128 lines
6.5 KiB
Plaintext
128 lines
6.5 KiB
Plaintext
___ ___ ___
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/\ \ /\ \ /\__\ the glorious hogs of entropy
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\:\ \ /::\ \ /:/ _/_ present unto you
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\:\ \ /:/\:\ \ /:/ /\__\ issue #173
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___ /::\ \ /:/ \:\ \ /:/ /:/ _/_
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/\ /:/\:\__\ /:/__/ \:\__\ /:/_/:/ /\__\ >> "dwindle dwindle dwindle" <<
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\:\/:/ \/__/ \:\ \ /:/ / \:\/:/ /:/ / by -> cstone
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\::/__/ \:\ /:/ / \::/_/:/ / n
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\:\ \ o \:\/:/ / \:\/:/ / t oink you, pal.
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\:\__\ g \::/ / f \::/ / r
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\/__/ s \/__/ \/__/ o p y
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Tae likes his job. LIP pays him well; it pays his bills, is adequate
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for his alcohol habit, and it pays for a rather nice one-bedroom,
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four-hundred square feet apartment in the lowest level of a block building
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in Itasca.
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block buildings are Itasca, Illinois's answer to its former surplus
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of ghost shopping towns, the remnants of the former booming economy in that
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area that frightened all the money elsewhere. they are dark primer-colored
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buildings three stories high with four identical four-hundred square feet
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apartments seemingly impossibly crammed on each floor.
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as Tae walks among the dozens of rows of block buildings to reach his
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this evening, he is careful not to trip over the rubber -- and
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neoprene-reinforced bundles of coaxial cable run in series from one block
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building to another. cuts in the cable are not a significant problem
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anymore; there is a SunComm repair team camped in a block building apartment
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for every three rows of thirteen buildings each in this area. cuts get
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serviced in less than ten minutes.
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home entry authentication in august, 2000, in the block buildings,
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has advanced to retinal scans. Tae sticks his face close to, but not
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touching, the face-shaped mold built into the wall near his door. someone
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has drawn a New Age Movers symbol, a reverse swastika, in pencil above the
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scanning panel. Tae ignores it.
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after Tae enters his apartment, his computer monitor switches on
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(his computer is on all the time) while the door automatically closes. Tae
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takes a beer from the dirty green exterior, clean white interior
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refrigerator and sits down at the computer to read this week's LIP.
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LIP is Life In Print, the recently rated #1 webzine of 1999.
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subscriptions are only $5 a year, and they have over ten million customers.
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their most read column this month is "Grunge Revive Jive," one of the
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columns that Tae is in charge of.
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Tae's full name is Taema Nonai. he has been on the very
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distinguished LIP editorial staff for six years now, even back to the
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non-pay non-web days. now Tae's life is good, yes, but as he reads the
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reviews for the Paperthins' "life is good," the painfully obvious but not
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picked up on subliminal message that life wasn't perfect enters his
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subconcious. Tae is good at ignoring his subconcious, though.
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Tae turns off the monitor via the manual switch. finds the yellowing
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beer -- and coffee-stained pages of laser-printed copies of LIP in a box
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near the rarely-used old-style analog television, mixed in with check pay
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stubs and hardcopy drafts of old LIP editorials.
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december, 1994 -- LIFE IN PRINT -- yeah, so fuck off
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1. "smells like he's dead" (finally) -- peoplekiller
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2. "can't buy feelings, baby" -- lisa
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3. "spit me out, eat me" -- evil_light
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(etc.)
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Tae carries his beer and the zine to the bed, and sits, back against
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the wall, and reads there, for a good two hours. he devours every old LIP
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he can find.
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reads a method of communication that is not funded by currency but by
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motivation, (or the lack of it, in some cases), of a passion that moves
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people to express themselves in any way they can.
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perhaps the fact that the difference between LIP now and then is so
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great carries so many feelings of disillusionment and disappointment is the
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reason why Tae has willfully stayed on this long, happy. he was never at
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the very apogee of the LIP chain, even in the print days; he was friends
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with the original editor, friends with every editor since, even during the
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sale.
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the emotion that hides behind the words in the zine that Tae is
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reading is not hidden or changed like the new LIP; it is still there. Life
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In Print is suddenly lively again, to him, the ideas of difference and
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observing, criticizing trends instead of setting them are returning. change
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returns.
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Tae is in charge of the entire music section of Life In Print. he
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has live access to the webpages, and he is the one responsible for editing
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content.
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perhaps (although not incredibly likely) it is the single beer in
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Tae's empty stomach, but more likely it is the revival of seeing pure
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instead of edited emotion that brings him to his conclusion. everyone else
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is going to see how LIP used to be, to see this emotion in the form of
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writing.
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Tae gets another beer. turns the monitor back on. finds an
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old-style floppy disk labeled "LIP9396" and sticks it in the computer.
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luckily enough, his label is accurate, and he is now looking at the
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december, 1994, issue of Life In Print. Tae opens the beer and takes a
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long swig.
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Tae logs in to the LIP web server remotely, and takes down the
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current articles, deletes them all. quickly substitutes the old issues of
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LIP, august-december, 1994. they're out. again. people can see them. Tae
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takes another long swig. Tae realizes his happiness now is greater than it
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was just three hours ago. Life In Print may not be in print (it never
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regularly has been), but it is more lifelike.
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of course, this didn't last. the ten million customers of LIP
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weren't moved, impressed, the way Tae was. Grunge Revive Jive was gone.
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that was the issue.
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of course, what appealed to the ten million customers of LIP appealed
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to the entire heart of LIP. they didn't even bother to call him, give him
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the courtesy call to say that he'd been fired. they locked him out of the
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LIP server, and Grunge Revive Jive's friendly-but-sassiness was back, in
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less than two hours; the colors, the splashes of light on the screen
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welcomed the eager customers; the coldness, worries, passionate, raw text,
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the roots, were gone. Taema Nonai was gone.
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* (c) HoE publications. HoE #173 -- written by cstone -- 12/30/97 *
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