textfiles/magazines/MISC/liminal_1.1

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>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>LIMINAL 1.1 "liminal explorations"<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
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EXPLORATIONS?            cover/essay
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"The Liminal Group is dedicated to exploring the terra incognita 
of the cultural map."  

In our recent collection of manifestos, we used these words to describe, at 
least in part, the purpose of LIMINAL.  We stand by our words.  However, the
reputation of explorers isn't what it used to be--with good reason--and, in the
aftermath of the Columbus Day Anniversary and the controversy that
surrounded it, some careful examination of "cultural exploration" seems to be
in order.  Exploration, as a prelude to commercial exploitation or military 
conquest, has been the cutting edge of Western History.  And it has been one of 
the dominant metaphors of progress-obsessed modernity--a metaphor 
powerful enough to unite pioneers, Indian fighters, conquistadors and LRRPs 
with scientists, entrepreneurs and philosophers in a grand movement toward 
"truth."  That modernist narrative has taken a beating lately, but consider 
the current vogue of "mapping" in postmodern discourse.  Consider the 
independent use of the exploring metaphor by several members of this group.  
One of the keys elements in postmodern experience is the "melting" of that 
comfortably mapped, well-explored and -exploited modernist terrain, and the 
result in a profound disorientation.  And this comes at a time when the 
repercussions of modernity run amok demand that we develop some way of 
orienting ourselves to the world around us, so that we can intervene.

Can we live without exploration? Can we function as intellectually and 
politically active scholar/citizens without at least attempting to survey the 
land around us? I suspect that we cannot not map.  But must our explorations 
be intrusive, disruptive, possessive, colonizing? Are there some "lands" that 
should simply remain unknown, or unthought, for the good of all? We can 
only wait and see.  In the meantime, we must realize that if we are to carry on 
with a project of cultural exploration then we must take responsibility for our 
actions, intrusion, colonizations.  And we must come to terms with mapping a 
landscape that is constantly changing, contingent, shifting beneath our feet.  
Difficult, exciting work.  May we engage in it with more wisdom and humanity 
than we have shown thus far.

Shawn P.  Wilbur

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LIMINAL Statement of Purpose
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LIMINAL seeks to apply new inter and transdisciplinary methods, theories, 
ideas, concepts, and approaches to the study of cultural phenomena as well as 
the inventive application of existing approaches.

Submissions should be exploratory and questioning in attitude and may take 
the form of verse, cartoon, photography, collage, etc. in addition to research 
monographs and essays.

The term "cultural phenomena" is taken to mean, but not limited to meaning: 
1) an activity engaged in by humans as members of a social network, 2) the 
product(s) of such engagement(s), 3) the motivators of such activities or 
engagements, 4) the functioning of such social networks themselves. 

Editorializing is encouraged, pontification is not.

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PERFORMANCE/THEORY
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In "Re/Search #13: Angry Women," Andrea Juno and V. Vale write of 
gender bending by gays and lesbians:  "The very act of subverting something 
so primal and fixed in society as one's gender role can unleash a creativity 
that is truly needed by society--like a shamanistic act" (4) [my emphasis].  
Interviews with the women performance artists in the book refer to the 
ritualistic power of performance as transformation.  The performer becomes 
someone or something else through her performance, like the participants in
a voodoo ritual trance.  But performance can also change more than the 
performer.  Like a type of social alchemy, a performance or a series of 
performances can transform audiences as well as media and representational 
conventions and formulas.  Performances of any type can become group 
rituals which transcend the immediate environment of the venue.  The power 
of these performances can reach beyond the time and space of the 
performance itself.  And if utilized properly, this power of transformation can 
change societies, cultures, the world.  Think of the power of Hitler's Nazi 
rallies and his own performances at those rallies and elsewhere.  Think of the 
power of performance (as one part of the total presentation) in presidential 
campaigns in the United States.  Think of potential that power possesses to 
enact positive social change rather than to manipulate the masses.

Performance as transformation and as an agent of social change warrants 
suitable theories with which to be explore it academically.  I suggest that 
theory itself become a process, a series of actions--theorizing--rather than an 
object--theory.  Theory as process can illuminate subjects such as live 
performance in a new and perhaps more appropriate light.  The potential for 
change inherent within a performance becomes clearer if the theory used to 
analyze it is capable of revealing that potential.  Also, theory as process is 
more appropriate to a perspective which seeks social change, such as feminism.  
The characteristics which make theory a process are those valued by feminism.  
Theory as process--feminist theorizing--is much more inclusive than traditional 
theory.  Not only can feminist theorizing analyze a performance by Karen 
Finley in a more dynamic manner, a performance by Karen Finley can 
potentially be feminist theorizing.  Theory and its subjects become united in 
the goal of social change, activism and theory are melded through public 
performance.
     In defining feminist theory or feminist theorizing, the humanist 
standards of consistency and comprehensiveness often used to judge 
theory should be discarded.  I propose that feminist theory should be a 
process which eschews rather than values mastery, closure, and totality.  
By disregarding humanist standards of what theory should be, feminist 
theory can avoid the sometimes static, monolithic, restrictive nature of 
traditional theory by becoming a process.  Each instance of feminist 
theorizing, each action, is one in a series over time which accumulates 
power--power to change institutions, practices, and perceptions.  Feminist 
theorizing is in part a process of meaning production in which women are 
constituted with their own subjectivity recognized and represented.

As a process, feminist theorizing, theory as process, reconciles and/or 
negates the usual dichotomies of thought/action and theory/practice.  
Also, feminist theorizing strives to simultaneously illuminate the past, 
evaluate the present, and expand the options for and point the way into 
the future.  To paraphrase Juno and Vale, to subvert something so 
fundamental to academia as theory is to unleash a creativity that is truly 
needed by academics who are working for social change.  Perhaps it is 
one step in descending from the isolation of the ivory tower and toward 
making our work useful in the struggles of everyday life.

Torey L. King

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THE AFFECTATIONS OF ENTROPY
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I: IN WHICH DARWIN IS WRONG AGAIN.    

 Recently  television's THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL (a dangerous misnomer in 
this case) presented a limited series titled BRAIN SEX, based on a popular 
book of the same name. (Please note: the following is all in reference to the 
show and not the book.)  Before you leap to wild thoughts about LBJ and JFK 
be forewarned: the topic here is the inherent sexual dimorphism of the 
human brain and not political cogito interruptus.

Quite simply the series is an excuse to pass off long discarded views of 
biological determinism as cutting edge science. Recent revelations about 
human brain physiognomy are incorrigably declared "proofs" for  all 
manner of social behaviors.

There's no denying that human brains are sexually distinct and that certain 
behavioral differences between males and females of a given population may 
have their root in those differences. But BRAIN SEX exceeds the grounds of 
reasonable scientific inquiry as matter of course.

Particular examples are virtually endless, but major concerns should suffice 
here. Viewers are frequently exposed to people having the amount of blood in 
certain areas of their brains  measured as they solve problems. Since men and 
women differ in this, it is "proved" that the behaviors measured are functions 
of biology, not sociocultural indoctrination. It actually proves nothing of the 
kind. The things tested (face recognition, determining emotional states, etc.) 
are clearly all culturally induced gender differences, not biological 
imperatives.

We are then subjected to declarations that sexuality is also completely induced 
through brain morphology. We are told this determination is good, since 
"moralists" will now have to reevaluate their positions. What!?! Without going 
into the tentative nature of the studies quoted, there is no reason to believe 
that "moralists" will have to do any reevaluating about their positions at all 
except to now declare that homosexual activity is a function of genetic 
failure. In short, gays/lesbians are freaks with messed up brains. Hardly a 
step toward tolerance, I would think. And I can't help but think of the 
morphological determinism of centuries past which had societies locking people
up because of eyebrow hair and crooked noses, the obvious biological 
manifestations of twisted criminal brains. Our science is perhaps more 
sophisticated (perhaps) but it seems that, sadly, we are not.

Another disagreeable aspect of the series is the cloying narration, written and 
delivered in a puerile sickeningly-sweet style that had me reaching for 
insulin. Picture a series of happy-faces saying "Vive le Differance  " and you 
get the general idea of the omnipresent, overly smug voice. 

Boys are seen playing sports and girls enact a domestic crises, all because of 
our sexed brains, no process of enculturation at work here. Passing reference 
is made to the few who don't fit the paradigm---they had some pre-natal 
hormone problem which accounts for their aberrant socializing. Again, this 
reeks of the old "His mother was scared by an elephant while she (the mother) 
was pregnant" explanation. 

What's really obnoxious about all this is that the whole show mixes legitimate 
scientific discoveries with wild extremist sociobiology towards an end which 
reifies the dominant paradigms involving masculinity and femininity in 
Western culture. Women want and need to be "domestic" (culturally defined, 
but the makers of BRAIN SEX will never tell you that) because their brain 
morphology makes them be that way, and men--well, just fill in the dictatorial, 
dogmatic sociocultural stereotype of your choice. It is very telling that BRAIN 
SEX never deals with peoples of other cultures. Speculation: if they had, they 
would have had to explain the differences they found by declaring then to be 
racial variations, since to admit the importance of cultural determinants (in 
all but the most shallow way they do) would cast doubt on the broader 
interpretations made throughout the series.

Regrettably, the series will be endlessly repeated and can be purchased on 
video. So students and the interested public at large will be subjected to this 
series of reprehensibly simplistic explanations. The misinformation age 
continues to swamp us, and it appears that Franz Boas was guilty of severe 
optimism when he declared that this century would see the end of the nature 
versus nurture debate. BRAIN SEX is brain dead, and watching it will give you 
a headache.

II: IN WHICH WE ENCOUNTER A DIFFERENT STAMP ACT.

One interesting thing about the brouhaha over which Elvis stamp our nation 
would spit on has been that it got some people to thinking about what Elvis, or 
more properly his image/icon, means to this cultural system.

After all these years it still never fails to jolt me when I happen to see 
footage of Mr. Presley from his final few concerts. Here, quite obviously, is 
a very sick and a most assuredly dying man. I want to scream (and often have) 
"Stop it! Don't do it for me! Stay home eating fried banana sandwiches if you 
like, but don't kill yourself for my enjoyment!" But he still sweats and 
strains his way through the songs, turning a little paler each second until 
the wall of flesh he built to protect himself collapses on him and he's gone, 
smothered and crushed by his image. Too much for anyone to survive.

The "Vegas Elvis" stamp was labeled the "Fat Elvis" stamp, but it wasn't. He 
got a lot worse after 1973, the last four years of his life were Mr. Presley's
treadmill to oblivion, a nightmarish hell by all accounts.

Why did it happen? One explanation is that the simple country boy just got too 
big for his "britches" and drowned in his own bumpkin excesses. But it doesn't 
ring true. The Elvis story may be a cultural cautionary tale, but not in that 
way. 

When told "Elvis died," John Lennon supposedly remarked "Yeah, when he 
joined the Army," a cold and inaccurate witticism--Mr. Presley didn't join, he 
was, after all, conscripted against his will.

But it does mark an important event. With Mr. Presley himself unavailable to 
make new recordings, films, and appearances, a system was set up to sell Elvis 
without Mr. Presley needing to participate. The genius (evil, but genius 
nonetheless) of Tom Parker (the real-life blueprint for GREEN ACRES' Mr. 
Haney)  was his early ability to  totally commodify his  product.

Corporate America used the two years Mr. Presley was in the Army to 
domesticate the Elvis as rebel image ( Clift-Brando-Dean format, with music 
added) in full. Gone is the troubled, disenfranchised youth of LOVING YOU (a 
great and eerily prescient film which, in his later years, Elvis could not bear 
to watch--its about a trusting rural singer who is manipulated by his 
managers and the music industry until it almost kills him) and in his place is 
the fun-loving maladroit of DOUBLE TROUBLE. No threat there, and easy to mass 
market. The process once begun would intensify, despite Mr. Presley's valiant 
(near heroic) attempts to counter it (the 1968 "Comeback" televised special 
being the most obvious). By the way, it seems more than mere coincidence that 
1958-1961 was also a bad time for Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, 
Little Richard, Gene Vincent, and Eddie Cochran. What was going on? 
Probably not conspiracy, but clearly no advantage was left unused or 
unmanipulated.

Mr. Presley found himself surrounded by sycophants masked as confidants and 
criminal opportunists disguised as close friends. He lost his personhood in the 
avalanching spew of publicity which fueled and fuels the corporate machine. 
From the perspective of Mr. Presley's life, shooting televisions was a rational 
and restrained act. Though it hardly pays to kill the messenger, he'd probably 
tried about everything else.

Clearly Mr. Presley had a range of personal troubles and made some poor 
judgments--like any human. His biggest guilt was his innocence. 

Mr. Presley died as mortals must, but Elvis lives on as a corporate commodity,
a consumer good, a product. Mr. Presley was killed by the consumer culture of 
greed, he was mythically iconized out of existence. Even his final resting 
place has become a shrine to the manufactured image, a paeon to consumptive 
excess and not to the real man. Mr. Presley died from excessive and prolonged 
exposure to the sins of corporate capitalism. Participants in that culture 
suffer a guilt by association. 

Elvis Presley, the young, vibrant, cheerful Rockabilly who was bludgeoned to 
death from 1958 to 1977 calls out to us. Our culture has spit on him enough. I, 
for one,  choose to honor the man by boycotting the image, coming soon to a 
government sanctioned United States Post Office near you.   

Ben Urish

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Married ... With S/Laughter
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"So you think I'm  a loser.  Just because I have a stinking job that I hate, a 
family that doesn't respect me, a whole city that curses the day I was born?  
Well, that may mean loser to you but let me tell you something.  Every morning 
when I wake up I know it's not going to get any better until I go back to sleep 
again.  So I get up, have my watered-down Tang and still-frozen Pop Tart, get 
in my car--with no upholstery, no gas, and six more payments--to fight traffic 
just for the privilege of putting cheap shoes on the cloven hooves of people 
like you.  I'll never play football like I thought I would.  I'll never know 
the touch of a beautiful woman.  And I'll never again know the joy of driving 
without a bag on my head.  But I'm not a loser.  'Cause despite it all, me
and every other guy who'll never be what he wanted to be are still out there 
being what we don't want to be, forty hours a week for life.  And the fact that
I haven't put a gun in my mouth, you pudding of a woman, makes me a winner."
--Al Bundy (Ed O'Neill)
  Married ... With Children

     After thirty years, disgruntled shoe seller Al Bundy returns "The Little 
Engine That Could" and pays a $2190.20 late fine to an evil, abusive librarian.
He does this after having radio editorialists--including Paul Harvey ("I used 
to like him," says Al) --condemn him and hateful television newscasters show a 
hidden-camera videotape of his attempt to surreptitiously return the book 
without paying the fine.  "Does this mean you'll be on America's Most Wanted, 
Al?" asks wife Peggy Wanker Bundy.[2]  Al tells the child-hating 
hegemon(ster)y/librarian--and thus us--in the above speech that choosing 
not to commit suicide and ending his--and thus our--years of suffering and 
disappointment on earth is an act of courage.  The studio audience cheers 
wildly, applauding his intrepidity, laughing, sharing his mockery and 
contempt for a nearly universal symbol of childhood terror, the wicked 
librarian.  And we do it even if we're not wholly convinced he's right; indeed, 
perhaps even because we know he may not be right.[3]  
     On one hand, Al Bundy maintains the working class sitcom husband's 
tradition of trying to "tough out the hard times" and "better his lot," even 
though he knows he is as forever doomed to failure as were Jackie Gleason's 
Honeymooners  of the mid-1950s.  On the other hand, quite unlike Ralph 
Kramden, this is a postmodern Sisyphus who fully recognizes he is locked into 
the TV hell of the dominant American metanarratives centering around his 
despised service-oriented, postindustrial, postNuclear Family and marriage--
and thus so do we.[4]  Al, like Sisyphus, is the absurd hero who refuses to 
suicide.[5]  Once again we see that if, indeed, you cannot know happiness 
without knowing pain, most certainly the powerful reverse is equally true.  
     I would submit that this is perhaps the primary reason Married ... With 
Children was once the most popular sitcom in syndicated television history.[6]  
This includes the syndication of M*A*S*H,  which was nominated for ninety-
nine Emmies.  Such a phenomenon would seem to suggest not just a fondness 
for, say, sordid laughs at "dumb blonde" jokes--the somber failure of, for 
example, Bosom Buddies  tells us that--or even a semi-cerebral celebration of 
cultural burnout.  Instead, Al, his family, and their neighbors recognize, 
indeed revel in, the meaningless absurdity of their very lives in this 
existential situation comedy of t/errors. We, the audience, love them,
since, as we recognize ourselves in them, we fear (for) them for the ultimate 
truths they convey through their electronic whimpering.  As they try to cope 
with current problems ranging from the mundane (concerning holiday traffic 
jams of no interest to the transportation department, the fetishization of 
women, the traditional work ethic, PMS, Oprah Winfrey's alleged mesmerizing 
effect upon bored viewers, inadequate secondary education, postcapitalist class 
awareness, and the intense drudgery of "housekeeping") to the extraordinary 
(space alien invaders, local celebrities who double as ax murderers, and 
ancient Celtic curses on the family name), the pathetic Bundys and their 
yuppie-bourgeois neighbors[7] are laugh-tracked stand-up tragedians for the 
fin-de-millennium.  These characters are enacting a spectacle of playful sign-
slide between aestheticized, nihilistic kitsch and the pure horror of the 
dominant signs concerning the (half-life) "decay" of "traditional (nuclear) 
family values" at a time when they are being (spuriously) (re)defined by a 
poorly spelling Vice-President who condemns a fictional character for having 
a child after its father-to-be runs out on its mother-to-be; as has been 
feared, some people clearly do have trouble distinguishing between television 
f(r)iction and reality.[8] Nevertheless, as a result of the Bundy's astonishing 
popularity we may see that the characters of Married ... With Children--and 
thus we--can be Very Funny in a Very Sick Way.[9]    
     In January of 1991, America's President George Bush, lagging in the 
polls likely for desperate want of a domestic policy, embarked upon what could 
easily be thought of as the first postmodern war, the "war against Iraq," 
perhaps best known as its "code name," Operation Desert Storm.  Desert Storm 
was the first war of pure images, of ardent appearances and twenty-four hour 
coverage, of CNN and Smart Bombs; the first war of all light and no heat, for 
the television audience, at least. Indeed, it had all the appearances of  a hot 
video game being played by somebody else's kid.  With characterizations of 
operatives either so broadly drawn they were either somehow almost less real 
than even the cartoonish Bundy family [10] or so inconsequential and 
insignificant as to be capable of producing no more human 
empathy/sympathy/ pathos than a pixel-sized blip on a VDT.  Other wars had 
media coverage, to be sure; that is, after all, how the West learned of Homer 
and his accounts of the Trojan Wars.  And certainly no one may forget the 
images of Vietnamese children running naked from a napalmed sanctuary or 
of a bound Viet Cong prisoner grimacing as his brains are blown from his 
head.  Nor, most certainly, may we forget the images of the horrors of the Nazi 
death camps.[11]  But not until this decade's instant global communications 
through a virtual spider web matrix of post-New Frontier satellites above the 
earth could we watch the live progress of the horrors of killing from start to 
finish.[12]  By the end of the war, with his approval rating at around ninety-
one percent, it seemed--at that time--George Bush could replace Vice-President 
J. Danforth Quayle with Willie Horton as his running mate in 1992.[13]
     I mention the war for this reason: the postmodern nature of that event-
-its being so Elegant, so Efficient, so deadly-Mechanical, so Progressive, so 
Technical, so Very Very Expensive; that is, so "dry" both as a series of images 
and as a cause for emotion--is antithetical to the nature of (what I call) 
s/laughter--which is so very "wet" in practically every sense. Though both are
ostensibly about suffering, about the taking of human life, about ritualized 
primordial vision quests, about testings-in-fire,[14] we recall that while war 
is hell, TV is fun.[15]
     Like the Bundys, we recognize that we revel in the meaningless 
absurdity of our lives in our own existential sitcoms of t/errors.  But it is 
first essential to cut far more deeply into the matter of violent humor in 
the context of the family.  It is, as we "winners" shall see, a most viscous 
psychic fluid matter indeed.
     
-------
NOTES:
     1  "Anything in Latin Appears More Important."
     2  That the Fox Network broadcasts original episodes of both Married ... 
With Children  and America's Most Wanted  should surprise no one.
     3  However, even that may not truly matter as the series is what may be 
termed a Virtual Cartoon with humans taking the place of anthropomorphic 
animal characters.  Indeed, in an attempt to kill a bunny rabbit which had 
been plucking carrots from his garden one by one (making the appropriate 
cork-popping sound as each entered the earth), Al inadvertently dynamited a 
city gas main; Chicago was next seen as ground zero for a mushroom cloud.  
The characters were, of course, a moment later seen as okay, save for their 
exaggerated, cartoon-style splints and bandages.
     4  See Albert Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus" from the book of the same 
title. 
     5  Ed O'Neill said this on Into the Night  the second week of Married ... 
With Children's run in syndication (clearly, the operational word here is 
syndication).
     6  The latter so "normal-foil" and all-American they were divorced at 
the end of the third season.
     7  On 3 June 1992,  Vice-President J. Danforth Quayle criticized the 
previous night's episode of Murphy Brown, claiming that the title character's 
choice to have a child "out of wedlock" contributed to the "decline" of "the 
values of the traditional family. "Criticisms of the Vice-President were swift
David Letterman, for example, simply said the following during his opening 
monologue that very evening: "Mister Vice-President, I don't know how to tell 
you this, but Murphy Brown is a fictional character."  Newsweek  writer Joe 
Klein said this, however: "... Dan Quayle--flawed, callow vehicle that he may 
be--seems to have nudged presidential politics perilously close to something 
that really matters...," the question of what or whom is to serve as national 
arbiter/manipulator for Official American Values (Joe Klein, "Whose Values?  
Whose Families?  Whose Standards?" Newsweek  8 June 1992: 19).  Less than two 
weeks later, Mr. Quayle misspelled the word "potato."  Letterman had this 
question for Trenton, NJ,  sixth-grader William Figueroa, the child who 
corrected the Vice-President: "Do you think he knows how to spell the word 
<EFBFBD>re-elected'?"  All this calls to mind a quote from a speech Quayle made to the 
American Society of Newspaper Editors in April of 1991: "The American people 
would not want to know of any misquotes that Dan Quayle may or may not 
make" (Mother Jones  17.4 [July/August 1992] 15).  
     8  It was, according to Tony Hendra, cartoonist Jules Feiffer who coined 
the term "sick" in its current, ironic, sense.  See Hendra's Going Too Far: The 
Rise and Demise of Sick, Gross, Black, Sophomoric, Weirdo, Pinko, Anarchist, 
Underground, Anti-Establishment Humor  (New York: Doubleday, 1987) 92.
     9   One need only think back to the jingoistic media presentations 
during the operation of Brigadier General "Stormin'" Norman Schwartzkopf,  
Dick "Ice-Man" Cheney, "All-American Negro" Colin Powell, et al. 
     10  Though there is clearly a movement to try to make us forget just 
those images.  For a detailed discussion, see Jean-Fran<61>ois Lyotard, The 
Differend: Phrases in Dispute.
     11  I am not really so na<6E>ve as to suggest the war in the Middle East is 
actually over; the current lull, however, signals the end of that operation.
     12  Willie Horton was a parolee in Massachusetts while 1988 Democratic 
Presidential challenger Michael Dukakis was governor of the state.  Horton, a 
black man with a singularly uncomplimentary arrest photo (very frequently 
shown by Bush's re-election committee during the campaign), was on work 
furlough release when he raped a white woman. 
     13  One need only think of how applicable the "men's movement" 
mytho-poetics of Joseph Campbell is to this argument, especially The Hero 
With A Thousand Faces  (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1949).  Additionally, 
"men's movement" author Robert Bly has made some marks of this in his 
writings about militaristic "male-bonding" events.  See, for example, his Iron 
John  (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1990).
     14  I am not na<6E>ve about TV just being for fun either, dammit. 

John A. Dowell

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Making a Mythic Mountaineer:
The Creation of Junior Johnson
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When Tom Wolfe went to North Carolina in 1964, he was prepared to write 
about Junior Johnson, the area's most popular stock car driver. What he 
discovered was an individual undergoing a period of folkloristic transition. 
Junior Johnson was more than a "good ol' boy" who could muscle a 1963 
Chevy around a banked clay oval. He was becoming the Junior Johnson, an 
icon of the rural South, the American Dream incarnate.

Wolfe knew Johnson was raised amongst the harshness of poverty-
stricken Wilkes County, an area where making and bootlegging moonshine 
was an occupation of choice during the Great Depression. Those days have 
become a part of history deeply rooted in our national mythology. For the 
origins of this cottage industry, one must look to the eighteenth century, 
when Scotch-Irish settlers populated the Appalachian range and made corn 
whisky out of necessity. Crop yields were low, transportation was difficult, 
and whisky more profitable. Junior Johnson was born into this tradition, 
and carried his cultural inheritance to new levels of national recognition. 
This national recognition came through Detroit automakers, who were 
utilizing Johnson's abilities to win on the NASCAR Grand National circuit 
during the early 1960s.

Junior Johnson's driving career spanned 13 years from 1953 through 1966. 
He won 50 Grand National races as well as numerous local events. If Johnson's 
bootlegging career was known throughout Wilkes County folklore, his driving 
career elevated him to a national folk legend. His Driving career reads like a 
collection of North Carolina folk tales. These tales would have been long 
forgotten had it not been for the Detroit automobile companies, who 
recognized the sales power of a winning stock car team.

These manufacturers were selling two distinct products. As certain makes of 
cars would win Grand National events, their sales would increase sharply. As 
the teams traveled the circuit and won races, the reputations of the drivers 
and mechanics would be used as a means of adding human interest to news 
reports. These "good ol' boys" were of interest to people outside the 
Southeast. It was entertaining to see bootleggers battle on a dirt oval at the 
fairgrounds. The sport's "hillbilly" image was its drawing power, thanks to 
the stories spread by the media as the circuit wound its way across the country.
This made drivers like Junior Johnson more than just wild men on wheels; it 
made them national personalities.

Johnson's racing career is the stuff of folklore. Legend has it that Junior's 
brother, L.P., approached him in the fields where Junior was working with a 
mule-drawn plow. L.P. had a pretty fast whisky car, and he asked Junior to run 
it at the North Wilkesboro track. Junior was plowing barefooted, with no shirt 
and a pair of dirty overalls, and L.P.'s offer sounded like more fun than 
plowing behind a mule. Junior drive his brother's car and finished in second 
place behind Gwyn Staley, a neighbor of the Johnson family who farmed 
nearby. Ironically enough, when Tom Wolfe visits North Wilkesboro to see 
Junior race in 1964, the race he sees is the "Gwyn Staley Memorial."

Junior Johnson's driving career, which began around 1947 with his second-
place finish to Staley, went "national" on September 7, 1953, when he managed 
to finish in 38th place in the Southern 500 at Darlington, South Carolina. From 
that moment, his legend grew.

People heard about the young driver. They knew he was in jail (eleven months 
in Chillicothe) for his involvement as a moonshiner--although some people 
said he was standing by the family still when the federal agents finally caught 
him. People talked about his famous "bootleg turn," which Johnson executed 
when he found himself facing an Alcohol Tax agent roadblock. Fans shook 
with delight as they gossiped about Junior throwing his supercharged 
Oldsmobile into second gear, locking the steering wheel at its maximum point 
of movement, then mashing the gas pedal to the floor, at which point the Feds 
would get sprayed with gravel as Johnson's Olds spun 180 degrees and roared 
off in the opposite direction. This was great history, the stuff they never 
read in school. What fun the Depression must have been in North Carolina, the 
racing fans exclaimed.

It was Wolfe's 1965 article in Esquire magazine about Junior Johnson that 
really shifted the folklore mill into high gear. All throughout his story, 
Tom Wolfe inserted tale after tale about the driver as told to him by rabid 
fans. "I wasn't in the South five minutes," Wolfe wrote, "before people 
started making oaths, having visions, telling these hulking great stories, 
all on the subject of Junior Johnson." Junior Johnson, to people of the rural 
South, was their redeemer--a savior who drove the paint off a 1964 Dodge to 
save his followers' souls. Here he was--the man who beat a federal roadblock 
by installing a siren and flashing red light in the grill of his Oldsmobile 
to resemble a lawman--out on Sundays giving 175 MPH novenas to the devout 
who gathered at Our Lady of the High-Banked One-and-a-Half Mile Paved oval. 
Wherever two or more have gathered in Junior's name, mouths will open and a 
Rebel Yell will be heard, singing the praises of the New South. It will rise 
again because of the powerful car makers in Michigan who worship rural heroes.

The Ford Motor Company, who Junior Johnson drove for in 1965, admitted 
years ago it spent almost five million dollars trying to beat Johnson and his 
Chevrolet in 1963. That year Junior put his car on the front row in 17 of 33 
races (10 were pole positions). That year Johnson won seven races and took 
home over $65,000. The bootlegger could beat Detroit at its own game, the 
Southern fans shouted; this man from the mountains didn't need big dollar 
sponsorship from General Motors. He was a legend, a man greater than mere 
corporations, a man who was the South. As Tom Wolfe wrote in 1965, "Junior 
Johnson has followers who need to keep him, symbolically, riding through the 
nighttime like a demon.... [He is] a hero a whole people or class of
people can  identify with."

Mark Howell

==================================================================
COOL IS UNCOOL: THE "IN GROUP" ATTEMPTS OF THE 1992 MTV MUSIC AWARDS
==================================================================

     MTV attempts to posit itself as a "non-corporation," a group of media 
pirates who happened to get control of a network and turn it into <20>garage TV," 
when in fact MTV is a multi-national corporation whose conglomerates form a 
billion-dollar industry, the Home Shopping Network for disaffected youth.
     The current MTV corporate image mumbles, "Hey, man, I don't know how
I got invited to this party, but look, I'm having fun."  This, of course, is 
just so much electronic bullshit.  The station spends millions of dollars to 
affect a self-mocking moniker wherein the (male) veejays  are sloppy (Ricky <20>I 
have enough tattoos on my right arm alone to be a metal dude"),  the 
commercial spokesmen are self-mocking (Denis Leary), and the best music is 
seemingly raw (MTV Unplugged).  MTV tries desperately hard to forget its 
commercial history (and current purpose for being) by creating other 
programming, and legitimizing its own art (while actually selling to the 
industry again) by developing and airing its own awards show.
     In response to industry criticism that past awards shows have been too 
serious (imagine the Sony boardroom: "Son - we ain't makin' art here; we're 
selling CD's. Cut the shit or we'll cut your funding"), came the 1992 MTV Music 
Awards. Matter of fact, it's still coming: MTV sells so much ad revenue for 
this program that you will probably still be able to watch it when Anthony's 
"I'm a  a Pepper" tits ('scuse me, pecs) hang past his balls.
     So, what did they do to "lite-en" the show?  Let's start with the host, 
Dana Carvey.  Carvey was chosen primarily for his role of Garth in "Wayne's 
World."  So we begin with a host chosen for fictional capabilities.  Carvey 
further pulls away from reality by not appearing as his self (if indeed there 
does exist a self within this actor), but as different characters from another 
network's program, "Saturday Night Live." The beginning of the awards show 
is even more unreal, with Carvey as Bush as Jack Palance doing MTV Awards as 
Academys.  
     Confused?  No problem.  Remember, the goal here is being cool, 
appealing to the youth market (as seen not through this target market's gaze 
but through the ideals of corporate owners from the US and Japan).  So we 
have Garth playing drums for U2 via video - and threatening to "hurl" 
because he's so excited, you have Kurt Loder claiming to do a first in 
interactive interviewing by interviewing U2 via Zoo TV video (come on, MTV 
boys, you don't do interactive video conferences?)  
     That's not cool enough for you?  Well, the boys at MTV really know how 
to appeal to the youthful masses - through bodily function humor.  Presenting 
for the metal category (because those corporate whizzes certainly understand 
that all metal listeners are dudes who enjoy lying around in their fecal 
matter) was FARTMAN, a stunning "humorous" creation by Howard Stern.  The 
writers let no gaseous joke slip by, from exploding podiums and stereo sound 
effects to Carvey's follow-up with "silent-but-deadlies"  and "pull my
finger" as his Carson/McMahan incarnation.  In the most significant display 
of corporate humor, Stern was paired with Luke Perry, for the rock-n-roll 
Beauty and the Beast innuendo. (Get it, dude?)
     In effect, by attempting to appropriate standards and attitudes of a 
subgroup the corporate leaders have never been part of, MTV undermines its 
attempts at in-group humor and identification, mocks corporate standards 
rather than succeeding in self-parody, and becomes in fact duller than all it 
attempts to ascend from.
     Another example of this is the wearing by hosts and presenters of 
leather and sequined red ribbons. By taking what is a cool symbol of protest-
simple red ribbon and safety pins (via ACT-UP) - and garnishing it with gaudy 
expense, MTV "kitches" what once was a true "in" symbol, rather like when 
older men drive sports cars or wear cowboy boots, or your home-ec teacher 
wears a "clip-on" nose ring. The power, the in-group identification is lost, 
usually not even known, so what finally exists is a non-realized self-parody, 
done not through being cool, but woefully stupid.  In the end, what matters in 
the MTV Awards is not who won, but who bought these nominations and 
awards.  Certainly you'll find this is not the "in-group" nor anyone
affiliated  with the group.

Molly Merryman

==================================================================
Bilateral/Tripartite
==================================================================

     I propose the investigation of the performance of folk music in bars, 
clubs, and recording studios to determine the impact of technology and the 
mass media on the performance of traditional materials and to establish a link 
(and separation) between popular music and folk music. Moses Asch, who 
founded and ran Folkways Records, admits to shortening songs and texts to 
accommodate the necessary limitations inherent in the recording process. My 
speculation is that the theories of oral-formulaic composition, developed by 
Milman Parry and Albert Lord, provide a useful methodology for examining 
the separation between the popular arts/media and the folk performance. That 
is, the music performed in small group settings, generally consider "Popular 
Music" can be profitably understood as extensions of the traditional processes 
of lengthening and shortening of musical texts that occur organically in the 
traditional "Folk" performance.
     The line between classic folk culture and modern popular culture is one 
of the tremendous gray areas for the popular culture scholar. It is my 
contention that a simple model might be constructed which would enable the 
scholar to examine the artifacts and texts collected to understand the 
interrelationship between these forms of folk music and popular music. The 
model also would be helpful to distinguish between genres and formulas 
present in these artifacts.
     I would suggest the following Bilateral-Tripartite system of observation; 
a Contextual approach:

Context                                           Tradition 
                             Business
                             Audience
                             Aesthetics
context = synchronic                              tradition = diachronic
(specific place)                                  (place over time)

Here I would study the context of a performance by examining the business, 
audience, and aesthetics and the tradition of a performance by examining the 
business, audience, and aesthetics. This would enable me to explore the entire 
sphere of the artifact. By changing any one of these factors, the artifact 
would either change genres or cross over the line from folk music to popular 
music. My speculation is that the theories of oral-formulaic composition, 
developed by Milman Parry and Albert Lord, provide a useful methodology for 
examining the recorded traditional materials. That is, the changes required 
during the recording process can be profitably understood as extensions of the 
traditional processes of lengthening and shortening of musical texts that occur 
organically in a performance.
     Moses Asch was a leader in keeping oral formulaic songs intact while 
working with artists to "...edit and think about time and everything else."
He said that while recording Woody Guthrie, he was "...interested in the
content, not in the engineering."[1] Asch's passion was for folk music. 
Folkways boasts of ethnic, country and bluegrass, spoken word, classical, 
children's, and sea chantey recordings. His theory of recording was 
preserving  "... what intellectual knowledge...we get from a record, rather 
than...super high fidelity..." [2] At first he recorded directly on wax, then 
acetate, and, finally, after World War II, tape. His practice was to record 
texts as they organically existed to document culture. Starting with Asch 
Records, evolving into Disc Records, and finally into Folkways, Moses Asch 
made an important contribution to the recording industry, while preserving 
cultural texts. Nevertheless, he did require folk artists to adapt their 
material so that he could include much of it on commercially available 
recordings.
     The Parry-Lord thesis has been presented in Albert Lord's The Singer of 
Tales According to it, oral-formulaic composition identifies a folk performance 
as an interactive process in which the audience and performer influence and 
alter the performer's text according to various aspects of the social context. 
The performance of folk music to small group audiences involves the use of 
formula: i.e. groups of words used to express concepts under specific 
conditions. The audience will respond to the performer and the performer will 
change <20> lengthen and shorten <20> the song to meet the desires of the 
audience.[3] In performances which involve instrumental music along with 
vocals, the theory can be applied to the music as well. I have come to use the 
phrase aural-formulaic composition in place of oral-formulaic to assist in the 
distinction made with the different spelling and implied meaning. Aural is 
used to describe the musical notes and chords found in a folk music 
performance rather than the words and linguistics of speech.
     The emergence of the technology to permanently record a musical 
performance permitted the collection of sung words and performed music 
rather than purely verbatim transcriptions. When this technology began, the 
length of a recording was limited to two-and-half minutes. This, as Moses Asch 
has stated, lead the artist and producer to sometimes lengthen, but most often 
shorten, the performance. The intersection of the traditional act of folk 
performance with the act of recorded documentation changed the method by 
which oral forms were transmitted and received by an audience. This 
intersection of traditional performance with technology requires different 
approaches to its understanding.
     Recording is, in itself, not a traditional act and requires additional 
perspectives, including the awareness of the impact of technology upon 
culture. This dissertation, then, will involve both the use of folklore 
methodology for the purpose of understanding the impact of technology on 
folk culture and the impact of folk culture on technology and a new definition 
of folk music in an era of mass media distribution of traditional folk texts. 
     The recording process involves the act of shortening and lengthening the
text to fit the technological time span on a ten-inch, 78 r.p.m. or 75 minute 
Compact Disc record is a reaction to context. Unlike the natural context in the 
field, however, the context of the performance is a technological content. The 
technology is an element which must be studied to understand the culture 
which produced the artifact. The technology and the text combine to make a 
statement about the culture that produced it. The folk songs changed to meet 
the requirements of a changing technological world. Asch managed to shorten 
traditional material for publication on ten-inch records while at the same time 
remaining true to those materials. The Folkways records appear to be faithful 
representations of the traditions they document. It was through an instinctive 
understanding of what can be deleted and how that Asch was able to do this. 
The exploration of the musical notes and chords will be used as data to support 
the project's basic assumption<6F>that the performance of folk music in clubs 
can best be understood as extensions of the traditional processes of 
lengthening and shortening of musical texts that occur organically in 
traditional folk tale performances. 
     Oral formulaic composition. defines formula as groups of words used to 
express a concept under specific conditions. This results in a performer 
knowing the story, but not the exact words. The words change during each 
performance to meet the needs, expectations, and reactions of the audience. In 
this way, a folk performance is an interactive process in which the audience 
and performer influence and change the performance to fit the social context. 
Lord anticipates Dan Ben-Amos[4] who presents the idea of folklore as any 
event, or thing, which holds as its root audience and performer interaction. 
The same can be said of rock and popular music.
-------
NOTES:
1 Scherman, Tony.  <20>This Man Captured the True Sounds of a Whole World." 
Smithsonian. 
2 Dunson, Josh.  Anthology of American Folk Music.  New York:  Oak 
Publications, 1973.  Interviews with Moses Asch.
3 Ben-Amos, Dan. Sweet Words: Storytelling Events in Benin. Philadelphia: 
Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1975.
4  Ben-Amos, Dan . Sweet Words: Storytelling Events in Benin. 

Michael Leo McHugh
American Culture Studies, Bowling Green State University
Associate Editor, Rock & Rap Confidential/

==================================================================
CHARTING THE RHETORICAL TOPOGRAPHY OF MICHAEL JACKSON'S FACE
AND NOTES ON THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE  
==================================================================

"take a look at yourself, and then make a change"
          - "Man in the Mirror" Bad
"I'm not going to spend my life being a color"
          - "Black or White" Dangerous
"The map is not the terrain"
          - Alfred Korzybski

     In the supermarket, the tabloids scream: MICHAEL JACKSON SLEEPS IN 
HYPERBARIC CHAMBER! MICHAEL JACKSON TO BUY ELEPHANT MAN'S BONES! 
MICHAEL ATTENDS LIZ'S WEDDING WITH (Choose one or more: BUBBLES THE 
CHIMP, BROOKE SHIELDS, EMMANUELLE LEWIS, MARIO CUOMO)! JACKSON TO 
WED SPACE ALIEN! MICHAEL HAS (Choose one or more: NOSE, CHIN, CHEEKS, 
EYES, MOUTH, TOES) SURGICALLY ALTERED!    Michael Jackson's eccentric 
behavior and numerous plastic surgeries have  been not only fuel for tabloid 
stories, but also for standup comedy routines and endless popular and academic 
discussion.  Much of the discussion attempts to explain Jackson's actions; to 
map the terrain of a seemingly inconsistent and erratic personality.  In spite 
of all the speculation, Michael Jackson remains an enigma, a land largely 
unknown and uncharted.  

As a member of American popular culture I have been appalled and fascinated 
by Jackson's behavior and joined in the popular speculation by offering 
explanations of stunted childhood in pop psychobabble.   As a scholar of 
rhetoric and  an academic explorer I have become interested increasingly in 
the suasory aspects Jackson's behavior, and especially his plastic surgery.  
Michael is manipulating his image to such an extent that it alters our 
perceptions of him; he is trying to persuade us to view his facial landscape in 
certain manner.  To explore this landscape and critique Michael Jackson's 
effectiveness as a rhetor (in a neo-Aristotlean sense) we need to chart the 
intent behind his actions and the goals he hopes to achieve.  What is Michael 
Jackson trying to persuade us about himself and the world?  What does he want 
from us?  What lands does he want us to discover?

Jackson's songs, especially on Bad and Dangerous reflect, on a global scale, 
concern with a variety of social issues including justice, racial equality, and 
the environment.  One of Jackson's goals seems to be to save us and our planet.
"Man in the Mirror" asks us to "make the world a better place" (Bad) and 
"Planet Earth" shows the inseparable relationship between human beings and 
their world (Dangerous).  Given a messianic goal, Jackson's plastic surgery 
can be seen as an attempt to influence his source credibility, or in 
Aristotlean terms, his ethos.  Part of the reason for the surgery seems 
consonant with Jackson's pan-humanistic empathetic message.  Jackson is 
attempting to be aracial and nongendered or, at the least, be racially 
indeterminate and gender nonspecific.  To become aracial Jackson has had his 
nose altered and his skin lightened, which gives him a Caucasian appearance. 
This appearance, however, must be constantly realigned with our past 
perceptions of a blacker Jackson and his image as an African American 
entertainer. Jackson's thin physique, high cheekbones, mascaraed eyes, and 
high-pitched voice contrast with the perception of Michael Jackson the male 
and the patriarchal/ heterosexual content of many of his songs and videos.
Thus by creating dissonance between appearance and "reality" Jackson creates 
an image that lacks racial or gender specificity to create an archetypal 
"everyperson." 

Jackson's intent as a pan-humanistic spokesman may be reinforced by the 
psychobiological concept of neoteny.  As Elizabeth A. Lawrence points out, 
neoteny is a condition in which there is retention of youthful attributes into 
adulthood.  Human beings represent a neotenous species because they retain 
into maturity certain characteristics that were originally juvenile traits of 
other primates.  Physical attributes of neoteny include a high and slightly 
bulging forehead, large eyes, and rounded cheeks.  According to Lorenz, 
human infants and other creatures with these traits may initiate a parenting 
or nurturing response in human adults.  Lawrence points out that Mickey and 
Minnie Mouse, many dolls, and most domesticated animals have neotenous 
features .

Neoteny may explain partly Michael Jackson's intent as a public pan-
humanistic spokesman. Jackson is creating a face that stirs primal instincts in 
humans.  In addition, neoteny may explain some of Jackson's personal reasons 
for surgery.  Since neoteny is so tied to our perceptions of youth and aging, 
Jackson's plastic surgery may represent an attempt to remain eternally 
youthful.  Although  cosmetic surgery has been used for years to provide a 
more youthful appearance by removing wrinkles or lifting sagging jowls, 
Jackson is actively working to reconform his face to neotenous proportions.  
Jackson's surgery goes beyond surgery that removes wrinkles and allows an 
adult to look more youthful.  Jackson's surgery allows him to look like a 
juvenile or infant. This use of plastic surgery may help stave off the reality
of mortality for Jackson that is evidenced in his often morbid fascination
with death (e.g., purchasing John Merrick's bones, sleeping in a hyperbaric 
chamber, paying for several people's funerals).

While one of Jackson's intents seems to be to recontour his facial topography 
to a universally acceptable appearance residing in some liminal landscape 
between male/female, and black/white, he is creating a face that is danger of 
becoming unrecognizable as human.  Jackson may have a face soon that is 
alien and otherworldly terrain to all.  Jackson's face is becoming similar to  
E.T., the space child in 2001, the aliens of Close Encounters of the Third Kind,
and the "real" aliens of Whitley Streiber's Communion.  Perhaps this is 
Michael Jackson's main intent: to become the universal other.  With 
appearance and behavior strange to all Jackson would continue to be 
infinitely readable, open to conjecture and the objectifying gaze of all, the 
ultimate open text. This goal is also consonant with Jackson's messianic 
intent. Instead of becoming the pan-humanistic savior, however, Jackson becomes 
the alien savior from science fiction novels, films, and UFO encounter stories.
Jackson nikt barata Gort.      

Jackson's creation of himself as ultimate other may have another intent: the 
numerous plastic surgeries and bizarre behavior may be nothing more than 
clever ploys to keep Jackson in the limelight so that he may sell more albums 
and videos and increase his stock as a celebrity spokesperson.  Indeed it is 
said that Jackson created the hyperbaric chamber rumor and allowed it to be 
spread.  If Jackson's only motivations are recognition and monetary gain, his 
pan-humanistic messages may be nothing but cynical devices to increase the 
bottom line.       

Jackson's effectiveness as a rhetor rests on his ability to remain in the 
public eye.  Up to this point his transforming facial landscape and eccentric 
lifestyle have kept his pan-humanistic message before the public and assured 
commercial success for his various creative projects.  Several critics have 
observed, however, a tenuous note to Dangerous that indicates that Jackson 
may becoming uncertain of the direction to proceed with his music.  If 
Michael Jackson becomes less adept at manipulating the public discussion of 
his persona, or if the public loses interest in constantly remapping the 
terrain of Jackson's intent and meaning, he may be forced to abdicate the 
title of "King of Pop."

Notes on the Columbian Exchange  

How valuable is an exploration of the rhetorical topography of Michael 
Jackson's face, or for that matter, any cultural exploration?  Explorers after 
Columbus brought disease and pestilence and destroyed civilizations.  In 
attempting to map meaning and explore culture, do I impoverish the culture I 
explore?  Do explorations of intent and meaning denigrate or reduce a culture?  
Even explorations that posit positive aspects of culture, such as ethnographies 
of  dominant ideology resistant readers may have negative consequences.  
Some critics have argued that reader response theory may reinforce passivity  
in social action.  

Do I give anything to the culture I explore?  I may be able to say that 
Jackson's potentially manipulative use of the media would have caused Aristotle
to call into question Jackson's good will, or his ethical  motivational 
relationship with his audience, and thus the ethics of his persuasion.  
Observations of ethical intent, however, seem naive or simplistic to critics 
of late capitalism and may not be useful or utilized by members of the popular
audience.  I might argue that good will provides a means for evaluating action
in a postmodern society, but who do those empty words benefit?

Explorations into culture and meaning must not impoverish or destroy the 
worlds they explore.  They must be pragmatically applicable and beneficial, in 
some way, to the larger culture beyond the explorer's club of the academy.
             
James T. Coon

==================================================================
FUTURE LIMINAL
==================================================================
SPECIAL ISSUES/PROJECTS
The Liminal Group is seeking submissions for special issues on the 
following subjects:

THE HUMAN-MACHINE INTERFACE: Cyberpunk SF, Netculture, virtual reality, 
teledildonics, technoculture, artificial intelligence, computer culture, 
cyborg politics, information anxiety, (post-)industrial culture, 
xerography, etc. . .
Editor: Shawn P. Wilbur

AUTO-MANIA: Automobile culture, roadside culture and/or architecture, 
social implications of the automobile, fast food and other drive-thru 
business, cars in music and film, etc. . .
Editor: Mark D. Howell

Send submissions to 
THE LIMINAL GROUP, BOX 154, BGSU, BOWLING GREEN, OH 43403. 
Submissions for special issues should be directed to the project editor, 
in care of The Liminal Group.

==================================================================
LIMINAL 1.1 is dedicated to:
Franklin Rosemont, Sinead O'Conner, Jerry Mander, Richard Kadrey, 
Matt & Andrew & Jay & Christian (& Gordon), Mason Williams, Neal 
Stephenson, Neue Slowenische Kunst, F.T. Marinetti, & Eddie Vedder.
==================================================================

The LIMINAL GROUP is:
Christine J. Catanzarite, James T. Coon, Philip Dickinson, John A. Dowell, 
Mark D. Howell, Matthew Johnson, Crystal Kile, Torey King, Molly Merryman, 
Michael Leo McHugh, Ginny Schwartz, Ben Urish & Shawn P. Wilbur.
==================================================================
<EFBFBD>1992 The Liminal Group
==================================================================
ONLINE:   swilbur@andy.bgsu.edu      <aka  Bookish>
==================================================================