+ doomed to obscurity + issue eleven + june 9th, 1996 +
ssssssssssssss .sPQs.
.sPQ ggggggggggg
iiiiiiiiii iiiii iiiii iiiii iiiiiiiiii
!!!!!!!!!! !!!!! !!!!! iiiiiiiii !!!!! !!!!!!!!!!
9bsssd 9bsssdP 9bsssdP
+ i got a machine i took over the world. - violent femmes +
i know you
by - shadow tao
you know why im angry? cause im angry at you. i know youre
sitting there, staring at the screen with ramen in your teeth. i know
youre out there waiting for your ride. i know youre out there because
theres nothing on tv. i know youre out there.
you know, somewhere out there, theres a girl sitting down at the
piano in five years, trying to bang out the beginning of moonlight sonata
and failing. i know that somewhere theres a boy, angry at his parents
constant abuse. i know people hurt. people regret.
i know you.
you sure as hell ought to know i do.
how long are you going to let them push you around?
how long before you can scream?
how long can you take it before you just break?
nothing in the world can stop them. theyre everywhere. your
parents. your teachers. your boss. everyone assaults you from every
direction, and all you can do is curl up and hope they go away.
well. youre wrong. you can do something.
no, idiot. not vote.
can you show them your pain? can you finally rip your heart out and
throw it on their table, still bloody and beating and raw? can you take
all that rage and hurt and love and laughter and everything and just hurl
it at the face of the world?
we can. we do.
were your friend. were your fear. were all the little secrets
that get pent up inside your head and just wait for you to break down.
were that light that keeps you from giving up.
were all the pent-up emotion of the world, spinning around in a
billion shades of rage and laughter, heading for your heart. why arent you
doing something? why arent you helping?
you cant escape us, love. were the only thing you know.
we just cant be ignored.
the shadow tao speaks!
*cough*
hey tao! you get to be editor this issue, here you go!
e-yup.
lets get down to brass tacks, shall we? this issue is just
teeming with comedy and fiction. but then again, every other dto was,
too. well, lets say hi to some new faces and features of dto that are
appearing in this glorious ish. hmm. oh! lots of new writers. yohan
bawk, tmm, orestes .. all new. all glorious additions to the magnificent
dto overlo ..
er.
corporation.
yeah. cause we oppress every little zine with talent! everyone
knows that!
anyway, this issue is certainly our weirdest issue to date. read
with my blessings.
doomed to obscurity eleven all contents therein ..
1 - i know you
by - shadow tao
2 - doomed to obscurity eleven all contents therein ..
by - shadow tao
3 - happy juice - condiments chapter 3,014
by - murmur
4 - sick call
by - yohan bawk
5 - demented grandpa tao stories: bible fun!
by - grandpa tao
6 - mirror
by - orestes
7 - the inconsistencies of the time-space continuum ..
by - the masked marauder
8 - thirty seconds at pratt sheridan
by - kojak
9 - the girlfriend
by - sweeney erect
10 - the chaos theory monday, july 18
by - eerie
9 - eggplant parmesan
by - creed
15 - dont try to understand
by - girlie17
12 - wish
by - fake scorpion
11 - all it took was one miracle e-mail
by - whisper
13 - present company excluded
by - creed
14 - into every sunset a little acid rain must fall
by - murmur
15 - dummercon update
by - mogel
16 - deliverance
by - shadow tao
17 - self-respect
by - girlie17
happy juice - condiments chapter 3,014
by - murmur the happybear name, logo, and included references are
copyrighted trademarks of shadow tao press, all rights
reserved, all titles held by shadow tao, copyright 1996.
cuddle bear walked into the room. cuddle bear saw huggie bear and
said huggie bear! lets cuddle! and they cuddled and huggied. then
hunny bear walked in and cuddled and huggied and huneyed too! they were oh
so happy bears! in walked kissy bear and they all kissyed too! oh, what a
tremendous day this would be in bearville! then in walked squeezin bear and
they squeezined too! days like this were frequent in bearopolis. in came
slurpobear! all of the bears were cuddling and huggieing and huneying and
kissieing and slurpoing! oh it was a tremendous day! then in came
analrapist bear. analrapist bear anally raped the other bears. but they
were oh so happy! then in came boltthrower bear, and boltthrower bear
scorched the other bears with hot lightning. but nothing could keep them
down! they were the happy bears! and hot lightning sure is happy! then in
came testicular cancer bear, and, sadly, all the bears died.
moral: i hear youre happy! lets fuck!
sick call
by - yohan bawk
i am on a sick call with my father. it is an overcast, grey and
gloomy day in mid-autumn, somewhere around the time of halloween and its
associated pagan silliness. this time the patient is a ninety-year-old man,
slightly sick and confined to his bed but still coherent and in fairly good
shape given his age. i am unfamiliar with both the family and the man in
question but through necessity in the form of lack of an extra car, i follow
my father to a two-story suburban house a few blocks away from the community
center from which our church rents a room for our sunday service. i drive
the few blocks in our dark grey - obsequiously renamed opal grey,
probably by the same kinds of people who use words like teal and fuchsia
and are not employed by the crayola company - ford taurus and park in front
of their skokie residence.
the house is old but appealing in its own sort of way it is a house,
really, that i stereotypically associate with old age. the architecture is
vaguely victorian, vaguely reminicient of old norman rockwell covers and
grandmother cooking pie in the oven. i would really much rather stay in the
car and listen to my simon and garfunkel but my father urges me to accompany
him in, and of course i acquiesce. we knock on the door and it is opened by
a fairly elderly woman who turns out to be the daughter of the patient we
have come to visit. my father knows her well, but i have absolutely no idea
who she is. however - just like many of my fathers acquaintances - she of
course knows me, has known me for some time, and uses the opportunity to
comment on how well ive grown.
we enter the house. it smells of herbal remedies - a distinctly
chinese odor, in my experience. i leave my shoes at the door, as is
customary in any asian household, and stand awkwardly on my navy socks in
the center of the living room.
the patient we have come to visit is lying on a medical bed with
metal railings and electric controls placed next to the inside wall of the
living room. although the room is well lit through a solitary window, dust
and an unbearable sense of age make the room seem misty, small, and dingy,
although it is none of these things. the woman who opened the door for us
offers us tea, candy. we decline my father has come for a different
purpose. the man we have come to visit rises slowly from his bed and,
balanced precariously on a four-legged walker, totters slowly over to an
easy chair across from my father.
my father begins to talk. he has an easy, hypnotic voice when he is
speaking in his native cantonese, probably his greatest asset as a preacher.
he begins to tell the grandfather we are visiting about the gospel, the
gospel about which this over ninety-year-old man has perhaps vaguely heard
of but never believed in. he begins by talking about life and how blessed
the elderly are to have lived so long and to still be in decent health. i
tune out and listen as if in a trance to the words flowing from my father.
i have heard the gospel before. the only thing i am aware of else than the
misty sunlight and my fathers voice suddenly breaks into my consciousness
like a machine gun: a loudly ticking clock. a clock on the mantle has been
ticking the entire time and i abruptly notice its noise.
my first thought is how utterly rude it is to put something so morbid
next to the bed of a man who spends his days in bed, unable to walk or bathe
without assistance, practically waiting to die. i immediately dismiss the
thought, of course obviously nothing bad was meant by whichever fool
decided to install a clock there.
i try to focus back to what my father is telling our host. my father
is telling him about jesus and how through gods only son we can attain
everlasting life. i try to listen further but nothing gets through now
except the ticking of the clock, counting off the seconds with a noise that
seems incredibly, unbelievably loud.
demented grandpa tao stories: bible fun!
by - grandpa tao
ed. note: these wouldnt be nearly as funny if they werent
completely true.
i was attending church one day, and something funny happened. well.
not ha ha funny, cause that would be damn sick, but it definitely was out
of the ordinary. this elderly widow was to do the childrens story, a
section of the service where the children all go up to the front of the
church and listen to a bible-related story. but she had only recently
lost her husband, and wasnt in the greatest of mental health. she got up
and went to the front and began to speak:
once upon a time, there lived a farmer and his family. his son,
a smart boy, had finally graduated from school and was ready to
go to college. the family scrimped and saved every penny to send
their son to school! finally, they had enough money, and the boy
said goodbye, hugged his parents, and left. one day, the farmer
decides that he should go see his boy in the Big City, so he packs
up his cart they were poor and his ox and heads for the college.
he slept under the stars, and ate food from his pack. he finally
arrived, and upon seeing his son on the quad, yells out a greeting.
the boy, embarrassed about having a dirty hick for a father, yells
at him to go away, and to never come back. the father,
brokenhearted, returns home. when the year was over, the boy
returned home to find his father dead, a suicide due to a broken
heart.
the moral of the story is, love your parents, or theyll DIE!
well, that pretty much did it for the kids, as they sat there all
teary eyed and wobbly. the same effect could have probably been achieved
by having ed meese decapitate a rabbit and stick the remains in his
buttocks. well, at least, for those kids it would have. they were crying
and bawling, each more scared than the next. most of the parents were just
sitting there, stunned that something like that could be said in church. i
was laughing. i was a real bastard back then. well, my friends were
laughing, too. yeah, just about everyone in our town is screwed in the
head. oh well. it still doesnt beat the time matt mccarthy set his desk
on fire, and decided to put it out with his own bodily fluids .. but
thats another story.
heres a quarter! dont tell your mom!
grandpa taos hometown funfact: in my hometown, in shop, you can
make a bookshelf, or a CROSSBOW. not many book lovers around these parts,
no sir-ee ..
mirror
by - orestes
i look at myself as i often do and i see a rather comforting
reflection. between the two panes of glass, sandwiched with an inch or two
of air in the middle, i can see myself twice. no, not really twice, but
rather, oh, different. i can be big head, small body, small body, big head,
big arms, small head .. yeah, focusing my eyes, or my mind, whatever the
trick is, i can remold this reflection.
oh, this isnt a mirror, i hate mirrors. mirrors are of as much use
to me as a twin, and if i had to live with a mirror and gaze in it every
bloody morning, id plot to murder it too. shit! i do! well, i am a
coward my mirror, er, that mirror, will live.
yeah, this isnt a mirror, its a window, or rather, two of them.
they make my eyes dark shadows and my hair a serious black. yeah, serious.
im serious this window reflects me from the inside out. how does that
work again? big body, little head? big head, little body?
im a late night guy and i see the insects here on the floor. i
dont like them much, but they do clean the floors. i think i see a
metaphor here. who hides in the walls and cleans the floor out of hunger?
maybe i do. yes, and im happy now, happy because of HER. the night makes
me happy and the metaphor doesnt bother me. yeah, im happy because of
HER. happy because of her.
earlier i felt more like one of these nefarious millipedes than i do
now, as i eat this tasty cold pizza and look out at the night. the moon was
out earlier, a pretty crescent, hopefully waxing, but i cant see it now. a
pity, i suppose, because the only thing i could see out this window with
these lights on is the moon, the pretty, glorious moon.
oh, i like times like these. when i watched television, id come out
here, look out the window and see the night and myself, drinking darjeeling
and thinking about this author or that, and that was a great time for me.
id dare say that it was a sacred time, because theres a kind of peace that
the night, the moon, bestows on me, and to be honest theres but one way to
take this sort of thing, and that is with a great deal of reverence. im
reverent now, reverent because of HER. yeah, reverent because of HER.
reverent because of her.
when i was younger, very young, i remember telling my mother that i
felt content. it was a word i couldnt have been wielding for more than a
couple years, but yet, it was almost magical in the depth of its
utilization. i remember telling her how being content was so different from
the other emotions i was familiar with, such as happiness and sadness,
that is, positive and negative anxiety respectively, and that it was very
rare for me to be content. its still rare for me to be content at the
level that i was at then, and i still go through rough bouts of dueling
positive and negative anxieties, but contentment is more common for me now
than then.
ive turned out the lights now. oh, this is fun, to see the strange
gray-scale landscape in the faint moonlight. looking outside at night and
enjoying the natural beauty is an indulgence more rare for me than
darjeeling tea i love it that much more.
i am a night guy, but there is something to be said about closing the
night like a wax-sealed letter by retiring at the peak of its charm.
fortunately, the hot tea, so reminiscent of the girl with whom the former
hours of the night were spent, is gracious with my mind and doesnt conflict
with sleep. a simple conformity since everything at night is gracious with
me.
the completion of the day doesnt bother me. in the knowledge that i
have innumerable nights left to enjoy, and probably with a little less
capacity to raise second thoughts, being impaired by a gentle fatigue, the
fade doesnt disturb me. im content, because of this night and its day.
yeah, im content because of HER. content because of her.
the inconsistencies of the time-space continuum empirically proven by irc
by - the masked marauder
the fabric of time and space that is set forth by einsteins general
relativity theorem is now ruptured, torn so to speak. the perpetrator in
this case was that friendly service we all know and love, internet relay
chat, commonly referred to by junkies like myself as irc.
the most disturbing part of this amazing scientific discovery was
that the discovery itself was sheer luck. just as penicillin was discovered
by leaving a sandwich in the lab, like ramen was discovered by some italian
fucking up his pasta recipe, like most of the really important breakthroughs
of this millennia, it was purely innocent. but the implications are
enormous.
first a little introduction. i am sure that we are all experts on
time travel. i know i am, i have watched back to the future at least
seventy three separate times, i know about the flux capacitor, i know about
the five gigawatts it takes to fire up the magic delorean, i know how doc
cut his head on the toilet, but learning this forbidden knowledge has
shaken, indeed torn, the very fabric of the reality that i know and love, as
i am sure it will do to yours.
so here it is, this little tidbit of information changes everything i
know and love about that little thing called reality. heres the premise i
am judging under. according to the basic theorem of the time-space
continuum, if time travel were to occur and i happened to meet my other
self in a dark alley somewhere, i would in fact meet that person. i
would see the aged reflection of myself even though it hasnt happened yet.
well, on irc, the rules are totally different.
if you are so fortunate as to encounter a lag then you obviously
are lame and should immediately be shot. well, you might also switch
servers so that you escape that lag and resume your netsex without further
interruption. well, if you were lagged enough on the first server and join
a server with no lag, you usually see yourself blabbering about stuff you
thought would be funny to say, but you are just five minutes too late, and
everyone thinks that you are some dumb guy that took five minutes to think
up some lame response.
sometimes it doesnt work that way. like if you join the channel
initially, on a lagged server, then change to an un-lagged server, you
should see that initial join in a few minutes but you dont.
oh god!@ damnation is upon us all! praise jesus! amen!
that single fact disproves the time-space continuum theory. you are
probably thinking tmm, you are just some sarcastic angstful alterna-teen
that doesnt know what youre talking about. a-ha, touche! i am in
advanced placement physics *two*, so i at least have some clue as to what
the hell i am talking about. anyways, this disturbance in my perception of
what is and what should be led to a slippery-slope, a snowball perhaps of
thought within my puny little brain. so i tried to justify the incident to
fortify and maintain the time-space continuum theory that all reality rests
upon.
i postulate that one of two things occurred. either the whole little
incident is a result of a bug or glitch in the programming of irc itself, or
reality is thrown out the window.
but i have been known to be wrong. or i could be just nothing at
all. im probably not typing this, and if i am, it is probably just the
result of a lagged server, and when the server i call reality rejoins, no
one will see me! i will be alone with my maniacal musings!
shit. theyre gonna put me in the jacket again.
thirty seconds at pratt sheridan
by - kojak
the young man gently stepped on the brakes, not in any particular
hurry. the car came to a stop, at the intersection of sheridan pratt,
in far-north chicago. the music on his tape faded out, signaling the end
of side one. as he patiently waited for the light to turn, his tape to
flip, and life to go on, he took a look out the window. he saw a multitude
of things, a myriad of activities.
close to the intersection was a police car, parked, with its lights
on. there was a policeman sitting in the drivers seat, door open, writing
on a clipboard. the flashing lights occasionally blinded the youth, and he
wondered why there would be a police officer on this seemingly normal street
corner. the policeman was middle-aged, with his hat pushed high up on his
head, exposing a forehead that itself exposed a few years of hair loss. the
officer was thinking as he wrote, occasionally pushing the eraser up against
his chin. i wonder when hes gonna get home, thought the young man, he
looks very tired. is there anyone that will be at home waiting for him?
wait a second, is there anyone waiting at home for *me*?
scanning farther to the right, the youth spotted a fireman walking
towards a large red fire engine, with a long wooden pole in his hand. he
motioned to the police officer, but got no response. setting the pole
against the fire truck, the fireman rubbed his hands together, signaling a
break in his activities, and leaned up against the side of his vehicle.
the uniformed man took in a deep breath, then leaned his head back against
the truck and let it out in a big, collected sigh. where is the fire?
pondered the young man, glancing upward. seeing nothing, he thought back
to the time that he had to call the fire department, also a false alarm.
he was eight at the time, and never once has he been more scared in his
life. his oven was smoking incessantly, and he was the only one home. he
shivered at the thought, and continued looking around.
in the street, facing the young man, was one other car: a green volvo
station wagon with a young woman driving, and a small child in the passenger
seat. the woman and the child were having an animated conversation, for the
young man could see a little pair of hands cutting through the air and
making wild gestures. the woman was plain looking, the type of person you
see one hundred times a day and never think about twice. the young man
remembered driving through the city with his mother hundreds of times,
sometimes with conversation - other times not. the scenery had always
intrigued him, and sometimes he wouldnt speak at all, but rather watch.
and learn.
the young mans eyes followed a group of kids who had just crossed
the street, and his eyes crossed paths with a hispanic family. three
people, standing on the street corner waiting for the light to turn green.
both the man and woman carrying several grocery bags, and the young child
carrying the womans purse. they waited patiently, their weight shifting
from one foot to another, eyeing the group of kids nervously. they seemed
very afraid of the gang of young men walking across the street - but why
should they be? theres a policeman right across the street. still, there
was the inkling of doubt in their minds about the situation.
the young man wanted to look up at the sky, but his view was blocked
by a billboard that told him, crack is an addiction. this didnt appear to
be a neighborhood that was drug-ridden, but what lies behind the facade of
lovely brick houses, he didnt know. were the lovely brick houses in his
neighborhood drug-ridden? the young man was from the suburbs, a nice one at
that, where drugs are supposedly not present. but an inkling of doubt crept
into *his* mind about the area he lived - why wouldnt drugs be prevalent
there? he continued his upward scan, and when his eyes finally rested on the
clear blue, he tookin a deep breath, holding it.
suddenly, the music faded back in, bringing the young man back to
life. he glanced down, and noticed the light turning green. he headed
southward, wondering how such a small corner in such a small neighborhood
could house such a vast world of activity. he wondered that if he went
back, the same amount of activity would be going on. he wondered what it
would be like to live there. all these thoughts crossed his mind, perhaps
never to do so again .. but yet, he still had this indelible image in his
head. it was an image of simplicity, indeed .. but the lives of these
people were inherently more complex than the intersection let on to, and
the young man found himself wanting to learn more about the scene. the
scene that was vibrant, full of activity, and one he will never forget.
the girlfriend
by - sweeney erect
dear casey,
i remember the first time we went out. i asked her out on a friday,
but unfortunately she was busy washing her cats hair. luckily i continued
to call her every hour on the hour until she agreed to go out with me. she
was so so beautiful and i was honoured.
i wanted to go to lunch with her, but she insisted on a night date,
romantic little pup that she was. we went to a movie and she insisted we
sneak into the disused balcony. so mischievous! after five minutes or so
she went off to get us some popcorn. i guess the line was really long
because she didnt get back until the movie was almost over.
then we left. she insisted on getting out of the car several blocks
from where she lived. shes so shy! very cute.
one day she got very sick so i stayed with her night and day. i
couldnt seem to cheer her up, she just sat around moping, insisting that i
could really leave any time i wanted. shes quite a little trooper, but i
stayed on. i would make her chicken soup, which she would usually drink a
little of, holding the rest of it in her mouth and spitting it at me. such
a playful little thing.
she didnt let me actually sleep in her apartment, i guess she was
scared of me getting sick, so i camped out in her hall. the neighbors
affectionately referred to the clump of blankets i laid on as my nest.
often they would come over and spit playfully on me.
one day she began brandishing a gun demanding that i leave. i guess
she really didnt want me getting sick. she has moved and changed her phone
number, but i still feel very close to her. casey, would you play wind
beneath my wings and dedicate it to sandra, from roger.
the chaos theory monday, july 18
by - eerie
at ten am i was back home. during all of the bus ride, i was
dreading cynthias anger. my relations with her werent going too swell
already, so i wasnt too sure what to expect for this time. then, i
realized it was monday she was at her job, therefore i wouldnt have to go
through her anger before supper time. cynthia was working for some clothes
boutique in the downtown.
from that moment i considered as impossible the fact that annie would
quit my thoughts. yesterday again i dreamt of her. she was by my side,
again, so pretty so fragile. for the second time, i woke up alone, with
dried sperm on my belly. like her sole presence would generate thousand
infinite erotic dreams i could hardly remember.
i got in the apartment i dropped on the arm-chair, mechanically
turned on the tv set. there was nothing interesting - monday morning, cant
expect too much - so i turned it off searched the bookstand for a book
that i could read maybe even try to finish someday. there was cynthias
almost complete stephen king collection, which never really interested me,
as well as some pocket books, comic books, nothing too intense. however,
after searching a bit more, i found a john irving book, which i heard was
pretty good. i then got back on the arm-chair read the first paragraphs,
with the interest of someone who has nothing better to do.
at that very moment, the doorbell rang. who the hell could it be?
i asked myself as i dropped my book on the small white three-legged table
next to the chair, i answered the door. it was melanie.
- oh. what a surprise.
- you seem almost happy to see me.
- no, thats alright, come in, you were just disturbing me in the
reading of a enormously entrancing novel, just at the moment where the plot
was reaching its highest climax level, but its okay.
- oh. im sorry.
- hey, i was kidding, i was reading the introduction about the
authors biography. what are you doing here anyway?
- i was near here. wanted to say hi, thats all.
- strange will, but i wont discuss.
she looked at me with a puzzled look i told her to nevermind.
- sokay, im wandering.
- ah, okay. so, you still have no job?
- nope, sadly. well, actually i dont complain. leaves me some
time to work on more important matter.
- really? youre still writing?
- yeah.
- about what?
- nothing excessively enthralling. some guy who decides one day
hell become a schizo.
- oh, it looks positive.
- you wouldnt imagine.
- can i read it?
- er, yeah, if you want to. its in my room.
i turned on the computer, entered the word processor printed a copy
of the first three chapters on my old dot matrix printer. she could read
the whole thing as the words appeared on the paper.
- the chaos theory. looks like something kafka would do.
- uh? yeah, true. never thought about that.
she sat on the bed read on the three chapters. it didnt take too
long before she finished. meanwhile, though, she stopped took a close
look at me, asking:
- hey, thats me, here, in the bus?
- er. yeah, true.
- wow! that happened like two days ago. i thought it was all
fiction .. or is it? here, cynthia ..
shit. i forgot i kept the real peoples names.
- some people, like you, are in the novel, so i could locate the
fictive events with more ease, thats all.
- oh yeah.
she kept on reading.
- maybe the events are fictive, but god, the narrator looks just
like you!
- could i do otherwise?
she smiled.
- im sure .. whats her name? annie! yeah. im sure annie really
exists you fuck with her like a dog.
i sighed she let go.
- well, i liked it anyway.
- hmm.
- but seriously, i dont believe you. im sure this story tells the
exact truth. you arent even amplifying situation or changing events.
everything looks so exact!
- believe what you want.
i smiled. i laughed, actually.
- anyway youre wrong.
- okay.
she laughed too, a laughed i was used to hear a lot more a couple
months ago, at a time when we saw each other almost every evening, going in
the city, watching the girls pass by, cause well, its probably the only
discussing topic we ever agreed on.
- well. i gotta go. i eat with joelle.
- come back whenever.
i watched her leave the apartment laid down on the bed. ive
always vaguely desired melanie, even if she i were radically incompatible.
shes been my girlfriend for two years. at first i was a blessing for
her, because everyone though she was with me, the rumours about her being
a lesbian would low down. after a while, though, she decided she didnt
give a fuck about what people say, we sort of lost touch with each other.
would i go back to my reading that i didnt even start? i was
feeling tired, didnt really want to do anything. i was too awake to sleep.
i didnt want to take a walk outside because it was still way too hot - oh
my god, its even hotter than yesterday - also because i had nowhere to go
to. i had the impression all i was doing these days was writing
ejaculating.
after a moment of reflexion, i decided in favour of irvings book,
read slowly, stopped only once to get something to eat.
eggplant parmesan
by - creed
lincoln elementary school was a school like any other. it had an
average amount of students who had average parents and got average grades.
but one particular student at lincoln elementary was anything but average.
this student was jimmy. jimmy was an eggplant.
jimmy had a hard time being an eggplant, but he dealt with it. when
bullies approached him and called him eggplant-head or stupid eggplant
boy, jimmy would usually just smile and walk away. it was no big deal for
him he was used to getting pushed around. yes, it was a hard life, but
jimmy sure did love being an eggplant.
one day, as jimmy was strolling down the hall on the way to his next
class, he was stopped by brian, the toughest bully in the whole school.
uh-oh, jimmy laughed, i think the school genius wants my lunch money.
thats right, eggplant, fork it over.
jimmy stood there and smiled at the enormous bully towering over him.
i cant, brian, im saving up to buy you a brain.
brian fumed with anger. listen, you snot-nosed eggplant punk -
jimmy interrupted and attacked again with another clever comeback: i
may be a snot-nosed eggplant punk, but at least im not a big dumb
poopy-head like you! jimmy was on a roll. he had never been so proud of
his quick thinking and expertise of argument.
but for brian, this was the last straw. completely furious at the
young eggplants witty remarks, he rolled up his sleeves and beat jimmy into
a mushy purple mess. thatll teach him, he muttered as he spit on the
bloody corpse and walked away solemnly.
the next day at lunch, they served eggplant parmesan in the
cafeteria.
dont try to understand
by - girlie17
everything changes so quickly
you never know what to expect
i was finally experiencing happiness
or something close to it
why dont they try to hear me
as i get my point across
force me to go to extremes
i hope i dont get lost
radical change in behavior
do they see me? probably not
so whats the use in trying
the battle - no point in being fought
they tell me how i feel
couldnt be more wrong
if I tried to reach them
it would probably take too long
theyll never understand
how im feeling how ive felt
they were the ones who gave me
the cards that ive been dealt
wish
by - fake scorpion
his face was without expression as he lay on his bed. his ceiling
was clean as far as he could tell, for that was all he had been staring at
for the past hour or so. the same song drifting from his stereo had done
so over one-thousand times and he attempted to make it two-thousand by
pressing the back arrow each time it ended.
it was saturday. the girl he had promised to call was most likely
sitting by her phone waiting for him. he was five minutes late, but
he felt it was still too early. she could wait forever for all he cared.
just imagining the look of anticipation on her face was making him sick.
my parents are out of town, would be one of her opening remarks after she
answered his ring. as if you havent told me that one thousand times
already, he would feel like saying, but he knew he wouldnt. he couldnt.
her perfectly aligned teeth, the mole on her cheek, her perfectly
trimmed eyebrows and nails, her clothes - she was a clone of a million
clones. all of these images, they formed such a thick soup in his head.
he began to feel sick to his stomach. he could feel it begin to reject
what little food he had eaten during the day. he knew he didnt love her
he knew she didnt love him. the thrill of dating an older guy was enough
for her it boosted her social class in the high-school caste system.
what he really wanted to do was bash her skull in. he wanted her
physically, of course, but when it was time to hold her and caress her
skin while repeating the age-old script, he just wanted to do away with her.
he would pull the lamp from the wall and hit her over and over again until
her blonde hair had been dyed a bright red. she wanted to look a bit
different - she wanted a change she had told him so.
perhaps then he would caress her skin. yes - the idea was turning
him on now. he was smiling as he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. he
would trace her lips with one of his fingers while running his other hand
through her hair, bloodying his hand. the blood how red it would be!
would be his motivation. he would press his face to her hair to smear
the blood around the edges of his mouth so he would resemble the animal
he wished he was.
how scary he would be then! his smile dominated most of his pale
face. he would leave her in his room and go out to eat afterwards. when
he returned home, he would see that she was bored and wished to go home.
im no fun? he would mutter, laughing hysterically at his own joke. he
would be a gentleman and would place her in the passenger seat very
carefully of his car, being courteous enough to strap the seat belt
around her chest. he would drive her back to her home and drop her off in
the middle of the gravel driveway so her parents wouldnt see her come in
late. dumb, he would mutter a mile down the road, remembering that her
parents wouldnt be back until much later. she had told him so.
seeing that he had much more time than before, he would return and
pick her up women dont weigh anything - she even complained of being fat!
and set her in the hammock stretched between two carolina pine-trees. he
would even cover her with a blanket from the back of his car, but not before
he had doused the blanket with gasoline. he would light a cigarette and
throw it upon the blanket after he had smoked away about three minutes of
his life. he would crash the car into a tree a few miles down the road,
on purpose of course.
he picked up the phone and dialed her number. she wouldnt be that
mad he was only ten minutes late. he asked her if she wanted to go to the
movies. they made out in the back of the theater. afterwards he took her
back home and went to bed.
all it took was one miracle e-mail
by - whisper
date: thursday, may 9, 1996 1:38am electronic mail
from: xcool msg: 159131
to: whisper
re: morality.
yo man,
you still cant explain why sexually a girl does not satisfy you, a
guy does not satisfy me because i have never been with a MALE. you keep
mentioning society, but nothing about morality. im very sure that in the
back of you mind you know that what you do is not right, just like taking
drugs you know its not right, but you just do it because you are addicted,
im not saying you are addicted to having sex with a man im just putting
across a point. i knew if i asked you how long have you thought you were
gay you are going to give me some answer like since i was a baby or i was
born like this but no one is born anything, liking the idea of sleeping
with men takes conditioning, like getting fed up with being rejected by a
girls, to maybe just something like going to and all boys school. im not
saying those are any of the cases for you but i think you are old enough to
know the difference between having sex with a compatibly REPRODUCTIVE person
and anything else, and that you a male having sex with a male is if nothing
else a question of MORALITY. im not trying to teach you anything whatever
you do is between you and your GOD.
later, man.
reply, erase, forward, copy, backtrack, previous, or next?
praise e-jesus!
present company excluded
by - creed
what if stalin was an aardvark?
what if castro was an iguana?
what if hitler was a ferret?
that would be really weird.
you may ask, how would that be weird?
well, ive never seen an iguana become the unruly tyrant of a small
island. ive never known a ferret who was responsible for the deaths of
over six million people.
present company excluded, of course.
into every sunset a little acid rain must fall
by - murmur
i am against stupidity. - reverberator
now, dont we all often complain a lot about stupidity? sure we do.
stupidity, sadly, is omnipresent in our society, and we are affected by the
ramifications of it daily. sometimes stupidity takes its form in neglect,
sometimes stupidity takes its form in such an outright blatant manner that
we are given little choice but to bubble with rage. lets take a look at
some examples of stupidity:
* you go to the grocery store, looking to buy a case of dr. pepper.
its 6.69, and youre thinking, this sucks, but i want my dr.
pepper. then as youre going to leave you see a big display that
twelve-packs of dr. pepper are on sale for 2.89 for 24 cans, or
the equivalent of a case, thats only 5.78, a full 91 cents less,
almost four cents less a can. what the hell is up with that?
* your little brother/cousin/lover is fiddling around with their
boombox and suddenly blurts out, damn it! how do you fast forward
a tape@? yes, there is a button clearly marked FF.
* the cure.
* walking on the jefferson street walking bridge in rockford,
illinois, and seeing the fine, fine work of a local graffitist:
slow down your going to fast.
of course, there are many, MANY more examples of stupidity in our
everyday lives! some, of course, are on more severe levels than others.
for every i am a jelly doughnut! uttered there is some idiot so broke that
instead of buying cigarettes he tries to inhale car fumes to get a buzz.
for every milk commercial sponsored by the american dairy board theres
bound to be a tv show whose script is written by the same man. for every
candlebox song theres a collective soul song.
so what is there to do in the face of such a terrible, terrible thing
as mass stupidity? some people have chosen to remain ignorant or
indifferent, often becoming part of the problem. these people include those
who bought the rembrandts lp and operation rescue. operation rescue is
a good example, too. did you know that you there with that delicious cherry
lemonade snapple have merely added to the problem? snapple gives money to
operation rescue, and by supporting snapple you are indirectly supporting
operation rescue.
but then again, so what? no average person can completely avoid the
supporting of the stupid. quite frankly, to make a conscious streamlined
effort to be completely pure, and thereby altering your life with some sort
of misdirected intention in mind, is probably evidence of such anal
retentiveness that youre stupider than anything youve set out to avoid.
besides, no matter how good your intentions, youve already failed to
avoid the stupidity! wanna know why, do you? look at yourself! you could
be outside in the sunshine, or your own personal sunshining darkness, but
no, youre sitting here reading this stupid piece! this is a very stupid
piece, in fact. its about stupidity, for christs sake. what kind of
idiotic topic is that?
wait! maybe youre relaxing from a hard day of work or play.
perhaps, for you, this text file is relaxation? bullshit! its your own
damn fault for being tired from a hard day of anything. the only way you
can expect to truly avoid stupidity is by laying in a meadow filled with
wild, poisonous berries that are killing off stupid birds, and soaking up
some sunshine or your own personal sunshining darkness! you damn well
better be sleeping ten hours a day, or youre fucking wasting away, too. i
mean, getting some good sleep makes you feel good! so does that chocolate
ice cream! lactose intolerant? nope! stupid! stupid as a fuzzy clam!
this here paragraph was removed because it was rude.
this here paragraph was also removed because it was rude.
hey. why are you still reading this, stupid? hoping for redemption?
think i might clear you from the stupid list? fat chance. im stupid just
like you are! stupid!
you know, i walked into the post office the other day and said hi, i
would like to buy a book of stamps and the person behind the counter asked
if i wanted bird stamps or flag stamps and i chose the flag stamps and she
said okay and handed them to me and i paid for them and left and while i
left i thought boy she was a stupid bitch.
then i sat down and i turned on my tv set and i turned on mtv
because im kind of stupid like that sometimes and the stone temple pilots
were on and i looked at scott weiland and say boy is he stupid the stupid
drug addict but i like his hair and then a sponge video came on and i prayed
to my personal jesus and thanked him for not making me as stupid as sponge
and he said shut up stupid so i said okay sorry personal jesus.
i was feeling hungry so i went to burger king and ordered a whopper
with just ketchup on it because mayonnaise is stupid and i got this burger
with mayonnaise on it and i said hello i ordered this without mayonnaise and
they said sorry and made me a new one and it had just ketchup and it tasted
okay when i ate it and while i ate it i thought to myself i wonder if the
fat chick behind the counter is more stupid than the manager or if the tall
hispanic man making the hamburgers is really the stupidest one and then i
remembered that lewis largent was a lot stupider than any of them and i
laughed and almost choked on a french fry and boy i am stupid.
boy, a lot of stupid stuff happens. it really kind of sucks that we
have to put up with so much stupid stuff because hey i might be stupid but i
am not as stupid as whoever that is in the corner that can not speak because
he was born a retard. poor guy. i mean, i feel sorry for him, because
people will tease him and everything, but its not his fault. he was
punished for something someone else did, quite possibly harry s truman. i
dont make fun of him or the poor people with downs syndrome. its really
not their fault they were born with those disabilities, you know.
i will make fun of many people, however, who deserve it. these
people include those who donated large sums of money to the mondale campaign
and anyone that buys old milwaukee. boy, this lead singer of the nixons is
kind of ugly. luckily, im handsome besides being not at stupid as many.
hey, im thirsty.
i had already ended this file, actually, and whilst playing a video
game in our fabled dorms fabled back lounge, in walked some random
individual. i guess random is a poor word because ive seen him before, he
lives here and all. but, anyhow, its 4:30 in the morning on a sunday, and
in walks this person, and he changes the channel, and im thinking, what the
hell is he doing? and im paying more attention to the video game, but
still im like, what the hell is he doing? and i notice he stops and first
chance i get ill take a glance at what he stopped at it but all i had to do
was listen and realize hey, he changed the channel to the weather channel.
hes watching the weather channel. then i finish my game and im trying to
figure out what the hell hes doing and i open a pop and hes like four
inches from the tv and this friendly weatherperson is telling us its going
to be cold and he starts swearing at the tv, fuck. fuck! and that
continues for a little while and all in all is relatively amusing, i guess.
my point is, hes also pretty fucking stupid. im not saying wanting
to know the weather is stupid, but, all in all, this is a stupid person.
hes ugly too. perhaps not as ugly as kenry kissinger, but i guarantee you
he isnt getting the chicks kissinger did. well, then again, no one again
ever will get the chicks kissinger did, except maybe keanu reeves, except i
hear hes gay and even if hes not gay, he cant do shakespeare, which you
would know if you saw the movie version of much ado about nothing starring
kenneth branagh sorry, kenneth, if ive butchered your name and emma
thompson, whos quite a beautiful woman, but getting back to the point, a
stupid, ugly person changed the channel on me and caused me to miss the
first half of that new video from rage against the machine, which ill grant
nobody else seems to like and most people will wonder about me for liking,
but hell, i like it, and i was looking forward to seeing the video, because
i like to bounce around this here lounge when no one else is here shouting
RALLY ROUND THE FAMILY .. WITH A POCKET FULL OF SHELLS but still im
digressing again thats an ugly and stupid person and i for some reason get
the feeling he doesnt smell good. im not sure why this is but other
people i know that look sort of like him, same build and height and hair,
they all pretty much smell bad for no explainable reason, and theyre all
stupid and ugly. damned if i know why.
im not so thirsty anymore, which is probably because ive almost
finished my can of dr. pepper. woah, this commercial makes me want to go
buy some schlitz malt liquor because its a bunch of black people drinking
schlitz malt liquor and they seem to be at some sort of picnic and theyre
dancing to music i dont understand that i dont think is very good and they
seem to enjoy their schlitz malt liquor. but then i remember i dont like
malt liquor or any sort of alcoholic beverage for that matter, except for
dimetapp. i like dimetapp, but thats medicine and on second thought im
not sure if theres really any alcohol in dimetapp or not, but i think
theres dimetapp in vicks formula 44 and i think i like the cherry flavored
vicks formula 44 too, but i dont like champagne, i just dont. whatever it
all may mean, my thirst has been quenched by that can of dr. pepper.
pastels. what the hell are up with pastels? ill bet a stupid,
stupid person invented pastels. either that or someone fully aware that he
or she could take advantage of stupid people and make good money exploiting
the stupid people, this part of the sentence removed for content. this part
of this sentence also removed for content, but they never went for the
pastel bit, no sir. pink jumpsuits? what the hell? you wouldnt catch me
dead in a pink jump suit, mister.
now, look. im reaching where i just shouldnt be reaching. this
piece may have had comedic value at one point but now its just pretty
fuckin stupid. oh well, stupid is as stupid does. damn it, that was
stupid of me. this has gone on too far, hasnt it, now? lets wrap up with
another list of things that are inherently stupid, to varying degrees:
* the chevrolet corporation launched a massive marketing campaign in
mexico, feeling that the mexicans comprised a large untapped
market. unfortunately nobody bothered to consult their
spanish-american dictionaries to discover that no va is spanish
for doesnt go chevrolet lost millions when the mexicans refused
to buy the chevy nova.
* the premise of the net. the movie, stupid.
* caffeine free mountain dew and diet caffeine free mountain dew.
* the woman in this century 21 commercial.
* that snapple mango flavor. god, thats terrible. dont drink it.
* the average frat guy in central illinois. er, the average frat guy
most anywhere. what the hell? hi, i like to get drunk and listen
to the bodeans and alternative bands like dave matthews. wait,
this is going to comprise most sorority chicks too. uhm. well, so
be it. okay.
* the cure.
* whoever authorized the cancellation of my so-called life, making
the revolting piece of trash a cult phenomenon it didnt need to be,
and authorizing mtv to suck even more by allowing it to fall mtvs
way.
* militant i hate men feminists. these fall into a special
category of ultra-stupids because, as you may recall, all women
are stupid. not to say all men arent, of course. but, uhm, yeah.
girls stupid@! wear dresses@! dresses stupid@! perms yuck!@
hate them soap operas@! insert random pathetic slander here
too@!! BOY ARE GIRLS FUCKING STUPID. I GUESS THEYRE JUST
STUPID OR SOMETHING.
* the gentiles. really. stupid gentiles.
* this whitney houston video. hyper-stupid. power-stupidity ho!
* art modell. wait, hes greedy. well, hes stupid too. so there.
* maybe theyre more insensitive than stupid, but whoever authorized
moving murder, she wrote from sundays to thursdays, theyre
pretty darn stupid.
* the minnesota vikings.
* the cure.
well, you get the idea, i think. you know, i think im thirsty
again, damn it. or something. its 5:30, maybe someone will come in and
change the channel to the discovery channel and start ranting. hell
probably smell, too!
oh, fuck, i think ill stop now. really!@
somebody bring me some water, cant you see im burning alive? oh,
hi, im melissa ethridge!@ im stupid too@! grrrkr@!
er.
hi.
uhm.
BOY, LIMA BEANS SURE ARE STUPID! AND SO IS YOUR STATE REPRESENTATIVE
AND YOUR COUNTY CORONER TOO!
stupid they are. stupid, stupid.
YOUR COUSIN IS SO STUPID HE GAVE ME A 1943 STEEL PENNY FOR A MEXICAN
FIVE PESO PIECE BECAUSE I TOLD HIM FOREIGN CURRENCY IN HIS POCKET MADE HIM
SPEAK BETTER ENGLISH.
boy.
well, uhm.
THE CURE SURE ARE STUPID.
oh, fuck.
good thing im madly in love or id be drooling at this here garbage
video. i might go to graduate school in wisconsin, you know.
wait, thats unrelated.
sigh.
WORMS! FEED ME YOUR SLIMY CRAWLY WORMS!
oh.
aye, capn! im movin her in! oops, we appear to have a man
overboard. drat that buoy! stupid buoy!
hmmm.
yeah!
STUPID BUOY. AND STUPID COAST GUARD TOO. STUPIDNOSES.
hrm?
sorry.
BOLT THROWER! BOLT THROWER!
ack.
well.
WALGREENS: THE PHARMACY AMERICA TRUSSES.
uhm, bye.
dummercon update
transcribed by - mogel
the following article appeared in the philadelphia city paper,
june 7th, 1996, page nine.
bbq with a byte
finally a reason for those offbeat scribes of electronic zines to
come out of their computer cubbyholes congregate in the the outdoors.
the dummercon 2 convention offers a little off-line fun for on-line
enthusiasts. organizer mogel just mogel encourages participants to bring
a laptop their own picnic necessities. anyone from the zine community is
welcome but he warns that they might feel out of place among the e-ziners.
his own publication, doomed to obscurity, features poems, prose, rants
from writers around the country.
expect the usual picnic games cuisine plus events tailored to
offbeat tastes. goofy jokes will abound at the spontaneous zine writing
contest laptop required. the dumb stuff raffle celebrates kitsch such as
michael jackson stickers vanilla ice records that are too neat to throw
away too goofy to sell.
last years dummercon drew about twenty people, estimates mogel. so
far, hes already gotten sixty inquiries for this one figures about a
hundred enthusiasts will attend. the came of this event is a play on the
title of the national hacker convention, summercon. mogel wont comment on
his own status as a hacker or give out his last name. if you want to get
more info about the shindig, e-mail him at doomed@voicenet.com or you can
just show up on sat., july 13th at fdr park, picnic area seven, between noon
six pm. have yourself a merry little rantfest.
- neil gladstone
deliverance
by - shadow tao
the images are getting larger.
the aliens are obviously creeping closer.
- star trek: phaser fight
a choose your own adventure book
the men and women made their way out onto the stage with a crafted
apprehension, their instruments cradled in arm and held in hand. the
orchestra was assembling on the stage, the movement of suits and dresses,
the sounds of cautious and quieted tuning, all anticipatory to his glory.
the world was his stage tonight that stage aglow with life and awe.
nothing better in the world.
nothing.
the sounds of the orchestra tuning soon overcame his controlled
breathing, the hushed cacophony of a thousand tones rushing in and out. he
was to be the spotlight tonight. he wouldnt solo, as the piece did not
require it, but he would be placed away from the orchestra - due to his
great skill and young age. everything made him excited. his first
performance with the orchestra. his first billing. his acclaim as a new
prodigy.
the audience was quietly filling the seats, as hundreds of
undistinguishable voices slowly formed waves of quiet chatter. the sound of
the orchestra was still present, but it was a glitter with the tone of
starhood. it was finally time. all the work. finally time to take his
place among the stars in the sky. finally time for the respect that his
genius required. demanded.
the conductor jutted out onto the stage from the other wing, and an
almost strangled silence fell. like a tree filled with raucous crows, the
director had startled them the noise of conversation had taken wing, the
hall quickly filled with the echoes of interrupted silence.
he carefully began his way to the soloist podium.
a curt applause erupted from the left, sparking interest in the
audience. polite applause. hed have to show them a lot to earn their
love. but that would just take his skill to do. and some time.
he glanced over at the conductor, to nod his
wait.
a woman was walking across the stage, carrying
a a a violin case? he had his, it was right
what
what could it possibly
th-the woman finally approached his sight and and slowly opened
the dark black velvet case.
no
it couldnt be.
it just could not be
but it was.
the warm orange glinted off the stage lights. the glory it was. too
beautiful for words, cradled. in his dreams.
a *stradivarius*.
he would play his part in the eventofhislifeona *stradivarius*.
he instantly swore that no one would escape the beauty of his genius.
his gift would be seen, and it would be too much for the weak-minded fools
to comprehend. he would save them with his beauty deliver them with truth.
DELIVER THEM. HE WOULD DELIVER THEM.
his mind seared with zealous rage.
he whipped his stare to the director harshly showing his intent. he
took the gentle beauty into his arms, tucking the ancient wood under his
chin. the huge stone podium before him, he stared out into the expectant
eyes of his followers.
they would see beauty like they would never see again.
the warm tremolo of the violins began behind him. the horn section
came alive, sounding out the way of the lord. he positioned his bow. the
cello entrance came and ..
crystal was the tone of the violin. like a radiant messiah he stood
there, leading the symphony a brilliant light bowing out the word. the
word of god. the strings grew stronger, angrier in their strokes. the
clarinets began their counter voice as the this is the most beautiful thing
ive ever done. timpani sounded out its bounding hits.
quieting, the orchestra passed through his sections shining moment.
the andante walk of the muted violas made the rhythm for his part.
this is the most beautiful thing the world has ever seen.
see their faces? that is the face of the saved.
i am their leader. i am their guide. feed off my brilliance,
mindless sheep. i will show you the way.
the finale was approaching. the angry attack of the brass was met at
first with only token notes from the strings. but the end was coming, and
he had no intention of letting his gift be snuffed by the short-sightedness
of the composer.
with the savage beauty of a swinging blade, his voice cut
through the
BEHOLD, FOR I AM CLAUDIUS!@
angry trumpets like vengeance upon the unknowing.
I AM CHRIST!@
instead of the deep and resounding minor finale
I AM FATHER, SON, AND SPIRIT!@
a single voice erupted, completing the perfect chord
in an orgasmic wave of harmony.
he had created the perfect end.
the audience sat aghast at the incomprehensible beauty of
I .. AM THE MESSIAH! I AM GOD!
the stradivarius swung from behind him in a slow arc,
creeping past his head in the slow motion of horror. seeming only to slow
at the top, where the light from the stage glinted off the instrument like a
brilliant salvation, the violin came down
.. GOD!@
from on high. propelled downward, it slammed into
the marble podium, shattering and splintering the work of love into a
million little pieces.
for a second, the shattered wood just spun in the air
lucent and spinning in the radiance of a blinding sun.
self-respect
by - girlie17
HEY THERE
COME OVER HERE
IS MY MESSAGE CLEAR?
IM NOT A SLUT
BUT I WANNA FUCK
SO BE NICE
AND TREAT ME RIGHT
AND MAYBE WELL HAVE FUN TONIGHT
please direct all dto correspondence towards - doomed@voicenet.com
the dto world wide waste homepage - http://wwti.iway.net/dto
zineworld plug - http://www.pla-net.net/corp/zineworld/
to get on the dto mailing list - send mail to doomed@voicenet.com with
the body of the message saying subscribe dto.
c copyright 1996 doomed to obscurity productions - all rights reserved.
delete your dogma the rest will follow. - kt
ssssssssssssss .sPQs.
.sPQ ggggggggggg
iiiiiiiiii iiiii iiiii iiiii iiiiiiiiii
!!!!!!!!!! !!!!! !!!!! iiiiiiiii !!!!! !!!!!!!!!!
9bsssd 9bsssdP 9bsssdP
+ i got a machine i took over the world. - violent femmes +
i know you
by - shadow tao
you know why im angry? cause im angry at you. i know youre
sitting there, staring at the screen with ramen in your teeth. i know
youre out there waiting for your ride. i know youre out there because
theres nothing on tv. i know youre out there.
you know, somewhere out there, theres a girl sitting down at the
piano in five years, trying to bang out the beginning of moonlight sonata
and failing. i know that somewhere theres a boy, angry at his parents
constant abuse. i know people hurt. people regret.
i know you.
you sure as hell ought to know i do.
how long are you going to let them push you around?
how long before you can scream?
how long can you take it before you just break?
nothing in the world can stop them. theyre everywhere. your
parents. your teachers. your boss. everyone assaults you from every
direction, and all you can do is curl up and hope they go away.
well. youre wrong. you can do something.
no, idiot. not vote.
can you show them your pain? can you finally rip your heart out and
throw it on their table, still bloody and beating and raw? can you take
all that rage and hurt and love and laughter and everything and just hurl
it at the face of the world?
we can. we do.
were your friend. were your fear. were all the little secrets
that get pent up inside your head and just wait for you to break down.
were that light that keeps you from giving up.
were all the pent-up emotion of the world, spinning around in a
billion shades of rage and laughter, heading for your heart. why arent you
doing something? why arent you helping?
you cant escape us, love. were the only thing you know.
we just cant be ignored.
the shadow tao speaks!
*cough*
hey tao! you get to be editor this issue, here you go!
e-yup.
lets get down to brass tacks, shall we? this issue is just
teeming with comedy and fiction. but then again, every other dto was,
too. well, lets say hi to some new faces and features of dto that are
appearing in this glorious ish. hmm. oh! lots of new writers. yohan
bawk, tmm, orestes .. all new. all glorious additions to the magnificent
dto overlo ..
er.
corporation.
yeah. cause we oppress every little zine with talent! everyone
knows that!
anyway, this issue is certainly our weirdest issue to date. read
with my blessings.
doomed to obscurity eleven all contents therein ..
1 - i know you
by - shadow tao
2 - doomed to obscurity eleven all contents therein ..
by - shadow tao
3 - happy juice - condiments chapter 3,014
by - murmur
4 - sick call
by - yohan bawk
5 - demented grandpa tao stories: bible fun!
by - grandpa tao
6 - mirror
by - orestes
7 - the inconsistencies of the time-space continuum ..
by - the masked marauder
8 - thirty seconds at pratt sheridan
by - kojak
9 - the girlfriend
by - sweeney erect
10 - the chaos theory monday, july 18
by - eerie
9 - eggplant parmesan
by - creed
15 - dont try to understand
by - girlie17
12 - wish
by - fake scorpion
11 - all it took was one miracle e-mail
by - whisper
13 - present company excluded
by - creed
14 - into every sunset a little acid rain must fall
by - murmur
15 - dummercon update
by - mogel
16 - deliverance
by - shadow tao
17 - self-respect
by - girlie17
happy juice - condiments chapter 3,014
by - murmur the happybear name, logo, and included references are
copyrighted trademarks of shadow tao press, all rights
reserved, all titles held by shadow tao, copyright 1996.
cuddle bear walked into the room. cuddle bear saw huggie bear and
said huggie bear! lets cuddle! and they cuddled and huggied. then
hunny bear walked in and cuddled and huggied and huneyed too! they were oh
so happy bears! in walked kissy bear and they all kissyed too! oh, what a
tremendous day this would be in bearville! then in walked squeezin bear and
they squeezined too! days like this were frequent in bearopolis. in came
slurpobear! all of the bears were cuddling and huggieing and huneying and
kissieing and slurpoing! oh it was a tremendous day! then in came
analrapist bear. analrapist bear anally raped the other bears. but they
were oh so happy! then in came boltthrower bear, and boltthrower bear
scorched the other bears with hot lightning. but nothing could keep them
down! they were the happy bears! and hot lightning sure is happy! then in
came testicular cancer bear, and, sadly, all the bears died.
moral: i hear youre happy! lets fuck!
sick call
by - yohan bawk
i am on a sick call with my father. it is an overcast, grey and
gloomy day in mid-autumn, somewhere around the time of halloween and its
associated pagan silliness. this time the patient is a ninety-year-old man,
slightly sick and confined to his bed but still coherent and in fairly good
shape given his age. i am unfamiliar with both the family and the man in
question but through necessity in the form of lack of an extra car, i follow
my father to a two-story suburban house a few blocks away from the community
center from which our church rents a room for our sunday service. i drive
the few blocks in our dark grey - obsequiously renamed opal grey,
probably by the same kinds of people who use words like teal and fuchsia
and are not employed by the crayola company - ford taurus and park in front
of their skokie residence.
the house is old but appealing in its own sort of way it is a house,
really, that i stereotypically associate with old age. the architecture is
vaguely victorian, vaguely reminicient of old norman rockwell covers and
grandmother cooking pie in the oven. i would really much rather stay in the
car and listen to my simon and garfunkel but my father urges me to accompany
him in, and of course i acquiesce. we knock on the door and it is opened by
a fairly elderly woman who turns out to be the daughter of the patient we
have come to visit. my father knows her well, but i have absolutely no idea
who she is. however - just like many of my fathers acquaintances - she of
course knows me, has known me for some time, and uses the opportunity to
comment on how well ive grown.
we enter the house. it smells of herbal remedies - a distinctly
chinese odor, in my experience. i leave my shoes at the door, as is
customary in any asian household, and stand awkwardly on my navy socks in
the center of the living room.
the patient we have come to visit is lying on a medical bed with
metal railings and electric controls placed next to the inside wall of the
living room. although the room is well lit through a solitary window, dust
and an unbearable sense of age make the room seem misty, small, and dingy,
although it is none of these things. the woman who opened the door for us
offers us tea, candy. we decline my father has come for a different
purpose. the man we have come to visit rises slowly from his bed and,
balanced precariously on a four-legged walker, totters slowly over to an
easy chair across from my father.
my father begins to talk. he has an easy, hypnotic voice when he is
speaking in his native cantonese, probably his greatest asset as a preacher.
he begins to tell the grandfather we are visiting about the gospel, the
gospel about which this over ninety-year-old man has perhaps vaguely heard
of but never believed in. he begins by talking about life and how blessed
the elderly are to have lived so long and to still be in decent health. i
tune out and listen as if in a trance to the words flowing from my father.
i have heard the gospel before. the only thing i am aware of else than the
misty sunlight and my fathers voice suddenly breaks into my consciousness
like a machine gun: a loudly ticking clock. a clock on the mantle has been
ticking the entire time and i abruptly notice its noise.
my first thought is how utterly rude it is to put something so morbid
next to the bed of a man who spends his days in bed, unable to walk or bathe
without assistance, practically waiting to die. i immediately dismiss the
thought, of course obviously nothing bad was meant by whichever fool
decided to install a clock there.
i try to focus back to what my father is telling our host. my father
is telling him about jesus and how through gods only son we can attain
everlasting life. i try to listen further but nothing gets through now
except the ticking of the clock, counting off the seconds with a noise that
seems incredibly, unbelievably loud.
demented grandpa tao stories: bible fun!
by - grandpa tao
ed. note: these wouldnt be nearly as funny if they werent
completely true.
i was attending church one day, and something funny happened. well.
not ha ha funny, cause that would be damn sick, but it definitely was out
of the ordinary. this elderly widow was to do the childrens story, a
section of the service where the children all go up to the front of the
church and listen to a bible-related story. but she had only recently
lost her husband, and wasnt in the greatest of mental health. she got up
and went to the front and began to speak:
once upon a time, there lived a farmer and his family. his son,
a smart boy, had finally graduated from school and was ready to
go to college. the family scrimped and saved every penny to send
their son to school! finally, they had enough money, and the boy
said goodbye, hugged his parents, and left. one day, the farmer
decides that he should go see his boy in the Big City, so he packs
up his cart they were poor and his ox and heads for the college.
he slept under the stars, and ate food from his pack. he finally
arrived, and upon seeing his son on the quad, yells out a greeting.
the boy, embarrassed about having a dirty hick for a father, yells
at him to go away, and to never come back. the father,
brokenhearted, returns home. when the year was over, the boy
returned home to find his father dead, a suicide due to a broken
heart.
the moral of the story is, love your parents, or theyll DIE!
well, that pretty much did it for the kids, as they sat there all
teary eyed and wobbly. the same effect could have probably been achieved
by having ed meese decapitate a rabbit and stick the remains in his
buttocks. well, at least, for those kids it would have. they were crying
and bawling, each more scared than the next. most of the parents were just
sitting there, stunned that something like that could be said in church. i
was laughing. i was a real bastard back then. well, my friends were
laughing, too. yeah, just about everyone in our town is screwed in the
head. oh well. it still doesnt beat the time matt mccarthy set his desk
on fire, and decided to put it out with his own bodily fluids .. but
thats another story.
heres a quarter! dont tell your mom!
grandpa taos hometown funfact: in my hometown, in shop, you can
make a bookshelf, or a CROSSBOW. not many book lovers around these parts,
no sir-ee ..
mirror
by - orestes
i look at myself as i often do and i see a rather comforting
reflection. between the two panes of glass, sandwiched with an inch or two
of air in the middle, i can see myself twice. no, not really twice, but
rather, oh, different. i can be big head, small body, small body, big head,
big arms, small head .. yeah, focusing my eyes, or my mind, whatever the
trick is, i can remold this reflection.
oh, this isnt a mirror, i hate mirrors. mirrors are of as much use
to me as a twin, and if i had to live with a mirror and gaze in it every
bloody morning, id plot to murder it too. shit! i do! well, i am a
coward my mirror, er, that mirror, will live.
yeah, this isnt a mirror, its a window, or rather, two of them.
they make my eyes dark shadows and my hair a serious black. yeah, serious.
im serious this window reflects me from the inside out. how does that
work again? big body, little head? big head, little body?
im a late night guy and i see the insects here on the floor. i
dont like them much, but they do clean the floors. i think i see a
metaphor here. who hides in the walls and cleans the floor out of hunger?
maybe i do. yes, and im happy now, happy because of HER. the night makes
me happy and the metaphor doesnt bother me. yeah, im happy because of
HER. happy because of her.
earlier i felt more like one of these nefarious millipedes than i do
now, as i eat this tasty cold pizza and look out at the night. the moon was
out earlier, a pretty crescent, hopefully waxing, but i cant see it now. a
pity, i suppose, because the only thing i could see out this window with
these lights on is the moon, the pretty, glorious moon.
oh, i like times like these. when i watched television, id come out
here, look out the window and see the night and myself, drinking darjeeling
and thinking about this author or that, and that was a great time for me.
id dare say that it was a sacred time, because theres a kind of peace that
the night, the moon, bestows on me, and to be honest theres but one way to
take this sort of thing, and that is with a great deal of reverence. im
reverent now, reverent because of HER. yeah, reverent because of HER.
reverent because of her.
when i was younger, very young, i remember telling my mother that i
felt content. it was a word i couldnt have been wielding for more than a
couple years, but yet, it was almost magical in the depth of its
utilization. i remember telling her how being content was so different from
the other emotions i was familiar with, such as happiness and sadness,
that is, positive and negative anxiety respectively, and that it was very
rare for me to be content. its still rare for me to be content at the
level that i was at then, and i still go through rough bouts of dueling
positive and negative anxieties, but contentment is more common for me now
than then.
ive turned out the lights now. oh, this is fun, to see the strange
gray-scale landscape in the faint moonlight. looking outside at night and
enjoying the natural beauty is an indulgence more rare for me than
darjeeling tea i love it that much more.
i am a night guy, but there is something to be said about closing the
night like a wax-sealed letter by retiring at the peak of its charm.
fortunately, the hot tea, so reminiscent of the girl with whom the former
hours of the night were spent, is gracious with my mind and doesnt conflict
with sleep. a simple conformity since everything at night is gracious with
me.
the completion of the day doesnt bother me. in the knowledge that i
have innumerable nights left to enjoy, and probably with a little less
capacity to raise second thoughts, being impaired by a gentle fatigue, the
fade doesnt disturb me. im content, because of this night and its day.
yeah, im content because of HER. content because of her.
the inconsistencies of the time-space continuum empirically proven by irc
by - the masked marauder
the fabric of time and space that is set forth by einsteins general
relativity theorem is now ruptured, torn so to speak. the perpetrator in
this case was that friendly service we all know and love, internet relay
chat, commonly referred to by junkies like myself as irc.
the most disturbing part of this amazing scientific discovery was
that the discovery itself was sheer luck. just as penicillin was discovered
by leaving a sandwich in the lab, like ramen was discovered by some italian
fucking up his pasta recipe, like most of the really important breakthroughs
of this millennia, it was purely innocent. but the implications are
enormous.
first a little introduction. i am sure that we are all experts on
time travel. i know i am, i have watched back to the future at least
seventy three separate times, i know about the flux capacitor, i know about
the five gigawatts it takes to fire up the magic delorean, i know how doc
cut his head on the toilet, but learning this forbidden knowledge has
shaken, indeed torn, the very fabric of the reality that i know and love, as
i am sure it will do to yours.
so here it is, this little tidbit of information changes everything i
know and love about that little thing called reality. heres the premise i
am judging under. according to the basic theorem of the time-space
continuum, if time travel were to occur and i happened to meet my other
self in a dark alley somewhere, i would in fact meet that person. i
would see the aged reflection of myself even though it hasnt happened yet.
well, on irc, the rules are totally different.
if you are so fortunate as to encounter a lag then you obviously
are lame and should immediately be shot. well, you might also switch
servers so that you escape that lag and resume your netsex without further
interruption. well, if you were lagged enough on the first server and join
a server with no lag, you usually see yourself blabbering about stuff you
thought would be funny to say, but you are just five minutes too late, and
everyone thinks that you are some dumb guy that took five minutes to think
up some lame response.
sometimes it doesnt work that way. like if you join the channel
initially, on a lagged server, then change to an un-lagged server, you
should see that initial join in a few minutes but you dont.
oh god!@ damnation is upon us all! praise jesus! amen!
that single fact disproves the time-space continuum theory. you are
probably thinking tmm, you are just some sarcastic angstful alterna-teen
that doesnt know what youre talking about. a-ha, touche! i am in
advanced placement physics *two*, so i at least have some clue as to what
the hell i am talking about. anyways, this disturbance in my perception of
what is and what should be led to a slippery-slope, a snowball perhaps of
thought within my puny little brain. so i tried to justify the incident to
fortify and maintain the time-space continuum theory that all reality rests
upon.
i postulate that one of two things occurred. either the whole little
incident is a result of a bug or glitch in the programming of irc itself, or
reality is thrown out the window.
but i have been known to be wrong. or i could be just nothing at
all. im probably not typing this, and if i am, it is probably just the
result of a lagged server, and when the server i call reality rejoins, no
one will see me! i will be alone with my maniacal musings!
shit. theyre gonna put me in the jacket again.
thirty seconds at pratt sheridan
by - kojak
the young man gently stepped on the brakes, not in any particular
hurry. the car came to a stop, at the intersection of sheridan pratt,
in far-north chicago. the music on his tape faded out, signaling the end
of side one. as he patiently waited for the light to turn, his tape to
flip, and life to go on, he took a look out the window. he saw a multitude
of things, a myriad of activities.
close to the intersection was a police car, parked, with its lights
on. there was a policeman sitting in the drivers seat, door open, writing
on a clipboard. the flashing lights occasionally blinded the youth, and he
wondered why there would be a police officer on this seemingly normal street
corner. the policeman was middle-aged, with his hat pushed high up on his
head, exposing a forehead that itself exposed a few years of hair loss. the
officer was thinking as he wrote, occasionally pushing the eraser up against
his chin. i wonder when hes gonna get home, thought the young man, he
looks very tired. is there anyone that will be at home waiting for him?
wait a second, is there anyone waiting at home for *me*?
scanning farther to the right, the youth spotted a fireman walking
towards a large red fire engine, with a long wooden pole in his hand. he
motioned to the police officer, but got no response. setting the pole
against the fire truck, the fireman rubbed his hands together, signaling a
break in his activities, and leaned up against the side of his vehicle.
the uniformed man took in a deep breath, then leaned his head back against
the truck and let it out in a big, collected sigh. where is the fire?
pondered the young man, glancing upward. seeing nothing, he thought back
to the time that he had to call the fire department, also a false alarm.
he was eight at the time, and never once has he been more scared in his
life. his oven was smoking incessantly, and he was the only one home. he
shivered at the thought, and continued looking around.
in the street, facing the young man, was one other car: a green volvo
station wagon with a young woman driving, and a small child in the passenger
seat. the woman and the child were having an animated conversation, for the
young man could see a little pair of hands cutting through the air and
making wild gestures. the woman was plain looking, the type of person you
see one hundred times a day and never think about twice. the young man
remembered driving through the city with his mother hundreds of times,
sometimes with conversation - other times not. the scenery had always
intrigued him, and sometimes he wouldnt speak at all, but rather watch.
and learn.
the young mans eyes followed a group of kids who had just crossed
the street, and his eyes crossed paths with a hispanic family. three
people, standing on the street corner waiting for the light to turn green.
both the man and woman carrying several grocery bags, and the young child
carrying the womans purse. they waited patiently, their weight shifting
from one foot to another, eyeing the group of kids nervously. they seemed
very afraid of the gang of young men walking across the street - but why
should they be? theres a policeman right across the street. still, there
was the inkling of doubt in their minds about the situation.
the young man wanted to look up at the sky, but his view was blocked
by a billboard that told him, crack is an addiction. this didnt appear to
be a neighborhood that was drug-ridden, but what lies behind the facade of
lovely brick houses, he didnt know. were the lovely brick houses in his
neighborhood drug-ridden? the young man was from the suburbs, a nice one at
that, where drugs are supposedly not present. but an inkling of doubt crept
into *his* mind about the area he lived - why wouldnt drugs be prevalent
there? he continued his upward scan, and when his eyes finally rested on the
clear blue, he tookin a deep breath, holding it.
suddenly, the music faded back in, bringing the young man back to
life. he glanced down, and noticed the light turning green. he headed
southward, wondering how such a small corner in such a small neighborhood
could house such a vast world of activity. he wondered that if he went
back, the same amount of activity would be going on. he wondered what it
would be like to live there. all these thoughts crossed his mind, perhaps
never to do so again .. but yet, he still had this indelible image in his
head. it was an image of simplicity, indeed .. but the lives of these
people were inherently more complex than the intersection let on to, and
the young man found himself wanting to learn more about the scene. the
scene that was vibrant, full of activity, and one he will never forget.
the girlfriend
by - sweeney erect
dear casey,
i remember the first time we went out. i asked her out on a friday,
but unfortunately she was busy washing her cats hair. luckily i continued
to call her every hour on the hour until she agreed to go out with me. she
was so so beautiful and i was honoured.
i wanted to go to lunch with her, but she insisted on a night date,
romantic little pup that she was. we went to a movie and she insisted we
sneak into the disused balcony. so mischievous! after five minutes or so
she went off to get us some popcorn. i guess the line was really long
because she didnt get back until the movie was almost over.
then we left. she insisted on getting out of the car several blocks
from where she lived. shes so shy! very cute.
one day she got very sick so i stayed with her night and day. i
couldnt seem to cheer her up, she just sat around moping, insisting that i
could really leave any time i wanted. shes quite a little trooper, but i
stayed on. i would make her chicken soup, which she would usually drink a
little of, holding the rest of it in her mouth and spitting it at me. such
a playful little thing.
she didnt let me actually sleep in her apartment, i guess she was
scared of me getting sick, so i camped out in her hall. the neighbors
affectionately referred to the clump of blankets i laid on as my nest.
often they would come over and spit playfully on me.
one day she began brandishing a gun demanding that i leave. i guess
she really didnt want me getting sick. she has moved and changed her phone
number, but i still feel very close to her. casey, would you play wind
beneath my wings and dedicate it to sandra, from roger.
the chaos theory monday, july 18
by - eerie
at ten am i was back home. during all of the bus ride, i was
dreading cynthias anger. my relations with her werent going too swell
already, so i wasnt too sure what to expect for this time. then, i
realized it was monday she was at her job, therefore i wouldnt have to go
through her anger before supper time. cynthia was working for some clothes
boutique in the downtown.
from that moment i considered as impossible the fact that annie would
quit my thoughts. yesterday again i dreamt of her. she was by my side,
again, so pretty so fragile. for the second time, i woke up alone, with
dried sperm on my belly. like her sole presence would generate thousand
infinite erotic dreams i could hardly remember.
i got in the apartment i dropped on the arm-chair, mechanically
turned on the tv set. there was nothing interesting - monday morning, cant
expect too much - so i turned it off searched the bookstand for a book
that i could read maybe even try to finish someday. there was cynthias
almost complete stephen king collection, which never really interested me,
as well as some pocket books, comic books, nothing too intense. however,
after searching a bit more, i found a john irving book, which i heard was
pretty good. i then got back on the arm-chair read the first paragraphs,
with the interest of someone who has nothing better to do.
at that very moment, the doorbell rang. who the hell could it be?
i asked myself as i dropped my book on the small white three-legged table
next to the chair, i answered the door. it was melanie.
- oh. what a surprise.
- you seem almost happy to see me.
- no, thats alright, come in, you were just disturbing me in the
reading of a enormously entrancing novel, just at the moment where the plot
was reaching its highest climax level, but its okay.
- oh. im sorry.
- hey, i was kidding, i was reading the introduction about the
authors biography. what are you doing here anyway?
- i was near here. wanted to say hi, thats all.
- strange will, but i wont discuss.
she looked at me with a puzzled look i told her to nevermind.
- sokay, im wandering.
- ah, okay. so, you still have no job?
- nope, sadly. well, actually i dont complain. leaves me some
time to work on more important matter.
- really? youre still writing?
- yeah.
- about what?
- nothing excessively enthralling. some guy who decides one day
hell become a schizo.
- oh, it looks positive.
- you wouldnt imagine.
- can i read it?
- er, yeah, if you want to. its in my room.
i turned on the computer, entered the word processor printed a copy
of the first three chapters on my old dot matrix printer. she could read
the whole thing as the words appeared on the paper.
- the chaos theory. looks like something kafka would do.
- uh? yeah, true. never thought about that.
she sat on the bed read on the three chapters. it didnt take too
long before she finished. meanwhile, though, she stopped took a close
look at me, asking:
- hey, thats me, here, in the bus?
- er. yeah, true.
- wow! that happened like two days ago. i thought it was all
fiction .. or is it? here, cynthia ..
shit. i forgot i kept the real peoples names.
- some people, like you, are in the novel, so i could locate the
fictive events with more ease, thats all.
- oh yeah.
she kept on reading.
- maybe the events are fictive, but god, the narrator looks just
like you!
- could i do otherwise?
she smiled.
- im sure .. whats her name? annie! yeah. im sure annie really
exists you fuck with her like a dog.
i sighed she let go.
- well, i liked it anyway.
- hmm.
- but seriously, i dont believe you. im sure this story tells the
exact truth. you arent even amplifying situation or changing events.
everything looks so exact!
- believe what you want.
i smiled. i laughed, actually.
- anyway youre wrong.
- okay.
she laughed too, a laughed i was used to hear a lot more a couple
months ago, at a time when we saw each other almost every evening, going in
the city, watching the girls pass by, cause well, its probably the only
discussing topic we ever agreed on.
- well. i gotta go. i eat with joelle.
- come back whenever.
i watched her leave the apartment laid down on the bed. ive
always vaguely desired melanie, even if she i were radically incompatible.
shes been my girlfriend for two years. at first i was a blessing for
her, because everyone though she was with me, the rumours about her being
a lesbian would low down. after a while, though, she decided she didnt
give a fuck about what people say, we sort of lost touch with each other.
would i go back to my reading that i didnt even start? i was
feeling tired, didnt really want to do anything. i was too awake to sleep.
i didnt want to take a walk outside because it was still way too hot - oh
my god, its even hotter than yesterday - also because i had nowhere to go
to. i had the impression all i was doing these days was writing
ejaculating.
after a moment of reflexion, i decided in favour of irvings book,
read slowly, stopped only once to get something to eat.
eggplant parmesan
by - creed
lincoln elementary school was a school like any other. it had an
average amount of students who had average parents and got average grades.
but one particular student at lincoln elementary was anything but average.
this student was jimmy. jimmy was an eggplant.
jimmy had a hard time being an eggplant, but he dealt with it. when
bullies approached him and called him eggplant-head or stupid eggplant
boy, jimmy would usually just smile and walk away. it was no big deal for
him he was used to getting pushed around. yes, it was a hard life, but
jimmy sure did love being an eggplant.
one day, as jimmy was strolling down the hall on the way to his next
class, he was stopped by brian, the toughest bully in the whole school.
uh-oh, jimmy laughed, i think the school genius wants my lunch money.
thats right, eggplant, fork it over.
jimmy stood there and smiled at the enormous bully towering over him.
i cant, brian, im saving up to buy you a brain.
brian fumed with anger. listen, you snot-nosed eggplant punk -
jimmy interrupted and attacked again with another clever comeback: i
may be a snot-nosed eggplant punk, but at least im not a big dumb
poopy-head like you! jimmy was on a roll. he had never been so proud of
his quick thinking and expertise of argument.
but for brian, this was the last straw. completely furious at the
young eggplants witty remarks, he rolled up his sleeves and beat jimmy into
a mushy purple mess. thatll teach him, he muttered as he spit on the
bloody corpse and walked away solemnly.
the next day at lunch, they served eggplant parmesan in the
cafeteria.
dont try to understand
by - girlie17
everything changes so quickly
you never know what to expect
i was finally experiencing happiness
or something close to it
why dont they try to hear me
as i get my point across
force me to go to extremes
i hope i dont get lost
radical change in behavior
do they see me? probably not
so whats the use in trying
the battle - no point in being fought
they tell me how i feel
couldnt be more wrong
if I tried to reach them
it would probably take too long
theyll never understand
how im feeling how ive felt
they were the ones who gave me
the cards that ive been dealt
wish
by - fake scorpion
his face was without expression as he lay on his bed. his ceiling
was clean as far as he could tell, for that was all he had been staring at
for the past hour or so. the same song drifting from his stereo had done
so over one-thousand times and he attempted to make it two-thousand by
pressing the back arrow each time it ended.
it was saturday. the girl he had promised to call was most likely
sitting by her phone waiting for him. he was five minutes late, but
he felt it was still too early. she could wait forever for all he cared.
just imagining the look of anticipation on her face was making him sick.
my parents are out of town, would be one of her opening remarks after she
answered his ring. as if you havent told me that one thousand times
already, he would feel like saying, but he knew he wouldnt. he couldnt.
her perfectly aligned teeth, the mole on her cheek, her perfectly
trimmed eyebrows and nails, her clothes - she was a clone of a million
clones. all of these images, they formed such a thick soup in his head.
he began to feel sick to his stomach. he could feel it begin to reject
what little food he had eaten during the day. he knew he didnt love her
he knew she didnt love him. the thrill of dating an older guy was enough
for her it boosted her social class in the high-school caste system.
what he really wanted to do was bash her skull in. he wanted her
physically, of course, but when it was time to hold her and caress her
skin while repeating the age-old script, he just wanted to do away with her.
he would pull the lamp from the wall and hit her over and over again until
her blonde hair had been dyed a bright red. she wanted to look a bit
different - she wanted a change she had told him so.
perhaps then he would caress her skin. yes - the idea was turning
him on now. he was smiling as he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. he
would trace her lips with one of his fingers while running his other hand
through her hair, bloodying his hand. the blood how red it would be!
would be his motivation. he would press his face to her hair to smear
the blood around the edges of his mouth so he would resemble the animal
he wished he was.
how scary he would be then! his smile dominated most of his pale
face. he would leave her in his room and go out to eat afterwards. when
he returned home, he would see that she was bored and wished to go home.
im no fun? he would mutter, laughing hysterically at his own joke. he
would be a gentleman and would place her in the passenger seat very
carefully of his car, being courteous enough to strap the seat belt
around her chest. he would drive her back to her home and drop her off in
the middle of the gravel driveway so her parents wouldnt see her come in
late. dumb, he would mutter a mile down the road, remembering that her
parents wouldnt be back until much later. she had told him so.
seeing that he had much more time than before, he would return and
pick her up women dont weigh anything - she even complained of being fat!
and set her in the hammock stretched between two carolina pine-trees. he
would even cover her with a blanket from the back of his car, but not before
he had doused the blanket with gasoline. he would light a cigarette and
throw it upon the blanket after he had smoked away about three minutes of
his life. he would crash the car into a tree a few miles down the road,
on purpose of course.
he picked up the phone and dialed her number. she wouldnt be that
mad he was only ten minutes late. he asked her if she wanted to go to the
movies. they made out in the back of the theater. afterwards he took her
back home and went to bed.
all it took was one miracle e-mail
by - whisper
date: thursday, may 9, 1996 1:38am electronic mail
from: xcool msg: 159131
to: whisper
re: morality.
yo man,
you still cant explain why sexually a girl does not satisfy you, a
guy does not satisfy me because i have never been with a MALE. you keep
mentioning society, but nothing about morality. im very sure that in the
back of you mind you know that what you do is not right, just like taking
drugs you know its not right, but you just do it because you are addicted,
im not saying you are addicted to having sex with a man im just putting
across a point. i knew if i asked you how long have you thought you were
gay you are going to give me some answer like since i was a baby or i was
born like this but no one is born anything, liking the idea of sleeping
with men takes conditioning, like getting fed up with being rejected by a
girls, to maybe just something like going to and all boys school. im not
saying those are any of the cases for you but i think you are old enough to
know the difference between having sex with a compatibly REPRODUCTIVE person
and anything else, and that you a male having sex with a male is if nothing
else a question of MORALITY. im not trying to teach you anything whatever
you do is between you and your GOD.
later, man.
reply, erase, forward, copy, backtrack, previous, or next?
praise e-jesus!
present company excluded
by - creed
what if stalin was an aardvark?
what if castro was an iguana?
what if hitler was a ferret?
that would be really weird.
you may ask, how would that be weird?
well, ive never seen an iguana become the unruly tyrant of a small
island. ive never known a ferret who was responsible for the deaths of
over six million people.
present company excluded, of course.
into every sunset a little acid rain must fall
by - murmur
i am against stupidity. - reverberator
now, dont we all often complain a lot about stupidity? sure we do.
stupidity, sadly, is omnipresent in our society, and we are affected by the
ramifications of it daily. sometimes stupidity takes its form in neglect,
sometimes stupidity takes its form in such an outright blatant manner that
we are given little choice but to bubble with rage. lets take a look at
some examples of stupidity:
* you go to the grocery store, looking to buy a case of dr. pepper.
its 6.69, and youre thinking, this sucks, but i want my dr.
pepper. then as youre going to leave you see a big display that
twelve-packs of dr. pepper are on sale for 2.89 for 24 cans, or
the equivalent of a case, thats only 5.78, a full 91 cents less,
almost four cents less a can. what the hell is up with that?
* your little brother/cousin/lover is fiddling around with their
boombox and suddenly blurts out, damn it! how do you fast forward
a tape@? yes, there is a button clearly marked FF.
* the cure.
* walking on the jefferson street walking bridge in rockford,
illinois, and seeing the fine, fine work of a local graffitist:
slow down your going to fast.
of course, there are many, MANY more examples of stupidity in our
everyday lives! some, of course, are on more severe levels than others.
for every i am a jelly doughnut! uttered there is some idiot so broke that
instead of buying cigarettes he tries to inhale car fumes to get a buzz.
for every milk commercial sponsored by the american dairy board theres
bound to be a tv show whose script is written by the same man. for every
candlebox song theres a collective soul song.
so what is there to do in the face of such a terrible, terrible thing
as mass stupidity? some people have chosen to remain ignorant or
indifferent, often becoming part of the problem. these people include those
who bought the rembrandts lp and operation rescue. operation rescue is
a good example, too. did you know that you there with that delicious cherry
lemonade snapple have merely added to the problem? snapple gives money to
operation rescue, and by supporting snapple you are indirectly supporting
operation rescue.
but then again, so what? no average person can completely avoid the
supporting of the stupid. quite frankly, to make a conscious streamlined
effort to be completely pure, and thereby altering your life with some sort
of misdirected intention in mind, is probably evidence of such anal
retentiveness that youre stupider than anything youve set out to avoid.
besides, no matter how good your intentions, youve already failed to
avoid the stupidity! wanna know why, do you? look at yourself! you could
be outside in the sunshine, or your own personal sunshining darkness, but
no, youre sitting here reading this stupid piece! this is a very stupid
piece, in fact. its about stupidity, for christs sake. what kind of
idiotic topic is that?
wait! maybe youre relaxing from a hard day of work or play.
perhaps, for you, this text file is relaxation? bullshit! its your own
damn fault for being tired from a hard day of anything. the only way you
can expect to truly avoid stupidity is by laying in a meadow filled with
wild, poisonous berries that are killing off stupid birds, and soaking up
some sunshine or your own personal sunshining darkness! you damn well
better be sleeping ten hours a day, or youre fucking wasting away, too. i
mean, getting some good sleep makes you feel good! so does that chocolate
ice cream! lactose intolerant? nope! stupid! stupid as a fuzzy clam!
this here paragraph was removed because it was rude.
this here paragraph was also removed because it was rude.
hey. why are you still reading this, stupid? hoping for redemption?
think i might clear you from the stupid list? fat chance. im stupid just
like you are! stupid!
you know, i walked into the post office the other day and said hi, i
would like to buy a book of stamps and the person behind the counter asked
if i wanted bird stamps or flag stamps and i chose the flag stamps and she
said okay and handed them to me and i paid for them and left and while i
left i thought boy she was a stupid bitch.
then i sat down and i turned on my tv set and i turned on mtv
because im kind of stupid like that sometimes and the stone temple pilots
were on and i looked at scott weiland and say boy is he stupid the stupid
drug addict but i like his hair and then a sponge video came on and i prayed
to my personal jesus and thanked him for not making me as stupid as sponge
and he said shut up stupid so i said okay sorry personal jesus.
i was feeling hungry so i went to burger king and ordered a whopper
with just ketchup on it because mayonnaise is stupid and i got this burger
with mayonnaise on it and i said hello i ordered this without mayonnaise and
they said sorry and made me a new one and it had just ketchup and it tasted
okay when i ate it and while i ate it i thought to myself i wonder if the
fat chick behind the counter is more stupid than the manager or if the tall
hispanic man making the hamburgers is really the stupidest one and then i
remembered that lewis largent was a lot stupider than any of them and i
laughed and almost choked on a french fry and boy i am stupid.
boy, a lot of stupid stuff happens. it really kind of sucks that we
have to put up with so much stupid stuff because hey i might be stupid but i
am not as stupid as whoever that is in the corner that can not speak because
he was born a retard. poor guy. i mean, i feel sorry for him, because
people will tease him and everything, but its not his fault. he was
punished for something someone else did, quite possibly harry s truman. i
dont make fun of him or the poor people with downs syndrome. its really
not their fault they were born with those disabilities, you know.
i will make fun of many people, however, who deserve it. these
people include those who donated large sums of money to the mondale campaign
and anyone that buys old milwaukee. boy, this lead singer of the nixons is
kind of ugly. luckily, im handsome besides being not at stupid as many.
hey, im thirsty.
i had already ended this file, actually, and whilst playing a video
game in our fabled dorms fabled back lounge, in walked some random
individual. i guess random is a poor word because ive seen him before, he
lives here and all. but, anyhow, its 4:30 in the morning on a sunday, and
in walks this person, and he changes the channel, and im thinking, what the
hell is he doing? and im paying more attention to the video game, but
still im like, what the hell is he doing? and i notice he stops and first
chance i get ill take a glance at what he stopped at it but all i had to do
was listen and realize hey, he changed the channel to the weather channel.
hes watching the weather channel. then i finish my game and im trying to
figure out what the hell hes doing and i open a pop and hes like four
inches from the tv and this friendly weatherperson is telling us its going
to be cold and he starts swearing at the tv, fuck. fuck! and that
continues for a little while and all in all is relatively amusing, i guess.
my point is, hes also pretty fucking stupid. im not saying wanting
to know the weather is stupid, but, all in all, this is a stupid person.
hes ugly too. perhaps not as ugly as kenry kissinger, but i guarantee you
he isnt getting the chicks kissinger did. well, then again, no one again
ever will get the chicks kissinger did, except maybe keanu reeves, except i
hear hes gay and even if hes not gay, he cant do shakespeare, which you
would know if you saw the movie version of much ado about nothing starring
kenneth branagh sorry, kenneth, if ive butchered your name and emma
thompson, whos quite a beautiful woman, but getting back to the point, a
stupid, ugly person changed the channel on me and caused me to miss the
first half of that new video from rage against the machine, which ill grant
nobody else seems to like and most people will wonder about me for liking,
but hell, i like it, and i was looking forward to seeing the video, because
i like to bounce around this here lounge when no one else is here shouting
RALLY ROUND THE FAMILY .. WITH A POCKET FULL OF SHELLS but still im
digressing again thats an ugly and stupid person and i for some reason get
the feeling he doesnt smell good. im not sure why this is but other
people i know that look sort of like him, same build and height and hair,
they all pretty much smell bad for no explainable reason, and theyre all
stupid and ugly. damned if i know why.
im not so thirsty anymore, which is probably because ive almost
finished my can of dr. pepper. woah, this commercial makes me want to go
buy some schlitz malt liquor because its a bunch of black people drinking
schlitz malt liquor and they seem to be at some sort of picnic and theyre
dancing to music i dont understand that i dont think is very good and they
seem to enjoy their schlitz malt liquor. but then i remember i dont like
malt liquor or any sort of alcoholic beverage for that matter, except for
dimetapp. i like dimetapp, but thats medicine and on second thought im
not sure if theres really any alcohol in dimetapp or not, but i think
theres dimetapp in vicks formula 44 and i think i like the cherry flavored
vicks formula 44 too, but i dont like champagne, i just dont. whatever it
all may mean, my thirst has been quenched by that can of dr. pepper.
pastels. what the hell are up with pastels? ill bet a stupid,
stupid person invented pastels. either that or someone fully aware that he
or she could take advantage of stupid people and make good money exploiting
the stupid people, this part of the sentence removed for content. this part
of this sentence also removed for content, but they never went for the
pastel bit, no sir. pink jumpsuits? what the hell? you wouldnt catch me
dead in a pink jump suit, mister.
now, look. im reaching where i just shouldnt be reaching. this
piece may have had comedic value at one point but now its just pretty
fuckin stupid. oh well, stupid is as stupid does. damn it, that was
stupid of me. this has gone on too far, hasnt it, now? lets wrap up with
another list of things that are inherently stupid, to varying degrees:
* the chevrolet corporation launched a massive marketing campaign in
mexico, feeling that the mexicans comprised a large untapped
market. unfortunately nobody bothered to consult their
spanish-american dictionaries to discover that no va is spanish
for doesnt go chevrolet lost millions when the mexicans refused
to buy the chevy nova.
* the premise of the net. the movie, stupid.
* caffeine free mountain dew and diet caffeine free mountain dew.
* the woman in this century 21 commercial.
* that snapple mango flavor. god, thats terrible. dont drink it.
* the average frat guy in central illinois. er, the average frat guy
most anywhere. what the hell? hi, i like to get drunk and listen
to the bodeans and alternative bands like dave matthews. wait,
this is going to comprise most sorority chicks too. uhm. well, so
be it. okay.
* the cure.
* whoever authorized the cancellation of my so-called life, making
the revolting piece of trash a cult phenomenon it didnt need to be,
and authorizing mtv to suck even more by allowing it to fall mtvs
way.
* militant i hate men feminists. these fall into a special
category of ultra-stupids because, as you may recall, all women
are stupid. not to say all men arent, of course. but, uhm, yeah.
girls stupid@! wear dresses@! dresses stupid@! perms yuck!@
hate them soap operas@! insert random pathetic slander here
too@!! BOY ARE GIRLS FUCKING STUPID. I GUESS THEYRE JUST
STUPID OR SOMETHING.
* the gentiles. really. stupid gentiles.
* this whitney houston video. hyper-stupid. power-stupidity ho!
* art modell. wait, hes greedy. well, hes stupid too. so there.
* maybe theyre more insensitive than stupid, but whoever authorized
moving murder, she wrote from sundays to thursdays, theyre
pretty darn stupid.
* the minnesota vikings.
* the cure.
well, you get the idea, i think. you know, i think im thirsty
again, damn it. or something. its 5:30, maybe someone will come in and
change the channel to the discovery channel and start ranting. hell
probably smell, too!
oh, fuck, i think ill stop now. really!@
somebody bring me some water, cant you see im burning alive? oh,
hi, im melissa ethridge!@ im stupid too@! grrrkr@!
er.
hi.
uhm.
BOY, LIMA BEANS SURE ARE STUPID! AND SO IS YOUR STATE REPRESENTATIVE
AND YOUR COUNTY CORONER TOO!
stupid they are. stupid, stupid.
YOUR COUSIN IS SO STUPID HE GAVE ME A 1943 STEEL PENNY FOR A MEXICAN
FIVE PESO PIECE BECAUSE I TOLD HIM FOREIGN CURRENCY IN HIS POCKET MADE HIM
SPEAK BETTER ENGLISH.
boy.
well, uhm.
THE CURE SURE ARE STUPID.
oh, fuck.
good thing im madly in love or id be drooling at this here garbage
video. i might go to graduate school in wisconsin, you know.
wait, thats unrelated.
sigh.
WORMS! FEED ME YOUR SLIMY CRAWLY WORMS!
oh.
aye, capn! im movin her in! oops, we appear to have a man
overboard. drat that buoy! stupid buoy!
hmmm.
yeah!
STUPID BUOY. AND STUPID COAST GUARD TOO. STUPIDNOSES.
hrm?
sorry.
BOLT THROWER! BOLT THROWER!
ack.
well.
WALGREENS: THE PHARMACY AMERICA TRUSSES.
uhm, bye.
dummercon update
transcribed by - mogel
the following article appeared in the philadelphia city paper,
june 7th, 1996, page nine.
bbq with a byte
finally a reason for those offbeat scribes of electronic zines to
come out of their computer cubbyholes congregate in the the outdoors.
the dummercon 2 convention offers a little off-line fun for on-line
enthusiasts. organizer mogel just mogel encourages participants to bring
a laptop their own picnic necessities. anyone from the zine community is
welcome but he warns that they might feel out of place among the e-ziners.
his own publication, doomed to obscurity, features poems, prose, rants
from writers around the country.
expect the usual picnic games cuisine plus events tailored to
offbeat tastes. goofy jokes will abound at the spontaneous zine writing
contest laptop required. the dumb stuff raffle celebrates kitsch such as
michael jackson stickers vanilla ice records that are too neat to throw
away too goofy to sell.
last years dummercon drew about twenty people, estimates mogel. so
far, hes already gotten sixty inquiries for this one figures about a
hundred enthusiasts will attend. the came of this event is a play on the
title of the national hacker convention, summercon. mogel wont comment on
his own status as a hacker or give out his last name. if you want to get
more info about the shindig, e-mail him at doomed@voicenet.com or you can
just show up on sat., july 13th at fdr park, picnic area seven, between noon
six pm. have yourself a merry little rantfest.
- neil gladstone
deliverance
by - shadow tao
the images are getting larger.
the aliens are obviously creeping closer.
- star trek: phaser fight
a choose your own adventure book
the men and women made their way out onto the stage with a crafted
apprehension, their instruments cradled in arm and held in hand. the
orchestra was assembling on the stage, the movement of suits and dresses,
the sounds of cautious and quieted tuning, all anticipatory to his glory.
the world was his stage tonight that stage aglow with life and awe.
nothing better in the world.
nothing.
the sounds of the orchestra tuning soon overcame his controlled
breathing, the hushed cacophony of a thousand tones rushing in and out. he
was to be the spotlight tonight. he wouldnt solo, as the piece did not
require it, but he would be placed away from the orchestra - due to his
great skill and young age. everything made him excited. his first
performance with the orchestra. his first billing. his acclaim as a new
prodigy.
the audience was quietly filling the seats, as hundreds of
undistinguishable voices slowly formed waves of quiet chatter. the sound of
the orchestra was still present, but it was a glitter with the tone of
starhood. it was finally time. all the work. finally time to take his
place among the stars in the sky. finally time for the respect that his
genius required. demanded.
the conductor jutted out onto the stage from the other wing, and an
almost strangled silence fell. like a tree filled with raucous crows, the
director had startled them the noise of conversation had taken wing, the
hall quickly filled with the echoes of interrupted silence.
he carefully began his way to the soloist podium.
a curt applause erupted from the left, sparking interest in the
audience. polite applause. hed have to show them a lot to earn their
love. but that would just take his skill to do. and some time.
he glanced over at the conductor, to nod his
wait.
a woman was walking across the stage, carrying
a a a violin case? he had his, it was right
what
what could it possibly
th-the woman finally approached his sight and and slowly opened
the dark black velvet case.
no
it couldnt be.
it just could not be
but it was.
the warm orange glinted off the stage lights. the glory it was. too
beautiful for words, cradled. in his dreams.
a *stradivarius*.
he would play his part in the eventofhislifeona *stradivarius*.
he instantly swore that no one would escape the beauty of his genius.
his gift would be seen, and it would be too much for the weak-minded fools
to comprehend. he would save them with his beauty deliver them with truth.
DELIVER THEM. HE WOULD DELIVER THEM.
his mind seared with zealous rage.
he whipped his stare to the director harshly showing his intent. he
took the gentle beauty into his arms, tucking the ancient wood under his
chin. the huge stone podium before him, he stared out into the expectant
eyes of his followers.
they would see beauty like they would never see again.
the warm tremolo of the violins began behind him. the horn section
came alive, sounding out the way of the lord. he positioned his bow. the
cello entrance came and ..
crystal was the tone of the violin. like a radiant messiah he stood
there, leading the symphony a brilliant light bowing out the word. the
word of god. the strings grew stronger, angrier in their strokes. the
clarinets began their counter voice as the this is the most beautiful thing
ive ever done. timpani sounded out its bounding hits.
quieting, the orchestra passed through his sections shining moment.
the andante walk of the muted violas made the rhythm for his part.
this is the most beautiful thing the world has ever seen.
see their faces? that is the face of the saved.
i am their leader. i am their guide. feed off my brilliance,
mindless sheep. i will show you the way.
the finale was approaching. the angry attack of the brass was met at
first with only token notes from the strings. but the end was coming, and
he had no intention of letting his gift be snuffed by the short-sightedness
of the composer.
with the savage beauty of a swinging blade, his voice cut
through the
BEHOLD, FOR I AM CLAUDIUS!@
angry trumpets like vengeance upon the unknowing.
I AM CHRIST!@
instead of the deep and resounding minor finale
I AM FATHER, SON, AND SPIRIT!@
a single voice erupted, completing the perfect chord
in an orgasmic wave of harmony.
he had created the perfect end.
the audience sat aghast at the incomprehensible beauty of
I .. AM THE MESSIAH! I AM GOD!
the stradivarius swung from behind him in a slow arc,
creeping past his head in the slow motion of horror. seeming only to slow
at the top, where the light from the stage glinted off the instrument like a
brilliant salvation, the violin came down
.. GOD!@
from on high. propelled downward, it slammed into
the marble podium, shattering and splintering the work of love into a
million little pieces.
for a second, the shattered wood just spun in the air
lucent and spinning in the radiance of a blinding sun.
self-respect
by - girlie17
HEY THERE
COME OVER HERE
IS MY MESSAGE CLEAR?
IM NOT A SLUT
BUT I WANNA FUCK
SO BE NICE
AND TREAT ME RIGHT
AND MAYBE WELL HAVE FUN TONIGHT
please direct all dto correspondence towards - doomed@voicenet.com
the dto world wide waste homepage - http://wwti.iway.net/dto
zineworld plug - http://www.pla-net.net/corp/zineworld/
to get on the dto mailing list - send mail to doomed@voicenet.com with
the body of the message saying subscribe dto.
c copyright 1996 doomed to obscurity productions - all rights reserved.
delete your dogma the rest will follow. - kt
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