MiSTing: CLR 3/5
Chris Mayfield
[SOL]
Tom: Mike, what's the point of these posts?
Mike: To show that Liberals are responsible for the decline of all
that is good in America.
Crow: But, aren't liberals--
Mike: That's Liberals.
Crow: Sorry. Aren't Liberals responsible for a lot of good things
about this country, especially art?
Mike: Well, the Liberals are members of the Cultural Elite whose
goal is to destroy the American Dream. So you see--
Tom: What's the Cultural Elite?
Mike: It's anyone who is smarter than you are and doesn't believe
in the same things you do. But--
Crow: Doesn't that make most people in America the Cultural Elite
in relation to these guys?
Mike: No, because--
Tom: And what is the American Dream?
Mike: It's to become rich and famous. Now--
Crow: Then aren't the Liberals fulfilling the American Dream by
selling their books and becoming rich and famous?
Mike: Actually, they're--
Tom: And if so, doesn't that make the conservatives the bad guys
for trying to keep the Liberals from achieving the American
Dream?
Mike: Except for the fact that--
Crow: So really, we should be supporting the Liberals and doing
our best to stop the conservatives.
Mike: Listen! I'm trying to tell you that--
[light flashes]
All: We've got web page sign!
[6...5...4...3...2...1...]
> The links stop here-- BeaconWay Press
> Breathing the life back into literature.
Crow: Quick! The novel is choking! Give it CPR!
>
> BEACONWAY PRESS PRESENTS
> BLACKBEARD'S CABIN:
Tom: A Francis Ford Coppola film.
>
> [Image]
> PARLOR FOR THE CONSERVATIVE INTELLECTUAL
> (THE JOLLY ROGER chat-room for the new minds of the new medium)
Crow: Why is it called a medium?
Mike: Because it's neither rare nor well done.
>
> Ahoy Mate! Sign Aboard!
Mike: Your indentured servitude starts here!
>
> Your e-mail: Your Pirate Nick-Name:
> [Image][Image]
>
>Ahoy there! To join the crew in BLACKBEARD'S CABIN, just knock on
>the door above.
Tom: Knock, knock.
Mike: Who's there?
Tom: Amway!
> But remember to fill out your e-mail and name
>first, and go-ahead and choose a cool name, like Terror of the
>Seven Seas,
Crow: Or the Dread Pirate Roberts.
> if you want. Don't be shy-- it's OK for serious
>intellectuals to play pirate--
Mike: My mom said so.
> especially when we've become
>accustomed to walking the plank in liberally-dominated academic
>institutions.
Tom: I want to see them keelhauled. In real life. Repeatedly.
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>BLACKBEARD'S CABIN is a discussion room where conservatives enjoy
>putting the first amendment to good use in each-others' company.
Tom: Rush is cool.
Crow: Liberals suck. Huh, huh.
Tom: Newt is, like, awesome, dude.
>This laid-back talk-parlor has been instituted at the request of
>many readers of THE JOLLY ROGER, the flagship of the fastest-
>sailing literary revolution on the seven cyber-seas.
Mike: Why don't these guys get exiled to Cyber-ia?
> Many fellow
>sailors expressed that they would enjoy having access to a forum
Tom: You know, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum...
>supporting a free-for-all discussion pertaining to current
>cultural and academic issues. We thought this would be a great
>idea,
Crow: Boy were we wrong.
> as THE JOLLY ROGER is unable to publish all the cool e-mail
>we receive from all you interesting people scattered across the
>globe. So we decided to open Blackbeard's Cabin
Mike: A literary discussion parlor/adult entertainment club.
> to all our fellow
>sailors who have at one time or another had their souls exalted
Crow: Sounds painful.
>by Great Literature created in the context of our Western
>Heritage. We hope you all have fun getting to know one another--
>just steer clear of the captain's adult beverage cabinet!
Mike: [singing] Oh, the first mate he got drunk...
>
>If you are not yet signed aboard THE JOLLY ROGER, you can do so
>my sending the message, "subscribe drakeraft your name," to
>list...@unc.edu.
Crow: No girls allowed.
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>
> THE CONSERVATIVE ARTIST & INTELLECTUAL:
Tom: The Conservative Intellectual.
Crow: Civil War.
Mike: Jumbo Shrimp.
>
>It is often stated throughout the major media that the people of
>this country are anti-intellectual.
All: [sarcastically] Noooo!
> This is stated in the
>following media-elite/liberal professor context:
Crow: We're smart; you're stupid.
> the major media
>and liberal professors are intellectuals, and the people of this
>country are a mass of dolts who force Time Warner to publish
>pornography instead of poetry.
Tom: Do you believe in the free market?
Mike: [uncertain] Ye-es.
Tom: Do you believe that people are responsible for their actions?
Mike: Yes. It's the liberals that assert that society is
responsible--
Tom: THEN SHUT UP ABOUT THE LIBERALS FORCING PEOPLE TO BUY PORN!
Mike: But-but-but, I want it both ways!
> And because the stupid, unrefined
>heathens force Time Warner to publish nihilistic sex and
>violence,
Tom: All the news that's fit to print.
> it thus becomes their duty to pay more taxes to support
>the NEA and NEH, so that professors can preserve higher culture,
>like lesbian performance art.
Crow: Next up on Masterpiece Theatre: Willa Cather's O Pioneers.
>
>But now, just like the firemen in Farenheight 451
Tom: Which just happened to be written at a time when ultra-
conservatism was crushing the artistic scene of America.
> whose chief
>concern was to ignite the fires to burn the books rather than to
>extinguish the flames,
All: [singing] We didn't start the fire...
> the chief concern of the liberal
>professor/editor/media mogul is to destroy the individual artist,
Crow: By immolating them.
Mike: In the case of these guys, I'm all for it.
>rather than encourage and nourish them. The liberal machine will
>reward those of my generation with fame, fortune, and adulation
Mike: Where do I sign up?
>if they conform to the liberal artistic guidelines and shoot
>heroin and get naked and things up on a stage.
All: [singing] Let the sun shine, let the sunshine in...
> They will be given
>a bonus if they contract AIDS,
[Everyone sits there, stunned]
Mike: I'd just like to apologize on behalf of the entire human
race for that last statement.
> but if one dares to write sober
>poetry,
Crow: I guess they're not Dylan Thomas fans.
> they will be kicked out of creative writing class by a
>feminist. Today the feminists' primary mission in academia
Tom: Should they choose to accept it.
> is to
>make the study of literature so unappetizing that any young
>scholar who comes to college loving literature will major in
>physics. That way they won't have to witness the liberals
>murdering cool books.
Mike: "Books are cool. Feminists suck." These guys are truly the
poets of Generation 13.
> Thus the feminists are assured better laser
>printers, and their manifestos can be printed with cooler fonts.
Tom: [falsetto] Shall we use Marxist Bold or Stalin Dingbats?
>
>Kurt Cobain and grunge are favorites of the corporate baby
>boomers, as like the first Woodstock, they too are a creation of
>the aging liberals.
Mike: It's alive! It's alive!
> They had Woodstock I to get high and do
>things, and they held the second one to make a buck. Pepsi wasn't
>the official drink of Woodstock I,
Crow: That was Ovaltine.
> but the music was better. A
>great day for the industry came when Kurt shot himself in the
>head. That made him resemble John Lennon,
Tom: In the way that both had large holes in them.
Mike: Tom!
Tom: Sorry. These guys are really frying my circuitry.
> and the event lent the
>new line of flannel Polo shirts that Kate Moss never wears in her
>ads a credibility.
Crow: Well I certainly--the hell?
Mike: The comma. Don't leave home without it.
>
>It's a free country and the Time Warner crowd have every right to
>bury their consciences and publish drug-inspired pornography, and
>we have every right to publish words that mean things,
Tom: Here's an idea. WHY DON'T YOU DEFINE WHAT YOU MEAN WHEN YOU
SAY "WORDS THAT MEAN THINGS?"
> written
>within a moral context, even though it won't get us tenure. A
>huge contigent of this country, like us and yourselves, is
>looking for meaningful literature
Crow: Oh, I wouldn't go that far.
> written in the tradition of the
>great works of the Western Canon. We're not here to attack
>liberalism,
Mike: In spite of the twelve hundred pages we've written prior to
this.
> but rather we are here to defend Great Literature and
>principled thought against those forces which threaten their
>existence, like liberalism.
Tom: Hmm. Liberal: 1.a. Not limited to or by established,
traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or
dogmas; free from bigotry. b. Favoring proposals for reform, open
to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior
of others; broad-minded. 2.a. Tending to give freely; generous.
b. Generous in amount; ample. 3. Of, relating to, or based on the
traditional arts and sciences of a college or university
curriculum.
Mike: Yikes! Those liberals *are* dangerous!
>
>The rising corporate elites, some of whom dropped acid a few too
>many times in the sixties, are the true unrefined dolts.
Crow: Speaking of unrefined dolts...
> Not only
>are they contributing to the cultural and moral decline of a
>nation by aiming their major commodities of sex, drugs and
>violence at children,
Tom: Yeah. They should be supporting assault weapons and beating
the fear of God into their children, like good conservatives.
> but they're also missing out on an
>opportunity to make money while exalting the peoples' spirits
>with great literature.
Mike: Of course. It all makes sense now. The conservatives want to
use literature to exploit people.
> The thing you have to realize about a
>liberal is that in their mind it's not politically proper to
>publish words that mean things.
Tom: It's Blanket Statement Bingo!
> Sober thought is the enemy of the
>feminist, as sober thought gives birth to logic and reason, and
>when viewed in such a context, books like Joyce
Mike: The Mooksie and the Gripes!
> Carol Oates' Girl
>Gang suck.
Crow: What a scathing indictment of feminism!
> It's interesting to note how reluctant the Time Warner
>executives are to defend their commodity.
Mike: They own Joyce Carol Oates?
> I wonder if they buy
>their children Snoop Doggy-Dog for Christmas or Hannukah? "Hey,
>this is how to talk to girls, son. It's how I met your step-
>mother."
Crow: Wow. Criticism of popular music with a biting commentary on
the erosion of the nuclear family all in one paragraph. These
guys write on so many levels it's frightening.
>
>These aging executives/professors are only increasing in
>entertainment value, and we enjoy having fun with 'em,
Mike: We enjoy playing with people's minds and emotions.
> so it's
>kind of cool they'll be around for awhile yet, along with their
>younger generation-x disciples.
Tom: Go forth, my children, and slack unto all corners of the
earth.
> Isolated in their mansions,
>tenured in their ivy-covered offices, perched high atop the
>towers of Geffen Records
Mike: What have they got against David Geffen?
Crow: He backed Cats.
> (or brown-nosing their way on up there),
>they've lost touch with what it feels like walking the streets of
>this nation. MTV bores us, dudes. It isn't us-- it's you.
Tom: Believe me. It's not us.
> We've
>been brought up with free love, and we wouldn't mind some that's
>worth working for.
Mike: You just keep telling yourself that.
>
>The liberal bureaucrats are so concerned that we have one teacher
>of each sex
Crow: Each sex? There's only two that I know of.
> and ethnicity that they let us go through school
>without ever being taught that the Declaration of Independence
>was written for us.
Crow: The Declaration of Independence was written specifically for
three dorks at UNC?
Tom: Sad, isn't it?
> They let students slip on through diversity
>studies without ever telling them
Mike: White is right.
> that higher culture and
>literature are their spirtual treasures, and that the protection
>of these treasures which nurture their consciences is their duty
>as students.
Mike: Here's a copy of Sons and Lovers, soldier. Guard it with
your life.
> They give the students condoms, tell them not to
>acknowledge the existence of a higher being in the cafeteria,
Crow: The lunch lady is God.
> and
>then they tell Uncle Sam they need more funds to study why so
>many kids are on drugs.
Mike: They're like the Angry Young Men, except they don't have any
talent.
>
>The conservative artist and intellectual asks nothing from the
>greatest government on earth,
Tom: Except for national defense, police protection, public
education, roads, mail, regulation of monopolies...
> nor do we ask anything from the
>universities or the major media establishments, but that our
>unalienable Rights be protected.
Mike: Isn't free speech wonderful?
Tom: But it lets goons like these guys print stuff.
Mike: And lets us tear it to pieces.
> The government has already
>provided us with the freedom to express our thoughts,
Crow: And it's regretting every moment.
> and the WWW
>has provided us with a medium to publish our literaure. And that,
>along with fellow humans yearning for truth and beauty,
Tom: Both as defined within the pages of Playboy.
> is all
>that is needed to launch a literary revolution, sans sex,
Crow: That sounds kinky.
Mike: He means "without."
Crow: Oh.
> sans
>drugs, sans government grants, sans a recommendation from Joyce
Mike: Here Comes Everybody!
>Carol Oates, sans approval from the editors of Rolling Stone.
Tom: Consider this rumor printed three weeks ago in Rolling Stone:
Studebaker Hawk can write the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin.
Crow: No!
>
>This is the sober soul of our generation and the subtle reality
>of our era. It is far too rich to be packaged into sound-bites or
>sold to Hollywood at any price.
Mike: Especially to David Geffen.
> It is too real to be comprehended
Crow: Interesting philosophy.
>by a dissertation committee. And that is why we are preserving it
>in The New Literature.
Tom: Which is also incomprehensible.
> So come on and sign aboard the fastest-
>sailing literary movement on the seven cyber-seas, and subscribe
>to The Jolly Roger by sending the message, "subscribe drakeraft
>your name," to list...@unc.edu.
>
>All the best,
>
>Drake Raft --Captain
Crow: Dumb.
>Becket Knottingham-- First Mate
Tom: Dumber.
>Elliot McGucken --Second Mate
Mike: Dumbest.
> Ahoy! Drop the crew a line!
> The links stop here-- Beaconway Press
>
[continued in part 4]