MiSTing: CLR 2/5
Chris Mayfield
>From: Elliot McGucken <mcgucken>
>Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
>Subject: BOOKS & LITERATURE FOR LITERARY GENERATION-X: BEACONWAY
>PRESS: http://sunsite.unc.edu/owl
>Date: 23 Aug 1995 16:45:51 GMT
[everyone enters the theatre]
Crow: Boy, that skit sure went nowhere.
Tom: Tell me about it.
>Organization: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
>Mime-Version: 1.0
>Content-Type: text/plain
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>Message-ID: <41flvv$n...@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>
>
>
> THE JOLLY ROGER: http://sunsite.unc.edu/owl/jollyroger.html
> THE ELECTRONIC FLAGSHIP OF BEACONWAY PRESS
>
> The Leading Journal of the Intellectual X-er.
Mike: Intellectual crossover? Like Descartes meets the crew of the
Enterprise?
> Check out our fans @ http://sunsite.unc.edu/owl/response.html
>
> SIGN ABOARD NOW! DON'T MISS OUR SEPTEMBER BACK-TO-SCHOOL ISSUE
> WHERE WE OFFICIALLY ANNOUNCE THE NEW BEACONWAY WWW SITE!
>
>%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
>%%%%THE FREQUENCY, KENNETH, IS http://sunsite.unc.edu/owl/ %%%%%
Tom: Excuse us? *We'll* make the pop culture references, if you
don't mind.
>%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
>%%%%%to sign aboard THE JOLLY ROGER, send the message, %%%%%
Crow: "Make me cabin boy!"
>%%%%%"subscribe drakeraft your name" to list...@unc.edu %%%%%
>%%%%%To sign aboard BLACKBEARD, send the message, "subscribe%%%%%
>%%%%%blackbeard your name," to list...@unc.edu %%%%%
>%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
>Because we can't, we won't, and we don't stop writing
Crow: This crap.
> great
>literature.
Tom: [deep] Bread. Two percent milk. Captain Crunch and Lucky
Charms. Today...is double coupon day.
Mike: That was Tom Servo reading, "Grocery List."
Crow: [deep] That was so...capitallistically anti-conformitive.
>
> ******THE JOLLY ROGER******
> A One Canon Ship.
Mike: Written by One Track Minds.
> Technology cannot change what words mean,
> there's yet us, the phantoms in the machine.
>
> *******SYNOPSIS OF THE JOLLY ROGER'S CARGO*******
>
> Editor in Chief: Captain Drake Raft
>
> Ahoy mate! Welcome aboard The Jolly Roger,
All: [singing] If my friends could see me now...
> the fastest-
>sailing literary movement on the seven cyber-seas! Hold on to
>your
Mike: Charles Nelson Riley!
Crow: I said bippy.
> hat and prepare to ship under full sail, as we let the
>canvas stretch taut in the truth's ragin' wind.
Tom: Never spit into the truth.
> We're navigating
>the world, setting in stone the deeper reality of the common
>American consciousness, and embroidering terror
Tom: It was Satan's fabric. It was...THE DOILY FROM HELL!!
> into the tenured
>elite/editor/professor/media mogul heart! They read our poems,
>find themselves thinking, and start getting nervous.
Crow: These guys are *spooky!*
> This we
>understand, because they know what we've come for. We've come
>for what is ours. We're pirating Academia and Pop-Culture,
Tom: Again, that's *our* job. *Please* don't try this at home.
> and
>returning them to the common man.
Mike: Doesn't popular culture already belong to the public?
> And what really gets 'em is
>that we're having fun doin' it.
>
> We at Beaconway Press can't come close to expressing how
>fortunate we are for the presence of the WWW,
Tom: Ahhh, writers who are unable to communicate...
> and we're keeping
>busy rising to the occasion. This is a historical moment, folks,
Mike: This is the Mein Kampf for *our* generation!
>for no longer does one have to submit one's literature to liberal
>journals that nobody reads to start a literary revolution.
All: [singing] You say you want a revolution...
>Instead, one can submit their thoughts directly to the souls of
>the people.
Crow: Why bother with editors? Now you can suffer public
humiliation at the hands of the masses!
>
> We're proud to be using this new medium to pay homage to
>the deeper souls of our generation.
Crow: Mike, who are the deeper souls of our generation?
Mike: Tori Amos and Urkel.
Tom: Kill me now. Please.
> MTV isn't set up to do it,
>the bastion of tenured-liberal-elite professors are too busy
>filling out grant proposals to fund the journals that nobody
>reads,
Mike: Someone got a D on his poem.
Crow: Bitter? Oh--a tad.
> and the pot-heads on alt.society.generation-x think that
>words were invented to brown-nose feminist instructors, or
>something.
Tom: Or something. Yes, we don't know what we're talking about,
but we expect you to accept it as truth.
> It's up to us to do the job that the Universities
>profess to do,
Mike: And what the professors universe to do.
Bots: Huh?
> but for the most part are failing to accomplish.
Tom: Because we're really not that good.
>The aging liberal bureaucracies can't afford to let words mingle
>with the truth,
Mike: It's newspeak.
Tom: And this post is double plus ungood.
> as the truth would exalt the peoples' souls, and
>the shallowness and insipidness of the watered-down multi-
>cultural curriculums and Courtney Love would become apparent.
Crow: Don't forget Melrose Place! It sucks too!
>While the elite are doing their best to keep us in the dark,
>we're going to inspire a generation to read Great Literature
Tom: *These* guys are going to inspire people to read?
Crow: They make me want to swear off literacy altogether.
> by
>rewarding them with the truth for their efforts. And while we're
>performing the noble task, we're also going to do MTV's job.
Mike: Mass marketing the glorification of the debasement of
society, art, and women?
Tom: [rapper] Yo bitch, you is my woman now.
> We
>might as well. We're going to express our souls in an artistic
>manner.
Crow: So like, yeah, or something.
> And we're going to do it with words, even if it means
>that David Geffen can't make a buck off of it.
Mike: Though we don't mind Katzenburg or Speilburg getting rich
off of us.
> It's called the
>New Literature, and we're writing it today.
Crow: Because if we wrote it yesterday it would be the Old
Literature.
> We're not waiting
>for the New York-based editors to acquire an appreciation for the
>Great Books and develop respect for the common sense and
>intellect of the people of this country-- we could be dead white
>males by then.
Tom: So much the better.
>
> ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
>
> HELLO GEN-X! (and stuff)
>
> We would like to extend a special warm welcome to our
>peers-- the members of Generation-X.
Crow: We, the members of Generation X, reject you.
> We didn't coin the term,
>and we're not trying to get you to drink Pepsi,
Tom: No no no! You see, it's called OK. What do you think?
Mike: [dumbly] It's ok.
Tom: Yes! We use Gen X's disillusionment with commercialism to
promote our product, which furthers their mistrust! It's a
beautiful vicious cycle!
> so listen up a
>sec. We're proud to be the voice of the contemplating generation
>x-er's,
Mike: All three of them.
> inspired by truths higher than heroin,
Tom: What do you have to smoke to get higher than heroin?
Crow: Industrial cleaning compound?
> preferring
>thinking to drinking, and mowing the grass to smoking it.
Crow: [stoned] Hey man, I've got some Kentucky Blue in my car...
Tom: [same] Far out, man...
> We're
>cultural mutineers, guardian angels of common sense, defenders of
>the subtle,
Tom: Subtle as an a-bomb.
> known and feared in creative writing workshops across
>the land.
Crow: Oh no! Here come the freaks!
> We're the most dangerous poets alive,
Mike: Byron. Shelley. Keats. They're poets. They carry a badge.
> and should be
>watched, according to a few feminists we've encountered on the
>net. They're pretty desperate,
Tom: [falsetto] A fish without a bicycle, my ass. I want a man!
> with their power-base fading and
>all, so like they have to stoop
Mike: To conquer.
> to trying to tie us in with the
>recent Oklahoma tragedy. But really we're just your clean-cut
>Boy Scout types,
Crow: Who blow up federal buildings.
> who don't mind havin' fun, now and then, with an
>attitude. What really freaks the fringe feminists out is that we
>believe in romance,
Mike: We believe in unrequited love, 'cause that's the closest
we'll ever get.
> and our poetry is written in such an
>oppressive context. We like women,
Crow: We're not gay.
> and that's what upsets them.
>We like Beavis, Butthead, and Rush,
Tom: I could say something about the grouping, but I'll let it
slide.
> and we fear no administrators
>armed with degrees in education-- we've got a Canon on this
>frigate, and it's a big one.
Mike: When the NRA meets the NEA.
> We're the writing on the wall,
Crow: For a good time, call Sally.
> the
>whispering wind, the unseen crack, and MTV doesn't have a half-
>hour show on us, 'cause they don't know what the hell we are.
Tom: Nobody gets us. We're the wind, baby!
>We're invisible to the whole mass-market media industry,
>filtering into the consciousness of our peers, undetected by the
>elite's out-dated radar.
All: RADAR!!
> There's no way that they can use us to
>get our peers to drink Pepsi, so like,
Tom: "So like?" Wow. Great literary technique there, bozo.
> what we think doesn't
>matter. We just have one question for the record industry--
Crow: Disco--why?
>alternative to what?
>
> And the New York Publishers think we're nuts.
Mike: They're right.
> You'd
>think they'd be our friends, with the way we're both
>fundamentally in the same business of trying to create things
>that people want to read,
Tom: So are we.
> but we freak 'em out. To them we're
>off our rockers, we've got bats in the belfry, we're over the
>rainbow, playing without a full deck, gone fishin'.
Crow: We've got an entire dictionary of lame cliches, and we're
not afraid to use it!
> Our oboes
>are out of tune. We've never been funded by the NEA,
Mike: Neither have we.
Crow: Can we be considered art?
Mike: Sure, the deconstructionism of modern media using post-
modern rhetorical critique.
Crow: Wow.
Mike: If they can claim to be art, so can we.
> nor have we
>won any creative writing awards,
Tom: Why does this not surprise me?
> so like our credibility is a bit
>lacking. And our work doesn't divulge any new sexual positions,
>either.
Crow: Well, none that involve other people.
> And get this-- some of it even rhymes.
Mike: Roses are red; violets are blue
Some poems rhyme; some don't.
> Don't we know
>that they need literature to level the playing field, and poetry
>to compensate for the history of Western Culture's oppressive
>concepts, like the Parthenon, Hamlet, and science?
Tom: Ohhh, are the big, bad multiculturalists beating up on the
White Male Reality?
> The literay
>intellectual arenas they control, like Knopf and Norton's, are
>far too valuable to be wasted on concepts like the Truth.
Mike: And, of course, who wants to be against the Truth (even
though the authors can't seem to (or won't) define it)?
> Why
>can't we be useful, and go off and make higher resolution TV's,
Crow: Or stick your heads in ovens.
>or something, with our linear minds, so we can augment the
>world's Pulp Fiction viewing experience, when it comes to the
>corner Blockbuster? Why can't we smoke something,
Tom: Like pure nicotine.
> or drop
>something,
Crow: Like cyanide.
> or shoot something,
Mike: Like yourselves.
> and sing something so that we can
>create something MTV could include in their arsenal? What the
>bejeezus-- didn't we learn anything in college?
Crow: Ding ding ding ding ding. Time's up. The answer: no.
> Didn't we learn
>that words don't mean things?
Mike: Ah, the resurgence of the "meaning" leitmotif.
>
> But hey-- we'd rather be nuts than stupid,
Crow: Hey, why settle for one or the other?
> which is what
>they think you are. They think you're incapable of literature--
>literature that means something, without pictures.
Tom: Hey! *They're* not the ones defining literature for us.
Mike: Tom, take another look at where the comma is.
Tom: Oh.
> Even some of
>the younger editors, fresh out of their deconstructionist theory
>courses,
Crow: I'd like to take one of those courses so I could find out
what makes them work.
> won't admit that you exist.
Mike: It's Big Brother that exists.
> You know, the happy campers
>who lived down the hall, who were always putting those "Save the
>GALS,"
Crow: Pave the Earth.
Mike: Shave the Whales.
> posters on their doors. They went into the business to
>make the world a better place-- we wish they'd gone to Cambodia.
Tom: WE DIDN'T LOSE VIETNAM, YOU HEAR ME?!?!
>'Cause we're not sure if they'd know a piece of literature if it
>bit 'em in the hiney. It seems that for the most part they feel
>good about making money
Mike: Those stupid capitalists.
> off of anything that has something to do
>with sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll, with a sprinkle of some PC
>social engineering,
Crow: Just a sprinkle a day helps keep conservatives away.
> to assauge any guilt that a person might feel
>from making money off of sex, drugs, and rock'n roll. Their
>baby-boomer bosses
Mike: Picked a peck of pickled peppers.
> all cleaned up on that strategy, and that's
>who they have to brown-nose to advance, so like they can't afford
>our irreverence.
Tom: These guys are about as irreverent as a Nazi death camp.
> Meaning doesn't occur to them,
Mike: Those who live in glass houses...
> so they conclude
>it doesn't occur to you, either. After all, you're not in New
>York. So then that's why they have to resort to trying to "fool"
>you into reading,
Tom: Billy, don't you go reading Hamlet, because it's just filled
with violence.
> by marketing everything with neon covers and
>getting their friends at Cosmopolitan to call it, "The Catcher in
>the Rye of the Grunge Generation."
Crow: Ah, yes. Cosmopolitan. The literary bastion of slackers.
> Then they complain that
>literature doesn't make money. They blame it on you. It's your
>fault because you're off listening to Greenday,
Mike: I don't have any Green Day, but I do have a couple Glass
operas that are almost as annoying.
> watching Melrose
>Place, and sending all your money to Columbia House and your
>college loan officer,
Tom: How stupid of you to spend money on college when you should
be spending it to further...your...education...uh, what was the
problem again?
> instead of buying their neon contemporary
>classics, that look more like boxes of Tide than books. You're
>too stupid--
Mike: Is alienating your audience a good rhetorical technique?
> so they're forced into printing more picture
>histories of Aerosmith. It's your fault we're all slackers.
>You're responsible for the illiteracy in this country, and teen
>pregnancy, drug addicts, and violence on TV,
Crow: NO! IT'S HER FAULT! DO IT TO JULIA! PUT THE RAT MASK ON
HER!!
> 'cause you're a
>flaming idiot, incapable of culture. That is what they think of
>you. You are holding back the literary geniuses of this nation,
Mike: [tough guy] Come on, buddy. You think you're so tough? Let's
write some sonnets!
Tom: [falsetto] Stop it, Danny! Stop it!
Mike: You're just lucky my chick's here.
>and as a result, America must be content with OJ Simpson. And
>Brett Easton Ellis has to compromise his Shakespearean
>tendencies, and write books about mutilating women.
Tom: Is this a chainsaw I see before me?
> Douglas
>Coupland has to write about shampoo, because of you, and you
>won't let him put plot or memmorable characters in his
>contemporary masterpieces. You consumers suck--
Crow: Down with the bourgeoisie!
> just look what
>you've done to America. And now France is worried about the
>effects of our culture on them.
Tom: Great. Now they're trying to blame EuroDisney on us.
> You, Generation x, should be
>ashamed of yourselves, and stuff.
Mike: The authors of this post had a laser-sharp vision of what
they wanted to communicate to their audience.
> Look what you're doing to the
>world. Just thank God that some people in congress are willing
>to give you an opportunity to correct it all, by paying more
>taxes to fund future NEA projects to enhance our culture.
Tom: Hey, buddy, get current. The NEA is dead.
Crow: Yeah. I hated the government spending that $0.64/year of my
taxes on all those worthless museums and orchestras.
> You'd
>better vote for them, or else things will really be your fault.
>I read it in Rolling Stone.
Mike: Then it *has* to be true!
>
> No.
Crow: Things that you say when you're hungry. Things you put in
your glovebox. Oh--pass!
>
> This is America. If one wants great literature, one
>doesn't go and petition the government for funds to create it.
Mike: One gets on the internet and blames the masses for one's
pathetic lack of talent.
>One picks up a pen and writes it. And while the baby-boomer
>elite are whining that nobody buys the Generation-X "novels" they
>write for themselves, we're going to author the literature that
>means something to the sober soul of our peers.
Crow: There is nothing in this post that could entertain a drug
free audience.
> These days are
>cool.
Tom: Ooooh, this must be that "magic realism" again.
> We can't emphasize the good luck we've had with the WWW.
>To start a literary revolution, we don't have to submit our
>thoughts,
Mike: No intelligence required!
> ideas, and literature to literary magazines that nobody
>reads. The WWW allows us to submit it directly to you.
Tom: By cutting out the middle man, we've reduced rejection times
to a fraction of what they used to be!
> So
>welcome aboard!
>
>All the best,
>
>Drake "Red Avenger" Raft,
>Becket "Bluebeard" Knottingham,
>Elliot "Ahab" McGucken.
Crow: If you see any of these men, do not approach them. They are
to be considered armed and extremely stupid.
>
>
>If you would like to participate in an open discussion concerning
>the conservative artist and intellectual, send the message,
>"subscribe blackbeard your name," to list...@unc.edu.
>
> BEACONWAY PRESS URL = http://sunsite.unc.edu/owl/home.html
>
>
> FORWARD ME TO A FRIEND!
Mike: Especially this version, so they can be ridiculed all over
the world.
>
>
>
[commercials]
[continued in part 3]