Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss
Happy birthday
1 view
Skip to first unread message
Doly G
Jan 16, 2024, 3:23:37 PM1/16/24
to
Happy birthday, Nick!
It looks like it won't be possible to post any more here soon, so it's the last chance to wish a happy birthday on the newsgroup you created, back in 98, or maybe earlier.
I guess I should provide some sort of overview of your life, like at the funeral.
It was quite a funeral, if I may say so.
It was all heading towards the disaster that most people's funerals are nowadays: a priest using the Bible to curse the poor deceased into eternal oblivion, making it as plain as possible that you don't matter, you never mattered, and in any case, if anything matters, it must be the priest's desire to increase his flock. The priest, of course, didn't want to hear that you considered yourself a Zen Buddhist fond of hacker koans. He didn't even want to use a quote from the King James Bible because his church didn't use that particular version of the Bible. Well, Phillip K. Dick said "through a scanner darkly", not "Let's put a scanner in a quote that nobody's going to recognise".
I had to hijack the funeral, obviously.
I made two sets of booklets with photos (one family-friendly, the other not) and cut some CDs with some of your favourite rare music. I couldn't find "Mr Kirk's nightmare", which was perfect, but I tried to compensate with some sounds generated to be seen in a frequency analyser. I told attendants to help themselves.
When the time came for me to read aloud a poem, I went off script. I took out your AA token from my pocket and read aloud the Serenity Prayer: "Grant me serenity for what can't be changed, courage for what can be changed, and wisdom to know the difference."
Then I really went off script. I took it on myself to officiate the funeral, since the priest was doing such a poor job of it. My inspiration was the book "Mama Day" by Gloria Naylor. I told people to share their memories, either the first, the best, of the last they had of you. I included the best, because I figured that the last could be too sad and they might not remember the first.
There goes my first:
We met inside an abandoned warehouse that was going to be demolished to build a supermarket. You were there squatting the space, as part of the protest against the supermarket. I went there because I knew the place had a concrete floor, and I wanted that to conduct safely an experiment I had been told about hanging around with the guys that did the "Interzone" science-fiction magazine, a device that would lift up by mysterious means when you powered it with high voltage. I had made it according to instructions and had the transformer from an old CRT monitor to provide the high voltage, but I didn't want to try it at home. You were instantly taken by a girl that walked in and behaved as if science fiction was the most real thing in the world.
There goes my best:
It has to be the pirate radio station. We did it for eight weekends in the summer of 03. We never managed to do it more than twice in the same place, a non-stop party from Friday 6PM to Sunday 6AM was something than most people could only handle once. You did your improvised laptop noises, I read passages of SF to a drum machine ("specialization is for insects"), others did their DJ stuff. It all went to hell when we thought we found the perfect solution, an abandoned building that turned out to be already in use by some... "psychotic gangsters" was the word that a guy used to describe them. They weren't nice.
There goes my last:
We had an argument, like so many times. I don't remember what we said. I remember what you looked like, because you were trying a new look again. Old fashioned Indiana Jones sort of hat and a tie.
But all that says so little. Nick Macro was a digital artist, and let nobody say otherwise. Look for macrology.org in the Wayback Machine.
In January 21, I was in a mess. I got calls, I wasn't in a state to answer any of them. One of the voicemails was from a friend of Nick's. He had just remembered the funeral, and wanted to check if I was OK.
It looks like it won't be possible to post any more here soon, so it's the last chance to wish a happy birthday on the newsgroup you created, back in 98, or maybe earlier.
I guess I should provide some sort of overview of your life, like at the funeral.
It was quite a funeral, if I may say so.
It was all heading towards the disaster that most people's funerals are nowadays: a priest using the Bible to curse the poor deceased into eternal oblivion, making it as plain as possible that you don't matter, you never mattered, and in any case, if anything matters, it must be the priest's desire to increase his flock. The priest, of course, didn't want to hear that you considered yourself a Zen Buddhist fond of hacker koans. He didn't even want to use a quote from the King James Bible because his church didn't use that particular version of the Bible. Well, Phillip K. Dick said "through a scanner darkly", not "Let's put a scanner in a quote that nobody's going to recognise".
I had to hijack the funeral, obviously.
I made two sets of booklets with photos (one family-friendly, the other not) and cut some CDs with some of your favourite rare music. I couldn't find "Mr Kirk's nightmare", which was perfect, but I tried to compensate with some sounds generated to be seen in a frequency analyser. I told attendants to help themselves.
When the time came for me to read aloud a poem, I went off script. I took out your AA token from my pocket and read aloud the Serenity Prayer: "Grant me serenity for what can't be changed, courage for what can be changed, and wisdom to know the difference."
Then I really went off script. I took it on myself to officiate the funeral, since the priest was doing such a poor job of it. My inspiration was the book "Mama Day" by Gloria Naylor. I told people to share their memories, either the first, the best, of the last they had of you. I included the best, because I figured that the last could be too sad and they might not remember the first.
There goes my first:
We met inside an abandoned warehouse that was going to be demolished to build a supermarket. You were there squatting the space, as part of the protest against the supermarket. I went there because I knew the place had a concrete floor, and I wanted that to conduct safely an experiment I had been told about hanging around with the guys that did the "Interzone" science-fiction magazine, a device that would lift up by mysterious means when you powered it with high voltage. I had made it according to instructions and had the transformer from an old CRT monitor to provide the high voltage, but I didn't want to try it at home. You were instantly taken by a girl that walked in and behaved as if science fiction was the most real thing in the world.
There goes my best:
It has to be the pirate radio station. We did it for eight weekends in the summer of 03. We never managed to do it more than twice in the same place, a non-stop party from Friday 6PM to Sunday 6AM was something than most people could only handle once. You did your improvised laptop noises, I read passages of SF to a drum machine ("specialization is for insects"), others did their DJ stuff. It all went to hell when we thought we found the perfect solution, an abandoned building that turned out to be already in use by some... "psychotic gangsters" was the word that a guy used to describe them. They weren't nice.
There goes my last:
We had an argument, like so many times. I don't remember what we said. I remember what you looked like, because you were trying a new look again. Old fashioned Indiana Jones sort of hat and a tie.
But all that says so little. Nick Macro was a digital artist, and let nobody say otherwise. Look for macrology.org in the Wayback Machine.
In January 21, I was in a mess. I got calls, I wasn't in a state to answer any of them. One of the voicemails was from a friend of Nick's. He had just remembered the funeral, and wanted to check if I was OK.
0 new messages