___ ___ ___ /\ \ /\ \ /\__\ the glorious hogs of entropy \:\ \ /::\ \ /:/ _/_ present unto you \:\ \ /:/\:\ \ /:/ /\__\ issue #173 ___ /::\ \ /:/ \:\ \ /:/ /:/ _/_ /\ /:/\:\__\ /:/__/ \:\__\ /:/_/:/ /\__\ >> "dwindle dwindle dwindle" << \:\/:/ \/__/ \:\ \ /:/ / \:\/:/ /:/ / by -> cstone \::/__/ \:\ /:/ / \::/_/:/ / n \:\ \ o \:\/:/ / \:\/:/ / t oink you, pal. \:\__\ g \::/ / f \::/ / r \/__/ s \/__/ \/__/ o p y ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tae likes his job. LIP pays him well; it pays his bills, is adequate for his alcohol habit, and it pays for a rather nice one-bedroom, four-hundred square feet apartment in the lowest level of a block building in Itasca. block buildings are Itasca, Illinois's answer to its former surplus of ghost shopping towns, the remnants of the former booming economy in that area that frightened all the money elsewhere. they are dark primer-colored buildings three stories high with four identical four-hundred square feet apartments seemingly impossibly crammed on each floor. as Tae walks among the dozens of rows of block buildings to reach his this evening, he is careful not to trip over the rubber -- and neoprene-reinforced bundles of coaxial cable run in series from one block building to another. cuts in the cable are not a significant problem anymore; there is a SunComm repair team camped in a block building apartment for every three rows of thirteen buildings each in this area. cuts get serviced in less than ten minutes. home entry authentication in august, 2000, in the block buildings, has advanced to retinal scans. Tae sticks his face close to, but not touching, the face-shaped mold built into the wall near his door. someone has drawn a New Age Movers symbol, a reverse swastika, in pencil above the scanning panel. Tae ignores it. after Tae enters his apartment, his computer monitor switches on (his computer is on all the time) while the door automatically closes. Tae takes a beer from the dirty green exterior, clean white interior refrigerator and sits down at the computer to read this week's LIP. LIP is Life In Print, the recently rated #1 webzine of 1999. subscriptions are only $5 a year, and they have over ten million customers. their most read column this month is "Grunge Revive Jive," one of the columns that Tae is in charge of. Tae's full name is Taema Nonai. he has been on the very distinguished LIP editorial staff for six years now, even back to the non-pay non-web days. now Tae's life is good, yes, but as he reads the reviews for the Paperthins' "life is good," the painfully obvious but not picked up on subliminal message that life wasn't perfect enters his subconcious. Tae is good at ignoring his subconcious, though. Tae turns off the monitor via the manual switch. finds the yellowing beer -- and coffee-stained pages of laser-printed copies of LIP in a box near the rarely-used old-style analog television, mixed in with check pay stubs and hardcopy drafts of old LIP editorials. december, 1994 -- LIFE IN PRINT -- yeah, so fuck off 1. "smells like he's dead" (finally) -- peoplekiller 2. "can't buy feelings, baby" -- lisa 3. "spit me out, eat me" -- evil_light (etc.) Tae carries his beer and the zine to the bed, and sits, back against the wall, and reads there, for a good two hours. he devours every old LIP he can find. reads a method of communication that is not funded by currency but by motivation, (or the lack of it, in some cases), of a passion that moves people to express themselves in any way they can. perhaps the fact that the difference between LIP now and then is so great carries so many feelings of disillusionment and disappointment is the reason why Tae has willfully stayed on this long, happy. he was never at the very apogee of the LIP chain, even in the print days; he was friends with the original editor, friends with every editor since, even during the sale. the emotion that hides behind the words in the zine that Tae is reading is not hidden or changed like the new LIP; it is still there. Life In Print is suddenly lively again, to him, the ideas of difference and observing, criticizing trends instead of setting them are returning. change returns. Tae is in charge of the entire music section of Life In Print. he has live access to the webpages, and he is the one responsible for editing content. perhaps (although not incredibly likely) it is the single beer in Tae's empty stomach, but more likely it is the revival of seeing pure instead of edited emotion that brings him to his conclusion. everyone else is going to see how LIP used to be, to see this emotion in the form of writing. Tae gets another beer. turns the monitor back on. finds an old-style floppy disk labeled "LIP9396" and sticks it in the computer. luckily enough, his label is accurate, and he is now looking at the december, 1994, issue of Life In Print. Tae opens the beer and takes a long swig. Tae logs in to the LIP web server remotely, and takes down the current articles, deletes them all. quickly substitutes the old issues of LIP, august-december, 1994. they're out. again. people can see them. Tae takes another long swig. Tae realizes his happiness now is greater than it was just three hours ago. Life In Print may not be in print (it never regularly has been), but it is more lifelike. of course, this didn't last. the ten million customers of LIP weren't moved, impressed, the way Tae was. Grunge Revive Jive was gone. that was the issue. of course, what appealed to the ten million customers of LIP appealed to the entire heart of LIP. they didn't even bother to call him, give him the courtesy call to say that he'd been fired. they locked him out of the LIP server, and Grunge Revive Jive's friendly-but-sassiness was back, in less than two hours; the colors, the splashes of light on the screen welcomed the eager customers; the coldness, worries, passionate, raw text, the roots, were gone. Taema Nonai was gone. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- * (c) HoE publications. HoE #173 -- written by cstone -- 12/30/97 *