Posted on by mwhybark

Note

In 1980 and 1981, I participated in an unauthorized online discussion forum sneakily hosted on the Indiana University Wrubel Computing Center mainframes. The forum, and the application, was called “Note,” and was written in 1977 or 1978 by then eighth-grade graduate Greg Travis.

In 2003, the younger brother of a fellow participant unearthed some hard-copy printouts of forum activity dating to August 1980 and posted the transcripts, along with commentary from Note creator Greg Travis, to Something Awful.

Fellow Note veteran Eric Sinclair passed the link along to me, and I have been corresponding with Greg, Eric, and others from Note over the past week or so. Greg did not keep his code – written in assembly language, natch – and wishes it was still around.

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Independence Day

Endzone was the livejournal of SF writer Tom Disch, a master of dystopian SF and a treasured early reading companion of mine. The books that I remember best are 334 and Camp Concentration. Appropriately, he also executed the novelization of The Prisoner.

His perfect cynicism and hopeless view of the human condition are certainly the aspects of his work that remain with me most resonantly. Whenever I have returned to these works, I have always found myself chuckling in appreciation of the perfect blackness of the worlds he wrote of.

He ended his own life on Independence Day.

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Rex Bob Lowenstein

Listening to a fifteen-year old cassette of a friend’s old aircheck – hm, maybe even older than fifteen years, can’t recall if it’s a WQAX or WFHB show – I was amused by the song Rex Bob Lowenstein, by artist unknown, but possibly Mark Germino.

I started to try to figure out whose song it was and the search results I was getting made no sense. It seems like possibly the song was originated by Germino but covered by a not-that-name Flying Burrito Brothers reunion outfit. No-one’s blogged it or posted a live version so I was defeated in my quest to do an aural comparison and share a link.

I did find the lyrics, so, um, make up your own damn tune.

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Hear it

From that Hoosier 60s band blog, on my first sweep through it I found a bunch of cools pics and band names but a sad lack of great sounds! This June 2007 post highlighting a side by the Tribu-terrys is the best I’ve come up with so far.

I did think it was interesting that many of the other sides seem to bear out my thesis of a ‘midwestern fatalism’ grounding Hoosier pop. There were at least two I previewed lamenting the loss of draftees in Vietnam, but specifically not protesting that loss. One of the songs was called ‘Necessary Evil.’

Eventually I suppose I’ll get all OCD on the audio and see if I can pull stats out. Not tonight.

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“But he would not stop screaming.”

The New Yorker’s fiction issue includes a longish, elegantly written tale of the baby-trade which interweaves themes of new life, death and loss, sex, and the things we Americans do in service of our desires. It seems unlikely that the piece, written in the form of a companion’s memoir of the expedition to Addis to save some tot or other, oh that one will do, from darkest Afric, is intended to prompt identification in the reader with, respectively, the child or the Alzheimer’s afflicted and now-passed hubby. It’s aggravating to learn I can’t share it with you.

I have spent my life between worlds, and imagine that will continue interminably until terminated. Friends, you have no idea of the distance I keep.

Posted on by mwhybark

3312

Since I know at least two of the authors in the series, and love the idea, I suppose I should really man up on 33 1/2.