Capital of Nasty Electronic Magazine Volume III, Issue 22, AD MCMXCVIII Thursday, December 31st, 1998 ISSN 1482-0471 ------------------------------------------- Don't u just hate it too when toietpaper tears lengthwise? -- Arno van Boven ------------------------------------------- Right now you think that everything is okay because you have your fancy car, money, committing fornication, and adultery, stealing, killing, bear false witness against your neighbor, you covet everything your neighbor has, and you think everything is okay. You know, and I know that it is not okay, because the most important thing is missing, and you know what that is. It is God, the most high. Without God you're nothing and you know that. For a free holy bible and/or movies, please call 555-2345. -- Flyer left taped to a phone booth at Secord and Danforth, Toronto. ------------------------------------------- 1. Editorial 2. Uniforms 3. God, Religion & All That Crap 4. Where are you going after your passing? 5. CoN at the Movies ------------------------------------------- This week's Golden Testicle award: Elvis Killed Kennedy http://home.pacbell.net/hrwhite3 ------------------------------------------- 1. Editorial by CoN Staff LAST ISSUE FOR Volume III, and following a typical pattern of tradition, this issue is late also. With the burden of Christmas on our backs, we ask but one gift from the readership, spam this issue to all of the blokes on your address book. Spread the gift of CoN. The first e-mail is from Arno van Boven: From: Arno van Boven To: con@capnasty.org Date sent: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 15:53:18 Subject: Re: Capital of Nasty III.21 Hi, about the size of CoN: i dont care if its long, i will simply pick some articles that interest me:) (whoops a smiley:) About the lenght of the articles: yes, i usually skip the long ones. I am not interested in the twistedmindedness of some deranged teenager, nor touched by the 'terrible suffering' he or she has to go thru. If ppl want to view the world as if it were a (any, really) Hollywood movie or some inane TV show, fine with me, but i'll skip it, thank you. Well, i can't think of a better example to illustrate my digust over that perception of life than what Willy Clinton did: bombs for a blowjob, live on CNN, and we'll be back after the break. Sex, shootings and commercials. What a fabulous way of living. I say don't impeach him, but drown him in his own cum. Anyways, I loved Jason's review of ST/Insurrection. It's not out here yet, so i havent seen it:( Good point u have on ST's makers denial of other SciFi. U seen Voyager's Scorpion double episode? Concept was kinda nice, yes, it had the Borg in them, but the idea of an alliance with the Borg was kinda nice and well worked-out imho. But that species 8427 (8??7 whatever), was it just me or did you too expect Sigourney Weaver to jump out of a closet any minute now? Or a jefferies tube, for that matter.. Well, one has to give Berman and co. credit for (re)creating a special feel to the whole ST series, it's not the shameless ripping of ideas like in X-files. Well, of course it is, but i think the 'soap' level is high enough to ensure a laugh or two every episode and justify the -let's say not very inspired- storylines. The technobabble u just got to love, don't u? I mean, what on earth is a multiphasic graviton pulse? Or a polaron beam? I just rotfl when they remodulate the forward shields to a rotating frequency. Again. But then, I may be opinionated due to heavy gravimetric distortion, or perhaps I cant get a lock on my brain due to electromagnetic interference in the planets atmosphere, who knows? Time to realign my plasma coils *grin* Warp regards & signature, arno P.S. Don't u just hate it too when toietpaper tears lengthwise? --- Don Fitch also shares with us his thoughts: From: Don Fitch S Date sent: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 04:23:25 To: leandro@capnasty.org Subject: Re: CoN III.21 >CoN Editorial would love to hear your input about the SIZE of >this issue. If I write: "It's not the SIZE that counts, it's what you do with it" fast enough, maybe it won't sound like a long-dead cliche. When it comes to response, I don't think it's length, number of items, or even quality, so much as "comment hooks". Something can be really great, or highly-enjoyable, and still not drive me to the keyboard to knock out a letter of comment. A really inspired typo (none of your mere misspellings), on the other hand.... I did intend to respond to the (almost all) Gay Issue, though. In retrospect, I realize that I was propositioned by Gays at least three times while in college, but was too naive to realize it. What was memorable, was getting propositioned about 5 years ago, when I was 65, by some guy who must've been about 50. It was in a mixed Gay & Straight neighborhood bar in West Hollywood, where I might expect to be approached by young hustlers (gray hair = money = potential "client" in that neighborhood, though a simple "sorry, I don't Trick" is adequate to get rid of them), but this guy obviously wasn't proposing a commercial transaction, and I really can't imagine a stranger thinking of me as an attractive/physically desirable person, despite my /m/a/n/y/ other virtues. I felt (probably correctly) that he saw me not as a person, but as an object to be used for his gratification, and I was rather disturbed by this, but managed to refuse politely. It reminded me of an account in a fanzine by a young (20-ish, & Straight) friend about 30 years ago. He'd spent an evening with a mutual (Bi) acquaintance and wrote something like; "He wanted to cuddle, and I didn't. Now I have a better understanding of how girls I've dated felt when I wanted to cuddle and they didn't". >let's take red meat which will slowly harden your arteries and >lets infest it with smoke... hmmm lung AND heart damage, all in >one meal. Gimme more. Let's not get Carried Away, here. Red meat -- the tough, not-marbled- with-tasty-fat kind I usually decide to afford -- doesn't harm the arteries (according to my cardiologist), and smoke residue intaken through the stomach doesn't affect the lungs. (There seem to be no good statistics relating it to stomach cancer, either, though I'll try to remember to check with my oncologist about that during the next appointment.) >[...] the toilet is within earshot... [...] you missed... you >couldn't just hit the floor... no you had to hit the textured >wall paper... I used to go to Dixieland Jazz Jam Session Parties (with lots of beer, to compound the problem) at the home of a friend who had a bathroom like that. Finally settled for dropping my pants and sitting down to piss. >I know some providers have some sort of program that stops a >mail from going through the system if it's riddled with >profanity. I've not heard evidence of any large ISPs reading email, and suspect that even the rumor that AOL has computers that check for Prohibited Words in email (as well as on its internal "bulletin boards" &cet) is an untrue vile canard. (I'm sure there are plenty of _true_ vile canards to be said about AOL, mind you.) The chances of an actual person reading any particular email, en route, is vanishingly small simply because the volume is so great. OTOH, I'm perfectly willing to believe that the US Government (CIA/FBI/BATF) has ways of checking even "private" email for certain words, and uses them. I'm almost tempted to start using a sig.file. >The truth is that we have no-one to blame but ourselves for >letting the 'net become a place that any idiot can join. Gee, you mean I ought to resign? Or is usenet not included? (I hang out mostly in some newsgroups and Lists where many of the participants are people I've known since long before arpanet days, and some are Caballeros ("There's no Cabal, but...") with cancelbots so there's virtually no spam.) Personally, I don't find that the presence of (ever so many) idiots on the 'net/WWW is bad enough to counterbalance the Good Stuff. But then, I don't mind the trash in bookstores, either. It would be nice, though, to have some more dependable Filters and Critics, so the Good Stuff on the 'net could be found more easily. >Send this page to all the people you know by forwarding the URL >in e-mail, ICQ, AIM, or any other means at your disposal. Yeah, I understand there's been talk about declaring "send this to everyone you know" messages "a human-vectored email virus" and taking steps to classify it with spam & unsolicited advertising, but the idea of prohibiting _anything_ is not appealing, so they'll probably try the basic approach of educating everyone to view it as a ridiculously newbie-ish thing, on the theory that ridicule is often an effective social corrective technique. Jason MacIsaac doesn't seem to have had much success with "The Search for Mr. Muggs" via URLs, but I'll wager there are several usenet newsgroups dealing with children's literature; maybe he should try deja news, or even posting (inaccurate information about it, which is the surest way to elicit responses) in an appropriate newsgroup. And maybe I should go to bed. Best wishes to all there for the Holidays & the New Year, Don Fitch -- alt.con.questionnaire 1. Why do you read CoN? 2. How do you read CoN? 3. Where do you read CoN? 4. What do you want in CoN? OUR NEXT ISSUE will deal about the Y2K bug. Have a skoodly one. ------------------------------------------- 2. Uniforms by Jason MacIsaac This anecdote actually has merit even today, at my current job. People who design uniforms for companies have a special reservation for a table in Hell. I'm starting my own fanatical hate group against them. We're going to terrorize them and their families at night, and burn crosses on their lawns. We're going to dress in white sheets with white hoods, spotted bowties, and a button that says "Ask me about gift certificates!" Apparently, the principal qualification for a job designing uniforms is to be colour blind, have fashion sense from 1973, and have skin like a lizard, so you really don't care what kind of fabric is put against your skin. Let's begin this by mentioning that we had to pay for our uniforms. You can always tell how bad a company is by the amount of money that it makes directly off employees. We changed uniforms on a regular basis too, sometimes every few months. If a special promotion required (required, ha ha) a new uniform, were charged for that too. That, like nearly everything else, made us bitter. Gretchen's had a habit of picking uniforms completely inappropriate and impractical for the job, too. If Gtretchen's were to design clothing for a space walk, the air tube would have been in the crotch, and the helmet would have this nice lace mesh instead of a faceplate. For example, restaurant work is messy work. The messiest job is line cook, followed by bussing, and fountaineer. Cooks worked around a grille that spat grease, pot of spaghetti sauce, grease, oil...you get the idea. Bussers cleaned tables after customers had left behind half-eaten food, (the other half sometimes was a pool of vomit left on the seat), spilled drinks and ketchup...Fountainers worked around a mixing machine that frequently fired chocolate and blue berry sauce all over its operator. For most of the time I worked at Gretchen's the uniform was white. After a twelve hour shift of slamming together 50 orders in the space of three minutes, or speed-cleaning a dozen tables while the hostess tapped her foot with a family of five behind her, you can imagine how some of these white shirts looked. In particular, my secret of keeping the fountain clean was to get as much of the mess on the counters on my uniform instead. It would be no big deal, really. Most restaurant managers would look at you and say, "That shirt's too stained to wear. Here, here's a fresh new one." But not ours. Ours would say "That shirt's too stained to wear. Here, here's a fresh new one. That'll be 30 dollars please." Nice, huh? Some of us were able to stave off this charge temporarily by bleaching the hell out of our uniforms...only one problem. The collars were dyed, and the restaurant logo was embroidered on one pocket. Sometimes even the strongest bleach wouldn't get rid of a blueberry stain, but it seemed like a sudden breeze was enough to get the dye off the collars of those damn shirts. We weren't allowed to wear shirts with faded collars either. Thirty bucks, please. Well, the problem is that the server has to do all things at one time or another. He or she has to tend bar, bus tables, make desserts...And since the restaurant was always understaffed, they would have dive into the grease or chocolate and do things themselves--while a full section of tables waited. With this kind of pressure on, there was no time to be neat. If a full team of servers with a complete support staff was there, then it wouldn't be such a big deal to them. Their shirts would go through normal wear and tear, and maybe the occasional whoopsie. But it wasn't like that. Servers would run around like madmen, getting messed up. The company would save money from understaffing, and then collect another $30 to issue a clean shirt. The crowning glory of it all was the name tag. I find this whole name tag business highly suspect anyway. If I had my way, customers wouldn't know my name at all. Once, a server told me that a table thought they recognized me and wanted to know what my last name was. I told the server to tell them my last name was "The Evil Overlord" and they could go to Hell. It's bad enough I had to serve some of these people. Having them get to know me better is out of the question. You're not going to believe the next part of this story. You're going to think I made it up. Your reaction will be "No, no company could be that oppressive, or come up with such an inherently stupid idea." Wake up, kindergarten baby. Gretchen was a 1950s theme diner. We had jukeboxes. They played a variety of songs from the 1950 to the 1990s. Once, a dipshit motherfucker (i.e. someone from head office) came and noticed that "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden was playing. Needless to say, that wasn't recorded in 1955. So, as part of a plan to a) return the restaurant to its original concept; an b) apparently drive away our few remaining customers, they made a whole list of sweeping changes. First, they got rid of any song recorded from 1980 and up. Never mind that people were dropping lots of quarters into the jukebox to hear songs like "Black Hole Sun." Second, they tried to get us to dress more like the 50s. The name tags were large, plastic things with some kind of food item on it-a burger, a hot dog, a sundae. They also had a name on them... now here's the kicker. It wasn't your name. It was a name head office thought would be "from the 50s"-Arnold, Potzie, Frank, even a Fonzie. Female names included "Annie, LaVerne, Shirley..." thank God they drew the line at "Squiggy." When asked which one I wanted, I asked if they had any that had "Jason" on them. "Jason" is the name of a Greek hero, and was popular long before "Potzie" came to prominence. We're talking about Ancient Times here, so kiss my ass, Potzie, I've got seniority. I wasn't the only one who thought that the idea was oppressive, cynical, and degrading. Management wondered why people like me "got all uptight" about it. It also defeated a name tag's only useful function. Customers would flag down other servers and ask if they could speak to their server. "Well, who's your server?" "Potzie." Well who the fuck is Potzie? And since they apparently couldn't think of enough names to outfit the entire restaurant, they're might be several Potzies on the floor. Smart policy all around. Before I stopped wearing my name tag altogether, I did have some fun with it. I don't remember what it said originally, but I had my printer print the label "Ragle Gumm" in a nice font, and pasted it over what ever had been there before. "Ragle Gumm" is the protagonist of the novel Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick, one of my favorite authors. In the book, Ragle is harboring the paranoid delusion the idyllic small 1950s middle America town isn't real, but a mock-up designed to keep him prisoner. His paranoid delusion is correct. Sometimes, for variety, I would put "Number 6" in tribute to The Prisoner starring Patrick McGoohan. But you know, it got worse, particularly for the waitresses. The apron is an essential part of a server's attire. It holds pens, maybe a notepad, our key, which is used to access the computer to ring in an order, credit cards, cash from sales, and maybe, just maybe, our tips. Originally the apron was a short, three-pocket deal. Between the pockets was a seam that you could stash a pen in (usually we secured our keys to pens). Some of the aprons had velcro tabs to hold the pockets closed, but not all. It didn't really matter. You tied it to your waist and it sat securely, and you rarely lost anything. It was black and it had the Gretchen's logo embroidered in red in one corner. It was simple, tasteful as far as restaurant attire went, and one of the few things we didn't complain about. For Fountaineers like myself, there was nothing much to keep in them. Our pants were black, so they didn't need any stain protection. Then, the support staff and female waitresses had their aprons replaced. For us fountain and busser types, we got this longer body apron, which covered just above the solar plexus and down to your knees. While wearing a white shirt, it helped prevent the more serious stains-for awhile. Then, as the summer days rolled around, an unfortunate unforeseen complication. We switched to summer dress, which meant shorts. My shorts ended just above the knee. The apron of course, went lower. Plus, I used to wear a sturdy pair of Mark II Combat boots on the job (I bought them at a surplus store. I figured if they could hand a tour in Vietnam, they could handle Gretchen's). With the apron down so slow, I looked like I was wearing a dress. With the boots, I looked like some crazy Goth Chick with a beard. It wasn't long before I put on the old apron again. Now, the female staff had it far worse. They used to use the same functional apron everyone else did. But for some reason, Head Orifice didn't think this was appropriate, and issued a frilly one. I should qualify the statement "frilly." Don't think frilly in terms of a lingerie or a French Maid outfit. That conjures up images of frill upon frill, like those crazy baby blue tuxedoes. These had frills-four frills, to be exact. It was longer and looser than the original apron, and it hung down to their knees. They tried to roll it up, but it would always slip, and credit card slips and money would fall out. The waitresses, understandably, were furious. It was degrading, but not nearly as degrading as it could have been-the damn thing failed on even it's pathetic terms. It was black and made of the same fabric as our pants-some synthetic fibre. With just four frills and it hanging limply, it looked about as feminine as a testicle. About the only time it looked vaguely female is when the two pockets were full of change-then it looked like an udder. Not the kind of female I think they were going for, and not the kind of female most women choose to project. Because it was black, you couldn't really define it against the pants they wore. Many waitresses just went back to their old aprons, and would go unnoticed for weeks. And there's the small matter of it being utterly sexist, and being a labor rights violation. I'm not going to spout off about my politics here (though I reserve the right at a later date), but it seems to be that too many people think that prior to 1960, things really sucked for women and blacks--jokes at their expense, being corralled into rigidly defined roles, and getting paid less than everyone else. But in the 60s sometime there was a social revolution, and now everything's okay for women and blacks. So since things are equally, we can all go ahead and make jokes at their expense, corral them into rigidly defined roles, and pay them less than everyone else. This apron showed just how insensitive and out of touch Head Orifice was with its employees, and the 20th Century. The aprons were clearly inferior to the task. They were a useful, almost essential tool for the work. If they had just recalled them all and issued the new one, then it would have been bad judgement. Because they took it from just the women, it was something else altogether. In other worlds, not only was the thing degrading, but it was a tool that was inferior to the job. The male servers were issued a better tool, solely on the basis of gender. No, it's not as severe as deliberately paying a woman less for the same amount of work, but it is in the same vein. A vein that's part of a wrist that should be slashed. Do I think Head Orifice was pursuing a hidden agenda as part of a greater, world campaign to rob women of empowerment? No. To do that they would have to be smart. They didn't it simply because of their idiocy. Head Orifice was almost as ineffectual at enforcing their policies as they were creating them, so it wasn't long before most of the female servers has delegated the frilly apron to dishrag duty and got their old faithful one out again. I was running a healthy underground market of male aprons. With the servers I was close to, such as the incomparable Miss White, I simply made a trade. And for a time, I wore a frilly apron. I'm not a transvestite, but I did attend a public screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show with a genuine, Bona Fide Transvestite, once. I was dressed as a woman too, but not a very good one. This guy was actually kinda attractive. But I digress. I wore that frilly apron for a long time without anyone noticing. Just goes to show that it just didn't work. ------------------------------------------- 3. God, Religion & All That Crap By IMPROV What a perfect time of the year for this subject...my regular readers (if there are any) may recall that last year at about this time CoN published an article of mine entitled "Happy Non Denominational Holiday's", in which I commented on the subject of those of the Jewish faith who enjoy financial gains thanks to the Christian holidays. I received many an irate letter concerning my "anti Semitic" views. So just to prove that I'm not a bigot and that I hate ALL people equally, here is my knock on the Christian faith. I actually attempted to become a practicing Catholic at one very dark point of my life... Please notice the use of "attempted"... Perhaps it was the particular church I was attending, though. This particular parish was (and still is) presided over by the most anal priest I have ever met. (Notice I'm being good and not making any altar boy jokes?) I mean this man's homilies sounded not just as if he was talking down to the congregation, but to God himself! This man was so condescending and arrogant, I'm pretty sure that he thought his unleavened bread didn't stink. Mind you, I could be wrong about him, maybe he has every right to act this way. Maybe he's the greatest theologist in the world, no one really knows though, because know one in his congregation understands a damn word has says. I'm sure he's very intelligent, smarter than I'll ever be...but he doesn't have to make it so apparent by using fourteen syllable words that I know the eighty year old lady in the second pew has never even heard. As for the people who attend church... hmmm... lets see here... I see a number... and, and a word... ah, yes.......... 95% hypocrites!!! Why go to church on Sunday to ask the Good Lord for forgiveness for all the "bad things" you did during the week, just to turn around the next week and forget what happened at church? Now mind you if you went to the church I went to it's not really a matter of forgetting, because, after all, you can't really learn what you never understood: " ...then once the firmament was congealed, Yahweh gazed upon the vapours and resolved upon the beseechment of his hegemony that, indeed, there was inconsiderable delectation consequent to his accomplishments... ah blah blah... ah blah blah..." As for Catholicism itself... I guess my biggest beef is with the act of confession. How in the hell does me telling some guy in a booth my sins gonna resolve me in the eyes of God? I mean does this guy have a direct line to the big man himself? Does he call up to heaven and ask how much penance should be given? How can a (so called) celibate priest relate to my teenage confession that I copped a feel at the movies with Judy Anne? "Uh...forgive me Father for I have sinned... it has been four months since my last confession... uh... in that time I have touched myself in an impure manner on several occasions..." "That's okay my son... SO HAVE I!!!" So if I don't say those three Hail Mary's...does my record not get wiped clean? What if I DON"T think it was a sin to grab Judy Ann's booby? What then, huh? What if I know it was a sin...did it anyway and now I'm asking for forgiveness? Better yet, what if I knew it was a sin... did it anyway... went to confession to ask for forgiveness... and went out and did it AGAIN anyway? What then? What does that make me? Oh yeah... I forgot... a practicing Catholic. MERRY FREAKIN' CHRISTMAS ------------------------------------------- 4. WHERE ARE YOU GOING AFTER YOUR PASSING? By Jeff Wright H E double L. My mother taught me not to cuss... or was it your mother? I'm not sure, but anywho... Who's going to H E double L? You? Me? Him? Her? I don't know, so I couldn't tell you. But I've developed a 3 question questionaire for you to answer. From the answers you send in, I'll be able to tell you if your some of your future workmates will be Hitla, Shmitla, and the rest of them Nazee bastardos once your time on this planet is over. So here goes. Good luck, hopefully there aren't that many of you going to H E double L. If unfortunately, you are amongst those who are, worry not. If you have access to the internet, you have access to CoN. We're the only publication that will distribute to H E double L, besides Soap Opera Digest. Which would you prefer to read? Question One: What's your sexual orientation? Question Two: What's your racial background? Question Three: Have you ever molested a child, killed, or raped? Send your answers to me at abu@pathcom.com, and in next issue I'll compile a list of readers who are going to H E double L, and who are going to A BETTER PLACE (a film by Vincent Pereria). ------------------------------------------- 5. Movie Recomendations By Jeff Wright Since it's the end of the year, I figured I'd compile my top 10 films of 1998, and put it here. When looking at the list, keep in mind that there are still some films that I haven't had a chance to see yet (and want to see), and from what I've heard, could all take a spot on my list. So this list is compiled without me having seen the following films (and there are quite a few): GODS AND MONSTERS PRINCE OF EGYPT BABE PIG IN THE CITY THE THIN RED LINE HURLYBURLY ELIZABETH RUSHMORE VELVET GOLDMINE BULLWORTH PI THE SPANISH PRISONER SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE THE RED VIOLIN So here's my 10 favourite films of 1998: 1. HAPPINESS 2. YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS 3. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN 4. A SIMPLE PLAN 5. DARK CITY 6. FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS 7. THE FACULTY 8. AMERICAN HISTORY X 9. LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL 10. BLADE ARMAGEDDON (tie) You should go see every one of those films. I'm not going to guarantee that you'll enjoy them all but hopefully you will. ------------------------------------------- CoN would not be possible without the great help of Scriba Org. "I'd like you to meet my new friend, Mr. Bear. What do you say, Mr. Bear?" "Foolish mortals, bow down before me! You know not the power of Mr. Bear!" "Now Mr. Bear, that's not nice." --Adam K. http://www.spinnwebe.com/dfc/425.shtml Capital of Nasty Electronic Magazine "media you can abuse" In memory of Father Ross "Padre" Legere Published every second Monday (or when we get around it) Disclaimer: unintentionally offensive Comments, queries and submissions are welcome http://www.capnasty.org ISSN 1482-0471 A bi-weekly electronic journal. Subscriptions available at no cost electronically. Available on Usenet newsgroups alt.zines and alt.ezines. This mailing is sent exclusively to those poor souls who chose to subscribe to the Capital of Nasty mailing list. Spread the word! If you have friends who would like to receive CoN, ask them to send email to join@capnasty.org. If you'd like to unsubscribe because such email aggravates your tolerance towards Mormons, Jesus Christs AND the Church of Lauredale Saints, then simply send an empty message to leave@capnasty.org. Brought to you by C.C.C.P. (Collective Communist Computing Proletariat) Leandro Asnaghi-Nicastro Colin Barrett ZimID 708EC8D1 1994/09/14 EC B0 97 59 1D FE 7C 32 7E 04 2C 66 47 41 FB 7D