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          .-------------------------------------------------.
          | flodis - flowers of disruption - #05 - 23.07.99 |
          `-------------------------------------------------'
             the zine for tasha & anjee
-----

what is the true meaning of life?

is it... creepy stuff?  are we alive because of creepy stuff?

is the reason currently understood by a faction of people, or by one
person, or by no person at all?

is it so incredibly basic that we can't understand it?

are we alive so that we can kill ourselves?  

that life could have a meaning is an abstract concept in itself, since
different groups of living people kill each other because of differing
ideas on what life means.  

there was a lady who made a living working at an ice cream shop at the
mall.  i ordered a malt and she didn't know how to make it so my
grandfather got very pissed off.  he wondered how an establishment could
succeed when it didn't train its employees to make the items on the menu.
the manager was called out and seemed to apologize, but then we noticed
that the manager also didn't know how to make my chocolate malt.

my grandfather and i killed both of them.  we didn't like their idea of
what life meant.  to them, their life was doing a shitty job of working at
an ice cream shop.  to us, their life meant to serve us in the way we
needed to be served.  and that should have been their method of living, but
it obviously wasn't.  so they're dead.

ever sketch up a death contract on someone?  i haven't.  if i wanted
someone dead i just killed them myself.  sometimes my grandfather and i, or
my neighbor and i, or my grandfather and my neighbor, or all three of us,
would want the same person or persons to be dead.  so we would team up and
do the murder as a group.  

i hear that murder based on religion is legal in the united states.  here,
you can do whatever you want if your religion dictates it's ok.  because
the law can't govern religion.  well, it can say that your religion can't
all live in a complex together.  and it can say that you can't all have sex
with each other all the time, because that's just not fair.  the christians
can't do it, so you shouldn't be able to either.  if you could, everybody
would be converting to mormonism or whatever, and the religious right would
have no one to fleece anymore.

after all, i have way too much time on my hands.  

is the meaning of life having your mother wake up in the middle of the
night just to see if you're awake?  just to bother you, and then go back to
sleep?  what if your mother has secret late-night escapades that she
carries on with as if you didn't understand them?  wouldn't that be odd?
imagine that.  your life's only meaning is to be tortured by the acts of
someone else.  

do we all have the same underlying meaning to our lives, or do we each
serve a different purpose?  a sort of destiny, perhaps.  destinies aren't
always good.  one worm was destined to become my pet when i was 5 years
old.  this worm was moved from its home to a styrofoam cup filled with
dirt.  then the cup was sabotaged with a hose and all the dirt was
displaced, leaving a worm in water.  and it was dead.  

the worm was destined to die in my cup of water.

what is *my* cup of water?  who will rinse away *my* dirt?  

it's enough to get metaphorical, but is it enough to get metaphysical?  am
i a cannibal?  can you taste the rhythm?

you are presented in this issue with a wonderous text from a man named 
mike, who goes by mogel.  and here it is:

---------\\\\\--------------

apathy, uhh.  uhh.
by Mogel

        uhh.  i guess.  "i guess" is the token expression for my
passive tendencies.  tendencies which i hate, but haunt me all the time. 
tendencies that make me lose my motivation.  i've been considering the 
idea that i have a mood swing disorder of some sort, but i'd never go see
a doctor because i hate taking medicine for things like that.

        a year ago i tried to switch my handle to "yes, okay"
instead of mogel as some sort of self-mockery, because i had this passive
mode.  a kind of mode that's hard to decribe.  it's self-fueling, like a
perpetutual motion machine.  i need something dramatic to snap me back into
being my normal, cheery, "SILLY" self.

        it might or might not be getting worse.  i'm so awful at
dealing with my own problems, but i'm fucking brilliant at giving other
people advice.  why could someone with such a gift for the big picture be
so incredibly terrible at taking care of themselves?  i wonder.

        i feel like a psychotic sometimes, just sittin' here. 
sittin' here, on a computer, fingers a-clackin' away, wonderin' how utterly
useless what i do is.  wonderin' why i wonder about things like this. 
wonderin'
if i should be doing more conventional HAPPY things, like going to BARS
or CLUBS. trying to pick up girls, like a meat market.  watching sports.  i
feel like such a anti-social reject when i compare myself to the standard. 
i'm not a big fan of feeling like a misfit, but how can i possibly function?

        am i just really fucking uptight and boring?

        i guess i am.

----------\\\\\========----------

i won't lessen that by talking about it at all.

mogel has run a few zines in his time, including doomed to obscurity (dto)
and hogs of entropy (hoe).  "dto" was revolutionary at the time of its
inception because it predated the widespread internet-craze with its witty
play on the "dot" term used so often in internet addresses.  hoe is a
zine that has inspired many, many people to get in touch with their
creative sides and get to work at writing.  it provides an outlet for
literature and opinions that would otherwise have no place to go, and
probably never even see the daylight.

if dto and hoe were as profitable as they are important, their founders
would be rolling in the dough.

flodis, this zine, is flowers of disruption.  floating dissidence.
flowing death in solitude.  it's your zine.  that is, it's the zine for
you.  it is made for you, with the intentions of going directly to you, for
you to read, and it contains text that i write.  flodis.  yum.

if i had a fro while i wrote flodis, i would most certainly have dark skin,
and all around my dark-skinned self, i would have floating colors and
shapes.  they would form waves of disctinctly different colors in the sky,
and they would be separated by suns and clouds and trees and flowers.  if
you were to paint the situation in the space around my fro, you would have
a very psychedelic picture.  you could sell it to someone who does acid
because it would highten their trip.  

back in the 60s, if you wanted to know what someone's plan was for their
life, you would say, "hey, man, what's your trip?"  and this question could
be asked to anyone in your age group, whether they used drugs or not.  it
makes sense.  with all the people i hear these days describing their lives
as roads or paths they are walking down, the metaphor of life being a
"trip" certainly still applies.  

what do you like to do on a trip?  get away from the hustle & bustle of
everyday life?  you like to go somewhere you don't normally go?  see
something new?  avoid ambulances?  on my trips that i take in my car or
in someone else's car, or in a plane, or on a bus or train, i enjoy seeing
new things and getting away from the place i was.  i often bring things
from home with me as a security blanket to make sure that i remain
entertained.  what would happen if my mind was idle?  i can tell you the
answer, because my mind is often idle on trips.  my mind takes in all of
the new information and processes it.  i often don't touch the security
blanket, but at least i know it's there.  it's more like a safety net
waiting for someone who's parasailing.  you know, if the wind is just
perfect for a parasailor, they can keep traveling and traveling forever.
they could remain afloat til they die.  but there is only a slim chance
of the wind being perfect for them for a long time.  eventually the wind
will die down or drift the wrong way, and the parasailor will sink.  maybe
the wind will pick back up, and the parasail will rise again.  but maybe
its altitude will steadily decline.  then the parasail can run into the
ground and tumble and cause pain.  but if there's a safety net waiting for
the parasailer to fall, the parasailor is likely to not get harmed too
badly.  and there's also a good chance that someone the parasailor very
much likes and respects (and possibly loves!) will be holding the safety
net.

isn't that sweet?  that parasailor took a trip.  i'll bet that my life, and
probably your lives, are very much like the trip that parasailor took.  if
you hit that safety net, there's always going to be another day that the
wind has a great chance of being perfect.  you can try again.

did i mention that the world is going to end sometime today?  oregano told
me that.  he saw on the news that nostradamus supposedly predicted that
today was the day.  i figured if i sent out this flodis, the world wouldn't
end.

touch your monitor, quick.  touch it fast.

the world won't end.  say it with me:  THE WORLD WON'T END.

if i send out this flodis to you, and you read it, everything's going to be
OK, and the trees will keep living, and the water will still run, and
marathons being held will not end prematurely due to mass death of its
participants.  this will be a good life.  it will last a very long time for
all of us.  we will all turn out very happy, we could very well be happy
right now!  nostradamus can be predicted in many different ways, and i know
for a fact that his predictions did not take into account the fact that i
would be writing this zine to counteract the course of history.

you keep in mind that this is something important, folks.

meanwhile, my father will be leaving today to go on a motorcycle trip.
please think good thoughts about his trip, i don't want it to end
prematurely for him because some old mathematician (thanks tasha!) bastard
said that the damned world was going to end or any of that shit.

your day will be great and so will mine.  bye!

(let's all hold hands.)

-----

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`----------------------------------------------------------`-'
          flodis / flowers of disruption #5 / 23.07.99 / trilobyte@hoe.nu
     tell your friends to massacre the earth with flodis