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longlost sister of the marx brothers
Daniel A. Foss (U17043@UICVM.BITNET)
Mon, 20 May 1996 20:55:02 CDT
Adrienne -
Her name was "-isme," hardly a commonplace Jewish or any other sort of
name, but her ghostly presence may be felt preventing certain Progressive
Sociologists from making a certain connection; whence the Book of Matches
enclosed herein.
But first, this message:
Adrienne Dearmas, you are undoubtedly understandably Suspicious, howbeit
wrongly this time, that I am Up To Something, which last time indeed I was,
if certainly and in no sense cognizant of What I Was Up To, which it seems
was alerting the entire female gender of the Menace supposedly represented
by myself; a wise precaution where there exists any possibility of women
Summoning the Authorities Elsewise. Why else mention celebrity neighbours,
eg, Son of Sam, Lee Harvey Oswald? Unable to reach your entire gender, of
course, I did alert those women known to me by Userid, which is not many.
Truth to tell, the rational substrate of such actions is, it is accurately
reflective of the opinions of certain Corporate Cyberhippies, male, who
said as much to my face and who do know women, whence the former then duly
warned, reciving anticipably gratifying quantities of Early Warning Signs.
Since that time, it should be remarked in my defense, I have cut all ties
with users of LSD who make large piles of money whilst enjoying Titles of
Corporate Nobility or at minimum Knighthoods; and, with a scathing essay
calling them the Other Side they claim they are against, vanished from
that milieu. This may be represented in Paranoid mathematical notation;
you needn't be bothered.
Let us recall better times, when I wrote you an essay about eminent
Paranoid theologians of our time, notably the "cult writer," Robert Anton
Wilson, author of Prometheus Rising, the garbled (inexorably) translation
of moribund mumbles of the nearly Late, yet no longer On Time, he's become
that retrograde even whilst nominally "alive," Timothy F. Leary, PhD. The
thesis therein is that a hierarchy of Drug highs corresponds in kind and
number to "neural circuits," at best a game with the Magic Number 8. (Days
of Passover, Candles in Khanukah Menorah, howbeit both Wilson and Leary
are pious Irish Catholic alcoholics.) Wilson's Conspiracy Books, notably
The Illuminati Trilogy, Masks of the Illuminati, The Historical Illuminati
Chronicles, are almost as good as history jokes as what I do, and praise
them sincerely for this reason. Cosmology is lightly treated in what concerns
us here, The Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy, which propounds the identical notion
of the universe, in all seriousness, Wilson, see, is preachy, that was by
stealth, guile, and insidious contrivance "snuck," my usage, into the journal
called Social Text, CUNY Dept of Cultural Studies, by Prof Alan Sokal, NYU
Physics Dept, for giggies, says Sokol, as noted, in a timely-scheduled inter-
view in Lingua Franca, the magazine of academic showbiz stardom. I begrudge
nobody who appears in it anything. Someone must tell us if there's Anything
Good On at our own nearby Lecture Halls; and more power to them, if unlikely.
Then, More money to them! "May their royalties continue to flow/Long after
Christmas has no snow." Professor Sokal, you recall, denounced Social Text,
and its, The New York Times would have us believe, universally-known editor,
Stanley Aronowitz, PhD, Chair of Cultural Studies, a great man of the armenian
left who at age 17 ran away from Brooklyn College to assimilate into Polish
Proletarianism in Newark NJ, discovering "life was hard, pay was low,"
organized trade unions (OCAW), in many hundreds of speeches comprising the
largest mass of Oral HIstory of the armenian trade union movement in this
century, and circled back to become, at last, what parents intended, Chair
of Sociology at CUNY. And married Ellin Willis, Village Voice prophet-in-
residence. Hardly constrained by any corseting thesisantithesissynthesis,
the pseudopods of Aronowitzism today span all Learning, scarfing up whatever's
just in at the airport; and at the Graduate Center, in permanent Denial
there's anything Out There (here I'll verify you need never leave the
building, ever), the mind of Aronowitz has subsumed Everything. Such
that the misleading impression may be given that "objective reality" is
denied in Cultural Studies. In principle, Aronowitz denies any such denial.
[Note carefully: Personally, I lovetheguy; worship the ground he walks on.
Who wouldn't. That I struck fear in him is to be expected; a Normal, after
all. Once, I was both Highly Inappropriate and Sexist, I recall:
"Professor Aronowitz is *late*!"
"Why, is it that time of the month?"
No longer do I indulge in such stuff; they'd shoot me, one false mood here,
that's it, and don't even badmouth people I don't like, as I'm allowed nowhere
near to close physical proximity as aforetime. But that useta be my main man,
one of my role models. I tell ya, if he's turned against objective reality,
it musta been lately.]
The intellectual position which Sokal's "Transgressing The Boundaries:
Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" actually duplicates
exactly, as mentioned, is that of Robert Anton Wilson.
What, exactly, is the difference between me and Robert Anton Wilson, ie,
insofar as talent is controlled for; there being in this department more
commonsense on my side, silliness and credulity on his.
This: Rober Anton Wilson has *always believed in himself*, a delusion for
the most part, whereof I would never have permitted myself to partake. I, who
was Eve's Apple Taster, don't believe it till I don't die from it; and it is
established, fact as factual facticiosity can get, that neither of us can
write, the edge being mine.
Who'd argue per contra, send e-mail.
You, Adrienne Dearmas, are herewith appointed Chair of Women's Studies
along with a lifetime tenured position at ANTHRO-L's sister station, FNORD-L;
a faculty position wherefrom There Is No Escape. We know whom you work for.
So much for our business meeting. Women's Paranoid Studies is as yet in
its infancy, though we expect the same persecution from you we get from one
another, no mothering. Nobody has or will ever be notified. These things
take care of themselves.
My objective, in Subverting the International Paranoid University, as
currently institutionalized on FNORD-L, is to turn that list from its
stated purposes, viz, the study of the sacred teachings of Timothy F.
Leary and his epigone, Robert Anton Wilson, to the following of me. No
substantial change, actually, need be made in anyone's actual expression
to other listmembers, as at this time Robert Anton Wilson and myself have
been ignored equally for years.
Like Sokal, contra Wilson, I support "objective reality," donate money
to it, and at times, vote for it in elections; yet I must insist that any
such Order Of Thingies wherein the slacker, unprincipled fellow, Wilson,
gets the gravy from escapism whilst I languish hellonearthily for denying
having talent merely because I do not have it, that objective reality, I
submit, stinks, pardon my language.
In short, you needn't do much, if anything at all. It's just that, you
know how subtle cultural Thingies are, there's been a tiny, you know, *list*
to the leftish, in the nature of Thingies in general. Do I make myself
unclear? For further information, you may always consult Doctress Neutopia,
whose generalized ignorance is unequalled, at:
<neutopia@spiff.gnu.ai.mit.edu cc:neutopia@asylum.org neutopia@genesis.nred.ma.
us>, where your status, qua woman, will do you no good.
Adrienne Dearmas, it's been a pleasure dunking heads in the highest possible
realms of human cultural activity; and we assure you; it's been a waste of our
time as much as it's been of yours.
The book of matches? Oh, it's mailed to kidz expecting to major in Coinci-
dence Theory, Assassinology, Applied Eschatology anent the longawaited period
circa Dec 2011, and other important subjects, but you may just light up; no
class will come to you nor will you ever know you're teaching. But teach you
will. You know me, and my selfstyled mother-figure (as of this afternoon).
How much expertise could you ask for without disgracing yourself.
[For the next foreseeable future I'll be where I was last week, which
I'm not telling. Now we should all assure John Pastore we're not dead.]
Daniel A. Foss
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