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anti-press ezine 1999 03 30
ANTI-PRESS EZINE #06
"We're Positive About The Negative"
A March E-dition
All Contents (C) Copyright 1999 Anti-Press All Rights Reserved
This ezine is published on a irregular schedule (i.e. whenever we feel like
it). Available at finer newsgroups such as alt.humor, alt.ezine, and
alt.etext.
Anti-Press Ezine radiates from our Reality Center. We're presently entrapped
in the alleged city of Plattsburgh, northeastern New York State, USA. (For
your own good: STAY THE HELL AWAY!)
=============================================================
"REDNECKS" BEING RAILROADED?
Light, fluffy snowflakes. Sometimes we get a googolplex of them dumped
on us in this neck of the woods. The wind swirls the white powder into
ever- shifting dunes. The only way to deal with it is to compact the
stuff with either a snowblower or a push-shovel.
Heavy, metallic subway cars. Being built right here in Plattsburgh, NY.
The classic story of a company from Canada going south and setting up
shop in this economically-deprived region, employing locals who need a
steady paycheck. Good deal for the region's economy.
Oh-oh. Article in the New York Post newspaper, published in The Big
Apple, dated 3/9/99. Concerns are raised that the railcars aren't up to
needed quality, that the local workforce is undertrained and not doing a
good job. Key points from the assessment by the NYC Transit Authority
include the observation that the assembly-line workers were "unskilled,
unqualified". TA officials also say "the shoddy workmanship was scary"
and that key parts supporting wheels and brakes were sloppily installed.
Is any of this true? The head of the railcar company defends his
workers, saying that there are usually problems with starting up a new
operation. With all the downstate/upstate rivalry going on, some wonder
if it's another example of those city slickers trying to rain on the
parade of the country folk. Only time will tell if the Post's
observations will pan out.
So in the meantime what does Anti-Press think about this issue?
The other day we had some light, fluffy snow dumped on us. It was
drifting all over the place. The landlord has someone to clean up the
parking lot to the building where the Reality Center is presently
housed. We'll call this clean-up person the Rocket Scientist. He's the
type of manual laborer who might be hired by a company like the railcar
manufacturer. We were going for a walk and we noticed that the Rocket
Scientist was trying to clear away the powdery snow, but not with a
push-shovel or a snowblower. No. He was trying to be clever and
efficient. He was using a leaf-blower.
"Jeezum Crow," swore the Scientist as we walked by. "Goddamn snow won't
go where I want it, keeps swirling back at me. Why ain't this working?
Could it be that the specific gravity of powdery snowflakes ain't the
same as leaves? No, that ain't it. This leaf-blower is defective!
Need a bigger one..."
Does anyone know the specific gravity of a subway car, especially when
it's hurtling down the tracks in New York City?
TEEVEE STATION FALLS SHORT ON LOCAL NEWS COVERAGE
If you were completely bored and desperate to kill time, you could check
a map and see that Plattsburgh, NY isn't that far away from Burlington,
Vermont as the crow flies across Lake Champlain. Stations in each city
compete for local viewers in the region, especially when it comes to
local news which is usually a real profit-maker for a broadcaster.
We can understand overlapping markets and that each station shouldn't be
confined to covering their own turf. But for years the running
complaint has been the Plattsburgh station puts too much emphasis on
news happening across the lake. Of course, Burlington is a real city--
more people, more events-- and, one most note, more advertisers. But
that couldn't be why there's so much Vermont coverage on the Plattsburgh
station, could it?
The following scenario wouldn't surprise us:
Teevee screen: images flash by, frightening and disturbing scenes: fear,
death, destruction.
Announcer, stentorian tone: "Tonight, on Plattsburgh Teevee News, these
lead stories:
--Active Nuclear Warhead Found At Decommissioned Plattsburgh Air
Force Base; Disaster Narrowly Averted!
--Black Plague Decimates Dannemora Prison, Spreads To Plattsburgh!
--Meteor Wipes Lake Placid, NY Off The Map! "
Cut to view of news anchor, grim-faced, staring intently into the
camera.
Anchor: "Yes, it's been a tense and horrifying day for many citizens in
northern New York State. We'll get to those stories in a while, but
first, this late-breaking story: THERE ARE JEWS IN VERMONT!"
Then the station cuts to a live interview with Solomon Rosen of Rutland
who drones on and on for ten minutes. Rosen reveals there also might be
a Jewish couple living up in Stowe. He's not sure, he never met them,
but he overheard his cousin Irving talk about the possibility of other
Jews in the Green Mountain State. One time Irving was passing through
Stowe and he spotted a man and wife eating a bagel...
(Yes, it almost gets this bad. It's reassuring the Plattsburgh station
practices good journalism and doesn't pander to Vermont ad dollars...)
CYBER-GREMLINS TERRORIZE CANADIAN READER!
In our last e-dition we announced we would have an article appearing in
the new edition of The Annihilation Fountain (www.capnasty.org/taf/).
As some of you know the new edition didn't materialize at that Web site.
That's because the brave man who maintains that site, Neil MacKay, has
been battling evil spirits from the darkest depths of cyberspace! PC
poltergeist have been wreaking hell, crashing hard drives, bombing
programs, even knocking a framed poster off a wall and shattering glass
all over while Neil was sitting in his office, typing email to us.
So Anti-Press announces the first cyber-cosmic convergence, scheduled
for one minute before midnight, Universal Time, on March 31st. You must
log on to the TAF home page and place your hands on your computer
screen, thinking good thoughts about Canada-- heavenly maple syrup,
majestic mountains, William Shatner, busy beavers, rutting moose, the
Expos, polite French Quebecers-- loving psychic vibes to drive out the
malevolent microchip meanies from Toronto. You must maintain the vibes
until the first quarter of the witching hour is over and a new-- and
more appropriate-- day has begun.
GRAVITY A SHADOW CAST IN TIME BY PATTERNS OF SPACE!
Skeptics usually have this ax to grind: mainstream media, especially
most news organizations, are too uncritical when discussing New Age
claims.
If we have to take a side, it would fall with the Skeptical Devils, not
the Believing Angels. But we're even somewhat skeptical of skeptics.
Never met any of those professional debunkers but we can imagine what a
roomful of them must be like. We guess that skeptics gather for a party
at a ritzy mansion but there is no laughter or joy. They're bored,
indifferent. Each one has realized there is no purpose to existence;
the universe is meaningless. They are like robots, dispassionately
talking about philosophy, science, intellectual topics, while a waiter
circulates the room with a tray of hors d'oeuvres, each appetizer topped
off with a Prozac capsule.
A skeptic states that all paranormal claims are nonsense. ESP doesn't
exist because there's no way of testing it under controlled laboratory
conditions. All UFO stories are hoaxes or mistaken identification. With
such sweeping generalizations, a smug skeptic turns his back on the
paranormal-- and one day the paranormal might sneak up behind him and
bite him on the butt. Your typical skeptic is too scientific, too
impersonal.
Meanwhile the New Agers have more personality; they're outgoing, willing
to help others. But there's that uncritical aspect of their
proselytization...
The Local (news)Paper has been carrying a column by a New Ager. She
lives in this neck of the woods and finds so many wonderful, magical
things are happening right here, outside our door! She talks about
meeting so many magical people: dowsers, Reiki masters, Amway
distributors, whathaveyou.
She describes a gathering where all share in the universal energy,
opening up their spirits to the flowing pulse of higher existence.
There's a diversity of reactions, from tinglings to heat-- or nothing at
all. A skeptic could argue that the sensations are so variegated
because each person is imaging a response to something that really
doesn't exist. It's all internal, not external. The vessel isn't half
full or empty-- it's just a vacuum and each New Ager is filling it to a
different degree with what they are told to expect, what they are hoping
is Out There.
The columnist comments that for those skeptics reading her article, no
one has disproved the power of God's love. Really. Well, no one has
proved it, either. Take a look at the world around you, with all its
beauty AND its ugliness. Does it make sense that a loving God would
allow so much tragedy happen to his sheep?
Envision the Great Father sitting Up There, affecting the fate of each
being here on this earthly plane. The Supreme One thinks to himself:
"Well, that earthquake in South America should make those poor bastards
fall in line. That will get the collection plates full again. Hmmm, got
a few New Agers trying to channel 'love energy' in Plattsburgh, of all
places. Maybe I'll be a nice guy and give them some groovy tingles.
Then again, why should I? I'll let them tap into some transdimensional
hellfire and flame themselves into cinders. No one will suspect Me--
that's why I got Satan as a scapegoat."
Perfect God = Imperfect Universe? It makes more sense that The Universe
Is, there is no Great Father behind it, the Universe just exists and we
try to label or define parts of it so that it's easier to comprehend
with our limited human perspective. Nutshell: Universe happens, ergo
shit happens.
We have no problem with New Agers who want to gather together and share
"love energy" or whatever else they seem to detect in the air. They're
probably better off than bored skeptics partaking of anti-depressant
canapes at a listless party. We just hope that New Agers can survive
when the impersonal, God-less Universe abruptly burns their collective
ass.
LOCAL (NEWS)PAPER EXCELS IN SENSITIVITY
Here's the sub-headline: 'Seniors are truly a special population'. It's
an appropriate quote for an article profiling the activities director at
a nursing home. When one thinks of a nursing home and its residents,
there is the image of an older generation with declining health, each
senior nearing the end of his or her journey in life. That's why we
question the appropriateness of the article's main headline: "Director
stands tall among dying breed".
ANTI-PRESS ENCOUNTERS DISCRIMINATION
Apparently we're the new minority: single male.
As announced in the last issue of this ezine we're in the process of
finding a new home for The Reality Center. The "City" of Plattsburgh's
population is around twenty thousand people. In a town this size you
would think that there would be a decent choice of apartments to rent,
especially for a tenant who minds his own business and pays his rent on
time.
So we go through the offerings listed in the Local (news)Paper's
classified ads. We're not that picky, just want an OK place to sleep,
eat, and create. We find a possibility in the paper and so we call.
Landlord: "Hello."
A-P: "We're calling about the ad for the apartment--"
Landlord: "How many people?"
A-P: "Just one. We don't have any pets and--"
Landlord: "No, I'm not going to rent to you. Single guys keep moving
out on me. I rent only to married couples."
_CLICK_ (Conversation terminated by Landlord.)
All right, that's just one landlord. Here's another ad. Instead of
calling we'll visit them in person, wearing good clean clothes and
making sure our teeth are brushed and our hair is combed. We stop in
and talk to the landlady.
A-P: "Hello, we're here about the apartment. The ad said we could drop
by this time of day and--"
Landlady: "No, I can't rent it to you. There's a girl living in the
first apartment and I'm only renting the second one to another girl.
Can't have a boy and girl living here."
So much for this lead. Here we have a landlady renting two physically
separate apartments-- the only thing they share is a hallway-- and she
won't rent to us because we might get her female tenant pregnant like a
flower, i.e. a stiff breeze and we'll cross-pollinate the girl across
the hall if her door is open.
Unlike the landlord on the phone, this time we see the discriminator in
person. Late middle-age, hair in a bun, prim and proper-- yup, due to
her strict upbringing this landlady's sex organs didn't dry up from
menopause, they simply ossified from lack of use. (But-- Praise the
Lord!-- her virginal flesh didn't give in to wanton desires and rot out
from one of God's social diseases!)
The irony of the situation is that we try to get along with most people
and yet we're the target of discrimination. Then again we've faced the
worse kind of discrimination, the discrimination of the individual: a
minority of one. Just being ourselves and not following the crowd has
made us unpopular at times, putting us on the outside. Fine. Screw it.
We're not on this planet to live our life for everyone else.
But this latest crap, the prejudice against a single male, is pushing
our tolerance for BS.
As a joke we checked the local phone book under the Yellow Pages listing
for social organizations, looking for any agencies that dealt with human
rights. Guess what. Nothing here in Plattsburgh. Apparently
discrimination is non- existent this this town.
Anyway we won't take that course of action. Why bother? What would we
accomplish if we went after either that landlord or landlady? Sometimes
you meet a person who is a certain way, he will never change, especially
with his narrow POV. (After all, his view is greatly restricted when
peering out at the world through his anal orifice.) And if the
opportunity arose to pursue legal means, we expect it would only result
in just more crap. Our action would be misread and so we
unintentionally put the whole issue in a bad light, people suspecting
the validity of our cause. Another type of discrimination: "Oh, he's
one of THEM-- a phony whiner who wants a free ride."
Well, we're not a phony whiner, but unfortunately there are a few out
there. Sometimes one silly incident by a self-serving jerk can taint all
of the true believers who are fighting the real fight.
Case in point: a story told to us by a law-enforcement official about
alleged discrimination at a state park. The story might be bull-- it
wouldn't be the first time a cop told a tale-- but we think it is more
than an urban legend. Anyway, it does serve up an interesting point.
Years ago when the issue of civil rights first came to the forefront, it
was easy for a jerk to do something stupid and then try to get out of it
by crying discrimination. While advocates were fighting-- and even
dying-- for equal rights, a dishonest few tried to turn the issue into a
big game.
There was a camper at a state park who ignored the rules. His dog was
running around, unleashed, bothering other campers, and he wasn't the
neatest when it came to proper trash disposal. The park officials
politely told him to please abide by the rules.
But nothing changed. So the park officials explained to the scofflaw if
he didn't obey the rules like other campers, he would have to leave.
"Hey," he countered, "you're discriminating against me because I'm
black."
So the park officials backed off and tried another approach. They asked
a local police officer from a nearby town-- an African American-- to
speak to the noncomplying camper.
So the police officer went to the park and told the noncomplying camper
that that the rules applied to ALL campers, that no one was getting
special treatment.
"Hey," said the angry camper, "you're picking on me because I'm
Catholic!"
Gee, with our own situation-- prejudice against a single male-- it's too
bad we're ex-Catholic. (After all, the Pope does have some pull...)
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