Path: mit-eddie!snorkelwacker!usc!ucsd!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabsy!hplred!egly From: egly@hplred.HP.COM (Diana Egly) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Re: Cynic on Beauty and Pain Message-ID: <20940033@hplred.HP.COM> Date: 24 Jan 90 17:57:29 GMT References: <9060014@hpfcso.HP.COM> Organization: Hewlett Packard Labs, Palo Alto CA Lines: 16 As I was driving to Roseville, I reflected on the role of pain in my life -- that everything I do is tinged with pain. It's part of the landscape of my life. The good times, the happy times, have overtones of pain. As I reflected on this - with fleeting images of a savory stew, or a richly colored tapestry, or even a subtly blended scotch - I reflected on how much richer I am because of the complexities. Have you ever felt but a single unmixed feeling for a period of time? It is a deprivation. When I returned home, I saw The Cynic`s note. Beauty and pain do mingle. For many reasons. I collect the moments of beauty, even with the foreshadowing of loss. Such things are priceless treasures. Which, for me, age well. Path: mit-eddie!snorkelwacker!usc!samsung!uunet!mcsun!sunic!tut!ousrvr!news From: yaz@tolsun.oulu.fi (Tuomas K. Kaikkonen) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Re: tommi talks again... Message-ID: <1990Jan20.080304.18817@ousrvr.oulu.fi> Date: 20 Jan 90 08:03:04 GMT References: Reply-To: yaz@tolsun.UUCP (Tuomas K. Kaikkonen) Distribution: alt Organization: University of Oulu, Finland Lines: 61 In article yaz@tolsun.oulu.fi (Tuomas K. Kaikkonen) writes: [Lots of stuff deleted] >to get that much attention after his monology. [and again -- deleted lines] >the call of the wild. He is spiritually a lion but physically a crawford. >Apparently he tends to hide his feelings, and usually express himself so that >only one who really knows him knows what he means. That's a pity though, if The uncertain young man with high ideals about Time Management walks in for the second time. This time he is much more quiet and somehow embarrased. He gets a seat near Luru and Tommi. "Hei Luru, Tommi." He looks for Ed. Perhaps he wants to say a word to him... "Oh well, Tommi, I just read today what Ed wrote weeks ago. There are so much people in Callahan's that", he sighs and continues, "I just feel ashmed I don't listen to them first and after that reveal my pains, thoughts." He thinks and mumbles "To find out that you are not the only one. To help and to get help. That's the idea. But sometimes, most of the time, I feel that despite how I wanted to help, I can't." Now he looks very disconnected for a moment. "It was phone. My father called me. I might get a odd job - teaching kids the basics of computers, modems, and all that - if I have time from my studies." That's funny, shitzophrenic feeling, to be in Callahan's and here and... God knows where he dreams to be. Apparently he is under stress because of his studies so much that he feels like escaping everything. "I lost it, why I came here. Oh, Now I remember. About my first speech." He blushes slightly and even grinned. :) "I re-read it today. What a bunch of spelling errors, strips of ideas. Chaos. I must have been in very chaotic mood." For exapmle those lines quoted in the very beginning of this article. He had no dictionary with him when he wrote. Crawford should be crayfish. A grin on his face. He got a talk request. "Bye! Sorry .. I will be back!" And off he goes. Tuomas Kaikkonen Phone: +358-81-563 081 (voice)"One of the equal policies Taidonkaari 1 E 36 INTERNET: yaz@tolsun.oulu.fi of life is that no one 90570 Oulu EARN/BitNet: TKOP-TKK at FINOU gets life experience FINLAND FidoNet: 2:515/810 beforehand." Path: mit-eddie!snorkelwacker!usc!samsung!uunet!mcsun!sunic!tut!ousrvr!news From: yaz@tolsun.oulu.fi (Tuomas K. Kaikkonen) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Re: tommi talks again... Message-ID: Date: 20 Jan 90 23:29:58 GMT References: <1990Jan16.033607.6677@granite.cr.bull.com> <1990Jan17.205552.25258@granite.cr.bull.com> Sender: news@ousrvr.oulu.fi Distribution: alt Organization: University of Oulu, Finland Lines: 26 In-reply-to: mandel@granite.cr.bull.com's message of Wed, 17 Jan 90 22:17:52 GM Yaz materializes again, for the third time. This time you can see his appearance more clearly than when he visited for the two first times. He is wearing green trousers of cloth, green and black sweatshirt, black shirt with long stiff. He has eyeglasses (if you turned those glasses 90 degrees clockwise a letter B would represent them quite well but not perfectly B-), deep black frame of spectacles with some goldish yellow. Hes pale bluish grey or greyish blue eyes seem to be looking somewhere else he presently could focus on his eyes. He seems to imaginate. Imaginate a bar; Callahan's. His greyish brown (mixed colors) hair is this time quite short. You can perhaps guess that he used to have blond hair as kid but as time goes by darkens his hair. It could have stayed blond if he had gotten more sunlight, though. He is quite thin, weights only about 60kg, compared to his height: 175cm. Numbers don't say much, we know that but you can imaginate. Now he vanishes suddenly. de-materializes just like that. Somehow you got an idea a friend needs him on IRC. --Yaz -- Tuomas Kaikkonen Phone: +358-81-563 081 (voice)"One of the equal policies Taidonkaari 1 E 36 INTERNET: yaz@tolsun.oulu.fi of life is that no one 90570 Oulu EARN/BitNet: TKOP-TKK at FINOU gets life experience FINLAND FidoNet: 2:515/810 beforehand." Path: mit-eddie!snorkelwacker!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!shelby!lindy!news From: GE.LJB@forsythe.stanford.edu (Louis J Bookbinder) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: tin cameo Message-ID: <7542@lindy.Stanford.EDU> Date: 25 Jan 90 18:28:30 GMT Sender: news@lindy.Stanford.EDU (News Service) Lines: 14 A tin head peers out from the door to the store-room. "Nice Poem, Jilara. Did you notice that the wind never blows in Oz, except by magic?! The weather here is hard to take. Oz has rain, but no torrents. Oz has day and night, but no seasons. No earthquakes. No droughts. I find the constant tumult here - refreshing. But I have to be more vigilant to stay out of the rain. And snow is new to me. "Drink a toast to change, will you, somebody? Life is change. Constancy is death." The head ducks back into the storeroom. Nick Chopper - my opinion? dont ax! LB>- GE.LJB@Forsythe.stanford.edu Path: mit-eddie!snorkelwacker!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!fsdcupt.csd.mot.COM!jane From: jane@fsdcupt.csd.mot.COM (Jane Beckman x4030) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Odd Visitants Message-ID: <9001251308.AA06198@fsdcupt.csd.mot.COM> Date: 25 Jan 90 21:08:16 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Lines: 30 Jilara gets up from the table by the right wall and walks over to where a strange, steaming hole has recently open in the floor. She kneels down and puts a hand over it, like someone testing the heat from a furnace. "I'll be damned," she says, frowning down at the hole, whose edges are still smoking in a most peculiar manner. "A genuine interdimensional gate. I haven't seen one of these since the last time I watched "Friday the 13th." She licks her finger, touches it to the edge, and hears the saliva sizzle, pulls it back and looks at it oddly. "Fascinating," she observes, sounding a bit like a female Mr. Spock. "Such odd beings. I wonder what their world must be like? Not a place most of us would go, not breathing ammonia vapor or gliding on films of odd chemicals. Still, it must be valid for them. I don't think they're going to be terribly comfortable here for very long. Not the right place for such beings to live long. It gets terribly cold when you're used to a place more like the climate of, say, Venus." She reaches into her jacket and pulls out a warm fuzzy. "I think they need this one a LOT more than I do," she says, and drops it into the hole. As if by magic, the hole in the floor suddenly closes up, as if nothing had ever happened. She looks thoughtful. "Why do I feel like I just beamed a shipful of tribbles over the the Klingons? I hope they don't get too upset with me." She grins suddenly at everyone. "Drinks on the house, on me!" and tosses Callahan a large bill. ---Jilara the Exile (I hope.) "If I'm not home accepting what I cannot change, I'm out changing what I can't accept." ---Ashleigh Brilliant (alternate identity may be jane@fsdcupt.csd.mot.com---don't you love computers with identity crises?) Path: mit-eddie!mintaka!yale!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!fsdcupt.csd.mot.COM!jane From: jane@fsdcupt.csd.mot.COM (Jane Beckman x4030) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: A Modest Proposal Message-ID: <9001251408.AA07261@fsdcupt.csd.mot.COM> Date: 25 Jan 90 22:08:24 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Lines: 33 "I know where a real Callahans is!" Jilara says, bouncing and giggling as she comes in. "Honest to goshun!" She gleefully chortles again. "A friend took me there. It's called the White Cockade, and while the barkeep is a little young to be Mike, it fits all other criteria! It's a pub, up off Highway 9 on the way to Santa Cruz, a little ways before you get to Boulder Creek. Okay, there's no chalk line, but there is a FIREPLACE (the barkeep was staggering in under a load of fragrant firewood while one of the patrons held the door for him), and a rather---uh---Callahanian selection of beverages. Beer, calistoga, coffee, juice, soda, hot tea? It's COZY. It's friendly. It has NEAT PEOPLE, and a darts room! It's so wholesome it squeeks. I found myself chuckling oddly as we pulled up chairs at a quiet corner table and tucked into some shepherd's pie and ale (for me, my friend had tea, brought to the table in a pot, no less). This place has got more corners than most places have got seating. My friend kept wondering why I was giggling so hard. "I was just thinking---it might be interesting to have a get-together of Bay Area and Santa Cruz Callahanians (yes, I just coined the word!) up there, some time. I think minors may be okay, because it's technically a restaurant or somesuch thing. Yes, it's out in the boonies (which is where the "real" (Spider-ian) Callahans was, but folks could carpool... Opinions?" "Gee, if I keep coining phrases, I could pay my tab and make a mint, besides. Then Mike could sell mints at the bar..." ---Jilara the Exile (I hope.) "If I'm not home accepting what I cannot change, I'm out changing what I can't accept." ---Ashleigh Brilliant (alternate identity may be jane@fsdcupt.csd.mot.com---don't you love computers with identity crises?) Path: mit-eddie!snorkelwacker!usc!samsung!uunet!philmtl!philabs!ttidca!hollombe From: hollombe@ttidca.TTI.COM (The Polymath) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Re: Cynic on Beauty and Pain Message-ID: <9322@ttidca.TTI.COM> Date: 25 Jan 90 04:16:50 GMT References: <9060014@hpfcso.HP.COM> Reply-To: hollombe@ttidcb.tti.com (The Polymath) Organization: The Cat Factory Lines: 89 A somewhat faded and harried looking Polymath rises from his corner. "Friends, a number of you have written some very caring e-mail to me about my goodbye post. I've tried to send replies to all of you, but a lot of them are bouncing and I don't have time to thrash out all the paths. On my way out, I want to say thanks to all of you for writing and caring. I won't be gone forever. I just have to take care of business for a while. "And now, as long as I have the floor, one more response ... In article <9060014@hpfcso.HP.COM> daq@hpfcso.HP.COM (Doug Quarnstrom) writes: [...] }The fact that any beauty, no matter how great, begins }to fade in the memory immediately, and becomes such }a thin ghost of itself so quickly, makes this beauty }very difficult to deal with. When confronted with }these things, my mind says, "How wonderful," but my }heart is saying, "It will be gone soon and will }give you no comfort when you need it." [...] }Has anyone else felt these things. I am sure that }this feeling must be pretty common, but I would }be interested to hear others express it. "I can't express it, because my feelings are pretty much the opposite. When I see a beautiful piece of the world I think 'How nice that this exists.' When times are hard I may not remember every detail, but I remember there is beauty in the world and that keeps me going. "I suppose it's possible my memory is better than yours. Certainly, I'm very visually/spatially oriented in my approach to the world. Still, as I said before, even knowing alt.callahans exists helps me keep going -- hardly a picture-postcard memory. "Even living in the heart of a city, as I do, it's possible to find beauty in everyday things: a cat asleep in my lap, flowers in the garden, music, spider webs or whatever you like. I may not think of them when I'm fighting freeway traffic to work, but they're there, in the background, making it all tolerable. "Fate knows, there are many things in this world to be cynical about -- venal politicians, greedy mega-corporations, assorted special interest groups and so on -- but to add beauty to that list is to deprive yourself of the things that make the bad stuff tolerable when there's nothing else you can do about it. That's a colder reality than I'm willing to live in. "If you'll forgive my saying so (or even if you won't (-:{ ) it seems cynicism is always fashionable among the young. I remember boasting of it when I was of high school/college age. I'm glad now I've matured enough to at least remember there are flowers in the world, even if I don't often take time to stop and smell them. Maybe, in a few more years, I'll learn to do more of that. "Of course, just as cynicism isn't restricted to youth, smelling flowers isn't only for us oldsters. If you'd looked for me about 17 years ago you might well have found me sitting on a motorcycle in Germany, admiring the sunshine over a calm Bavarian lake, or in the West Country of England, enjoying the bracing breeze as fall colors turned the green forests to cool flame. Maybe, someday, I'll do it all again. Maybe you'll do it yourself. There are worse ways to spend your life." Stepping to the coat rack, he dons old hat and older jacket and takes up his walking stick. Then back to the bar. "A cool one, Mike. It's warm where I'm going." "BTW, for those who are envious of the California climate, I'll be spending early February in Burlington, Ontario. They tell me the average temperature there is well below freezing, so don't think _too_ hardly of me. (-: "And now, a toast: "May Fate smile on this place and all who enter. May your troubles be lessened, your happiness increased and your loneliness ended. Salud, amor y pesetas y tiempo para gastar los!" With a final wave, he walks to the door and out into a clear, warm, windy night. -- The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, hollombe@ttidca.tti.com) Illegitimis non Citicorp(+)TTI Carborundum 3100 Ocean Park Blvd. (213) 450-9111, x2483 Santa Monica, CA 90405 {csun | philabs | psivax}!ttidca!hollombe Path: mit-eddie!snorkelwacker!think!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!jls139 From: JLS139@PSUVM.BITNET (Abadon) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Re: Fragility, Beauty, Resignation Message-ID: <90025.161939JLS139@PSUVM.BITNET> Date: 25 Jan 90 21:19:39 GMT References: <9001241640.AA06606@fsdcupt.csd.mot.COM> Organization: Penn State University Lines: 20 >Jilara shakes her head at Cynic and Chris Phoenix... > > ...Death hangs over my shoulder, holding >out a pocketwatch, whispering "how much time do you think you have? And >has the bell tolled already?" ... > > .... Imagine a place where >the forces of birth and death, building and decay, are eternally >stalled! ... As she finishes her poem a shadowy figure detaches himself from the corner, where he was quietly and attentively listening for some time. He's another newcomer. One of those people who enjoys listening to others more than speak for himself. His appearance is rather unassuming, yet his eyes are strangely bright (blue). He nods his thanks and appreciation to Jilara for her poem. "Who wants to live forever?" Then just as silently as he appeared, he melts back into the shadows. Path: mit-eddie!snorkelwacker!usc!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!samsung!cs.utexas.edu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!lethe!geac!maccs!cs4l3ac From: cs4l3ac@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Hi Ho Silver) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Re: So it's Sunday... Message-ID: <25BFBDBC.13710@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca> Date: 26 Jan 90 03:02:20 GMT References: <1344@amethyst.math.arizona.edu> Reply-To: cs4l3ac@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Hi Ho Silver) Organization: McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario Lines: 35 In article <1344@amethyst.math.arizona.edu> xibo@mts.rpi.edu (Xibo) writes: $Xibo: To a future, may we meet more closer friends! $crash, tinkle $Xibo: hmm, gee... now I don't have anything to drink... $ Krill, you do a toast; I'm going to get another drink. $Xibo walks back to the bar but trips over a teddy bear and falls $flat on his face. No sooner does Xibo get back to the bar but Hi Ho Silver walks in. Xibo: Silver! Hey, we were just talking about meeting more closer friends! Here, let me buy you a drink. Silver: Thanks, man. Got any Canadian beer? Mike (looks around): Sorry, we don't seem to have any tonight. Silver: Okay then, scotch on the rocks. Xibo and Silver walk back to the table. Xibo: Hey Krill, look who just walked in here! Krill: Hi Ho Silver! How's it goin'? Silver: Good to see ya! So, like where are the chix in this place? Xibo and Krill look at each other and shrug their shoulders. Xibo: I dunno ... have another drink. -- Hi Ho Silver (or just silver for short) | Disclaimer: Okay, I'll disclaim (a.k.a. cs4l3ac@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca) | myself. How's that? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Genius for rent (modesty available for a small surcharge) Path: mit-eddie!mintaka!yale!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!agate!ucbvax!PICA.ARMY.MIL!skitchen From: skitchen@PICA.ARMY.MIL ("D. Scott Kitchen", CCH-V) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Boston get-together, week of February 5th Message-ID: <9001261536.aa05811@CC1.PICA.ARMY.MIL> Date: 26 Jan 90 20:36:14 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Lines: 29 Hi, everyone! I've only gotten three responses back so far for my proposed get-together in Boston during the week of the 5th of next month. They were from: Greg McMullan Gilly Rosenthol Dave Joslin The last get-together had eight people. I'd like to try for more. I'd like to propose Crossroads as the place, and 7 PM the time. All I need now is a date. Choose a day between Monday the 5th and Friday the 9th, and get back to me ASAP. Or, for those of you who have more transportation, we could meet at the hotel I'm staying at in Andover. It's the Marriott in Andover, and the phone number is (508) 975-3600. I'll be there after about 9:00 PM on Sunday the 4th. Hope to hear from all of you soon. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Scott Kitchen Send mail to: skitchen@cc1.pica.army.mil Mechanical Engineer ICBM: 40.88 N 74.56 W ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Heard during Warhammer gaming session: GM: "Brett, you just lost your eye..." Brett: "COOL!!" GM: "...but you also lose your night vision, your ballistic skill drops by 20, and other assorted minor nasties." Brett: "Well, that sucks then."