UFONY #4
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UFONY April 1991 Volume 1, Number 4
The Magazine of the Electronic Underground
Against Nonsense and in Support of Reason
UFONY is published by Ultrarad Software and is Copyright (C) 1990, All Rights
Reserved. Permission is hereby granted to republish this issue of UFONY on
computer Bulletin Board Systems (BBS's) and in computer-oriented newsletters
provided the issue is published intact and without added internal comments.
If you edit or publish a computer-oriented newsletter and you republish an
issue of UFONY in your newsletter, please send a copy of the newsletter to
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ÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜ
Û Û
Û ì ë ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ í Û
Û é ì ë Û
Û ê ê ê ê Scratch 'N Sniff Issue Û
Û Û
ßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßß
An Appeal
We of the Thundering Herd have suffered some difficulty in our pursuit of
wide distribution for UFONY. Is there the stench of censorship in the air?
Have we fed into the ether bit streams that betray a want of any of the social
graces demanded of all who would carry themselves, proudly, as troopers of the
good society. Fie.
Those who style themselves the Thundering Herd have published, believe it
or not, more than a thousand books. They have received two Nobel Prizes and
several Pulitzers. One among us is a university president. One is a Supreme
Court justice. One is a member of the Politburo of the Soviet Union--and a
deep-cover mole of the Defense Intelligence Agency. One is an astronaut. You
will perforce agree then, surely, that we are the Bourbaki of lettres.
All of us in the Thundering Herd (except the mole, of course) are proud
to be citizens of the greatest, freest nation on earth. Well, there is the
Netherlands, of course. There is a lot to be said for the Netherlands.
Anyone who has spent a few months there would testify that the Netherlands, in
all fairness, is a very free country. There would be no bowing of heads in
the Netherlands in a contest of freedom versus the United States. And
Switzerland. Can there be a nobler and more beautiful country on earth, where
the bowl of heaven is a song of cleanness and of magic, where the wind stirs
and whispers among the peaks and valleys like a young girl's winter
petticoats? And what about Japan? Haven't the Japanese outperformed
Americans in many areas?
No, let's not quibble. America is America, and even if her fortunes are
in decline and her air now listing toward the gray-brown portion of the
spectrum that is shunned by the people of other nations who are more attached
to breathing than are we; still, America is America. In the joyous words of
George Burns, some years ago, to a pretty and personable acquaintance, "Long
may it wave."
Let's not boast then. All of us in the Thundering Herd (again, excepting
the mole) are proud to be citizens of the second greatest, second freest
nation on earth. Or possibly third.
We asked a wretched old tennis shoe that runs a BBS that declines to
carry UFONY, "Sir, why would you still a unique voice? Is there no room on
your BBS for a voice that offers fresh compositions and fresh modulations?"
The old tennis shoe said nothing. Its tongue lolled out, limp, soiled,
misshapen. We peered down into the tennis shoe. Do you know what we saw?
(Hint: We did not see the way; we did not see the truth; lo, we did not see
the light.)
Hitler happily allowed to be heard those voices that bleated words that
did not stir his bile. Stalin said, "Yes, comrade, it is permitted to say
what I want to hear. Is a free country, no?" Pol Pot, truly a fiend's fiend
... well, he was the exception: Pol Pot killed supporters as well as
opponents, indiscrimately.
Appeals to a sense of fair play mean nothing to an old tennis shoe, so we
will not make them. We do appeal to all our fans and to all good people
everywhere who appreciate fairness, truth, justice, and satire to take part in
a contest open to everybody who is not a member of the Thundering Herd or a
relative of a member of the Thundering Herd or an associate of the firm of
Gouge, Wimple, DeGroot, and Lesions, Attorneys-at-Law. How do you win a prize
in the contest? By uploading more issues of UFONY to more BBS's than the
losers of the contest can manage. (May we humbly suggest that to describe
each issue of UFONY you simply use the words in that issue that appear next to
the stylized alien family?)
The Grand Prize is an all-expenses-paid trip to the star system of your
choice (must be within the Milky Way galaxy or one of its satellite galaxies)
on the first alien spacecraft captained by a being willing to honor a passport
of the United States.
First Prize is a heavy date with Peggy Bundy--if you know what we mean by
"heavy date," and we think you do. Those who prefer more experienced
companionship may choose Kelly Bundy instead of Peggy Bundy. SYSOP's may
choose Tom Cruise instead of either of the Bundy babes.
Second Prize is a heavy date with either (but not both) of Bart Simpson's
parents.
Third Prize is a heavy date with Roseanne Barr.
Those coming in 5th through 100th in the uploading derby will receive a
spoon bent using mind power alone by the noted psychic Uri Geller. (Hey, if
you had his given name, you'd knock off a couple of letters too.) These
magnificent bent spoons come with a certficate suitable for framing and are
normally sold at their full retail price of $75.
Begin uploading now! The contest ends on January 1, 1991.
We've decided to throw this issue of UFONY open to some of our well-
wishers and, in fairness, to a few detractors.
Gouge, Wimple, De Groot, and Lesions, Attorneys-at-Law
666 Park Avenue South
New York, New York
Editors, UFONY Magazine:
Our client is Christine Brinkley, famed model and actress and cute, smiling
young lady. We are writing to you to demand that you cease and desist
expropriating her name and her fame in your magazine. We do not believe there
really is a Dr. Christine Brinkley as alleged in your magazine. If our
suspicion in this matter proves to be misplaced, we urge upon you our position
that your Christine Brinkley will have to change her name in order to avoid
further confusion on the part of the public. If we do not hear from you in
this matter in a reasonable period of time we will be forced to consider
seeking injunctive relief in the name of our client and to bring suit for
damages already suffered by our client.
Our client's husband, Billy Joel, asks that if you should ever refer to him in
your magazine that you give his correct height of 5' 11''. He is a truly
gifted little musician, and he is frankly tired of reading that he is less
than five feet tall. Mr. Joel also asks that you refrain from mentioning any
hickeys on or about Ms. Brinkley's body. The hickeys are, in point of fact,
birthmarks.
-o-
Say, have you heard the story about the horribly bedraggled
lawyer who was at the point of dying of thirst as he crawled aim-
lessly on the desert floor and called silently for help. Half a
dozen buzzards circled repeatedly above him, drifting down closer to
him as he drew nearer and nearer to death. Finally the lawyer
breathed his last breath and ceased moving. The buzzards came down
still closer and continued to hover over the remains for some 20
minutes. When they were finally, absolutely certain the lawyer was
dead, they rose up into the clear blue sky on silent wings and flew
on.
--the Thundering Herd
Lindo Beeley
Cincinnati, Ohio
Editors, UFONY Magazine:
It is not part of the American tradition to make fun of peeple's relijious
beleafs! We will KIL you if you donut paulajize! We will probly KIL you even
if you do upaulajize! Kiling is 2 good for you! You shoe be KIL! You bet
rapent before it 2 late!!
-o-
Faith is an affront to reason and an impediment to learning.
It's a tapestry of pretense and of lies, a great patch of quicksand
that smothers joy and swallows lives. It's faith's skinless
fingers that wield the whip that lashes men and women and children
into the slaughterhouses of every war that ever turned a human being
into a pile of ground round.
Nobody appears to have observed, incidentally, that Septem-
ber 17, 1990, holds special status as a 10,000,000th anniversary,
albeit in the binary rather than the decimal system. On Septem-
ber 17 in the year of our Lord 1862, Americans lost more soldiers in
battle, it's said, than on any other single day in history. For
several days the air over Antietam Creek took on a pinkish cast.
And on windless mornings even today, the claim is made, if you stand
in the middle of Bloody Lane and make no sound at all you can still
hear the screams of those young men who were brought to early
harvest by God at such a lascivious pace, fruits of the wasted
brilliance of General Robert E. Lee and the endless hesitancy of
General George B. McClellan.
"We heard all through the war that the army 'was eager to be
led against the enemy,'" wrote a northern soldier who fought at
Antietam. "It must have been so, for truthful correspondents said
so, and editors confirmed it. But when you came to hunt for this
particular itch, it was always the next regiment that had it. The
truth is, when bullets are whacking against tree-trunks and solid
shot are cracking skulls like egg-shells, the consuming passion in
the breast of the average man is to get out of the way. Between the
physical fear of going forward and the moral fear of turning back,
there is a predicament of exceptional awkwardness."
You, sir, present another "predicament of exceptional awkward-
ness," and you must also be confronted.
You are free to be as ignorant as you wanna be; but don't you
dare demand that those of us who are unencumbered by your capacity
for stupidity share your faith in a litany of plagiarized myths and
forget that your holiest of relics are to be found in torture cham-
bers constructed in the dark nights when faith ruled the world. Why
should reason and logic cringe before the chancres of faith?
Religion is a cesspool that covers the land at least to the depths
of your shriveled mind. The stench of religion is everywhere. Let
the cleansing waters of reason flow.
The sins of religion are not central to our charter. UFONY is
dedicated primarily to shedding a light on UFO nuttiness and on
claims of paranormal happenings and powers. Religion is, all the
same, another leaning tower that calls for an occasional suspicious
glance.
Your lie about an American tradition of keeping secret the
truth about religion's warts is grounded in ignorance. Religion has
been considered a worthy target since the day George Washington
piloted the Mayflower into Pearl Harbor. It's only during the last
generation, coincident with the metastasis of fundamentalism in
America, that delicate dears such as yourself have felt driven to
pass wind at the first hint that the heresy of religion might be a
freak and a blight.
For an example of America's real heritage, savor these words
from ROUGHING IT by Mark Twain, the greatest writer America has
produced:
"All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the
'elect' have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I
brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me,
it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so 'slow,' so sleepy, such
an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If
Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle--keeping
awake while he did it was, at any rate....
"The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary
history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious
plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his
words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of
our King James's translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a
mongrel.... Whenever he found his speech growing too modern--which
was about every sentence or two--he ladled in a few such scriptural
phrases as 'exceeding sore,' 'and it came to pass,' etc., and made
things satisfactory again. 'And it came to pass' was his pet. If
he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet."
No, Lindo. The notion that America has a tradition of treating
religion as too lily-livered to be appraised rationally, is a fic-
tion invented by those who do your unthinking for you.
--the Thundering Herd
Penny Moedog Toot
Pacific Palisades, CA
Editors, UFONY Magazine:
You have used several bad words in your magazine, and I think you should
apologize to your readers. Some of us appreciate good taste, you know. And
what would happen if little kids got hold of your magazine and read those bad
words?
-o-
Speaking of little kids, you'll no doubt be pleased to learn
that the Thundering Herd, in its quest to keep UFONY afloat, now
offers for sale a line of hard rubber practice toddlers designed to
appeal in particular to owners of pit bulls. These practice
toddlers are life-size, fully vulcanized, and of the highest
quality. Cost is a very reasonable $39.95 apiece, plus shipping.
If you have any other concerns, don't hesitate to give us a
toot.
--the Thundering Herd
Central Intelligence Agency
Langley, Virginia
Alpha Seven, Control Ten Niner
EYES ONLY
Editors, UFONY Magazine:
Congrats! Your project to enhance the breadth of the recent efforts at
disinformation foisted upon the American public shows great promise. Never
let pass a chance to degrade the reps of those who see the expeditionary
craft. So many sightings, so many landings, so many cross-breeding
abductions. The lid is really getting awfully loose. That's the feeling here
at Langley. Imagine if the people ever find out the whole truth. Probably
have our hides. Not to even think about the heavy charges that would be
thrown against Ford.
-o-
Hey, watch it with the memos, Alpha Seven. Loose lips ship
sinks. Loose ships lip synch. Lipschitz sucks Chinks. Aw, what-
ever the hell, you know what we mean.
--the Thundering Herd
Mortimer Scobb
Biloxi, Mississippi
Editors, UFONY Magazine:
I never seen no nekkid alien woman with three breasts in nary a one of your
issues. What goes? Am I missing something?
-o-
We all hope so, Reverend Scobb.
We were going to include the really astonishing Scratch 'N Sniff
feature in this issue, but now you've gone and used up all the room
we had available. Some people.
Just for you, Rev:
O
ooo
/ | \
W
< >
- -
--the Thundering Herd
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