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Dear Editorbeing,

This article is submitted by Doc Logger(163/110) who was still puzzled over His Zorchness' obtuse references in the previous Snooz. Mostly, Doc was puzzled over why anyone would announce that they read "Atlas Shrugged" in 7 hours. Is this an Olympic event now and will World Records be benchmarked against how long it takes to read Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow"? We should be told.

Roll da flic, Zorch....

Dear Reverend Visage,

Bad craziness abounds. One of Satti's fartcatchers, a fellow named Bowerman sent a stern message to someone who doesn't post in the ZIC echo suggesting that "they might want to take a two week holiday." I know that were the message addressed to me, I'd have declined the invitation. I'd have to borrow a sampling from His Zorchness' paranoia and speculate that poor Bob Satti was getting miffed at being called a moron in the elflord echo.

Naturally, it wouldn't occur to Satti that he might want to deal with the root of the problem with nodes migrating to net163 because they were abused by their NCs. Bob "noted" Satti, being a genius, chose the path where he figured that he could browbeat net163 into sharing his totalist nightmare. Hint for Blonde Bobs Again: Go away, get lost, leave net163 alone and go play with your peer, Bob Kohl. Peefour isn't now and never was the law in Fidonet. No matter how many times Satti snivels that he is bound by policy it still doesn't give it any greater jurisprudent weight.

Satti wasted his entire week's worth of 46 words by whining that if people stopped insulting him, that he could actually answer questions instead of using his lame "noted" macro. He's been asked several times a week by nodes in Region10 to do something about Kohl's excesses and incompetence by hasn't yet mustered enough working neurons to come up with a solution. It strikes me as a real simple issue: ask Kohl to seek an electoral mandate from the sysops in Region10. While that is happening, get Belcke to obtain a sysop level mandate from his region as well.

For my Chautauqua this week I've chosen a quote from Francois Mauriac's "Viper's Tangle" which should give me a good running start to answer some of the questions which have been posed to me in email concerning last week's offering in the Snooz:

"Is it possible for us...to observe only one side of a person who shares our life? Can it be that, out of habit, we pick and choose among the things they say and the things they do, retaining only that which nurtures our grievances and perpetuates our resentment? Have we a fatal tendency to simplify other people - to eliminate all those features which might be regarded as extenuating, which might render more human the caricature of them which our hatred needs for its justification?"

My simple answer is yes. I do indeed selectively choose those things that offend me and give them more stature than simple context would normally allow. This becomes for me an ends justifies the means sort of argument. My premise begins where Fidonet began - as a truly noble experiment in communication that was unfettered by anything other than minimal levels of cooperation with respect to technical connectivity. This may seem trite, but Fidonet represented a great hope that communication couldn't be shackled by bureaucracy or regulatory intrusion, or commercial conquest. Fidonet represented in practice the concept that people are free to associate with whom they choose, on the terms that are mutually agreeable.

The transformation from that noble dream into the current nightmare is tragic. It offends me deeply as it ought to offend anyone who has the presence of mind to give credence to the worth of their freedom. It is a long, long way from that noble dream to where we have cretins asserting that nodes must conform to geographic boxes where they can be tormented by local despots. It is an equally distant remove from the original concept to have a small coterie of elflords presuming to "rule" Fidonet from positions where owe more to positional heredity than merit.

I must go Visage, my netmail runneth over, and for a pleasant change it isn't entirely composed on insane speculations about His Zorchness.

Regards,
Doc Logger
Furlang Island,
South Pacific