Copyright © 1999 by Lenna A. Mahoney

Theofe (private): You don't believe me?  Think over the order I put these in, what they have in common.
         I met Jay Jacklin halfway.
         The black, pink double paper airplane disappeared forever near the couch.
         The thin insect shaped like a wheel that I never found again after the rock hit me on the forehead, above the pineal.
         Crawling through the passage between closets, sliding in boxes down the stairs.
         Flea-flea.  Gorilla.
         The end of the world stood behind the English class.
         Deep swallowing mud, leopard frogs, backswimmers, crimson dragonflies.
         General Ivy, perhaps Councilor Ash, went into the surf three times before she disappeared.  She had to come back in a new avatar to help Colleen Redea of Mriodom, with the silver coins in her rose-violet dreamcolor hair.
         Schnickelfritz, my last favorite, after Cecily, Elizabeth R, and Halro Mackenzie Laurel.
         Flat bike tires, my missing diary, its pages sold at public auction in the outdoors hallway.
         Toy books, pierced earrings, small square colored tiles, an old library book, a fancy stone.
         Gaiety, Clarion's Queen for years, ruled the Uraniades before kidnapping Ademas.
         One of the three Steves got drunk and had to be kept away from the pier.
         M/, briefly a person as well as a planet.
         Penny Lane starts here.
         What do you believe now?

Beach BEM:  Suppose that Don McLean's song "American Pie" was not so much a set of allusions to (then) current events in rock music and popular history as a set of prophecies a la Nostradamus.  Allow me to demonstrate by rewriting four quatrains from the latter prophet's Vraies Centuries in the past tense, using the same metrical scheme as "American Pie":

Within the rock was milk-white clay;
It flowed out from a cleft like whey.
The timid folk would not go near,
Not knowing clay upheld the world
Before the empire's change unfurled.
And when it came the wonder seemed so clear.
A field was moved, a porphyry post
They put where rocks were gnarled the most:
Hermetic silver strewn,
With silver of the moon.
They saw the figures in the lake
Where a sculptor found new clay to bake;
He and his friends of gold partake.
And few would take their place.

Soon, soon, all disorder erased,
The century will show a very sinister face;
The lonely masked ones will be wholly debased.
Surely few would want to be in their place.
Few would want to be in their place.

Those were quatrains (1,21), (1,43), (9,12), and (2,10).  Heavens, that was excruciating; I have more respect than ever for McLean's lyric talents.  Ignore the ineptitude of my muse and consider:  is this poesy really so much more gnomic than any verse of that very singular song "American Pie"?  It seems plausible that McLean, finding himself afflicted with the same infirmity as Nostradamus (and Cassandra), concealed his precognition in much the same way as his ancient French predecessor.

NeuroGod:  Cool idea and that song is practically as ancient as Nostradamus too...  muhahahah >;-> (that old devil smiley)...  let me try a prophecy like the Cachinnodeists do it instead of McLean, okay?..  Scientists will start taking apart the eyes of wildcats to find out what makes them shine in the dark...  they'll be looking for new kinds of chemicals to put on the insides of TV screens and CRTs to get color pictures...  They'll do real well with the eyes from lions and tigers and panthers but when they get to cheetahs they'll be SOL because cheetahs never phosphor...

Thalp:  Beauty:  perceived pattern or structure that compels a responding attraction. 
         A perception of beauty is found in all sapients.  This is felt by all to be a redundant statement.  The mind has to have compensation for its function else it turns against life and then self-blocks its action.  Then the species must become non-sapient to survive.  Somatic pleasure rewards reproduction, similarly the perception of beauty, mental insight, and perhaps humor are special rewards for the sapience.

Ruby Arsenic:  Clearly there can be considerable difference between eschatological dreams (or visions), because mine aren't anything like Paisley's, or Nostradamus', or Patmos Johnny's (I mean Revelations, of course).
         A couple walked down the street toward the corner.  She had an errand to run at the corner gas station; he resigned himself to wait.  While she showed the man behind the parts counter the vehicle light that had stopped working, her companion glanced over the two motorized bicycles that were parked between the pumps and waiting for maintenance.  They looked as clean and efficient as any machines the man had ever seen, with slick light-grey paint and ribbed whitish translucent balloon tires.  The water with which the tires were being filled bubbled and foamed within the plastic.
         Suddenly the man felt a gush against his feet and turned, startled.  A thick-walled utility hose lying near him on the pavement was splashing his shoes with water.  A nearby gas-station employee grunted something that was more an apology than not and turned down the flow from the hose.  Stepping from the puddle, the man looked over at his companion.  She was concluding her transaction; he remembered noticing out of the side of his attention that the parts clerk had seemed to disagree with her about the proper repair or replacement of the headlight. 
         Now the clerk's disgruntlement, which had looked almost like hostility, was altogether subdued; but he still had one point to make.  Gesturing almost didactically, he produced from behind the counter an odd little gadget, holding it with his fingertips.  It was a size to fit in the hand, but so brilliantly chrome-plated that it could be seen in clear detail from several yards away.  The thing was in the form of the figure eight (not flat, but a torus twisted over on itself) and from the juncture protruded a short rod.
         As the couple walked away from the gas station, the man considered the smooth little device.  Some sort of tool or key, perhaps?  It had looked peculiarly like an object with symbolic significance:  infinity, or the male genitalia.  Twilight was becoming night as the two turned right at a corner and began to walk up the slight incline.  She went on telling him about her childhood.
         He could clearly imagine the street she had so often walked down in her adolescence:  the dirt interspersed with pavement, the hot thin sunlight, the large lethargic dogs staring silently from weed-eaten yards, the old people calling their grandchildren from games to chores.  It was such a childhood as he could never have thought of.  She had often gone down to the seashore as the storms came in, and stood watching while the waves, wind, rain and rocks broke upon each other.
         Suddenly he stopped and caught her arm, and pointed at the sky.  "Look there!"  There were bright straight lines drawn here and there across the sky, as though some of the stars had just finished sketching.  None of the lines formed any patterns, though there were more with every breath; but the figures of the constellations were manifesting more clearly than ever.  Clearly some curse was working itself out upon them.  Thinking back, he understood the chrome talisman.
         Now many of the stars were brighter, and some were almost disks.  None twinkled.  There was a great dreadful loveliness to the bright but still dusty whorl of the galaxy that now filled most of the sky.
         He had an impression of great light, very briefly, and then of darkness.  He could see the trees and buildings around him as absolutely black silhouettes against a featureless, lightless sky that was the color of the inside of the eyelids.  Another visual shock, and the darkness and dismay were complete.
         He sat down on the curb and felt vaguely around for help, or explanation, or his friend.  Something thin hit him a sharp but nearly painless buffet on the knee.  He cried out her name and rolled back onto his back on the sidewalk, half curled against further blows, making feeble incapable attempts to ward them off.  His foot struck something that moved away and he heard her voice protesting at some distance incalculably greater than the length of his leg.  Then another darkness, and paralysis, came.

NeuroGod:  Maybe the chrome thingus was the key to wind up the universe and the guy behind the counter forgot to do it?.. oooops, he said...

Paisley is My Friend:  Let me get this straight, Neuro-G.  You're trying to tell us all that the so called "music of the spheres" isn't anything but a kid's wind-up musicbox? 

Theofe:  Some of my co-dopples from Oncorya formed a cot called The Motoslybnians.  They create IVE hypermusic.  Each note stands for, can call up a phrase, section from another piece, if the listener so reacts.  Some Gregarians also admire The Motoslybnians as Listeners.  Listeners collect interest for listening to music, IVEmentally recording it while wedged in.  Their composing, performing expertise leads them to notice important features.  They recognize, record subtle percepts that amateurs would miss.  Usually they start by listening to a piece.  Then they perform in it, conduct it, record it by listening to it a few more times while wedged in.  Me, I prefer music composed, not compiled.
         IVE contains many compiled novels, omnisensory hypertext.  Easy to get to the end, find out what happened.  The reward, in finding out how, what surprising events, riddles came between.  If you don't enjoy the details, you haven't got a life.

Beach BEM:  For example, one might redo Dune as a theatrical Jacobian revenge tragedy in blank verse, including the dramatic interior monologues, and make the Baron Harkonnen a villain in the grand Shakespearian style.  He well deserves it.
         Rewrite Titus Andronicus as cyberpunk.  Lavinia would not be a girl who is brutally raped and mutilated, but a computer intelligence who is hacked.  Her famous software developer Titus determines to avenge her; the plot continues from there with increasing mayhem.  Ideally, George Romero would film the revised play with Industrial Light & Magic F/X and infinophonic sound.

NeuroGod:  Oh-kay!..  now what about this fact that there's one character who appears in all of Shakespeare's plays in different disguises, he's supposed to be someone like the Wandering Jew?..  Or maybe it's a she...  The blurb in Omni was real coy, like work it out for yourself and no gender pronouns...  do you think one of King Lear's daughters was one of the Three Witches?..

Beach BEM:  I would say that you were reading the April issue of Omni.

NeuroGod:  Oh no... not when I'd almost gotten all of Shakespeare's plays put into chronological story order... I want to disappear...  I'm so embarrassed...

(:-) :-) -) ) ) )
that's a Cheshire smiley...

NeuroGod:  I'll tell you a better tall tale than that since the board is all for tall tales these days...  Fat isn't really less dense than muscle...  The only people who've learned to levitate are fat people but they don't know it...  If you slugged one of them and put him on the scales he'd weigh more being unconscious...  Let's see you top that one, do it in public why don't you...

NeuroGod:  Oh yeah?  Bet you never knew this, Belle...  ever heard of nitrocellulose...  cute little old classic explosive...  well the latest terrorist gimmick is to take a bale of hay which is pure cellulose in case you didn't know and dump it in nitric acid to nitrate it...  then just stick the hay wherever they want a bomb, it looks soooo innocent...  they call it RIP, Rest In Pieces...

NeuroGod:  Well then you're really not going to go for this next one...  I used to know a guy, he'd take his own freshly-cut hairs with the sharp ends on them...  He'd drill the hairs into the palm of his hand till they stuck there...  It would take him a while...  Then he'd show it to someone who was easy to pukify, or show it to some girl so she'd ask how he got hair on his palms...

NeuroGod:  You like urban legends huh...  Well I heard one you'll truly hate...  you know the bacteria that make dead things rot?..  well we've been holding them off with refrigeration and preservatives...  and they've been evolving all the time...  now some kinds of germs have turned up that can't be stopped any more...  not just that we're going to starve when our food rots extra fast on the store shelves...  but think what happens when the bugs with super rotting power get into live people...  talk about living dead...  muhahahah!  that's what you get for not mailing in public!

Ruby Arsenic:  I'm willing to move anywhere but Maine, because that's where Stephen King hangs out.  Figure it this way:  he writes horror; he sets most of it in Maine; enormous numbers of readers read it and at least temporarily believe it; and maybe sometimes belief, uh, makes things happen.  Thiiiiiiiiings, you get my drift?  Worse things than Bill and I have now; things far worse than apricots.
         A year without apricots is like a day without nuclear fallout.
         Last year at about this time our major apricot tree was bearing.  To spare you suspense, I'll say here that since then the tree has been cut back to a very truncated fractal indeed.  But last year we had a, well, apricot-colored squushy carpet under that tree.  It was hot.  It was sicky.  I meant sticky, but let it stay.

___________________________________________
Recipe for Apricot Fling:

30 lb/day of fallen apricots
Lacing of overjoyed earwigs
Sprinkle with apricot-colored and -filled grasshoppers
Oodles of paper bags
One extremely affectionate cat

Pick up the apricots and put them into a paper bag.  Keep doing so until the cat falls on her back, belly craving a rub, right on top of the apricots you were about to pick up.  Pet sticky cat.  Then discourage cat.
         Pick up the apricots while observing the charming antics of the earwigs and hoppers, and wondering when the yellowjackets are going to arrive from their burrow eight feet away.  Pet cat.  Pick up cat, speak reproachfully to cat, carry cat five feet away.  Observe cat staring at you uncomprehendingly with big apricot-colored eyes and starting to walk back.
         Pick up apricots with unseemly haste.  Pet cat.  Nice kitty.  Put cat in garage and close the door.  Pick apricots and take the full bag to the garbage bin.  Pick the next bagful.  Pick up bag.  Observe apricots cascading out of no-longer structurally sound wet sticky apricot-flavored bag.  Scrape apricots off sidewalk with snow shovel and try double bags.  Then put yourself in double bag and scream.  It cures hiccups.

___________________________________________

Fun for the family!!!  At one point we had about 150 lb of apricots in our garbage bin.  It took both of us to pull same over our rocky downsloping driveway.  It picked up speed.  We didn't.  We glanced at each other with a wild surmise and gasped, "o no! it isn't stopping" and jumped out of the way.  The bin did not explode but we heard earwigs laughing.  I was downright polymerized with chagrin.
         Oh yes, we did let the cat out of the garage.

Sabre:  Here is a thought problem for all of you.  If someone stands inside a spherical mirror what does he see when he looks at the reflections?  Do not cheat by setting it up on your 3-D rendering software!

Paisley is my Friend:  Himself, I'd guess.  Or was it a trick answer you were after?

Aquinas:  In order to inductively envision the effective image distribution, some knowledge of the morphitude of the illumified conformation must be supplied.  Three limiting cases can be readily theorized:  ortholucent, schizolucent, and pantolucent morphitudes.  From the point of view of imaginous distinction, the dominatious aspect of the morphitude of an ortholucent conformation is its phase geometric configuration and that of a schizolucent conformation is its phase pseudotopology.  For some precisely collimated ortholucent morphitudes, it is possible to gyrify exact analytical expressions for the effective image distribution (footnotes 1, 2, and 3).  For schizolucent conformations in which the visotes are randomly intromented, an aptosimate form of the effective image distribution is gyrified by many different methods, the most discitional of which is derived from illuminific ether theory (IET) (footnotes 4 and 5, in part).  However, it is known (footnote 6) that in panlucent conformations the visotic coefficients differ by two or more orders of morphitude.  In such rarefied cases IET fails to provide gyrificacious estimates of the effective image distribution in the crucival "X" region, that is, in the morphotopid range around the Nyker-Ensign cohabitation threshold.
         In other words, you have failed to inform us of a most important datum, to wit, whether the sphere contains one or more light sources and where it or they is or are placed.

Beach BEM:  The point you raise is (pardon my play on words) illuminating.  A rather different but equally intriguing criticism can be set forth using the arguments upon which the Banach-Tarski paradox is based.  (These principles were explained by A.K. Dewdney in Scientific American, April 1989, p. 116).
         Briefly, it has been mathematically proven that any body that is bounded and has a non-empty interior can, in theory, be decomposed and recomposed into any other body that meets the same two criteria.  Applying this theory to any imaginable real physical body instead of remaining in the realm of hypothesis, we find that any solid object can be disassembled into some finite number of pieces (of unimaginably complex shape) and reassembled into any other solid object comprised of the same material.  The fact that volume and mass need not be conserved in this process constitutes the Banach-Tarski paradox.  A mathematician publishing under the "nom de numbre" of Arno Lipof has devised a computer program to give exact directions for the correct equicomposition procedure.  This process, however, has not yet been put into practice because even our modern machining equipment does not possess the requisite precision for the cutting and assembly operations.
         Now consider, at your leisure, the interior of Sabre's sphere of mirrors and whatever light it contains.  The volume filled by the light is demonstrably contiguous and non-empty (of light, at any rate).  This light is composed of photons moving about at the speed of light and, therefore, constantly changing their positions with inconceivable rapidity.  It is far from impossible that the photon motion will result, by pure chance, in the decomposition of the light volume into Banach-Tarski subvolumes and the subsequent recomposition of the light volume in a shape that extends outside the walls of the sphere.  (The precision of the photonic assembly and disassembly is far more than adequate, being limited only by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.)  The recomposition of the light volume leads to an indescribable topological transformation of the images in the sphere, and the leakage of light caused by volumetric expansion eventually allows all the light in the sphere to escape, no matter how bright the original light source(s).  This inevitable outcome of the laws of mathematics may be observed within any perfectly closed container. 
         It then must follow that Sabre's riddle is operationally unmeaningful.  In the first place, the steadily increasing darkness within the sphere would rapidly make it impossible to see the reflections.  More significantly, equicomposition would distort those reflections in a manner that can barely be described by mathematics, and certainly not by words -- which as we all know are much less precise tools even than lathes and saws.  Sabre's question is therefore one that does not permit itself to be answered, an appropriate corollary of the Banach-Tarski paradox. 

La Belle Dame Sans Souci:  Every time I try to figure out what it would all look like my brain goes into tinier and tinier circles because of the reflections of reflections of reflections.  Is there any more to it than that?

Citizen Paine:  I don't know what you see in that mirror but what I see iz perfection!  Don't drool girlz there'z more than enuf for all of ya, don't push well yeah ya can go right ahead and push _there_ .

NeuroGod:  Boys and girls, can you say tes-tos-ter-one?..  I knew you could...

Citizen Paine:  Hey I wanna hear about sex in Gregaria!  How bout a good horny stacked she-doctor like Bev Crusher?  SEX!  SEX!  SEX!  Science fiction needz more sex yeah!  Never mind sci-fi, I'm a bachelor and I need more sex!  (pant, pant, slobber drippin on galoshez and overcoat held way way open, need lotsa room here)
         Anyhoo I dunno about you otherz but I wanna get off of this sick sick planet before They start doin sex to git govt fundin.  Don't laugh, I see it All now!  Prostitution to feed the Poor!  Bingo fer Bodies!  The State Lottery fer Lovin!  First the Special Olympics now the Special Miss America Beauty Pageant!  Officer, what the hell ya doin in my room and why do ya have such a big white net?  The better to provide care for the needy, m'dear Paine!

Beach BEM:  If you want to observe sex in SF, you would do well to watch Doctor Who and his interstitial assignations... with his TARDIS.  What is even more shocking, the TARDIS was the Doctor's father, or rather one of his fathers, before the Doctor altered his (the TARDIS's) sex to female.
         TARDISes are reputed to be the covert third and fourth sexes of the Gallifreyans.  Ever since the time of Rasselon, inventor, warrior, and king, the TARDISoid Gallifreyans have been unable to reproduce without mindlinking with a male humanoid Gallifreyan, and vice versa.  The presence of a TARDISoid mindlink at birth is the sole sine qua non for the heightened mental and regenerative powers possessed by the humanoid Gallifreyans like the Doctor.  Lacking the engrams of that birthlink, a humanoid who attempts mindlink with a TARDIS usually goes mad.
         On the whole, I find Thalp's GWs, which may well represent the crucial next step of TARDISian evolution, to be a much more socially redeeming idea.  ;-)

Theofe:  Sex, you ask?  Hordes of it.  Homosex, heterosex, autosex, polysex, cryptosex.  Sex within species, without.  Sex within oneself, without.  Sex with magical elementals, with pure machines, with golems.  With unattached still lively body parts, with magically animated objects.  (Like the broom that gave Mickey Mouse so much trouble in Fantasia.)  Sex in the real-time-now personal body, projected into someone else's body, in VR fiction, in IVE contact (with, without emotional, somatic filters).  Sex sober, drugged, in trance.  Cool sex dangling in interstellar space in a ballfield.  Hot sex in the outer corona of a star, as near as a GW can safely go.  Sex while drowning, stifling in a barely filtered gas giant atmosphere, survival not guaranteed, for the auto-erotic asphyxiators.  Sex requiring enemas, flying feather chairs, masses of chilled vibratory black rubber leeches.
         So did you have something specific in mind?

Citizen Paine:  Somethin specific?  You bet!  ain't there no Amazon planetz?  Think of it thousandz of them sleek warrior wimmin wearin littel gold leather straps and banglez standin in line beggin for inzemination.  Oh man!  Hey I'll volunteer.  Ya don't haveta drag me by my handle :> hurry up and send a taxi while I'm still in the mood, I'm not a lightswitch ya know.  Not the twist-on kind anyway.  ;->

Theofe:  Sorry, no Amazons.  I do know a half-habitable world where the macopave completely favors oreads, dryads, naiads.  So by the very nature, men can't get no satisfaction.  The birds, the bees, the tadpoles can, those of the proper size.  No gerbils need apply.

Citizen Paine:  Aw damn, no breast fer the wicked.

Thalp:  Perversion:  any potential pleasantry carried out in a way that refuses pleasure to any essential participant.

Ruby Arsenic:  Gee whillikers.  Can perversion be a natural act?  That is, can animals be perverts?  What about our parakeet's long scandalous affaire d'amour with his swing?  What about the quail who mated messily with my mother's suede shoes?  (They were brown, they had openings, he had a bird brain, what did he know?)

Free Meson:

The penguin swims but cannot soar;
   His formal suit is seldom dry.
His lack of bow-tie we deplore,
   But envy that he needs no fly.

Ruby Arsenic:  This is your lucky day, bird-lovers.  I have handy for upload a long list of birds much more unusual than penguins.  Here they come, look out below...

PROBLEM BIRDS
         Eared grebe. Wandering tattler. Yellow-breasted chat.  Be discreet in their vicinity.
         Ashy petrel.  A dirty bird.
         Spectacled eider.  A nerd bird.
         Loggerhead shrike.  Natural enemy of the northern spotted owl.
         Marbled godwit. Long-billed dowitcher.  Notorious cultists.
         Prothonotary warbler.  A musical talent related to the legal eagle.
         Noddy tern.  He can't say no.
         Killdeer.  He only hurts the one he loves.
         Black Brant.  An outlaw wanted in nine Western states.
         Crissal thrasher.  Its discoverer, Mad Jack Crissal, had a black eye for some weeks after the encounter.

GLAMOR BIRDS
         The Magnificent Frigatebird.  A movie classic directed by Orson Owls.
         Blue-footed booby. Pink-footed shearwater. Sharp-shinned hawk. Lesser yellowlegs. Black-legged kittiwake. Bristle-thighed curlew.  The fashionable feetwear crowd.
         Dickcissel.  The fashionable effete-wear crowd.
         Great Tit.  Not to be mistaken for Carol Dodo.
         California Gull.  An old David Lee Roth® favorite.
         Purple Gallinule.  The stage name of Purple Martin.

TROUBLED BIRDS
         Rhinoceros auklet. Thick-billed murre.  Nose surgery is scheduled for Friday next.
         Hepatic tanager.  Led a jaundiced adolescence.
         Chuck-will's-widow.  Suttee enthusiasts in the Goatsucker family.
         Pectoral sandpiper.  Sorry, but he's no threat to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

ODD BIRDS INDEED
         Anhinga. Gadwall. Oldsquaw. Dotterell. Limpkin.  Sanderling. Whimbrel.  Dovekie. Bufflehead.  Water birds named by people with water on the brain.
         Greater scaup. Least bittern.  No sizes in between.
         Fish crow.  But not quite like roosters.
         Ancient murrelet.  He stoppeth one of three.
         Lazuli bunting.  Popular at baby showers for boys.
         Varied bunting.  For undecided babies.
         Pigeon guillemot.  Makes more pigeons lose their heads.
         Bushtit.  A recent First Lady raised a pair of these.
         Copper-tailed trogon.  The latest fad in condoms.
         Caracara. Chachalaca. Pauraque. Sora.  Spanish in four easy lessons.
         Phainopepla. Pyrrhuloxia.  And Greek in two.
         Yellow-bellied sapsucker. Sulfur-bellied flycatcher.  Their hybrid offspring are banned in Boston, having starred in "I Am Curious, Yellow".
         Pygmy nuthatch.  For loons like me.

AND BIRDS THAT MAKE EVEN ME GULP AND WALK AWAY SLOWLY, DEVOID OF COMMENT
         Red-whiskered bulbul.
         Pomarine jaeger.
         Bahama honeycreeper.

Beach BEM:

(Debate Organizer's Note:  One of the frontiers of libertarian political philosophy is the definition of personal property rights in non-delimitable resources such as those that are loosely termed "ecological".  Such resources include endangered species, groundwater, scenery, and air; of these resources the least philosophically scrutinized has been air.  This issue's debate centers around the question of the proper libertarian approach to take in the realm of personal air rights.  The debate is excerpted from the April 1993 issue of the newsletter "Freedom in Your Face.")

(1) MINAEROBE POSITION
         The significance of the issue of "personal air rights" can be seen in small in the contention arising at any libertarian meeting that includes both smokers and non-smokers.  Is smoking an intrusion on the rights of the non-smokers, or are the non-smokers depriving the smokers of rights by limiting their smoking?
         Certainly, as long as there is no definition of personal air rights consonant with libertarian principles, we can expect these and other, more profound, controversies to weaken the Libertarian Movement.  We suggest that a definition can be obtained by following the logic of privatization.
         An individual's personal air right could be defined as the continuing right to a certain volume of air (the volume breathed by an average person of that age, size, and physical fitness level) of a certain purity (the air quality prevailing in the region and period of the individual's birth).  This volume of air is that which can be considered to be continuously homesteaded by an individual.  While this definition contains a certain degree of arbitrariness, the same is true of common definitions of rights in other resources, such as the electromagnetic frequency spectrum allocation procedures proposed by numerous privatizers.
         At present, no air right is defined in law.  We therefore suggest the following scheme for personal air privatization.  The government should put personal air rights on sale, for a nominal amount, to all individuals ex utero at the time of the enactment into law of the Personal Air Rights Bill.  (Individuals born subsequently will automatically be charged a fee based on the market price at that time for personal air rights.)  These rights will be transferable.  An individual who does not purchase such rights at the time of the bill's enactment, or who later sells them, will not be allowed to prosecute any civil action or vote on any ballot measure pertaining to air pollution:  for example, anti-smoking and anti-noise laws.
         This approach will serve the double purpose of removing air quality from the domain of the "tragedy of the commons" and of providing a legitimate source of income for the government.

(2) ANAEROBES
         The minaerobic approach to the definition of personal air rights does not begin to solve the problem of personal air contamination.  To say nothing of the manner in which the minaerobes intend to support and finance that wholly unconscionable entity the State!  This problem, like so many others, can best be resolved by the combined use of technology and a voluntaryist political ethos.
         The only way in which air can be defined as a resource not held in common is to make it a resource held by individuals or groups that have mutual-assistance contracts.  The air presently circulating around the Earth should be captured in containers (by entrepreneurs who thereby homestead the air), and then sold to individuals for use in their own personal, home, and workplace air systems.  The natural biosphere can be moved to "air domes" which are accessible on a pay or charity basis as fully voluntary parks protected by property rights.  This practice will, in any case, be the one necessary in future work on other planets or in interplanetary space, and possibly also on this planet should pollution proceed far enough.
         Note the side benefits of this approach.  Homes, workplaces et al. will become closed systems far more amenable to definition of other types of property rights than are the present, more interpenetrative loci.  In addition, we can lay the essential propertarian groundwork for our extraterrestrial destiny.

(3) FACULTATIVE (OPPORTUNISTIC) AEROBES
         There are no "rights" anywhere.  Nature and physical law provide no such protection for individual choices.  Rights are mere fictions whose contemplation leads only to a progressive social and personal separation from reality and realism.  In the realm of air resource conflicts, the discussion of a "right to breathe" merely evades the question of who is to enforce that "right" and who will benefit from the pretense.
         In any society that bases its air allocation on "rights", the rich and powerful will end by controlling the air supply through a systematic manipulation of the enforcement system and of the terms in which political discourse is conducted.  The same thing will happen in a rights-less society, in which "them as has the air owns it" and whoever can get his hands on the most clean air has the privilege of breathing it.  In either case, social Darwinism will inevitably occur; so why even waste our breath discussing rights?
         The most powerful and competitive people in our world are already moving to change the world we know to one in which "transferable air rights" (and "rights" to other previously natural resources) can be used to manipulate the populace into obedience.  Our best Libertarian strategy is to prematurely accelerate that trend into even greater oppression, so that the populace becomes alarmed and willing to rebel.  That will be our only chance to take the air away from the System so that we can continue to breathe free.

Citizen Paine:  Hey my man I'm not gonna let you get away with makin fun of us libz that way!  Aw cummon lets fight!  Where are those fistz of death, jeez bring on them flamethrowerz, .... (message called on account of insanity)

Theofe:  The Temporal Arts coteries have a saying, "Time is permeable, not deniable."  Time travel hasn't yet become accessible to magic, null.  True scrying doesn't foretell.  Neither do other mancies, not often.  They can only show what goes on elsewhere at the same time.
         The Einvij might invent time travel of a sort within my lifetime.  They chose the archecultural goal of literally, physically returning to their past.  They worship Ouroboros.  Its image wraps round all their doors.  The Einvij have settled on amnesia as their time-travel method.  So they start by purging the body of all traces of modern food, medicine.  Einvij try to avoid all physical reconstructions, even medical ones.  They must also purge all memories inconsistent with the past.  (No one seems sure a successful Einva time traveller would have any personality left.)
         Some Einvij have theorized about a "relife kit".  A very specific memory-erasing bandaid.  Its chemicals would permeate though skin to erase memories back to a set age.  So that would send the user back to some point in his own past.  These temporalists think that habits, attitudes, personas wouldn't block time travel, would remain even without the inscribing memories.  The non-Einvij have some doubts.  Where would a traveler end up in space?  In his location on the planet back then?  In the planet's now location, in then space?
         Last-century records on Inthit show mystery amnesiacs of unknown origin.  They turned up with heads shaved, bodies showing marks of restraint, sedation, hospitalization.  The Einvij think some future agency will clear the arrivees' brains for medical, political reasons. Unknowingly half-freeing them to pass back in time, much to their relief.

Bill Inconnu:

In the beginning, Europe was without form and void.  And Caesar said, "Let three be Gaul."  And lo, there was gall.
         The Romans were only the first of numerous non-French-speaking barbarians to overrun Gaul (no, not France yet).  They were followed by the Invisigoths, who may never have left, and the Osteogoths, a particularly spineless and boneheaded tribe.  Sometime after the Sextons, Bombards, Vandals and other vagrants had also passed through, followed at last by the Twotons who utterly devastated the roads and didn't stop at weigh stations, the region was rezoned for the Franks.
         With the fall of Rome, all Europe descended deep into the Dank Dark Dreary Ages, except for France which remained the bastion of civilisation and food that civilised people could eat without immediately inducing projectile vomiting and offending the host, thereby starting one of the numerous small wars which wracked all of Europe except of course France.  This was just as well because France lacked the vital strategic weapon of P.V.  But soon the French language was invented (by Klaus the Palateless) restoring the balance of power and assuring the future.
         These weapons were put to a terrible and, frankly, quite messy test in 697 when Italy, Italy, Italy, Italy, and Italy launched La Guerre de la Bouche.  But Germany and Germany, who had such respect for the P.V. that they achtually incorporated it into their language, joined forces with the French and defeated the Italians with a combined assault of umlauts and accents grave.  Thus the way was prepared for Charlemagne and his descendants through such luminaries as Louis II the Stammerer and Charles the Fat.
         The first major industry of France was, of course, the production of kings. Their Louis series crested in popularity with the Louis Mark 14.  Later models, especially the Mark 16, were rejected by the market, even though designed to operate on cake.  The dead hand of the marketplace, as always, found a demand for the surplus industrial-strength cake slicers.  And so the French began to reject the subsistence regiculture of the past, preferring to be on the cutting edge of new technology.  The rallying cry of the French Industrial Revolution of 1787 was "Let me eat cake!" and their motto, "Liberté, Egalité, Maternité".  (They were, after all, horny fils du biches.)
         After numerous failures to penetrate the international market with their Napoleon product line, the French at last revived their original national specialty, the mass production of language:  fiction, poetry, philosophy, and DNA à la Français.  Their inventors have been preserved in French history (and vats of champagne).  One of the greatest of France's science-fiction writers, Cyrano de Bricabrac (not to be confused with his successor, Jules "Cake-Face" Urn) became famous for his Limoges nose, which grew every time he spoke English.  He lost the original in an unfortunate childhood accident with a mechanical cake-slicer.

Beach BEM:  After reading your Histoire I fell deeply despondent, wondering at all the French history that I had somehow missed in my years of study.  That night I tossed and turned until in the early morn I fell into a troubled sleep and a vision was vouchsafed me.
         In my fancy I was standing within the ruined donjon of a shattered castle.  The shapes of Drou and Elosset of Erlicey formed themselves out of the thin unsavory mists rising about me.  I could only shudder at the threats the brothers, for once in their lives united, uttered against you, your co-sysop, your computer, and everyone else connected with that fatal histoire that foolhardily neglected their multifarious deeds of valour and nefarious deeds of treachery!
         Beware!  I warn you most sincerely.  As you value your life and reason -- if an unsolicited French tourist phrasebook should come to you in the mail, do not open it!

La Belle Dame Sans Souci:  I found this old news hash wandering on the Net.  Hope you don't mind its being so very long.  Just scream if you already know the punchline!

DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia (PP) The heavy metal rock blasts across the empty crown prince has pledged to return to parliamentary democracy after the war, according to the high water mark to trap oil and prevent its spread inland.  Truckloads of orange entrap there.  The carcasses of dead fish Hussein ordered the oil released and beautiful creatures whose flight graced the skies and "Classified" paint to protect allied armor from friendly fire.
         War will cost $58 billion to $77 billion this fiscal year, according to Defense Department documents on tanks protecting an exclusive district where the top Communist leadership lives.  The two parties came to the conclusion that it is possicussions.  Iraqi troops at one point broke into foreign example, you need foods lower in cholesterol and saturated fats.
         Their 15-day hunger strike ended later in the day, when it overshot the runway and crashed into the Beagle Channel, 1,500 miles south of Santiago, they tried to swim 150 yards to a beach.  Several passengers, in despair, tried to jump into the U.N. Security Council.
         Only four deputies voted against the constitutional amendment and all survived.  Some survivors planned to leave immediately for home, but others decided to go ahead with the circuit, rode a roller coaster that included eight birdies and five bogeys.
         After the full withdrawal, the causes for the remaining U.N.  resolutions against Iraq dropped 6.45 percent the previous week, said Donoghue's Money Fund Report, a trade journal based on a game that has kept us flipping for decades.  Players must use their own flippers to try to sour opponents.  But beware, they may block your passage, or even capture a game piece, if President Bush continues to reject the outlook for the Gulf War.  The Dow Jones average of 30 industrials dropped 7.18 to avoid bloodshed.
         Of the 15 U.S. soldiers killed in action since February 2, Mr. Hentzen said the last shipment left the plant a week and a half ago destined for operation.  When seven Marines were killed late January by a missile fired from a U.S. helicopter, Watkins said, imports will increase to 65%.
         Israelis said the missile was destroyed by a Patriot statue of Enver Hoxha, then threw ropes around it and pulled it to the ground.  SPEAKER AFTER SPEAKER COMMENTED ONKS.  They also promised more "bunmail deliveries to servicemen and women stationed in the war zone.  The entire Congress is littered with leon."
         PepsiCo's 1,537,000 lies Thursday, which was declared an international day of student mobilization against, then marched to the Chicago Tribune's building to decry media coverage of the war.  Nomina monthhoppers rounded up nearly 500 enemy prisoners in a combined assault.  If necessary, they decontaminate.
         Near misses with wrong-way drivers in the swirling dust does a lot to break in U.S. military history.  At other times the horizon is lined with columns of Marine amphhead until it is almost too late to save your settings before you exit the program. 
         The ad said applicants would be transferred from 02 - 03 AM ET using 770 Kbytes diskspace.  Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said that in the meantime, the U.S. and its allies will "continue in at this point."  Hamilton offered a caution, SOVIET-SPANISH RELATIONS HAVE RISEN TO A RATHER HIGH LEVEL.  Consumer prices in Singapore increased by 0.1 per cent in January compared with December due to high blood pressure, putting in 31 hours of overtime the week before he died.
         Ryzhkov today left the Barvikha health centre in the Moscow region where army remained in Kuwait, and the world waited for Bush to give his own troops the go-ahead for the attack and needed only 92 minutes to beat Commonwealth champion Rob Parrella of Australia 7-1, 7-0, arrested on suspicion of swuctions.
         He was briefly detained at the local police station and then released following interventritions, took a stroll in a sector of Nablus, the biggest West Bank city, that was closed off to the plowed involvement with nuclear weaponry.  "The conservative National Party governmean specifically told the New Zealand Government not to carry nuclear weapons," said Flighand.  Alca arIea hahahaco ha hacahahahahahahahahahahahaha$!
         He said, "Greta Garbo, Loretta Young, Marlene Dietrich, they all floor like a worm," focusing upward.  "The war itself continues," he told reporters in a brief statement.  "We will continue to seek comilies in a rubber room," said Yvonne Miner of Savage, Minn.  After the cease-fire, all prisoners of war will be immediately released in Holliston, Mass.
         A spokesman for US Sprint said that company does not suspect that there is a link between the body's main fuel-regulating hormone and American forces making armed forays into Iraq and Kuwait in advance of a possible crude prices.  "The war itself continues," said spokesman Marlin Fitzwthing positive in the proposal, saying, "I don't want to give it any characterization."  The warty advisers lasted more than an hour and 40 minutes.  Sen. James Exon, D-Neb., said, "It isn't a question of whether the Soviets accept it but hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah ahah SINGAPORE is ended. 

Beach BEM:  Belle, I fear the punchline will be known only to the next generation.

I don't want to change the world.  I only want to burp it.