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'Star Wars Kid' born out of private moment on tape
Thursday, August 21, 2003 Posted: 3:33 PM EDT (1933 GMT)
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(AP) -- It was a moment of unadulterated goofiness, the kind of thing anyone might do with no one watching: A teen from Quebec videotaped himself as he pretended to wield a light saber "Star Wars" style.

But that private moment went public, very public, when classmates at his high school found the tape in a cabinet and uploaded it onto an Internet file-sharing site this past spring.

Now Ghyslain Raza is known far and wide as the "Star Wars Kid," with a fan base that only seems to be growing -- even though he doesn't want the attention.

The video shows the slightly portly teen awkwardly twirling a golf ball retriever like "Star Wars" bad guy Darth Maul, and has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. Web sites have been dedicated to the youth. Supporters have raised money for him. And several techies have created their own "clone" versions of the video, adding sound and visual effects or placing his image in any number of backdrops -- from "The Hulk" to "The Matrix."

Many teens who post their images on the Web would probably be thrilled to get this kind of attention. But Ghyslain, who made the video while doing a school project when he was 15, has said he didn't intend for it to be seen by his classmates, let alone people across the world.

"I want my life back," he said in an e-mail interview with the National Post newspaper, a Canadian daily.

Claiming that their son has been humiliated, his parents are suing the parents of the teens who put the video on the Web.

Some say the case may become a step toward setting privacy standards on the Internet, which has been difficult terrain to police. But in the meantime, Web surfers are having a field day with Ghyslain's image on any number of sites.

Elizabeth Murphy, a production manager for a Web design company in New York, says she finds herself visiting one of the sites often.

"Contrary to popular belief, I think it is not the Jedi kid's awkwardness that keeps him in people's hearts but his undeniable enthusiasm for what he is doing," Murphy says. "While I feel bad for him because he hates his new found popularity, I revisit the site anytime I am feeling down. It just cracks me up. I love this kid!"

Resonating with Web surfers
Experts say it's no wonder the video has only increased in popularity.

"It resonates because we all know what it is like to have moments like that," says Patricia Leavy, a sociology professor at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts, who specializes in popular culture.

"Personally, I sing and bop along to TV theme songs," she adds. "Embarrassing, yes. But also a part of being human."

Ghyslain's lawyer, Francois Vigeant, declined to comment, citing an upcoming court hearing. He said the teen and his parents, who live in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, also were declining interviews.

Meanwhile, the teen's supporters are working on his behalf.

Andy Baio, a 26-year-old computer programmer from Santa Monica, California, helped lead a fund-raising campaign for Ghyslain -- and claims to have purchased an iPod music player and gift certificates for him.

Others have started a petition to get him into the next "Star Wars" movie, which Lucasfilm Ltd. is currently filming in Australia.

A spokeswoman at the California-based film company would not say whether filmmaker George Lucas is considering the request.

"We are deeply saddened by this current situation and any difficulties this uninvited publicity might be causing [Ghyslain] and his family," spokeswoman Jeanne Cole said. "We have no other statement."

Regardless, many "Star Wars" fans hope Ghyslain will learn to enjoy his newfound fame.

"I guess I can feel his pain because it's so big," says Joshua Griffin, editor of TheForce.net, a Web site of "Star Wars" trivia and gossip. "But part of me thinks he should enjoy this. Drop the lawsuit and embrace this."

Griffin admits that he enjoys watching the video clips of Ghyslain.

"I definitely want to respect the kid's privacy. But...," he says, starting to laugh, "It's so funny. He's the 'Star Wars Kid' in all of us."

Still others applaud the lawsuit, and hope it will help set stricter Internet privacy standards.

"We need to ask 'What kind of culture are we going to have?"' says Lynn Schofield Clark, director of the Teens and the New Media @ Home project at the University of Colorado. "I'm hoping we're able to be a society where we do provide people's right to privacy and dignity."

But Baio warns that the lesson is "if you don't want to risk being the next Star Wars Kid, you should be very careful about what you videotape and where you keep it."





HAS ANYONE SEEN THIS?
IF YOU HAVE, PLEASE POST A LINK TO WHERE WE CAN FIND AND DOWNLOAD IT, THANKS!

ps- I think he should capitalize of it, who cares if he looks goofy???

The following is an article from CNN. Very interesting and very sad. In my opinion, this kind of coverage promotes a kind of competitive spirit amongst hackers: "Dude, their virus broke our record!"

I don't know how many of you know much about the hacker culture, but it's big and often glorified.  Anyway, check out this article: (by the way, a girl in one of my classes told me her brothers consulting firm was effectively shut down for 48 hours and it cost them an estimated half-million in losses...ouch!)

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SoBig.F breaks virus speed records
Friday, August 22, 2003 Posted: 2:25 AM EDT (0625 GMT)


(CNN) -- The SoBig.F computer virus -- which has already overwhelmed hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide -- has become the fastest spreading virus ever with experts warning the worst is yet to come.

Already the worm has caused an estimated $50 million of damage in the United States alone.

Among its casualties: It briefly brought freight and computer traffic in Washington, D.C. to a halt, grounded Air Canada and slowed down computer systems at many major companies such as advanced technology firm Lockheed Martin.

The sixth or "F" version of the SoBig infection disguises itself in e-mails which once opened scan a computer for e-mail addresses before sending scores of messages to the addresses it collected via its own inbuilt sending program.

The SoBig.F outbreak, first detected Monday, began 10 days after the Blaster worm (which itself infected an estimated 500,000 users) and has already beaten other infamous viruses such as LoveBug, Klez and Kournikova in terms of spread.

The first SoBig variant was released in January.

U.S.-based e-mail security group MessageLabs says the virus originated and is most prevalent in the United States.

"This is the most severe e-mail virus we've ever seen," MessageLabs' Josh White said.

"At its peak 1 out of 17 e-mails that we were processing was a copy of the SoBig.F virus. Certainly we haven't seen numbers like this before. It is spreading at a very fast rate and the volumes are high."

Internet service provider AOL (part of the AOL Time Warner group which includes CNN) says it scanned 40.5 million e-mails and found the virus in more than half. SoBig accounted for 98 percent of all viruses found.

The e-mail-borne worm arrives with various subject headers, such as: Your details, Thank you!, Re: Thank you!, Re: Details, Re: Re: My details, Re: Approved, Re: Your application, Re: Wicked screensaver or Re: That movie.

The body of the message is short and usually contains either "See the attached file for details" or "Please see the attached file for details."

Fooled that the e-mail is legitimate, the user opens the e-mail and triggers the worm, which then goes hunting for addresses. The flood of messages it then sends are capable of succumbing other users' inboxes or computer systems by the sheer volume of e-mails.

Worrying sign
The virus also implements a background program that turns an infected computer into a relay system for further messages from the virus' creator.

This part of the virus has led many computer security experts to believe the virus was written to try and beat spam filters.

Experts are predicting that though it will soon be brought under control, the infection is likely to spike early next week as many people in Europe and the U.S. return to work from (northern hemisphere) summer holidays to awaiting e-mail inboxes.

However, the worm is set to deactivate September 10 and halt further propagation. This itself is a worrying sign.

"The SoBig virus writer's use of an inbuilt expiry date indicates he is committed to inventing new and improved versions," MessageLabs' chief technology officer Mark Sunner said.

"Each variant released so far has exceeded the previous one in growth and impact during the critical initial window of vulnerability."

-- CNN Correspondent Bill Tucker contributed to this report.

I found this article interesting and wanted to share.  Any of you been victims of scam artists?
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Scams that sting even smart people

You can't avoid all of them but you can at least try to minimize the damage.
August 19, 2003: 2:19 PM EDT
By Jeanne Sahadi, CNN/Money Senior Writer

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – You're smart, you think you're good at reading people and you know those claims promising "great, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities" are pure bunk.

But that doesn't mean you're safe from scams. "Smart people never think it's going to happen to them. They think only the greedy, gullible or brain-dead would get scammed," said Dennis M. Marlock, a retired police officer and author of "How to Become a Professional Con Artist."

Sophisticated con artists can snare intelligent consumers because they are masters of human nature, can size up their prey and will say what you want to hear and make it highly believable, Marlock noted. And that's if they deal with you personally. Some scams are IQ-proof because the con artists work remotely.

Here are just a few scams that have taken in the smart and the not-so-smart alike.

ATM skimming: You don't advertise your PIN and other bank-account information, but a crook may get a hold of it anyway by rigging an ATM.

Here's one way the crime works: A tiny camera is inserted in or near an ATM's keypad and works in conjunction with a peripheral device attached to the ATM – perhaps a reader through which you're asked to swipe your card.

The devices capture information about your account and the criminals then create fake cards in your name that can be used at any ATM to siphon money from your account.

At greatest risk for skimming are those stand-alone, non-bank-related ATMs, like the kind you might see at stores, or ATMs that are located outdoors, said Diane Terry, senior director of TransUnion's Fraud Victim Assistance Department.

To prevent your card from being skimmed, avoid ATMs with any obvious oddities – such as a device over the card reader or a note telling you to swipe your card through a reader other than the one in the machine. And, as always, be sure to cover up the keypad while punching in your PIN.

Also, check your bank statement carefully, suggested John Hall, a spokesman for the American Bankers Association. If you notice any withdrawals that you didn't make -- even small ones -- alert your bank immediately.

If you detect skimming and report it to your bank within a "reasonable period" – typically two months, but check your bank's definition – "the bank will refund your money 100 percent," Hall said, so long as you can prove the fraudulent withdrawals were not yours.

Going phishing: A lot of people have gotten an e-mail in the past week that looks deceptively like it's from Citibank, complete with logo and dry bank-speak asking you to review the bank's new Terms and Conditions by clicking on the link and indicating your agreement with the new policy. Otherwise, the e-mail informs you, the bank will have to suspend your checking account.


Don't click on the link. And if you do, don't reply to the questions. Con artists interested in identity theft are "phishing" -- that is, stealing company logos to make e-mails requesting personal information look official. Once they get your information, they can wreak havoc in your financial life.

Citibank is just one among many companies that have been the target of phishers. Others include Best Buy, eBay and Bank of America.

One telltale sign the e-mail you get is fraudulent: the return address isn't from the company the sender claims to represent. For instance, one version of the fake Citibank e-mail came from a "Carolina_Sika@att.net." Another sign? Everybody and their brothers get one, even those without accounts at the company in question.

For other phishing scams, click here.

Getting crammed: Ever get a phone bill littered with international calls you never made? You may have gotten crammed.

Here's one way it works: Say your teenage son is using your home computer to view a porn site on the sly. He wants to view an image but doesn't have a credit card to pay. No problem. The site offers him an opportunity to see the image anyway by clicking on a given button.

Doing so automatically downloads dialer software, which disconnects the user's modem from its usual Internet service provider, triggers the modem to dial an international number and reconnects the modem to the Internet from an overseas location.

Often, Federal Trade Commission spokesman Daniel Salsburg said, "consumers have no clue they've been victimized and have no way to prevent it."

What's more, your phone carrier may expect you to pay the charges anyway even though you never authorized them, since the phone bill is in your name. The FTC has argued otherwise and even won one legal case on the matter in New York. But, unfortunately, it's still true that "a lot of consumers have a very difficult time getting rid of those bills," Salsburg said.

There are other ways you may get crammed on your phone bill or credit card. To learn about them, click here.

Passing bad checks: Say you're selling a big-ticket item like a car in an online auction and the highest bidder just happens to be someone overseas who sends you a cashier's check for, say, $4,000 more than the price agreed upon. Recognizing the error, the buyer tells you his or her secretary made a mistake and asks you to send a check back for the extra $4,000.

Being efficient, you deposit the cashier's check from the buyer and have the $4,000 check cut from your account during the same visit to your bank. Surprise, surprise – the cashier's check sent to you turns out to be counterfeit and now you're out $4,000.

Remember, Marlock said, a cashier's check isn't necessarily gold – it can take a week or more for a bank to certify that it's a good check. So if you find yourself in this situation, tell the buyer that you'd be happy to cut a check for the amount overpaid but only when the original check clears.  


--*Disclaimer

Hey, just a quick note about ISP's.  This doesn't apply to all of you who are fortunate enough to enjoy the multidudinous blessings of high-speed internet access, but for those denizens like myself who are limited to a dial-up connection there is good news.

If you are paying more than $9.99 a month you are being swindled, straight up!  I happen to use Juno which is in fact about $10 a month and I find that my connection is fast, etc.  but here is a new ISP that has dirt cheap prices:

www.550access.com

You pay $7.00 to set it up and then $4.75 a month thereafter.  You do have to purchase 6months or more of access from the start, but that's an unbeatable price.

Check it out, it might save you a lot.  And if you are using AOL, I suggest you get out fast...AOL is notorious for it's slow connections and diverse compatibility issues.

Dan

Take the survey!

http://www.metamath.com/multiple/multiple_choice_questions.cgi

My results:

Visual/Nonverbal 30 Visual/Verbal 32 Auditory 24 Kinesthetic 28

Your primary learning style is:


The Visual/ Verbal Learning Style


You learn best when information is presented visually and in a written language format. In a classroom setting, you benefit from instructors who use the blackboard (or overhead projector) to list the essential points of a lecture, or who provide you with an outline to follow along with during lecture. You benefit from information obtained from textbooks and class notes. You tend to like to study by yourself in a quiet room. You often see information "in your mind's eye" when you are trying to remember something.

[I can't think of a better place to post images inspired by the out-of-body experience, lucid dreaming expereince, etc. than here in the OBE discussion forum. Please post any images (ie. art, etc.) that have to do with OBE here if you like.]

Please CHECK OUT THE NEW PICS ADDED FROM ALEX GREY!

Hello! I can't think of a better place to post images inspired by the out-of-body experience, lucid dreaming expereince, etc. than here in the OBE discussion forum.  Please post any images (ie. art, etc.) that have to do with OBE here if you like..



Regarding the linking to images:
If you do not know how to do it, here is a quick lesson:
Find an image on the net and right click on it.  Then select the "properties" tab at the bottom of the menu that appears after you right click ion the image.  Then select (highlight) the URL (address) of the picture and copy it (copy by either holding down control and then hitting the c button OR going to the edit menu and slecting "copy".  Then come here to this thread and click on the little icon above that looks like this: .
Then the following will appear:
(not supposed to be a real image, just a representation of the OBE phenomenon)





Once again, the above image is not supposed to be real, just to represent what OBE is like.





























From  www.kheper.net/realities/ Astral

Although I probably could have (and should have) posted this in one of the other threads, I am posting this here because I would like this topic to recieve maximum exposure in hopes that everyone interested will chime in and provide commentary, links to other articles and their own ideas.

I recently printed out an article titled, "Spirituality and Technology: Exploring the Relationship" by a man name Michel Bauwens" which can be found at: http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5/bauwens/

I am going to copy and paste the article at the end of this post to save those of you interested the "trip" to the website, although I recommend printing it out and reading it whilst lying in bed with your head propped up by a pillow and another pillow accross your chest on which you can rest your arms and the reading matierial (my favorite way to read[])

I found this article very compelling (despite some weaknesses in logic and the fact that he could have expanded on some of the more vague and arcane ideas he puts forth) because I, for one, can see how technology, especially the internet, is changing mankind on a fundemental and even spiritual level, I mean think about how the ideas/info you are reading in this very moment are being transfered to your mind (e.g., this guy thinks, types an article, I find it, print it, read it, type my ideas, send it, you read it, etc...and it all happens so fast and even 10 years ago this would have had to been printed in a book, journal or letter or something and the chances we would have communicated would have been almost impossible!) it's mind blowing when you think about it!

Anyway, here is the article.  I am interested in what you have to say about it.  Besides the ideas about technology in general which are discussed in the first page or two, I was very compelled by the age old idea of mankind slowly falling away from a more divine consciousness and into one more grounded in materialsim, I think there may be something to this.  And then there is the question of which direction technology is taking us...further from spirituality or closer?  I prefer to think of it as doing both, depending on how it is utilized and by whom.

Here is the article:
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Spirituality and Technology: Exploring the Relationship

by MICHEL BAUWENS


This essay first looks at some of the social and cultural changes associated with the notion of a Digital Revolution, the result of the growth of the Internet and the emergence of 'cyberspace'. It then examines some basic 'spiritual' attitudes and how various debates within and between different schools of thought are changing attitudes about technology. Technology can be seen both as a degenerate practice and/or as a means to bring mankind to a higher level of consciousness or to a more well-developed civilization. Finally, the essay will discuss some of the emergent spiritual practices on the Internet itself.

The world is utterly and irreversibly changing right now thanks to the exponential growth of the Internet, a new global communications tool linking humans together in real time as never before. This sort of massive computer networking changes human relationships with time and space in a fundamental way. It is not an exaggeration to remark that much of the world is experiencing an important shift in the way in which it works.

Consider simply the effect of computer networks on the speed of knowledge transfer, and hence on the speed of cultural and technological evolution. Before the invention of the written word, it was not possible to codify knowledge nor to save it over time. 'When an old man dies', says an African saying, 'a library goes up in flames.' In pre-literate times, progress depended on the capacities of humans to remember and hence, progress was very slow.

With writing, but especially with the mass-produced book in the last century, knowledge became independent of its bearer and independent of Time. Knowledge was still fixed in physical objects however, so it was not yet independent of Space.

With computer networks, and with an increasing migration to wireless styles of communicating, knowledge is being liberated of the constraints of Space. When a network appears in a home, an organization, in a city or state or country, every innovation, every creative thought, every possible solution to a given problem, becomes widely and nearly instantly available over the course of the network.

This sort of computer network will accelerate the growth of culture and science. It will permit a greater diversity of science and culture, representing the ideas and emotions of many more groups of people, to become available to larger and more diverse audiences. At one time, it may have required thousands of years to double our collective knowledge about the world. Now, according to some calculations based on the mathematical study of 'novelty', it seems that this doubling time has been reduced to less than three years, at least in certain knowledge domains such as engineering. There indeed is some speculation that a hypothetical point in the not too distant future will occur, called the Singularity. At this point, knowledge will double in a single moment, leaving mankind utterly unable to even understand what is happening. According to some, we are indeed creating a world that is totally 'Out of Control' [1].

In this essay, I will first look at some of the social and cultural changes associated with the notion of a Digital Revolution. Then I will examine some basic spiritual attitudes and how various debates within and between different schools of thought are changing attitudes about technology. In this context, I will describe how technology is seen both as a degenerate practice and as a means to bring mankind to a higher level of consciousness or to a more well-developed civilization. I will also discuss some of the emergent spiritual practices on the Internet itself. But first, some comments on the notion of the Digital Revolution.


I mentioned how networks change relationships with time and space, and alter fundamentally social, political, and economic conditions. Liberating ourselves from the constraints of space means change in our definitions of territory, which in turn has serious implications for the ways in which we define law and politics. It also alters the way we explain community and human settlements, which traditionally have been based on the need to be close to physical products and the centralized structures of power. The recent growth of "tele"- activities points out this rise of new kinds of communities and social structures, in "tele"-education, "tele"- shopping, and "tele"-working.

It is possible that quite a few of the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution in the last century are being reversed at the end of this century. A great deal of recent growth in employment may be attributable to teleworking [2]. It has been reported that 9.1 million Americans already telecommute; this number is expected to increase by 15 percent annually [3]. Production technologies increase the efficiencies in creating material products with less manpower. Four decades ago, a third of the U. S. labor force worked in manufacturing; now it is less than 17 percent [4].

In the thirties, under influence of organizational advances like Taylorism, manual labor was heavily reduced and gradually expelled from the production process. In the last decade, a similar process is now in progress for 'routine' intellectual work. Many organizations are analyzing processes under the theme of "re-engineering" to further take advantage of technology and eliminate routine procedures [5]. The effect of the digital revolution on how we organize and experience work will be very important. Some analysts seriously argue that concepts of work, employment, and the job are altering forever [6].

Part of this digital revolution involves virtualization. Virtualization is just the latest step in the ways in which humans have transformed the material world for their own needs. In the agrarian age, nature and matter were transformed by first physical labor and then mechanical devices, tools to alter matter (and thus we had 'matter' vs. 'matter'). During the Industrial Revolution, the expenditure of energy was a new factor in the production process, energy in the form of processed fuels (and thus we had: matter vs 'matter + energy'). Tools, powered by new energy sources, led to a quantum leap in productivity.

Now a new factor has been added to this equation, information. Today, the natural world is being transformed not only by using matter and energy, but also by information, leading to a new explosion of productivity. In one way, virtualization is the increased substitution of matter by information. This substitution has profound consequences for the relations of humankind to nature, between humans and other humans, and between humans and machines. This new layer of information is becoming increasingly prominent as virtualization intensifies.

In the past, the credo of science, the industrial world, and materialism was simply "if I can't touch it, it is not real." Today, it is nearly reversed to the point where it could be said "if you can touch it, it's not real." Information has become more important, in political, economic, social, and philosophical terms, than material objects.

This alteration has affected leisure time. Many find watching nature documentaries on television more preferable than real walks in the woods. This process has been intensified by new cyberspace media. For many, the Internet is not just a continuation of traditional mass media, but a new shift. The Internet, unlike other media, represents a new collective mental space. Hence the notion of cyberspace, a parallel 'virtual' world, co-existing in tandem with real world. Over the long term of human existence, our prehistoric ancestors existed principally in a natural environment. Civilized humanity occupied an invented architectural environment. Our descendants may principally live in a digital environment (mentally speaking, that is), where they will spend a great deal of time, working and playing. If this digital revolution is altering civilization, it will also impact our metaphysical imagination, the basic building blocks of our experience.


What are the reactions of spiritual schools of thought towards this digital revolution? Let me digress by examining the notion of the 'Wisdom Tradition' itself. If I define spirituality as the means through which mankind finds meaning in its relationship to the totality of the external world, I can then examine the most basic human activities and decipher their relationships to man's place in the universe.

In the modern world, there clearly is a divorce between those who subscribe to a belief in an Absolute or Supreme Being, those who accept the existence of non-material realms and beings, and those in the rationalist or scientific camps. Within the camp of the spiritualists, there are many great differences in terms of methodology and approaches. In very general terms, we can distinguish paths based on 'the concepts of "belief" and "faith," and those based on concrete experiences. Some distinguish between "exoteric" religion, based on belief and aimed at those without concrete experiences, and the "esoteric" tradition, for those who do indeed have experience with the "divine." This body of knowledge, known as the "Tradition," "Philosophia Perennis," or the "Wisdom Tradition," is considered to be the foundation of an enormously diverse corpus of religious thought [7]. That such a tradition itself would exist, is subject to debate, but an increasing number of scholars do accept it (Ken Wilber, Huston Smith, Aldous Huxley, Rene Guenon, Julius Evola, ...).

I accept that there is a Wisdom Tradition but in my personal analysis, there are two main interpretative schools within it. This contradiction has an impact on the meaning and role of technology in the psychological and spiritual development of mankind. I will call these two schools of thought the "pessimistic" and the "optimistic" interpretations of the Wisdom Tradition.

The pessimistic view sees human history as progressive degeneration or regression. Some writers, like Rene Guenon and Julius Evola, argue that a 'spiritual golden age' existed only in the mythical past (though for them, it is evidently not 'mythical' but 'real'). Early mankind, in this perspective, was more developed spiritually than current civilization. It is argued that the first ruling classes were primarily spiritual and over time corrupted into the military and merchant classes. Support for this spiritual loss is also based on an interpretation that many sacred texts argue for a gradual loss of consciousness over time. This continual loss of the spiritual culminates in world destruction. Hence, for traditional Hindu scholars, we are now in the Kali Yuga age, before the destruction of the earth, and the beginning of a new cycle.

The 'optimistic' school of thought, as exemplified in the works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, takes an evolutionary approach. These philosophers generally agree that there has indeed been a fall, at the creation of the Cosmos and our universe, when divine consciousness was lost in unconscious matter. But from that point on, there has been progress towards ever higher levels of complexity and consciousness.

This basic attitude towards spirituality and life colors spiritual points of view. Pessimism leads to dualism, a fundamental split between the human and the divine; or Gnosticism, where there will always remain a split between the Knower and the Known; or towards negative attitudes of the body. Indeed, pessimistic spiritual practices emphasize "you're not (fill in the blank)," as in "you're not your body" or "you're not your mind." Optimistic spiritual practices avoid this duality through mysticism or simply a fusion with the divine or in a positive approach towards the body and the self. Optimistic techniques teach that an individual is more than a sum of their parts, as in "you're more than your ego" or "you're more than your body." In reality, most existing spiritual schools contain both pessimistic and optimistic elements, but it is very instructive to look at these schools and practices simply from these more 'radical' perspectives.

Hence, man's technology, and especially the current cyberspatial phase, can be seen from one view as a 'Luciferian' God Project, an attempt to usurp 'God' and to liberate man from all limits imposed by Nature. Alternatively, technological advances can be viewed as the means to spark the evolution of mankind towards higher levels of collective consciousness. I will continue my exploration on the meaning of technology inspired by these two points of view, as a God Project and as Electric Gaia.


Metaphorically, technology perhaps started mythically when Adam ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. At that moment, mankind said "we can do it on our own and we want to understand the meaning of it all." The very first tools enhanced our mastery over Nature rather than encouraged our harmony with it. For spiritualists, there are two ways of approaching knowledge, one which will lead to holiness or wholeness, the other to a false, arrogant, and destructive mastery over nature. The first approach is based on the idea that mankind is created as an image of God. By discovering our inner being, we discover our God-like aspects. Spiritual practice will therefore give us aspects of the powers of the divine. To some, technology is simply a crude substitute for spiritual powers. Technology indeed is magic; as Arthur C. Clarke said, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Pessimists see the inner way strengthening human character, arguing that technology progressively weakens humanity. This interpretation would fit with Marshall McLuhan's thesis that technology extends our senses. The more we extend technology and thus our external senses, the less need for inner senses. This technosphere is increasingly becoming inimical to both our bodies and minds.

Pioneers in artificial intelligence, such as Marvin Minsky and in nanotechnology such as Eric Drexler, predict a world where both body and mind become obsolete. This world, a combination of technologies and genetic engineering, could lead to some sort of post-human world.

A group of young scientists called the Extropians have carefully looked at these technological promises. They are examining techniques to double life spans by special diets and to deep- freeze bodies via cryogenics. With computers, they are studying ways to download human memories into computers and to upload digital memory into human brains, a mechanical merger known as cyborgism.

The Extropians, in their faith in technology, may represent a kind of 'Technological Unconscious' in Western civilization. They ask the fundamental question: What does mankind really want? In their view, it is entirely possible to create an immortal 'trans'- human, capable of controlling nature and ultimately the Universe.

If the complex worldwide computer networks will soon be inhabited by artificial intelligences and sophisticated agents, there may be a point of such complexity that the network itself is no longer manageable by human intelligence. Some see this condition leading to the invention of a Machine-God, a Deus Ex Machina, in direct competition with a concept of a Supreme Being of some spiritualists. Some spiritualists would see the birth of this Machine- God as proof of technology as ultimately Luciferian. Others might see this event as the actual Technological Singularity, which might be painted by some as the "End of History" or the "End of Mankind." To spiritual pessimists, this event would equate to the coming of their versions of the Anti-Christ.

Spiritual pessimists are not alone in their assessment. Their dim view of technology is shared by neo-Luddittes and some 'deep ecologists'. Spiritual pessimists and neo-Luddittes dream of their Utopia in the past. Spiritual optimists and technological utopians see a Utopia in the (near) future.

For these spiritualists, the optimism imbedded in the Wisdom Tradition would point out that technology is simply one more step in the unfolding of mankind's consciousness.


This perspective subscribes to the view that at the creation of the Cosmos, divine consciousness "fell." At first, Nature itself could not be conscious. Life evolved, leading to the eventual development of uniquely self-conscious beings called humans. Through this latest manifestation of life, Nature and the Cosmos become conscious and aware of itself.

The process of increasing consciousness in mankind is slow. Mankind evolved through stages, from magical to mythical to rational consciousness, and from tribal through political (nation-state based) to planetary consciousness. For planetary consciousness to truly become widespread, a material basis, and thus certain tools are needed. Hence, technology can be seen as a necessary adjunct to make improvements in consciousness possible.

Some might argue that there have been and are certain humans who have already achieved higher states of global or universal consciousness. History is indeed littered with stories of these personalities but for most of mankind, these humans have been anomalies. For the mass of humanity, help is needed, and it is precisely technology that, to some, drives consciousness forward. It could be argued that political consciousness could not have been achieved without the printing press. Others see only a real planetary consciousness with the creation of truly a worldwide communication network, accessible to all, anywhere and at any time.

Universalization may have started with the print media and extended itself with primitive electronic tools such as the telegraph, telephone, radio, and television. Only now is there a medium that combines both personal and mass media, extending human thought to much of the world. The Internet is a tool that broadens awareness and allows mankind to invent a noosphere, a collective mental space.

Optimists see the Internet ultimately evolving into a global brain, connecting much of mankind together. These optimists read a prediction of this sort of state in philosophers like Hegel and Teilhard de Chardin. Their enthusiasm is shared by many working in cyberspace. Certainly, it provides one kind of explanation for the extraordinary amount of creative and cultural energy generated with this medium known as the Internet.

In terms of this cultural energy, the construction of cyberspace can be compared to that other collective project of mankind, i.e. the construction of the cathedrals in western Europe five hundred years ago. Like those cathedrals, cyberspace is a parallel world to reality. In the Middle Ages, it was possible to escape ever so momentarily the world into the glass and stone, spiritual world of the Church. Now, parallel to the reality, there is a virtual world, described by John Perry Barlow as a"new locale of human community ... [where] ... people were deaf, dumb, and blind" existing in a "town [that] had neither seasons nor sunsets nor smells." [8]

Many see cyberspace as a utopian social and political project, a generator of a kind of utopian energy [9]. For many, in a time of great political frictions and when traditional religions are either moribund or hijacked by reactionary social forces, cyberspace is seen as the apex of freedom. Cyberspace to these is an organizational tool to create utopian virtual communities [10]. Cyberspace is seen as a place for utopian hopes for a better world. In this context, it is not surprising that cyberspace is also a domain for spiritual movements, especially those with a positive interpretation of history.


Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Review and author of the book "The Media Lab," argued that there is a strong relationship between the pioneering forces of technology and the sixties counterculture [11]. One of the components of the counterculture three decades ago was an increased interest in spiritual matters, especially non-Western religions and practices. Many alternative spiritual groups, some dating back to the '60s, have found a place on the Internet, using it to further their aims [12].

The Internet is also used by traditional religions and groups including Christian fundamentalists, Judaism, and Islam [13]. The Roman Catholic Church and various schools of Buddhism are particularly active [14]. Among, Buddhists, there is an active "Cyber- Sangha" community [15]. However, most traditional schools use the Internet as an auxiliary tool, a simple addition to their other activities.

There are some movements that are taking a very active role in cyberspace such as the techno-pagans. They use the Internet not only as a self-organizing tool but as a new space that has to be ritualized. For example, Mark Pesce, one of the creators of the Virtual Reality Modeling Language, has developed a Zero Circle on the Internet and used a shamanic ritual to 'sacralise' it [16]. Every three dimensional object will have to position itself against this spiritual "Axis Mundi" or "Center of the World." Similarly, Tibetan monks at the Namgyal Institute in Ithaca, New York consecrated cyberspace on February 8, using a tantric ritual usually performed by the Dalai Lama himself.

From a spiritual view, these rituals create sacred spaces where the divine forces are present. Some argue that cyberspace will contain "pathogenic" spaces that are detrimental to our mental well-being, To counter them, "vivogenic" spaces have to be created.

Among active techno-pagans, there are experiments with cyber-rituals and collective meditation with the Internet as a focal point. This has led to a lively debate on certain mailing lists about the transmission of spiritual energy in cyberspace. Some clearly believe that cyberspace can be used for spiritual practices [17].

Some are also trying to create specific cyber-religions. Though some of these are tongue-in- cheek, a few initiatives are serious attempts to create new kinds of virtual spiritual communities. Terence McKenna and Timothy Leary are popular in these circles, arguing for a new alliance between technology and nature, with pychedelics interpreted as being an intrinsic part of that nature.

There is an active spiritual life in cyberspace. While every mass medium has influenced culture, the Internet is creating social movements that take their very identity from cyberspace. This development confirms the Internet as not just a medium, but a real place, a digital environment for the life of the mind.

It can also be argued that even the techno-scientific world can learn from spiritual traditions. For example, cyberspace can clearly be interpreted as a magical medium, where the 'Word' actually affects reality, and hence, magical technologies and incantations can, and are, being used as human-machine interfaces (such as in MUD's and MOO's). Also, cyberspace is the quintessential immaterial realm, a domain where science, who always dealt with 'matter', has precious little experience, while it can be argued that spiritual traditions have dealt with immaterial space from time immemorial. There are interesting parallels that could be pursued, between the reality of the internet, and concepts from the 'wisdom literature'. Notions like Indra's Web (from Hinduism), and the Akashic Records (a depository of the world's total knowledge) come to mind.

Finally, it can be argued that to effectively deal with the new powers afforded by technology, humans would need an equivalent 'moral' upgrade, an effort which has traditionally been part of the spiritual domain.


Cyberspace presents an important spiritual challenge. One of the fundamental aims of spiritual practice has been to extend human identities, to overcome feelings of separateness with the rest of mankind, nature, and the Cosmos. Some of the techniques of spiritual practices could be used to arrive at a more holistic view of technology. In that sense, the merging of man with technology could be seen as part of larger mystical task within the context of the universe.

It will be always difficult to decide on the merits of pessimistic and optimistic spiritual interpretations of technology. For every new power and possibility that technology brings, it could be argued that technological progress takes away other components of humanity. For some to survive in the stressful world of high tech, there may be a great need for the enduring legacies of spiritual practice. The new edge of technology, may need the new age of reviving of spiritual practice. Without them, we may not be able to survive.


Michel Bauwens is an active internet consultant and 'cyber-marketeer' who advices companies in their 'migration to electronic environments'. He has been information analyst for the United States Information Agency, information manager for British Petroleum, where he created one of the first virtual information centers, and editor-in-chief of the first European digital convergence magazine, the dutch-language 'Wave'. Michel Bauwens is actively researching material for the preparation of a documentary on the convergence of technology and spirituality, which will be called 'The TechnoCalyps'. His essays on the implications of technology are published on the Internet

mbauwens@innet.be
http://www.iocom.be/



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



1. See Kevin Kelly, 1994. Out of control : the rise of neo-biological civilization. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 521 p. See also Kevin Kelly's " self-curated connections" to Out of Control at http://www.world3.com/meme1/kelly.html and an interview with Kelly at http://businesstech.com/interview/3_96interv/btinterv3_96.html

2. See the Teleworking home page at http://www.labs.bt.com/innovate/telework/index.htm and Mike Gray, Noel Hodson, Gil Gordon, eds., 1993. Teleworking explained. New York: Wiley, 289 p.

3. See Susan Stellin, "Is Telecommuting In Your Future?," at http://www.pader.gov/dep/deputate/pollprev/telecom.htm

4. According to Peter Leyden, On the Edge of the Digital Age, Part III: The Coming trauma, at http://www.startribune.com/digage/main3.htm

5. It has been estimated that 75% of all re-engineering projects fail because they ignore the human aspects involved in re-engineering projects; from http://brainware.net/adc-hsor.html

6. See, for example, William Bridges, 1994. JobShift: How to prosper in a workplace without jobs. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 257 p., or Jeremy Rifkin, 1995. The End of work : the Decline of the global labor force and the dawn of the post-market era. New York: Putnam's Sons, 350 p.

7. For those wishing to deepen their understanding of these matters, read Teilhard de Chardin, Rene Guenon, Fritjof Schuon, Julius Evola, and Ken Wilber.

8. John Perry Barlow, "Is There a There in Cyberspace?," at http://www.utne.com/lens/cs/11csbarlow.html

9. See, for example, Michael Grosso, 1995. The Millennium myth: Love and death at the end of time. Wheaton, Ill. : Quest Books, 384 p.

10. In this sense, virtual communities are a revival of 19th century utopian socialist communities. These communities flourished for a time in the last century in the United States. The leaders of these communities argued that change could happen here and now by inventing communities based on goodwill and new social rules. See, for example, Mark Holloway, 1966. Heavens on earth: Utopian communities in America, 1680-1880. revised 2d ed. New York: Dover, 246 p.

11. The history and relationships of Brand's "Whole Earth Catalog," "CoEvolution Quarterly," and the Well - the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link - are succinctly described in Bruce Sterling, 1992. The Hacker crackdown: Law and disorder on the electronic frontier. New York: Bantam, pp. 237-244.

12. One summary can be found at http://www.altculture.com/site/entries/spiritux.html

13. For example, thoughts on the Torah can be found on the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California Online at http://www.jewish.com/jb/torah.htm The Christian Coalition home page can be found at http://www.cc.org/main_page.html Pointers to many of the Islamic sites on the Internet can be found at http://gpu2.srv.ualberta.ca/~slis/guides/religion/islam.htm

14. A statement by Pope John Paul II, entitled "The Church Must Learn to Cope With the Computer Culture," can be found at http://listserv.american.edu/catholic/church/papal/jp.ii/computer-culture.html One collection of Internet Buddhist resources can be found at http://www.cac.psu.edu/jbe/resource.html

15. CyberSangha: The Buddhist Alternative Journal can be found at http://www.hooked.net/~csangha/

16. http://www.hyperreal.com/~mpesce/circle.wrl

17. In Douglas Rushkoff's book Cyberia, there is a description of a fusion of the Internet with psychedelic and certain music communities. This spiritualized youth culture aims at awareness through the combined use of ecstatic techno-music, hallucinogenic substances, and communication in cyberspace. See Douglas Rushkoff, 1994. Cyberia : life in the trenches of hyperspace. San Francisco: Harper, San Francisco, 250 p.

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Copyright © 1996, f ¡ ® s T - m o ñ d @ ¥

I am a gamer.  An interactive electronic gamer to be exact.  Not a freak, I am so busy with school, work and family that I don't find nearly as much time (or money) required to be a hard core gamer, but I am a gamer nonetheless.

It's tough to admit this sometimes as an adult, even though I am a "young adult."  Most people look at electronic gaming as childs play, I, however, think these people are out of touch.  Gaming actually makes more revenue than the movies do these days.  Furthermore, the new games are really interactive DVD's than merely "games."  Take the new PC/Xbox game Half-Life 2 which is due to be released in a few months, it's been FIVE YEARS in production!  It looks beautiful and will incorporate amazing lighting effects, real time physics and graphic engine that is going to stun everyone.

I myself own a PC as well as a console system (the XBOX).  The following screens are from XBOX games, check 'em out (I think those of you who have not seen what contemporary games are looking like these days will find these screenshots to be amazing...mind you that the resolution is often less than it would normally be due to the fact that the images have been resized, also another thing to keep in mind is that games aren't always supposed to look "realistic," often times they are designed, like any work of art, to look as the artist intends, e.g., cartoony, surrealistic, etc.):

From the upcoming Xbox tennis game "Top Spin"



Half-Life 2: (this game has a built in program that allows the characters mouths match up excatly with the words they speak, no matter what language!)



From the upcoming Xbox game HALO 2 (I cannot wait for this one!):







From "wiggles":


for more on Halo 2:
http://halo.bungie.net/site/halo/features/av.html
or
http://halo.bungie.net/site/halo/features/gallery.html
and
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/halo2/screens.html?page=33

(notice they are all recent...I don't know if this takes into account the ticket price increases that come EVERY year)

1
Spider-Man
Sony
3
$403,706,375
5/3/02

2
The Matrix Reloaded
WB
3
$276,572,478
5/15/03

3
Attack of the Clones
Fox
4
$310,675,583
5/16/02

4
The Phantom Menace
Fox
5
$431,088,297
5/19/99

5
Harry Potter / Sorcerer's Stone
WB
5
$317,575,550
11/16/01

6
The Two Towers
NL
5
$338,230,249
12/18/02

7
The Lost World: Jurassic Park
Uni.
6
$229,086,679
5/23/97

8
Austin Powers in Goldmember
Sony
6
$213,307,889
7/26/02

9
Harry Potter / Chamber of Secrets
WB
6
$261,988,482
11/15/02

10
X2: X-Men United
Fox
6
$214,488,742
5/2/03

11
Independence Day
Fox
7
$306,169,255
7/3/96

12
Rush Hour 2
NL
7
$226,164,286
8/3/01

13
Bruce Almighty
Uni.
7
$238,497,000
5/23/03

14
Men in Black
Sony
8
$250,690,539
7/2/97

15
Mission: Impossible 2
Par.
8
$215,409,889
5/24/00

16
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Uni.
8
$260,044,825
11/17/00

17
Planet of the Apes
Fox
8
$180,011,740
7/27/01

18
The Fellowship of the Ring
NL
8
$313,364,114
12/19/01

19
Men in Black II
Sony
8
$190,418,803
7/3/02

20
Finding Nemo
Dis.
8
$319,968,000
5/30/03

21
Jurassic Park
Uni.
9
$357,067,947
6/11/93

22
The Spy Who Shagged Me
NL
9
$206,040,086
6/11/99

23
The Mummy Returns
Uni.
9
$202,019,785
5/4/01

24
Pearl Harbor
Dis.
9
$198,542,554
5/25/01

25
Jurassic Park III
Uni.
9
$181,171,875
7/18/01

26
Monsters, Inc.
Dis.
9
$253,060,490
11/2/01

27
Signs
Dis.
9
$227,966,634
8/2/02

28
Batman
WB
10
$251,188,924
6/23/89

29
Batman Forever
WB
10
$184,031,112
6/16/95

30
The Perfect Storm
WB
10
$182,618,434
6/30/00

31
Cast Away
Fox
10
$233,632,142
12/22/00

32
Hannibal
MGM
10
$165,092,056
2/9/01

33
Scooby-Doo
Sony
10
$153,294,164
6/14/02

34
Die Another Day
MGM
10
$160,932,247
11/22/02

35
Pirates of the Caribbean
Dis.
10
$209,803,000
7/9/03

36
Hulk
Uni.
10
$130,176,000
6/20/03

37
Batman Returns
WB
11
$162,831,698
6/19/92

38
The Lion King
Dis.
11
$312,855,561
6/15/94

39
Toy Story 2
Dis.
11
$245,823,397
11/24/99

40
X-Men
Fox
11
$157,299,717
7/14/00

41
Shrek
DW
11
$267,665,011
5/18/01

42
Mission: Impossible
Par.
11
$180,981,886
5/22/96

43
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
WB
11
$142,800,000
7/2/03

44
Twister
WB
12
$241,721,524
5/10/96

45
Titanic
Par.
12
$600,788,188
12/19/97

46
Godzilla
Sony
13
$136,314,294
5/20/98

47
Armageddon
Dis.
13
$201,578,182
7/1/98

48
Big Daddy
Sony
14
$163,479,795
6/25/99

49
Scary Movie
Mira.
14
$157,019,771
7/7/00

50
Catch Me If You Can
DW
14
$164,558,699
12/25/02

51
American Pie 2
Uni.
15
$145,103,595
8/10/01

52
Ice Age
Fox
15
$176,387,405
3/15/02

53
Bad Boys II
Sony
15
$111,300,000
7/18/03

54
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Par.
16
$197,171,806
5/24/89

55
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
TriS.
16
$204,843,345
7/3/91

56
Air Force One
Sony
16
$172,956,409
7/25/97

57
The Sixth Sense
Dis.
16
$293,506,292
8/6/99

58
What Women Want
Par.
16
$182,811,707
12/15/00

59
XXX
Sony
16
$142,109,382
8/9/02

60
Anger Management
Sony
16
$135,377,854
4/11/03

61
Liar Liar
Uni.
17
$181,410,615
3/21/97

62
Saving Private Ryan
DW
17
$216,335,085
7/24/98

63
The Waterboy
Dis.
17
$161,491,646
11/6/98

64
The Mummy
Uni.
17
$155,385,488
5/7/99

65
The Blair Witch Project
Art.
17
$140,539,099
7/30/99

66
Gladiator
DW
17
$187,683,805
5/5/00

67
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
Par.
17
$131,168,070
6/15/01

68
The Fast and the Furious
Uni.
17
$144,533,925
6/22/01

69
Lilo & Stitch
Dis.
17
$145,794,338
6/21/02

70
2 Fast 2 Furious
Uni.
17
$125,355,000
6/6/03

71
Forrest Gump
Par.
18
$329,294,499
7/6/94

72
Tarzan
Dis.
18
$171,085,177
6/18/99

73
Return of the Jedi
Fox
19
$309,306,177
5/25/83

74
Deep Impact
Par.
19
$140,464,664
5/8/98

75
Runaway Bride
Par.
19
$152,170,201
7/30/99

76
Ocean's Eleven
WB
19
$183,417,150
12/7/01

77
Minority Report
Sony
19
$132,072,926
6/21/02

78
The Matrix
WB
20
$171,479,930
3/31/99

79
Dinosaur
Dis.
20
$137,748,063
5/19/00

80
What Lies Beneath
DW
20
$155,385,184
7/21/00

81
8 Mile
Uni.
20
$116,744,370
11/8/02

Sorry about the loud title, but those of you with Windows XP or server 2003 need to go to the Windows download page and get the new patch for a security flaw that even the Federal gov't is warning could allow hackers and terrorists to do major damage to your system.

Here is some "offical" info regarding this:
Feds issue second Internet attack warning



WASHINGTON, July 31 (UPI) -- The Department of Homeland Security has issued what's believed to be an unprecedented second warning to Internet users about a Microsoft security flaw.

Federal officials said the defect in the Microsoft Corp. windows software could leave millions of computers around the world vulnerable to hacker attacks.

Homeland Security officials said there's been an internet-wide increase in scanning for vulnerable computers during the past several days, reinforcing the urgency for updating affected systems.

The second warning comes two weeks after Microsoft announced it had discovered a critical flaw in some of its Windows operating systems, including Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

The flaw allows hackers to use the Internet to seize control of computers to steal files, read e-mails and launch virus and worm attacks that could seriously damage the Internet.

Microsoft has issued a free "patch"' that users can download to correct the problem, but many people's computers aren't programmed to automatically download patches, or they ignore such announcements.
----------------------------
Concerns mount over possible big Net attack

A flaw that affects almost all versions of the Windows operating system could be exploited

By Paul Roberts, IDG News Service
JULY 31, 2003

Security experts warn that a recently disclosed security vulnerability in Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system may soon be used by a powerful Internet worm that could disrupt traffic on the Internet and affect millions of machines worldwide.
The vulnerability, a buffer overrun in a Windows interface that handles the remote procedure call (RPC) protocol, was acknowledged by Microsoft in Security Bulletin MS03-026 on July 16. Today, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security updated an earlier warning about the RPC vulnerability, noting increased network scanning and the widespread distribution of working exploits on the Internet.

The vulnerability affects almost all versions of Windows and could enable remote attackers to place and run malicious code on affected machines, giving them total control over the systems, Microsoft said.

No user interaction would be required for machines to be compromised, prompting security experts to liken the RPC vulnerability to the buffer-overflow vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) that was exploited by the Code Red worm in July 2001. "I would compare [the RPC vulnerability] to Code Red. It doesn't require user interaction, and the number of infectable machines is on same order of magnitude," said Johannes Ullrich, chief technology officer at the Bethesda, Md.-based SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center.

However, although Code Red affected a component typically found on Windows servers, the RPC vulnerability affects a component found on both Windows servers and desktops, according to Tomasz Ostwald, a co-founder of The Last Stage of Delirium Research Group in Poland, which discovered the RPC flaw and reported it to Microsoft. That increases the number of vulnerable machines from a few hundred thousand systems for Code Red to several million for RPC.

Concern heightened last week after code designed to exploit the RPC vulnerability -- known as DCOM RPC, after the flawed Windows Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) interface -- appeared on the Internet on July 25 (see story). The Internet Storm Center noted an increase in scanning on ports used by the affected interface, Ullrich said.

Much of that activity is disorganized, however, and doesn't necessarily mean that a widespread attack or DCOM RPC worm is in the works. "Most of what we've seen is people using [the DCOM RPC exploit] as part of regular hacking activity, [Web site] defacements or people just compromising machines."

However, recent posts to security newsgroups suggest that hackers and computer security experts have been enthusiastically modifying and swapping the exploit code since it was released.

Although the original DCOM RPC exploit code worked only on machines running English-language versions of Windows 2000, recent modifications show that the code has been modified to exploit the same vulnerability on French, Chinese, Polish, German and Japanese versions of Windows 2000, XP and NT.

RPC is at a stage similar to that of a widespread Microsoft SQL vulnerability after exploit code for that vulnerability was published in August 2002 by David Litchfield, a security researcher at U.K.-based Next Generation Security Software Ltd., according to Ullrich. That exploit code was later modified to create Slammer, one of the most widespread worms to exploit disclosed vulnerabilities.

In its present form, the DCOM RPC exploit code probably isn't ready for wide distribution as a worm, according to Ostwald. The code isn't fully developed and often relies on variables such as the presence of particular versions of Windows to work, he said.

In contrast, Last Stage of Delirium developed so-called proof-of-concept code for use internally that works against a wide variety of Windows platforms and requires only the Internet Protocol address of the vulnerable machine to create a buffer overflow, Ostwald said. Such code would be "very useful" to worm writers, making it easy for a worm to spread from machine to machine, he said.

Hackers are also working on shrinking the exploit code, narrowing the exploit to work on a small set of sytems that will net the most compromised machines, Ullrich said.

However, the release of a worm that uses DCOM RPC is unpredictable, he said. While it typically takes a couple of months from the time of a published exploit to the development of a worm, the development of a worm that takes advantage of the RPC vulnerability may be influenced by other factors such as media attention or this week's DefCon conference in Las Vegas, a popular gathering for hackers and computer security experts.

"These things are really random," Ullrich said. "It just takes one guy to put in the effort."

In the end, the media attention given to the problem may prompt more administrators to patch vulnerable systems, blunting the effects of a worm once it's released, Ostwald said.

In fact, the period of greatest danger from the RPC vulnerability may be now, before a widespread attack on vulnerable systems has been launched, Ullrich said.

I stumbled upon this article on the MSN page and found it interesting.  I have pasted the entire text below.  Here in CA I can see this happening already, in fact I myself have some of the traits of the so called "Metrosexual," e.g., lots of hair care products, etc.  I don't think this in anything new, however, the trend of men being more in touch with their feminine side began happening here in the US in the 60's and 70's.  Besides, looking back to ancient civilizations even, men have had their fair share of vanity and the like.  Anyway, here it is:
(from: http://content.health.msn.com/content/article/71/81366.htm )
--------------------------------------------------------------------
An emerging breed of man, the metrosexual, shows his soft, sensitive, feminine side. [/size=4]

By  Richard Trubo  
Reviewed By Brunilda  Nazario, MD
on Monday, July 28, 2003
WebMD Feature


There, deep in the hair-care aisle, carefully selecting the product du jour, or in the salon having his nails buffed to the perfect shine while checking out the latest fashion magazines -- it's not a bird, not a gay man, it's a metrosexual!


And judging by the popularity of the new TV program Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, many more once slovenly men want to join the ranks of this new breed of Renaissance man.


Not yet familiar with the new buzzword, "metrosexual"? Some social observers and product marketers believe it's just a matter of time until "metrosexual" becomes part of your vocabulary -- and perhaps a description of your own lifestyle as well.


So what makes a metrosexual man? He's been defined as a straight, sensitive, well-educated, urban dweller who is in touch with his feminine side. He may have a standing appointment for a weekly manicure, and he probably has his hair cared for by a stylist rather than a barber. He loves to shop, he may wear jewelry, and his bathroom counter is most likely filled with male-targeted grooming products, including moisturizers (and perhaps even a little makeup). He may work on his physique at a fitness club (not a gym) and his appearance probably gets him lots of attention -- and he's delighted by every stare.


Blurring Gender Lines


Curiosity about metrosexuals climbed considerably in June when Euro RSCG Worldwide, a marketing communications agency based in New York City and more than 200 other cities, explored the changing face of American males in a report titled The Future of Men: USA. As part of this research, men ages 21 to 48 throughout the U.S. were surveyed on masculinity-related issues. The conclusions? According to the report, there is "an emerging wave of men who chafe against the restrictions" of traditional male roles and who "do what they want, buy what they want, enjoy what they want - regardless of whether some people might consider these things unmanly."


The metrosexual male is more sensitive and in some ways more effeminate than his father probably was, says Schuyler Brown, one of the architects of the study and associate director of strategic trendspotting and research at Euro RSCG Worldwide. Metrosexuals are willing to push traditional gender boundaries that define what's male and what's female, she adds, but they never feel that they are anything but "real men." Yes, a little primping and pampering were once considered solely female indulgences, but they are becoming much more permissible for men, too.


Metrosexual men "are very secure in their sexuality," says Brown. "They're comfortable getting a facial or a pedicure. It doesn't make them feel any less masculine or any less heterosexual."


The Future of Men report noted, "One of the telltale signs of metrosexuals is their willingness to indulge themselves, whether by springing for a Prada suit or spending a couple of hours at a spa to get a massage and facial." They might devote an afternoon to choosing their ultrafashionable attire for the night. They may don an apron and prepare a mean and meatless pasta dish for friends.

Beyond Testosterone


So what's prompting men to think outside the box of male stereotypes? They might be influenced by a new breed of male-oriented magazines such as FHM and Maxim, which are devoting an increasing number of their pages to fashion. These popular magazines are encouraging men to dress to the nines and fall into line with media images of men with washboard abs and bulging biceps.


Members of the homosexual community also appear to have influenced their straight brethren. Even though metrosexual men are absolutely heterosexual, the gay movement has helped society as a whole accept so-called effeminate characteristics and lifestyles. "As a society, we're more comfortable with homosexuality today," says Brown. "It's no longer taboo, it's portrayed on prime-time TV, and heterosexual men have become more comfortable with the gay culture."


Ironically, if one of the metrosexual's goals is to transform himself into a "chick magnet," some of his efforts -- particularly those spent pumping iron in the local fitness facility -- might be misplaced. Some research suggests that his straining and sweating to inflate the size of his muscles may not be as interesting to women as he might think. According to Roberto Olivardia, PhD, co-author of The Adonis Complex: The Secret Crisis of Male Obsession, the average male thinks that women are attracted to men who are 15 to 20 pounds more muscular than what women actually find attractive.


Coming to Your Neighborhood


Who are examples of prominent metrosexual men? Brown points to the flamboyant, makeup-wearing Johnny Depp ala Pirates of the Caribbean at one end of the metrosexual continuum and Bill Clinton at the other. The former president, she says, "conveys a personal concern for body image, and is a publicly sensitive guy who wears his feelings on his sleeve." The list of metrosexual-style celebrities includes Brad Pitt and George Clooney. British soccer star David Beckham (whose wife is Victoria Adams - a.k.a. Posh Spice) may be the quintessential metrosexual icon, sometimes attired in a sarong and embellishing his nails with colorful polish.


While you're most likely to find metrosexual men in big cities, particularly media centers such as New York and Los Angeles, they are certainly not confined there. "Because of Hollywood and the fact that many of the male glitterati exhibit metrosexual qualities, you can see the imitation and the experimentation among men in many smaller cities as well," says Brown.


Yet facial plastic surgeons such as Seth M. Goldberg, MD, whose patients in his Rockville, MD, office include politicians, lobbyists, and attorneys in the Washington, D.C., area, question whether the label "metrosexual" is one that is really catching on in the nation's capital. At the same time, however, he notes that "in the last few years there has been a tripling of the number of men who are coming into my office for cosmetic surgery or office-based cosmetic procedures such as Botox injections. A generation ago, we wouldn't have seen any of these men in our office."


Olivardia points to a Psychology Today survey showing that 43% of men are dissatisfied with their overall appearance, and 63% are unhappy with their abdomen in particular. So they might seek out the services of a cosmetic surgeon for some major or minor retrofitting. Abdominal liposuction to wipe out love handles is particularly popular. The number of lip augmentation procedures in men in the U.S. increased by a startling 421% from 2001 to 2002, according to the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.


"It's definitely more acceptable for men to undergo these procedures than it once was," says Olivardia, clinical instructor of psychology at Harvard Medical School. "Even so, there are still many men who won't tell anyone they've done it; they won't volunteer that information."


Goldberg says that when men opt for cosmetic surgery, it's often the last step in their personal campaign to improve their appearance. They tend to be well dressed and well groomed, and then thanks to their affluence, can afford to move on to plastic surgery -- for example, eyelid procedures, chin augmentation, or laser skin resurfacing.


But can a metrosexual's preoccupation with his physical appearance be carried to extremes? Olivardia says that if your preoccupation with maximizing your looks is interfering with your relationships, your job, or your schoolwork, perhaps you should talk to a therapist and work on creating a healthier balance and a more sensible approach to your physical exterior.


Published July 28, 2003.



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SOURCES: American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Alexandria, Va. Schuyler Brown, associate director, Strategic Trendspotting and Research, Euro RSCG Worldwide, New York. Roberto Olivardia, PhD, clinical instructor of psychology, Harvard Medical School, Boston. Seth M. Goldberg, MD, facial plastic surgeon, Rockville, Md.

I stumbled upon the following article and I thought some of you might find this interesting.  Ever since I was young I kind of hoped that a monster like the Lochness might exist, so I guess I'll just ignore this![]


Hi-tech study fails to find Nessie
Tuesday, July 29, 2003 Posted: 2:09 PM EDT (1809 GMT)
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There was an anticipation that we would come up with a large sonar anomaly that could have been a monster, but it wasn't to be.  
-- Hugh MacKay, researcher  


LONDON, England (AP) -- The Loch Ness monster is a Loch Ness myth.

At least according to the British Broadcasting Corp., which says a team which trawled the loch for any signs of the famous monster came up with nothing more than a buoy moored several yards below the surface.

The team used 600 separate sonar beams and satellite navigation technology to trawl the loch, but found no trace of any monster, the BBC said in a television program broadcast Sunday.

Previous reported sightings of a large beast in the gray waters of the lake led to speculation that the loch may contain a plesiosaur, a marine reptile which died out with the dinosaurs.

Searching for clues
The BBC researchers said they looked at the habits of modern marine reptiles, such as crocodiles and leatherback turtles, to try to work out how a plesiosaur might have behaved.

They hoped the air in Nessie's lungs would reflect a distorted signal back to their sonar sensors.

"We went from shoreline to shoreline, top to bottom on this one, we have covered everything in this loch and we saw no signs of any large living animal in the loch," said Ian Florence, one of the specialists who carried out the survey for the BBC.

His colleague Hugh MacKay added: "We got some good clear data of the loch, steep sided, flat bottomed -- nothing unusual I'm afraid. There was an anticipation that we would come up with a large sonar anomaly that could have been a monster, but it wasn't to be."

What did they see?
The BBC team said the only explanation for the persistence of the monster myth -- and regular "sightings" -- is that people see what they want to see.

To test this, the researchers hid a fence post beneath the surface of the loch and raised it in view of coach full of tourists.

Interviewed afterward, most said they had observed a square object but when asked to sketch what they had seen, several drew monster-shaped heads, the BBC said.

There have been reports of sightings of a "monster" in the loch since the time of St. Columba in the 6th century.

Many who have reported sightings have described a beast similar to a plesiosaur, but experts say it is 65 million years since the last fossil record of plesiosaurs. Loch Ness is only 10,000 years old, so anything living there must be much younger.

BBC TV plans to broadcast a documentary on the investigation, "Searching For The Loch Ness Monster."

Anyone hear ever heard of this guy or seen his work?

He is a magician and a darned good one.  I recently saw his DVD and the tricks he does, from cards to levitation, are amazing.

I guess he once froze himself in a block of ice for something like 34 hours.

Does anyone know of a quick, easy to do energy development techinque that one could do while sitting in a chair at work or while simply walking?

I know that sounds somewhat absured in light of the kind of long term, intensive programs that are normally used, but I want something I can do at work, school, etc.

If one were to walk in to schedule an appointment with a psychologist and walk in and share his or her ideas and beliefs about OBE's and the astral, what do you think the psychologist would say?

Would there be differences in what one psychologist would say compared to another?  Would they administer tests and as long as you came out ok in other areas they would not think you are "crazy."

I know I took a psych test and because I answered certain questions with the affrimative, such as "Do you in non-physical beings" OR "Do you ever "hear" voices?" I came out as having some schizophrenic tendencies.

So the question is, what would a psychologist likely say?  Have any of you ever visted a psychologist or some health professional and told them about your OBE beliefs?

Those of you who have been hanging around the "Pulse" for a while are probably familiar that I am somewhat of a movie junkie...well, mostly just a junkie, but I do love film!  Here is a list of films, both old, new and soon to be released, that I recommend or at least would like to discuss.  I have a fairly eclectic taste...I like everything from Hollywood to independent (I don't do horror movies though).  

Anyway, I just saw "Adapatation" and despite the fact that I would have liked it to end a little bit differently, I LOVED it.  It's funny, original and down right fascinating.  I would call it a mixture of parody, tragedy and comedy.  It works really hard to expose Hollywood for what it is as well as delve into the minds of its suprisingly well develped characters.  It has some harsh language and some sexuality, but nothing terrible.  If you have seen it or watch it, let me know what you think.

Upcoming stuff that looks promising (or at least fun):

PIRATES of the Carribean
CAST & CREW
Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom
Directed by Gore Verbinski


The following review is by:
- Scott Weinberg
go to: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/click/movie-1123873/reviews.php?critic=columns&sortby=default&page=1&rid=1172948
"That's why they play the games." - This is a hoary old chestnut that NFL fans inevitably mutter when some 2 and 10 squad is trouncing the Super Bowl Champs at halftime. Basically it means: you never know. One could extend this cliché over to movies as well: "That's why we go see 'em." Because no matter how disposable a film may seem at the outset, one never knows what treasures may lie in the finished product. I'll admit it: I was one who sneered at the prospect of a movie based on a Disneyland ride; I scoffed at the combination of Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer from the very beginning. But man oh man do I love being wrong; Pirates of the Caribbean is the best studio movie so far this year, it deserves a half-dozen Oscar nominations, and I can promise that it will rank among my favorite movies of 2003. All together now: Whooda thunk it?!?!?
Movie fans rely a lot on previous performances; the idea of a big-budget pirate flick based on a Disney attraction and produced by the king of Flash & Bang Cinema seemed an unwieldy combination at best. (And that's me being kind.) It's tough to blame the movie freaks for their early skepticism: there hasn't been a good pirate movie in about 40 years, and the only other features based on Disney rides (The Country Bears and Mission to Mars) were pretty darn bad. Plus add Bruckheimer to the mix and you'd hear a lot of boo-hooing about "loud, garish action scenes" and "next-to-no depth whatsoever".

Well if all that history is true, get ready to add a glorious new amendment to the books. Because Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is (against all odds) one of the most dizzyingly entertaining big-budget adventures of the past five years. I sit here incredulous as I type such things, but I can't remember the last action/adventure epic that enthralled me so effortlessly. As I sat there watching the movie, I rattled off my mental checklist to see how much they got right:

The plot. Yes, it's a whole lot of adventure flick hooey: unrequited love and devious buccaneers, stolen haunted treasures and undead armies, excitement, comedy, betrayals, high-seas adventure; it's all here. But here's the best part: It makes sense! What a simple joy it is to watch a movie and have the plot make sense. We know where one scene is supposed to lead us; plot threads actually TAKE us somewhere; the antics never seem rushed or forced or confused. Yes, it's a whole lot of adventure flick hooey, but it's logical and smart hooey. What a nice switch. Things start out with a standard "damsel gets kidnapped" hook and quickly boils over to include devious allies, insufferable soldiers, deserted islands, tons of treasures and (of course) three dozen scummy old pirates who turn into rotting skeletons when the moonlight hits them. It's even more fun than it sounds.

The look. Good gravy does this movie look gorgeous. From the massive old galleons to the cavernous pirate lairs to the expansive exterior sets, the movie is just stunning to look at. If one wanted to judge the movie solely on visual scope, art direction, costume design, etc., he would find virtually nothing to dislike here. The DVD will look great, but this is a movie that deserves to be seen on the big screen.

The tone. Fully playful and breezy but never ironic or overtly self-referential, the screenplay (courtesy of Shrek scribes Ted Elliot & Terry Rossio) is laden with moments scary, funny, thrilling and exciting. Much like everyone's favorite adventure (Raiders of the Lost Ark) this film is clearly written with an obvious affection for the Pirate Movie genre. And by Pirate Movie I mean Captain Blood and Treasure Island, not Cutthroat Island and Pirates.

The score. Loud and joyously bombastic during the action scenes, light and atmospheric during the chatty bits, Klaus Badelt's score is pitch-perfect in every way. I can't remember the last time I left a movie itching to buy the score, but here's one I'll be purchasing soon.

The action. Any solid director can cull together a suitably kinetic action scene. What Gore Verbinski (The Ring) has done here is nothing short of exhilarating. While the foreground is appropriately laden with clanging swords and burly fists and one screeching monkey, the backdrop is overloaded with astoundingly cool galleons, crystal-clear waters, and various other impressively majestic sights. If you're doling out some well-earned praise, cinematographer Dariusz Wolski should be among the first to applaud.

The cast. Orlando Bloom (Lord of the Rings) sheds his elven ears and delivers an appropriately heroic presence while relative newcomer Keira Knightley (Bend It Like Beckham) proves as charming as she is lovely. Geoffrey Rush (Shine) is clearly having a whole lot of fun as the head villain, though he consistently keeps his performance just this side of high camp. He's funny, but he's also effectively nefarious. Another small touch that helps the film immeasurably: there are several colorful background characters, none of whom are played by an actor you'd classify as 'familiar'. None of that "Hey look it's Bob Hoskins as a pirate!" stuff. The supporting players are great across the board, and their anonymity helps sell the flick.

The Depp. Look, everyone already knows that Johnny Depp is one of Hollywood's most unique and talented actors. The guy does do big-budget stuff, but even then he brings something quirky and untraditional to even the most familiar characters. (Check his work in Sleepy Hollow and/or From Hell and you'll see what I mean - if you're not already nodding your head in agreement with me.) Simply put: Depp is a man possessed. His performance as the egocentric Jack Sparrow is one of the most entertaining bits of acting of the past several years. Were Pirates a big stinkeroo (which, clearly, it is not) Depp's performance would still be worthy of your nine bucks at the box office. In a perfect world, one in which popcorn movies were worthy of old-school respect, Depp would earn an Oscar nomination for his work here.

The sly bits. Since Pirates of the Caribbean is (loosely) based on the popular theme park ride, one could expect a few references to said attraction. That these additions are worked so effortlessly into the film (those unfamiliar with the ride will overlook them entirely) is yet another example of how much care went into making the film so much more than just 'product: expensive yet inevitably profitable'. You can FEEL that Verbinski and Bruckheimer and their screenwriters are actively trying to make something worthwhile. Needless to say, they've accomplished something quite special.

There is a clear sense here that Pirates of the Caribbean is a whole lot more than "just another summertime popcorn-muncher" and damn if everyone involved doesn't pull it off with flying colors. If there's any justice in the dog-eat-dog summer movie season, this flick will sprout some enormous legs and surprise everyone like it so completely surprised me. On the downside I have to admit I was entirely wrong about this movie; on the upside, I now have another great adventure flick to add to my collection.

Gloriously entertaining proof positive that Big-Budget Extravaganza and Quality Filmmaking need not be mutually exclusive, Pirates of the Caribbean really does offer something for everyone. You may not love it as much as I clearly did, but I'd be willing to bet the flick shows you a damn good time.

Awesome

If you know of any interesting, fun, money saving or otherwise "cool" websites, please post the URL's (you know, wwww.whatever.com) here.  Share the love!

Here are some of my favorites:

To find the best prices on electronics on the web I like:
www.epinions.com
OR
www.half.com

Cool IQ test:
http://www.emode.com/tests/uiq/

www.rottentomatoes.com

www.boxofficemojo.com  <---this is a fun one for movie buffs.

The following is a sample of my writing.  This is a short paper I wrote regarding the Virginia Woolf's novel, "To the Lighthouse."  I copied and pasted it and subsequently lost all of the formating, so just know that the real version was neatly divided into paragraph form obviously.  If you've read the novel this will make a lot of sense and if you haven't, well, I think this is a good summary.  Either way you can see how I write.  Please ciritque me, I need it!

A "splendid mind" is Mr. Ramsay's most coveted and powerful instrument, the one constantly at his disposal for perceiving, judging and dissecting the universe.  His is an intelligence comparable to a mechanism with gears which move steadily, in one direction, limited by infinite, unseen parameters.  His beautiful wife, Mrs. Ramsay, intelligent, dependent and giving, all at the same time; she bestows her ostensibly universal presence until she withers away and dies, leaving something of an obscure beacon for her wandering family.  The couple, each with their limited perceptions and distinctive flaws, come to embody the conflict between the feminine and masculine principles at work in the universe and also provides the framework necessary for Woolf to transcend the conventions not only of the traditional "novel," but of traditional modes of consciousness and how they are represented in literature as well.  Finally, it is Lily, who, in the end, represents that which is capable of overcoming all convention, including these bifurcated feelings, and catches "the vision."
Mr. Ramsay, a self-centered philosopher, expresses the male principle in his rational point of view throughout the novel.  Everything: knowledge, the essence of life and existence itself, in his rational and limited mind, can and should be broken down into puzzle pieces and fit together until everything reveals itself to scrutiny.  Mr. Ramsay's mind is called "splendid," for in a world in which thought functions like "the keyboard of a piano" or "like the alphabet is ranged in twenty-six letters all in order, then his mind had no difficulty... until it had reached, say, the letter Q."  But Mr. Ramsay "would never reach R."  But is that really the dilemma?  No, it is not, for other men had reached Z and even started over from A again.  Better yet, some, the masterminds of the world, had even lumped "all the letters together in one flash" thinks Mr. Ramsay.  He resigns himself to the fact that he shall never reach R.  Tragically, however, is his blindness to the fact that it is this very process, the very idea that knowledge, the universe, works in such a linear way, which is Mr. Ramsay's true demise.  It plagues him throughout the novel and presumably the rest of his life.
Mrs. Ramsay's "shortsightedness", on the other hand, is different but nonetheless just as dangerous as that of her husband.  It is Lily Briscoe, near the end of the novel, who, in her remembrance of the woman, points out one aspect of the tragedy that is Mrs. Ramsay: "That man [Mr. Ramsay], she thought, her anger rising in her, never gave; that man took. She, on the other hand, would be forced to give. Mrs. Ramsay had given. Giving, giving, giving, she had died--and had left all this."  
Not only was it Mrs. Ramsay's propensity to constantly unfurl her gorgeous petals and present her sweet nectar to all, until at last the great flower withered, but she also relied, in many ways, on the unstable platform of men:

"What did it all mean? ...A square root? What was that? Her sons know. She
leant on them; on cubes and squares; that was what they were talking about now;
on Voltaire and Madame de Stael; on the character of Napoleon; on the French
system of land tenure; on Lord Rosebery; on Creevey's Memoirs; she let it uphold
her and sustain her, this admirable fabric of the masculine intelligence, which ran
up and down, crossed this way and that, like iron girders spanning the swaying
fabric, upholding the world, so that she could trust herself to it utterly, even shut
her eyes."
Notwithstanding the fact that this inner jaunt into the thoughts of Mrs. Ramsay exposes an obvious weakness in her character, not everything about her and her husband is so cut and dry.  In fact, the above descriptions of the limitations and faults of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay are but gross, oversimplified sketches of these characters.  Woolf's characterizations are much more sublime and intricate than these rough outlines let on.  She does not narrowly draw distinctions between genders, nor does she offer two extremes, such as the cliché of the logical man and the overly emotional woman.  Instead, Woolf draws characters which portray the blurred line between gendered modes of perceiving, reasoning, feeling and relating to others.  Paradoxically, this intricate web of emotions and thoughts both highlight the extreme differences between the man and woman and, simultaneously, transcend the limitations associated with the tendency to "genderize" any particular mode of thought or feeling.  This sublime, careful quality in Woolf's work is one of many elements that lead the reader to realize the larger scope of the novel: to rise above conventions.
One of the conventions which the author strives to overcome is the traditional representation of human thought in the "novel."  Thought, in this novel, is not confined by boundaries such as gender and time.  All of the forces, both external and internal, objects, both animate and inanimate, influence the consciousness of the characters.  One of the ways to see how this is accomplished in To the Lighthouse is by stepping back and attempting to disregard the particularities of the characters and let what little plot there is dissolve entirely.  When this is done, what stand out are the hundreds of thoughts of the individual characters.  It is the very thoughts, not moments of action or lengthy dialogue, that make up the backbone and structure of the whole work!  Although Woolf does not abandon linear narrative completely, some frustrated readers might rant that this is indeed the case.  For example, one of the most striking features of the novel is how Woolf blends external and internal dialogue together until the two flow together almost seamlessly.  While the patient and discerning reader soon realizes that this is indeed a very accurate way of representing the dynamic way in which thought and speech actually interact in reality, the less perceptive reader might be knocked off balance, never again to regain equilibrium.  Indeed, reading the novel is somewhat maddening at first, like watching a film composed of countless rapid cuts and interminably long shots that are constantly juxtaposed to seemingly unrelated close-ups of objects that are just out of focus.  But, given time and patience, the novel begins to reveal itself as a sort of antithesis to Mr. Ramsey's very limited mode of thinking from A to Z.  Therefore, when viewed in its entirety, the work begins to emerge as an attempt to represent that which cannot truly be explained or represented: the nature of consciousness.
What eventually emerges, thanks to the Woolf's decision to make individual thought "streams" the center of the narrative, is the distinct feeling of being disconnected from any specific action or character and, like a ball of light, taking on the ability to dart effortlessly in and out of characters minds, often times following a thread of thought until it frays in a million different directions and is no longer able to be represented in words.  After reading the novel for the first time, the natural inclination is to conclude that in this novel, Woolf is rejecting the rigid structure of the established Western tradition of narrative and has made an experiment into the stream-of-consciousness type writing.  This argument, however, oversimplifies what the author has accomplished; what exactly has been accomplished is difficult to put into words, for what she seems to have done is to provide the reader a glimpse of what all humankind experiences, on different levels no doubt, on a regular basis, but is, at the same time, difficult impossible to explain.
   In this spirit of overcoming convention and attempting to write what cannot be directly communicated it is, in the end, the character Lily Briscoe, the painter, who carries this desire to its fullest extent by embodying Woolf's ideal voice; a voice that seems to rise above all conventions, at least momentarily.  Near the beginning of the novel the reader is introduced to Lily and her seemingly impossible endeavor to capture the truth or "vision" in her painting,
"It was in that moment's flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child. Such she often felt herself--struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage; to say: "But this is what I see; this is what I see, "and so to clasp some miserable remnant of her vision to her breast, which a thousand forces did their best to pluck from her."
These "demons" that beset Lily seem to signify some barrier impeding her from realizing that singular goal of truly capturing that vision that she feels deep within.  This quest is obviously not one that can be quantified and analyzed—solved by moving from point A to point B, until one reached the "end of the alphabet,"—as surely Mr. Ramsay would approach it.  For the barrier impeding her is an invisible one, ingrained in that particular reality which is composed of expectations, traditions and "nature."  
Throughout much of the novel, Lily looks to others for answers, especially Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay.  She sees in Mr. Ramsey something desirable, the fact that he can keep "his eyes fixed upon" his philosophy, his "kitchen table" and "never allow himself to be distracted or deluded" until he took upon himself that "unornamented beauty which so deeply impressed her."  She also looks to Mrs. Ramsey for answers.  She imagines, at one point "how in the...mind and heart of the woman [Mrs. Ramsey] ...were stood...tablets bearing sacred inscriptions, which...would teach one everything..." and that the way to this enlightening intimacy and knowledge might require her to discover a "device for becoming... inextricably the same, one with the object one adored."  It is obvious that Lily, being highly sensitive to these polar opposites, is torn within as she seeks to reconcile the disparate emotions and overcome the invisible obstruction keeping her from her objective.
This struggle to overcome the invisible barriers keeping her from that indescribable goal, that fleeting "vision", is embodied in her effort to complete the painting she begins working on at the beginning of the novel.  "Women", sneers Charles Tansley "can't paint!"  When Lily decides, however, that she can and will paint, the completion of the painting becomes her sole purpose in life.  With its completion she will not only establish her artistic voice, but will finally be able to bring these disparate elements, both masculine and feminine, in an accord that aligns itself with all that the author seems to be attempting to accomplish as well.
Lily accomplishes her feat of completing the painting and realizing the vision in various stages.  It is at the dinner table that the initial leap is made.  First she has an epiphany regarding her painting, "Yes, I shall put the tree further in the middle; then I shall avoid that awkward space."  Only moments pass when, as if a continuation of the same train of thought, Lily realizes that "she need not marry, thank Heaven: she need not undergo that degradation. She was saved from that dilution. She would move the tree rather more to the middle."  Immediately after this vital realization, Lily becomes painfully aware of the "violently two opposite things...and they fought together in her mind."  The magnitude of the decision not to marry is vital, but it remains juxtaposed to the fact that she has not officially reconciled the two "opposite things."  It is not until much later, at the end of the novel, when everything comes together for Lily, and for the reader.
Returning as a guest, years later, Lily once more takes her place on the lawn in a final attempt to complete her painting, her vision.  As her thoughts begin to drift back and forth, in and out of time and space, and as she watches the distant sailboat move inevitably toward the lighthouse she "was losing consciousness of outer things. And as she lost consciousness of outer things, and her name and her personality and her appearance" she began to paint her picture.  Her inability to find symmetry and balance in her painting, which had plagued her in the past, is unexpectedly absent, and at last, "With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision."  Suddenly Lily's voice becomes the ideal one, combining those bifurcated feelings, those "violently opposite things" until, at last, she captures that which cannot be named.  She has had "her vision."
To the Lighthouse manages, in the end, to transcend the conventions and barriers of the traditional "novel" and in doing so gives the reader a glimpse, or perhaps more, of an entirely unconventional way of viewing and experiencing life and consciousness.  The novel is written in a prose that is rhythmical, figurative, and overflowing with fantastic visual imagery, but it is so much more than this.  Its very structure and style act as vehicles for the reader to catch a glimpse, in the form of prose, of how thought and consciousness function.  Finally, it is Lily herself who embodies the spirit of Woolf's work as she overcomes the conventions represented by Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, and, by integrating both of their admirable characteristics, is able to have her long sought after vision.  As the uninitiated reader struggles to find the traditional conventions of the novel, such as a clear cut plot, action and typical external dialogue, sooner or later the realization comes: consciousness, nor sexuality for that matter, is structured like the English alphabet, from A to Z, symmetrically arranged.  Instead "It is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from beginning of consciousness to the end.  Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumcised spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of alien and external as possible."

The following is a short story by William Gibson, he who coined the term cyberspace before anyone had really heard of the internet.  The father of the "matrix."  (He should get credit for the matrix movies).  This story was written in the mid to late eighties.  I loved it the first time I read it and continue to find it quite compelling. It's a little long to read at the computer, so you might want to cut and paste it to Word and then print.  

This story is part of a collection of short stories from a book titled "Burning CHrome."  It's sci-fi type lit, cyberpunk if you will...but don't let that dissuade you if you are not into the genre, it's really for everyone.  It even has kind of an out-of-body spin on it.  Enjoy.
_______________________________________________________________

Burning Chrome
By William Gibson


It was hot, the night we burned Chrome. Out in the

malls and plazas, moths were batting themselves to

death against the neon, but in Bobby's loft the only light

came from a monitor screen and the green and red

LEDs on the face of the matrix simulator. I knew every

chip in Bobby's simulator by heart; it looked like your

workaday Ono-Sendai VII. The "Cyberspace Seven,"

but I'd rebuilt it so many time that you'd have had a

hard time finding a square millimeter of factory cir-

cuitry in all that silicon.

   We waited side by side in front of the simulator

console, watching the time display in the screen's lower

left corner.

   "Go for it," I said, when it was time, but Bobby

was already there, leaning forward to drive the Russian

program into its slot with the heel of his hand. He did it

with the tight grace of a kid slamming change into an ar-

cade game, sure of winning and ready to pull down a

string of free games.

A silver tide of phosphenes boiled across my field

of vision as the matrix began to unfold in my head, a

3-D chessboard, infinite and perfectly transparent. The

Russian program seemed to lurch as we entered the grid.

If anyone else had been jacked into that part of the

matrix, he might have seen a surf of flickering shadow

roll out of the little yellow pyramid that represented our

computer. The program was a mimetic weapon, de-

signed to absorb local color and present itself as a crash-

priority override in whatever context it encountered.

   "Congratulations," I heard Bobby say. "We just

became an Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority inspec-

tion probe. . . ." That meant we were clearing fiberoptic

lines with the cybernetic equivalent of a fire siren, but in

the simulation matrix we seemed to rush straight for

Chrome's data base. I couldn't see it yet, but I already

knew those walls were waiting. Walls of shadow, walls

of ice.

   Chrome: her pretty childface smooth as steel, with

eyes that would have been at home on the bottom of

some deep Atlantic trench, cold gray eyes that lived

under terrible pressure. They s~id she cooked her own

cancers for people who crossed her, rococo custom

variations that took years to kill you. They said a lot of

things about Chrome, none of them at all reassuring.

   So I blotted her out with a picture of Rikki. Rikki

kneeling in a shaft of dusty sunlight that slanted into the

loft through a grid of steel and glass: her faded

camouflage fatigues, her translucent rose sandals, the

good line of her bare back as she rummaged through a

nylon gear bag. She looks up, and a half-blond curl falls

to tickle her nose. Smiling, buttoning an old shirt of

Bobby's, frayed khaki cotton drawn across her breasts.

She smiles.

   "Son of a grump," said Bobby, "we just told

Chrome we're an IRS audit and three Supreme Court

subpoenas. ... Hang on to your butt, Jack.~. .

   So long, Rikki. Maybe now I see you never.

   And dark, so dark, in the halls of Chromes s ice.


Bobby was a cowboy, and ice was the nature of his

game, ice from ICE, Intrusion Countermeasures Elec-

tronics. The matrix is an abstract representation of the

relationships between data systems. Legitimate pro-

grammers jack into their employers' sector of the matrix

and find themselves surrounded by bright geometries

representing the corporate data.


   Towers and fields of it ranged in the colorless non-

space of the simulation matrix, the electronic consen-

sus-hallucination that facilitates the handling and

exchange of massive quantities of data. Legitimate pro-

grammers never see the walls of ice they work behind,

the walls of shadow that screen their operations from

others, from industrial-espionage artists and hustlers

like Bobby Quine.

   Bobby was a cowboy. Bobby was a cracksman, a

burglar, casing mankind's extended electronic nervous

system, rustling data and credit in the crowded matrix,

monochrome nonspace where the only stars are dense

concentrations of information, and high above it all

burn corporate galaxies and the cold spiral arms of

military systems.

   Bobby was another one of those young-old faces

you see drinking in the Gentleman Loser, the chic bar

for computer cowboys, rustlers, cybernetic second-story

men. We were partners.

   Bobby Quine and Automatic Jack. Bobby's the

thin, pale dude with the dark glasses, and Jack's the

mean-looking guy with the myoelectric arm. Bobby's

software and Jack's hard; Bobby punches console and

Jack runs down all the little things that can give you an

edge. Or, anyway, that's what the scene watchers in the

Gentleman Loser would've told you, before Bobby de-

cided to burn Chrome. But they also might've told you

that Bobby was losing his edge, slowing down. He was

twenty-eight, Bobby, and that's old for a console

cowboy.

   Both of us were good at what we did, but somehow

that one big score just wouldn't come down for us. I

knew where to go for the right gear, and Bobby had all

his licks down pat. He'd sit back with a white terry

sweatband across his forehead and whip moves on those

keyboards faster than you could follow, punching his

way through some of the fanciest ice in the business, but

that was when something happened that managed to get

him totally wired, and that didn't happen often. Not

highly motivated, Bobby, and I was the kind of guy

who's happy to have the rent covered and a clean shirt

to wear.

   But Bobby had this thing for girls, like they were

his private tarot or something, the way he'd get himself

moving. We never talked about it, but when it started to

look like he was losing his touch that summer, he started

to spend more time in the Gentleman Loser. He'd sit at

a table by the open doors and watch the crowd slide

by, nights when the bugs were at the neon and the air

smelled of perfume and fast food. You could see his

sunglasses scanning those faces as they passed, and he

must have decided that Rikki's was the one he was

waiting for, the wild card and the luck changer. The new

one.


I went to New York to check out the market, to see what

was available in hot software.

   The Finn's place has a defective hologram in the

window, METRO HOLOGRAFIX, over a display of dead

flies wearing fur coats of gray dust. The scrap's waist-

high, inside, drifts of it rising to meet walls that are

barely visible behind nameless junk, behind sagging

pressboard shelves stacked with old skin magazines and

yellow-spined years of National Geographic.

   "You need a gun," said the Finn. He looks like a

recombo DNA project aimed at tailoring people for

high-speed burrowing. "You're in luck. I got the new

Smith and Wesson, the four-oh-eight Tactical. Got this

xenon projector slung under the barrel, see, batteries in

the grip, throw you a twelve-inch high-noon circle in the

pitch dark at fifty yards. The light source is so narrow,

it's almost impossible to spot. It's just like voodoo in a

nightfight."

   I let my arm clunk down on the table and started

the fingers drumming; the servos in the hand began

whining like overworked mosquitoes. I knew that the

Finn really hated the sound.

   "You looking to pawn that?" He prodded the

Duralumin wrist joint with the chewed shaft of a felt-tip

pen. "Maybe get yourself something a little quieter?"

   I kept it up. "I don't need any guns, Finn."

   "Okay," he said, "okay," and I quit drumming.

"I only got this one item, and I don't even know what it

is. He looked unhappy. "I got it off these bridge-and..

tunnel kids from Jersey last week."

   "So when'd you ever buy anything you didn't

know what it was, Finn?"

   "Wise butt." And he passed me a transparent mailer

with something in it that looked like an audio cassette

through the bubble padding. "They had a passport," he

said. "They had credit cards and a watch. And that."

   "They had the contents of somebody's pockets,

you mean."

   He nodded. "The passport was Belgian. It was also

bogus, looked to me, so I put it in the furnace. Put the

cards in with it. The watch was okay, a Porsche, nice

watch."

   It was obviously some kind of plug-in military pro-

gram. Out of the mailer, it looked like the magazine of a

small assault rifle, coated with nonreflective black

plastic. The edges and corners showed bright metal; it

had been knocking around for a while.

"I'll give yo

sake."   u a bargain on it, Jack. For old times'

I had to smile at that. Getting a bargain from the

Finn was like God repealing the law of gravity when you

have to carry a heavy suitcase down ten blocks of air-

port corridor.

   "Looks Russian to me," I said. "Probably the

emergency sewage controls for some Leningrad suburb.

Just what I need."

   "You know," said the Finn. "I got a pair of shoes

older than you are. Sometimes I think you got about as

much class as those yahoos from Jersey. What do you

want me to tell you, it's the keys to the Kremlin? You

figure out what the gosh darn thing is. Me, I just sell the

stuff."

Ibought it.


Bodiless, we swerve into Chrome's castle of ice. And

we're fast, fast. It feels like we're surfing the crest of the

invading program, hanging ten above the seething glitch

systems as they mutate. We're sentient patches of oil

swept along down corridors of shadow.

   Somewhere we have bodies, very far away, in a

crowded loft roofed with steel and glass. Somewhere we

have microseconds, maybe time left to pull out.

   We've crashed her gates disguised as an audit and

three subpoenas, but her defenses are specifically geared

to cope with that kind of official intrusion. Her most

sophisticated ice is structured to fend off warrants,

writs, subpoenas. When we breached the first gate, the

bulk of her data vanished behind core-command ice,

these walls we see as leagues of corridor, mazes of

shadow. Five separate landlines spurted May Day sig-

nals to law firms, but the virus had already taken over

the parameter ice. The glitch systems gobble the distress

calls as our mimetic subprograms scan anything that

hasn't been blanked by core command.

   The Russian program lifts a Tokyo number from

the unscreened data, choosing it for frequency of calls,

average length of calls, the speed with which Chrome

returned those calls.

   "Okay," says Bobby, "we're an incoming scram-

bler call from a pal of hers in Japan. That should help."

   Ride `em, cowboy.


Bobby read his future in women; his girls were omens,

changes in the weather, and he'd sit all night in the

Gentleman Loser, waiting for the season to lay a new

face down in front of him like a card.

   I was working late in the loft one night, shaving

down a chip, my arm off and the little waldo jacked

straight into the stump.


   Bobby came in with a girl I hadn't seen before, and

usually I feel a little funny if a stranger sees me working

that way, with those leads clipped to the hard carbon

studs that stick out of my stump. She came right over

and looked at the magnified image on the screen, then

saw the waldo moving under its vacuum-sealed dust

cover. She didn't say anything, just watched. Right

away I had a good feeling about her; it's like that some-

times.

   "Automatic Jack, Rikki. My associate."

   He laughed, put his arm around her waist, some-

thing in his tone letting me know that I'd be spending

the night in a dingy room in a hotel.

   "Hi," she said. Tall, nineteen or maybe twenty,

and she definitely had the goods. With just those few

freckles across the bridge of her nose, and eyes some-

where between dark amber and French coffee. Tight

black jeans rolled to midcalf and a narrow plastic belt

that matched the rose-colored sandals.

   But now when I see her sometimes when I'm trying

to sleep, I see her somewhere out on the edge of all this

sprawl of cities and smoke, and it's like she's a

hologram stuck behind my eyes, in a bright dress she

must've worn once, when I knew her, something that

doesn't quite reach her knees. Bare legs long and

straight. Brown hair, streaked with blond, hoods her

face, blown in a wind from somewhere, and I see her

wave goodbye.

   Bobby was making a show of rooting through a

stack of audio cassettes. "I'm on my way, cowboy," I

said, unclipping the waldo. She watched attentively as I

put my arm back on.

   "Can you fix things?" she asked.

   "Anything, anything you want, Automatic Jack'll

fix it." I snapped my Duralumin fingers for her.

   She took a little simstim deck from her belt and

showed me the broken hinge on the cassette cover.

   "Tomorrow," I said, "no problem."

   And my oh my, I said to myself, sleep pulling me

down the six flights to the street, what'll Bobby's luck

be like with a fortune cookie like that? If his system

worked, we'd be striking it rich any night now. In the

street I grinned and yawned and waved for a cab.


Chrome's castle is dissolving, sheets of ice shadow

flickering and fading, eaten by the glitch systems that

spin out from the Russian program, tumbling away

from our central logic thrust and infecting the fabric of

the ice itself. The glitch systems are cybernetic virus

analogs, self-replicating and voracious. They mutate

constantly, in unison, subverting and absorbing

Chrome's defenses.

   Have we already paralyzed her, or is a bell ringing

somewhere, a red light blinking?. Does she know?


Rikki Wildside, Bobby called her, and for those first

few weeks it must have seemed to her that she had it all,

the whole teeming show spread out for her, sharp and

bright under the neon. She was new to the scene, and

she had all the miles of malls and plazas to prowl, all

the shops and clubs, and Bobby to explain the wild side,

the tricky wiring on the dark underside of things, all the

players and their names and their games. He made her

feel at home.

   "What happened to your arm?" she asked me one

night in the Gentleman Loser, the three of us drinking at

a small table in a corner.

   "Hang-gliding," I said, "accident."

   "Hang-gliding over a wheatfield," said Bobby,

"place called Kiev. Our Jack's just hanging there in the

dark, under a Nightwing parafoil, with fifty kilos of

radar jammed between his legs, and some Russian

moron accidentally burns his arm off with a laser."

   I don't remember how I changed the subject, but I

did.

   I was still telling myself that it wasn't Rikki who

was getting to me, but what Bobby was doing with her.

I'd known him for a long time, since the end of the war,

and I knew he used women as counters in a game,

Bobby Quine versus fortune, versus time and the night

of cities. And Rikki had turned up just when he needed

something to get him going, something to aim for. So

he'd set her up as a symbol for everything he wanted

and couldn't have, everything he'd had and couldn't

keep.

   I didn't like having to listen to him tell me how

much he loved her, and knowing he believed it only

made it worse. He was a past master at the hard fall and

the rapid recovery, and I'd seen it happen a dozen times

before. He might as well have had NEXT printed across

his sunglasses in green Day-Gb capitals, ready to flash

out at the first interesting face that flowed past the

tables in the Gentleman Loser.

   I knew what he did to them. He turned them into

emblems, sigils on the map of his hustler's life, naviga-

tion beacons he could follow through a sea of bars and

neon. What else did he have to steer by? He didn't love

money, in and of itself, not enough to follow its lights.

He wouldn't work for power over other people; he

hated the responsibility it brings. He had some basic

pride in his skill, but that was never enough to keep him

pushing.

   So he made do with women.

   When Rikki showed up, he needed one in the worst

way. He was fading fast, and smart money was already

whispering that the edge was off his game. He needed

that one big score, and soon, because he didn't know

any other kind of life, and all his clocks were set for

hustler's time, calibrated in risk and adrenaline and that

supernal dawn calm that comes when every move's

proved right and a sweet lump of someone else's credit

clicks into your own account.

   It was time for him to make his bundle and get out;

so Rikki got set up higher and farther away than any

of the others ever had, even though and I felt like

screaming it at him she was right there, alive, totally

real, human, hungry, resilient, bored, beautiful, ex-

cited, all the things she was. .

   Then he went out one afternoon, about a week

before I made the trip to New York to see Finn. Went

out and left us there in the loft, waiting for a thunder-

storm. Half the skylight was shadowed by a dome

they'd never finished, and the other half showed sky,

black and blue with clouds. I was s~andsng by the bench,

looking up at that sky, stupid with the hot afternoon,

the humidity, and she touched me, touched my

shoulder, the half-inch border of taut pink scar that the

arm doesn't cover. Anybody else ever touched me there,

they went on to the shoulder, the neck....

   But she didn't do that. Her nails were lacquered

black, not pointed, but tapered oblongs, the lacquer

only a shade darker than the carbon-fiber laminate that

sheathes my arm. And her hknd went down the arm,

black nails tracing a weld in the laminate, down to the

black anodized elbow joint, out to the wrist, her hand

soft-knuckled as a child's, fingers spreading to lock over

mine, her palm against the perforated Duralumin.

   Her other palm came up to brush across the feed-

back pads, and it rained all afternoon, raindrops drum-

ming on the steel and soot-stained glass above Bobby's

bed.


Ice walls flick away like supersonic butterflies made of

shade. Beyond them, the matrix's illusion of infinite

space. It's like watching a tape of a prefab building

going up; only the tape's reversed and run at high speed,

and these walls are torn wings.

   Trying to remind myself that this place and the

gulfs beyond are only representations, that we aren't

"in" Chrome's computer, but interfaced with it, while

the matrix simulator in Bobby's loft generates this illu-

sion . . . The core data begin to emerge, exposed,

vulnerable.... This is the far side of ice, the view of the

matrix I've never seen before, the view that fifteen

million legitimate console operators see daily and take

for granted.

   The core data tower around us like vertical freight

trains, color-coded for access. Bright primaries, im-

possibly bright in that transparent void, linked by

countless horizontals in nursery blues and pinks.

   But ice still shadows something at the center of it

all: the heart of all Chrome's expensive darkness, the

very heart..


It was late afternoon when I got back from my shopping

expedition to New York. Not much sun through the

skylight, but an ice pattern glowed on Bobby's monitor

screen, a 2-D graphic representation of someone's com-

puter defenses, lines of neon woven like an Art Deco

prayer rug. I turned the console off, and the screen went

completely dark.

   Rikki's things were spread across my workbench,

nylon bags spilling clothes and makeup, a pair of bright

red cowboy boots, audio cassettes, glossy Japanese

magazines about simstim stars. I stacked it all under the

bench and then took my arm off, forgetting that the

program I'd brought from the Finn was in the right-

hand pocket of my jacket, so that I had to fumble it out

left-handed and then get it into the padded jaws of the

jeweler's vise.

   The waldo looks like an old audio turntable, the

kind that played disc records, with the vise set up under

a transparent dust cover. The arm itself is just over a

centimeter long, swinging out on what would've been

the tone arm on one of those turntables. But I don't

look at that when I've clipped the leads to my stump; I

look at the scope, because that's my arm there in black

and white, magnification 40 x.

   I ran a tool check and picked up the laser. It felt a

little heavy; so I scaled my weight-sensor input down to

a quarter-kilo per gram and got to work. At 40 x the side

of the program looked like a trailer truck.

   It took eight hours to crack: three hours with the

waldo and the laser and four dozen taps, two hours on

the phone to a contact in Colorado, and three hours to

run down a lexicon disc that could translate eight-year.

old technical Russian.

   Then Cyrillic alphanumerics started reeling dowi

the monitor, twisting themselves into English halfwa

down. There were a lot of gaps, where the lexicon rai

up against specialized military acronyms in the readou

I'd bought from my man in Colorado, but it did give m

some idea of what I'd bought from the Finn.

   I felt like a punk who'd gone out to buy a switch.

blade and come home with a small neutron bomb.

   Screwed again, I thought. What good's a neutro~

bomb in a streetfight? The thing under the dust covei

was right out of my league. I didn't even know where to

unload it, where to look for a buyer. Someone had, but

he was dead, someone with a Porsche watch and a fake

Belgian passport, but I'd never tried to move in those

circles. The Finn's muggers from the `burbs had knocked

over someone who had some highly arcane connections.

   The program in the jeweler's vise was a Russian

military icebreaker, a killer-virus program.

   It was dawn when Bobby came in alone. I'd fallen

asleep with a bag of takeout sandwiches in my lap.

   "You want to eat?" I asked him, not really awake,

holding out my sandwiches. I'd been dreaming of the

program, of its waves of hungry glitch systems and

mimetic subprograms; in the dream it was an animal of

some kind, shapeless and flowing.

   He brushed the bag aside on his way to the console,

punched a function key. The screen lit with the intricate

pattern I'd seen there that afternoon. I rubbed sleep

from my eyes with my left hand, one thing I can't do

with my right. I'd fallen asleep trying to decide whether

to tell him about the program. Maybe I should try to sell

it alone, keep the money, go somewhere new, ask Rikki

to go with me.

   "Whose is it?" I asked.

   He stood there in a black cotton jump suit, an old

leather jacket thrown over his shoulders like a cape. He

hadn't shaved for a few days, and his face looked thin-

ner than usual.

   "It's Chrome's," he said.

   My arm convulsed, started clicking, fear translated

to the myoclectrics through the carbon studs. I spilled

the sandwiches; limp sprouts, and bright yellow dairy-

produce slices on the unswept wooden floor.

   "You're stone crazy," I said.

   "No," he said, "you think she rumbled it? No

way. We'd be dead already. I locked on to her through a

triple-blind rental system in Mombasa and an Algerian

comsat. She knew somebody was having a look-see, but

she couldn't trace it."

   If Chrome had traced the pass Bobby had made at

her ice, we were good as dead. But he was probably

right, or she'd have had me blown away on my way

back from New York. "Why her, Bobby? Just give me

one reason...

   Chrome: I'd seen her maybe half a dozen times in

the Gentleman Loser. Maybe she was slumming, or

checking out the human condition, a condition she

didn't exactly aspire to. A sweet little heart-shaped face

framing the nastiest pair of eyes you ever saw. She'd

looked fourteen for as long as anyone could remember,

hyped out of anything like a normal metabolism on

some massive program of serums and hormones. She

was as ugly a customer as the street ever produced, but

she didn't belong to the street anymore. She was one of

the Boys, Chrome, a member in good standing of the

local Mob subsidiary. Word was, she'd gotten started as

a dealer, back when synthetic pituitary hormones were

still proscribed. But she hadn't had to move hormones

for a long time. Now she owned the House of Blue

Lights.

   "You're flat-out crazy, Quine. You give me one

sane reason for having that stuff on your screen. You

ought to dump it, and I mean now.

   "Talk in the Loser," he said, shrugging out of the

leather jacket. "Black Myron and Crow Jane. Jane,

she's up on all the sex lines, claims she knows where

the money goes. So she's arguing with Myron that

Chrome's the controlling interest in the Blue Lights, not

just some figurehead for the Boys."

   " `The Boys,' Bobby," I said. "That's the opera-

tive word there. You still capable of seeing that? We

don't mess with the Boys, remember? That's why we're

still walking around."

   "That's why we're still poor, partner." He settled

back into the swivel chair in front of the console, un-

zipped his jump suit, and scratched his skinny white

chest. "But maybe not for much longer."

   "I think maybe this partnership just got itself per-

manently dissolved."

   Then he grinned at me. Tjie grin was truly crazy,

feral and focused, and I knew that right then he really

didn't give a excrement about dying.

   ``Look,'' I said, ``I've got some money left, you

know? Why don't you take it and get the tube to Miami,

catch a hopper to Montego Bay. You need a rest, man.

You've got to get your act together."

   "My act, Jack," he said, punching something on

the keyboard, "never has been this together before."

The neon prayer rug on the screen shivered and woke as

an animation program cut in, ice lines weaving with

hypnotic frequency, a living mandala. Bobby kept

punching, and the movement slowed; the pattern re-

solved itself, grew slightly less complex, became an

alternation between two distant configurations. A first-

class piece of work, and I hadn't thought he was still

that good. "Now," he said, "there, see it? Wait. There.

There again. And there. Easy to miss. That's it. Cuts in

every hour and twenty minutes with a squirt transmis-

sion to their comsat. We could live for a year on what

~he pays them weekly in negative interest."

   "Whose comsat?"

   "Zurich. Her bankers. That's her bankbook, Jack.

That's where the money goes. Crow Jane was right."

I stood there. My arm forgot to click.

   "So how'd you do in New York, partner? You get

anything that'll help me cut ice? We're going to need

whatever we can get.~~

   I kept my eyes on his, forced myself not to look in

the direction of the waldo, the jeweler's vise. The Rus-

sian program was there, under the dust cover.

   Wild cards, luck changers.

   "Where's Rikki?" I asked him, crossing to the con-

sole, pretending to study the alternating patterns on the

screen.

   "Friends of hers," he shrugged, "kids, they're all

into simstim." He smiled absently. "I'm going to do it

for her, man."

   "I'm going out to think about this, Bobby. You

want me to come back, you keep your hands off the

board."

   "I'm doing it for her," he said as the door closed

behind me. "You know lam."


And down now, down, the program a roller coaster

through this fraying maze of shadow walls, gray

cathedral spaces between the bright towers. Headlong

speed.

   Black ice. Dont think about it. Black ice.

   Too many stories in the Gentleman Loser; black ice

is a part of the mythology. Ice that kills. Illegal, but

then aren't we all? Some kind of neural-feedback

weapon, and you connect with it only once. Like some

hideous Word that eats the mind from the inside out.

Like an epileptic spasm that goes on and on until there's

nothing left at all...

   And we're diving for the floor of Chrome's shadow

castle.

   Trying to brace myself for the sudden stopping of

breath, a sickness and final slackening of the nerves.

Fear of that cold Word waiting, down there in the dark.


I went out and looked for Rikki, found her in a cafe

with a boy with Sendai eyes, half-healed suture lines

radiating from his bruised sockets. She had a glossy

brochure spread open on the table, Tally Isham smiling

up from a dozen photographs, the Girl with the Zeiss

Ikon Eyes.

   Her little simstim deck was one of the things I'd

stacked under my bench the night before, the one I'd

fixed for her the day after I'd first seen her. She spent

hours jacked into that unit, the contact band across her

forehead like a gray plastic tiara. Tally Isham was her

favorite, and with the contact band on, she was gone,

off somewhere in the recorded sensorium of simstim s

biggest star. Simulated stimuli: the world all the in-

teresting parts, anyway as perceived by Tally Isham.

Tally raced a black Fokker ground-effect plane across

Arizona mesa tops. Tally dived the Truk Island pre-

serves. Tally partied with the superrich on private Greek

islands, heartbreaking purity of those tiny white

seaports at dawn.

   Actually she looked a lot like Tally, same coloring

and cheekbones. I thought Rikki's mouth was stronger.

More sass. She didn't want to be Tally Isham, but she

coveted the job. That was her ambition, to be in sim-

stim. Bobby just laughed it off. She talked to me about

it, though. "I-Iow'd I look with a pair of these?" she'd

ask, holding a full-page headshot, Tally Isham's blue

Zeiss Ikons lined up with her own amber-brown. She'd

had her corneas done twice, but she still wasn't 20-20; so

she wanted Ikons. Brand of the stars. Very expensive.

   "You still window-shopping for eyes?" I asked as I

sat down.

   "Tiger just got some," she said. She looked tired, I

thought.

   Tiger was so pleased with his Sendais that he

couldn't help smiling, but I doubted whether he'd have

smiled otherwise. He had the kind of uniform good

looks you get after your seventh trip to the surgical

boutique; he'd probably spend the rest of his life look-

ing vaguely like each new season's media front-runner;

not too obvious a copy, but nothing too original, either.

   "Sendai, right?" I smiled back.

   He nodded. I watched as he tried to take me in with

his idea of a professional simstim glance. He was pre-

tending that he was recording. I thought he spent too

long on my arm. "They'll be great on peripherals when

the muscles heal," he said, and I saw how carefully he

reached for his double espresso. Sendai eyes are

notorious for depth-perception defects and warranty

hassles, among other things.

   ``Tiger's leaving for Hollywood tomorrow.~~

   "Then maybe Chiba City, right?" I smiled at him.

He didn't smile back. "Got an offer, Tiger? Know an

agent?"

   "Just checking it out," he said quietly. Then he got

up and left. He said a quick goodbye to Rikki, but not

to me.

   "That kid's optic nerves may start to deteriorate in-

side six months. You know that, Rikki? Those Sendais

are illegal in England, Denmark, lots of places. You

can't replace nerves."

   "Hey, Jack, no lectures." She stole one of my

croissants and nibbled at the top of one of its horns.

   "I thought I was your adviser, kid."

   "Yeah. Well, Tiger's not too swift, but everybody

knows about Sendais. They're all he can afford. So he's

taking a chance. If he gets work, he can replace them."

   "With these?" I tapped the Zeiss Ikon brochure.

"Lot of money, Rikki. You know better than to take a

gamble like that."

   She nodded. "I want Ikons."

   "If you're going up to Bobby's, tell him to sit tight

until he hears from ~

   "Sure. It's business?"

   "Business," I said. But it was craziness.

   I drank my coffee, and she ate both my croissants.

Then I walked her down to Bobby's. I made fifteen

calls, each one from a different pay phone.

   Business. Bad craziness.

   All in all, it took us six weeks to set the burn up, six

weeks of Bobby telling me how much he loved her. I

worked even harder, trying to get away from that.

   Most of it was phone calls. My fifteen initial and

very oblique inquiries each seemed to breed fifteen

more. I was looking for a certain service Bobby and I

both imagined as a requisite part of the world's clande-

stine economy, but which probably never had more than

five customers at a time. It would be one that never

advertised.

   We were looking for the world's heaviest fence, for

a non-aligned money laundry capable of dry-cleaning a

megabuck online cash transfer and then forgetting

about it.

   All those calls were a wasted finally, because it was

the Finn who put me on to what we needed. I'd gone up

to New York to buy a new blackbox rig, because we

were going broke paying for all those calls.

   I put the problem to him as hypothetically as possi-

ble.

   "Macao," he said.

   "Macao?"

   "The Long Hum family. Stockbrokers."

   He even had the number. You want a fence, ask

another fence.

   The Long Hum people were so oblique that they

made my idea of a subtle approach look like a tactical

nuke-out. Bobby had to make two shuttle runs to Hong

Kong to get the deal straight. We were running out of

capital, and fast. I still don't know why I decided to go

along with it in the first place; I was scared of Chrome,

and I'd never been all that hot to get rich.

   I tried telling myself that it was a good idea to burn

the House of Blue Lights because the place was a creep

joint, but I just couldn't buy it. I didn't like the Blue

Lights, because I'd spent a supr'~mely depressing eve-

ning there once, but that was no excuse for going after

Chrome. Actually I halfway assumed we were going to

die in the attempt. Even with that killer program, the

odds weren't exactly in our favor.

   Bobby was lost in writing the set of commands we

were going to plug into the dead center of Chrome's

computer. That was going to be my job, because Bobby

was going to have his hands full trying to keep the Rus-

sian program from going straight for the kill. It was too

complex for us to rewrite, and so he was going to try to

hold it back for the two seconds I needed.

   I made a deal with a streetfighter named Miles. He

was going to follow Rikki the night of the burn, keep

her in sight, and phone me at a certain time. If I wasn't

there, or didn't answer in just a certain way, I'd told

him to grab her and put her on the first tube out. I gave

him an envelope to give her, money and a note.

   Bobby really hadn't thought about that, much,

how things would go for her if we blew it. He just kept

telling me he loved her, where they were going to go

together, how they'd spend the money.

   "Buy her a pair of Ikons first, man. That's what

she wants. She's serious about that simstim scene."

   "Hey," he said, looking up from the keyboard,

"she won't need to work. We're going to make it, Jack.

She's my luck. She won't ever have to work again."

   "Your luck," I said. I wasn't happy. I couldn't

remember when I had been happy. "You seen your luok

   around lately?"

   He hadn't, but neither had I. We'd both been too

busy.

   I missed her. Missing her reminded me of my one

night in the House of Blue Lights, because I'd gone

there out of missing someone else. I'd gotten drunk to

begin with, then I'd started hitting Vasopressin inhalers.

If your main squeeze has just decided to walk out on

you, booze and Vasopressin are the ultimate in

masochistic pharmacology; the juice makes you

maudlin and the Vasopressin makes you remember, I

mean really remember. Clinically they use the stuff to

counter senile amnesia, but the street finds its own uses

for things. So I'd bought myself an ultraintense replay

of a bad affair; trouble is, you get the bad with the

good. Go gunning for transports of animal ecstasy and

you get what you said, too, and what she said to that,

how she walked away and never looked back.

   I don't remember deciding to go to the Blue Lights,

or how I got there, hushed corridors and this really

tacky decorative waterfall trickling somewhere, or

maybe just a hologram of one. I had a lot of money that

night; somebody had given Bobby a big roll for opening

a three-second window in someone else's ice.

   I don't think the crew on the door liked my looks,

but I guess my money was okay.

   I had more to drink there when I'd done what I

went there for. Then I made some crack to the barman

about closet necrophiliacs, and that didn't go down too

well. Then this very large character insisted on calling

me War Hero, which I didn't like. I think I showed him

some tricks with the arm, before the lights went out, and

I woke up two days later in a basic sleeping module

somewhere else. A cheap place, not even room to hang

   yourself. And I sat there on that narrow foam slab and

cried.

   Some things are worse than being alone. But the

thing they sell in the House of Blue Lights is so popular

that it's almost legal.


At the heart of darkness, the still center, the glitch sys-

tems shred the dark with whirlwinds of light, translu-

cent razors spinning away from us; we hang in the

center of a silent slow-motion explosion, ice fragments

falling away forever, and Bobby's voice comes in across

light-years of electronic void illusion

"Burn the grump down. I can't hold the thing

back "

   The Russian program, rising through towers of

data, blotting out the playroom colors. And I plug

Bobby's homemade command package into the center

of Chrome's cold heart. The squirt transmission cuts in,

a pulse of condensed information that shoots straight

up, past the thickening tower of darkness, the Russian

   188


program, while Bobby struggles to control that crucial

second. An unformed arm of shadow twitches from the

towering dark, too late.

   We've done it.

   The matrix folds itself around me like an origami

trick.

   And the loft smells of sweat and burning circuitry.

   I thought I heard Chrome scream, a raw metal

sound, but I couldn't have.


Bobby was laughing, tears in his eyes. The elapsed-time

figure in the corner of the monitor read 07:24:05. The

burn had taken a little under eight minutes.

   And I saw that the Russian program had melted in

its slot.

   We'd given the bulk of Chrome's ZOrich account to

a dozen world charities. There was too much there to

move, and we knew we had to break her, burn her

straight down, or she might come after us. We took less

than ten percent for ourselves and shot it through the

Long Hum setup in Macao. They took sixty percent of

that for themselves and kicked what was left back to us

through the most convoluted sector of the Hong Kong

exchange. It took an hour before our money started to

reach the two accounts we'd opened in Zurich.

   I watched zeros pile up behind a meaningless figure

on the monitor. I was rich.

   Then the phone rang. It was Miles. I almost blew

the code phrase.

   "Hey, Jack, man, I dunno what's it all about,

with this girl of yours? Kinda funny thing here..."

   "What? Tell me."

   "I been on her, like you said, tight but out of sight.

She goes to the Loser, hangs out, then she gets a tube.

Goes to the House of Blue Lights "

   "She what?"

   "Side door. Employees only. No way I could get

past their security."

   "Is she there now?"


   "No, man, I just lost her. It's insane down here,

like the Blue Lights just shut down, looks like for good,

seven kinds of alarms going off, everybody running, the

heat out in riot gear. . . . Now there's all this stuff going

on, insurance guys, real-estate types, vans with munici-

pal plates....

   "Miles, where'd she go?"

   "Lost her, Jack."

   "Look, Miles, you keep the money in the envelope,

right?"

   "You serious? Hey, I'm real sorry. I "

Ihung up.

   "Wait'll we tell her," Bobby was saying, rubbing a

towel across his bare chest.

   "You tell her yourself, co,wboy. I'm going for a

walk."

   So I went out into the night and the neon and let the

crowd pull me along, walking blind, willing myself to be

just a segment of that mass organism, just one more

drifting chip of consciousness under the geodesics. I

didn't think, just put one foot in front of another, but

after a while I did think, and it all made sense. She'd

needed the money.

   I thought about Chrome, too. That we'd killed her,

murdered her, as surely as if we'd slit her throat. The

night that carried me along through the malls and plazas

would be hunting her now, and she had nowhere to go.

How many enemies would she have in this crowd alone?

How many would move, now they weren't held back by

fear of her money? We'd taken her for everything she

had. She was back on the street again. I doubted she'd

live till dawn.

   Finally I remembered the cafe, the one where I'd

met Tiger.

   Her sunglasses told the whole story, huge black

shades with a telltale smudge of fleshtone paintstick in

the corner of one lens. "Hi, Rikki," I said, and I was

ready when she took them off.

   Blue, Tally Isham blue. The clear trademark blue

they're famous for, ZEISS IKON ringing each iris in tiny

capitals, the letters suspended there like flecks of gold.

   "They're beautiful," I said. Paintstick covered the

bruising. No scars with work that good. "You made

some money."

   "Yeah, I did." Then she shivered. "But I won't

make any more, not that way."

   ``I think that place is out of business.~~

   "Oh." Nothing moved in her face then. The new

blue eyes were still and very deep.

   "It doesn't matter. Bobby's waiting for you. We

just pulled down a big score."

   "No. I've got to go. I guess he won't understand,

but I've got to go."

   I nodded, watching the arm swing up to take her

hand; it didn't seem to be part of me at all, but she held

on to it like it was.

   "I've got a one-way ticket to Hollywood. Tiger

knows some people I can stay with. Maybe I'll even get

to Chiba City."

   She was right about Bobby. I went back with her.

He didn't understand. But she'd already served her pur-

pose, for Bobby, and I wanted to tell her not to hurt for

him, because I could see that she did. He wouldn't even

come out into the hallway after she had packed her

bags. I put the bags down and kissed her and messed up

the paintstick, and something came up inside me the

way the killer program had risen above Chrome's data.

A sudden stopping of the breath, in a place where no

word is. But she had a plane to catch.

   Bobby was slumped in the swivel chair in front of

his monitor, looking at his string of zeros. He had his

shades on, and I knew he'd be in the Gentleman Loser

by nightfall, checking out the weather, anxious for a

sign, someone to tell him what his new life would be

like. I couldn't see it being very different. More com-

fortable, but he'd always be waiting for that next card

to fall.

   I tried not to imagine her in the House of Blue

Lights, working three-hour shifts in an approximation

of REM sleep, while her body and a bundle of condi-

tioned reflexes took care of business. The customers

never got to complain that she was faking it, because

those were real orgasms. But she felt them, if she felt

them at all, as faint silver flares somewhere out on the

edge of sleep. Yeah, it's so popular, it's almost legal.

The customers are torn between needing someone and

wanting to be alone at the same time, which has prob-

ably always been the name of that particular game, even

before we had the neuroelectronics to enable them to

have it both ways.

   I picked up the phone and punched the number for

her airline. I gave them her real name, her flight num-

ber. "She's changing that," I said, "to Chiba City.

Thatright. Japan." I thumbed' my credit card into the

slot and punched my ID code. "First class." Distant

hum as they scanned my credit records. "Make that a

return ticket."

   But I guess she cashed the return fare, or else

didn't need it, because she hasn't come back. And

sometimes late at night I'll pass a window with posters

of simstim stars, all those beautiful, identical eyes star-

ing back at me out of faces that are nearly as identical,

and sometimes the eyes are hers, but none of the faces

are, none of them ever are, and I see her far out on the

edge of all this sprawl of night and cities, and then she

waves goodbye.



Brought to you
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The Cyberpunk Project
Page last modified on Friday, June 27, 2000.

I have my screen set at 1024X768 and in the past I have had no problems, but now in the forums I often have to scroll to the right in order to read some of the  lines in a posted message within a thread.  Is there something I can adjust to avoid this???

I am studing English at the University of California and I also like to fancy myself as a writer, although just an amatuer (did I spell that right? See I told you I was an amatuer).  Anyway, I have been in love with books since I was a small child.  I have C.S. Lewis to thank for that, as well as a plethora of authors of children's books.

Anyway, I just wanted to state how difficult writing is.  Although I think everyone should write due to the fact that it's an incredible experience,no matter what level of writing it is, real "publishable" writing is extremely difficult.  It takes a lot of time, patience and practice.  

I hope this new forum will be helpful to me and all of us as we search to improve.  I love constructive criticism and I hope that this will be the focus of this forum.

I think it would be helpful to define a lot of terms right off the bat (ie. narrative, style, diction, etc.) for everyone who will visit this forum and seek input and guidance.

I'm at work and I can't write more...so until next time!

I haven't even finished watching this amazing animated film, but I can wholeheartedly recommend it to you all.  This is a Japenese film but it's not the regular "anime" type...it's, well, wonderful.  It is full of enchanting visuals and an amazing narrative.  To tell you the truth it reminds me of an OBE or LUCID DREAM.  In fact there are more than a few allusions to these things (see through hands, chakra points illuminating, flying, spirits, etc.)

I am going to post some info, reviews and pics.  I hope at least a few of you check it out (it's avail on DVD and VHS for rent/purchase).  The Pixar animators say this is better work then they have done but it's too bad that US crowds didn't like it more...what can I say, most of us American's a culturally ignorant! []

SPIRITED AWAY
Hayao Miyazaki

ACADEMY AWARDS HISTORY
This is the first Academy Award nomination for Hayao Miyazaki.
-----------
Country: Japan - 2002, 124 min.

Voices: Daveigh Chase, Rumi Hiragi, Miyu Irino, Suzanne Pleshette (Dubbed into English)

Rated: Parental Guidance. Not recommended for young children.

Awards & nominations:

2002 BERLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL - won Golden Berlin Bear
2002 AWARDS OF THE JAPANESE ACADEMY - won Best Picture
2002 HONG KONG FILM AWARDS - won Best Asian Film

Synopsis: Miyazaki's SPIRITED AWAY is the latest cinematic triumph from Japan's most renowned filmmaker, Hayao Miyazaki. Adding to his impressive body of work, which includes such remarkable animated features as "Princess Mononoke" and "My Neighbor Totoro," this exciting new film is a wondrous fantasy about a ten-year-old girl named Chihiro, who is whisked away to a spirit world and must learn to overcome her fears and face unique challenges in order to save her parents and herself.

The most successful film ever to play in Japan, SPIRITED AWAY became the first animated feature in fifty years to win the coveted Golden Bear Award at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival.

Set in rural Japan, SPIRITED AWAY opens with ten-year-old Chihiro and her parents on their way to a new home in the suburbs. Having taken a wrong turn, the family arrives at what they believe to be an abandoned amusement park. Chihiro's parents are soon tempted by a buffet of irresistible food, which nearly consumes them as they consume it. They are quickly transformed into large squealing pigs.

When Chihiro searches for help, she finds a friend in Haku, a mysterious boy with magical powers. He introduces her to the spirits that inhabit the amusement park at night. Chihiro must go to work for Yubaba, a fierce old woman with a huge head and short body, who runs a hot springs resort for all manner of fantastic creatures and gods. Her experiences with these spirits, monsters and beings from ancient legends, lead to a series of extraordinary and entertaining adventures beyond her wildest imagination.

Review:  "Miyazaki's drawing style, which descends from the classical Japanese graphic artists, is a pleasure to regard, with its subtle use of colors, clear lines, rich detail and its realistic depiction of fantastical elements. He suggests not just the appearances of his characters, but their natures. Apart from the stories and dialogue, SPIRITED AWAY is a pleasure to regard just for itself. This is one of the year's best films." -- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
--------------------------
SYNOPSIS

Directed by animation legend Hayao Miyazaki, SPIRITED AWAY is the tale of Chihiro (voiced by Daveigh Chase), a young girl who is taken down an unusual road by her parents while moving to a new home in an unfamiliar town. The curiosity of Chihiro's mother (Lauren Holly) and father (Michael Chiklis) leads the reluctant child into what appears to be an abandoned amusement park. Soon her parents are greedily feasting on various delights from an enticing food stand and are literally turned into pigs. The frightened and bewildered girl then encounters a young man named Haku (Jason Marsden), who explains what she must do to navigate this strange and magical realm. Finding employment in a bathhouse for spirits and other odd characters--including kimono-wearing frogs, lumbering tentacled monsters, and a mysterious apparition named No Face--Chihiro attempts to figure out how she can free her parents from the clutches of the resort's owner, a powerful witch named Yubaba (Suzanne Pleshette). In the process, she makes some very eccentric friends--and has to deal with some notoriously stinky customers.

A surreal adventure reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's ALICE IN WONDERLAND, SPIRITED AWAY continues Miyazaki's streak of groundbreaking animated films that also includes PRINCESS MONONOKE and MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO. Succeeding MONONOKE as the most successful film in Japanese cinema history, this charming movie follows its own bizarre yet engaging logic as it reveals a cast of fascinating characters and jaw-dropping settings through stunningly beautiful hand-crafted animation. A movie experience like no other, SPIRITED AWAY is sure to enchant audiences of all ages, leaving viewers grinning with a giddy sense of wonderment.


Theatrical release: September 20, 2002

Every once in a while you run into something on the web that is just plain useful or cool, and I think I have found just that with WEBSHOTS.  (sounds like I am being paid to advertise for them).

www.webshots.com

Webshots is a great desktop/screensaver program.  The nice thing is that you can customize it like adding a small calendar to the corner, it cycles automatically, you can download pics from their website (THOUSANDS of BEAUTIFUL PHOTOS, etc.) AND****THE BEST THING is that you can drag and drop any photo or pic you already have into the webshots folder (which you open from the system tray area once you've dowloaded it) and it is automatically refitted and cycled as a desktop/wallpaper.  I swear once you get this you'll never go back.[]

Just click on the "download for free" link at the top and then sign on as a user.  It's totally free, although there is a limit to how many pics you can download in one 24 hour period for the free service.

No, not cop circles and blood red moons, these kind of signs:



Or billboards:



Real signs that are funny, freaky or just plan strange!

Add some of your own if you please.  I think truth is always stranger than fiction...well, usually (aren't we all in a chat room about floating out of your body?)[]

Here are a few more: