If Gear were a Supercomputer

[jack]

TRY to stay with me

 

[jack]

did you give Cody ANY cell connected to you?

 

['Gear]

I already know about the Cody persona.

 

[jack]

You know what? Cody's a real person, and you're an ignorant fuck.

 

[The Question]

He might process like this:

"HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE."

And you know what? Other than you, Jack, I am the only one who knows, without using Google, what that's from.

"I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream" by Harlan Ellison.

AM. Skynet's granddaddy.

EDIT: Bah, and you spoilered all that for all the non-readers later. lol

 

[Charlemagne]

Actually, no, I knew it was from that as well. Thanks to countless hours wasted at TV Tropes.

 

[Donovan]

I knew the phrase but couldn't remember from where, thanks to countless hours wasted reading sci-fi books at the library when I should have been at school.

 

[The Question]

Actually, no, I knew it was from that as well. Thanks to countless hours wasted at TV Tropes.

That's impressive. Most people don't read Ellison nowdays.

 

[Loktar]

And you know what? Other than you, Jack, I am the only one who knows, without using Google, what that's from.

"I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream" by Harlan Ellison.

AM. Skynet's granddaddy.

EDIT: Bah, and you spoilered all that for all the non-readers later. lol

Wait...what? Harlan Ellison, the Star Trek guy wrote other stuff too?




(just kidding....I've never read any of his stuff though)

 

[jack]

I know Ellison personally, I met him at one of the old San Diego Comic Cons years ago and we share the same birthday. He's quite the old curmudgeon. That little quip has stuck with me all these years.

Glass Bead Game indeed.

 

[The Question]

Yeah, from all I've read, from him and about him, he's a towering asshole. Gotta admire that in a writer.

 

[jack]

He sued Kim Thompson/Gary Groth and The Comics Journal at one point, spawning "Friends Of Ellison"

 

[jack]

I have no dick but I must fuck.

 

[VKD]

what's the matter with Gear here?

 

[VKD]

Ellison sounds like he'd fit right in on TK.

this was his response to his wikipedia article:

HARLAN ELLISON

- Tuesday, December 6 2005 13:11:44

WIKIPEDIA PUSTULANT

Let me urge you to go to the link Mark O. has posted re Wikipedia, just previous to this. My fervent 2 cents (and with all this much-vaunted hossanah'ing of PCs, and how they'll make us a better species, how come the fuckin' things don't have a "cents" sign as did the cheesiest typewriter Back In The Day?), my two cents is entered YET AGAIN FOR THE ELEVENTH TIME, that the site, the idea, the concept, the execution, the content of the Wikipedia site is simply unadorned crap.

Let me stress thst. CRAP. Not just useless for reference if you give even the smallest shit about truth or accuracy or fairness or being courant, but DANGEROUS and HURTFUL CRAP that balms the egos of those whose idle hours compelled them to create this cesspool in the first place, in blind denial of the idiocy of the opening concept.

It is a stupid idea, deifying the urban myths and illogical personal twitches of anonymous know-nothings. It is the raising to the level of notice, the blathering and meanness of those who formerly had an adequate and appropriate soapbox on the corner, but who now have the aid and abettment of worldwide broadcasting. It is the enabling of half-witted and jejeune autodidacts who truly believe every paranoid conspiracy opinion they foam up in their brain-basin is worthy of dissemination, and is as "valuable" as real facts and Britannica-researched real information.

The Siegenthaler situation exactly parallels mine own, EVEN AFTER I played their silly little game and spoke to the several creators of the site personally, and then spent an hour or so revising and submitting an accurate (evenhanded, non-ax-honing) revision...which lasted for about an hour till the anonymous brigands formerly of Enemies of Ellison realized their long-posted scurrilous CRAP had been deleted...and they just punched in the previous CRAP all over again. And the Wizards of Wikipedia giggled, shrugged their shoulders and said, "Well, see, that's the idea of Wikipedia. Nothing is permanent."

NOTHING IS PERMANENT???!!!!!!???????

gEEZus bleedin' whatever, this flies in the face of every basic instinct of the human race. The Great Wall of China, the Tower of Babel, the Great Library of Alexandria, the World Trade Towers, the Pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, all of Shakespeare's and Faulkner's and Shirley Jackson's writings, the begetting of children ... TO LAST, TO BE PERMANENT (even in the face of the futility of "eternal" permanence)(to defy death and the eroding sands of time, to leave a mark, to have BEEN HERE), to create that which does not slip and slide and fall away beneath our feet. To be permanent, as best it can be so.

IMpermanence = chaos.

Don't talk to me, those of you who must need to be slammed in the forehead with a maul before you'll GET IT that Wikipedia is a time-wasting, totality of CRAP...don't talk to me, don't keep bleating like naifs, that we should somehow waste MORE of our lives writing a variorum text that would be put up on that site.

It is a WASTE OF TIME.

Those who are obsessed with disseminating "Chinese Whispers," who enjoy "Playing Telephone," who batten on creating gossip and rumor and the kind of paralogical CRAP that is as real as the "little fuck" anecdote allegedly about me, that Phil Klass cobbled up from a creaky old vaudeville-cum-Joe Miller Jokebook shtick, decades ago...that still lives on...

Those pus-bags will revel in using CRAP SITES like Wikipedia, and the even more egregious ancillary-sites that reproduce the CRAP without checking, thus spreading obscurantism and illiteracy further and further...

Those schmucks will not go away. But YOU PEOPLE have some very laudable degree of common sense. So stop blathering about "we should do this" and "we should do that" and lamenting what a nasty business this is. Because short of finding each and every one of these people (and who the hell knows how many that might be, on a million different topics) and putting a Glock to their head, and festooning the wall behind them with strawberry gliomas, even RUMINATING about buying into this set-up is no more than annoying and aggravating.

So unless you can hack your way in, to destroy Wikipedia from the tap root up, give it a pass, I beg you...give it a rest!

In sympathy with John Siegenthaler's father,

Yr. pal, Harlan

 

[The Question]

The real question is, is Ellison a towering asshole because of shit-sniffers like those? Or did the aforementioned shit-sniffers go into a snorting, armpit-farting trolling frenzy because Ellison was a towering asshole first?

Is he the raging anti-hero bursting up out of a seething mound of mindless trolls, valiantly flinging them hither and yon in the righteous white-hot fury of an almost-victim who had Had Enough? Or was he simply a strutting, preening personification of insufferable hubris whom the thumb-twiddling twit masses felt it was their solemn duty to bring down?

 

[VKD]

I've been viewing some Ellison interviews on utube. he's a funny bastard.

I ought to start reading some of his stories. Any recommendations?

 

[FBI parte due]

My favorite Harlan Ellison story is the one where he defends the innocence of (sci-fi convention organizer and) known child molester Ed Kramer in public repeatedly and insistently.

 

[Mirah]

what's the matter with Gear here?

Gear challenged some dick head on the internet to find PI on him, the dick head did and Gear thinks it was jack and not the dick head.

 

[jack]

This thread now reminds me of my very favorite Harlan Ellison story. People in the field are afraid to tell it out loud, but I'll be daring and be the first to repeat it. Harlan and I are good enough friends that he won't sue me for telling it (I think)?

The thing is, Harlan is shorter than I am. This is pretty difficult to imagine, but true. A total 5' 4" on the Richter scale. In the days before he married his current wife (she's the fifth btw, and just a half-inch taller than he) he insisted on dating women twice his size. Gorgeous fucking women that literally he could let them rest their pretty titties on his forehead.

He went up to some skyscraper chick at a bar, and batting his eyes said to her, "What would you say to a little fuck?"

She supposedly said, "Hello, little fuck."