Charter of alt.binaries.slack

From: modemac@netcom.com (Modemac)

For your newsgroups file: alt.binaries.slack Sounds and pictures of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs.

Welcome to alt.binaries.slack, the official Usenet multimedia newsgroup of the Church of the SubGenius. This newsgroup was proposed on alt.config on January 30, 1995, and the discussion was unanimous in favor of its creation. The original proposed name for the newsgroup was alt.slack.multimedia, but upon suggestions to follow existing Usenet hierarchies, the name was changed to alt.binaries.slack.

This newsgroup exists for users to upload digitized files of all sort - pictures, sounds, animation, clip art, programs and utilities, and anything else related to sound and vision - that will aid the members of Usenet in their eternal quest for Slack.

What is Slack? If you don't know, then I can't explain it to you. However, I can offer a clue: Nirvana and ecstasy look like sheer torture when compared to Slack. Slack comes when you oppose the mind control of the Conspiracy and actually dare to think your own thoughts, believing in yourself and letting no one control your will except you. When you have Shack, you can relax in the safety of your own delusions by pulling the wool over your eyes!

Although much of the artwork posted to this newsgroup is directly related to the Church of the SubGenius, you are encouraged to do far more than post infinite variations on the grinning face of our mighty leader, J.R. "Bob" Dobbs. While Dobbs is the short-cut to Slack, he is not the ONLY route.

You are encouraged to upload weird, unusual, rare, mind-blowing files to this newsgroup. Sounds files and picture files that oppose the Conspiracy, that make people sit up and take notice, and make people start asking questions about the world are what this newsgroup is for. Things that are shocking, mind-warpingly bizarre, out of the ordinary, offensive, screamingly funny, and memorable - THESE are the images that will be seen here. Spreading these files across the Internet will make them accessible to many people who never would have dreamed that this stuff existed. These sounds and images will show the unenlightened how they spend their lives as SLAVES to the Conspiracy, when all they have to do is wake up and get SLACK! In this way, we will further infiltrate the Conspiracy and continue our chipping away at its feet of clay, until it comes CRASHING DOWN!

THE SUBGENIUS *MUST* HAVE ***SLACK!!!***

For more information about Slack and "Bob," read alt.slack. Alt.slack is also the discussion group for the files posted here to alt.binaries.slack.

You can also receive information through the mail, just by writing to:

The Church of the SubGenius
P.O. Box 140306
Dallas, TX 75214
USA

Finally, one important note about using and posting images with the image of "Bob." This image -- referred to as a Dobbshead -- is a trademark of The SubGenius Foundation, Inc. Use of the Dobbshead in your artwork is encouraged; the Church of the SubGenius is alot more lenient than Disney when it comes to using its corporate symbol. But you should still acknowledge the fact that this is a registered trademark. This is actually very easy to do. Reverend Ivan Stang offers advice on acknowledging the trademark as follows:

"The one thing I would add -- and this applies to ALL uses of the Dobbshead, in ANY medium -- please put a little tiny TM or R (registered) mark somewhere on it. This is strictly to protect us all in case some monied utter Pink decides HE'S gonna make the million bucks off T-shirts and bumper-stickers, or, worse, a damn TV show or something.

"We've never sued anybody, but we'd like to have that option when it comes time to punish evildoers."

-- Rev. Ivan Stang [ i.stang@metronet.com ] Posted to alt.slack on Saturday, January 28, 1995.

From: i.stang@metronet.com (Rev. Ivan Stang) Newsgroups: alt.config,alt.slack,alt.religion.subgenius,alt.discordia, alt.binaries.pictures.d,alt.binaries.sounds.d, alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.d

modemac@netcom.com (Modemac) wrote:

Therefore, I am proposing the creation of a newsgroup especially for the posting of SubGenius artwork of all sorts, to be called alt.slack.multimedia. This group will be for the posting of binaries of all sorts: pictures, sound files, utilities, animations, and all sorts of multimedia files with one thing in common: they are based on the concepts of the Church of the SubGenius, and they are meant to spread Slack across the Net.

AH YES!! Sounds like a good repository for stuff that would also be a source-bin for building the envisioned-by-every-SubGenius ULTRADOBBSWEB SITE or PALACE OF DOBBS or whatnot. You can count on me to make available everything that I don't think is gonna cause copyright problems or PAY problems for the arteests in question. Most of the stuff sent in by nonprofessionals for the Stark Fists (seen and unseen) is probably NO PROBLEM. Palmer Vreedeez has the MEGA-STASH of digitized art -- partly REV-X leftovers, and probably a whole lot of his own art that he might "share" -- but he won't be back in the states and getting his DEVICES hooked up to the Net for at least 6 weeks. I have a lot of MacPaint looking stuff from the olden days, but it pales in comparison to the newer pieces, especially the ones done entirely digitally from start to finish.

Then there are the thousand files of paper-copy art pieces. I don't have a scanner and probably won't for a long time. Maybe I can send unscanned art to somebody EMINENTLY TRUSTWORTHY for scanning. AND THEN THERE'S THE AUDIO... and then there's the VIDEO... I am sitting in a room that's lined wall to wall with SubGeniusness in every medium except CDRom.

I haven't ever used my StuffIt doohickies to compress anything, just to unstuff, but in theory I can do that with the pore little 4-Meg-o'RAM box I have.

But here's where I'm at. An immediate priority is a STARK FIST for ALL the Subs, a printed one. Since I don't really have the dough to print a biggie yet, I'm planning to get another Interim Report out to all 6,000 Members, containing major emphasis on alt.slack, SubG web sites, etc... a recruitment piece for the Subs who COULD be here but just haven't been motivated yet to do so. MEANWHILE I want to start dropping NEW FIST TEXT here, and maybe at the same time start doing something with the artwork that would go with it. I haven't actually started doing that YET because I'M STILL TRYING TO CATCH UP ON ALT.SLACK (everybody's about 150 postings ahead of me still) as well as the MOUNTAIN of personal/creative-contrib type snail mail. MEANWHILE I ALSO have these ever-swelling files of stuff captured off alt.slack itself, which I've been categorizing gradually towards what end --? Some recycling into Web sites for the "ONLINE FIST," a lot for the PRINT FIST, and now I'm thinking that the non-connected SubGenii probably wouldn't mind a BOOK of "Best of Alt.Slack" -- not a big deal Simon & Schuster thang, but more like something Illuminet Press or Loompanics or suchlike could use. (Illuminet has first dibs after S&S turns it down, as I'm sure they would.)

So that's the way I'm thinking about it.

When it's in the Net, we're giving it away free. But I feel that, if anything, that would STILL HELP SELL <MORE> PRINT VERSIONS OF "IT" or "THEM." (I have to think about such aspects, see. There're a lot of hungry artist mouths that would like to be fed in return for their hard work.) I figure for every SubGenius who's using this newsgroup, there are 100 who aren't. But 50% of them WILL be within 2 or 3 years, MARK MY WORDS! And that WON'T be a bad thing, so don't groan about it. I read the SubGenius snail mail. Very little of it is dunderheaded. We SubGenii, even the worst, clumsiest, most ADD-afflicted writers among us, are still FUNNIER, MORE ORIGINAL and, dare I say it, SMARTER than EVEN WE SNOBS would expect. I've read fan mail at Club Devo and Rip Off Press and -- folks, by comparison, SubGenius participants are usually way out there on the far end(s) of the Bell Curve as far as ENTERTAINING blather goes.

What I'm saying is, things can only get better. SO LET'S SHOWER THE NET WITH ALL THE MOUNTAINS OF GREAT MINDFUCKERY THAT I CANNOT AFFORD TO PRINT and will NEVER be able to print in COLOR, AIEEEE!!!!

And wait'll you see what Numen Remissionis has up HIS sleeve. Wait'll NENSLO gets COLORIZED. Wait'll you see what STERNO has done along the lines of WALLPAPER.

DAMN!!! I wasn't gonna stop and enthuse. I wanted to get CAUGHT UP. And instead, I got... CAUGHT UP! Oh well.

Rev. Ivan "Eyes Bigger Than His Belly" Stang

From: nathan@bwh.harvard.edu (Nathan Mehl)

Well, I haven't checked in on alt.slack in a while (last time I did, it as still the "pit of cascades and Pinkness" you mentioned, which has something to do with how long it's been...), but if there really is a substantial amount of binary traffic in it, I'd definately support - hell, I'd *demand* that a seperate group be created to carry them. Hidden binary groups are the plague of space-crunched admins like myself.

However, alt.slack.multimedia is not a name that gives me warm fuzzies. "Alt.binaries.multimedia.subgenius" would be ideal, since that would put it squarely in the existing hierarchy for binaries groups. Failing that, alt.slack.binaries might be marginally acceptable. The point, basically, is to make certain that even the newest of newbie news admins knows exactly where the binary groups are when s/he begins the inevitable task of paring down their active file...

Given a slight name change, consider me an enthusiastic supporter.

(p.s. Was nice meeting you at Arisia, tho' you probably don't remember me) -- -------------{http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/nmehl/home.html}--------------- |Didn't the book of Revelations say something about a plague of Newts?| ----{Nathan J. Mehl}-------------------{nathan@bwh.harvard.edu}--------

From: 3rdUncle@Sirius.com (Mark Maggi)

How about alt.binaries.slack ? It's simple, easy to use and enigmatic enough to please Bob ! -- "Now we're on the telephone Making final arrangements (ding ding)"

Original file name: Chater_of_alt.binaries.s

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