Index

219
313
666
Agon
AI
Aiwass
Albedo
All-nighter
Asymptote
As Your Attorney...
A-Train
Bad Dirty Toilet
Bagel Stetcher
Bezoar
Brooklyn
Buddy
Cardboard Cone
Cat Receptor Site
Chaos
Cheese
Chuck's
Czar
Dead
Ding an Sicht
Dome, The
Eat Flaming Death
Eat Fuck!
Eddie's
Eleusis
Emergent
Entiteification and Recombination
Entropy
Epiphenomenon
Epoche
Essencing
Every fuckup is a Gloss
Existential comedy
Fix it in post
FRED
Fuzzy Stainless Steel
Given, The
Global Village
Goddamned Canadian Bullshit
Gödel's Theorem
Gonzo
Grok
Guerilla Scrabble®
Harsh
Hanoi
Head
Heiros Gamos
Holomovement
Humous
Hypertext
HyperReal
Isomorph
Jootsing
Ka
Kenosha, Place of Dry Ice
Knows how to light a street...
Lilith
Limp Rod Rancho
Logos
Long Joke, The
Macintosh®
Media Ecology
Moxie
Mu
Muans
New Pranksters, The
No matter where you go...
Nuke The Pope
O.B.O.E.
On the train
Ontic Dump
Orange Pulp
Orgone
Pan Am 103
Pansi
Penship, Center for Mental
Postmodern
Quantum Theory
Qwisp/Qwake
Reptiles
Rock Lobster
Saint Stephen
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Sell Buicks
SlimeTime
Spoot
SUDS
Thornden Park
Unified Sensorium
UFO
Virtual Particle
Virtual Reality
Wall, The
Wallet!
Whippets
Wriggle
Yay
Yeah, right
Zine

219 rigid descriptor, geographical
1. Address of a house on Wickenden Street in Syracuse which was home to many reptiles, q.v. New Pranksters, q.v. and SUDS q.v. folk. A sort of anti-frathouse pioneered by Al Magnusson which grew like a complex organic molecule, changing each semester, but retaining a unique high artistic funk.
2. In Kabbalistic numerology, Resh=200, Yod=10, Teth=9 or, Head q.v. (path from Foundation to Splendour), Hand (Beauty to Mercy) and Serpent (Mercy to Strength.) Can also be read as R= Surreal reversal, I=prayer (tefillah or shirah)), T=Reintegration (tikkun) "recollection of the fallen stars."
3. In Tarot attribution, Sun, Hermit, Strength. The cognate astrological symbols are Sun, Virgo, Leo.

313 rigid descriptor, JFK headshot
1. The frame number in the Zapruder footage (of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, on Elm Street in Dallas, Texas, Nov. 22, 1963) in which the third (?) shot strikes the President's head q.v. Blowups of the frame show a corona of blood and bone expanding outward from the point of impact, toward the rear of the right side of his head. In this frame, Kennedy, obviously, is killed.
2. A summary phrase (from sense 1) describing a shut-ended situation, often accompanied by hand gestures and vocalized "gunshots" imitating a gun firing at one's head. Usage : "So, there I was, with a beer in my hand, when my supervisor suddenly drives up..." (hand gesture pointing to head and audio effect.)..."313."

666 rigid descriptor
1. The number of the Beast [from the New Testament's Book of Revelation, Chapter 13 verse 18] A riddle designed to protect the author (allegedly the apostle John) from the person identified, possibly Nero Caesar.
2. By extension from 1, any form of Ultimate Evil, particularly the Great Beast who is supposed to arise in Europe at the Apocalypse.
3. President Ronald Reagan. One of the particular numeric decodings of the 666 riddle was Ronald Wilson Reagan (because of the six letters of each name).
4. Flesh, the physical enfleshment of human life. [nonce , Dr. Holme] From the atomic description of carbon, the basis of terrestrial life. Carbon has six protons, six neutrons, and six electrons.

Agon n (a«-gon) [Gk αγων "gathering"]
1. Struggle. The sense in the original Greek was of the assembling of people for a contest or game. This came to mean the contest or struggle itself.
2. metaphoric The Agon has become symbolic of the contest-form in drama: Prot agonist meets Ant agonist, creating conflict, rising tension, a climax, and a resolution.
3. really metaphoric Stupid old fictions. From 2, the wasted paradigm of printed fiction and drama: those forms of storytelling which, because of closure requirements, predispose one to tell stories of patriarchal conflict. Usage : "Oh. Okay. Ask me to step outside. Yeah. Re-enact the agon." (Note: This is not recommended repartee in what one might imagine to be the situation.)

AI abbrev Artificial Intelligence
1.weak The attempt to replicate, in software, what in a human being would require intelligence. The current paradigm is expert systems: databases with inference engines which make judgements about limited domains. i.e. diagnostic expert systems in medicine.
2.strong The ultimate goal of creating machines which have experience of things the way we do.
3. Any program which can pass the Turing Test. Alan Turing proposed the following as a put-up or shut-up operationalization of AI: Sit a questioner in front of a computer screen. They type questions to two subjects, one a person, one a program. If after fifteen minutes they can\'t tell which is which, the program is AI.

Aiwass proper n relig. & electronic
1. Spirit guide of Aleister Crowley (aka Therion), also spelled "Aiwaz" in some versions. Aiwass was the angelic intelligence which provided Crowley with mystical insight.
2. Buddy Newkirk's boom box, so labelled one night when he noticed that the box's name, "Aiwa®" begged to have some closure supplied with White-Out. On the box at the time was a Mu tape (Home Jams Vol. II no. 14, "Soft Rubber Monster") in the middle of "Collision with a Deer," a reading of the reptiles q.v. repository of bizarre newspaper clippings, Frigidaire Rex.
This may have had some synchronistic influence on the situation-inevitable discovery. Or perhaps the angelic intelligence speaks refrigerator.

Albedo n astron. [Lat alb, "white"]
1. The reflectance of a surface, esp. that of a planet or satellite. Measured on a 10 point scale, with 0 being dark and Earth\'s moon being 7.
2. metaphoric Describing persons, esp. facial features, as reflective surfaces. Pynchon, for example, borrowing from Niven, describes a character as an "inconstant moon." Buddy, in an abstruse lyric in The Story of Emily and the Time Machine , notes "the flexible albedo of your skin."
Note: The metaphoric use is closely linked to the Dark Side of the Moon , from the album by Pink Floyd, in which the dark, or projective hemisphere of the moon becomes the chaos q.v. and madness (luna, see?) of the unconscious.

All-nighter 1. academic The process of staying up (to pull being the operative verb) all night, usually to finish something due the next day. (Most often something put off until the night before.)
2. theatrical The frantic, gonzo q.v. effort the night[s] before a show opens to fine-tune (or, in some cases, to tune) the physical aspects, such as sets, props, costumes, technical effects. Usage: "God did not create the world in seven days: he fucked off for six and pulled an A-N."-Will Neustadter
3. film UFO's q.v. once-a-year film series, featuring 12-14 hours of movies, played back to back, from a Saturday night to a Sunday morning. Examples: Ape-A-Rama, Prisoner Festival, Sixties Festival, Animation Festival, etc.

Asymptote n math (a«-simp-tote)
[Gk a sun ptwtoz "falling apart"]
1. Functions which approach a certain value, closer and closer, without ever reaching it. Similar to Zeno's paradox, in which you are asked to imagine always approaching something by half the remaining distance. Obviously, in this theoretical sense, you never reach it. Many interesting real-world functions exhibit this property.
2. By extension from 1, an description of the existential crisis in human thought (Popperian fallibilism argues that we can approach truth closer and closer by rejecting that which is disproven) and action (while human- kind may progress ever closer to "peace" and "harmony" actually reaching such ideals appears to be impossible.)

As Your Attorney [I Advise You To...]
injunction [Thompson, 1973]
1. From Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the phrase Raoul Duke's attorney, Dr. Gonzo q.v. (allegedly based on real-life attorney Oscar "Brown Buffalo" Acosta) usually employs to preface some important advice, like "drive as fast as possible," or "begin drinking heavily."
2. A phatic reptilian utterance, delivered in deliberate emulation of Thompson's staccato mumbling speech, usually used to advise some improbable...or interesting...course of action. "Well, you've hacked into the administrative mainframe. AYA, I advise you to change all MY grades too..." "AYA, I advise you to give me the whippet q.v. master."

A-Train n [nonce, Jackie Zeichner]
1. A term of disguise for essencing q.v.From the name of the jazz classic, and a standard initialism as substitution.
2. The construction n-Train becomes, by extension, "under the influence of." e.g. "V-Train" would be "Having taken Vivarin® brand alertness aid."
3. The most byzantine extension of this concept is to be found in constructions like, "Take the train to the plane," a borrowing of the motto NYC used for their defunct subway link to the airport, used to mean "Arrive at the plane of universal consciousness."
4. prosaic A subway line running up the west side of NYC's Manhattan island out to Far Rockaway in Queens. Both The Zone [see: Hanoi] and Mu's 191st St. apartment were on this line.

Bad Dirty Toilet simian watchcry
[Koko, 1980]
1. Since the beginning of attempts at teaching simians American Sign Language, there have been numerous funny -- and insightful -- neologisms on the part of the experimental subjects. Most interesting have been expressions of anger and frustration, what in humans we would call cursing. The apocryphal story goes that Koko was angry with her trainer and signed this three word phrase (the mean length of utterence hovers around 2.5 words in most primate subjects.) The reptiles q.v. can often be seen saying this to people, mostly unrecognized.
2. Second most popular locution: You [the trainer] Eat Green Shit. A sophisticated insult by anyone's standards.

Bagel Stretcher. rigid descriptor
1. The persistent, incorrect solution to a rebus-puzzle printed in the caps of bottles of Haffenreffer Malt Liquor, the favorite reptilian beverage. Of the many beer-cap rebi, only this one (which was determined by Dr. Holme to be "Do not litter.") and "Organize a paper drive" (misinterpreted for years as "monkey, monkey, you're a conductor.") proved repeatedly resistent, and hence became objects of cult status.
2. By analogy to sense 1, any abstruse (in the sense of recondite) puzzle or diversion. e.g. In the InfoCom® text adventure game Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the machinations required to obtain the Babel-fish. Usage : "That's a fucking bagel stretcher."

Bezoar n (bée-zore) [Arab 'antidote']
1. A knotted accretion of material.
2. A hairball, particularly in cats.
3. By extension, any postmodern q.v. concatenation or pastische. e.g. the Mu q.v. audio piece Collision with a Deer, four voices simultaneously reading an accumulation of newspaper headlines and clippings. "Real" people do 'em too: just take a gander at Jacques Derrida's Glas sometime...
Note: B is derived from the Arabic ba against zahr poison. Originally, the concretions found in the stomachs of animals which form around irritant nuclei. These were popularly supposed to protect against poisoning. True postmodernes rejoice in this felicitous accident [?] of meaning, coupling bricolage with emergent q.v. order.

Brooklyn n geog [Dutch]
1. One of the five boroughs of NYC, located on the western tip of Long Island. Pop. 4 million. The name is from the Dutch "broken land," for the marshland and fields which character- ized the area before its development.
2. The place where a tree grew, and which only the dead knew; i.e. the fictional mindscape, particularly that of Ellison's preeminent ST epsode: The Mystical Locus of Things Past.
3. adj from senses 1. and 2. A state of mind characterized by regression from the harsh, kinetic realities of the Manhattan necropolis; a creeping suburbanism of mind. Usage: "Even before Buddy left New York to go back to Pirate Cove, he was getting really Brooklyned out." -Mu

Buddy n and proper n
1. Contraction of 'brother'
2. Close friend (from sense 1)
3. Wizard (from Gaelic Buidhe)
4. State of reproducing by budding, as captive bubble-universes will.
Note: Phonemic similarities have been the stuff of bad origin-linkings since Ignacius Donnely first plied these waters in the 1800s, but the similarity of many Celtic words to Sanskrit is worth commenting on. If only to say that one has commented on it, and then pass on. But the similarity of "siddhi," Sanskrit for "power" (in the sense of psychic manifestation) and the Gaelic "sidhe" (the "shee" of "Banshee") is juicily suggestive. The relevance of this line of argument to the current entry is left as an exercise for the student.

Cardboard Cone Also, The argument about CC. frighteningly rigid descriptor [Gerald Cambrensis, 1984]
In the course of a spirited discussion with Neal Carty about analog v. digital sound systems, Cambrensis asserted that ultimately the source for a audio signal didn't matter, because all you were really listening to was a speaker, i.e. a cardboard cone. (Mylar notwith- standing). This so incensed Carty that the argument over o(n)tological veracity (or at the very least, epistemological possibility) with Carty insisting he heard voices or instruments and Cambrensis countering with the CC, raged for the next six years. As of this writing, the debate remains unresolved. Saying CC near either of them will provoke immediate mass exodus.

Cat Receptor Site descriptor, psych
[Cambrensis, 1983]
The portion of the human anatomy to which cats are naturally attracted, i.e. the lap. Cambrensis coined this term to explain to someone at SlanCon83 how neurotransmitters work: "Imagine that you're sitting down. Your lap has a certain shape. Cats, for example, could fit comfortably in your lap. A rhino wouldn't. We thus call your lap a CRS. Now some things make it more pleasant for cats, say, pillows. A pillow on a person's lap would be a catagonist, because it increases the probability of a cat sitting there. Things that keep cats away, like hammers and dogs, would be cat antagonists. That's how your brain responds to psychoactive compounds; they lock up to the CRS."

Chaos n physics [Gk caoz 'the void']
A description of systems which exhibit large fluctuations in behavior with only small differences in initial conditions. Unlike classical systems which vary linearly with input (if I push this harder, it goes only incrementally further) chaotic systems are characterized by 'basins of attraction' which interact in ways that amplify the effects of a small push to the point where predicting its effect is impossible; only the system itself can model its behavior. e.g. The Butterfly Effect: weather systems are influenced by the dynamics of the entire atmosphere. One could imagine a butterfly's wings moving the air at just the right time to break a critical threshold. C creates the time limits in weather forecasting.

Cheese descriptor
1. [advertisement, 1980] "The secret to a good meat." From some long-forgotten television commercial of the early 1980's which went something like: "The secret to a good meat: cheese."
This became emblematic for this type of doublespeak in advertising. Usage : "The secret to a good democrat. C." (meaning, 'to be Republican')
2. [from the nursery rhyme] That which stands alone. Distinguished from use 1 by the prefatory article 'the.' Usage: "Philip K. Dick. The C."
3. The little wedge-shaped slice you get when you correctly answer the question on the spokes when playing "Trivial Pursuit." By extension, any important question or situation. Usage: "This one's for the C."

Chuck's [also Hungry Chuck's, HC's Hungry Charley's, Charlie's, Fuck's]
Simply put, the best pub/restaurant on the Syracuse university campus drag, Marshall (or M) street. It became the hangout of choice for all associated with the reptiles, q.v. the New Pranksters q.v. and SUDS q.v. Its logo was the screaming head popularized in the graphic for "Sweeney Todd." During the summer of 1980, when the SUDS did their illicit production of "Todd" C's was celebrated in song by Jim Labov, the visiting mathematician who played Judge Turpin.
Note: Often, one could tell the frame of mind of an interlocutor simply by which form of the pub's name they used. "Let's go to Chuck's." was very different than "Let's hit Fuck's."

Czar abbrev. How Brandon Became the Czar of New York." descriptor [1981-82]
In The Cove, [see: Hanoi] Buddy wrote an extended, picaresque narrative of apocalypse, starring reptiles q.v. vocalist Brandon Edmonds. He sent this off as short takes, Dickens-style, back to Syracuse. The plot was an absurdist tale of Magick and organic chemistry, NYC's secession from the US to become the Emirate of Lennon, and Al Haig's ascension to Führer of the Sixth Reich. cf . Mogul abbrev How Buddy Became the Mogul of Hollywood. Will returned the compliment, and constructed a narrative of the reptiles q.v. loose in Hollywood, a sequel to ET, a monster dance in the suits from Infra-Man, and the replication of the Ludovico Technique. (see Clockwork Orange)

Dead rigid descriptor
1. Grateful The band, who from their beginnings (in the Kesey "Acid Tests" and the Fillmore) to the present, continue to produce intricate, polyrhythmically webbed little gems of mind-melting music. The occasion on which they played the SU Carrier Dome q.v. is the stuff of local legend. ("It was like having God on campus!" -Brandon J. Edmonds) Known best for the eclectic guitar virtuosity of 9-fingered Jerry Garcia, and the totally unhinged "Space Jams," in which song boundaries melt and a half-hour may pass in unhurried contemplation of the infinite, accompanied by massive drum solos.
2. Shorter title for D-D-D-D-Dead, Art and Mu's [1980] existential punk tune describing their car accident in Tully.

Ding an Sicht compound n [Ger lit 'Thing in itself'] [Kant]
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is the first systematic attempt to build a presuppositionless philosophy. Kant argues that our experience is shaped by certain a priori (before all possible experience) constructions native to consciousness (the intuitive forms of space and time) and that it puports to be experience of an external world, full of things. It is these Things in Themselves to which DaS refers. Not as objects of consciousness, but as essentially unknowables. All we ever know, we know within consciousness. How Things outside might be in themselves is for Kant metaphysical. When I perform the epoche, q.v. I admit that the DaS is now and forever unknown.

Dome, The rigid descriptor
1. The "Carrier" D, constructed on the campus of Syracuse University in the 1980's to replace the Archbold Stadium football arena. Campus sentiment was high that the facility be named after late SU football great Ernie Davis. However, the Carrier Corporation (A division of United Technologies based near Syracuse) provided major funding. Hence the name. An enormous structure, capable of holding 60,000 in pressurized comfort. It became, in the early 80's, the most visible symbol of the mercantilization of the university.
2. Generic evil. (from sense 1) Used in compound phrases like "Playing the D," or "Living in the D," in an inversion of Buckminster Fuller's benevolent D vision.

Eat Flaming Death [You Fascist Bastard]
song title/motto [ Spring, 1979]
Mu and Art's first lyrical collaboration. Tearassing around the campus in Mu beatup Fury, collecting stuff for a party, one of them, neither remembers who, shouted the first line at someone out the window, and by the time they made it back to the living room and their guitars, most of the verses were done. The recitative opening, a deliberate parody of the Stones Girl with the Faraway Eyes, evolved in Performance. [heh heh] EFD reached its apotheosis when the reptiles q.v. performed it live on Orange Pulp q.v. and the TVR production professor turned off his set, reportedly so sick and disgusted he couldn't watch television for over a week. Yay. q.v.

Eat Fuck! nonce expletive
Attributed to Mary Goss, Providence College dorm, 1977. Tired of the street-rowdy antics of a gang of drunken Jesuit college whoop-te-doos, Goss, after yelling every possible thing at them to no effect, coined what became the rallying cry of the reptiles q.v. and their progeny. Al Magnusson describes the experience: " We were at the bottom of the barrel of expletives. The supply of expletives had been exhausted. By the time we screamed EF we were hoarse. To truly signify, to truly mean , it has to be [uttered] after you've exhausted very other expletive."
Note: As the paradigmatic recombinant expletive, EF has been studied to provide clues to the future of obscenity. See also : Bad Dirty Toilet.

Eddie's rigid descriptor, geog
A restaurant located on Waverly Place and Mercer Street in NYC's Greenwich Village, adjacent to NYU. Formerly a New York incarnation of "Chuck's," q.v. (which is alleged to have had a third establishment in Cambridge, MA.) this became the NYC base of operations for the reptiles q.v. because of its large murals (duplicates of the ones in Syracuse) and its HC like atmosphere. The sangria was slightly more expensive, but in all other resepects, it was a lizard's home away from home. Try their excellent broiled chicken breast pita with cranberry mayo, or their vegetarian tofu stir fry. Or pig out on one of their deluxe burgers, served with curly fries and a generous side salad. Recommended.

Eleusis geog (el-e-ooh´-sis) [Gk eleusinioz linked to eleuqeroz "free"]
The location of the shrine of the Great Goddess Demeter, (delta-matrix) and site of the Mysteries, a cultic ritual celebrated for a over thousand years. Initiates were led into a cave, and the the lights put out. The initiated were called "Epopts," \'those that see." None of the content has survived. Modern scholarship finds support for the hypothesis that the Mysteries involved not only tantric sexual union, (See : Heiros Gamos) but also intoxication with powerful hallucinogens (possibly amanita muscaria) and consequently a direct, intuitive experience of the Infinite. The Mysteries were, probably, yet another transform of the perennial mystical insight: All Is One.

Emergent adj phys [Lat e mergere 'to rise up from out of'] [wide nonce 1980s]
1. With the paradigm shift from a universe of Entropy q.v. to one exhibiting self-organization, E comes to describe the artifacts of this process. Ex. At the big bang, only energy exists. Cosmos expands, temperature falls, and the energy 'freezes out' into the basic particles and four forces. All else is emergent: quarks interact and suddenly we have atoms, which hang out together and molecules emerge; molecules recombine and self-repli- cators arise, leading to organic life, plants, reptiles, and Dan Quayle. Well, even E universes fuck up sometimes.
2. By extension, any system which gives rise to order spontaneously, particularly in AI. q.v. See : John Conway's "Life"

Entiteification and Recombination
process descriptor Buddy 1978]
1. The ongoing process of the universe, the way some quantum q.v. physicsts see it: an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space, with complexity emergent q.v. out of chaos, q.v. and blackholes eating space and time to bud out little baby microverses into alternate spacetimes.
2. The Gaia view of organic life on earth, with the individual organism seen as the E and its dissolution into organic constituents the R; the process of biogenesis as a whole. See : orgone.
3. The subconscious process of the mind that underlies consciousness: possible idea-solutions existing in superposition, which collapse into the idea as experienced. See Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind

Entropy n physics [Gk troph turning ]
1. The portion of energy unavailable to perform work in a system. Imagine two ballrooms in the Carnot Hotel, H and C, connected by a revolving door. If there are too many people in room H, they will move through the door, spinning it and performing work. As the number of people in the rooms equalizes, less people push the door, doing less work. Thus, the E of the system increases
2. This can be related to information. Imagine the system above in its initial state as being highly improbable (in the sense of non-random) and the final state as being classically random. E is thus a measure of the information in a system. The less probable, the lower the E. But all information goes to E too...

Epiphenomenon n phil [Gk epi fainomenon "out the window; outside of the appearance"] [Science, 1800s]
1. Literally, that which appears as an adjunct to something else. The sense is one of subordination. Ex . "When the President appears, so do the Secret Service. SS are an E of the Presence."
2. By extension, those aspects of experience which are irrelevant, and which should be relegated to secondary importance in understanding. (The SS in 1, above.)
3. By further extension, those aspects of a ding an sicht q.v. which it cannot mask off; signs and symptoms of the Thing, even if the thing itself can't be perceived. "The E is always more interesting than the phenomenon" -Dr. Holme's rule of gonzo q.v. journalism.

Epoche n (eh-p—ck-hay) [ Gk. epoch 'I abstain, stop, hold position']
1. The initial move of Husserelian phenomenology, the act of abstaining, or 'bracketing' experience, that is, regarding the flow of experience as just that, the flow of the Given, q.v. and attempting to construct a presuppos- itionless first philosophy beginning with only that which is the content of such experience.When one is in the E, one is observing experience from the point of view of the transcendental subject, the "I" in, "I am that which is appeared to."
2. The E has strong similarities to Zen meditation (observe but do not become attached) schizophrenia (I feel like I've been separated from reality by time- space displacement) and Essencing. q.v.

Essencing rigid descriptor [twisted nonce, Jackie Zeichner 1980]
Zeichner's term of choice for Practicing the Mystery at Home, [cf. Eleusis] particularly the experience of transcending overdetermined aspects of experience. As Zeicher put it after his first A-Train q.v. ride: "Remember the Buddha's last words: 'Transient are conditioned things. Try to accomplish your aim with diligence.' That's fucking It . It's about penetrating past change, past mutability, past the conditioned, to the Essence."

cf. Anti-Essencing, the process of blurring the edges of artificial concepts to make them seem more universal, employed by Republican party spokespeepholes for the last 10 years.

Every fuckup is a Gloss bon mot
[translation of the apocryphal def. of Jazz 'Jazz is riffing on your own mistakes .' which unfortunately none of the reptiles q.v. remember who said] Mu in his idioclastic fashion, refused to edit any of the recordings the band produced, arguing the above point about mistakes, and relying on Buddhist dogma that runs "First thought, best thought" as well as the Cagist axiom, "Everything we do is Music." (Which he also inscribed on a poster of the popebot which occupied a place of prominence over the toilet in Hanoi q.v. . Opposite the toilet was a wall-size photo-mural of the galaxy, giving rise to the well-known "pope-universe" dichotomy.)

Existential comedy descriptor [Buddy Newkirk 1979]
1. Humor which isn't funny; i.e. verbal utterances with the structure of a joke, but without comedic power. Its paradigm [Newkirk] joke is: "These two aliens walk into a bar, and the first alien says to the second alien, "You know what a shame is? A shame is a starship full of Kzin falling into a black hole with two empty life support capsules." [Often told simply as "These two aliens..." AKA "The Alien Joke"]
2. Humor which has been ellipsised or shortened. In the following example, the elipsis is spoken as "dot dot dot": "Waiter...Fly...backstroke." The best example of this was done by New York City comedians Bob and Smooth: "Two men...a bar...What, no comb?"

Fix it in post process descriptor [recurrent nonce, Emily Keane, 1980]
1. A locution adopted from the motion picture/ television field where any mistakes made in the shooting of a scene (camera angles, coverage of action) can usually be made up in skillful editing or overdubbing. The sense is that nothing is irrevocably fatal. Usage: "So you didn't catch her hitting the tree. We'll fix it in post."
2. By extension, from 1, sliding toward an increasingly cavalier attitude about getting things right. Usage: "Oh, fuck it. We'll fix it in post."
3. By further extension, a palliative statement about anything that goes wrong in the day-to day. e.g. someone drops a tray full of glassware. "Hey! We'll fix it in post."

FRED acronym Fucking Ridiculous Electronic Device[Neustadter, 1980]
1. Any piece of equipment which is either too complex or too trivial to name. By extension, any mysterious object about which one may have paranoid delusions, like electric typewriters. Has a connotation of sentience, as if FRED is self-aware to the point of disguising it's origin and purpose. (Geez, pretty paranoid , huh?)
2. A metasyntactic name/variable, esp. for persons, inserted either when the real name is unknown, or for effect. Usage : "FRED here tries to get the program to cough up my check."
3. The defunct McDonald's® Yumbo®, from their original commercial, in which they say they almost called it F.
4. metaphor The Shwartzgërat.

Fuzzy Stainless Steel. rigid descriptor [recurrent nonce, 1980]
1. What your mouth tastes like after an all-nighter, q.v. particularly an unpleasant one during which you have had to accomplish some especially loathesome task. Popularly thought to be the tangy xanthide aftertaste of the V-Train. Usage : "Man, I think I took too many Vivarin. I can taste every fucking one of my fungiform papillae. And you know what they all tastelike ? FSS."
2. By extension from sense 1, the sound you hear at that time, to be imagined as sort of a scouring-pad rasp on one\'s cerebral cortex. "Cor, Tex!"
Symptoms : insomnia, twitching, tinnitis, diuresis, tachycardia with extrasystole, psychosis and asemia.

Given, [The] n philosophy
1. The raw sense-data present to consciousness, so regarded. From C. I. Lewis's pragmatic phenomenology as described in his Collected Papers . An attempt to characterize the sensory component of a 'bracketed' experience, that is, what one has after one performs the epoche q.v. and looks at the contents of their perception as such. Derived from Edmund Husserl's phenomenology, particularly his transcendental reduction. (I think...)
2. The elements of a perception which may naively be attributed to a presumed external world.Usage : "The tree is G; the Tree of Life is not."
3. That which is universally assumed to be true. Usage : " MTV sucks." "Yeah. That's a G."

Global Village n [McLuhan, 1962]
1. Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media sketches a theory of media as extensions of the human sensorium. e.g. The camera is an eye, the wheel, a foot. McLuhan argues that the computer is the extension of the central nervous system, and that the inevitable result of wiring up the entire world will be to shrink the whole planet to the phenomenological size of a village.
2. The inverse of this vision is found in William Gibson's 1982Neuromancer. Gibson imagines that under the Hand of the transnationals, the Matrix (as he terms the GV) will be a replication and extrusion of the monolithic and monadic nature of the corporation. i.e. The GlobalVillage (in the Prisoner sense...) See also : Virtual Reality

Goddamned Canadian Bullshit com- pound descriptor [anon. nonce 1988]
Marshall McLuhan's work; by extension, European/critical media theory, including semiotics. A nonce expression for McLuhan's work used by a senile whitehaired fuck* at the first job interview Newkirk ever essayed as an academic. The interview had been going swimmingly. The department chair, pleasantly reading Newkirk's résumé, noted an article on McLuhan. Dr. S.W. Fuck, who had until then said nothing, looked up from his crusty, malignant, self- absorbed daze, uttered his appraisal of professor McLuhan's work, and returned to his vegetative somnolence. The author did not get the job. Thank Isis.
*If you know him, please don't tell.

Gödel's Theorem descriptor [1930]
Shorthand name for what are actually two theorems derived by mathematician Kurt Gödel. The first says that all sufficiently powerful formal systems (like mathematics and logic) are fundamentally open-ended (there will be some statements which can neither be proved or disproved) and the second says that formal systems are unable to internally establish their own consis- tency (systems cannot prove that they contain no internal contradictions.) GT has some interesting implications for AI q.v. , since AIs are programs, which, in fact, are formal systems governed by GT. It would therefore seem to be impossible for AI's to Jootsing q.v. out of logical dilemmas the way humans do. Or so it is alleged.

Gonzo adj n v [etym unknown, pop by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson 1970]
1. Immediate, (un-mediated) unplan- ned, pristine. From Thompson's 'G journalism' (Ex : Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ) which favors in-your-face, visceral reportage delivered directly from notes to fax machine to typesetter, with as little editorial fuckery as possible. Similar to Beat/Zen's 'first thought, best thought.' Popularized by the 1981 film,Where the Buffalo Roam and "Mr. Duke," from Doonesbury, an unabashed charicature of HST.
2. Cool (from sense 1) "Totally G!"
3. noun The ideal which G expresses: the transcendent. Usage : "The G."
4. verb To produce something quickly, esp. a piece of writing. ex : "I'll just G that out this afternoon."

Grok tr v [Martian, from Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land 1965]
1. Literally 'to drink,' G carries the sense of 'to make one with yourself in the fullest way possible,' to take in and make part of you. Metaphorically, it means to understand deeply, to have wisdom (rather than just knowledge) While you can 'G' beer (drink) you wouldn't say that unless you were also a brewer. The locution is best reserved for occasions of ultimate knowledge or insight. Zeichner: "I was Essencing q.v. to Lennon, and I suddenly grokked his whole thing inWorking Class Hero ." Mu: "Grok around the clock."
2. Usage is similar to "hack" in its time-extended sense: "She's a major HyperCard hacker" and "She groks HyperCard" would be equivalent.

Guerilla Scrabble® game [1980]
The preeminent New Pranksters q.v. party game, credited to Al Magnusson. The rules are simple: take the letter tiles from Scrabble and divide them up so that each player has an even share. Then you come up with a category (like, "Movie Titles") and each player must construct an appropriate phrase using only their letters. The wierder the better. Each player must first explain the context, and then show their entry.
Example : Category: Insults in foreign languages. Context: An insult created by Roman vineyard workers. Entry: Yo lille grapa tu tutti beaver donga. (My little grapes are bigger than your 'big' beaver's penis.) Part of the fun of GS is the machinations required to explain such entries.

Harsh adj [recurrent nonce, 1980s]
1. The reptiles/New Pranksters q.v. term of choice for generic, extreme unpleasantness.Ex.:"My boss put me on the seven a.m. shift." "Ow. Fucking H."
2. More specifically, any quality of food, drink, or smoke which is hard to take, because of extreme character. Usage : "Bat 151 makes a H Rum and Cola."
3. Over the top, rough, particularly the ultraviolent in cinema. Usage : "That scene in Three the Hard Way where the guy gets pasted right through the pinball machine? Fucking H, man."
4. Reeeely nasty, usually in the practical joke sense. Like the long joke q.v. Mu played on Jackie where he painstakingly removed the contents of a tube of hemorrhoid creme and laced it with jalapeño peppers. Mu: "Preparation H."

Hanoi rigid descriptor, geog. abbrev of The Hanoi Hilton. [Mu and Art 1980]
The Syracuse apartment occupied by some of the reptiles q.v. during 1980-1981. It is part of the group's tradition of apartment names: The Void (1978-1979) The BatFlat (1981-1982) The Cove (1981-1982) and The Zone (109th Street, NYC) 1982-84) and Callisto (Flabtush, Brooklyn, 1984-1986). The only place that never received a nickname, but was always referred to by its address was, for some reason, 219. Whether for Kabbalistic reasons or because no viable name spontaneously occurred (it was prohibited to have to sit down and think of a name -- that was considered unspeakably plastic) has never been formally decided.

Head rigid descriptor (film, 1967)
The Monkees movie. After the pre-fab Four finished their antics on television, they got together with screenwriter Jack Nicholson and director Bob Rafaelson to produce this genuinely twisted piece of musical wierdness. Mickey Dolenz, Peter Tork, Michael Nesmith, and David Jones wander through the back lots of Hollywood's subconscious. They jump off bridges. They do dandruff commercials. They meet Frank Zappa and a talking cow. They are trapped in a huge black box by someone who talks a lot like Marshall McLuhan. All accompanied by wigged visual effects and over-the-top musical numbers (the intercutting between concert and battle footage would not be equalled untilThe Wall q.v. ) Highly Recommended.

Heiros Gamos n [fr Gk ieros gamos 'mystical marriage']
1. In almost all ancient (that is to say, pre-patriarchal) religions, the only way in which men could acquire spiritual power was to directly experience ecstatic sexual union with the Goddess in her aspect as Woman. In HG, women celebrated their participation in the ekstasis of the cosmos. Tantric Bud- dhism and the Japanese Emperor's union with Amaterasu are remnants of this once pervasive belief system.
2. As religion became a bureacracy for the routinization of ecstasy, particularly once men discovered paternity and replaced the Cauldron with the Cross, the HG gave way to marriage as domination. It's a frighteningly short jaunt from Eleusis q.v. to Stepford.

Holomovement n physics [Bohm 1980]
1. Physicist David Bohm's term for the ongoing process of the universe, as ding an sicht. q.v. Bohm makes a distinction between explicate order (what we can see, roughly, the phenomenal world) and the implicate order (the way the universe gives itself to itself, the noumenal) Bohm argues that the universe is holographic (that information about the whole structure is encoded locally at all points) and that we cannot penetrate to this level of perception Given the a priori constraints imposed by our way of being (short-lived two-meter fleshy biped planet dwellers.) The H is another intuitive approach to the All is One.
2. humerous 'Movement' even bigger than an Ontic Dump q.v. (sense 3)

Humous n (pron huh-mos)
1. A delicious Middle-Eastern dish of ground chick peas, tahini, garlic, and lemon, served as a dip with pita bread.
2. Tahini machŽ of the prophets. Day- old H makes excellent modelling clay, with extreme durability. A small H dog, modelled by Magnusson during the 219 era, survives to this day. Once this stuff gets hard, NOTHING eats it.
3. Spackle of the New Pranksters. Near the close of the age of reptiles q.v. at 219,q.v. Mu and Art came into posession of a pair of motorcyle helmets. (you don't want to know) They would strap them on and then run at things, like lamps and ceiling fixtures. To preserve their security deposit, most of the damage was filled with several-day old H. Sand, prime, and paint as usual.

Hypertext n comp [Nelson, 1964]
1. Term coined by Theodor Nelson for the non-sequential linking and navigation of text, (which can include anything postmodern q.v. theorists think of as text: film, audio, images) under full user control.
2. Michael Joyce, in a 1988 article in Academic Computing , made a critical terminological addition. Joyce proposed that we think of two types of Hs: Exploratory (those with pre-defined knowledge bases and existing pathways which we discover) and Constructive (those with evolving, emergent information phase-spaces which we interact with, and in our interaction, create meaning in a quantum q.v. way.) In the constructive H, there is no meaning, only pattern.

HyperReal descriptor [Baudrillard, '83]
French semiotician Jean Baudrillard's term for the illusory surface of everyday life produced by the machineries of postmodern culture. DisneyLand, for example, is a HR simulation of reality designed to make us forget what a charnel house the rest of our society is. The President is a HR figure who exists not as a human being, but as a nexus of public-opinion data and the long-range goals of Those In Power. The idea of the HR has strong affinities to illusory reality in Buddhism (See: essencing) and to the Gnostic paranoias of Philip K. Dick, particularly in his Valis trilogy. Suppose, just for an instant, that everything They told you was a lie. How would you ever find out? Ha, Ha. Just kidding, folks. Buddy make joke.

Isomorph n [Gk isomorfh 'equal form']
1. Having the same form as. The early sense of the word pertained to chemical or mineralogical properties. When it was picked up by mathematics, more of the modern sense emerges. Two things or systems are Is if their components and processes can be mapped onto each other, that is, if significant correspond- ences exist. I-ism raises interesting philosphical questions, particularly in AI q.v. What 'is' "the same as" human intelligence? Can, for example, the way humans think about a problem (with brains) be I-ic, in any sense, with the operations of a computer? What precisely (to ask a Hofstadterian question) needs to stay the same for us to retain an I-ic mapping? What am I?

Jootsing gerund acronym (for 'Jumping Out Of The System' Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel , Escher, Bach 1979]
1. The process of self-transcendance required to achieve a meta-level picture or solution to situationally engendered problems, particularly constraint- driven paradoxes like "This sentence is false," or Gödel's Theorem. q.v.
2. Joots tr v (from 1) The act of self- transcending a system, especially one predicated on control structures geared to prevent just that, like religions or schizophrenogenic family structures. Usage : "Oh, criminy, will you just Joots out of that stupid, catholic, Batesonian double-bind of a family of yours."
3. jocular (from 2) To get something, particularly in the sense of extraction.
Ex : "Joots me a beer from Frostigone."

Ka n [Ancient Egyptian]
1. In Egyptian theology, a person's doppleganger or spirit double. The K is, arguably, the closest to the person of the several egyptian souls. There was also the ba , or sublime soul, thekhabit , or shade, the ren , or name-soul, and the khu , or aura. It was the K for whom the pyramid was stocked with food and drink, for it continued to eat after the person died.
2. By extension from sense 1, one's 'soul-mate' or 'life-partner,' regardless of sexual orientation. One's 'K' in this sense is the person who understands you and who you understand.
3. By extension, one's isomorphic q.v. transform: that which would stay the same about the person if the universe slipped, forked, or looped.

Kenosha, Place of Dry Ice witticism
[TV nonce, Buddy Newkirk, 1984]
Recombinant fake TV show title encompassing all possible 'nature' documentaries. After watching n docs with names like "Foo: Bar of FRED Baz" (whose paradigmatic example was "Etosha, Place of Dry Water") Buddy referred to all such programs from then on as K...
Related usage : Art and Emily, watching a National Geographic doc on Pleistocene hunting, brainstormed these lyrics to their theme:
"There goes a mammoth
There goes another one
Now there's two.
Let's get our spears out
And then we'll kill them both
And have stew." -Art and Emily

Knows how to light a street... insult
[nonce, Emily Keane, 1982]
Damning with faint praise taken to its logical conclusion in the film biz. Shooting night-for-night with banks of blue floods and tight key lights is so ingrained in the american oeuvre that all but the most clumsy neophyte can produce what we instantly recognize as "dark" streets on film. Saying that a director or cinema/videographer K... means no more than that they can speak understandable sentences to union lighting crews, who are the real brains anyway. Originally aimed at some minimally competent first-time director in the Whitney Biennial, the insult broadened and ripened with age until simply saying "Gee. Sheknows ..." was sufficient to convey the intent.

Lilith prop n relig [fr Snskr lilu, 'lily']
1. Traditional first consort of Adam, who, unhappy with her role as chattel, left him for the demon Samael. Distressed by this turn of events, the evil tyrant demiurge pulled a new partner out of Adam's rib, making sure that this one knew who was boss. And then, Eve gets blamed for falling for the Serpent's wiles. Moral: You just can't win if you ain't got a pecker. Unless you joots q.v. out of the godgame like L.
2. L's reputation eventually broadened to include all manner of she-demons: child-killers, night- mares, succubi.
Note : Yet another example of patriarchal distortion of the Great Goddess to give Man some way to reproduce, thus rendering Woman less powerful. See also : logos, Heiros Gamos.

Limp Rod Rancho like, poetry, man
1. Mu. q.v.
2. Yay. q.v.
3. Written on the bottom of a case of Budweiser, the LRR is one of the finest examples of collaborative poetry from 219 q.v. .

Logos n [fr Gk logoz 'word']
1. Orignally, word, language, reason. By extension, this came to mean the speech act as creative act, from whence it went on to become identified with male creation cosmologies, particularly the christian.
2. The L became emblematic of the shift from oral, goddess cultures to the linear, bureaucratic god cultures which written language produced. Writing served a metaphoric function as well: suddenly, men had a technology for reproducing themselves (in their words, their commands to others) which they had never had in the natural world. It was inevitable that they use this technology to subjugate nature, accelerate capitalism, and bury ekstasis in the necrotic tissue of literacy.

Long Joke, The descriptor [1980s]
1. Humor, particularly physical comedy or practical jokes that require extended set-up, preparation, or some triggering event. Usually there is a sense of randomness involved. Scary Things in unexpected places are paradigmatic.
2. The most famous example of the LJ occurred in the SUDS q.v. office. Before Mu left SU in 1982, he hotglued a pair of pumps to the bottom of the costume trunk. In 1987, when Emily, Al, Bob and Buddy visited the campus and dropped in to see who was running the organization, the new president had just been cleaning out the costume room. He reached in to get this pair of shoes, and couldn\'t figure out why on earth they wouldn\'t budge. "Like somebody had glued them." The LJ.

Macintosh® prop n computing
1. Insanely great wheels for the mind. But you know that already. The first iconic interface, bit-mapped computer available. Introduced in 1984, it was the brainchild of Steve Jobs and a pirate crew that included the likes of Woz, Atkinson, Hertzfeld, Capp, etc. Within two years it went from a toy to the standard that Big Blue had to emulate.
2. As Guy Kawasaki points out in The Macintosh Way, the Mac is emblematic of THE happening school of thought: empowerment, flattened hierarchies, distributed systems, all the good stuff. Read Guy's book. It's groovy.
3. Redefined the look and feel of software. Killed the commandment line interface justabout single-handedly (and there was much rejoicing...)

Media Ecology compound n academic
1. A graduate program in the philos- ophy of media at NYU created by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner. Begun in the late 60\'s, it continues the tradition of media analysis founded by Harold Innis, Walter Ong, and Marshall McLuhan, and the General Semantics of Count Korzybski.
2. The study of media as symbolic environments. (by analogy to ecology)
3. What media ecologists do. Bonnie Bornstein: "Saving the whales and wiring them up for cable." In fact, anything that media ecologists do, leading to sense
4. Contentless nonsense (perjorative) as in, "Is that research, or is that just 'media ecology?' Cf. Goddamned Canadian Bullshit."

Moxie® prop n beverage
1. Anybody raised in New England knows M in their bones. Anyone else will find it hard to believe that a gentian-root soft drink sounds like anything but a Warsaw Pact import. And yet, it is a tasty, piquant brew, with a fine finish, clever underpalatals, wide filamentation, and a loquacious bite. Compare the flavor of the reptiles q.v. favorite Jãgermeister®, a German gentian-root liqueur of which Vox said, "Don't drink any if you're going to sit on a roof." The Reptiles often mixed the two, calling the drink theMoxmeister.
2. metaphoric Description of a person who has what in Yiddish would be chutzpah . Probably originally used to describe anyone who could actually drink the stuff. Use: "Vox has Moxie."

Mu prop n (moo or mew)
1. Nom de guerre of the reptiles q.v. guitarist/ vocalist and founder and producer of the Blood Pumping Stumps Mitchell "Uzi" Ubel, constructed originally by analogy to the Velvet Underground's "VU."
2. The Buddhist equivalent of "Spoot" i.e. a metasyntactic utterance which unasks the previous question. Usage : "Does a dog have buddha-nature. If you answer yes or no, you lose your buddha nature. If you do not answer, you lose your buddha nature. How do you answer?" "Mu." Also acceptable: "Do you want to see the Bob Hope show at the Dome?" " Mu! "

Muan n [synthetic Jap muko no ango "code of the beyond" based on koan ]
The term created to describe the repetitive gnomic utterances of Mu; almost everything he said consisted of these short, indigestible, multi-purpose phrases. Especially, Yay q.v.
Ex: My Spine...! (I am receiving noxious stimuli) I...I...I...I...I (funny expression of trapped apprehension) Shit...shit...SHIT (something has gone seriously wrong. Imagine the Sorcerer's Apprentice) Tick...tick...tick... (Something seriously interesting is about to happen.) Twitch, twitch (Spoken comment on nervous-making situations) Art is Destruction (Most famous of the M. Mu appraisal of any artistic effort, particularly those involving high- culture art and exothermic reactions.)

New Pranksters, The prop n
Every generation must discover it all over again, such is the nature of ecstasy. As you grow up, you try to forget what it was like, that first antic rush of sex, drugs, and rock&roll. When Thomp- son led us into Tom Wolfe and thence to Lilly and Leary and Kesey, we became the NP. It was April. Thornden q.v. was a Woodstock of dandelions. We lay out in the evening strumming six-strings under the clouds, reflective, spearmint tea drinking shadow-selves of the new wavers pogoing to the Ramones. We were that too. But this time, we would unite the hemispheres. We believed it was possible. We did guerilla theatre. We smashed things. We welcomed the Pope q.v. to Syracuse. We played for Al Haig at the Dome. We got away with it.

No matter where you go... (there you are.) catchphrase [popularized in the film Buckaroo Bonzai 1983]
Written by Earl MacRauch, (New York, New York; Wired) Buckaroo Bonzai traces the Postmodern q.v. exploits of a neurosurgeon/rock musician/pulp crimefighter/physicist and his gang, the "Hong Kong Cavaliers." Lectroids from the Eighth Dimension threaten Earth with extinction. They entered our dimension in 1938, under cover of War of the Worlds . Posing as humans, they have infiltrated our society and gained lucrative defense contracts, only to use them to build an interdimensional transport ship to attack their fellow Lectroids. Buckaroo utters the phrase to explain to a concert audience why they shouldn't be mean. Believe it.

Nuke The Pope watchcry [1979]
Code name of a top-secret New Pranksters q.v. operation. When the Pope visited the US in 1979, The NPs were fortunate to have among their numbers Ivan S.P. Galanskov, who bore a striking resemblance to Karol Wojtyla, esp. in the SUDS q.v. Archbishop costume from "Candide." (Well, at least WE thought so...) We put ads in the papers, rented a limo, and drove in from Hancock and around downtown Syracuse with "The Pope" sticking his head out of the moonroof, waving to surprised Central New Yorkers. He then proceded to the Comm school, where he made an appearance on Orange Pulp q.v. A press conference had been scheduled, but nobody showed up. Sic transit.

O.B.O.E. acronym Off-By-One Error also OBOE computer science [1970s]
The off-by-one error is one of the persistent bugbears of all novice programmers, cropping up almost any time an iterated looping structure is used. The paradigmatic example from the Hacker's Dictionary runs: "You have a 100 foot fence with posts every 10 feet. How many posts do you need?" In pseudocode it usually has the form "Repeat the following n times/ Do a bunch of things/ next n ." Unless one is cagey, one will almost always repeat either one too few or one too many times, depending on where in the loop one tests for the current value of n. The OBOE is only soluble in Jolt® Cola.
Related Usage : OBOEist, OBOE recital, OBOEmeister, O, BOE knows FOO.

On the train descriptor [nonce, 1981]
1. Short for "On the A-Train." q.v. A further term of disguise for Practicing the Mysteries at Home. (See : Eleusis)
Other NYC Subway lines are often inserted for further disguise: IRT, BMT, IND. Also compound constructions like "Did you find your train tickets?"
2. Alternate version of On The Bus from Kesey's famous dichotomy "You're either ON the bus or OFF the bus." The Bus being Furthur , the Cassady-skippered, multicolored Magic Bus of the Pranksters' famous cross-country trip from Haight-Ashbury to Milford, with all that implies. See : Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test or Kesey\'s Furthur Explorations .
3. Out of touch with reality (from 1) used jocularly: "What are you, OTT?"

Ontic Dump phrase [nonce 1984]
1. neutral The process of explicating one's presumptive universe, by going through the human equivalent of a 'core dump,' the process by which programmers retrieve a printed image of the state of every significant memory cell in a computer's active environment. How naive storytellers and beginning writers tell stories. "This happened and then this happened and then they got hit by a truck..."
2. perjorative The process of extruding one's presumptive universe on the Given q.v. without regard for epistemological coherence. Republican jive.
3. An extremely LARGE bowel movement (from sense 2) as in, "That Mexican dinner made me take an ONTIC dump."

Orange Pulp rigid descriptor TV [1980]
The comedy-variety show which was produced by students at SU's Comm. School as part of their TV classwork. A weekly half-hour show which was also run on Syracuse cable telelvision, OP became a vehicle for the Reptiles-New Pranksters-SUDS q.v. conglomerate. Well known (by which of course we mean things that got them in trouble) episodes included Art as Khomeni and Al Magnuson as Bani Sadr in "Ask the Ayatollah," SUDS pianist Kevin Bolt as Jesus on "The God Show," Art giving a stuffed rabbit a lobotomy with a fork chucked into a power drill in "Elective Psychosurgery," and Tim Hamelink's music video of Art as Warren Zevon's "Excitable Boy," which caused all that trouble with the DA's office...

Orgone n psych (oar-gõn) [Reich, 1936
Wilhelm Reich's theory of the universal Primordial Energy of the Cosmos, which he argued existed as sort of a biogenic ether, flowing through all living things. It is described as a bluish-gray energy field. According to Reich, the orgasm, as the ultimate charging up and releasing of orgone energy was essential to psychological and physical health. Orgone energy could also be concentrated in the body (to fight diseases, etc.) with Orgone Energy Accumulator boxes. For Reich, there was a real linkage between sexual impotence (on the personal and national level) and neurotic, fascistic behavior. For these beliefs, Dr. Reich's books were burned by the US Government, and he was imprisoned.

Pan Am 103 rigid descriptor, aviation
1. Flight designation whose equipment, on December 21, 1988, was The 747 Clipper Maid of the Sea , inbound to JFK from Heathrow on the middle leg of a flight from Frankfurt to Detroit. About a half-hour after takeoff, the plane exploded at altitude and crashed into the village of Lockerbie, Scotland. 269 persons were killed. 35 students from Syracuse University's Division of International Programs Abroad were among those who died in the bombing.
3. Neither President Reagan (whose policies in the Gulf had resulted in the downing of an Iranian Airbus the previous July 3rd, the incident for which PA103 was retribution) nor his sidekick Bush was able to bring those responsible to justice. Remember that.

Pansi (The Girl Who Loved Lead Vocals) rigid descriptor
1. A christian comic book that began its life as "Hansi, the Girl Who Loved the Swastika," a touching, inspirational story of a Nazi girl who discovers Jesus and America. The judicious application of whiteout, rapidograph and colored pencils which began at Chuck's q.v. and continued on and off for several years produced this masterpiece of modern textual alteration.
Also in the series : The Crust and the Swizzlestick, Tom Laundry Does the Dallas Undies, Crazy Jesus and his Wacky Disciples. Also, the "Black Hole Coloring and Activity Book," an issue of the A-Team comic, and two book length works: "Living by God's Swill," and Rod McKuen's "Intestines."

Penship, Center for Mental n
1. The non-profit arts foundation organized by Gerald Cambrensis. In addition to yearly SlanCons, Cambrensis ran conferences (The CMP Department of Horizontality, School of Interpretive Squirming) and sponsored lecture series (The Meister Eckhart Brau Concert Series.) People never knew how to take this stuff seriously, but we did. And it was all tax free. Get a good lawyer and try it yourself. Yay. q.v.
2. The Penships Press, the for-profit business Cambrensis also ran, published a distinguished series of chapbooks and small-run novels. Jackie Zeichner's "Phalarts Variations," as well as Will Neustadter's "Slime Time Anthology" made their first appearances in Penships Press editions.

Postmodern adj [nonce sense]
1. See : everything ever written, painted, or played, sort of, tossed in a blender and then implicated in the cultural inscription of late-stage consumer capitalism; Pastische.
2. Anything people who call them- selves postmodern thinkers point to. See : Goddamned Canadian Bullshit.
3. The condition we find ourselves in, a world of capitalist simulation and the HyperReal, q.v. predicated on high-tech's expanding web of influence and accretion, and the falling away of absolute (or even defensibly relative) valuation. It grows out of semiotics and Existentialism, and incorporates the neorealism of the post-war boom, the soulless anomie of Dachau and Hiroshima, and the Smurfs. It's big fun.

Quantum Theory n [Planck, 1900]
QT states that the universe is Given to itself in discontinuous chunks. (quanta) In the same way that there is no intermediate phase between water and ice, so there are discrete 'phases' in which, for example, electrons can exist. QT is also deeply involved with probability. An electron, in QT, exists 'around' an atom as a series of probabilities that we will find the particle in one or another quantum state. This has serious implications: things don't necessarily 'exist' until we force them into one quantum state through measurement (Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle) and things don't have to go through intervening spaces to get from one place to another. (Q Tunneling.)
The cosmos is not like our experience.

QWISP/QWAKE cereal names [1960's]
1. Names of both cereals and the animated cartoon characters who were their icons and spokestoons. Qwisp was a bug-eyed alien, with spaceship and raygun. Qwake was a burly, Aryan demigod who walked around in the earth. These two characters would continually battle over whose cereal was better. They were both pretty bad.
2. A true Postmodern q.v. expression of the essential dichotomy: earth and space. See: Goethe. Even in extremis , Madison Avenue can't help but reflect the underlying holomovement .q.v. As Eco says somewhere, you don'tknow the code. Youare the code.
3. Cereal, of course, comes from Ceres, the goddess of grain. Isogoddess of Demeter. See: Eleusis.

reptiles descriptor [Mu/Art 1980]
When Mu and Art were casting about for a name for their proto-band, the concepual space was defined by the desire to choose a name for the ages, a name that would live in history. They came pretty close to calling it Fred. q.v. Fortunately, they were influenced by the work of former SU student and brilliant comix artist, the late Vaughn BodŽ, whose work was rife with all things reptilian. They had also just read "The Dragons of Eden," in which Carl "Billions and billions" Sagan talks about the 'r-complex,' a phylogenous bundle of saurian reflexes that still lives back in the human hippocampus and makes us do things like go to West Point or nuke cities. Also, Burroughs uses lots of reptiles.

Rock Lobster anthem [B-52's, 1979]
The premiere dance cut from the B-52's first album, this had everybody in Syracuse down on the floor, snapping their extended hands like lobster claws and waving imaginary antennae. Perhaps this had something to do with Buddy Newkirk's well-known infatuation with all things lobsteric: Lobster soap, lobster-claw harmonicas, lobster pins, lobster bibs, lobstercrackers, rubber lobsters, jumping lobsters, lobster pull toys, lobster lollipops, lobster mugs, lobster hats, lobster nose prostheses, lobster masks, lobster-claw salt and pepper shakers, lobster plates, lobster lampshades. About the only thing it didn't include was actually consuming lobsters. "One does not eat one's totem animal." -Buddy

Saint Stephen song title [Dead, 1968]
1. Name of a song by the Grateful Dead q.v. which is, well, sort of about... like...existence, yeah, existence, and sex, and death, and meaninglessness, and like has this bitchin Jerry solo, and they never play the long version.
2. spec The Morning They Played St. Stephen Friday, June 13, 1980 During the SUDS q.v. production of "Sweeney Todd" the cast and crew had pulled an all-nighter q.v. hacking the set together for opening night. Poet Jackie Zeichner called the campus radio station at 5:30, just as it was getting light, and asked them to play SS. Half an hour later, as everyone was desultorily attempting to finish the paint job, the first few notes rang through the huge hanging Altecs. See also : Essencing

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis descriptor
1. In linguistics, the term for the theory that language controls the possibilities for thought. Named after the linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf. Whorf, in particular, studied Native American languages, which bear no relation to European tongues, most of which are variants of Greek and Latin. Whorf found some amazing things: god is a verb in Old America, a noun in the Old World. Interesting, eh?
2. In its weaker form, the idea that different languages cut up the world differently, and hence, their speakers will probably notice different things. Americans have one word for snow. Turks have no word for icicle. Californians have many ways to say fun. That sort of thing.

Sell Buicks v and n [nonce mid 1980s]
otomotopoetic
To vomit (esp. loudly). Syn : american prayer, ant barking, barf, big spit, blow chow (or lunch), call for York (on the big white telephone), chunder, defood, eat in reverse, feed the badgers, flash the hash, gut shoot, heave, hug the bowl (or porcelain god), hurl, imitate Mount Saint Helens, jerk the cat, keck, lose lunch, laugh at the carpet, make a republican, nurk, order pizza, puke (your guts out), pitch a dog, power boot, pray (to the porcelain god), projectile vomit, quark, rainbow thunder chunder, ralph (chunks), sling a map (or cat), Technicolor yawn, toss chunks (or cookies), upchuck, urp, vomit (big juicy) chunkets, vork, warm boot, whoops, xerox dinner, yark, york, zarf.

SlimeTime rigid descriptor
The first incarnation of Will Neustadter's film zine q.v. published from 1982-1990, after which it was known as Shock Cinema. ST, traditionally printed on slime-green stock, covered the offbeat, the cult, and the just plain bad, with occasional excursions into print and television. Most of the Reptiles q.v. and New Pranksters q.v. were at least occasional contributors. Will's reviews were noted for their acerbic wit, their omnivorous knowledge of the backstage industry machinations, and their unhinged, over-the-top descriptions. ST reviewed everything from Roger Ramjet and the American Eagles to Peter Greenaway's Zoo to Redneck Zombies.

Spoot (pron S póohT) indeterminate particle [Brandon J. Edmonds 1980]
1. The metasyntactic exclamation, coined by Brandon Edmonds of the original reptiles. q.v. With varying tonality dependant on context, S is closely akin to the Buddhist "mu,"q.v. and the Muans q.v. "Yay."q.v. S is a response to a situation either requiring no response, or for which no appropriate response exists, or needs to exist. Usage: "Look...a whole bottle of codein cough syrup." "S."
2. Retroactive Rhetoricalizer (converts any question into a statement.)
Usage : "Do you want to see the Dead at the Dome?" "S!""Who ate all the vitamins last night?" "S."

SUDS short for Syracuse University Drama Society [Martin B. Finn, 1976]
A student-run theatre organization started in 1976, which performed in a converted dining hall. They did such shows as "Celebration," "Charlie Brown," and "House of Blue Leaves." By 1980, they comprised a large intersect of the set of New Pranksters q.v. and reptiles. q.v. Their costumes and sets were featured in many acts of guerilla theatre and musical "entertainment." Always conceptually excellent and energetic, the group did its best with a limited budget and resources. The high point of the early '80s was a pirate production of "Sweeney Todd," which attracted substantial local audiences and publicity, much to the chagrin and fear of the participants.

Thornden Park rigid descriptor
1. Outside the back door of 219 q.v. was this park, located on a hill just east of the campus of Syracuse University. Behind 219 was a large meadow, and a secluded grove with a stone bench. This became a favorite spot for reptiles q.v. and New Pranksters q.v. to haul guitars out to for impromptu jams, at any hour, or to drink Haffenreffers and stare off into space, or to read Beckett and LeGuin in the misty mornings.
2. spec "The Hinterlands" As in, "Lets go to the Hinterlands." From the line in David Bowie's "Red Sails," off Lodger . Used in the sense of TP as the location of the Mysteries. [see: Eleusis] From the famous A-Train q.v. ride during which the New Pranksters climbed to the top of the water tower.

Unified Sensorium rigid descriptor
[Marshall McLuhan, 1962]
In McLuhan's Understanding Media , he describes what he calls the US: the way the human consciousness was before media (and he means that in its strongest sense, including the spoken word) fragmented its holistic unity. For McLuhan, this was an Edenic balance and harmony among the senses. He's obviously read some Blake. McLuhan is most disturbed by Western societies and their overdependence on the visual, particularly the linear, perspective model of visual experience that characterizes our thought. Do yousee what I mean? Can you follow thisline of argument? Do you get the point ?
See: Goddamned Canadian Bullshit

UFO short for University Film Organization rigid descriptor
1. The UFO is SU\'s student-run film program, one of the top five the country. Each year, UFO showed something like 150 films, of all genres; everything from Raiders to Chainsaw to Citta Aperta. Several reptiles q.v. ran it at various times (Will, Vox, Gerald Cambrensis) and made sure to program some evenings (Head q.v. on the Quad) that were unlikely to be duplicated. They brought many an offbeat film for its Syracuse premiere. With the rise of dorm VCRs, however, a slow decline set in. The Age of the reptiles q.v. was the last generation that experienced cinema the way it was originally intended at college campuses.
2. Cool ITC series.

Virtual Particle n physics
1. In current models of physics, physical particles (like electrons and protons) exhibit forces (electricity and gravity) which are carried by what are called bosons or VPs. (photons and gravitons) We are asked to imagine these VPs as particle-antiparticle pairs (thus the net charges cancel out, and conservation laws are not violated.) The consequence of this model is that we must imagine every field to be constantly creating and annihilating particles as the ongoing process of its emanation. See : Entiteification and Recombination
2. Stephen Hawking has pointed out that in the vicinity of black holes, one member of this pair may well fall into the event horizon while the other escapes. Black holes thus emit things.

Virtual Reality virtual descriptor
1. The construction of computer-based models of real-world objects and ensembles which can be navigated subjectively by interfacing with the computer via modally appropriate input devices. You wear miniature tv sets over your eyes, and when you turn your head to the left, the images shift the way they would if your head was inside the model. If you want to grab something, you extend your hand, sheathed in a sensing glove, and the computer produces a manipulable HyperReal q.v. hand in the model.
2. Cyberspace, or the Matrix (from Gibson's Neuromancer) the extended shared VR once everybody jacks into the Disneyworld of the mind.

Wall, The descriptor [Pink Floyd, 1980]
1. The end of rock music; the final de- construction of performance. Roger Waters crowning achievement as The Floyd's lyricist, TW follows the story of a young poet/musician as he discovers sexuality, death, and the crush of fame. Haunted by his father's WWII death, (See : postmodern) wasted by touring, and mourning the decay of his marriage, he withdraws into his own fantasy mindscape. A critique of the fascistic leanings of modern arena rock as well as the difficulties of human relationships, TW brings to closure the issues Waters raised in "Wish You Were Here," and "Dark Side."
2. Alan Parker's film version, the first thoroughly realized rock musical. (Okay, HAIR. And, I guess, Tommy...)

Wallet! phrase elipsis of: "You naive motherfucker, give me your wallet." [Prof. Lance Strate, 1984]
Dr. Strate, in a discussion with an idealistic graduate student at Eddie's q.v. in which the student advocated an unrealistic and hopelessly unworldly line of argument. Strate's off-the-cuff retort became a recurrent theme among devotees of Media Ecology q.v. and other Goddamned Canadian Bullshit q.v. artists.
Usage :
"I think that President Fred q.v. should spend less money on defense."
"Why?"
"With communication, we can all understand each other. No one wants to die -- why not give peace a chance?"
"Wallet."

Whippet [s] n [recurrent nonce, 1980s]
Miniature cartridges of N2O used as propellent in whipped-cream makers. Also known as "laughing gas," N2O, or nitrous oxide, is a sweet-tasting , short-duration inhalant anaesthetic, usually used in dentistry. It must be administered in careful mixture with sufficient oxygen; if inhaled alone, it can induce hypoxia and possible brain damage. Despite the best efforts of Government officials, many stores still carry these gas cylinders, usually called "whipped cream chargers," which can loaded into standard soda-water bottles, or specialized cream-whippers. You would think that people would learn...
Symptoms: Cyanosis (blueness) of the fingernail beds is indicative of hypoxia. Cf. the SubGenius' "church air."

Wriggle descriptor elipsis of Robert Klein's classic comedy phrase, "Kick it, Morry, make it wriggle."
1. Meant to describe the off-camera machinations involved in "nature" shoots, particularly those involving animals which are supposed to do something on cue. (Such as crawling obligingly toward the camera) Imagine the director calling this out to their PA.
2. Perjorative descriptor for a situation which is being manipulated. "It's a W." (gesture with hand yawing at wrist)
3. An utterance or action which has the character of being phony or coerced. (from sense 2) You see a picture of Dan Quayle, sitting behind Bush as the President addresses Congress. When George pauses to breathe, the VP begins to clap. You point and say, "W."

Yay ejac [Muan, q.v. 1979]
1. Mu's ubiquitous rejoinder to almost any pleasant situation, Y became the rallying cry for Reptiles q.v. and New Pranksters q.v. alike. Usage : "We're back from LiquorLocker with the rum for the party. " "Y."
2. Mu's rejoinder to almost any unpleasant situation. Usage: "Al stripped the gears on his bus. We gotta go out in this snowstorm to push it home." "Y."
Note: This is one of those difficult terms to explain, like yes and no in Japanese. Y is infinitely deformable, depending on the curve of inflection. Like wine to the French and Budweiser to Americans, there was no situation that did not conjure up occasions for its use. Often Mu would go weeks without saying anything else.

Yeah, right. utterance [nonce, 1980s]
1. Paradigmatic utterance of frustration and resignation, characteristic of the Reagan era. Often, all that could be said. "The World Court denounced us for mining Nicaraguan harbors. Maybe now we'll respect their sovereignty." "YR." "Hey, 260 Marines got killed in our geopolitical dick-wagging in Beirut. Maybe people will wake up to Reagan's incompetence." "YR." "Jesus...here's a picture of Ron laying wreaths in a cemetary where Nazi stormtroopers are buried. Now this should cause some consternation." "YR." "SDI would require 10 million lines of code to execute flawlessly, the first time, without testing. Surely nobody will believe that's even remotely possible." "YR."See also : Wallet.

Zine n pub [abbr MagaZ, FanZ, etc]
1. A publication, usually of an under- ground nature, and usually featuring material outside of the mainstream. Zs typically focus on narrowly specified areas of interest (comix, gore, hardcore music) and are often produced by inexpensive offset or xerographic reproduction, although the design and graphics work frequently equals or betters anything seen in the straight press. Many established mainstream journals (Rolling Stone , Gore Gazette , Shock Cinema ) originated as Zs.
2. adj Zine or Ziney From the "look and feel" of a Z. The sense is "cool, interesting, offbeat." Usage : "Yeah, it's okay to start doing your typesetting on the Mac®, q.v. but don't lose the ziney stuff and get all fucking corporate."