Capital of Nasty Electronic Magazine
Volume II, Issue 35, Year AD MCMXCVII
Monday, September 1st, 1997
ISSN 1482-0471
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"I go to school to muse at what teachers find worthy of 
regurgitation."
-- Colin Barrett Taken from The Globe and Mail. Labour Day, 
September 2, 1996.

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FROM WEEKLY TO BY-WEEKLY

Here at CoN we decided that with school starting, the pressure from 
work and other situations, to change CoN's distribution from weekly 
to bi-weekly. Although it saddens us, since we won't be able to 
provide our readership the fine material that appears on CoN, we 
unfortunately need more time for our busy lives. That is, unless 
some rich corporation decides to hire us full time allowing us to 
dedicate ourselves completely to CoN. But that will never happen. 
Hopefully with this reduced number of issues we'll be able to boost 
the quality (and the grammar) of future releases and perhaps even 
increase what we offer. We pray, in a not too far distant time in 
the future, that we'll be able to return to our weekly distribution 
while still maintaining everything that our readership has grown to 
like. 

Please send us any comments or questions you might have regarding 
this change at con@capnasty.org. 

CAPITAL OF NASTY STAFF

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When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast 
is dropped, it always lands with the buttered side facing down. I 
propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat; the two will 
hover, spinning inches above the ground. With a giant buttered cat 
array, a high-speed monorail could easily link New York with 
Chicago.

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1. The Grim Factoids 
2. Law School Welcome 
3. Random thoughts 
4. A new look at spam 
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This week's Golden Testicle award goes to 

Christian Bikers
Riding accross Colorado for the love of Jesus

http://www.enol.com/~jyeoman/

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1. The Grim Factoids

  by Gard E Abrahamsen 

Ladies and Gentlemen, readers of Spontaneously Combusted Literature, 
Capital of Nasty, Twilight World and surfers of the Scriba Org web 
server.

Scriba Org's presence on the Internet has so far been possible 
through the good will of a handful of people in Toronto. The 
previous Internet connection was, however, of the understanding that 
it was temporary, and that I'd take the server with me when I moved 
to Georgia. Now the server has been moved, and through the lack of 
contacts in the area, the server is now with a commercial ISP in 
Smyrna (just west of Atlanta, south of Marietta). This, of course, 
means that like any other non-profit organization, in order to stay 
online, Scriba Org needs to make money. You are not required to, but 
asked very kindly, to donate a handfull of money to Scriba Org in 
order to keep it online. It costs us US$320 per month to stay 
online, which is not much for the many, but a lot for the one. 
(Especially when the one doesn't have money to live on) 

By supporting Scriba Org, you secure the continued presence of fine 
literature such as Spontaneously Combusted Literature, Capital of 
Nasty and Twilight World on the Internet, and at the same time give 
the organization enough time to find new ways of funding its 
continued existence. 

You may send US checks or money orders to: 

Gard E Abrahamsen <gard@scriba.org>
3189 Sasanqua Lane Marietta
GA 30008 USA 

You can also wire funds directly to Gard's account at Bank:

Nations Bank Routing: 061000052
Account: 325 934 2683 

Canadians may send Canadian checks to:

Leandro Asnaghi-Nicastro <leandro@scriba.org>
322 Strathmore Blvd. Toronto, ON
M4J 1P8 CANADA 

Please mark your fund transfers "Scriba Org Donation." Thank you. 
Our continued operation is dependent on your goodwill. 

You can subscribe to Spontaneously Combusted Literature by sending a 
message to scl@scriba.org and put the word "subscribe" in the 
subject line. 

You can subscribe to Capital of Nasty by sending an empty message to 
join@capnasty.org.  

You can subscribe to Twilight World by sending a message to 
twilight.world@scriba.org and put the word "subscribe" in the 
subject line.


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2. Law School Welcome

  by Dean W.S. Prosser 

(For many, school starts tomorrow.. have fun -Ed)

The following is a welcoming speech purportedly delivered by Dean 
William S. Prosser to his freshman law students. 

It is my duty to welcome you all to the Law School of the University 
of Minnesota. It has been my custom to greet the entering class by 
asking each one of you to look at the man on his left, and at the 
man on his right. I ask you to do that now. Take a good look, and 
impress the features of each man on your memory. Next year, all 
three of you will not be here. 

  I always wonder why students come to study law. As I gaze into the 
faces now before me, that wonder becomes amazement. I do not know 
what business, what trade, what hard labor your faces suggest to me, 
but it is not the law. There is nothing legal about them. They fill 
me with revulsion approaching nausea. Some of you are here because 
your fathers are willing to spend the money for three more years in 
the university. That money would be better spent on drink. 

  Some of you are obviously here because you are looking for a place 
to sleep. This is not the place. There is not a comfortable bench in 
the building. I have tried them all. 

  Some of you, the female students, are all too evidently here for 
biological reasons. Of that I most emphatically disapprove. I warn 
you that no biological activities will be tolerated in this school. 

  Some of you do not even know why you are here. I am sure that I 
cannot tell you. There are other institutions for morons, for 
criminals, for alcoholics, and for the mentally deranged. There is 
still time to seek them out, and I urge you to do so before it is 
too late. 

  There may be a few of you, perhaps four or five, who are normal 
human beings and capable of making an intelligent choice, but who 
have come here through ignorance, or misinformation or aberration or 
folly. To them I have this to say: Abandon the idea. Go away. Dig 
ditches. Drive garbage trucks. Clean sewers. Go back into the army. 
Even teach. But do NOT study law. If you do, you will rue it. You 
will work long hours of the day and of the night. You will read 
thousands of incomprensible, written by incompetent judges, and 
endeavor in vain to understand them. For three years you will get no 
sleep. You will have no time to eat. Above all you will have no fun. 
No one has any fun here, not even I. You will slave for three years 
like the beasts of the field, and in the end you will fail. All of 
our students fail. 

  If you do not fail in this school, you will fail in the bar 
examinations. All of our students fail in the bar examinations. And 
if you do not fail, you will not find employment. There is no 
employment to be found in the law. The legal profession is 
saturated. It is crammed. It is overflowing with graduates of this 
and other law schools--for there are other law schools, for reasons 
that I do not know--Harvard, Columbia, Michigan, Iowa, Arkansas, 
Idaho, even Yale. Out of 20 men in our last graduating class, seven 
are now working in filling stations, five are selling popcorn, four 
are shoveling ashes, two and one-half are in jail, and one man is 
playing the piano. I have heard him, and he does not play it well. 

  If you try to practice law you will be extremely unhappy. It is a 
dismal and distressing trade. You will be brought into contact with 
clients. They are dishonest, corrupt, unrefined, bad-tempered, ill-
mannered, disagreeable, and above all unremunerative. You will not 
be able to earn a living. According to figures complied by Professor 
Llewellyen, the average income of the lawyers in Minnesota for the 
last 10 years, that is, before the payment of state and federal 
income taxes, was sixty-four dollars and eighty-three cents. Your 
wives--if any of you are ever so foolish to marry, which I sincerely 
trust that none of you will ever do--your wives will be forced to 
take in washing, or driven to a life of shame. Your children will 
starve. The cemetaries of Minnesota are filled today with the 
emaciated bodies of lawyers' children who have died of starvation. I 
urge you to consider before it is too late what be your feelings if 
one of those fragile little bodies should some day be your child? 

  Now we will pause, and there will be soft music while you reflect 
on what I have said. 

(Flute: Massa's in the Cold, Cold Ground.) 

  I do not mean to be unduly discouraging. In the practice of law, 
there is always room for a good man at the top. Sometimes even for 
two good men. But in this school we have not had a good man in the 
last 31 years. 

  I welcome you to the Law School of the University of Minnesota. My 
office is open for the cancellation of registrations. Will some of 
you in the back please carry out the men who have fainted? The 
assignment for tomorrow will be the first 168 pages of my casebook 
on real property.


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3. Random thoughts

by Leandro+ 

My computers are still acting up. I managed to get the Pentium to 
work, but now my CD-ROM is "not found". What gives? My 486 on the 
other hand made it clear: it needs a format and a complete re-
installation of everything. 

Having mentioned that I had formatted my Linux box and installed 
Windows '95 got quite the response:

Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 09:55:18 -0700 (PDT) 
To: leandro@capnasty.org 
From: David Welton 
Subject: capnasty  

I decided to format my Linux machine and install Windows '95 because 
I desperately needed a working computer. 

Errr, your logic is less than straightforward here. Linux works, 
Windoze does not. Linux is a multiuser, multitasking operating 
system with advanced features such as protected memory. The Linux 
box I set up a week ago at work reports this uptime: 

9:35am up 7 days, 20:28h, 6 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

In other words, after I set it up, it has not been shut down or 
crashed. After a week of continuous use with lots of processing and 
buggy programs such as netscape. This is quite normal - many users 
report uptimes of weeks, months, and even years, in some cases. Can 
Windoze do that? And host multiple users? And work as a loaded 
server?

So, knowing you (Leandro) to be a fairly intelligent guy (evidence - 
you did have a linux box:-), I assume you probably meant 'I needed a 
computer with certain tools on it'. While Linux has most of the 
basic tools one would want (WP, spreadsheet, database, financial 
programs, graphics, etc...), they are more readily available for 
Windoze. 

So... use Linux, Windoze, Mac, Amiga, VMS, FreeBSD, SysV UNIX, or 
whatever, but don't make spurious claims about them.

No, Windows can't do that. However Linux doesn't like to connect to 
Windows NT, the servers that we have at work used for the dial-up. 
I've been trying for several months now to get it to connect, with 
the same results: nothing happens. I guess with the fact that I have 
no more time lately, the luxury of Windows '95 for me is that it 
connects to the WinNT servers, and although it turned my Pentium 
into a 8086, it works (kinda) for the time being. 

Shortly after that I got an e-mail from Robin Miller who pointed out 
that "Maybe you need a Macintosh??" 

Maybe. I thought about buying a Mac, since my negative feelings 
toward the two machines sitting on my desk had grown quite profound. 
However, what's the difference? Computers are prone to breaking 
down, no matter if they are a Mac or an IBM compatible. 

I don't want to start an OS war. I personally prefer IBM 
compatibles. They're cheaper (price and at times quality as well) 
and I can run Microsoft software or Linux. I prefer the latter but I 
can't connect to the Internet, so I'm stuck with Windows '95 which 
is nothing more than a rip-off of the original X-Windows system. 

Mac users shouldn't snear at Win users: where do you think your 
Windows interface came from? 

Before I leave you, I just wanted to let you know that Colin has 
updated all of the pages on our site. Although we still have quite a 
bit of work ahead of us, it looks pretty good. Let us know what you 
think.


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4. A new look at spam 

  by morbus 

Got a spam in my mail today. Oh, not any old spam. Well, okay, I 
lied. It was like every other spam from the Internet. "Would you 
like to make more money." Yeah, sure, we all do. DELETE. Oop, what's 
this. Some little kid is collecting pen caps? What the hell? He 
wants my chewed up pen caps? Yeah, right. DELETE. Nice letter from 
myself saying that I've been online too long... hmm... DELETE. And 
what's this? More spam! 

As we all now, unless we have nice filtering software (which AOL 
really doesn't) then this is what our mail is like everyday. Scan, 
delete, scan, delete... Sometimes, we get so good with the delete 
key that we lose our real mail. If only there was some sort of cost 
to spamming, like snail mail companies have to pay for all that 
cellophane they use to highlight our mispelled name. 

Since I know that won't happen, can't spammers at least make it a 
little more fun? Like maybe instead of offering a better job or 
"hey! come visit www.more$$$.com," maybe they could offer 1000 cats, 
or a new car if you sell your soul. The least they could do is make 
their life a little more exciting by making out some weird mail with 
the subject line "God Wants Your Money." I know I would respond to 
something like that. And maybe these destitute little kids with 
their new email program would actually get more friends because of 
the responses. 

Who knows? I'm just another "sick and tired holding down the delete 
key oop there goes my college acceptance letter" person who wishes 
that things would change. But, hey, I've been wishing for an all 
marshmallow cereal for a long time and that dream hasn't come true. 
Maybe I could start a petition through email.... 

c 1997 disobey - http://www.disobey.com 

Appeared in The Magnetic Times (07/01/97)
This article appears courtesy of morbus 
