Date: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 02:38:50 -0400 To: _swat.org.swil @ cc.swarthmore.edu From: Lesley Tsina (Lesley Tsina) X-Sender: ltsina1 @ cc.swarthmore.edu (Unverified) Subject: Stande: Position, footing, foothold, level, rate, social position, SWILnews #4 We would like to note an alarming trend, noticed over the past few weeks. A certain insect has been muscling in on our meeting time. Now, while some have found this bug to be fun and amusing, we co-presidents wonder if it doesn't indicate the continuing breakdown of our moral fiber as a community. This Tick, as he is called, is a menace, and I'm not just saying that because I don't have a TV. Nonetheless, our meeting times have continued to advance into the early afternoon. Something must be done! With this in mind, I have dispatched Josh Burdick, our most qualified negotiator to seek out the good people at FOX broadcasting, and have them change their schedule. We expect to hear back from him shortly. ----Attention--- All team members report back immediately. Do _not_ go near alpha site, repeat, do NOT go near alpha site. There have been unverified reports of injuries resulting from emission of hazardous materials from the test cannisters. Project "planarian" under temporary suspension until situation has been brought under control. ie. we find Geoff Noer's other leg. Vive la resistance! SWILbusiness: Boy howdy [love that expression! -TG] did we have a lot of blood and gore this last week. It was random body parts and spattered grey matter as far as the eye could see. Without further ado, let's go to the play-by-play, Howard? Thanks Bob. In the first heat, Alice Unger, previously known of as a fully capable member of the human race revealed herself to be an 18 inch doll with much lighter hair and an absolutely darling frock. Having shown herself to be both made of plastic [throw her into a pond! -TG] and devastating at staring contests, she was happily admitted to the host of dismembered SWILfolk. Thus she was able to vote for all the rest of the applicants that day. As for her unwieldy disguise (which showed up for refueling about halfway through the meeting) it has been allowed to stick around and help Alice with such irritating chores as mobility. Next up in the thirty-and-under class was Aaron Hertzmann. The man from R.I.C.E. differentiated himself from all the non-sentient bison (who actually did all of those cave paintings as self-portraits) by passing off bad artistic expression as something somehow higher and more meaningful, at least to the few dupes who glanced rapturously at his salad-bar representation of Parrish Beach. Anyways it's been long enough since the dishwashing contingent has had something interesting to look at so what the hell. Let's hear it for Ben Williams for not only proving himself sentient by dint of his preference not to juggle knives (Minimum standard qualification) but winning the Miss Congeniality prize by showing that he can play up to an audience more than adequately. Let this be a lesson to y'all in Psych 1, the timely introduction of a conditioned stimulus (vying for the support of non-members of SWIL) when coupled with an uncondidioned stimulus (statements about the high quality of Babylon 5 as a show) can often produce an association with an unconditioned response (complete ecstasy) which has enough to do with the task at hand to get you at least half an arm removed. With a big showing from the crowd, Melissa Binde, the plucky character from Madagascar, made a fine showing, demonstrating that not only could she stress (very few house plants stress), juggle (even fewer juggle), and threaten people with knives (well, ok, even MY plants can threaten people with knives if properly provoked. those of you who know Dan Heider can back me up on this phenomenon), but that she can do all this at once while cooking up a souffle and yodeling. Well, maybe not but wouldn't it have been cool if she had. As it was, her act of pulling a knife on Charles was enough to get my vote, while many were swayed by her disarming personality and sheer determination. ...information super highway... Stephanie Dyrkacz, along with having the most interesting last name [Big scrabble point potential! -TG] [shove! -L] [you'd think with a nickname like Literature she'd be a bigger word game fan wouldn't you? -TG], proved that she could be sentient with or without proof. I myself was a bit confused, but from the way she put it and the look on her face I wasn't going to say anything. In any event, a vote was taken, the tally was tallied and in the end Stephanie could return to bed as a sentient, if somewhat disagreeable, being. Somewhat disappointed that his frock wasn't quite as darling as Alice's, Joel decided to bring an entire inanimate community into his argument, and having written a constitution and prescribed a judicial system proved himself to be, in actuality, a despot by leaving with certain members of said community in heinous, unlawful bondage (he put some lego men in a bag). However, he was found to be sentient, though less so than his legos who would have been dismembered had they attended three consecutive meetings. Which brings us to our last sentience debate... [NICE segue! -TG] Our pancreases raced as we co-presidents realized that this meeting would see a new precident of SWILlish jurisprudence established before our very ocular organs as Joe Robins had decided to reason that he was sentient by intentionally not being dismembered on his third consecutive meeting. Of course, while there have been incidents of individuals leaving as proof of sentience, it seemed difficult to attend three consecutive meetings without showing up for the third one. It was Larry Miller who came up with the revelation that Joe had indeed proved himself sentient through concious politeness (a quick vote was taken to verify this fact) and that he could therefore be easily admitted and dismembered as soon as he had shown up for three consecutive meetings. Therefore we will probably be seeing more of Joe. Whew, thank you all and good night! ...oh dear, it would appear that we still have more SWILbusiness, to say nothing of non-SWILbusiness. So it's 2 am and there is nothing but work ahead tonight for your two intrepid co-presidents [well, actually one plans on sleeping, but don't tell L. -TG] as we continue with this fiasco of information. The following issues were all dealt with in the last five minutes of the meeting and therefore, we will deal with them in a single sentence. ahem... Having completed the dismemberments, jere7my brought up the issue of PHILCON and who would be going and who would be paying what and where and when and how they would be sleeping with whom [oops! -TG] arriving at the decisions that several people would pay $25 and later pay for rooming for one night and not more then one night although which night has yet to be decided, even though everyone knows that Friday would be much better than Saturday, including Ben who drives the shuttle Saturday nights and therefore couldn't stay that night but only Friday night which, like I said, would be better anyway, so all this was actually after the Renfaire discussion, in which it was decided that we're all going this coming weekend, Larry is getting the van, we leave Sunday morning and contact Andrea and Sam for details and speaking of transportation, sources report that the T-shirts will be migrating any day now from Beth's car to Elizabeth Christian's room which may swallow them whole as it has most of her floor including the boiler room of ML, quite a feat of agressive entropy which is just the sort of thing Besh needs once all the money for T-shirt reprints comes in, feed this one to your Warriner's Grammar, baby! ATTENDANCE (9-24-94) Ben Williams, Kristen Walker, Elizabeth "Gratuitous warthogs" Christians, Larry "Extra-Curricular Fizzbin tournaments" Miller, Snibor Eoj, Alice "Through the looking Glass" Unger, Julianna "SADD- SWIL Against Doll Discrimination" Patrick, Beth "More Blood More Guts" Bruch [Oh Boy, I wanna be a Toys o' War Kid! -TG] [Don Lehr, boy toy. -L], Charles "Hugged by treehuggers" Danforth, Aaron "Does a cow have the Buddah nature? Mu!" Hertzmann [remember, if you see the Buddha walking in the road, kill him. -TG], Jeremy "Not early, not late, and DEFINITELY not an iguana!" Dilatush, Stephanie "Now that I don't have my cane I need something else to hit Joel over the head with" Dyrkacz [try Willets. -TG], Kendra "When you were in there, wrestling with my tongue- did you feel kind of weird about that?" Eshleman [well, no, but jere7my looked rather pale. -TG] [So did her tongue. -L], jere7my "Do not meddle in the affairs of Geoff, for he is subtle and has beautiful eyes." [not to mention being king of the wild frontier, heir to the throne of Spain and free in your Cocoa Pops. -L][no folks, we aren't supposed to understand all this. -TG] tho?rpe, Melissa "Stressed and very sentient" Binde, Geoff "More sentient then a pancake" Noer, Joel Alan McNary Jr.- Me, me, me, me., Josh T Burdick, Ross "NO Tim" Dickson, Fred "I am not a doll, I am a free man!" Bush [Mrs. Peacock was a man? -L], Literature & The Grotesque.