,,ggddY"""Ybbgg,, subversive literature ,agd888b,_ "Y8, ___`""Ybga, for subverted people! ,gdP""88888888baa,.""8b "888g, / ,dP" ]888888888P' "Y `888Yb, ,dP" ,88888888P" db, "8P"""" Installment 231 of... ,8" ,888888888b, d8" db. dP b. ,8' d88888888888,88 d$$$s. dP `8, - -- -THE NEO-COMINTERN ,8' 8888888888888" dP$$$$$s. dP 8. d' I8888888888P" dP `T$$$$$$dP `.d$$b. .d$$b. .d$$b..s$s 8 `8"88P""Y8P' dP `T$$$$P d$$$P dP' `$ dP' T$ dP' `TP' `T$ 8 Y 8[ _ " dP `T$P d$$$P dP dP dP dP dP dP 8 "Y8d8b dP dP :$ .$ $b. .dP dP dP dP 8 `"".dP dP `T$$P' `T$$P' dP dP dP Y, ,,odnd88b, ,b `8, ,d8888888baaa ,8' ELECTRONIC MAGAZINE- -- - `8, 888888888888' ,8' `8a "8888888888I a8' Writers: `Yba `Y8888888P' adP' Junior Haagis "Yba `888888P' adY" Komrade B `"Yba, d8888P" ,adP"' BMC `"Y8baa, ,d888P,ad8P"' - - - - -``""YYba8888P""''===================------- -- - - - - MARCH 23, 2003 INSTALLMENT 231 BMC, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF - - - - -- -------===========================------- -- - - - - FEATURED IN THIS INSTALLMENT: N-Com War Correspondence - Komrade B Junior Haagis' Belated TV Review Column Seven Reasons why Boloball is Better than Chess - BMC - - - - -- -------===========================------- -- - - - - EDITOR'S NOTE - - - - -- -------===========================------- -- - - - - Komrade B has headed off to the frontline to send us a new report. His diehard commitment to seeking the truth has put him in the face of danger just to send the real story to The N-Com readers. He was the obvious choice for this mission, since he has already died and claims that it's not actually all that bad. This report is special for more than one reason. It's also Komrade B's 50th N-Com article. What a stand-up guy, huh? Gotta love his sweet soul. "I'm glad to see that in these equal-opportunity times the dead can finally break through and make it in the world of the living. It's inspiring, and it gives me hope for success in my own eventual death. Way to be, Komrade B. You the awesomest ghost in town!" -Cog "Komrade B: There but for the grace of D-O-G go I." -Margarina Cataclysma "When I heard Komrade B's 50th article was coming out, a plethora of thoughts and emotions surged through my system in an orgy of unrelenting joy and rapture. I was all like "Huh? Komrade B has written 50 articles? That's weird. I thought it was, like, no more than twenty." -Gnarly Wayne "I am shocked and appalled. It sickens me to think that it has taken this long (3 days) for BMC to finally print Komrade B's 50th article. In fact, I can still remember the magnificent day Komrade B first sat down to pen this brilliant piece. It was a Thursday evening, and the sky was growing purple with the setting sun. Komrade B appeared over the horizon -- a lumbering silhouette in the distance -- and slowly made his way towards me. As he neared, I saw that he held a fresh pad of paper in his hands and I thought, But wait, how can this man possibly write an article without a writing device of some kind? And then, as if in response, he reached into his breast pocket and removed it before my very eyes: a blue Bic, its plastic casing glinting with the rays of the sun. So good job Komrade B, you've mastered the utensils of writing! Took you long enough motherfucker." -Melatonin And now for your regularly-edited N-Com. - - - - -- -------===========================------- -- - - - - N-Com War Correspondence - Komrade B - - - - -- -------===========================------- -- - - - - N-Com War Correspondent K-rad B reporting from the front lines. Well it's day three of the armed conflict and the allied forces have moved through the demilitarized zone and headed into the flat open grasslands with our way clear all the way to the capital. There has been little resistance as far as I can see. Close by, there is a rusted-out piece of what I believe is artillery. I cannot get a closer look because I forgot my rubber boots and it is surrounded by a pool of water. A little further away, I find a desiccated and rotting corpse of what appears to be some sort of large four legged mammal. The soldiers asked me to stay away from the animal as they set its body aflame. One man mentioned something about Chronic Wasting Disease and I can only assume that this creature is a victim of some sort of chemical weapons attack, which of course I feared greatly when we moved into the area. We've made camp for the day and the soldiers have set up a palisade to defend against possible enemy assaults. The soldiers are more concerned about the small rodents in the area. One Private had this to say: "They've been known to carry diseases. There is an open season on them. The one who gets the most tails wins some sort of cash prize. But personally, I'd rather not have to deal with them at this leg in our mission." I spoke with the commander of our regiment about the resistance we might possibly meet on the way to the capital. "Well luckily the smooth two lane highway is largely intact. I think that's a sign that taxation of petrol fuel does in fact go into roadwork. Our regiment is reaping the benefits of this program." Of course I spoke briefly about this road and wondered if they expected to find any resistance or perhaps mines along the way. "No, we don't expect mines. It's not the sort of thing these people do. I mean, who wants to blow up a road? You're just going to have to fix it again once the war is over anyway, and that's simply not being fiscally responsible. However, I do expect some resistance as we near the capital as there is a weigh station along the road and I just know some of our mobile artillery is over the legal weight limit." Confused as I was, I asked the commander if he could elaborate on this weigh station and if it posed a danger to our troops. "Well I can't be too specific for security reasons, but these weigh stations have been known to dole out some pretty hefty fines. I could see some of the guys having to work overtime to pay them off." A few uneventful days later we reach the dreaded much maligned weigh station. I steel myself for the first conflict our brave soldiers will have to face, but then a cheer rises from the troops. Gods be blessed the weigh station is closed for what appears to be renovations. The road to the capital is open and fine free! This is K-rad B reporting from the frontlines of the new war... - - - - -- -------===========================------- -- - - - - Junior Haagis' Belated TV Review Column - - - - -- -------===========================------- -- - - - - *an opinion formed from viewing a repeated television broadcast. It is mostly, if not entirely, irrelevant... Star Trek - Episode 36 - Wolf In the Fold Originally aired 12/22/1967 Recently seen on 02/26/2003 I happened upon this little chestnut on 'Space' one afternoon during a day off. There are many curiosities about this odd Star Trek episode. I hope you can spot them in my ramblings beginning below... After being beaned upside the head by a fellow female crewmember, Mr. Scott is felt sorry upon and is granted shoreleave on Argelius II, a hedonistic world where pleasure reigns as the only pertinent thing. It's at a peeler bar that Scotty, Kirk, and McCoy bide most of their time, where Kirk personally introduces Scotty to a featured performer whose jiggly jewels jangle when they dangle. Soon after the two hopeful love-birds leave the club, a scream is heard, and all come rushing to a foggy alley where Scotty stands over the murdered stripper's body with bloody knife in bloody hands. When it seems like an open and shut case, Scotty conveniently claims a blackout at the time of the stabbing and doesn't remember exactly what happened; "Ahh dunnah r'membah!!". With the evidence circumstantial and no official charge laid against him, he is then considered the chief suspect, leaving the investigation to be run by Mr. Hengist; a hard-nosed lawman, hell-bent on rooting out the crime-riddled punks. Who better to play this head-cracker then none other than John Fiedler; the voice of 'Piglet' in the animated adventures of Disney's 'Winnie the Pooh'? Under the supervision of Prefect Jarvis (a rather foppish baldy in an occult guru's robe), the suspect list is narrowed down from the patrons and staff of the bar to Scotty and the stripper's jealous, musician boyfriend. Utilizing the Prefects' own priestess wife and her spirit channeling abilities to finger the guilty party, a seance is held. After the Prefect's wife is channeled by what sounds like Mellisa Manchester's Hell-rotting spirit, the lights cut, another scream rings out, and when the lights return, she is dead. Stabbed. With Scotty again holding the bloody knife. "Ahh dunnaahhh r'membahhhhh!!" is all he can say. Prolonging Scotty's immanent arrest, the investigation is moved to the Enterprise as Kirk and company stall for time and put their technology to use. Evidently, there's a mysterious supernatural presence at work here. Well, by your more shoddy process of elimination, there eventually has to be. The Prefects' wife had yelled out several names before her demise during her trance. When they're fed into the ship's 'Speak and Spell' database, they point out to several serial killings of women throughout the galaxy, including 'Red Jack' or 'Jack the Ripper'. Theorizing the existence of an immortal entity than can possess anyone at will to feed on weaker prey who scare easily (in this case 'women' as a whole), Spock stiff-assedly concludes this must be the killer. Hengist protests, claiming this to be all fantasy and presses for Scotty's incarceration. After the murder weapon is discovered to be of 'Rigelean' origin, fingers suddenly point to Hengist, a Rigelean too, but technically not really a knife. Infuriated... the entity inside Hengist goes nuts with knife in hand. And after Kirk does his famous Flintstone judo on him, it flees into the ship's main computer. Spock cleverly keeps the creature busy and most of the vital systems going by running some complex computations a few million times through the database. What a guy! And McCoy administers fresh smack to the crew to keep their terror down. This offers an opportunity for George Takei (Sulu) to really wig-out and talk of exploding Super-novas. With most of the crew sedated, McCoy shoots up and smiles from ear to ear. Suddenly the entity jumps into Prefect Jarvis and yells it will kill all. Kirk struggles with him, causing the entity to jump back in Hengist's life-less form, after which exclaims it will kill all. Coming from Piglet, that either sounds really disturbing or really sweet. Depending on your mood. Struggling with Hengist somewhat, they manage to inject the heroin into his system. Giggly and floppy, they toss him into the transporter and beam him into space where they hope he will behave himself. With the entire crew riding a marshmallow made of silk for the next 6 hours, the tone of the episode goes from serious melodrama about women being murdered mercilessly, to escaping into the seedy life of illegal narcotics. By the sound of the last bit of cheery incidental music, this is a good thing. All is forgotten about the day's events. Even the fact that one of the crew, a girl of 21 taking a testimony from Scotty, was one of the murdered women. But seeing as she was wearing a red uniform at the time, this is immaterial. This episode also features the great character actor, John Winston, in a duel role as both a bartender and the stoned transporter chief. Too many "He's/She's Dead, Jim."s from Bones in this one. Here's a Quicktime link to a preview of the episode: http://startrek.com/library/media_tos.asp?id=18655 - - - - -- -------===========================------- -- - - - - Seven Reasons why Boloball is Better than Chess - BMC - - - - -- -------===========================------- -- - - - - Back in 1998, I told the unsuspecting world of a little-known game called Boloball. The world took note and the game became popular worldwide, eventually overtaking chess as the most popular strategy game of all time. But some fools still don't see what sweet Boloball does that chess has never been capable of doing. So for the uncivilized mind, I present seven reasons to believe in the power of bolos. 1) Chessboards are a status symbol. I sure don't know anyone who is rich enough to own one. I even know a guy named Rich and he doesn't own one. Boloball, on the other hand, is a computer game and is therefore immaterial. It is a file that can be infinitely copied, and so it is not property. Nobody can truly own Boloball, and yet anyone with a computer can possess it. Boloball is shareware and can be possessed by anyone, free of charge. Can the same be said of chess? No. 2) In chess, the pieces compose a hierarchy based on the feudal system. The king is the most important, benefiting from the labour of all the other pieces while not having to do any work himself. The queen is subjected to his patriarchal whims, scurrying around the board more than any of the other pieces without receiving adequate benefits in return for her labour. The bishops crawl around the board in a shifty diagonal way, working in conjunction with the throne as propaganda agents who attack the minds of the masses. The knights are highly trained in the art of war, and can attack in the most unorthodox, and yet the most sucky way. The rooks are akin to the mass military, which simply moves in with brute force and brute ignorance. The pawns (proletariats) are the first to be picked off, except in the unlikely event that they reach the other side of the board without being nailed by one of the higher ups. This kind of thing only happens in games where both players suck. In Boloball, all of the balls are exactly the same. None are better or worse than the others. Only in this game can you find the equality that only exists in a true socialist society. 3) A game of chess chronicles a war between two countries, and so anyone who partakes in a game is perpetuating violence in our world. Furthermore, one side is usually black and the other side is usually white. This setup creates in its players a socialization to hate the "other;" for Europeans, this means military targets in countries with populations that are primarily non-caucasian. It may appear that Boloball promotes competition and hatred too, but such is not the case. There are two factions in the game, each represented by a colour of ball, but the significance of the colour is not so dichotomous as the dichotomous white and black of chess. One of the colours in Boloball is red, which is a reference to the glorious socialist state. The second colour, on the other hand, is a mystery. The ball that is shown on the screen is obviously green, and yet the game says it is "blue." The true story behind this ball is a mystery. Is the ball both blue and green, or is it neither? William Soleau, game creator, once explained to me that the reason for this discrepancy is because he is colour-blind (N-Com #21), but I believe the true reason for the non-green, non-blue ball is to show that the foe of the socialist empire is in fact non-existent, since socialists are benevolent and wish neither to attack or be attacked. 4) The object in chess is to vanquish the enemy and murder their king. In Boloball, however the object is simply to earn a greater amount of points than the other player. In chess, the focus is on destruction. In Boloball, the focus is on production. While chess and Boloball are both allegories for international relations, chess is analogous to a sort of scorched earth policy where everything that cannot be carried away is destroyed, while Boloball features a more peaceful solution to political disagreement. There are no aggressive strategies in Boloball, only defensive ones. The greatest skill is to block off the other player's moves and take the best for yourself. Entirely unlike war, this strategy is more comparable to a trade embargo placed upon capitalist nations by the socialist state in order to ensure that commodities are secured for redistribution among the proletariat class (as opposed to being lost to the coffers of the bourgeoisie of capitalist nations). But still, one need not think of Boloball in purely economic terms. 5) Chess has a clearly defined set of variables. Players can only move their pieces in a predictable manner. Advancing a rook one square will yield the same result every time. Boloball has those wonky black hole squares. If you drop a ball into one black hole square, it emerges from another random black hole square. So no matter how well you think you understand the board's layout, you can forget about the predictability that can be found on a chessboard. So unlike chess, which claims to have all of the answers to life's mysteries, Boloball is honest in reminding us that we can't predict a fucking thing. If we had an insight into the algorithms of the black holes we might be able to understand all, but, like the real world we live in, there are things that will always be beyond our comprehension. In this instance, Boloball has a fatalistic honesty that chess can't touch. 6) Boloball is nice and simple. Chess has the En Passant move that nobody understands or likes. 7) Since chess must be played against an opponent, it creates competition and hostility between two people who could otherwise be friends. While there are also two players in Boloball, the game can be played against the computer, and no hard feelings need be had. But in this one respect chess may win, since it is all too often that in situations of war and violence that we forget the humanity of those we hurt. Still, since this is a pro-Boloball article, I'm chalking up another point for Boloball. All in all, Boloball is the better game by far. In accordance with the mission statement of SoleauSoft, this game is non-violent, logical, and fun. It also teaches us how to be better people and better socialists. Download it today. http://www.neo-comintern.com/files/boloball.zip - - - - -- -------===========================------- -- - - - - hello komrade B... I have exactly four minutes and twenty-three seconds to write down something you will remember for the rest of your life. your adoring fan, ada p.s. three minutes and four seconds. p.p.s. two minutes and eighty-two seconds. p.p.s. one minute and sixteen seconds. p.p.p.s. hmmmmmmmmmmm - - - - -- -------===========================------- -- - - - - The Neo-Comintern Magazine / Online Magazine is seeking submissions. Unpublished stories and articles of an unusual, experimental, or anti-capitalist nature are wanted. Contributors are encouraged to submit works incorporating any or all of the following: Musings, Delvings into Philosophy, Flights of Fancy, Freefall Selections, and Tales of General Mirth. The more creative and astray from the norm, the better. For examples of typical Neo-Comintern writing, see our website at . Submissions of 25-4000 words are wanted; the average article length is approximately 200-1000 words. Send submissions via email attachment to , or through ICQ to #29981964. Contributors will receive copies of the most recent print issue of The Neo-Comintern; works of any length and type will be considered for publication in The Neo-Comintern Online Magazine and/or The Neo-Comintern Magazine. - - - - -- -------===========================------- -- - - - - ___________________________________________________ | THE COMINTERN IS AVAILABLE ON THE FOLLOWING BBSES | |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| | TWILIGHT ZONE (905) 432-7667 | | BRING ON THE NIGHT (306) 373-4218 | | CLUB PARADISE (306) 978-2542 | | THE GATEWAY THROUGH TIME (306) 373-9778 | |___________________________________________________| | Website at: http://www.neo-comintern.com | | Questions? Comments? Submissions? | | Email BMC at bmc@neo-comintern.com | |___________________________________________________| | The Current Text Scene : http://www.textscene.com | |___________________________________________________| - - - - -- -------===========================------- -- - - - - copyright 2003 by #231-03/23/03 the neo-comintern All content is property of The Neo-Comintern. You may redistribute this document, although no fee can be charged and the content must not be altered or modified in any way. Unauthorized use of any part of this document is prohibited. All rights reserved. Made in Canada.