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The Annihilation Fountain Issue 05
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THE ANNIHILATION FOUNTAIN
A JOURNAL OF CULTURE ON THE EDGE...
TEXT ONLY - ISSUE #5
The Annihilation Fountain & TAF Copyright c 1997-99 Neil MacKay
ISSN 1480-9206
http://www.capnasty.org/taf/
the_annihilation_fountain@iname.com
CONTENTS:
---------
*NOISE CULTURE: THING I
*ARE WE A CULTURE
*THE COMPLETE, UNOFFICIAL TEMPEST INFORMATION PAGE
*AN INQUIRY INTO A SAMPLE OF VERNACULAR PHILOSOPHY: THE APHORISMS OF
YOGI BERRA
*POETRY & PROSE
*NIKE'S POETRY SLAM
*CONTIRBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE...
************************************************************************
NOISE CULTURE: THING I
By Alan Sondheim
************************************************************************
*Pity for the world. let the new knowledge come.*
*- Michel Serres, Detachments*
*The poetic moans of this century are only sophisms.*
*- Lautreamont, Poesies*
"No place left to go and no money to take you there, abjection itself
will become the last accessible frontier. But the wherewithal to
undertake this exploration has been severely blunted by the media's
aestheticizing the hell out of horror. Thus the abjects. They explode
the aesthetic filters slapped on horror, restoring it to the capacity
to affect again."
- Biba Kopf, "Bacillus Culture" in Tape Delay, ed. Charles Neal
Approaching the second millennium, culture undergoes a great trans-
formation, the revenge of surplus and excess. Totality fragments;
fragments clutter; clutter accumulates. The social itself is wounded;
with the disappearance of the great narratives (progress, self,
family, religion, science, all tending towards the ultimate),
an exponentially increasing number of tragedies - criminality,
starvation, poverties, plant and animal extinctions - traverse the
depths of a damaged planet. The human(e) is broken, identified now
only with fictions. "Noise Culture" refers to both this state of
affairs and various (sub)cultural responses. Noise culture is
normative; culture undergoes splintered intensifications, floods,
dissipations...
---
Noise culture exists as social turbulence, invaded by parasites -
fragments of incomplete data-banks, addresses, indirect and coded
addresses, all operating within the incoherency of an outmoded
concept of "truth" - a concept with proliferating falsifications.
Logic itself has become exhausted as the foundation of mathematical
culture. Deconstruction and its trace vanishes, without a trace.
The fatigue of the body dominates and compresses the clarity of
thought (what was thought to be clarity), which becomes nothing
more than an occupational privilege, bound only to immediate
situations and their promise of economic and sexual power - the
checkmating of the professional elite.
Absolute identity (A=A) is no longer of any consequence; even
the degree zero of cultural anomie has vanished, replaced by a
null set defined as the set of those things not equal to
themselves. Within this accumulation of virtual displacements
(crises of identity), contradiction is impossible, replaced
only by waywardness - the crafty smile, the eroticism of
sleaziness. This waywardness, this contrary (as in the
"contrary child") inhabits a universe whose ethical structure is
sham; what's left is strategy and happenstance.
Contradictions themselves "float" as temporary, part objects.
In place of the well-defined semantic field (the occasion of a
theory of competence), one notes a swollen semiosis (sign
production) possessing fissures intead of inscriptions:
definitions are temporary, occurring at the weakest point of
the communicative domain. Such fissures pass for the entities
of a traditional linquistics, but their occasion within speech
or grammatological acts is chaotic, catastrophic, and ill-
defined. (One need only consider the use of words such as
"health," "drug," "intervention," "postmodern," "sado-masochism"
now, and forevermore.) There is no memory or tradition at work;
instead, memory becomes a construct inherited from the
photographic; the representative contents of recall are nothing
more than current representations, simulacrua, virtual
subjectities, Kodak-content. "Communication," "community," both
reserved for the past tense, are American imaginaries; the
Aquarian itself is tied to a surplus economics and demographics
of New Age illiteracies.
Noise culture is replete with the parasitic, commodity culture
feeding upon real and unreal human needs and the
creation/isolation of data bank fragments (dating services,
mailing lists, etc.). Given the exponential rise of information
in post-industrial society, given the contrary and imminent
nature of this information, given the transvaluation of all
truth-values, and given the problematics of scientific and
technological progress - then information becomes viral,
inhabiting the linguistic, decaying within it, and having no
immanent value whatsoever. Noise culture is a culture of
confusions, conflations - a culture of the inconceivable; it
is unbelievable, because belief itself is refused entrance,
except as imminent construct. What is seized is purely the
momentary hiatus amidst the chattering of signifiers.
Philosophy has become Das Mann, for example, and
as example, philosophy is further abandoned.
In place of any consideration of the modernist paradigm of
cultural objects (paintings, estates, media, within
formalist or New-Critical paradigms), consider the phenmenology
of the cultural site. The accumulation of artworks exists,
but existence is transgressive; the context is mobile, wobbly,
and competitive (in the sense that any jostling is
competitive). What once were considered objects are now objects
of (impure) representation, formally identified as the union
of the intersection of their family of descriptions; such an
inexact definition (i.e. what constitutes a painting, human
being, person) becoms a fissure within the swollen cultural
domain, a fissure according to the lines of wekeast resistance,
but a fissure nonetheless which passes as an inscription - a
temporary demarcation which may even, under exceptinal
circumstances, last the life of the organism. (Thus an
inscription is a "classical" demarcation within a
culture's mapping of the world, while a fissure is
an ambiguous, temporary, and commodified demarcation of both
the real and increasingly remote layers of representation.)
Prejudice expands within the boundary-zones; born out
of the swollen, it is the "simplest thing in the world,"
collapsing the need for real observation. Anything for
demarcation, transcendence; godding and the sexual play similar
roles. Bondage/domination and sado-masochisms temporarily
harden what appear to be permanent positions of the
body(politic). Within noise culture, then, all
communication is distorted, and distorted necessarily.
Clutter carries no memory, no history, no competency.
Seriality is always on the horizon. Bodies penetrate and
grapple. People sigh and borrow from one another.
Clutter contains no memory; the absence of history, history
adjudicated and collapsed, is characteristic of noise culture.
History eliminates noise from temporality; as a process of
reorganization, it produces the purity of historical process.
History does what the present cannot do; cause and effect apear
incontrovertible and the cluttered horizon of everyday life
disappears into discourses on power, economics, media, bodies,
and demographics. With the accumulation of information across
the planet, there are more and more calls for reogranizations
which are problematized upon their creation; history has become
histories (mystories, herstories), and local history descends
into the mythopoeic, the realm of legend which futilely
inscribes itself as "tradition" against the incrusion of
electronic media (employed by local history as a matter of
record) - more information, more histories. Memory disappears
into legend and exhaustion. There are no conclusions to be
drawn (no time to draw them in). (History, history,
history.)
Romanticisms (jogging, art-school, substance abuse
consultations) appear in which individuality is promulgated
as defense; no one listens. There is no longer anyone to
listen; there are no sites for competencies. The best one
hopes for is computer matchups, successful searching, links in
which information may be exchanged without decay and the
presence of computer viruses, which clutter up the immediate
works. More and more, the binary interiority of the computer
dominates; the output is monitored and nothing more
(everything watches everything else). Dialogs are reduced to
microdialogs which circulate endlessly in eccentric space -
phallocratic and headless dialogs, situational ethics, invaded
by noise and parasites, dying and reborn endlessly (nothing
dies within the loop; power runs out).
The (transnational, managerial) corporate domain is also
invaded: terrorism, viruses, sabotage, and bureaucratic labor
continually collapse, on a local level, economic structures
parasitic upon an increasingly depleted planet. Still, this
domain speaks the totalization of culture everywhere; it's as
if the culture were One but the "family of man" syndrome has
long been deconstructed. Familiality, the sheer goodness of
things and commodities, is questionable amidst famine, drug
culture, the neutralizations of late captalism - questioned
everywhere; the most totalitarian systems leak within and
without the world information (dis)order.
The body becomes a production of the state; by capital; by
scarcity; by itself within noise culture, wherre it collapses
into part-objects and representations. Character becomes an
accumulation of "character traits," which give the appearance
of being able to be rearranged at will, as smokers stop smoking,
entrepreneurs make fabulous fortunes from foreclosures, and men
and women stop fucking in a viral atmosphere still reeling under
the myth of hygiene and self-control. Traits and body parts,
sexualities and aggressions, circulate in a space of
information overload; this is the liquidity of organic
information where the body collapses in fissures and
abjections. Again: No one listens, because no one can. As
usual, the "media" become problematic (designed for the body!)
with the introduction of new information displays, formats
and sensations. Enter noise culture's media dump:
the accumulation of battered television sets, video disks,
vinyl records, CDs, old computers - "it's cheaper to get a new
one" ... Clutter transforms into rubbish.
In noise culture, bureaucracy and language are viral
themselves; the former is paralleled by T2 or T4 bacteriophage,
which possesses modularity, assembly-line technique, and the
bacterium as a market investment transformed back into itself.
Everything is absorbed within the bureaucracy, which ideally
possesses no inputs or outputs. Starvation and a mismanaged
(managed) ecosystem are the result. Language, too, is manipulated
on the model of 1984; the part-objects of social realities
are bureaucratically constructed. Words are identified with
manipulation; released, they result in idle chatter dominated by
prejudice and confusion. (No one admits this, the poverty of
language, the abject fear and sorrow that lie just beneath the
surface of most of us. No longer speaking, we try out speech; no
longer thinking, we try out thought. No wonder so many turn to
the frozen realm of ideology - Christian fundamentalism,
right-to-life, RCP, whatever. Certainly the thought of the Other,
which can pass for our own, structures lives in a fast-forward
culture where reality and Otherness themselves are problematic.
The Christ-narrative continues to find expression, moving from
cultural center, however, to the periphery of empowering the
bitter and meek.) Even the Freudian model of loss, retrieval,
and reconstruction (symbolized by the "Fort-Da" all over again)
has been transformed into the bureaucratic shuffle of memory
input and recall, across the confusion of conflicting data-bases
within an impotently totalizing eye (Foucault's Panopticon).
The Panopticon itself records everything, loss everything;
epistemologies shift under its eyes which always operate across
the wrong spectra. Information is assorted piecemeal (knowledge
is replaced by knowledge management, knowledge management by
turbulent information flows), and the result is the "block" of
dead langage - the advertisement, propaganda message, little
(colored) book, holding things together within the flux of
distorted communication. (Hence the naivete and absurdity of
the conclusion of Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition:
open access to data banks is literally open access to
nothing.) The tens of thousands of commercial messages
one is exposed to every day conflict; the message is always
Buy! but the effect, like everything else, is one
of increased noise and destructuration.
Noise is literally that in noise culture - an
effusion or emission of partial signifiers everywhere and
nowhere at all, and an effusion which transgresses ontological
and epistemological boundaries on a random basis. Teleology
becmes an accumluation of "asides" and deflections;
goals are presented fully immersed in discourses which
are impossible to unravel (the soap-opera approach to life).
"Truth-values" become smeared across these (broken) discourses,
ultimately referring to a conflation of noisy logics. This noise
is compounded by a parasitology composed of AIDS, computer
viruses, advertising, piecemeal ideologies, criminalities,
bureaucracies... Behavior appears ab nihilo and protean.
This noise cannot be modelled (i.e. reduced to a chaotic
domain), since it partakes of ontological confusion on one
hand, and the imminence of making-do on the other. Nothing
coheres.
---
Noise culture is the culture of the _worn,_ worn-out, the
culture of exhaustion. It is abject, corroding whatever
mythopoeic sites are left. Pure power remains the only
immobility, ultimately grounded in the asolute speed of nuclear
retaliation. In reality, confusion reigns in the battlefield,
equally ill-defined. Civilians and soldiers alike are ground
up in a general slaughter. The pessimist might assume that all
states are states of total war - internal, external, or both. War
has been transformed from a series of operations ("battle,"
"strikes") to a condition, within and without the
parasitic. Noise culture is a civilian response to a situation
of fear, foreboding, and information overload, to which the body
responds by a continuous literal deconstruction (no metaphysics
here!), including drug culture. Dulled and disassembled, producing
and reproducing the lie, one move in media res, in extremis.
The cords binding the body in sado-masochistic theater spell out
in hieroglyphic everything and nothing that remain to be spoken.
The stutterings of desire, cries of infinite orgasm, are the only
hygienic result (take the plunge!).
Looking!: Take the plunge! The gaze is dissolved; there's no
longer a site for it. The gaze collapses into aimless and endless
loops of saccadean, protean movement. Absorbing absence, it's
replaced by a glance which covets power. (Think of the Obsession
and Charlie perfume ads, existing between gaze and glance,
mediated by commodity, searching surface, producing a
body-economics and nothing else.) Only pornography remains as
absolution within noise culture, contributing to its parasitology
- only pornography provides the site for the collapse of
distorted communication into the immediacy and arousal of the
body. Erect tissue chatters until its completion (complementation)
within itself. (And flesh is everywhere, resonating in the quantum
domain; noise culture is also the release of the flesh,
from object into millenarian field.)
In daily life, however, the glance predominates - the glance
whose province is clutter itself. The glance is a moment in
retreat, a continuous search and withdrawal. This retreat is
(as simulacrum) inverted in the video or computer game, with their
temporary totalizations of space, time, and power; the player can
be assured of a definitive (one-to-one) response based on his her
well-defined operations. The space-time of the game is therefore
classical, temporarily empowering - but now a space-time
based on capital investment. Here, the gaze appears momentarily
(concentrate!, concentrate!); these games are another pornography
(as are all investments). Channels of desire, sexuality, and
capital have collapsed into general (catastrophic) flows from
somewhere to somewhere; one sees (on the computer
bulletin-board) only the banks of the rivulets, which themselves
are changing course. Classical mathematization (taxonomies,
addresses, hierarchies) is being replaced by a universal mathesis
of widely disparate domains and computational heuristics. The
result is the gaze's meander, traversing for example the
shopping mall, in which desire is accessed by the body
(or the body's representation, the creditcard) in every direction,
and through every sense.
The body, too, is jargon. The "jargon of authenticity" has
been transformed into the authenticity of jargon, the
language-stream of the culture slipping forever away. What occurs,
if not exhaustion, overwork, impotency, performance - one withdraws,
backs down, selfcensors, editing out all but the most vociferous
(desirable, dangerous) messages. The world of the dream,
no matter how nightmarish, provides at least temporary escape;
the noise of the day transforms the random firing of neurons,
a firing ultimately under the control of the brain as a totality.
The resulting dream is a structural reorganization of firings
comming- led with both traumatic memories and everyday activities.
The dream curiously parallels its Fruedian interpretation. Instead
of reflecting the past-unconscious, it reflects the
present-conscious commingled with deep organization. It "saves"
the organization, not through sublimation, but through
guaranteeing, at least "in dream," the ability of the mind to
recuperate its environment, make sense of it. On this level,
it is irrelevant whether or not the dream is pleasant or night-
mare; what occurs is narrative, and noise culture itself is put
to bed. (Providing of course that one sleeps, and sleep disorders
have become an integral part of culture's disorders of the real.)
Put to bed: to a degree. For beyond this, exhaustion dominates,
and the dreamworld no longer functions, except perhaps on the
level of distorted narrativs of fear, abandonment, anxiety.
Exhaustion is all that can occur within turbulence. Do not forget
that nothing is absolute, transcendent (and that nothing itself
is nothing); even deconstruction leaves one only with play in a
world which already has too much. (For whom?) One fears totality
as one fears fascism: there is no turn, no Kehre, no return.
(Adorno: "Fascism is the absolute sensation.") The collapse of
noise (collapsing noise within noise) is the re-presentation of
the repressed with a vengeance. Too much play: nothing operates.
Theory dissolves as well (and what is the use of theory if, as here,
it can only remark incoherencies with incoherencies of its own?).
Language plays itself out in the empty space of mutilated bodies,
the remnants (Panama City, Beirut, Baghdad, East Timor, Kuwait,
Brazil, China) of the World War I battlefield in which the
distance between bodies was reduced to zero (nothing), and
in which bodies were literally fragmented into noise and the
abject. Does this alter? Has this been altered? Does this alter
anything? Only these spaces (collapsed, commingled) remain.
Of course there is no conclusion (no time for one).
Beyond noise culture, what refuges remain? Apocalyptic
culture reproduces classical narrative structure,
beginning, middle, the caress of the end - but here the
ultimate, resulting in the simultaneous death of
reader and writer. Apocalyptic culture can be considered in
terms of a field of operations upon deteriorating logics,
focusing on the margins of these objects for both recuperation
(1950s atomic paranoia) and lurid effect (Manson's writings).
Essentialisms of all sorts produced the privileged witness,
the guarantor of classical truth-values; deconstruction is threby
applied to the Other, critique produced from a stabilized site.
"Essence" itself is taken for granted, resulting in false or
inauthentic consensus. Spiritualities appear to entail
specific rites and beliefs (why, for God's sake?), resulting
again in essentialisms as well. Disbelief joins belief at
the margins suturing the subject (surely in need of construction).
Radical disbelief denies "believing in," and perhaps
that is the best one can hope for. This position, however, with
its denial of transcendence, remains problematic in regard to ethos
and praxis. It also opens to noisy inundation. Finally, pervading
all, are the various subcultural responses; these aren't passiave
productions, but may in fact be cultural assualts. It is here that
a frontier appears, that orgasm recuperates; it is here that the
existence of an avant-garde becomes meaningless, as culture
continues to proliferate and aesthetics simultaneously moves to
outer space and the liquid interiority of the body.
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ARE WE A CULTURE
by Morbus
************************************************************************
Originally published in Devil Shat Fourteen.
Before I even attempt to answer that question, we
both need to understand who "we" are. "We" are not
all the people who read this zine, but probably most
of them. "We" is not everyone who is on the Internet,
and it's probably not even a lot of them. "We", in my
definition, are those people who are on their
computer for the better part of the day. More
accurately, "we" are those people who are online for
most of that time also.
"We" could consist of mothers who have to take care
of their children as their husband works a nine to
five. But when the kids are in school, what does she
do? Go online to chat. "We" could consist of people
who have given "life" a try, and simply felt more
comfortable with the computer world. More comfortable
with the world of letters where your only mouth is
predominantly your eyes. And "we" might consist of
people who go online and get porn all day. Hey, there
is no prejudice here... even perverts contribute to
"we".
Now we have to define what "culture" is. According to
my handy-dandy dictionary, culture is (wow, there are
a lot of definitions here... they don't even know
either): "the sum total of ways of living built up by
a group of human beings and transmitted from one
generation to another" or perhaps "a particular form
or stage of civilization" and also "the behaviors and
beliefs characteristic of a particular social,
ethnic, or age group".
If we go by those definitions then the Internet is a
culture... a web page allows us to put any little bit
of knowledge we think we know so everyone can see.
This is the "sum total of ways of living" which is
easily "transmitted from one generation to another".
How could it not be? Our children are often more
comfortable being on the computer than spending time
in the "real world". The internet is certainly a
"stage of civilization" although after a while it
won't be. Soon, the internet will be so normal and
natural that we will expect it to be there one way or
another... just like electricity. And the internet is
our "behaviors and beliefs" and we are the "social"
group that make up it's heart.
But are we a good culture? And what effects do we
have on the already established culture?
"A new culture is being formed out of a desire for
communication" writes Garth Graham. Perhaps, but at
what loss? Do we really need to communicate with
everyone and anyone instantaneously? I've stated this
before: at what cost is it to our real life? Do we
escape into this new reality because we don't
communicate with our families or our friends or our
workers? Psychiatry in the future won't be about
sitting on a couch and telling your problems to a
scribbling bald guy. It will involve typing to Eliza
and getting fortune cookie responses back. Or perhaps
we need to sit down husband and wife on two different
computers and have them get together in a chat room.
Would that help? Probably. One of the benefits of
this desire to communicate is the medium: you don't
need an identity. Enter a chat room; be a guy or a
girl; quiet, joking or thoughtful. Who cares? When
you're computer shuts down, it's all over. The
saddening negative of meeting your wife on IRC is the
fact that you'll still have to get into bed with her
and you'll have nothing to say. Your feelings, anger,
and shopping list will all be hidden inside... until
you get into that chat room, and then you can CAPS
and bold all you want.
"The daily exposure to various cultures makes it
impossible for an individual to envision the world
consisting of only his or her culture" writes
Margaret Mead. That is true, but what will it bring
us? Confusion and anger. Confusion because we aren't
even secure with our culture in the United States. Go
to Texas to a hick town. The culture there is
different than the Bronx in New York, or the people
in Concord, New Hampshire. Why do we need to know
what it is like in Podunk, Africa? Sure, we can
saturate ourselves with their wonderful nativeness
and their beautiful art, but again, we have all that
in the United States - we just haven't been searching
hard enough. If the United States is such a "melting
pot" of culture, people, and ideals, where is our
desire to "get away from it all"? Why would it bring
anger? The inability to understand people's point of
view. Sure, we may be able to get "cultured" and
communicate with people in Podunk, Australia, but
we'll still attempt to twist their standards and so
forth to something that is familiar with us. All of
our hoping and longing to "get away from it all" will
merely be replaced by "dammit, everything is the
same". We need to realize that although the internet
allows us to communicate with everyone, it is mostly
through the same medium... and that medium is largely
American.
"Mead writes that while in the past culture was
transmitted from the older generation to the younger,
today the younger generation learns from their peers
and teach their elders," explains Michael Hauben...
and that pisses adults off, doesn't it? We even
capitalize on that in the commercials on television,
with the father having his son book flight plans for
him: "it's so simple even an adult could do it".
That's great, junior, but I make the rules here, and
I don't want to admit that my six year old son taught
me how to send email. I'm a grown-up, I'm smart, I am
your life. We are the teachers, that is how it's
been, and that is how it should always be. It's an
immortal paradigm that needs to fall before we truly
have enlightenment. Everyone is a teacher because
everyone is an expert in something.
"The new media of Usenet news, electronic mail and
the Internet facilitate the growth of global
interactive communities" continues Hauben. This is
common in many cultures. We have gangs in New York,
and cliques of jocks, goths, and preps everywhere.
Within each group there is a mini culture. There are
enemies and there are allies. It is against the "law"
to be a friend with a prep if you're a jock... so
Romeo and Juliet-ish. Of course, our wonderful
"internet various-global culture" thingy wouldn't be
a culture if we didn't have hate, or anger, or
rivalries. A lot of people have adverse reactions to
individuals from AOL or WebTV. Read a newsgroup every
once in a while. In "underground" (I use this term
with regret) newsgroups, there are constant put-downs
if someone posts a question and their return address
is from one of those groups. And then the newsgroup
is filled with this stupid-ass flame war between
groups for weeks. It's annoying as all hell, but
isn't this what come to expect? Take McDonalds for
example: I worked there when I was younger, and the
morning crew always hated the closers because they
would never do everything that needed to be done. The
night crew hated the morning crew because they kept
adding more things to be done at night. It was
wonderful stuff.
"The chance to contribute and interact with other
people spread Usenet to become a truly global
community of people hooking their computers together
to communicate" says Graham. I suppose - although
most newsgroups are empty (ever been to
alt.thought?). Well, all except for the spam that is.
Yes, as much as our wonderful community is so
connected, we still have those who manage to screw it
up. Their equivalent in the real world is the shiny
junk mail we get in our mailboxes. But we can't just
throw spam away like we do junk mail. There is
something more personal about spam. Take a newsgroup,
for example. If you don't have good filtering
software, you have to download all that spam through
your modem. They have just wasted your time. And with
email, you can't throw spam away... inadvertently you
find yourself opening it under the impression that it
is a real post. Yet another waste of time. I've grown
used to spam although I still don't like it. I have
learned to deal with it like commercials on TV: you
hate em, but you patiently wait for the show to come
back on.
"There's something to be said about the attraction of
representing one's self to the greater communication"
says Hauben. Yes, and that is this: it is awfully
hard.
"The online culture is primarily a written one,
although much of the text is written generally in a
non-formal almost off the cuff type of nature"
continues Hauben. And as such, it's hard to
understand. VVh3/\/ p30p73 t47/< like that all the
time, and slaughter words down to "i've ben werkin 2
much... d00d." we lose communication. And we lose
face. Text is just that: text, words - merely ASCII
characters that don't seem to betray any face. But
how you type your text and the readability of the
text is an indicator of maturity, and openness. No
one wants to sit and decipher what the hell you are
saying. They want to read something, see if you
expressed their opinion and move on. Hauben goes on
to talk about how "body language and other non-verbal
clues need to be spelled out". This is true, but also
annoying. I know people who use smiley faces after
every sentence. That kinda lessens the emotion. "Oh,
look, she's smiling again... isn't that cute?" Of
course, the alternative to smileys are those stupid
little HTMLemotions. You know, the ones like [grin]
and [laugh]. People stick by a set range of emotions
and are almost never [smiling like the sun] or [ready
to beat the crap out of you]. Ah twell. Of course,
like the idea of groups, a secret "acronym-code" can
be learned by members... the online equivalent of
gang signs. That way, you can tell your buddy to
KHAAMO and be secure in the fact that you're
mysterious (cos people are sure gonna ask what you
mean).
"While not bound by formal, written agreements,
people nevertheless are required by convention to
observe certain amenities because they serve the
greater common interest of the net" writes Bruce
Jones. Required, no. Requested, yes. People break the
ideals set in FAQ files all the time, probably
because a) they didn't read them, b) they don't give
a damn, or c) because they're stupid. Have you ever
joined a mailing list? Ignoring the countless morons
who think they can be unsubscribed by sending
multiple messages to the list itself, there is rarely
an unmoderated list that stays on topic. There are
many different facets of real culture and as such,
there should be as many, if not more, in the larger
culture of the internet. For example "Cow Loving
Group One" might have radically different rules than
"Cow Loving Group Three". It can all be very
confusing for someone who just wants to know about
cowtipping. Sure, "the elements of culture and
community that bind the people of Usenet together"
feels all warm and snugly when you're on the inside,
but if you're an immigrant from Ellis, you might have
trouble being accepted much less heard.
"The voiceless and the oppressed in every part of the
world have begun to demand more power." finishes
Mead. This is dangerous. Take voiceless and
oppressed. Crying to be heard and being suppressed
forces people into a corner of "fight or flee". And
hey, this is where anonymity is the standard, and
because of that, most fight and demand for more
power. The "leaders" either relinquish or fight
themselves. It will be only a matter of time when
modem potatoes of the world figure out how to stage
an revolt through electronic means. And unlike the
hackers creed, desperation and oppression throw out
all niceties and damage is merely a side-effect.
There is a book called "Cyberpoet's Guide to Virtual
Culture" written by John Frost. Is that what we are?
Are we a "realistic simulation" of real culture?
c 1997-1998 disobey
Devil Shat is published by disobey and is protected
under all copyright laws.
Devil Shat Fourteen was released on 11/20/97.
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************************************************************************
THE COMPLETE, UNOFFICIAL TEMPEST INFORMATION PAGE
by Joel McNamara
************************************************************************
Across the darkened street, a windowless van is parked. Inside, an antenna
is pointed out through a fiberglass panel. It's aimed at an office window
on the third floor. As the CEO works on a word processing document,
outlining his strategy for a hostile take-over of a competitor, he never
knows what appears on his monitor is being captured, displayed, and
recorded in the van below.
~~~~~
If you're even vaguely familiar with intelligence, computer security, or
privacy issues, you've no doubt heard about TEMPEST. Probably something
similar to the above storyline. The general principle is that computer
monitors and other devices give off electromagnetic radiation. With the
right antenna and receiver, these emanations can be intercepted from a
remote location, and then be redisplayed (in the case of a monitor screen)
or recorded and replayed (such as with a printer or keyboard).
TEMPEST is a code word that relates to specific standards used to reduce
electromagnetic emanations. In the civilian world, you'll often hear about
TEMPEST devices (a receiver and antenna used to monitor emanations) or
TEMPEST attacks (using an emanation monitor to eavesdrop on someone). While
not quite to government naming specs, the concept is still the same.
TEMPEST has been shrouded in secrecy. A lot of the mystery really isn't
warranted though. While significant technical details remain classified,
there is a large body of open source information, that when put together
forms a pretty good idea of what this dark secret is all about. That's the
purpose of this page.
The following is a collection of resources for better understanding what
TEMPEST is. And no, I seriously don't think national security is being
jeopardized because of this information. I feel to a certain extent, the
"security through obscurity" that surrounds TEMPEST may actually be
increasing the vulnerability of U.S. business interests to economic
espionage. Remember, all of this is publicly available. A fair amount has
come from unclassified, government sites. Up to this point, no one has
spent the time to do the research and put it all together in a single
location.
I've just begin to scratch the surface. If you have any additions,
corrections, or amplifications, let me know. This is a work in progress, so
check back often (updates are listed at the bottom of the page).
References marked with an (X), are good primary sources. If you just read
these, you'll end up with an excellent overview on TEMPEST-related topics.
Joel McNamara
December 17, 1996 - updated June 9, 1997
~~~~~
Contents
What is TEMPEST?
TEMPEST History
Just how prevalent is emanation monitoring?
TEMPEST Urban Folklore
General TEMPEST Information
Online Sources
Patents
Paper Sources
Monitoring Devices
Do It Yourself Shielding Sources
TEMPEST Hardware & Consulting
US Government Information Sources
Department of Energy
Department of State
National Security Agency
National Institute of Standards and Technology
US Military Information Sources
U.S. Navy
U.S. Air Force
U.S. Army
Department of Defense
Other Countries
Used TEMPEST
Non-TEMPEST computer surveillance
~~~~~
What is TEMPEST?
TEMPEST is a U.S. government code word that identifies a classified set of
standards for limiting electric or electromagnetic radiation emanations
from electronic equipment. Microchips, monitors, printers, and all
electronic devices emit radiation through the air or through conductors
(such as wiring or water pipes). An example is using a kitchen appliance
while watching television. The static on your TV screen is emanation caused
interference. (If you want to learn more about this phenomena, a company
called NoRad has an excellent discussion (X) of electromagnetic radiation
and computer monitors, that you don't need to be an electrical engineer to
understand. Also, while not TEMPEST-specific, a journal called Compliance
Engineering, typically has good technical articles relating to
electromagnetic interference. There's also the Electromagnetic Compliance
FAQ.)
During the 1950's, the government became concerned that emanations could be
captured and then reconstructed. Obviously, the emanations from a blender
aren't important, but emanations from an electric encryption device would
be. If the emanations were recorded, interpreted, and then played back on a
similar device, it would be extremely easy to reveal the content of an
encrypted message. Research showed it was possible to capture emanations
from a distance, and as a response, the TEMPEST program was started.
The purpose of the program was to introduce standards that would reduce the
chances of "leakage" from devices used to process, transmit, or store
sensitive information. TEMPEST computers and peripherals (printers,
scanners, tape drives, mice, etc.) are used by government agencies and
contractors to protect data from emanations monitoring. This is typically
done by shielding the device (or sometimes a room or entire building) with
copper or other conductive materials. (There are also active measures for
"jamming" electromagnetic signals. Refer to some of the patents listed
below.)
In the United States, TEMPEST consulting, testing, and manufacturing is a
big business, estimated at over one billion dollars a year. (Economics has
caught up TEMPEST though. Purchasing TEMPEST standard hardware is not
cheap, and because of this, a lesser standard called ZONE (X) has been
implemented. This does not offer the level of protection of TEMPEST
hardware, but it quite a bit cheaper, and is used in less sensitive
applications.)
Emanation standards aren't just confined to the United States. NATO has a
similar standard called the AMSG 720B Compromising Emanations Laboratory
Test Standard. In Germany, the TEMPEST program is administered by the
National Telecom Board. In the UK, Government Communications Headquarters
(GCHQ), the equivalent of the NSA, has their own program.
~~~~~
TEMPEST History
The original 1950s emanations standard was called NAG1A. During the 1960s
it was revised and reissued as FS222 and later FS222A.
In 1970 the standard was significantly revised and published as National
Communications Security Information Memorandum 5100 (Directive on TEMPEST
Security), also known as NACSIM 5100. This was again revised in 1974.
Current national TEMPEST policy is set in National Communications Security
Committee Directive 4, dated January 16, 1981. It instructs federal
agencies to protect classified information against compromising emanations.
This document is known as NACSIM 5100A and is classified.
The National Communications Security Instruction (NACSI) 5004 (classified
Secret), published in January 1984, provides procedures for departments and
agencies to use in determining the safeguards needed for equipment and
facilities which process national security information in the United
States. National Security Decision Directive 145, dated September 17, 1984,
designates the National Security Agency (NSA) as the focal point and
national manager for the security of government telecommunications and
Automated Information Systems (AISs). NSA is authorized to review and
approve all standards, techniques, systems and equipment for AIS security,
including TEMPEST. In this role, NSA makes recommendations to the National
Telecommunications and Information Systems Security Committee for changes
in TEMPEST polices and guidance.
~~~~~
Just how prevalent is emanation monitoring?
There are no public records that give an idea of how much emanation
monitoring is actually taking place. There are isolated anecdotal accounts
of monitoring being used for industrial espionage (see Information Warfare,
by Winn Schwartau), but that's about it. Unfortunately, there's not an
emanation monitoring category in the FBI Uniform Crime Reports.
Threat?
There are a few data points that lead one to believe there is a real threat
though, at least from foreign intelligence services. First of all, the
TEMPEST industry is over a billion dollar a year business. This indicates
there's a viable threat to justify all of this protective hardware (or it's
one big scam that's making a number of people quite wealthy).
This scope of the threat is backed up with a quote from a Navy manual that
discusses "compromising emanations" or CE. "Foreign governments continually
engage in attacks against U.S. secure communications and information
processing facilities for the sole purpose of exploiting CE." I'm sure
those with appropriate security clearances have access to all sorts of
interesting cases of covert monitoring.
Or not?
In 1994, the Joint Security Comission issued a report to the Secretary of
Defense and the Director of Central Intelligence called "Redefining
Security." It's worthwhile to quote the entire section that deals with
TEMPEST.
TEMPEST (an acronym for Transient Electromagnetic Pulse Emanation
Standard) is both a specification for equipment and a term used to
describe the process for preventing compromising emanations. The fact
that electronic equipment such as computers, printers, and electronic
typewriters give off electromagnetic emanations has long been a
concern of the US Government. An attacker using off-the-shelf
equipment can monitor and retrieve classified or sensitive information
as it is being processed without the user being aware that a loss is
occurring. To counter this vulnerability, the US Government has long
required that electronic equipment used for classified processing be
shielded or designed to reduce or eliminate transient emanations. An
alternative is to shield the area in which the information is
processed so as to contain electromagnetic emanations or to specify
control of certain distances or zones beyond which the emanations
cannot be detected. The first solution is extremely expensive, with
TEMPEST computers normally costing double the usual price. Protecting
and shielding the area can also be expensive. While some agencies have
applied TEMPEST standards rigorously, others have sought waivers or
have used various levels of interpretation in applying the standard.
In some cases, a redundant combination of two or three types of
multilayered protection was installed with no thought given either to
cost or actual threat.
A general manager of a major aerospace company reports that, during
building renovations, two SAPs required not only complete separation
between their program areas but also TEMPEST protection. This pushed
renovation costs from $1.5 million to $3 million just to ensure two US
programs could not detect each other's TEMPEST emanations.
In 1991, a CIA Inspector General report called for an Intelligence
Community review of domestic TEMPEST requirements based on threat. The
outcome suggested that hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent
on protecting a vulnerability that had a very low probability of
exploitation. This report galvanized the Intelligence Community to
review and reduce domestic TEMPEST requirements.
Currently, many agencies are waiving TEMPEST countermeasures within
the United States. The rationale is that a foreign government would
not be likely to risk a TEMPEST collection operation in an environment
not under their control. Moreover, such attacks require a high level
of expertise, proximity to the target, and considerable collection
time. Some agencies are using alternative technical countermeasures
that are considerably less costly. Others continue to use TEMPEST
domestically, believing that TEMPEST procedures discourage collection
attempts. They also contend that technical advances will raise future
vulnerabilities. The Commission recognizes the need for an active
overseas TEMPEST program but believes the domestic threat is minimal.
Contractors and government security officials interviewed by the
Commission commend the easing of TEMPEST standards within the last two
years. However, even with the release of a new national TEMPEST
policy, implementation procedures may continue to vary. The new policy
requires each Certified TEMPEST Technical Authority (CTTA), keep a
record of TEMPEST applications but sets no standard against which a
facility can be measured. The Commission is concerned that this will
lead to inconsistent applications and continued expense.
Given the absence of a domestic threat, any use of TEMPEST
countermeasures within the US should require strong justification.
Whenever TEMPEST is applied, it should be reported to the security
executive committee who would be charged with producing an annual
national report to highlight inconsistencies in implementation and
identify actual TEMPEST costs.
Domestic implementation of strict TEMPEST countermeasures is a prime
example of a security excess because costly countermeasures were
implemented independent of documented threat or of a site's total
security system. While it is prudent to continue spot checks and
consider TEMPEST in the risk management review of any facility storing
specially protected information, its implementation within the United
States should not normally be required.
The Commission recommends that domestic TEMPEST countermeasures not be
employed except in response to specific threat data and then only in
cases authorized by the most senior department or agency head.
Maybe
The main difficulty in tracking instances of emanation monitoring is
because it's passive and conducted at a distance from the target, it's hard
to discover unless you catch the perpetrator red-handed (a bad Cold War
pun). Even if a spy was caught, more than likely the event would not be
publicized, especially if it was corporate espionage. Both government and
private industry have a long history of concealing security breaches from
the public.
As with any risk, you really need to weigh the costs and benefits. Is it
cheaper and more efficient to have a spy pass himself off as a janitor to
obtain information, or to launch a fairly technical and sophisticated
monitoring attack to get the same data? While some "hard" targets may
justify a technical approach, traditional human intelligence (HUMINT)
gathering techniques are without a doubt, used much more often than
emanation monitoring.
~~~~~
TEMPEST Urban Folklore
Because of the general lack of knowledge regarding TEMPEST topics, there is
a fair amount of urban folklore associated with it. Here's some common
myths. And if you can provide a primary source to prove me wrong, let me
know (no friends of friends please).
* It's illegal to shield your PC from emanation monitoring. Seline's
paper suggests this, but there are no laws that I've found that even
come close to substantiating. Export of TEMPEST-type shielded devices
is restricted under ITAR, and most manufacturers will only sell to
government authorized users, but there are no laws banning domestic
use of shielded PCs.
* Emanation monitoring was used to snare CIA spy Aldrich Ames and also
during the Waco incident. Winn Schwartau appears to have started the
speculation on these two events. While conventional electronic
surveillance techniques were used, there's no published evidence to
support a "TEMPEST attack."
* You can put together a emanation monitoring device for under $100
worth of Radio Shack and surplus parts. Perhaps for a dumb video
display terminal (VDT), but certainly not for a VGA or SVGA monitor.
And definitely not for doing serious remote monitoring. There have
been anecdotal accounts of television sets with rabbit ears displaying
fragments of a nearby computer screen. Beyond that, effective, cheap,
easy-to-build devices don't seem to exist. If they did, the plans
would be available on the Net at just about every hacker site.
* LCD displays on laptops eliminate the risks of TEMPEST attacks. Maybe,
maybe not. The technology behind LCD monitors versus typical CRT
monitors may somewhat reduce the risk, but I wouldn't bet my life on
it. There have been anecdotal accounts of noisy laptop screens being
partially displayed on TVs. If laptops were emanation proof, I
seriously doubt there would be TEMPEST standard portables on the
market.
* TEMPEST is an acronym. Maybe. There have been a variety of attempts to
turn TEMPEST into a meaningful acronym (such as Transient
ElectroMagnetic Pulse Emanation STandard) by government and
non-government sources. The official government line denies this, and
states TEMPEST was a code word originally given to the standards, and
didn't have any particular meaning.
* There's virtually no information about TEMPEST on the Net because it's
so secret. Nonsense. The world does not revolve around AltaVista. You
just need to dig a little deeper.
~~~~~
General TEMPEST Information
Online Sources
* One of the most distributed sources of TEMPEST information on the Net
is a paper by Christopher Seline called "Eavesdropping On the
Electromagnetic Emanations of Digital Equipment: The Laws of Canada,
England and the United States." It deals with laws relating to
eavesdropping on the electromagnetic emanations of digital equipment.
Seline postulates that it is illegal for a U.S. citizen to shield
their hardware against emanation eavesdropping. There are no laws to
support this contention. Other information in the Seline paper has
been questioned by informed sources, however, there is good source
material contained in it.
* The other widely distributed source is Grady Ward's "TEMPEST in a
teapot" (X) post to the Cypherpunks list that discusses practical
countermeasures based on techniques radio operators use to reduce
electromagnetic interference. Good technical source material.
* "Electromagnetic Radiation from Video Display Units: An Eavesdropping
Risk?" (X) by Wim van Eck, Computers & Security, 1985 Vol. 4. This is
the paper that brought emanation monitoring to the public's attention.
Van Eck was a research engineer at the Dr. Neher Laboratories of The
Netherlands' Post, Telegraph, and Telephone (PTT) Service. His paper
was purposely incomplete on several points, and modifications were
required to actually build a working device based on his plans. (.PDF
format)
* "Electromagnetic Eavesdropping Machines for Christmas?" (X) Computers
& Security, Vol. 7, No. 4 [1988] A follow-up article to the van Eck
paper. Excellent source material regarding why (and what) certain
details weren't included in the original. .PDF and HTML formats.
* "The Threat of Information Theft by Reception of Electromagnetic
Radiation from RS-232 Cables", Peter Smulders, Dept of Electrical
Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, 1990. Many people
just think their computer monitors are vulnerable to emanation
monitoring. This paper clearly shows that cabling is equally at risk.
(.PDF format)
* "Protective Measures Against Compromising Electromagnetic Radiation
Emitted by Video Display Terminals" (X) by Professor Erhart Moller,
Aachen University, Germany, 1990. A good introduction. Reprinted in
Phrack 44.
* "Data Security by Design" was written by George R. Wilson and appeared
in Progressive Architecture, March 1995. It offers some interesting
facts on shielding structures from emanation leakage.
* PC Week, March 10, 1987 v4 p35(2) has an article by Vin McLellan about
emanation monitoring and TEMPEST.
* COMPUTERWOCHE, August 8, 1986, #34 Lauschangriff auf unbekannte
Schwachstelle is a German article regarding TEMPEST shielded
terminals. Thanks to Ulf Mller for the following summary:
The article says that authorities had long known about
compromising radiation, but the information had leaked to
business only recently. It was usually neglected by commercial
computing centers and completely unknown to users. Experts
estimate that screen contents can be received over a distance of
1 km, and of 300 m using amateur equipment. SCS GmbH gave
recommendations on low-radiation screens determined in
experiments. Room protection with Faraday cages is explained.
Radiation-free computers, typically implemented by a Faraday cage
inside the box, existed but were not available to the market.
Beginning March 1 that year, authorities processing sensitive
data were required by order of the ministry of interior to use
only Tempest-protected devices approved by the ZfCH (= central
office for encipherment, the predecessor of the BSI). The
producers of those devices are obliged to secrecy and may deliver
to authorities only. Ericsson was the market leader for security
screens with a special version of the S41 terminal with an annual
turnover of 10,000,000 DM. They would have liked to sell more of
them, but were not allowed to deliver them to private companies.
Patents
A quick search of IBM's patent server service revealed several interesting
patents:
* Patent number 4965606 - Antenna shroud tempest armor (1989)
* Patent number 5165098 - System for protecting digital equipment
against remote access (1992)
* Patent number 4932057 - Parallel transmission to mask data radiation
(1990)
* Patent number 5297201 - System for preventing remote detection of
computer data from tempest signal emissions (1994)
A note about patent 5297201. It references patent 2476337 that was issued
July 1, 1949. Unfortunately, the details aren't available online, but the
reference may be telling as to just how long emanation monitoring has been
taking place.
Paper Sources
* "Cabinets for Electromagnetic Interference/Radio-Frequency
Interference and TEMPEST Shielding" by Kenneth F. Gazarek, Data
Processing & Communications Security, Volume 9, No. 6 [1985].
* Information Warfare, Winn Schwartau, Thunder's Moth Press, New York,
1996 (second edition)
Chapter 7, The World of Mr. van Eck, is devoted to TEMPEST-related
topics. There's some good information, but it's painted pretty
broadly, and really doesn't get into technical details (the second
edition does present much more material on HERF guns and other topics,
but nothing has been added to the van Eck chapter). Still, a good
read, also some additional sources not mentioned on this page in the
Footnotes section.
* Computer Security Basics, (X) Deborah Russell and G. T. Gangemi Sr.,
O'Reilly & Associates, Sebastpol, CA, 1991. Chapter 10, TEMPEST,
provides an excellent overview of the risks of emanations as well as
the government TEMPEST program. This is a must read.
~~~~~
Monitoring Devices
A company called The Codex probably has the most information about
TEMPEST-type products on a single Net site. The CEO, Frank Jones, gave a
monitoring demonstration on the Discovery Channel in October, 1996 (a
transcript and video stills are available). The site also houses a general
discussion of emanation monitoring and a reprint of an Internet Underground
article. Jones sells a monitoring device called a DataScan, but
unfortunately doesn't supply much technical detail and I've yet to talk to
a third party that's actually used one. He also sells something called
Safety Shield, which is used to reduce emanations.
John Williams sells the Williams Van Eck System, an off the shelf emanation
monitoring device. He also has a demonstration video and and a book called
"Beyond Van Eck Phreaking." The updated Consumertronics Web site has a
variety of interesting products (the $3 paper catalog is a good read too).
In past written correspondence with Mr. Williams, he has provided a
considerable amount of technical details about his products.
I'm currently looking for first hand, real-world accounts of a monitoring
device actually being used to gather intelligence (not in a demonstration).
PGP-encrypted e-mail through anonymous remailers or nym servers perferred.
~~~~~
Do It Yourself Shielding Sources
After you've read Grady's paper...
If you're handy with a soldering iron, Nelson Publishing produces something
called the EMI/RFI Buyers' Guide. This is a comprehensive list of sources
for shielding material, ferrites, and other radio frequency interference
and electromagnetic interference type products. There's even listings for
TEMPEST products and consultants. Unfortunately, most of the sources don't
have links. But company names, addresses, and phone/FAX numbers are
supplied.
A more general electronics manufacturer data base is electroBase. They have
over 7,800 manufacturers of all types listed.
There's an interesting product called Datastop Security Glass, that's
advertised as the only clear EMF/RFI protection glass on the market. It's
free of metal mesh, so has excellent optical clarity. This is the same
stuff the FAA uses in air traffic control towers. Contact TEMPEST SECURITY
SYSTEMS INC. for more details.
Just remember, effective emanation security begins with the physical
environment. Unless you can shield the wiring (telephone lines, electrical
wiring, network cables, etc.), all of the copper around your PC and in the
walls isn't going to stop emanations from leaking to the outside world. In
shielding, also remember that emanations can pass from one set of wires to
another.
~~~~~
TEMPEST Hardware & Consulting
Here's some of the players in the billion dollar plus a year TEMPEST
industry (this is by no means a complete list):
AFC (Antennas for Communications) manufacturers TEMPEST sheilding
enclosures for antennas.
Aerovox manufactures a variety of EMI filters. Nice downloadable catalog
(Windows help format) with photos.
Austest Laboratories is a down-under company that provides TEMPEST testing.
Candes Systems Incorporated (X) produces TEMPEST products, including
monitors, printers, and laptops. Nice photos and specs.
Compucat is an Australian company that provides a variety of TEMPEST
products and services.
Conductive Coatings, a division of the Chromium Corporation, produces a
variety of shielding solutions.
CorCom makes a variety of shielded jacks (RJ type) in its Signal Sentry
line.
Corton Inc. manufactures TEMPEST keyboards.
Dynamic Sciences is another TEMPEST-oriented company. Among other things,
they produce a piece of hardware called the DSI-110, for surveillance and
testing purposes.
Elfinco SA is a British company that produces sheilding products. Most
notable is electromagnetic shielded concrete.
Equiptco Electronics sells a variety of general electronic equipment and
supplies, some TEMPEST standard (but you need to dig through their catalog
to find it).
EMC Technologies is an Australian company that provides TEMPEST testing.
Emcon Emanation Control Limited, in Onatrio, Canada, has been providing
TEMPEST equipment to NATO governments for the past 12 years.
Framatome Connectors International manufactures TEMPEST cables and
connectors in the UK, especially suited for marine use.
GEC-Marconi Hazeltine produces COMSEC products as well as TEMPEST design
and test facilities.
GTE, the phone people, make a TEMPEST version of their Easy Fax product,
complete with a STU-III (encrypted phone) gateway.
HAL Communications Corp. provides TEMPEST shielded modems and radio
equipment to the government.
JMK makes a variety of filters (including those of the TEMPEST variety).
Kontron Elektronic is a German company that offers a slick little shielded
portable.
Lynwood is a UK supplier of TEMPEST and ruggedized PCs.
NAI Technologies (X) produces a variety of TEMPEST standard workstations
and peripherals.
Nisshinbo is a Japanese company that provides quite a bit of detail on its
TEMPEST shielding products. The DENGY-RITE 20 wideband grid ferrite
absorber panels is especially interesting.
Panashield manufactures a variety of shielding enclosures.
Racal Communications does TEMPEST evaluations.
Radiation Sciences Inc. is a TEMPEST consulting and training firm in
Pennsylvania.
Security Engineering Services Inc. is a consulting firm that offers TEMPEST
courses and other services. The courses are only offered to students who
have a security clearance. The interesting thing is the course books appear
to be orderable by any U.S. citizen. TEMPEST Hardware Engineering and
Design and TEMPEST Program Management and Systems Engineering, with over
800 pages of total material are available for $200.
Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) performs TEMPEST and other testing.
SystemWare Incorporated is another consulting company that offers TEMPEST
consulting. Not much information at this site.
TRW Specialized Services offers TEMPEST testing, both in the lab and field.
This site has a nice Acrobat brochure that describes their services.
Tecknit is one of the leaders in shielding products. They specialize in
architectural shielding (copper coated doors, panels, etc.) and smaller
gaskets and screens for electronic devices. A very informative site, with
downloadable Acrobat catalogs.
Tempest Inc. has been around for 11 years and produces TEMPEST standard
hardware for the government and approved NATO countries. Their catalog
isn't online, but
as an example they offer an interesting Secure Voice
Switching Unit that's used in USG executive aircraft. Not much technical
information here.
Wang Federal Systems (X) also sells TEMPEST rated hardware as well as
performs testing. This site contains their product and services catalog.
Some good information.
Veda Inc. is a defense contractor who landed a 5.6 million dollar Navy
contract for TEMPEST and COMSEC services.
There's an interesting EMC-related site that has lots of job listings, many
having to deal with TEMPEST. This is a good intelligence source.
A truth in advertising note: Just because a piece of hardware is advertised
as "designed to meet NACSIM 5100A" or "designed to meet TEMPEST standards"
doesn't mean the device has gone through the rigorous TEMPEST certification
process. "Real" TEMPEST hardware will clearly state it has been certified
or endorsed.
~~~~~
US Government Information Sources
Department of Energy (DOE)
The Department of Energy is an extremely security conscious agency. A
variety of their documents provide revealing glimpses of TEMPEST
procedures.
While not TEMPEST-specific, the DOE's Computer Incident Advisory Capability
(CIAC) has an interesting document called CIAC-2304 Vulnerabilities of
Facsimilie Machines and Digital Copiers (PDF format). In it, TEMPEST
threats to FAX machines and copiers are briefly discussed. There are
several papers referenced, including:
* DOE 5639.6A, Classified Automated Information System Security Program,
July 15, 1994
* DOE M 5639.6A-1, Manual of Security Requirements for the
ClassifiedAutomated Information System Security Program, July 15, 1994
* DOE 5300.2D, Telecommunications: Emission Security (TEMPEST), August
30, 1993
The DOE's Safeguards and Security Central Training Academy also has some
relevant classified training courses.
The DOE apparently uses a company called DynCorp to perform internal
TEMPEST assessments.
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
In the 1989 Annual Report of the National Computer System Security and
Privacy Advisory Board, NIST stated that "TEMPEST is of lower priority in
the private sector than other INFOSEC issues." It's fairly well known that
NIST is influenced by the NSA, so this quote needs to be taken with a grain
of salt.
NIST has a list of accredited laboratories that perform MIL-STD-462
(electromagnetic interference) testing. Some of these also do TEMPEST
testing.
While a bit dated (1986), A GUIDELINE ON OFFICE AUTOMATION SECURITY has a
few references to TEMPEST, as well as other computer security nuggets.
Brief mention of the Industrial TEMPEST program as well as contacts (may be
dated).
National Security Agency (NSA)
The NSA publishes something called the Information Systems Security
Products and Services Catalogue (X). It contains a list of TEMPEST
compliant hardware (as well as other approved security products). The cost
of the catalog is $15 for a single copy or $34 for a yearly subscription
(four issues). Requests for this document should be addressed directly to:
The Superintendent of Documents
U.S. Government Printing Office
Washington, D.C. 20402
Unfortunately, several of the following classified documents can't be
ordered:
* "Tempest Fundamentals", NSA-82-89, NACSIM 5000, National Security
Agency, February 1, 1982 (Classified).
* "Guidelines for Facility Design and RED/BLACK Installation, NSA-82-90,
NACSIM 5203, National Security Agency, June 30, 1982 (Classified).
* "R.F. Shielded Enclosures for Communications Equipment: General
Specification", Specification NSA No. 65-6, National Security Agency
Specification, October 30, 1964.
* "Tempest Countermeasures for Facilities Within the United States",
National COMSEC Instruction, NACSI 5004, January 1984 (Secret).
* "Tempest Countermeasures for Facilities Outside the United States",
National COMSEC Instruction, NACSI 5005, January 1985 (Secret).
* National Security Telecommunications and Information Systems Security
Advisory Memorandum (NSTISSAM) TEMPEST/2-95, RED/BLACK Installation
Guidance; 12 December 1995
State Department
While it's not hard to guess, the State Department uses TEMPEST equipment
in foreign embassies. There's a position called a Foreign Service
Information Management Technical Specialist - Digital, that pays between
$30,000 to $38,000 a year. The ideal candidate should have a knowledge of
TEMPEST standards as well as the ability to repair crypto hardware.
Along with cryptography, the export of TEMPEST standard hardware or devices
for suppressing emanations is restricted by the International Traffic in
Arms Regulations (ITAR). However, there is an exception in that: "This
definition is not intended to include equipment designed to meet Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) commercial electro-magnetic interference
standards or equipment designed for health and safety."
~~~~~
US Military Information Sources
Part of the government's mandate to reduce costs is to make information
available online. While the average user doesn't have access to Milnet or
Intelink, there are a variety of unclassified, military sources on the
Internet that directly or indirectly relate to TEMPEST standards.
Jargon alert. You'll sometimes see references to RED/BLACK systems. A red
system is any device that stores or transfers classified data. Black
systems store/transfer unclassified data. Gee, with all of the black
projects and helicopters around these days, I would have thought it would
be the other way around.
U.S. Navy
The Navy seems to be a further ahead then the other services in putting
content online, including:
Chapter 16 of the Navy's AUTOMATED INFORMATION SYSTEMS SECURITY GUIDELINES
manual is devoted to emanations security (X). Probably the most interesting
section in this chapter deals with conducting a TEMPEST Vulnerability
Assessment Request (TVAR). Completing the TVAR questionnaire provides some
common sense clues as to how electronic security could be compromised.
Chapter 21 of the same manual deals with microcomputer security. Section
21.8 Emanations Security, reads: "TEMPEST accreditation must be granted for
all microcomputers which will process classified data, prior to actually
processing the data. Your security staff should be aware of this and submit
the TEMPEST Vulnerability Assessment Request (TVAR) to COMNISCOM.
Microcomputers may be able to comply with TEMPEST requirements as a result
of a TEMPEST telephone consultation, as permitted by COMNISCOM. Contact the
Naval Electronic Security Engineering Center (NESSEC) for further
information to arrange a TEMPEST telephone consultation. Use of a secure
phone may be required and your request will be followed with written
guidance." This leads one to believe that certain PC systems may not be as
susceptible as others to emanations monitoring.
C5293-05 TEMPEST Control Officer Guidebook - "Provides guidance to the
individual assigned responsibility for TEMPEST implementation at a major
activity." Unfortunately, not online, and likely classified.
NISE East Information Warfare-Protect Systems Engineering Division
(Information Warfare-Protect Systems Engineering Division - Code 72) puts
on a couple of TEMPEST related training courses, including "Tempest
Criteria for System/Facility Installation" and "Tempest Fundamentals."
These are targeted toward Department of Defense personnel and civilian
contractors who must comply with TEMPEST standards as part of their
business.
"The Reduction of Radio Noise Eminating from Personal Computers" is a
thesis topic at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Naval
Postgraduate School.
U.S. Air Force
The Air Force's Rome Laboratory has produced a variety of interesting
defense related systems. Some developments likely related to TEMPEST
include:
* In 1961 the Electromagnetic Vulnerability Laboratory was established.
* In terms of emanation monitoring, circa 1965 - 70, a Wullenweber
antenna (called the "elephant's cage") is reputed to have done an
excellent job of retrieving stray signals. While hardly a portable
device, it does suggest the military was actively pursuing emanation
monitoring during this period.
* In 1964, Rome developed the AN/MSM-63 Electromagnetic Measurement Van
(no information as to whether it just served a testing function, or
could be used for surveillance).
* In June of 1965, RADC a lightweight (350-pound) electromagnetic
surveillance antenna was developed that was operationally equivalent
or better than systems that were up to ten times larger and heavier.
During that same year considerable progress was made in the area of
reducing vulnerability to electromagnetic interference. Mr Woodrow W.
Everett, Jr. was among personnel recognized for technological
improvements in wave guides, electronic tube components, and greater
electronic compatibility.
Other Air Force documents:
* "Ground-based Systems EMP Design Handbook", AFWL-NTYCC-TN-82-2, Air
Force Weapons Laboratory, February 1982.
* "Systems Engineering Specification 77-4, 1842 EEG SES 77-4", Air Force
Communications Command, January 1980.
U.S. Army
The U.S. Army Information Systems Engineering Command is headquartered at
Fort Huachuca, Arizona. The Fort engages in a variety of spook-related
activities. One of the classified documents that is referenced is:
* AR 380-19-1, Control of Compromising Emanations; 4 September 1990
The Army Corps of Engineers released a publication called "Electromagnetic
Pulse (EMP) and TEMPEST Protection for Facilities" (X) EP1110-3-2, in
December 1990 (unclassified). This is a treasure trove of information
related to shielding buildings. (Thanks to John Young for digitizing parts
of this massive document.)
The Army Corps of Engineers, Construction Engineering Research
Laboratories, has also been experimenting with low cost TEMPEST shielding
technologies. Some revealing tidbits are described in their fact sheet.
The Army's White Sands Missle Range has a Test Support Division that does
TEMPEST testing as well as other things. An interesting photo of the inside
and outside of a test truck is shown.
The Army's Blacktail Canyon (X) EMI/TEMPEST facility at Ft. Huachuca
(spook-related location in Arizona), recently put up a Web page, with lots
of interesting info.
Department of Defense
The Department of Defense's Defense Technical Information Center has
information regarding the Collaborative Computing Tools Working Group
(representatives from private sector and the intelligence and defense
communities). The CWG put together some TEMPEST recommendations for
video-conferencing products.
>From a post to the Cypherpunks list in April of 1994, by Steve Blasingame:
An overview of TEMPEST can be found in DCA (Defense Communications
Agency) Circular 300-95-1, available from your nearest Federal
Documents Depository / Government Library. The section of interest in
is Volume 2, DCS Site and Building Information, sections SB4 & SB5,
(Grounding,Shielding,HEMP). SB5 though not directly covering RFI/RF
Emanation is devoted to shielding for high altitude electromagnetic
pulse radiation (HEMP). The documents discuss Earth Electrode Systems,
Fault Protection Systems, Lightning Protection Systems, Signal
Reference Systems, and RFI containment, they also briefly discusses
radio signal containment (TEMPEST) as well. This is a must-read for
anyone wishing to keep their bits to themselves. Discussions of
testing and validation methods are not discussed in the unclassified
documents. I have included the references to the Secret/Classified
documents for the sake of completeness. It is possible that some of
them are by now de-classified, or may be requested through FOIA.
DA Pamphlet 73-1, Part One, 16 Oct 1992 (DRAFT) (X) is an obscure document
that discusses survivability and mission performance of military systems.
The interesting thing in this pamphlet is a fairly detailed description of
the military's Blacktail Canyon facility.
Other Defense Department documents:
* MIL-STD-188-124, "Grounding, Bonding, and Shielding for Common Long
Haul/Tactical Communication Systems", U.S. Dept. of Defense, June 14,
1978.
* MIL-HDBK-419, "Grounding, Bonding, and Shielding for Electronic
Equipments and Facilities", U.S. Dept. of Defense, July 1, 1981.
* "Physical Security Standards for Sensitive Compartmented Information
Facilities (SCIF), Manual No. 50-3 Defense Intelligence Agency (For
Official Use Only), May 2, 1980.
* "Design Practices for High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP)
Protection", Defense Communications Agency, June 1981.
* "EMP Engineering Practices Handbook", NATO File No. 1460-2, October
1977
~~~~~
Other Countries
The US isn't the only one playing the TEMPEST game. Here's some additional
sources from various countries.
Canada
COMMUNICATIONS SECURITY ESTABLISHMENT PUBLICATIONS
* COMSEC Installation Planning (TEMPEST Guidance and Criteria)
(CID/09/7A), 1983, (English only)(Confidential)
* Criteria for the Design, Fabrication, Supply, Installation and
Acceptance Testing of Walk- In Radio Frequency Shielded Enclosures
(CID/09/12A)(Unclassified)
UK
The British Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency publishes a
variety of computer security titles including:
* TEMPEST: The Risk (Restricted) CCTA Library 0 946683 22 0 1989
~~~~~
Used TEMPEST
TEMPEST shielded computer equipment sometimes leaks out into the public in
the form of surplus and scrap sales. This section is devoted to
descriptions.
JC describes two shielded IBM PC cases he picked up from a scrap dealer for
$35 each (unfortunately they had already sold the printers and monitors).
The cases were labeled EMR XT SYSTEM UNIT (on the front), with a model
number of 4455 1 (on the back). The cases are similar to a standard IBM XT
case, except depper toward the back, so a filter bank and power supply
baffle could be installed. The top is bolted down, requiring an allen
wrench to remove. The top part of the case has a gasket groove for the
brass colored RF gasket, and the mating surface is a finished in anodized
aluminum. The top appears to be a cast aluminum plate. Each of the ports in
the rear has a filter, unused ports have a metal blocking cover that mates
to the case and make a good eletrical contact.
W.J. Ford Surplus Enterprises had the following printer for sale in
December 1996:
LASER PRINTER Make:MITEK Model:100T 300 X 300 DPI LASER PRINTER WITH LETTER
SIZE PAPER TRAY, 8 PPM, MEETS NACSIM TEMPEST SPECS, C.W. OWNER'S MANUAL
(TONER CARTRIDGE NOT INCL.) Dimensions: 19.00"w x 16.00"h x 16.50"d 1.00 on
hand, No Graphic on file, Item No.:1208 RAMP Price: $ 250.00
As of February 8, 1997, Dark Tanget (of DEFCON fame) has a whole collection
of TEMPEST shielded equipment for sale. Check out his page (X) for complete
info and photos. Lots of great details and specs.
Note: I personally don't own or have access to any surplus TEMPEST
equipment. However, if you've encountered such hardware, let me know about
it.
~~~~~
Non-TEMPEST computer surveillance
In researching TEMPEST topics, sometimes I run into little-known tidbits
that relate to possible computer surveillance techniques.
Infrared Ports
The Department of Energy Information Systems Security Plan has an
interesting section titled, 8.5 Wireless Communications (Infrared Ports).
It states:
"The use of wireless communications (infrared) ports found on most PPCs to
interface with printers and other peripheral devices is strictly forbidden
when processing classified information. These ports must be disabled on all
accredited PPCs and peripherals by covering the window with a numbered
security seal or physically removing the infrared transmitter."
~~~~~
Disclaimer: I've never been involved with the TEMPEST community, had a
security clearance for TEMPEST, or have access to classified material
relating to TEMPEST. The information on this page is completely derived
from publicly available, unclassified sources.
revision history
12/17/96 - original document
12/18/96 - added link to van Eck follow-up article, shielding comments
12/21/96 - reorganization and additional comments about Rome Lab, ZONE,
DOE, non-TEMPEST
12/22/96 - added Smulders paper
01/02/97 - added Compliance Engineering, additional NIST, Navy, Canada,
Used, and paper sources
01/08/97 - added UK, patents
01/11/97 - added DA Pamphlet 73-1/Blacktail test facility, Army,
COMPUTERWOCHE, EMC, HAL, Austest, Racal, Compucat, Nisshinbo
02/02/97 - added Naval Postgraduate School, EMC FAQ, DynCorp, Conductive
Coatings, GEC Marconi, CorCom, AFC, Corps of Engineers, Ford Surplus, GTE,
ECM job list, White Sands, Cortron, SwRI, Veda, Emcon
02/14/97 - added DEFCON goodies to Used
02/18/97 - added Redefining Security report, Lynwood
03/10/97 - added Datastop glass to shielding section
03/21/97 - added Moller paper (from Phrack 44)
03/26/97 - added Army Corps of Engineers pub, Elfinco, recommended Xs
04/12/97 - added Computerwoche translation
06/09/97 - added Blacktail page, Framatome Connectors International
07/02/97 - added JMK
special thanks to John Young for his relentless pursuit of information and
archival prowess
Copyright 1996,1997 Joel McNamara
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************************************************************************
AN INQUIRY INTO A SAMPLE OF VERNACULAR PHILOSOPHY: THE APHORISMS OF
YOGI BERRA
by Paul Laurendeau
************************************************************************
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler
Albert EINSTEIN
NOTE: the following piece IS NOT ABOUT BASEBALL. However, it benefited from
the baseball expertise, as well as from the documentation wizardness,
intellectual uplift, debating sagacity, friendship, and love of the
following York University colleagues: Walter GIESBRECHT, Igor KUSYSZYN,
James PORTER, Laura PIETROPAOLO, Louise RIPLEY, Martin (Marty) THOMAS,
Ildiko TROTT, Fredric WEIZMANN and John WILLOUGHBY. It was generated in the
heat of a series of stormy exchanges on the York University professor's
Trade Union Electronic Mail Line: the glorious YUFA-L. As almost always in
matters directly or indirectly related to the noble sport played on the
diamant diamond, I benefited from thorough speculative and elevated
discussions with my own old man, Ral LAURENDEAU (an all times fan of the
Montral EXPOS and direct witness of a fair amount of Yogi BERRA's verbal
and non verbal achievements). The responsibility of the positions
formulated here is, of course, exclusively and integrally mine.
In the wake of our investigation of every aspects of spicy and
odoriferous facets of philosophy creeping around contemporary
culture at the turn of the millennium, I want to offer the present
intervention to every intellectual dandy who makes fun of Yogi BERRA's
thought, and sees in it the vague and unarticulated eructations of some
tobacco chewing infantile moron in an old fashioned baseball pyjama. I wish
also to flamboyantly commemorate my recent access to the English logia of
the Berraian aphorisms that I had initially sampled in vernacular French,
during my bumpy childhood in Montral, and that I constantly tended to
retranslate toward English, in a manner that Yogi would certainly have
somewhat understood if not approved. The present observations are grounded
in a series of postulates that hysterical intellectualists, elitist
scholastic pen pushers, and other academic megateriums of that type may not
approve but that you, Nihilo-Fountainers, may at least relate to if not
integrally already be aware of:
1) Philosophy is not a strictly scholarly intellectual activity. It
manifests itself in the totality of the population under several forms.
GRAMSCI wrote to that effect that folklore and language themselves were
very rich sources revealing the philosophical representations of popular
wisdom. I will designate here by the name of BERRAISMS these short
statements, called in the philosophical jargon aphorisms, pronounced, or
believed to have been pronounced, by the renowned former catcher of the
New-York Yankees in his career as player or as sport analyst. A good amount
of these BERRAISMS have reached in North America the level of collective
proverbs or mottoes, and if the man is a mere idiot, I, for one, would love
to be the type of idiot to the perorations of whom three or four web pages
are already consecrated (see biblio).
2) Philosophical statements, i.e. statements reaching the fundamentals of
existence, can manifest themselves DESPITE the conscious will of their
subjective authors. One could quote several examples of that phenomenon.
Let just mention one among millions. The movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
III is certainly the last cultural product where one would expect the
manifestation of any philosophical debate whatsoever. Nevertheless, by the
end of that contemporary "masterpiece", the turtle Michelangelo, who is in
love with the woman who leads a peasant revolt in 17th century Japan, has
to leave her for ever, for reasons that he does not clearly understand. At
the last possible moment, he gives her his numchucks as a souvenir, and
just before joining the other turtles and April O'Neil to time-travel back
to 20th century New-York, he screams in the thunder: "Destiny, what a
trash! [sic]" Question: is this statement denying the existence of destiny
by "trashing" it or, by going back to his own time and assuming what he has
to be, does Michelangelo not accept his "destiny" despite the fact that he
judges it as being pure ethical garbage. Is the notion of "destiny" denied
or confirmed here? Complex issue grounded in a highly complex philosophical
debate, integrally shifted here by an ambivalent Yogi BERRA-like
formulation. More complex: do you think an intellectual pigmy as
Michelangelo or/and his close relative, the author of the movie's script,
were directly aware of the complex philosophical ramifications of such a
statement? No. And no. The claim here is that Yogi BERRA, the baseball
catcher, produced very solid philosophical aphorisms just the way
Michelangelo, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, did, i.e. the same way Yogi
BERRA, the sport analyst, provided fine pieces of humor, and possibly the
same way Yogi BERRA, the batter, even provided homeruns: without really
knowing it at a fully conscious level.
3) We will assume that we are dealing here with a thinker who has no
scholarly instruction of any sort. We all know the story: BERRA did not go
to school, he was of modest origin, did not speak English at home in his
childhood, etc... So did Cline DION, by the way, and the philosophical
heritage she will let us is probably doomed to be far more tiny than the
one we owe to Yogi, but that is another gig. ALTHUSSER introduced in other
circumstances the notion of "spontaneous philosophy" to describes sets of
philosophical representations learned at school, forgotten, and then
popping back in the mind of a public personality (for example renowned
scientists such as Jean ROSTAND or Desmond MORRIS), writing a philosophy
book or his or her autobiography with the candid belief of producing an
original system of thoughts. Such is not the case here. Yogi BERRA can in
no way be suspected to regurgitate remnants of ideas or philosophical
representations read in the books of some mysterious scholarly grand-uncle
or teacher. The integrality of his philosophical thought is the direct
product of his personal activity of speculation on his own practical life.
In his case, the notion of Vernacular philosophy, is far more accurate than
the Althusserian idea of a "spontaneous philosophy". What is vernacular is
what is "from around", from our ordinary environment, from the natural and
social surrounding, from the chitchat with the bozo next door, from that
part of the universe so deeply immersed in banality that we eventually even
forget to notice it. The claim here is that there is nothing "spontaneous"
(in the Althusserian and ordinary sense) in BERRA's aphorisms, that they
are the sophisticated produce of a mere and thorough reflection on the
social and natural world, but a casual, colloquial, ordinary, unnoticed
one.
4) We will assume that BERRA's thought is not exclusively speculative but
solidly grounded and generated in Praxis, i.e. practical action as a mode
of existence. Yogi's thought emerges out of the praxis of a highly
dialectical sport, or game: baseball, that he understood thoroughly in all
its logical and strategic ramifications. Things are like that in our class
societies. Nobody would hesitate to recognize that a noble game such as
chess involves a thorough amount of logical aptitudes. But to see Yogi
BERRA as the KASPAROV of the green diamond appears quite more difficult to
conceptualize for certain narrow elitist minds. The claim here is that the
geometrically inductive, probabilistic hypothetico-deductive, and
algorithmic implicative elements involved in the mental activity related to
the practice of baseball contributed to bring BERRA to a level of
dialectical consciousness definitely unequaled in popular culture. But
also, in the case of BERRAISMS, the dialectics coming from social existence
itself will have a significative role to play in his set of philosophical
representations. I repeat, his thought is fundamentally non-speculative: he
does not ask questions (only one of the BERRAISMS studied here is
interrogative) or explore hypothesis. He rather makes generic descriptive
assertions and prospective axiological recommendations.
5) We will mean by dialectics here, to the exclusion of any other
definition (specially the shitty definition given by straight tacky dusty
philosophy: "argumentation" or "argumentative development") the notion of
the REALITY OF CONTRADICTION AS THE INNER FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF
EXISTENCE. For example everybody will accept that there is no death without
life, that a non living being like a pebble or my watch can in no way die.
The dialectics here is in the IDENTITY of these two opposed poles: the fact
that we are living IS the fact that we are dying. To live is to die. It is
a contradiction and a fact at the same time. The contradictory formulation
of BERRAISMS is one of the main source of their oddness, including their
apparently ridiculous aspect. But it is a widely acknowledged fact in the
modern philosophical tradition that dialectics is ridiculous to the eyes of
gross common sense. It is the twisted and bizarre consciousness of the
apparently naive clown.
6) The language issue has to be also dealt with as a preliminary. From
several comments heard here and there, I am forced to notice that BERRAISMS
are spontaneously explained by the "language abilities" of the thinker. His
problem with English, due to the fact that he spoke only Italian in his
childhood, would be supposedly at the origin of the peculiar formulation of
the aphorisms. That type of belief is fucking ethnocentrist garbage and
could already be trashed as such. But, furthermore, I want to firmly insist
on the fact that the majority of BERRAISMS are translated very easily into
another language (French is my example) with absolutely no loss of their
content and their strange flavor. It is not the case for the totality of
them. Here is an example of an obviously linguistic case:
Interviewer: Why, you're a fatalist?
Yogi BERRA: You mean I save postage stamps? No. Not me!".
The paronymic parallel fatalist/philatelist is obvious here and the
humorous effect is coming from that strict play on the words. These cases
must be considered marginal in the totality of the corpus of aphorisms
available. Because of their minimal philosophical dimension, we will not
address them here.
7) The issue here is about THOUGHT, not language. Let observe first that
the majority of BERRA's aphorisms involves the manifestation of either an
oxymoron or a tautology. An oxymoron is a virulent contradiction in terms,
for example when he says: A nickel isn't worth a dime today. A tautology is
a virulent redundancy in terms, for example when he says: I take a two hour
nap between 1 PM and 3 PM. Looked at superficially, oxymorons and
tautologies seem absurd simply because of the blatant aggression they
represent to our sacrosanct common sense. We will try to demonstrate here
that Yogi BERRA's philosophical intervention is actually to be seen as a
deep and constant subversion of the simplistic idea of what EVIDENCE
(verbally formulated in the tautology) or CONTRADICTION (verbally
formulated in the oxymoron) simply are.
8) The English corpus analyzed here is, as the immense majority of
BERRAISMS, completely apocryphal. I simply mean by that that when an
aphorism of Yogi BERRA is quoted, no specific sources are ever provided,
and that often the same aphorism is quoted slightly differently.
Furthermore, the border is often tiny between aphorisms of Yogi BERRA, and
aphorisms la Yogi BERRA, which are actually coming either from another
baseball player, or from the bozo next door... We are dealing here less
with Mister Citizen BERRA's effective recorded statements than with their
reflection (and distortions) in popular culture. We are working on a logia,
in the standard hermeneutic sense, namely a fluctuating and diverse set of
oral and written variations coming from several sources with no specific
authorship firmly defined, but joined together by a coherence and a
consistency that the contemporary tradition associated to the name of Yogi
BERRA. The GodAssLickers and MotherMaryFuckers who are still reading me
have certainly enough composure to stand a comparison with the gospel
according to, say, Saint LUKE. The saint in that case did not sit on his
butt and write the story of his souvenirs!. It is rather a stream of
anonymous sources that have been gathered by the exegetic tradition under
the name of that historical or mythical figure. The name Saint LUKE itself
rather operates as a sort of label, than as the signature of some author. A
logia then is mainly depending upon the good (and bad) faith of a buzzing
crowd of diversely reliable "witnesses", compilators, doxographers,
chroniclers and other reporters of multiple complexions and with disparate
objectives and priorities. Variations are then unavoidable. In the specific
case of Yogi BERRA's statements, we frequently observe the existence of two
versions of the same aphorism, existing in formulations that are different
enough to force critical hermeneutic choices. The issue of the critical
intervention here is NOT TO TRY TO CLARIFY WHAT YOGI REALLY SAID . That
would be historiographic rather than hermeneutic. Yogi's effective
biography is less at stake here than the collective philosophical heritage
associated to his name, so let just forget about what he really said or
even meant: we simply don't give a shit about it here. The issue at stake
is rather to compare the two versions of the logia available and observe
the logical (rather then chronological).link that connects them. Doing this
with the BERRAISMS that are presented to our collective memory in two
versions, we are struck to notice that one version is always more clownish,
silly, absurd or ridiculous than another. We will develop that observation
on one example: the renowned anecdote of the pizza cut in pieces. There are
(at least!) two versions of the logia:
Yogi ordered a pizza. The waitress asked: "How many pieces do you want
your pie cut?" Yogi responded: "4, I don't think I could eat 8."
You better cut the pizza in four pieces, because I am not hungry enough to
eat six.
Of these two versions we have in hand, the clownishized version is
obviously the second one. In that second version the ridiculous culminates,
since I am not hungry enough blatantly eliminates all possibilities of
dialectical complexity in the interpretation of the statement. Furthermore
the relation between the number 6 and the number 4, formulated in that
version, is far more silly and awkward than the straightforward divisive
relation between 4 and 8, appearing in the non clownishized version. In
that clownishized case, one have the impression that the author of that
statement was reacting like these young children who believe that a glass
with a smaller volume capacity but which is higher actually contains more
liquid than a glass less high but with a bigger volume capacity. The
baseball champion ends up looking as if he had the empirical grasp of
surface qualitative geometry of a pre- school tot! Ha, ha, ha very funny...
Now, if we inquiry into the non clownishized version of the logia, one
observe that the obvious and the ridiculous is suddenly not so blatant: I
don't think I could eat 8 is far more complex to interpret in that context.
Everything goes here as if after a while, some elements of the subtle
thought of Yogi BERRA get eventually degenerated into gross jokes by their
putting in circulation in popular culture. Yogi is somewhat treated as the
dunce of the class who says silly things we are making fun of, and when
these silly things are not funny enough when we repeat them to each others,
we embellish them! That postulates of course that the clownishized version
comes AFTER the non clownishized one. As mentioned already, there is no
tangible proof supporting that. Another hypothesis, then, would be that,
oppositively, the gross elements of his initial childish thought would
become complexified by the filter of the collective intervention of
inspired and modest anonymous doxographers. I have my strong doubts about
that second possibility: Yogi BERRA is not mythified in our culture as a
philosopher but rather as a verbal clown. A clown is what our collective
consciousness tends to make him become. Whichever arrived the first of the
clownishized or non clownishized version, we have to assume that both of
them are there, floating around. In the present argumentation, the non
clownishized version (owed to either Yogi or to some witty anonymous
compilator) will generally be the one considered for its philosophical
content. In the case of the pizza aphorism we have at a certain moment to
stop to laugh an to begin to meditate a bit on the multiple significative
facets of a statement such as I don't think I could eat 8...
9) Finally, despite these delicate problems of interpretation, associated
among other things to the absence of any valid "official" source for that
type of philosophical phenomenon, it is possible to say that there is
something a huge amount of North-American ordinary vernacular thinkers as
you and me will unmistakably recognize as the BERRA touch. It is that je ne
sais quoi that brings us to eventually stop to say AS YOGI BERRA SAID,
quoting a limited corpus of statements, and begin to say AS YOGI BERRA
WOULD HAVE SAID, relying on our own original and autonomous "generative
grammar" of BERRAISMS. This very original flavor of BERRAISMS, their
specific articulation equal to none, that doomed several aphorisms that
where not even of BERRA himself to irresistibly become satellites of this
thinker's very peculiar intellectual intervention, should reach your
nostril the minute I will summarize the philosophical ramifications of the
immensely intriguing aphorisms "of" BERRA.
DOCTRINE OF KNOWLEDGE (GNOSEOLOGY)
An important amount of the reflection contained in BERRAISMS is about the
inner contradictions of knowledge, more precisely, of understanding in the
sense of classical rationalist philosophy:
YOU CAN OBSERVE A LOT JUST BY WATCHING
YOU CAN SEE A LOT BY OBSERVING
The logia fluctuates here, but in that case, both versions provide the same
level of philosophical dept. Strongly influenced by scholarly thought, the
doctrine of knowledge of modern culture tends to value the virtues of
practical experimentation over simple contemplative observation. That
orientation in the tradition is rooted in DESCARTES and the Cartesian
continuation. But in the 18th century, DIDEROT and a series of materialist
philosophers called the naturalist materialists tried to demonstrate that
strict observation, if performed with no prejudice, could supersede
experimentation, specially if that one is biased by a priori
conceptualizations and prejudices, of the type of the one DESCARTES and his
disciples had a tendency to entertain. Furthermore, in certain sciences,
for example astronomy, observation was the only procedure of apprehension
available. Here, fundamentally in the debate between DESCARTES and DIDEROT
on the activity of knowledge, Yogi opts for the ideas put forward by
DIDEROT, the naturalist materialist, who analyzed in detail the virtues of
simple observation with the senses. This is solidly in objection with the
Cartesianist position that lionizes the virtues of experimentation over
mere observation. The conscience of objecting to a dominant idea is present
in the tone of the aphorism. Yogi speaks here, knowing that he is not
saying something everybody will spontaneously agree with. But as a good
catcher always knows, the virtues of simple observation of every corner of
the field are to be reconsidered in modern culture. The tremendous capacity
of millions of fans, gathered since almost a century in stadiums big as
canyons, to focus their attention and cognitive activity on the arabesques
of a flying object of the size of a fist tends to support such an opinion!
HOW CAN YOU THINK AND HIT AT THE SAME TIME?
Notice the (rare) interrogative formulation of that one. The incapacity for
the performer to produce his acting out, was formulated in its radicality
by the behaviorist psychologists but is already well in place in the
empiricist and rationalist tradition. You cannot act and observe yourself
acting at the same time. Try that on skis! Look at yourself skiing while
skiing. You will end up with your face printed in the mountain. Now our
attention here should also focus on the interrogative formulation of the
aphorism. Yogi is not saying that it is merely impossible to think and act
at the same time. Such an affirmative formulation would tend to reduce us
to either mechanical automates, or speculative fly-floating minds, two
options that are not the ones we read here. Yogi does not split the mind
and the body, on the contrary. What we read here is that the simultaneity
of thinking and acting, or more precisely of speculating a forecast and
successfully acting (one can assume that hit here excludes the strikes!),
is a problem, a difficult issue on which a constant interrogation is to be
entertained.
IT'S PRETTY FAR, BUT IT DOESN'T SEEM LIKE IT
One of the prominent British materialist philosopher, BACON, compared the
sensitive perception to an uneven mirror. A mirror, since sensible
perception provides a somewhat accurate image of reality. Uneven, since
that image is not integrally accurate: there are distortions, alterations,
deformations of the perception. The empiricist BERKELEY developed that
dialectics with his meditation on the color of the clouds. At the end of
the day, the clouds are pink, but what is actually pink? The sun, the sky,
the clouds themselves? Change your position, or let the sun slowly go down
and the color seems to vanish. Where was it exactly? Hard to say. The
perception is distorted. This aphorism of Yogi is nothing other than
reality seen through BACON's uneven mirror. It is BERKELEY's color of the
clouds, interpreted in a materialist orientation. The distinction to
establish, between what the understanding grasps and what the objective
reality is effectively, forces us to oppose what it is to what it seems to
be. Rather a materialist la BACON than an agnosticist la BERKELEY or
KANT however, Yogi has a claim on what the reality is behind its
appearances. He claims that despite what it seems, we have a possibility to
know that it is at a distance different from what our perception provides.
A solid non- empiricist stand: the mirror of our perception is uneven but
it is still a mirror.
YOU GET TO BE CAREFUL IF YOU don't KNOW WHERE YOU'RE GOING, BECAUSE YOU
MIGHT NOT GET THERE
Yogi acknowledges the possibility to know reality despite the distortions
of the appearances. But he does not fall in objectivist phenomenism either.
You cannot just let yourself be carried on the river of existence without
monitoring the situation, as objectivist phenomenism would suggest...
Knowledge is a factor and can be the crucial one. The link between
knowledge and action is solid in every gnoseological aphorisms we owe to
Yogi, but specially in this one: you can not rely only on the inner
movement of the world. Lose consciousness of what is going on, and your
objective action can be jeopardized. It is not enough to take the train,
you have to know where the train goes. This aphorism shows the huge
importance Yogi gives to the THOUGHT OF THE ACTIVE SUBJECT in the global
process of our knowledge of the objective movement of the world.
THIS IS LIKE DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN
And here is PLATO, less stinky than usually. the Platonicist gnoseology
claims that everything we know is actually something we remember, that
every single action brings back all the configuration of our spiritual
halo. Taste the Freudian flavor too of that aphorism: a fugitive memory is
there somewhere in my subconscious self, again!. Yogi could not avoid to
have a doctrine of such fugitive subconscious knowledge (and subconscious
philosophy!), since he was involved in the praxis of a game existing as a
permanent reiterated contradictory connection between the reality of
innovative actions and sets of preconfigurated patterns and rules. After
the virtues of observations, it is the virtues of integral memory (all
over) and the integration of pre-established sub-conscious patterns that
are lionized here. Yogi operates with a quite elaborated cognitive
theory...
ITS TOUGH TO MAKE PREDICTIONS, SPECIALLY ABOUT THE FUTURE
Here comes dialectics. Stop to laugh and face the flat logical consequences
of that aphorism: predictions can be done about something other than the
future. Let try to understand that contradiction. First, prediction can be
done about the past quite simply, as in Here he comes! I predict you that
he will have forgotten to phone Mary. One may not think about it
immediately, busy as one are laughing, but it is quite straightforward...
and the easiest to do, according to Yogi. Now what about predictions about
the present? So contradictory! Well, let us try to understand the fact
(painful for our common sense, but scientifically demonstrated by Einstein)
that time varies when speed varies. The subjectivity of Yogi BERRA, as the
one of any baseball player, lives the most intense peeks of its mental
activity in an endless reiteration of brief instants. Between the moment
the pitcher pitches and the moment you strike or catch, there is a short,
so short distance that no, you cannot call that the future. And it is on
that infinitesimal hiatus between two moments that the most intensive
activity of prediction of a baseball batter or catcher is doomed to
flourish. You eventually end up knowing for a flat objective fact, when
your praxis develops itself in such a universe, that the present has
absolutely no stability whatsoever, and that, contrarily to what common
sense believes, prediction applies to it as well, because speed alterates
time. Other than Einstein, only the antique Greek dialectician HERACLITUS
expressed such a sharp consciousness of the fluency of the time process.
Then, since that fundamentally fugitive present moment is already difficult
to predict about, just imagine what the future, distant, tangled and
complex as it appears from the home base, can be...
IN BASEBALL, YOU don't KNOW NOTHING
In that highly dialectical formulation, there are two opposite
interpretations possible: IT IS NOT TRUE THAT IN BASEBALL YOU KNOW NOTHING
i.e. THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING YOU KNOW ABOUT IT. And IT IS NOT TRUE THAT
IN BASEBALL YOU KNOW SOMETHING i.e. IN BASEBALL YOU don't KNOW ANYTHING, in
that second case with a use by Yogi of what grammarians stigmatize under
the name "double negation". Ha, Ha, Ha, Poor Yogi! Well, there is no
fooling around to be done here. We have to choke our laugh again, and
peacefully accept the simultaneous co- existence of both significations.
Doing so, we are in front of a brilliant double entendre providing a highly
original solution to nothing other than the sharpest gnoseological debate
between the two strongest philosophers of modern times: KANT and HEGEL. The
agnosticist doctrine of knowledge of KANT could be summarized as follows:
IN EXISTENCE, YOU KNOW NOTHING, it is simply not possible to have an exact
knowledge of the fundamental of things, any belief in actual knowledge is a
mere illusion. "How do you know that?" answers HEGEL, If you are wrong,
your collapse is obvious, and if you are right the statement YOU KNOW
NOTHING is something true you know about knowledge and yourself!!! Arrange
it the way you want, you are forced to admit that IN EXISTENCE, YOU DON'T
KNOW NOTHING! You are aware of something, even if it is only of the
effective existence of your flat ignorance of anything else. And the minute
you know a bit, that knowledge can decrease, or increase! These two
positions of KANT and HEGEL, the result of the most fundamental and crucial
debate of modern philosophy on knowledge, are both partially true... and
are both amalgamated, and consequently given dialectical (co-)existence, in
an aphorism of Yogi BERRA! Furthermore, the speculative dimension of the
KANT/HEGEL debate is replaced here by the thinking concrete, since the
claim is not made about EXISTENCE but about a fragment of it: BASEBALL.
DOCTRINE OF ACTION (PRAXIS)
Here we will have to face a problem of semantics that concerns the illusion
of tautology. Like some of the previous ones, every aphorisms concerning
praxis postulate a crucial concrete distinction between two notions that
our lazy common sense and unilateral sense of humor strongly tend to
consider synonyms. Yogi, when he is formulating his doctrine of action and
activities, sees things that we miss, grasps notional distinctions that
escape us. And our missing of it takes the form of the tautological
impression we experiment when we look superficially at the aphorisms of his
doctrine of action. Let enter the core of the logico- semantic subtleties
of BERRAISMS.
IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO GET A CONVERSATION GOING, EVERYBODY WAS TALKING TOO
MUCH
To talk and to have a conversation is not the same thing. It is again a
matter of instant versus length. Contemporary pragmaticians and specialists
of communication are still working on the development of that one.
Dialectics is still present: it is the accumulations of conversation
attempts that make them all fail. Nobody who went once to a crowded bar can
deny the empirical accuracy of the statement. Furthermore, a complete
hypothesis on the qualitative status to be given to a quantitative
multiplicity of unfocused diverse actions is provided here.
NOBODY GETS THERE ANYMORE, ITS TOO CROWDED
This one is for business people. It is Yogi's understanding of the law of
qualitative shifting in market tendencies. There is an infinitesimal moment
where that aphorism applies and the restaurant is in bankruptcy quickly
after. Fast shift between the couple knowledge/action and facts. Again (on
time) very Einsteinian and Heraclitean.
IF YOU CAN'T IMITATE HIM. don't COPY HIM
To imitate and to copy is not the same thing. You can copy a Scottish
whisky or a French pat without managing to actually imitate it. How can
any serious thinker in an industrial society, where MILTON becomes
paperback, where PICASSO becomes posters, and where JETHRO TULL becomes
muzak, possibly dare to make fun of such a subtle and true statement. The
first one presented here to be prescriptive rather than descriptive, by the
way. Almost all the others are simply descriptive, since, in conformity
with his gnoseology, Yogi observes the world. But here he does more, he has
a say on what one should avoid to do: craft an incomplete identification,
provide a pale carbon copy. Yogi considers that inefficient praxis...
I MADE A WRONG MISTAKE
There are right mistakes and wrong mistakes. This is very baseball, very
deep, and very Brechtian: Hey, Mister K, what are you doing. Nothing
special. simply preparing my next mistake. Some mistakes reconfigure a
complete situation an turn out finally as being "good" ones. Somebody who
never said; "Lucky I missed that train: that is the way we met" do not
really know the crucial distinction between right and wrong mistakes. May I
add as a corollary that we meet here for the first time the negation of
negation as a crucial qualitative distinction. So very Hegelian and Marxian
of you, Yogi.
DOCTRINE OF OBJECTIVE EXISTENCE (ONTOLOGY)
Often related to the doctrine of knowledge (which constitute the core of
the system, no surprise in vernacular philosophy, the intellectual
environment of the self-educated!), and to the doctrine of action, Yogi
BERRA's ontology is once again eminently dialectical.
90% OF THE PUTTS THAT ARE SHORT DON'T GO IN
The problem raised here is the one of the non-empirical dimension of
correlations. I will assume a unique field of application to that aphorism:
golf. If we follow the logic suggested here, the complement of that one is
that 10% of the putts that are short actually go in. For Yogi then, the
fact of being short or long for a putt is not directly correlated to the
entrance or the non entrance of the ball in the hole. It can be defined on
other criterias: size of the links, force of the player, average
measurements, whatever else that he thinks about in his analysis. For our
common sense here, short is unavoidably an empirically correlated concept.
It ends up meaning shorter than needed (to enter a specific hole). We are
trapped in the pragmaticist conception of the TV watcher, who wants the
ball in the hole period, with no further cognitive consequence than to see
it fall at its place. After all, we are not slumped in front of our TV to
think, let keep that idea in mind, even if it lays there alone. Yogi has
another perspective. For him short is defined with non-empirical
preconfigurated criterias that are correlated to each others but
independent from the local movement of the ball on the green. His approach
is the one of an axiomatized rationality. He is not the type to improvise
ad hoc definitions in matters as crucial as qualitative surface geometry.
His set of definitions preexists with a systemic stability to his specific
comment on existence, just like the axioms in the Ethics of SPINOZA.
I WANT TO THANK ALL THOSE WHO MADE THAT NIGHT NECESSARY
It would have been so simpler to remain unnoticed, stick to the standard
clich formulation and say ...POSSIBLE. But how come Yogi replaced here
that prominent category of modal logic by its direct opposite. Formal logic
puts classically the couple POSSIBLE/NECESSARY as antinomic. In the present
aphorism by replacing one by the other, Yogi puts them as parasynonymic.
Arrange it the way you want, the NECESSARY appears here as an intensive of
the POSSIBLE. Literally the stronger possible possible. HEGEL used to say
that the necessity was the result of the unfolding of possibles. Yogi
obviously echoes that dialectics with the highly dialectical notion of
something made necessary... But there is even more. A complete critic of
the social order is trapped in the nutshell of that aphorism. Some power
made that night a necessity in the logico-modal sense, i.e. something
unavoidable, imposed on us with the weight of some transcendent duty. We
politely thank them, but we also show the flag and tell them explicitly
that we are not here by choice, that the category of possibility is
excluded from the present dynamics. Yogi, just like the wisest of the Greek
fatalists, sees with lucidity, and a solid critical sense, the weight of
NECESSITY in social gatherings, i.e. in a crucial sample of human
interaction.
IF YOU COME TO A FORK IN THE ROAD, TAKE IT
That other prescriptive one is literally Promethean. The Greek half-god
Prometheus challenged the law of the Olympus to give the fire to men
against the will and the world order established by the Gods. He is the
hero who does not escape the hard task that the fatality placed in front of
him. That aphorism is a masterpiece of dialectics. We can only chuckle
because our dualist common sense is myopic in its unilaterality to the
multiplicity of facets it develops. If we laugh at that aphorism, it is
strictly because we see only the two branches of the fork as two exclusive
dichotomic oppositive possibilities. We are prisoners of ARISTOTLE's logic
of the exclusion of the third... Yogi breaks these Aristotelian chains for
us and brings to our limited understanding the critical sense of totality.
He faces in a flash all the ramifications of a situation of alternative:
the possibility to take one branch, the other, to stop, to go back, to step
aside, to face the fork as a whole, etc. And furthermore he makes his
claim. A firm Promethean claim. Between the simple and the complex, the
known and the unknown, the safe and the risky. Go for the complex, the
unknown, the risky: take the fork and turn your back on the straight road.
Take the only part of the alternative that will force you to intensify and
deepen your analysis of the object faced. But also, always remember that a
two options fork has always a multitude of branches.
NINETY PERCENT OF THIS GAME IS HALF MENTAL
NINETY PER CENT OF THAT GAME IS MENTAL, THE OTHER HALF IS PHYSICAL.
This is another very interesting fluctuation in the Berraian logia, and
probably the most famous involving that constant propensity to speak in
approximated percentages! I see the second formulation presented here as a
clownishized version of the first formulation. First of all, organize it
the way you want, what you have here is no praxis without theory (LENIN!),
no doing without understanding, no action without cognition. It is very
important to note the precedence given to the mental in both versions. The
FICHTE of the diamond rides again! Now let us compare these two versions.
The clownishized version appears as a strict procedure of rhetoric
inflation of quantitative measurements. You split the 100% in parts and
exceed it. In our common meditations on that logia, my excellent friend
Louise RIPLEY quoted often to me the following propaganda statement of the
Department of Business & Marketing of Atkinson College (York University):
Your task in this university is 40% teaching, 40% research, and 40%
service. Let me tell you that there is already nothing so funny about that!
But let now inquiry into the non clownishized version of the aphorism. What
is said here is that 90% of the actions produced in that game, when taken
and evaluated one by one, reveal the involvement of a half and half
equilibrium between body and mind. The fact that he is talking about a
sport allows to infer that he is compensating here the common sense idea
that the game is strictly physical, a bodily activity for big armed morons.
Yogi is in no way at fault in his measurements if we stick to the non
clownishized version of that logia. Furthermore, his attention given to the
mental even permits us to suppose that the last 10% is not necessarily
strictly physical!
THE FUTURE AIN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE
The number of aphorisms involving the notion of time is noticeable. But the
FUTURE dealt with here is not flatly chronological. It includes the
totality of implications merging out of the representation we make
ourselves of the existence to come. The future: the opportunities, the
possibilities of achievement, the expectable goals, the hopes, the fancies,
the lunacies, the promises. The autobiography of the French Actress Simone
SIGNORET was titled Nostalgia is not what it used to be and nobody laughed.
The clash to our common sense in Yogi's aphorism here, as opposed to Madame
SIGNORET's title, is that he makes his claim about what the future was. He
testifies then that the future was and is always present to us, under the
form of our intensive activity of prospecting. And America does not
prospect the same way it used to. Why, Yogi, you're a fatalist?
PITCHING ALWAYS BEATS BATTING - AND VICE VERSA
This one is a manifestation of the immense problem of the reversibility or
non reversibility of symmetric formulations. The oxymoronic clash is, of
course, between always and vice versa. Despite the fact that the current
piece is not about baseball we have to mention the fact that this aphorism
is addressing the fundamental debate of the dynamics of baseball. Here,
Yogi takes his stand on an issue on which every baseball player, every
analyst, even every fan has a position taken. To that fundamental question
on the dynamics of baseball, Yogi gives a philosophical answer. Two main
interpretations can be proposed here. The first one takes the aphorism as a
block and suggests that, favoring symmetry and equilibrium, Yogi produced
nothing other than the perfect non-committal answer on that sensitive
question. Let push the reasoning to its dialectical consequences. PITCHING
ALWAYS BEATS BATTING AND BATTING ALWAYS BEATS PITCHING. Then BATTING AND
PITCHING ALWAYS BEAT EACH OTHERS. Then THE VICTORY OF PITCHING AND BATTING
OVER EACH OTHERS NEVER ENDS. It is like the struggle between life and
death. Everybody ends up dying, but there are always more living beings
growing and developing themselves. DEATH ALWAYS BEATS LIFE - AND VICE
VERSA. There is absolutely nothing laughable about this after all... Now,
the second interpretation could be named the asymmetrical one. It does not
take the aphorism as a single block. Yogi, say in an interview, is asked to
take his stand on the fundamental debate of the dynamics of baseball. He
speaks in two phases. He favors strongly pitching over batting in a first
blow, and then counterbalances his initial assertion by an abstract
symmetrisation in a second blow. After all, and that counts, he did not say
BATTING ALWAYS BEATS PITCHING - AND VICE VERSA (I allow myself to presume
that nobody will dare anymore to consider this as a pure and complete
synonym of the aphorism initially quoted!). The symmetrical dimension
verbally introduced in the formulation just at the end by vice versa is
partly artificial and looks like some form of last minute patch aiming at
hiding the fact that the precedent predication is possibly the genuine
opinion of the thinker. After all, he is a catcher, i.e. the thinking brain
of the pitching apparatus... The problem raised by this crucial ontological
aphorism is complex: symmetry and asymmetry always beat each others...
IT AIN'T OVER, TILL ITS OVER
The multitude of applications of that immensely classical one is a non
equivocal warrant of its philosophical dept. All the Hegelian doctrine of
AUFHEBUNG (qualitative change, transformation by steps, evolution by
crisis) is here in a superbly bare and percussive ontological statement. In
existence, all can suddenly precipitate or radically alterate itself at the
very last minute of a given process. No prospective extrapolation is to be
judged totally reliable. Subjective forecast is always susceptible to be
completely taken by surprise by the shifting complexity of the movement of
the objective world. Keep alert. Never take your victory or your defeat for
granted. This aphorism completes superbly all the gnoseological positions
already taken about predictions. It is also to be narrowly associated to
the very Hegelian theory of the last straw breaking the back of the camel.
It gives all their dialectical and dramatic signification to the famous
Murphy's Laws, as well as to the compulsive fascination and ineradicable
hope of American culture for the Happy End. IT AIN'T OVER, TILL ITS OVER is
a pure and simple philosophical monument. Synthesizing the Weltanschaaung
(vision of the world) of a complete civilization, it is the COGITO ERGO SUM
of America. Baseball was worth existing just to generate such a piece of
wisdom.
ETHICS
Without losing his deep sense of dialectics, Yogi shows us sometimes his
highly sophisticated sense of axiological meditation i.e. of moral
reflection.
HALF OF THE LIES THEY TELL US AREN'T TRUE
On a pattern with which we begin to get familiar, we are allowed to
conclude that it is possible for a lie to be true. Let entertain that
hypothesis. A lie can end up true if the liar is clumsy enough to lie about
something he mistakenly believes false. If I lie to you, telling you Bob
did not eat the cake, Scooter did, my lie can end up true (and my belief
mistaken) if Bob, that I nevertheless saw rob the cake, was crook enough to
sell it to Scooter, and Scooter selfish enough not to share it! The problem
here is a problem of ethics. Which crook will screw the other crook up
best. Let observe the dynamics of the aphorism then. Yogi expresses his
disappointment toward the fact that these liars are often cold blooded
competent liars. In at least half of the cases, they do not make the
child-like error I previously mentioned to mistakenly believe in the
falsehood of what they lie about. On the contrary, they sincerely lie. They
distort the truth with nothing other than a cruel efficiency and their lies
end up quite often being effective lies, flatly untrue. We have no chance
with them. Their competence in knowing what reality is completes itself
with the standard lack of ethics of regular liars. Since we cannot rely on
their mistakes to allow the truth to settle, we are doomed to live in a
universe of constant suspicion. No transcendent moral of any sort can save
us: half of the lies are mistaken, the other half is untrue
ALWAYS GO TO OTHER PEOPLE'S FUNERALS, OTHERWISE THEY WON'T COME TO YOURS
The intelligence of the moral dimension of a social gestus, such as a
funeral, is very solidly articulated here. Let start with the defunct
himself or herself and let apply to him or her the Klingon motto on death:
he or she is an empty shell now. He or she should be treated as such.
Materialist to the bones, Yogi understands here that funerals are not
funeral for the defunct. The defunct is as stiff as the wood of the coffin.
The genuine dimension of any participation to a funeral is the formulation
of compassion toward the family of the defunct. In that logic other
people's funeral is to be interpreted as the meeting or wake of the peers
of a certain defunct, and yours is to be interpreted as the same ceremony
in which you are peer yourself. The focus
on the stiffs, that perverted
common sense evidence, is totally avoided here. Now the claim is that that
type of event is painful enough that, in good moral, we have to make the
effort to participate to the one that afflicts the others so that the
others will reciprocate and come to the one where our own affliction is
expressed. It is only for the ones who believe that funerals does not heal
the living but involves the deads, that the present aphorism sounds like an
abrupt absurdity.
AESTHETICS
Marginally, other aspects of thought are also present in Yogi BERRA's
aphorisms. About the opera TOSCA, written in 1900 by PUCCINI, after a play
written in 1887 by SARDOU , Yogi is supposed to have said:
I REALLY LIKED IT. EVEN THE MUSIC WAS NICE.
Well, that is an excellent summary of North-American apprehension of an art
like opera. The postulate here is that an opera is unlikely to be
interesting or pleasant, period (notice the tone of surprise of the
aphorism!). Furthermore, in an opera, the music and the singing are going
to be the most distasteful elements, and, if you are lucky enough, the
scenario and the dialogues will save the show (Yogi speaks Italian
fluently, as we know already. The booklet of TOSCA was written by ILLICA
and GIACOSA, and the story is sad but could be considered somewhat
thrilling if you understand the language subtleties). Yogi is foreign to an
art like opera and does not lie about it. His attitude is sincere, non
elitist, and a genuine sample of North American Aesthetic. Furthermore the
music of TOSCA has the reputation to be superficial, according to the top
shot specialists of that art. That simply means that there are a couple of
quite fun tunes in that gig. Yogi obviously noticed them!
LINGUISTICS:
Finally, trust me on that one. The recent trends of descriptive and
theoretical linguistics are heading big time toward the discovery of the
strange but unavoidable reality of the negation of reference in language:
I DIDN'T SAY THE THINGS I SAID
No he did not. He did more, less, better, and worse. He acted brilliantly,
spoke diligently his thought. Cut our breath and made us reach the
unexpected intellectual mysteries constantly covered up by gross laugh and
arrogant common sense. For that, of course, he paid what the buffoons, the
poets and the philosophers had to pay during centuries: banishment from the
drab and dusty Hall of Fame of Metaphysics. But the elitist intellectual
bean counters and their various flunkies that broom the bookshelves of such
an intellectual mausoleum can kiss the ass of the universal order. Yogi
BERRA drank his hemlock straight with a couple of hot-dogs in the company
of the millions of other vernacular philosophers that he managed to make
think geometrically, algorithmically and dialectically in the gigantic
stadiums of North American class society. He became the myth he is, and did
not even have to melodramatically die la Socrates for it. Long live
within all of us Yogi BERRA and the sharp and vivid unconventional twisted
pitch of his philosophical voice.
REFERENCES AND COMPLEMENTARY SOURCES
WEB SITES:
Famous Yogi Berra Quotes
Quotable Quotes
Yogi Quotes
Best of Net Quotes
Yogi-isms
Pepe, Phil. THE WIT AND WISDOM OF YOGI BERRA., New York: St. Martin's
Press,
1989, ISBN 0312925840
De Bourbon, Caucus. YOGI BERRA: THE QUOTABLE CAREER, San Diego, CA:
Revolutionary Comics, 1993
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POETRY & PROSE
FEATURING: BEN OHMART, KYUNG-SOO HO & CHRISTOPHER STOLLE
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BEN OHMART
The Janitor gets arrested
I didn't know why. No one said anything. Just, suddenly, there was
this new guy I had to ask every time I'd lost my keys, it was
often. He was short, white, I think, and he had a little hair
above his ears, that was all. He spoke with an American accent that
made me blue about not getting around more. I couldn't place it.
But I could see him in gay San Diego.
The police questioned some of us. I was lucky because he'd opened
the door so often for me, so I was asked if I'd noticed anything
strange. If Jim had ever displayed any violent tendencies in
front of me. I said no, but that I don't really pay attention to
people. He was there to produce the key that opened everything.
That was all. I asked what had he done. Cop showed me pictures of
Jim's room in the cellar, I suppose to win my confidence, maybe
make me open up more?
The pictures showed Jim's place completely overcome with mouse
pads. All sizes, designs, some were free giveaways for subscribing,
most were documenting some movie or beautiful woman. It was
horrible. What a wasted life.
No wonder he was in trouble with the cops. But it wasn't my
problem. I had a life, and I wasn't about to get pulled in for not
having one. You thought it was work keeping up a relationship in
the 20th century, you should try hanging on to someone when you
get fined for being single. And Beth is too independent, she
believes in rights and all this crap so she's not going to mind
being pulled over for being alone. She'd pay the money on
principle, and not promise the judge to get a boyfriend. It's only
her love for me that's going to matter any. Stupid laws.
I came in and fixed the flowers just right or wrong. It was difficult.
My girl was one of those who doesn't laugh in the right places in
movies or will laugh right before the real laugh, as if she knows
what's going to happen. I would say she laughs out loud to show the
others how smart she is, but she doesn't care. She cares about
being a doctor and making this relationship work. Well, I care about
not going to jail, so I laid on the red roses thick, covering up the
plates, not getting too close to the candles. I put some Tony Martin
Unplugged on the battery-op't radio. Everything was lovely, perfect,
and looked good..
I waited about 5 hours, then I ate. I was in the middle of the last
course, which is always the salad for me, when she came home
covered in another man's blood. I got heated and hot and demanded
to know whose blood it was.
"Cool it," was all I got.
I had to cool it, so I blew out the candles and waited. She always
came home with these depressing stories of how horrible her world
is, and what tough life/death decisions she had to make. I don't
know what she wanted from me. I didn't know these people. I didn't
care. I know it sounds hard, but disease research programs are
never started by rich guys with no-sick ties. They've got a reason
to care.
As per usual, she slipped off her wide shirt and let me knead her
tight, bare shoulders. She was lovely, pretty much, but she was cute
foremost. That's the most important thing with me. If you're cute,
you have beauty, it's just cast in a different word. She listened to
the music. There was nothing of rock base here, we got the sound
system to relax. She did the same. All I ever did at work was pack
electronic equipment. There was no blood involved.
"What did you do today?" she asked.
I told her. It was stupid and it involved cardboard.
"I had two necks to set. Some kind of fight. And I had cops looking
over me, horny as hell to take them off me. I had to fight them too."
"That's interesting."
"Not as much as this little girl. She'd broken her leg, but when I
did the prelim, it was obvious there was abuse involved. I did a
page to see if the cops were still there, no. I asked the little
girl about it, and she told me to fuck off."
"Did you fuck off?"
She was growing bored by all this. Beth stood, and yawned. I could
see the flab of her stomach rolls melt upward into her buoyant
breasts. Out of the right nipple was a long black hair. I always
cut that prick at night, when she was sleeping. It was time to
do some editing again.
"Is there any left?" she asked, seeing the table and all the dying
flowers.
"I'll warm you up something."
"Don't bother."
She was mad at me tonight. Or at the world. Who knows, hard to
figure professionals out sometime. If she really cared enough about
humanity, wouldn't she include me in on it? Give me some bedside
manner? She fought me all the way to bedtime on things that didn't
matter, but it was good for her. Put her right out, drained.
In the morning she was gone before my alarm went off for the first
time. I thought she should live at the hospital. I was going to
bring it up that night.
//////////\\\\\\\\\\
Contacts and Eye
so she put her hair in a bottle
her eye on the commercial
her nose in the knife, her child held for a few years
thinking this is what I wanted
stomach in knots and sucked
face wrenched until she strips it
I keep telling her
but she doesn't get it
//////////\\\\\\\\\\
CD-ROM of my Girlfriend
I said over-twice I didn't mind
but then when I go in the book and media
store to look for something that will
help with my taxes
our taxes
I see her smiling on the box, and how
there's only one left, and I
think about the men who have bought her work
her time
my patience
Ben Ohmart
~~~~~
KYUNG-SOO HO
stream of
Streaks of clouds pass,
Like Streamers
Falling.
I am overwhelmed by nothingness
Pressing all around me.
I fall with the Streamers
Their crimson shades covering my body in red.
Emptiness pervades me,
Burrowing beneath my skin,
Through every pore,
Constricting its coils about me,
Its rattling
Crashing
Into the glass surface of my drums
As it shatters
In a perfect chaotic order
Which I scurry into,
In safety,
Huddled in my den of iron and stone.
A Spark of light
Reaches out
Its tentacled rays,
Piercing my eyes,
Forcing them to turn towards it
In a never-ending game of tag
Which swirls and grows
Till I am blinded by hailstones
Of primaries,
Crowding ceaselessly
Together,
Joining and breaking in rivulets.
I move motionlessly,
My arms sweeping out
To prevent the stinging
Pain of crimson streamers
Which now whip at my body
As I move unnaturally·
Snatching at the air
In frenzied decision,
I reach out my hands
To the cold surface
Of iron bars
Which glare at me
Through their stone visor.
Kyung-Soo Ho
~~~~~
CHRISTOPHER STOLLE
PRIESTS AND NUNS
Swinging like apes on lanky tree branches
This is the folly we followed into the drowning night
Tracing broken steps into dead silence
Looking for possible ways to kill reality
And as the singer laid down in his tune's chorus
He could see the sun beating his reflection in a lake
Smoking a cigarette with the classical twist of breath
Trying to make everything we see look on fire
Naked mermaids floating by the dock smile in their eyes
And the old man wishes he knew something about love
In the twinkling fright of each dying star, we grow a little
But we will never find a way to turn into cartoon characters
God must have been a woman to create this world
But men have turned it upside down with their war
And if we keep slipping toward the isolated island
We'll all have to pretend we're priests and nuns
March 5, 1997
//////////\\\\\\\\\\
GREED AND PRIDE
drunks are coherent
hearing only what I say
remembering an argument,
not creating one
as the alcohol waifs
like each candle i light.
the phone rings
i'm dizzy with thoughts
weak with my words
as if in a flashback
thinking of suicides
as well as every mother fucker
i've had to deal with.
all these asinine people
never know about me
as i sit here alone
listening to lou reed
a man i'd like to meet
i'm going to see ralph nader
he's a hero of mine.
as i look at myself
i wonder what hero i'll be
with a cigar in my mouth
surrounded by celebrities
in publicity photos
to promote this and that.
i wonder if i could be a legend
eating peanut butter sandwiches,
drinking generic orange soda pop.
i may consider it all shit
but i know someday it might change
have to have that option
have to have that umbrella
to guide the rain away from my eyes.
i look out the window
to see clouds in immobile shapes
swallowed up by shadows.
the headlights in my eyes
the memories in my soul
when i saw an accident in chicago
or the time we returned from florida,
my sister's best friend was killed
i heard she cried at the wake.
but some men know existence
some men know how to smile
while the prim and proper fall
orchestras playing melodies in their heads
it is the only music they know.
denying the rights of victims
fighters of all the wars
looking at me, the general,
as we hold a coup
on the democracy of the u.s.
so lennon got his revolution
so did lenin
but stalin and chapman reaped the rewards
they took all the acclaim
they telephoned all their friends to boast
the neglected was dead
these legends were dead
the greedy bastards took lives
lives that the devil held in his hands
but only for a moment
before mohammed reincarnated them
into two unknown flowers.
i knelt down at gideon's tomb
he called me, i cried
man, i cried for hours
then the virgin mary disrobed
i kissed her breasts
sweet as wine, sweet as love
took out my golden ax
to carved her name in an apple tree
she left me for another guy
damn, the bitch, and joseph was his name.
but i walked on in my dreams
making love to starlets and idols
but my true desire was kathy ireland
she had my son in 1991
unbeknownst to the media world.
i see my son every month or so
support him with my money
the cash i make as a writer
making people laugh and think.
god, if i just had the answer
to whatever i wanted to know
i could say fuck it all
make myself life dictator of earth
fuck any girl i wanted
but what good is that
when we hold dictionaries in church
while eating bananas on cold days.
the prophet cursed me with his cross
told me to get my laundry from the dryer
just wasting electricity
he was gone with the flick of a knuckle
but the blood was rich in flavor.
the miracle was reversed
the ku klux klan burned the house down
ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
god pissed in the bushes
rejected moses' commandments
neighbors in the sky
had his wife suck down his semen
i had to gaze, i had to stare.
my eyes glazed with a woman's vagina
my cock erect and waiting her every move
my trouble my only fright
my fears were my chants
inhibitions, my captains and soldiers
i made love to a woman tonight
love in the sense of hate.
we watched the sun set
from the fountain
the trees swaying so our eyes could see
but i'm not a meter, telling time
i'm not the foliage on those trees
i'm not the smoke that fills my hallways.
in my mind, there are the sinners,
the keepers of the orchards
somewhere in the middle is me
with every girl i've ever known,
every guy i've ever known
walking right behind me
or right in front of me.
tombstones for ghosts
the graveyard a heaven
for heroes and legends
who is buried here,
who has yet to die
where will the needle point next
which dial will call up your name.
hey there, blue eyes, seep away
like the water in the gutter
the feces, the deeds, the jitters
hitting every decibel, every grate
a special twang i enjoy.
this is dedicated to the masses
in particular a few dozen
see if your name is here
but alas, it is not, my prayer ended
just as i was struck by a thought
that if i become famous
i'd have to act like a role model
but i've got little understanding of that
for all i have is greed and pride.
Christopher Stolle
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NIKE'S POETRY SLAM...
by C.J. Janovy
Originally published in PitchWeekly
************************************************************************
Get ready for some of the most manipulative, cliche-ridden and sickeningly
sweet media in a long while. It's time for the Olympics.
I'm not talking about stunning shots of awesome athletic performances.
There's nothing like watching the Olympics for the simple fascination of
seeing inordinately strong, fast and focused individuals battle their own
past accomplishments, or the thrill of new phenomena such as women's
hockey teams. The Olympics are a great excuse for the most jaded TV hater
to indulge in a couple of weeks on the couch.
Unfortunately, the experience comes with more and more high-sugar,
high-fat, junk-food television. If CBS's coverage is anything like NBC's
during the Summer 1996 Olympics, viewers will have to suffer through
overwrought made-for-TV minimovies milking every possible off-slope,
off-rink human drama o' the minute.
But the biggest offender this winter might be Nike. As local readers of
The Progressive may already know, the ubiquitous athletic-wear titan known
for its dramatic commercials -- and increasingly, for its despicable use
of sweatshop labor in Third World countries -- has been planning a new
advertising venture into hipness-for-the-sake-of-money.
As Progressive editor Matthew Rothschild reported in January, Nike's
advertising agency apparently approached several poets, including Martn
Espada (an English professor and member of The Progressive's editorial
advisory board), whose work is distinctly political, about participating
in an ad campaign for the Olympics.
The ad agency, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners of San Francisco, hoped to
"celebrate the poetry of competition and athletics by using your words."
Espada faxed PitchWeekly a copy of Goodby, Silverstein's proposal:
"This year's Winter Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan will be unlike any
before. Women will compete in greater numbers, and in more sports. And for
perhaps the first time, a large number of female competitors will be
athletes who grew up feeling empowered, supported and equal to their male
counterparts when it came to athletic opportunities, facilities and
training."
"We would like to celebrate four of the most remarkable of the new women
athletes in a series of commercial films that will run during the Olympic
telecasts. And we'd like to do it through the eyes of artists like
yourselves. You each have a voice, outlook and perspective on the world
that we feel mirrors in some fashion, the spirit these athletes possess."
"Read the accompanying biographies of Picabo Street, Dawn Staley, Cammi
Granato and Mia Hamm. Watch the videotapes. If you don't know these
athletes now, we feel sure you'll soon find them unique: uniquely
committed to the rigors of sport at the highest levels, uniquely aware of
their roles in history."
"Then write about them. Or each of them. Or all of them at once. It could
be about their roles in the world of sports, their individual styles, the
significance of their contributions."
That was the pitch. It was quickly followed by the hitch:
"(Y)ou are free to write anything you want. We will not censor your
thoughts or opinions or feelings. You don't have to write about shoes or
even mention Nike...(For legal reasons, you should not include references
to the Olympics, Games or medals. And keep in mind TV network standards
and practices regarding content and language.)"
"It must be possible for your poem to be read out loud in less than 30
seconds. (Otherwise, we may have to edit your piece for time.)
Unfortunately, the mechanics of commerce outweigh the demands of art in
this instance."
Espada's response, which he also faxed to PitchWeekly, succinctly
articulated all that's wrong with Nike and its insidious advertising.
"I could reject your offer based on the fact that your deadline is
ludicrous (i.e., ten days from the above date)," Espada wrote. "A poem is
not a Pop-Tart."
"I could reject your offer based on the fact that I would not be free to
write whatever I want...since I must 'keep in mind TV network standards
and practices regarding content and language.' You clearly have no idea
what the word 'censorship' means. Where, as you put it, 'the mechanics of
commerce outweigh the demands of art,' then de facto censorship will
flourish."
"I could reject your offer based on the fact that, to make this offer to
me in the first place, you must be totally and insultingly ignorant of my
work as a poet, which strives to stand against all that you and your
client represent..."
"I could reject your offer based on the fact that your client, Nike, has
through commercials such as these outrageously manipulated the youth
market, so that even low-income adolescents are compelled to buy products
they do not need at prices they cannot afford."
"Ultimately, however, I am rejecting your offer as a protest against the
brutal labor practices of Nike. I will not associate myself with a company
that engages in the well-documented exploitation of workers in
sweatshops...(T)ake the $2,500 you now dangle before me and distribute
that money equally among the laborers in an Asian sweatshop doing business
with Nike."
I don't know whether any of these ads will actually air during the
Olympics (the producer at Goodby, Silverstein who'd approached Espada was
out of her office the week of my deadline). But that's not the point.
What's so disgusting -- beyond the slimy manipulation of women athletes --
is the ad agency's obvious misunderstanding of concepts such as art and
censorship, and its assumption about how readily the services of artists
can be purchased to help Nike sell its swoosh.
The more one knows about Nike labor practices, the harder it is to watch
Nike ads. And knowing how Nike's ad agency works is almost enough to make
one read a book of poetry instead of watching the Olympics.
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CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE...
************************************************************************
ALAN SONDHEIM is a nationally-recognized writer and cyberspace theorist
who comoderates three email lists, Cybermind, Fiction-of-Philosophy, and
E-conf (electronic conferencing), on the Internet. He has published over a
hundred and twenty articles, and has lectured at a number of venues on the
Internet and Information Highway. He teaches and lectures on issues of
on-line culture and community at various venues, including Lang College at
the New School for Social Research. He has an M.A. from Brown University
and currently lives in Fukuoka, Japan.
PAUL LAURENDEAU is an associate professor in linguistics at the department
of French Studies, York University. Influenced by the thought of Spinoza,
Diderot, and Marx, he is currently working on a book titled MATERIALISM
AND RATIONALITY (PHILOSOPHY FOR THE SOCIAL ACTIVIST). Describing himself
as a materialist rationalist atheist, Laurendeau formulates the religious
debate in philosophical terms in the tradition of the progressive struggle
against the mystical and irrationalist tendencies of philosophical
idealism. His previous contributions to TAF include On a Philosophical
Implication of the Astronomical Big Bang Theory, from TAF issue #1, The
Doom Of Religion, from TAF issue #2, I Stink, Therefore I Am from TAF
issue #3, and An Email Debate from TAF issue #4.
BEN OHMART has had 100s of stories and poems in zines and
journals, and had 4 plays produced last year. His lyrics will be on 2 CDs
this year, 1 a gothic album, the other a rock album. He's currently
writing films, with hopes of having one done in Malaysia soon, and is also
trying to break into the prison of television. He's white, 26, single and
loves British comedy. He lives in Boalsburg, PA, right next to PSU, and
enjoys watching rabbits eat his garbage.
KYUNG-SOO HO is a York University English M.A. student. He is a 26 year
old Korean Canadian. He has published his works in various magazines, but
this is his first piece on the net.
CHRISTOPHER STOLLE (aka The Poet Man) is a senior at Indiana University
majoring in journalism and education. He has published poems extensively
throughout the U.S. and overseas. His previous contribution to TAF include
3 poems from TAF Issue #3
MORBUS is a prolific writer who enjoys many things... he relishes in
creating something HE likes, which is often hard to do. He feels the need
to fill gaps in areas best left alone. The founder of Disobey, he is often
very tired and has enough to do already. His real name is Kevin Hemenway.
He currently lives in Concord, New Hampshire.
JOEL MCNAMARA is a security/privacy consultant who's been using the Net
for the past 15 years.
C.J. JANOVY is an assistant editor and media critic at Pitchweekly, Kansas
City's alternative newsweekly. C.J.'s work has also appeared in The
Progressive, Ms., the New York Times and New Letters (fiction). C.J. also
teaches English Composition part time at Kansas City area community
colleges.
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The Annihilation Fountain & TAF Copyright c 1997-99 Neil MacKay
http://www.capnasty.org/taf/
the_annihilation_fountain@iname.com
