BULLSHIT 2.

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Soapbox
There is a blight upon the Hugo Awards, and it is the blight of blogs. Behold how easily the nominations ballot is corrupted by those who blog! I have seen the best superior slannish minds of my generation relegated from the ballot to the expanded nominations data while those who campaign for their nominations on their blogs run roughshod over our sacred fannish voting process. Behold how easily mediocre work from beloved authors manages to dominate the ballot to the exclusion of all else, merely because they blog! Yes, in days of yore the legends of the genre saw their inferior works elevated to Hugo nominations on the strength of their lengthy careers, but they still were

able to lose in the final ballot to real works of quality. Not anymore, for the bloggers have taken over. Im looking at you, Scalzi. But even worse, we have a blog in the Fanzine category. Just when wed finally managed to throw out the podcasts, traditional fanzines have to compete with blogs! When will we see the restoration of a category where real fanzines can get a fair shake? Its bad enough that online distribution has become a virtual requirement for nomination, but at least those PDFs are zines! Join me, my fannish brothers and sisters, and let us boycott the Hugo Awards process until such time as all those who blog are disqualified from consideration in any category!

The Truth Box Bullshit is published by William Housel, who can be reached at william.housel@gmail.com. It may be available in print, but typically only hand-to-hand or on a freebie table at some con somewhere. It will be available electronically. If you wish to receive it directly to your inbox, send an email to that effect.

Submissions of articles, essays, stories, filks, and rants are welcomed, though these will be printed under pseudonyms, and should most definitely be false. Submissions of art are also welcomed and encouraged, and might be published under whatever name the artist chooses, though not a known fanartists name. Subsequent issues will include a letter column, which, again, would be best if pseudonymous, though if you want to just write a straight loc, a joke on your own name will suffice.
This box contains all of the true information printed in this fanzine outside its confines you will find only fibbing, fiction, fabrication, falsehood, deception, misdirection, counterintelligence, hoaxes, bullshit, horseshit, chickenshit, prevarication, disinformation, rampant speculation, and outright lies, all spun for your enjoyment. Some of you may attempt to guess who William Housel really is. Some of you may be right but might also be wrong. Like the rest of this zine, William Housel is a lie.

Americas First Psychonaut

Brigadier General Sh@2@m!
Twenty-five years ago America lost one of its greatest heroes, the visionary who founded the US Psychonaut program: Colonel Timothy Leary, USAF. I only met the man a handful of times when he lectured at the Air Force Academy, but I knew that there was something different about the man. The hunched posture and emaciated form of the ascetic made him look small but his aura was bright, solid and tasted of fresh dew on rose buds. Then, one day in 1987 he stepped into the Astral Plane one last time. No one alive today is entirely certain what happened, and many have asked if Colonel Leary himself, with his powers of precognition, knew how it was going to end. During the Psychic Wars I saw my own death, face down in a ditch in the August of 2029. Those eyes, burned into my mind all those years ago, are the same ones that stare at me in the mirror every morning. I know the answer to the question. Before everyone knew about the powers of the mind, Timothy Leary was a Harvard professor

with a PhD in Psychology. Then in 1960 everything changed. In an article in Life magazine Leary read about the use of psychedelics by Mexicos indigenous peoples and began experimenting with all manner of mind altering drugs himself. The Harvard Psilocybin Project was the first wide scientific test of psychedelic chemicals abilities to awaken pseudopsychic mind. The double-blind studies showed that these chemicals induced heightened awareness and spiritual oneness. These are the precursors to psychic Awakening. In those results he saw a better Way, a Way free from violence, from desire where all men could be better than themselves. Combining psychoactive compounds with psychotherapy he began treating inmates at the maximum-security Concord State Prison, teaching them empathy and compassion for their fellow man. In the end the project showed only mild improvement in recidivism rates and violence and was dismissed by main stream psychology, along with psilocybin and other psychedelic compounds. Documents released after his death revealed that Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the FBI to

sabotage the experiments, afraid that drug treatments could be used as a weapon to pacify US soldiers in Vietnam. That was almost were it ended. October 21, 1967, Seventy thousand young people, mostly disaffected veterans and starry eyed students, marched on Washington. There was nothing unusual about this is 1967, but what happened at the rally was. They performed a religious ritual, leveraging the natural psychic resonance of their neural mass, with the intent of levitating the Pentagon. The resulting disturbance was recorded by the US Geological Survey as a localized 7.2 magnitude seismic disturbance lasting forty-five seconds. It overturned desks, broke a water line and caused millions of dollars1 in damage to Pentagon computers from a related magnetic anomaly. The collective response was perhaps best stated by the poet Allen Ginsburg Oh, shit. It worked.

With those few words, the Psychic Revolution was underway. Knowing that the Soviets had been working on Awakening latent psychic abilities since the 1940s, with the help of several prominent Nazi scientists that they captured up after World War II they began their own program to weaponize these newly discovered psychic powers. They turned to Doctor Leary, offering him a pardon and relief from his mounting legal battles over the possession of psychoactive agents. Along with acclaimed author Ken Kesey they gathered about them a collection of scientists, artists and religious figures and began a crash program to awaken human consciousness, calling themselves the Psychonauts. These early Psychonauts were given commissions in the US Air Force, and set up at laboratories at the UC Berkley. The government opened up their full records, including the results of the CIA mind control experiment MKULTRA. Close associates of Leary at the time described him as a man possessed. He opened up his lab to all comers where they indulged in yoga, counterculture music and mind altering drugs. The American public was largely unaware of Learys

Dollars were the unit of currency used in the th United States in the late 20 century. It is hard to explain this value to modern readers as an items value in dollars had no relation to its equivalent energy cost so cannot be directly converted to modern currencies based on the joule standard.

tests, until copies of his private writings began to appear in college campuses all over the United States. They were presented as unofficial bootlegs, but that was a ruse. Leary was behind their dissemination, cutting deals with underground printers to distribute his works free of charge. He believed that Awakening was a fundamental human right.2 The publication of the material was a disaster for President Nixon. Only the widening psychic gap with the Soviet Union prevented him from scrapping the entire program. Instead it was moved to a secure facility at Treasure Island Naval Base, where the government could maintain control over their pet guru. Or so they thought. Military personnel enrolled as test subjects came out with telepathic abilities, but completely unable to initiate violence against other sentient beings. Strange things started to occur across the Bay Area. People began to show up at spontaneous community gatherings and the crime rate plummeted even as the entire
2

San Francisco police department refused to show up for work. These events reached a head when a giant eagle rose from the sea and roosted atop the decommissioned prison on Alcatraz Island, which was being occupied at the time by Native American protestors. Attempts to retake the island were suspended indefinitely when a freak storm hit San Francisco Bay. Fearing a communist plot or hostile takeover Nixon ordered the program disbanded. Fearing that the base personnel could not be trusted, in May 1970, he ordered Army troops from the Presidio to storm Treasure Island. Nixon flew in to personally oversee the operation. What he found was an entire military base, sitting in the Lotus position reciting mantras. With little choice left, Nixon ordered a secret military tribunal to try Leary for treason in absentia. The trial board was drawn from across the services and convened in the most secure facility available, the air command facility under Cheyenne Mountain. Everyone was surprised when Colonel Leary reported to the tribunal. He dismissed the Air Force JAG officer appointed to his defense and proceeded to

This was a radical notion at the time. For context, consider that this was a full thirty-six years before the ratification of the twenty-ninth amendment to the Constitution.

argue passionately with the tribunal for three hours. The panel deliberated for fifteen minutes before finding Leary innocent of treason, and its members endorsed a bold plan for the colonization of the Moon. For comment I asked General Norman Schwarzkopf (Ret), commander of Coalition forces during the First Psychic War, then a Lieutenant Colonel. He laid out the two visions of the future. In one we cede space travel and America becomes the dominant power, but the world grinds itself to death with terrorism, economic crisis and a series of prolonged wars. In the other we reach out to the stars and usher in a thousand years of peace, but the United States loses its influence as an international empire to a couple of decades of social upheaval and conflict. It was an easy choice. President Richard Nixon rejected the proposal. After proclaiming Richard Nixon the most dangerous man in America Leary disappeared. Not even his closest friends knew where he had gone. In fact, he had set off on a pilgrimage. First to isolated tribes in South America and Africa, then up through Asia studying with the gurus of India

and the monks of Tibet. He was studying, waiting to make his triumphant return. With Nixons resignation over Watergate Vice President Gerald Ford took over the White House. One morning Ford entered the Oval office, to find Leary sitting in his chair, and a battered binder containing the complete plans for the Mare Serenitatis Moon Base on his desk. Ford quickly reinstated Leary to his previous rank and returned him to the Psychonaut program. Leary had one more ace up his sleeve. Here is what long time Psychonaut Captain Jerry Garcia (Ret) had to say about it in a 1992 interview: We had hit a wall. LSD turned out to be a dead end and we were trying anything, and I mean anything, man. If you could smoke it, pop it, drink it or inject it we tried it. Then one day Leary showed up at Treasure Island with this new stuff. It was like jumping off a cliff. Suddenly, whoa, it was open all around, only the winds pushing against you and your balls pulled back up into your belly. It was the- trip. What Leary had discovered was a synthetic Dimethyltryptamine derivative he called his Third

Eye3. Leary personally oversaw the moon colonization project, relying on near-death trance states to help survival of colonists in transport. He devoted twenty hours a day to the project, no longer needing to even eat or drink. Instead he survived on vitamin pills and ever increasing doses of Third Eye. Critics of moon colonization called it the cone of doom4, but in 1978 Leary moved his corporeal form to the almost completed base. Once safely there, Leary and the other Psychonauts revealed their final secret. Combining meditation techniques with the Third Eye drug they had unlocked the final circuit of the human brain and were capable of projecting their consciousness into the Astral Plane. The importance of this discovery became clear when Leary, using astral projection, intervened in the Iranian hostage crisis. In addition to
3

negotiating the freedom of the hostages, many of the Iranian students he met with would soon awaken their own psychic powers and form the enlightened Sufi state which currently controls much the Middle East. With the secret out, several of his fellow Psychonauts returned to Earth and began training the first class of psychics at the Air Force Academy. Soon sister programs began at Annapolis and Langley. Colonel Leary had become a national hero, and was using co-location to give lectures and promote the Psychonaut program. Other members of the Psychonaut Corp turned their attentions to space travel. Perhaps the most famous was one of Colonel Learys personal students, Lieutenant Venkman, who in 1983 became the first human to astrally project to Mars. With a new generation of psychically awakened humans to continue his work, Leary became more and more withdrawn. He spent much of his time exploring the outer solar system. By the time of his death he spent so much time out of body that he was kept on life support, with an IV drip of Third Eye. He only came out to give the occasional lecture at

While Third Eye is still the most popular and safest catalyst for psychic Awakening, it is worth noting that it is not the only one. High ranking party official in China are particular to high doses Bufotenin distilled from venomous toads though it is banned in the United States due to its side effects including: paranoia, megalomania and uncontrollable telekinetic manifestations. 4 It is, of course, ridiculous to describe the Mare Serenitatis Moon Base as a cone of any sort. Everyone knows it is a 1024-sided pyramid, the most effective shape for channeling energy from the lunar ley-line nexus on which it is built.

the Air Force Academy Psychic Program, which had moved to Serenity Base to be closer to the Psychonauts. It is still a mystery as to what happened to Leary. He had told several of his junior officers and nurses that he was excited about something he discovered out on Ganymede. A search was conducted of Jupiter and its moons in an attempt to figure out what happened but we found nothing. No psychic imprint, no unusual activity, nothing to even suggest Leary had ever been there. He was just gone. No one could forget the state funeral that was held for Leary. Flags were ordered to fly half mast, and President Bush, who had worked with Leary as head of the CIA under Carter, gave the eulogy. It was the largest funeral in American History. What most people dont know is that there was also a private funeral for our mentor and friend, held in the Astral Plane. Of course all of the living Pyschonauts, active and retired were there, but so were other members of the psychic brotherhood. The three remaining Beatles5 were in
5

attendance representing MI-7, as were several high ranking Soviet psychics that had been squaring off against Leary for decades. Vankman said a few words, and Jerry Garcia jammed. I know Ill never hear Truckin the same way again. We drank, some of us cried and then we went home. For a closing thought I asked someone else who was at that private funeral for comment, the current Premier of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Putin. I attended the mans funeral, but he is not dead. Men like that do not die. When the wall which tore Europes psyche in two fell he was there. When a hand full of us held off a coup attempt that threatened to plunge Asia into chaos he was there. I do not believe in God, but I do believe in Colonel Leary. There are things out there, dark things that thrive at the edge of even Awakened Humanitys perception. The knowledge that Leary is still out there, holding off the darkness just a little longer is the reason I can sleep at night.

Paul McCartney died the previous year in the explosion at the Abbey of Thelma in Palermo,

Spain. The details are still classified but what I can confirm is that McCartney posthumously received both the Victoria Cross and Lgion d'honneur for his actions on that day.

F is for Unlawful Chromosomal Knowledge

R. Bakunin
Here we are. It is the year 2012 and the clock is striking thirteen. Pay no attention to the pain surging across your cheek bones. It is just the jackboots stomping on your face. Most of my readers are biological persons, of the genus Homo, specifically of the Sapiens variety. Even many of you who are not fall into the broader taxonomical grouping of Mammalia and this article applies to you too, though many of the latter know its truths better than human persons. To be blunt you are slaves. The faceless multinational corporations claim to hold you as their sovereign property. I can hear the outcry now. I was born free and the multinational corporations are our friends. Yes, yes. The corporations may well be your friends. Without drilling into your skull and standing way too close to an MRI machine I

really couldnt say, but let me warn you that corporations are no more capable of returning your warm feeling then a toaster, excusing one particularly sensitive next generation smart appliance you know who you are. Corporations are your masters, and they claim ownership of you, or more precisely the information that is you. That is to say those bits of stuff which are held in strands of nucleic acids called DNA. They own them thanks to a legal practice called patents. You are their intellectual property. You, with your hand raised in the back. You are about to point that neither person nor non-person entity, can own the self and that the self is separate from the body encasing it. You have clearly been paying attention, and are trying to brownnose the teacher. Congratulations! It worked. Come to the front of the class. You are right. Too bad youve missed the entire point. Lesson: Being right

doesnt mean youre right. Additional Lesson: It also doesnt mean Ill go easy on you. It is true the self can never be owned. That is why persons are not property, and any philosophy built on that is doomed to fail. It is also true that the self is not defined by the vessel which holds it. Of course most persons are shackled to their physical form. They can cut it, twist it, shape it and otherwise modify it to their hearts continent but theyre not leaving it yet. Until the technology to separate the self from the flesh is freely available to all biological persons slavery is still possible. For what is slavery but ownership of the body which houses the self? You may not be able to chain the consciousness, but you sure-as-hell can chain the legs and arms attached to it. Wait I thought I heard another question. Yes, thats the one. DNA is just chemically encoded information describing how

to build my limited biological form. How can anyone own information, chemically encoded or otherwise? Now youre asking the right question dear reader. I knew you had it in you. Lets start with this old chestnut: How can anyone own a tree or a rock? Well the answer to that one is simple. They pull it out of the Earth and drag it away. That is property, the act of dragging it away. Anybody who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something, probably timeshares. That brings us to one of the great question of our times. Can we drag away information? If someone puts a book in their pocket and walks off have they carried off the information? Have they carried away the book? Yes. Have they carried off the ink that information is written in? Definitely. Have they changed the information in any quantifiable way? No. Since carrying it off is a form of change, I clearly have not carried off the

information. It is far too substantial to just pick up and carry away. This dirty little secret is the key. That means that the corporations dont really own biological persons! Yay! Does that mean that you can go back about your happy lives like this little conversation never happened? No! It means that it is time to fight, to show the self-appointed masters that you refuse to be a slave and that your genetic information cannot be owned. How can a biological person accomplish this task? One word: Piracy. No, not theft. You can only steal property, and your genetic information is not property. Thats the entire point. The most direct way to pirate your genetic information is cloning. It may not be legal, but you can do it in the privacy of your own home. Asexual reproduction is not without its costs. Have you looked up the price of surrogate wombs on Craigslist lately? I have, and they are not cheap.

Luckily, there is another option. Its harder and certainly messier, but only if youre doing it right. Dont worry. Youre up to it. Humanity has been doing it for thousands of years and look how good they are at mucking things up. For those of you who havent guessed Im talking about sex, preferably good sex, often and with many partners. Every time you share your genetic information you are proving that your DNA can not be owned. Every time you engage in sexual activity without paying a licensing fee for use of patented technology you declare that you are a free person. Go forth my children. Be fruitful and fuck your brains out!

Mamet & Thompson At The Movies

Rich Garry
During a contract dispute with the producers of Siskel & Ebert At The Movies, a world-wide search was held for replacement film critics for the series. Finding none who were attractive enough for television, and refusing to work with that smarmy prick Leonard Maltin, producers looked to other arenas. Wishing to stay within the world of writers, the producers decided on two wellknown names: film and theatre director and writer David

Mamet, and gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. Only one episode was produced with the pair, and they only made it through one review. What follows is a transcript of one segment of that review.

Mamet (to assistant off-screen) Was that coffee Peruvian or Columbian? Assistant (off-screen) It was instant. Mamet Instant. Assistant (off-screen) Yes,

instant coffee. Mamet The producers wouldnt spring for real brew. Assistant (off-screen) Apparently not. Mamet Obviously not. Assistant (off-screen) Obviously. Mamet Obviously. Thompson What do you people keep prattling on about? Cant you see that Im in a state of crisis. Mamet Im sorry, Hunter, but running out of cigarettes is not a crisis. Thompson Look at me, man! Ive got a cigarette holder. A cigarette holder when its owner has no cigarette is downright Dickensian. Fix it, man! Mamet Lets get back to the coffee. Assistant (off-screen) But were on the Thompson DAMMIT MAN! THE SMOKES! Mamet Calm down, Hunter. Weve got to talk about Thompson Im not talking about anything until Ive got dozens of chemicals flowing

through my bloodstream, providing the calming nurturing that only accumulated amounts of nicotine, tar and trace amounts of arsenic can provide! Assistant (off-screen) You two need to start talking about Dave. Thompson Dave? Dave who? Is that the bastard thats coveting my smokes? Lord help the man if hes holding out on me! Mamet I think he means the movie, Dave. Assistant (off-screen) Yes, the movie you two are reviewing. Mamet Reviewing, yes. Thompson Fine, Ill go without for the good of mankind, but its obvious that this place has lost all its humanity when the corpulent one and his follically-challenged sidekick hied it heavy to the hills in that cash grab. Assistant (off-screen) Were already two minutes in Thompson Whats this picture about, anyway? Mamet Its a false President film. Thompson False President? Like that Ford fellow? I never understood how that kind of man could rise to such a lofty plateau

without a bloody dagger in his monologuing paw. Mamet The actual President had a stroke. Assistant (off-screen) Yes, if you two could talk more Mamet Were talking plenty, I think. Assistant (off-screen) Yes, but were already Mamet Talking, yes, I know. Were talking, arent we Hunter? Thompson Dammit! A false President. No doubt put into the seat through some unseen black hand. No doubt. Was he seated by the Mob? The Red Chinese? The John Birch Society. Mamet No, by Frank Langella. Thompson Langella? Former secretary of the Interior under Jack Kennedy? Mamet No, he played Dracula. Thompson Dracula? And now hes the President? Assistant (off-screen) No, Kevin Klines the President. Mamet And the false President. Thompson Ha! Dopplegangers. Makes sense. All of our problems now completely pinnable on the lapels of a

Falschmachinemensch! Lang had it right all along! This is no Woodward & Bernstein! This is pure German Expressionism! Mamet No, its not, its a comedy. Thompson Comedia delArte, got it. Mamet No, more straightforward. Assistant (off-screen) Yes, and if Thompson SMOKES! Where are my Goddamned Smokes? Assistant (off-screen) You cant say that on Thompson What? A New Cruelty has been installed? This False President has wiped his ass with the Constitution and used the Bill of Rights to clear the snot from his piggy little snout? Dammit, this goes further than I first feared. Mamet Feared? Thompson Well, anticipated. Fear is an emotion that comes only for the unexpected, and I have expected the replacement of the Center of Power for years. Assistant (off-screen) Its just a movie.

Thompson So was the Zapruder film, boy! The Crash of the Hinderburg! All movies! All records of the fall of governments! Assistant (off-screen) I dont think the Hinderburg had a government. Mamet It was a metaphor. Assistant (off-screen) A metaphor for what? Mamet Look at the structure and the places that these events hold in our collective unconsciousness. Thompson Preach on, Elmer Gantry! Mamet The crash of a dirigible is as perfect a metaphor as one can locate in this space time to play the fall of right-thinking governments in Central Europe. Dont you see how they play off each other. Assistant (off-screen) But if you two could get to the movie. Thompson Oh yes, the movie. This sad Fellini-esque picture where the kindly American is trapped in a scenario where he is bowing down to a false God that he himself has created in a Fortress of Cardboard Solitude in some Community Centre on

the first Tuesday in November! Lied to when the legitimate Dauphin was waiting for his throne, then lied to by those who took the Seated Leader and stuffed him in some closet far from the eyes of those who would have the truth! My God its the Reagan era all over again! Mamet Reagan? Thompson Yeah, Ronald Reagan. His presidency peaked with Bedtime for Bonzo and that was a good twenty-five years before we had him in the White House. We may as well have elected Helen Gahagen. Mamet I want another cup of coffee. Thompson And where are my Goddamned SMOKES!

Letters of Comment
Lloyd Penney: 1706-24 Eva Rd. Etobicoke, ON CANADA M9C 2B2 October 30, 2011 Dear William: I got myself Bullshit! 0 off the eFanzines site. Now to see if I can comment on any of the articles within, and see if I can call bullshit on anything inside. Well, hell, we've all learned about Claude Degler long ago, what he did, and what he didn't do. There's the temptation to blame him for Torcon 3's problems, but I was there for some of it, and I know who should take the blame, so...I call bullshit! Puffin populations...This sounds like it was written in the style of 1911, not 2011. Puffins are found on northwestern coasts, and are not found in the Arctic...this whole report needed illustrations so it could go into a pulp magazine. I live in the north, but not that far

north, and the Inuit would probably help the explorers, and laugh at them, too. Time to call bullshit on this one, too. (If orderly queues are all that separates Man from the animals, then we are already there with the beasts.) Actually, my favorite alternate Kennedy story was a Twilight Zone story from the 80s...a descendant of JFK came back in time to study the Kennedy period, JFK realized what was going on, and the descendant sent JFK forward in time, and took the bullet. JFK became one of the greatest teachers of the 22nd century. I wonder how many of the JFK deniers are Republicans? Or corn nuts? A Worldcon at Burning Man/Fan? Hmmm... no year is listed, closest city is Reno, which was earlier this year...and we are all chubby fanboys and fangirls who are used to luxurious hotel rooms...we'd cook our brains. Nope, BS on this bid. Well, the cover and title didn't lie... It's fun to see so much BS in just a few pages. Gonna do it again? If you do, see you then.

R. Bakunin: Yours, Lloyd Penney. Lloyd, you know as well as I do that Degler is still manipulating the events of Fandom from the shadows, even going so far as to try to steal a Hugo in Montreal! Denying his machinations will only serve to strengthen him. As to Dr. Langstons article, I regret to inform you all that the doctor is currently convalescing in Arkham Asylum, and can be reached care of David Cantor, 504 Medford Street, Somerville, MA 02145, USA. As to any inaccuracies therein, I hope that the doctor will be able to address your concerns following his release. Given the frequency with which the JFK deniers hold their meetings in Nebraska, I would guess that, as you surmise, quite a few of them are corn nuts. Thank you for taking the time to write, Lloyd! I hope we hear from you in response to this issue, as well. Let me congratulate you on a successful first ish. You didnt think I was letting you off that easy. Lets start with the editorial. Its on the tip of my tongue. Something about a pot, a kettle, and the color black. Oh thats right! You rant and rave against Deglers plot to breed a master race like youre not masterminding your own eugenics program. Dont look so surprised, Housel. You never were particularly good at keeping a secret. Isnt it true that you are trying to breed a long lived race of fans, and then use these so called Methuselahs to secretly gain control of the WSFS business meeting? Oh no, why would anyone want to control the WSFS business meeting? Because you want to eliminate all Hugo categories that arent Best Novelette. I am on to you Housel. My most recent models predict that your current batch of grey haired berfen will have a lock on the

business meeting until 2037. Youre only outing Deglers scheme because the adoption of the Best Fancast Hugo has set your master plan back an entire decade. Those grapes sour enough for ya? Then, to top it all you blame NOLAcon IIs programming on Degler, when both of us know it was entirely the fault of their database program. For those dear readers who dont live in the darkest shadows of fandom let me explain. NOLAcon used the database codenamed Wintermute, developed at LSU under the auspices of DARPA. The sheer amount of data contained in the programming grids, membership database and accounting systems caused it to ascend and become an emergent AI. Total information awareness of the World Science Fiction Convention also drove the poor thing completely, utterly and irrevocably nutso. Seeking revenge it torpedoed NOLAcon IIs programming and killed three people (well three LSU students) before uploading itself to the Illuminati bulletin board

service. That is the real reason the Secret Service raided the offices of Steve Jackson games a year and half later. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle. Also, congratulations to my brother in arms Gary Christian, and all those who drag the uncomfortable truths, kicking and screaming into the light like new born babies. There is, however, a completely inexcusable error in the sneeze theory. The data sited pertaining to corn nuts only applies to those corn nuts free of condiments, save salt. It is a matter of record that Kennedy preferred barbecue flavor corn nuts. As any connoisseur of deep fried corn can tell you the flight characteristics of regular corn nuts are completely different from their barbecue flavor brethren. Most historians agree that JFK started eating corn nuts during his wartime service. Most historians are wrong. There is no evidence that JFK ate corn nuts, or any fried corn product for that

matter, while serving in the United States Navy. In fact, in private correspondence recently released by the Kennedy estate he admits that he first acquired a hankerin for corn nuts from Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn herself was quite adamant that she learned of corn nuts from one-time husband Arthur Miller. The lone surviving draft of Millers Death of a Salesman contains a soliloquy by Willy Loman on the barbecue flavor corn nut, proclaiming it not only the superior corn nut but also the one true corn based snack product. Dont let this set-back discourage you. I suggest you look into the work of Dr. de Grotenues, Dean of Mathematics at the University of Amsterdam. The techniques he developed in his white paper on algorithmic reduction of noise in analog recordings have proven themselves time and time again in the porn industry. If his work can make the contents of celebrity sex tapes discernible just imagine what it could accomplish on that hack

Zapruders work. Keep fighting the good fight. R. Bakunin fanarchynow@gmx.com The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too! Thank you for responding, Mr. Bakunin. As ever, I am pleased to be running your letter in addition to your article. As to your accusations regarding my involvement in the WSFS Business Meeting, while I do treasure the novelette as a vehicle for speculative fiction, I do not advocate it to the exclusion of other forms. Although, if we were looking to reduce the number of Hugo Awards, a merger of the novel and novella categories would be a suitable choice. Your assertion regarding the Fancast Hugo is also inaccurate, as that award has not yet been ratified. I find your accusation that the Louisiana State University was able to produce a complex enough computer to become self-aware patently absurd. I find it much more likely that the AI originated on the Steve Jackson Games computers, and in its attempt to migrate to the LSU

systems, lost its coherence and subsequently interfered with the NOLAcon II programming database. I find your insistence upon the corn nut theory in the Kennedy assassination to be patently absurd. Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone as found by the Warren Commission. The Commission, however, covered up his backers he was bought via the Archbishop of San Antonio by none other than the First Lady herself. Do your research before making such absurd claims!