As the children get nestled all snug in their bed.. with visions of sugar plums
dancing in their heads.. and Santa stops by the fireplace for a well-deserved
snack.. I present you this--the Hallucigenia Christmas pack.

..Sending Greetings of the Season..
So here's our slightly festive offering for this month. We've got a couple neat
treats like Uneide's "FranKenturtle" (from her computer animation of the same
title) and the ever uplifting "12 Horrors of Boxing Day" for you to sing this
December 26th. Just our way of saying, we'll see you in 1999.

..New Members..
We have four new members this month. NOeffeks, for Hirez and Real-World Art, andChainsaw, for Hirez--both of whom have work in this month's pack. To our
spluttering Lowrez department, we finally have some relief in the form of
Slackzor doing ascii and Grimmy doing ansi. You'll finally see some work from
that department in the new year.

..The Tale of Iris and the Ripping Monster..
If you frequent hirez.org or the discussion area there, you'll no doubt have
heard the tale of a Hallucigenia member, Iris. Her hirez picture of a fairy was
put up in the top 10 list of hirez.org only to have it removed with much
fan-fare after it was determined to be a rip from a book called "Good Faeries /
Bad Faeries." I got wind of this through my hirez coordinator and proceeded to
try to track Iris down while keeping the hounds of the 'anti-rip regalia' from
tearing Iris or Hallucigenia's reputation to shreads. Finally, after much
melodrama, the truth came out which goes something like this:

OptikNurv, another Hallucigenia member, was teaching Iris to use Photoshop with
the assistance of a scanned image--the offending picture from "Good Faeries /
Bad Faeiries." Iris mucked around with it and OptikNurv sent it to Silent
Knight for an opinion--just a critique on a practice piece. Silent Knight, not
realizing this, sent it to me and I inturn asked OptikNurv to recruit Iris for
Hallucigenia. Iris sent me a number of pieces to which I added the faerie
picture I had received earlier. So, as a result of crossed communication
channels and honest mistakes, a picture that was intended for mucking purposes
only, made its way into the pack and into ripping history.

Hallucigenia would like to stress that it is strongly against ripping and its
practice is not tolerated within our group. Those who have followed Hallucigeniafrom the beginning know that we had a ripping incident in our very first pack
and that member was immediately expelled from the group. We feel, however, that
the situation with Iris is significantly different from that previous incident
and as a result, Iris will be staying within the ranks of our hirez artists.
There may be those among you who feel that Iris did rip and should be kicked
out, however I will not condemn someone for an honest mistake. Iris, like many
of Hallucigenia's artists, is not scene 'born and bred' and this entire
experience--from the accusations to the general flaming--has been quite the
education for her. I'm very confident she will be ten times more careful to
ensure that this situation is never repeated in the future. Hallucigenia has
also revised its policies to help its artists are properly crediting their work
and never get snagged by something like this in the future. We welcome any
comments people have about this case of ripping, however, as far as I'm
concerned, I consider this situation closed.

..Merry Pack-Viewing..
Hallucigenia wishes you and yours the happiest of holidays with lots of
warm socks, snow angels, cookies & milk, mistletoe, crackling fireplaces and
many gifts given and received.

-Etana--
group coordinator
Hallucigenia