This is Cthulu of Mistigris.  Welcome to my solo pack.  This evening we
we will be focusing on the rightmost of my tentacles, that is, my writings. In
the interests of good taste I will be saving discussion of the lobster and brickuntil our adult show later tonight, where I read all of my poems... naked.
If you ask me nicely, I'll explain them to you on the IRC.
You may think that a meg and a half is a lot of size for writing to be
taking up, and you'd be right.  Raw text-wise, that's well on the way to a
dictionary, but I don't claim to contain anywhere near so much: the focus on
this archive is not myself, but rather those I have worked with.  The subtitle
of this collection is Illustrations and Descriptions and thus what we have here
is not so much a collection of my writings (and certainly in most cases not of
my favorite instances of my writings) but rather those you would have seen: lit
for the scene contained in the company of graphics and pictures in most cases
describing either the picture it accompanies or the name of the bulletin board
they both promote.  In considerably fewer cases the graphics illustrate what
the words put forth and in a couple of cases the juxtaposition of word and pixelis a completely spurious and irrelevant one.  We don't like to talk about those
much so if you'll just follow me I'd like to take you on a bit of a tour though
my illustrious and pathetic scene career.

all dressed up and nowhere to go

Oh yes, I almost forgot - one more note before we proceed: though I havemaintained the integrity (ugh, that word gives me stomachaches) of all of the
pieces contained herein (file dates match those of the original release, where
applicable, for those of you who like to view things chronologically and in
progression) these poems have never looked so good: before ending up in this
archive they were all combed and scrubbed and any and all ugly misspellings havebeen surreptitiously tidied up from the goofy state they may have inadvertently
been released in - in the case of one poem, entire lines were omitted in the
release, but letters and words have been mangled here and there over the years.
For this pack they have been restored to their original state, that you can
experience, if not the sheer literary merit which was never theirs, at least theimpeccability of their rhythm and rhyme schemes. In addition to those changes,
to avoid any confusion, I have changed all occurrences of my e-mail address to
show my current one, just in case anyone tries to refer to them to contact me.
SAUCE information has as well been updated in a few cases, and if you feel that
with these changes accounted for, these still don't quite reflect your memories,well, remember that things ain't what they used to be and in most cases, they
never were 8).

making the most of my limitations

For your entertainment, a review of sigs and headers used on occasion
by myself to assert creative ownership over released product.

by___Would you believe me if I told you
(   \that this sort of thing was elite inC  T H  \_δ ) U  L U !1994?

_ _/   (  ) \ _ _No, neither would I.

"Why choose the LESSER of two evils?!"I acually used this in messages on
BBSes.  One less thing we have to
(c) IMPERiAL '94worry about these days...

Though we had our disagreements
(see: Integrity) Darkforce was
gracious enough to revamp the
C  T H  ▀    δ█δ  U  L U !hideous ASCII octopus in a
marginally-less-hideous ANSI
incarnation after I wrote a lit for
his board, House of Style.

At the time I was very upset that we
still had to resort to the high-
ASCII character δ for the eyes.
(There were very fiercely delineated▀▀  ▀▄boundaries between ANSI and ASCII inthose days and newschool ASCII was"Why choose t
he LESSER of two evils?!"still a glimmer in kHz's eye.)"Do not summon up that which ye cannot put down"

(c) iMPERiAL '94It's interesting that I flaunted
most of these affectations of
eliteness at a time when I was arguably my least elite ever, a minor cog in a
group whose main claim to success was merging with GRiP/AD.  In fact, I think
that I adopted the use of these sigs before I'd even released anything.  (Then
again, that took months.  And my migration from the ANSI department to the lit
division is a story all its own...)

A nice touch emerging from
the frame of "I am 31l73++",
my first attempt at subtle

illustrated by Eerie before

"Why choose the LESSER of two evils?!"
"Do not summon up that which ye cannot put down"▒  The sig was apparently used
without intentional irony.

Poem written byMy favorite of my various
Cthulu of Mistigris    identifying marks, a more
compact and less TABNet-
centric version of the
illustration crowning this

Key among this preference
is that it promotes my group
as much as it promotes myself
- any prominence I attained in
the scene (through guest
Mistigris▄▄▒▀▀▄░▀appearances in ANSI collaborations
in other groups - now it all starts▀▀▀▓▀▀▀▀ ▄▓▀to make sense) was strictly in an
(unsuccessful) attempt to draw attentionto my struggling group.  More on that later.oh yeah - this is by Nitnatsnoc, bless his Queen-y heart.└─────────────────────────────────────────-

So you can have some idea as to the utter trash topics I was provided
to work with over the years, I include here a sample 1993 WareZ BBS name
generator.  Simply match one word in COLUMN A with a word from COLUMN B (adding
"of"s and "The"s where appropriate) and voila! An authentic 1992-1994 era BBS
name!  All words (and non-words: see "Grindoris") appearing in this generator wewere used in real BBSes, most of which actually went up at some point!  And as abonus to you, I include sample end rhymes for the words in col
umn B so you can
try your hand at making your own geniune elite lits, which, at one time, were
considered to be worth leech access on a local 7-to-10-day board.

COLUMN A:────────────┬─COLUMN B:───────┬─rhymes with:

coping nicely, thank you

As anyone who's been keeping track can see, my profile in the scene
has been even lower recently than it was before - keeping for the most part
clear from releases of all sorts, but also far and beyond primarily absent
(except as an incorrigible idler) on the IRC.
if this gets to be too much, just flip down to the end of this section
Fans of mine may be glad to know that I'm still writing; enemies may
be glad to know that it's for the most part exclusively in real-life contexts
and forums.  I've been participating more and more in open-stage events and
poetry slams in coffeeshops and bars for the past few years, and now appear
regularly 4-5 times a month at various regular events around town - strictly as
a hobby still, but though the potential audiences are smaller than the scene
both the proportion and even sheer number of them who actually pay attention is
considerably greater - encouragement, as it were, to continue devoting myself
to such a forum. (Disclaimer: though there are occasionally people in black
turtlenecks and berets present at such events, more often than not it is in an
indulgence of intentional self-parody.  Spoken word events can be fun if you
allow yourself to enjoy them, so check one out near you!)

One I especially endorse is an event which I enjoyed so much I decided
to help put it on: every month and a half (or so), interested parties in the
area put some volunteer effort into putting on a Living Closet - what began
as a 'wine and cheese' network-session-cum-house-party equal parts folio
exhibition and MC-duel now puts on free seven-hour performances for hundreds of
fellow artists and art enthusiasts, exhibiting art on the walls of the event,
creating art collaboratively on-site and most of all, establishing connections
between different, previously unrelated (and unknown) factions of the local artscommunities.  As people who find themselves on #ansi after 6 years can ensorse,
a community can be a compelling thing but a community you can see, hear and (in
a few cases) touch can be by so many degrees that much more compelling.

The bottom line: live art still rocks at least as much as computer art,
so get your ass out there and check it out.

As far as computer art goes, however, I have still been writing - in
prolific and, dare I say, copious quantities - in an online forum which most of
you are probably unaware of.  Under my 'new' (extra-scene) online identity,
Pseudo_Intellectual, I have become the number one contributor (with some 3000
submissions) to the Everything encyclopedia of ideas, thoughts, dreams, poems,
knowledge and trivia, brought to you by the guys who run SlashDot.

Beyond that I am still as well active on bulletin boards.  No, I am not
referring to dial-up Renegade and Telegard BBSes (even the 604's stalwart scene
has dwindled to one or two PD megaliths hardly worth calling) nor to telnet
boards, which always gave the impression of trying to be something they weren't
instead of focusing on new strengths which could be theirs.  Message-threading
systems (similar to Acheron's discussion bases) are out there and possess great
possibility of potency potential.  I'm a regular on four or five of them and
though it's never quite as good as it was when we were 13, it's still a fair
sight better than #ansi.

I never really intended to quit the scene - I never really intended for
Mistigris to stop releasing (as anyone I've solicited for art over the past few
months will testify...) and though I've had a few quasi-legitimate excuses for
its disappearance (hardware incompatibility for house network, leaving me
offline, hard drive crashes, switching over to linux and learning it - very
slowly, going to college, having a life, etc, etc) the thing (a benign tumour -
has anyone here seen Videodrome?) which drives me to release never quite got
satisfied: you can take the boy out of the scene but you can't take the scene
out of the boy.  As such, I'm interested in releasing whatever I can round up
from my recent-past scene incarnation (everything I could scrape together since
the last mist release) and am interested in getting back into themed pack
release and e-mag publication, with one eye to the scene, one to the greater
'net' culture out there and one eye to the real-world art community.

But I'll need some help.  Get ahold of me if you're interested in
working with me and/or the sort of thing I've described.

One of the easiest things I have in mind is another one of these.  This
pack contains all of my collaborations to date, and it's taken six years to
amass everything in it.  Yet keep in mind that probably only 10% of the lits I
ever wrote for the scene (for collaborations) ever got used.  This means a big
backlog of much of my best stuff.  If you're interested in a Cthulu lit for yournext big undestined ANSI, drop me a line and I'll point a nice juicy unreleased
poem in your direction.

Beyond that, I'm interested with furthering what was only realized a
couple of times in this archive - illustration.  That is, instead of the pictureand writing only being paired because they're both promoting the same board/
group/e-mag/brand of detergent the picture is actually thematically consistant
with the subject matter and tone of the poem provided.

Since I can't draw worth a spit, I need someone to help me illustrate -
I enjoy working with both high and low-resolution artists, but if no aid is
offered, I may have to resort to...

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Top 5 favorites
in this archive:

as the epitome of clever,
punchy, metered andas eye candy, wholly
as well-integratedultimately meaninglessignoring (if not
pieces of art:"lit" for "the scene"discounting) the
- ansi ornamentation:writing:

df-girl1.ans──────────┤5.──┴──nitct-hi.ans───────┴────us-clock.ans──────────┴──multi-01.drk──────────┘*bonus* ctmz-les.ans
(which ones I like the writing most of all you have to figure out for yourself)

Number of suspected Gif2Ansi'd pieces in this pack: 2.5
(can you guess which ones they are?)
stuffs by Questor and White Trash

"Walking home from Benny's one night" - RIPscrip illustration by Lady Blue,
lost in a hard drive crash.  If you know of her whereabouts, please contact me.  Mistigris Blender Kombat entry for the kid choking to death on a lego block.

Never released publically before:
tsct-tpo.ans, us-stars.ans

∙    ∙   ─   -- ─ -───-───-─────────────────────────────────────────┤ Top 5 artists I most regret not having collaborated with: (in descending order)
numb, Inquisitor, Silver Rat, Corinthian, the 4th Disciple
and I wish I'd made non-blender collaborations with more mist ansi folks! grr!

Top 5 subjectively greatest offenders in most consistent, outstanding or serial  failures to make good on promises / offers of collaboration (especially after
the pieces were already written): (in descending order)
aka 'foul temptress'es
Grateful Dead (My 2nd lit, left hanging for... going on seven years now!)
Inner Vision  (who I'm convinced leaves the scene every time I find him again.)
Cain (who killed his group Oasis only after I made a lit for it)
The Extremist (2 pieces, one of which was for his own board!)
Creator (1 piece, but one I really liked)
Inazone (1 piece)

∙    ∙   ─   -- ─ -───-───-─────────────────────────────────────────┤Greatest inspiration to start writing for the scene:

Israfel / GOTHiC

Greatest inspirations to continue writing in the scene:

Schtroumph and Cenobite
Argon and Visions

∙    ∙   ─   -- ─ -───-───-─────────────────────────────────────────┤Greatest discouragements to continue writing in the scene:

BlueDevil and ScrollZ

Members: (er... let me rephrase that)
Artists who knowingly or unknowingly appear in this pack:

Avenger, CatBones, Corinthian, Creator, Cthulu, Darkforce, Dead Soul,
Deviate, Dieznyik (Nootropic), 33rie, The Extremist, Fever, Fire From Heaven,
God Among Lice, The Green Hornet, Grim Reaper, Halaster, Happyfish, Haquisaq,
Iodine, Iori Yagami, Ironghost, Kitiara, Kyp, Lady Blue, Mage, Mainline,
Mavrik, Mmmelk, Mongul, Nitnatsnoc, Patrick Monnahan, Prison Breaker,
Prisonernumberone, Prophet, Pure Voltage, Questor, Quip, Scope, Shaft,
The Silent Killer, Skrubly, Smokescreen, Spirit of Illusion, Stone the Crow,
Tabaqui, Tincat, Tomppa, tRc (?), tricolore, Trip, Ts, Vengeance, Wator,
White Trash, Zamfir Worshipper and ZeusII.

∙    ∙   ─   -- ─ -───-───-─────────────────────────────────────────┤Sites: (not Mistigris sites, but places of interest)

The Living Closet──────────────────┬────────http://livingcloset.vancouver.bc.ca
Everything─────────────────────────┼──────┬──────http://everything.slashdot.org
BBSes:│http://www.everything2.com too!Bonk (TabNet)──────────────────────┼──────┴───────────────http://bonk.dynip.com
UNCENSORED! BBS────────────────────┼──────────────http://uncnsrd.mt-kisco.ny.us
The Obloid Sphere──────────────────┴────────────────http://www.obloidsphere.com

in conclusion: sigs appearing in this infofile by, respectively, Nitnatsnoc,
Cthulu, Darkforce, 33rie, and Nitnatsnoc. ANSIFICATOR text by Zamfir Worshipper.FILE_ID.DIZ by Corinthian.

cthulu handy-dandy access stat sheet:
handles:│Zaphod Beeblebrox; The Happy Flower Man; Anomie;
Joconde Flambeau; Mogus Bogus, the Prince of Pride;
Pseudo_Intellectual
how "Cthulu" is pronounced:│kuh-THOO-loo
what Cthulu is:│a giant alien god with an octopus for a head
do I know it's misspelt?│Cthulhu was taken by an early Remorse ASCII artist
e-mail address:│pseudo_intellect@hotmail.com
where he can be reached:│#everything on the slashnet as p_i-whatever
get ready to read

Everyone I met on my trip to europe and haven't
worked with yet: Tarot, Crayon, Mongi, Alla Xul, Shere Khan
dr shizuma and a cast of thousands!