The P-Farm Summer Bus Tour

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

The following is profferred with unmitigated--even toward the
worst of us--affection.  Apologies for any exclusions 
(a-and I guess for the inclusions too!)

john m
*************************************

Hi and welcome to Pynchon Farm, the best darn cybercommune 
this side of the millennium.  We like it when the buses
 bring you folks in around this time of morning.  The light's
 just right about now, the better to see.  I'm your Moderator for 
today's tour, so let's all fall in real nice and quick now.  Please stay 
on the yellow ampersand-shaped line for best results.  Thank you.

Let me introduce some of the members of the family.  
You know how it is with our type of living situation--
"family" is kind of like a, well, a metaphor, you know?
Folks come and go, drift away, sometimes just dissolve.
Then sometimes they come back,  Some have a lot of 
things to do "Off Farm" as we call it; others have no life
 at all once they go out the front gate.  Some are "here" only
 in the ghostly Thanatoid sense, never leaving their rooms,
 but watching all.

What's that?  Who watches the Watchers?  Heh, heh, 
well-said, young fellow.  I see you're "hep" to our "jive" 
around here.  Have you seen the V-2 Plenty Gift Shoppe yet?

Anyway folks, 

Now here's "Paps" S.  over on his rocker.   "Paps" is the oldest 
member of the commune.  In fact, he thinks he founded it!  We 
just humor him in this as in many other things.  He's a real
fount of knowledge about the good old days, and a real good 
storyteller. Later, at Campfire Hour, if he's up to it and the thorazine's
 still working, maybe he'll spin a few of his special yarns about those
 meshuga days when a guy or gal could smoke a spliff of righteous
 boo, then drive down the topless freeways topless too!  A-and nobody
to be put in jail for it, like now.  What's he doing, you ask?  
Oh, he's just abusing himself again.  Does it for hours on end
some days.  Helps him pass the time, he says.  Hey "Paps,"
it's gonna fall off one of these days you keep trying
to stick it in your ear like that!  Yeah, well, same to you "Paps"!!

Hey, here's Mittelwerk, our pet pit bull.  Here boy!  Look, human 
bone!!  Mmmmmm.  Don't worry folks, Mitty's as benign as they
come really, and smart as a whippet, but his ferocious visage has
scared away many a potential camp follower.  We love him, even
though we sometimes throw his "fetch" stick into the latrine pit for fun.

Now here's someone you really don't want to mess with--
Peetee One-Three.  He rides shotgun with the notorious "Hell's
Shelvers"  Motorcycle Librarian Club.  That's Dog-Dougie M. having
a powwow with him.  Dog-Dougie's another tough cookie.  Runs with
the "Dewey's Devils," a rival librarian MC gang.  Yet, on Pynchon Farm,
they too have a home.  And you ought to see our library!  Just don't be
late returning anything.  Believe me, you won't want to pay the fine.
You know, I think those two are up to something? Uh oh, I'll bet they're
planning to give old "Paps" the hotfoot again!  You guys!!

Here's davemarc.  He's the only one on the Farm who actually works
full time.  He makes most of the money that keeps the Farm going.
Sometimes his fondness for parabolic dish microphones makes the rest
of us a little--edgy--but we literally couldn't survive without him.
He's not insane, you know.  And neither is Jody "silvertongue" P.
the smoothest and most graceful stylist on the Farm.  It's funny, I've
known and respected Jody for quite some time, but I still don't have
the faintest idea whether she or he is male or female.  Got that androgyne
things down "pat" eh, Jody?

This is Andrew.  Say hello to Andrew folks.  No, say it again, properly
this time, with the right inflection, ok?   That's better.  Andrew actually
IS one of the founders of Pynchon Farm.  But he can't get his green
card, pity.  He's been here on the longest-held student visa ever known,
but it's finally running out.  Any of you folks got a friend at INS?  Ha Ha.
Andrew's in a good mood because he just found out he won the
Stentorian Society's annual oratory award, for the, what is it Andy,
fifth year in a row?  Mantlepiece getting kind of crowded, I'll wager?
That's his Jenny with him there, by the way.  Andrew knows a lot about
philosophy.  He studied Spinoza with Leibniz, you know.
Actually, you don't, do you?

Here's Eric W., another Englishman.  Eric just invented a text-based
 swizzle stick that you can read while you stir.  
He plans to plan seminars for a living.

Ah yes, my fond Weavercreature, rounding out the HMS England
contingent.  We think he's English in name only though, and that
really he's the met-him-pike-hoses-ized reincarnation of Lemon
"One-Finger" Melon, the legendary 19th century Mississippi Delta
Bluesman.  Can you dig it? I knew that you could.

Here's "Cheers" Casseres, a stately man, with a mind to match.  One of
the real peace keepers on the Farm.  Sometimes we call him Uncle
Avuncle, because he's so nice.

You'll want to step over here to the Steelhead Memorial Clay Pigeon
Shooting Lawn.  This is where Steely, who left the Farm some months
ago, used to do that thing--like Louis XIV in Ken Russell's film THE DEVIL'S?
Only instead of Huguenots, he'd make People With Wrong Opinions dress
up in crowsuits and run around the lawn, then he'd shoot them while we
all sang a song of sixpence for him.  It was like Orson Welles does Fellini.
Really.

Hi John. Meet the folks.  Folks, this is Mr. John K. who knows all and tells
some of it.  He's the only one on the Farm with real credentials, so he gets
us into conferences and stuff.  He gets quoted for a living.

I'd like to introduce you folks to Sojourner, who just recently joined
the Farm, but he's busy composing another in an epic series of the most
heartfelt emails anybody'd ever hope to read.  And are they long, too.
So we don't disturb him when he's in"inspiration mode." as he seems
to be right now.  Let's quietly move on.

There's Heikki R., North-Man World-Wanderer in search of the
mythical Undefundable Fellowship.  Heikki is a man of broad learning
and exquisite sensibilities. He once actually held the Sampo in his own
hands, and you can't do that if you're unworthy, you know.

--Oh, hush, "Paps," you did not once hold the Sampo too.  That "Paps"
is really incorrigible!  Pay him no mind, folks.

It's time we said hello to the Women of Pynchon Farm.  The gatherers
to our huntsmanlinesses.  Pynchon Farm women, like  P-Farm men,
are a special breed.  Both of us like to mix horns and mu's, chaotically
(or at least non-linearly) whenever possible, and usually we all just fall
into the pig's mud puddle and end up laughing and oinking till dawn.
It's really a good life. folks.  Much better, we think, than on the outside.

But I digress.

Here's that Chris K.  Planning another get together, Chris?  Hey, ouch!
Stop that.  I tease Chris because she takes John Donne's observations too
seriously.  Hey, Chris, some people are better off at least ON islands
don't you think?  Like that Manhattoe?  She's the Pearl Mesta of the 90s,
that Chris.  She's very cultured.  She also runs the gangsta girl wing of
Hell's Shelvers.  Rides a Vincent Black Shadow.
Once dated the Checkered Demon.

That's Meg and Penny. Sometimes they dress up like Betty and Veronica
for fun.  Then, they switch wigs and do it all over again!!  Two of the
most intelligent people you'll ever meet, which is why I get them confused
sometimes.  They run with the gangsta girl gang too.  So does Jeanjeannie,
only she rides a bicycle instead of a hog, because she's French,

It's too bad Vaska, "Scourge of the Great White North" isn't here.
Some people on the Farm were upset with her because she put the
politics before the horse and the cart ran bass-ackwards for two days.
They shouldn't have been so mean about it though. Now she's
temporarily in Seclusion, a small town near London, Ontario.
The mean folks feel bad, but on Pynchon Farm, no good deed goes
unpunished, or unforgiven, for long.

You know, come to think of it, there ain't as many women as there
used to be on the Farm.  DYB went and joined up with the Army of
the Republic of Texas,  Bonnie long ago left to take a job as lab assistant
on the Mr. Wizard show, Shirley Lim turned into Gershom B.  I dunno.
 I think we're gonna have to deal with this, or our days are numbered.

What's that, little girl, Wanda Tinasky?  Ah, Wanda.  You know,
there's still a lot of disagreement about whether old Wanda ever
really was a part of the Farm or not.  Somehow, we like to think she
was, once.  And maybe she'll come back again some day, little girl.
To show us all the way to where we think we're home, that special
underpass, out of the wind, at last  .  .  .  .

But hey, don't let me go on, folks.  I can tell by the whispery shuffle
of your rubber-shod feet that you're getting a little hungry, a little thirsty?
 OK gang, it's the time you've been waiting for--everybody over to
Osbie's Banana Hut!!  Frappes and fricassees for all, fondues for
fongools!!  haha!! Whipped and creamed and  sliced and diced,
marmalade and mole.  Bananarama madness folks, the wonder food
that could free the world.  Remember that when you go home, OK?
A-and don't forget--you can smoke the peels!!!

Say, that was well worth the wait, wasn't it?  Free time for now, folks.
Wander around all of the public spaces.  The Tragi-Comi-Cosmi-Commons
is a good place to start.

Who's that over there?

Well, it's "Three-Card" Monte.  Hey Monte. You know folks, Monte
shut himself up in the atrium for it seemed like forever until,
mutatis mutandis, he emerged as the wittiest epigrammatist since
Horace.  He's off to interview for a job as head writer on the new
Burma Shave sign campaign.  Good luck Monte, and remember: 
"She kissed the hairbrush/By mistake/She thought it was/
Her husband's jake" or something like that.  Can't miss, babes.

Oh, there's Ted and Henry.  They go up to Hollywood every couple
of months to get jobs as bit actors in old movies.  Ted specializes
in doing the cowboy who mutters, "Yeah, a little--too--quiet" in those
old Saturday afternoon Westerns.  Henry plays the 1970s lounge lizard
who briefly, and usually semi-drunkenly accosts the heroine halfway
through the bar scene near the end of the second reel.  She recoils, then
pushes by him on the way to the movie's climax. You've probably seen
the scene a million times.  Ted and Henry are method actors, you know.
That's why Ted never goes anywhere without his mechanickal 10-gallon
hat, and Henry spends all day practicing pick-up lines, of which he has
acquired a most impressive collection.  Hey Henry, live around here
much?  No, wait--Gemini, I knew it!  I can always tell.

Well, that's about all the Family that's around today folks.
Manta Ray's gonne eel fishin, Greg M. is busy studying the physics
of cliff-perched cabins, and doktorjimmy has apparently fallen asleep.
The Paul M. twins, Paul M. and Paul M.,  seem to be getting a little
blurry, Don L. went to Krypton for a vacation visit with his brother Jor-El,
Kenny the  J. was taken away by Deputy Dan one night, Romeo's off doing
Shakespeare in the Parking Lot again and Bill's on tour with Spinal Tap.
The rest of the women seem to be heading up to Seclusion for a long
weekend with Vaska until the Farm's testosterone count drops a
little, and--

Oh, wait, there's jj jester and r. edbug.  Hey guys, come up for air?
They spend so much time in their web pages they're starting to look
like spiderman!!  Oh those technophiles.  These boys can whip a
10-gigabit Cray through a rotating multiplex semi-linear blue light
laser, no sweat, but just try and ask them to fix the Mr. Coffee!!  

Jester just invented an Universal Copyright Pill.  It's way cool. Take
one with breakfast, and for the next 24 hours everything you say, do,
think or feel is 100% copy-protected against piracy.  I took mine this
morning, and copyrighted this whole tour!!  Is that Murthy with you
guys?  Hey, Murthy, here's my ten bucks.  I should explain, folks.
Murthy is the "owner" of the Farm and we all have to pay him ten
dollars "rent" every week or he evicts us.  And no P-Farmer can bear
the thought of expulsion, the ultimate excommunication.

And there's john m, Meta-Fool Extraordinaire.  Means well, but keeps
confusing himself with the Apostle Jesus loved.  Calls his bedroom
"the high moral ground."  Really.  He never says "Goodnight" when
he turns in.  Instead he says, "Well, I'm off to occupy the high moral
ground again."  We just throw stuff at him when he gets unbearable,
but his heart, at least, is in the right place.  Sometimes he wrassles 
"Paps" for fun, and lets him win.  Makes the old man's day.

OK, folks, mandatory nap and orgy time. Then it's a lecture on the
Feng-Shui of the main Farmhouse before Campfire Hour.  Enjoy the
rest of the afternoon and don't forget, stylish P-Farm logo patches,
muted posthorn rub-on tattoos, clockwork-priest dolls, bluejay-feather
jewelery, paperclip missiles, blurry photos, replica 18th-century sextants
and other memorabilia are available for purchase at the
V-2 Plenty Gift Shoppe.