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     $$     .d""b. .d""b.                  HOE E'ZINE #1060
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     $$  $$ $$  $$ $$ss$$                "Strike The Surface"
     $$  $$ $$  $$ $$                        by Jam Master
     $$  $$ $$  $$ $$  $$                       4/7/00
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     $$  $$ "TssT" "TssT"

	I was just surfing the web minding my own lonesome and I
 discovered that there was this thing called HOE and I read some and it was
 amazing!  All of these amazing talented files by amazing talented people!
 People writing left and right.  Like I always wanted to...
	So I figured I'd try writing a file.  I asked someone what I
 should write about and they said "Write what you know is true."  So I
 figured I'd write about what I know is true.
	Then I realized I really don't know anything is true unless it's
 in the immediate range of my senses.  And even then, my senses have been
 wrong before.  I don't know if anything is true.  Maybe nothing is.  But I
 know what seems to be true and maybe I should write about that.
	Well, I know that too many people are preoccupied with the idea
 that their fellow men are evil and vile.  I don't know why, but it seems
 like I can ask anyone, and they'll tell me that Hell is other people.
 Other people are so vile and cruel.  Awful to themselves and each other.
 Maybe this is a truth; but is the preoccupation a legitimate one?  What I
 mean to say is, presuming that the world is populated exclusively by evil
 people, seeing that this seems to be a fundamental truth of everyone's
 world view, is it something to also be obsessed with?  There are lot of
 good ways for a man to be wicked.  Is it really worth the obsession?
 Can't we just move beyond it?
	Secondly, I'd like to address this so called truth.  I don't
 believe it.  It might seem that everyone around you is a vile shit eating
 son of a bitch, but I would propose that they're merely just inept.  It
 takes a lot for someone to be wholly good or wholly bad, but it doesn't
 take anything to be mediocre.  And that's really just what these people
 are.  Mediocre.  You live in a mundane world and they're just living
 manifestations of it.
 	I used to like video games a lot.  I owned a Nintendo.  I'd like
 to know why the Nintendo was such a popular machine when the Sega Master
 System co-existed in the same market place.  Have you ever looked at the
 color palette on your typical NES game and then contrasted it with the
 color palette of something like Alex Kidd in Miracle World?  It's the
 difference between the middle ages and the renaissance.  And yet the
 period of darkness won out with a vast market superiority.  What does this 
 say about us?  What does this say about me, who owned the NES?  I loved
 those fucking games, man, I *loved* them.  Ninja Gaiden, Super Mario 3,
 Black Trout Bass Fishery, anything.  I'd play it and love it.  I can't
 look at them now.  They make me sick.
	There are a lot of good ways for a man to be wicked.  I worry
 about God entirely too much.  If God exists, why does he allow all this
 greed and contemptible seed to continue?  Is he a benign or malign
 creator?  I've met some girls who would be primo evidence for the latter
 category.
	Speaking of girls, let me set a scene for you; how I clipt those
 angel wings off a girl who looked more like Axl Rose than any person I've
 ever met.  Hated her from the moment of sight.  Something though, gave me
 that old smile and I knew I need to go for the gold.  That light cropping
 of blondish red pubic hair.  That's neither here nor there.  She wore
 angel wings.  I pluckt them.  The next day, I couldn't even bring myself
 to speak with her.  But her door was across the hall from the bathroom.  
 A lesson learned.  Fucking go.
	I've been told that learning how to play an instrument is a
 rewarding and edifying experience.  Perhaps it is, but it seems like I'd
 be buying into a world of bullshit.  I can't stand people who try to
 affect an emotional catharsis from music.  I loathe it openly.  I can't
 stand people who stand around looking at paintings in museums.  Which
 isn't to say I dislike art or music; far from it.  I just question the
 self-congratulatory aspect of them.  Can a person affect an abstracted
 enjoyment of them without in some way relating it to themselves, and
 giving them self a pat on the back for "getting it"?  Feeling the singer's
 pain, which is, in fact, their own?  Too many people embrace something,
 anything, just because that want that one true thing which is their own
 and no one else's.  And it doesn't matter what it is, there's no attention
 paid to detail, just the broad strokes of its very existence.  Does it
 matter that you're listening to the worst thing ever recorded or reading
 the worst book ever written? That, to avoid having to share a common
 experience, you'll embrace the most amateur artistic endeavors ever put
 to medium?  Do you even think? Can you?
	I used to be in love.  Sure, I've been in love, hundreds of times,
 but this one was different.  This was the real thing, or the closest I've
 been to it.  Someone compared true love to the Holy Grail and they weren't
 wrong.  It's the unobtainable.  I remember a movie I saw where the lead
 actor said, "No matter how long a man lives he will never know the true
 nature of his wife."  The person opposite of you, the one with whom you
 wish you could experience everything, is the ultimate unknowable.  You can
 know your friends and you can know your family, but you'll never be able
 to know the people you fall in love with.  Remember all these little
 tricks you do and all the things you keep hidden from them?  You don't
 have any real reason for them, but you keep them all the same.  Well, let
 me clue you in: the person you love does the exact same thing.
	I didn't intend this file to be structure like this, with one
 paragraph addressing one thought after another, but I wanted to write what
 I knew was true, and this seems to be the only way I can do it without
 being utterly didactic and insulting.  maybe I haven't even begun to
 strike the surface.  Maybe none of this is true.  But at the very least, I
 tried to give you what seems to me, in my limited perspective of a limited
 viewpoint of a limited world, to be most true.

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 [ (c) HOE E'ZINE -- http://www.hoe.nu      #1060, BY JAM MASTER - 4/07/00 ]