Article: 178571 of talk.bizarre
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
From: ra@asuvax.eas.asu.edu (Starcap'n Ra)
Subject: Catch-22, Chapter XXI -- Theodore Kaldis
Message-ID: <D0570u.801@asuvax.eas.asu.edu>
Keywords: REPOST for FTSD
Organization: t.b
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 17:24:29 GMT
Lines: 144
Status: O


     Hopefully my muse will strike me with something new at
some point today this FTSD, but in the spirit of meredith
I have decided to post a couple examples of so-called
"breaking the rules" as a sort of newbie-instruction, if
you will.

     The following is a parody of a chapter from the novel.
It is reposted here to provide a rare example of (IMHO)
both appropriate cross-posting and use of another's work.
I felt the cross-posting was appropriate at the time because
all of the newsgroups involved were intimately familiar with
T*d Kaldis AND the article was unlikely to generate a long
and tedious cross-posted thread; and I felt using another's
work was appropriate because it wasn't merely regurgitated
as though the reader was assumed to be not as well read as
the poster, but rather because the original material was
changed in a reasonably resourceful manner calculated to be
of interest to the intended audience.

     By way of explanation for those not around when this was
originally posted, and for those who were but don't recall
exactly what was happening at the time:

    T*d Kaldis -- right-wing Rutgers graduate student
        renowned for anti-homosexuality and anti-abortion
        postings.  I had tangled with him on several
        occasions, one of which led him to telling his
        famous tire-iron story in which he and several
        other students had threatened some gay bar
        patrons in a parking lot with a tire iron, only
        to be congratulated by police officers who
        responded to the incident.  Just prior to the
        repost that follows, T*d had posted something to
        soc.singles to the effect that men should only
        wear short haircuts.

    Suzanne Forgach and David Rasmussen -- "pro-life"
        posters in talk.abortion.

    Starcap'n Ra -- a "malcontent hippy" (as per T*d
        Kaldis in a previous posting).
    

>From ra@asuvax.eas.asu.edu Wed Aug 14 13:03:59 1991
Path: asuvax!ra
From: ra@asuvax.eas.asu.edu (Starcap'n Ra)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre,alt.flame,talk.abortion,soc.singles,soc.motss,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Catch-22, Chapter XXI -- Theodore Kaldis
Message-ID: <953@asuvax.eas.asu.edu>
Date: 14 Aug 91 20:03:59 GMT
Organization: everywhere
Lines: 90


                  .. XXI ..
               Theodore Kaldis

        [ With apologies to Joseph Heller.  --sr ]

     T*d Kaldis was not thinking anything at all about
the homosexual problem, but was tangled up in a brand-new,
manacing problem of his own: "Starcap'n Ra!"

     "Starcap'n Ra!"  The mere sound of that execrable,
ugly name made his blood run cold and his breath come in
labored gasps.  The net's first mention of the name
"Starcap'n Ra!" had tolled deep in his memory like a
portentious gong.  As soon as the latch of the door had
clicked shut, the whole humiliating recollection of the
Usenet poster came down upon him in a mortifying, choking
flood of stinging details.  He began to perspire and tremble.
There was a sinister and unlikely coincidence exposed that
was too diabolical in implication to be anything less than
the most hideous of omens.  The name of the man who had
debated him that day several years ago on talk.abortion had
also been -- "Starcap'n Ra!".  And now it was a man named
Starcap'n Ra who was threatening to make trouble over the
short haircuts he had just ordered the men in soc.singles
to wear.  T*d Kaldis wondered gloomily if it was the same
Starcap'n Ra.

     He climbed to his feet with an air of intolerable woe
and began moving about his office.  He felt himself in the
presence of the mysterious.  The talk.abortion debate, he
conceded cheerlessly, had been a real black eye for him.  So
had the episode about the tire iron and the delay in
harrassing the homosexuals on the net, even though harrassing
the homosexuals at the bar in New Brunswick finally, he
remembered with glee, had been a real feather in his cap with
the police officers he spoke with, although losing face on
Usenet a second time around, he recalled in dejection, had
been another black eye, even though he had won another real
feather in his cap by calling the troublesome poster a
malcontent hippie, but who had gotten him the real black eye
in the first place by goading him into telling the story about
the tire iron.  That malcontent hippie poster, he remembered
suddenly with a stupefying shock, had also been "Starcap'n Ra!"

     Now there were _three_!  His viscous eyes bulged with
astonishment and he whipped himself around in alarm to see
what was taking place behind him.  A moment ago there had
been no Starcap'n Ra's in his life; now they were multiplying
like hobgoblins.  He tried to grow calm.  Starcap'n Ra was
not a common name; perhaps there were not really three
Starcap'n Ra's, but only two Starcap'n Ra's, or maybe even
only one Starcap'n Ra--_but_that_really_made_no_difference_!

     Kaldis was still in grave peril.  Intuition warned
him that he was drawing close to some immense and
inscrutable cosmic climax, and his broad, meaty, squat
frame tingled from head to toe at the thought that
Starcap'n Ra, whoever he would eventually turn out to be,
was destined to serve as his nemesis.

     Kaldis was not superstitious, but he did believe in
omens, and he sat right back down behind his desk and made
a cryptic notation on his memorandum pad to look into the
whole suspicious business of the Starcap'n Ra's right away.
He wrote his reminder to himself in a heavy and decisive
hand, amplifying it sharply with a series of coded
punctuation marks and underlining the whole message twice,
so that it read:

                Starcap'n Ra!!! (?)!
                ====================

     Kaldis sat back when he had finished and was
extremely pleased with himself for the prompt action he
had just taken to meet this sinister crisis.
"Starcap'n Ra" -- the very sight of the name made him
shudder.  There were so many esses in it.  It just had
to be subversive.  It was like the word "subversive"
itself.  It was like "seditious" and "insidious" too,
and like "socialist," "suspicious," "fascist" and
"Communist."  It was an odious, alien, distasteful name,
a name that just did not inspire confidence.  It was not
at all like such clean, crisp, honest, American names as
Rasmussen, Forgach, and Kaldis.

--Starcap'n Ra       {ames,gatech,husc6,rutgers}!ncar!noao!asuvax!kennedy
                        {allegra,decvax,ihnp4,oddjob}--^
                                          ^---------------The Wrong Choice
                          csnet, arpa: kennedy@asuvax.asu.edu