From daniel at sccs.swarthmore.edu Tue Sep 3 23:11:32 2002 Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2002 20:51:28 -0500 (EST) From: BDan Fairchild Reply-To: presidents at swil.org To: The SWIL List: ; Subject: SWILNews #9 is just an illusion (oh dear, Ruly, what if there are no other presidents? what if they're all illusions created by an evil demon bent on convincing us that reality is real? -k) (of course there aren't, Kempt! they weren't at meeting, ergo, they don't exist. -r) (say, i wonder who this Cartesian demon is, anyway... -k) SATAN: HAHA! It took me no time at all to get into this SWILNews! [does little victory dance.] (I think Sheveled should have something to say, because he actually _doesn't_ exist. -c) (well neither do you, and you had something to say. -r) (Maybe we should actually get to the ***SWILBusiness*** And I *do* exist. Your belief that I've been created by a demon is just a fantasy. -s) (Right. You weren't created by a demon. If you had been created, you would exist. -c) The two presidents present agreed that the rabble were pathetic. Although they were of course deceived, since the rabble were an illusion projected into their brains by mad scientists with transcendent neurotechnology and a really cool quantum computer. (They can't have transcendent neurotech. This is the Slow Zone! -s) Some people thought they signed up to play Challenge Chess. Black King: ____ Queen: ____ Knights: BDan, ____ Bishops: JC, ____ Rooks: ____, ____, Pawns: ____, ____, ____, ____, ____, ____, ____, ____ White King: ~Elliot Queen: ____ Knights: Rachel Sapiro, Amy' Marinello Bishops: comma, ____ Rooks: Mark Handler, ____, Pawns: ____, ____, ____, ____, ____, ____, ____, ____ People who want to appear to have signed up should create the appearance of an email (containing (possibly ranked) choices) in Couth's inbox (by sending to daniel at sccs.swarthmore.edu), very soon, since the illusion of Challenge Chess will happen this Saturday, April 13th, at about 1:30pm on Parrish Beach. 'Nominate books, you stupid, illiterate people!' they shouted in unison. But it was hopeless, because, as St. Augustine, who was passing by at the time, remarked, if the people were stupid, then they were, and of course they weren't, what with the mad scientists and the demon and all. Nevertheless, they experienced the sense-impression of T-shirts happening. They beheld the appearance of a T-shirt the design for which can be seen at http://www.swil.org/shirts/ . Of course, the shirts were just an illusion, but illusory people should email bgeorge1 at swarthmore.edu with their shirt requests (size, shirt color (various), and ink color (red, black or white), shirts will cost about $10.00, more for 2XL, possibly more for ink colors other than red) by noon (Eastern Time) on April 15th, or else the illusion of them getting SWILShirts won't be observed. People who don't pay for their SWILShirts in a prompt manner may also be involved in other illusions, including one popularized in Macbeth (Meeting was on National Tartan Day! Yay national holidays to commemorate historically privileged groups! -r). And, of course, all demons, even Cartesian demons, respect the Old Traditions, like Walpurgisnacht which will happen in the WRC the evening of April 27th. People should bring stories of horror, fertility, and trees. Well, actually, maybe they shouldn't, because ought implies can, and, in general, if you don't exist, you can't. Either way, somebody should get food for Walpurgisnacht, and you can take on this exciting and ritually significant responsibility by sending a clearly worded email to that effect to presidents at swil.org. On April 27th, the cruel and deceptive Cartesian Demon will also cause its unsuspecting victims to hear a speaker in the afternoon. The speaker will be Alan Ravage, who will talk about the history of Science Fiction publishing in the fifties and sixties. This will be rendered more ironic by the fact that the fifties and sixties never happened, since the universe (complete with our false memories) was created six minutes ago. Ruly and Kempt were starting to suspect something... If this had been the real world, there would have been a coup by now. Also, the rabble appeared to be voting to declare Mark's sandwich the Official Sandwich of SWIL, but everybody knows that the semblance of democracy is a sham created by the International Jewish Communist Anarchist Fascist Capitalist Feminist Mormon Transcendentalist Wiccan Hedonist Socialist Masonic Conspiracy, with its mad scientists and transcendent neurotechnology and Cartesian Demons and orbital mind control lasers (from which I am safely protected, thanks to my Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie! (http://zapatopi.net/afdb.html -c) -s) (Hey! That was going to be my comment! -c) and insidious chinchilla farmers. The conspiracy also kept the masses distracted by forming an exploratory committee to look into getting liquid nitrogen so that SPAMageddon can happen on April 20th after meeting. Next, the mad scientists, in an effort to conduct some useful psychological research by subjecting their unwitting brains in vats to a disturbing ritual known only as Lottery. Jonathan won a 'Dinosaur Puzzled Egg: "Easy to hatch; mind boggling to close."' But the conspiracy knew that our intrepid co-presidents were too close to discovering the unspeakable truth, so it decided to distract them by segueing clumsily into ***NonSWILBusiness*** The first order of business was, of course, voting to use the orbital mind control lasers to prevent BDan, wherever he was, from talking during NonSWILBusiness. (Of course, the plan failed, as I was wearing my AFDB. -c) (or at least you THOUGHT you were! muwahahaha! -k,r&satan). Jonathan was declared a cheating SWIL member, leading to a great scandal, which kept the masses in a frenzy that prevented them from realizing that reality was just a social construct imposed on them by the ruling classes with their international conspiracy and magical illusions and transcendent neurotechnology and so forth. (And their partridge in a pear tree. -c) (little do you suspect that partridges have really been extinct since 1742, and the demon has just replaced them with incredibly lifelike animatronic robots! -r) (but Kripke told me that partridges couldn't have been robots since they're a natural kind and all that... -k) (But Lord Kripke says they might have turned out to be robots. -s) (let's never write a philosophy SWILNews again, okay? -k) (But Saul Kripke will make it into every SWILNews we write this semester anyway. -s) (Maybe he ALREADY HAS! [unnerving background music.] -r) FOQS, which was one of the powerless puppet-organizations created by the conspiracy (So it can't be destroyed? -s) in order to distract attention from the unspeakable truth, appeared to make a report. Of course, it didn't really make a report, because the entire membership of FOQS were really holograms, transmitted by ansible link from the secret homeworld of the Mutant Alien Cartesian Demons, who had been controlling human evolution all along in an effort to create a slave race whose brains they could harvest and place in vats to do twisted behavioral experiments on. At least, this is what our heroes thought. The truth, as always, was much worse. Anyway, in the FOQS report, it was revealed that FOQS lost its perfect record of not getting slapped. Mathnet was observed at 1:30 in Kohlberg last Saturday. Spring budgeting, which didn't matter because all budgeting is decided by evil campaign contributors, was also happening, so people felt sorry for Prime. (We got full funding! -s) (Yay! -rksc) Concerts, involving Jazz Band and some kind of a capella, also appeared to happen. Discussion question: if a Jazz Band concert happens in the forest and nobody's around, does it make any noise? (answers at bottom of SWILNews.) Movies happened Saturday night in Trotter, or possibly Kohlberg; both of them involved espionage, but neither came close to accurately depicting the horrifying BIG PICTURE. Nothing important has happened at meeting, of course, because nothing happened at all, or maybe that's just what we want you to think. ANSWER TO DISCUSSION QUESTION: Of course not, because this could never happen at all, because the woods don't exist, because all the real trees were replaced by superintelligent impostors in league with Saul Kripke. The attendance list of perfect times to stage a Coup Robert "Rise again, Scotland" McFarland Rebecca "I show up" Jones Amy' "Comma _wishes_ someone would throw a coup... Mwa-ha-ha!" Marinello Nick "I see your coup, and raise you three pails of oobleck!" Ward JONATHAN "WOW, MY VERY FIRST CONSECUTIVE MEETING!" SCHNEIDER* Adam "Subverting the Hegemony since 1989" Oleksa Josh "tango with the mango" Burdick MARK "EATING THE OFFICIAL SANDWICH OF THE DAY" HANDLER Rachel "Qian is Sauron!" Sapiro Ben "Subverting the Hive Queen since ..." Mitchell JC "Breyned" Ravage benjamin 'lousy copresidents...' r, george Callicles "Hey!" the Moose Magic "I wanted to stage a coup!" Loops John "|\|/|\|/|" Finkbiner * THIS FOOTNOTE CAN PROVE THE MAGIC LOOPS' SENTIENCE Yours from the inner sanctum of ultimate confusion, Ruly, Kempt, Sheveled, and Couth