So Wrong They're Right

http://groups.google.com/groups?enc_...iYTQavV7mdW13Q


with all due respect, you are a regular over on the "other" site, you
obviously got bored over there, so you came over here to stir up
trouble ? above is a link to your previous posts- you're not only a
newbie to this hobby, but you're a newbie to this message board as well

Bob,

"Nutbags like "Noodles" thrive on getting people churned up with his
whacky nonsense. Ignore the troll now by putting him in your kill
filer. "

No need. I am simply stating a point, he can like it or not like it and
react however he pleases...I will not be churned up, I am
unchurnupable. I am also unflammable. Anyone who doubts that is free to
test me at any time.

DeserTBoB wrote:
On 27 Aug 2005 17:02:29 -0700, wrote:

Charlie, with all due respect: snip

He doesn't deserve any. He deserves your kill file. Repeated
attempts to correct his psychotic mind just results in more flatulence
from him.
....

LOL

So if one spouts hates for 'slackers' because they know they are a
slacker themself, what does it say about them when they spout hate for
homosexuals?

LOL later, ron

Noah, I suggest you read Russ Forster's views on the 8trackheaven site-
would you want to be categorized as part of the "punk nation", or the
"geek nation" ??

I'm neither, and don't want to be either.

It's obvious from these rantings, that Russ tried to take a 1960/70's
format, and make it the domain of the 1990's slackers. MANY a diehard
8-tracker has read this stuff and been turned off by it, because I've
spoken to or emailed with many myself, who do not share this view.
links and quotes below- Noah, is this your view ?

http://www.8trackheaven.com/russforster3.html

http://www.8trackheaven.com/ravings.html

USELESS ANGRY RAVINGS BY RUSS
PUNK NATION TO 8-TRACK NATION TO GEEK NATION: A DECADE OF SUBCULTURE
SURFING
In my "Personal Note from Your Editor" in the last issue of 8-Track
Mind Magazine I talk about how I want to embrace my "compassionate
geekiness" instead if hiding it behind a veil of irony. I'm sure my
raving confused most of the people who read it, so here is further
explication, for better or worse.

My 10 years with 8-TM was a crazy trip into the land of underground
subcultures (or, at the risk of sounding New Age-y, "tribes") hiding in
the crevices of our oppressively monolithic corpora-culture. I'd
actually been exposed to such a subculture which developed for ne'er
do well suburban white kids like me in the early '80s, when I went to
my first punk rock show and fell in love with that weird and
inexplicable family of misfits and thrill seekers. It was so easy to
find people who were as sick of Reagan and trickle-down and lame-o Top
Forty rock schlock and the whole effort to discredit all of the
idealism of the '60s to justify the greediness that was the call of
the day. Unlike the punk scene today, it wasn't all about Gucci
rebellion; it was kids wearing the crap their mothers bought them for
Christmas or stuff they bought at thrift stores so they would have
enough money to go to see H=FCsker D=FC at the local rock'n'roll
toilet all-ages show. We were poor and misunderstood and passionate and
disorganized, and it was quite a thrilling time and place to be in.

Fast forward a few years to the end of the '80s, and my thrift store
purchases were leaning more and more toward music instead of clothing,
and it wasn't uncommon to see me leaving with a garbage bag filled
with clumsy cartridges and a dusty old player or two. Generally I would
get my booty for under a ten-spot, and I can't remember every
spending more than a Jackson. I'd get back home and tinker for a few
hours, and figure out some ridiculous way to incorporate 8-tracks into
whatever goofy punk band I happened to be in at the time, although by
this time we weren't calling them punk bands anymore. We were all
noise or grunge or whatever term we happened to like that week. We
played in Chicago dumps like Batteries Not Included, or, if we made it
big, the Cabaret Metro. There were a few of us who would soon have
major label deals in a few years, like Urge Overkill and Material
Issue. But for the most part we were the misfits we always were,
directionless and proud of it. And the oddest and most wigged-out of us
were into 8-tracks.

Looking for anything unacceptable to latch onto, we started a weekly
bowling team at a neglected bowling alley called the Fireside Bowl. We
brought our 8-tracks and players and amps and dressed up in our most
heinous '70s thrift store garb and even got on TV with our Disco
Bowling antics. Traveling punk bands would get dragged into the
craziness, years before they would be playing at the Fireside when it
became one of the premier all-ages venues in the country. I was on the
verge of finding a subculture that would congeal and sustain me for
more than just a few years at a time.

I won't repeat the story of how 8-Track Mind and the 8-Track
Underground came to be such a big part of my life (you can read about
that in Useless Angry Ravings 11/00). It followed the same pattern of
my earlier subculture dabblings, but went further and deeper than all
the others. I ended up forming bonds with people all over the country,
who became part of an impossible, ridiculous community. Just like the
punk and noise and disco bowling communities in my past, eventually
this community moved onto bigger and more important issues and bonds,
many of us getting immersed in jobs and families and the like. But as
an eternal seeker of communities outside the Nuclear Family norm, I
find myself searching for a new subculture for sustenance.

And realizing the basic geekiness that is woven like a thread through
my life, I hit upon the notion of the Geek Nation. A lofty and even
more ridiculous concept than anything in my past, the Geek Nation is
for the millions who have been Black Sheeped into the underground, into
cultural ghettos like Burning Man, clandestine raves, rock'n'roll
toilets, freestyle hip-hop competitions, underground film festivals,
homemade art galleries, and thousands of other places the
self-important scene-makers would never be caught dead in. You might be
part of the Geek Nation too, and not even know it. All I can guarantee
is that everyone in the Geek Nation will have an amazingly good time,
and my credentials are pretty good on that promise.

http://www.8trackheaven.com/russforster6.html

ok, now in this raving by Russ, he puts down DVD's as being for "snob
appeal" (see link above), yet he just released his DVD now priced at
$25, or $100 each with extras...

and he also sells DVD's on Ebay

so which is it then, is he analog, or digital ?

I'm confused here- this "father of 8-tracks", with his film about the
"analog revolution", has gone completely digital and abandoned the
8-track hobby altogether ? He's obviously embraced CD"s and DVD's
because he's SELLING THEM on Ebay.

Has he sold us out, or just changed his mind and tastes, or ? who
knows ?

here's his Ebay username again, if you read down the feedbacks, you'll
see he is selling DVD's and CD's

http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAP...3Drusselforst=
er

now it seems mighty odd and strange, to call DVD's "snob appeal", and
state that VHS is better, then be selling DVD's and offering your movie
in DVD

quote from the ranting below, it seems the Russ has bought into his own
"digital conspiracy" ?

YOU GUYS TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED HERE ! I'd say you've all been
bull****ted and buffaloed by this guy. He changes his views like most
of us change our socks.


"How true the words of Santayana: "Those who do not learn from
mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them."
Case in point: The new DVD craze.

DVDs have been around for more than a few years, but only in the past
year have they become a major force in the consumer entertainment
market. It wasn't until the manufacturers started dumping DVD players
on the market at barely above cost that consumers started paying
interest in a big way, and even then with considerable suspicion. The
fact of the matter is that VHS tapes are much more versatile, useful,
and dependable than DVDs are, not to mention cheaper, no mater what
Sony/Warners/MCA tell you. It's still expensive to get DVD recorders,
and with all the copy protection thrown on this digital technology, you
probably couldn't record much anyway. The entertainment oligopoly is
so scared by the idea of people being able to make endless perfect
copies of their favorite films that they've made copying digital
material the realm of hackers. But one of the great boons of home
entertainment during the VHS years was having the freedom to record
your own stuff the way you wanted it -- customizing your raw material,
if you will. In the digital Brave New World, you have to take it as it
comes down from the corporate hierarchy, and pay a hefty price for it
to boot.

This is one of the reasons why it's taken so long for DVDs to catch
on, and why VHS will continue to capture people's imagination for a
long time to come. The companies are trying to put all kinds of bells
and whistles into the mix to make you feel that you're getting
something extra going digital, but while some features are nifty
(widescreen, subtitles/dubbing on demand, director's commentary,
slide shows and outtakes and extra camera angles) they are hardly
essential, and some features are downright dumb (chapter selection,
choppy fast forwarding, endless confusing menus). They're pushing
"Digital 5.1" or "DTS" so that you can have the 360=BA sound
experience, but you have to buy tons of speakers and have an
acoustically inviting room to get much advantage from them. The law of
diminishing returns kicks in pretty quickly here, unless you're a
home theater maniac with tons of money to burn.

It's all so reminiscent of the way the market moguls manipulated the
world in the late '80s to make it safe for CD technology. And perhaps
their greatest weapon then (as now) is the simplest: snob appeal. They
are portraying VHS tapes as they did 8-tracks way back in the late
'70s, as big, clunky, awkward, inconvenient. They are trumpeting that
DVDs deliver better picture and sound more reliably than any analog
formats. It all sounds so alluring, but after having to suffer through
a rented DVD that had scratches rendering sections of GOSFORD PARK
unwatchable, I have a greater appreciation of VHS tapes (as I do
8-tracks) as being jerry-riggable if not fully fixable when problems
arise. Scratched CDs and DVDs are just plain junk, but a broken VHS
tape or 8-track is a workable inconvenience. That makes all the
difference in the world to me, since I like to think of my
entertainment purchases as becoming part of an archive with some sort
of longevity.

The snob appeal button works with plenty of people, though. I've been
thrust into the world of DVD with my own film and video work because
distributors and a lot of potential customers won't accept VHS tapes
anymore. (By the way, SO WRONG THEY'RE RIGHT, my 8-track
feature-length documentary you can read about elsewhere on this
website, just came out on DVD as a freebie with the August 2002 issue
of an industry mag called TOTAL MOVIE AND ENTERTAINMENT, mainly because
I thought it was such a ridiculous idea to have an 8-track movie in
such a pro-digital-tech publication.) So I've had to bite the bullet
and get serious about going DVD with all my visual media work, just to
make it possible to be seen in the ever-widening circles of tech snobs.
It's a dilemma for me, but as long as I can fire up my own Beta
player in my own personal goofy analog world, I guess I can live with
having to provide digital drink coasters for those who have bought into
the Corporate Digital Conspiracy."

one more quote, just to show how wrong someone can be, and still be
followed blindly by a larger group- this is Russ on his political rant
November 2000, where he predicts George Bush doesn't stand a chance.
Subsequent events proved otherwise. I strongly suggest not glorifying
or hero-izing Russ, because he is merely what he says he is- a slacker
lazy wannabee who made a "B" movie laced with off-topic undertones that
are mentally unhealthy and socially repulsive. Think about this before
you lay down $25 or $100 or whatever for the DVD (oddly enough, to
promote the analog revolution ?) Now you can see where/why/how just
dubbing yourself a copy on VHS fits in so nicely- that approach
basically makes Russ walk the walk, not only talk the talk. He was
openly anti-copyright and anti-corporate, but suddenly didn't want
diehard 8-trackers making each other copies of his film on VHS. So
much for the early 1980's punk rock attitude he allegedly grew up with-
it proved short lived in his case- I doubt you see him frequenting
thrift stores anymore either. You may as well follow the Pied Piper.
Read this link and realize how much Russ has changed his stances over
time- notice how he's not active at all in the 8-track hobby anymore.


http://www.8trackheaven.com/russforster2.html

"True, there are pragmatic issues to consider. If George W. Bush wins,
I will be wincing every day at his dumb-ass cowardly bullying way of
dealing with the world. But if I survived Reagan and George Sr., I'm
sure I can survive George Jr. in a pinch. I'm pretty sure I won't have
to worry about that contingency, though. Once the female vote comes in
strong, Bush doesn't stand a chance. Watch the surprisingly astute
women's talk show The View sometime if you don't believe that Bush has
managed to bungle things with the most secretly important voting block
in this country."

OK, now the icing- explain this, and read the LAST SENTENCE in this
ranting. I realize it's not in the literary sense- rather it is
allegorical. But enough is enough- this guy is against anything, for
the sake of being against it, only to embrace it later when it is
convenient for him- such as the DVD and CD examples.

http://www.8trackheaven.com/russforster7.html

66FOURDOOR wrote:
OK, now the icing- explain this, and read the LAST SENTENCE in this
ranting. I realize it's not in the literary sense- rather it is
allegorical.

One thing in that last sentance stood out loud and clear,
"With humor".


But enough is enough- this guy is against anything, for
the sake of being against it, only to embrace it later when it is
convenient for him

As does 99.99% of the population. So what?

- such as the DVD and CD examples.

In the grand scheme of life, who cares?

http://www.8trackheaven.com/russforster7.html

"made a "B" movie laced with off-topic undertones that
are mentally unhealthy and socially repulsive."

Charlie,

You still have not offered one solid, irrefutable example of these
things you claim are present in SO WRONG THEY'RE RIGHT. Until you do, I
see no need to continue debating you on this topic.

Respectfully,

nldc

On 28 Aug 2005 04:59:40 -0700, wrote:

Bob,

"Nutbags like "Noodles" thrive on getting people churned up with his
whacky nonsense. Ignore the troll now by putting him in your kill
filer. "

No need. I am simply stating a point, he can like it or not like it and
react however he pleases...I will not be churned up, I am
unchurnupable. I am also unflammable. Anyone who doubts that is free to
test me at any time. snip

Oh, he will...trust me on this.

Noodles is a nutbag who refuses to let others alone, and will find any
inflammatory point to elicit an angry response. After costing him a
few times more than the dollar amount he defrauded me out of on eBay,
I've relegated him to the kill file, where he most certainly belongs.
If you want to wrestle with the troll, by all means be my guest.
Meanwhile, I'll put some popcorn in the nuker and pull up a comfy
chair and watch the show. Just remember this: trying to reason with
a paranoid delusional psychotic is like teaching a pig to sing...it
wastes your time and annoys the pig.

dB