Our handsome protagonist reaches into his vest pocket and pulls out a silver pocket watch in one quick, fluid movement. He glances quickly at the face of the watch before restoring it, and would appear altogether unmoved by what he had seen. "I'm late," he said with utter imperturbably, "I'm late for a very important date." The words settled as a penetrating grin spread across his granite face. No, our courageous hero was not going to allow a few misplaced minutes to shake his calm character. Late he very well may be, but that did not change the issue at hand. "Besides," he self-confidentially reasoned, "they'll wait for me." Indeed, the handsome devil had slid effortlessly out of many a quandary by rugged good looks alone. And so with that, our fearless protagonist takes to his pen, and writes articulate words of delicate eloquence. His verbs; awe-inspiring. His adjectives; breathtakingly elegant. His nouns; powerful. Soon he is finished. Before him lies yet another grand masterpiece of stunning prose and delicate poetry. It will enchant the masses with piercing wit and penetrating observations. It will delight the readers with intoxicating locutions. Yes, it was a work to be proud of, even if it was a bit belated. Our handsome protagonist leans back from his work and deftly snaps his delicate --yet masculine-- fingers. Gliding silently from the inky shadows come two beautiful women-servants. Thick, blond hair tied back and cascading like a golden rope down their smooth, naked backs. They slid to either side of our hero and begin massaging his large, muscular biceps and strong, powerful shoulders. Their hands seem so small compair-- [REMAINING PORTION OF NARRATIVE CENSORED BY THE RUBI KON SMUT POLICE. BESIDES, WE THINK YOU GET THE POINT.] Ahem. Sorry about all that. I'm afraid I got a bit carried away. Anyway, as if you didn't already know, this is the ninth Rubi Con Newsletter. I am your host, Jim Tantalo, and I would like to take a moment before we begin to apologize for some of the exaggerations made in the introduction. I mean, I don't even OWN a pocket watch... Be that as it may, we stand here together with a common purpose: Rubi Con, and the silly newsletter certain organizers keep churning out, despite many vocal complaints. Of course, this is the ninth newsletter, yet only the second after the recent unholy resurrection of said publication. Once per month, it is spun out of common straw by magic elves, for only the price of my first born son. Not a bad deal, as they do do a pretty good job. This month's installment, as has been circuitously explained in the introduction, is a bit late. I blame only myself. You may join this mailing list, just as the barnacle affixes itself to the side of a garbage scow, by sending an email to rubicon-list-owner@umich.edu. Your address will be poked and prodded and horribly violated in all manner of unspeakable ways by our team of expert scientists and our huge, impersonal bureaucracy. Then, after the basic physiological and psychological tests are complete and your address is deemed fit for inclusion in the list it will be strapped to a cold, steal stretcher and dragged kicking and screaming into our creepy, yet Star Trek-esq laboratory. Then the terrified address, naked and confused, will be dumped into a huge vat of goopy, green biomatter. There, in an endless humiliation, your email address will be cloned over and over again until we have thousands upon thousands of exact copies. A horrible gaggle of endlessly duplicated email addresses! But this is no army. No, we only need the duplicates for next month's installment of the newsletter. Even our most visionary scientists (they are, of course, all *mad* scientists) offer no answer as to how long this list will labor on. So we err on the side of caution. Nonetheless, each month, one address is plucked randomly from the high-density holding pens and gruesomely tethered to the new newsletter. Simple as that. I am sorry to inform you that, talented and evil as our scientists may be, there is no straight forward way to remove yourself from the mailing list. You might try sending $20.00 in cash to Jim Tantalo, 1087 William, Plymouth, MI 48170. This technique has worked in the past. As has been said, I am your host, Jim Tantalo. For some reason everyone here still lets me write this newsletter, despite my unrelentingly verbose approach. Most of you will recall me from previous writings, but for anyone new to this list, I am an 18-year-old caucasian male of Italian-American decent who is absolutely terrified of coffee shops. I like to pretend to be a writer or to be able to write, and have, as was probably obvious from my introduction (those parts which weren't cut off, that is), no girlfriend. So now, for those of you who are still reading, and more than eight hundred thirty unnecessary words later... ACTUAL CONTENT! YEPEE! 1. Rubi Con 2000 Speakers, and how to become one I used to drink a lot of Mountain Dew, but it started seriously disrupting the chemistry in my body, so I stopped. During my sophomore year of high school I probably drank hundreds of fluid ounces every week of the bright yellow beverage, and loved every drop. I was addicted to the caffeine, but I also happened to like the taste and, because I never got any sleep, I needed the energy. But after 18 months of consuming little more than said carbonated soft drink, it started to catch up with me. I started to feel really slow and tired like I was carrying leaden weights, but that didn't scare me too much. After a few more weeks of abusing my adrenal glands, my mood really turned sour, and I started really hating everything and everyone around me (that is, of course, more so than normal. Remember: we are talking about high school here). Then, my whole body just started to hurt. I mean real, PHYSICAL pain. It got really bad whenever I downed a bottle of Mountain Dew, and so I decided to quit. Getting over the caffeine addiction was difficult, but not impossible. The real issue was finding something else to have for lunch, and getting used to cafeteria food. Terrible. Anyway, about our speakers for the next con; we've got some great people lined up. (Excuse me. Sorry. If I might pause for a moment here, I would like to explain what we just saw. I'm sure I left more than a few people in a confused stupor back there. I went from a rather pointless story about my 10th grade obsession with Mountain Dew to --rather jarringly-- Rubi Con 2000 speakers. Some of you may be familiar with my love of subtle and elegant segues in a piece of writing, and so this might look strange. At the advice of my therapist, I've recently begun experimenting with "antisegues." Ordinarily I would do something like this: from "I luv donuts," to "restaurants around this year's hotel," to "one time when I was a kid I tripped a fire alarm in a local Hilton and I was the only one who thought it was funny." But now, with the antisegue in my arsenal, I can do things like this: "one time my dog ate a whole sock," to "I like Bjork," to "Echo is the new patron saint of Rubi Con." As you can see, it opens up a whole new dimension to these newsletters. Now I can jump around from disparate issue to disparate issue with reckless abandon. Keep your eyes out for more glaring examples). So where was I? Speakers. Regular visitors to our occasionally-functional website (more on that later) will know that we've been landing some great speakers this year. In addition to some of the bigger acts from last year, hacker group TDYC! has signed on. They've pledged to do two or three sessions, one on "what it means to be a hacker," and perhaps some security topics as well. TDYC!, is, for those who may not know, one of those underground computer groups that has been here forever. I fear each and every one of these guys. We also have some big-name authors from some even bigger-name companies. Tim Crothers, from Evinci, could, I am quite sure, give me a serious ass kicking over a standard phone line from the comfort of his own home. That's just how far beyond your puny benchmark of "elite" he is. He probably wouldn't even need to use a mouse. I am personally afraid of one of our other speakers; a certain Rick Forno. He's the chief security ninja down at InterNIC and could, without a doubt, kill me five times before I hit the ground, using only off-the-shelf, commercially available software. Back from last year, despite a pretty clear understanding of exactly how Rubi Con is organized and operated, are our friends Peter Stephenson and Michael Ryan. That is, they have actually seen the greasy, filthy, Stalin-era piece of Brazil-esq industrial equipment that is our behind-the-scenes operation. And yet, they have agreed to come back. We love them forever for doing so, of course, but I just have to shake my head in astonishment. Nonetheless, Misters Stephenson and Ryan could also, I assure you, cause me great bodily harm from thousands of miles away with only a standard 101 key keyboard. Despite the nephilim-like stature of our speakers, we also want YOU to get up on stage for 60 minutes and teach us all something. If you have any useful technical knowledge, or anything you think you could teach a bunch of like-minded computer geeks, please get in contact with us! Perhaps you don't have anything intelligent to say, but you still want to get up and spout opinions and your own personal slant on open source programming, whether Microsoft is really the vanguard of Satan, soft shell versus hard shell, and other important topics. We will be hosting a series of panel discussions, debates, violent arguments, and vicious, bloody fights on these topics and more. This is your chance to present your own bizarre conspiracy theories and argue against someone who actually thinks vi is better. We'll put some resources on our web site soon so people can sign up for various slots and topics and select their weapons of choice. 2. Bif Naked is Bettie Page on Crack What do you get if you cross Bettie Page with Johnny Rotten with Patti Smith with a big ol' vile of crack? Why, Canadian "punk" rocker chick Bif Naked. I don't know why I feel I have to bring it up, but I saw a video by said "punk" musician the other day and just feel obligated to clear her name. Bettie Page's that is. Even if you don't recognize Page's name, you've probably seen her, and you've definitely seen her influence in modern culture and fashion. She was a pinup queen and model who rose to phenomenal prominence after WWII. She became a legend of near mythic proportions when she disappeared mysteriously in 1957. She made whip toting, leather clad dominatrixes acceptable to the larger population, which was saying a lot in the repressive 1950s. The long, jet black hair with cropped bangs, the coy, friendly smile, the leather and bondage gear, and the open sexuality which were her hallmarks have been endlessly copied by fashion designers, musicians, cultural arbitrators, and Hollywood in general. From Madonna to Lords of Acid to vast subcultures of 'zines and comic books endlessly worshiping her image. Perhaps I shouldn't mind the aforementioned "punk" musician following in that tradition of appropriation. But there's just something about this chick. I get the sensation that she just sucks too much, or is too much of a sell out fraud to wear the mask of the great Bettie Page. Anyways, watch out for this band. I think we already learned our lesson from Green Day. 3. Call to Arms This may be the last newsletter I complete before the end of the year, and so I wanted to make sure I issued this dictate to our Volunteer Korps: You are hereby ordered into active alert and ordered to prepare for possible deployment in the event of Y2K-related mishaps. Our troops may be asked to create levies in case of flooding (note how I didn't say "dikes"), to defend against possible terrorist acts such as bombings or hostage-taking, or to preform emergency crucifixions/circumcisions, should Armageddon dawn. This is only a warning, but the Federal government is counting on the fierce loyalty of our troops. Admittedly, there is little we as mere 'con goers could do if the new millennium does bring apocalypse, but we must fight to protect what we love (for that matter, shouldn't we really be on the Dark Side?). However, even if we capircorns don't have our birthdays ruined by a holy war, there are other things we and the Volunteer Korps can do. Most of you are probably unaware, but the government will be taking this opportunity to impose strict martial law on the entire population (we have been a bit too uppity for a bit too long, haven't we?), and there are plans for our troops to be added to the occupying force. The government has gotten tired of taking crap from us peon citizens, and longs for the good old days of servile populations of serfs and peasants. After all, they're the ones with all the cool guns and helicopters. They'll be using the new year as an excuse to install large-scale military occupations in just about every city in the country. Anyways, be prepared to have to forcibly hold down a native population for several decades starting this January. It could get rather bloody, but putting down resistance fighters shouldn't be too difficult considering all the Quake our volunteers have played. Special note to Echo: You may finally get a chance to gun down several dozen people against the side of a building with a high-powered machine gun, just like you've always wanted! 4. My Friend are so Distressed Being in the 'con scene as I am, I hear a lot of stories about other 'cons around the world, and I get the chance to meet a lot of the very cool people who put them on. One of my friends was telling me this terrible story about an event he was putting together somewhere on the other side of the country, and I just thought I might share it with you all. My friend had put on a mildly successful event last year with the aid of some other partners and a lot of blind luck. The event was executed as well as a first year con could be by a bunch of kids who had no idea what they were doing. But a good time was had by all and, even though no one got laid, they were working hard to make the second installment even better. The first time around, everything was paid for, organized, and executed by a very small group of guys. Something like two or three people handled everything. They decided that, this year, they would invite a few more people into the mix and spread the burden out across a few more shoulders. The pool of organizers more than doubled with invites, and they were looking at four or five completely new people. Some of the original organizers were more than a bit perturbed by all the new voices barking orders and asserting their opinions. Others welcomed the new ideas and different perspectives. Problems soon arose for my friend and his band. Placing all these new organizers at a level equal to that of the original organizers --those who had been there from the beginning-- started tearing rifts through the entire operation.Tensions grew as the new organizers became more comfortable in their positions. Fights were not uncommon, and an adversarial air soon hung over the entire operation. Some of the original organizers just couldn't handle the idea of a bunch of upstart kids telling them what to do. It was a matter of precedence for them, and authority based on time served. Other original organizers recognized the value the new people added, and saw them as equals deserving of just as much authority as anyone else. From this difference of perspective came fights, arguments and general bitterness. Things were looking bad for my friend and his 'con. All this infighting was preventing any work from getting done, and putting together the event had stopped being fun. The few original organizers who did not welcome the new voices were causing serious problems, and my friend tried his best --or so he claims-- to make everyone happy and get along. But his diplomacy simply wasn't enough, and just when the infighting dropped to a new low, those problem causing organizers decided to leave the event entirely. They realized that they just couldn't win, and walked out. With that, one problem was solved, but another quickly popped up. Although they walked away, they refused to leave the rest of the group alone. They threatened to steal domain names, screw around with their website, spread discord and just plane make it difficult for them to succeed. They were just bitter and hated to see the rest of the group prevail, and vowed to use everything they knew to crush what was left of the event. Negations followed intended to buy the silence and co-operation of the organizers who had left. Concessions were made, titles changed hands, money was offered, and everyone grew frustrated and sickened by their predicament. Last I heard, my friend and his event were still trying to sort out the mess left by those one or two original organizers. They'll probably be sifting through legal nonsense for months to come, and all because of immature infighting and petty pride. Let this be a lesson to all of you with a 'con in your eyes: Pick your allies carefully. They may come back to hurt you. I just hope Rubi Con is never hung up on such stupid bickering and immature personality conflicts. 5. rete orbis For those who have been living in a cave for the past several weeks, we have been having some trouble with our web connection. As was explained on our site, we have switched from the venerable TDYC!, to Crystal Night who are perhaps less venerable, but who do have lower down time. There is also the advantage of me getting even more prestigious email addresses. All I need now is an @projectnexus.org address. Anyways, we hope this little change will do something about our famously mediocre up time. Our web presence is, to use a corporate bingo word, mission critical. You wouldn't think that from all the times Netscape would tell you that it's sorry and that the server does not have a DNS entry. But this point, DNS has filtered through and everything should hum along smoothly until the Y2K bug destroys modern civilization as we know it (see above). As for TDYC!, ego miseret, but it had to happen. OH! HE'S FINALLY SHUTTING HIS BIG, FAT MOUTH. NO MORE MATERIAL TODAY. STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT INSTALLMENT, RUBI CON NEWSLETTER X, "FEARSOME WEAPONS OF THE LUFTWAFFE" Jim Tantalo The guy with the keyboard Rubi Con 1999, 2000