 O=
/)              FLIPPERSMACK 018
`=     culturemag for a penguin generation
           http://www.flippersmack.com/
x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x

This issue is dedicated to those who have fallen victim to last week's
terrorist attacks. September 11, 2001 will be a day none of us will ever
forget. We are strong, and together we stand to voice our concerns,
opinions, and emotions. Flippersmack- a flock built on unity.
   pinguino
   [pinguino@comicartist.com]


tABLE oF cONTENTS

Writing Challenge ..................................... pinguino
Comic Strip Reviews .................................... Melinda
[poem] Untitled ........................................... Monk 

            Attack on America -special edition-
Freedom-Loving People ................................. pinguino
Response to WTC Attack ................................... Kilna
[poem] unfathomable .................................... Melinda
Big Brother Invades .................................. SlapAyoda
my journal entry last night ............................... Monk

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FLiPPERSMACK WRiTiNG CHALLENGE!@#%#!%@#!
:
Write a story about a penguin who lives in the timeline of Tori Do. 
He lives in the Galapagos, and his name is Kennai. He is a creature 
of habit, an accountant who works in his local kingdom. He opens an 
anonymous letter one day that had been slipped under his door. "Meet 
me at the eastern waterfall at midnight. Come alone."

Finish the story. The one we like the most will be the winner.

Flippersmack will publish the best story submitted to us in Issue 
#20. The winner will get signed comics and original art from Penguin 
Palace. 

The deadline is Sept 23, 2001 .. 6pm PST. Mark it down!!

Please include your name, nickname, email address, and snail mail 
address with your submission. We will keep private any information
that you ask to be private. Stories can be sent in text format or 
Microsoft Word. Please spellcheck before sending. 

                           -.x.x.x.-

A Comic a Day Keeps the Grumpies Away
by Melinda (scgal1@excite.com)

Okay, so it's been decided (by an ever-so-wise) group of peers that I
should review webcomics on a weekly basis, mainly because I already read 
them. A lot. Every day. I'm going to start with those I love and go from  
there. If you have suggestions for comics that you think I MUST READ NOW, go
ahead and email them to me at scgal1@excite.com. Grazie.

This week's offerings:

Sinfest, by Tatsuya Ishida
http://sinfest.net/
:
This comic actually holds the honor of being the one that started my
addiction. A tech-writer friend of mine from the snowy North (aka Canada,
eh) turned me on to it and through Sinfest, I found my way to Keenspot,
home of many of the great comics on the web. It's sick, it's twisted, and
at the same time it's amazingly political. Tatsuya is perhaps the only person
on Earth who can actually get away with making God a hand-puppet master.  
His characters include Monique - a very hip hoochie who's damn proud to be
a hoe, Slick - a teensy little man with a definite Napoleon complex and
complete pimp attitude, Beezle and Squigly - Slick's partners in crime,
Seymour - who, along with Ezekial & Ariel manage to make devotion to God a
laughing matter, God & the Devil - who provide the most comic fodder of any
comic character out there (IMHO), the Dragon - (perhaps a nod to Tatsuya's
heritage?) Eastern to God's Westerness and of course Percival and Pooch,
who show why cats are better than dogs (again, IMHO).

Tatsuya's strips range from ninja parodies to blatant pokes at the
commercialism that is America. My personal faves are strips that involve
God and hand-puppets. Nothing quite like watching God make fun of the Devil
using an Uber-Goth hand-puppet. Perhaps one of the best parts of the
strip is the fact that you can walk away for a few weeks, come back and
not feel lost. Strip storylines are usually contained within 5 strips or
so, and the entire cast gets a good enough rotation that it's hard to get
tired of any of them. Even potentially annoying characters like Ezekial
and Ariel are made amusing when going duck-hunting with the Devil.  
Besides that, Tatsuya's got a great hold on that dry, semi-cynical wit
that always tickles. Definitely worth reading every day, which I do. And
so should you.

Real Life, by Greg Dean
http://www.reallifecomics.com/
:
If you are at all a techie or have friends/relatives/significant others
who are techies, you will find something to relate to in this strip.  
Greg has basically taken his computer geek life and comicalized it (and
no, that isn't a word, I just made it up). The characters exist in
reality, which is probably why there have been so many times when I have
been reading it and thought, "Hey, I know someone just like that!"  
The main characters include: Greg - the Ultima Online playing, sword loving
shirt ninja, Dave - his Quake loving hardware junkie best friend/roomie,
Tony - his pure evil, inventive buddy and other roomie, and Crystal -
Greg's "I'm a nerd but hide it well" girlfriend, who I think is the only
thing keeping these guys grounded in reality.

Greg's passion for Pepsi makes me a fan right off, but its storylines
like trips to Fry's Electronics (the geek Mecca), computers who not only
talk to their owners but sabotage each other in fits of jealousy, and chain
mail and sword adventures with the mail man that keep me hooked. The scary
thing is, Greg really owns the swords he draws into the comic strip. He's 
majorly into gaming and tends to put up some decent links for those of you
who are looking for strategies and other gaming needs. He's also branched
off and added a new comic to his list of hits, called "The Forge."  It's
at Swords Online, and features a talking sword named Robert (who wishes
his name was Xanthes). It just started, so now's a good time to start
reading that one. It's got the same real feeling to the dialogue as Real
Life, only in a medieval-like way. So go, read them both. Trust me on
this.

                           -.x.x.x.-

Untitled
by Monk (monkstah@hotmail.com)

i fell asleep behind the steering wheel.  
luckily the car didn't move.
i could have forgotten how to brake properly.

i dreamt i was behind the steering wheel.  
a car sitting still at a red light
in the middle of nowhere with buildings
sneering at me through their broken glass windows.
the car wasn't on though.

i dreamt i was dreaming about being behind
a steering wheel.
i thought about turning the car on and going
somewhere in my dream.
i settled for just sleeping and letting the
car horns honk around me.

i was behind a steering wheel.
stuck in a parking lot reading a story i heard about.
a guy fell asleep behind a steering wheel and
started dreaming about being behind a steering wheel.
he started dreaming about dreaming.
philosophy makes you so much smaller these days.

                           -.x.x.x.-

Attack on America - Special Edition

Flippersmack feels that it's important to cover the recent events that have
hit our nation. It's affected us in different ways already, threatening our
civil rights, touching us emotionally, and causing an almost-hysterical
reaction. If you don't want to read about the subject, do not read on. Join
us next week for our sex-themed issue, instead. Feel free to join our 
discussions at the Penguin Palace Meeplist discussion group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/penguinlist/

                           -.x.x.x.-

Freedom-loving People
by Pinguino (pinguino@comicartist.com)

It's been a week since the tragedy. I don't think anyone I know was killed.
I'm not sure. I was asleep when it happened; my friend called me and told
me to turn on the TV. Terrorists had flown planes into the World Trade
Center. Thousands of innocent lives extinguished in the name of religion.
The world watched: hearts white-lipped with fear and overwhelming grief.

Americans are all suffering a rollercoaster of emotions - we seek an answer
where none exists. The terrorists wanted to disrupt our lives and tear
apart our nation. This event brought us closer together. Last Friday at
7pm, the nation shared a candlelight vigil. Fear the power of the
Internet. A friend and I stood with some strangers next door, singing "God
Bless America." They shared candles with us. As I drove home an hour later,
I saw a group of thirty teenagers standing at a streetcorner with candles - 
teenagers who generally live in apathy. There is a flag saluting in all of
us. 

Wax drips from our candles of hope. Tears fall free from our faces.

There are endless stories of Arab Americans being harassed and tormented by
their fellow Americans. Kids throwing glass bottles at foreign taxi drivers.
Marines calling into radio stations saying that they'll beat the shit out
of any Arab that crosses their path. A call for concentration camps and
forced removal of Arab peoples from our suburban lifestyle.

What century is this?

Did we not learn from our mistakes? America was created to be the land of
the free, a place where those persecuted for religious beliefs could
rebuild a peaceful land. Arab terrorist groups attacked our freedom. They
do not represent the entire Arabian community. You can't judge a person's
beliefs by the color of their skin. You never could. Don't let the media
speak for them by flashing a few seconds of media footage of Palestinians
cheering in the streets. They probably don't have the same beliefs as the
guy who runs the 7-11 down the street.

Don't let history repeat itself.

                           -.x.x.x.-

Response to WTC Attack
by Kilna (kilna@kilna.com)

For our leaders:

     "Never confuse motion with action."
                      -Benjamin Franklin

For ourselves:

     "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
      safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
                      -Benjamin Franklin

Freedom is not an intangible concept bestowed on us by fate. Freedom is
the direct consequence of our actions, and lost freedom is the direct
consequence of our inactions. Our present liberty is the result of our
forbearers' willingness to fight for our way of life, and our successors'
will be the result of ours.

Our nation, as the WTC towers, has been shaken to its foundations. In
this hour of chaos, do not allow attempts at temporary safety to strip our
basic freedoms. Wired is reporting that our legislators are trying to do
just that with cryptography.  
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46816,00.html

Let your congressman, your senators know that you are not going to give up
this essential right for a false feeling of safety. Let your
representatives know that cryptography is an essential part of privacy
in your daily life just as having blinds on your windows.  Let them know that
e-commerce is built on cryptography. And most importantly, let them know
that restrictions will only hurt private citizens, since the bad guys
already have the tools. Banning encryption will only force encrypted data
into the least significant bits of other data, for no other reason than a
false sense of security for those who don't know how technology really
works.

Let our leaders know that you cannot preserve freedom by taking freedoms
away.


                           -.x.x.x.-

Unfathomable
by Melinda (scgal1@excite.com)

Anguish of the masses crashing through
The devastation left in the wake
Of someone's hatred.
A million whys on the lips of tear-stained faces
Blurred by the wailing of mothers suddenly childless
Lovers suddenly single
Children suddenly missing a parent
A brother
A sister.
Numbness and Shock wrap their arms around us
Cushioning the blows that images assault us with.
Disbelief giving way to a universal sorrow
As the shadow of an army of sacrificed souls 
Falls over us.
Those who feed their children
On candy and stories of an EVIL COUNTRY
Dance and cheer in the streets.
Do they not feel the chill of the shadow?
Leave us to our mourning
Let us drape ourselves in black
But do not tempt our wrath to show itself to you.
Our buildings have been destroyed
Not our spirit. 

                           -.x.x.x.-

Big Brother Invades
by SlapAyoda  (slapayoda@yahoo.com)

Now that those of us who were fortunate enough to avoid being directly
affected by last week's tragedies have had time to recover and regain our
senses, it is time to work together to prevent another frightful
occurrence of even longer-lasting and wide-reaching scope. I'm not talking
about another terrorist attack, and I'm not talking about an American
invasion of the Middle-East. The problem I'm referring to is the
widespread anti-privacy campaign currently taking Washington by storm.
Major news agencies have already reported on a bill passed by Congress to
allow the FBI -unwarranted- wiretapping privileges, but it went seemingly
unnoticed in the endless stream of reports coming from New York. It's sad
that some of the more extremist players in Washington are using this
unfortunate attack on our nation to attack the privacy of Americans. Among
the current proposals being discussed in Washington, one of the most
intrusive and pointless measures deals with encryption. For those who
aren't aware, encryption is a valuable method of protecting your personal
privacy. It works by scrambling a message into an unreadable collection of
jargon, until decoded with the correct algorithm or password. Unencrypted
email is sent in plain-text across the Internet and can be easily read by
anyone with access to the computers between the sender and the recipient
(ie - anyone who happens to work as an admin at a major ISP). The
government is proposing that all tools used to encrypt data, which they
claim are used only by "hackers and terrorists" to "thwart law
enforcement", be modified to include a "backdoor password" so that law
enforcement agents can automatically decrypt any data encrypted with such
software. This would make any software not complying with
government-spying standards 'illegal'. This is a completely ridiculous
piece of legislature for the following reason (among others): if Osama bin
Laden's terrorist sect, or any other criminals for that matter, are
planning on committing a criminal act, why would they use encryption
software approved by the US government when they could simply use the
software they already have, or simply opt to use the 'illegal' software
which will continue to thrive with or without the government's approval?
It makes no sense. This is simply another piece of legislature that will
have no effect on real criminals and will criminalize the actions of
legitimate citizens. To learn more on how to protect your freedoms, read
this article posted on Slashdot.org:

http://slashdot.org/yro/01/09/16/1647231.shtml 

You -can- fight for your freedoms.

*  Begin BASE64-encoded message  *
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                           -.x.x.x.-

my journal entry last night
by Monk (monkstah@hotmail.com)

expression. 2 doves, repeatedly striking glass.

i can safely say that i have yet to feel 10 million pounds
of steel and concrete fall on my head.

i hate the intelligence community. i hate passenger planes.
i hate suicidal people. i hate war.

shock is such a small word for how i feel right now. it would
almost compare to an alien standing next to me and saying
hi. we, human beings, just don't realize how small and
insignificant we really can be.

boom. firecrackers on the 4th of july. closing a city down.

poof. the city that never sleeps does, covered in man-made snow.

i hate tuesday.

                           -.x.x.x.-

Grieve with others across the world at the following sites:

http://www.phonelosers.org/wtc.html

We set up a message board for people to express themselves and leave
messages about those they care for in NY and DC.  - Colleen Card, PLA

http://www.dubistkoeln.de/condolences/

We express our sympathy with the victims of the horrible terror attacks,
their families and friends and want to demonstrate our solidarity with
you.  - Caynan, Book of Condolence
 
                           -.x.x.x.-

Flippersmack Archives:

http://www.penguinpalace.com/ 
http://www.nettwerked.net/ 
http://www.ghu.ca/ 
 
+-----------------------------------------------------+
Flippersmack (c) 2001 Flippersmack All Rights Reserved.
pinguino rocks muh socks y0.
