--___ ___-- øøøø------_____________________________________-----øøøøø .s$ .s$ .s$ $$ s$ s$ .s$$s. $$ .s$$s. $$ .s$$s. $$$$s. .s$$s. .s$$s. .s$$s. $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$$$üï $$ .s$$$$ $$$ $$ $$ $$ $$ .s$$$$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ `ü$$üï `ü$ï `ü$$üï $$ `ü$$$$ $$ $$ `ü$$üï $$ $$ `ü$$üï $$ $$ `ï `ü$$üï NO FAME - NO SHAME - - isSUEe1 - - - - - We are Afghanes. We live in Afghanistan, a small country in Central Asia, only slightly larger than France. Our life is hard. The country has a rough climate and hardly any natural resources, with the notable exception of opium. We Afghanes are not a homogenous people. The largest ethnic group and the real elite of us is the Pashtunes. The Pashtunes are an Indo-European tribe. They represent a bit less than two-fifths of the total population. The second largest group is the Tadzhiks, of Persian descent, followed by the Mongolian Hazara, living in the poorest regions of our country, the Uzbeks, the Aimaks, the Nurestani, who are suspected to be descendants of the ancient Greeks, the Baluchs, the Turkmens and the Kyrgyzes. All that unites us is our belief in the one and only God, and our pride to be Afghane. asuteramneskapedanesumlinetkodimfekne _ - _ - oa This is the premier issue of Afghanistan's first (mostly) sb English language e-mag. We will hereby contribute to making si propaganda for our country in the western world. _ - _ - emusnej Sorry if parts rasneskusitnemetylamenkoresnejnaspeste manku of this e-mag are alemaneneputimsemeneteresimuliskesimo ras a bit hard to read but we are forced umirestuseratimlenek naputim by our belief to insert holy words unneseluratosbanek solimenetferete into english texts soliferetsimulesnespustjet or else we would do mongoloskimensuresneminhasulnepanutetarub alumi harm to our mighty god simuliskemenuhinsedsumlamullaseb arepesketalipanoskerotimuse and he would be very apset nutlnes wellletsstartthisshitthinggoonnowwithhottrashholyyearreaddizzero OK! PASHTUNA LANGUA WISDOM COMING UP THEN PASHTUNA ARTICULA!!!! _____________________________________ ___----øøøøøø øøøøøø----___ ïï `` Mahatma na simejka, nasud nam nemidim pensim. Unna esta manesku, aske beste limunesk. Menunin sa nasatin, ale mane mankunu. --___ ___-- øøøø------_____________________________________-----øøøøø Ne sumnereska airbus indiosne. Asnekera raspitu li nutlni amerkrasnoj lamnidet karusima listobenje ankristani airbus mastaniki lemnotorov arsibutim. Unna erim nhe retalin askabad na kandahar usibeki nesborov amneskarat. Eristerov amerkra, neski somibedt, ale mane karustej nunka punja pashebet. Eskulapne indio, lemni este karusten. Askabadne sumalet, uska munka erutin. Nijnov wente nisturan, auke remnisentiej. Newladim ni skaromov, asperim ne anne ku. Unna semni as na bare, simnos strete atre fakta. Lumnidosne arumin, este peste kinka nug. Nunka pare, aska umnijarim, pare maskadim, este vulnerim. Indiasne manuke. "A sumanuma karu, a lumanuma hey. Eskemale divusne, anne mane kej, a sumanuma karu, a lumanuma hey." Lomniset rimuta, askemare brosveret. Ale mane rasputin, one more im na him. Ondsu meruski india tal iban asta reske, kabulne ralevit na ritostandu menjasim. Et si manesu nas kende ibrahim, leste mane kalevit num ire kej. Pashtun na apel na saru unna skej, immohum rasputi nesne ars. Lamme numeri, ale nesmotim respunem. Resnasne aleksom, relmehem indiasi na airbus aperat na summe. Askebat! Semniaskom relitim, eske peske parutim. Karu na hey na luminesne meju, ele mene nasputim, are meske parutsne. Maskadim som na simulni li anne kuravet. Skaramim aste ella numireita. Auskoremo maratas, za ud semiaski lomniet as reske maske karutin, indiasnem manaluga luma semnat arutim. Eske peske simul neput, ne es strasnoskej rasputin rum ause asputim. India nos omnerat mas artumin es kemalog. E pakistanom mempherat, ak simul tanem peniet. Erutin set aste man, mane pus na kulmenat. Somiel som ne skusim tje vaistvo aske mim. Ale, maru! Tal na somniet! Rum skinesne lamiskum! Abu Gaza _____________________________________ ___----øøøøøø øøøøøø----___ ïï `` Somniferet menuhin, sed aske nebet banuhin. Ale enna sastamat, arru luka ne meniheko. Maru somniet na bare. --___ ___-- øøøø------_____________________________________-----øøøøø rasputim OKay sakaralastarasomtibulneperotisniskelotimnarasme namenuhomin we want to kep our promise nesopestnerulatistovet ne to be in english langua sumaletusnekamenakparimovskiskusne welmingtonskoskene mostly nesputimsomanifestomosturetulnerati karuhejuske so lets give ya sum english stuph numibidetaspeti CENSOREDCENSORED yeah sumthing about naskorestimistesumoeltas the fate of the world. written by ...? blinki blinki twinki winki. ah. sumalti nivosto. okej okej i am s'posed ta writa in english. okej. so afghanbashi, pleaze translate. okej. so, i am going ta write about ta fate of the world. ojek. well so wot am i going ta write? i mean you know our one and only god dont ya? so you know the fate of the world dont ya? ya ya see its in his hands. gretinx to ale mane bashi shroder and usa bashi klinton btw. et ta coaxcable ta writin style rulez. okej so wut was i up ta? ah ja blinki twinki, ta fate of ta world. ta world, ta world will exist, it will exit for ever, eh, exist for ever! but only if everybady belief in our on and onli! eh! ja! thats wot i wanted ta say! afgnanustan rulat! hogy vagy! asemenuhinskenumerastunaminephobiastanumbisa _____________________________________ ___----øøøøøø øøøøøø----___ ïï `` Lumniteros meniasne. Laske mane satusnin! Aske bane ale sed ne muna sera laskutin, karu ne men bene lef teg negad sartunim. --___ ___-- øøøø------_____________________________________-----øøøøø Here comes our poetry section, edited by "afghanbashi". Don't listen to what he is saying, he's a stupid old weirdo and a bit revolutionary and nihilistic, but who cares, he can use magic and so we need him. This magic is called English. Your right its he who translate texts of us from Pashtuna on english. ale my dear poetic friends, here i am with a completely new form of poetry. poetry not in the sense of rhymes or rhythmic texts. poetry as a means of expressing emotions, without any restrictions. without caring about grammar, spelling, vocabulary. rhetorical figures are accidents. content matters, encrypted content hard to decipher most of the time. poems for people with psychological talent. this is el afghano. not a lifestyle a life itself. I am the Leader of the Afghanes. Afghanes - a fictional nation. Coincidence that Afghanes exist in our real world too. In the third world. Coincidence that we have alot of things in common. But never be too serious about us. We are what we are, we are pure fictional. Turkmens have Turkmenbashi. Their President. A really Democratic Leader. 100% of the people are for him. Logical? Well so I am AFGHANBASHI. Leader of the Afghanes. Leader of a one-person-nation with hundreds of members. we have no shame because we need no fame tal sastana negujim. -AF first poem we rule we rule we rule! we suck we suck we suck. tata, ta ta ta tatata, ta ta ta tatata, ta ta ta ta-ta, ta ta ta tatata ta tatata ta ta-ta-ta-ta-ta! kalashnikov-mozart. mozart sucks! music sucks! except mine! i rewl! second poem holy ghost, my only ghost, what has happened to my spirit, how dumb i am, how mad i am, i cant believe it, how deep i must have sunken to write such a poooem, this sucks this sucks, i suck i suck, ah well i am only af-ghan-ba-shi, and so i am no problem for this world. eh, i know, rhythm was never my strength, but who carez, i mean, i redefined poetry as sumthin non-rhythmic so its fully okej. third poem third pooooem... inspiration! where have ya gone! third pooooem... felip! gimme back ma inspiration! third pooooem... oh diz sucks i dunno whadda write third pooooem... eh why not start ta fourth... fourth poem i adore, i adore, i adoradorador, toramilnusetenuminet, eh, this is supposed to be english! i adore, i adore, i adoradorador, malusemnijetaskemanuvet, eh, this is supposed to be english! i adore, i adore, i adoradorador, semnijaskemetalemunujet - eh, peter und der wolf sucks as bground music when you are writing an e-mag! fifth poem oh, what has happened to me, i am still trying to write poems, i am still doing as if i was a great poet. shakespeare! mohammed! marktwain! goethe! you all suck and i'm ta best. yes! oh my god. so many english words. and so few pashtuna holy words. THIS SUCKS! compensation ------------ rasputim neskola sumalet somnifet ale mane menuhin suma tuba nuba ras ne pas maskat numa kabul kandahar herat masar i sharif dshalabad baghlan kundus felsabad rasputim neskola sumalet somnifet ale mane menuhin suma tuba nuba ras ne pas maskat numa kabul kandahar herat masar i sharif dshalabad baghlan kundus felsabad rasputim neskola sumalet somnifet ale mane menuhin suma tuba nuba ras ne pas maskat numa kabul kandahar herat masar i sharif dshalabad baghlan kundus felsabad rasputim neskola sumalet somnifet ale mane menuhin suma tuba nuba ras ne pas maskat numa kabul kandahar herat masar i sharif dshalabad baghlan kundus felsabad rasputim neskola sumalet somnifet ale mane menuhin hugi tuba nuba ras ne pas maskat numa kabul kandahar herat masar i sharif dshalabad baghlan kundus felsabad rasputim neskola sumalet somnifet ale mane menuhin suma tuba nuba ras ne pas maskat numa kabul kandahar herat masar i sharif dshalabad baghlan kundus felsabad rasputim neskola sumalet somnifet ale mane menuhin suma tuba nuba ras ne pas maskat numa kabul kandahar herat masar i sharif dshalabad baghlan kundus felsabad phhhhhhhhhhh......... fiiiiiiinnnnnniiiiiiisssshhhhhhhheeeeedddddd! _____________________________________ ___----øøøøøø øøøøøø----___ ïï `` Selet nemed banuhin, aske paske naska beret. Suskim te ok sineho, neret sole nam ta sinuj nimim ni sorejet manesne sum nostu sovietsko. --___ ___-- øøøø------_____________________________________-----øøøøø Okej, now let's go on with something completely different: the world, as it's seen by us Afghanes! azramskinesputimnosperatum ---------------- POLITICAL NEWS ---------------- by the Afghane Secret Service AUSTRIA. After the attempts of SPO and OVP to form a new government failed, President Thomas Klestil wants to make his wife, Margot Klestil-Loffler, form the new government. His long-term plan is to reinstall monarchy. EGYPT. Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Barak visited President Hosni Mubarak in his apartment in Cairo. While they were drinking Mexican tequila and eating French frogs, Barak said: "Hosni, there's something I still don't understand." "Whaddaya mean, buddy", said Mubarak. Barak: "Why did you Egyptians keep our ancestors imprisoned for such a long time?" Mubarak thought a while, then he said: "Simple: To prevent them from electing a fool like you as their leader who seriously thinks he can establish peace with Arabs." FRANCE. President Jacques "Hirochirac" Chirac has ordered scientists whom he had beforehand kidnapped from Germany and the USA to build new nuclear weapons in order to be able to catch more frogs than ever before. GERMANY. Ex-chancellor Helmut Kohl received 10 million DM from France's ex-president Francois Mitterrand for his party CDU. Rumour has it that in return Kohl was to cede Saarland to France. Also, we've been informed that President Johannes Rau is planning to make his horse, the leader of the "Sozialdemokratische Pferde Deutschlands" party, his first adjutant. We know that the two of them already exchange letters via snailmail regularly. INDIA. Prime Minister Vajpayee announced that every Indian citizen will get free Internet access within a year. However, everybody has to care for electricity and telephone lines themselves. LIBYA. The leader of the revolution, Muammar Gaddafi, is working on new nuclear weapons in order to catch even more frogs than the French. He is thinking of raising the water level in the Sahara and create frog lakes. MALAYSIA. It has been proved in court that Malaysia's former minister of finance was indeed gay. His boyfriend was Prime Minister Mahahtir. NORTH KOREA. Kim Jong-il visited the 314th housekeeper brigade in order to inform himself about their productivity. He was very pleased to see their latest achievements, such as a blank 1qm chamber. To reward them for their great contributions to the glorious North Koreanian nation, he proudly presented each of them with a machine gun and posed with them for a photo. PAKISTAN. Rumour has it that Pakistan wants to become part of our Empire. Well, at least the shape of our Empire would look even better on the globe, then! RUSSIAN FEDERATION. The Austrian Press reports that Gospodin Putin spent his honeymoon in a little Lower-Austrian town. He enjoyed it so much that he seriously considered buying a house. UNITED KINGDOM. After frenzy won the lawsuit against Prince Charles of Wales concerning the title "King of the Scene", frenzy has been encouraged to proclaim the title "King of England" for himself, too. Watchers say that he has good chances to win the upcoming royal elections. frenzy's slogan: "The King must have Intellect." UNITED STATES. Poland has become the 52th federal state of the USA. (The 51st was Canada.) VATICAN. The Afghane secret service has found out that the Pope owns several hundreds of nuclear warheads and missiles. He wants to use them on January 1st, 2001, in order to prove that the Bible is right if it announces that the apocalypse will happen on the turn to the 3rd century. _____________________________________ ___----øøøøøø øøøøøø----___ ïï `` Mene debe samudset, sentia nas skarsom tim. Sustine ma divonim, seste peska numa tura. Soltamesko sumelski, neske same nulatom. --___ ___-- øøøø------_____________________________________-----øøøøø Now let's play a compleetely different game! (Yes! Hoorah! We now these western soopa doopa entertainment words! We are kool!) Wellwell actually its very serious now. lemnioskimsomiel Before we made diz emag, we locked out for other e-mags. We needed sum inspiration, ya now. So, we did look on ta Internet, and we found lotsa of them. And I cant help but write my opinion on them! (I = Mohammed Napol‚on, proud El Afghano main editor! No, you fool, I, AFGHANBASHI, am the only main editor! Ya sucks!) emag reviews written by mohammed napoleon. editad by afghanbashi. okej. i dled some of ta emags which i found on ta internat. it took very long becuz these sucky thangs had 1-4 megabyte on average. suckz deeply, har har. neway we didnt make this mistake, ya know. we rulez. you can dl us even fast if ya have a 9600 bps modem like us. menshewiksomniejskosimbalatnudeliasje okej. ill now review ta thangs in the row i dled em. first ... nitro. damn doesnt run on ma thang, suckz. but it was small. well maybe to small who knowz, maabe too small thangs dont run. okej. second ... a bigger one. what was it called again? seenpoint. ah doesnt run either fuck. well, maabe it should be still bigger... so lets try ta biggest i found, called, erm, how was it called again, right, sanraj. sex megabaits thats it. ohoh very big and ye kool it runs altho i had ta wait a couple of minutes until it started. verry nice graphix altho i miss ta afghane flag, our holy flag. font is hard ta read and i dont care neway bcuz ta emag contains only reviews and otha shit i am nat interest in. okej, forth one. how was it calld again? well, dragon. issue 5. a bit smalla. i awready feard it wouldnt run on ma compu. but it did. but it was in some langua i donot understaand. sucks. well if i were god id force their editas to read the pashtuna langua articles in ma mag! so, fifth one. diz one runs fine altho its very slow. has some nice dark graphix and kewl musik altho unfortunately not our afghane hymn, our holy afghane hymn. lotsa texts but i wont read em all bcuz they seem to be boring, their all written in good english so it sucks. emags hav ta be unprofesional othawise their suck. ya onli waste yar life if ya make an emag with a good quality, nobody carez neway. ah, how was ta mag called? year, hugo18 or sumthin like tat. dont care neway. sixth.. anti-sozial magazine. 19. really kool thiz one, graphic colors remind ma of ta afghane flag. also topiks of mag seem ta be kool, undaground, hacking, xracking, freaking and so on. i like it. i like it so much, i like only ma girlfriend even more. but now seventh! demonjournal. wow, what a title! unfortunately i see nathing bout demons in it. well maabe a typo. the ascii dezign is kool, i decide ill also make ma mag in ascii becuz than i dont hav ta care bout colors, ta make em look like holy afghanes flag. IT IS COMPULSORY TO VIEW MY MAG WITH A TEXT VIEWER THAT USES THE HOLY AFGHANE COLOURS - BLACK, RED AND GREEN. so. okej. next one: the eighth one. very coloful altho bad design id say: title bitchture lookin bright like a jungle, navigation picture grey. stupid contrast, thats no feeling! feeling means ya use same color scheme for whole mag! othawise rulez, nice afghane-quality english language grammar. name of ta mag? shite6 or so. okej, now ninth... egroups managers newsletter. wow very kool, hardli any text, thats great, ya kan read it fast, thats how an emag should be like! almost bettah than anti-socialist managzine. and finally tenth... i love it. really. they released two issues on a day. whaddaya mean, ya ask? jonas! ... okej somehow i got ta feelin thiz review suckz deeply but otoh i dont wanna kill it so lets leave it in after all tits mag suck neway wheni compare it with all this rewly good emagz. _____________________________________ ___----øøøøøø øøøøøø----___ ïï `` Mostne simore, neske peska muretalne sum nos manjuresne nam jamusnamisku nolta sualetomotsne. --___ ___-- øøøø------_____________________________________-----øøøøø managusimulistenumerati Well, now you see what this fool (sorry, buddy) Napol‚on thinks of e-mags. By the way, if you wonder about the bad spelling in his article: The information that I edited the article is not true, in fact I left it as it was, to prove what cool a main editor he is. Great spelling he has, doesn't he? I suppose he could already be on place 3 in the international editor charts at least. numisatorimanesumske Anyway, I actually enjoyed reading all these e-mags. And one day I had the idea to contribute an article to one of them myself. This was my article - my opinion on e-mag editors which I had got after reading all these e-mags. I just had to write it, because when reading all these articles, I already saw myself as the editor of a big mag and imagined my career. Of course I'm not an editor of a big mag (yet) but I think I now know what it's like. Well, at least I thought so. aburamidejtaomne And so, in order to learn if my ideas were really true, if an editor's life was really like I imagined, I submitted this article to the editor of a rather nice e-mag and asked for his comments. I'll also publish his reaction of course, but first here's the article. istfangoratelnostojemunsk the dilemma of the editor. editors are in the scene. and they are not in the scene. at the same time. they are supposed to know everything, as they inform the scene. they should kind of lead the scene. their mags are the means of propaganda of their interests. they could also be a lobby's interest. but there is no lobby because most mags are group-independent, and the editors are usually not so interested in the scene that they'd really use the chance to manipulate heavily. a mistake. editors nowadays watch the scene. and describe what they see, but they're often not "in" the scene, they see only the outward facade, they bring uninteresting reports because the readers could easily have found out everything themselves, on the web. or just by asking some ppl. editors need to get internal (confidential) information and make it public to offer sth new even to scene insiders as most of their readers - in most cases - are. but they're too busy or lack interest. this is because the work of an editors is highly MANUAL. yes, they're lower-class ppl in some way, if you define lower-class as ppl working manually. editors have to check through texts, find mistakes and insert heaps of stupid formatting codes. and fuss with the pictures, really ugly work. bitch-tures. well, so they have so little time for really creative work. and their brains eradicate. and they get dumb. and they lose all interest in coding or gfx or whatever they made before they became an editor. no incentive to resume learning how to code coz the top coders are already so far ahead of you that you'd need a year to catch up if you are EXTREMELY fast. all the dreams of making a demo after quitting the mag are gone. you can't release crap demos when you have the image of a top editor, can't you? you'd immediately be regarded as the biggest lamer and everybody would questions why he admired your mag so much. yes, mag-making is stupid, hard, hardly creative work, no fun, eats your brain. with one word it SUCKS. but otoh it could also be fun. if you were a mere writer and wouldn't have to care about fools sending you crap texts full of spelling errors and other shit. and if you didn't have to care about organizing graphics for your mag. and all this stupid fuss. this exhausting work of convincing ppl to help you and being disappointed when, although they agreed, they don't show any result in the end. if you could really make a mag all alone, independent of anybody, just choosing if you use other ppl's stuff when they send it to you - then you would be free, that's the ideal. Even better than being a mere writer or "co-editor" at another diskmag and leaving all the hard work to someone else, the editor fool. but it's hard to realize, editors mostly suck at what they need most badly. if i were only a graphician! if i could paint a picture i like without everybody else seeing it vomiting! then i would be able to realize my dream ever since i got active in the area of diskmags. afghanbashi Okay, this was the article... and here is the editor's reply!! I received it just a day after submitting my article and was really, really pleased about it, especially as it was my first contact with the western world, and I have really fallen in love with the wisdom of these people! They're almost as good as our one and only God! (Good that my co-editors don't know English so they don't understand what I was writing...) aremise Hi, Afghanbashi! Thank you for your article "The Dilemma of the Editor"! I was very pleased at receiving a piece of your work. Of course I'll publish it in the next issue of Hugi. It will fit the Diskmag Corner greatly! You wrote that I should carefully read through your article and not only edit and format it, but also comment "every single thought and mistake". Actually this is not what I usually do. Usually I just edit the article and, if there were passages in it which I didn't fully understand (possibly incorrect grammar) and which I tried to clarify, I sent the edited version of the article back to the author so that he can confirm if it's okay for him, if I've understood him correctly. I fear that I would get on the authors' nerves if I commented every single little detail extensively, as there are usually hundreds of things in an article we could have long arguments about. And indeed I had a bad experience when I included heavy comments in a voting list I sent to the editor of a newsletter, of whom I then had a good opinion, which was a big error as I later saw. But that's a private affair, so I won't talk about it here. I guess you're more interested in comments on your article anyway. Well, what I wanted to say is, if you ask for comments, fine, I'll give them to you. So let's start! Ah, by the way: If you're really interested in the story with that newsletter editor, check out the article "Charts suck!" in Hugi #18 - The Eminent or its Russian translation in Hugi #18 - Russian Edition, if you speak Russian (afaik Afghanistan was partly occupied by the Soviets for a couple of years, so maybe you've learned some Russian). First of all, I'm afraid your article is somewhat pessimistic. Fortunately, at least you offer some sort of solution in the end, although it is pretty unlikely to happen. So it's okay to be published. You have to know, our readers don't like articles with a negative connotation. Nobody wants to read that in a diskmag. It's only understandable that there have already been polls searching for the author of the lamest is-the-scene-dead article. That's why I personally don't write anything about the scene - well, with the exception of diskmags - that could be misunderstood as negative criticism anymore, at least not in the public. Only in hidden articles I express my real opinion from time to time. But it's a fact that if you don't want to scare your readers away, you must not be too critical. And if you are critical, you must always offer a solution. Otherwise it would be pure pessimism, and that's always bad. Really. Well, one general thing about the article: It's written all in lower case, with the only exceptions being words that should be written in a bold font and some characters which you probably didn't want to write in upper case, but as it seems you accidentially hit the shift key. Please refrain from writing articles entirely in lower case in the future. Lower case doesn't look good in a diskmag, and it's not proper English, either. It's really a lot of monotonous work for the editor to make the characters where it's necessary upper case. I've fixed these mistakes without indicating in the forthcoming quotations which character was changed. I think it's pretty logical that this would only disturb you. The topic of your article is editors. I assume you mean diskmag editors with this. To be very exact, you mean main editors of diskmags, as you set "co-editors" equal to mere writers somewhere at the end of the article. Okay, so you called your article "the dilemma of the editor." A nice idea, actually. Well, if I really think about it, it suits the article! After all, you're talking about the dilemma of editors being in the scene and not being in it at the same time. Okay, great. By including a suitable headline in your article, your article is already better than 50% of the articles I receive, because they either contain a boring headline or none at all. However, once again, please don't write entirely in lower case. As for your headline, proper spelling would be "The Dilemma of the Editor." English headlines always start with a capital letter. The other words can start with a lower-case or upper-case letter, just as you like. However, I recommend writing the first letter of nouns in capital, because in this way they're more striking. As nouns are often the most important element of a headline, I really recommend this. Sometimes it's also good if you do the same with verbs, adjectives, adverbs and conjunctions, like for example in "To Be or Not To Be". But nouns are most important. Only if they are of really minor importance, leave them lower-case. OK? The actual article starts with a paradox, a thesis followed by its very antithesis: "Editors are in the scene. And they are not in the scene. At the same time." That's what I call a nice use of this rhetorical device! It really fits in here. It creates the tension that is important for the average, bored reader to continue reading. In this way the reader will be encouraged to continue reading until the tension, until the puzzle is solved. Fine. Then you state: "They are supposed to know everything, as they inform the scene." Hmmm. I'm not sure if you can say this. I mean, you can also inform somebody if you don't know everything. What you can't do is inform them about everything. You can only inform someone about something you know, or suppose. Otherwise it will be a lie, or a fairytale. But I understand what you mean: You mean that diskmags are meant to be the universal way of informing people in the scene. The ideal diskmag should cover everything about the scene. I see. Well, I hope you know this is a very idealistic idea (hehe, what a pun!). This is practically impossible to reach... okay, actually it depends on how you define scene. It is possible to define scene as something you can write everything about. But that's not the definition of the scene most people believe in. Talking of this, actually there is no real definition of the scene. There have been long discussions about it in some German diskmags some years ago. In the end the participiants agreed on a compromise: The scene is the common denominator (phew, that's the first time today that I had to look in my dictionary!) of the people interested in a particular field. I think this applies to every kind of scene. Of course it doesn't really determine the borders of a scene because there are people who are more interested and others who are less interested. Anyway, I suppose that with "scene", you mean what is called "demoscene" in this diskmag, and what is rudimentarily described in the article "Introduction to the Demoscene" on the Hugi website. Okay, fine. Then it's obvious that you - practically - can't know everything. And you're completely right that hence you can't expect it from an editor. Otherwise the logical conclusion would be that there are no editors. But forget this rambling. If I really think about it, I come to the conclusion that with this sentence, you wanted to define the task of an editor, or at least what somebody (you) think it should be. In the next two sentences, you define another task of an editor: "They should kind of lead the scene. Their mags are the means of propaganda of their interests." Another interesting thought. I sometimes thought the same. Let's continue: "They could also be a lobby's interest. But there is no lobby because most mags are group-independent, and the editors are usually not so interested in the scene that they'd really use the chance to manipulate heavily." Here you emphasize on the notion of the editor being the leader of the scene and disprove it at the same time. I fully agree. If an editor has no interest in the scene, why should he make the effort to manipulate, to lead it? But then you write: "A mistake." So you say that editors _should_ lead the scene! Now I'm puzzled. Why should they do this if they do not want it? In my eyes, the scene is a pure hobby. Okay, by making demos or diskmags, you learn a lot about many subjects, including psychology, i.e. manipulating people. But, is it necessary? You can gain the same psychological skills with other activities, too, for example political activities. Was Cicero a mag editor? No! And nevertheless he had so good rhetorical skills that he lost only a single lawsuit of hundreds in total. I think you cannot force anybody to do a particular thing in the scene. I mean, maybe he will miss some experience, maybe it will be harder for him to learn some skills he would have learned in the scene, but then it's his decision, not yours. You can be happy about it because if you learn what someone else didn't learn, you will be superior to him in this area and have an advantage over him in your future life. All the same, let's continue with analyzing your article. After writing what people (or you, respectively) expect from editors, you now intend to list the real activities of the editors of today: "Editors nowadays watch the scene. And describe what they see." (Here you actually wrote a comma, but I think a foot stop is better, because what follows is a separate thought.) I can identify with this, but this is not the main work of an editor. This is the work of a _writer_. It's true that editors also write articles, but their main activity is something else, namely editing and formatting articles, as well as organizing the mag. All the same, I said I could identify with your statement. Why? Because most of my scene-related articles in the last few Hugi issues were based on the watching-and-describing procedure. Before that, I wrote mainly pseudo-philosophical state-of-the-scene ramblings. One of the persons who changed my mind was Fishwave, main editor of the Amiga diskmag Seenpoint. He told me that there had already been so many scene-philosophy articles and similar texts in older diskmags that these topics were getting boring. Reports about people and groups would be more interesting, he said. So I tried to play scene journalist. But meanwhile I have come to the conclusion that writing pseudo-philosophical essays is more satisfactory for me than forcing myself to make investigations about things which, in fact, do not interest me that much at all. All about the scene that still interests me a bit is diskmags, but with time I'm losing my temper with the slow pace the PC diskmag scene is evolving. You continue: "But they're often not 'in' the scene. They see only the outward facade. They bring uninteresting reports because the readers could easily have found out everything themselves, on the web. Or just by asking some people." As you see, I replaced some commas with foot stops again. What you write here is important points of your argumentation, so the readers should read them a bit more slowly instead of rushing through the sentence, as the effect of the commas would have been. I also replaced the abbreviation "ppl" with "people" because it is too scene-ish an idiom, and after all we want Hugi to be comprehensible for non-sceners too. Well, concerning the essence of this part of your argumentation, this probably applies to some editors. On the other hand, if you define scene as I did in my "Introduction to the Demoscene", you can hardly be "in" the scene, because the scene is too fragmented. You can only be an insider in some parts of the scene, such as the Polish diskmag scene, the #pixel community or your local lamers next door. Furthermore, I do not agree with your statement that the readers could easily have found out everything themselves on the web or by asking some people. This certainly applies to a part of the readers, which can be a pretty big part in some cases or a pretty small part. A lot of people do not know the resources where to obtain specific information. That's one reason why we have diskmags: to give an overview of the scene. Now you demand: "Editors need to get internal (confidential) information and make it public to offer something new even to scene insiders as most of their readers - in most cases - are." I have to problems on trying to falsify the statement that most readers of diskmags are scene insiders. First of all, how can you measure who reads a diskmag? And secondly, who is a scene insider? As I explained above, you can practically call yourself "inside" only concerning particular parts of the scene. So if you are an insider regarding demo programming, an article containing rudimentary information on the Greek graphics scene might still offer exciting news to you. But you are right, internal information would be new for almost everybody. However, how to get them? Especially confidential information! I doubt people would enjoy it if you published confidential information about them. I already got into troubles when I quoted from a publicly available chat-log without explicit permission. If I quoted from a letter, people would be even more upset. Your desire to publish confidential information in a diskmag hence cannot be fulfilled, as much as I'd personally enjoy reading such things, too. "But they're too busy or lack interest", you say next. Ah, you mean too busy to gather confidential information. I guess I've already explained the real reason why they don't do this. But I understand your alterior motive why you suddenly come up with business and lack of interest: because you want to explain why it is like this. Perhaps not the best way of moving on to the next subject. Anyway, you explain it as follows: "This is because an editor's work is highly manual. Yes, they're lower-class people in some way, provided you define lower-class as people who work manually. Editors have to check through texts, find mistakes and insert heaps of stupid formatting codes. And fuss with the pictures, which is really ugly work. Bitch-tures." Minor mistakes: You used the genetive with "of" instead of the Saxon genetive and used the plural of "editor" instead of its singular. As you see, I slightly reorganized some of the sentences and marked the word "manual" with an italic font instead of capital letters as well. About the contents, you are now contradicting yourself. You see why? Because now you are saying what the actual work of an editor's really is: not watching and describing, as you said before, but all this manual stuff. I'll offer you a solution to avoid this contradiction at the end of my letter. What else I'd suggest is, leave out the stuff about "lower-class". Some people could really believe it. But this does not apply. Although much of their work is repetitory, editors still need to be creative, especially when the concept or the engine of the mag changes and they have to adapt the articles, or they have to introduce new writers. There is a lot of organizing work behind a diskmag, all done by its main editor. The main editor is the person a diskmag depends on. But why do I write this here, it seems that you know very well how a diskmag works yourself. "Well, so they have so little time for really creative work." You mean, for writing articles. True. I myself usually write all my articles for a new Hugi issue in the last three weeks before the release, often after the deadline for external contributions. "And their brains eradicate. And they get dumb." You are exaggerating a bit here, but it fits the style of your article. "And they lose all interest in coding or gfx or whatever they did before they became an editor." Please don't confuse "to make" and "to do". "No incentive to resume learning how to code because the top coders are already so far ahead of you that you'd need a year to catch up if you were extremely fast. All the dreams of making a demo after quitting the mag are gone. You can't release crap demos when you have the image of a top editor, can't you? You'd immediately be regarded as the biggest lamer and everybody would question why he admired your mag so much." Some typos and grammar mistakes were in here, but they didn't disturb so much. Well, why do I say this, I've fixed them anyway. I understand your point very well. In the rest of the article, you complain about the difficulties connected with the task of organizing a diskmag and propose your vision of being completely independent of any contributor: "Yes, mag-making is stupid, hard, hardly creative work, no fun, it eats your brain. With one word: it sucks. But, on the other hand, it could also be fun, if you were a mere writer and didn't have to care about fools sending you crap texts full of spelling errors and other shit." (Oh Hugi, you talk about "spelling errors" and write "pelling errors"! Sorry, couldn't resist.) "And if you didn't have to care about organizing graphics for your mag, and all this stupid fuss, this exhausting work of convincing people to help you and being disappointed when, although they agreed, they don't show any result in the end. If you were really able to make a mag all alone, independent of anybody, just choosing if you use other people's stuff when they send it to you - then you would be free. That would be the ideal." Good. A very emotional passage. That's something people enjoy reading after a logical argumentation that explained the reasons for your State Of Mind. "Even better than being a mere writer or 'co-editor' at another diskmag and leaving all the hard work to someone else, the editor fool", you conclude this part of your article, indirectly explaining that a co-editor actually is no editor, but just a writer (which has nothing to do with his skills of course; on the contrary...). In the last passage, you conclude why your vision is, unfortunately, pretty unlikely to come true: "But it's hard to realize, as editors mostly suck at what they need most badly." All of a sudden you start talking in the first person: "If I were only a graphician! If I could paint a picture I like without everybody else seeing it vomiting! Then I would be able to realize my dream ever since I got active in the area of diskmags." In this way your article, which started objectively, gets personal, and you reveal that you actually are an editor yourself. Not a bad end, I feel! Well, as you see, your article is very good, but still not quite perfect. Apart from the minor corrections which I already showed you, I've hence tried to re-write the parts of the argumentation which seemed a bit illogical to me. Also, I structured the text in paragraphs. Although your article is a stream of thoughts, this makes it better readable, which is important in a diskmag as it's hard to decipher such small characters on a screen for several hours in a row anyway. So, here's my proposal of the final version of your article, as I'd like to publish it in Hugi: <<>> The Dilemma of the Editor. Editors are in the scene. And they are not in the scene. At the same time. They are supposed to know everything, as they inform the scene. They should kind of lead the scene. Their mags are the means of propaganda of their interests. They could also be a lobby's interest. But there is no lobby because most mags are group-independent, and the editors are usually not so interested in the scene that they'd really use the chance to manipulate heavily. A mistake. Similarly to most writers, editors nowadays watch the scene and describe what they see. That's their way of writing articles. But they're often not "in" the scene. They see only the outward facade. They bring uninteresting reports. I call them uninteresting because the readers could easily have found out everything themselves, either on the web or simply by asking some people. Editors need to get internal, perhaps even confidential information and make it public to offer something new even to scene insiders as most of their readers - in most cases - are. But they're too busy or lack interest. This is because an editor's work is highly manual. Editors have to check through texts, find mistakes, insert heaps of formatting codes and fuss with the pictures, which is really a lot of boring work. As a consequence they have little time for really creative work. And their brains eradicate. And they get dumb. And they lose all interest in coding or gfx or whatever they did before they became an editor. There is no incentive to resume learning how to code because the top coders are already so far ahead of you that you'd need a year to catch up even if you were extremely fast. All the dreams of making a demo after quitting the mag are gone. You can't release crap demos when you have the image of a top editor, can't you? You'd immediately be regarded as the biggest lamer, and everybody would question why he admired your mag so much. Yes, mag-making is stupid, hard, hardly creative work. It's no fun, it eats your brain. With one word: it sucks. But, on the other hand, being active in the diskmag area could also be fun if you were a mere writer and didn't have to care about fools sending you crap texts full of spelling errors and other shit. And if you didn't have to care about organizing graphics for your mag, and all this stupid fuss, this exhausting work of convincing people to help you and being disappointed when, although they agreed, they don't show any result in the end. If you were really able to make a mag all alone, independent of anybody, just choosing if you use other people's stuff when they send it to you - then you would be free. That would be the ideal. Even better than being a mere writer or "co-editor" at another diskmag and leaving all the hard work to someone else, the editor. But this is hard to realize, as editors mostly suck at what they need most badly. If I were only a graphician! If I could paint a picture I like that everybody else likes, too! Then I would be able to realize my dream ever since I got active in the area of diskmags. Afghanbashi <<>> Hmmm. Well, maybe your original version was better, because it sounded more sponaneous, more emotional. Maybe I should use the original version and only fix the spelling, grammar etc. What do you think? Please let me know what I shall do. Regarding the ascii you demanded, I've already contacted Slash. As soon as I've got it, I'll forward it to you. I'm waiting for your answer! -- Adok / Hugi Core & Royal Family http://www.hugi.de/compo/ http://www.hugi.de/ rumski - What should I say... He was really friendly... Well, I - somnie - think you know why I contacted him: because we - sumalatu - know he's afghanophile. - romaskino - But as he's so wise I didn't - manabuaruteria - dare answer him. Maybe a mistake? Nonono can't be, I'm wise enough to know why I won't bother him any more! menlekujal _____________________________________ ___----øøøøøø øøøøøø----___ ïï `` Aska paka maru, lamnu tumna hej. Sumi tumi nesputim, ramma tumma oej. Aska paka maru, lemnu tumna hej. --___ ___-- øøøø------_____________________________________-----øøøøø Maabee yar interested in wot languages we learn in Afghanistan? First language is German! Then English! Then Dari! Then Chinese! Then Russian! Then Pakistani! (Okej it's ccalled Urdu.) Then we learn ta boooooze! _____________________________________ ___----øøøøøø øøøøøø----___ ïï `` soooof sooof soof luma tuma buma huma eyeyey --___ ___-- øøøø------_____________________________________-----øøøøø Wa also knowa sum Finnish of coz! yksi kaksi kolme! perkele! haista vitttttttuuuuu!! rumsitumnesterasumatunaleskutimnoremutalnianositimo We are developiing plaans to conquer ta world! Look, this is the world now: - North America - Europe, Asia _ - - - - _ - - - - - South America - Africa, Australia - And this will be ta world in sum years: - Afghanistan - Afghanistan _ - - - - _ - - - - - Afghanistan - Afghanistan - HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA (woooowowow, i typed tat without using copy+paste at all!!! belief me!!) _____________________________________ ___----øøøøøø øøøøøø----___ ïï `` Indisomniejskoje, semnit nemiekiej ale mane rapusom sto nasperati. --___ ___-- øøøø------_____________________________________-----øøøøø OKEJ. I think this issue of the emag should also have an end. Its the first issue isnt it? Right, so it shouldn't already bee too long. Who knows if ourr readers will really like us? Maabe they like it more if the mag is rather short? More fun? Kurze Wurze? Or how do ale mane sorekruts say it? lumniskomitetsamisdattorellimanet NO! FIRST I; THE REAL MAIN EDITOR OF THIS MAG; ARTURO UI; WANT TO SHOW OFF MY KEWL ASCII SKILLZ! YOU MUST KNOW; STRANGER; THAT WE HAD AN INTERNAL ASCII COMPOTITION BEFORE WE DECIDED TO TAKE THE ASCII YOU NOW SEE IN THE BEGINNING OF THE MAG! THE JURY WAS ALL STAFF MEMBERS OF EL AFGHANO AND THEY VOTED FOR AFGHANBASHI'S ENTRY ALTHOUGH IT SUCKS DEEPLY DONT YOU THINK SO??? HERE COMES MY ENTRY SO YOULL SEE THAT THEY MADE THE WRONG CHOICE!! AND IF YOU DONT BELIEVE ME YOU SUCK YOURSELF AND YOU ARENT WORTH READING THIS EMAG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!bla .s$ .s$$$$s. .s$$$$$s. $$$ s$$$ $$$ $$$ $$$ $$$$ .s$$ $$$$$$$$$ $$$ :::: s$$$ $$$ $$$ .s$$$$$$$$s. $$$$ ü$$$$$$$ü ü$$$$ü s$$$ $$$$ :::: $$$$:$$$ .s$$$$$$$$s. .s$$$$$$$$$$ s$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$:$$$$$s. .s$$$$$$$$s. ü$$$$$$$$$$ü ü$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$ s$$$ $$$$:$$$$$s. :::: $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ .s$$$$$$$$s. $$$$ ü$$$$$$$$$$ü $$$$ .s$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ ü$$ü :::: :::: $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ ü$$$$$$$$$$ü $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ ü$$ü ü$$ü :::: :::: $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ ü$$$$$$$$$$ü ü$$ü ü$$ü DO YOU SEE????????????? IT'S VERY COOL OLDSKOOL PICTURE AINT IT? NO IT'S NOT NEWSKOOL YOU FOOLZ! I KNOW BEST WHAT'S OLDSKOOL AND WHATS NOT AND WHATS GOOD AND WHATS BAD AND WHAT SUCKS AND WHAT DOESNT SUCK AND AND AND AND AND::: AFTER ALL I REVIEWED ALL DSCENE RELEASES OF AFGHANISTAN !)))! AND ILL DO THE SAME FOR "=== TROO! you ask how many released damN MY CAPS LOCK SUCKS ah SUCKS AGAIN OKAY WHERE DID WE STOP:::: YEAH; WELL; THERE WAS ONLY ONE RELEASE IN !))); AND THAT WAS THE PREVIEW OF THIS MAG; BUT ANYWAY; I REVIEWED !==%; AND I'M PROUD OF IT!!! I AM THE KING!!!!!! ROMAKULNE and I, Napoleon, want ta show ma ascii entri to ofcos! heres it: ... ... ... . . . . . . . . . . ... .. . . ... . . . . ... . . . DAMN! I had selected Word Wrap in my text editor and now it's all wrapped up! You cant read a damn fuck this sucks deeply well who cares... Anyway now that it doesn't work I agree tat Afghanbashi's entri is best. lumasentjenukebarumaskatnaratelniesumilostamaniskust _____________________________________ ___----øøøøøø øøøøøø----___ ïï `` Remi, remi, remi, suma tera remi, remi, remi... --___ ___-- øøøø------_____________________________________-----øøøøø THE CREDITS ----------- Main Editor: Mohammed Napol‚on Real Main Editor: ARTURO UI Modest Mind Behind The Mag: afghanbashi We send out greetings to Taliban, United Freedom Force, Wladimir Putin, Vladimir Meciar, Boris Jelzin, Jiang Zemin, Bill Clinton, Gerhard Schroder, CoaXCable, Ehud Barak, Benjamin Nethanyahu, Thomas Klestil, Helmut Kohl, Francois Mitterrand (RIP), Jacques Chirac, Daniel arap Moi, King Saud, Cardoso, Hugo Ch vez, George Bush jr., Viktor Klima, Viktor Orb n, Victoria, Nelson Mandela, Laurent Kabila, Mobutu Sese Seko, Colonel Muammar Gaddaffi, Queen Beatrice, Lady Diana Spencer (RIP), Theodor Herzl (RIP), David Ben-Gurion (RIP), Ariel Muzicant, Saddam Houssain, Leonid Kutshma, Mikulas Dzurinda, Vaclav Klaus, Vaclav Havel, Helmut Zilk, Menachem Begin (RIP), Winston Churchill (RIP), Jorg Haider, Wolfgang Schussel, Her Majesty Margot Klestil-Loffler, Jean Chr‚tien, Heinz Fischer, Lionel Jospin, Vajpayee, Omar Sharif, Nawaz Sharif, Musharaff, His Majesty Hirohito (RIP), His Majesty Akihito, Kim Jong-il, Li Peng, Zhu Rhongij, Turkmenbashi and all other politicians. numasumadumarejsomnaskabutterasomnelukanebissomnarreku DISCLAIMER: IF YOU TAKE ANYTHING IN THIS MAG SERIOUSLY, YOUR IQ MUST DEFINITELY BE FAR BELOW AVERAGE. godsaveournoblegraciousqueen - the end - _____________________________________ ___----øøøøøø øøøøøø----___ ïï ``