Hiya all

John suggests a short bio note:

Well, first I am a writer and poet with a tiny bit of published work.
_The times of Zenia Gold_ , 1992, is my only poetry monograph thus far.

I have been doing other things, since then, like editing a magazine for
illicit drug users, working in the community response to HIV/AIDS which ran
me off my feet into burnout and now being chronically fatigued and unable to
work have finally found the time to return to writing.

I did writing and philosophy of culture majors and hons in a communication
degree (UTS) prior to the above stuff and am now enrolled in a research
degree in writing at the University of Western Sydney.

I am also writing a novel with the working title _Swindle_ and
when the time is ripe for it, hope to return to a poetry collection I had to
drop while working in HIV/AIDS called _The Bar-B-Q_.

Was it Shelley who wrote something like: the distinction between prose and
poetry is a vulgar error?

My response on grokking hacks fills in more details.

Hi Josephine (and list, of course)

Actually, I am quite excited since you appear to have travelled in areas I am
exploring. (I am putting off other writing to respond so will be brief as I
can.)

> I'm assuming you've read the William Gibson Cyberspace
> books?

Hackers are deeply into Gibson. They find his ignorance of computer systems
amusing but are still captivated by the novels.
>
> As for you question re cyber sex, have you tried lambda moo?

Moos and muds fascinated me hearing about them from friends in the mid 90s.
Haven't tried them, since the last thing I wanted to do after being on a
computer all day at work writing and editing was go online in off work hours.

> Cybersex comes
> down to two things, the creative writing skills of the
> participants, and as a demonstration that the mind and the
> imagination play a large part in sex.

Yes. . . the creative writing, fictional identity really gets me fascinated.
Can't say I am tempted to try it, though, since I am going mad enough
slipping into my own fictional character voices in my novel. But it does also
illustrate a sort of love that anyone can have in writing their own fictions.
I would find the different ways you are treated depending on which gender you
chose quite interesting.

> Lots of adolescent males describing themselves
> as tall dark and mysteriously handsome.

It would be interesting to think about the mix of public gender and sexual
identities participating. A lot of supposedly heterosexual young males have
sexual fantasies about being a woman, for example. I find these new variants
of gender confusion and refusal interesting also. Two lead characters in
_Swindle_ start out in life as supposedly heterosexual and male. I keep
imaging them both as becoming pregnant to each other, in a twisted sort of
way. (Delany _Stars in my Pocket like grains of sand_ plays with gender in
quite an interesting way, speaking of sci-fi novels.)
 
> I'm very interested in roleplaying, identity and how we
> represent ourselves on the net through the limitations of
> text.

I certainly share this interest. The young hackers writings I read play with
this too. They all have handles and don't let on their real identity. The
first time some of them meet is in court. Most of them are boys and at first
glance it can be made to look like a boys own adventure but when you take a
second look this masculine ideal fades quickly. Some of the first spectacular
hacks were done by women. It is like there are two internets. The official
and proper one with a police mentality which demands you play by the judge's
rules of society and then the street-wise more illicit internet. I avoid the
straight stuff and go for the illicit. Much more fun to be had there.
(Reminds me of Samuel R Delany's article on street talk and straight talk,
also.)

> Removing the object leaves the sign
> and its signfier/signified, forcing meaning to arise from
> relationships between signifiers. How does this effect
> poetry?

Sounds a bit like Derrida to me, here. I am I right? In my project I
questioned the structuralist theories of narrative such as the story
(signified) and discourse (signifier) distinctions and stuff like Propp's
structural study of myth. But then I very quickly had to leave Derrida,
finding that the formal distinctions between prose and poetry also came
unstuck, very quickly, not to mention genre distinctions. Derrida may have
prised the door open but he just ended up putting you on the other side of
the closed door. (The flip side of structuralism.) I am also working with a
rennaisance critical idea which said something like a good novel is like a
good poem. I am interested in novels as poetry. Hence my fascination with
Dorothy Porter's recent books, too. I understand a new one has just been
published but haven't yet gotten around to chasing it up. I am also looking
forward to a trip to Sydney to see the movie of _The monkey's mask_.

Anyway, must go and do some writing. Nice chatting with yr all.

Chris Jones.