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“Kids and Teens”

Feb
7
2010
Asher Black By Asher Black | No comments yet

Anti-bio

[This bio is compiled from various negative reviews of Asher]

  • I don’t like Asher very much.
  • For one thing, he’s unpatriotic. He thinks we live in an aggressor nation that kills innocent people or something. He seems to like other countries better than ours. He’s always talking about someplace else, when he’s not knocking this country.
  • He doesn’t accept authority. He acts like he doesn’t have to answer to anyone. One of these days, someone’s going to shut him down.
  • He’s judgemental. Everyone has to earn his respect. He has no respect for the average person. He thinks he’s smarter or better than most people. I once asked Asher if he thought he was better than other people, and he said, “Better at what?”
  • He thinks very highly of himself, like he’s special. He acts like he’s above most people. He’s so aloof.
  • He thinks that knowing a lot of words and facts is very important. He never stops thinking, he’s always reading some book, and he always has something to say.
  • He doesn’t concern himself with the results of his ideas before deciding to accept them.
  • He doesn’t weigh the consensus of others against his own opinion before deciding what to believe. He’s opinionated. He almost never agrees with anything other people think, say, or believe. He has to be different.
  • He constantly wounds people’s pride, almost automatically, without trying. He’d be the first to be tossed out of an overcrowded lifeboat. I told him that once, and he said, “The fact that anyone would be tossed, makes me the necessary as well as logical choice.”
  • He’s into all kinds of weird, extreme, alternative things. If it’s unusual, he has to know about it or be involved in it.
  • He has all kinds of unusual theories about how the world works, what people do, and so on. He’s always reading some book about it.
  • He thinks he’s some kind of artist. I don’t understand his writing. He can’t just have a normal job, and that’s probably why he has to write.
  • Probably nobody should like him, but he has weird friends who he’s fooled into actually liking him for all of these things.
  • What a woman could see in him makes no sense. You’d think no woman would ever want him, but he either fools women into liking him or they’re weirdos, too.
Aug
24
2008
The Playful Anarchist By Asher Black | No comments yet

Serving as Keeper of the Rules

As two young men walked up, a couple of girls at the coffee shop said, “There are those two guys again. They’re going to keep coming around all the time, now. They think because we hung out the last three days with them, we’re their girlfriends now.”

Asher, who was fixing a PC on the spot for one of the girls (never leave a downed PC behind), responded “You ARE their girlfriends. Those are the rules. You hang out with them three times, and you’re their girlfriends.” When the girls protested, Asher added, “It doesn’t matter if you know the rules, like the rules, or agree with the rules. The rules work anyway. You’re their girlfriends, now.” They laughed and Asher smiled a long smile.

Feb
7
2004
AsherNet By Asher | No comments yet

An Online Story

In a previous version of AsherNet, I answered the question, “What the Hell is this?”

This is an online story, an endlessly developing one. It is also an interactive story, one involving a community as well as a personality. In some ways this is close to the tradition of the online journal (see links). It can also be likened to a kind of open-air expressionism. The ‘notes’ for this story, in all their various forms… poems, tales, letters, jottings, virtual books, rooms, doors, corridors, icons, colors, fonts, layout, structure, reveal the plot, the setting, the theme, and the characters – including the protagonist. You’ve heard it said that the medium is the message. The form of speech communicates as much as speech per se. Every aspect of this multiverse of personality is a contribution to the story. The reactions to these notes, as they take shape, have ranged from praise to ridicule to bewilderment. These reactions too, are sometimes part of the story.

Feb
7
2003
AsherNet By Asher | No comments yet

What the Hell is This

The AsherNet, besides being obviously structures for expression, information, interaction, is also a collection of stories. The Arena is, in part, a story as well as a construct or metaphor. The Haunt is a story, as well as a homely house. And the Office is a story, though a more private one. There are other stories at the AsherNet, and even other people telling stories.

I’ve been asked to justify all this, to explain why the site should be of interest, or how it fits conventional notions of what a web site should be. I can only respond that nowhere did I ever claim that the AsherNet is what these questions presume it to be. In fact, most of the responses I’ve received have indicated that the depth (by which I mean, the layers of meaning and activity) and character of the construct (I do not refer to it as merely a “site” of which there are many) are too discreet to be readily perceived. Some symbols are part of a language that only a few who are “in the loop”, so to speak, may easily read. When I have replied that this is so, just as when I originally spoke aloud about alienation, the critics have become detractors even more disenchanted with the so-called “obscure” or “meaninglness” symbology. So be it.

Again, I never offered to explain or to justify what I’m doing. I never invited anyone to understand. And those who do, who speak the same language, those residents of the Haunt, the Arena, the Office, the OverState, and the other places, are more than a sufficient community; they are those to whom I need offer no explanation or justification.

Jul
15
2000
The Playful Anarchist By Asher | No comments yet

Dialgogue

So you want to blow something up?

No, not just any kind of something. Something in particular.

And why are you telling me this?

Because you also want to blow up something.

You’re nuts.

Probably. So what?

What do I want to blow up?

You’ll settle for anything. You don’t have anything particular in mind. Just something will do.

I see. And how did you come to this conclusion?

You haven’t focused your anger, your hostility, your sense of dreadful destiny. That’s because you don’t yet know the source of your oppression. You don’t yet know your oppressor.

Dreadful destiny?!? Oppression?!?

Laughter is good. You should go with that – with your ability to cover your emotions with laughter. You might very well need it for what we’re going to do.

I don’t believe this. And what is it we’re going to do, according to you?

We’re going to discover together at what precisely you are angry. And then we’re going to blow it up.

That’d be my boss. He oughta be blown up, but I’m no murderer.

What if your boss quit work today, what then?

They’d just hire someone else like him, possibly even worse.

Exactly. So then is your boss really the primary object of your anger, or is it something that can be killed without committing murder?

It’s the whole environment, the whole system at my job, and at every job like it.

Well, let’s let other people worry about other jobs like it. Talk to me about *your* job.

You’re talking about blowing up the dealership. This is crazy.

No, *you’re* talking about it, and I don’t think your crazy. Do you?

All right, let’s say hypothetically I blew up the dealership, then I’d lose my job, most likely everything I own, and I’d go to prison.

Perhaps. Suppose for just a moment that you only lost your job. How would that stack up against blowing up the dealership.

I can always get another job. I’m still not too old, and I can feel it coming anyway – the day they fire me to make room for younger blood.

All right, so it is possible that the only thing you’d lose is something that you’re going to lose anyway, only in this case you’ll be in control of it.

I guess that’s possible.

Jul
15
2000
The Playful Anarchist By Asher | No comments yet

Character

The sales work wasn’t that rough. It’s all about knowing people, after all. Oh yes, and about positive thinking. No one ever did anything for themselves without believing that things would work out for his benefit. It wasn’t lying either, telling that old couple that I was thinking of buying that car for my wife. It was telling them what they wanted to hear, what they needed to hear. And they would be as happy – happier – with that car, as with any other. Hadn’t they felt better about buying it, knowing they were stealing it from someone else. Getting something practically for free, an edge over someone else, didn’t that make it easier for them to part with their savings? And that’s what it took. They were going to steal from my wife, if I’d actually had a wife, and yet I didn’t hold it against them. I gave them a steal of a deal. All things work together for good, and what’s good is good for me.

And the boss, he’s just doing his job. Larry. He just wants to motivate me. Telling me I have to sell 20% more than last year, which was 20% more than the year before that. If I give 110% of myself, he said, I could do it. He believes in me. I do to, I guess. I have to. It’s me and only me that determines if I get to stay in this job, and there’s only me to blame otherwise. Last week when they let Mr. Felka go, that was understandable. He wasn’t making his quota. They really let him stay longer than they had to. He’ll be happier now that he has more time on his hands. He was looking forward to retirement. It’s just a little earlier, after all. And he doesn’t really need the full retirement package. Where’s he going to go, and old man like that? He never took a vacation in his life. He was always here, trying to sell cars. And then last week Larry finally tells him that he needs a break. He could’ve died working himself like that, and then it would look bad for the dealership. And severance pay – they’re phasing that out, anyway. Not fair if he were to get it, when no one else will. No, Larry did the right thing if you ask me.

Pretty soon my hair will go from white to gray. But I’m not like Mr. Felka. No sir-ee-bob. I think positive, which is why I can’t afford to give that old man much thought. He made his own bed. It’s not up to me.

“Hi Larry. That was a sweet deal, eh – that old couple driving away in that Chrysler. You’ll have to drive something else home on the weekends, now.”

“Yeah, I’m swinging back. I’ll be up 20% over next year easy if I keep this up.”

“No. Felka was dead wood. You did what you had to do. I’d've done the same thing if I was in your shoes. After all, you have to answer for the whole company. Like you say, you were doing him a favor. It’s just that you’re compassionate, that’s all, so it’s kind of hard to know if when you’re doing the right thing. In this case, I’d say you definitely did.”

“Yeah, young blood is what we need all right! Gotta keep those tankers moving.”

Why was he looking at me so funny? Ah, he’s just trying to figure out if I think he should feel guilty. Serves him right, canning old Mr. Felka. Of course he’s right, though. That’s what I have to be – that ruthless… no, that committed, if I’m going to hang onto my job. I might even outlast Larry, if the corporate boys figure out their paying him too much. Hell, I might even have his job before long. I’ve just gotta keep up this uphill climb, keep Larry off my back, so he doesn’t have a good reason to… I just need to think positive. Positive. Positive.