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Organization: Church Of Divine Tastelessness, Quality Control Dept.
Keywords: tasteless FAQ
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Archive-name: tasteless/faq
Posting-Frequency: monthly
Last-Modified: 2003/12/03
Time-estimate: The FAQ takes about twenty minutes to read.
Disclaimer: Contains dirty words, foul thinking. You are hereby warned.

WELCOME TO ALT.TASTELESS!
Monthly Posting
v. 1.15

POST QUALITY. ENCOURAGE QUALITY. DISCOURAGE CRAP. BE
ENTERTAINING, BE CREATIVE, OR SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Editor's Note: Anybody who emails me a 'remove' or
'unsubscribe' message or sends me a nice little note telling
me how I need to get help will at least be laughed at or, at
the editor's discretion, will have their puckered little
missive posted to the newsgroup for abuse from the masses.
Consider yourself warned.

           "Get cancer. Die." -- Herry

1) What is alt.tasteless?

A newsgroup devoted to tasteless phenomena in all its forms.
A place for people with a twisted and sick sense of humour.
In alt.tasteless we like to get into the details. We want
the feel of it, the smell of it, the stench of it, every
little rotten and puss-oozing detail. And then, of course,
some rough pictures of it in alt.binaries.pictures.tasteless
or alt.tasteless.pictures.

You should never post binaries to alt.tasteless, because it
might cause some news admins to kill the group at their
site. Let me rephrase that: you should never...EVER...post
binaries to alt.tasteless, because it pisses off the
regulars no end and we will hunt you down and kill you,
slowly, painfully, and with great and lasting pleasure. Then
we'll post a highly detailed description of our activities
to alt.tasteless and pictures of your flayed and squicked
corpse to alt.binaries.pictures.tasteless and
alt.tasteless.pictures.

           "Spam is not allowed and, if you do it here, we
           will kill you, sell your wife and children into
           slavery, burn down your house, and plow your
           fields and sow them with salt so that nothing will
           ever grow there again."  --your friendly
           neighborhood misanthrope

Short jokes have their forum in alt.tasteless.jokes; take
advantage of that. A cross-post is rarely wise.

Some examples of popular alt.tasteless posts:

-- The joys of raping: epileptics / the dead / pregnants /
    minors / small furry animals with big wet eyes.

-- "The worst (scrotal/nasal/rectal) operation I've ever had."

-- The joys of: vomiting / farting / pissing / shitting /
    picking your nose / masturbating / menses / giving birth to
    children / sweating
    / slobbering.

-- Tasteless sex acts.

           "Share your cysts, your zits, your tits, your
           ingrown pubes with us. Tantalize us with pussy
           problems, tit trials, butt bleeding, femme
           frivolities, gigantic grogans, and amazing farts.
           Show us you're one of us."  --Mr. Crank

But tastes differ even within the tasteless kingdom. Some
like a story of a little boy sitting on the throne shouting
"Me go plop-plop! Me go plop-plop!" Others favor the
weeping spastic on the toilet, desperately struggling not to
miss the bowl, screaming, "Me go plop-plop! Me go
plop-plop!" The first is an example of a simple story of
taking a dump. The second brings more sophistication and
delicacy into the sordid affair, and is thus labeled as
being more "intelligent and mature," the label apparently
chosen because innocent children (or innocent adults, for
that matter) will not find it funny, except perhaps the
"plop-plop!" bit. The difference was put to a debate a while
ago, which ended thus:

2) I'm confused. Could someone explain the concept of
intelligent, mature tastelessness?

Original, non-monotonous material. Factual, based on fact,
or fictional; vividly graphic or repulsively image
provoking. Command of spelling and grammar at least to the
level of comprehensibility.

Examples of non-tasteless, time-wasting, useless, boring
cunt crap: uninspiring fiction, recycled fraternity jokes,
excessive pointless profanity, vanilla sex, elementary
playground-type "eww gross" urban legends, license plates,
funny names, 90% of all flaming; "Because his dick tastes of
blood," "Hearing the pelvic bone snap," "Oops, I farted,"
and all the other short jokes; Exploding Whale (true story),
Scrotum Self-Repair (not), Flaming Gerbil Up The Ass (not),
The Mormon Guide to Overcoming Masturbation, and plenty of
others. Post your own creations. Get the old stuff at our
archives, and tire of it in the comfort of your own living
room.

Additionally, please note that this is not alt.tacky or
alt.bad.taste. This means that merely posting "Kenny G., ha
ha ha" is not enough; you will generally have to couple it
with something really tasteless to get people's attention.
Yes, we have heard zillions of puke and huge bowel movement
stories, but don't let that keep you from posting one of
your own. The competition should just raise your ambitions
and thus the quality of your story.

Thus, having sussed out that your post is too interesting
for sci.med, too intelligent for alt.stupidity, too sick for
alt.sex.bestiality or alt.torture, too twisted for
talk.bizarre, too funny for rec.humor or
alt.tasteless.jokes, you choose alt.tasteless and post. The
group is unmoderated and the subject line of your article
will be seen by approximately 140,000 people worldwide.

3) WOW! What will happen next?

-- Some will ignore it.
-- Some will read part of it, then skip to the next article.
-- Some will read the whole thing.
-- Maybe one or more people will reply to you telling you what
    they thought of the article. They might even follow it up
    if they have something to add.

This is sadly the ideal picture. Sometimes people will
follow-up even though they have nothing to add, though they
think they do. Further, some very good tasteless posts
generate absolutely no response, or, rather, they generate
the same response you'd get if you wrote it on a piece of
paper and flushed it down the toilet.

4) Then why post?

Because you fucking well feel like it!

5) But this stuff is disgusting / immoral / dangerous / etc.!

           "It is YOUR God, They are YOUR rules, YOU burn in
           hell." --Uncle Brian (d. 2000)

Every now and then some dickless weasel constipated on his
own religion or set of values will bother the noble
freethinkers in AT with his standard "This is not funny"
drivel. Best thing is to ignore him. Next best is to mail
him with the likewise standard reply "Then why do you read
it?" A follow-up is not a good solution here, unless you
choose to flame him to ashes in such an inspired way that
the readership of alt.tasteless also benefits. This is a
very very hard thing to do. If, however, you do so, YOU ARE
THEN STRONGLY ENCOURAGED TO SET THE FOLLOW-UP TAG TO:
'Followup-To: alt.flame.' After all, we have important work
to do here.

This formal introduction may make alt.tasteless seem like a
terribly boring place, but all the stuff that's been
recommended (not commanded!) thus far has been done so in
order to make the newsgroup more chaotic and
interesting--not less. There's nothing more boring than
three-month cycles of repeated semi-tasteless garbage.

It's our hope that you'll now feel WELCOME IN ALT.TASTELESS!

Remember:

POST QUALITY. ENCOURAGE QUALITY. DISCOURAGE CRAP. BE
ENTERTAINING, BE CREATIVE, OR SHUT THE FUCK UP.

That's the simple secret to keeping alt.tasteless a living
forum and community. We'd rather see twelve good posts in a
year from your keyboard than twelve crap ones a week. You'll
even get more respect that way.

Every post of yours should contain some element of
tastelessness in it. That's the reason that people come
to visit AT--not for your personality, not for the profound
wit you suppose yourself endowed with. AT ain't a blog, it
ain't a chat room. There are plenty of other resources on
the Internet for that sort of thing. We want the real stuff,
the good stuff.

If in the event you find yourself posting a quick follow-up
to a message--a one-off, or some other sort of
quick-and-dirty post-- it is INCUMBENT UPON YOU that you
include an "Obligatory Tasteless" (ObT) passage to your
post. This typically goes at the end of the post, but there
are no hard-and-fast rules here. The simple idea is that no
post of yours shall fly through the ether to AT without
containing, at least potentially, some good content in it.
In the ObT, tell us about your recent bowel movement, the
decaying carcass of your dog, the scent of the woman in the
pig-fattening pen beside you at work. Whatever. Just make
an effort. Do it right. There's enough ineptitude in the world;
we don't need more in AT.

When you read a good post, don't forget to thank people for
amusing you. That's the only payment they get. And don't be
afraid to tell badly behaving idiots to shape up. That's
probably the only education they'll ever get. If they can't
take the heat, they don't belong.

6) My site doesn't carry alt.tasteless and/or
    alt.binaries.pictures.tasteless. What can I do about it?

           "With modern GUI's like WIN2K/XP and Mac OS X, even
           a spastic ring-tailed lemur with poor eyesight and
           Downs' syndrome should have little difficulty
           navigating the Internet and finding desired
           information."  --Citizen Ted

Best bet: Grovel at the feet of your news admin. Or get a
different ISP.

If that doesn't work you'll have to read/post to it from
another site. Once upon a time there was a FAQ about how you
could access banned newsgroups, but sites like Google and
Supernews have pretty much made that obsolete. And if
that's not enough of a hint, then you wouldn't survive AT
for long.

7) Where are the archives?

AT isn't fully archived, but there are a few spots of
seething suppuration here and there that you may want to
check out.

On the web, see:

Juan Rico's Tasteless Toilet (with content in part inherited
from Jaydog):

<http://tasteless.teneight.com>

Lorri's Twisted Shrine:

<http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Disco/3645/>

Dave and Kristen Hall's Stuff:

<http://www1.iwvisp.com/thehalls/tasteless/index.html>

. . . Chris Pando's archives:

<http://pando.org/misc/at-archives/at-archive-1992a.html>
<http://pando.org/misc/at-archives/at-archive-1993a.html>

. . . Mr. S. Pisser:

<http://www.mindspring.com/~squicker/>

"Homicide Heroes":

<http://www.apollo12.webfusion.co.uk/Crime/homicide.htm>

"Save the Choad" at:

<http://www1.iwvisp.com/thehalls/tasteless/tasteless.html>

There's the AT Awards page:

<http://www.teethboard.com/atawards/>

. . . and the alt.tasteless Dead Pool page:

<http://www.ila.com/atdp03.htm>

or, if that official page for 2003 is still
offline/outdated, check:

<http://www.angelfire.com/nv/scharff/deadpool2003.html>

Citizen Ted is coordinating the 2004 Dead Pool; the
official page can be found at:

<http://www.citizented.com/atdp2004.html>

There's also usually a Tasteless Secret Santa (see below)
page, but it's down at the moment.

Don't forget about the possibilities of searching Google
groups to unlock the mysteries of the Great Old Ones and
otherwise reveal ancient alt.tasteless history.

8) What about flames . . . ?

           "Oh, and welcome to alt.tasteless: the rabid
           doberman of the Alt hierarchy." --StukaFox

Tedious, aren't they? Some can elevate it to an art form
(alt.flame/talk.bizarre '91 and '92, alt.peeves '93 and
'94). If you can too, flame away. But beware; we've got a
few regular denizens that are professionals. You may well
live to regret flaming in a.t.

8.1)  . . . trolls. . . ?

Excerpted from the Internet Jargon File:

           troll v., n.  1. [From the Usenet group
           alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on Usenet
           designed to attract predictable responses or flames;
           or,the post itself.

           (...) 2. An individual who chronically trolls
           in sense 1; regularly posts specious arguments,
           flames or personal attacks to a newsgroup, discussion
           list,or in email for no other purpose than to annoy
           someone or disrupt a discussion.

Talk about tedium. Regulars in alt.tasteless are not known
for their tolerance of cluelessness, and can therefore
become prime troll-bait. The weary old troll in the form of
a "how do I unsubscribe from this *disgusting* mailing
list?" message still snares a few each time it shows up,
every now and then.

Other trolls are somewhat more sophisticated, but their goal
and purpose remains the same: to draw a predictable and
shopworn response. It's not hard to recognize them, so the
responsible AT reader should know better than to encourage
them. We've got too much noise and not enough signal to
warrant a less-than-original torture flame. We prefer you
not give them the satisfaction.

There's a general rule of thumb with regard to reponding to
trolls, crossposts, and such in alt.tasteless. That rule of
thumb is as follows: flaming crossposters and/or neophytes,
--or ANYONE, for that matter--is perfectly all right as long
as you understand that you're probably not going to change
a thing in their posting habits, and thus you should
post/flame for the benefit of others potentially reading
the thread, i.e., you should make your response as amusing
and interesting as possible.

But being amusing and/or interesting and/or creative is
what posting to alt.tasteless is all about, isn't it? And
yet it's so very hard to do it well. And then there's so
much tard-like behavior out there and so little time and
energy to address it all the way you'd really like to.
Thus, feeding the trolls is usually considered pointless,
boring, and a sign of clue deficiency. So, unless you want
to make it your life's work to combat the trolls, don't.
Instead, go read the alt.syntax.tactical FAQ at

<http://ddi.digital.net/~gandalf/trollfaq.html>

Make sure that in addressing the problem, you don't
become more of a problem.

8.2)  ...and newsgroup invasions?

           "Hot $hit on Toast, we're now getting crossposts
           from alt.tasteless, the absolute cesspool of
           USENET!" --brucewolfe@erols_.com, in
           alt.support.arthritis

Freaking out normal people with our hideousness has a long
tradition in alt.tasteless. The first recorded AT NI was
Rauli Lauhanen's one-man invasion of talk.abortion,
talk.rape and soc.motts, Dec 13th 1991. He told
alt.tasteless that he was about to invade the
faggot/lesbian/religious fundamentalist groups using his new
account.

On Dec 17th he posted a series of highly offensive
rants/stories, the first being:

           From: [e-mail] (Lauhanen Rauli)
           Newsgroups: talk.abortion,talk.rape,soc.motss,
           alt.tasteless
           Subject: Re: Homosexuality and Rape
           Summary: Also women have the right to be raped !

They all got cancelled, and he lost the account
(temporarily).

Rec.pets.cats was first targetted as a deserving havoc spot
in March '93, and war was declared. On the front line we
found:

           From: [e-mail]
           (Mark A. Pitcher)
           Newsgroups: alt.tasteless
           Subject: WAR PROGRESS REPORT: A.T. vs R.P.C.

But the hardest (and most publicized) battle was that in
September instigated by Adam Steele ([e-mail]),
with Trashcan Man ([e-mail]) doing the hardest work,
and losing his student account in the process. Read all
about it on Wired's web site at:

<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.05/alt.tasteless.html>

Before embarking on an invasion consider whether it'll be
fun enough to be worthwhile. Usually it won't. If you're new
to AT, you may also want to consider whether the anal rape
you're likely to get at the hands of the AT regulars will be
worth it. If you're truly interested in invasions, wander
over to alt.troll or alt.syntax.tactical. And leave AT out
of it.

Actually, alt.tasteless is invaded from time to time by
clueless newbies, some being professional clueless newbies
who take pleasure in pushing the buttons that starts stupid,
tiring flame wars with the same old tired, nominally
tasteless imagery. If you want to punish them, do it
silently somewhere where you won't look like a fool. Old
timers know how to do this.

9) What is this shit-eating picture that everybody keeps
    referring to?

           "Well, everyone here already knows I don't like
           spoo in the face. But that's an aesthetic thing."
           --Lorri R.

Probably hb2a.gif or hb6.gif, the most common names for two
pictures of a woman pinching a loaf into the mouth of a man.
They're sort of an alt.tasteless idol, and they appear under
many names. But they're quite good, actually. lortbg.gif is
the small version that can be used as a background on a home
page. Of course, nowadays you can find all sorts of stuff
like this on the web with minimal searching.

10) Aren't you all just a bunch of 15-year-old wankers?

A 1992 survey fixed the average a.t subscriber's age at 27
years and a 1993 survey fixed the average weight at 200
pounds (but that's an altogether different matter). A 1994
survey then corrected the average age to 27.53 years, and
the average weight to 184.8 pounds. 89.4% considered
themselves male. All were wankers, and 92.1% admitted to
having beaten off in a public place. The 1997 survey updated
things still further--the average age of an AT subscriber
then was 31 years old, with a professed range from 17 to 55
and an average weight of 193.1 pounds. 88.1% were male last
time they checked. And an even 100% admitted to wanking an
average of every 1.143 days. Assuming an average of 1.5
teaspoons of spoo shot each time, that means the typical AT
male spills 79.8 ounces of joy juice every year.

So, to answer your question: yep, we're a bunch of wankers.

11) Well, what about the alt.tasteless Who's Who? How come it
     hasn't been updated recently? (Or, alternately) I
     want to update it!

Periodically, someone runs across the old alt.tasteless
Who's Who FAQ, a list of Great Old Ones from circa 1993. The
question then is posed, "Why don't we update this?" There
usually follows two or three weeks of flames discussing the
pros and cons of having a Who's Who. We -always- decide that
a Who's Who FAQ is a sure sign of a newsgroup that is so
full of in-jokes and cliques and self-absorption that it has
lost contact with whatever made it interesting in the first
place (ever try to read rec.humor.oracle.d?). In
alt.tasteless, we're all a bunch of unwashed heathens.
Everyone's an outsider, having been relegated here through
the hatred and disdain of the rest of the newsgroups. Yes,
there are AT celebrities; we have regulars who are
well-respected in AT and roundly hated throughout the rest
of Usenet. But this does not grant them any special status.
In alt.tasteless, you're only as good as your last post. We
are hyenas; we are vultures; we are cannibals. In
alt.tasteless, we eat our own.

With that, we present:

11b) The Official Alt Dot Tasteless Who's Who, by
      Tasteless Ginny:

-- Did you read here?
-- Did you post here?
-- Do you know how to spell your name?
-- Have you picked your ears, ass or nose in the past 48
    hours and smelled, tasted, or shown off your fingers to
    someone for them to smell or taste?

    OK, you're in.  Unless you're not.

12a) What's the 'Tasteless Secret Santa'?

The "Tasteless Secret Santa Gift Exchange" (or, more simply,
"TSS") is a cozy seasonal activity. Past TSS coordinators
have included:

-- Rob North, who took over from
-- Dave Hall, who took over from
-- Pamelush

TSS is about sharing tastelessness across geographic and
political borders, and involves you sending a package of,
er, "goodies," to someone you may or may not have ever met.
The coordinator usually starts accepting reservations to
participate around August, and closes the reservations
mid-October or so. Watch the newsgroup for more information.

12b) How do I sign up to be someone's TSS, and to have a
      TSS assigned to me?

RobNorth is coordinating for 2003. His instructions:

    From: [e-mail] (Nanook of the North)
    Newsgroups: alt.tasteless
    Subject: TSS Registration Alert
    Date: 7 Aug 2003 15:28:47 -0700

    Greetings.  It's that time of year again.  Sort of.

    I'm posting this now because I will be inaccessible until
    the end of September. So, here's the deal.

    If you want to participate in this year's Tasteless Secret
    Santa gift exchange, you must do the following:

    * Fill out the form below. Sorry, I ain't got the webpage
      stuff.

    * Send it to [e-mail]. (Don't just reply to this;
      the 'From:' e-mail address of this note is Tango Uniform.)
      The 'Subject:' MUST be 'TSS'. If it isn't, it goes into the
      junk.  Hotmail's filters are ruthless.

    * Send it before October 1, 2003.

    * Because I won't be accessing e-mail, I won't be responding
      immediately. When I get back, I will send an acknowledgment
      e-mail to everyone who sent in a registration. I will then
      allow a week's grace for lateniks or screwups to try again.

    * On or around Columbus Day/Canadian Thanksgiving, I will
      send out the assignments.

    Any complaints?  I don't care, I won't hear them.

    This alert will NOT be reposted. If someone misses this and
    they're too fuckin' dumb to use groups.google.com, they
    don't deserve to live.

    Over and out.

    -RobNorth

============================================================

OFFICIAL TSS REGISTRATION FORM (email to [e-mail])

Name:
Email address:
Mailing address:

Sex (upon birth):
Shirt size:
Underwear size:
Length of choad:
Bra size:
Do I have a sexual preference?
Piercings/Tattoos:
Bizarre allergies:

Do I have a VCR?
   If so, what format (NTSC, PAL or SECAM):
Do I have a DVD player?
   If so, what region:

Tell me about your computer...
   Processor:
   Operating System:

Am I willing to ship my gift overseas?

Recognizing that some folks have squeemish spouses,
nosy bosses, etc., please indicate any problems you
may have in receiving your gift, and the required
workaround, so you may get your goodies without undue
pain or professional embarrassment:

Final Comments (any additional information your TSS
might like to know):

============================================================

13) AT awards? I've heard something about awards being given out,
     and of people struggling to be Mr. Alt.Tasteless.

That is the case. Every year we try to decide who to honor
for their efforts in the group. During the year you're
encouraged to save nominations grouped in the following
categories:

-- Mr. A.T. - the most tasteless male among us, period.
-- Ms. A.T. - the most tasteless female among us, period.
-- Mr. Rookie - the most tasteless male newcomer to the group.
-- Ms. Rookie - the most tasteless female newcomer to the group.
-- A.T. Poster Child - the most tasteless public figure of '02.
-- A.T. Fiction - best fictional story of the year.
-- A.T. Non-Fiction - most tasteless true story, either public
    (e.g. news story) or private.
-- A.T. Real Life - most tasteless personal experience by
    an AT contributor.
-- A.T. Quote - anything short enough to fit into a .sig.
-- A.T. Flame - the most vicious, biting and/or effective
    flame posted in AT
-- A.T. Concept - the most revolting concept (either real
    or theoretical) presented in AT
-- A.T. Product - the most tasteless commercial product.
-- A.T. Work Of Art - URLs, GIFs, software, etc.
-- A.T. Poetry - the vilest, most imaginative prose, as posted
    in AT during 2002.
-- A.T. Lifetime Achievement, aka "The Paul Ess Memorial" - a
    tribute to an AT poster's entire body of work over several
    years. Most often awarded posthumously, e.g. Paul Ess,
    Uncle Brian, Vinnie Jordan, but living denizens are
    also eligible.

Near election time someone steps typically forward and asks for
nominations.

For 2003, our hosts will again be Omicron Delta Pineapple
and Jonathan Blaque. See <http://teethboard.com/atawards/>
for more info.

14) Is there an AT masonic-style greeting?

Yup. Pretend to wipe your ass, then give the fellow your
hand. The call for distress is "Will nobody help the widow's
son fuck his dead father!?" This will usually give you all
the help you want.

The tough guys greet each other by blowing their noses onto
their hands, then shaking with them, with the collective
snots being squished out around the edges. After separation,
the licking of the hand is optional. Only known to be in use
in Australia.

           "There are *dozens* of real-life Walking Time Bombs
           lurking in and around these parts -- living,
           breathing human nightmares that might just leap at
           the chance to call your bluff." --Vomit Boy

It has been known to happen that AT'ers on various coasts of
the US and in other places worldwide may gather together for
reasons best not mentioned here. We've seen everything from
a trip to the strip-joint for two AT'ers from the same area
to a full-blown SquickFest with AT'ers from thousands of
miles away showing up. It's always all nice and friendly and
stuff until, suddenly, it's not.

While for some of the regular readers and posters, AT is a
place to check out some gross-making fiction, there are
others who are very serious. Here's a secret: many of the
people who stick around AT -are not very nice-. No, really.
Sure, there's plenty of made-up crap floating around.
However, most of the better stuff is 100% true. We really do
have people here who eat shit. We really do have a gay
skinhead who has fucked or been fucked by over 1,200 men. We
really do have people who have done hard jail time for
assault. We have members to whom extreme torture is a sexual
thrill. We have members who have committed rape, molested
children, killed animals just for the fun of it. As a
general rule, WE ARE NOT MAKING THIS STUFF UP. So if you
decide you want to meet someone in real life that you met on
alt.tasteless (or anywhere else on the Internet, for that
matter), make damn sure you know what you're getting into.
The loose collection of nutbags that comprises alt.tasteless
will not be responsible for what happens if you decide to
meet some random shithole in a bar and you end up in
multiple suitcases.

We will, however, laugh about it.

15) I want to become an alt.tastelesser? How?

Possess, use, and flaunt a sick sense of humor. Cultivate
disgusting personal habits. Write about them, and post the
writings to a worldwide network for strangers to marvel
over.

Get as much as you can from the web archives. Share them
with, and thus alienate, all your friends.

Let's face it, though. If you don't find yourself reading
through the archives when you should be working, hanging on
every word, staying up late at night to Google up pictures
of maggots and piss and shit and bloated decaying corpses in
all their wondrous variations; if you don't feel in yourself
a thrill as you stare open-mouthed at conjoined twins'
fetuses preserved in formaldehyde, if you don't feel a sense
of awe and inspiration in reading about rare and
debilitating diseases; if reading about the Crusades and
adventures of Vlad the Impaler fail to bring a happy tear to
your eye; if the wonder, mystery, and magnificence of the
Congo floor maggot is lost upon you; if you don't get a
feeling that all that crap -means something-, then you
probably shouldn't be reading alt.tasteless in the first
place, let alone posting to it.

16) I'd like to have an academically waterproof excuse
     for reading AT.

Over the years, various AT'ers have recommended texts whose
material perhaps meshes with the AT'ers scholarly and
literary appetites. Those who have provided such
recommendations are for the most part no longer around to
defend their choices, so the list below is presented with
no guarantees or warranties, implied or explicit.

a) A good place to start might be the FDA/CFSAN Defect Action
Handbook, located at:

<http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/dalbook.html>

This is the book that sets out exactly what kind of
surprises are legally allowed in your food; things like the
amount of fly eggs in tomato juice, the amount of rodent
feces in hot dogs, and so on. Great dinner reading.

b) A hardcover option might be _Kritik der zynischen Vernunft_,
written by Peter Sloterdijk. It might be translated to your
language. The book is about cynicism, the ancient and
wonderful approach to life. It's well-written, funny and
astoundingly learned. Adorno in a good mood.

[Editor's note: a comment from a Deutscher
correspondant: "The book is mostly boring; YMMV."]

c) _Rabelais and his World_, by Mikhail Bakhtin.
It's not an easy read, but it tells you about
life in the Middle Ages, a wonderful age comparable to
our own on many counts.

d) _Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition_, by Barry R. Burg
(New York U. Press). Describes how most if not all of the
pirates and buccaneers who sailed the Caribbean from 1650
to 1700 had sex with each other.

17) What are some additional resources for me to get to know
     alt.tasteless a little bit better?

Alt.tasteless is a strange and wondrous place: an enigma, a
contradiction. It denizens are attracted to its
mildew-covered halls because, generally speaking, they
eschew and despise order, tidiness, formality, rectitude,
probity, authority, and pretty much anything that thrives
under the Light (preferring to worship Darkness, Chaos,
Entropy, Cynicism, Pestilence, and Decay). On the other
hand, you won't find a bunch of people swifter to apply the
cat o' nine tails to your glistening plump pneumatic
buttocks when you fuck up. Nor will you find people who
enjoy it as much, often achieving orgasm upon hearing you
shriek and holler.

With that in mind, it might be a good idea to review
Internet etiquette. The information below applies to Usenet
as a whole and the Internet in general, not just
alt.tasteless.  If you are at all interested in not pissing
off everyone you meet on Usenet, you'll at least browse the
following sites. Also, make a habit of reading everything in
news.announce.newusers at least once a year, and browse
through news.answers occasionally.

As a minimum, you probably ought to read the following
documents in news.announce.newusers, particularly if you are
new to Usenet:

-- What is Usenet?
-- What is Usenet?  A second opinion.
-- Rules for posting to Usenet
-- Hints on writing style for Usenet
-- A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community
-- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette

If you don't like to read so much, you shouldn't be on the
Internet, so piss off.

Web sites of interest include:

The Usenet Info Center:
<http://sunsite.unc.edu/usenet-i/>

The news.admin.net-abuse FAQ:
<http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq.html>

The rn Killfile FAQ:
<http://www.faqs.org/faqs/killfile-faq/>

The Internet FAQ Archives:
<http://www.faqs.org/>

18) This FAQ has a lot of big words in it. I don't understand.
     Can't you just give me the gist of what I should remember
     about alt.tasteless? Like, in fifteen words or less?

That's easy:

POST QUALITY. ENCOURAGE QUALITY. DISCOURAGE CRAP. BE
ENTERTAINING, BE CREATIVE, OR SHUT THE FUCK UP.

19) Well, then, end of FAQ.


                     -QUALITY CONTROL DIVISION-
                     -ALT TASTELESS INDUSTRIES-
                               -2003-