Whole Earth Extended

In the last issue I wrote about the Whole Earth Catalogue. Since then I have come across one of the supplements to the Catalogue. It is a sufficiently useful extension of the Catalogue to warrant a few more words.

To start with, the full title of the supplement is ‘The Difficult But Possible Supplement to the Whole Earth Catalogue’. It is thinner and cheaper than the Catalogue, appears twice as often as the Catalogue and is no more difficult and no less possible than the Catalogue. On the inside cover it describes its function as follows:

‘The Supplement corrects and up­dates information in the most recent Catalogue, carries on-going research toward the next Catalogue, and publishes what doesn’t fit in the Catalogue but does relate to the use of tools’.

One third of the supplement relates directly to the Catalogue: corrections, further information about the items in the Catalogue, new suggestions for items to be included, queries, mail and details of the production costs. Broadcast Yourself

The Case

The case is complicated by the fact that it is composed of two elements one of which is simply the confusion the other has got itself in.

A piece of string coming from nowhere and going out of sight has got itself into a fantastic knot called ‘the present situation’. It is this that the prosecution, defense, defendant, judge and everyone else involved in the case is caught up in. The prosecution says that the defendant endangers ‘something’. It never seems to be able to define exactly what it means. The defense says that the prosecution has got its string tangled. The prosecution has, says the defense, imperceptibly over the years, come to identify itself with the knot. And now, as the prosecution thinks that it is the knot, it is naturally concerned about the knot’s continued exis­tence. It is this that the prosecution thinks the defendant endangers. The knot is largely the prosecution’s un­certainty about the basis of its reality anyway. The vague awareness it has of this only makes it more paranoiac, particularly if someone seems to be about to point this out and clarify the confusion. Domain Checker

Diversification seems

down of hard-core pornography. There are the inevitable pages of personal ads collected under a section called ‘Baubles and Balls’. The paper also acts as a vigilant watch-dog against shysters and fleecers who con any of their readers into buying lousy goods or joining non-existent clubs. There is no hesitation in criticising a product that is advertised in the next column.  Aumi Its political com­ment is in the ‘tell it like it is’ tradition of the underground press. When Senator Everett Dirk-sen died and all the American press wept crocodile tears, Screw began its obituary: ‘Dirksen was a campy fool with almost no saving grace. A dis­honest crook with senility his constant companion.’

Is London missing anything by not seeing Screw?

Al Goldstein is a paunchy 33 year old with a goatee beard. He once worked for schlock magazines like the National Enquirer—the sort of tabloid that has headlines like ‘Why I turned My Twins into Hamburger Meat’. Jim Buckley is 25 and his background is the New York underground press. He was heavily involved in the now defunct New York tree Press. In November 1968, on election day, they brought out the first edition of Screw. It sold 4,000 copies and today this issue is a collector’s item. In less than a year the weekly circulation soared to 150,000. Then came the busts and the figure slipped back to 100,000. The original investment in the paper was 350 dollars and half of that was put up by a hip air-hostess. Not long ago a very respectable firm of financiers offered, via a front organisation, one hundred thousand dollars in a taKe-over bid. Al and Jim turned it down. Screw is now in the big time. But it costs plenty of dollars to hire the best First Amendment lawyers in the land and Goldstein and Buckley are fighting the obscenity charges right the way up to the Supreme Court. Blog / News

Pornzina Fun City, USA

Flesh meat hair pink orange more hair plastic skin coy smiles pyramids singles twos and three-somes -all around Times Square and the neighbouring streets it’s Freedom Land! The emporia of porn­ography are doing a roaring trade. Inside the shops customers with their brief-cases are urged to buy, buy, buy. B Line Boys One sign reads ‘No Ball-Breakers  Here’: another says ‘Be 21 or Be Gone’. At the back of- every stor^” are the 25 cent nickelo­deons where commuters about to catch the Long Island Railroad can linger over two minute films of girls showing their all. A few years back none of these shops would have survived the statutes of New York. Now they ring the chimes of freedom and the cashbox seven days a week. Pick up any of the paperbacks on sale and conjugate the verbs of the emporia—I grunt, you squeeze, he throbbed, we came, they laid. All this for two dollars and fifty cents a bash—the fun in Fun City, it’s un­believable! Naturally the big boys are moving in on the porn shops. They are far too profitable to be left alone as the mark-ups are astronomical. HEEL download-mp3 Occasionally the law fines the odd book-seller. But there is no serious harrassment.