I'm sending this message to both the UK
based AAA list and my own NZ AAA Aotearoa list.
Here in New Zealand it is already Sunday, April 23, 2000, the
official end of the Five Year Plan of the AAA. The AAA List has
therefore been full of closure statements from the various cells,
with the notable exception of Mr Balli and his 333 Extension.
On December 4, 1999 the AAA Aotearoa held a Symposium here at
Kitchener St called 'First (,) Into Space'. At the plenary session
under the washing line it was decided that AAA Aotearoa would
become an umbrella for AAA activity in Enzed and that we would
fracture into individual cells for all other purposes.
Thus Baaary became Kitchener West AAA
Maaark became AAA Kitchener East
Saaam continued as Te Aro AAA
Millennium set up a company called Fireships :-)
and so on.
The consensus was also that we had hardly begun our efforts to
get into space so are hardly going to pull up at the end of the
so-called 'Five Year Plan'.
As outlined in 'Suspension in Reality 1', the tendency towards
community based space travel that has come to be titled the AAA
Aotearoa did not come into existence on April 23, 1995. Rather
it is the continuation of an effort that goes back to my address
to the 1990 McGillicuddy Serious Party Symposium in which I argued
that the Great Leap Backwards was only possible on another planet
and that a push for Mars be initiated immediately. The AAA title
slipped into our consciousness in 1996 at a time when McGillicuddy
was fracturing and was freely used by me in a McGSP context, even
while our initial efforts to contact the AAA proper got nowhere
for some two years. The AAA Aotearoa was formed by a meeting in
Nelson at New Years 1998, some three months before contact with
the AAA mainframe was finally established. As *Autonomous* Astronauts
we see new real reason for us to follow the crowd down the plughole.
As I type Issues 4 and 5 of Suspension in Reality are in the envelopes
and about to be posted. They represent a clearance of the backlog
of material but there is much more to be written. The Ballardian
in me likes the constant revisiting of similar themes, so we can
continue to organise more and more elaborate balloon stunts and
then write about them for some time to come. Twains motor seems
to work as a liquid thing so it should ignite. The AAA logo is
resplendent on the Life of Galileo propaganda that we're distributing.
The Mars Mission was due to happen this weekend but has been put
off cos we're too busy. In short we've plenty to do. Our NZ audience,
small though it is, has never been aware of a Five Year Plan so
won't miss it I don't reckon.
So I won't unsubscribe to the AAA List. Perhaps I'll land up in
this room on the other side of the world by myself, like some
exhausted survivor of a party under SETI program dish. I will
try and subscribe directly to the Anti-Starwars stuff that Neil
sends out and which has been the main body of stuff I've passed
on to the AAA Aotearoa list. I will be in Britain in September
and October so fully intend to find you various members of the
withered AAA network then. Until then, see you in space
Have Fun
Mark
Free Lunch
PO Box 380
Hamilton
021 256 0796 & 07 853 5332
www.oldfarm.co.nz/freelunch.html