photo booth Stone Road Mall October 1993

john_stevenson@magic-bbs.corp.apple.com


vision
attitude
humour
focus
passion
intelligence
modesty

I moderate the Internet Cafe - the forum which rose from the ashes of the Electronic Frontier of the pre-crash MAGIC. I call MAGIC every evening on a WATTS line from (in Cory Doctorow's words) "someplace in the middle of nowhere."

I'm an artist and activist, though I make little money at either. I have a degree in theatre from Dalhousie in Halifax, but I took comp sci and other stuff as well. I know more then I really care to about a variety of topics, including partical physics, professional wrestling, Japanese cinema, and the early Christian church.

I worked for nine years in community and student radio. I produced, hosted, interviewed, managed, did the program guide, drank at the NMS, and told jokes to Keith Spicer. I'm currently developing co-owned businesses with the Ontario Worker Co-op Federation. I am part of Spiral Communications, which does publication management, consulting, graphic design, and other things. I am also working to establish a new, free Internet dialup called FreeSpace in the Guelph/KW area. Most likely I am off to Montreal in the fall to do a Master's in media studies at Concordia. and drink like a goddamn fish. I grew up in Nova Scotia, and miss the weather and land there but not the racism and frustration of the culture.

I'm 29, 6'1", 195 pounds, shoulders, wear black, screwball eyes and cute as a bug. My cat's name is Fimo. I am not happily married, or married at all, for that matter. (This would be a good place to tell you about Sonja, who went to the Czech Republic, but I won't; the Complete Letters to Prague are available on request via email).

Right now I'm listening to Nirvana's last, the October Project, Pearl Jam, Coltrane, and the Cocteau Twins; reading Doris Lessing, the New Yorker, WIRED (the banned issue), Sandman, and every Internet rag I can get my hands on.

snailmail

41 Norwich Street E.
Guelph, ON
N1H 8E2 Canada

voice

+1 (519) 766 9186

email

john_stevenson@magic-bbs.corp.apple.com
owcfstev@web.org

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I used to have a huge crush on Sarah McLachlin, but not under the circumstances that you might imagine. I don't know how old she was - maybe nineteen or so - but it was well before she was signed by Arista or released her first album. No, we were in the late-1980s, frustrated version of Halifax. She was in a band with Barry Walsh (who's sister, Janice, I was madly in love with) called the October Game, one of those pumping synth bands that lives on only on CFNY all-request mornings. I was a tortured proto-Goth/jazz kid slaving away at the Dalhousie college radio station trying to organize everything, including my own life, and heaven only knows how I did.

My feverish, simple desire for her reached its zenith at Gillian McCain's post-Lawn Jam party. All the kids were there, each, I expect, with their own fevers, most in various hues and tints of black. There was plenty of alcohol and loud, embarrassing voices. The evening culminated in Gillian's version of a love-in - we played Spin- the-Bottle. This was my first and, I am sad to say, last experience with this wondrous activity. Squeals of joy from the assembled multitudes met Jen and Nat, old lovers who one never saw together in public, as they kissed and kissed and kissed. And when I spun the bottle, it stopped at Sarah.

But there was nothing more after that moment. Nature may abhor a vacuum, or so I have read, but that moment had no substance beyond itself - it is good for a story only.

What do you want to know about me?

I moderate the Electronic Frontier forum here on MAGIC, an area that brings together some of the most diverse and strangly focused people I have ever met. TEF focuses on the cultural and legal aspects of technological change. You can draw your own conclusions about my hacker activity from TEF - just don't jump to any.

I studied theatre for four years at Dalhousie University, and both my love and fear of performance grew during this time. My world became big during this time with radio - I worked at CKDU-FM, Dalhousie's campus station, from the time it went FM right until 1988. It grew, really grew, in that time, becoming a diverse place.

More later.

JS

I miss the storms my father and I used to watch roll in off Northumberland Straight.