Every so often, though with decreasing frequency these days, a journal appears in print that is subversive enough to balance delicately on the edge of mainstream yet backed by enough money to warrant a glossy cover. These journals are occasionally found in the large chain bookstores, a few copies buried amongst their larger, less inflammatory brethren. And it was in just such a location that I, with eyes wide with delight, recently discovered a copy of The Thresher, sporting a wide variety of goodness on the cover ranging from Surgical Deprogramming and Meth-Sick Goddesses to Madness & Mysticism and Scientologists Punked!

My eyes continued their expressive posturing by welling with tears when I spotted the name of the editor on the inside cover: R.U. Sirius

R.U. Sirius is perhaps best known for his alternative tech magazine Mondo 2000, which starting in 1989 began glamorized the then rising geek-scene and reported (though I use the term loosely) on the formerly fringe scenes of nootropics, life-extension, human augmentation and a host of other similar issues.

It has been quite a few years since my former life as a cryotransport technician and my involvement with the budding transhumanist movement, and as I stared down at R.U.’s name on the inside cover of this journal I sensed a sort of home sickness, seeing a name that was so near and dear to me that also represented a scene with which I hadn’t cavorted in years. I realized then that there was still some nagging need to pursue these former obsessions, albeit with a radically new point of view.

And as it turns out, R.U. himself admits to having drifted away from the “scene”, as I’ll call it.
Shift.com states in their introduction to an interview with R.U. back in 2002:

“Sirius hardly goes online anymore, except for research. The truth is, the Godfather of GeekChic has moved on.”

Yet his writing is still as relevant and interesting as ever, and I was delighted to discover by sheer happenstance this issue, now in its third volume.

But as it stands, the fun stops there, with issue three, for I am unable, despite my best efforts, to locate any current information about the journal.

The website itself is displayed prominently on the back of the journal: www.thethresher.com. Anyone visiting the site will be sorely disappointed to discover that it in fact does not exist.

A WHOIS search of the domain turns up the following:

Domain Name: THETHRESHER.COM
Registrar: WOOHO T & C CO., LTD. D/B/A RGNAMES.COM
Whois Server: whois.rgnames.com
Referral URL: http://www.rgnames.com
Name Server: NS.BUYDOMAINS.COM
Name Server: THIS-DOMAIN-FOR-SALE.COM
Status: ACTIVE
Updated Date: 27-oct-2004
Creation Date: 21-oct-2004
Expiration Date: 21-oct-2005

and a search for the publisher, David Latimer and Altar Inc., turns up absolutely no information relevant to any future plans for the journal.

There are plenty of interviews with R.U. Sirius, yet not a single one is more recent than 2003, and everything seems to indicate that beyond his book Counterculture Through the Ages : From Abraham to Acid House, published only last month, R.U. is involved only in a project called NeoFiles, a website that seems to focus on interviews with such thinkers as NLP co-creator Richard Bandler and Extropy Institute founder Max More, and appears to be run by a life-extension supplement manufacturer by the name of Life Enhancement.

There is hope, however. The third and thus far last issue of The Thresher went to print in 2003, and despite the fact that the magazine itself states that it is:

“published (approximately) tri-annually”

which would mean that we should have seen more issues by now, R.U. is himself quoted as calling it a “yearly journal”.

With any luck, The Thresher has not mysteriously disappeared in the style of the nuclear sub carrying the same name, and rather than find it buried at 8000 feet, we’ll once again see its glossy cover gracing the shelves at newsstands; or at least crammed tightly between its larger, more PC cousins.
–

MORE INTERVIEWS WITH R.U. SIRIUS
San Francisco Chronicle
betterPropadanda
BETTERHUMANS
ctheory.net - very old, from ‘96

tags: mondoglobo, neofiles, ru sirius, ru sirius show, the thresher

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 5th, 2004 at Dec 05, 04 | 8:29 pm and is filed under Books, Featured Articles, Just Noumenon Posts, Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.