The Introduction.  Not to be confused with The Inquisition.  Different Thing Entirely. 
Introduction        General Rant        Newbie Info        News and Notes/Commendations        What's New        Site Info

OH SH * * !   ANOTHER  REVAMP?
In the words of a few famous people at one time or another, "Nah."  This is at best what could be considered a "Site Clean Up."  It's come to my attention that my front page and a lot of other things are slow to load, have far too much beginner information for frequent users, and that the whole damned thing could be sped up easily by streamlining the whole thing again.  So that's what I'm in the progress of doing.  You'll notice that the old site, located at http://php.iupui.edu/~mhughey [LINK OBSOLETE] still has the old crusty front page, so if you want that Rocky Horror picture, snatch it from there ASAP, because I can't guarantee how soon it'll make another appearance here, and I almost guarantee it's only a matter of time before the powers that be at my old school decide to purge my archives.

In fact, it's partially because of my moving from IUPUI's server space that I decided it was time for some streamlining.  I have a new server site, for those of you haven't noticed, at Oaktree, and so far, I'm pretty happy with it.  So, yes, before you ask, I will continue to try to make the Hall of Statuary one of the Priemere ASFR sites out there.  I've received more compliments from this site than I have for any story or photomanip I've ever done, with good reason, so I'm just going to continue plugging until people's eyes pop out.
 
Of course, this site couldn't do what it has without help from each and every one of you all, from the hardcore statuephiles, to the people who found this room by mistake and found themselves sucked in to the world of petrification kicking and screaming.  The site recently broke 20,000 hits, an absolutely INSANE number when you get right down to thinking about it.  Some of you have even been around since the old Times New Roman Title Page (shudder), sending me your photomanips, edits, stories and the like.  Every one of you has my gratitude, and don't think that this many people can hit a site without notice.  Give yourselves a huge pat on the back-- you deserve it!  I promise there will be a bit of a reward for you guys and gals soon enough.

So let me tell you what this new introductory segment is about... I have included this little area, The Editorial Introduction area, so I can keep you people up to date with what's been on my mind recently.  This way I can keep in touch with you all about why I may have problems uploading, throw a bit of thanks around, give you all a chance to look through my musings, and generally give freedom of speech a reason to want to recind itself.  The General Rants area is where I take time to go off on themes which have been noticeable during our jaunts in the ASFR world, or in life on the whole.  You'll notice some of my rants come straight from the HOS message board.  Think of the General Rants as my idea of showing the world that even placid statuephiles can get PO'd too; I can't be held responsible for the language content.  The Newbie Information section probably won't change much; it's there for those of you who might be visiting the site for the first time, or are just being introduced to ASFR and would like to know what trips the trigger of this particular Statuephile.  The other three areas on this page are strictly info:  The News and Notes/Commendations area is sort of an ego-thing for me, where I try to keep up with how ASFR affects the outside world, or how ASFR is viewed by the outside world.  If this site gets mention somewhere, I'll try to make sure that link can be found here in the NaN/C area. If you know of a piece of news for the News or Commendations area, please send away. The What's New Section is sort of a play-by-play of how the HOS has grown in recent weeks.  If you're not sure what has been added, taken away or what have you, check here.  And finally, the Site Info Section is specifically for anyone who wants to know site specs and the like.  Hope you enjoy it.  Take a gander, drop me a line, tell me what you think.  Thanks again for stopping by.
 
- ArgoForg
Curator, Hall of Statuary.


GENERAL RANT - What Ticks Me Off
Okay, you all might be wondering what posessed me to put a Rant Section in an otherwise unassuming web page... there are several answers for this, and I'll settle for the simplest:  Because I can.  Face it, everyone has something that torques them off, and I'm no different.  Here's where I can verbally (well text-ually) barrage those facets of ASFR or society in general until people start calling me a pundit and laughing at me.  And even then I won't care. A warning before I start; the language in this gets violent.  Please skip to a different section if you have delicate sensibilities. Otherwise, read on:  this is all for shits and grins, anyway.  So here we go:

SPAM
Not the luncheon meat, mind you, which should be in with the seven wonders of the modern world.  I'm talking messages which are posted to the newsgroup simply because the SF in ASFR stands for Sex.Fetish.  Whatever ABSOLUTE MORONS cross-post to thirteen different Fetish newsgroups without bothering to check what the Newsgroup is about should be hung by their eyelids and kicked repeatedly in the nads until they blink.  I was naïve enough when I first subscribed to the ASFR newsgroup to follow some of those links in their badly-spelled, exclamation-point-ridden, multiple-posted and cross-posted advertisements, and guess what... No statues.  No robots.  No mannequins.  No dolls.  Not a fucking thing even remotely resembling something ASFRish.  And on top of that, almost all of them were PAY sites!  Yo, dumbasses!  If you want me to even consider paying to get into your cheesy, completely-intrusive-linked sites, you'd sure as hell better show me some statue pics, toot-fucking-sweet!  I know we're not a "Mainstream fetish," whatever the hell that is, but if we're going to be subjugated to endless amounts of binary porn ads with some woman sticking a blender into her in OUR newsgroup, it's about fucking time you reciprocated.  Tell you what:  show me some pics proving that you can photo-airbrush something other than breast sizes.  Show me a binary ad featuring a woman being turned to stone or gold and include a bit of advertisement I can read without wanting to call up a spell-check program so I can send it back to you grammatically correct, and we'll talk.  Hell, I'll foot the bill for the adult check myself!  The challenge is out there, spammers!
 
WHOEVER THE MORON IS THAT KEEPS POSTING NON-ASFR MESSAGES TO MY MESSAGE BOARD
You know, when I first got that message board, it was one of the coolest things I had ever found.  The idea of being able to post messages to people spamlessly, and to just sort of talk shop about statuary in a not-quite-IRC and not-quite-e-mail manner was very pleasing to me, and it's worked out well.  That does not at all keep me from wanting to WRING THE NECK OF THE STUPID PUD WHO KEEPS POSTING HIS OFF-TOPIC LIBIDO STORIES!!  What is this bullshit about rubbing yourself on the bus or wanking in a dark theater?  Are these fictional accounts so 'enticing' that they have to be cross-posted onto a statuephile's message board?  Whoever is doing this needs two things:  A nice port-fuck on IRC so he can spend a few days offline to reconsider the idiocy of his actions, and a fucking LIFE.  This doofus is worse than the spammers on the ASFR newsgroup because he serves NO redeeming purpose whatsoever; he doesn't even come with a link where you can thief cheezy porn pics for later statue manipulation!  Listen up, Mark, or BusRubber or YankingMyselfInTheDark, or whoever you are: we're not interested in your letters to Penthouse Forum unless you have a petrifying climax, get me?  So if you want to post off-topic, why not find a nice message board where someone will actually give a fuck about your puerile musings, like the Some Girl I Didn't Know Held My Knob in Public Message Board, okay?  I don't send Some Woman I Didn't Know Turned to Stone stories to the Playstation Codes Message Boards, do I?  Quit posting to message boards off-topic!

POWERGAMING AND SUCH ON IRC
Ohhhhh, you so don't want me to go here, but I will anyway.  In fact, I'll probably be less harsh here than I would anywhere else, because of the fact that I'm friends with a lot of people on IRC who might take this the wrong way, and the fact that a lot of us statuephiles don't really get into the role-play on IRC.  But anyway:  Quiz Time.  Why do we remember characters in stories?  Take Achilles and Othello, to name a couple off the top of my head.  Do we remember Achilles because he slew so many Trojans?  Nah.  Do we remember him because his mother dressed him like a woman so he wouldn't go off to war, until Odysseus saw through the ruse?  Probably not.  We remember him because of a freaking heel.  This is what we call a character flaw.  Like Othello's gullibility to fall for Iago's half-truths and believe him rather than Desdemona.  Like Data's inability to completely comprehend human emotion.  Character flaws are what makes a character interesting and fun.  What does this mean in role-play speak?  It means, put simply, don't be a be-everything, do-everything character.  The people who gamemaster in the ASFR room have usually put a lot of thought into the role-play session.  It really screws it up when one character is either completely unhittable, or can defuse any situation at the drop of a hat:

GM Guy:    Okay, Echo's been put out of action by a tight-focus Electro-Magnetic Pulse and the evil Gor-Gone is staring at Veldar.
Veldar:    I look away, punch Gor-Gone hard in the gut with a titanium-braced fist, and go over and fix Echo.
GM Guy:    Uhm, all right... Her systems are shot.  It would take the bio-bed weeks to patch her up.  The Gor-Gone is not pleased.
GM Guy:    It keeps coming after you.
Veldar:    I pull out my vortex-creating autofire rifle and shoot it.  The vortex sucks at the Gor-Gone while I fix Echo.
Veldar:    I run a sub-system diagnostic on her and use the android-EMP scrambler I carry to restore power to her own systems.
Veldar:    I then pull out my pulse cannon from my right forearm and finish off the Gor-Gone.
GM Guy:    You do WHAT?
Echo's Player:     (Tries feverishly to come up with a reason that doesn't work to prolong the session)
Everyone Else:    *Yawns*

As you can see, not very much fun.  On IRC we don't have the luxury of stats or dice for our RP sessions, so please... there is nothing so UN-fun as an RP which has some character that refuses to be hit, knocked offline (androids), stoned, what have you, or generally has all the answers for any problem contained within his or her frame.  Okay?  I could go off on this and other fun RP stuff for hours, but I won't.

Replies to any of the General Rants can be sent to the current site admin/restorer, Leem.



NEWBIE INFO
Okay, here's the chant if it's your first time here, or you're looking to delve into the wonderful world of ASFR.

ASFR stands for Alt.Sex.Fetish.Robots, the mainstay newsgroup for anyone interested with the idea of robots, mannequins, statues, dolls, and more.  The Newsgroup has spawned a slew of images, stories, web pages, and even an IRC channel.  For first timers, I heartily suggest you read RobotDoll's ASFR FAQ, so you can get a firsthand understanding about what ASFR is all about.  I will include more stuff here as soon as I get a chance, because I think it's important that everyone, from new folk to seasoned vetrans, gets a chance to see all the facets involved with ASFR.  I just haven't had time to put together a beginner's copy I've felt comfortable with yet.
 
The Hall of Statuary deals most specifically with the subsection of ASFR dealing with turning people into statuary, be it stone or gold or other substance.  There has been a lot of questions as to what the mindset of the Statuephile (those of us who enjoy the thought of turning people into statuary) actually is, and it's something I'll be delving into at another date in the Hall of Statuary's Guide to Statuephiles.
 
For now, suffice it to say that the love of creating Living Statuary stems from a love for aesthetics, and a will to see such aesthetic beauty made long (maybe ever-) lasting.  The statued form is our ideal of the ultimate capturer of beauty.  Too see that form caught between instants, to be able to study that form from every angle and for indefinite time.  That's sort of a romanticist view.  There are other ways of looking at it, too... some people regard it as the most complete form of bondage, some the idea of objectification and/or exhibitionism.  There are a lot of common themes, and even some dissimilar ones.  The point is, if you like the thought of transforming men or women into works of art, literally, then this is the place for you.  More details later; for now, just check around the place and see if there's anything that grabs your fancy.



NEWS AND NOTES/COMMENDATIONS

The Hall of Statuary received an A+ rating from The Official Lady Cyrrh Website!  Check the review at the Lady Cyrrh website.  My review is at http://www.p-synd.com/hos/argoforg.htm  [local cached version --Leem] And while you're there, hang around for a bit.  This is a nice place to find some really good erotic fiction, natch.  The Site Front page [updated link] is http://www.asstr.org/~ladycyrrh/main.html.  You'll be glad you stopped by!



WHAT'S NEW

June 2012:  Leem reposted this cached version of the site with Argo's kind permission.

November 1-2, 1998:  Restructured Front Page, Added Credits and Introduction Page.  Worked over links at both main site and mirror site, cussed and fumed an awful lot.

November 3, 1998:  Added a few links to this introduction page, added to the newbie info section, berated myself for not sleeping more.



SITE INFO

Site Name:                                          The Hall of Statuary
Site Creator:                                        ArgoForg
Site Restorer and current Admin:           Leem
Main Site Address:                               NO LONGER AVAILABLE
Cached Mirror Site Address:                  http://www.p-synd.com/hos
Linked and Subsidiary Site Locations:    NO LONGER AVAILABLE
Question and Correspondence e-mail:    leem10538a@hotmail.com
Submissions and Query e-mail:             NO LONGER AVAILABLE


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