From franke@ksts.seed.net.tw Sun Jan 12 10:31:02 1997
Newsgroups: rec.games.go
Subject: Re: Ishi Press broke?
From: L. W. Franke ( franke@ksts.seed.net.tw )
Date: 12 Jan 1997 18:31:02 GMT
Now that I'm no longer the president or owner of Kiseido USA, I suppose I shouldn't get involved in another absurd r.g.g discussion involving Sam Sloan and his alleged connections to Ishi Press (which one, by the way? There are--or, at least, there were, four or more of them at one time-- one in Japan, now defunct; two in the US; and two in England) and Kiseido. However, it pains me to see otherwise reasonable people making statements about things that they know little or nothing about.
For everyone's information, Sam Sloan is the president of Ishi Press International, Inc., a Delaware corporation founded about ten or twelve years ago, I believe (this is all hearsay that I'm reporting as fact: I haven't seen the paperwork, but I've heard it so often that I'm damn sure that it's true). Note, please, that the name of this now-suspended (for non-payment of annual fees) corporation is ever so slightly different from Ishi Press International, a California corporation founded about ten years ago by Richard Bozulich and James Connelley.
Get it? There are two US corporations with almost the same name and Sam Sloan IS the president of one of them. Dropping the "Inc." is normal shorthand for referring to corporations in the US; ironically, many people ADD the "Inc." to the California corporation Ishi Press International's name when they shouldn't because they assume--and reasonably so--that it should be there since it is a corporation. So much for Sam's being or not being the president of Ishi Press. He is and he isn't. What could be easier to understand now that you have the facts? :-)
As far as his claim to being president of Ishi Press International in California, well, there is some justification to his making that claim. There was a board of directors meeting in November 1994 at which he thought he was elected or appointed to the position. This is also hearsay, but I've heard this from many different people who were there at the meeting, so I'm convinced that it's true. The only problem with this claim is that the status of that meeting has not been legally determined, as far as I know. However, according to the members of the board of directors who did not attend that meeting, there was no legitimate meeting. They also claim to have written proof of that fact. This is all a legal matter that no one is capable of determining but a judge, so why should uninvolved go players lather themselves up over the issue. Shouldn't we all be playing go instead of cybertag with Sloan? Go is much more interesting and much more fun, IMHO.
The only guy who seems to take all this nonsense in the right spirit is Angus. He sees Sam as a source of entertainment and doesn't seem to lose sleep over Sam's annoying antics. Would that everyone else would instead of losing their goats whenever Sam sets out on his Internet forays to rustle them. =8-O
As far as Sam Sloan's connections to Kiseido go, there are absolutely none to Kiseido USA now and never have been. It is true that Sam has posted a variety of unauthorized articles related to Kiseido, the first one being merely a reprint of the article written by Richard Bozulich in Go World 73--Sam did not say those things, Richard Bozulich did. Sam got GW 73 earlier than almost everyone else (airmail is faster than having it shipped on a freighter) and thought he'd "help out" by letting everyone know about the change in publishers etc. That article was as much of a surprise to Richard Bozulich and me as it was to everyone else. But very few people seem to have read the post carefully enough to realize that Sam was only posting Richard's words and they established Sam in their minds as an official spokesman of Kiseido, which he was not and is not. Sadly, however, because of his incorrigible rash impulsiveness, his irrepressibly successful goat rustling, and the uninformed allegations of his apparently willing victims, much like the Ugly American, the myriad American serial killers, and, most recently, the three US military kidnapper-rapists in Okinawa seem somehow to represent the mainstream of USA culture and the US government in the minds of many uninformed non-US residents, Sam Sloan has become, unfortunately and inappropriately, synecdoche for Kiseido and metonym for Richard Bozulich.
Like Frankenstein's monster, Sam has a mind and a will of his own. He cannot be controlled by anyone because he has the happy trait of believing that whatever he thinks is correct and that the reason people are angry about what he says and the way he says it is that they simply don't understand the truth. He would have been a colorful sidewalk Jeremiah. Too bad his inclinations do not tilt in the direction of evangelicalism. >;>
If you would like to see what kind of man you are wasting your time lambasting here in r.g.g, please connect to his plethora of WWW pages. You will instantly discover that his character is redolent of Brylcream, the popular 1950s hair pomade, viz., "a little dab'll do ya."
Bill Franke