Rant 57: The Fragrance

[Irreverend Hugh, KSC]

Rant 57
The Fragrance of Paper Shortages

,ÄúDo you smell something burning over here?,Äù

,ÄúWe opened the ancient text and saw written upon it, via sharpie, the words ,ÄúBF Skinner was a political prisoner of the pigeons!,Äù Upon this profundity we mused until we drained all such bottles of tequila as were in our vicinity, yet we achieved not illumination. Lacking the proper ornithological training, the import of pigeons was lost upon us.,Äù
-from the Book of the Tequila M??stica Cabal

,ÄúI wasn,Äôt sorry to see them burn. In fact it smelled pleasantly like clove cigarettes as they went up in smoke.,Äù
-Tequilarius Malignatus (when asked about certain people)

Aaaaaah! Smell that? It,Äôs that time of the year when the PMM/C everywhere begins shredding, ripping apart, and burning up documents of the BUREAUCRACY. It,Äôs a great cut-up extravaganza! (And none of you should trust anything we do when certain more-occultist-types such as some of us play cut-ups.) Why do we do it in spite of the clear and present knowledge of the Paper Shortage? Need I answer?

You know why we do it. Among many reasons, to celebrate Our Lady of Discord and possibly because we like ripping things up and/or setting fires. And now in the ripping and the burning there are thousands of sigils of chaos being released upon every one of THEM wherever in the land of DUMB THEY hide themselves. Perhaps it,Äôs time the witches start burning the Followers of Stupidity in all of their intelligent-looking disguises. It,Äôs not easy to take on the Followers of Stupidity,Äîthe DUMB of DOOM. But we can start by burning up all the damned documents through which THEY gain for themselves a sense of validation. BUREAUCRACY can only survive behind a great big obfuscating pile of excuses, files, reports, allegations, and prejudices,Äîall duly noted and written down somewhere, whether on paper or on minds. Getting rid of that huge pile by setting it on fire is one way to push THEM over the brink. Another way is to add to their files and catalogues of information, so that THEY run out of space, paper, and time. The best way is to somehow convince THEM to do it to themselves, which is a lot easier than you think.

We are the ignorant bastard children who happen to know that we are the ignorant bastard children,Äîas opposed to THEM who do not yet know, or refuse to acknowledge that THEY are the ignorant bastard children,Äîsetting fires to all of the files and documents under which you have buried your souls and behind which you have tried to hide yourselves from Eris. We are the spectral Claw Shrimp visions and Prairie Squid nightmares that scratch slowly and silently at your grayed imagination. We bring you insanity in a bottle and never for once charge you for it, unlike your therapists and healthcare professionals, who charge you outrageous sums for insanity, cleverly marketed as Sanity,Ñ¢ in nice neat little packages of happy pills, spiritual seminars that promise something or other, religions of endless guilt, or regimens designed to keep you happily in line. (How,Äôs that for a run-on?) We don,Äôt want you happily in line,Äîwe want you to mob us and tackle us for the goodies we bring to you,Ķbut remember we do carry around clubs, staffs, and various appliances, on the off hand chance you get a little too enthusiastic. As I was saying, we don,Äôt want you to fall in line happily for your next little dose of patch-me-up-and-send-me-back-out-there-to-regain-my-place-as-one-more-cog.  We want you feverish for the taste of freedom,Ķmore feverish than a pack of gnomes with cookie fetishes trapped in a bakery. If the BUREAUCRACY is all that stands between us and the true tyranny of DUMB, then perhaps we,Äôll end up in more trouble then when we started. Or perhaps we,Äôll cause tyranny to die of both the smoke inhalation from our launched desires and the surrealist congestion clogging up the arteries of their sluggish minds after we get through with them. Or perhaps the smoke will simply intoxicate them into the vague passive sleepiness, like a horde of bees being pacified. Perhaps THEY are so sleepy, THEY won,Äôt even know the difference. Perhaps it,Äôs all cyclical and we,Äôll have to keep doing it again and again for all time,Äîhopefully it gets funnier the more times we do it. Perhaps this fouled-up attempt at another digression into another idea has run its course.

But, as I was saying at least once or thrice above, we offer you a mighty peak at Eris. Hell, not only a peak. She,Äôll come upon you and flash you so righteously that you will never ever be able to fall back in line, or into the categories that the BUREAUCRACY has so meticulously made for you. Or worse, you may even become a nutty chaoist. You may suddenly find yourself with an obsession to strip yourself naked, run along railroad tracks, and shout ,ÄúWorms! Worms! Worms! Prepare the Way for the Coming of the Fnord!,Äù at the top of your lungs,Äîthough we would recommend you use a pre-recorded message through mobile loudspeakers (you can strap them to your back and they make excellent accessories to nudity, I might add). You may suddenly find yourself wearing a lab coat and bringing your packages of eggs to the local abortion clinic, ,Äòjust to make sure,Äô, so to speak. You may find yourself in a bowling alley rolling towards the pins instead of the ball you should have thrown. All sorts of amazing and weird things will start happening to you once we have reached you, unless Eris gets to you first, and then perhaps it will be you who reaches out and touches us. About the only paper we won,Äôt burn for now is that in the form of money, because it really can get us certain things we wish to have, such as lighter fluid and other ODDities that we are presently too lazy to make for ourselves. Or toilet paper, because while we can be said to be possibly almost positively supportive of the paper shortages that threaten the BUREAUCRACY with freedom, there is no fun in coming home to sit on one,Äôs porcelain throne only to realize that there is also a toilet paper shortage. Except for Eris, who probably hides the toilet paper from you for shits and giggles anyway. (And then there is sand paper which escapes the paper shortage on the mere technicality of us being undecided as to whether we think it should be thought of more as paper than sand.)

If our ,ÄòJihad,Äô against the BUREAUCRACY confuses you more than our ,ÄòJihad,Äô for the BUREACRACY, or even more than our Purple Monkey Tzaddik Rouge Great Discordian Jihad against Serious Real Discordians,Ñ¢ , then you have more in common with us than we think, if such things such as BUREAUCRACY, Discordian Jihads, or confusion can be said to exist, in as much as you can be said to understand this gibberish, in as much as anything could be comprehensible. No matter the confusion, you can always just catalog it, file it in a big binder, and then throw it on the bonfires of the aftermath. We don,Äôt guarantee that any end to your confusion will result, but it might look pretty as it burns up, especially if you used certain inks and papers to write it all down with. And by the time we,Äôre finished, you,Äôll possibly be too drunk on either Eris,Äôs freedom, or from the great jugs of tequila, to remember anything but laughter. In which case, we,Äôll all be happy.

Perhaps the paper shortage and our part in contributing to it are all just another part of the BUREAUCRACY, but at least we can claim that it,Äôs ours and not theirs, whether or not any of us or any of THEM can tell the difference. And if THEY are confused, then that,Äôs all the more cause for celebration because, if BUREAUCRACY is all that stands between us and tyranny, then we,Äôve succeeded by confusing them,Ķas the ancient words ,ÄúThere is no tyranny in the State of Confusion,Äù will attest. (Okay Eris, I did another rant. May I have my apple pie now?)

Hail Eris, and pass the tequila!

(Bureaucracy 12th, 3170)