Rant 112: Cookies, Pie, and Tequila

[Irreverend Hugh, KSC]

Rant 112
Cookies, Pie, and Tequila

"Hey! That's not haiku!
You're just counting syllables!
Stop that this instant!"
-from the Apocrypha Discordia

"A woman without a fish is like a man without a bicycle."
-Discordian mondo from the A.D.

"You want to hang some Discordia up on your walls along with your African knick knacks, your pseudo-Asian tiki Zen-like Tao relics, your feathers twigs and leather Native Americanesque knock offs, and your assumed post-Christian gothic occult-like icons bought at the local 'alternative' spirituality store?"
-St. Kallista (when a Wiccan from a North Shore Pagan asked her to explain Eris)

"Eris, Goddess of Chaos, She What Done It All,...oh, never mind, I'll do it myself."

Is the state of the world or the people around you giving you a headache? Take some ibuprofen and get over it. We are here today to reflect upon cookies, pie, and tequila. (Or at least that's the excuse for me to write some drivel thinly disguised as purposeless meander.) As bonkers as it may drive some of you more serious and self-important (or righteous) Discordians(tm), silly humorous camp is part and parcel (and hind-leg and foreleg) of the Discordian Society. (And driving you bonkers is also part and parcel and forelock of the Discordian Society.) If you think you are too intelligent for such enterprises, then enroll in some university and seek out some degrees or something. Academia has what you are looking for: Recognition for your sweaty and anxious mentations proving how smart you are. They'll even give you some pretty piece of paper which you can frame and hang up to show all your friends that someone important somewhere thinks you're smart. Fortunately, no one around the halls of Eris' Asylum could give two shits about how smart you think you are. And if you want recognition or titles or degrees from any of the rest of us, you are acting like a petulant brat. Make up your own damned titles or degrees.

We want no revolutions that don't include cigars, dancing, and general horseplay. We want no solutions that don't include camp, quirks, or silly little hats. We want nothing to do with all this talk of war, violence, overthrow, or even car bombings, unless they include hidden jokes, triple entendres, and weird chants in ancient languages. Let the fools and the serious fools get martyred for their causes whether right or wrong. The one who dies with the most toys is still dead. The one who tries to jump from the ship of chaos only ends up drowning in worse chaos. There are half a million hidden metaphors hidden in the bottom of your foot. Did you speak with your Goddess today? (Don't admit it too loudly. Those who believe in the delusion of no-gods are just as fanatical as those who believe in the delusion of gods.) Personality is nothing but a fiction melded together from scraps of childhood memories, friends' mannerisms and thoughts, lovers' impacts, notable film clips, lines from novels, and cultural expectations. The day you free your selves is the day you know the meaning of slavery. Do you call yourself free and yet still live in slavery to yourself? Liar!

Realizing the inconsistency of your selves and the transience of everything, do you still demand consistency and permanence? Do you still believe in heaven/hell or oblivion or in any other scenario? One delusion is just as good as any other delusion. Stop trying to pretend that your delusions are closer to the truth. The truth is a much abused and diseased effigy of the incarceration you have been living within. So why bother? Just perceive what you perceive and be aware of how you have trained yourself how to perceive. Enjoy some pie. Eat some cookies. Drink tequila. Drop your baggage. Live it up. In a world that has presented us with the false choices of euphoria and dysphoria, it may be best to err on the side of euphoria if you still choose to play that bipolar game. Those who cannot stand euphoria are mere beggars trying to claw at your heels...stingy to themselves and others, which is the reason for their hatred of joy. If there is no law and there are no rules, then why do you follow them? If there is no need for balance between order and disorder, then why does your body or mind even function? What need is there for health? For wealth? For anything? In disorder you may find yourself and in order you may find yourself. But you should have never had to look for yourself anyway. How did you lose yourself?

You can also find yourself in pie, cookies, and tequila. Or in meditation. Or in pretty word games, or in any other random thing you wish to do. Or you can find yourself in hating pie, cookies, and tequila. Or never meditating. Or in ranting and wailing and blowing off steam in endless run on sentences compounded upon each other over and over again, always meandering and never making much sense of anything, even of themselves until you get so confused that you just want to smash machines or go on rampages of shopping and drinking and showering, unless you don't. You don't like crap but you need it. You hate humanity or certain human beings, but you need them. You want to be free of compulsions, but they motivate you toward that freedom. You want to settle the dust and clear the air, but you need the smokescreens. Perhaps the story of Tezcatlipoca, or better yet, Avalokiteshvara, has resonance for each one of your selves. Perhaps the pantheons are just a reflection of how the mind works. The only danger in multiple personalities is mutual amnesia. But THEY have therapy, drugs, and electrical appliances to cure you of any confrontation with those selves you dislike...or worse, those selves who actively plot to dethrone you from your primary position of authority over them. Failing that, you can find numbing solace in sex, television, and occult magic...or its ugly stepchild: religion.

If the zombies are going to march, then we may as well stagger around and stumble towards our own fulfillment. If that means eating more pie and cookies, or drinking more tequila, then so be it. The game is played by the rules we choose to make and adhere to. The game is created as the ultimate chaos confidence trickster to get you taken for a ride, and so long as the ride is enjoyable, why complain about being swindled? The tricks are simply there to get you to learn wisdom. Whether you act upon the knowledge is purely your own problem, if anything could be said to be purely anything. You asked for a softer, safer Discordian sandpaper, and you got sandblasted, shafted and shanghaied onto another ship of fools. Now do you cry "foul" because you believed what you were told, that bottled air was not bottled air but in fact medicine to help you. There was no truth and no lying involved. And if you had figured that out sooner you would have only become your own con-man until you were ready to be weaned off. Better us to blame than yourself so you can feel somewhat smarter.

Do you feel now that you can give up your addiction to the Erisian holey sacraments of cookies, pies, and tequila? What will you replace them with? Or will you simply just sit there, impassive like a Buddhist monk flying high off of the sensation of movement from the Earth's rotation? Are you still trying to sledgehammer your way through obstacles not realizing that the Most High God Natural Selection (a.k.a. She-What-Done-It-All) gave you legs and wheels and arms if you need to move around them? Do you seem to be anybody at all? Liar!

That is all. And all is a lie if never seen as dreamlike.

August 12th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
(Driving under the influence of Medical Terminology studies with all sorts of wonderful color pics of various pathologies and disorders. When my appetite comes back, I am eating some cookies.)

[The Good Reverend Roger]

NEW REALISATION CHURCH WITHOUT "BOB"

NENSLO



Beware, dear reader! Beware of the shocking revelation you are about to receive from the Heart of Bigfoot Country, from the mighty Sasquatch of Salvators, O NENSLO himself, roguest of Rogue SubGenii, and from the "cute and funny joke religions by mail" division of the world's FASTEST GROWING EVIL MIND CONTROL CULT, NEW REALISATION FELLOWSHIP!!

BEWARE, I say, to you lukewarm SubGeniites, you Dobbshead-sporting, rubber-stamp dollar-mailing "Church Members," you SICKLY SUBGENIUS-ARTIFACT COLLECTORS, YOU... YOU... "BOB" FANS!!!

In keeping with our Holy Name, the "cute and funny joke church by mail" department of NEW REALISATION tears the smirking head of alleged J. R. "Bob" Dobbs off the front of the head of the Church of the SubGenius and presents the bloody goggle-eyed skull of a NEW REALISATION so SIMPLE that YOU could never have thought of it!! I, even I, the ALL-MIGHTY NENSLO bring to you the NEW REALISATION you SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF THE FIRST TIME YOU SET EYES ON THE VACUOUS PIPE-CLENCHING GRIN OF PHONY CARTOON FACE "BOB" DOBBS! BE WARE, BE WARNED, AND BE HOLED....


THE GREAT NORTHWEST CHURCH OF THE SUBGENIUS WITH NO "BOB"!


For too long has the fabulous SubGenius church been held spellbound by the fatuous serpentine gaze of Stupid Cartoon-head "Bob"! ONLY NENSLO, the CHOSEN ONE, could bring to you this NEW REALISATION of the Great Northwest Church of the SubGenius With NO "Bob"!

ESCHEW, I ADJURE YOU, slavery to two-dimensional ink-picture LIE of pipeface Dobbs. You may say, "But, Reverend, "Bob" IS the Church of the SubGenius... without "Bob" it isn't even a one-joke pseudo-cult anymore, it's a NO-JOKE pseudo-cult..." and there you just might pause... realizing that you have just now, by accident, said the SMARTEST THING YOU HAVE EVER SAID IN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE!! Yes, ESCHEW MIGHTILY that DESPICABLE FICTION, THAT SMIRKING PERSONIFICATION OF PHONINESS, for "Bob" is not MERELY DEAD, he NEVER EXISTED!! Oh, I know that we're not supposed to admit that, that we're supposed to keep PRETENDING that he's sort of "real" but in a funny, joking sort of way, insisting on his reality in a way that lets everyone know it's just a joke, that we don't really believe it. Well, TO HELL WITH "BOB"! "BOB" IS DEAD! THERE IS NO "BOB"!! "Bob" is just a made-up thing, a picture of a face, and nothing more! YES, IT'S TRUE, I TELL YOU!!

Oh, I know, most of you will not accept this. Most of you just can't feel comfortable in a phony joke-cult with NO JOKE TO IT ANY MORE. Most of you need something just a LITTLE bit different from all the things you mock and despise, the same except for a few minor changes so it won't be too scary and weird and unfamiliar, something with YET ANOTHER MARTYRED MESSIAH, ANOTHER "IS HE ALIVE OR DEAD" MYSTERY EVEN THOUGH YOU CLAIM TO HATE ALL THE OTHER ONES. Yes you need a safe FAKE jesus to yuk it up over because you aren't REALLY sure that the REAL jesii are as safe and fake as you wish and hope they are, you aren't ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE that you won't BURN IN HELL for saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing or going to the wrong church or WEARING THE WRONG UNIFORM... ...so you have to keep the very tip of one toenail over the threshold of belief, just to be safe. "Just in case, heh heh."

How disgusting.

But that's really what the stupid pipeface is for, isn't it? To trick the weaklings into REVEALING THEMSELVES so the REAL SubGenii, the true Yeti and Yetiette, will not have to WASTE THEIR PRECIOUS TIME on sorry pink "Bob" fans... except to use that ugly face as a TARGET in the last minutes before Boarding Time on X-Day when we will be permitted to cut loose with our Weapon Of Choice on all the SUCKERS pressed against the forcefield waving their membership cards and pointing to that FACE on their tee-shirts as if to say "Me! Shoot me first!"

Faugh! This stern and manly mouth fills with a bilious tang at the thought of such stupidity. So many FOOLS, so little FIREPOWER!!

As you can see, I get a little riled when I see GLOBESPANNING DISPLAYS OF IDIOCY, nitwits congratulating themselves on their intelligence for being the first to PAY for the opportunity to jump from one frying pan right into another, smaller, slightly hotter one, without so much as a non-stick patina of burned-on grease so not only do they STILL FRY, they also STICK and little bits of them get RIPPED OFF when the Huge Spatula comes down to flip them over and press the other side down to get SEARED REAL GOOD.

This is not to say that the ugly pipeface doesn't have all the MIRACULOUS HEALING POWERS claimed for it; it is everything they say it is, and more (whoever "they" are). "Bob" himself, as a reality, far surpasses any claim which could be made about him, and the fact that he doesn't even exist, that he's just some fake thing that was made up just as a joke doesn't change that true, true fact, no indeed! No, the Disembodied Head in all its forms has always been an ideal power object, and ALL stories and claims made about its fabulous powers are just as true as anything else we can believe with or without direct personal experience! Even now the Disembodied Head of Shamefully Betrayed Chinese Leader Mao, though a mere Profile, often a bust or even with full figure and upraised arm attached, in its ever present amuletic manifestation is used much as western culture's St. Christopher Medal as protection against automobile accidents! (True Fact!) Even, or perhaps especially, the PHONY amulet Dobbshead, ugly teeth-clenched shinyhaired thing, has miraculous powers equal to that! "Proofs" of miraculous salvation due to pipeface protection fill FIVE file drawers at SubGenius Hall of Records, Dallas Texas, on 3 1/2" computer disc! Yes, HEAPS AND HEAPS of them, in their hundreds, each disc containing in itself hundreds of UNBELIEVABLE EVENTS attributed DIRECTLY, with UNASSAILABLE SCIENTIFIC PROOF, to the mere presence of black-and-white dotface Dobbshead. And not a one of them worth a red cent.

We refute Dobbs. We revile him, we... nay, I, I Noble NENSLO, mightiest Dobbskiller of them all, DEPOSE DOBBS, throw him out of his own damn church, declare in ringing tones that here, in the Great Northwest Church of the SubGenius without "Bob" there shall henceforth BE NO MORE J. R. "BOB" DOBBS, NO MORE SMIRKING PIPE-DOT-TEETH-CLENCHED-HAIR-REFLECTION FACE ON OUR LITERATURE, no "Bob" rants, no Dobbstales, NO GOD DAMN BOB, WITH OR WITHOUT QUOTATION MARKS!!

I know, I know, some of you few readers who are familiar with the Portland area, smile knowingly. I know what they are saying, and I CATEGORICALLY DENY ALL SCURRILOUS CHARGES!! They are saying it has something to do with Tom. They are saying we are afraid of Tom, of his billboard sized floating head. I laugh to scorn such absurdities. I mock cruelly the brain or body-part size of those who put forth such claims. I distract attention from the point of their accusations to avoid having to come up with an explanation, but now, here, at last I declare the Great Northwest Church of the SubGenius without "Bob" does NOTHING out of FEAR. Yes, Portland area furniture salesman Tom Peterson has infused his visage, his floating head, his HUGE DISEMBODIED, BILLBOARD-SIZED UNCANNILY DOBBSLIKE FLOATING HEAD into the subconscious mythology of the area. Yes, it's true that this big eerily-similar-down-to-the-very-grin-and-nose-shadow face pervades the daily newspapers of this fine American City, OF COURSE I ADMIT THAT, AND ANYBODY WHO SAYS I DON'T IS A LIAR!! And yes, it is true that if I were to suddenly flood this Fair City with a seeming RIVAL Disembodied Head the sadly naive and, through no fault of their own, mind you, ignorant populace would naturally jump to the wrong conclusion. They would not realize the FACT of the pre-existence of "Bob" and the pervasive presence of false-head Tom as a MEAN TRICK played by the scruple-free Conspiracy to discredit The Great Northwest Church of the SubGenius with or without "Bob" plotted and executed YEARS BEFORE the Church's arrival here!! Imagine my consternation on arriving to find such a situation which, though serious, has NOTHING WHATEVER TO DO with the G.NW.C. of the S.G.'s decision to repudiate "Bob" in all his smirking forms, no indeed, nothing at all. IT'S JUST ANOTHER DAMN COINCIDENCE I TELL YOU, AND IF YOU ARE THE KIND OF NAIVE SIMPLETON WHO WILL TAKE A SIMPLE COINCIDENCE, A MATTER OF MEANINGLESS HAPPENSTANCE AND ATTRIBUTE ALL KINDS OF MEANING AND INFLUENCE TO IT, WELL I'M JUST SORRY FOR YOU THAT'S ALL. Not meaning any disrespect or anything, I just think, hell, this is the twentieth century, the atom age, the last days predicted in some book somewhere, and I figure by this time we should have crept far enough away from the shadow of the cave-mouth to see through such transparent ploys. We should, even the mere human among us, be able to keep our mental knuckles off the figurative ground long enough to straighten our psychological spine a little and stand allegorically erect. I figure. Maybe not. Maybe I'm really as much of a nitwit as everybody seems to think I am. Maybe I ought to just quit, crawl into my bunker and drink canned water `til 1998 and let the squealing hordes fight it out alone, but by something or other (hell, without Dobbs I don't even have anything to curse with) by dang I just can't do it. I guess I'm just a meddler, a sucker, a dreamer, a HELPLESS ROMANTIC SWEPT AWAY BY MY OWN SELF-GENERATED WAVES OF JUVENILE EMOTION, BUT BLING-DING IT ALL I STILL HAVE FAITH IN YOU!! Yes, I still believe in you, and I still believe in the Church, and in my fellow and gal SubGenii, and feel that if anybody can save this tired old world from a disgraceful degenerate end (and nobody can) it's us. I MEAN YOU AND ME, PAL OR PALETTE. You and me, we're different. We're not like the rest of them. We think alike. And I truly believe that if you and I can work together, if we can work together with the pitifully small handful of True SubGenii, whether they admit they are SubGenii or not, whether they hate the church and the terminology, or even don't even know if it exists or not but the True Flock, if we can get together we can really make a change for the good. I know it seems hopeless, I know sometimes you seem so alone, you look out into the bleak grey grimy world through a cracked and filthy windowpane and it all seems so pointless. You say to yourself there's squillions o' them and only one o' me, what the heck can I do? Just remember it's not only one of you. It's you and me. It's you and me and a secret underground of Illuminated ones who for eons have gently guided this sad old world upward in the face of incredible odds, sometimes without even knowing it. Strange idea, isn't it? That someone seemingly insignificant and powerless on the ragged edge of society could actually be the SECRET MASTER OR MISTRESS OF THE WORLD, but it's true. Look at them all, the squabbling organic robotoids acting out their ritual programs over and over again. They live to serve you. It's true. THEY LIVE TO SERVE YOU. Everything they build or make, all the extravagant waste they create, all the seemingly pointless futile murderous hateful acts do have one ultimate goal. To make possible for YOU those all-too-short moments of PURE SLACK you get in the course of the days endless round of drudgery. I have always said that the folks I pity most are the ones who suffer from the delusion that they are NOT Jesus Christ. What I mean is that everyone who suffers, labors and dies does so for YOU. To make YOUR life better. Your labor and suffering and death are not pointless either, but go to make another person's Slack possible. NO MOMENT OF PAIN, SORROW OR SUFFERING GOES TO WASTE. All is transformed from the base metal of pain to the pure gold of SLACK through the action of the Alchemical Sublimate of.. well not "Bob" because this is the Great Northwest Church of the SubGenius Without "Bob" but something... I don't know...

[Irreverend Hugh, KSC]