Heartfelt Thing I Wrote a Long Time Ago

Correspondent:: "Rev. Ivan Stang"
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 17:21:34 -0500

--------
I was thinking about that thread here where Nenslo was expressing some
bemusement with the high emotions that grip people as they get all
worked up about politics. And then Joe Cosby got to saying well things
be more like they are now than they have ever been, but you still have
to slap back the stupidity now and then or it gets worse.

When people start signifying about world politics it's usually just
venting, a long winded expression of frustration and impotence that
boils down to "That George Bush motherfucker doesn't know who he's
dealing with, and he better watch out!" If most of these angry folks
were serious, they'd either Kill Bush, Flee America or Run for Office.

But, as The Last Poets correctly predicted, "UNTIL the Revolution
comes, SubGeniuses will PARTY and BULLSHIT, and PARTY and BULLSHIT, and
PARTY AND BULSHIT.

Meanwhile here is my bullshit from the 1980s, prefaced with bullshit
from the 1990s.
************************************

PREFACE:

Following is an old rant of mine from the ³But...WHY?² issue of The
Stark Fist magazine, finished back around 1987. The rant was started
much earlier.

Recently, an old alt.slack hand suggested I post this; he said it was
the thing that made him know the Church was more than just a bunch of
³Bob²-praising garbage. I have heard that from many people regarding
this rant. On the other hand, some others have regarded it as cloying
and maudlin. The former group have mostly been parents. Which figures
-- this rant comes from the kind of feelings a new Mom or Dad has. I¹m
no longer a new Dad; my kids are teenagers now... somehow, once they
reach reproductive age, you fall back into a certain nonparent
complacency (compared to the hormonal overdrive one feels with a new
family) -- you¹ve laid the groundwork and now they¹re on their own, no
matter what you as a parent might try to do. But unless you¹ve had kids
(while your instincts were still intact), you cannot imagine how
protective one can get to be. As if writing some kind of stupid rant
for some dopey fanzine would have any effect at all on anything.

Also, this was written while we were all ³in the shadow of the Cold
War,² before the USSR fell apart. It may be hard for young people now
to understand just how paranoid we were when Russia and the U.S. were
on the brink EVERY SECOND. Not that it was paranoia -- and it still
isn¹t. Nuclear war can still happen, although the likelihood of it
being ³ALL-OUT² has lessened a little bit. Small tactical terrorist
nukes in individual U.S. cities are easy to imagine, however. And
³technical errors² on the U.S. end that cause millions of deaths are
also not too hard to imagine.

But then, They probably now have much less MESSY ways at the ready for
wiping out all human life than nuclear war. Nowadays, I consider THE
STAND to be a more reasonable scenario than, say, PLANET OF THE APES.
It¹s more likely to be a virus or a comet that wipes the slate clean,
than the classic back-and-forth nuclear exchange that I grew up
preparing for.

In that respect, this is a nostalgia piece. But what the hell. Here it
is; if nothing else, it saves somebody else typing it all up. (I have
most of the old STARK FIST stuff on disc, and until I get the new
³online Fist² together, I don¹t guess it¹ll hurt to run the old stuff
now and then.) I regret only that for Usenet, I¹ve had to go through
this thing and change a lot of phrases that had been in boldface or
italics into ALL CAPS. SubGenius rant punctuation is a touchy thing, so
it may lose something in the translation.

And if you think this is ³corny,² you¹ve never been the young parent of
little tiny kids with great big nukes pointed at them.

BUT SERIOUSLY, NOW, FOLKS ...

HOW I FINALLY LEARNED TO HATE THE BOMB

Written In The Spirit by Rev. Ivan Stang

"Having three flat tires in one day, oh, yeah, that's HELL !"
-- Hypercleasians 14:6.

"The only ones who have a right to live are those not yet born."
-- Yossarian, Rio Bisbee Band

"NONE ARE SO BLIND AS THOSE WHO HAVE NO EYES."
-- Philo the Essene.

I am the proud owner of two little kids, both old enough to read, yet
young enough still to believe in Santa Claus. It irks me that I can't
tell them certain things, but it almost shames me to have to tell them
other things at all. The monstrous truth about Santa Claus, they don't
need to know. But one day, I had to warn them about certain grownups
who were so twisted by their own messed-up parents that they want to
"do bad things to you." Breaking such news to a child feels awful --
and it's chilling to think what they're prompted to imagine about the
world, no matter how you soften it in the telling.

But I couldn't bring myself to tell them about The Bomb...or about The
Germ, or The Gas. I know what would happen if my kids started thinking
about those all the time: they'd end up like me. Throughout high school
I was DEAD SURE the future would see us back in the caves. As Einstein,
or somebody, once said, "I don't know what World War III will be fought
with, but the one after that will be fought with sticks and stones."

And now, we don't even have THAT to look forward to. There would be
nothing. NOTHING LEFT if the Big Mistake happened. (Incidentally, my
children figured that out for themselves, without my having to say
anything. Between TV cartoons, news, and overheard conversations, they
were able to put two and two together before First Grade. You'll be
glad to know they have adjusted better than I ever did.)

Most people can't really conceive of worldwide extinction of all higher
life forms; they have a lot of trouble, for that matter,
conceptualizing so much as a rape or a car wreck, at least until it
happens to them. "Positive thinking" and escape into affluent isolation
have become so socially desirable that the idea of preparing for the
worst is seen as a bad habit indulged only by survivalists and other
'kooks.' To most Americans, a 'big mistake' is forgetting to, say,
photocopy that textiles contract before the board meeting, or burning
the roast when guests are coming for dinner. They won't build
themselves a fallout shelter, yet they'll donate to save the whales.

Most human beings have no idea how REAL they are -- nor how smart, for
that matter; yet, at the same time, they grossly underestimate their
own stupidity! They could permanently wreck the planet for the rest of
us simply by not giving themselves enough credit. (And if they distrust
themselves so much, think how much they distrust you!) They assume they
wouldn't be good enough at anything important to take a stab at it --
and in all too few cases, they're right -- so they cling to the safe
and the meaningless. They wish everyone else would, too. When someone
tries to warn them of a danger of which they weren't already aware,
they take it as an insult.

"If they all thought they were as great as I think I am, everybody'd
get along just fine -- even though they'd all be wrong!"
-- "Bob" Dobbs to a Sunday School class in 1955.

How much do you tell your kids about the future? About pollution, about
overpopulation, and war and crime, and where the statistics point? When
does it stop training them for survival, and start making them
suicidal?

How much can you afford, psychologically, to tell yourself?

People tend to take things for granted, to forget how useful their
MINDS are. Unfortunately, that's one of those processes which
snowballs, and by which privileged people, given every opportunity to
become self-reliant, nevertheless degenerate into big pink crybabies.
If people are less alive than they used to be, it's only because, for
them, there's less TO being alive. The line between life and death can
become blurred and indistinct. A truly dedicated worker can keep making
an income, or cooking dinner for the family, long after his or her mind
is dead. Any belief in life after death should include the hideous
plausibility of becoming a sick, invisible ghost that keeps shuffling
back to the office or the kitchen. What else happens to people whose
instincts are so ruined that they can no longer differentiate between
the so-called "Light" and the so-called "Darkness?" Might not that
"Light" thing, that ALIVENESS, get overdrawn just as easily as its
checking account?

It's all too easy for us to desoul ourselves by overdoing just what we
thought might save us -- work, drugs, religion, etc. We continue to
calculate, but we cease to feel. We wreck the very instincts that are
necessary for maintaining that state between self-lobotomizing lethargy
and neurotic burn-out.

People are compelled to "own" more and more things, which would be
fine, but constant gain becomes a sick compulsion that can scrambles
anyone's ability to distinguish between LIFE and THINGS at all. They
forget that they're animals, and start playing dangerous games with
their own bodies and with all of nature. It's fine to learn by
experimenting; a child usually has to get burned a time or two before
it learns to take its parents' advice about the kitchen stove. It's
just that THIS time, the "stove" is 50,000 nuclear warheads and
unimaginable germ warfare viruses. We only get to 'try' it once.

It's just a damn shame: snuffing all life except lichens and deep-sea
heat vent worms is EASY, whereas feeding humanity is HARD WORK. No use
crying over spilt milk; but that doesn't mean it's okay to spill that
plutonium!

Human brains can be terrifying to examine closely, especially by their
owners. Ordinary people, conditioned to limits on every hand in the
real world, become so scared of the immensity of their own brains, of
the obvious fact that the inside is so much bigger than the outside,
that they routinely run absolutely INSANE risks. Their desperation then
requires all manner of half-assed justifications, and ineffectual but
(more importantly) SIMPLE formulas by which to remain uninformed --
avoiding the complexities of their responsibility for themselves.
Driving to work on the expressway, for instance: how often do we
concretely visualize what we're doing then? CAN we realize that we're
little wads of delicate meat, crouched inside flimsy tin cans, hurtling
along at incredible speeds with death no farther away than the next
driver's last mixed drink?

We see this chronic denial also in the differences between "religions"
and "cults." A religion exerts itself in improving psychological and
physical conditions within it and without it; a cult just keeps jacking
itself off, though it might go through the motions of 'food
outreaches,' etc. €Most so-called Christians aren't religious; they're
cultists. So are most SubGeniuses!

America is a cult. We are cult zombies. If the ruling elite can get
away so easily with dumping unimaginable quantities of poison into our
air and water, meanwhile withholding safer technology because they
don't currently sell it, how is that any different from Jim Jones
telling 900 people to commit suicide? In both cases, the zombies do
what the cult leader says. The Rev. Jim Jones was simply more honest
about what he demanded from his devotees.

The function of religion is to circumvent that creeping acceptance of
hopelessness, to constantly remind you how alive you indeed are, so
that the logical, practical side of yourself can't keep hammering you
down. You're being hammered at from all sides -- including the inside
-- but as long as you know what's going on, you can HAMMER BACK.

If life was easy, everybody would be living it. But it isn't, so some
die instead. Many of our more brainy citizens kill themselves. The more
a person knows, the tougher it is to maintain a sense of balance and
fairness in the universe; the inventive mind is tormented by visions of
how much better things MIGHT HAVE BEEN. On the other hand, common sense
-- particularly the common sense of humor -- can reveal a sustaining
beauty, and a level of meaning (even if only imagined!) that makes life
just as much more fun as it is more threatening.

Sadly, such an outlook is incomprehensible to the self-desensitized. If
you're of a minority religion, or race, or sexual proclivity, or even
business, then you have probably clashed with people who seem to oppose
you -- but won't come out and admit it -- for absolutely no reason at
all. Hopefully, you realized that such people are simply jealous of
your ability to make the best of a bad situation. They want you to be
as unlucky as they are. Otherwise, their entire world view wouldn't
make sense. Religions are particularly easy to warp into disguises for
jealousy, justifications for hate. In modern America, a "Christian"
preacher can make himself very rich by acting as the carrier of some
contagious neurosis, some form of mental illness in which followers can
hide from their own shortcomings.

Being informed, knowing better, doesn't always help. "Expanded
consciousness," if it's the real thing, should go hand in hand with an
awful realization of responsibility. But we've all had 'hip' friends
who drank enough beer EVERY NIGHT to nourish a tribe of Ethiopians for
a week -- and who put enough up their noses in a day to buy
vaccinations for half of Kenya. There are literally millions of people
starving to death right NOW, and we "aware" people of the developed
nations are the only ones who can really do very much about it; we talk
or sing about it eloquently before blowing it off. We remember our
rights, but forget our responsibility as... well, as the only
responsible life forms. A tough responsibility? It isn't half as tough
as watching your whole family starve to death because there is NO FOOD
for miles around.

Everyone has a right, even a duty, to enjoy themselves. However, to a
man getting off a hard day's work, having fun means ignoring those who
aren't -- just as those who possess no sense of humor automatically
dislike those who do. Indeed, fun for many people REQUIRES seeing
others in misery. Until work and fun are no longer opposites, this
won't change. Work must become more meaningful for fun to become less
an act of desperation; only then will the semi-leisured class (such as
those who found themselves reading this) be able to appreciate what
leisure they have. When that happens, the jealousies will evaporate and
people will WANT TO SHARE.

We can probably look for this to happen in, say, ten thousand years.

In the meantime, a minority of the two-legged animals will be stuck
with keeping the whole chain of life intact, almost despite the wishes
of the rest of the two-legged animals. Since two-legged animals are by
far the most dangerous creatures on the planet, this may prove to be a
risky job!

And it really is all life. All. That's how high the stakes have risen
on the nuclear gameboard. We are actually placated by movies like ROAD
WARRIOR, or even PLANET OF THE APES; such popular post-holocaust
fantasies may turn out to be 'best possible" scenarios! Those nasty,
low-tech caveman future worlds might come about without ANY wars; at
least they're inhabited worlds! The real post-nuke landscape wouldn't
support such exciting luxuries as roving bands of bloodthirsty killers
or mutated monsters.

The chain of life is astoundingly adaptable, but frighteningly fragile
at the same time. Like a delicate glass ball, it's easy to break, and
easy NOT to break. We've already racked up quite a bill on our
ecological charge-card, but our kids and grandkids are the ones who'll
have to pay up. Evolution proves every day that it's a blind machine,
without sympathy or aesthetic sense, that will snuff us out
automatically if we blow it. There was at least one other race of
humanoid bipeds not so long ago; remember the Neanderthals? Guess who
exterminated them? (And we did it without even ONE nuclear device!* )

If we do screw up, in the BIG way, it won't be just a couple of the
big-league countries -- it'll be everybody. Extinction is just as hard
on an innocent baby or a cute little bunny as it is on a murderous
asshole. Ask any dinosaur, or any Mandan Indian.

We well-fed people have a dream: the dream of acquiring MORE CRAP for
LESS WORK. The rest of the world -- the other three-quarters of it --
has a dream too: the dream of enough to eat. The hungry ones surround
us on all sides; they live right down the street, in fact. We, AND the
wretched, AND the normals who couldn't care less, are all in the same
rickety little boat together, in a cold, cold sea. And someone is
FOOLING AROUND with that little PLUG at the bottom of the boat. Our
leaders act like they don't even believe that plug is there; obviously,
NOBODY is giving us "instructions." We have to figure this situation
out for ourselves. And we'd better do it fast, just to be on the safe
side.

Nor will God help us. That's right, NO BIG MAN IN THE SKY WILL SAVE
US.* We smartypants bipeds chose to take it upon ourselves, to take it
out of "God's" hands. We have the ball ... now where do we run with
it? Do we run with it at all?

Having the responsibility also means we have choices.

For all intents and purposes, WE are "God" now... yet some talk about a
"nuclear judgement" as if it had been DECREED for our OWN GOOD. Someone
in THIS life might beat you up or throw you in jail for your sins, but
it won't be God. If there is a nuclear judgement, it'll be OUR fault
alone.

No "church" will save you either, especially not the SubGenius Church.
However, we would at least encourage you to SAVE YOURSELF, which is
better than most religions can say. What are we saying you should do?
Well, we know, but, just to be assholes, WE WON'T TELL YOU. That would
be CHEATING! It's between you and "Bob" and Mom and apple pie.

It isn't just the prospect of an irreversibly contaminated foodchain
that should worry you, either. It's the thought of what the pissed-off
ELDER GODS will do to our ETERNAL SOULS as PUNISHMENT for stupidly
ruining Their expensive chessboard, Earth.

There's not a whole hell of a lot that any of us CAN do with any major,
immediate results. Violence and sabotage? That's exactly like using a
knife to attack a man with a machine gun. The Bomb, and starvation, and
etc., are here to stay until people change not just the way they think,
but WHAT they think ABOUT.

Any lone person -- even you -- can aid and abet that process by
becoming one more voice howling in the wilderness, or howling from atop
a car hood in the city, or howling on a radio talk show... or in
conversation with a friend. We must howl in all our different ways. It
can make a difference: 2,000 years ago, Christianity started out as a
couple of maniacs ranting in the desert, and look how far it's come!

On second thought, forget that example.

I, or any subversive character like me, will gladly tell you to DO
SOMETHING... but we sure as hell aren't going to try to tell you WHAT.
The Conspiracy, however, tells you EXACTLY what to do, every chance
they get.
(Notice a difference?)

It's easy to do what they want; they desire but one simple thing from
you. They'll let you have anything you want, if you'll just do this ONE
THING they ask.

If you'll just GIVE UP.

Think about it. Wouldn't it be so much EASIER to just stop WORRYING?
You're not stupid, though. Even though you can't just suddenly up and
save the planet, there are still a million "little" things to be done.
There are groups out there, countless clusters of knowledgeable people,
all underfinanced, that specialize in protecting the water, the
animals, the people, the plants. They need your money and time.

Or maybe, for now, all they need is your attention. Perhaps, even more
than that, they need you only to hang on to your instincts, to preserve
your intuition, until you're in a better position to use them. That
alone would be better for them, for the time being, than losing you
entirely.

It's up to you to find the ones you can work with in your own town,
and/or the national organizations that happen to agree with your
personal politics. You have to decide which ones are naive do-gooder
fools, which ones are crooks, and which ones are effective. We could
point you in a few general directions -- but who's kidding who? You've
known all along what to do. This article is just a 'pep talk' to help
convince you to go ahead and actually do it. Whatever it is.

We're the first animals on this planet to have to start guiding our own
evolution (at least, until we're outdated by the new models we'll
create!). Only the few who know about it ever feel the burden, but it's
a heavy one. The crucial, immediate thing is to keep it FUN. Our job
right now is to make the responsibility more clear and yet to keep it
in perspective, to keep it fun. To make it POSSIBLE.

Everything you can see around you was once called "impossible." We must
make the damn-near-impossible seem MORE possible than it really is --
if we knew how tough it was actually going to BE, we'd give up
entirely. We must continually FOOL ourselves into HELPING ourselves,
because another part of us is always trying to fool us into HURTING
ourselves. The part that hurts has acquired a glamorous rep of late,
while the part that helps has been made to seem boring BECAUSE IT HAS
BEEN LEFT IN THE HANDS OF "EXPERTS" WHEN WE SHOULD HAVE PRESERVED OUR
INSTINCTS OURSELVES, HANDING THEM DOWN FROM PARENT TO CHILD LIKE
PRIMATES ARE SUPPOSED TO DO, RATHER THAN PAYING SOMEONE ELSE TO DO IT.
It's easy to assume that the person with the loudest voice and most
credentials knows what he's doing, but it's surprisingly difficult to
learn the truth. "The Hard Way" seems to work best.

In some misfired way, our puritanical ancestors were right -- it takes
REAL WORK to be REALLY ALIVE. Not the meaningless toil they pay you
for, but REAL WORK, like whatever that thing is that you enjoy most.
Keep THAT alive and you won't squander your energy off into rancid
pools of hate and self-pity. It isn't just the system that keeps you
down -- it's YOU, TOO. SNAP OUT OF IT!! Shed that skin of habits!
You're ancestors PAID to make sure you could really think... now THINK,
GOD DAMN IT!! If you had any INKLING of how far you've come, you would
NEVER slip back! There IS a reason to keep going;WHY DO YOU THINK IT
STARTED UP IN THE FIRST PLACE??

The main thing, in any case, is simply to remember. Remember the air,
the ocean, the people just out of eyeshot, the strangely delicate
balance that can't function under Dioxin and radiation and a burnt
ozone layer. You don't have to dwell morbidly upon these things;
indeed, you MUSTN¹T .

Just REMEMBER ... and sooner or later you'll know exactly what to do.
At that point, if it didn't before, everything will make sense once
again.

FOOTNOTES:

*SubGeniuses may be their revenge.

*"God" is what you remember when you die -- so, no hurry, right?

ADDENDUM to the "BUT SERIOUSLY..." rant:
FOR DECLARED SUBGENII SPECIFICALLY:

Unfortunately, it isn't as easy being a Good Guy as it looks in the
movies. Most people desperately want to be Good Guys at first, but they
blow it off when they realize that there really are Bad Guys too. Bad
Guys with super powers, in fact!

Just because you aren't "bad" doesn't mean you're "good." If you
aren't DOING anything about the Bad Guys, you're nothing but a "plot
device" that the Bad Guys OR the Good Guys are going to USE.

Don't feel like a lone kook just because nobody around you seems to
know what the word "ecosystem" means. They won't know what DEATH means,
either, until they've learned to appreciate life. They take the
universe for granted, and are stuck in a world of "goals" which are as
worthless as they are easily attained.

Normal adjustment to society seems to demand this "blinkered"
consciousness. On the other hand, maniacal SubGenius style mental
health, although illegal, can create an immunity against future-shock
apathy. If you can "take a joke" even as HORRIBLE as modern reality,
you can't be blinded to its horrors OR its joys.

The Bad Guys have a funny way of twisting all this around, though, and
making whole planetary populations fall for it. Ever notice that the
Conspiracy is COMPOSED of "TOUGH MEN?" TOUGH MEN. They're MAN enough to
watch a football game, alright, but not MAN enough to change their
kid's diapers. MAN enough to let the President bury nuclear waste in
their backyard, MAN enough to pay taxes, MAN enough to wear an itchy
business suit even in summer (because they're MAN enough to pay the
electric bills for air-conditioning), MAN enough to send their kids to
fight overseas, MAN enough to be BLANK FOOD TUBES that "WORK" to pay
for MORE FOOD... MAN enough to tell NIGGER JOKES, or to gang up with a
bunch of other TOUGH MEN to beat up lone queers or even just little
nerds with glasses... but not MAN enough to STAY HUMAN.

Does that enrage you? Does that make you want to gang up with a bunch
of other tough SubGenii to beat up lone Normals and Rednecks?

One of "Bob's" Secret Doctrines, as you'll remember from your studies
of BoSG Ch.20, is that THERE ARE NO NORMALS. It's a matter of degree.
The only "SubGeniuses" who seriously think they can tell a 'normal'
from a 'Sub' are the "Bobbies" -- the slimy anti-social Normals who are
SO SURE they're True Children of "Bob." (A thousand average normals
aren't half the threat to the Church that three "Bobbies" are.)
Revealingly, most of these still live off their parents. Naturally, we
find "Bobbies" who declare themselves "better than normals" because
they don't have to hold down jobs. That's supposed to mean they "have
Slack."

Almost everyone has to work for the Conspiracy, just to survive -- but
how many of you are really sufficiently true to yourselves to PRESERVE
your CRAZINESS, to STAY "SUBGENIUS" in the face of a squalling baby,
unpaid heating bills, and the promise of wealth if you'll just "buckle
down"?? How many will be capable of the NOBLEST chore, of SUBVERTING
FROM WITHIN, of remaining teenaged while mastering the APPEARANCE of
adulthood?? Getting Slack, in its truest sense, can sometimes be MORE
WORK than WORKING ONESELF to STUPIDITY!

In the eternal battle, Slack WILL eventually win out, simply because
in its pure state it cannot be bottled or sold. However, thanks to the
Conspiracy, abnormality in the current ruling civilization usually
demands sacrifice. "FINE," you say, "I'll sacrifice my NORMALITY!!"
Okay.. but what if being a Good Guy means being treated worse than the
Bad Guy half the time? Think you're "man" enough, Pink Boy? Ready to
spend 20 years proving it?

Someday, 10,000 years from now or so, we will no longer have to
sacrifice; we will have our cake and eat it too, for we are OWED it.
"Bob" HAS promised us Something for Nothing. But, in the meantime, the
only form of PURE TRUE TIME CONTROL now open to us is PATIENCE to put
up with all the shit and torment that being one of the Good Guys
means... to party ANYWAY... because WHATEVER IS CLOSEST TO REAL SLACK
WILL PAY OFF THAT MUCH BETTER IN THE END.

The Conspiracy wants you to party and work, party and work -- Their
way. "Bob" wants you to REALLY party and REALLY work. "Don't just
launch that Bleeding Head... launch the HELL out of it!" -- Sternodox.

"Bob" lived his life the way he did to prove that you can be a Good Guy
and still be Cool...just like Mr. T, kids!! The Conspiracy (and the
"Bobbies!") promulgate an EZ-2-Digest Canned Hipness; the kind of
hipness we're talking about isn't like anything shown on TV or sung by
rock stars. It isn't Punk, nor old-timey, either. It simply IS. It
predates fashion, it predates CLOTHES, it predates DATING, it may even
predate bipedal locomotion and the opposable thumb, and it's more
important than any lifestyle with a name, including "SubGenius." FUCK
the assholes that keep trying to replace it with cheap thrills. It's
possible to have a more swinging time at home with your family, just
sitting around, than the "bad guys" would EVER want you to think. That
would RUIN Their system.

Slack, strangely enough, has a lot to do with commitment and love and
responsibility and such, things which haven't been "hip" lately, but
will be again someday, no thanks to either the Moral Majority or the
New Age... SLACK is ultimately what it will take for, for instance,
nuclear disarmament to ever happen. But EVEN NATIONS MUST HAVE SLACK.

Any religion is just one big PEP TALK, but -- screwy as it may be --
the basic GIST common to most religions is THE FUCKING TRUTH!! But
that inevitable loss of perspective keeps creeping in, no matter what
absurd measures the 'guru' takes to prevent it, and pretty soon the pep
talk becomes repetition. Then, a completely new form of "pep talk" is
created to fill the need, to REMIND PEOPLE OF THEMSELVES.

The terms "SubGenius" and "Slack" don't mean a cluster of "Bobbies"
thinking a shared "in joke" proves they're better than everybody else.
SubGeniuses are people who, even if for one second, or one instant,
recognized the value of their lives. If the rest of humanity could lock
onto that, the assholes of the world would be CURED INSTANTLY and all
crime and war and exploitation would CEASE FOREVER.

That's what the Church is here for.

"BOB" COMES AGAIN and AGAIN to prove that being a Good Guy is WORTH IT
in KICKS and SLACK.

"Bob" asked WOTAN if we COULD party, and IT said that we HAD to.

Of course, you can't enjoy yourself if you're an evil shit who thinks
that hurting other people is enjoyable. That cancels itself out --
which is exactly why it's so hard to tell the difference. Slack for
thyself and Slack for others, then, are not interchangeable, but
definitely interconnected. To keep all Slack for yourself actually
depletes Slack; not only are you rendered unable to appreciate it, but
you also lose brownie points in society AND Heaven, and will eventually
be branded an asshole, and so fry in Hell.

Being a Slackful Asshole gets you nowhere.

On the other hand, a fine person with no Slack won't be a fine person
for long. It'll become a stupid person and kill itself.

Many don't even know when they DO have Slack to begin with. When people
can barely count past ten anymore, how can they accurately count their
blessings? Yet, as Slackless a land as this is, Hell has even less
Slack. YOU COULD DIE AND GO THERE ANY SECOND.

There is no justice, no answer. If you can save the world
singlehandedly, GREAT. If you can "just get by," THAT'S GREAT TOO.

Just don't QUIT.

SET AN EXAMPLE as a LIVING ENTITY that HASN'T STOPPED LIVING. You won't
really know what it's all worth until it's been taken away -- so just
TAKE "BOB'S" WORD FOR IT!!

On the surface, that may not be a sane approach; but nothing really
important that ever happened was a "sane" event. That is why the
Conspiracy suppresses abnormality. It doesn't want anything IMPORTANT
to happen.

They have 50,000 nuclear weapons, and we don't have ANY. YET, WE DARE
TO FIGHT ŒEM ANYWAY!! Sure, it's a lost cause -- but as Jimmy
Stewart's old Pa said in MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, "The lost causes
are the only causes worth fighting for." SURE we're CRAZY -- hasn't it
ALWAYS been the crazies and the misfits who were STUPID and BRAVE
enough to STAND UP AGAINST THE CONSPIRACY?

The decks are stacked, alright. But WE have the JOKER... the Joker and
the Batman all rolled into one!

Is it not ... "Bob?"

((END))

STARTED at the beach house the day after the mean religious cop tried
to scare us, and succeeded, during the SubGenius Beach Party hosted by
the Houston Clench -- Galveston, Texas, June 1983. With certain key
lines cribbed from the rants of Pope David Meyer, St. Janor
Hypercleats, Dr. Philo Drummond, Pope Sternodox and someone else.

*****

AFTERFACE: It may come off as somewhat corny today, but I worked harder
on this rant than on much else I was doing at the time. I¹ll tell you
what motivated it. LSD. Yes, I¹m sorry, but I ³was² a pretty serious
occasional LSD user. The family and I were on a mini-vacation combined
with a SubG devival in Houston. We and many Houston Subs were staying
at a beachhouse in Galveston for a weekend, like a mini-Dokstok; on the
last day (after the Catholic anti-cult cop, a classic Texas stereotype,
harrassed us) I did two hits of acid and, while my wife and kids napped
in the afternoon, I lay on the floor with the ocean rumbling outside
the window, and, as often happens when I trip, I was beset by visions
of a million billion starving and tortured people covering the globe, a
blighted planet, and the ULTIMATE TECHNO-HORROR. I managed to jot down
a few lines that gradually grew into this rant. I would work on it for
a weekend and then let it sit for 6 months until I wasn¹t ³too close to
it,² then would rework it again after seeing it afresh. I showed the
first versions of it to my Apostle pals and they all said it sucked
from corniness. So I hacked away at it and jacked with it and added to
it and finally said, well, I¹ll never get it perfect, so LET¹S CALL IT
QUITS!

--
The SubGenius Foundation, Inc.
(4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected, Rev. Ivan Stang, prop.)
P.O. Box 181417, Cleveland, OH 44118 (fax 216-320-9528)
Dobbs-Approved Authorized Commercial Outreach of The Church of the SubGenius
SubSITE: http://www.subgenius.com PRABOB

Correspondent:: brthrn@dangermedia.org
Date: 30 Jan 2005 15:00:42 -0800

--------
"The Lord's angel, Gebrail, dictated the Koran to Mohammed the Lord's
Prophet. What a joke if all that holy book were only twenty-three years
of listening to the desert. A desert which has no voice. If the Koran
were nothing, then Islam was nothing. Then Allah was a story, and his
Paradise wishful thinking."

Correspondent:: Two Beans
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 23:51:46 -0500

--------
On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 17:21:34 -0500, "Rev. Ivan Stang"
wrote:

> snip

I agree with this poster.

-2B

Correspondent:: "Ad Absurdum"
Date: 30 Jan 2005 23:19:18 -0800

--------
This, and the Introduction to 'High Weirdness By Mail' which I attained
lately, remind me that you're one of my very favorite writers and
"thinkers" that I know of.
PRASTANG!

Purple, what have you really got against this guy?

Correspondent:: purple
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 22:03:05 -0500

--------
On 1/31/05 2:19 AM, in article
1107155958.799567.154210@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com, "Ad Absurdum"
wrote:

> This, and the Introduction to 'High Weirdness By Mail' which I attained
> lately, remind me that you're one of my very favorite writers and
> "thinkers" that I know of.
> PRASTANG!
>
> Purple, what have you really got against this guy?
>
Because Doug writes in English - which is a pretty fascist thing to do
today. Too much LSD - very sad. He lost everything and has nothing to show
for it.

So there you have it.

The Great Bob Dobbs

Correspondent:: Zapanaz
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2005 09:19:57 -0800

--------
On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 17:21:34 -0500, "Rev. Ivan Stang"
wrote:

>Meanwhile here is my bullshit from the 1980s, prefaced with bullshit
>from the 1990s.

that's pretty good. I posted that thing in the venture communism
thread before I read this in case you thought I was parrotting this.

I used to think, still think, that the only possible answer to how
fucked up things get is to make people wake up. To try to get across
to them what's going on and why the insane stuff is insane.

I watched a movie about the SLA the other day. The ones that
kidnapped Patty Hearst. I think most of them were addle-noggined
dingle brains, but they were talking at the beginning with some of the
founders, who were talking about the frustrations that led them to
become violent revolutionaries.

There they were, watching Nixon pursuing this completely insane war in
Vietnam, and getting on TV and telling everybody that he didn't give a
damn if people were in favor of it or not.

And that drove people crazy, but then they RE-ELECTED HIM.

And it really hit me. All that work people did in the sixties, and
since the sixties, trying to educate people to reality. I was a
little kid in the seventies, and it seems like I was just inundated
with it all. And personally it really got to me. I -thought- that it
got through to everybody else the same way. That all these ex-hippies
who decided that violence was wrong and the answer was to change the
system from within, were right.

But now here we are, 30 years after the sixties, going through exactly
the same drill. Just substitute "Bush" for "Nixon" and "Iraq" for
"Vietnam".

Nobody's learned a damned thing. You can even -quantify- how few
people learned how little, just count the election returns.

Enormous forces rose up to fight back against any attempt to make
people any less insane, best exemplified by conservative fundie
religion-politics. Zillions of dollars and immense human effort to
keep people intellectually in the middle ages and emotionally living
in a John Wayne movie.

Personally I think the yippies were right. The only answer is to dump
huge quantities of LSD into the water supply.

Sure, some people would just crack. They'd go away and never come
back. That would be OK with me. It would make life more colorful
anyway.

--
Zapanaz
International Satanic Conspiracy
Customer Support Specialist
http://joecosby.com/
Peddle that flabby blather in the hinterlands, Grendel
- Hellpope Huey

Correspondent:: "Rev. Ivan Stang"
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 12:23:00 -0500

--------
In article <1gosv0p91f2kbesb7l31m9l3tpss6f0voc@4ax.com>, Zapanaz wrote:

> On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 17:21:34 -0500, "Rev. Ivan Stang"
> wrote:
>
> >Meanwhile here is my bullshit from the 1980s, prefaced with bullshit
> >from the 1990s.
>
> that's pretty good. I posted that thing in the venture communism
> thread before I read this in case you thought I was parrotting this.
>

No, I posted it BECAUSE I read your thing!

> I used to think, still think, that the only possible answer to how
> fucked up things get is to make people wake up. To try to get across
> to them what's going on and why the insane stuff is insane.

That's what every fundamentalist tells itself every morning when it
wakes up, though.

>
> I watched a movie about the SLA the other day. The ones that
> kidnapped Patty Hearst. I think most of them were addle-noggined
> dingle brains, but they were talking at the beginning with some of the
> founders, who were talking about the frustrations that led them to
> become violent revolutionaries.
>
> There they were, watching Nixon pursuing this completely insane war in
> Vietnam, and getting on TV and telling everybody that he didn't give a
> damn if people were in favor of it or not.
>
> And that drove people crazy, but then they RE-ELECTED HIM.
>
>
> And it really hit me. All that work people did in the sixties, and
> since the sixties, trying to educate people to reality. I was a
> little kid in the seventies, and it seems like I was just inundated
> with it all. And personally it really got to me. I -thought- that it
> got through to everybody else the same way. That all these ex-hippies
> who decided that violence was wrong and the answer was to change the
> system from within, were right.
>
> But now here we are, 30 years after the sixties, going through exactly
> the same drill. Just substitute "Bush" for "Nixon" and "Iraq" for
> "Vietnam".

And if you were 75 years old you'd remember yet more examples of the
same cycle.

I think that was Nenslo's partial point to begin with. People get
terribly emotional as if this was all happening for the first time and
in the worst way ever. The details are different. But worse things have
happened on much bigger scales many times before. The Chinese and the
Russians both make us look like newbies, mere pikers in this arena.
Perhaps only because they've been doing it for so much longer.

>
> Nobody's learned a damned thing. You can even -quantify- how few
> people learned how little, just count the election returns.
>
> Enormous forces rose up to fight back against any attempt to make
> people any less insane, best exemplified by conservative fundie
> religion-politics. Zillions of dollars and immense human effort to
> keep people intellectually in the middle ages and emotionally living
> in a John Wayne movie.

Oh, I don't think that takes any immense human effort at all.

> Personally I think the yippies were right. The only answer is to dump
> huge quantities of LSD into the water supply.
>
> Sure, some people would just crack. They'd go away and never come
> back. That would be OK with me. It would make life more colorful
> anyway.

I like the idea of the Living Dead virus better.

--
The SubGenius Foundation, Inc.
(4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected, Rev. Ivan Stang, prop.)
P.O. Box 181417, Cleveland, OH 44118 (fax 216-320-9528)
Dobbs-Approved Authorized Commercial Outreach of The Church of the SubGenius
SubSITE: http://www.subgenius.com PRABOB

Correspondent:: Zapanaz
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 12:08:03 -0800

--------
On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 12:23:00 -0500, "Rev. Ivan Stang"
wrote:

>I think that was Nenslo's partial point to begin with.

yeah nenslo had a good point as always. But I have to fuck with him.
Someone's gotta do it.

Otherwise he would TAKE OVER THE WORLD. And that would just be more
nenslo than I could probably handle.

>People get
>terribly emotional as if this was all happening for the first time and
>in the worst way ever. The details are different. But worse things have
>happened on much bigger scales many times before. The Chinese and the
>Russians both make us look like newbies, mere pikers in this arena.
>Perhaps only because they've been doing it for so much longer.
>

And they probably both had people saying "bah! You complain about
Stalin as if he were any worse than any other politician!"

See the thing is, Hitler had a little mustache that looked like a
caterpillar on his lip, right? And he kills -millions- of his own
people. And Stalin has an EVEN BIGGER mustache, and kills EVEN MORE
of his own people. And then Mao comes along, who has NO MUSTACHE AT
ALL, and kills more people than both of them put together. WHAT DOES
THAT SAY ABOUT "BOB"?

(fragment from a rant I was going to deliver at next x-day but I will
probably never get finished)

>>
>> Nobody's learned a damned thing. You can even -quantify- how few
>> people learned how little, just count the election returns.
>>
>> Enormous forces rose up to fight back against any attempt to make
>> people any less insane, best exemplified by conservative fundie
>> religion-politics. Zillions of dollars and immense human effort to
>> keep people intellectually in the middle ages and emotionally living
>> in a John Wayne movie.
>
>Oh, I don't think that takes any immense human effort at all.

true enough. If Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis can shift the
whole political climate of a nation (and they did) then I don't reckon
it requires some kind of evil mad James Bond Super Villian to fuck
that nation up.

--
Zapanaz
International Satanic Conspiracy
Customer Support Specialist
http://joecosby.com/
"Birds are the eyes of God." -- Shaman Leo

Correspondent:: bobdiddley@aol.com (3D Bob)
Date: 31 Jan 2005 23:42:04 GMT

--------
Stang wrote:

>It may come off as somewhat corny today, but I worked harder
>on this rant than on much else I was doing at the time. I¹ll tell you
>what motivated it. LSD. Yes, I¹m sorry, but I ³was² a pretty serious
>occasional LSD user.

You needn't apologize for having been at the right place, at the right time, in
the right frame of mind, to do something interesting with LSD. This is good
write/ranting, however it came about. For those of our time frame (that's you
and me and many others), LSD was the key to seeing beyond the tv set robotic
Pink curtain. Hooray! You dosed, you pondered, and you actually managed to
congeal some of that liquid thought in a format which can be re-ingested even
today!

Many of the times that I took acid, I frittered away the experience, wasting my
time and a dose someone else could have used. But some of those times, I
babbled out Universal Truth in forgotten languages which I'm still trying to
translate into forms recognizable in this common era. My medium was and is
countrified folk rock songs with many layers of intricate organic rhythmpuns,
so subtle that few either get them, or dance to them - which is about the same
thing.

I got two quikquotes from the Heartfelt Thing, and am saving the whole for
rerereading. Thanks for writing it, thanks for remembering you wrote it, thanks
for sending it to us. I babble, you babble, we all babylon and on.

Keep on playing those mind games forever...

=========================================================
"We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his
noble qualities...still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of
his lowly origin." - Charles Darwin

Correspondent:: König Prüß, GfbAEV
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 00:05:03 GMT

--------
bobdiddley wrote:
>Stang wrote:
>
>>It may come off as somewhat corny today, but I worked harder
>>on this rant than on much else I was doing at the time. I¹ll tell you
>>what motivated it. LSD. Yes, I¹m sorry, but I ³was² a pretty serious
>>occasional LSD user.
>
>You needn't apologize for having been at the right place, at the right time, in
>the right frame of mind, to do something interesting with LSD. This is good
>write/ranting, however it came about. For those of our time frame (that's you
>and me and many others), LSD was the key to seeing beyond the tv set robotic
>Pink curtain. Hooray! You dosed, you pondered, and you actually managed to
>congeal some of that liquid thought in a format which can be re-ingested even
>today!
>
>Many of the times that I took acid, I frittered away the experience, wasting my
>time and a dose someone else could have used. But some of those times, I
>babbled out Universal Truth in forgotten languages which I'm still trying to
>translate into forms recognizable in this common era. My medium was and is
>countrified folk rock songs with many layers of intricate organic rhythmpuns,
>so subtle that few either get them, or dance to them - which is about the same
>thing.
>
>I got two quikquotes from the Heartfelt Thing, and am saving the whole for
>rerereading. Thanks for writing it, thanks for remembering you wrote it, thanks
>for sending it to us. I babble, you babble, we all babylon and on.
>
>Keep on playing those mind games forever...
>

Play that funky music, White boy!