DALLAS in '98 -- WHY THE DRILLS?

In article <9IoYzcEbldeV092yn@YGRI.net>, dynasor@en.com wrote:

> friday@cybercom.net (IrRev. Friday Jones) sent bitwaves which read:

.
> }Every SubGenius should do as s/he/it feels like doing - partying alone in
> }the orgone chamber, nude in the dew at Brushwood, dancing in the hot sands
> }of Dallas - what does it matter? THE SAUCERS ARE COMING!
>
> BLASPHEMY. Which is, of course, why you are one of the Most Beloved of
> Dobbs Or At Least His Fillet Minions.
>

Actually I think Dobbs was thinking the DONATIONS more than the blasphemy. And possibly the alabaster TITS of the good sister Friday. That's what I was thinking of. And her extremely USEFUL SubSITE art of buttons and knobs. Friday is good with knobs. Only G. Gordon Gordon has donated more money to the Church. But his tits are sagging. If one were to nitpick about it, SOMEONE ELSE OWNS the entire Church (INCLUDING the SOULS of ALL THE MEMBERS!!)... she and Connie, technically. And their tits are fine. I could probably CLAIM to have made "donations" in the past, but it really falls more into the category of just plain LOSING MONEY and so doesn't count, in fact would be shameful in Dobbs eyes, were Dobbs capable of shame. My tits... man, I don't even want to THINK about MY tits and I'm sure you don't either.

> However, if such were the case, WHY THE DRILLS?
>

The Drills are mainly just an excuse to have a big party, and rope in more Members before X-Day. I get to record lots of good Hour of Slack inspirational material and shoot very very weird home movies of very... interesting... people. The new, raw, unseasoned preachers get to practice. Frank Barney and the Brushwood staff get a great vacation from the stodgy Pagans. But Drills are also TRAINING for the SubGenii in "HOW TO BE AWAKE AT 7 A.M.", something that many of our fellows need PRACTICE in.

I need practice too. Practice on not losing it. Only someone else knew how bad it was, but Saturday night at the last Drill, from about 3 am to 5 am, I was freaking out with Convention Host Syndrome, suffering from exhaustion and not nearly enough drugs. I stayed away from everybody and paced around, cussing to myself. Finally I got into "bed" and vibrated fitfully for awhile and it wore off by 7 am, when I had to do... something.

Every Con Host gets Convention Host Syndrome, and it's a BITCH. I had hoped to avoid it but... I guess it just goes with the territory. It MAY go specifically with the territory of Sacred Scribe of this particular Church. MANY ARE THE SUBGENII who have come up to me after their first hour or two around A WHOLE LOT OF THEIR FELLOW SUBGENII, for instance their first devival or Drill or con, and say, "Stang? I just want to ask you ONE THING. HOW DO YOU STAND IT???" And well, that's what Dobbs pays me for, I guess. In other words, I am not the only SubGenius who is crazy as a bessy bug. They are ALL crazy as bessy-bugs. I just have to deal with more of them at ONCE than anybody else, except possibly Jesus and Will O'Dobbs, and someone else, who have also been on the "surrounded by SubGeniuses" train.

I will admit that I do freak out sometimes. I am not making excuses, I'm just warning you. Some people have to inform you that they are epileptics, or that they are in a wheelchair or whatnot. I have to inform people that in certain conditions I am likely to turn into a monster, but that it will be temporary. I should have a little card made up. "This person MAY BE AN ASSHOLE. If he is, avoid him. Do not offer him a cigaret. Give him coffee if you have any. Be careful; he WILL bite. Report his condition to jesus@subgenius.com"

Speaking of both of which, it looks like our new domain names, stang@subgenius.com and jesus@subgenius.com, ARE now working. In theory, soon I'll be able to Timbuktu into a Mac in North Carolina and set up that domain name for anybody's email account. Jesus and I are still using metronet.com, physically; I mean, email to us does not sit on that Mac in North Carolina, it is merely bounced THROUGH that Mac and thence to Texas Metronet's frequently-busted machine over to Fort Worth way. (However, I can now switch to onramp or airmail or eyeball or com.com are anything, but my email address will always be the same.) Likewise, if you bought a subgenius.com "vanity plate," which is essentially what this is, you would still be connecting through your local access company... you@subgenius.com would simply be an alternate address but it would still be your same account.

If you changed servers all the time, we'd constantly have to reshuffle your subgenius.com thingie, which would be a pain in the ass, which is one reason we'll charge for this service. Another reason is that we're now paying a monthly fee for all this.

I don't know JACK SHIT about servers! I guess I'm gonna have to learn real quick. McConville says to get me a Timbuktu (Mac program) and connect and just start feeling it out. Apparently we can run majordomos and all like that... auto-mailings, etc. etc. In theory we could have done that anyway, I guess. But now we own the damn gizmos.... this is all part of our web move from our charity home at SUNSite to a commercial server. We have ordered a Sun Spark workstation(?? -- I don't even know what the heck it is, McConville ordered it) and pretty soon, all the 6,000 "some-odd" files of SubSITE will be copied over to there, all 700 mb, and that'll be www.subgenius.com.

I guess I better buy that book on web servers. Heck, McConville WROTE part of it (the VRML stuff). And meanwhile Steve Jackson is gonna suddenly dump a load of script on me and I better be ready with ART GA-FUCKING-LORE!!

I cannot believe that I am learning about SERVERS. And 3D graphics. (I'm in the manual reading phase.) Never would have imagined getting so totally computer-geeky. It would be WEIRD except that it seems perfectly natural. The other day I sort of "woke up" and really "SAW" the room I was in, for a change. It's probably just like many of yours. Come to think of it, most single guys I know, their whole PLACES look like my office. It's like this vortex of jumbled beat up old media machines and wires, all converging into some plugs on the back of this now-outdated 7500 "Power" Mac. EVERYTHING goes into that now, it seems. I had to double my storage space and I know full well that $130 JAZ disk is only a STOPGAP MEASURE. Yesterday I permanently converted my broken video camera into a "poor man's scanner" or copy-stand arrangement so I can start shooting art and photos. We have some TRULY inexplicable photos in our Sacred Snapshots box. And Jesus says somebody says they're donating an old B&W scanner? Cuhl. People have volunteered to scan stuff for us but... I have become nervous about giving out art originals. I had to give the ORIGINAL DOBBSHEAD IMAGE to John Zero to scan... knowing that thing wasn't safe in its vault here, I could hardly sleep, I had such anxiety. IMAGINE!!! The ORIGINAL Dobbshead. The one that ALL the others are copied from. We got it back safe, and now it's in "FIRST GENERATION" form at the Art Mines of SubSITE, but for awhile there... ugh. It was like Linus not having his security blanket.

Mac users with Timbuktu, uh, well, huh.

Talk about a fucking NERD!! It's SATURDAY NIGHT -- and what am I doing? Sitting here on the INTERNET looking at a damn SUBGENIUS NEWSGROUP!! Jesus and his girlfriend Demonica, and someone else, they all went out bar-hopping or art-looking or something. But not grumpy old spoilsport, old nasty irrascible mean old scoundrelly muttering Rev.Stang! Nosir. Well, that's the way weekends are for preachers! MONDAY is really the preacher's day off, sort of like museums. Dobbs knows I could use a break. This Church multimedia thang is actually a PRETTY DEMANDING JOB! I've already managed to lock myself into monstrous routine... well I guess it beats working for the Man. But... I'm just working for The Other Man. I like him BETTER than the Man, and it's Slack work, but it's still WORK, if you understand the distinction.

Jesus told me from the start that He was always gonna take Sundays off, lest He go crazy like me. Although come to think of it... He did work today, Saturday. He and Nickie filled orders like crazy. There was a serious shortage of CRUX Dobbswear, the orders had stacked up, and shipment finally came in... so anybody who was waiting for a t-shirt or mug, I saw about 4 boxes of that stuff ready to mail, over at the Factory.

The Foundation is truly insidious. It keeps sucking in new people. Our latest part time employee, Sister Felia, didn't know or care a damn thing about the Church before she started doing mindless labor for Jesus; she's a first grade schoolteacher who works with my wife and was looking for a moonlighting job! This innocent women had NO CONNECTION TO DOBBS AT ALL and now she's one of his slaves in that sweatshop.

Those other people -- they can LEAVE though. Jesus cannot leave, and I cannot leave. I don't "get off work" and "go home." I'm always AT work. Period. And poor Jesus -- His office is starting to look just like mine -- with pictures of THAT FACE, EVERYWHERE YOU TURN. And GOUTS OF BLOOD all over the CARPET. Oh, wait, no, that's only at MY office.

I expected Jesus to do more carpentry, but in this incarnation, He is more of a stonemason. On Sundays lately, while I preach, he works in the Foundation's GARDENS on the damn MASONRY! We have all these LARGE FLAT WHITE ROCKS, with which someone else has her men build pathways and walls around her organic Yeti garden. (There are big piles of dead Tibetan holyman fertilizer and Yeti shi, laying around... she's going the distance!) Anyway the Lord likes to sit out there, chipping and levelling those large flat white stones. He sits there happily chipping away, in childlike simplicity. And He really did actually join The Stonecutters, you know. He has to go to secret Stonecutters rituals and all that stuff, wear the little apron and everything.

I have the strangest gig coming up... really unexpected, and short notice, and... weird. Rutgers University in New Jersey next Saturday. A panel and I GUESS a lecture/devival? hosted by... now get ready for this... THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW CLUB of RUTGERS.

I shall try to go into this with an OPEN MIND.

That will be a challenge. I not a very Rocky Horror Picture Show kind of guy, myself. I have had... bad experiences with Rocky Horror Picture Show people.

However, they certainly have excellent taste in SPEAKERS!! And they PAY my MODEST HUMBLE FEE! And it's just one day. Although... those one day preaching jobs... they're really 3 day preaching jobs, when you count the packing and unpacking, travelling, etc. I don't just haul me, some tapes and a preachin' Book. I have to haul 3 suicases holding 70 pounds of swag, each (the airlines' limit). Now I'm not GRIPING. But do you have any idea how EXHAUSTING it is to be POLITE at the SALES TABLE? When you're a MEAN HATEFUL BASTARD? PLUS they expect you to be FUNNY. In fact they PAY you to be FUNNY but INSIGHTFUL or something. Luckily, I can now recite SubG 101 in my sleep, what they're paying for is in the can, I could probably do it on drugs, not that I would ever want to. That's the problem...

It's living up to the LEGEND that's so tiring. I mean these kids, they're expecting some kind of crazy pill-popping literary nutcase outlaw geek weirdo, right? That is SUPPOSED to get off the plane drunk, and try to bed all the student girls, and throw his drinks in the rich patron's face, and toss TV sets through windows, and all like that. SO OF COURSE I (sigh) try to live up to their expectations. But faking it just WEARS on a fella. HANK would have understood. Probably all Hank Williams really wanted to do was sit at home reading cheesy sci fi books and fiddling around on the Web. Do you think I LIKE having this ridiculous long hair? It's a HUGE HASSLE. But it goes with the territory. The grey streaks aren't real. I tint those gray streaks. It's because in my job, my pay is directly based on greyness and craziness of hair. It's a damn job uniform. You think I LIKE having all these wives? It's just for the p.r. I don't actually sleep with ANY of those women. I really could not care less. The pounds and pounds of 'frop? I didn't inhale. The surgery? That was all from a childhood accident, didn't have a damned thing to do with Apprentice Overmanship. The dicks? Half of them aren't bigger than your finger. The godawful temper and fits of madness? ACTING. Scripted. Jesus schedules those, actually.

However, no, I will not step down and let some EAGER YOUNG FOOL step in, because I am TOO MEAN!!!

Another thing about the Drills -- you get to FINALLY SEE what your fellow SubGenii are like when they aren't JUST TEXT but are standing there right in front of you. It is frequently a SHOCK. I am extremely familiar the syndrome from the previous 20 years of snail mail Church biz. The text personality and the spoken personality... sometimes they are OPPOSITES!!! Other times they MATCH EXACTLY. Some you KNOW must be ALIENS, REPLICANTS or SOMETHING NOT FULLY HUMAN OR SUBGENIUS! Some of them are so SHY that the whole weekend goes by and you're back home before you realize that that lurking sulking silent person who wouldn't talk was Rev. SUCHANDSUCH@THERE.COM, the life of the party on alt.slack! And that that HILARIOUSLY FUNNY, charming, hale fellow well met, the one you REALLY liked, was THE SAME ENTITY as "Rev. SO&SO," who would seem from his email to be BARELY LITERATE and VERY POSSIBLY RETARDED. You will be terribly disappointed that Pastor Craig isn't anywhere NEAR as ugly as you'd hoped he'd be. You will be terribly relived to see that they DON'T all look alike, after all, though some of them look, physically, quite normal.

The newsgroup will NEVER be the same for you after that. I don't mean this in a BAD way. Alt.slack will take on a whole new DIMENSION.... many things will make a lot more sense. You will have seen the men behind the curtain. They are not BAD men, really, just very bad wizards. (Some of them are not men but women.) Don't get me wrong. I LIKE most of the SubGeniuses I meet. I really do. The best folks I've known in my incredibly long, tedious and arduous life, I met through the Church. But... they're INTENSE PEOPLE. A little of SubGenius goes a LONG WAY. You know how our video, ARISE, is like being hit in the head with a hammer for 80 minutes, and how all our reading material and tapes give you a headache? Well, imagine that going on for 72 hours straight, from all directions at once. Imagine... THE PLANET OF THE JANORS. Imagine a Janor Device with NO OFF SWITCH, and you CAN'T RUN AWAY.

Speaking of Bad Wizards...
You'll DROWN in the WINKING LIZARD!!

at the X Day Drill 97

Winking Lizard Official Barbecue Sauce of the X Day Drill

But about those SubGeniuses. Really. Think about it. What "sort" of person would this attract? The answer is, just what you'd think -- ALL KINDS, from the best to the worst, but almost ALL ECCENTRIC in some way or another. Hell, they're SUbGENIUSES!!! We aren't even really HUMAN! So yeah, you run into the most PAINFULLY, EMBARRASSINGLY LAME, NERDY TWEEBY BAD-PUN-SPEWING OBNOXIOUS PRISSY EGOMANIACAL BLABBERMOUTHs, and you run into THE coolest, most alert, on-top-of-it, imaginative, well spoken, fucking HILARIOUS, healthy looking, robust, spirited, passionate, incredibly talented, Slack-filled, sexy, thank-Dobbs-you-met-'em, FRIENDS-FOR-LIFE -- and in many cases, like MINE, you get BOTH, alternating cyclically.

Speaking of egomaniac cult leaders -- that shit about L. Ron that Anonymous posted, and the Scientology vs. homosexuals bizness -- WHEW!!! That is scary and sad and horrible. Where did we go wrong. We could have YACHTS by now, like THOSE fucked up weirdos have. It's because L. Ron didn't crack a SMILE while he was spewing his poisonous evil. We gotta get serious or we're never gonna catch up to them. I guess I should see this as a license for me to be even more of an asshole. I mean... that guy sounds like a REAL asshole. I am a piddling half assed asshole compared to L. Ron Hubbard. But then, I'm not really the L.Ron of this cult anyway, I'm more like the CEO of the cult's corporate p.r. branch, who is in an L.A. ad office, not out on the yachts with the Sea Org, and never talks to the crazy old man. Dobbs is the L.Ron Hubbard of our cult, and from what I can tell there's just no comparison. None. Apples and h-bombs. And the funny thing is, Dobbs and Hubbard were old buddies for awhile there, right after the O.T.O. murders and Parsons and all that mess.

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Original file name: Dallas '98?

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