Today's Topics:
Coca-cola, phone home
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Date: Mon, 10 Feb 92 11:11:51 EST
Message-Id: <9202101611.AA03958@teatime.think.com>
From: Doug MacDonald <macdon@think.com>
To: phy6jem@sun.leeds.ac.uk
Cc: Subgenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu
Subject:
From: phy6jem@sun.leeds.ac.uk
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 92 17:25:38 GMT
Message-Id: <1203.9202071725@sun019.sun.leeds.ac.uk>
To: subgenius <@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk:subgenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu>
Subject: Avatars of Bob in the Weimar Republic
Weimar germany seems to have been a particularly fruitful period for
messiahs, deities, sects and the like. Every time I read about the
period, I discover a new one. Some of them had their roots back in the
kaisers time, while others sprang from nowhere. Most were suppressed
by the Nazis along with the freemasons but others (Thule Society,
World Ice Theory) seem to have continued to flourish under fascism.
For all I know some of them might be still out there. Has anyone ever
seen a book on this subject? A likely title would be "religious cults
Isn't it funny... "suppressed by the Nazis" has among occultists the same
cachet that "banned in Boston" has among the readers of ribald tales.
You may already know about this one, but Pauwels and Bergier's _The Morning
of the Magicians_ devotes much discussion to alleged connections between
the Nazis and various occultists and sects, Hoerbiger among them. One of
these guys argued that we are on the inside not the outside of a sphere,
and that the stars are the cities on the other side of the world. Talk
about subgenius, that guy deserves a SubArthur Grant!
This book also provides a nice segue' into _The Spear of Destiny_ (I forgot
the author's name: after all, this was nearly twenty years ago in my callow
youth), which tells the alleged history of the Spear of Longinus (thrust
into the side of Christ on the Cross, no less) and how Hitler allegedly
lusted after it as an alleged good luck charm.
A film I saw not long ago dealt with a famous stage psychic (genuine,
according to the story) who ran afoul of the Nazis before they came to
power, for predicting among other things the burning of the Reichstag. I
don't remember the title, but Klaus-Maria Brandauer played the main part.
in weimar germany" or some such. (english preferred but I'm still
interested if its in german.) If there's any interest, I could
separately write up what little I've found out about some of these
luminaries for the Subgenius digest. So far I could write about :-
Johannes Itten; Bauhaus teacher and thistle theoretician; organiser
for Mazdaznan a Leipzig based pseudo-oriental cult.
Hans Hoerbiger; Engineer and author of the World Ice Theory - a sort
of glacial cosmology with overtones of Velikovsky leading inexorably
to the natural domination of the nordic races.
Johannes Baader; Oberdada; gave "christ is a sausage" sermon in Berlin
cathedral 1918; clear winner of congress of messiahs, thuringia 1930
Gustav Meyrink; author and fraudulent banker; theosophist,
astral-traveller and disciple Bo Yin Ra (another pseudo-oriental
fraud)
There are others that I know practically nothing about, Bo Yin Ra is one,
another intriguing one is Oskar Ernst Bernhardt who apparently "founded
the Gralsbewegung (grail movement) in the Tyrol, claiming to be the
the new son of god who had come to fulfil the mission unfinished by
christ and to bring gods final word to mankind. The movement continued
despite his death in 1941."
Let me know.
John McMillan
These whipping times and this my day which burns as an oven. Hark!
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Date: Mon, 10 Feb 92 14:14:37 -0500
From: Eric Haines <erich@eye.com>
Message-Id: <9202101914.AA02888@hemlock>
To: subgenius@media-lab.media.mit.edu
Subject: Coca-cola, phone home
>From comp.risks
>From: pjs@euclid.JPL.NASA.GOV (Peter J. Scott)
Subject: What next - pizza over UUCP? [UUCPizza?]
A colleague just gave me this juicy tidbit. Seems that his brother-in-law was
with the 82nd Airborne and, upon assignment to Fort Bragg, was given an office
that had never been used. He plugged a phone into the jack and the phone
immediately rang. No, it wasn't telemarketers; he was greeted with a modem
tone instead. Hung up. Phone immediately rang again. This repeated 24 hours
a day until the Army put a trace on the call. The trace led to, get this, a
Coca-Cola machine. The manufacturer had built into these vending machines the
capability to call the bottling company when they were getting low on supplies
and order more.
Unfortunately for my friend's brother-in-law, the bottling company that owned
this machine in particular wasn't interested in this option, so they didn't
change the default telephone number that was programmed into the machine, and
which was happened to be set to, you guessed it, the office at Fort Bragg.
The Army cut the telephone cable on the Coke machine. (I guess they weren't
armed at the time.) This brand of vending machine also has the capability of
signalling via modem that it was out of change, full up on money, or had been
broken into ("Help, I've fallen over and I can't get up...").
[Not high enough on Coke? PGN]
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End of Subgenius Digest
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