I mention this because about a year and a half ago, a hoax went around the Internet that Bob Wilson was DEAD. I happened to run into him at Winterstar in Ohio that same week. He was pleased as punch that his wife had gotten flowers and sympathy from all over the world. He was more famous and beloved than he thought he was.
He got to live out the fantasy without even trying.
Dealey Plaza just isn't the same at night. It lacks the numinosity of its daytime aspect, which is ingrained on all Earth consciousnesses via the Zapruder 8mm film. You'd be surprised how well you already know the landscape of Dealey Plaza, even if you've never been there. But at night, it just doesn't cut it. Nevertheless, it was good to see Pope Bob, and Rev. D.Lee Lama who initiated this, and Will O'Dobbs and Nickie Deathchick OUTSIDE THE OFFICE(!), and Rev. Zepol and various other Dallas SubGenii, many of whom I only sort-of recognized. It's embarrassing. There's been a lot of water under this bridge and I just can't remember the names or even the PLACES that go with the faces. I could tell Pope Bob had the same problem, and he didn't seem to have any more gracious a way of dealing with it than I have. Here's how it is when you're a minor celebrity. You show up and of course gravitate toward the people you know fairly well. But right in the middle of your yapping some guy walks up and starts talking at you as if you weren't already in a conversation. And you sort of recognize the person, only you're SCARED that you WON'T be able to place 'em. Tonight I interacted with a guy as if he was a stranger for 20 minutes before he reminded me that we had actually had LUNCH together last year. It's embarrassing, but by gummie, I just don't have much ROM left at all. If I was a clerk I wouldn't be EXPECTED to remember all these people, but I'm a preacher, and I count my blessings if I can remember a name. I still don't know whether it's best to FAKE familiarity or just say, "Man, I hate to say it, I'm brain damaged, but do I know you?" Which has lately been my strategy, just being honest.
Anyway.
Pope Bob spotted some grafitti on the fence behind the grassy knoll:
"SHIT HAPPENS"
"MARILYN LOVED YOU JACK AND SO DO I"
and another one I can't quite remember... apparently Pope Bob placed a Dobbshead on that fence years ago, himself.
Wow.
I don't really know Robert Anton Wilson very well, but he has always been so friendly and funny and glib and polite to me, I always end up feeling like a COMPLETE DUMBASS. Because I can JUST TELL by talking to him that he has read a HELL of a lot more books than me, REMEMBERED 'em, and WROTE a hell of a lot more books than me. It means a lot to me that he doesn't treat me like a retard, but in fact expects me to "get" his references. And I don't always, because... well... I DID read those books, but I FORGOT most of it.
Wilson says he has continued to post on alt.slack and alt.discordia, only he changed his name again so nobody knows who he is. In fact, he has 6 internet names now. He fears the email bombardment. I don't blame him.
After the picnic we all (about 30 people, half of whom seemed to be respondees to the SubGenius mailing list and half of whom were perhaps OTO people??) we all went to visit the new THE CONSPIRACY MUSEUM around the corner from Dealey Plaza. WHEW!!! This is a NEW conspiracy museum, not to be confused with the City of Dallas Official Warren Commission Kennedy Assassination Museum, nor the old defunct RESPECTABLE SANE JFK assassination conspiracy museum. No, this is a NEW one, and... well, let me put it this way, there are thousands of JFK conspiracy theorists, some of whom are very rational and probably have it figured out, and some of whom are FUCKING NUTS. It's ironic that the multi-million dollar NEW conspiracy museum, the one that's a monument to last the ages, is put together by one of the FUCKING NUTS. No offense. But you know how some JFK-kill stuff is VERY SURREAL in its endless occult correspondences to the Lincolnian-Masonic-Rockefellerian cabal-cult-conspiracies, remagnetising the ley lines of evil to generate a maelstrom of demonic energies for the OWG? Well, if I wasn't exhausted I'd tell you how much CRAZIER this presentation is than even THOSE. And yet this most outre' and UTTERLY FUCKING LOONY of JFK-Kon museums is outfitted so swankily that you almost want to puke. CD-ROM-driven TVs everywhere with narration (in CODE!!) and hand-drawn pictures, all by the lone kook who designed all this, the great man who conceptualized it, WHOSE NAME I CAN'T REMEMBER AND ISN'T ON THE BROCHURES I BROUGHT HOME... AMAZING murals painted on all the walls representing the KEY ASSASSINATIONS (JFK, MLK, RFK, MJK(!)) in terms of TIBETAN THEOLOGY.
Yes, Tibetan theology.
This is the TIBETAN MAGIC-slanted JFK vs. One World Gov't. theory. If the Dali Lama can be brought to Dealey Plaza to do the CLEANSING CEREMONY, WORLD PEACE WILL ENSUE.
That's their MAIN POINT. And this one very rich old crackpot spent millions to make sure you LEARN it in a two-story air-conditioned museum in downtown Dallas.
As I said to Pope Bob, "Wow. I guess Dallas has THREE tourist attractions now. Southfork, Dealey Plaza and this museum." And, bless his heart, Pope Bob said, "Don't leave out your post office box."
Wilson seems STILL to be VERY AMUSED by the Church of the SubGenius. What can I say? In a way, we CAN'T expect him to take it seriously; after all, he's PARTIED with J.R. "Bob" Dobbs.
Well, I haven't. Philo doesn't invite me to those parties. I still take it ALL with DEADLY SERIOUSNESS and I am NOT KIDDING.
It's late; I'm supposed to be signing books and hawking t-shirts at Forbidden in 12 hours. That's okay. I got a lot done today. I finished the total updating of the mailing list and the extracting of the key data for organizational purposes re: this upcoming "tour" Slack Crusade thing. I have to update the "BROCHURE" crap on Sunday. The SACRED P.R. MUST BE IN THE HANDS OF STEVE BEVILACQUA AND GWAR BY MONDAY!!! I swear on Will's soul it shall be so. Would you bleive, GWAR lost their opening act and asked me and Legume if we wanted to go on THEIR tour? Problem is now, the BOOKING AGENTS have to be convinced. The version I heard, the Gwarman tried to explain the Devival/Church concept to the booking agent, and after 15 minutes, the guy finally said, "You mean they're not a rock band?" So you see what we're up against. God damn this world wherein, to bring the SIMPLE, CHILDLIKE Word of Dobbs to America, we have to be an OPENING "ACT" for an INSANE ROCK BAND??? *IF* possible?? The things we have to do to get the kids to listen.
I also learned (BY ACCIDENT!!) how to convert the SubGenius Mailing List, which exists as files for an ancient Macintosh program called "PFS FILE," into SIMPLE TEXT ON DISK!!! AMAZING! I've had requests for such a thing for YEARS from weirdo mail-order companies. I'm kind of glad I didn't know it was POSSIBLE back then. The Church mailing list is SACRED. Who knows what evil secret societies might get hold of YOUR REAL NAME AND ADDRESS were we to just TRADE our list with other fringe weirdo publishers etc. NOW we can learn to ENCRYPT it so it is of value ONLY to the HIGHEST bidder.
I'm sure there was a lot more I was gonna say, that might have been of more interest, but FUCK IT PAPPY FUCK IT!!
My Bedtime,
Rev. Stang
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: dynasor@news.infi.net (Dennis McClain-Furmanski)
Subject: Re: Stalking the Wild Wilson (was Re: RAW in Dealey Plaza)
Date: 21 Aug 1995 05:40:21 GMT
On Sun. Aug 20, 1995, clavis@ix.netcom.com told All:
cnc> In <417rt2$5bh@fu-berlin.de> Peter Hipwell <petehip> writes:
>jlyons@haven.ios.com (Reverend Jack) wrote:
>>Suddenly, Rev. Ivan Stang wrote:
>>: Wilson says he has continued to post on alt.slack and alt.discordia,
only
>>: he changed his name again so nobody knows who he is. He has 6 internet
>>: names now. He fears the email bombardment. I don't blame him.
>>
>>Get the fuck outa here. Really? No way. Really?
>>
>>I say it's Newman.
>>
>Let's have a "which" hunt.
cnc> Well, let's see:
cnc> It can't be me, because I'm not Robert Anton Wilson. Besides, before
> you know it or would WANT to know it, my website will have pictures
> of me. A LOT of me. (Hey, I AM the fucking Grand Clavister, eh?)
cnc> It can't be Tarla, because she's got a pic on HER website, and...
I reiterate my statement made in response to questions of "Sandra's"
validity (in response to your post, but addressed to all, Clav.)
Any one of us may be a certain person in the physical realm, but that
doesn't mean we're not the person we say we are online. We become who we
wish to be in the bitworld. We can become any number of who's that we wish
to be in the bitworld. And we ARE those who's. Given long enough, even the
lines between the worlds blur. In the 15 years since I first logged onto
the RSTS system at Purdue (and wrote a BASIC program to forge official
looking grade reports), I have become more and more DynaSoar in the
physical realm. I retain my "original" identity mostly in the eyes of my
mother, ex-'s, and siblings.
If Pope Bob is on alt.slack as someone else, he's IS that someone else.
It's a Yeti's right to be who or what they wish. If the wool gets pulled
over someone else's eyes, it's simply because the protagonist successfully
pulled it over their own TO THAT EXTENT. Not such a terribly difficult job
here in the guts of the machine. Unless you (the collective) are sitting
there endlessly producing valid and objective statements of your physical
existence, then you're trolling. Simple as that. The negative connotation
that word has accumulated is undeserved. It's as accurate a description of
life in the wires as your "job" is a description of your life in the
molecular world. (Which is to say, not really very accurate, but about as
close as you can come to it without miring yourself in existential
non-answers and self-opinions posing as truths).
If the fact that someone on alt.slack is someone else when they're living
in their atoms bothers you, hang a half silvered mirror over the monitor
for a while, to remind you of the who's that you are. You want to be
treated as the person you've decided to be. Shouldn't you extend that to
your fellow Yeti? If you're bothered by the fact that you may have treated
someone "famous" differently than you would have had you known who they
"really" are, then maybe you'd better take a look at how you're treating
everyone. And maybe you need to perform a little personal iconoclasm. If
you flamed an online entity who is Pope Bob when inside his meat machine,
then you've flamed that online entity and treated him/her/it precisely
with the respect due to that online entity in your estimation of the
circumstances at the time. To treat that entity any differently than
they've obviously allowed themself to be treated by becoming who they wish
to be online, you are not respecting that entity's existence. You want
respect for your entity as you produce it. You want to be who you want to
be, and be treated as such. Maybe you should learn to serve the guests in
your machine the same meal that you want to eat.
I for one would still have flamed him (if I indeed have, and I suspect so)
had he used an account with flashing all caps ROBERT ANTON WILSON, because
1. I treat all online entities accoring to how I react to their screen
presence, and
2. to quote Douglas Adams "He's just this guy, you know?"
I (ALMOST) wish I hadn't made it to Clevetown and met several of you in
the flesh. I could then set about pranking you all to keep you off the
trail of the "real" RAW. Not that you'd ever REALLY find him online, even
if he said who he was, but simply to defend his chosen personas' right to
exist.
There's a phrase used in theater, "willing suspension of disbelief."
You do it quite a bit of the time on here. Try to maintain some
consistency, whether you think everyone is who they say they are, or are
someone other than who they say they are. It takes a lot of stress off and
it allows you to actually be person-to-person friendly, or unfriendly,
rather than developing the artificial humility in the presence of someone
"well known" who you really don't know at all.
* 2qwk! 1.26b3 * Gnaw the bone which has fallen to thy lot.
--
dynasor@infi.net The Doctor is on.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Robert Anton Wilson
Subject: Re: Stalking the Wild Wilson (was Re: RAW in Dealey Plaza)
Date: 23 Aug 1995 19:59:49 GMT
bmyers@ionet.net (TarlaStar) wrote:
> I know it aint me, unless I've been fugueing more than usual. I don't
> believe it's Duchez unless RAW really loves Berea Ohio, and I'm pretty
> sure it's not Newman. I've seen pictures of him in action, and too
> many of us have his music for him to be a full time writer as well as
> everything else he does. I doubt that it's anyone who posts regularly.
> I've spoken to Stang, Dynasor, Iceknife, and St. Andrew on the phone
> so I don't think it's them. That doesn't help much with who it IS, but
> it may help with who it isn't.
Supposition and implication to the contrary, I categorically deny that it's
me. I know I fit all the requirements (nobody knows me), but it's not me.
It's not. I am NOT Robert Anton Wilson, and I challenge any of you to prove
otherwise!
Hell, who am I kidding?
---
/* Robert Anton Wilson Integrity Solutions *
* jnutting@is.com (612)223-8474 *
* <http://www.is.com/Users/jnutting/subg.html> */
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