Prior to 1978 I never thought about Dobbs, and worked normal jobs for a living. Since 1978 my every waking moment has been concerned with Dobbs in one way or another, and I "work" for Dobbs -- i.e., play with the toys of the gods at my leisure -- for a living. I'd call that a rather profound change, somewhat akin to the omnisexual speedfreak biker who suddenly gets Jesus and becomes Ned Flanders -- only in reverse.
In 1978 I was well on my way to either 1) at best filling the niche as a Hollywood director that Terry Giliam now occupies or 2) at least being a well paid but essentially nameless Dallas business film worker. But this Dobbs bastard came along and offered me a "job" that didn't pay, and now I'm a cross between Lenny Bruce and David Koresh (minus the heroin and harems this time -- eh, for the most part). I have constant money worries, but hundreds of thousands of people would give their ribcages to glimpse but ONE DAY of my email, much less have my jobs preaching the Word of Dobbs to definitive sinners in nightclubs, tweaking the coolest website in the universe, sitting around all day listening to the rarest Hendrix bootlegs while nonchalantly sorting through the greatest artworks and insanest kook literature of the 20th Century, expounding upon it bombastically to my own ego gratification, and getting PAID for it (albeit a pittance ) -- HELL, I AIN'T COMPLAINING! When seen from the perspective of all human history, I'm one of the richest 1% of creatures that has ever lived. Sure my life will be shortened by the bizarre stress involved in this trade. But just by virtue of having an air-conditioned HOUSE full of PRETTY STUFF, really GOOD food to eat, 'Frop, and the right to BITCH AND GRIPE VEHEMENTLY and PUBLICALLY with IMPUNITY, I am on par with the Tsars of Russia and the Sultans of Turkimanistan in terms of MATERIAL SLACK. And I am infinitely richer than they were, when one takes into account my SubGenius Membership Card.
As much as I hate to admit it, I think Dobbs did me a BIG FAVOR.
When I was a 16 year old filmmaker, I made a vow that by the age of 26 I would have directed the new "CITIZEN KANE." Instead, by age 26 I had produced 500 copies of SubGenius Pamphlet #1 on a budget of $60. Not a bad trade-off, in my opinion, but then I have absolute and total faith that time will prove me right. Specifically, the time of 7 am July 5 1998.
ANY SubGenius, no matter how otherwise miserable, is far better off than Orson Welles ever was, if it has that $30 Membership card/Escape Vessel ticket in its pocket. Orson never got the opportunity to apply for TWO Paradises and eternal salvation.
Besides, Federico Fellini took Orson a step farther with 8 1/2, and The Firesign Theater and Frank Zappa picked up the ball, and R. Crumb and other underground cartoonists such as Justin Green covered the rest of the bases... and Dobbs, with the help of we his servants, pushed it another stretch. (One could also go backwards and attribute guilt to Windsor McCay, Georges Melies, the Fleischer Brothers, Warner Brothers cartoons, Salvadore Dali, The Three Stooges, MAD Magazine, etc.) The canvas has really gotten big; LIVES of ACTUAL HUMAN BEINGS are the paint now. Frankly, not that I would expect any other soul to see it this way, as far as I'm concerned, The Church of the SubGenius is not only the One True Religion, and the most terrifying threat that the human race has ever faced, but also a nice single piece of art -- taken as a whole, as if it were one huge semi-abstract painting. That may be a hard thing to for anybody to grok. I have a unique overview of the whole mess. I can't really control the paintbrush, but Dobbs picked the colors and from where I sit, it looks surprisingly good so far. Even if we don't have the 1 billion Members that he predicted for 1996.
2.
Let's suppose the Church of the Subgenius became insanely popular one day for whatever reason - would it be less fun to be a member?
Only for the ones who got into it for the wrong reasons -- i.e., to be "cool" in that stupid inside-joke way. It would piss off and permanently alienate the Bobbies (i.e., the SubGenius equivalent of Trekkies, D&D wimps, Anime fanboy geeks, etc.) -- they wouldn't be "special" anymore. Any Child of the Yeti who truly understands what this Church is about -- total world conquest by Dobbs -- would be jubilant. (Needless to say, I'd be especially jubilant, because I'd suddenly be a rich man, after enough years of poverty to truly APPRECIATE wealth.)
Who cares if 99% of the millions wearing Dobbs T-shirts had no idea what they were really advocating? (THEIR OWN EXTERMINATION) So what if the message seemed diluted by virtue of millions of Pinks pretending to "get it"? The bottom line is, we'd have a better chance of getting the seed-code-Word to the ones that COUNT. Rooting out even ONE True SubGenius is worth a million bothersome hangers-on, easily, especially if each of those hangers-on provides the Church with a dollar.
If the relative popularity of the Church is a factor in one's devotion to it, then that person must have somehow MISSED that very first sentence in that very first pamphlet.
I suppose that the idea of The SubGenius Foundation suddenly being empowered to do what we have always intended and struggled for might be less important to some people than their personal identity as someone who "gets" an inside joke. Such persons have my permission to GO DIE.
2 1/2.
Let's just suppose that the Church of the Subgenius were entirely a joke - isn't the riffing of Southern Christianity/Scientology getting a little old hat? Couldn't a far more interesting parody faith be built around zen buddhism, say?
It is only your own cultural bias that makes you focus on the riffing of Southern Christianity/Scientology that exists within Dobbs' Word. If you were a true Master of Zen Buddhism you'd realize that we have vampirized those teachings JUST AS FULLY as we have those of redneck Christianity, in Dobbs' service. Were you a New Ager you would see it as mainly New Age-tainting, etc. etc. It is designed from the ground up to strike a chord of familiarity in occultists of EVERY stripe. Dobbs, and the monks who assembled his texts, are experts in comparative world religion. We cannot help it if all world religions have the same bullshit in common.
Because the "Bob" happened to be born in America, his Word is marketted in a very American way. But that has nothing to do with the basic core Word, which incorporates the literal collective SubGenius unconcious of the planet.
The contributions of Dr. Philo Drummond to the basic general thrust of Church propaganda cannot be underestimated. Philo was a personal student of Lobsang Rampa, the great Bastardized Zen mystic, and Dobbs himself was Rampa's bridge partner for years. For those with eyes to see, Rampa's Zen influence is rampant.
I will admit that we're a little weak on the Moslem stuff. They have a knack for fundamentalism that we haven't fully tapped.
3.
What do you attribute as the reason for the consistently high quality of graphic art and HTML programming featured in Subgenius web pages and that of its members?
Most SubGeniuses AREN'T DUMBASSES, no matter how they strive to be like "Bob." What's sad is that SubGenius art is actually sloppy and slipshod, compared to what it could be were we not all so lazy. It's only by comparison to the work of Normals that our stuff looks good. That's what's really depressing.
4.
How is it possible to achieve 'slack' when to attempt to achieve it requires some conscious effort on the person which arguably would result in the loss of more 'slack' and falling further away from their goal of achieving the ideal 'slack' state?
Action: Stang whacks interviewer very hard on the head with a great big stick. Zen Buddhism point finally sinks in. Interviewer is rewarded with a free Hour of Slack tape.
4 1/2.
Follow-up question: why doesn't the church/Ivan Stang write shorter books, say the length of a collection of zen koans? Wouldn't that better allow members to have more time devoted to doing nothing, thereby having a better chance of achieving the 'slack' state?
OPEN YOUR EYES. There are maybe 65,000 copies of THE BOOK OF THE SUBGENIUS floating around. Maybe 100,000 copies of SubGenius Pamphlet #1 -- more if you count the Internet.
But -- you know those sheets of stickers we distribute with Memberships, that say "XEROX ME" on them, that bear 25 or 30 tiny two-sentence ADS with captions like "JEHOVAH IS AN ALIEN AND STILL THREATENS THIS PLANET! Send $1 to PO Box 140306 Dallas TX 75214"... you know those stickers? Those little "koans," those weird little ads stuck to restroom mirrors in bars, are the FOUNDATION upon which this Church was built, and there are MILLIONS of them floating around, like pollen blowing through the air. Of course, 95% of the "flowers" they land upon might as well be sterile.
Then there are the bumper stickers.
But all of the above pale in comparison to... THE DOBBSHEAD. THE SIMPLE DOBBSHEAD. THE PLAIN DOBBSHEAD. THE TRUE DOBBSHEAD. THAT is the koan to end all koans. The bee Dobbs carries his little bucket of meme from stamen to stamen and he cross-polinates all species.
And if I had a penny for every time it appeared I would be richer than the Sultan of Brunei. Unfortunately that koan trademark has been compromised.
4 3/4.
Is there not a possibility that the Church of the Subgenius is _itself_ a part of the Conspiracy to rob more people of slack under the guise of giving the more by having long, obscurely humorous books be the central reading of the religion and inciting them to spend long, intense, work-filled hours producing HTML pages/Subgenius music/Subgenius lit, in fact, not slacking off at all?
Certainly, that is a possibility. It is perhaps one of the most important questions any SubGenius should ask itself. If the answer comes up yes, Dobbs is there for the killing.
Many are the SubGenii who martyred themselves for Dobbs initially (sinning greivously in so doing) and then forsook him. And years later realized that it was their mere-hume programming, not Dobbs, that had made them do that to themselves. Then they rejoined the Church, buying many sacred goods, once again rejoicing in fellowship with other mutants -- fellowship kept thankfully short, of course, since true mutants generally grate on each others' nerves after awhile.
5.
Given that deliverance from X-Day is to come from sex goddess driven spaceships, do you not see a difficulty in recruitment of women to the church, i.e. wouldn't they prefer to be transported away on vessels manned by Leonardo diCaprio clones?
You need to read REVELATION X a little more closely.
While it is true that the early Church was rife with lonely guys -- naturally -- the 1990s Church is becoming almost as buy-sexual as it should be. Connie Dobbs has tended to work behind the scenes, but her evil plans are apparently coming to fruition, because the very most high-tech end of the Church media outreach is dominated entirely by women -- witches, as far as I'm concerned. But there they are, and there's not a damned thing Philo or me can do about it. A quick scan of alt.slack or the Sunday Night IRC Church Services on #subgenius, irc.another.net, or attendance at any given nightclub Devival, will bear this out.
Granted, certain key SubGenius documents may seem inordinately testosterone-driven. WELL, WE CAN'T HELP IT. Any given SubGenius WOMAN has more testosterone than most Pink males. By the same token, our estrogen levels are equally escalated, as per our Yeti heritage. The toughest, meanest, most scarred and hairy SubGenius Alpha Prime males, such as myself or Dr. Legume, or Sterno or G. Gordon Gordon or Philo or Palmer Vreedeez or Puzzling Evidence, could easily become more womanly than any Pink woman, were that called for. Many SubGenius males have BECOME women, and vice versa. We become easily bored with Pink-conceived roles. The published materials may come off as more manly than feminine, but that's only because so many UberBitches sat on their butts and made us good old boys do all the god damned work.
It has lately been my idle conceit that we are HUMAN CARTOONS -- i.e., to the human, our personalities seem exaggerated and cartoonlike, archetypal somehow, no matter how obnoxious. My SubGenius collaborators certainly seem that way to me. HUMAN CARTOONS. To the Pinks (and to each other) we are "characters," over-or-underblown, bigger-or-smaller than life mythic figures.
If the Pinks notice us at all, that is. Their general tendency is to avoid anything unusual.
Think of Mae West, John Wayne. Marilyn Monroe or Jimi Hendrix. Unsaved SubGenii -- human cartoons, yet real. Our low self esteem prods us to such egomaniacally high self esteem that we act out what we dream, and even come to look like what we act like. I actually look like a mad scientist. Rev. Susie the Floozie actually looks like a high priced hooker. How much of it is real? All of it. But that includes the parts you can't see, the parts between the lines. The man behind the curtain. It's showbiz, but that's not all it is. Our lives REALLY ARE like movies or sitcoms. Truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction does however pay the bills.
6.
A follow-up question: give a rough estimate (based on interactions in the church, devival meetings, etc.) of the woman-to-man ratio in the church?
60% male, 30% female, 10% other.
We're getting there. It's not perfect but it's better than most other mind control cults and WAY better than any rock band.
The important thing is that they GET TOGETHER. That's what we're here for. And it works. I could recount DOZENS of tales of happy love affairs and marriages (and happy divorces) attributable to the Church. It really does bring the lovelorn and the lonely together, if the lovelorn and lonely don't just sit there waiting for something to happen like common fargi.
And the Church just as often is the last straw that drives the incompatible apart.
6 1/2.
The release date of the first movie of the next Star Wars trilogy will be May 24th, 1998. Do you feel that in anticipation of X-Day the release date will be changed (even though every major Lucasfilm release since the first Star Wars movie has come out for Memorial Day weekend) or that it doesn't really matter, because the invading aliens might turn out to be a sizable section of the target audience for such a picture?
??? This is a rather pointless question in view of INDEPENDENCE DAY, the Conspiracy attempt to portray July 5 1998 as a "war" that They can WIN. Which is fine with us; let them nurture their false hopes. As Dr. Legume said, "If they have no hope, what is there for us to CRUSH?"
It has become obvious that the general Pink population is not going to be terribly concerned about X-Day as predicted in Dobbs Prophecy. At best, CNN will have a crew at Brushwood Folklore Center in Sherman, NY, where we hold the big X-Day Drills and where the actual X-Day main gathering will be held, their Barbie on-camera spokesman ready to do a silly "human interest" (!!) story about that wacky millenialism-satire group, the Church of the SubGenius. Their cameras will pan across the sleepy-eyed, hung-over crowd of weirdos, geeks and topless babes, awaiting 7 am, and the announcer will be letting the audience know this is all tongue in cheek, and suddenly the crowd of geeks will disappear, or flop around screaming as they spontaneously combust, or something weird, and the screen will go dead. And we'll have the last laugh, and we'll be able to laugh as long as we want to, because we will never die until we want to, and we will exist in a continuum of PERFECT PLEASURE.
So FUCK George Lucas if he doesn't tithe 1% of his income to the Church, making our wildest dreams come true one of his HOBBIES. It's HIS LOSS. SURE -- George Lucas is a SubGenius whether he wants to admit it or not. THX-1138 alone would prove that. The first STAR WARS too. His subsequent Howard Hughes-like behavior reinforces it. But that doesn't excuse his not sending in that $30. He's just as doomed as the dumbass human on the street. Oh, he might lead an army of grips in conquest over some tribal fiefdom post-X-Day, but he'll be forever cut off from "Bob" and eternal salvation. In the end he'll just be another slug in the vat of souls, like Bill Gates or my kids, who also haven't sent in their $30.
7.
A member of the church is asked to co-operate for an article whose intent may be to propagate false information on the church and may be a part of the conspiracy to mislead the public about the purpose of the Church. What do you do and why?
Just proceed as usual and tell the GOD'S HONEST TRUTH in hopes that one or two more souls might purchase THE BOOK OF THE SUBGENIUS or REVELATION X.
8.
Why did the subgenius cross the road?
Answer: 5,765.
5,763 SubGeniuses to engineer, finance and build the mass-cluster shrinking device raygun, and 2 to climb inside the lightbulb.
And that joke is COPYRIGHT 1996 Rev. Ivan Stang!!
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From: mitchell@interserv.com (Popess Lilith von Fraumench)
Newsgroups: alt.slack
Subject: Re: let me try this again...(questions)
Date: Mon, 09 Sep 1996 22:37:58 -0700
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In article <32331FAA.381F@alcor.concordia.ca>, The Link
<thelink@alcor.concordia.ca> wrote:
|1.
|
|Give a concrete example of how subgenius philosophy changed your life
|(i.e., I used to shower in the morning, now I shower at night)
All it did was reaffirm what I already knew. I knew the UFOs would come for
me and take me home someday, as early as being old enough to read Von
Danikan's books (about 7 or 8), and more pronouncedly during puberty. The
only profound change was in concentrating on the tenant of Thinking With
Your Feet and Walking With Your Head. I certainly can think with, and on,
my feet, and I became a DOER. No more geeking around for me, friend, I was
going to do things. And I still am.
|2.
|
|Let=B9s suppose the Church of the Subgenius became insanely popular one day=
| for whatever reason - would it be less fun to be a member?
That's the most stupid question I have ever heard. The kind of "popularity"
that the Conspiracy advocates would be poison to the Church, obviously, and
should it happen the only way we can survive is if enough MAKE MONEY AT IT,
and then go underground where the "real" Church lies. It would only prove
less fun if the Bobbies were less than gentle when sucking my toes.
|2 1/2.
|Let=B9s just suppose that the Church of the Subgenius were entirely a joke =
|- isn=B9t the riffing of Southern Christianity/Scientology getting a little=
| old hat? Couldn=B9t a far more interesting parody faith be built around ze=
|n buddhism, say?
a) You would BEG AND PRAY that the Church were entirely a joke. Well, pal,
it IS a joke, and a lot more. It's not our fault if you can't see behind
the humor. You probably think Twain was a boring twit, and that Lenny Bruce
was just a Jewish hipster.
b) Stang riffs Southern Christianity, as do many others who, gosh darn,
belong in Southern and predominantly Christian parts of the US. Other
SubGeniuses fashion their personae based on many other religions, and for
that matter many other mind-games. Some have entirely built their own
religion within the SubGenius universe, completely alien to any other
faith. I myself am inspired by Native American deities, Qabalistic
concepts, Sufism, and Punk. I preach like a pro wrestler, stalking the
stage with an intensity that rivets audiences and sends them to the sales
table. And the matching corset and vestments set should go beautiful
together. In other words, we do what the hell we want to do, period, and
there's no reason why we should adapt any particular religion to do it.
|3.
|
|What do you attribute as the reason for the consistently high quality of gr=
|aphic art and HTML programming featured in Subgenius web pages and that of =
|its members?
Habafropzipulops, bipolar disorder, caffiene, hate, a skewed perspective in
relation to the Norm, and just plain giving a damn.
|4.
|
|How is it possible to achieve =8Cslack=B9 when to attempt to achieve it req=
|uires some conscious effort on the person which arguably would result in th=
|e loss of more =8Cslack=B9 and falling further away from their goal of achi=
|eving the ideal =8Cslack=B9 state?
You can't try not to try. You inevitably struggle, because you were taught
to do so. Finally you find yourself in a situation where the only thing
left to do is let things happen. And when you let things happen, things
start to happen YOUR WAY. You meet the love of your life when you stop
looking for Mr./Ms. Right. You find a $20 bill when you are thinking about
getting something to eat, never mind that you have $2 to your name. You
find someone else's lottery ticket and it's a winner. You show your most
recent sculpture to a friend's date and three days later someone wants to
show it, and it gets sold for $500. You delete an unwanted program from
your hard drive and all of a sudden that game you wanted to play works for
once. Or whatever. Hell, maybe you just feel GOOD, simply lying back and
watching TV.
Slack is what comes despite of, and in the absence of, effort to gain
Slack. But you can exert effort in ONE direction and get a shower of Slack
from all others. Somebody in this world gets Slack from breaking bricks. I
have gotten Slack from breaking bricks, for that matter. Breaking bricks,
chopping wood, mowing lawns--there are times when Slack can manifest in
even mere household chores. See *Book of the SubGenius*, page 67, column 2,
paragraph 3 (4?). I gave the reference because, seeing that you can't
distinguish Slack from Sloth, I wanted to make it *easy* for your benighted
soul.
|4 1/2.
|
|Follow-up question: why doesn=B9t the church/Ivan Stang write shorter books=
|, say the length of a collection of zen koans? Wouldn=B9t that better allow=
| members to have more time devoted to doing nothing, thereby having a bette=
|r chance of achieving the =8Cslack=B9 state?
Slack can be READING the books, magazines, comics, and other printed
effluvia, endlessly. This isn't "wu-wei", the art of doing nothing
effectively. Slack can come as a massive memetic fornication spawned by
horrifically dense text and equally horrific, equally dense artwork.
Short and to the point works too, but who am I to deny slack, especially
from myself, by demanding that I can read a complete work at one toilet
stop without wasting a moment to wipe afterwards?
|4 3/4.
|
|Is there not a possibility that the Church of the Subgenius is _itself_ a p=
|art of the Conspiracy to rob more people of slack under the guise of giving=
| the more by having long, obscurely humorous books be the central reading o=
|f the religion and inciting them to spend long, intense, work-filled hours =
|producing HTML pages/Subgenius music/Subgenius lit, in fact, not slacking o=
|ff at all?
a) The Church IS part of the Conspiracy; we've made that awfully plain many
times. See Guy Deuel's illustration on page 95 of *The Book of the
SubGenius*, under the title "Large Basket Cell". This time, wade through
the fine print, it won't hurt.
|5.
|
|Given that deliverance from X-Day is to come from sex goddess driven spaces=
|hips, do you not see a difficulty in recruitment of het women to the church=
|, i.e. wouldn=B9t they prefer to be transported away on vessels manned by L=
|eonardo diCaprio clones?
If the women want Leonardo deCaprio clones, the Sex Goddesses will
translate themselves into Leonardo diCaprio clones. Or if they want Lou
Duchez, they'll appear as Lou Duchez, even if Lou's busy watching *The Hell
Adventures of Earth Farm One* on his slack-realized 55-inch wraparound
holovision station. I envision Narnini, twin of Nunu and one of the Sex
Goddesses, as EveryDyke, and it is to her I extend my hand and other bits.
Some of us swing both, or every, way anyhow. And don't forget the Prairie
Squid!
|6.
|
|A follow-up question: give a rough estimate (based on interactions in the c=
|hurch, devival meetings, etc.) of the woman-to-man ratio in the church?
1:2 to 1:3, except at science fiction conventions, where the ratio is more
like 1:10. Either way, not damn near enough, but we're working on that.
Between Suzie the Floozie, Princess Wei R. Doe, Gobi, Sister Kris, Nanzi
Regalia, H-P Eileen, someone else, Rev. Nickie, Tarla Star, Sister
Rosebrit, Aprilfish, Catgirl Nuku Nuku, MegaLiz, and the lovely Miss
Siouxsie Sakamoto, we're gaining on the Mormons, only this time we're
advocating polygamy BOTH WAYS.
|6 1/2.
|
|The release date of the first movie of the next Star Wars trilogy will be M=
|ay 24th, 1998. Do you feel that in anticipation of X-Day the release date w=
|ill be changed (even though every major Lucasfilm release since the first S=
|tar Wars movie has come out for Memorial Day weekend) or that it doesn=B9t =
|really matter, because the invading aliens might turn out to be a sizable s=
|ection of the target audience for such a picture?
The release date may be changed depending on how successful Lucas is in
fending off starving, disease-ridden savages who were once middle
management slaves back before the Econocataclysm. As for invading aliens,
if the Xists get here first they will think Star Wars to be a
superstition-based and quaint farce, and if the Yacatisma (op. cit., p.
109, 2nd column) get here first there won't be a single movie theatre left
to show it, unless the aliens skin humans to fashion new screens.
|7.
|
|A member of the church is asked to co-operate for an article whose intent m=
|ay be to propagate false information on the church and may be a part of the=
| conspiracy to mislead the public about the purpose of the Church. What do =
|you do and why?
I do it anyway, as long as the Sacred P.O. Box is listed.
|8.
|
|Why did the subgenius cross the road?
Because.
How many SubGeniuses does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Five thousand two--five thousand to concentrate enough psychic energy, and
two to climb inside.
P-Lil, Seattle SubGenius Mafia
--
Popess Lilith von Fraumench, Sadomasticist At Large
The Church of the Skullfarmer's Daughter
In Rapt Communion With The Dobbshead, Inc.
Fools' Press * 1202 E. Pike St., #769 * Seattle, WA 98122-3934
mitchell@interserv.com * http://www.rlabs.com/utopium/
Spiting the Gods since 1989
Original file name: subgenius questionnaire
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