
The Church of the SubGenius Finally Plays It Straight - wallflower
https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/the-church-of-the-subgenius-finally-plays-it-straight/
======
pmoriarty
_" And besides, it really is an interesting story. There are interesting
characters, and we're not going to be around forever. I'm 64, and I'm doing
great, but we've lost a lot of us. They aren't going to get to be in the
movie. They boarded the saucers prematurely. It's good to document this stuff
and get it down in the real words."_

This part really resonated with me. There were so many things I was in to when
I was younger that I liked but really didn't fully appreciate for the
uniqueness of that particular time and place. It's never going to happen
again, and if it's not documented, it'll just all fade away and no one who
wasn't there then will know about it.

So much of it seems so special in retrospect, especially to people who weren't
there, but there's no way of going back now and recording it all, or interview
all those people I had an opportunity to interview then but didn't.

Something to think about for those of you who might be involved in some
"underground" scenes today that the general public hasn't picked up on yet. I
know you're out there and you know something we don't. Record it. Share it.
Teach us. Interview the people who are involved in it. You might not get
another chance.

~~~
ghftyu666
I find it rather vain of folks to think humanity should care forever about
their personal experiences

That it won’t happen again or be known is part of the intrigue to me.

Why do we need to keep propagating our own contemporary fascinations forward
in time?

We’re each going to die and very few of us will leave behind truly novel ideas
that humanity can rely on

Most of our experiences are emotionally novel _for us_ , and that specific
time and place creates that novelty.

What makes them so will be completely lost on future people. So much
information is inaccessible to them when reading about it or watching a poorly
shot video

And to me that’s the cool part about having been there.

I’d rather folks go on creating such experiences for themselves than watch my
highlight reel and never really get since they weren’t there

~~~
linkmotif
Couldn’t agree more! I think so much about this. What on earth gives anyone
the impression anyone will care about us or our minutia in the future?

The fact is of the billions of humans on earth, almost all of them are either
too low on resources or interest to even care about how things like the solar
system or genetics operate, mysterie that humans have wondered for millennia
and are only being unlocked now. It’s made me think that for most humans it’s
enough to kind of wonder and enjoy the mysteries.

As a child I grew up upper middle class with kids who had time and resources
to find out all kinds of things but most people including me just wasted most
of our time, taking more interest in basic human interactions and intrigues
than knowledge. It’s how humans are I think.

What makes anyone think some distant ancestor or researcher will care about
us? I find it unlikely and kind of transparently desperate to think so. It’s
liberating to know no one will care and I can die and have the freedom to just
fade into oblivion and that no one but some AI will taken interest in my
Gmails.

~~~
mbrock
I saw a conversation where a diarist asked what a historian wished to find in
someone's diary—like, do they wish for nuanced analyses about current events?
But the historian said the most interesting stuff is that which you don't see
in official chronicles or books: daily little things, relationships, habits,
food, all the minutiae that still paints a picture of the world from a
specific point of view.

------
jey
Good thing there's still Discordianism for those of us who are more serious.

Hail Eris.

~~~
obrajesse
I think this is the first time I’ve heard Discordianism described as “more
serious” than something.

~~~
labster
Discordianism has always been serious, even when it's not. The end of the
_Principia Discordia_ even tells you to go back and reread it if you thought
it was just a joke.

Subgenii annoy me, because they do tend to make everything a joke, and for
some reason it reflects on those of us in Eris' Apple Corps. Like no, we have
a serious philosophical point to make here (don't take everything seriously)
that really needs to be taken seriously.

~~~
edmccard
> Subgenii annoy me, because they do tend to make everything a joke

They've even got a slogan about that.[1]

[1][http://subgenius.wikia.com/wiki/Slogans](http://subgenius.wikia.com/wiki/Slogans)

~~~
emacsgifs
The one true religion disguised as a complicated joke.

------
giancarlostoro
Also inspiration for Slackware. One of the oldest Linux distributions in
existence.

See:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Volkerding#Personal_li...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Volkerding#Personal_life)

~~~
jimjimjim
And still a very good distribution. rock solid and very predictable with no
weird magic stuff that may or may not work.

~~~
bstamour
Yep! It runs on all of my personal gear for that exact reason. Praise Bob!

------
jd3
Although people talking out of their ass about McLuhan have always annoyed me,
that conspiracy nut who claims to be a 120 year old Bob (Neveritt) Dobbs is
hilarious — his stuff is past performance art.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1JbomcBkck](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1JbomcBkck)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY4HG9YCUJk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY4HG9YCUJk)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9kMq131GyE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9kMq131GyE)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRJr1kKYFYY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRJr1kKYFYY)

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Brilliant! I've had the (dis?)pleasure of spending hours with people like this
in real life. They certainly are _entertaining_.

~~~
jd3
Watching this stuff tends to give me that dissociated-from-reality feeling
that is only possible with certain media content (Richard Linklater's
"Slacker", for one)

------
robotbikes
I remember the first thing I ever saw on the internet was an ASCII face of Bob
Dobbs on a gopher site somewhere. This was back in the early 90s when MTV.com
was owned by one of the VJs and web browsers were called Mosaic.

------
DonHopkins
I'm hoping to hear more about the notorious "Cult performer arrested in rail
tunnel" / "Poop & Pee Dog Copyright Violation" incident...

I'm sure it was just a big misunderstanding, and there are two sides to the
story.

[http://accelerateddecrepitude.blogspot.nl/2012/02/his-
name-i...](http://accelerateddecrepitude.blogspot.nl/2012/02/his-name-is-not-
legend-its-tentatively.html)

The Baltimore Sun's Ann Lolordo reported, "As they entered the tunnel which
leads into Camden Station, police heard a loud banging sound, like cymbals
crashing. Then, police said, they saw a dead animal hanging from the ceiling
and a man standing in the dark tunnel, his naked body covered with 'a glowing
paint.'"

[https://minxuslynxus2.wordpress.com/2013/06/24/poop-pee-
dog-...](https://minxuslynxus2.wordpress.com/2013/06/24/poop-pee-dog-
copyright-violation-ceremony-documentation-by-tentatively-a-convenience/)

... I was naked except for my shoes & socks & I had white squiggly lines
painted on me. I danced & gyrated wildly & beat the dogs & the thunder sheet
with a club. The dogs were on fire & exuded what one might call a “foul”
smell. I had been entrusted with the sacred head of Arnold Palmer by a
representative of the Bloody Head Launcher’s Society which I had set on fire &
which I was also beating about the tunnel ...

------
pdog
_> SKB: When the SubGenius was originally created, it was the trickle-down
theory and Reaganomics. Those policies destroyed our middle class then, and
it’s still affecting us today._

I don't buy the argument that Reagan's policies destroyed the American middle
class.

Based on every available statistic, the middle class has been in decline since
the early 1970s, a decade before Reagan was president.

~~~
itomato
Cancer patient dies from blunt trauma. News at 11.

~~~
pdog
The blunt trauma might be NAFTA, which came into force in 1994.

~~~
logicchains
There's actually a relatively non-controversial theory in economics that such
trade agreements will decrease low-skilled wages in the richer country, at
least in the short term:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_price_equalization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_price_equalization).
Economists generally consider this acceptable however as the models used
suggest the benefit to the poor country and overall increase in global utility
is greater than the loss faced by low-skilled workers in the richer country.

------
sallyfour
Anybody else a Rev. Dr. here?

~~~
revscat
Rev. Dr. Scatological Warfare checking in.

------
CodeWriter23
One of my long time friends and a fellow member came to visit a few years
back. Before he left, he put "Kill Bob" easter eggs (via post it notes) in
various locations in my house. These little fountains of Slack remain in place
and I will leave them when I move out. Except for the one on the back of my
monitor.

------
indescions_2017
A great place to start might be reviving alt.binaries.slack. Or a countdown
ticker for is-it-x-day-yet.com :)

~~~
UncleSlacky
Alt.slack still exists, and is fairly active, too.

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/alt.slack](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/alt.slack)

