World Domination Update
“Cashing in the COINTELPRO”
vol. III, iss. vi

“The voice of one crying in the wilderness”
                                            —Matthew 3:3

in this issue:



· brain police hostilities
· sports vice
· a word about the bible babble
· crying foul on the fig tree
· ask evil matt
· historical ’hogs revisited
· shady salutation



 
Hi kids!

Well, folks, the armageddon clock is quickly ticking away toward Millennial Meltdown, and I must say that I’m surprised more bad shit hasn’t happened than already has.  Since the current calendar system (GreyGoryAum) is a wholly human creation, you would think that the folks who observe it would be freaking out more than they are.  Since all of the problems associated with the Millennium are of man-made origin (ie: Y2K) all of the results would be too.  Then again, consider the mentality of the people spazzing out: they seem to think that Satan himself works off of GreyGoryAum.  There have been a couple of comparable freak-outs in the past, such as the first Millennium (1000^AD) and also the year 1666, but nothing bad happened back then except what hysterical humans caused to happen by their own force of will. That means we should be okay so long as people keep a level head.

In other words, we’re phuqed. So start hoarding MRE’s and batteries if you haven’t already. And remember: don’t skimp on the ammo! That’s such a rookie mistake: stock up on guns, then run out of bullets half way into the Final Showdown. Don’t be that guy.

Not surprisingly, the group causing the most Millennial mayhem is the Brain Police.  BP secret agents have tampered with my computer, and have been waging a (sadly successful) campaign to prevent me from connecting on-line.  At first I thought it was this shitty software I’m using, and have had to reinstall AOL 5 times in 3 months to “solve” the problem.  This prompted a shift in tactics by the Brain Police, and reinstalling stopped working.  So next I had to reinstall windows, which was more torture than anything Dr. Mengele ever dreamed up.  I had to resort to reformatting my entire hard drive and starting over from scratch.  In the process I lost everything, but fortunately Friendly Fire was able to resurrect a good chunk of the important stuff (for which he gets my thanks, an indulgence, and three Hail Vernon’s.)  Anyway, that solved the problem for, oh, two days.  Then the Brain Police again adjusted their tactics, and I was back to where I started: barely able to start my pc, and completely unable to sign on-line.  As a last ditch effort I put a new modem in, which seems to have solved the sign-on problem for now, though the Brain Police worked some more modem mojo on me and consistently give me a sign-on speed in the mid 30’s.  I’ve seen turtles going faster than that. This whole ordeal has been more targshit than McVeigh used to blow up the Murrah Building.

Seems the Brain Police have also latched onto the web site and worked some weird juju there, too.  I’m not referring to the annoying pop-up window that visitors now have to deal with; that’s just the “price” of dealing with a free hosting site (and I think you’ll all agree it’s better than a built-in ad banner.)  Several of the art backgrounds have just simply disappeared.  They’re still there in the directory, and view correctly if I edit the page and do a preview, but no force makes them appear when viewed “normally.”  Still trying to figure out what’s up with that, and I have no idea why it was working fine until a few weeks ago.  So far my only explanation is Brain Police monkeying.

Some of you may have noticed a change to the WDU format, such as the substitution of ‘barbecue sauce of the week’ for that old stand-bye, ‘cheese of the week.’  This is in continued protest to the strong-arm tactics of the Gumby’s Dairy Gestapo.  Some friends of mine recently ordered an “extra cheese” pie from Scumby’s.  Not surprisingly, it lacked anything even remotely resembling “extra” cheese, but apparently tried to compensate for this with the gallon of grease and goo pooled on top.  So why is there no longer a cheese of the week?  Because Scumby’s Pizza sucks.

But you already knew that, didn’t you…

In other news,,,

One of the more interesting revelations in the newly reopened Waco investigation is the unedited aerial footage of the compound before and during the fire.  The film is infrared, and shows FBI foot soldiers running around outside during the final assault.  Most suspicious are the bright flashes of light directly in front of the agents, which conventional wisdom dictates are bursts of automatic fire.  But of course the FBI is sticking to its story that it fired no shots during the final showdown, and is offering up the explanation that these are merely “sunlight reflecting off of broken glass.”  Needless to say this excuse is lame even by FBI standards, and goes far in backing up allegations that they were capping off survivors fleeing the flames.

Following up on our most recent martyr, MariLewanna has been unable to get a lawyer to take her case against the Phoenix Police Department for breaking her arm.  Apparently lawyers realize it’s an uphill battle ultimately resulting in her word against theirs.  I was about to set up a MariLewanna Defense Fund, but then ol’ girl went and got on saint’s shit list.  To prove to her there was more to the musical world just Korn, saint loaned her a couple Zappa cd’s.  Unfortunately, when he got them back, they were horribly, indeed visibly, scratched.  That is so wrong! But worse, and ultimately inexcusable, was her comment “sounds like the Grateful Dead.”  Then again, what do you expect from somebody who’s favorite band is Korn?  In all fairness, I was going to offer her another rebuttal to this, but she’s not returning my messages, most likely again being lost in Everquest LaLa-Land.  Clearly she has not found Frank.

Someone who has hound Frank is Rev. 451, who (through saint’s guidance) is truly beginning to appreciate the Zapster. 451 has become initiated into the Mysteries of the Mudshark, and now spends his time Whizzing and Pasting and Pooting through the Day.  Actually, when I say the good Reverend “Found Frank,” I mean that quite literally: he stumbled across an FZ compilation in K-Mart of all places.  This scares me, that a “mainstream” store like K-Mart now carries Zappa, for under $10 no less!  Surely this is one of the signs of the Apocalypse!

It was also pointed out that another of saint’s Signs of the End was recently fulfilled: a tv channel that runs nothing but commercials.  It already exists, and it’s called M-TV.

Closer to home…

As most of you know, one of the main reasons saint took up camp in ’Zona was ’cuz it’s in a desert.  After freezing his nards off in Chicago for seven years he needed to thaw out, and the Sonoran seemed a good place.  Unfortunately, he informed me recently, “Chicago may be the coldest place on Earth, but the second coldest is Arizona in the summer—indoors!”

The Arizona Diamondbacks got spanked out of the playoffs, and while it may have crushed Pop ’N Fresh, that loud wind from the west you all heard was saint breathing a sigh of relief.  As you all know, saint is strongly anti-sport.  When he lived in Ice Station Zappa he was going nuts because Chicago is a haven for athletic supporters.  While he was there, the Bulls were HUGE.  After bailing out and booking to the Octopus Garden, the Marlins won the World Series.  And now that he’s in ’Zona, it seemed that the D-Backs would follow suit.  If they had, saint said he would move to Montana or New Mexico—any place without a professional sports team.  Pears commented on this: “dude, if you move, I’m going straight to Vegas and betting on every team wherever you live.  You are so money.”

Which brings us to our next point.

Sports Vice

As stated, saint is strongly anti-sport, and I for one’ve got his back on this matter.  Newbies who’ve missed this diatribe might want to check out WDU II,i for his biting commentary on the subject of “sports as a conspiracy.”  However, some more musing and empirical observation makes me tempted to reclassify it, or at least expand the definition: sports are a vice.

Remember: sports in moderation are okay, but I never seem to see any moderation in the following of one’s favorite sport.  Anything in excess is a vice.

Don’t believe me?  Let’s do a line-by-line comparison of sports with a more “recognizable” vice, such as crack.

Both are incredibly addictive.  The crack head can’t wait to get home to hit the pipe, the athletic supporter can’t wait to get home to check out ESPN.

Both are incredibly expensive.  Like a crack addict, a dedicated athletic supporter has a costly habit to maintain.  In the latter case, tickets to games serves as the prime example, but others no doubt come to mind, such as the accompanying “paraphernalia” that goes with the habit.  For instance, the football fiend usually has a couple of footballs lying around, some posters, and a couple dozen jerseys.  Ask any addict: that crap’s expensive, and takes a toll on the wallet.

But of course the most devastating toll taken by sports is in time.  Like a dope fiend lost in a heroin nod, the athletic supporter sits glued to the tv in an unproductive haze.  Pop ’N Fresh is the prime example of this, spending several hours a day updating his infamous ‘tally sheet’ of D-Backs stats, streaks, and other ultimately irrelevant nonsense.  And yes, saint reports he’s got a mammoth one of the Cardinals now, with the accompanying newspaper clippings, posters, and other tripe.  Hell, the guy’s even got a box of cereal called “Jake’s Flakes” which is nothing but a generic knock-off of corn flakes with Cards quarterback Jake Plummer on the over.

As Nancy Reagan said, “stop the madness.”

For its addictiveness alone sports would meet the criteria of a “controlled substance.”  Many people will no doubt “cry foul” to that, saying sports have no harmful physical effects.  Targshit. Sports have an even more damaging effect than on the body: that shit rots the brain.

  Speaking of rotting the brain,,,

   a word about the Bible Babble

A number of you have expressed negative vibes towards religion in general and to the prevalence of religious themes in my world domination updates and saint’s sermons therein.  These same people pass along comments along the lines of “I think the updates are funny, except when they get into religion.”

Then again, many of these people don’t even get the pun of “Branch Floridians,” so it’s not surprising they are missing the point.

All this brings to mind an infamous marginal note from the daily transcriptions of phone “negotiations” between the FBI’s “Hostage Rescue Team” and David Koresh during the Waco stand-off: “from now on stress more negotiation and less Bible babble.”

Readers who are anti-religious tend to skip over the “Bible Babble” in the Updates either due to lack of interest or lack of understanding, and I’m pretty sure I know why.  There is a high level of dissatisfaction with “organized” religion these days, especially among the “younger” crowd.  Most of them dismiss religion on the whole as targshit, and I am convinced that this apathy is the result of a tactical change of plan by the Brain Police.  Used to be, the BP controlled everyone through religion. Religion is one of the most fertile grounds of free thought, so by ensuring that people dismiss it out of hand, they achieve their goal of control by moving in the opposite direction: if you don’t think about it at all, you are still not thinking for yourself.  This creates a void, all the more insidious because you fail to realize there is a void at all, but which the Brain Police are more than happy to fill.

Let’s look at this a moment, by first dispelling the myth that religion is “bullshit.”  Hopefully all of you realize the importance of “philosophy.”  A philosophy is a set of guidelines that one attempts to follow in living one’s life, but also it is a rationale that one attempts to use as a set of answers for that all-important question of “why are we here?”  Religion is a philosophy that answers these questions with a focus on “The Divine.”

However, Religion goes a step further than philosophy by extending its purview to include “the afterlife.”  And that is why Religion is so important. Everybody dies; the human mortality rate is 100%.  Like it or not, you, dear reader, are included in this statistic.  You may not want to think about it, but you know it’s true: sooner or later you’re going to be dead.

Since you will be experiencing this “afterlife” eventually, you better start thinking about it sometime, and my opinion is the sooner the better.  After all, this is the next stage in your existence, and you are going to be spending some time there, quite possibly “eternity.”  If you go into that situation wholly unprepared, you are so rolling your dice with your fate.  After all, if you’re wrong, chances are pretty good that you’re phuqed.

Dismissing religion entirely out of hand is as bad (and as dangerous) as blindly embracing it.  And this is the other reason why religion is so important.

I think the most dangerous thing in the world is Dogma.  Dogma, by definition, is something that is assumed to be true and is not to be unquestioned but instead blindly obeyed.  Remember, I don’t have a problem if you accept something after you’ve thought about it, but if you just follow the flock because your daddy says 200 Popes can’t be wrong, then you are not only missing the point, but you are a mindless robot under someone else’s control.  In order to think for yourself it is necessary to have alternative viewpoints from which to choose from.  One of the main reasons that religion is so heavily discussed in the Updates is to provide these alternative viewpoints.

That said, here’s saint’s sermon.

Fig Tree Unfairness

By

¹⁸ In the morning, as (Jesus) was returning to Jerusalem, he was hungry. ¹⁹And seeing a fig tree by the wayside he went to it, and found nothing on it but leaves only. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once. ²⁰When the disciples saw it they marveled, saying, “How did the fig tree wither at once?” ²¹And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and never doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it will be done. ²²And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”

—Matthew 21:18-22

Jesus did a lot of weird things in his life, but this little incident gets the prize for most petty and spiteful.  Poor little fig tree, minding its own business, doing nothing bad but being in the wrong place at the wrong time with no fruit on it.  Jesus could just as easily have caused it to come into bloom with fruit, but no, he curses it.  That is so wrong!

The version of this story in Mark (11:13) adds an incriminating detail: “it was not the season for figs.” If that’s the case, then Gee, what the phuq was he thinking?!?  Of course there’s no fruit on it!  Wrong season, dumb-ass.

Mark actually breaks the story into two parts: unlike Matthew, who has this as one self-contained, instantaneous incident, Mark has Jesus curse the tree (11:12-14), then go into the Temple and overturn the moneylenders’ tables (11:15-19), and on the way back discover that the hapless tree was withered (11:20-25.)  Matthew has a full day passing between ‘cleansing the Temple’ and cursing the tree.  So either Jesus withered two separate fig trees, or we have a Gospel contradiction in terms of event timing and quote attribution.  Either answer causes problems: either Jesus was vindictive (and stupid) enough to curse two different trees, or we have yet another (albeit minor) nail in the coffin of Canonical infallibility.

The standard explanation of this story is that it is a metaphor. The framing of the event around the “cleansing” of the Temple certainly suggests this. Throughout the Bible, “fruit” is a metaphor for “good works.” The tree was barren of fruit, the Temple was barren of holiness, and Jesus ‘destroyed’ both.

Continuing on with “standard interpretation,” the story of the fig tree raises a disturbing implication: if even through no fault of your own you do not do what God (or at least Jesus) wants, you will be cursed.  

Whew.

Jesus’ rationale behind the story, that all things are possible through faith and prayer, raises another conundrum.  Simply put: this is not true.  I could cite so many incidents of devout prayer by the sincere not being answered that I won’t even bother.  I’m sure the reader could do likewise.

This incident, and especially Jesus’ explanation of it, is a favorite of Christian Scientists and “faith healers” who spurn medicine in favor of divine cures.  Citing both this and Matthew 18:19 (“If two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.”) they get together and pray that someone’s leukemia goes away.  Doesn’t happen like that, as the high mortality rate among Christian Scientists bears out.  More disturbing, not one but several phundamentalist congregations took a cue from Jesus and the fig tree by praying for the death of the entire Supreme Court following the Roe v. Wade verdict.

I’m not sure which is scarier: the mentality of someone who withers a fig tree for something that wasn’t it’s fault, or the mentality of people who imitate this deed in what they assume to be “good faith.”

Either way, it’s a heaping mound of targshit.

ask evil matt

Q:  So just what the phuq is 'targshit,' anyway?