World Domination Update
“The Son of Sam I Am”
vol IV, iss i
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness”
—Matthew 3:3
Secret Word of the Day: Beatdown
Site of the Week: www.dumblaws.com
Barbecue Sauce of the Week: KC Masterpiece Honey Smoke
Now Playing: S.O.D. — Speak English or Die
In this issue:
· Y2K Round-up
· New Year’s Evil
· shade’s Vacation
· The Lighter Side of the Conspiracy
· Sermon/Survey on Bullfrog 8:8
· Asinine Astrology
· Ask Evil Matt
· Hedgehog’s Day
Hey, kids!
First things first: It’s February 28th, the seventh anniversary of the Waco raid, and our second-most important holiday. So go out and shoot a jelly doughnut or something in observance. I shot myself in the foot with a rubber band and a chocolate frosted; what are you gonna do?
Well, we managed to make it past Midnight on December 31st without too much going wrong, once again shaking my faith in the stupidity of the average person. Honestly, I was expecting a lot more of the headless hen-coop mentality, but apparently those people truly concerned about Y2K bugs biting them were buried too deep in out-of-the-way concrete fallout shelters for me to notice.
Needless to say, much of the Y2K hysteria was merely a marketing ploy courtesy of Microsoft, essentially a sick trick to get everyone to go out and buy new products. But you already knew that, didn’t you...
Some Y2K compu-goofs were reported, though “officially” they were “minor.” A Holiday Inn sign wished people a Happy 1900, a few video stores gave people late fees in excess of $30,000; fun stuff like that. According to CNN, a French defense satellite had a Y2K glitch, though what, exactly, was affected remains “classified.” Through some research, I have been able to determine what occurred: on January 1st, the satellite sent orders for the cavalry to invade Prussia.
Closer to home, one of the more interesting—and suspicious—bugs bit six nuclear power plants, all of which had midnight glitches in their weather tracking software. Ostensibly, nuclear plants would need to know weather conditions in case there’s a phuq-up so they can forecast the fallout. Sure. In reality, nuclear plants are the engines behind the Government’s efforts to control our weather (see WDU II,iv). Obviously there isn’t much trick to controlling weather; we’ve been doing everything from rain dances to cloud seeding for years, but you need a lot of energy to do it on a wide scale. This Y2K weather-tracking snafu is merely more proof of this.
By the way, and needless to say, this control of natural forces isn’t limited to just the weather. Don’t believe me? Click the button below to create your own localized earthquake:
- …but I digress…
saint said he had plans to ring in the New Year quietly atop Billy the Mountain, but this was undone by his uncanny ability to be in the
wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong t-shirt
- (I’ll let
Tempe was having a big New Year’s Block Party downtown, with overpriced food and music courtesy (shudder) Billy Idol. Yeah, I really wanted to go to that... I figured I’d just go up on Billy the Mountain and have some semi-peaceful introspection time. (It’d also be a good spot to watch the fireworks, which is what FirsSkunk and I did back on the Fourth of July.) Unfortunately, Billy the Mountain is about 200 yards from Mill Avenue (renamed for the occasion to Millennium Avenue, which I admit I thought was kind of cute.) So naturally there was no parking. Worse, there were Brain Police everywhere. Still, I managed to made it to the foot of Billy the Mountain, where I was promptly stopped by Brain Police.
“Look,” I told them, “I don’t give a shit about all that,” and I indicated the drunken frenzy that was already under progress a few blocks away, “I just want to go up on the Mountain.”
“No can do,” the guard told me, “it’s sealed off. Media only.”
“Ughhh,” I exclaim, “DENIED!”
There were two guards, actually. The one I was talking to was temporary event security, a wispy Hispanic barely old enough to shave, which he hadn’t. The other was a real cop, standing right behind him. But anyway, after telling me that Billy was under Brain Police lockdown, the Mexican rent-a-cop suddenly sees my t-shirt.
“Hey, boss shirt, man,” he says, clearly impressed. “What is that?”
It was a piece of “poetry concrete” in the form of the names of every American Rock band, arranged stylistically (and roughly chronologically) into the shape of a giant tree. A plaque on the trunk proclaimed it “The Family Tree of American Rock & Roll.”
“It’s the Family Tree of American Rock & Roll,” I tell him.
He is now talking an up-close inspection of all the fine print on it.
“Cool,” he repeats. “So like every Rock and Roll group is on there?”
“Just the American ones.”
“Is Bob Marley on there?”
“Uh, no,” I reply. “These are just American bands. Marley was Jamaican.”
“Jamaican?!?” he exclaims, confused and suspicious. “I doan’ know...” he tells me skeptically, “I thought he was American. You sure?”
“Well,,, yes.” I reply, and make my first unsuccessful attempt to escape. The real cop behind him was now taking an active interest in me. Not a good thing anyway, but I just knew he was Brain police, and he’d be sure to make me as saint.
“Well,” the mini-Mexican goes on, resuming his in-depth inspection of my shirt, “how about that guy that sings ‘Another one bites the dust’?”
“That’s Queen. They’re British.”
“British?!?”
“ ’Fraid so.” I say, making a second attempt to get away. Denied.
“You sure he’s British?”
“It’s ‘Queen,’ man,” I try to explain. “Y’know, like in QUEEN of England?”
This further puzzles him, so in the confusion I finally make good my escape. Somehow I just knew his next request would be for either The Beatles or the Rolling Stones.
Anyway, saint managed to escape; in a separate e-mail, he said he then went back to Desert Palm and rung in the New back there with Col. Fluffynnutts, Princess, Noah, and the rest of the crew. saint was impressed; Noah was carrying around a baseball bat for “Y2K insurance, baby!” in case something went wrong. From his balcony saint said he had a good view of Billy the Mountain, and occasionally Brain Police helicopters would douse it with search lights, undoubtedly putting the clampdown on anyone trying tot sneak up. I second his cry of ‘shenanigans’ on the Brain Police beatdown of a public park—clearly something was afoot.
As for me, I just chilled back here at the Octopus Garden with Harriet and Sisooomba (and a big bottle of Asti Spumonti) to have a fun night. The next morning I started packing for ’Zona.
shade’s Vacation and Relocation
With the new year rolling around, it’s time to get going with the World Domination thing in earnest, so I took some time to head out west and check out ’Zona. saint was cool enough to put me up at The Oasis, and I must marvel at his tolerance of Pop ’N Fresh, sports-fanatic in extremis.
Seems I wasn’t the only one to visit ’Zona at the time; FireSkunk, Uncle Istivan, and Smoking Gun also made treks out to the Promised Land west of the Pecos. With enough of our brethren on-site, saint and I realized it was time to look into setting up a compound.
We quickly agreed that Desert Palm was bogus for this purpose, and began hunting around for a better place to set up base camp. With some luck, we found a nice little cave atop the pinnacle of South Mountain, and hope to have it fortified by the next issue. I’ve already put Harriet to work clearing out the bugs, and saint’s been planting a defensive perimeter of cacti and landmines. FireSkunk is making some curtains.
Details as they arise, and if you’re not at our “cave-warming” party, then you just plain suck.
...in other news...
The Latest from Waco
When we last left off, infrared footage had surfaced from under the cloak of “National Security” showing FBI agents running around outside the compound the day of the fire with suspicious bursts of light directly in front of them. The FBI originally claimed that muzzle flashes wouldn’t show up on the film, and explained these as “reflections of light off of broken glass.” Not surprisingly, everyone else explains that explanation as “bullshit.” Both the Danforth inquiry and attorneys representing the Davidians in their wrongful death lawsuit had a simple solution: fly a plane with the same type of infrared camera over a firing range and see if the pictures look similar.
The government is now claiming that the infrared camera used that day was ‘one of a kind,’ and immediately after the conflagration the camera was dismantled and sent to another (undisclosed) country.
Gee, how convenient...
According to reports, the “other country” has agreed to return the camera for the requested test. Not surprisingly, the government made an abrupt about-face and stated that maybe the gunshots would show up on the test after all. But of course they’re still sticking to their story that they fired no shots that fateful day.
On a related note, Dick DeGuuerrin, the chief attorney representing the Davidians, claims he has “substantial evince” that many of those shots fired that fateful day came from Delta Force positions. No word yet what that evidence is, but we’ll keep you posted.
Air bag update
A few issues ago (III,iii) we asked the simple question, “what’s the ‘air’ in an air bag?” Turns out the “official” explanation is that air bag gas is the result of a mixture of Sodium azide (NaN
3) and potassium nitrate (KNO3)—essentially the same ingredients as in a solid rocket booster.Think about that for a second...
Of course, that’s just the “official” answer, but we know the real truth.
More Assorted Strangeness Involving Food
Updating our Fast Food Shit List…:
-
Arby’s was advertising 2 subs to $4, so I asked for two roast beefs with no mayo. They even repeated the order back to me, correctly. Needless to say, these things were so dripping with mayonnaise that I think the entire crew beat off on ’em. I mean, what part of the word “no” did they not understand?!?
-
saint and I did a midnight drive-through at Burger King the other night. The sign out front advertised BBQ XL, so we said, why not?!? (dangerous words, I know...) Anyway, I asked for onion rings, but they told me they were out. [Read: they were too lazy to go in back and open up another box.] So I had to settle for fries, but I asked for some barbecue sauce on the side. Again, they told me they were out. saint astutely pointed out that he had just ordered the BBQ XL, so how could they be out? Seems they were out of the little packets. But since saint called shenanigans on that, they accommodated us by filling up a 10-oz dixie cup half full of barbecue. What the phuq was that all about?!? Worst part was, it was nasty.
Child Proof Lighters
Having had several bad run-ins with “child-proof” lighters, I am now convinced that they are actually a conspiracy by the Brain Police to hinder our religion. Seen any of those new models? Getting them to work is an exercise in dexterity, and many of them have the complexity of Chinese puzzles. Better terms for them would be “adult-proof”, “smoker-proof”, or “user-proof.” With one of those evil contraptions, you might always keep a lighter handy, but good luck trying to get the damned thing to work... Clearly this is a BP stratagem against us.
Besides, the whole mentality behind child-proof lighters is ass-backwards. Let’s face it: if you’re dumb enough to let your kid play unsupervised with a source of fire, then you not only get what you deserve but are doing everyone a favor by Darwining yourself out of the gene pool.
And now, lest ye think we just nit-pick the New Testament,,,
saint’s sermon-under-construction:
The Bullfrog Conundrum
|
How can you say, “We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us?” But behold, the lying pen of scribes have made it into a falsehood. —Jeremiah 8:8 |
This is a very perplexing and intriguing passage, and most of you can readily spot why.
Lying pen of scribes making the law false?!?
The difficulties this presents are immediate: if the law of the LORD has been made into a falsehood by scribes, then how accurate is that law as it has been passed down to us? Worse, if the laws are false, has anything else has been scribally falsified?
This is an important issue, for the only record from that time that we have of what the law is comes from these very same scribes. Was scribal ‘tampering’ with religious literature a problem in Jeremiah’s own time? This hints that it was about to be, or indeed already was.You must admit that calling the law false is a bold statement to make, and it is God Himself, who makes this accusation (8:1, 8:4.)
This is an important litmus test that I think everyone should give to the
Scripture. After all, if you’re of the Faith and you’re correct, you have nothing to
fear. But if you find it really is a falsehood, at least now you know and can start looking for what’s
right. Or, if you’re like shade, you just know it’s the smoking gun that the Brain police tampered with The Bible. Unfortunately, this topic is complex enough that examining the explanation(s) takes several pages, plus a few more pages of tangent digressions that tie in the Big
Picture. shade and I have agreed to move the sermon to a subsection of this issue. Readers are encouraged to check it out and leave their thoughts on it.
Shade will maintain a page of reader responses, and maybe retool the whole thing with hyperlinks to verse quotes, which should remove a lot of the bulk and make it easier to read {hint hint,
shade 0;) } Depending on reader response, this possibly will become a recurring feature to encourage group discussion and en-masse ‘thinking for yourself.’
Check out the sermon
shade’s peshar
One of the ironies of Jeremiah’s accusation that scribal tampering is that the text that records it: the actual Book of Jeremiah, shows signs of scribal shenanigans within it.
Specifically, there are roughly three different versions of the Jeremiah. Numerous passages (e.g. 33:14-26) come only from the Hebrew (Masoretic) texts—they are conspicuously missing from the Greek (Septuagint.) And neither version completely agree on the the order and placement of all of the oracles. The Aramaic of the Dead Sea Scrolls further complicate things, which alternate allegiance in agreement between the two. Some would say that’s all nit-picking, and it doesn’t affect the overall picture. Some would say it’s everything, because it is proof that someone played with—at the very least—the order of the text. What else did they change, delete, or invent out of scratch?
Whore-O-Scopes
Disclaimer: these horoscopes are calculated with the assumption that you are currently on Earth. If you are not on Earth, shift up one sign per planet towards the sun, down one sign per planet away from the sun. Void where prohibited, and in Utah.
Aries (Mar 21-Apr 19) Powerful opposition between Neptune and the Sun in your 9th house (long-distance travel) forebodes ill: your low-profile trip to Barbados will be undermined by an hour-long cavity search in customs, a millipede-infested “suite,” and potentially end with a rabid alligator attack. Also, the expiration date on your yogurt is off by a week.
Taurus (Apr 20-May 20) After being stationary for several months, your Venus goes into retrograde; this should jolt you out of your complacent doldrum. Expect to meet (and be warned of) a new special someone you’ll run into at Arby’s with hair down to his/her tail-bone and an unhealthy fixation with candles.
Gemini (May 21-Jun 20) Mars squared to Jupiter all but ensures an IRS audit, so save those awkward receipts. They might be incriminating, but He Who Cannot Be Named already knows what you and another Gemini are up to so, you should at least recoup your financial losses. On the bright side, you will lose your keys in the laundry. (I say bright side because now you know where to look first.)
Cancer (Jun 21-Jul 22) Weird scenes inside the Crab Skies. The upcoming meteor shower through Cancer suggests you will shortly wake up with a mysterious color tattoo of stigmata on your hands, vampire bites on your throat, or a 665.9 on your scalp. That pain in your neck is from an Aries armed with a voodoo doll of you; call her more often and she’ll ease off the pins.
Leo (Jul 23-Aug 22) The Moon will play an especially important part in your life, and your bad hair days will be proportional to the lunar phases. You will get Twisted Sister songs stuck in your head and develop an obsession with John Madden that could result in a restraining order.
Virgo (Aug 23-Sep 22) Mercury in the second cusp denotes immense clumsiness—if you garden, you’ll kill everything. All of your clothes will shrink one size in the laundry, and none of your jokes will be funny. An Aquarius will bake you a cake.
Libra (Sep 23-Oct 22) Sun square Uranus: you will question your sexuality over the coming months. Also expect the death of a loved plant; something large, such as a tree in your front yard or that bad boy you’ve got under grow lights in your basement.
Scorpio (Oct 23-Nov 21) Mercury prominent hints at a craving for custard and an itch in your foot that just won’t go away. An Aries at work is setting you up to be their scapegoat, so start looking for a new job now; a change of profession is encouraged. Avoid betting on red in roulette.
Sagittarius (Nov 22-Dec 21) The alignment of your planets hasn’t been this fucked up since 1912, so expect to be assassinated in Sarajevo, climb Mount Alto Blanco, or even discover a new theory of relativity. Wax fruit will mysteriously appear in your refrigerator.
Capricorn (Dec 22-Jan 19) With both Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn, you just know it’ll be bad: you will be the subject of three pulp exposé’s and a made for tv movie costarring Pam Anderson and John Leguazamo. When the moon cruises through Capricorn you can expect the physical manifestation of your sign: the goat. You’ll be bitten by one, smell like one, or eat one at Burger King. (most ’King-eaters run that risk, anyway.)
Aquarius (Jan 20-Feb 18) Neptune prominent in Aquarius all but ensures something bad involving water coming up: a boating accident, plumbing disaster, or bad seafood. This will heighten your dysfunction for mismatching clothes, and you will consistently wear two left socks.
Pisces (Feb 19-Mar 20) An ascending Jupiter makes this the perfect time to get in touch with your dark side. Your significant other will be terrified yet curiously aroused by your zeal at slicing bread with a knife. There is a spider in your pantry, but don’t kill it or ten thousand of its relatives will show up for the funeral.
Today’s Birthday: You didn’t get a present mom or dad, which should be the final proof you need that they are not your biological parents. The dream you had last night will come literally true for a Virgo living in Nepal.
is the premier aborigines hermaphrodite astrologer on the circuit.
Blind, deaf, and mute,
is
renowned for her sense of smell in Astrological matters.
Author of How to smell the the future and the best-selling Sneeze reading for beginners, her sense of smell is credited with predicting two hurricanes, four
volcanoes, and John Lennon's assassination.
Ask Evil Matt
- The Evil One fields your queries; as channeled by Sister Ob’dewlla ‘X’
Q: what is Truth?
A: Pilate asked Jesus that same question (John 18:38) but never got an answer, and I believe this is because there isn’t one. I’ve had this conversation before, and it gets messy and convoluted. I’ll try to keep it short and simple.
Webster’s Unabridged gives, among others, three definitions: 1) the true or actual state of a matter. 2) conformity with fact or reality. 3) a verified or indisputable fact, proposition, or principle.
I’ll shoot those down on the grounds of “subjectivity.” Something may be “true” TO ME but not to other observers. Two examples to illustrate:
- The sky is blue.
- 2 + 2 = 4 Believe it or not, there are forms of mathematics where that is not the case. I do not understand them, but I know that they exist and are valid within their own parameters. Do some research on non-Euclidean geometry if you don’t believe me. For those who still call “shenanigans!” consider the Trinity. If you can believe that 3 = 1 then you can laterally jump to 2 + 2 ≠ 4.
A person who is colour-blind would certainly disagree; to them, the sky would be green. Is the colour-blind person wrong? Only from my (non-colour-blind) standpoint.
“Truth” is one of those murky, abstract CONCEPTS like “infinity,” “nothing”, and “love” that describe an IDEAL which cannot be objectively (and empirically) quantified. Most things can be demonstrated to be “conditionally true,” but unfortunately there seems to be an exception to every rule that precludes an absolute.
Hope this was of some help.
No, huh...
[note from shade: this question was asked Evil Matt by ‘Sean,’ who is unknown to any of us. Evil’s original reply (quoted above) to the sender’s cross@pcola.gulf.net address was mailerdaemoned. This has raised concerns among a few of the crew here; did a casual reader get whacked by the Brain Police for asking a question of that magnitude? Or is this a BP feeler to see how much we really know? If legit, it is hoped this answer reaches him.]
Q: how did Andy Kaufman Die?
A: Lung cancer, which is unusual in that he did not smoke or do drugs. It is speculated that he got it from second-hand smoke at all the comedy clubs he played.
Q: Can you do... The Milano Mosh?
A: I think that I’m really hard! I think that I can mosh! Got my suspenders, and got my boots! Got plate mail +8 (you filthy tool!) I mosh until I die! I mosh until I fry! I think that I can try, and I can do... The Milano Mosh!
Q: Matt, you know how an object appears to become larger as you approach it? Does infinity become larger as you approach it?
A: Yes, but only if you approach it in a car in reverse, looking at it in the side-view mirror. (you know, ‘objects in mirror are closer than... ’aw, nevermind.)
Q: Where does Hebrew come from?
A: “Classical” (ie: Biblical) Hebrew is an offshoot of the Canaanite family of the Semitic language group, which also includes Phoenician, Moabite, Ammonite, and Ugaritic. The earliest known (written) example of it is from the 15th century B.C.E. though it is undoubtedly much older. Even in Old Testament times there were different, distinct dialects of Hebrew, as emphasized by Judges 11:5-6 (where Ephramite fugitives’ pronunciation of ‘sibboleth’—compared to ‘shibboleth’—betrayed their origins to their Gileadite enemies.) Interestingly, the word ‘Hebrew’ itself is not of Israelite origin, but has been traced to Ugaritic, where it means either ‘bonded servant’ or (more likely) ‘slave.’
Q: Didn’t the star’s in Orion’s Belt used to be in a straight line? Seems I rememer ’em that way, but clearly now they’re not. This is bothering me.
A: Nope, the center one has always been off, at least as far back as my research shows (Egyptian astrology chart, ca 3000 B.C.E.) If you remember them in a straighgt line, you were viewing them from somewhere other than Earth. Were you not on Earth recently? That could be it.
Q: If a tree falls in the forest and no one sees it, does it make a sound?
A: Sure does, usually “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”
Got a question? Ask .
- And finally,
The Hedgehog Corner
By Harriet the Hedgehog
Groundhog’s Day Roundup
February 2nd was Groundhog’s Day, and for those who missed the results from Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania, Punxsuutawney Phil yet again saw his shadow, so you better bundle up with someone you love for six more weeks. Unfortunately, it was 11 degrees outside, so when Phil went back into his burrow his shadow stayed behind, frozen in place.
Phil (in one incarnation or another) has been forecasting for 114 years. Scholars trace the tradition back to medieval Germany. What academic-types fail to realize is that Groundhog’s Day is a weak imitation, a “pale shadow,” if you will, of a much older tradition; Hedgehog’s Day.
Hedgehog’s Day was an ancient Roman festivity, Chuffus Regressus, held on (or about) February 1st. If the hedgehog came out and chuffed at his shadow, the Caesar would die within the year. Both Tacitus and Suentonius, in their respective Histories, dutifully record each year’s results, and they were right on the mark. Indeed, Emperor Hadrian had a little hedgehog burrow at his Tivoli palace, and tried to ‘hedge’ his bet by ensuring numerous torches were placed outside the nest to keep it well lit—no shadows, no chuffing—and thus ensuring another year of drunken debauchery and wall-building.
What is not well known is that early Christians also tried to get in on the gig. Easter was also a ’Hog-day knock-off. The original tradition was that if Jesus came out of the tomb and saw his shadow, there would another six weeks before the Second Coming.
(Harriet would like to thank RawBurn and the anonymous U.S. Marshall for the .gif of Phil)
Write to Harriet!
Anyway, that’s all for now, so...
Trust no one
Deny everything,
And Always keep your lighter handy!