http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/answers/articles2/X0080_Stang_Doesnt_Exist.html
Me gusta la idea de "demons". Creo que los trolls no existen sino tal
como se cree en ellos. Son daemons mal programados.
CYBERPUNK HANDBOOK
From: jim...@gate.net (Jim Vandewalker)
Date: Thu, 21 Sep 1995
This is a report on a strange sighting at Barnes & Noble of a new book
out, entitled CYBERPUNK HANDBOOK [The Real Cypberpunk Fakebook], by St.
Jude, R.U Sirius and Bart Nagel, with a foreword by Bruce Sterling. A
fairly slim paperback which purports to teach callow youth how to pass
for cyberknowledgeable. Just some cyberhippies selling out and cashing
in on a new fad, you may say, nothing any of us wouldn't do given half
the chance, right?
Well, okay, but there are some strange and menacing things in the book.
FFrom the foreword:
"Then there's this Saint person. Never draw to an inside straight. Never
eat at a place called Mom's. And never eat a bag of ephedrine and a
pumpkin pie ("the *whip* of vegetables!") from a California blonde who
doesn't even have a real name. This female personage is so appallingly
cagey that even her main squeeze delights in cryptographically baffling
the NSA. If Pat Buchanan ever gets his not-so-secret wish and sets up a
domestic American gulag for counter-culture thought-criminals, the
Judester's gonna be way, *way* up on the list -- maybe even number two,
right after Bob Dobbs. Her trial's likely to prove interesting, however,
as she only commits "crimes" in areas of social activity that haven't
even been defined yet, much less successfully criminalized. A serious
study of this woman's spectrum of activities would be like a CAT-scan of
the american unconscious."
See that? Odd reference to Dobbs just thrown into the forward; subtly
wrong, too. No initials, no quote marks. Look a little further:
"Chapter 19, The Parental-Discretion Special: Sects and Politics...and
Recipes
"Part 1. The Joy of Sects
" Cyberpunks are just like everyone else, only more so. It follow that
cyberpunks are not blind to any aspects of mind, including those called
spiritual. Do you assume that cynical, technology-worshipping,
leather-wearing persons don't bother about theses things? Well, you're
wrong.
And the first listing is:
"Church of the SubGenius
"This started out as an outrageous parody of organized religion, but as
organized religion has become equally outrageous, SubGenius has had to
retrench as a branch of the Irony movement. SubGenius people tend to
worship Irony in its more accessible aspects. Some highlights of the
cult are:
"1. The grinning, pipe-smoking deity Bob Dobbs.
"2. The hero's quest -- the search for Slack, which is the most valuable
element in the universe.
"3. Ivan Stang, who doesn't exist.
"We may be up for the SubGenius hit-squad for divulging this, but Ivan
Stang is just a title that gets passed around among SubGenius Inner
Illuminati. Be warned. If any of the authors of this book end up hanged
under a bridge so that the tide washes them, those of us who are left
will infallibly pin it on this year's Ivan Stang.
Chapter 20. It's an Intelligence Test! Cyperpunk Skull-Tweakers and Fun
Fare
The 3-Letter Acronyms From H.E.C.K. CrypticCrossword
The clue for 4 down: "A band that will probably be forgotten in the few
lousy weeks it takes for this book to make it to the shop. It does
pseudocyber shtick and horrible splatter routines that spray the
audience with fake gore. (4)" And the answer is GWAR.
Now some of this you might be able to write off as just the maunderings
of hacks trying to make a buck off some stuff they down-loaded off the
net and only semi-understood. But one of these paragraphs made the hair
on the back of my neck stand up when I realized its full implications.
Stang's hand is in this. He may even be one of the authors. But Prophet,
you say, why would Stang make these clumsy mistakes: Dobbs without the
initials and without the quotes, the garbled explanation of Slack?
The key, children, is the seemingly throw-away line about the
non-existence of Stang. He knows the thought police will be, almost
certainly ALREADY ARE, after him. It hardly takes a revelation from
Dobbs, and anyway the persecution of the Church is prophesied right
there in the Book of the SubGenius. STANG DOESN'T INTEND TO GO QUIETLY.
In fact, it looks as if he doesn't intend to be martyred at all. When
they come for him, he's going to have a sacrificial lamb all ready to
go. "Stang, Stang, you want Stang? Oh, yes, there's the Stang all right.
Take HIM." The apparent "mistakes" are simply thrown in to lend artistic
verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. And the
vicious cut, "SubGenius people tend to worship Irony in its more
*accessible aspects* [emphasis added]," is, when you think about it,
pure Stang. He's ready to throw one, OR MORE, of us to the wolves. This
sets things up to do this little trick