What my cult has done for me

I stopped surfing the internet in 1999. I don’t mean I stopped going on the internet, I mean I stopped actively looking for things on it. I no longer needed to, the pertinent information found its way into my possession as if by magic. It WAS magic, it was my cult. I can’t tell you how many times people have said something like “WOW! How in the ever living FUCK do you FIND THIS SHIT!?” and then I could coyly reply “What this old URL? uh, just something I found lying around” No matter WHAT it was, no matter HOW obscure, you can be sure *I* would find out about it. If a photograph of a one-legged Asian hooker with Marfan syndrome was posted on the internet at 5am Bangkok local time, you can bet I had a copy of it before my morning coffee started to cool. And I didn’t have to do ANYTHING to make these wondrous things happen, I just had to show up. My cult did all the heavy lifting. Before the bright days of the internet, I used to pride myself on my adventures in ‘kook collecting.’ I had mailed away for newsletters on all topics great and small, and I enjoyed my status as a big fish in a very small pond, UNTIL I found the Church of the SubGenius and realized what a RANK AMATUER I was in this, among many other things. Kook collector you say? Well members of my cult had written BOOKS on the subject, opened MUSEUMS, and the kooks themselves weren’t some far off curiosity, they were KNOWN by members of my cult. I wasn’t a big fish anymore. In fact I knew almost nothing at all about “kook collecting”. Over the next decade or so I would learn many things, until the time when I was able to BORROW a kook, merely for being ASSOCIATED with the Rev. Ivan Stang, and get to feel for myself what it was like to be looked at through those paranoid eyes, and immortalized in their scrivenings. For this I will be eternally grateful. You may think I am kidding, but I am NOT. (thanx: gammamute! mikey!) It wasn’t just kooks, I got access to, it was just about ANYONE I ever considered cool. If I liked some obscure band, before the Church I was pretty much on my own, I could try my luck at tracking down some limited pressing import, or self-released this or that, but once I started ‘networking with “Bob” all these barriers MELTED AWAY, and not only did I have access to things I never dreamed of before, it was always delivered in SubGenius fashion; bereft of NORMAL oppressions and PINK categorizations “oh you like that band, eh? yeah I know all about them, back in the early 80’s I went through a gay period and blew the bass player in the ladies room of the 930, SHE WAS HOT!…anyway let me get that tape for you” Lately, there has been discussion on how cool the X-day experience is, the one time when we can all be together, for our little freaky fellowship in the naked woods. But I think it’s just a small BONUS for everything I get EVERY SINGLE DAY from this Church. The truth is whether I want to admit it or not, I would probably NOT be the person I am today, if this church had never existed. And it’s the reason I do my small little part to keep the wheels turning.

– Reverend Ankara of the Taphouse Cabal