The official new members and lurkers thread

[Zardoz]

Hi all, and thank you Jeff for opening this thread,

I'm one of those "lurkers" who come here daily but never post.

I've been reading the blog since at least the summer of 2005. I'm not sure how I found out about it - probably through 911Truth.org but I think I got here by chance once or twice before; I've never paid much attention to the discussion board until maybe last fall.

I don't post for a series of time-related reasons:

- I work in academia (my field is the anthropology of science and technology, known also as Science & Technology Studies), and time management is of the essence for me;

- I basically come here to read and learn. Just processing the sheer volume of information posted daily, and looking up the sources provided, is already time-consuming as it is. And quite frankly exhausting;

- Most forumers are simply more knowledgeable, and insightful, about this material than I am. I feel that not posting when one has nothing relevant to contribute is the best way to optimize the signal/noise ratio;

- English is not my first language. Again, I find it time-consuming to write in it.

There were times when I could have made a (small) contribution but my sources are more often than not in French. Posting and commenting a link to a story from Cyberpresse or a clip from Radio-Canada is futile if nobody understands the language; besides, these stories are often picked up afterward by the English language media.

Keep on posting, I'll keep on reading

[Luposapien]

Been less of a lurker as of late, but I'm still under 50 posts for the past year, so I guess I qualify.

I started in with the blog about 3 years ago (I think), and used to post comments there fairly regularly. I stopped after a while due to work getting especially hectic (I have no computer at home, so I'm relegated to reading/posting between job duties or at lunch), and also a sort of personal crisis where I was having trouble buying into my own BS. Still not entirely sure that I'm not full of it, but that's probably for the best.

Though it's frustrating to have to wade through a lot of the bickering and one-upmanship that can go on, I'd still say that I'm glad that Jeff and the other mods use a light hand when it comes to banning people from the board.

Like many, I suspect, it was Jeff's 'Coincidence Theorists Guide' that led me here originally, and I was hooked immediately. Everything I was already into, and more.

Thanks to everyone (and I mean everyone) for bringing this place to life.

[Doodad]

Hi all, and thank you Jeff for opening this thread,

I'm one of those "lurkers" who come here daily but never post.

I've been reading the blog since at least the summer of 2005. I'm not sure how I found out about it - probably through 911Truth.org but I think I got here by chance once or twice before; I've never paid much attention to the discussion board until maybe last fall.

I don't post for a series of time-related reasons:

- I work in academia (my field is the anthropology of science and technology, known also as Science & Technology Studies), and time management is of the essence for me;

- I basically come here to read and learn. Just processing the sheer volume of information posted daily, and looking up the sources provided, is already time-consuming as it is. And quite frankly exhausting;

- Most forumers are simply more knowledgeable, and insightful, about this material than I am. I feel that not posting when one has nothing relevant to contribute is the best way to optimize the signal/noise ratio;

- English is not my first language. Again, I find it time-consuming to write in it.

There were times when I could have made a (small) contribution but my sources are more often than not in French. Posting and commenting a link to a story from Cyberpresse or a clip from Radio-Canada is futile if nobody understands the language; besides, these stories are often picked up afterward by the English language media.

Keep on posting, I'll keep on reading

Your field is probably fascinating. I sure wouldn't mind hearing about its basics if you can ever find time to that. Even a biblio could be a start...English of course.

[mentalgongfu2]

si vous ecrivez en francais, je peux comprendre. mais ca fait plusiers annees pendant que je n'ai pas parle la langue parce que personne la connait ou j'habite, et mon vocabulaire commence a disparaitre et j'oublie beacoup.

[Joe Hillshoist]

I am looking specifically for someone who has all the answers. If this applies to you please contact me.

I've got all the answers. PM me for a price list.

[chiggerbit]

Zardoz, you're not covertly studying us, are you? If I'm going to show up in some obscure Meade type book on internet tribes, please spell my name right: it's c h i g g e r b i t.

[King_Mob]

Thanks for the thread, Jeff.

Ol Gideon likes to keep a low profile, so the Outer Church doesn't lift my bald arse and feed my soul to the Archons... that, and i have a lot of homework to do.

[marmot]

si vous ecrivez en francais, je peux comprendre..

M'aussi. Mon francais est horrible, mais aller de l'avant et fournir les references francaises..

[AlicetheKurious]

Mon francais est horrible, mais aller de l'avant et fournir les references francaises..

Oui, s'il vous plait. Et si il ya quelque chose de particulierement interessant, je me ferait un plaisir de le tranduire en anglais (si c'est pas trop long).

[sijepuis+]

Non, mais c'est un comble, Alice ...

Vous parlez et écrivez le français, en plus? Alors, là, je suis vraiment impressionnée. Et ce n'est pas que votre maîtrise linguistique qui frappe, mais aussi votre patience, éloquence et diligence ... J'en suis pleine d'admiration.

As for me, I'm not entirely new to RI. I've contributed occasional commentary, here and there, since 2006. Until one day I botched the update of my email address, and had to create a new account. So here I am with the counter practically back at zero.

The RI board is a fascinating place, attracting a wide variety of opinions and people. I have to agree with Vojislav, though, in his observation that RI is undergoing internal changes. Though I'd add that this may not necessarily be a bad thing. Challenge is a good, as long as it's constructive.

I may go back more or less to lurking mode, since I contribute primarily to European blogs, but I can't tell you how many times what I've learned here has provided me with the basis for sound argument 'over there'.

Thanks, Jeff, and cheers to all.

[Zardoz]

Obviously, sources posted in French wouldn't be lost on everybody here

Merci à Alice d'offrir de traduire si besoin est. Ça ne risque pas de se produire trop souvent mais je prends bonne note de l’offre

Anyway, it doesn't change the fact that I prefer lurking to writing. Merci quand même à tous et à toutes.

Zardoz, you're not covertly studying us, are you? If I'm going to show up in some obscure Meade type book on internet tribes, please spell my name right: it's c h i g g e r b i t.

No, not at all.

By the way, I should add that I rarely watch tv (I don't even have cable) and read the newspapers. I get my fix online and selectively, from an eclectic range of online media. RI is pretty much the equivalent of a media review circle to me: I learn of stories that are not followed elsewhere, and of different blogs and online publications of interest.

And as unwise it may be, you guys are also my main source of info on US politics

Your field is probably fascinating. I sure wouldn't mind hearing about its basics if you can ever find time to that. Even a biblio could be a start...English of course.

It is a fascinating field indeed! I could post a little description, and a selected bibliography, sometime this weekend. As I don't want to hijack this thread where should I post it?

[Doodad]

And as unwise it may be, you guys are also my main source of info on US politics

[overcoming hope]

started reading the blog in the run up to the 2004 election. stumbled across "coincidence theorists guide to 9/11" and it eventually led me there.

I've purchased about ten books that were either directly mentioned by Jeff or someone mentioned in a follow up post.

In my opinion Jeff has the most interesting blog on the internet, even if I don't agree with some of his politics.

So much of what I read I end up thinking, "is this author uninformed or are they knowingly spreading disinfo?", but with Jeff I can hear the genuine struggle in his writings. He is just a bright guy with a knack for research trying to make sense of it all, and he happens to be great writer. all right enough ass kissing for one post.

[Beelzebob]

Thanks for the thread, Jeff.

Ol Gideon likes to keep a low profile, so the Outer Church doesn't lift my bald arse and feed my soul to the Archons... that, and i have a lot of homework to do.

Forget the Archons follow the truth of the Word of "Bob": J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, that LIVING GOD WHO WALKS THIS PLANET EARTH IN HUCKSTER'S SHOES.
PRAISE HIS SWEET NAME

-- OR BURN IN SLACKLESSNESS TRYING NOT TO!

The Church of the Subgenius
Slack-filled young men and women of Yeti descent who are spread, SEEMINGLY randomly, throughout the breakthinking world... but are bent on breaching all Earthly human political and cultural barriers with the searing nonhuman truth of the Word of "Bob": J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, that LIVING GOD WHO WALKS THIS PLANET EARTH IN HUCKSTER'S SHOES.
PRAISE HIS SWEET NAME

-- OR BURN IN SLACKLESSNESS TRYING NOT TO!

Pity the poor human Earth Pink who comes looking for a SIMPLE, SHORT EXPLANATION of The Church of the SubGenius™, one that he or she can UNDERSTAND QUICKLY. If the Church could provide THAT, it would be bigger than Islam or Christianity by now -- and probably much, much worse.

A True SubGenius, however, understands EVERYTHING, INSTANTLY upon exposure to the Word or even just the Face of Dobbs.




Thru Bob everything is possible and Fear THE STARK FIST OF REMOVAL no longer!
,,,,,PRAISE HIS SWEET NAME





J.R. "Bob" Dobbs
High Epopt
Living Slack Master




SubGenius Manifesto


Excerpted from SubGenius Pamphlet One and The Book of the SubGenius by J.R. "Bob" Dobbs edited by Rev. Ivan Stang of The SubGenius Foundation, Inc. Re-edited by the Reverend Kareem du Gristle of the Church of the SubGenius, Santa Cruz 25 Hour Clench.

(Modified by Reverend Modemac on November 18, 1995 and again by Bucky on September 13, 2005)

"Time Control? You've come to the right place..."

ARE YOU ABNORMAL?

Then you are probably BETTER than most people!

* IF you suspect that things are much worse than you ever suspected...
* IF the only thing you've been able to laugh at for the last 5 years is the fact that NOTHING is funny anymore...
* IF you sometimes want to collar people on the street and scream that you're more different than they could possibly imagine...
* IF you can possibly help us with a donation...
* IF you see the whole universe as one vast morbid sense of sick humor...
* IF the current "Age of Progress" seems more like the Dark Ages to you...
* IF you are looking for an inherently contradictory religion that will condone megadegeneracy and yet tell you that you are "above" everyone else...

Then...

THE CHURCH OF THE SUBGENIUS could save your sanity!

Your secret wishes can be granted in full once you know what they are!

"You'll PAY to know what you REALLY think."-J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, 1961

NOW, AT LAST! The step-by-step process is revealed! THIS IS IT! The only "faith" that promises ACTION, THRILLS, SUCCESS IN SEX AND BUSINESS!

Feeling like there's just no SLACK?

You may have 'snapped' already from the information disease! ("The sleep of reason begets monsters.") Look to the High Unpredictables of the Church of the SubGenius for pancultural deprogramming and resynchronization!

Perfect your subliminal vision, edit your memory, relive your reincarnality! SYNC UP! THE SUBGENIUS MUST HAVE SLACK!

Using SubGenius secrets of BULLDADA and MOREALISM you can now MIRACULOUSLY ELIMINATE COMPULSIVE URGES such as smoking, eating, sleeping, working; end baldness, constipation, sex-money problems, assouliness, and painful shortage of SLACK!

Become a Doktor of the Forbidden Sciences... Make religion a kick-*** adventure! Indulge in Self-Help through Raising Hell!

The SubGenius:

* Patriot or Alien?
* Personal Savior or False Prophet?
* Nurd or Hero?
* Inspired Madman or Complete Jackass?

Thought you'd tried everything? YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTHIN' YET! Learn to THINK BIG! Develop the tricks of Length Extension! Bring your weirdest dreams to rampaging LIFE!

Stand erect for you own abnormality. WISE UP! They are out to get you.

The "different" are being silenced by a global conspiracy. WEIRDOS ARISE!! You probably already knew that the U.S. Government is a SHAM. Something propped up there for you to blame. But did you know that the real "powers that be" are not even people? That they are actually shambling, unbelievable, unmentionable, unthinkable THINGS??

YES! JEHOVAH IS AN ALIEN AND STILL THREATENS THIS PLANET!

Defy the sinister "Star Forces" which mock us all. Evil demons have kept the truth from humanity for thousands of years - God has been misquoted all this time! His actual words may disturb you...but "Bob" Dobbs is a bulwark against the unbearable fear and anxiety tormenting mankind. "There's no 'Prob'...With "Bob"!"

"Bob" is a way of life to millions - yet half of them don't even KNOW it! He is the one true LIVING SLACK MASTER with the spiritual know-how to help you BASH THROUGH the locked doorway to FINANCIAL HEAVEN. He is the only real Short-Cut to Slack.


SEE ANOTHER DIMENSION ON YOUR TV

"Bob's" promise is to widen the scope and nature of abnormal behavior... to explore NEW WAYS of going over the edge and coming back. PLUS to bring back those who couldn't on their own... to help you create the HIGHEST POSSIBLE EARNINGS from the PSYCHODYMANICS of ABNORMALITY... to turn Conspiracy-implanted personality disorders AROUND and channel them into an ILLUSION OF CREATIVITY that will fool normals and GET YOU SEX!

As you learn more and more reliable, safe methods of Time Control, you will find your I.Q. increasing - your very cranium will seem to pulsate from within, barely able to contain the turmoil of glorious new concepts and mental skills. Soon you'll be able to withstand COMMUNICATION WITH THE XISTS, our mentors in space; you will be ready for TRANSFIGURATION into a new physical body, a more powerful one, built to contain the surging mental and material mutations that your brain now generates. YES - become and OVERHUMAN, a dangerous and feared superhuman of the future! Yet - because your SubGenius roots can never be forgotten - you won't be able to abuse your powers, but instead make them an unstoppable force for GOOD and JUSTICE, choosing always to defend the oppressed SubGenius wherever they may be

* The world is a turkey, and "Bob" gives you the carving knife.
* Fear THE STARK FIST OF REMOVAL no longer!
* Become PHYSICALLY ATTRACTIVE- overnight!
* Attain STATUS-LUCK-PROSPERITY by blowing them off!
* When you join this "Order of the Knights of Wotan," you get a mastery of fighting skills... good health, an attractive personality, and a WEIRD ABILITY TO INFLUENCE OTHERS! To BEND THEM to your WILL!
* You'll learn INCANTATIONS that lead to MASTERY over FISCAL PLANES... the OCCULT TECHNOLOGY of FINANCE POWER...E-Z ways to borrow money - from other people who don't have it either!
* Achieve SHEER GUT BLOWOUT. Our "ascetism" consists solely of the abstinence from abstinence. Give up the not giving into of temptation! Think thoughts that no human has ever dared think before. You CAN learn to recall memories from the past that you had forgotten, or that never existed at all.
* CONTACT ALIENS BOTH BENEVOLENT AND EVIL!

The Church of the SubGenius the first and last stand against a crumbling world filled with Pinks and Glorps."SURVIVE THE GREAT CATACLYSMS THROUGH UFO TRANSPORT!"

And so the true history of the SubGenius has been kept secret from Man. For Jehovah 1 is to the Xists and Us what a hungry fisherman is to a prize fish and his favorite pet worm - the last in the can. How many million other races were used before us in these ghastly galactic water-sports?

UNTIL NOW!!

For YOU are lucky enough to "live" in the End Times when the Word of Jehovah's Prime Ordinance has been made known to "Man"kind by the Primanimal SubGenius, the High Epopt of the Church!

In the early Fifties an industrious young American drilling equipment salesman, while watching late-night TV, was abruptly REMOVED and transported astrally to the 'IDGE' of JEHOVAH 1 HIMSELF! In this seizure-like trance he took the brunt of the first brain-buffeting communications of countless to come from the alien Jehovah: awesome pronouncements which form the sacred PRESCRIPTURES of the SubGenius (available for $19.98 at most bookstores!)

This milestone in Man's mined path to Slack was:

THE DIVINE EMACULATION OF J.R. "BOB" DOBBS!!

Who IS "Bob"?

While yet the least approachable or scrutable of the vast SubGenius membership, he is the preeminent and most frequently invoked of the godzillion PERSONAL SAVIORS of the SubGenius. While he remains an anonymous executive shunning publicity or recognition at a faceless multinational corporation, he is nevertheless The Most Ascended Master, the original Retriever of Jehovah's Message on Earth and basic model of the Archetype SubGenius. He set the "anti-pattern" of random conduct among all those who are now practicing SubGeniuses. His are the defects and peccadilloes that we 'analize,' his the SLONGS and the JESTS which we devotedly twist and distort for future generations according to our unexplored whims. -- AND YET the only photos of him that exist are grainy frame blow-ups from Grade Z movie thrillers in which he played bit parts!

Dobbs is, of course, the ultimate symbol of SubGeniusness, but despite/because of his infra-human mediumship he possesses one single failing above and beyond all other shortcomings: his omninclusive FOLLIES. Yet where they would be crippling stumbling-blocks for another person, in Dobbs they loom stranger-than-life. His ten billion all-too-human quasimodalities embody, in some cheaply symbolic way, all the Foibles of the Primate Race. Dobbs is a miacrocosm encapsulating the imperfektions of the so-called
'human condition;' his Blunders and Idiocies, errors and inadvertencies are perhaps more sacrosanct, more deserving of analization than even his hallowed salesmanship. None of "Bob's" words or deeds are particularly spectacular; their holiness lies IN their nondescript but inviolate triviality.
"THE STUPIDER IT LOOKS, THE MORE IMPORTANT IT PROBABLY IS."
-- J.R. "Bob" Dobbs

You too can can be a part of this WAVE OF THE FUTURE!

* Make strangeness work for YOU!
* Thought you were 'ordinary'? WRONG.
* Tap your secret Abnormality Potential.
* Take control through liberated weirdness.
* Discover RADICAL INSANITY!

You may be suffering under many potentially dangerous misconceptions about the Church of the SubGenius. This isn't some small-time mail-order comedy publisher working on a minuscule budget out of an anonymous garret, but a powerful conglomerate of talented, wealthy professional abnormals with state-of-the-art equipment, living it up in a downtown Dallas skyscraper.

[sunny]

It is a fascinating field indeed! I could post a little description, and a selected bibliography, sometime this weekend. As I don't want to hijack this thread where should I post it?

Start a new thread here, in General Discussion. I'm very interested to hear about it as well.