Tuesday, January 22, 2008

041887: Lord Ravenhurst interview minutes — If Styx Was Nine


Pungenday, Discord 35, Year of Our Lady of Discord 3153

Lord Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst: “I picked ‘5’ -- it wasn’t a coincidence that I picked 5, ‘cuz I talked to a guy in New Orleans about assassinating Kennedy, who at one point right in the conversation said five is a very important number. He was always telling me stuff he said I should remember... I wasn’t paying attention, I thought he was nuts... So anyway, just in case five was an important number, I worked it into the Discordian since I had a dogma...”
[...]
“‘17’ is about last-ditch reactionaries fighting a battle against the forces of evil against the forces of good...”
[...]
“‘9’ is society being driven forward by its contradictions.”
[...]
“And ‘23’ is people who are the gung-ho communists, like the communist party in China forty or fifty years ago...”
[...]
“That’s basically what I am, a ‘Nine-and-Five’ would be somebody who is middle-of-the-road, ... ambivalent about both capitalism and communism... [tape gibberish]”

[Various mentions of Hitler’s Werewolves, the European name ‘Switzer,’ ‘Oswald’ being a German Crusader name, and moving on from reading Marx/Lenin to Ayn Rand.]

And so went the interview upon a L5P grassy knoll on a warm Pungenday (not to be confused with Pungeon Day). Lots of entertaining red meat for numerology and conspiracy buffs, to be sure. But a peculiar thing was happening as this all transpired.
A man, madras-clad, passes by.
Of no notice.
But then, he again passes and subtle details surface: camera slung around neck, blank expression.
Minutes later he’s there again, at the edge of a crowd staring dead on at this brave clench who dares to confer with their interlocutee in a public place.
Gone.
The interview winds up as batteries wind down; magnetic media slows to a halt.
And there that stranger is again, amidst the passers-by, glaring.
Is paranoia a contagion or is it a buzz? Or is it both -- a contact high, seeking memes and meaningful patterns in everyday sensory input?
Who is this being?

May we fancy some idle speculation?

• Was this Charon of Styx, mistaking Eris for a mere mortal awaiting his Final Ride?

• Was this preppie android an MIB -- one of the notorious ‘Men in Black?’ (Perhaps with his fashion update he should be referred to as a RIP -- ‘Robot in Plaid.’)

• Perhaps it is an individual variation of Lord Ravenhurst’s ‘9’: the good lord, being driven by his own contradictions, projects an obverse isochronal simulacrum of himself -- the Anti-Thornley.

Let us entertain this notion. What do you think?

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