. . . make up something like that. SubGeniuses can't bear to be around each other, much less a bunch of people who all believe the same thing. That's the built in fail safe by the nature of the SubGeniuses. That's why the concept of clenches or SubGenius covens never work. We found that out real quick. That was a real dumb move on the part of me and Philo Drummond.

Goblin: That's where Zen comes in? If you take yourself too seriously you're not it. Stang: I feel sorry for the earnest young SubGenius who believes the wrong lies. Their hopes are all in the wrong place for the church. But boy are they fun to deprogram. It's cruel, I hate to admit it.

Goblin: For people who don't understand Slack I was wondering if you could define it. Is it like taking the maximum pleasure from all you do, whether it's work or play?

Stang: By definition you either fully understand what "Bob's" talking about or you are forever doomed to be clueless. But some people want maximum pain. It would be so different for each person it would be impossible to pin it down. For one thing it's useless as a religious commodity, it loses its mystery. Sure it's happiness, freedom and perfect luck, but at the same time you could be groveling in some cell and being tortured by evil sheriffs and somehow have Slack. I saw an on-line debate on that just the other day going back and forth about whether it was derived from stuff you did, or just a state of mind; and I'm sittin' there going "look at these guys trying to count angels dancing on the head of a pin."

Goblin: It's like Dungeons and Dragons dudes working out their Magic scene.

Stang: They're working it out. The best thing would be if they came to the X-Day drills which is not a show, it's SubGeniuses wandering around occasionally grabbing the P.A. to do some impromptu madness. They get a chance to get their heads knocked in by Doctor Legume when they start talking that way.

Goblin: Isn't Slack like taste, where you're either born with an intuition or you're not, and it's your cruel fate if you're not. There are a lot of nice people who are lumbering like Raccoons into the area of these things and trying to do the best for themselves but they don't have a clue. It's frustrating.

Stang: It's too bad. Present company excluded. We're trying to be polite, we wouldn't want to run off any potential customers. Sometimes I think they might be better off at the old Presbyterian Church. Although I must say it's pretty cheap to be a SubGenius, if you bought one of everything you wouldn't spend more than three hundred bucks.

We're selling two paradises for thirty bucks! Plus you get one after you're dead if you can live to 1998. You can get to decide when you die if you make it to '98, for thirty bucks! And a triple your money back guarantee if you don't get the eternal salvation. I don't see how anyone could worry about it -- you spend the thirty bucks and you're saved! It does all happen to be literally true but even if it isn't -- so what? Some people think it's a bunch of silly losers, other think its a brilliant art, and some other people are just plain saved, washed in the pee of "Bob," have killed "Bob" in their heart many times and have achieved Slack. Not perfect Slack but at least they know what they're missing.

Goblin: I see people working their asses off day after day, and I think, God damn, there has to be something you can do, give them some peace or something.

Stang: Yeah, you can take their money. If they're Pink they deserve their fate. There's an old joke: What do you do if you see a Pink drowning in quick sand? Answer: Throw him his wife and children.

Goblin: I'm afraid we have the same opinion. We call them yuppies.

Stang: I would not be presumptuous enough to brand an individual as Pink. It's better to just sweepingly call people you don't like Pinks. Because you can't really judge people by their looks. You can say those yuppies are bad, but technically many SubGenius are young upwardly mobile professionals -- they may even drive fancy cars and listen to insipid music but who cares? If they have the Hate, 'cause sooner or later that Hate is going to come out; and if nothing else they're going to become termites to the foundation -- part of the rot. They may not be a Conspiracy fightin' SubGenius on the surface but at least they're part of the rot mold at the beams that hold the whole hideous structure.

Goblin: It seems like we're at the end of the Roman Empire. We had a glorious time and now it's all rotting and falling down, everything is collapsed.

Stang: No, that's what the Church Of the Subgenius is for, to be the next Conspiracy. We don't want to just tear things down without building them up. We just want to build them up in the image of "Bob." The leader who's never present, pays no attention, and makes no rules at all. Of course it would just turn into tribal cheifdoms fighting back and forth but it would be kind of a change.

Goblin: Is there a difference between Anarchy and Bobbism? With Anarchy people do their own thing and follow their personal bliss and bullshit.

Stang: Then you have to say no, I won't do it. It's like the correct answer to Timothy Leary's constant thing about question authority: Why? There's only one political party for the true Subgenius and that's Patriopsychoticanarchomateralism. Which is psychotically patriotic to your own country but your own country is your yard and you're the king. In my case Mom is probably king and queen of the checkbook. And I had these two serfs but they turned into teenagers. But I've got these two dogs and they're the serfs. Under Patriopsychoticanarchomateralism if we didn't like our neighbor we'd declare war against our neighbor, and convince enough people to gang up on him then we'd win. Or if he had a bigger gun then he'd win. In theory everyone would just leave each other alone and get along. But we all know human beings would never behave that way. Maybe 10,000 years from now we will if we evolve back up to the tool using stage.

Goblin: I think we're in an uncomfortable evolutionary phase between being apes and an evolved species.

Stang: It's an interesting but tricky position.

Goblin: We have to struggle between our intelligent Yeti side and our barbarian side.

Stang: They had a bigger brain but that doesn't always mean more intelligent. In this case the Yeti's were more intelligent. The reason the Neanderthals didn't leave more artifacts behind is because they didn't need them. They were able to teleport mammoths from one place to another and that didn't leave much record. And they didn't really get wiped out, a lot of them interbred and ran away. Of course Neanderthals are nothing but very watered down Yeti. A true full bloodied Yeti is nine feet tall and smells like a sulfur mine.

BREED WITH BIGFOOT

Goblin: Is Bigfoot a Yeti? Should I breed with Bigfoot?

Stang: Yes. Bigfoots are like teenagers on a joy ride. They show up, go "boo, look what I'm going to do to these funny humans." The humans all run around and write funny articles about them.

Goblin: Is that the root of Pinkness? The difference between Neanderthal; and Cro-magnon?

Stang: Yeah, the Cro-magnon were invented by the Yetis in labs 80 million years ago. Then the damned space God JHVH-1 got disgusted with all of the Yetis and teleported all of these lab rats straight to about 100,000 years ago to what we call modern day human beings. They were Cro-magnon men running around screwing everything up for the Yeti. It's a very complicated story. But it boils down to the Yetis, our ancestors, invented the Conspiracy in a lab just for yucks. They were so prideful they didn't think the little experiment would get out of hand. But they didn't take into account the rat-like, roach like nature of the humans they brewed up.

Goblin: There was a meteor that barely missed the earth and new studies of the dark side of the moon show that we're constantly being bombarded with meteors. I think the Church Of the SubGenius should lobby to have something in space to deflect the asteroids. So "Bob" could truly save us.

Stang: There was a SubGenius here in Dallas who was collecting donations for something called the laser project but all he was able to build was bunch of tin cans and a flashlight out in a field somewhere. What he was really trying to do was signal JHVH-1 to call off the asteroids. We've got worse things to think about though, the worst thing an asteroid is going to do is destroy all the life. If the Yacatismo happen to get here before the Xists do you'd be a brain in a tank somewhere praying for an earthquake. It would be a lot worse than death.

Goblin: We all trust scientists to tell us everything is okay but they really don't know.

Stang: Frightenin' thought, ain't it? Makes it hard to sleep at night unless you have "Bob's" warm Slack wrapped around you. You know when you have that membership card in your pocket that if the rupture happened early you'd be ready.

Goblin: "Bob" will forgive us.

Stang: "Bob" doesn't forgive because he doesn't think our sins are worth forgiving, but he does excuse. He can't forgive because he doesn't have that good of connections but boy does he have one hell of an excuse.