Strange Days after Kerry Thornely

Strange Days after Kerry Thornely
Marc Howard, Hollywood.com

Some approaches to journalism are less than hard-core, more like the subtle probes of the philosophical journalist who has researched the details of the given subject (counterculture political opinions) for so long that the dry clinicality that Winchell suggested as a basis for all 'real' newspaper writing is utterly displaced by a sort of intuitive caring about what's going on...

Whether this sort of choice is that which separates and delineates the Independent Mediaperson from the Big Media faces and names of the day is a possible topic for conversation...

Since the death by heart attack of Kerry Thornely, the world of the Church/Cult he founded in the psychedlic and Bacchean splendor of hippie wildness has evolved and mutated, grown as art movements and relgions grow. And the key fact that separates thos things that are termed 'discordian' have a special sort of ting, a glow that is clear, because there are neo-hippies; people don't want to accept it all the time but such beings do exist. many are neo-hippies because they are simply living similar lives to the years of their youth in the sixties and seventies, "generation-gap" is something these people are aware of. they yet share so much ethically with the generation including people who will be eligible to vote in the coming election for the first time that it is worth pointing out, if only to be oddly zen and dialectical about it all.

After all, the subtext of manic chaos theory revealed via Goddess symbolism that constitutes Principia Discordia was given such an elaborate and vehement paint-job by writers R. A. Wilson and Kerry Thornely that it’s sad these men are yet to recognized as the American philosophical counterparts of DeLeuze/Guattari (A Thousand Plateaus, Capltilisme et Schizophrenie) as beeing men unafraid to point out what punk rock has been steadiliy, dully insisting with a sort of bored "damn, we are tired of tellin' y'all” kind of vibe: that working at jobs which are demeaning creates an evolutionary cul-de sac leading to fits of explosive mania and abyssal walking-zombie depression.


Where punk just said 'I didn't go to work today, i don't think i'm gonna go tomorrow.' Wilson and Thornely say in Principia Discordia that you are Free, and if you do not feel Free, you are Free to feel that way.

The scientific side of the 'discordian' metapantheon is the spiral flow of masculine and feminine spirit energy, with the concept of five elements theory suggested subconsciously. these asian allusions bring the mark of scientific merit into the scope of that book they wrote after dropping all that acid; Principia Discordia, (which is a bizarre laugh riot with many absurd jokes and naming of 'discordian' saints, unlike any example of a religious book i can think of.)

But the bigger question suggested has more to do with a broader base of Americans.

As sure as linkin park, staind and limp are selling a whole hell of a lot of compact discs, there will be a whole lot of semi-interested teens voting for the first time in 2004. These kids will be cyberslick children of the post-X generation, they won't go along with the crowd as easily as the pack before, Winona Ryder, Leo DiCaprio, Kiefer Sutherland, and myself.

Punk Rock is just a given to these kids, it saturated the mainstream with it's overbearing styles long before these kids were conscious that records cost money. But they will be given the option to vote George W. bush back into office; or not…i am taking NO BETS here because i am just telling 'youse...if Bush is re-elected it is the fault of the progressive left.

You can look at it other ways, of course.

Objectively there’s no one single factor that could be blamed, if after all this stuff that’s going on now, Americans vote for another four years of George W, Bush. One could point out what a laughingstock this man was to us at one time, but now he is the Big Chief and the Left isn’t laughing, those who aren’t resorting to spirited but repetitive versions of 60’s resistance tactics are resorting to bitter denial or worse, ‘patriotic’ support of the whole dumb show! Meanwhile, it’s empirically true that Bush loves oil and drugs, and those are the things Afghanistan is famous for, (aside from we are currently focused on, the Taliban and the World Trade Center Pentagon tragedy.)

Let’s Get Pointless

Films are happening in WWWland and it is only a matter of time until the technology becomes more friendly and beautiful, thus becoming a medium that more cinematic geniuses will dain to dfip their brushes into, figuratively.

(we can use QuickTime, the edges aren’t too fuzzy on a lot o fstuff, I guess, if you gotta cable modem, and, um, stuff…I can’t afford a new computer, I had to buy this one when I started at Drexel in 1990 and it’s pretty slow…)

When Pedro Almodovar (Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown) and other sensitive cinematic artistes are ready to make internet films, the trend wave will rock the industry. It’ll be the next multimedia innovative leap and artists will plunder and plunge and create a bizarre new world of web-ready routines, and subroutines.

But it is in internet movies where the Left, empowered by the enfuriating realization that they are being taxed without representation.

Which is what happens when you don’t wanna blow up Kossovo but the guy you voted for votes that Kossovo be bombed stupid and the guy you didn’t vote for told him to.

Taxation without representation is the blank slap of humiliation that will arouse the creative minds of the deep liberals and progressive thinkers among the voting community. And then: all the artists who have always performed in a manner designed to stimulate notions of culturejamming will flock to the internet, the last vesiges of Luddite reactionary ape-fear will be left behind. People will begin using the internet to check and balance the military-industrial network it was created to support.

How many new documentaries will be made between now and Decision ’04, I’d like to hazard a guess: A Lot. There are so many deep areas left untapped as far as using the internet to circulate ideas, thoughts, concepts vital to creative reinterpretation of activism, of grass-roots and progressive theory and the role of the Left in the political spectrum.

This is largely because the democratic Party has left the common people high and dry and is a management-run as anything else, and EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS.

Only the Democratic Party leaders are pretending anything else is true.

Sick Sad World?

Try to remember…

The Reagan, Bush and Bush presidencies…were not so long ago. This was followed of eight years of relative Clintonian BoomTime! Anti-Clinton arguers would raise a stench, but that’s all they could do, it’s more or less so.

Now we are one year into GOP policy and there is economic turmoil. The GOP live to see life be generally more expensive. The Democrats have been scared of them since Carter was sucked out following intrigues in Iran, 52 significant hostages released the day of Reagan’s inauguration. (George Herbert Walker Bush had left behind Directorship of the CIA not long before.) It was just…weird. That’s all I want to go on the record as saying.)

But they have been obvious liars for a long time; let’s all just take a big deep breath and face it together, shall we? Ahh.

The world of Reagan economics set a tone long after Ronnie left office, but let’s remember that we were all growing up affected by these times. The Breakfast Club line—“when you grow up, your heart dies” was almost backed up by the tag they painted on Generatrion X- ‘cynical’.

Sensitive would have been just as good and then people did get cynical and hard. They generally rejected all labels, but this leads to counter-culture conformity as we all know, and lots of derivative cock rock on the radio dial. This forced a backlash like anything else that is imbalanced, the imbalance is grrl power music…

But what I remember distinctly about the time when the televangelists were all making asses out of themselves with whores and in seedy motels is the cry of the matrons on talk radio: “these children will control our world when we’re old!” It’s true, friends…those of us in our thirties now, a lot of us are already part of midlevel economic comfort status, and many of us will be involved in taking care of aging baby boomers. Or already are.

So the thing the Republican puffed up Ugly Americans always attack me on CNN.com is:

“So what to YOU suggest? How would you deal with the situation, mister bleeding-heart hippie?”
or else:

“hey, I understand the give peace a chance crap, but we gotta bomb the fuck outta these sand niggers” attitude: this is showing off a Riechstag underside to Americans that is disquieting and why I always check it out and bravely post my own opinions. But I am used to the meekness of my fellow Democrats, we are a people without representation. The Democratic representatives, senators and governors might as well be a
“Lil GOP”.

So we are left with Perotista threats, John McCain, Alan keys and Darth Nader or simply starting with somethingnew born with the reevaluations stimulated in the Left by these recent weeks of military aggression on behalf of All Americans.


Resistance was spirited, vocal, vehement and totally, completely ineffectual. The bombs are still falling, we marched and screamed until we were hoarse. So, um,are we still gonna keep resisting in the same ways now?

We who identify as the Left, as in Not the Right, not Military-Industrial concerns or big business—we have used these tactics for a long time and they have not stopped wars. They have stimulated awareness, they were born of awareness.

But what will the new faces of resistance look like? We’ll see some of them this hallo’we’en… especially at Malls…

Hey; it’s a sick world right? Nothin’ we can do about it, life just sucks. It’s that prevalent attitude that sadly creates its own justification as we tolerate more and more and become more and more subconsciously infuriated. Road rage. We stop voting, stop caring, they do nastier and nastier things in plain sight at we tolerate more and more…head ache and teeth gritting ensues… but that’s life.

The more we seek new avenues of expression, the more we learn about our culture’s possibilities to enlighten us.


Hey, but I think that people should make the money they deserve for their work: I think artists are entitle to more fair treatment unde rthe law and less economic bullying at the hands of the artists, I am with Prince, George Michael, Courtney Love and TLC in this regard.

(TLC did a platinum disc and got eight cents per disc. They are broke now. Isn’t that lame?)

We are willing, currently, to deal with wave after wave of nasty crap and call it Consumer directed entertainment. It doesn’t satisfy us in cinema attraction after cinema attraction, yet is salty and induces the thirst for 72 oz. Sodas. We know this and sway to the metered click of the mass commercial media conductor’s baton, we are ushered off to our seats time and again to be left less than excited by what Hollywood says is art. Now and again they throw us a real movie, and we wonder, ‘Wow, the Chinese are making really intelligent films.’ Cannes comes and goes with clicqueish, minimal examination and the Hollywood mise en scene remains relatively static.

So, yeah, Spike Lee and Ani DeFranco and Kevin Smith have done distinctly different things. It is past time for the hundreds of other bright lights who have similar ideas and visons to make films and display their cynical view of society, so that we may learn about ourselves as we did from Do The Right Thing and Dogma (for example!) Because we ALL know goo dfilms sometimes get scheduled for critical termination, nobody’s made a secret about that.

Just go get a recently panned out of theaters big-ticket film. Bet you’ll enjoy it and realise that most reviewers are jealous, just jeaoluos and know which side their bread’s buttered on. Too many examples—I’ll leave it up to taste to say which films to which I am referring. But hot young stars get ruined by jealous acid reviewers, and everyone knows this…come on.

So who, to space out, is ready to get involved in slamming this system, and stimulating, in effect, an American artistic culture that truly reflects, on a popular level, the diversity that todays greater scene is suggesting? More major representatives to the world of what is an American. Our Keroacs are hibernating to a great degree, disgusted inwardly by the crass cashhungriness of modern art-industry relations…

I space out and I remember the Principia Discordia, which had a buzz when it came out. Lots of hippies have this book with green flakes and coffee stains on it, it was a phat ‘zine that collected some crystallized Beat science (this circle included Alan Watts and Gary Snyder at one time it’s worth adding), and of course since it’s connected to Robert Anson Wilson it’s connected to mad conspiracy science, mystical pyramid cosmic trigger metaphilosophy and anarchic schizofeedback that implies the X-istance of secret societies and leads us to weird counterculture art outletters and Hakim Bey’s poetic Sufi monologues on autonomy. In short, Principia Discordia, as a book, leads us directly to the people whose voices are thin and indistinct now as far as American Politics is concerned, the hippies, beats, bohemians and punks who know where the liars hide. We are turning for answers to either drugs that politicians want us to stay stupifeied on, or the politicians themselves, and we know they’d sell us out for a dollar…forgetting, perhaps, the reminder tat Principia Discordia sends, that chaos and order are relatives…as the Earth is in serious imbalance and becoming gradually more and more difficult to live in, maybe we need to reexamine the hippies and the punks as social and historical penomena worth examining as the new century begins. Instead of letting it keep going on, election after election, or waiting for the Libertarians, Greens or Reform party to make a difference. Shall we?