What the hell is up with these guys?
I’ve read the Staff Report and read around the 'net about the church, but haven’t spoken to an actual member yet. How big is the movement? Any Doper SubGeniuses? How about Discordians? Does anyone listen to the Hour of Slack while not stoned?
I don’t think it’s so much a movement as a philosophy. I’ve read much of The Book of the Subgenius, and it is decidedly strange. Bookstores that carry it usually have it in the humor section, next to George Hayduke’s revenge books.
I have incorporated a few elements of Subgenius philosophy into my own philosophy, and it can be very useful. I’ve also explained some bits to my mother, who is now gently floating her will particles through the Luck Plane instead of flinging them forcefully and having them bounce off.
I really don’t think the Subgenius is meant to be taken entirely seriously. If it helps you with your life, go for it, but I don’t think it’s something you would want to adopt as a full-blown religious system.
Then again, you might…
Never heard of them, perhaps a Linky- link?
May you find the all the slack you need here: http://www.subgenius.com/
Actually know Bob Dobbs, but not the same dude as subgenius.
Isn’t one of the SubGenious Rules is that you’re not supposed to
talk about it / brag about it / acknowledge it at all?
I could be wrong, it’s been many years.
I have slack, btw, but I’d never talk/brag/acknowledge it.
~S
I get the whole play on organized religion, I just can’t understand why this thing still has some steam. It’s funny, yeah, but it’s not like we’re talking 1920’s style death rays or anything.
I’ve gotten out of my tree with the Rev. Ivan Stang way back in the day when he was still drinking.
I won a slapping contest with St. Janor Hypercleats in 1987.
My four-track tape collage headfucks have been played on The Hour of Slack.
I supplied twenty pounds of 'frop butter for a Washington state devival in the '90s.
I was shanghaied by bodiless fiends and alien infidels from a corporate galaxy, and got away with their hubcaps.
For all that, I’m not a SubGenius. I’m a True Discordian, and regard the Church of the Subgenius as a heretical splinter group. Besides, all the hot chicks are in the Temple of Eris.
SubGenius minister here, ordained 1993. I have ordained several others, making me a bishop, or something. (People often call me something that sounds like ‘son of a bishop…’)
My denomination is the Tupelo Church of the Benniediction (TCB), which subscribes to the theology revealed to the Prophet Mojo Nixon (“Elvis is everywhere, Elvis is everything…”) Adherents face Memphis and swallow a whole bunch of pills four times a day.
I also coordinated with Rev. Stang a supplement to the Church’s theology w.r.t. the Mormons (while we concur that the Mormons are the real Jews, we further stipulate that we – the SubGenii – are the real Mormons).
Doktor Fluff and I are both Subgenii. We’re planning to air Hour of Slack next semester as part of our radio show, assuming we can raise the dough.
Robin
Ordained Minister of the Mysteries, here, appointed by Ivan Stang himself back in '87, due to my response to a question he posed in his excellent but now sadly obsolete book, High Weirdness By Mail.
Still got my indulgence, hanging on my office wall. 
You are one.
The book may be obsolete, but the idea isn’t.
PRABOB!
Like that’s an accomplishment. I once drove him and a couple of girls to the liquor store, about a year before your slapping contest (summer of 1986) – I was headed there anyway, and he and the girls happened to be at my house at the time.
Rev. Brooks Caruthers was a college classmate, and I ran sound for a one-act Sam Shepard play Brooks directed starring my two roommates at the time. He and his SO (now his wife, I believe) crashed at my apartment on a visit to Atlanta back in the late 80s. I’m not sure what his “official” relationship to the SubGenius is these days, but he had one of his plays, “Killing ‘Bob’”, published in Three-Fisted Tales of “Bob”: Short Stories in the SubGenius Mythos, was in the band Homicidal Briefcase with Pope Sternodox Keckhaver, usw.
I myself have played covers of Doktors for “Bob” songs (notably “Half-Ass Drunk”) in at least one public performance – on drums, which I do not otherwise play.
Given the crowd I was hanging with in central Arkansas in the mid 80s, there are probably several other SubGenius figures of note that I know without knowing of their connection to the Church. You couldn’t swing a five-iron in LR in those days without hitting a Bleeding Head of Arnold Palmer.
Well, maybe not, but I won on a technicality by pulling faces until he started to hyperventilate and drool, then bent double and neglected to take his turn. It was beautiful.