What Does It MEAN?!?

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subNOSPUMgenius.com>
Newsgroups: alt.slack,alt.binaries.slack
Date: Sat, Oct 11, 2003 12:45 AM

10-10-03

We've all had a catchy tune "stuck in our heads." There was a thread
about that very thing on a.s. recently, in fact. SubGenii were
reporting what awful catchy tunes were cranially looping in them that
day.

The worst is when you don't really know the whole tune, so that only a
short portion is looping, with only occasional blurry attempts by the
brain to fill in unknown lyrics with musical mental mumbles.

What does it mean when you wake up with the same song stuck in your
head for three mornings running?

Tonight is Friday. On Wednesday morning, after not quite enough sleep,
I awoke with a pretty faithful rendition playing in my head of an Elvis
Costello song off his album, "This Year's Model," a song called "Living
in Paradise." Like so many Elvis songs, it's a bouncy, catchy, happy
sounding tune, bleeding with irony.

Only the middle of the song was playing in my head. Specifically:

'Cause when they pull the shutters down
and throw up in the dark,
they'll find that all the dogs outside
bite much worse than they bark.

Here we are living in paradise,
living in luxury.
Oh, the thrill is here but it won't last long
You better have your fun before it moves along
And you're already looking for another,
fool like me.

I have found two ways to rid myself of JukeBrain Loops. One is to
simply listen to the actual tune played in full on a CD or tape player.
For some reason, hearing the whole tune sometimes helps "erase" the
loop. I found my copy of the album, and listened to the song, as well
as the songs before and after it on the album... hoping that would help
"dilute" this particular Song That Refused to Die.

It so happened that on that day, I had to go straight to the Cleveland
airport and fly to Texas to help with an illness in my family. On the
way to the airport I found that not only had the fucking song not left
my head, but it now had more of the lyrics, and so ran in longer loops.

During the flights -- it took several because I had to arrange the
tickets rather suddenly -- I read the whole first half of David Brin's
recent sf novel, "The Kiln People" (his first black humor sf novel that
I know of) -- but that FUCKING SONG provided the SOUNDTRACK. As I
strode between gates at the various terminals I was walking to the beat
of that FUCKING SONG.

Actually it's a very GOOD song. But just then, it rather SUCKED,
know'm'sa'in?

My brother picked me up at the airport and that FUCKING SONG ran in my
brain's background all the way to the Stang Ranch, which is a couple of
hours from DFW airport.

Elvis sang me to sleep that night. AND WOKE ME UP THE NEXT MORNING.

Thankfully he just kind of whispered and crooned the song softly during
most of the day. Helping with the ailing relative helped keep it muted.
But it was STILL THERE. Late that night I sat and watched Minority
Report on satellite TV with my dad. I could almost hear the song coming
from Tom Cruise's futuristic car radio. Faint, but ever-present, like
the drums at Brushwood. Unlike the drums at Brushwood, however, it
didn't make me want to fuck anything that moves; being an Elvis
Costello song, it made me want to move anything that fucks.

This morning... IT WAS STILL THERE.

There is one other way that I have found to erase a mental song loop --
GIVE IT TO SOMEBODY ELSE. Sometimes the act of informing others of the
tune, getting it running in THEIR head, is like tagging somebody in the
game of Tag to tranfer IT-hood from you to them. The sickness is passed
on to somebody else.

But my cowboy brother, Navy captain dad, Republican mom and tough-ass
sister are not Elvis Costello fans. (Had it been his one Top 40 hit
song, "Allison," I might have had a CHANCE.)

So now... forgive me, but this is my last hope.

REMEMBER THIS JAUNTY, LIVELY SONG, ANYBODY?

IT GOES LIKE THIS:

I don't like those other guys looking at your curves
I don't like you walking round with physical jerks
Everything they say and do is getting on my nerves
Soon they will be lucky to be picking up the perks

'Cause when they pull the shutters down
and throw up in the dark,
they'll find that all the dogs outside
bite much worse than they bark.

Here we are living in paradise,
living in luxury.
Oh, the thrill is here but it won't last long
You better have your fun before it moves along
And you're already looking for another,
fool like me.

I call you Betty Felon 'cause you are a pretty villain
And I think that I should tell them that you'd
make a pretty killing
'Cause meanwhile up in heaven they are waiting at the gate
saying 'We'd always knew you'd make it,
didn't think you'd come this late'.
And now it's much too dangerous to stop what you've begun
When everyone in paradise carries a gun

Here we are living in paradise,
living in luxury.
Oh, the thrill is here but it won't last long
You better have your fun before it moves along
And you're already looking for another,
fool like me.

Later in the evening when arrangements are made,
I'll be at the keyhole outside your bedroom door.
'Cause I'm the first to know whenever the plans are laid
that never go further than floor to floor.

You think that I don't know the boy that you're touching,
but I'll be at the video and I will be watching

Here we are living in paradise,
living in luxury.
Oh, the thrill is here but it won't last long
You better have your fun before it moves along
And you're already looking for another,
fool like me.

****

I would post it to a.b.s., but I'm on a dial-up out here.

***

SCIENTIFIC NOTE:
"Living in Paradise" was the last song I heard before I went to bed on
Tuesday night.

***

Despite" the iPOD *IN MY MIND,*" and the insanely beeping oven timer in
my kitchen, I have been feeling fantastically rich, healthy and lucky
lately. It's partly because I AM, and partly because so many other
people I know have so been broke, unhealthy and/or unlucky lately. The
bad luck of others puts one's own blessings in sharp and easily
countable relief. If their bad luck were to end all of the sudden,
however, I'd feel even luckier.

A SubGenius admitted to me that, until I angrily lit into something or
somebody recently on a.s., or IRC or something, they'd been thinking
that I'd lost my "zeal." Because I haven't been repeating rants from
THE BOOK OF THE SUBGENIUS over and over, I guess. Well, after having
spent the first 45 or so years of my life learning how best for me to
fight against the Conspiracy, I am indeed now engaged in spending the
next 45 years or so GETTING SLACK. Because that turned out to BE the
best way for me to fight the Conspiracy.

That might not be the best way for somebody else to fight the
Conspiracy (and in fact you angry young men are RIGHT to be angry and
young). But after decades of struggle, it sure does "feel right" to ME.

Now, it just so happens that for me Slack still happens to involve
fighting the Conspiracy (or helping angrier, younger persons to do so).
The difference is, whereas I used to be terribly anxious to reach the
GOAL, now the PROCESS is the reward in itself. The goal didn't change,
it just became much better defined, and a shitload more realistic.

For after zeal comes realism. By that point, however, the posers,
pussies, wimps, Bobbies and hangers-on have dropped away. Reality is
boring to dumbasses, and realism is generally, well, over their heads.
Only the craziest, most fanatical motherfuckers can stick with
something like the Church of the SubGenius after the 700 Basic Jokes
get old, and the One True Joke slaps them in the face.

"Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke" proves once again to be the ONE
WORKABLE PHILOSPHY, the SINGLE worthwhile science, the only business
worth being in, and the best avenue yet discovered to actual Time
Control. You had BETTER be able to handle the One True Joke, because
every single life form reading this ultimately will come up against its
punchline.

"HA HA HA!"

***

Young Bull: Hey, let's run down there and fuck some of those cows!"
Old Bull: No, let's WALK down there and fuck ALL of those cows."

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: What Does It MEAN?!?
From: nenslo <nenslo@yahooX.com>

"Rev. Ivan Stang" wrote:
>

> Young Bull: Hey, let's run down there and fuck some of those cows!"
> Old Bull: No, let's WALK down there and fuck ALL of those cows."
Gay Bull: No, let's stay here and you can fuck ME."

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: What Does It MEAN?!?
From: kdetal@aol.com (KD et al)

>Young Bull: Hey, let's run down there and fuck some of those cows!"
>> Old Bull: No, let's WALK down there and fuck ALL of those cows."

Cow: I knew we shouldn't have worn red.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: What Does It MEAN?!?
From: "Abolish_Death-and-Taxes" <brainwav93@hotmail.com>

The best cure i've found for a persistant song in your head is to replace it
with a MUCH WORSE one. Say, Debbie Boone, or Celine Dion.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: What Does It MEAN?!?
From: hellpopehuey@subgenius.com (HellPopeHuey)

It means you don't live in some godawful place where a Madonna tape
scritching out of some shitty little mono cassette player isn't the
highest form of culture around and you aren't having to chase a pig
with a wooden spear for dinner or eat green bananas you have to fight
some screaming moneys for while some friggin' generalissimo sells off
the charitable bags of UNESCO rice so he can live in borderline
opulence and fuck any local woman who still has most of her own teeth
and SHUT UP, da-do-ron-ron. Anyone who got upset because Billy Ray
Cyrus cut off his mullet should be hacked to death by the dull
machetes of the generalssimo's brutal bodyguards, ah tell ya whut.
Earache, my eye.

HellPope Huey
8 out of 10 people think the other 2 are nuts

"Neil was the kind of man
who couldn't open a packet of biscuits
without spraining an ankle
and setting fire to something."
-Mark Haddon

"Wow, look at those ducks!"
- 'Village of the Giants"

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: What Does It MEAN?!?
From: "3TiMMY2" <timmy@timmy.com>

>
> A SubGenius admitted to me that, until I angrily lit into something or
> somebody recently on a.s., or IRC or something, they'd been thinking
> that I'd lost my "zeal." Because I haven't been repeating rants from
> THE BOOK OF THE SUBGENIUS over and over, I guess. Well, after having
> spent the first 45 or so years of my life learning how best for me to
> fight against the Conspiracy, I am indeed now engaged in spending the
> next 45 years or so GETTING SLACK. Because that turned out to BE the
> best way for me to fight the Conspiracy.
>

I think it coulda been me. You'd really lit into someone however, so I
commented "I thought Stang lost his zeal" see. I heard a lot of Subgenii
quit the church after X-day 1998 occur.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: What Does It MEAN?!?
From: "BForest" <B.Forest@comcast.net>

Everyone knows what that MEANS, Rev. Stang, but none dare admit it's
true. The facts are so NOT EVEN HIDDEN, it's silly. What the hell
kinda CONspiracy *is* this, anyway, ferthaluva'bOb'-like jelly?

Part I-A1: The mind machine (mind reading) and subliminal message
techniques
http://members.aol.com/alanyu5/part1a1.htm

United States Patent 3,951,134
Apparatus and method for remotely monitoring and altering brain waves
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=3,951,134.WKU.&OS=PN/3,951,134&RS=PN/3,951,134

United States Patent 5,406,957
Electroencephalic neurofeedback apparatus for training and tracking of
cognitive states
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-adv.htm&r=13&f=G&l=50&d=CR79&S1=4,140,997.UREF.&OS=
ref/4,140,997&RS=REF/4,140,997

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Original file name: What Does It MEAN?!? - converted on Saturday, 25 September 2004, 02:05