Oscar Addlepatter’s Swallow the Document
Revolution is looming. It is large like a thunderhead covering multiple zones of hardiness and inflicting unknown numbers of raindrops on the unassuming. It is too large to be conceptualized, but if we are to break it down into a series of small units, we too may participate, even now as the earth itself seems prepared to tip over the cusp, at least for me and mine.
That is my goal: to disseminate anarchy in units which may be digested and disseminated by those who are unaware.
To create a revolution there must be a series of expressions of anarchy so deeply embedded in the cultural fabric so as to be imperceptible to the untrained eye.
It Begins With Thine.
Do you know what your cells are doing? They are doing something very remarkable and not even the scientist can fathom the method to their manners.
That is why the movement must begin at a personal level - they must begin with ourselves personally. Take a look in the mirror and then change. If we cannot impress upon ourselves the validity of harking to a higher series of actions, how can we dare to impress upon a stranger? And if we cannot translate our thoughts into actions, which realize our ideals, this kingdom will remain, for lack of a better term, invisible.
Procedures for the First Possibile Expression of Anarchy:
Go into your closet. Find your sock drawer. Close your eyes. Feel around for a pair. Open your eyes. No matter what color or shape of sock you pulled out, put it on. Go about your business. Record any observations.
It is a slight upon the intelligence of humanity to suppose that a change in socks can change the world, but I would ask that you would merely consider the role of the mundane in the profusion of anarchy.
Note: this is a document so incriminating that if the wrong hands were to read it, all we have accomplished would be undermined up to this point. If there's any pressure from the officials to hand over this document or, if at any time the document causes duress, please eat the document. The document must be swallowed.
All the precautions must be taken. As I write this I wear four bullet-proof vests out of fear of assassination. Not that I fear my own death, I am certain I will not see the collective heaves, but I dread the confiscation of the ideas hidden in this document.
I have shipped my cat out to live with my Uncle Luther.
All my possessions have been placed in a shed. Before my mother's eyes I burned my birth certificate. I threw my driver's license into the trash. The trash man sent me a letter in the mail the next day, but I will not open it!
There is no proof of my existence outside of my person, as it should be. These are the things that I have done to prepare myself for the creation of this document. Not that I may brag about my own adamancy, there's no time to puff up one's chest in days such as these, but that others may know what the spirit may request if it calls your name.
Yes to participate one must sacrifice - but I remind you all that one must follow the dictates of their own conscience and if that conscience does not ask for an iota of sacrifice, who am I to collect stones?
Still, there exists a population who refuses to recognize the existence of conscience or even self. You are not to be ostracized for this. Even the bumble bee may go silent for a season.
A chart has been drafted that may be used as a guideline. The chart is reliant on the individual to supply the variables. Obviously, the variables are to be distinguished according to the determination of the individual. If the individual has a difficult time ascertaining the value of the variables that control his or her life, then the help of another may be called upon for guidance and speculation, but above all it must be the individual who shall deem value to the variables to be plugged into the chart. Because if we are to have a full expression of anarchy it must be through a collection of independents, not the engineered partnership evident in the puppet states of these modern governments.
Keep in mind while working with the chart that it is still very much in utero, and the final chart is far from completion, although we are hopeful that it will be supplied at a date in the not too distant future. For now, I offer a rough outline of the equation used to calculate the amount of sacrifice necessary for a proper revolution, in situations where the person is unable to determine the mandates of their own conscience.
Take the aggregate score that combines both EQ and IQ. See Appendix Wiki. Discover what percentile you rank in accordance with geographic location, not weight. Multiply the percentile by the average wage of those living in your phone's area code, removing both the top three and the bottom three wage outliers. Calculate this figure into cash dollars, converting cash dollars into hourly wage, calculating number of hours spent that amount of time.
There are many phases to a revolution and we know it must begin deep within, but what is to happen next? Is the enthusiasm to remain stagnant like ripe milk left in a jar on the porch? Indeed not! It is to spread like mold and bloom at every shining opportunity.
It Must Affect Those We Know
To affect a stranger in the gravity of the importance of anarchy - this is no small achievement. If an anarchist is to change the mindset of one stranger, that is more than is often accomplished in a typical day.
So how do we effect change?
Topple a building?
To end the lineage of the moneyed aristocracy?
No, no, I tell ye - the exertion of power in order to achieve power is a fool's errand. We do not intend to build bridges by destroying bridges! Powers will replace powers, but anarchy will upset them all.
Yes confusion, not violence, is our aim. The awkward, not the militant, is our guise. Sure there are those who'd love to argue it all out.
But I say let the sun dry out their tongues as they hang out of their heads all day! Join the club those who are desperate for convenience.
As I've said before many times off the page, this transformation will not affect everyone. In fact, I will be surprised if anyone does, and I would have it that way if the alternative were to have others make actions born of guilt and hatred.
And so what is to be done on the next level? What is to be done after our own personal procedures have been effectively scrambled?
We must affect those who are closest to us. Many people assume the kindness of close ones and fear the passing stranger - this is a fallacy, but for now we must exploit this conceit.
Those closest to us are both the members necessary for a movement and the least likely to expect any sort of horseplay.
Three examples:
One: You and a friend go to a party of acquaintances, if you have no acquaintances or no parties, please join a bowling league, bowling is fantastic. While your friend is dispersed at the moment, please tell those around you who know you but not your friend, that your friend often calls herself Claire of Broderick but their real name is, and has always been Barnaby Struthers. When the friend returns you will notice that everyone will either treat her w/ white gloves or will be rude and end pieces of dialogue with pieces of talk like, “Oh sure thing Barnaby.” Of course, your acquaintances could ignore your statements or treat them with unconquerable apathy.
The first example was not good enough and confusing, but I believe the second example is quite good.
You know someone very well and have learned their phone number. Let's say it is 888-888-8888-8888888. You call this number repeatedly from a third line that is unaffiliated with either you or the friend.
When you return to the house you will see a crack in their defenses. They say someone from TurdWattage Communications kept on calling them today. You say, with as much sympathy as possible, “Well my friend what do you expect? This is the world we live in, where harassment may strike at any time in the name of capitalism.”
Now a third example which may not be easily produced as easily as the first two examples and yet is very powerful.
You often go to sports games at large stadiums. You go with a friend who is attractive and yet far from being considered your partner. However, your friend seems like a perfect match for your other friend who has never met your second friend.
You have the vital information of the third friend, and in the half-time of a large sporting event you hire a hot-air balloon to unravel a sign that says: Mr./Mrs. Second Party will you marry me? Signed, the Third Party
The display will inspire many but disturb your second party first. You assure them it must be some other person in the stadium with the same name. Second party snoops online and discovers you are acquainted with third party. The second party confronts you and you swear you talked to third party and they swore have never talked to second party but has always like them but would never dream of it, and from then on they share a morbid fascination of each other that either leads to a life-long partnership or an insatiable curiosity that will never be fulfilled. Also it is possible that due to shyness it will engender a spiteful speculation that rots all future relationships with man or beast.
When considering second and third party be sure that they are unsusceptible to the last possibility as it may cause bad news.
A fourth possibility to inflict an expression of anarchy on a close friend, replacing the first possibility which the author has realized was of inferior stuff, is to put a hole in a friend's mailbox so that when any letter or a bill in the mail it will fall into a false bottom after twenty seconds time.
Every third day empty the contents of the false bottom and into a pillow case. Take this pillow case and empty the contents into a slow moving stream, making sure not to scatter the mail down current but upstream so that when you take your position the mail will float back to you.
Collect the wet letters into a bag. Take them home and place them in the oven at 150 degrees for two hours. Letters should be dry at this point.
Take a stamp from 1985 or earlier. Stamp all letters w/ ancient stamp into large yellow envelope.
Compose a letter impersonating a mailman from 1985 in which you offer advice on the future. Letters should straddle fence between being historically accurate but fuzzy on details to prevent second party from being too suspicious. Put letters into envelope and place into the actual bottom of the mailbox.
Repeat two to three cycles for best results. Periodically check in with the second party to witness emotional anarchy.
Obviously this insertion of anarchy requires a mailbox and a stamp and stamps are very expensive but it can still be a very powerful tool to remind us how connected we are with the past and our general numbness to the sensations of history.
I have an announcement-I have adjusted my seat cushions. This chair has been a legitimate hazard in the creation of this document and it is important to note that the if in the course of organizing an expression of anarchy one becomes uncomfortable physically - this is a good sign.
We must become squeamish so that we are squeamish no longer. We must allow ourselves to be exposed to what is awkward if we are to effect transformation on a larger scale.
“Larger scale” is of course a term that argued over hither and fro.
Now let us review our first two points in a nutshell:
We hope to manipulate the trivial to create something that is greater than the fractionalized selves. And so yes, we take socks, hot-air balloons, etc. and allow them to become vehicles in which the person is to be moved from one point-of-view to the other.
But how do we inform others? Do we create a pamphlet and hand it out like the evangelicals? Or perhaps the politicals who would like you to stick their brand name in your front yard, or the entrepreneurs who stick coupons for furniture betwixt the funny pages?
No - we are not children. We do not expect others to glance at the skin of an old tree or pop-up ad that can be dismissed with a click and expect them to be volitionally metamorphized.
Yes we believe that the mundane can be used to prevail on one's mind, but without context, without relationship it is a wasted effort.
However let us go beyond, because if these expressions are to have any momentum they must touch the fourth party - which we know nothing about. However we do know that the third party they must take part in this exercise in order for the bacteria to spread.
I am tempted to tell the third party to repeat one of our three second expressions but is this to expected from anarchy? To numbly repeat a series of steps?
Honestly. You may water a row of rocks and you will get the expected results, in a closed environment but if you are to subject a group of people to the same elements you will discover that the results can not be as simply as watering a rock.
If people are given the impression that they are anything but a wholly unique creation deserving of time, attention and compassion they would immediately head themselves in the opposite direction and so I suggest and my peers suggest that the fourth party must be offered a unique expression.
When it comes to potential exercises may I suggest... deer piss? It is a stereotype that all people live in buildings, houses, apartments, bungalows etc. but for the purpose of this exercise it is necessary to assume that the fourth party lives in a house.
You might be wondering what role deer piss could play in expressing anarchy and you are correct to wonder. I wondered myself until Bonnie VonHofferson came to our meetings with a gallon of the yellow stuff.
She proceeded to interrupt our meeting and began sprinkling and dousing deer piss all over my door, my yard, my house until finally the jug was empty.
Bonnie didn’t say a word. She merely handed me a few lemon twists and told me to stare outside my windows.
I woke up several hours later to find a massive congregation of deer in my front yard. There were dozens of deer frolicking and mating all over my yard. I couldn’t even get to my car for work the next morning. This was back when I worked at the post office. The bucks were very aggressive with me and I was forced to sit at home and watch as they scared people all through our neighborhood with their antlers and their hissing.
It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and it changed my life.
We cannot control what people do with these instructions.
We do not know what will be provoked within. Some may find an application for these principles immediately: my friend, a professional horse whisperer, was interrupted by the awkwardness of beauty and that next day he released twelve stallions down the streets of Boston, Arkansas. I have seen pictures.
Others such as my friend Tulip* turned an attic full of quilts into a swimming suit for a very large mammal. It took several years. By the time Tulip* finished this project she had completely forgot the conversation we had in June of '87. As it should be.
If our principles can affect a transformation so deep that their expressions of anarchy may be a natural profusion from their person, this is ideal. It is better for the concepts of anarchy to develop organically over whatever length of time is necessary for anarchy's poetic purposes to take hold. It is better to wait a hundred years for an expression than to witness a next day expression that is nothing more than the forced creation of some use of verbal pressure.
So we never know who has been affected and who hasn't, so never assume you know what progress looks like in the development of a person or that you have license to judge another. Would you lift the shirt of a pregnant person just because you thought they were really just holding up a pot of chili with their belt?
And so, if every stranger is treated as a silent participant we have no choice but to treat all people with the same respect and compassion that we give to the initiated.
Now we must always show compassion, but to deal with machines and industries we must be draw upon our most sapient of mischiefs.
And we have it we are to destroy the artifices that restrain ourselves before we can live as trees.
We must allow ourselves to be witnesses to the chaos around us if we are to have our brothers and sisters cling to the ideals we hold so dear.
Fact: We have heard of trees growing in the middle of deserts not because they would rebuke the forest but to prove that they would stretch out their hands towards the sun and dig their feet into the earth wherever their seed may fall.
Mechanical Malfunctions:
I have heard that if you pour spaghetti sauce into an envelope and place the envelope inside a mailbox you can not be held legally responsible for whatever damage the sauce may inflict, especially if you prepare the envelope with proper postage.
You cannot fathom the implications of small gestures.
Now this is not a technological meltdown, nor is it something that requires a certain level of skill and know-how, but this exercise should in fact be as destructive or instantly transformative as a bomb on a toilet seat.
I have done this many times, and trust me it works. At least it has done so for me - to varying degrees.
Firstly you go to Wal-Mart and you bring a hundred rubber snakes in a non-descript travel case. Go ahead and disperse them on the ground like a scattering of reptilious seeds, make sure you are outside in the parking lot for maximum impact. Then go inside to Wal-Mart’s buffet section and drink about four servings of coffee and tell all the people you meet that there's snakes in the parking lot and just watch as the heads begin to roll!
Now this vision of what to do with mechanicals is certainly limited but it will have to suffice, at least for now.
A Development
I've had a dream - or perhaps some would it call it - a vision. Last night me and my friend Clam Simmons, yes that Clam Simmons, were discussing his annual bean dinner for readers. Apparently many of the readers did not stay to the end and Simmons was distraught, but good man that he is, there were no barbs that stung deep enough to damage his spirit.
But yes so I signed off and fell asleep after discussing with Clam and I soon found myself roving the neighborhood knocking on doors and inviting these adjacent strangers to a picnic.
In the dream I gave no pretense for the meal. There was no known cause for celebration or discussion; it was just a group of people I have lived by for years sitting down with me to share some kind of salad. We all selected our leaves with the same tong and in the relative silence we listened under the shade of the gladdening.
This picture is invisible but I must pursue it. The edges first, they are the sharpest and clearest to me and then the middle pieces of the image will surely reveal themselves. There is nothing to lose in these relationships. I have yet to offer anything to them as of yet, save for a glance or two and rampant midnight speculation, but maybe a free salad can turn this maddening collection of individuals into some sort of corporation of note. And so brothers and sisters I must put aside my reasoning and mechanical schemes and pursue this vision of salad with all my zest.