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What the hell is going on here

Difference (from prior minor revision)

Changed: 1,13c1

< "What happened to the High Weirdness Project?" "What's all this crap about cooking and food?" "Are you really trying to shoehorn this cooking stuff into ''pagan Chaos magic?'' What the hell, man?"
< For sixteen years, this Web site was part of the Church of the SubGenius, and it's certainly difficult to move on after being so heavily involved in that group -- and especially after being close to so many good people. But it is also true that even Rev. Stang had commanded SubGenius followers to "quit the Church and start your own damn religion!" That's what I'm doing here. After breaking away and making my first tentative steps outside of "Bob's" shadow and into the light on my own, I'd pondered where to go with my new-found interests, and how to integrate them into my continuing love for the subversive and outrageous "fringe" of society.
< Why would a person who had spent so many years looking at kooks, hackers, Scientologists, skeptics, psychic frauds, and pagans alike suddenly develop a love for and interest in...'''cooking''' and '''food'''? For anyone remotely interested in someone as unimportant as myself, it may seem as though I was seduced by a kitchen witch and I took on Her interests as replacements for my own. I'll gladly agree that this was an influence on me, but beneath the surface there has been far going on more than this simple explanation...and I have no interest in discussing this in public. I will state emphatically, however, that I found this new interest and lifestyle on my own -- I was not told to do so, nor did I start cooking as a way to please Her. I can even date the moment of my conversion into the cult of cast iron: December 15th, 2010, on a night when I was completely by myself, living 250 miles away from Her; in fact, I had not even seen Her in nearly a month, nor Spoken with her for several days. However, I had moved into a brand-new home on my own after living with someone else for eight years, and on that night I was celebrating a full month there. On that night, I broke out a cast-iron pan that had been sitting in my old kitchen cabinet for eight years, unused. The pan had a thick layer of dust on it, and it still had the original tag from the store on it. It had been given as a wedding gift, and it had been entirely neglected for all of that time. I had decided to cook a steak in that pan, to celebrate my one month anniversary in my new home. Cooking it in that pan, for the first time after ignoring it in my old life, would be a symbolic gesture to show how my life had changed. I cooked the steak entirely wrong, but it still came out tasting well; but something else happened when I cooked with that pan. I <b>enjoyed</b> it. I didn't just cook that steak because I was hungry; I had a lot of <b>fun</b> cooking it. There was something different about it that I'd never felt before, and I really enjoyed cooking in that pan.
< That was enough to get me hooked. Like a true geek in the modern era, I took to the Internet and started looking at cast iron entries on Amazon, videos on YouTube, and even Yahoo groups dedicated to cast iron cooking -- and I realized that there really is a genuine religious cult dedicated to cast iron cooking. There's a cadre of hardcore cooking fans called "foodies," and the foodies will tell you that hardcore cast iron afficionadoes are fiercely dedicated to their pans, with all of the zeal and fervor that you'd see in a genuine religious cult. If you dare try to diss cast iron with a statement like, "Teflon nonstick pans are better!" then you'll be certain to find yourself deluged in flaming spam of the type you might expect if you went onto the [[Abortion|abortion]] forums or the [[Politics|political]] groups. Cast iron has its unshakable religious devotees who expound on the Sacred Truth of these holy pans: '''Thou Shalt Not Wash Thy Cast Iron Pans With Soap. Thou Shalt Not Put Thy Cast Iron Pans In The Dishwasher.''' And '''Thou Shalt Not EVER Say Anything Nice About The Unholy Teflon!''' Cast iron groupies can be grouped in with hardcore ''anime'' fans, Marvel zombies, political junkies, Christian fundamentalists, [[Objectivism|Objectivists]], and [[Lyndon Larouche]]'s followers. But like most religious cults and their lure, there's a carrot that they use to entice you...and this bait certainly hooked me. You can cook some GREAT tasting food in cast iron, and it takes very little effort at all. Even a cooking novice like me could whip up something in a cast iron pan, and it would taste good! You may have heard that "things taste better when they're cooked in cast iron," and I will certainly testify that this is true.
< This is what turned my footsteps onto the path of cooking, one that I have enjoyed immensely since that night. And I have not seen this as separate from my other interests, but rather one that supplements them all. There's no reason why a person can't be an anti-censorship and anti-control activist, yet still enjoy cooking great tasting food rather than eating at McDonald's and Wal-Mart all the time.
< But there is another aspect to this newfound healthy pasttime, one that I am only beginning to explore...and one that I am finding very intriguing. I am beginning to look into a new kind of '''cooking magic''' in a form that can satisfy my psyche as well as my body. This requires an entirely separate explanation, one that I've written down in the [[Cooking Magic]] section of this Web site. Because I am attempting to create a kind of psychological "magic" that works for me, I find that '''Chaos Magic''' is best suited to my purposes. It has nothing whatsoever to do with silly "ley lines" and "energies" and astrology, but it does encourage creativity and expanding your mind in such a manner that it (commonly called a ''paradigm shift'')
< As I tried to figure out how to bring it all together, a phrase came to me: '''Cast Iron Chaos.''' Not "cooking," but "chaos." And when I considered these words, I realized they were a vivid and accurate description of the state of my life at this particular moment in time. Considering the upheavals I had gone through over the past year, in which everything has changed from my body weight, to my marital status, to my interests and acquaintances, "chaos" is certainly a word to describe my psyche and my well-being.
< This site has been online since March of 1987, and my Web site has been in operation since May 1995. I am proud to have been at the focus of various controversies involving the Church of [[Scientology]] and its war against the Internet; the net.kooks and spammers of the ''news.admin.net-abuse.*'' newsgroups; and the great [[X-Day]] gatherings of 1998 through the present day at [[Wisteria]] (home of [[Starwood]]).
< I founded the First Online Church of "Bob" as a way of opening people's eyes to the truth about the Conspiracy, so as to bring them Slack and achieve my own Slack in return. Here's hoping that the High Weirdness Project inspires you to make your own mark on the world.
< Especial thanks to [[Rev. Ivan Stang]], the author and compiler of ''High Weirdness By Mail,'' upon which my Web site is based.
< -- Reverend Modemac
< February 25, 2005
< ''This Web site was originally dedicated to '''Midori Hatamoto''' when originally founded in 1995. As of December 2010, the wiki for The High Weirdness Project is re-dedicated to [[Morgan Proctor]] in respect and gratitude.''

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Coming soon.