Escape Magazine [England], Issue 3, March/April 1997
YOU have approximately a year and a half to become One of the Saved, guarantee your place on the Sex Vessels of the Alien Goddesses and wave fond goodbye to hated enemies as the world plunges into chaos beneath you.
Yes, X-Day is coming, and according to the Church of the Subgenius, only JR "Bob" Dobbs can save you from a fate that's worse than death, and that's if you're lucky.
Admit it, you've seen Dobbs before. His manful grin, his jutting pipe are all too familiar. The luckiest man that ever lived, the greatest old-time salesman in the world, star of 1,000 cheesy ads from the 1950s and bit-part actor in countless cheap B-Movies, only this unlikely looking character can offer you Eternal Salvation or TRIPLE Your Money Back!
He's the patron Saint of the Church of the SubGenius, the most wacked-out, witty and patently trippy cult to walk the earth. And *you* could be a latent SubGenius. Yes, you!
If you're not with "Bob," you're a tool of The Conspiracy. You are, in fact, a Pink Boy, which makes you just like everyone else - normal, boring and without Slack. Church doctrine says that if none of this makes sense to you, you're Pink and there's nothing you can do about it.
Thanks to the internet, Salvation and Slack (the one true goal of the SubGenius) are at hand. The Church has two newsgroups, Sunday night IRC devivals and the Subsite, a vast collection of amazingly creative pages which just scooped an Internet Underground Magazine's top 10 websites of 1996 award.
The Reverend Modemac told Escape: "SubGenii, by their very nature, often find themselves away from the crowds. Their differences tend to set them apart from the mainstream.
"So when the newsgroup alt.slack was discovered, it became a way for the outcasts and rebels to get in touch with each other. We found a common interest -- hatred of the Conspiracy -- and we used that as the basis to get in touch with each other.
Founder member, the Reverend Ivan Stang, said: "IRC seems to be mainly just a lark for a few... alt.slack however has been around since 1985 (!!!) and is really busy, like 1,000 posts a week.It's also pretty obnoxious, but, heck.
"I personally intend to push this Web shit as far as I can. 2 years ago, I didn't know what email was, and now we're like unto GODS!
"I would say that the Net has VASTLY IMPROVED our potential output for commercial product like CD ROMS. Have you seen the Art Mines at SubSITE? The artwork alone is coming in faster and prettier than ANYTHING we saw in 15 years of snail mail."
The church also exists outside the net, you'll be thrilled to hear. At devivals they Rant, indulge in the Slinging of Slongs, Bulldada and the launching of bleeding amputated heads. They also raid Christian conferences. They occasionally get arrested. Best of all, they party, sometimes buck-naked and ripped to the tits.
They also love pranks. The scarey Reverend Legume, who preaches with baseball bat in hand, faked his own death. For weeks, the alt.slack SubGenius newsgroup was full of tributes and impassioned elegies, until he turned up alive and well at his own memorial service. Nothing (especially not death) is sacred.
Which may be why the Church gets up the nose of Christians, who regularly send hate email. Although The Fightin' Jesus is a minor church saint, the conventionally religious still get snitty when they see major icons portrayed holding M16s. Never mind the revelation that The Lord is, in fact JHVH 1, Space God.
Does Dobbs Himself use the net? Luckily for the believer, no. Rev. Stang, the man closest to "Bob" said: "From what I've been able to glean from his memos, he doesn't really understand the Internet, and I know he can't type. He mentioned something about child pornography and plans for building H-bombs, that's all he seems to know about it."
Is it all a joke? If you think it is, even for a minute, you're sunk! I asked Stang whether most SubGees thought the whole thing was a gag, a nod-and-a-wink parody of religion in the 20th Century.
"Only the DOOMED ones," he ominously replied.
Sure, they admit it's all a scam, but to achieve true Slack you need to accept "Bob" into your life and practice for X-Day like there's no tomorrow. Because there may not be.
LINKS
Beard Dobbs in his lair at the madly visual SubSite (it also contains great weirdo, fringe and psychedelic links, including ones to fractal zoom downloads) by heading for http://sunsite.unc.edu/subgenius/
Confused? Don't know what 'frop, prairie squids or N'Gheee's are? Head for the Totally Fucking Retarded homepage, which contains (amongst other weird shit) the SubGenius Dictionary of the Gods at http://rampages.onramp.net/~searcy/
For more seemingly random SubGee oddness plus media archives, try Modemac's homepage, The First Online Church of "Bob."
SOME RANDOM QUOTES YOU MAY WANT
"The Goal: Slack. The Method: The casting out of false prophets. The weapon: Time Control. The Motto: Fuck 'Em If They Can't Take A Joke." - Credo of the SubGenius.
"You'd PAY to know what you really think." JR "Bob" Dobbs, 1961. SubGenius.
"It is as easy for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as for a needle to pass through the Camera's Eye. Who cares? Everybody's trying to buy property in Hell." JR "Bob" Dobbs, 1961.
"The stupider it looks, the more important it probably is." JR "Bob" Dobbs.
"Dobbs himself probably couldn't figure out how to operate a Macintosh or even manage a mouse, never mind get online.That's one reason why he created the SubGenius Foundation: when he wants something done on the physical plane, he tells his moronic fans...err, his *loyal minions*...to do it for him." Reverend Modemac.
"We're probably the only cult that admits we're ripping them off every day, and teaching them to enjoy it." The Rev. Ivan Stang, talking to CNN.