Crazy Bear was loaded to the gills, in more ways than one, so it was wise as well as lucrative to humor the dope-crazed madman. It was also fun, if you had a sense of humor; I-Victor, that is-knew him from the crackpot circuit. We made a casual friendship over the years out of an intense acquaintance, getting along, I suspect, primarily because we were both out of our minds. He had guided me along my first, fitful explorations of that which cannot be explained, but can be perceived by the sensitive, and instructed me in the fundamentals of the Art.<\/p>\n
The oddest thing about him was not his egregious slovenliness, in spite of immense means, or the radical revolutionary rant he spouted despite his hypersuperdeterminism. The man is a study in paradox. He prides himself on his admittedly amazing talent for simultaneously holding two or more contradictory opinions. He partcipates in annual competitions; the last year I followed his progress, he had narrowly lost the title to a Baptist preacher.<\/p>\n
No, the most unnerving peculiarity of Crazy Bear was the way he\u2019d keep a straight, solemn face while propounding the most bizarre theories as if they were gospel from L. Ron Hubbard himself. His eyes would fill with the fires of fanatacisim; his voice would carry the conviction of a mad prophet crawling back from the desert. Then he\u2019d take another bong hit.<\/p>\n
No skit comedian could match his efforts at inscrutability; he actually pretended to be offended when you laugh.<\/p>\n
For example:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe human species was evolved, in perfect accordance with the Design of Nature, primarily to mine oil and build nuclear weapons. Fossil fuels are a sort of toxic pus on the Earth\u2019s face. How do you feel, after all, about deposits of oil near your<\/em> surface? We\u2019re here to pop the zits. Also, the carbon dioxide thereby released is a boon for the trees, who are the real masters of the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n Or…<\/p>\n \u201cEinstein was a prophet sent to share the secret of suns. This Solar system-mostly Jupiter, it\u2019s all about Jupiter, where the crystal entities, you dig, silicon-based life, that\u2019s where it\u2019s at…anyway, we\u2019re in it, too, planet-hopping, first it was Mars, then Venus, building bombs. That\u2019s the Forwhy of people, dig, that\u2019s the Howcome. Nuclear technology…those stupid greedy motherfuckers would stop right this very second if they could comprehend…the magnitude. The service they are doing for the cause of Life in the name of death. This planet, and everything in it, can you see it?<\/p>\n The solar system represents the embryonic stage<\/em> in the life cycle of a star<\/em>. Why do you think binary pairs of stars have one big one and one small one? Think reproduction<\/em>. Stars, man, that\u2019s where it\u2019s at. This skin trip is all bullshit. Our real participation in the intellectual life of the universe will begin at the Starbirth….\u201d<\/p>\n After a night of this, Dianetics<\/em> makes relative sense.<\/p>\n Not that any respectable church like the Scientologists would be caught dead renting so much as a post-office box on the Row. Not with neighbors like the Pointy Hat Childbaking Coven. The Radical Gay Tantric Mosque. The Moron Tab \u00d4n Apple Choir. The Creed of the Crazy. The Unitarian Church. Heading east, I pass the Church of the SubGenius, with the Discordians quartered on the second floor.<\/p>\n A scraggly kid, evidently hopeful of spare change, mutters, \u201cHail Eris!\u201d but I\u2019m not in the mood to honor the Goddess of Chaos. Nothing personal; I\u2019m quite fond of the ancient apple-thrower. I\u2019ve simply had my fill of that energy for awhile. I ignore him and he does not seem surprised. Had he made his pitch in the name of Bob, patron of Slack, I still would have stiffed him, being penniless myself, but I\u2019d have been friendlier.<\/p>\n Right now, I can use about all the slack I can get.<\/p>\n The next block is sort of a political district, featuring the massive, well-funded headquarters of the Social Libertarian Party, Crazy Bear\u2019s write-in affiliation, a strange hybrid of classical socialism with modern libertarianism, advocating, for instance, nationalizing the public utilities, holding the infrastructure in trust, then administering them with democratically elected private companies, who will place bids on the ballot for the people to evaluate.<\/p>\n This political platypus hasn\u2019t caught on nationally in spite of their slogans- \u201cWE CAN\u2019T TELL OUR RIGHT FROM OUR LEFT\u201d and \u201cWORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE AGAINST TAXES\u201d-but the local alderman from the ward that includes Religion Row is, and will be for some time, a social libber, running on the deep pockets of the Ridley estate, the heartfelt loyalty of the tenants to their landlord, and the general kookiness of the constituency.<\/p>\n ~ )))0((( ~<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Crazy Bear was loaded to the gills, in more ways than one, so it was wise as well as lucrative to humor the dope-crazed madman. It was also fun, if you had a sense of humor; I-Victor, that is-knew him from the crackpot circuit. We made a casual friendship over the years out of an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transmigrant-blues","category-transmigrant-blues-round-1"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amanamission.com\/transblues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amanamission.com\/transblues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amanamission.com\/transblues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amanamission.com\/transblues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amanamission.com\/transblues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.amanamission.com\/transblues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amanamission.com\/transblues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amanamission.com\/transblues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amanamission.com\/transblues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}