One Hand Jerking

by Paul Krassner

  A. I doubt it. I don’t think they’ve ever heard of me. They don’t read books.

  Q. The original meaning of conspiracy was “to breathe togeher.” What’s your personal definition of conspiracy?

  A. When me and me friends gits together to advance our common interests, that’s an affinity group. When any crowd I don’t like does it, that’s a goddam conspiracy.

  Q. After my High Times column on the Prophets Conference, in which I referred to you as “the irreverent bad boy at this oh-so-polite conference,” why were you disinvited from speaking at future Prophets Conferences?

  A. A lot of my fans think I got booted for lack of respect for His Royal Fraudulency George II. I take that as an assertion beyond proof or disproof. The managers said it was for finding a Joycean epiphany in a Spike Lee movie. I take that as an assertion beyond even comprehension.

  Q. I’d like to hear about your—perhaps psychotic?—experience with higher consciousness and the resulting epiphany.

  A. I have had not one but many seeming encounters with seemingly nonhuman intelligences. The first was a Christmas tree that loved me—loved me more than my parents or my wife or my kids, or even my dog. I was on peyote at the time. With and without other drugs—for instance by Cabala—I have seemingly contacted a medieval Irish bard, an ancient Chinese alchemist, an extraterrestrial from the Sirius system, and a giant white rabbit called the pook or pookah from County Kerry. I finally accepted that if you already have a multi-model ontology going into the shamanic world, you’re going to come out with multi-model results. As Wilson’s Fourth Law sez, “With sufficient research you will find evidence to support your theory.” So I settled on the magick rabbit as the model nobody could take literally, not even myself. The real shocker came when I discovered that my grandmother’s people, the O’Lachlanns, came from Kerry and allegedly have a clan pookah who protects us from becoming English by adding periodic doses of weirdness to our lives.

  Q. The dedication in my book, Murder At the Conspiracy Convention and Other American Absurdities, reads: “This one is for Robert Anton Wilson—guerrilla ontologist, part-time post-modernist, Damned Old Crank, my weirdest friend and favorite philosopher.” Since these are all terms you’ve used to label yourself, would you explain what each one means?

  A. Well, I picked up “guerrilla ontology” from the Physics/Consciousness Research Group when I was a member back in the 1970s. Physicists more usually call it “model agnosticism,” and it consists of never regarding any model or map of Universe with total 100 percent belief or total 100 percent denial. Following Korzybski, I put things in probabilities, not absolutes. I give most of modern physics over 90 percent probability, the Loch Ness Monster around 50 percent probability and anything the State Department says under 5 percent probability. As Bucky Fuller used to say, “Universe is nonsimultaneously apprehended”—nobody can apprehend it all at once—so we have no guarantee that today’s best model will fit what we may discover tomorrow. My only originality lies in applying this zetetic attitude outside the hardest of the hard sciences, physics, to softer sciences and then to non-sciences like politics, ideology, jury verdicts and, of course, conspiracy theory. Also, I have a strong aversion, almost an allergy, to Belief Systems, or B.S.—a convenient abbreviation I owe to David Jay Brown. A neurolinguistic diet high in B.S. and low in instrumental data eventually produces Permanent Brain Damage, a lurching gait, blindness and hairy palms like a werewolf.

  Then I started calling myself a post-modernist after that label got pinned on me in two different books, one on my sociological works and one on my science-fiction. Then I read some of the post-modernists and decided they were only agnostic about other people’s dogmas, not their own. So then I switched to Damned Old Crank, which seems to suit my case better than either of the previous labels. Besides, once my hair turned snowy white, some people wanted to promote me to a Sage, and I had to block that. It’s more dangerous to a writer than booze. By the way, Congress should impeach Dubya and impound Asa Hutchinson.

  Q. What’s your reaction to the recent mid-term elections?

  A. Profound boredom. I don’t give a hoot whether the thieves and cut-throats in power call themselves Republicans or Democrats. If they want power over you and me—the power to use violence against us—they should be put in nut-houses and heavily sedated until a cure for this condition is found. Like all other marauders and predators.

  Q. Since you believe that the universe is indifferent, why are you an optimist?

  A. It may have genetic origins—some of us bounce up again no matter what we get hit with—but as far as I can rationalize it, nobody knows the future, so choosing between pessimism and optimism depends on temperment as much as probabilities. Psychologist John Barefoot has studied this extensively and concludes that optimists live about 20 percent longer than pessimists. When the outcome remains unknown, why should I make the bet that keeps me miserable and shortens my life? I prefer the gamble that keeps me high, happy, and creative, and also increases lifespan. It’s like the advantage of pot over aspirin. Pot not only kills pain better, but the high boosts the immune system. High and happy moods prolong life, miserable and masochistic moods shorten it.

  Q. Recently, when I spoke at a college campus, a student asked what I wanted my epitaph to be. I replied, “Wait, I’m not finished.” What do you want your epitaph to be?

  A. I have ordained in my will that my body will get cremated and the ashes thrown in Asa Hutchinson’s face. The executor of my will should then shout one word only: “Gotcha!”

  SCOOP, HOLLY AND ME

  My friend Scoop Nisker manages to maintain his balance between current events and the infinite void. As a commentator on KFOG radio in San Francisco, his slogan is, “If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own.” He’s also a practicing Buddhist, and his other slogan is, “Stay high, but keep your priorities straight.”

  Scoop, the sit-down meditator, and I, the stand-up comic, have been co-leaders of humor workshops at Esalen and other New Age resorts. The first one was a five-day workshop at Hollyhock, on Cortes Island off British Columbia. On the final day, Scoop suggested that the group remove all their clothing and wade into the ocean, returning to the shore covered with seaweed. As we watched their naked bodies following that instruction, I muttered, “We mustn’t let this power get into the wrong hands.”

  Scoop once persuaded me to attend a ten-day meditation retreat where I would have to survive without any of my usual media distractions. I was afraid at first, but decided to go only in order to confront my fear. Then my daughter Holly called. She was now seventeen. She wanted to go to college in San Francisco and live with me again. So—keeping my priorities straight—I immediately canceled out of the Buddhist retreat. That whole experience would only have been polluted by my irresponsibility in not being home to help Holly with her re-entry.

  One afternoon, Holly and I were waiting at a bus stop, on our way to a movie, and there was a luscious teenage girl waiting for the bus.

  “Ooh, yummy,” I whispered.

  “Daddy, she’s my age.”

  Her words echoed around in my cranial cavity. Lust for teenagers permeates our culture. I had slept with four 17-year-olds in my life, but now I felt myself caught between the lines of dialogue in Stripes, where Bill Murray mentions getting “wildly fucked by teenage girls,” and Tempest, where John Cassavetes says, “If you touch my daughter, I’ll kill you.”

  When Holly got involved with a new boyfriend, they cooked spaghetti in my kitchen, and they threw a few strands up at the ceiling, where they stuck, thereby passing the gourmet chef test. She spent a lot of time at his place, and my moment of truth arrived, not in a bullfight ring, but in the form of a question from Holly. She wanted to know if her boyfriend could spend the night at our house. I pretended to be nonchalant. I prided myself on being a permissive parent. Holly and I had agreed that I wouldn’t tell her what to do unless it involved health, safety, or the rights of others
. And now she was calling my bluff.

  “Okay, sure,” I said, “but tell him that he can’t smoke cigarettes in the house.”

  At least I felt justified in asserting some parental authority. When I was Holly’s age, I would be in my bed wondering if my parents did it in their bed. Now I was in bed knowing that my daughter was doing it in her bed. Holly was no longer my little girl saying, “Daddy, would you scratch my back?”

  Holly didn’t accompany us when Scoop and I went to cover an anti-nuclear-power demonstration at the Diablo Canyon site in California. We reserved a motel room for that night. During the day, we became friendly with a couple of female protesters and invited them to use their sleeping bags on our floor. At one point, Scoop was about to take a shower, and asked, “Anybody want to join me?” And one of the women decided to join him. Later, Scoop and I found ourselves in the double bed, while the two women were in their sleeping bags on the floor.

  I finally broke the long, awkward silence: “I feel like I’m on a Polish double date.”

  Scoop is now the editor of a Buddhist journal, Inquiring Mind. In the May 2004 issue, he writes: “It’s time for a mythological revolution. Not only do we need some regime change in world governments, we also need a new spiritual pantheon. We have lived long enough with the old stories: the mishugas of warring desert tribes; the personified sky gods who judge and punish; the idea that we aren’t tied to materiality, to atoms or to the elements; and the notion that our true identity has some life beyond the one we are now living. Isn’t it time to be more in the present? Isn’t it time to come back home?

  “Our current mythology is not only out-of-date, it has become dysfunctional. It has stripped us off the Earth and placed the divine somewhere else. Our major religions have come to regard Earth as little more than a training camp, a place where we come to learn some special lessons, get rid of some karma, or get saved by some messiah or another. The general hope is that once we’re done here, we can go off to a better place, where we truly belong, and be in a better life, forever and ever!”

  Meanwhile, whenever I find myself looking lustfully at a teenager, I still automatically hear Holly’s voice saying, “Daddy, she’s my age!”

  BODY PARTS

  BOOBS IN THE NOOZ

  They’re all over the Internet, from “Tender Teenage Tits” to “Mammoth Mammaries,” from “Busty Amateurs” to “Big Breasted Porn Stars.” My personal favorite: “Touch Our Beautiful Titties.” In recent months, boobs and the bras that cover them have been bobbing up in the media.

  The New England Journal of Medicine reported that the sexual excitement men feel when they’re staring at female breasts gets the heart pumping and improves circulation—ten minutes of ogling is equivalent to a half-hour of aerobics workout—thus reducing the risk of heart attacks (though, of course, simultaneously increasing the number of strokes).

  In Colombia, a trio of young women preyed on men by smearing their breasts with a powerful drug and luring the victims into licking them, which made the men lose all will power, while the women proceeded to depart with their wallets and cars.

  Because Attorney General John Ashcroft didn’t like being photographed in front of a 12-foot statue representing the Spirit of Justice—a woman with arms raised and one breast exposed—the Justice Department spent $8,000 on blue drapes to hide her.

  During a Kansas City performance with his band, the Accelerators, actor Bruce Willis fired up the crowd by urging females in the audiences to throw their bras up on stage. He then took off his own T-shirt and adorned himself with a black bra that had been thrown on stage, prancing around with it for the rest of the concert.

  A cruise ship with 2,000 nudists aboard stopped in New Orleans for the Mardi Gras celebration, contributing mightily to the large number of women who flashed their breasts, in exchange for which costumed revelers on the passing parade floats tossed down garish strings of party beads.

  A new Swedish soft drink that reportedly increases the size of a woman’s breasts was headed for sale in American bars, night clubs and health-food stores. The gold-colored liquid is called Wunder Titte (German for “Wonderful Breasts”).

  The male stars of Friends did a double-take when Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow and Courteney Cox all arrived with unduly well-endowed bosoms. The three women kept a straight face until Kudrow burst out laughing, and they admitted that they were all wearing the new air bras.

  A reader wrote to an advice columnist for the (Durham, N.C.) Herald Sun: “You recently told a concerned grandmother that her 16-year-old grandson’s breast enlargement might be due to marijuana. I can only wonder what you were smoking! Contrary to government propaganda, marijuana has not been linked to breast development in anybody.”

  England’s ministry of defense has admitted to footing the bill for a dozen breast-augmentation surgeries. The $36,000 operations are performed in military hospitals to boost the morale of female soldiers.

  Brava, a non-surgical breast enlarger in the form of a computerized bra, is now obtainable for $2,500. A woman must wear it for ten hours a day for ten weeks. An alarm sounds if the wearer moves the wrong way and breaks the vacuum seal. Two huge plastic domes supposedly induce cell growth by suctioning the breast tissue.

  Breaking a long-standing magazine-industry taboo, Teen Vogue and Seventeen have accepted ads for Bloussant breast-enhancement pills.

  Two women were killed by a bolt of lightning in London’s Hyde Park when their underwired bras acted as conductors. “A pure act of God,” said the coroner, recording a verdict of “death by misadventure.”

  A man wrote to Ann Landers to share his method of avoiding sleeping on his back in order to prevent snoring. He wears one of his wife’s old bras backward, with a baseball sewn in each cup to ensure discomfort.

  A Michigan woman was cutting the grass when a 1-1/2-inch nail shot out from under the lawn mower and punctured her right breast; fortunately her Maidenform padded “liquid curved” bra broke the speed of the nail and it stopped short of her heart.

  The Superbra contains easily accessible compartments for a .38 caliber handgun and a can of pepper spray. The Techno Bra incorporates a built-in heart monitor and cell phone—police are instantly notified of unexpected spikes in the heart rate, although the cause of such an adrenaline rush is not communicated.

  Nipple warmers in the form of possum-fur bra inserts are now available. Also on the market: Body Perks—erect silicone nipples ($20 a set)—that are tucked inside a bra to simulate a bra-less look. More than 1,000 pairs were sold at a South Dakota motorcycle rally.

  The British Journal of Plastic Surgery reports that 40 percent of men in their 30s and 40s have trouble removing bras, and some have suffered serious injuries, such as the 27-year-old who suffered major ligament damage and fractured one of his fingers when he got his hand caught in the straps of his girlfriend’s bra.

  Finally, in a functional mode, a couple of items about breast-feeding:

  Comedy Central’s The Man Show featured a woman standing on the sidewalk ostensibly nursing a baby, but she was actually using a hidden device to squirt long streams of milk onto passing strangers whose reactions ranged from humor to anger.

  And Tess Hennessy, the founder of Citizens Against Breast-Feeding, proclaimed: “This primitive ritual has continued to be a violation of babies’ civil rights, an unlawful, incestuous relationship with mother that leads to a child’s moral decay.” However, the 600-member organization does not really exist—it’s just a good old-fashioned hoax—and Tess Hennessy is actually professional prankster Alan Abel.

  DOLLY PARTON’S TITS

  When the Grateful Dead received a gold record, Jerry Garcia noticed that it had more tracks than their actual album. He peeled off the label, only to discover that the award was actually a gold-plated Dolly Parton record. As a stand-up comic, I mentioned that, and after the show a woman in the audience thanked me for not making an obvious joke about the size of Dolly Parton’s bosom.

  Her
name had become a national generic reference. Upon hearing the words “Dolly Parton,” a contestant on The New $25,000 Pyramid blurted out her instant association—“Big busted woman.” Burt Reynolds, Dolly’s main squeeze, couldn’t resist telling Johnny Carson, “Her breasts have their own zip code.”

  Even Ronald Reagan loved to indulge in dirty jokes. Following his attempted assassination, he told doctors at George Washington Hospital the story of a gynecologist who found a tea bag during a routine examination and asked his patient about it. “My God,” she exclaimed, “then what did I put in the hot water?”

  Nor was I immune from sharing raunchy humor in those decadent early 1980s.

  At the Village Gate in New York: “There’s definite sexism in the movie E.T. I mean, how do we know E.T. is male? Because the little boy says, ‘I’m keeping him’—a blatant male chauvinist assumption. I’ve seen E.T., and there’s no penis. Even if there were, it would be human chauvinism to think it was a penis. How do we know it’s not just a spare battery holder for E.T.’s finger with the red light?”

  At the Improv in Los Angeles: “They did a test on Canadian mice and discovered that, when male mice smoked marijuana, they grew female breasts. The same phenomenon has been found with humans. Men who smoke marijuana have actualy been growing female breasts. That’s the bad news. The good news is that it’s cutting down on sexual harassment in the office.”