Scamology - The Final Chapter

Disclaimer: The events depicted herein take place in an alternate Universe. It's my Universe and you can't have it!

L. Jack Horner is tasked with spinning an Origin yarn that will separate those with any semblance of critical thinking skills from meat for the institutional scam he is developing. He comes up with a yarn that would make an old sailor weep with admiration. L. Jack used to be a Naval Officer himself. The prospect of an undistinguished and mediocre career did not suit his particular brand of egomania. He hallucinated a Japanish submarine and sent an entire wartime Naval unit chasing a Will-o-the-Wisp down the Central Amurican coast. He will later remember this as one of the best periods of his life. This is probably where he learned that he had the gift of bullshitting convincingly.

When we left off last time, Nu-gai, an Emperor of the Galaxy unsurprisingly similar to Ming The Merciless, had just rid his Mongo-like Empire of intelligent species that he deemed undesirable and overpopulated. (Pardon me a moment. HACK, HACK, HACK, HACK, HACK! Ok, I feel better now.) Nugai first rounds them up and freezes them at his giant frozen-concentrate concentration camp. (HACK! Sorry. I’ll stop now.) He later decides to send them to earth on giant DC8-shaped space ships. He does this because, somehow, it’s worth all the effort.

When the winged dildo-craft arrive on earth, they dump their cargo in the volcanoes at Hawaii. They do this because of an inexplicable shortage of volcanoes and molten planets in Nugai’s galaxy, and because a race known as the Perillan Brotherhood had a lock on the volcanoes of Italy and Greece. It does not end there however. As soon as the frozen aliens hit the magma, they die, and their spirits escape upward. This is very important to establish the afterlife-belief so important to any successful religion. The escaping souls are vacuumed up by yet another fleet of spacecraft. They are imprisoned and ghost-brain washed into forgetting who they are and where they come from. This is to prevent them from trans-emigrating back from whence they came, and causing Nugai to have to start all over from the beginning.

The alien ghosts (ghost aliens?), who are now known as “Feeties”, are left to roam the earth. This all happens in Prehistoric Times, and the ghosts must wander and lament their fate without so much as a ghostly chain to rattle; chains having yet to be invented. Eventually, the Human Race started showing signs of intelligence. The Feeties, homesick for a real body, attach themselves to these early humans and become the less scrupulous half of their inner dialogue. This is really saying something, as the Human Race at this time was still trying to work out the first two unwritten commandments. They went something like: “Thou Shall Not Steal Food or Women from Someone Bigger than You”, and “Mind Your Own Business”.

Anyway, the Feeties attach themselves, and it is their presence that is credited for many of the woes of humanity. In addition to irrational behavior, the interaction of the Feeties with bodily fluids and bacteria is credited as being the cause of smelly feet and armpits, bad breath, and of course, smelly shit. Scientifonomists are taught to believe that they can rid themselves of Feeties and all associated problems. Through the use of the O-meter, a talk therapy technique called “Minding” and the occasional degaussing, Scientifonomists are told they can achieve a state where their shit no longer stinks. All this for a fee of course. The new arrival is given a course of Minding sessions based on how much he can be made to believe he can afford. The Minding session consists of an O-meter, a “Minder” and a “Mindee”. The Mindee is encouraged to spill his guts and wallow in self-pity while holding the banana-like probes of the O-meter. The Minder is paid to listen and act like he cares, and to ask uncomfortable and embarrassing questions designed to erode self-confidence and self-worth. This unburdening process often engenders the same feelings of gratitude and loyalty one sees in regular practitioners of the Priestly Confession, and in victims of the Stockholm Syndrome. (So far, in every parallel universe I have encountered a Stockholm. Most of them bear more resemblance to Amsterdam – ed.)

When the Mindee starts showing signs of impatience and frustration that can no longer be quelled, it is time to pronounce him “cured”. The Mindee (also known as the Mark), is told that the Feeties have been peeled off, and he is now free of them, or “Shucked”. He is now free to believe that his shit doesn’t stink. He is also told that he is in a state that makes him eligible for membership in one of the inner circles of the organization. After so much help straightening out the cosmic injustices of the Mark’s life, it’s only natural that he will want to further the financial success of the organization. It is also only natural that the organization will be reluctant to let the Mark off the hook.

One opportunity for the Mark is to become a Minder himself. This will of course require some very expensive training. Another opportunity is to join the Sea Monkeys. This is an invitation-only inner circle. It was started by L. Jack in part because of his nostalgic feelings toward Navy life, and in part by his desire to stay beyond the 12-mile limit. This was during a time when avoiding scrutiny and subpoenas seemed like a very good idea. The monumental boredom, loneliness, and occasional storm-induced fear, and interdependency of the crew is also a great way to cement feelings of subjugation to the group.

If life on the sea does not appeal, the Mark might also be invited to join the Scientifonomist Scrutiny Society, or the SSS. This is the group that diligently roots out sedition within the organization, champions the Myth of Persecution, and entangles detractors in frivolous nuisance lawsuits. This is basically a complex and expensive execution of one of the scam artists’ favorite weapons, stealing the high ground. The Church of Scientifonomy can well afford to spend some of its victim’s money this way. Replace, “liberal press” with, “Suppressive Person” if you care to read that link. No other changes are required.

L. Jack finally dies, but not before he and his cohorts successfully muscle in on the religion scam. In perfect execution of the closed-loop delusion, they provide a defensive explanation for all their detractors and encourage their followers to hate and fear them. Detractors are labeled “Suppressive Persons”. The are attributed all manner of evil motives in keeping with the organization’s mythology. Detractors are also diligently sued to discourage future detractors. Competitors, such as mainstream medical and psychological organizations are strenuously denigrated. Any exposed wrongdoing or illegal actions of the organization are attributed to “misguided” actions on the part of individuals within. Said individuals are purged for the crime of getting caught, and the organization lives on like some beast with a life of its own. Scam artists are always attracted to a good money machine like flies to shit, and this group will never lack in leaders or promoters.

Moral: If you can make a story sound ridiculous by injecting a little sarcasm and changing a few proper nouns, it was ridiculous to start with.

Special thanks to Robert A. Heinlein, Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and Robert Anton Wilson, whose literary contributions provide the yardstick by which it is proved that you need a microscope to appreciate the contributions of L. Ron Hubbard.