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I have been called at times directionless. An
underachiever. Lacking in ambition, overly content, At seventeen, a tarot reader at a psychic fair
in the food court at the Methuen Mall told me I wasn’t living up to
even half my full potential. A hell of a stretch, making that observation of
a seventeen year old guy with the kind of bushy muttonchop sideburns the
late 70’s not only allowed but encouraged. Adding insult to injury,
she wasn’t reading my cards when she made her analysis. I wasn’t even in
line. She had to lean around my stepmother and point at me. I thought to
tell her that she was living up to her full potential, telling fortunes
in a food court, but unfortunately the thought occurred about six hours
after it would have been funny to say it.
I want to state here, on the record, none of these
assessments are true. I have a goal, a lofty one. F.E.T.A. I want to bring about Forced
Enlightenment Through Absurdity.
The
Official F.E.T.A. Logo
I’m rarely one to advocate political violence. I’m
adamantly opposed to capitol punishment, I abhor terrorism in any form and sadly, history
shows revolution almost always leads to nothing more than a shift in
what group is abusing whom. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
That being said, I’d like to advocate for political violence for my
cause. At least once. I mean, come on, be fair.
To achieve F.E.T.A. someone has to die. Even God
required a blood sacrifice to get the whole Christianity thing going. How could He have
known St. Paul would turn such a nice hippie dippy, vaguely commie
religion into a global corporate engine of doom churning out such
notable atrocities as the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Pope at
Avignon and the annual East Lawn Easter Egg Roll Off? Actually, ‘He’
being omnipotent, pretty much had to know. So scrap that line of
argument. My point is, for me to get what I want, someone needs to get
croaked. A big someone. A Page One someone. John Lennon big, Kennedy
big.
It’s possible I waited too long. I don’t just need Big,
I need Blameless. This death has to be tragic and pointless. I had Mother
Theresa in mind, but then she went and died of old age which I think was
selfish. And you know what? Blamelessness pretty much went with her.
I can’t think of anyone currently famous who there isn’t some good reason
to kill. So for the sake of argument and until I can find another likely
candidate lets pretend Mother Theresa is still alive, still doing her
good works with lepers, just hanging out being saintly so I can have her
killed.
Now let’s pause for a minute here. Imagine your reaction
to the news that Mother Theresa has been brutally assassinated. Shock. Horror. Why
would anyone do this? Twenty four hour news coverage saying the same few
things, showing the same few minutes of video over and over, humanity
coming together to grieve as one... and then imagine, on a worldwide
scale that there was no clear, unconflicted way to experience any of
these emotions.
Anybody out there familiar with the Chicken Gun?
Developed by The Experimental and Applied Mechanics Division at UDRI, (the University of
Dayton Research Institute), it’s a compressed-gas gun, with a 30-foot
long, seven-inch diameter barrel designed to simulate birds hitting
different sections of an aircraft at up to 900 mph. It’s a huge cannon
that fires chickens bodies.
Picture for a moment the kind of damage a nice ten pound
Perdue Oven Stuffer Roaster traveling at 900 MPH could do to a diminutive, elderly,
brittle boned, innocent Nun.
Now. What would the banner headline on the New York Times say? How would
Dan Rather break the news? Could Letterman and Leno just ignore it that
night, pretend it didn’t happen? The leader of the free world would have
to say something, wouldn’t he? George W has enough trouble saying what
he wants for breakfast without making a howler.
True, plenty of cynical bastards would laugh freely, but
they’d have laughed no matter how she got whacked because that’s what cynical
bastards do when someone important dies unless it’s Joey Ramone. But
what about everybody else? How would they process the information?
Wouldn’t the pope have to speak at her funeral? And what if instead of
"Ave Maria", Julio Iglasias sang "I feel like chicken tonight, like
chicken tonight"? Would anyone ever do the Chicken Dance at a wedding
again?
I believe this act of senseless, violent absurdity would
cause a wave of cognitive dissonance that could cleanse the world. For a good, solid
chunk of time no one would be able to worry about bills or yell at the
neighbor kid or yammer pointlessly into the cell phone while burning
a gallon a mile out their bloated, dangerous, ugly, SUV that cost more
than a condo and never once got mud above the wheel rims and never will,
or muster the kind of focused concentration really conscientious ethnic
cleansing requires. They’ll all be caught in that special place where
you have to laugh but you can’t, not just because you’re not allowed to
or supposed to but because it’s just plain wrong to laugh in this
situation except you have to because this saintly woman who only
did the things we all ought to do but don’t because of how wound up we are in
our own petty needs and desires died of a dead chicken flying removing
her pancreas at 900 MPH.
But Mother T. is gone and there are no candidates as
good as her for the role of poultry martyr. While I’d personally like to aim my chicken gun
at Michael Stipe, that would be just some damn good comedy and couldn’t
create the cathartic paralysis I’m looking for. So things are on hold
for me and my little movement. At least for now. And this creates the
illusion that I’m not doing much of anything with my life.
But you know what? If that’s your attitude, I’d keep
your mouth shut. Because while no one out there looks ready to fill Mother Theresa’s
sensible Nun shoes just yet, I’m going to need some target practice. I
wouldn’t want to miss when the big day finally comes.
note: F.E.T.A. has no
affiliation with P.E.T.A. Although if a F.E.T.A. member wanted,
he or she could aim that chicken gun at a P.E.T.A. member to
really stir things up.
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