Oxymoron, Onomotopaeia, and Other Long Words

I'd like to introduce you to someone I've been reading for a whole blinking week now. Meet Central Scrutinizer, conspiracy theorist and possible paranoid schizophrenic. Since February of 2007, he/she (no offense intended to any of my hermaphroditic readers) has taken up the cause of all the victims of the Discordian movement, which in Scrutinizer's mind must be legion.

Enter the work of this mad genius, The Concordian Movement blog, wherein Central Scrutinizer does all of the thinking for us so our brains won't fizzle and pop. This "Discordian organization" is vile, and must be vanquished! With the all too familiar cry, "think of the children", Scrutinizer rants on and on about a joke religion (not taken seriously by any of its adherents by design) as if it were the largest and most sinister terrorist organization ever to crawl out of the primordial slime.

While digging in this muddy blog, it occurred to me yet again that it's very easy to unite people against something, and yet infinitely more difficult to get people united for something. It's easy to feel as if you're part of something when you adopt an "us" versus "them" mentality, and ally yourself with those who hate the same things you do. Slap the label "terrorist" on any group and you're likely to attract a long line of sheeple to do your bidding. It's very easy to see what this blogger is against.

For the life of me, however, I couldn't find out what this blogger was for, no matter how deeply I looked. In the first blog some interesting candidates were provided:

1. Censorship - Scrutinizer proclaims that Discordian materials are "obscenity" and "blasphemy", and therefore people against Discordians must support the legislation designed to censor what can be made available online, and also put pressure on online services to shut down websites they find "objectionable".

2. Reporting legal activity to the police - This one really gets me. If I am a Discordian, and your teenage son starts a conversation with me in a coffee house, you're going to call the police? Wow. I've broken no laws that I know of by having a conversation with a minor. I'd love to see this one in action. I suppose there is no law against being insanely paranoid.

3. Driving traffic to offensive websites - "If you notice Discordian activity, in your community, your workplace, your online service or elsewhere, keep an eye on it and alert others." Yay. Instant blog traffic. Look over here! Look here!

In a later blog post, Scrutinizer proclaims that "we are a people who have decided to put people into power who are smart enough and self-sacrificing enough to do the thinking of an entire population for them". This bizarre line of reasoning culminates with the following pronouncement: "If we allow the youth to think for themselves we would soon have a country composed of 100 million small countries. WE ARE NOT A PEOPLE IF WE ARE ALL IN IT FOR OURSELVES. End of Discussion." I think I smell a rat. Look at the last line of the latest post:

"So, I beg my readers to please be vigilant, and stay awake, try not to believe every *cockamamie* story you read."

Wouldn't that require you to think for yourself? I think Scrutinizer may well be in league with the "anarchoterrorist cult" he/she is claiming to be against. This is another possibility. As is this:




I'd like to think that this blog is Discordian comedy, because it's provided me with hours of hilarity. The very concept of an organization based upon disorganization is a veritable cornucopia of lulz, but I know people like this blogger. They DO exist, and this may be one of them. I sincerely hope it's a joke, but it's sad that it may not be.