SubGenius Class Starts on Monday!

MaybeLogic Academy Online Course:
Running Your Own Cult (Do's and Don'ts) and
HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF THE SUBGENIUS
Presented by Rev. Ivan Stang and other SubGenius Old-Timers
8-week multimedia online course from April 28 - June 22

http://www.maybelogic.org/stangcrs.htm

This isn't held in a classroom in Ohio. This is an online course that takes place on a slick interactive multimedia website. You can "attend" from anywhere in the world, and you can log in any time of day or night. Everything can be downloaded and saved for later, too.

Last year, we had exactly 50 online "students" sign up. Many signed up after the classes had already started; I guess word got around. I wasn't expecting such a large online audience, and really went overboard. Each week I wrote a chapter of text that described various parts of SubGenius real-life history in hopefully funny detail, and I scanned hundreds of documents from each period so that the students could read our older zines, early works, and even organizational notes and letters to each other. (For instance, the correspondence between us and R. Crumb, and Mark Mothersbaugh, are included, as are the outlines and basic scribbled notes that became Pamphlet #1 and THE BOOK OF THE SUBGENIUS.)

I spend a lot of time describing the high points and especially poignant or hilarious moments involving the bizarre characters we met over the years while developing "Bob's" Church. The idea was to find the real-life turning points that make good stories.

Because the Maybe Logic Academy website allows downloading of large files like videos and audio, I went through our archives of video and tapes going back to 1977. I turned hundreds of hours of audio into MP3s, and converted ancient VHS tapes to MPEG videos that any computer (and many DVD players) can play.

SubGenii may be interested to know that the course allows you to download, if you want to, THREE DVDs' worth of audio, video, and graphics. This includes ALL the dozens of Media Barrage and Bobsongs tapes, all the edited SubConvention tapes, a ton of video unavailable anywhere else, and thousands of scanned photos and out-of-print magazines, including most of the 7 giant Stark Fist printed issues and "Bob's" Favorite Comics.

Students don't have to download all this stuff; I expect that most people last year read the text and looked at all the scanned graphics like zines and letters, and then downloaded just the main bits of multimedia that interested them. Or they downloaded all of it and saved it for later. No one could possibly have time to absorb all the hours of media we offer while the course is going on.

As far as requirements go, I am a pretty Slack teacher. Energetic students can work to design their own cults -- there were both funny and serious ones last year -- and less workaholic students can just lurk. It's not like you are graded or anything, although last year I did provide a diploma at the end.

The most fun part of the course for many is probably the interactive aspect. The course has its own online forum, like a newsgroup, where people can leave comments or questions any time. I answered a lot of questions there in great detail, covering stuff I hadn't in the main text. We also had chat room "live" sessions every few nights, at various times of day so that folks in distant time zones could tune in conveniently. (There were students from all over the world.)

Because I got all that scanning done last year, and a detailed history of the Church written, I'll have a lot more time this time to expound, tell embarrassing stories and do online chats with the students. Last year it was extremely hectic for me, but this year I'm looking forward to having time to flesh out the material with more and funnier detail.

I will also try to drag in more Guest Instuctators like Dr. Philo Drummond, Onan Canobite, G. Gordon Gordon, Dr. Hal, LIES, maybe even Nenslo!

So if you're really curious about the real-life side of SubGenius -- "What are these people REALLY like?" -- or if you simply like bargains, for that $135 you get media that would cost about a thousand bucks . . . if you bought the items one at a time, and if the items were available in our catalog. Most aren't. (Although just about all the media in our catalog is also included, in downloadable form!)

Here are the other instructors of various classes so you can see how highly faluted it is:
http://www.maybelogic.org/instructors.htm

As you can see, MaybeLogic Academy is a class act, with some of the most visionary artists and writers of our time involved. (They snuck us in the back door when no one was looking.)

But most important of all, here is the shopping cart:

https://www.deepleafproductions.com/deepleafcart/home.php?cat=2

See you in the virtual classroom! (You don't need to shave or dress up.)

Seattle, Hamburg, X-Day; SubGenius Online Course; SubCondoms; videos; MORE

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GETTING RID OF THE ADS AND ASSES OF ALT.SLACK

Praise Rev. ChuckKey for bringing this to our attention.

Many of us LOVE the main SubGenius forum, alt.slack. The fact that it is unmoderated and uncensored is one of the best things about it, but that has also lately allowed a drawback: floods of both unsightly ads, and nonsense floods (the bad kind) from disturbed SubGenius wanna-bes. These seriously cut down on the Slack in alt.slack.

If, like many, you are using Google Groups through web browsers like IE or Firefox to look at alt.slack (as opposed to a newsreader and Usenet service, which already come with these anti-spam features), the simple installation I'm about to describe will allow you to "killfile" unwanted ad spam and chronic assholes whose posts you do not want to see.

Imagine never again having to scroll/wade through floods of nonsense posted by Chinese spammers or drunk, mentally ill Pinks just to get to the JUICY STUFF!

This works on Mac OS, Windows, Linux, or any other platform using Firefox as a browser.

Go to this site:

http://www.penney.org/ggkiller.html

There are three links there -- one to download Firefox browser, one for GreaseMonkey (a Firefox extention), and one for the latest Google Groups Killfile Script.

#1. If you aren't already using Firefox, you might want to try it. It's more secure than Internet Explorer. On Macs, it's much more stable than Safari. There are ways to copy over your bookmarks.

#2. Now go to the GreaseMonkey site and click on DOWNLOAD GREASEMONKEY and then "ADD TO FIREFOX" on the resulting page. It will automatically download the extension and put it where it needs to go in Firefox. (Ignore the warnings re: malicious software! Show no fear!)

#3. Then you must RESTART FIREFOX. You will probably be prompted to do this, although in my case the prompt window was hidden at first.

#4. Now you reopen a Firefox window, return to http://www.penney.org/ggkiller.html and go to the next link, "Latest Google Groups Killfile Script:" http://www.penney.org/googleGroups.user.js

If you've done everything right so far, just clicking on that link (which ends in "user.js," telling Firefox it's a script) makes the newly installed GreaseMonkey present a dialog box with the option for installing that Google Groups Killfile Script. Ignore the warnings and let it install the script.

The next time you go to Google Groups, EVERY POST now has the option of "IGNORE USER" between the name of the poster, and the PROFILE link. (On Windows this may appear as an X in a box as well.) You can also IGNORE THREAD. This is good for killing crossposted flame wars from other newsgroups.

Once you have clicked the IGNORE USER link for a given asshole, the next time you return to alt.slack, all posts initiated by that asshole will have VANISHED, and you won't see any future posts by that asshole either.

If you have trouble, here are the instructions that helped me:

http://wiki.greasespot.net/Greasemonkey_Manual:Installing_Scripts

Under TOOLS menu (on Mac Firefox anyway) there's now a GreaseMonkey option where you can uninstall the script or reinstall it.

Finally, even Googleposting Jackadandies, to borrow a Nensletic term, can truly and effectively "plonk."