The Committee for the Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal
Robert Anton Wilson's response to CSICOP: CSICON.
It started with two old codgers named O'Brian and Nolan discussing the weather. "Terrible rain and wind for this time of year," O'Brian ventured.
"Ah, faith," Nolan replied, "I do not believe it is this time of year at all, at all."
At this, Murphy spoke up. "Ah, Jaysus," he said, "I've never seen a boogerin' normal day." He paused to set down his pint, then added thoughtfully, "And I never met a fookin' average man neither"
[...] Murphy's simple words lit a fire in the subtle and intricate brain of Timothy F.X. Finnegan, who had just finished his own fourteenth pint (de Selby says his fifteenth pint). The next day the aging Finnegan wrote the first two-page outline of the new science he called patapsychology, a term coined in salute to Alfred Jarry's invention of pataphysics.
Finnegan's paper began with the electrifying sentence, "The average Canadian has one testicle, just like Adolph Hitler -- or, more precisely, the average Canadian has 0.96 testicles, an even sadder plight than Hitler's, if the average Anything actually existed." He then went on to demonstrate that the normal or average human lives in substandard housing in Asia, has 1.04 vaginas, cannot read or write, suffers from malnutrition and never heard of Silken Thomas Fitzgerald or Brian Boru. "The normal," he concluded "consists of a null set which nobody and nothing really fits."
[...] Patapsychology begins from Murphy's Law, as Finnegan called the First Axiom, adopted from Sean Murphy. This says,and I quote,"The normal does not exist. The average does not exist. We know only a very large but probably finite phalanx of discrete space-time events encountered and endured." In less technical language, the Board of the College of Patapsychology offers one million Irish punds [around $700,000 American] to any "normalist" who can exhibit "a normal sunset, an average Beethoven sonata, an ordinary Playmate of the Month, or any thing or event in space-time that qualifies as normal, average or ordinary."
I know, I know, I'm a silly nitpicker, but what kind of math is it that gives humanity an average of greater than one vagina apiece? Does that mean that some of you are running around with four and five?
I was going to ask where you kept them and what you did with them, but I really don't think that's the discussion Zed wants to have here, and I'd be wholeheartedly with him on that.
Posted by Mris on January 13 2003 12:33
=v= Hmm. The excerpt makes me regret that I never discussed de Selby's theories with Zed, especially the ones about the intermingling of human and bicycle molecules. These are obscure, but a web search found roundabout mentions at two interesting sites, The Unknown and blather. Of course, we mostly know about de Selby's work through footnotes of a narrative that was lost for 30 years before its publication in 1969.
Posted by Jym on January 27 2003 20:29