Spencer Dryden
Once again I was stuck on first sight. Disbelief. It's
not a word I use regularly. I had to play around with it for a while before
remembering suspension of disbelief. Oh yeah, that's a really important thing.
They (that great mass of experts) say that suspension of disbelief is essential
in writing science fiction. I think it is present in all fiction to some
degree, and essential for daily living.
They (there they are again), they say that we are
defined by our beliefs. Fanatics of all stripes like to recite beliefs boldly,
loudly. Pledging allegiance is a good thing, most of the time, but I didn't
know what 'pledge' or 'allegiance' was when I first learned to recite the bit.
For any of you who are old enough to remember, back
in the fifties, when nuclear war seem inevitable, there was a movement to put
permanent ID bracelets on all children. I can still see the bracelet. The front had identifying information. The
Pledge of Allegiance was on the back. I'm doing this from memory and not
research, but as I recall, the Catholic Church had a fit, claiming it was the
the feared mark of the beast from the Revelations (13:16). (No doubt there were
other groups with similar reservations.) Secondly, a Roman Catholic in good
standing could not embrace any organization that claimed affiliation with the
almighty. We could not, for instance, belong to the YMCA or the Masons, because
both secular organizations had ties to the deity. They (once again, that
disembodied group) capitulated and made a special bracelet for Catholic kids
that omitted the Pledge of Allegiance. The bracelets were also made removable,
which defeated the whole purpose. Can you believe it? A little disbelief would
have been in order.
Disbeliefs put order in our lives just like beliefs.
I don't believe in zombies or vampires. I do believe in UFO's, alien
encounters, and time travel.(As well as the Oxford comma, which I just
demonstrated in the last sentence.) I don't believe in reincarnation, but I do
believe there is a spiritual realm beyond, or just out of reach of this one. I
do believe I have a muse. I try earnestly to disbelieve in critics-even when
they are right. I embrace conspiracy theories for the sheer thrill of it.
Unfortunately I don't believe the Masons rule the world, even though I want to.
They let my brother in. He's a shrine clown who rides around on a go-cart,
invading children's peaceful dreams. Maybe in that one sense Masons do rule the
world, the world of our childhood fears. Who really likes clowns anyway-besides
other clowns? (Sorry if offended any of you clowns, but stop scaring people
will ya.)
I believe in the power of marketing. I only wish I
was better at it. Talk about suspension of disbelief; the idea that long
legged, narrow hipped, large busted women will love me for the beer I drink is
a billion dollar delusion fostered by the NFL. Roger Goodell (NFL Comissioner)
does rule the world, attended by a host of clowns. It's really frightening. I wish that enjoying football could be detached from the tawdry elements of the game behind the game. But they (damn, will "they" ever go away?) they say that by writing pornography we are feeding the chain of sexual enslavement. Our disbeliefs help us make sense of our paradoxical choices.
Here in Minnesota we gave a billion dollars of public funds to a
couple of clowns who own our football team so they could build a new stadium
where we can pay ten dollars for a beer. The pitch was economic development.
Mercy. I'm only asking for a buck for one of my books. I wish I could get that kind of suspension of disbelief going for my stuff.
It was big trouble for the Church on the day it was
announced that the earth revolved around the sun and not the other way around.
I'm quite certain it didn't happen in a day. I think at the 700 Club they still
believe it. They are looking for Noah's Ark and trying to explain away dinosaurs. They are also one of the voices that condemns our craft.
It's going to be a big day of rethinking when we
finally admit that we have been visited by aliens and worse, that the seeds of
life didn't spontaneously arise here, they blew in with cosmic dust. Carl Sagan
used to say we were made from 'star stuff' but that means organic as well as
inorganic. I can't recall which Kurt Vonnegut story gave the perfect
explanation, that an alien craft dumped their holding tanks here and life arose
from that primordial compost. They don't want us to believe it. Roger Goodell
will have the NFL rights in an instant, if he doesn't already. Send in the clowns. Suppose the aliens
are really here for the beer and big breasted, long legged women? They could do
worse.
When auditioning for a spot on an inventors TV show
I signed a contract that gave the producers rights to the universe, for
eternity, to languages and media not yet in existence. Maybe they'll want my
grill on the planet Mongo. Or worse yet, some alien group is going to sue me
for patent violation. Maybe my grill is a meme like the Clovis point ,racing
though the space time continuum and it just landed in my head. If it ever gets written, my third installment
of the Gueschtunkina Ray Gun series uses this concept to explain how the weapon
gets across space and time. I'm still working on the suspension of disbelief
for that notion. But why not? Really, when you keep breaking it down,
everything is just vibrations. Why couldn't vibrations migrate across all kinds
of barriers we only think exist but in fact don't. Check out the Multiverse
Theory sometime.
Well, I see its time for Thursday Night Football.
Nice visiting with you all, but there are some large breasted women and cold bottles of Coors
that need my attention.
