A Journal of Humor and Verbal Anarchy

 

new cult on the block

Move over, Twelve Tribes. The new cult on the block, the Thirteen Cabals, have arived in Ithaca to assume the mantle of most bizarre socio-religious amalgam to grace the sublunar landscape. Hey, it's the lake waters, glowing out there in the moonlight like a big gatorade slick that attract these whackos.

We've all read now about how the 12 Tribes, that zany bunch of communards who follow some Arkansas bible thumping con-man named Earl Spriggs (sounds like a character Humphrey Bogart would play) recently plopped down $1.5 million for the Home Dairy building and the Ithaca Fitness Center. What readers probably don't know is that many group members eat at the local soup kitchen. Jesus saves on meals so he can afford to speculate on real estate. Adherents embrace a heady stew of Mormon-like Judeo-Christian mytho-gibberish with some communism thrown in for flavoring. The matriarch of the Ithaca contingent looks like Colleen Dewhurst dressed in KungFu pajamas. This Saturday a bunch of 12 Tribesmen were parked in front of the Home Dairy building on the Commons, dispensing free Mate (their own blend of java) to passerbys, endearing themselves to the public and the hardworking competition at Juna's.

Well, if Jesus saves, Pythagoras hoards. The Thirteen Cabals descended on Ithaca this week like a StarTrek convention, dropping a cool $25 million to buy Center Ithaca, the Short Stop Deli, the old CVS, Simeon's, 3D Light, Autumn Leaves and Talmadge Tire. And, yes, they all dress like Mr. Spock, accept Pythagoras and Lester Maddox as their personal messiahs, advocate having safe sex with robots, go around picking Macintosh computer components from dumpsters, assemble the parts into a time machine that transports them back to 302 BC to participate in Graeco-Roman bowling tournaments. They walk around Ithaca, lugging copies of the Kaballah and Monopoly board games under their arms, dressed in pink jumpsuits. In other words, the Cabalists pretty much blend right in to the I- Zone's human parade.

It's nice to see that people believe in something these days besides shopping.

Ez knows a thing or two about cults. He was once inducted into the Rotary. Yeah, he was living in a place called Pleasant Valley, New York. As you may well imagine, there wasn't much else to do besides join a covert coterie of businessmen and golfers whose mission was to make sure that everyone in the world wore pocket protectors. It took a couple of weeks of deep deprogramming in a Motel 8 before Ez finally went cold turkey on those plastic do-hickeys that almost ruined his life.

Cults come and go. The hills around Ithaca are dotted with hidden encampments, abandoned, dilipidated compounds that had formerly housed Babas and gurus, brainwashed hippies, mantra-mouthing flower children, born again Hindi-Lutherans, free-loving lotus lizards.

It's when they move into town that you start to have a problem.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 7:39 AM