The caffeine buzz hits. My eyes crack open, the lids feeling as if they’ve been pried apart and shunted open with crowbars, a raw ache tinging the corners in protest. The neurochemical change is slow, hindered by weeks of abuse of the bean, but it assuredly happens. An irritation sets in- a repression of energy, a heightened speed in the cycle of thoughts that twist away like a small, vicious tempest- a state of things unique not to me, but ubiquitous to everybody but zen masters. The average human being, caught up in the omnipresent complexities of life in civilization, lives within sight of psychosis, the bubbling cauldron of small dread and silent fears, the FNORDs of our lives, so pervasive that, except under duress, we fail to truly notice its leering fangs and glinting, narrowed eyes that peer at us just outside the range of our vision.

The damned, terrible bean has twisted me and ravaged my words. I’m in the perfect mood for journalism.

Ten minutes before the bus, and I observe as much of the campus as I can. A protest has been rallied- immigration rights, the rights of the impoverished, lots of vibrant and symbolic black and red. Dried and spilled blood. I recognize a few faces- no friends, but vaguely familiar faces, from classes, or even from high school. The gay rights advocate, pale of complexion and a mess of clashing hair dyes, once went to my high school. Used to blog often, and to me, was fascinating as a perspective into the daily thoughts of an average homosexual. Another- a man with the dark, bird’s-nest beard- part of the student body. An organization I have traditionally not cared much about- the ASBs of any school have a tendency to be tangential to the geek life, ruled, as it were, by the tides and fashions of the yuppies-in-training.

But here’s something weird.

He finishes applying the last, bold stroke of vivid black to the sign before I can take a proper picture of it. He seems in haste. Irritated. His close-cut crop of faded pink hair not doing anything for his blotchy and increasingly red face. It is obvious at first glance why he seems defensive and irritated- a different flavor of irritation from my chemically wrought neurosis.

He’s carrying a sign that says “End Women’s Suffrage.”

…what? Is this red-tinged, twitchy, caffeinated lucidity a lie? Has my own brain played a sham on me? I blink rapidly, scanning my internal dictionary to see if my first impression was a falsehood- no. I’m lucid. I’m reading well. I have my glasses on, and while the continued degradation of these eyeballs have cursed me with continuously flawed vision, they cast no doubt upon my reading comprehension.

“Am I reading that right?” I asked, pressing for further verification. Senses lie. “Does that say what I really think it says?”

An immediate attack! “Do you know what women’s suffrage is?” he demands of me, spittle flying in the bright, warm spring light. “Are you informed about this issue?” He turns and yells, not waiting for a response. “Then get informed, pal!” He stomps off, his meek little blonde girlfriend patting him on the shoulders as he stalks off towards the civil rights protest. His shoulders set, his steps determined and quick. He is, clearly, a man on a mission.

But what mission? Was that a fellow Discordian? Have I just been made an unwitting spectator of yet another part of Our Glorious Lady’s Operation Mindfuck? Certainly, the half-intelligent Erisian would attempt to utilize the similarity between the words “Suffering” and “Suffrage” to attempt to warp the mind of the unsuspecting. Indeed, the ludicrous situation seems quite likely a low farce, meant to stir attention and dilute the inherently ludicrous student protest.

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? How the hell do you tell these days? A little more than a quarter of our people still think that the war in Iraq was justified. A little more than that is still willing to trust our criminal executive administration. These are the same people that think creationism is a legitimate science, that the police are out to serve their best interests, that the government’s never waged an unjust war, and that a fat old man can and will commit multiple acts of breaking and entering one night a year, for the sole sake of delivering presents to such children that fits the self-proclaimed authority figure’s ideal of a perfect Christian child (yeah, like that isn’t suspicious). How do you tell the difference between farce and reality these days?

Scratch a satire, and you get a documentary, trying to sneak in. And that’s the sad Truth of it all.

Mahalo,

Gonzo Mehum the First, Pope
Erisian Noosphere of North America
Hail Hail Eris Eris Eris

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