Sunday, February 13, 2005

Lo, I Say Unto You (or: Who Is Cult Abandon?)

This week's "Daring Escape" prize goes to your hero and mine, Crowbar, for managing to extricate herself from the lethal clutches of the Dark Side! What, you didn't know Crowbar had been captured? Where the hell did you think she was for the last week? Do you think she would just wantonly abandon you with no goodbye, no 'see ya later', no "I'm bored now"? See, this is one of the dangers inherent in SuperSpydom - you disappear off the face of the earth and everyone just thinks it's par-for-the-course and forgets to look for you.

No, gentle reader, Crowbar did not just get bored and start watching old WKRP re-runs rather than talk to you - she has been deeply ensnared in the Dark Side web, fighting her way toward the surface. You may not have noticed but Dark Side activity has been running at unprecedented levels for the last few weeks, leaving almost no downtime for commandos, rebels and secret agents to write dazzling communiques to their legions of followers.

So what, exactly, HAS our hero been up to?

Most notably, this week saw multiple appearances by one of our favourite secret identities, Cultivate-A-Band-Of-Neophytes (Code-name: Cult Abandon). In charge of the Crowbar Ministry Of Information, Cult Abandon goes into action when the Resistance has need of a pseudo-intellectual to go out and pose as a credible academic. Cult plays this role beautifully and has managed to insinuate herself and our Resistance Force propaganda into university lecture halls, Dark Side staff trainings, conferences, various publications and the like. Among other exploits, Cult lectured this week on the topic of "Access To Justice" to a law class of about 350 new minds, primed and ready for capture by the Dark Side. We in the Resistance believe in sneaking in early and wooing these maleable young recruits away from the language of PURE EVIL that pervades our institutions of "higher-learning" whenever possible.

The law school lectures are always challenging, being delivered, as they are, to individuals already much-inclined to believe the Dark Side rhetoric and view of the world. This one always begins with the prof admonishing them that "they WILL be tested on this" (yes, people actually do say that somewhere other than on t.v.), and blurry, early-morning resentment from already-bored students. Then Cult starts talking and even those of us at HQ who have seen it before begin to sense a growing disturbance in the Force. Cult is highly trained in the arts of Mind-Control, Re-education, Deprogramming, and generally clubbing her enemies into submission with truth, and this weeks appearance seems to have been no exception. In fact, an unprecedented amount of Cult Abandon fanmail has flooded HQ in the subsequent hours and days. Here's an excerpt from one of our favourites:

"To start off I'd like to tell you that it is my first year here, and this was the best lecture I've attended all year. To tell you the truth, I found myself asking why I was here and doing this program."
It is that second line that infuses the crew here at HQ with hope. Cult has once again worked her magic, sucking meaning out of young lives, and replacing it with doubt. Doubt is the beginning of questioning, questioning is the beginning of deconstructing, deconstructing is the beginning of understanding, understanding is the beginning of challenging, and challenging is the beginning of revolution.

Two more speaking invitations have rolled into Crowbar Headquarters as a result of this most recent deprogramming and we're thinking of increasing the budget line for the Ministry of Information (our CFO, Con Allyerd, has just snorted derisively as she collects loose change from under the couch cushions).

Postscript:
A new identity surfaced this week, one even those of us in-the-know at Crowbar HQ were unfamiliar with. At the end of what is known as a "check-in", (the process of sharing your current mood, thoughts, or state of mind at the beginning of a support group), a young woman finished up with, "That's it for me and I'm gonna pass it over to my little homeslice now...". Crowbar, who was facilitating at the time, was shaken from her reverie when someone said, "um, I think she means you."
That is officially the first time anyone in the Crowbar crew has been referred to as "My Little Homeslice". We think we're flattered, but we'll have to get back to you on that.

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