Kirk Hiner's

"When thinking differently just isn't different enough."

Absurd Notion: The New Confidence

By Kirk Hiner

I have many passions in life. Regular readers of my reviews and articles know of my frequent plugs for Queen, the WWF, Kurt Vonnegut and movies with either Steve Martin or swordfighting skeletons...or both. I know that my readers could not care less about what entertains me, but I tell them anyway. It's the kind of guy I am.

The effect of constantly sharing my interests with others is that they come to associate those interests with me. Perhaps that's why I do it...to give them something to remember me by. I can't begin to count the number of times I've received emails or phone calls from people with whom I haven't spoken in a year, telling me, "I heard 'Fat Bottomed Girls' on the radio today and I thought of you." In fact, when Freddie Mercury died, I got sympathy cards in the mail. That's how tightly people connect me with my interests. So they tolerate my loquaciousness, and some even find it endearing.

But this all changes when I mention the Macintosh. Whereas my collection of the Japanese versions of Godzilla movies is just a freakish but harmless character quirk, the fact that I prefer the Macintosh makes me a dangerous fanatic; a cultist.

I'm not the only one who's heard this analogy. Even the press has directly referred to the legion of Macintosh users as a cult; especially during the time of the Waco incident when Apple happened to be having such a difficult run. I was at first concerned by this comparison. I mean, nobody wants to think as differently as David Koresh or Jim Jones. But then I started to see the forest through the trees. Let's say, hypothetically, that the press was right. What if their paranoid delusions, no doubt brought about by some twisted inferiority complex or PC envy, were true. What if we were a cult?

So, brothers and sisters, I propose to you "The New Confidence."

Why that name? Well, the thing about naming a cult is that you have to hide your purpose while still enticing new members. We can't call ourselves "Looneys Bent on World Domination through the MacOS." See, the press frowns on anyone bent on world domination unless they get exclusive rights to cover the conquest. But if we sell to CNN, then we lose the other networks, so everyone hates us and we don't get new members. No, it's important to choose a nice, ambiguous name such as "Order of the Solar Temple" or even "Heaven's Gate." The former sounds like the type of place you'd go to see a Pink Floyd laser light show, and the latter calls to mind cheesie love movies from the early 80s. And what's hotter right now than the early 80s? I mean, I've heard "Come On Eileen" on the radio more in the past three months than I did during all of 1983. So I've chosen for our name "The New Confidence." After all, people like to be confident, and who doesn't enjoy something new?

Next comes the doctrine. The great thing about forming a cult is that you don't really need any sort of original writings to explain your beliefs. Why write entire books like L. Ron Hubbard did when you can just twist one or two passages from the Bible to suit your purpose. I'll do that now, choosing at random from the Old Testament because that's where all the funky stuff is.

Joshua chapter 2, verses 15-16: "So she let them down by a rope through the window, for the house she lived in was part of the city wall. Now she said to them, 'Go to the hills so the pursuers will not find you. Hide yourselves there three days until they return, and then go on your way.' " - New International Version.

There. Perfect. So how do we base an entire cult on those three sentences? First, we have to figure out what our main belief is. The trouble is, compared to some other popular cults of the present or recent past, it's kind of difficult to be original. For example, how can The New Confidence hope to compete with the Taiwan Salvation Church? They believe that, in July of this year, a spaceship will land on Lake Street in Miller, Indiana to deliver them from the apocolypse which will have apparently started by then. We can't beat that, but we might have better luck gaining recruits from House of Yahweh. According to them, not only do you have to change your name to Yahweh to survive the end of world (which is, of course, just around the corner), but you also have to give 30% of your income to their Church. The New Confidence doesn't ask for money. All we require of members is a "Made with Macintosh" button on their website and a subscription to "Mac Home Journal."

All cults are a problem/solution type of deal. Take, for instance, Marshall Applewhite and his Heaven's Gate cult. Their problem? Getting to the next level. Their solution? Vacation in Vegas, order some pizzas, buy some Nike shoes, then kill themselves and hitch a ride on a spaceship flying in the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet.

You know, aside from the suicide bit, that really doesn't sound too bad.

But back to our beliefs; or, more accuratly, what we don't believe. First, we will make no mention of spaceships. This never bodes well for a cult. Even worse is when they predict when the spaceships will arrive. The Church of the Subgenious predicted not only that the spaceships will invade the earth in 1998, but even narrowed it down to July 5th at 7:00 a.m. That never transpired, as far as I know, so what's next for them? Where can that cult possibly go now? No, it's fine to predict the end of the world, just don't claim to know when it will take place.

Second, we will have no official compound. I'm even opposed to offices, to tell the truth, too easy for the Feds to tear gas us if we're all in one room. Instead, our sanctuary will be the internet. Everyone got ICQ?

Third, no members from Texas. They've got enough cults already.

And finally, no Kool Aid. Not because of the whole Jamestown suicide thing, but because I can never get the right mixture of sugar and water, and that frustrates the hell out of me.

So now, what is our main belief? Well, the more obstinate PC users have already picked that out for us; world dominance through the MacOS. Can this be obtained? No, but that's what makes us a cult, right? Besides, it's what our doctrine states. If you'll recall, our Bible verse begins, "So she let them down by a rope through the window, for the house she lived in was part of the city wall." In order to escape the confines of the masses ("city wall"), we must give up the Windows operating system ("through the window").

The second sentence reads, "Now she said to them, 'Go to the hills so the pursuers will not find you.' " Okay, so I have no idea what that has to do with anything, but it does hint of the paranoia that all cults require. That's good. As long as our dismissers fear us a little, we'll always have a bit of an edge.

And finally, "Hide yourselves there three days until they return, and then go on your way.' " This basically translates to: let the PC users berate us all they want. Eventually, they'll have to reinstall Office 97 for the fourth time to stop Word from freezing up during a cut and paste. When they do, we'll be free to go about our business of world conquest. But what's our motivation for this? I haven't quite worked that out yet. I'm open to suggestions, but I'm positive of one element that must be involved: pudding.

Now I realize that I haven't spoken much about our prophet. That's because it's going to be Jennifer Connelly. There's no debating me on this. Don't even try.

So there it is, my friends; The New Confidence. Will we ever achieve our goal? Who cares? Sometimes, it's not so much about where you want to go today, but how you go about getting there. And hasn't this trip been a lot of fun so far? Why, it's almost as much fun as riding a spaceship in the back of a comet. So get your Nikes on, my friends, and meet me in Miller, Indiana, 7:00 sharp!

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Friday, 22-Aug-2008 00:06:34 EDT