A badly kept secret about myself is that I suffer from a sci-fi/fantasy/murder/mystery deficiency. It’s a bit like dyslexia (which oddly enough is a very difficult word to spell… is this sarcasm on the part of the non-dyslectics?). Anyway it’s a bit like dyslexia in that I like, enjoy and get sci-fi/fantasy films but it’s really grueling work for me to read even the shorter books. Reading Lord of the Rings was almost as difficult as reading Joyce’s Ulysses – and I enjoyed the latter more! In the interest of honesty I admit to reading Dan Brown’s Da Vinci code but it made me cringe with embarrassment at its banality and silliness – I would have preferred to read a porn magazine on the bus but I realized that the rest of the bus probably didn’t care what I read.
Due to this deficiency I am often being educated by more knowledgeable people (mainly sci-fi/fantasy nerds and most under 16) about points I need to know. Most recently one of my students emailed me a link to the Wikipedia page on the fascinating Celine’s Laws.
Celine’s Laws are a series of three laws regarding government and social interaction attributed to the fictional character Hagbard Celine from Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! Trilogy. Celine, a gentleman anarchist, serves as a mouthpiece for Wilson’s libertarian, anarchist and sometimes completely uncategorizable ideas about the nature of mankind. Celine’s Laws are outlined in the trilogy by a manifesto titled Never Whistle While You’re Pissing.
The three laws are
- National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity.
- Accurate communication is possible only in a non-punishing situation.
- An honest politician is a national calamity.
Pessimistic and reasonably accurate. I like it, very dystopian so I guess I have found another sci-fi/fantasy book to punish myself with.
Oh, I don’t mean that I don’t read fiction. Right now I am on the final chapters of the brilliant and strange Haruki Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase.