The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How He Met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture

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ISBN 1-55634-320-5) Steve Jackson Games also publishes Discordian and Illuminati-inspired games, such as GURPS Illuminati and the Illuminati card game. He and Hill authored the religion's text Principia Discordia, Or, How I Found Goddess, and What I Did to Her When I Found Her. The heavenly body was nicknamed Xena after the character appearing in the television series Xena: Warrior Princess. The Kerry Thornley story is an interesting twist on the 'tragic hero' - a gifted and talented counterculture figure that eventually succumbed to his demons.

Oswald portrayed himself as some sort of martyr who was being made example of by the entire Marine Corps hierarchy, and in particular such authority figures as Sergeant Spar.Kerry decided he wanted nothing further to do with fraternities, and this episode probably turned him off of college altogether. At one point in the dialogue, Kerry tried to change the subject of their conversation, by saying: Let’s talk about something interesting…me, for instance! One year elapsed between the time I began doubting the lone-assassin theory and the beginning of tribulations in my own life suffered at the hands of a man most journalists insinuated was a paranoid. S. Marine Corps for about two years, Thornley had been summoned to active duty in 1958 at age 20, soon after completing his freshman year at the University of Southern California.

K erry Wendell Thornley is known as the co-founder (along with childhood friend Gregory Hill) of Discordianism, in which context he is usually known as Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst or simply Lord Omar. This led Thornley to believe that the US government had somehow been involved, directly or indirectly, in creating and/or supporting these events, personages and phenomena. Not even the electronic dissolution of memory could neutralize these Objectivist toxins within him, no matter how many times his handlers kept pushing the button to keep him raving. After Bill thanked him, and gloated a bit, Greg added: "Yes, I could have heard it even if I was out standing in the hall.

As I read more Wilson I discovered Discordianism was real, and later on I even found a copy of Principia Discordia in the (now long-gone) wonderful Compendium Books in Camden. Aynny's I've-got-the-Hots-for-Capitalism philosophy served to malignantly magnetize the ever mutating vortex of KT's psyche and attracted some kind of negative free market investment forces into its realm. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. While raised Mormon, he explored atheism, anarchism, Objectivism, neo-paganism (a term some claim he coined), Kerista, and Buddhism. All of this I took to be a sign of his interest in the subject, and not as a sign of any active commitment to the Communist ends.

Later, the former Marine came to believe that "Gary Kirstein" had in reality been senior CIA officer and future Watergate burglar E. But because the book was based on Oswald, it remains an eerie novelty, like the appearance of Fidel Castro as an extra in a Busby Berkeley film.Both men had shared a common interest in society, culture, literature and politics, and whenever duty placed them together, had discussed such topics as George Orwell's famous novel Nineteen Eighty-Four and the philosophy of Marxism, particularly Oswald's interest in the latter. In all this book is a strange journey into a past that is sometimes disconcerting, sometimes amusing, and at other times infuriating. He was also a key player in the history if independent zines, printing his own one-page "wall newspapers" in the mid-'70s, well before the zine craze caught on in the '80s. Thornley had wound up at Arlington, a Washington suburb, and had moved into Shirlington House, a first-class apartment building where he worked as doorman. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform.

Both the Secret Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been to the restaurant by then to question me. A "Fifth Edition" consisting of a single Western Union telegram page filled with the letter M was published as an appendix to the Loompanics and SJ Games re-printings of the 4th Edition. His first stop was El Toro Marine Base, located outside Santa Ana, California, where Kerry met up with an infamous character in history, Lee Harvey Oswald, the future alleged-to-be-assassin of John F. However the Fool ended up occupying the Hanged Man's place in a Tarot deck that had been stacked against him from day one. Alden has professionally published news/sports/humorous/and feature articles, poems, columns, reviews, stories, scripts, books, and school lunch menus.It was Kerry who first introduced Bill Stephens to the powerful poetic works of William Blake, and the philosophy of experiencing everything to excess.