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

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Later, the former Marine came to believe that "Gary Kirstein" had in reality been senior CIA officer and future Watergate burglar E. When you’re talking about immortality, space colonization, and brain engineering, it seems reasonable to start by acknowledging how little we know or can foresee, as well as the strong possibility that we might be totally wrong. Discordianism can best be described as a "revelation of the doctrine of chaos and the worship of the Goddess Eris.

However, the Kennedy Assassination--though obviously an important event in the storyline--is only one sub plot of many that appear.If there ever was a perennial scapegoat of the 60's counterculture it would have to be Kerry Thornley, one of the founding members of the patently anarchist Discordian Society. Things like this had a way of irritating the military establishment usually personified by the Staff NCOs, and there were always people who delighted in baiting superiors with seemingly disrespectful remarks or an indifferent you don’t scare me type attitude.

While reading the final chapters of this sad, wonderful, tragic, inspiring/electrifying book, I flashed that the `evil' Goddess Eris, who brought a well known apple to a banquet on Mount Olympus celebrating the wedding of King Peleus and the Sea Nymph Thetis, decided to jump ahead a few thousand years into the 1960's and toss another solid, golden fruit into the chaos heart of a Discordian party, a fruit upon which was engraved, 'Who is the most paranoid of all? Especially interesting are the parts about "brother-in-law," the shadowy CIA/neo-nazi/cowboy who Thornley came to believe had brainwashed him into assisting Lee Harvey Oswald. Both were active members of the drama club, in which Kerry landed leading roles in such productions as The Remarkable Incident at Carson Corners and Jenny Kissed Me.Oswald, with a thick Russian accent, commented wryly, Ah ha, collective farm lecture, which brought a lot of laughs from his fellow Marines. When the owner picked the individual out of the photos, Weisberg contacted him and told him he needed to get an attorney as he was about to be indicted for perjury; at this point in a taped interview Kerry Thornley admitted committing perjury and admitted that he had been the one to pick up the FPCC leaflets. Adam Gorightly: Robert Anton Wilson claims that the Discordians were waving the peace sign a few years before them damn hippies and yippies started up.

Still, it is remarkably insightful into his personal character and is based on information from people who were close to him.Oddly enough, this isn’t always true within science fiction, which deals by definition in uncertainty.

Every now and then we had to give up our Saturday morning liberty to go march in one of those parades . While the Discordian Society wasn't the only 'spoof' religion created in the '60s (another example is the Reformed Druids of North America founded in 1963), it was one of the most ingenious. Garrison suspected the assassination was part of a New Orleans-based conspiracy, and wanted to find a “second Oswald. Wilson’s ingenuity shines through every page that he ever wrote, and he had such an abundance of it that he became intensely skeptical of where it led.Master Sergeant Spar, our section chief, jumped up on a fender one day and said, "All right, everybody gather around," and Oswald said in a very thick Russian accent, "Ah ha, collective farm lecture," in a very delighted tone.