1. Thou shalt be greedy.In this world, everyone (especially politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen, and other thieves) is trying to steal your horseshit from you. Protect your horseshit. Be ready to sock a motherfucker in the eye if they try to steal your horseshit.
2. Thou shalt be disruptive.Because the way the world runs right now is horseshit, it is the duty of every Horseshittist to disrupt, distort, and disturb the smooth operation of this pathetic planet, especially where business, politics, bureaucracy, and oppressive law enforcement are concerned.
3. Thou shalt be unpredictable.Society fears the unpredictable. Being insane, being bizarre, being non-normal—these are all effective tools for disrupting society, and they can sometimes be utilized to generate cash, which you can then greedily protect! (CASH is not horseshit.)
4. Thou shalt be angry.Horseshittists are angry by nature. Chances are, if you have been drawn to this “philosophy” then you are already angry. If you are not angry at all the horseshit going on around you, then you cannot see. If you are not angry, and you fancy yourself a Horseshittist, fake your anger until you look around enough that you become angry fur real. And it’s important (as you will see in a future Commandment) that you ENJOY being angry, revel in it, be joyously furious!
5. Thou shalt manufacture your own entertainment.The entertainment industry is horseshit, of course, because most objects/experiences that we can BUY are created by a committee for a fictional, statistically imagined, “target market.” HORSE-SHIT! We are individuals with personal histories, personal tastes, personal desires, and other personal horseshit. Therefore, we are uniquely qualified to create our own entertainment objects, which express our own, unique flavor of horseshit. It is also wonderful to take money away from big businesses that try to sell you their generic, mass market, non-specific objects or experiences (horseshits.)
BONUS POINTS if you can get cash from others who want to buy YOUR horseshit stories or horseshit paintings or horseshit movies, etc….
[Doubting Thomas question: Why produce more horseshit when the world is already full of it? Because, by producing YOUR OWN horseshit, which is competing with the corporate horseshit, you are DISRUPTING the normal flow of production and consumption, (which is horseshit,) and you can create your horseshit to be as ANGRY and as UNPREDICTABLE as you want it to be. In addition, you may be able to make some CASH with your horseshit, which is cool, and then you can be GREEDY about protecting the profits from your horseshit project, which will both DISRUPT big business and help you ENJOY your life (see Commandment 10, below.)]
6. Thou shalt be prolific.The goal of every GOOD Horseshittist is to overwhelm the world with as many horseshit gestures as possible: pranks, hoaxes, nonsense, jokes, zines, novels, poems, art objects, blogs, performances, songs, spectacles, showings, “fashion” designs, puppet shows, events, accidents, incidents, and any other horseshit you can imagine. Hundreds, thousands, millions of small gestures. Floods, tidal waves, tsunamis of horseshit should be produced and projected or performed upon the world, for the purpose of drowning the corporate horseshit mechanism and strangling the day-to-day operations of all the societal / religious / bureaucratic / advertising horseshit that is inflicted upon us, all day, every day, AMEN.
7. Thou shalt find inspiration in the work of other Horseshittists and in historical, proto-Horseshittists.*
[*Sophists, punks, Dadas, Fluxurs, Gnostics, alchemists, Absurdists, hippies, Surrealists, Pop Artists, Satanists, Beats, Symbolists, Romantics, New Wavers, late nighters, Fugs, crazies, cross-dressers, kooks, and all the other weirdos, thugs, revolutionaries, and freaks.]
Historically, most societies have endured wackos, dissidents, non-conformists, and other disruptors of the societal flow. In some cases, such as shamen or anti-establishment artists who have been absorbed by corporate capitalism, not many, but in some cases the Horseshitters have become important members of their societies: creating art, furthering the sciences, causing spectacles, changing mass public opinions, or even causing or assisting with revolutions. In most cases, however, Horseshittists and proto-Horseshittists die, relatively unknown and poor, only appreciated years or even decades after they went away, which sucks.
In our current, science-fiction world of instant publication and world-wide communication, it should be MUCH easier for Horseshitters to get their particular brands of horseshit in front of humans who will appreciate it—and maybe even give them some CASH for it, which would be F.A.B. In addition, the ACCESS to historical data which the magical (yet truly and completely horseshitty) electronic networks provide makes it ridiculously easy to learn about historical Horseshittists’ and proto-Horseshittists’ activities and personalities, which leads directly into the next Commandment…
8. Thou shalt be knowledgeable, particularly of your own brand of horseshit.If you are a painter, know everything there is to know about that horseshit, from cave paintings to contemporary practitioners. If you are into pranks, find out which neanderthal invented the whoopy-cushion. KNOW YOUR HORSESHIT! The ease of access to information, thanks to the electronic information super-highway, (at least for those Horseshittists in countries where the internet is everywhere,) makes researching nearly any topic so simple, requiring only time and devotion, that IGNORANCE is a Horseshittist SIN! (The idea of “sin” is, of course, complete and utter horseshit. The idea of “original sin,” however, is very appealing, particularly if the sin is SO original and shocking that those who participate in it make the news, get arrested, and then live to write a book about their experiences and get CASH!)
Bottom line: Become an EXPERT at your kind of horseshit, and feel free to share that expertise (perhaps for a small fee) with other Horseshittists to help lift them out of their sinful state of horseshit ignorance!
[Side note: It may be beneficial to the Horseshittist cause to create a catalog or archive list, possibly as an online database, of important and/or amusing Horseshittist or proto-Horseshittist personalities, events, pranks, movements, nonsense, etc., to help inspire new acts of Horshittistry. Who are the Horseshit giants whose shoulders we can straddle in order for us to fling our own horseshit that much further?]
9. Thou shalt be skeptical.One of the downest of down sides of our horseshit digital age is the massive proliferation of ignorant, false, inaccurate, incomplete, and misleading information. If something seems too good to be true, it’s probably horseshit. If something seems too BAD to be true, it’s also probably horseshit. (If something IS true, it is, again, probably horseshit, but that’s a subject for a different discussion.) Do not be fooled, taken in, misled, or robbed of your dignity, or more importantly, of your CASH, because of false information. If ANYONE is going to spread lies, false rumors, half-truths, or misinformation, especially when money can be made by doing it, it should be US raking it in, not them.
Research, check sources, use critical thinking skills, and don’t get suckered! (Again, if you don’t know HOW to do these things then fake it until you learn!)
10. Thou shalt enjoy yourself.By a cosmic fluke, an accident of nature, by a bazillion to one chance, you exist! And you have no idea for how long that will continue to be the case. Do not waste the one, meager, fleeting, unrepeatable chance that you have to exist on horseshit that does not make you happy. Eat the ice-cream. Sing the songs. Enjoy your body, and other people’s bodies (unless they are screaming—that’s a bad thing.) Stay up too late. Take the vacation. Go for the walk…
It’s all horseshit, so you might as well enjoy the horseshit you’ve got for as long as you’ve got it!
Start your engines…
—Mr. Smog Monster
[Originally posted 7 Mar. 2013 @ The Primitive Entertainment Workshop.]
