<MSTing> 5/5 "Bloodlines/An Open Window"
peasporr...@hotmail.com
OPEN ON: McLaughlin studio, as the panel continues to watch the posting.
> In the external world we look out on. Yet, none of us
> truly experiences him or herself as part of this external world.
ELEANOR: No one in New Orleans, anyway.
> I don't mean in a lofty, spiritual sense either.
MORT: I mean in a sweaty, erotic sense!
JOHN: Keep your Playboy Channel fantasies to yourself, Mort.
> I mean in a practical, obvious
> sense. Where we perceive ourselves to be is not outside in the
> external world, we are in an inside reality. Where are "you?"
PANEL: (sings) Hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo.
JOHN: Must I remind the panel of the correct Pete Townsend chorus?
"Who are you," not "Where"!
> Are "you" outside in
> the world or inside something we abstractly call our minds?
FRED: Neither! I'm in Suffolk!
> It's really as
> if "we" are behind an open window that looks out, through our eyes
> and other senses. We see that which is outside ourselves, don't we?
ELEANOR: Unless we're looking at a cat scan, I guess.
> We all know
> that our sense of identity rest somewhere deep within. "I" am not in
> the external world. "I" am in an internal reality that merely looks
> out at the world, gathers other sensory information and filters it
> all through concepts we believe about ourselves.
PAT: It seems Reverend Tony tried to read DesCartes on an empty stomach.
>
> When I go into myself, when I close my eyes and go within, there's no
> death inside where "I" am.
MORT: I think he just wrote a song by Night Ranger.
> Death is absolutely only an external image. Inside I
> find only life. Where's the death inside? There isn't any!
FRED: Not until I die, anyway.
> Nobody dies in
> my internal world.
ELEANOR: Ooooooooooooookay.
JOHN: That is a widely accepted religious precept, Eleanor. As hard as
it is for you godless socialist types to accept.
ELEANOR: I'll take that in the spirit of free and open debate, since you
god-fearing holy types always believe in turning the other cheek.
JOHN: Touche.
> If I want to talk to somebody I just bring an image of
> them to mind and talk to them.
MORT: They all sound like Norman Vincent Peale, for some reason.
> There is no loss in my internal world. If
> something seems to go away it's just because I'm not thinking about
> it. If I think about it again, there it is!
FRED: I want to make some sort of autism joke, but I just can't.
JOHN: And won't!
> There are no lovers who have jilted me
> in my internal world.
ELEANOR: HA!
> I close my eyes and chose to have the fantasy and
> they're still there! (And still turned on to me, which must be a
> fantasy, but they're definitely there and willing if I chose to think
> of them that way.)
MORT: Cool! Next time my girlfriend dumps me, I'm founding a church
too!
PAT: My oh my. This is the single saddest thing I have ever read- and
I got through that book by Millie the White House Dog.
FRED: I for one would not have thought pimple-faced internet-addicted
Magic: The Gathering geeks could become ordained ministers.
ELEANOR: And yet...
> There is no loss, no death in the internal reality where "I" am. The
> loss and death only seem real in the outer world where, in true
> obvious honesty, I know that "I" am not!
PAT: "I" have no mouth, and "I" must scream.
FRED: "I" am Don Niego Montoya. "You" killed "my" father! Prepare to
"die"!
> Death is only in the outer world illusion.
MORT: Jim Morrison's estate is NOT going to be pleased with this.
> The trouble is that I falsely identify myself, conceptually, with the
> external illusion. Yet, the true experience is "I" am somewhere
> inside. "I" am not a part of that death illusion.
JOHN: Just look at the org chart!
> This is what the COURSE is talking
> about. Death is just an illusion. My inner truth does not have an
> experience of death or loss.
ELEANOR: Or dates, or baths on Saturday night.
>
> My relationship with God, my Creator, exists in my inner reality, not
> in the outer illusion. When I get more in touch with this truth I
> heal. Then I don't see God as giving me death and life together.
MORT: It's like that packaging they had for the McDLT. Keeps the life
side live, and the death side dead.
> Inside there is only
> life. Inside there is God.
FRED: Outside, a crispy candy coating!
> God is only life! If this becomes our basis for
> identity, the outer begins to reflect this changed perspective of
> self and worldly life begins symbolically to heal as well. This is
> what I believe is happening.
FRED: Was that what I believe, or what "I" believe?
PAT: e e cummings, tell me what i believe
MORT: Trial lawyers, tell me what libel leaves!
>
> The world is evolving as a reflection of our own evolution.
FRED: No, it's developing from our own development!
JOHN: Get off, it's clearly a product of our own production.
ELEANOR: Doubling our duplications? Oh! Darn, I did the repetitive
redundant joke. Oh well.
> I see the
> rhetoric and the conversation about an "evil empire," or external
> enemy, has faded. We don't have the mass enemies to rally around
> anymore.
PAT: Remember after Pearl Harbor when we rallied around Japan? Confused
them so much they crashed their own planes!
JOHN: Kamikaze pilots are such a rich vein of humor, aren't they, Patrick.
> We don't
> have Japan or Germany or Russia or communist China to get us all
> worked up and "united." The disadvantage is that without an external
> enemy we tend to turn our projected guilt within and we start doing
> battle with ourselves. Nothing like a good external enemy to get us
> all "joined" in a common purpose is there?
MORT: You know, John, getting joined for a common purpose can get you
arrested in certain states.
JOHN: And you're telling me this because?
MORT: No reason.
> People speak of the good old days when the country was
> one, in World War II when we all united.
ELEANOR: Yeah, dying for our country was really hip- except for the
dying part.
> Well, of course, we had a
> perceived external threat! It was easy to rally, but the COURSE is on
> to this tendency. It says, " as blame is withdrawn from without,
> there is a strong tendency to harbor it within.
FRED: But the harbor was what we rallied around!
JOHN: Simmer down there, Freddie.
> It is difficult at first to realize
> that this is exactly the same thing,
PAT: -seeing as how it doesn't make sense and all.
> for there is no distinction between
> within and without." (T 187/201) Isn't this just what we see going on
> in our country now? We aren't worried about other countries invading
> us, now our enemies are right in our midst.
ELEANOR: "Midst" always looks like a typographical error to me.
JOHN: Yes, some Dark Ages typesetter forgot to finish a longer word,
and since everyone back then was so dung-covered illiterate, it stuck.
> Fanatics bomb our federal buildings and
> more than one hundred men, women and children die!
FRED: But Reverend Tony says, hey, Tim McVeigh hasn't blown up a
building on over a year, which is cause for celebration!
JOHN: I haven't jammed my fist down your throat since the posting
started, Freddie, but I wouldn't celebrate that quite yet, if you catch
my meaning.
> Militia groups arm
> themselves to the hilt and await the coming military collapse and
> final anarchy. The Christian right sees the decadent anti-family gays
> as a perverted evil run amuck in the cities of sin.
MORT: Yeah, Vegas and Reno used to be nice quiet towns, where a man
could settle down and raise a prostitute!
> (San Francisco being a fine
> example of sin's festering place in their eyes.)
PAT: They're probably just upset the Niners didn't cover the spread.
> Gays see conservative
> politicians as Nazi-like evil beings intent on crucifying them as a
> convenient scapegoat.
ELEANOR: Chase's new 24-Hour Automated Fascists. It's like having a
scapegoat at your fingertips!
> The conservative politicians see the liberal news
> media as mercilessly blaspheming them in the eyes of the public and
> on an on the circle of blame goes. Where the guilt, stops nobody
> knows.
PAT: Where the comma, goes Rev doesn't know.
>
> Some people see this tendency and think this means things are getting
> worse. I think just the opposite. I think it's a sign that we're
> progressing.
FRED: Now, wait. I thought a circle of blame was a BAD thing.
MORT: Well maybe he means like, a circle of blame has only one side, which is
better than a triangle of blame, which has three sides, or a pentagon of
blame, which has five.
JOHN: Need I remind you, panel, that the more sides a shape has, the closer
to a circle it is? Mathematically, a circle is actually a shape with
INFINITE sides! Everyone's blaming everybody, forever!
ELEANOR: Well, great. Let's start with you.
> We've stopped seeing the enemies out there in the other
> countries designing to snatch away our resources and enslave our
> people. (Men digging in dangerous mine shafts and women forced into
> sexual slavery for pleasure and breeding purposes come to mind.)
JOHN: One could write a whole doctoral thesis on why those two
particular items came to the reverend's mind.
> Now the enemy is right
> within our own people! This is what the COURSE is warning us about.
PAT: Oh, it's "The Bible Code 2: Cassandra's Revenge".
> We've
> stopped blaming without; now we're blaming within.
MORT: You see, Civil War instead of World War! I told you it's
progress!
> Yet, I have faith this
> too will fade when we begin to see personally, within ourselves, the
> folly of self blame.
ELEANOR: Alaska was Seward's Folly of self-blame.
FRED: Wasn't that the steamboat?
PAT: No, you're thinking of Fulton's Folly of self-blame.
MORT (singing): Have a folly, jolly Christmas!
> Isn't this just what we've done on a personal level? It used
> to be our parents' fault, the churches' fault, the government's fault
> and let's not forget the most important one, our lover's fault.
FRED: So, we try to blame ourselves, but we have a lousy sense of aim.
> "I would have
> been happy if he just had not been afraid of commitment. If she had
> only stopped drinking my life would have been different."
PAT: If only her ventriloquist dummy had said that he loved me!
> Then we embraced
> personal responsibility and realized, "Oh my God, no, it's my fault!
> I brought this on myself!" Yet we must learn that it's nobody's
> fault.
ELEANOR: Hey, yeah! It's all nobody's fault!
MORT: Let's go find nobody and twist his nipples off!
> There
> is no blame or guilt to be had. There are just mistakes to be
> corrected.
PAT: If we could just find some moral whiteout.
ELEANOR: Darn! I didn't close the cap, it's all gummy.
> As
> we undo our self blame, I firmly believe, we will see our country
> reflect this healing and stop factionalizing and looking for internal
> villains.
FRED: I'd love to see our criminal justice system run on this
principle.
JOHN: Stole your life savings? Oh, well, stuff happens.
> Bringing the guilt within is just an unfortunate step in the healing
> progression. We will move out of it collectively when we move out of
> it individually. The country is merely a macrocosm of the individual.
> We will embrace together all of our societal elements, from gays to
> Christian right wingers, from paramilitary groups to the liberal
> press,
ELEANOR: -from Alan Dershowitz to Charles Grodin!
> and when we do we
> will have enormous resources to tackle the problems of terrorism,
> drug addiction and crime.
FRED: So we should stop terrorism.
MORT: Absolutely.
FRED: How about starting in Bosnia?
MORT: Oo, sorry, Serbian aggression is not terrorism.
FRED: Because?
MORT: It's not happening to me!
>
> Who Left the Window Open?
PAT: Probably the same guy who wouldn't fill your stupid glass.
>
> The COURSE says some interesting things about war and battle. The
> COURSE tells us we can rise above the battleground.
ELEANOR: Oh, it's an Air Force Recruitment Temple.
MORT (sings): I- went- to- the- DANGER ZONE!
> Let's begin with
> this quotation, "Mistake not truce for peace." (T 461/496) This one
> helps us not to get stuck in something that appears as peace and in
> truth isn't.
FRED: Oh, yah, like when I bought a Peace Pop, and it turned out to be a
Dove bar?
> The
> world thinks the bargains we strike with one another while we
> temporarily "cease fire" are peace but this isn't so. Bargaining is
> not true forgiveness.
PAT: Not the way the NBA owners do it, anyway.
> We don't forgive if . We forgive. We do it for ourselves, not
> to get them to change.
ELEANOR: But what if they just exercised and their clothes are stinky
sweaty!
JOHN: They have to really want to change, Eleanor.
> As I stated earlier, I see the world starting to do
> this. We're not forgiving Viet Nam because they've admitted their
> guilt.
FRED: We're forgiving them because we just can't stay mad at them, the
big lugs!
> We're just letting go of that past. It's over. Bargaining is still in
> the battleground.
MORT: Not at your local Saturn dealer! Stop in today!
> If the bargain is kept the fighting may still, but it's all
> so conditional. "There is no safety in a battleground. You can look
> down on it in safety from above and not be touched. But from within
> it you can find no safety." (T 461/496)
JOHN: OK, let's recap. What is The Ponticello Doctrine, Pat Buchanan?
PAT: War? That's just bad. Battlegrounds? They're real bad, too.
Someone needs help stopping an invasion? That's just real too bad.
> We must continue the healing and not be deluded by
> bargains and truce. Only real forgiveness will bring us the peace we
> deserve.
MORT: The things one could say to that...
JOHN: You're in enough trouble just for saying THAT!
> We rise above the battleground. We realize that who "we" are is
> not actually contained in the external battle.
ELEANOR: Oh, no, the quotation marks are back!
FRED: Who is he talking about? I'm confused!
PAT: Maybe it's like when a sports figure talks about himself in the
third person. Only "Mike Tyson" knows what's best for Mike Tyson.
> Who "we" are is the
> consciousness that looks through the window and perceives the battle
> outside.
FRED: Oh, now I see. It's the royal "we". It's a commentary on the
British royal court's aloofness during World War I. See, guys, it's
really quite insightful!
JOHN: Odds that Reverend Tony was King of England in 1914! Mort!
MORT: Zero.
> We are a vast mind, an infinite, eternal expanse of intelligence
> and life. We perceive this world through an open window, if we
> remember that, truce will not delude us.
ELEANOR: I see through your false illusion, to the real illusion behind
it!
>
> Then the COURSE gives us some very clear, concise ideas of what to do
> when we get tempted to forget all this.
PANEL: GIVE IN!
>"When the temptation to attack rises to
> make your mind darkened and murderous " when we get that temptation
> to forget we really are not the external battle
PAT: When we start to think "The X-Files" is a well-written show...
> and therefore are not really
> in danger " remember you can see the battle from above." (T 462/497)
> So here's the first thing to do.
MORT (sings): Ca-a-a-ALL for Super Chicken!
> We need to remember that we can see this
> battle from a higher perspective, from above or beyond it all.
FRED: I would hazard that the rev is really good about stuff being
beyond him.
JOHN: You have two seconds to apologize, Beetle.
FRED: OK, OK. I'm sorry, Reverend. Put your dukes down, John.
> We need to
> remember that we don't have to be hooked in this way of perceiving.
> This passage continues, "Even in forms you do not recognize, the
> signs you know."
ELEANOR: Sounds like a Cosmo article.
PAT: The Twelve Signs It's Time to Move On!
> Sometimes we don't immediately recognize that we are getting hooked
> in, but there are little clues that indicate we are being caught and
> we can identify them.
MORT: Like when there's a barbed thing with a line attached poking
through your lip, and it's reeling you down to hell, and Satan's there
holding a fishing line and laughing and pointing and saying ha-ha, I
hooked you good? Little clues like that.
> "There is a stab of pain, a twinge of guilt, and above all,
FRED: A chewy nougat center!
> a loss of peace. This you know well." (T 462/497) This is what the
> COURSE wants us to be monitoring:
PAT: My goodness, it's a U.N. religion!
> that little stab of pain, that little twinge of
> guilt and that little loss of peace.
JOHN: Those little things husbands and wives do for each other that
make all the difference!
> When we feel these things we need
> quickly to identify we've lost our perspective of the battle from
> above and have gotten hooked into its seeming reality again.
> We've forgotten where "we" really are.
MORT: "We" are clearly between that pair of quotation marks.
> We've believed that we exist back in the world. Then it
> concludes, "When they occur leave not your place on high, but quickly
> choose a miracle instead of murder." (T 462/498)
FRED: Although killing an illusion isn't technically murder.
ELEANOR: Illusions fighting amongst themselves isn't technically a war,
either.
> What we need to learn to
> do is a process of self correction and we have to learn to click it
> in faster.
PAT: Everyone blames the clicker when they lose on Jeopardy.
> We have to do it before things get totally out of hand.
MORT: Before reverends of New Age religions start writing foreign
policy tracts and posting them on the- oh.
> We have to
> do it when we get that first little stab of pain, that first little
> twinge of guilt and that first little loss of peace.
PAT: This is his THIRD twinging stab already!
FRED: And I lost my peace a long time ago!
> We have to remember that
> there is a higher way to look at this situation.
ELEANOR: Oh, wow, man.
MORT: Far out.
FRED: The father, the son, and the Holy Smoke.
> We have to offer the way
> we are looking at it to the Holy Spirit.
ELEANOR: Oh, my mistake, it's a Lionel Barrymore kind of high.
> We have to ask for a miracle; ask
> for a shift.
MORT: LEFTY! Shift the infield! LEFTY!
>
> As we continue to do this correction process,
PAT: -we realize the editor is stark raving mad.
> as we do it quicker and
> quicker and not let things get so out of hand in ourselves I think we
> will continue to see the world evolving and growing towards peace.
> Fifty years ago we dropped atomic bombs on our brothers and sisters
> because we saw no other way.
JOHN: Freddie!
FRED: The other way was an invasion of Japan, which would have caused
the death of hundreds of thousands of both Japanese and AMERICAN
illusions.
> The other way existed but our conceptual perspective wouldn't
> allow the notion of it.
PAT: The Japanese military refused to surrender! What other way is he
talking about? An American surrender?
ELEANOR: No, the recognition of the illusion of winning.
> We believed the battleground and it was very real
> for us. COURSE students do not have to stand in judgment of the
> people who made those decisions.
MORT: That's what Fundamentalist Christians are for!
> However, we can learn from what those decisions
> brought to pass. More important still, we can congratulate ourselves
> because for a half century we have let another perception take hold
> in the collective unconsciousness.
FRED: The perception that Grover Cleveland was President for two non-
consecutive terms.
> This is a perception that tells us that there
> must be a better way. We must be choosing it, because we see the
> results of true forgiveness all over the world. Don't be confused by
> the manifestations of problems that still appear.
PAT: Don't let facts stop you!
> Remember where "you" are.
JOHN: Quotation frustration! Eleanor!
ELEANOR: "AAAAARGH"!
> "You" are behind an open window observing these situations. "You" are
> not in the world's battlegrounds, no matter how real the images seen
> through your window may appear.
MORT: "You" are hole in search of a donut!
John wraps Mort across the wrists with a ruler.
MORT: Ow!
JOHN: You and Freddie are staying after the show, Mort-one.
> Don't leave your place on high. Leave the
> battleground instead. The world will continue to heal as we each
> individually do our part.
FRED: Won't that leave the world with a big festering scab?
PAT: Yes, but just tell folks it's Baltimore. They won't know.
> World peace is an idea whose time has come.
ELEANOR: -the walrus said.
MORT: You know, I think I'd actually prefer talking about ceiling wax
to reading another paragraph.
FRED: I'd prefer talking about EAR wax to reading another paragraph!
JOHN: Just one more, panel. Hang in there.
>
> It is a miraculous blessing that we have this holy relationship which
> allows us to share these healing ideas.
PAT: Like, "Don't place your burned hand in the Mr. Coffee!"
> Thousands of years are being saved
> right this instant.
ELEANOR: Whoap! You missed it, too bad.
> Did you just feel them slip away?
MORT: Well, sure. The nearer your destination, and all.
> I did. God bless us
> all.
>
PAT: Except for you, Tommy Piccolo, who was sniggering all through this
sermon and will see me after Sunday School!
JOHN: OK, panel, I think we owe the Reverend a special thank-you for
putting up with all your guff.
PANEL: Thank you, Reverend Ponticello!
PAT: Nothing personal, guy. We just need to rip apart someone's
foreign policy positions every once in a while. It's like flossing.
JOHN: OK, let's get out.
ELEANOR: What, with an exit question?
JOHN: No- let's just get out! Now!
> (c)1995, Rev. Tony Ponticello, San Francisco, CA
Door sequence - Cambot zooms past a blue rectangular graphics box with
a gold "P" in it, then a purple box with an "U", a red box with a "O",
a green box with a "R", and an orange box with a "G", to get to a one-
shot of a scowling McLaughlin.
JOHN: I'm looking for a difference between the Reverend Tony
Ponticello's stated policy for the way the U.S. should deal with
foreign conflicts, and covering your ears while saying "La-la-la, I'm
not listening! I'm not listening!" Pat!
PAT: I don't know, John, sounds like a reasonable way to deal with you
to me.
MORT: Yeah! Hey everybody, John's an illusion!
JOHN: I am not!
ALL: (cover their ears) La-la-la! We're not listening! La-la-la!
CUT TO: <House of Pain> As we pan through the dungeon, we hear the
panel continuing to sing "La-la-la!" through a monitor off-screen.
Soon we pan onto a dungeon set-up very similar to the McLaughlin Group
set, but with five electric chairs in place of the five regular chairs.
The last thing that pans into the shot is a very perturbed Evil Mike,
holding a sinister-looking remote.
EVIL MIKE: Let's have a frank exchange of ideas.
Evil Mike aims his remote at the electric chairs, and presses it. The
chairs dissolve as they are beamed down to the studio. We hear the
group's "La-la-la! La-La- AAAAAAAAAAAUGH!" and a discharge of
electrical energy.
EVIL MIKE: So much for the McCoffin Group.
Pan over to Pearl, still hung like a mobile from the ceiling.
PEARL: Oh, yeah, we're a big man when it comes to the Sunday morning
news programs, aren't we?
EVIL MIKE (clenching his teeth and fists): Yes, but where McLaughlin
made an ass out of himself, I- (Evil Mike grabs a flamethrower from
off-screen) make an ASH out of YOURself!
PEARL: Oh, jam a pencil in your jaw, Nero. We both know you're not
going to kill me.
EVIL MIKE: Oh, really?
PEARL: Yeah. Because you're my antibody. And even an antibody with a
body temperature IQ like yours knows you exist in this reality only to
kill me. No me, no you. I die, you die. So where's the dessert menu?
There was this really nice Oreo cheesecake-
EVIL MIKE (grabbing Pearl's chin): Oh, very clever, Auntie Mame! Yes!
Alive you must stay- until, as is inevitable, I recapture that wedge of
Wisconsin cheese that's floating around interspace.
PEARL: You? Would drain Mike Nelson's existence and replace it with
your own?
EVIL MIKE (sarcastic): Oh gosh golly no, Pearl. That would be wrong.
Once I assume Smelson's existence, I will be free to pursue my destiny,
conquer this realm, and assume my rightful place as Supreme Ruler of
the Universe! Mwa-ha-ha-ha! (coming down a bit) Acting as executive,
you understand. A bicameral legislature would pass the laws, each
planet having a senator, representatives based on population-
PEARL: Why- you're mad! With an eloquent knowledge of social politics,
but still mad! I'll have no part of your wicked scheme!
EVIL MIKE (quiet, confused): But I didn't ask you to.
PEARL (annoyed, harsh whisper): It's your cue!
EVIL MIKE: Oh! Sorry! Ahem! (Goes eyeball-to-eyeball with Pearl)
Maybe! But in the meantime I have to keep you safe- on the sidelines-
out of the action. Somewhere where you can't cause me any trouble.
PEARL: There's no place in the universe I wouldn't cause trouble for you!
EVIL MIKE (raising a finger): There is one!
Evil Mike grins evilly. Pearl's face drops. They both turn and look
into the camera.
CUT TO: <EXTERIOR OF SATELLITE OF LOVE>
PEARL (echoed, from inside the satellite): NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
CREDITS (which we hear Pearl crying through)
Mystery Science Theater 3000, its characters and situations are
copyright 1998 Best Brains, Inc. "Bloodlines: The Calling" copyright
1998 FireRose. "An Open Window Observing the Battleground" copyright
1995, Reverend Tony Ponticello. Edited for time. This publication is
for entertainment use only. This publication is not meant as a
personal attack on FireRose or Rev. Ponticello, nor an attack on A
COURSE IN MIRACLES, its followers, or any church affiliated with its
teachings. This publication is not meant to infringe on any copyrights
held by Best Brains, Sci Fi Channel, FireRose, the Foundation for Inner
Peace, the Community Miracles Center, or any employees thereof. If you
liked my acknowledgements for "Windmills of the Gods", you'll love them
for "An Open Window on the Battleground"! Thank you Stacy, for your
pearl of love! Thank you Steve, for your jade of friendship! Thanks
dad, for your hardwood charcoal briquette of humor!
Don't hate me because I e-mail. peasporr...@hotmail.com
|-----------------------------------|
/ /
| There are no lovers |
| who have jilted me |
| in my internal world. |
/ /
| Copyright 1998 Brendan Herlihy |
|-----------------------------------|
----- The Imp -----
Life, death. Life, death. How quaintly binary.
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