Dear Mr. Brown,

I'm afraid I'm not a commissioning editor, but I have passed your e-mail on
to the editor, David Sutton. He will be going on holiday shortly and we are
currently coming up to our busiest period, with very early deadlines prior
to Christmas, so it might be some time before he has the chance to respond
to you. I have little or no say in what goes in to the magazine, so please
address all future correspondence to David.

Best wishes,

Owen Whiteoak
Sub Editor
Fortean Times
Tel: +44-20-7907 6237
www.forteantimes.com
Dennis Publishing, 30 Cleveland Street, London, W1T 4JD

On 10/11/08 17:51, "Barrett Brown" <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Howdy-

I'd like to submit the following piece for your consideration; I thought
that perhaps the Fortean Times could use more strange humor.

As for me, I'm a Brooklyn-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in
dozens of publications including National Lampoon, The Onion, McSweeney's,
and American Atheist, and my first book review is set to appear on the
nthposition (Val's site) later this month. My first book, Flock of Dodos:
Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design, and the Easter Bunny, was
released last year to praise from Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School,
Skeptic, Rolling Stone, Air America Radio, and other sources.

The piece may be found below; please take a look and let me know if it
interests you.

Thanks,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

Instructions for My Funeral

by Barrett Brown

To follow are instructions for the composition of my funeral. By reading this, you have implicitly agreed to execute the operation in question. In a way, you have in fact already done the things I am about to ask of you; causality is mere formality.

• The service is to be held at a temple which will be built especially for the occasion, and which will be an exact replica of the Temple of Solomon except that the interior will be solid stone and contain no rooms, but rather a tunnel which leads thirty-three meters into the earth before opening out into a barren room illuminated by seven candles. The temple itself must be built at the current location of the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, which is obviously to be destroyed beforegand if it has not already been destroyed by the time of my death. The facade is to incorporate sacred Pythagorean geometry.
• During its construction, the building site is to be guarded by a cadre of Masai warriors equipped with their traditional Masai sticks, which themselves consist of short, thin clubs which may be pulled apart to reveal a knife within. If they are addressed by passerby, they are only to say, "The time of the shadow is always, and always the time is the shadow; it does conceal from us the bearer, and the bearer himself knows no bounds and no man knows him." They are to say this in Masai, not Swahili, and the phrase must never be translated by anyone. They are also to be provided with a single bull, a single cow, and a bucket; do not be alarmed when they puncture the beast's neck and mix its blood with milk from the cow, as this is their custom. It is also unnecessary to give them these instructions, as their people have awaited this event for 1,200 years and have duly passed down the ceremonial utterances by way of their oral histories and messages delivered in dreams.
• When the construction is complete, the Masai will march back to northern Tanzania to carry out further instructions which I shall not share with you at this time or ever. Incidentally, do not photograph them or look them directly in the eyes under any circumstances.
• A week before the funeral, you are to deliver the following message to the pope, assuming that it is Pope Benedict XVI: "The moon is risen; there is no moon." Say this in English. He will answer thusly, in perfect German: "Hereafter I roam not with the deceivers." If he does not, shoot him in the forehead immediately. Do not concern yourself with ethics; it is a hologram, and I only ask you to shoot it so that you will discover this for yourself, for you are to play a part in the Seven-Fold Working and must understand the truth of what I tell you, for it is the truth that I will bring to the world as we know it, that we might know it better and by knowing it, rule it.
• The title of my funeral shall be the Seven-Fold Working.
• After your encounter with the pope or his AI nano-hologram, you are to fly to Constantinople. You are then to check into a hotel under the name "Julian Lux," at which point you will be directed to a particular room. There, in the closet, you will find a disguise; put it on and leave the hotel immediately. The hotel will explode a few minutes after you leave; pretend to be surprised and make your way to the airport, being very careful that you are not being followed by anyone who might be of Swiss nationality. Fly directly to Cairo. There you will most likely be met at the airport by a man calling himself "Darren." He will tell you that I arranged for the two of you to meet and proceed to Dar es Salaam. He is lying. Fake a seizure at the airport so that you are taken to a nearby hospital. Leave without checking out and fly back to Jerusalem.
• When you arrive, walk to the temple. Do not take a car service or any buses; much modern technology will dematerialize over the coming hours as reality shifts in accordance with the Seven-Fold Working.
• At the temple, you will find thousands of invitees who have been summoned by way of messages delivered to them in small bits in accordance with synchronized metaphysical alchemy which I put into motion twelve years from now and which works backwards in time to give the illusion of "cause." Do not bother trying to understand it because you are a mere child of history.
• Meanwhile, seven statues will have been put into place in Moscow, Rome, Constantinople, Delphi, the Forbidden City section of Beijing, and Mecca. The statues will be concealed by velvet coverings. No man shall ever set eyes on them, and thus the statues will exist as all statues and all things, while also being nothing.
• When the ceremony is about to begin, you will hear a loud thunderclap of unknown origins. A loud voice shall proclaim, "Where does he walk?" Another voice will answer, "All places." The first voice will respond, "Then none other can walk in his place." At this point, the invitees may begin to march into the temple, and through the passage into the underground chamber. There, under the illumination of the seven candles, will be my embalmed corpse. When everyone has arrived, the door to the chamber will seal shut automatically. Then my corpse will open its eyes and proclaim that "Weaving spiders may themselves fall into the web." Then the thermonuclear weapon concealed inside my fake robotic corpse will go off, killing everyone present, but not Jerusalem, as the Temple of Solomon cannot be destroyed this time. Those who will have died in the chamber are currently the true masters of the Earth, who rule in secret yet in plain view. When they are gone, the mantle of the earth shall fall to I.
• Only you will know that I am not dead, but his will not matter because I am writing this from the year 2012, and all that is to occur has already occurred. You will find that you are incapable of uttering a single word about any of this to anymore. Fate has caught you in my web. I am Quetzalcoatl; I have returned; I have always been here.
  

Just kidding. Funerals are stupid. Dennis Publishing Limited - A Sunday Times Top 100 Best Company, 2007 and 2008

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