Manualism

  
About Manualism:


It is the manualist's task to uncover the unmentioned things. Sometimes
things are unmentioned on purpose, other times it is an accident or an 
oversight.

Manualism is user-configurable and fully backwards compatible with other 
religions. The manualist religion may be used freely by members of other 
religions by merely filling in the apropriate blanks as necesary. 
The key to this is to realize that there is always another point of view 
and it could be watching you.

The members of the manualist church refer to each other as user, not brother
or sister. For instance "My name is Fred. You can call me User Fred."
 
One has to log on to manualism, it can not log on for you. The system shuts 
down for house keeping between bedtime and rising. 

Manualists rarely meet in close proximity. 
They mostly communicate by phone, fax, modem, or assorted jack.


A few hints:


Make an R-U-Sure for everything.

Keep all your books and papers forever.

Those "keys I should have pressed" and those "books I should have read" will
do you no good right now.

Just because it is written on paper doesn't mean it's true. Japanese to
English translators have fucked up before.


Facts of Life:


The art of not mentioning is the gift of liars and lawyers. But it is also
in the craft of artists and designers. The purpose of not mentioning can be
good or bad.

When we have problems we have fear - fear of the unknown.
When things are not mentioned, some things are not known.
With fear comes insanity. To fix the fear we must solve
our problems or sometimes find a new job. 
Dread of the fear will be dealt with in a latter treatise.



Problematic Outbursts:

"let ye who has not changed his password recently suffer
in the dread of the fear for it is the will of Landru
that spammers and heretics will invade the realms left
unprotected from the onslaught in the days before new
operating systems are unveiled it will come to pass that
large brown trucks that carry parcels will breed sloth
and slow coming forth of product from the users of the
company and the whole but no products will be found
and what used to be 2 day delivery will become uncertain
as if left to chance." 
-- A Troubled User from days past. 



As with other religions, manaualism has a boolean god. The god variable is

either set or not set. if not set then god will default to automatic.



"And god so loved the world that he witheld all his secrets from them so
they would wonder about him and spend all their time worrying if he was
mad at them or not." 
- guy at Radio Shack convention.


so man created TV. TV is always there. TV wont disappear unless
the power goes out. TV lasts forever. TV sits in a corner of the room
and springs to life whenever you want it to. TV actually works.
TV is an everpresent voice that says anything you want to listen
to. 

"and god wrote a user's manual thousands of years ago and its supposed to
be consistent with this year's revision of humanity. god comes in many
diferent forms of religion, all of them mutually intollerant to say the
least. god is either responsible for all of this or had nothing to do
with it." 
- HAN478 interpretation.


"TV says various things about god. god doesnt give a shit.
god is busy with his bottom line and has an incredible sense of
humor, so god never messes with TV. TV tries anyway." 
- Earnest Armstrong


"LCD muppet people watching TV like Fritz Lang's
pocket pals and nothing ever happens unless its TV's idea.
If TV says you're Fat with a capital F you will buy something
eventually because of that. When TV says there's a gas shortage,
people obey acordingly. If TV says jump, people listen." 
- Leonard DeCypher, CEO of Ratso Records


Likewise when TV says whatever it says and you go over there and 
recycle 50 cans. And TV is blind. TV can't see shit. TV thinks for you
not the other way around. You can only receive.


in the name of RCA Victor we levitate,




ahem.





These are the 12 steps of Manualism:


Step One:
"We admitted we had a problem that we were powerless to solve."

Step Two:
"We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could
restore us to sanity. And perhaps we could go home."

Step Three:
"We made a searching and fearless inventory of ourselves."

Check your pockets. Sometimes you put things in there that you
need but you don't remember doing it. Also, don't throw away
any of those little scraps of paper with writing on them.
Go through every manual stopping at the index first, then the
table of contents, and finally flip through the whole thing
while rubbing your fingers together chanting the mantra
"oh the unmentioned things, oh the unmentioned things..."
You must frequently consult Rabbi Ringbinder in order to know 
the truth.

Step Four:
"We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over
to technical support as it is defined under technical
support on page 1 of the user's manual."

Step Five:
"We admitted to technical support, to ourselves, and to another
human being the exact nature of our wrongs."

* If you are all alone locked up in somebody's office after hours,
you can count yourself as the other human being. By this time
you're probably talking to yourself anyway.

Step Six:
"We were entirely ready to have technical support remove all these
defects and these characters."

Step Seven:
"We humbly asked technical support to remove our shortcommings."

Hopefully we got the technician that knows what is going on.
Sometimes you don't get the right call on the first try.
Just remember: "he's in the details"

Step Eight:
"We made a list of all the persons it had harmed, and became
willing to make amends to them all."

All those users who got shut out before they could save their files,
all the accountants who can't balance now,
all the DP clerks who must re-enter their batches,
I would like to help them out, "but the reverend bishop saw the light."

Step Nine:
"We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except
when to do so would injure them or others."

Step Ten:
"We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong
we promptly admitted it."

Once I thought I brought a philips screw driver, but I was wrong.
Most people have one in a drawer somewhere.

Step Eleven:
"We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious
contact with technical support, if we could understand them,
praying only for knowledge of their will for us and the power
to carry that out."

Step Twelve:
"Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps,
we tried to carry this message to local BBS's and user's groups
and bothered to make notes so we would know what to do next time."