I’ve been mulling over things recently and, due to an online discussion about my past as a Hegelian (I have a thesis to prove it) I was, well not reminded but rather, forced to contemplate old memory banks as they flung themselves into operation; ‘The Manifesto of Self-Revocation’ hoved itself into view.
‘The Manifesto of Self-Revocation’ was a project that several of us worked upon a very, very long time ago. It originally existed as a website ((Which was http://www.neo-catholic.org. I let the domain registration lapse a while back and until recently it was being sat upon by some domain name reseller; the address no longer seems to resolve. Curious, says I.)) and then I, when I should have been doing other work, made it into a book. We had always intended to print copies, but this was before Print-on-Demand was easy and popular. Not that we were expecting a best-seller, or indeed sales; we just wanted to deposit copies of our ‘religious’ text in libraries and in the homes of whanau.
Anyway, it turns out that the PDF is no longer online and that seems, well, a bit disappointing. So here be a link to a page that contains the most recent version of the text of the religion of the pub of the University of Auckland of the country that should be known as Aotearoa/Te Wai Pounamu on the planet dismally called Earth in a solar system other sapient people don’t seem to visit ((Allegedly.)).
The Red Book of the Neo-Catholic Church – The Unexpurgated Version (Contains no Gannets)
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I must ask: is your name really Matthew Richard Xavier Xander Xanthias? I note that this spells MR XXX, which gives rise if not to conspiracies theories then at least to theories of a secret life.
Well, at the time it was. It’s actually much longer now; I am, by deed poll, ‘Matthew Richard Xavier Xander Xanthias X Dracos Hieronymus Oliphant Ransome Dentith.’
I wonder what flash of inspiration wrought such masternyms, but this is not that kind of personal blog.
Well, actually, the Xs are due to an interest in names beginning with X. ‘Hieronymus Oliphant Ransome’ is a pseudonym I used to use whilst ‘Dracos’ is, well, a relic of my boyhood RPG fetish. The solo X; that was due to their being a limit to how long your name can legally be; it stands for ‘Xanthippus.’
I had a childhood friend who, lacking a middle name, used to take on the same every so often, the better to arm herself for games of “Letters” (someone calls out letters one by one and you take one step forward for every letter in your full name. You get two steps for a capital letter. First to reach the caller wins).
Another acquaintance put down a joke middle name when applying to graduate, thinking it would be cross-checked against the university records. It wasn’t.
Well, I’m in two minds about graduating with my full name. Part of me thinks it will be awkward (mostly around pronunciation; the caller of degrees when I got my MA pronounced them in the American style) and the other thinks it will be grand, as I will have to walk very slowly to the centre of the stage as it is called out.