Kerry Thornley sketch by Barbara Blackman. Courtesy of Barbara Blackman.Kerry Thornley was many things to many people. Discordian, anarchist, Zen Buddhist, JFK assassination conspirator, acid gobbling hippie, pornographer, paranoid schizophrenic and MK-ULTRA mind control victim—to name but a few of his many personas, or how he was perceived.
The old Kris Kristofferson song sums up Kerry quite succinctly:
“He’s a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction, taking every wrong direction on his lonely way back home.”
Or to quote Walt Whitman:
“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.”
Kerry Thornley sketch by Barbara Blackman. Courtesy of The Discordian Archives.One person who saw Kerry Thornley in a quite positive light was Barbara Blackman who was friends with both Kerry and Greg Hill during the 70s.
In the following passage, Barbara recalls how she first met Kerry:
“My friend was taking her children for the prerequisite visit to their father during summer vacation. He had kindly arranged for us to stay at Stone House, a Quaker Commune. I was trying to find my spiritual self I suppose & connected with Kerry on a very high level. I had never sat with someone & meditated in the purpose of the two beings focused together in meditation. For me he was very much the Indian Yogi walking a path of spiritual awareness. Sometimes he was a whirling dervish, others a Shakespearean bard, then Krishna with his lovers. He was asexual in that he made love with the world.”
Below: Letter from Kerry to Barbara Blackman dated January 1, 1971. Courtesy of Barbara Blackman.
Letter from Kerry to Barbara Blackman dated January 1, 1971, Page 00002. Courtesy of Barbara Blackman.Letter from Kerry to Barbara Blackman dated January 1, 1971, Page 00001. Courtesy of Barbara Blackman.
Early Discordian Louise Lacey. Photo courtesy of Faith Echtermeyer, Copyright 1980.
I recently happened upon an interview I did with Louise Lacey back in 2007 and thought it’d make a good addition to Historia Discordia, including — as it does — Louise’s recounting of the halcyon days of Discordianism along with some fond remembrances of Robert Anton Wilson, Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley.
At one point in the interview, Louise corrected (as she is wont to do!) my apparent butchering of the pronunciation of Eris — “Ear-reese” — which is how Robert Anton Wilson invoked the Goddess, and so often times I’ll use that pronunciation. Wilson was also the first person I heard pronounce “Principia” with a hard “c,” which is the correct way of saying it in Latin. (Just so ya know I’m not a total dodo!)
Elsewhere in the interview I state erroneously that Kerry Thornley did NOT appear before the Orleans Parish Grand Jury (during the Jim Garrison Investigation madness) which at the time of our interview was my understanding. However, I was wrong, which seldom happens to your humble Discordian reporter, but when it does I’m the first to admit it!
Hail Eris! All Hail Imperfection!
On to the Untamed Dimension’s Louise Lacey fnord Interview…
Greg Hill - November 1959 - The Art of Collecting Belly-Button Lint - Pg 00001. Courtesy the Discordian Archives.Many people collect stamps. Some people collect coins, a few collect antique bottles, others shoe laces, bottle caps, yellow pencils, and endless array of miscellaneous items worth absolutely nothing (except, of course, to those who ardently collect them).
I collect belly-button lint.
Before you put this down and go back to your television, read on. It really is quite a fascinating hobby–if you like that sort of thing. Honest!–it is! Well… maybe, but it’s still fascinating. Why, believe it or not, I’ve belly-button lints from all over the world: Spain, France, China, Canada, even USSR. Indeed, I even have lints from some very famous people, too. One of my most valuable is a small wad of plaid lint from an eccentric Scotch clan-leader over 300 years old (the lint, not the man). My favorite is a piece of red lint from Khrushchev’s great gram-pa. I received that one just before I was lucky enough to possess a hunk of green lint from an old Irishman (drunken) I met one night in the gutter facing Barney’s Bar and Grill. Another priceless possession of mine is a pillow stuffed with lint of all shapes, sizes and colors from just plain people.
Greg Hill - November 1959 - The Art of Collecting Belly-Button Lint - Pg 00002. Courtesy the Discordian Archives.A novice just can’t realize the thrill and joy obtained from the experience of discovering a piece of belly-button lint once proudly worn by General George Washington just before he met Martha.
All in all, I have about 23,000 different specimens, ranging from one st up to and including a ball almost one and one half inches across, fished from King Farouk’s bath tub. These, I keep mounted in glass covered wall plaques starting in the entrance hall of my home, going through the living room, dining room, through my den and ending in my bedroom. The less interesting ones I keep in my wife’s bedroom (she’s a very understanding woman) and the poor ones I keep in a box in the garage. As soon as it gets about another 7 pounds in it, I think I’ll stuff a mattress.
As far as practical uses, I have already mentioned pillows and mattresses. Well, there is an infinite source of objects that lints can be substituted for if you have a practical mind. Some of my friends are soaking them in formaldehyde and using them as moth balls. Do you have noisy neighbors? Why, just stuff some in your ears and eliminate the noise (or better yet, send a box them next door and eliminate the neighbors). Actually, you can do almost anything with this wondrous material if you have the imagination &/or the nerve.
Greg Hill - November 1959 - The Art of Collecting Belly-Button Lint - Pg 00003. Courtesy the Discordian Archives.However, I think I should warn you about using lints for practical purposes instead of keeping them. Nothing, I repeat, nothing beats the grandeur of collecting–especially collecting such an important item as belly-button lint. What could be more satisfying than surprising your house guests by showing them a mounted board or row of glass cases containing hundreds of lints! Doesn’t it sound wonderful!!! It is almost a sure bet that they will never bother you again.
Now that I have undoubtedly sold you completely on the art of collecting belly-button lints, your first reaction is probably: where would an ordinary person like yourself obtain old and rare lints?
April 17, 1938:Kerry Thornley is born in Los Angeles to Kenneth and Helen Thornley.
1956: Kerry Thornley meets Greg Hill and Bob Newport while attending California High School (CalHi) in East Whittier, California.
Kerry Thornley: An award winning high school student who had no idea of the conspiratorial madness that would await him in 1976!
1957: Kerry Graduates from CalHi.
1958: Kerry attends the University of Southern California as a journalism student. That same year, Kerry and Greg Hill form the Discordian Society.
1959: Kerry enlists in the Marine Corps and meets Lee Harvey Oswald and Bud Simco. Begins work on The Idle Warriors (Paperback). Oswald is dishonorably discharged from the Marines and defects to Russia.
1960: Kerry is discharged from the Marines and returns to Los Angeles.
1961: Kerry and Greg Hill move to New Orleans, where they meet Slim Brooks and Gary Kirstein, aka “Brother-in-law.”
June 1962: Oswald returns to the U.S. from Russia.
1980s: Kerry lives the life of a vagabond, hitchhiking from coast-to-coast. Most of his time is spent in Florida or Atlanta, with occasional trips to the West Coast.
1986-1987: Kerry begins circulating The Dreadlock Recollections (recounting his unwitting participation in a JFK assassination conspiracy) via samizdat format.
1991: Kerry starts experiencing kidney problems.
1992: Kerry is interviewed by Oliver Stone, who is researching his forthcoming movie, JFK. Kerry appears on A Current Affair (YouTube: Part 1, Part 2).
November 28, 1998: Kerry dies from complications related to Wegner’s granulomatosis disease.
Nov 22nd, also known as “JFK Assassination Day,” is a high holy day in Discordianism—or if it’s not, it should be.
Discordianism—for those not in the know—is a religion that worships Eris, the Greek Goddess of Chaos and Discord, that was created (or revealed) to a couple of lads named Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley in a Southern California bowling alley in 1958. Afterwards, the official organization (or dis-organization) of the religion was dubbed The Discordian Society.
Numerous hints as to the mystical significance of bowling alleys and their relation to Discordianism can be found in the movie The Big Lebowski, such as the Dude’s preference for Lane 23. 23—it should be noted—is one of the holiest of numbers in Discordianism, second only to the number 5. If you’re interested in finding out more about the Law of Fives and other such holy wonders you’re encouraged to read The Principia Discordia, the Bible of the Discordian religion (or irreligion, as the case may be) which, in turn, became a major influence on the underground classic Illuminatus! So much so, that the authors of Illuminatus!—Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea—dedicated the first book in the trilogy to none other than Discordian founders, Hill and Thornley. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves….
Back in 1959, Kerry Thornley served in the Marines with none other than Lee Harvey Oswald, and was actually writing a novel based on Oswald three years before JFK’s Assassination. Thornley considered Oswald a bright and interesting fellow, although somewhat of a natural born screw off who could fuck up a wet dream. With that being said, Thornley was a bit of a loose cannon himself, constantly bouncing from one political stance to the next; one minute a card-carrying commie, the next moment an Ayn Rand Libertarian, then later transforming into an acid gobbling anarchist. Somewhere along the line, Thornley grew to detest JFK, mainly because of a United Nations supported massacre that took place in the Katanga region of the Congo that was endorsed by the Kennedy administration. So when Thornley—ever the irreverent one—got wind of Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, he joked openly about the Pres’s death to co-workers at a restaurant where he waited tables, then later that evening he and a friend wound up at the bar where they made tongue-in-cheek toasts to the Marine Corps drill instructor who taught Oswald how to fire his rifle, offending most everyone in earshot. A couple of days later when his old friend Oswald got pumped full of lead to the point of being dead, all of Thornley’s laughter died in sorrow… But the story doesn’t end there.
During the period Thornley and his friend Greg Hill lived together in New Orleans in 1961, some of their early Discordian writings—that later made their way into the 1st ed. of the Principia Discordia (published in 1965) —were covertly copied, after hours, on New Orleans’ District Attorney Jim Garrison’s mimeograph machine by Hill’s friend, Lane Caplinger, a secretary in the office.
Oddly enough, when Garrison launched his JFK assassination investigation in 1967, Kerry Thornley became a key suspect in the case. To this end, Garrison claimed that Thornley was a deadly CIA agent who was part of a JFK assassination conspiracy, but Kerry claimed innocence and that he was being framed. It didn’t help his case that he had earlier joked about JFK’s death. Of course, Garrison had a lot of odd theories, including that Thornley was one of the notorious Oswald doubles and that the Discordian Society was a CIA front organization that had been involved in the assassination. Hail Eris!
For further details about this and much, much more related to Discordianism fnord visit www.historiadiscordia.com.
