Do not for a moment think you cannot be an exceptional orator if you can just find some way to keep repeating yourself hypnotically and changing the subject of your speech frequently at the same time.

Winston Churchill pointed out another attribute of good rhetoric: it is sincere. You must yourself realy be against the Germans buzz-bombing London before you can persuade the English people it is a rotten notion.

Natural aptitude also plays its part. America has known no greater public speaker than Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose son once quipped, "Father wanted to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral." And that's important to keep in mind, because if you want to be the bride at every funeral and the corpse at every wedding you just are not made of the right ingredients. Your timing is off.

In that case you could have better luck with eyeball-to-eyeball conversations, the versatile art of one-on-one seduction which you want to learn anyway. Here, too hypnotic repitition is a key to unlimited potential. Pick any theme out of the air for repeating - a word, a name or a number will do. Let us say, for this example, that you choose the number five into your pitch. Again and again, five times five, over and over, drive that mother home until your victim is entranced in the Fifth Dimension. Then dazzle them with all the techniques in "A Primer for Erisian Evangelists" on page #51.

Such mood setters as lighting and music are also important. For maximum results, illuminate the room with strobe lights. Play Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in the background. They will be putty eating out of your hand.

If you are repelled by having anything to do with human beings whatsoever - as individuals or in groups - then you were probably meant to be a great Discordian writer such as myself.

That being the case, my advice to you is consider that rousing literary form known as the manifesto. Not only should you read The Communist Manifesto so you can find our how to get bankers to finance your activities, you should also study the lesser-known but equally great specimens of this genre. What especially comes to mind in this respect is that underground classic anonymous authorship, "Manifesto of the Artistic Elite of the Midwest."

As it has not yet been anthologized, I reproduce it here in full just as it appeared in issue #2 of False Positive (c/o Donna Kossy, Box 953, Allston, MA 02134):