Note the presence here, in spite of a lack of explicit Discordianism, of all the characteristics of an excellent manifesto: mixed emotions expressed with all the vitrolic vehemence of unmixed emotions.

So if there is a cause about which you are ambivalent, do like Karl Marx did. Pen its manifesto.

No Discordian Manifesto yet exists. We need at least five. That will generate controversy and confuse Greyface.

My own favorite Holy Name - Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst - functions in that way. It is a walking identity crisis. Anybody can say or do anything in the name of Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst. For better or worse, that never fails to confuse the authorities.

This tradition started in 1960 when I was basic training clerk in Marine Air Base 11. I typed in the Ravenhurst moniker on a training lecture roster, listing him as a truck driver in motor transport - serial number 1369697, rank: private.

When Ravenhurst, Omat K., failed to answer the role call somebody called the captain in charge of motor transport to find out where Ravenhurst was. Of course nobody in the motor pool ever heard of any such private.

Motor transport called administration. No Ravenhurst on record there, either. A clerk-typist from administration Corporal Chadwick, came by to ask me about the mysterious Marine.

Upon returning to his desk, Chadwick completed an IRC card - a condensed record - which would have to do until Ravenhurst's entire file arrived from his last duty station: Marine Barracks, East British Outer Cambodia.

An unusual man, this Ravenhurst - with his IQ of 157. How many other truck drivers spoke 17 languages but, in ten years of service, had never been recommended for promotion?

You would imagine that one glance at such statistics would arouse suspiscion. But some days later there occured within my earshot a conversation between two lieutenants and the swaggering staff sergeant who headed basic training (who, so as to protect his identity from ridicule, I shall call Karen Elliot instead of Sergeant Garcia).

"Where do you figure he learned 17 languages - including Upper and Lower Swahili?" one of the officers wondered aloud.

"I'll bet his parents were missionaries," contributed Karen Elliot.