CHRIS KORDA & THE CHURCH OF EUTHANASIA

AN INCOMPLETE HISTORY 1992 - 2019 GOSWELL ROAD PARIS

Dear Jason, January 26, 1994 I've been meaning to send you this for a while now, and your Fall issue pushed me over the edge and into action. It might have been the picture of Noam Chomsky that did it; he is one of our Big Heroes (though I doubt the feeling is mutual) along with Jaques Ellul, Jeremy Rifkin, Paul Erlich, E.O.Wilson, Allen Ginsberg, and Fairfield Osborn (an obscure zoologist who accurately predicted in 1948 that the primary threat to the human species was not nuclear war but topsoil depletion). I was very interested in your articles on cults and decadence. The Church of Euthanasia certainly qualifies as a decadent cult: our four pillars are suicide, abortion, cannibalism, and sodomy. What do they all have in common? I'm not telling...

You've probably never heard of us, so a little background is in order. It was the summer of 1992, and I was covering the Democratic Convention in New York for an underground cable channel called UTV. I got us inside with forged press passes, made it onto the floor somehow (Divine intervention?) and managed to give away or sell 400 "Save the Planet, Kill Yourself" bumper stickers to the assorted delegates, flunkies and hacks who where roiling down there. The story made the Daily News the next day, complete with a picture, and the Church of Euthanasia was born. We wound up interviewing Lenora Fulani and Larry Agran, and we also got amazing footage of the Anarchist riot that the press blacked out, but that's another story.

Since then the Church has instigated many more DADA actions. We have developed a small but devoted band of followers, and a much larger "virtual flock" on the Internet, where we distribute the "e-zine" and the more or less weekly "e-sermons" for free. The church has also spawned a variety of subversive consumer products, including the magazine (distributed by Tower, Fine Print, and Desert Moon), the "Save the Planet Kill Yourself" record (#39 on the Progressive Dance chart last July) and of course the ubiquitous stickers, of which Spencer Gifts (500 malls nationwide) has now sold over 30,000. Just last week Spencer's picked up two more of our stickers: "Eat People Not Animals" and "Thank You for Not Breeding." Apparently we're hitting a nerve out there. Our messages are readily absorbed into the Spectacle; we could hope for no more.

Needless to say, we have made many enemies, particularly on the so-called "Left." We are the pariahs of the Gaia movement, and mainstream organizations like Zero Population Growth and EarthSave hate us, in the same way that mainstream Gay organizations hated ActUp before ActUp got wise to the Big Money. We disrupt their activities whenever possible; it is essential to ridicule people who take themselves too seriously, no matter how "righteous" their ideas. Ideas are what got us into this mess in the first place. Like Tristan Tzarza, we are against ideas, and for DADA. We are fighting the death-grip of the rational mind, the Eyeball with Fingers we call the Octopus. The situation is desperate. Our only weapon is paradox, and our battle cry is "Kill the Planet, Save Yourself."

I enclose our first two issues, to give you the whole picture. I would love to cotribute an article to your zine. If you have access to the Internet, please e-mail us at coe@netcom.com, or call us (617) 628- **** . I look forward to hearing from you! Keep up the excellent work. Thou shalt not procreate. Yours, Rev. Chris Korda P.S. Tell me about your Xexoxial visit! Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the clouds and the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children? -Tecumseh