Exquisite Corpse - Issue 4
HomeSearchSubmitCorpse CafeArchivesCorpse MallOur Gang
issue 4 home | ec chair | broken news | critical urgencies | burning bush
ficciones | secret agents | stage & screen | letters | gallery

School for the ImaginationGreetings, Corpse lovers! We are celebrating the Fourth Issue of our Bounteous Exquisite Corpse in cyberspace! With this issue, we are announcing the establishment of a physical institution to serve the needs of our 15,000 weekly readers.

Beginning in May 2000, in a jasmine-covered courtyard in New Orleans, the School for the Imagination is opening its doors. The School for the Imagination is offering a full program of courses for our readers, with a multi-disciplinary degree in Living, Thinking, and Adventure. We are appealing to a varied constituency, but will accept people strictly on the basis of need. Our staff is trained to instruct everyone from people suffering from SWS (Sudden Wealth Syndrome) to sufferers from LALS (Lost Appetite for Life Syndrome).

Course offerings in our SWS (Sudden Wealth Syndrome) program include: How to Use Your Unearned Millions to Help Other People, Feeling Alive While Being Rotten Rich, Enjoying Simple Pleasures without Reaching for your Wallet, and Feeling Loved While Everyone Hates your Guts. The students are taught how to use their imaginations after losing them in a proportion directly related to the size of their fortune. Using a ten-point system in which each million dollars is regarded as losing its owner one full IU (Imagination Unit), the program seeks to attenuate the sterility and affective waste that can lead, in extreme cases of billion-dollar fortunes, to a total loss of humanity.

The instructors lead their charges into urban field trips without their credit cards and test them with exercises such as leaving school for a week with six dollars and returning at the end of the week with two friends and fifteen dollars. Not everything at the School for Imagination is hard work: the strenuous course of study is relieved by check-writing binges to projects conceived entirely in the classroom. Graduates from SFI will go on to become almost human and become leading members of such diverse communities as Food for Thought, Libido Restoration, Inc, No More Hunger, Dollars for Landmines, and A Day Without Worries.

The School for the Imagination will also be home to the Program for Sweat Management (SSM), a rigorous educational program for summer students. Sweating in New Orleans is a fact of life and a great body of wisdom has collected over the centuries regarding the rational use of perspiration. The mostly native staff will teach The Proper Management of a Sweat Drop, Teaching Sweat Where to Flow for Maximum Enjoyment, and other courses aimed at turning sweat from an annoyance into a magical experience. But far from being some highly localized concern, sweat management will be of use to Sudden Wealth Syndrome students who will find employment for the constant sweating nightmares associated with the fortunes of their fortunes. The Cold Sweat management techniques taught here are blended with Hot Sweat Management to introduce libido where formerly only fear reigned.

The third program at SI will be SFP, the School for Pacing, where overeager consumers of pleasures and material goods, are taught to pace themselves so as not to drop dead from over-consumption. The Mardi Gras season, which lasts for long months, beginning in January and ending on Ash Wednesday, causes a great many casualties who never see Ash Wednesday because they burn out too quickly. People with Sudden Wealth Syndrome have an identical problem as a great many of them overdose on houses, airplanes, boats, and stupid hobbies.

Pacing oneself, sweating for pleasure, and using imagination are essential for today's living. For information on how to apply to these New Orleans schools, write to us at submissions@corpse.org.

issue 4 home | ec chair | broken news | critical urgencies | burning bush
ficciones | secret agents | stage & screen | letters | gallery

corpse home | search | submit | corpse cafe | archives | corpse mall | our gang
Exquisite Corpse Mailing List Subscribe Unsubscribe

©1999-2002 Exquisite Corpse - If you experience difficulties with this site, please contact the webmistress.