There are many strange religions in this mixed-up, modern world – Discordianism, Pastafarianism, the Church of the Subgenius – but one of strangest and most popular is the Cult of the New.

People will pay more than twice as much to see a first-run movie compared to seeing it in a second-run theater or renting it and watching it at home. They'll pay $50 for a videogame that will clearly be a $20 "greatest hits" game before too long.

They buy novels in hardback, comic books in their original run rather than waiting for the anthology. And then there are all those people paying $600 for video cards that, six months from now, will cost less than the shiny, full-bleed folding pamphlets currently being used to advertise the hardware.

It seems to me that the best way to instantly raise your standard of living is to live in the past. If you subsist entirely on two-year-old entertainment, and the corresponding two-year-old technology used to power it, you're cutting your fun budget in half, freeing up that money for more exciting expenditures like parking meters and postage.

The problem is that it's hard living out of sync with the world around you. Just ask the Amish or Bill Cosby. I'm usually not in a big hurry to keep up with the latest books and movies, but I read the last two Harry Potter books and saw the most recent Star Trek movie very soon after release, just to avoid the inevitable deluge of spoilers. (Chekov is actually a woman, and Harry Potter grows up to be Spock.)

Plus, it gets tiring listening to people rave about people playing Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad on the Xbox 360 when you haven't finished The History Channel: Battle for the Pacific yet.

That's why I'm going to start my own cult. A counter-cult, if you will, but not a cult actually involved with counters like you'd see at Home Depot. My cult will be called the Cult of the Somewhat Delayed, and like all good cults we will shun contact with outsiders. I'll probably also get some chanting going — I like chanting.

The main purpose of the cult will be to allow us to enjoy two-year-old entertainment and technology without being corrupted by the heathen new-havers. In order to remain blissfully ignorant of spoilers and shiny new temptations, we will constantly live as if it were two years in the past.

Normally, a proper cult would live on a secluded campground where we could practice our beliefs and store our automatic weapons, unhassled by people — like folks from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — who don't understand our ways. But isolated armories don't get the fastest DSL, and AT&T Wireless has notoriously poor coverage in rural Montana, so we wouldn't be able to use our iPhones, which we just got like five months ago. (They're pretty awesome, but I hope Apple comes out with a 3G model.)

Instead, we'll form an online compound, with its own search engine, entertainment review sites ("Almost Entirely Decomposed Tomatoes") and discussion forums where we can express our hopes and dreams that the Wolverine movie won't be a huge disappointment.

Nobody in our cult will be allowed to view media from the outside. Those who mention Michael Jackson's funeral will be banished from our society, and anyone who reveals the identity of the final Cylon will be killed.

It is our fervent hope that all of you filthy unbelievers will respect our money-saving way of life, just as we respect your right to provide us with cheap entertainment. We just want to be left alone, and we hope you and the upcoming Clinton administration understand that.

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Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjoberg eventually overcame these handicaps to become an isolationist, an isotope and an isopod.

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