Clavam Hominum Senum Pallidorum

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The Clavam Hominum Senum Pallidorum (lit., The Society of Pale Old Men) was — some say, still is — a pre-Enlightenment secret society founded in a remote castle in Romania by the “Orphan Count” Vlad Paripasu in the 13th Century.

The society’s goals were to promote the interests of all those with a fascination for chasing balls, standing around fires, hunting, fishing, carpentry, machinery, gadgets, explosions, racing cars, trains, space, beer-drinking, weak jokes, being knowledgeable about Pink Floyd guitar solos, Monty Python and boobs.

In the dark ages, many men felt the oppressive weight of social expectation: that they must adopt unrealistic gender stereotypes foisted upon them by society’s misconception that every man must, by biological imperative and on the feeblest pretext, showboat, play rugby, start fights, hog resources, enter jousting tournaments, bait bears and with little more encouragement, wage all-out war for the simple pleasure of dominating any other man who so much as looked at him in a funny way.

Returning from a duel one day, it struck Paripasu just how unfair this picture was. Men, he thought, were just misunderstood. Really, he knew them to be a naturally nurturing, collaborative, caring and homogeneous group, fiercely loyal to each other, and tirelessly protective of their fellow man against the intrusive interests of women, children, animals and nature.

What they all needed was a safe space, sheltered from these hurtful generalisations, where they could meet, help each other out, recite their favourite Fast Show sketches, and generally promote their frail collective interests as a class over the malign, mainly female, forces in society.

Paripasu encouraged his clubsmen to play up to their unjustified stereotype purely as a smokescreen to conceal their real, darker industry: holding the line against the advancing front of modernity.

Paripasu could not have dreamed how successful his concept would be.

Over time The Senum Pallidorum, as he called it, metamorphosed from a harmless bullshitting club into an occult sect deeply entrenched in the shadowed machinery of the state, ensuring fellow members were preferred wherever possible, easing them wordlessly into positions of power and influence across the wide run of human endeavour.

Members took an oath of utmost secrecy — on pain of confiscation of their entire collection of Yes albums — which explains why there is so little tangible evidence or acknowledgement of the existence of the society, and also explains the continuing popularity of Yes.

It shows just how effective and insidious the group was, and still is, actively manouevring in their every activity, public or private, to frustrate aspirations to self-actualisation of anyone who doesn’t play golf or enjoy Jeremy Clarkson’s Sunday Times columns.

To this day, members — who are honour-bound to deny their participation, of course, though of course they have elaborate self-identification routines, secret handshakes, funny walks and so on by which they identify each other — are deeply embedded in all branches of government, arts, the academy, trade, commerce and industry, so their insidious influence continues to spread and dominate the national conversation.

At the same time, members restricting their ostensibly competitive tendencies to performative displays of excess testosterone on sports fields, in bars, on Twitter, in low level antisocial behaviour in the community and in the prosecution of international conflict.

In the last thirty years the group’s chilling effect on social justice has been increasingly obvious, and vilified by progressive critics who observe that, for all the formal advances in suffrage, equal treatment and legal protection that over the last century, statistics do not lie, and that plainly senum pallidorum loyalists continue to operate unobserved in the shadows of the polity.

Vlad Paripasu is allegedly buried in a cemetery in Bistrița, modern-day Transylvania. It is well tended, often laid around with flowers, coins and amulets from well-wishers. Occasionally, a group of two or three will gather to reverently perform the stoning sketch from Life of Brian. On his headstone, only his name, his birthdate, and the famous Socratic dialogue:

Socrate: Știai că, ca deghizare, elefanții își vopsesc picioarele în galben și se ascund cu capul în jos în cremă?
Cephalus: Nu am făcut-o, Socrate.
Socrate: Ai văzut vreodată un elefant ascunzându-se cu susul în jos în cremă?
Cephalus: Nu am, Socrate.
Socrate: Asta dovedește ce deghizare bună este.

This translates roughly as:

Socrates: Did you know that as a disguise, elephants paint their feet yellow and hide upside down in custard?
Cephalus: I did not, Socrates.
Socrates: Have you ever seen an elephant hiding upside-down in custard?
Cephalus: I have not, Socrates.
Socrates: That proves what a good disguise it is.

In popular culture

Though widely regarded as a conspiracy theory, C.H.S.P. features as an expositionary plot point in Hunter Barkley’s finance fiction potboiler The Atlantis Variation.

See also

• Vlad Paripasu
• The Atlantis Variation
• Elephant