the Wild Conceits essay: the rival-organ taxonomy — Montcalmistes vs. the A.F.R.

The Separatist ecology mapped as a taxonomy of cults keyed to their formative games: the F.L.Q., the Fils de Montcalm, and "the ultra right anti-Reconfigurative vishnu of the Bloc Quebecois" ranged against the A.F.R.'s Root Cult. The Montcalmistes grew out of "La Culte de Baiser Sans Fin" (the Endless Kiss breath-trading game) and are "not particularly dreaded but media savvy" — their signature act the "12 meter, human waste filled, pie shell" dropped by helicopter onto Gentle's second Inaugural, waste hurled back at the founder in farce. Their game teaches "using what one is given with maximally exhaustive levels of efficiency... before excreting it back whence it came" — "a stoic stance toward waste utilization" that maps onto "the Montcalmistes' relative indifference to... Reconfiguration." Against them the A.F.R., forged by the train-game's brinksmanship, treat Reconfiguration as "raison de la guerre outrance" — total-war cause. The taxonomy's thesis: each cell's politics is the politics its childhood game taught, and only the A.F.R.'s game taught total war.