Francis E. Dec (January 6, 1926 – January 21, 1996) was a U.S. lawyer from Hempstead Village, New York, disbarred for fraud in 1959, and later known for the bizarre socio-political tracts of conspiracy theories he mass-mailed to the media. Often denouncing a "Worldwide Mad Deadly Communist Gangster Computer God" mind-controlling mankind, Dec is considered to have been a paranoid schizophrenic of the influencing-machine delusion kind, and is often referred to as a "kook".
Not unlike Ed Wood, Dec later became a cult figure referenced in underground culture. He was the subject of a 1994 book chapter, a 1998 comics, and a 1999 stage play; he also made his way into the folklores of the Discordians and the Church of the SubGenius. His rants have been reprinted in a 1983 issue of Robert Crumb's magazine Weirdo and circulated since 1986 from recordings by KROQ-FM host Doc Britton; they have been sampled in 1991 and 2004 by Psychic TV, Critters Buggin 1997 record 'Host' on the song 'Bill Gates', in 2004 by Venetian Snares, and inspired a Coldcut album in 2005; they have been archived as outsider art by UbuWeb and WFMU; they spawned a fanclub and website; they have also been used as a gauge in 1994 for "kook typography" and in 1998 for the entropy of the undeciphered Voynich manuscript.
Famous quotes containing the word francis:
“I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had to hailbomb, for twelve hours, and when it was all over I walked up.... We didn’t find one of ‘em, not one stinking dink
body. That smell, you know, that gasoline smell. The whole hill. It smelled like ... victory.”
—John Milius, U.S. screenwriter, Francis Ford Coppola (b. 1939)