Cramulus' message to Net:

They're still being edited (to some extent)... and the order is still undefined. Ultimately I'd like to have a PDF which I can upload to lulu.com and then be able to sell a hard copy.

The goal here is to produce a book which with a collage/cutup style similar to the PD, but with a more modern feel. The PD was clearly put together using oldskool photocopiers and stolen stamps and artwork. A whole mishmosh of marginalia, dingbats, one-liners, scribbles, etc. We want to do a more high-tech / high-style version of this.

For my pieces ("the strange times", follow, why I put up posters, and Go OMF yourself) I'm going to print them out, then also print out some art (or whatever), then tape them onto a page, then scan the whole thing. Optimally, you'll see the tape and paste and whatever, giving it a really DIY feel. But that's the only pieces we've discussed layout/design for.

We've got quite a bit of WOMP and Misc art, some of it good, some of it bad, and we're unsure how to present it properly. http://we.dontexist.net/index.php?topic=150.0 and http://we.dontexist.net/index.php?topic=35.0

We have a lot of marginalia: http://we.dontexist.net/index.php?topic=36.0 - this stuff can be included wherever it fits.

We're totally open to creative suggestion regarding editorial or design. The "we" here is me and triple zero.

We'd love to have you aboard no matter what level of involvement you're interested in. If you'd like to mess around with some of the pieces and lay them out, that'd be cool. If you want to try out a more comprehensive overarching style, that's cool too. Anything you can do to help us move towards having a final 8x11 sized B&W PDF would be sweet.

Are you interested? if so, Any ideas?

PS: feel free to make notes right at the wiki I linked to. Might want to start your own page, and we can discuss over there. It's not too private, but very few people know it exists.

Net's Reply

You can count me in.

I typed up this great message but then the WOMP link wouldn't load any images and crashed my window. Which is an interesting experience, not the browser, but the window... my CPU is still being taxed by it.

Anyway.

I had this really great teacher, Gary Cox, who has a creative method that has never let me down. You can find it here. http://www.garycox.com/creative_process.html I think we should do a step, share, discuss, freak out, and then do the next one, share discuss, etcetera until we have a finished booklet.

In my experience, the more thorough the defining, research, and brainstorming, the easier the grunt work.

And here's an idea I just got that could help tie all these disparate discordianisms together: we have a super simple cartoon character that interacts with the text body and images. He or she, it, would always be vandalizing a tiny part of it. Pulling a line out of alignment here, squishing a word there—it's rife with possibilities. On the cover the character could be interacting with the page itself by appearing to rip a part of the cover, with a real rip in the paper. Then at the end of the booklet he could have a large jumbled pile of type (as though a paragraph full of words fell on him from some kind of vandalism that clearly went too far). Oh, and maybe it could start very innocently, like with kicking a period, and slowly escalate into heavy machinery and wrecking balls and whatnot.

So let me know what you think of Gary's methodology. I'll repost this cartoon idea on the wiki later today.

Cramulus Sez

I dig the methodology. It seems to mirror what the Art of Memetics says about Mastermind groups..

you take the signal, examine it, edit it, polish it, turn it into output.

Then the group examines the output. They examine it, edit it, polish it, turn it into output.

Process repeats until everyone is satisfied.

I like the idea of the little character who's messing with the text. A little agent of Chaos that is slowly disassembling the book. I'm not too good with drawing though... any ideas on who this character should be?

Net, if you're going to help with design, what's the most convenient format for us to work in? Is text straight from the wiki easy enough to lay out in InDesign (or whatever you use)?

Net replies

Yeah, there's something about developing an idea of what you want before you actually carry it out that really helps facilitate this sort of design work. Even if the sum of that idea is only 3 adjectives (srsly), it's immensely useful in steering such a massive undertaking.

We could steal a character out of the Principia. If I remember correctly, there's this little gremlin, hairy looking dude drawn in a very rudimentary style. That would provide a nice, not-too-obvious link to it. I think 000 has some cartooning skills, so at the very least, the two of us could do that part. But, the most difficult part of this plan that I can think of is making sure we have an idea per page. So first I think we need to lay it all out and get a sense of how many pages this is going to take.

In terms of manipulating raw text, as long as I can highlight it, it's all gravy. Some programs will retain their formatting when I dump them into InDesign, but this is by no means essential, yet. If we get to a point where that will be a big time saver we can work that out at that point. I kind of doubt it will be an issue though.

6/23

• Chloe and Cramulus go through and try to organize pieces into "not in" and "in" categories. This proves difficult. We don't particularly care for a lot of the pieces, and we're worried that in the end, it'll be a bunch of pieces by PD heads. Which is not the goal.
• We're considering writing a fiction piece which includes the people at the Masquerade as characters (a story about something that happens at the Masquerade), so everyone can feel like they participated, even if they don't end up having a piece in.
• We're worried that too many of the pieces are: first person sermons or diatribes which are jaded, cynical, belittling of the reader, and talking about FREEDOM. A little bit too much freedom/free will stuff and not enough LULZ. Any ideas on how to remedy this?

Re: 6/23 - Net

I like the idea for the fiction piece. However, the only solution I have about the cynicism and lack of sheer lulz is to manufacture lulz with the design. Suppose Chloe and Cram made a list in descending order of favoriteness: most favorite at the top, least favorite at the bottom. This would result in the least favorite writings getting the most amount of vandalism by our cartoon character. If they can't take a joke, fuck 'em. I think people will be happy to have their stuff included, even though we're making fun of them.

This could add another interesting layer of meaning to the cartoon character. His or her vandalism wouldn't be wanton, it would be a kind of protection of the reader. It would validate people's feelings of being offended so they might continue reading, just to see how we make fun of the next cynical git.

Does this idea sit well with you? If so, does it increase your willingness to put more jaded, cynical pieces in?

6/25 - Cram

New Direction:

stop agonizing over whether the book as a whole will be of the Highest Quality. This is meant to be a collage of ideas, and the arrangement is more important than the content of any specific piece.

I will begin drafting an intro piece which basically says "we don't stand behind everything in this book - it's a conucopia / collage of pieces. and we hope that even if YOU don't agree with everything, at least you'll have considered something outside of your comfortzone"

which is a cop-out, but within the scope of this project it should be okay.

See earlier, Chloe and I were worried that there's too much Sermon and not enough Lol. And we don't personally agree with a lot of the sermon pieces either. And we were worried that we'd have to Keep Digging or Produce NEW Stuff to balance the book... But I don't think that's the point. garbage in, garbage out?

The good part about this approach (the "let's just publish almost everything" approach) is that it helps everyone feel like they participated, and we can really just bust this thing out without feeling too protective over it... later, if we feel like it, we can take the Award Winning pieces and throw them into a different collection.

The bad part is that we will have a book that has some good parts and some bad parts, and the good might be lost for the bad... but I'm reminded of the general pinealist reaction to the Black Iron Prison book - that it's too dark and not enough silliness.

I love the idea of a little character messing up everything. Maybe St. Gulik? Or one of the other saints? But certainly, I think it's a good idea to have a character who is NOT taking the serious pieces seriously. What do you think he should look like?

We're working on ordering the pieces now... as you can see in the Table of Contents, it's hard to cut out stuff without making this a purely circlejerk venture :-P

• edited to add: the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of this mischevious little character who messes with the text. Do you, net, know of any characters like this who we could borrow? Or could you draw one? It's a good way to include stuff that might not otherwise fit - to have it cut up with other pieces.

6/26 Net

I was thinking of Apostle Zarathud: http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/8977/zarathudwc2.gif

Who I could easily reproduce. I imagine 000 could as well, hell, if you tried I'm sure you could too.

If Zarathud did the most vandalism to the most jaded pieces, I think we would have more lulz and wouldn't alienate the reader.

6/27 Cram

Hahahah, Zarathud was exactly who I was visualizing, but I couldn't picture who he was.

What's next? What can I do to help you lay stuff out?

I'm still working on editing. Any piece with a bullet next to it

• like this

is ready, I think.

6/27 Net

Just keep plugging away.

I don't need all or even most of the pieces to make a working draft.

However, if any layout ideas come to you, I'd love to hear about them.

I'll post some drafts in the next couple of days, as I find the time to bust 'em out.

Oh, and we should start a new page somewhere that is a list of Zarathud's vandalisms.

6/30 Cram

Check out Zarathud, where I collected some of what we've been discussing about the little bastard.

On Audience:

I figure the majority of our audience will be Discordians, and practically-discordians. (people who are intrigued by the ideas, but aren't "on board", so to speak)

I picture our ideal reader as very eclectic. The kind of people who are stumped when you ask "what kind of music do you like?" The kind of kids that read the Principia and said "wow, that's my tribe." The kind of people that surf the net because it's FASCINATING, not just because there's pr0n there.

Most of my writing is targeted at this seventeen year old version of myself. Who was a kind of extroverted, over-the-top, zany, iconcolast, but had very introspective, taoist, sensitive leanings. From the pieces we have collected, I think teenagers and people in their early 20s will get more from this than established Joes. I want it to be something that attracts free thinkers, the kind of people that get Active about things and go to protests or whatever.

I also like the cut-up post-modern feel that collage has. I wouldn't mind a style similar to a periodical - newsprint, smudged ink, eye grabbing headlines. Or maybe more like a ransom note - little bits of media cut up and rearranged.

Net 7/1

This is exactly what I was looking for. A bunch of meaty ideas to sink my teeth into.

Some of it is obvious, but it's really amazing how easily one can lose sight of basic goals of a publication when you're up to your chin in it.

For me, having this written down is essential so I can return to it and use it for guidance.

Here is a quick brainstorm/strategy sketch.

The strategy statement is completely formulaic, but I've found it to be a highly effective focusing tool. Just another form of sigil mahadjgickqueue IMO.

I did this mainly for myself to examine the main ideas I'm considering as I go about this, but by all means feel free to disagree and especially add anything you think I'm missing. Also, I can transcribe the thing if you can't read my handwriting.