This should go without saying, but it's been a weird year.

The Party at Limbo Peak took place from Confusion 1-7, or May 27th to June 2nd in the 2008 Gregorian Calendar. I'm writing this in Spring of 2009, still putting the finishing touches on the tome you're now holding. Or reading on a screen. Or maybe a telephone pole or something. Nobody's really sure exactly when Discordia was kicked off, (it could have been 1958 or 1959) so I've met my goal of publishing roughly 50-years later.

I've been searching for the Discordian Society since I first read the Principia at (about) age 16. I always wondered if it was just this group of heads who hung out before I was born? Is there an actual network of cabals, exchanging weirdness by mail and collaborating on massive mindfucks? How many self-identified Discordians are there, anyway?

So I began sending out signals, feelers, setting up sign posts for the others to find. I figured that if there wasn't really a Discordian society, I'd just act like there was. Irreligious LARP solitaire. I've mailed weirdness to other cabals. I flew out to Portland, Oregon to meet some of the lunatic west coasters. I attended a Discordian caucus in which many of our kind gathered to swap smalltalk. (They want me to tell you that there were 23 of us there, but the truth is that there were about 21.) I been to the edge of the internet and back. And DAMN, we are some fascinating people.

But that's just the spags who identify with this word "Discordian". There's more of us. I'm talking about the creative, effervescent, electric slice of the population who you'd never in a million years confuse with grayface or a cabbage. There's scads of awesome people out there who are one of us even if they don't know it yet.

And sadly, a lot of us are lost. Disorder can be a lonely, scary, confusing place. Some aren't excited by the notion of being a freak or an outsider. The solace: this is the century of freaks and outsiders. A Discordian priestess once told me she feels it's her responsibility to help these people cope with their weirdness. We're the clergy for the strange.

And on this journey I met an odd cloaked figure. He wouldn't let me see his face, but he took my draft of the Et cetera.