Proposal - Spring - Summer '07

[hunter s.durden]

A good law of fives/BIP parable:

"Guy's sitting in his world, his BIP.  Gets bored, starts drawing on the walls.  Eventually he just covers the walls in writing and drawing.  He then notices that a lot of the letter 'E' shows up in his writing, it being the most common letter of the language (but he doesn't know that).  So he starts rationalizing and philosophizing as to why this is.  He's not unclever, and generates some convincing arguments along the lines of it's shape, pleasing sound, perhaps some psychological obsession with the letter.  So over time E becomes his symbol for "unknown" and "wierd" things.  E is now synonymous with something irrationally correlated for some arbitrary reason.  Around this point the man is deranged with excitement at the very thought of E.  When the gaurds say words with E he giggles or sobs.  He writes it on his face in the mirror.  He's over the edge. 

There's this great They Might Be Giants song called E Eats Everything."

"E" is the 5th letter of the alphabet. just saying 

Goddamnit...

[P3nT4gR4m]

A good law of fives/BIP parable:

"Guy's sitting in his world, his BIP.  Gets bored, starts drawing on the walls.  Eventually he just covers the walls in writing and drawing.  He then notices that a lot of the letter 'E' shows up in his writing, it being the most common letter of the language (but he doesn't know that).  So he starts rationalizing and philosophizing as to why this is.  He's not unclever, and generates some convincing arguments along the lines of it's shape, pleasing sound, perhaps some psychological obsession with the letter.  So over time E becomes his symbol for "unknown" and "wierd" things.  E is now synonymous with something irrationally correlated for some arbitrary reason.  Around this point the man is deranged with excitement at the very thought of E.  When the gaurds say words with E he giggles or sobs.  He writes it on his face in the mirror.  He's over the edge. 

There's this great They Might Be Giants song called E Eats Everything."

"E" is the 5th letter of the alphabet. just saying 

Goddamnit...

Swote and double swote. Good work you two.

[AFK]

I'm down with LHX's idea.  I think a new written effort kind of needs to go in a different direction just by virtue of not repeating ourselves.  The Law of Fives is a good tool for pointing out how easily people fall into the trap of NOT thinking for themselves.  Of course, I don't think LHX is literally thinking about schooling people on the literal "Law of Fives".  That obviously would have limitations.  But you can go in many different directions with the spirit of the Law of Fives.  So, my vote is that we should at least explore this possibility. 

[LHX]

actually i was thinking about a thick hardcover book titled 'The Literal Law of Fives Literally'

the cover will be dark grey wiff light-dark-grey text


there will be no pictures inside ANYWHERE

[rygD]

actually i was thinking about a thick hardcover book titled 'The Literal Law of Fives Literally'

the cover will be dark grey wiff light-dark-grey text


there will be no pictures inside ANYWHERE

That is a wonderful idea!  I have lots of resources you can use for this.  Do you have a fax machine?

Also, I think that somewhere someone got lazy, as it is obvious that the law of fives was used as filler until they got to nine.  They probably just were having a difficult time figuring out the last few numbers to count all the way up to 9.  I can provide assitance to those who have this problem, as I insist that the most useful stuff be put into circulation, not someones filler.

[LMNO]

Why 5?  Srsly.  I actually have been noticing the number five an awful lot lately.  I have a five magnet on my fridge, with five ordinary magnets surrounding it.  The strange thing is, I picked up the five magnet long before I ever heard about the law of fives, years ago.  Come to think of it, I don't know where I got that magnet, but I know it was many years ago.  I just went to San Francisco this weekend.  I got room 500 on the fifth floor, and my sister parked on the fifth floor of the parking garage.  I also used to visualize pentagons in my mind's eye long before I learned about Discordianism and the LAW.  Maybe coincidence, and maybe something more like the law of attraction, but I can only wonder.  But we might explore the law of fives more.  We might open up a new subforum, but keep the bip, even though everybody wants to escape it.  What does the five mean in numerology?  In tarot, it is the number of conflict.  In the enneagram, it's the number of the thinker, of genius and of paranoia.  555 is the number that's just a little bit humbler than the devil, though I haven't explored its full meaning.  What else does it mean?  Does the topic deserve a subforum?

Why 5?  Look at your hand.

[Cramulus]

Why 5? There's a passage in Illuminatus! where someone asks that. Hagbard (I think) shows them a picture of a guy with six fingers on one hand. The caption is something like "If we had evolved like this, it would be the law of sixes".


What about the phrase

"Think for yourself about ______".

At some art school I visited, there were these bumper stickers everywhere which said "Art is         ". In some cases people had written in stuff in the blank (I saw one in a bathroom stall where someone wrote in "shit", for example)

We could fill in the blank ourselves for as a heading for specific rants and stuff. Think for yourself about the machine. Think for yourself about voting. Think for yourself about individuality. Think for yourself about pretzels.

If we printed stickers, they could be put in places where we could fill in the blank with relevant things. Like on the front of a magazine rack it could say "Think for yourself about fashion"



Regarding the OP -- I feel that any effort we make to reorganize ourselves towards a specific goal is a good effort. These new beginnings come with a lot of fresh energy. It also forces us to rethink refine recycle all that shit we were talking about last week.

[LMNO]

I was sayin let me out of here before I was
even born--it's such a gamble when you get a face
It's fascinatin to observe what the mirror does
but when I dine it's for the wall that I set a place

I belong to the blank generation and
I can take it or leave it each time
I belong to the ______ generation but
I can take it or leave it each time

Triangles were fallin at the window as the doctor cursed
He was a cartoon long forsaken by the public eye
The nurse adjusted her garters as I breathed my first
The doctor grabbed my throat and yelled, "God's consolation prize!"

I belong to the blank generation and
I can take it or leave it each time
I belong to the ______ generation but
I can take it or leave it each time

To hold the t.v. to my lips, the air so packed with cash
then carry it up flights of stairs and drop it in the vacant lot
To lose my train of thought and fall into your arms' tracks
and watch beneath the eyelids every passing dot

I belong to the blank generation and
I can take it or leave it each time
I belong to the ______ generation but
I can take it or leave it each time


-Richard Hell, 1976

[LHX]

this idea is really ________

[Cain]

Art is dead, motherfuckers.

[LHX]

Art is dead, ______fuckers.

[LMNO]

___ is ____, ____.

[LHX]

that wasnt funny man

[Triple Zero]

yea because his mother is a _____


that was just insensitive

[LMNO]

[re-jack]

I think what some of us need to do is to do a lot of thread diving & compile the best ideas/posts/phrases.  So much good stuff is written, and then buried.  I'll see if I can ignore the new posts long enough to gather some shit together.