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I hate both of you because your conversation is both navel-gazing and puerile

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Messages - Cramulus

#11026
GASM Command / POSTERGASM: Calvin Ball Edition
July 17, 2008, 03:32:47 PM
It's been a while since we've had some new posters, no?



This is a brainstorm thread for the upcoming CALVINBALL poster pack.

The theme here is
-imposing / removing rules in public spaces
-creating the illusion (or reality!) that the reader is in the middle of a game

(we'll also include some miscellaneous meme bombs and fun stuff)

Please toss out any and all ideas. Discussion of ideas will lead to new and better ones. Then we'll make a sexy PDF.

(other calvinball comics located here, by the way)




[Official looking poster sporting a homeland security logo]
This is a designated area approved for cellular phone use



Do not step on cracks in this zone




You are being followed. Tag him before he tags you for +5 points.





If you stand in this spot long enough, you will see some very strange things.




Tell someone about this poster
+5 points




Congratulations! You've found Clue #3! The man in the green jacket will tell you what to do next.



Congradulations! You've found Clue #5! The man smoking a cigarette will tell you what to do next.



+5 points for putting up a new poster within 100 feet of this one






All the winners from the last game get to start off knowing this game's rules.
If you don't know the rules, do your best to figure them out.
#11028
GASM Command / Re: CELEBRIGASM
July 17, 2008, 01:41:57 PM
HAH!

I'm on it like vomit.

Nice work, Vex!
#11029
I dunno man, I think you might be grasping at straws here.
#11030
Or Kill Me / Re: Why So Serious?
July 16, 2008, 09:16:44 PM
You address the archetypal trickster here, sniffing down a similar coyote trail to Lewis Hyde's musings.

But to spin Campbell into it - do you feel that the Trickster is just a mask for the Hero? Or is that irrelevant because everybody, even the trickster's dupes, are the Hero in some sense?
#11031
Quote from: Hoopla on July 16, 2008, 03:48:46 AM
For people with a few minutes to kill:

http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii273/photojonny2007/Extras/Mirrorshots.jpg

Just Law of Fives, or on to something?



On to what?

The kid is on screen for mathmatically related durations and intervals?

I'm not quite sure what you're going for here.

#11032
Or Kill Me / Re: The Circular Firing Squad
July 16, 2008, 07:28:58 PM
Our progidal mod has returned, and bearing gifts!

I'm reminded of the talk in the Art of Memetics about the purpose of stress. Stress forces a group to stick together, move tightly, and form strong bonds. External threats (in hindsight) serve to strengthen a group and mortar them together.
#11033


Great stuff here, masked wanderer.

You Agents of Stife have a way of conceputalizing these things (like humor) as weapons to use in conflict. I think this piece is really useful to help conceptualize the oft-overlooked utility of humor. Good analysis, and very easy to read. Bravo!
#11034
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 16, 2008, 05:14:12 PM
Dunno... it seems to me that some aspects of personality might be genetic...

example?
[/quote]

Asperger's Syndrome & Schizophrenia
#11035
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 16, 2008, 04:35:33 PM
I would like to state for the record, my firm belief that there is NO personality until the memes kick in. Don't believe me? Check out a newborn baby, maybe a week old or less, show me some personality traits that define it's character. Babies are pretty much just a clean slate on which the memeplex that becomes the person is scribbled. Once this starts it becomes self refining to a point but until you start giving a baby input it's nothing and it will grow up to be nothing until it gets input.

you're talking about Agency
(see also: Art of Memetics page 35)

and in general, I agree with you. At the core of a human being there's this sticky meme called "I Am", and there's just a bunch of garbage stuck to it. I don't subscribe to free will - I think people (read: a collection of shrapnel) do what their shrapnel tells them to do. If the bit of shrapnel which says "Be a good person" is lodged in my flesh, I'll act accordingly. but with no memes, there's no person. Which also means that you don't really have a will, just a bunch of influences and control mechanisms to choose from.

It sounds like it diminishes free will, but I don't see that as a threat to personal freedom. The AoM says that Freedom is just the ability to move within a network, even an internal one. And I can get behind that.
#11036
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 16, 2008, 03:25:41 PM
Without either shrapnel or scars there is no personality.

I'm not so sure.

I'm thinking of this kid I knew in high school who didn't have a TV in his house. He was certainly exposed to a lot less shrapnel than most. But it didn't seem to translate into having less personality.

Is there a way to live without being exposed to shrapnel? I mean, even if you're a monk who spends entire years copying the bible from inside your cell, (very few "scars") you still might have a sense of humor.

I think of poorly adjusted kids who spent their childhood in homeschool rather than socializing wiht peers... they weren't exposed to less shrapnel really, just different shrapnel.


To me, the relevant part of the shrapnel meme is
-we're exposed to all this crazy input (shrapnel) every minute of every day
-we also output all this crazy media (explode shrapnel) every time we talk to someone or react to something or even as just a face in the crowd
-so then I guess your scars are the overall effect that the shrapnel has had on you. The Odyssey hit the greeks pretty hard, and it scarred a lot of them. And Star Wars hit a lot of Americans. The war on terror has left a scar shaped like your opinion on the matter.


see I'm not sure that scars are a good extension. It makes sense because in the material world, explosions injure people. But I think that leaves us with a rather victim-like relationship with culture - that it's just constantly injuring us and leaving us battered, and we have to overcome. But it's kind of fatalistic. The majority of the shrapnel we're exposed to is benign. And it seems weird to classify even the good effects of shrapnel as "scars".

The shrapnel image (to me) implies that your internal state at any given time is this explosive, rapidly evolving soup of memes and ideas, history and fiction... The image of a scar is something that is permanent, unchanging, remaining forever.

I think certain bits of shrapnel leave scars (cultural imprinting, important life events), but ultimately you can change those things, right?
#11037
and lo,
fuckmittens were tossed into the air

:fuckmittens:

#11038
#11040
Principia Discussion / Re: List of Discordian books
July 14, 2008, 11:39:58 PM
The author of Condensed Chaos, Phil Hine, is a Discordian... well, as much as any Chaote "is" anything. So Condensed Chaos is probably a Discordian work, but it has less to do with Discordia than it does with Chaos Magic.

His book "Prime Chaos" has two appendicies about neophilic irreligions, entitled Liber Nice and Liber Nasty. Liber Nice is about Discordia, and Liber Nasty is about Cthulhu cults. Hine gives a pretty good introduction to both groups, albeit from a rather occultish point of view.