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[valuable]

Hello?

Hel-

Yeah, I'm still here. I thought we must have got cut off.

I can only just hear you, have you heard any of what I've been saying?
About... eh, I'm not going to go through it all again.

I was just thinking that, y'know, if you had heard it you might have said made some reply, y'know?
And I wasn't sure if it was just a bad connection or errors in communication or whether you were just ignoring me...
Because, well, let's be fair; quite often I say things and you clearly hear them but don't actually acknowledge it.

I'm not talking just for the hell of it. I'm trying to have a fucking conversation with you and...

I just want you to acknowledge my opinion as being valuable, okay?

Even if you don't think it is, I want it to be responded to respectfully and not only when you agree with it.

Otherwise, why do I even keep talking?

Decided to start throwing together cover images for the new Facebook Timeline format.

Anyone got a favourite memebomb that needs illustrating, or a clever idea on how to use the combination of profile picture and background?
Feel like making more of these.

The PODGE of the Sacred Chao is symbolized as The Golden Apple of Discordia, which represents the Eristic Principle of Disorder.

The Pentagon represents the Aneristic Principle of Order and symbolizes the HODGE.

It is the HODGE-PODGE of the Erisians. And, instead of a Podge spot on the Hodge side, it has a PENTAGON which symbolizes the ANERISTIC PRINCIPLE, and instead of a Hodge spot on the Podge side, it depicts the GOLDEN APPLE OF DISCORDIA to symbolize the ERISTIC PRINCIPLE.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

"Instead of a Podge (Eristic) spot on the Hodge (Aneristic) side, it has a PENTAGON which symbolizes the ANERISTIC PRINCIPLE."

Is placing an Aneristic symbol on the Aneristic side and an Eristic symbol on the Eristic side supposed to be a meaningful subversion of the balance represented by the yin-yang's shade and light each containing the seed of the other? Is the point that Order and Disorder are in conflict, rather than having a harmonious and flowing relationship? Did those hippies forget which term they were using for which?

There are other Discordian sites/glossaries which have Hodge as Eristic and Podge as Aneristic. Are there explanations of or elaborations on these labels outside of the PEEDEE?

WHAT DID YOU ASK SANTA TO BRING YOU THIS CHRISTMAS?

I'M GETTING INDIVIDUAL PAIRS OF TINY SOCKS FOR EACH OF MY TOES, FOR THOSE DAYS WHEN YOUR TOES ARE FREEZING BUT YOUR FEET ARE TOO WARM TO WEAR SOCKS.

(Yes, this is the BEST IDEA EVER THREAD, but with ++YULE)

[just because other people liked them.]

Updated. Original for comparison: http://pastebin.com/Vaipdg9A

I am not the fucking Counterculture™.

Rejection of elements of The Mainstream™ does not require acceptance of their exact opposites. Shocking, I know... but I've found a way to process reality without breaking everything into binaries. That your counterculture doesn't include a rejection of the assumption that polarising issues is the best way to understand them suggests to me that your "anti-mainstream" doesn't do what it says on the box. It seems a very superficial rebellion, built on the framework of the existing system, only refusing to conform where it is safe and otherwise leaving it untouched.

That communities cannot exist without some form of social hierarchy, I have accepted. My brain is wired for that. It's not a bug, it's a feature... but I can choose the kind of hierarchy I want the apemeat in my head to recognise. The Mainstream™ and the Counterculture™ (which defines itself in terms of the mainstream) recognise hierachies that I cannot bring myself to care about my natural place on. I think that one of the reasons for this is how easy it is to buy a social status upgrade. I get a nice car; +1 to Mainstream Status. I grow dreadlocks; +1 to Counterculture Status. Fixed gear bike. Big-screen TV. Smartphone. FairTrade Tibetan clothing. I can exchange my currency for the unearned respect of my peers. But fuck those people. I'm not restricted to their unconscious deference or petulant dominance-asserting rejection of one set of rules to convince my brain to reward me with the warm fuzzies.

So just because I identify as a Discordian doesn't mean that I'm going to jump at the chance to attend your anarchist circlejerk, agree with blanket disagreements with the government or dismiss things that other people liked just because other people liked them. That's nonsense. Once you recognise these systems, conforming to them no longer does you any good anyway, because your submission to them is so transparent as to negate the rewards.

I still like the warm fuzzies, though, so I need a way to tell myself that I'm making progress.

Being a Discordian, to me, is being a member of the metaculture.

We are a community who respects the understanding of our primate functions and manipulation of the bizarre rulesets that emerge from these. When it's useful, we can forge social status though our awareness of the values of the groups we find ourselves in. Ideally, this would be the full extent of our observance of these damned monkey value systems. The primary hierarchy we recognise and expect to be rewarded for progressing through is based on the knowledge of how we relate to these systems and their inhabitants. Those who better understand these relationships are more valuable to our group.

I find that this is a far healthier method of status-seeking. When we approach conflict from this perspective, neither side benefits from misrepresenting the facts to support their position because being honest is seen as more important than being right. Being willing to respond to new evidence isn't seen as submission to the person presenting this information, it's commendable and a boost to your status to acknowledge your mistakes and learn from them.

But we're social mammals too. Sometimes it seems nice to think that in our superiority we have entirely exorcised the phantom of status-seeking outside of our specific specialisation, but it's more of a work in progress. It's a constant effort to maintain. Sometimes the primate brain screams "ASSERT YOUR DOMINANCE" with the full force of any other mammal's will to survive and (often without being conscious of our folly) we lose our shit because to this apemeat that governs us, failing to do so is a threat to our survival.

And we do it because we're good at it. This understanding of the rules, for example, gives me a unique opportunity to condescendingly highlight the dominance-seeking of others while masking my own. I know that this is posturing and if I catch it consciously, I aim to avoid it, but there are very real neural connections which have been reinforced by years of experience in successfully using this strategy of intellectual oppression. Why change what works? The simpler brain has difficulty recognising the value of these abstract truth-seeking ideals.

None of us is a Discordian bodhisattva. At least, not in the sense that we have entirely mastered our animal brains with clever abstractions... but that's not what it means to grok Discordianism. We're talking about Chaos, for fuck's sake. You'll find no Ultimate Serenity, nor Oneness, nor True Peace. Life isn't so tidy as all of that. So sometimes we scream, shout and throw things about. We make a mess and we get in amongst it.

Why not? If a thing like this is worth doing at all, it's worth doing right.

Or Kill Me.

MORE TO COME AS MY "FREEDOM OF INFORMATION" REQUESTS TO THE NZ MILITARY ARE RESPONDED TO.
THIS IS AN EXCERPT FROM AN ARMY FIELD GUIDE.

Weren't you the detective in "Spag City Never Sleeps"?

[MAKE UP YOUR OWN AND CHECK 'EM FOR AVAILABILITY OR SEARCH A MASSIVE LIST OF SUGGESTIONS.]

MAKE UP YOUR OWN AND CHECK 'EM FOR AVAILABILITY OR SEARCH A MASSIVE LIST OF SUGGESTIONS.

ALLCAPITALLETTERS.COM
ARGUE IN CAPITAL LETTERS. INVENT SWEAR WORDS.

ReDirectNotice.com
Redirect to a different website every time you visit. Like StumbleUpon only EVEN MORE USELESS.

TheWorstForum.com
Redirect to principiadiscordia.com/forum.

LimitedFunctionality.com
Don't know how to make a website? Draw one in MSPaint and host it here.

HatePeople.com
Self-explanatory.

InfatuationLetter.com
Write infatuation letters and link your victims the object of your affection to them.
Share letters you've been sent.

ExorcismReview.com
Make sure you get the best for the your possessed loved ones!

SphincterTone.com
Self-explanatory.

I just knew you'd look at this thread, Roger.

This just proves what I've suspected all along.
You're much too interested in me. It's starting to concern me.

I bet you'll even reply to it and if others reply to it, you'll quote them and reply to them as well.
You just can't leave it alone because you're OBSESSED and you won't stop until you've convinced the whole board that I'm the one with an obsession.

Okay, sorry about all of that, can't we just be friends?

You prick.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
-attributed to Margaret Mead

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."
― Barack Obama

You have the power to change the world in ways greater than you might ever imagine.
With a simple action you can trigger events that will reshape the lives of many.

You have a voice. With this voice, you can have an influence.
You are an agent of change, though you may not be aware of the enormous impact your choices have.
All change begins with one human being making one choice.
You are that human being and by your will the world will be remade.

At this very moment thousands of people are gathering together, cheering and screaming. They're waving their signs above their heads and they are hoping.

And they're waiting for you to act.

To vote for Chelsea txt "IDOL" to 7783
To vote for Jack...

[get it]

Listen: Signor Paesior has come unstuck in time.

He has blinked driving to work and watching the sun rise and opened his eyes at a party watching it set some five days earlier. He has forgotten self and found it again but it was not the same self. A boy sitting at his dining room table suddenly fell forward and the momentum continued into a man sitting up from bed elsewhere in timespace. He has been born and he has died many times with many faces and payed random visits to all the events in between. He has experienced countless lives as a human being and lives as other things altogether which upon returning to a human mind are garbage and gibberish.

He says.

Paes says that he first came unstuck in time in the dining room I've already mentioned. This was shortly after he ditched his education to work retail. His parents were on holiday and he had the house to himself, so he had some friends around. A buddy of his and he were waiting on a pair of girls they knew, each having a favourite they aimed to woo.

Paes was a guru.

He said.

A proper psychonaut, fluent in pseudophilosophy and profound sounding wank. This was why he didn't need school. The establishment didn't get it and the primitive brain he hadn't conquered couldn't recognise the value of all of these numbers which were being used to describe his progress as a learner. "Fuck these people," said he, "I bet they don't even know that 'we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively,' the jerks. I'm the smartest motherfucker I know."

"Ha," said he, "Ha, ha. I know the truth already because I've taken a lot of drugs."

So here was Paes, preparing to impress these girls with his mastery of the universe and give them some drugs as well, if they wanted, so he could take credit for any Meaningful Revelations they experienced and knew but couldn't capture with their words. He loaded a bong with Salvia and let his buddy take the first hit while they waited for the girls. "Now, it's got a reverse tolerance," offered Paes, the expert, "so it might not work so well the first few times but then it'll start to really fuck with you but you've already had it twice so this might be good."

And his buddy smoked the drug and went on an adventure and neither of them could stop laughing as they galumphed about looking at old things as new things and having trouble with simple things like remembering how to chew biscuits and generally being a pair of schmucks.
And everyone was having a good time.

The girls arrived and were invited in and they couldn't stay long but oh, no, no just stick around for a bit and share some of this and we'll all have a good time. "Don't worry," says Paes, our expert on these matters, "it's perfectly safe, really. It's legal" and Paes is some sort of Anarchist even though he's never wondered what that means or why he has to be one but either way it's silly that its legality is even relevant to him. "It's legal, don't worry. I'm not going to insist, though, you can do what you like but I'm going to smoke some to show you how safe it is." And he does and everything is fine.

For about fifteen seconds while he holds it in and sits there smugly, his eyes saying "I told you so" until they start to vibrate inside his head and a laugh builds up inside him but it doesn't get out before he wakes up on a beach somewhere and his wife is upset because she wants to go home but he wants to stay a little longer even though it's cold and the sun is going down.

He remembers the girls and his buddy and he's confused until he moves again and he's waiting in the subway for the train to take him home from work and he can only remember the beach but now he's moved on again and again and this goes faster and faster and he goes back to the wife from the beach for a conversation about their finances then he leaves again and he's someone else and one day he makes it back to his dining room table but he's bracing himself to leave again because he's already mourned the loss of this place and these people.

Paes has lost his shit on drugs before. He has seen blood and been convinced that he is bleeding out onto the road and seen bugs and been inside-out screaming at everything for hours that feel like forever. He has resolved in these moments of terror to never fuck with his brain by provoking it with deliberately upsetting input but afterwards he knows he always makes it back safe and that it would be silly to stick to drunken, doped up resolutions. He resolves that this is the last time he takes drugs and he apologises to the girls. They don't know why, but he regrets having suggested to them that they go where he has just been. Things are collapsing all around him, every sense is lying to him with unholy sounds and sights and sensations. He goes to bed, sheets rolling like an ocean but he dives in and holds his breath until he is sleeping at the bottom of the sea.

The next day he still can't see straight. He is Gregor Samsa, suddenly and inexplicably in world entirely alien to him but more upset by how this inconveniences him in his plans to go to work that day. Salvia should only last a few minutes. This is not doing what it says on the box.
He drives to work, refusing to swerve for anything which he doesn't usually anticipate encountering on this journey.

"Oh, fuck," says he, "I've done it properly now, haven't I? I'm seriously broken. I would go to the hospital if only I weren't running late for work already." And he's afraid because he can no longer trust his senses to accurately report reality to him and maybe this is forever because it is certainly going on a lot longer than he is comfortable with but it wears off over the course of the day.

Which is when he starts to remember the details of the 'lives' he 'experienced' that didn't make sense to him and still do not. He spends the day throwing up and doubting things until other people react to them and the rain reliably strikes their faces and slips quietly for the ground as he expects it to. And he spends the day thinking of Lovecraft and thinking that he can relate to the inability to describe a horror except by waxing poetic about its evasion of description and how the real horror Lovecraft has to show us is not the ancient creatures or the cultists or the offensive geometries but what they reveal about the restrictions on our perception and knowledge. And he is concerned that his failure to understand the world he lives in might cause him to hurt a friend who seems an enemy or other related misperceptions which might irrevocably alter his world for the worse.

Two weeks later, forgetting the promise he made to himself and desperate to prove it was 'just a bad trip' he takes the drug again and has another terrible reevaluation of his relationship with time and space.

And for a while Paes is a solipsist, but he grows up and he gets better. And everyone is having a good time.

The door swings open and the first thing you see is so much face like Chesteron's Sunday, growing larger and larger as he nears. I fear if he gets too close his face may be too big to be possible and that I may scream aloud but he stops a short distance away before the thing entirely fills my vision. Unfortunately this immense scowling mask is in proportion to the rest of the giant's body. I'd forgotten than people could get so big. I'd forgotten what it was to find a person intimidating. In the shadow of the giant I am suddenly too conscious of the insignifiance of the Lilliputian almostmen I lower myself to associate with each day. Fuck those people.

I think the giant owns the bank. He has come because I have broken something of his. No, I think I was just there when it happened, but I feel as if I should apologise anyway and only refrain from doing so because some merciful chance or perhaps dismissive disinterest on his part. An appliance has stopped working, as I understand. Something has gone wrong, in any case. Something trivial, I think, but the giant has been invited in to make sure everything continues on according to plan.

Fuck those people. Fuck those people.

We hardly share the same world and where our lives are the same, we describe them with words too different. Some cases I attributed to recent acquisition of our language, others to general illiteracy and ignorance but I've come to realise that what really separates us is just how damn small these people all are. I never thought I was like them but I thought we were similar. We're not and now I remember and on the way out the door I see the giant eye to eye and I see he is surprised because I remind him that he is not alone is being so large. Fuck those people.

YOU HAVE A METH ADDICTION CARLA.

WE'RE NOT EVEN HAVING THIS CONVERSATION BECAUSE I'M A DOG AND YOU CAN'T TALK TO DOGS. THINK ABOUT IT.

I'M NOT EVEN YOUR DOG. YOU PROBABLY STOLE ME, BECAUSE YOU'RE ON METH.

GO TO REHAB. DRY YOURSELF OUT. YOU STILL HAVE SOME TEETH LEFT.

FROM THE SPAGS WHO BROUGHT YOU "DARUKO: DEFENDER OF NOOBS" COMES THE MOST RECENT INSTALLMENT IN THE MATRIX SERIES.



MORE TO COME AS I REFORMAT FROM TERRIBLE MOVING IMAGES INTO THE MORE VIEWER FRIENDLY .WOMP

(Might edit this later, so don't be surprised if it changes. I'm too tired to re-read it properly and make sure it says what I want it to say, but I'ma post it anyway.)

We have been criticised; it is said that we are unkind. It is said that we crash parties just to harass the guests and make a nuisance of ourselves. It is said that we dedicate ourselves entirely to causing upset amongst people who are otherwise quite content.

Our Lady was often misunderstood in this way. Eris wasn't invited to parties for fears she might offend the guests' delicate sensibilities. That simply by being present at a wedding feast, she might motivate the celebrated couple to prematurely split. They called her cruel and bitter. She's portrayed as being some sort of malicious shit-stirrer, rocking up to a party she had no business being at and starting the bitch-fight that resulted in the Trojan War, just for kicks. Upset at being snubbed, they say, she hatched this devious little plan to get her revenge. Strife, abhorred Eris, mother to murders and lawlessness, to pain and to ruin... got her revenge by rolling in a note which read:

You are now aware that only one of you can be the prettiest.
   Love, Eris.

PS: Your party is gay.

This is the ancient equivalent of a "kick me" sign taped to your back. Oh, no. I doubt this was an enraged Eris acting out of anger at a perceived insult. If you insult Eris, I'm pretty sure you know all about it.

Thing is, Hera, Athena and Aphrodite, the three who quarrelled over the apple, had some issues they needed to resolve. Each of them felt they had a claim to being called "the fairest of them all" and assumed it was well-known that they held the title. They were so confident in this being common knowledge, in fact, that none of them ever thought it worth mentioning to the others. They never directly acknowledged it, but the belief subtly influenced their every interaction.  Similarly undetected by the conscious minds of these women was their own resentment of the way the others carried themselves. Too proud to consider their own jealousy, each of the Goddesses went about their business growing increasingly short with each other, but barely aware of change in their relationships and even less cognisant of the reason it was changing.

Eris, though... Eris could smell bullshit from a mile away. She didn't just apply Strife to whatever the fuck she liked to see what impact it would have. Eris had a pretty solid understanding of how and where to push and which bits would fall off. She knew how each of these women secretly viewed the others and of what would happen if things were allowed to continue to deteriorate. In all probability, the end result of an uncontrolled confrontation between these Goddesses would have been immanentization of the eschaton. Not the "everybody meets again in Heaven" eschaton, either. We're talking "Aneris swallows up all of being, curtains close, maximum entropy" kind of end-of-the-world. No fucking way was Eris going to let her sister win like that.

With a targeted application of a specific kind of Strife, Eris forced the other Goddesses to confront the lies they were telling themselves to support the narratives they lived by. She forced the following discussion of the issue, which led to arbitration and reconciliation. That Zeus chose a fucking stupid method of choosing a winner – "Oh, this dude is pretty fair. He didn't try to cheat Ares, at least." – can't really be blamed on Eris at all. Like Partyboy Zeus or Aphro-fucking-dite didn't know that given a choice between ANYTHING and an easy lay, most guys aren't going to have to think long. Eris didn't force you do kidnap the wife of Menelaus, guys. What she did force them to do, however, was to address reality and update their understanding of it. The Goddesses could no longer disregard the fact that there was unvoiced conflict between them, and it was addressed before it caused further issue.

Many situations can benefit from having a Golden Apple tossed into them. Boring parties, online echo-chambers, gatherings of misinformed memoids and perhaps most importantly, the dialogue between the voices and beliefs within your own head.
Application of Strife to these situations works much the same as tugging on a rope to test whether it can take your weight before fully committing yourself to it. We see if things will break before we fully link our safety to their integrity.

The Discordian Apple-Lobber is a member of reality's Attentive Public. Much in the same way that the Mass Public of politics are unqualified to make serious decisions regarding their leaders, the Mass Public of reality cannot be trusted to decide how we relate to it, because they do not live there with us. By increasing the awareness of our fellows, and encouraging their rationality, we increase the voices we can trust to inform us about reality. The word of a member of reality's Attentive Public is fully entangled with reality, and so counts as evidence of the nature of things on its own.

I throw apples because successfully alerting people to the ways in which misinformation hinders them encourages a rational relationship with reality, and the further rationality spreads, the more eyes I have upon the world.

I throw apples because I want to create a botnet of truth seekers, because the totality of existence is too big for me to understand alone.

Sometimes throwing apples appears unkind. Sometimes it seems as if I'm crashing parties just to harass the guests and make a nuisance of myself.

Our Lady, too, was often misunderstood in this way.

[why]

In the name of the Reason, and of Observation, and of Experience. My last check-up was three months ago.

Three months, Doktor. Only three months since my last check-up. It was here, with my regular guy. I would have waited to see him, but this is urgent. So three months. How can it have only been three months?
Only three months and... hm? The trouble, Doktor? What seems to be the trouble? It's all been trouble. Fuck, it's been trouble since I got that bloody package from Cram. Cram is from the internet, you see. You know what that means. It means he's a no-goodnik. I didn't know it meant that before, but I know that now. Goddamn, those Discordians. Why are you smiling?

That's more like it. I'm not joking, okay. This is a Serious Matter.

Cram sent me a package, with a new Correct Answer Machine. You may have read in my notes how I was having some trouble with the old one. I experimented with a couple of related models, first, but they were ill fits. This Discordian model said it was compatible with anything, though, so I figured I'd give it a go. It was shaped like an apple, and when I bit into it the old machine dropped off, like it's meant to. But, Doktor, it didn't give me any new answers. I tried to fit a new one immediately and have tried to replace it several times since, but no other Correct Answer Machine will power up.

You have to understand, I've been horribly crippled ever since, by having to think about things for myself. You can't know what it's like, Doktor. I've been awfully confused. I'm thinking all the time now. And noticing things, Doktor. Noticing things I never cared to notice before, like the order in which people use their words, subtle pauses, misdirection and people who I used to believe are lying now, while lunatics are making sense. But, Doktor, I have to tell you what else I've noticed.

Strings. Everyone is on strings. Why are you smiling? Don't smile, I've seen them. Strings on everybody's hands and feet and heads, like they're all puppets. Everything anyone ever does, Doktor. Because of the strings. Sometimes you can't see them at all, but other times, when the light catches them just right, they're all over the place.

I saw the strings on myself, stretching way beyond sight into the sky. Worse still, I felt them tugging. Felt them carry me about my business. How did they know where I was going? They couldn't, so they must be deciding. I couldn't resist their pull, either. When I tensed by arms, they dragged me about by my legs. It was impossible to anticipate their movements. Naturally, I suspected that bastard, Cram. The Discordians must be planting thoughts in my head. Not wanting to let them know I was onto them, I asked only about the Discordian Answer Machine, hoping I might get some clue as to what was going on. Since I last spoke with him, Cram had turned into some sort of Jesus freak. Not really, he was making a point about the Gospel of Thomas, but fat lot of good that did me when he hardly remembered sending me that Goddess-damned package.

Fuck it, you know? If you want something done right...
First thought was to cut my strings, but I got this terrible mental image of my simply dropping dead if I did that, so I left it alone.
You know what I did, Doktor? I climbed them. Climbed up my own strings. To begin with, it was hard work, but it got easier. I started to feel almost as if my ascent was being assisted by the strings being drawn upwards.

"Oh, I can't wait to see the look on the puppet-master's face when I get up there and show him what I think of him," I'm thinking, "I'll make a fist and show him how we play puppets where I come from."

Imagine my surprise when I reached the end of the line and there was no great controller pulling the strings. Imagine it.
What do you suppose I found instead? I'll tell you, Doktor. Maybe you can help me work it out.

More string. When you get up high enough, everyone's strings just sort of meet and are tangled together, with this great mess of connections jerking about and being jerked and everybody is controlling everybody else.

My hand lifts to bring my coffee to my mouth, follow the strings, some kid kicks a ball into a goal, halfway across town. Only that doesn't make sense, so I think there must be more to it than that.

I'll tell you what, though, Doktor. Every since finding out where my strings go, I've been becoming a lot more comfortable with this "thinking for myself" thing. I can't cut them entirely, oh no, but if I know how I react to each string being pulled, and which other strings those are reacting to, I can resist, I can climb back up and untangle the parts that cause me to behave in ways which aren't working for me.

Doktor, do you understand? I thought my trouble was thinking for myself, but it wasn't. I wasn't.  Not until I knew why I thought the way I thought, and how to change my mind. How to take the strings and rearrange them. It's not good to entirely untangle them, because it's useful to sometimes react the way they make me react... but its not so much of a mess now.

Doktor? You do understand, don't you? But I can see that you do not, or you think me mad.
I wish you wouldn't smile at me so.

You just keep smiling.

I guess I'll come back when the regular doctor is in.

I found this on my computer and wasn't sure whether I posted it here. I thought I might have, but I couldn't find it, so here it is.

We were mighty. We knew we were. That wasn't enough, though.

It was important that everyone knew. What good is being mighty if nobody else knows about it? It was decided that we would build an enemy. Like that day you got that kid at school to pretend to be a bully, so you could fight him off and look like a hero. It was like that.

We had to build an enemy that we knew we couldn't lose against. We chose a small boy. He didn't have many friends, so we knew nobody would mind if we picked on him. We took his things and we pushed him around. We told him he had to do how we did, and that if he didn't there would be trouble. We wrote "enemy" on the back of his shirt so everyone would know what he was, what they should think of him. There was really no contest.

"Enemy".

We all knew what that word meant, then, but now we're not so sure. We thought that the word would be enough to keep him isolated. It was, for the most part. Some still insisted on ignoring our advice and defying our will. Threatening our control, so we wrote "enemy" on them as well. We wrote "enemy" on everyone who stood too close to them. We wrote "enemy" on everyone who questioned us. "Enemy" spread like a plague, because so many of us had the power to write it. We wrote it on each other's faces. We wrote it until it all but lost its meaning.

"Enemy". "Enemy". "Enemy". "Enemy". "Enemy". Until we were outnumbered, simply for our inability to agree on definition. A subtle thing like semantics. We didn't expect it to have a measurable effect. "Enemy". "Enemy". "Enemy". "Enemy". "Enemy". Until the words blended together into noise. An unintelligible, menacing hum, enveloping our heads and nurturing our paranoia. Perhaps the first of them wasn't that boy, but whoever decided to write on his shirt.

There's more than one kind of magic.

[full]

Has anyone played around with this?
I've been involved in the design, development and administration of Second Life roleplay sims for about six years now. Curious whether any of you spags might have looked into it. Here follows some potentially disjointed thoughts about how all that shit works. If you're not hot for rambling, best to just skip it.

To briefly explain the setup, for those who don't know. Second Life is a virtual world, where users are able to build and design their own environments and accessories. Each region simulator (sim) of the world runs on a single dedicated core of a multi-core server. Where the settings of the sim you are in allow, users can freely create geometric primitives and link these together into more complex objects. SL also allows for 3d objects designed outside of the game world to be imported as textures, where the R (red), G (green) and B (blue) channels are mapped onto X, Y, and Z space to describe complex shapes to the system. By clever combinations of these shapes, and textures applied to their faces, users create some pretty spectacular environments. Once these environments have been created, you have to decide what to do with them. They're a little too costly to just put together and ignore ($1000 US initial setup, and monthly $295 for a full private region, which is the preferred way to buy land, otherwise your neighbours build giant dicks everywhere to ruin your view)

An obvious choice is to start an RPG in your sim. This software has a lot to offer to roleplayers. You can make your avatar appear nearly any way you please. If someone hasn't already designed the things you need to realise your character concept, you can build it yourself. There's an easy to use body shape editor to change the appearance of the default avatar, but if it won't do the things you want, avatars built entirely out of objects are very common. These objects are attached to points on the avatar body, which can be animated any way you please to ensure the creation moves how you would like it to. It's easier to be less creative and buy some macho/slutty motion capture animations for your attractive human avatar, though.

Roleplaying communities in Second Life fail much more often that they succeed. I've had a lot of fun helping to build up and maintain some popular ones, and I've been involved in some that just flopped, too. Usually the causes of these flops are pretty easy to determine. The sim owner hires staff that don't get along. There's a clash between the "I'M JUST HERE TO HAVE FUN DON'T CRITICISE MY ONE-SENTENCE POSTS" and "*Snort of derision* I only talk to people who post paragraphs". Or a combination of the two, where the staff disagree on which is their target audience, or if they're trying to please both. Sometimes the sim just doesn't have enough traffic to attract more people; you need a pretty dedicated group of gamers to be regularly playing to get people into it in the first place. Other times it's just a poorly designed game. This final reason is something I like to work on, game mechanics.

There are a lot of ways of handling these. One common method is to use a combat system, scripted in the Linden Scripting Language.
LSL is a procedural scripting language used to add interactivity to objects. It can make doors open on click, apply physical impulses to avatars to augment their jumping/speed and create a bullet object in front of a gun, applying a force to that object. A lot of sims go for a combination of text-based freeform combat and a first-person-shooter combat system, registering the collisions made by physical objects fired at them. These systems also monitor a user's movement input, using this and the data from functions which detect the position of nearby avatars to determine whether melee attacks hit or not. Most of these systems are very basic and the most popular of them are full of bugs. I've always meant to design my own, and have a whole pile of code snippets towards it. A lot of these have been contributed to the development of other people's systems, but I'm still convinced that the software allows for a lot more than anyone else has given.

Some sims use a meter purely to handle combat and though it strikes me as strange that RL skill with point and click determines the outcome of IC confrontation in places where RP is the focus, there isn't much alternative if you want to use an existing system to handle it.
Other places use a meter system to better control interaction with the environment. If the data stored on your character says you're good at driving, the vehicles in the game will handle better. All of the popular versions of this system incorporate the FPS combat system mentioned above.
Only in pure RP sims is RL ability not such a factor, but I've yet to find an example of this sort of sim that uses a meter beyond simple stat display. I'm still not certain what the best approach is, but I've spent a bit of time moving between popular MMOs to see what works and what doesn't for the script-controlled stats.

If any of you have had a look at SL, what were your impressions of it and how long ago did you check it out?
Those of you who aren't interested in this platform, I'd still like to hear if you have any information about RPG development and balancing.

Also, pics of a sim I liked, to show some of what is possible in environment design. They closed because they didn't have enough traffic to hold new players.

I'll probably edit this post so it makes more sense if I have more to say on the subject.

[completely]

14:
One evening, Hung Mung and Aini were walking through a bad neighbourhood. Police sirens wailed in the distance. As they came around a bend, Aini was seized by a large, heavily intoxicated man (who happened to be dark-skinned). Hung Mung tried to stop him and the dark-skinned man shot him in the head before fleeing the scene.

Hung Mung recovered, but the bullet fragments could not be removed without endangering his life.
Aini came to visiting him in the hospital and lamented, "O! Hung Mung! Good friend! My heroic rescuer! I am troubled."

Hung Mung sat up in his bed. "What bothers you, Aini? You don't sound well."

"I am filled with fear and tormented with terrible visions of pain. Everywhere I go I see black men and am convinced that they are plotting to rape me. O, woe!"

"I know of the shrapnel I am carrying from that event," said Hung Mung, "Were you aware that you are carrying some too?"


1:
The Good Reverend Roger invited Daruko to have dinner with him.
They ate their vindaloo in silence, after which Roger excused himself for the better part of an hour.
Daruko waited patiently until Roger returned, then asking him, "Roger, I have come here to ask you to teach me about your Discordianism. What is the source of your great power? I..." He trailed off, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. Roger's calculations had been correct and he had timed it perfectly. Daruko left to use the bog, but no sooner than he had entered, before he even found the light switch, the Good Reverend shut and locked the door behind him.

"Like the toilet bowl, you are completely full of shit. There's no room for any more, so what good is giving you Discordianism?"

Step 1: Lie to the government about having previously worked in intelligence overseas.
Step 2: Lie to the government about having designed the Polaris missile guidance system.
Step 3: Lie to the government about having competed in the Winter Olympics.
Step 4: ???
Step 5: PROFIT.

So you're saying that before we employ spies we should check their backgrounds? Sorry, we're not very good at this.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1351473/New-Zealand-government-embarrassed-employing-British-born-fantasist-senior-intelligence-officer.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Stephen Wilce's action-packed career appeared to rival the great heroes of thriller stories.

The British-born military scientist had worked as a spy, served with the Duke of York as a helicopter pilot, competed in the Winter Olympics, captained a Royal Navy swimming team and was a special forces soldier who ended up on an IRA death list.

He also boasted that he had designed the Polaris missile guidance system, that he was a member of the Welsh national rugby union team and, last but not least, that he was a guitarist on the British folk music circuit.

The only trouble was that Wilce's yarns were just that – total fiction

...

It has all proved very embarrassing for the New Zealand government, who employed the British expat as a senior intelligence officer.
...

The CV he tendered impressed a defence panel so much that he was given top level security clearance.
He oversaw 80 staff and had access to highly classified intelligence.

[I'm not sure that this is what I wanted at all.]

Dear Cram,

The package you sent me arrived today.
I must admit, it wasn't what I was expecting it would be.
I thought I was waiting for the delivery of a new Correct Answer Machine from you, so I could replace my current one and become a Discordian, as you are. I'm not sure that this is what I wanted at all. For one thing, it doesn't look anything like the others I've used. In the past when I have changed mine, the new one came in a box with foam packaging, wrapped tightly in plastic. Once unpacked, you pull the tab out to connect the temporary batteries and it springs to life. It's a small mechanical spider, with slender metallic legs. They usually have a port on the back for updates and a needle on the front. The little thing sits neatly on the palm of your hand for a few moments before running up your arm, shoulder, around to the back of your neck and resting there. The old Answer Machine falls to the floor, its legs curling in towards its body, disconnected from its power source. You have to give the new Correct Answer Machine up to two weeks to work, depending on how dramatically it differs from the previous one and how effectively the previous one was working before being replaced. When they get old, they stop being able to answer questions as quickly and its easier for a new machine to take over.

Your machine, though, was something different entirely. It doesn't look anything like a spider, but I thought perhaps that was just a modification you made for its case. It looked like an apple, painted gold. There was a little circular window in it, showing that in the center was a dice with pentagonal faces, suspended in a dark liquid. It reminded me of a magic eight ball, so I shook it and looked through the window. The words on the dice slowly became clear. "Eat me."

I didn't think I had any reason to doubt it. I just took a bite without thinking. I only took a small bite, but the liquid inside must have been pressurised because it all burst through into my mouth and I had to swallow it. It tasted like cough syrup. I thought it must have worked, because the old version fell off the back of my head and died. I was worried, so I used one of the calibration kits that came with the previous machine. I knew it would work fast because, like I told you earlier, I'm quite random, so it didn't have too much to change, but I didn't actually think it would be that quick. One of the questions is "What do you think about child labour."

Now here's the part that has me worried. And I'm starting to wonder if this package came from you at all. Previously I would have been supplied with an immediate answer. Something binary and easy to understand. "Child labour is bad" or "child labour is good". This new thing didn't do that, but it already over-wrote the answer from the old one. Instead of an answer, this Discordian Answer Machine repeated the question, over and over again, getting louder and louder. "What do you think of child labour?" It stressed different words each time.
"What do YOU think of child labour?"
"What do you think of CHILD labour?"
"what do you THINK of child labour?"
And it interrupted itself, and spoke over itself, until all that I could pick up was "what do you think what do you think what do you think" and it hasn't stopped, even as I am writing this, chanting away in the back of my mind. And the sweet liquid from the apple has unsettled my stomach, so it feels as if I am going to vomit.
And I want to scream and I want to cry and all the while there's a tickle at the back of my head where the Correct Answer Machine used to be and it makes me want to giggle all the while and what do you think what do you think what do you think?

http://www.risky.biz/hell

Risky.Biz understands multiple intruders have compromised Hell Pizza's 400mb database. While it does not contain any credit card information, it does contain in excess of 230,000 rows of customer entries.

The company operates 64 stores in New Zealand, three in England, nine in Australia and one in Ireland.

The database entries include the full names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, passwords and order history for the company's customers. The information is "doing the rounds" across New Zealand.

Some who came into contact with the database contacted the company last year, posing as "concerned customers", but received no acknowledgement of the data breach. They fear the database may have already found its way into the wrong hands.

When contacted by Risky.Biz, Hell Pizza co-owner Stuart McMullin said he was unaware of the data breach. He offered no comment when a list of questions was e-mailed to him, beyond acknowledging the contact from "concerned customers" in 2009.

"I have spoken to my IT staff and they are not aware that our site was hacked or any records lost," McMullin wrote in an e-mail to Risky.Biz. "There were a couple of 'customers' that thought it was the case last year who emailed us - perhaps these are the sources you are referring to - but not to our knowledge."

While the database has become a valuable tool for security professionals in New Zealand, they believe the exposure of the data is exposing the company's customers to spam and other attacks.

It's possible that many users have recycled their passwords between their e-mail, PayPal, TradeMe, banking, eBay, Hell Pizza and other accounts. Even if just a few percent of the company's customers are recycling passwords, the database is worth obtaining, they say.

Downloading the Hell Pizza database, apparently, was very easy.

One source Risky.Biz spoke to says they looked into the security of the website when rumours of the breach started doing the rounds:

Immediately I spotted the SQL Queries being made by the Flash SWF as part of the query string to the server-side. The Flash client makes queries which are hard-coded in the .swf (this is dumb as it means SQL Injection is effectively a 'feature' of the store).

You could easily alter the query string to show the hashes stored in the MySQL users table. I figured out the version of MySQL was 4.0 (Debian Sarge) - and the hashes in this version are very weak, cracking them would take less than a couple of hours.

MySQL was listening on a remote port, so one could simply log in remotely and run queries or dump the database slowly so as to not be noticed.

Security researcher and Metasploit creator H D Moore described the security arrangements of the online ordering portal, as described above, as "about 50 steps of fail".

Another penetration tester says the Hell Pizza database is an excellent example of "non critical" information that could still be used by attackers for great benefit.

The Chair of New Zealand's Internet Task Force, Paul McKitrick, told Risky.Biz that he had heard rumours of the database circulating around the security community as far back as last year.

"A database like this of New Zealand users' personal information provides miscreants with a valuable list of commonly used, New Zealand-centric passwords which could prove useful in brute forcing passwords," he said.

"If Hell Pizza were aware of this then they should have notified their customers. I do not know what actions Hell Pizza took, but I was a customer and I have never received any notification that my personal information has been compromised."

McKitrick, the former head of the New Zealand Government's Centre for Critical Infrastructure Protection, added organisations that collect and store the personal details of their customers, have a responsibility to notify their customers if they believe that there has been a breach of their personal information.

"This enables customers to do something about mitigating their own personal exposure, such as ensuring that the compromised password was changed everywhere it had been used, because people frequently reuse their passwords."

Hell Pizza reported the breach to police after Risky.Biz provided it with some database excerpts it could verify.

Hell Pizza has posted a warning on their Facebook to explain the situation to their customers, but otherwise appears not to have done anything to alert customers who used the system that their information may not have been stored securely.

Dear Valued Hell Customer,

We have been approached by a party claiming to be in possession of customer details from the previous Hell website which is no longer in operation. The samples that we received included details of four customers from 2006, including phone numbers and email addresses and order information. We can confirm that credit card data was not at risk as this is held independently on a secure banking website.

Whilst we are still investigating the matter, we can confirm that the information was obtained without our knowledge and we have approached the New Zealand Police with a view to lodging a formal complaint. Hell recognises the importance of protecting customer information and additional security measures were implemented earlier this year when our new website was rolled out (again, we reiterate that this is not an issue affecting the new website). As a further security measure your may wish to consider changing your passwords on other sites if they were the same as the old Hell Pizza website.

We apologise for the incident and any inconvenience that this may have caused.

Sincerely,

Stu McMullin – Director Hell Pizza

We acknowledge that some of you have asked to be removed from the database and we have only included you for the purposes of this notification.

The final line of this suggests to me that this message was sent to their customers using information from the database, but... my email and friends' emails would have been in this database and none of us has heard anything from Hell Pizza. The plus side is, that now that there is an physical address connected to my email address, the spam I receive is more related to my interests.