Topics

split so as not to jack the Missions, Goals, Objectives thread...

We should really see if we can contact people in the current internet counterculture - groups like the former Technoccult site (now Renegade Futurist), Alterati (good for creative projects), the PDX Occulture lot...and work from there.  The first two in particular churn out links and promotions like nobodies business, and with the added bonus of attracting our sort of crowd.

Disinfo.com would be a good target too.  If there are enough of us there we could vote the story up and get it on the main page.

Can we start setting up a wiki page for these memetic infection vectors?

We can break it down into sections and have easy links to register for sites like stumbleupon, boingboing, LJ, etc, etc.

If we can make it very easy for the PD members that are less interested in trying to organize this thing to get all set up with accounts everywhere we need them, then we can have our mob pre-register over a few weeks time. Then once we have something ready to infect the web with we would have a large group of agents that can just jump in and start posting/commenting/bumpng our stuff all over without having to go through the hassle of signing up for each site right before they do so.

Yes, that's a great idea.

let's create a naughty stepchild of Discordian_Websites_and_Communities called http://blackironprison.com/index.php?title=Discordian_Vectors

with the sweetest spots to seed stuff




but here's the ten million dollar question - where is the most fertile soil (generally) for planting ideas?

http://principiadiscordia.com/cramulus/index.php?title=Hodgeonauts

Her'es a piece I've written for the Prophetica Discordia. Feedback requested.

[Project:]

Project:

create a library of scribus magazine layout templates for Intermittens editors


What does that mean?

Scribus is the recommended program to lay out an issue of Intermittens. The goal is to create a bunch of layout templates that Intermittens editors can download. Then they import graphics and pour text into the frames, move shit around a bit, and ... voila!


How to help:

1. download scribus.
2. go to intermittens.org's template/tools section and download some of the stuff there
3. improve them and re-upload

OR

3. create new 1-page, 2-page, 3-page, 4-page layouts and upload them

OR

1. find existing magazine layouts on the net and upload them

OR

profit???

[Every so often, I feel it's important to examine this forum-thing we're riding, and perhaps break it out of its black iron prison. WE are bars of the forum's prison. This post is an attempt to examine the shape of the cell and maybe start to rearrange it.]

Every so often, I feel it's important to examine this forum-thing we're riding, and perhaps break it out of its black iron prison. WE are bars of the forum's prison. This post is an attempt to examine the shape of the cell and maybe start to rearrange it.



I joined this forum a little over two years ago.
At first I thought, "Wow, an actual group of Discordians!"
                     and I was expecting a normal internet forum.

Then I read The Black Iron Prison, and it shook me up proper. Never before has the internet reached into my life like that.

I thought, "Man, these guys aren't just talking about it, they're actually doing it." Gradually, I realized that there's probably no larger group of Discordians, online or offline. (to be fair, whether we qualify as a "group" is up for debate)

I realized that a lot of my grandiose and over-the-top drives could probably be achieved with the help of a network like this. Many ideas had to change in order to work with a decentralized online group. I've found that the hardest thing to do is to interact with somebody digitally and get them to do something in meatspace. (This is well summarized by Shii's description of the difficulties in motivating Anonymous: "Anonymous as a collective can rarely be motivated to do anything useful, especially if it involves standing up from the computer. This phenomenon was first noted on the Something Awful forums where many people eagerly mobilized in anonymous form to attack furry forums, but few would stand up and get off their computers to go volunteer somewhere.") But nevertheless, projects like POSTERGASM and COLBERTGASM proved that we CAN do stuff in the real world, even if we end up spending much more time talking about it online. Some of this stuff can be really big. A group of 20 or 30 people with their own social networks and resources is a very powerful group. Even if those people are only kinda on the same page and have no central leadership.

I think this forum has amazing potential which it has only partially reailzed. When someone in the year 2050 writes about the history of Discordia, there's a good chance they'll have to mention this forum or its satelite projects. I don't say that to inflate anyone's ego or present us as "authorities". This forum blows goats in many ways. But on the other hand, we also kick ass. Again, we're probably the largest group of Discordians so if something cool is going to emerge from the Discordian society in this decade, there's a really good chance it'll come from here. That's if advancement of the Discordian Society is our goal.

Meta-goals

In my magical dream world, where this is the perfect forum for Discordia, we...

• are involved in a constant outpouring of NEW information and ideas (like Intermittens, the BIP, etc). At least once a year we release a more significant work like the BIP.
• are a social resource for the Discordian Society, making it easier to find Discordians in your area for 3D adventures (this is one of the biggest ways we can encourage emergence)
• provide resources (like POSTERGASM or the stuff in the propaganda depository) for people to play with. These things should be easily accessable from the front page
• have a few clearly defined ongoing projects, so if people want to DO something, there's something to participate in (safaris, trolling, pranks, etc)
• have threads with interesting topics and discussions. 90% of the forums on the internet have nearly identical threads. We should strive to maintain the quality of reading around here.
• are living proof that the Discordian Society wasn't something that just existed in occult / lunatic circles in the 1970s

On a more concrete level, I'd like to see us propagate a prank which makes serious news.


Inclusion Critera
On one hand, I feel bad when someone with thin skin arrives here and gets flamed away before they've had time to learn how we roll. On the other hand, this forum isn't for everybody and I wouldn't want to see this place declawed. Everybody here should be able to freely express themselves. Sometimes that includes being a dick. That's freedom for ya. The Admins have made it clear that this isn't an "ALL ABOARD!" clubhouse - we want to hang out with cool people, and that requires some maintenence to keep a good signal-to-noise ratio.

That being said, I see many newbies as potential resources - people who will make our whole project bigger and better through their participation. So when someone gets flamed off the board for having an unpopular point of view (the big three being Anarchy, Libertarianism, and some types of Paganism), I think it ultimately hurts the community as a whole. (I'm reminded tactic we use when trolling a board - flame any newcomers, thereby generating a sort of judgemental, mistrustful attitude towards newbies. This ensures that newcomers either conform to group norms or leave entirely)

There's also the Monkey Politics game, a middle-schoolesque game we play to determine who's in the in-group and who's in the out-group. This bugged me in high school and it bugs me now. The defense of an in-group generates the SNAFU principle. Here at PD we don't act like we're above our shitflinging territorial monkey nature. Which is cool, but it doesn't mean we have to embrace it either.


Difference from the run-of-the-mill forums

I have always liked the uniqueness of PD. When we were running with the Adam Weishaupt Society, we discovered that when you post something on a forum, the responses are nearly always predictable. This is less true of PD than other places I've found.

I like that people who get involved with this forum often feel the need to give back to it. This has resulted in a lot of great posts, writing, images, etc. The best way to give back is to participate in it - but here you have more options than the typical forum. You could help manage a project, or one of our websites (blackironprison.com always needs participants!). You can write on the blog. And there are always projects going on. When you hang out on most forums, there aren't as many activities! (trolling, safaris, brainstorms, etc)


Presentation

Perhaps the best way to prune this community into the bonsai tree we want it to be is to reorganize it.

The pd front page should be a dynamic page which is updated with the current Quotes, Jokes, Projects, Blog Entries, and Images.

blackironprison.com should become an encylopedia of ideas generated by this forum. We should come up with succinct entries about memes we're fond of (like shrapnel, the Machine, and "FUCK YOU MY COUSIN DIED FROM X") This will help newbies get up to speed, and help us communicate our ideas with minimal confusion. We need volunteers to help do this!

              One entry I suggest is a Newbie entry where everybody can give their thoughts on how to best join the commutiny. Like the ATTN N00bs threads, but less than 40 pages long.

Each subforum could have a sticky thread which describes the function / vibe of that subforum. This is already going on, but some of 'em need updating.

I see the Volunteer Thread as a good resource for this, but maybe there's a better way to let people know what we need help with?




Sometimes I come here for social reasons, sometimes project reasons, sometimes educational reasons. I recognize that there's a broad spectrum of reasons people come here. Nobody wants to be told how to use this forum, so I want to be clear: suggesting a motivation does not mean that everybody's gotta be on the same page. Saying we want to do X does not necessarily exclude Y and Z. So let's not waste our breath trying to come up with a vision we all agree with. Just because I want to spread the word of Eris doesn't mean that you have to. Everybody gets to choose their level of commitment, but must also accept that others see things differently. There are certain points we will never agree on. Dwelling on those points is a distraction from talking about what we could be doing.

I'd like to hear your thoughts about how we can make this forum even better than it currently is, even more different from the boring cardboard forums that are typical on the internet. Let's think for ourselves, shmuck, and collaborate on a creative trip which will help the Forums / Community be totally bitchtits.

I re-learned a valuable lesson last night. It's the same thing I discovered while piloting the OBNOXIOUS JERK CABAL to pointless screaming marathons and drunken debacles. Stupid drunken childish fun is nothing to be ashamed of! In fact, it may be the only thing that can save some of us from becoming total cabbages.


I was back at my old college campus last night. It's spring break there, and some college buddies were getting Saint Patrick drunk with one of their friends that still lives on campus. So they called me, piss drunk, and said CAPTAIN WE NEED YOU, GET DOWN HERE. So I shrugged, picked up some booze, and drove down to my old college.

I love these guys. When they're on, they've got the trickster-asshole thing down pat. But they're kind of media-obsessed, and it gets in the way of their awesome individuality. So instead of talk about movies, I told them we were going for a walk, and we took a tour of all the sacred spots on campus.

There's this place called the elephant tree, this huge old gnarled tree which looks like elephant skin. It's in the middle of this beautiful glade, and for generations, kids have been coming here to - do drugs, fuck, larp, read poetry, whatever. More specifically MY group of friends has spent a lot of time in this spot. it has a meaning to our group. And we stood there for 20 minutes while everybody quoted family guy, swapped celeb gossip, and referenced their favorite moments from recent sitcoms. They're really interesting, creative, energetic people, but sometimes they need a reminder about what REAL fun is.

So I led them away, and I took them down this dark staircase into this really creepy place under a building, which is where I came when I tripped out for the first time. It's easy to pretending you're outside the gates of hell. There's a shaft of moonlight that illuminates the otherwise scary industrial basement-area. I've always found that place extremely poetic. Also, I hadn't been there in three or four years and it was really strange to be back. But everybody was still talking about Watchmen or the Watchmen video game, so I sighed and led them back out.

We used to have ADVENTURES, you know? I mean for real, spending the entire night breaking into buildings and exploring basements and crawling through air ducts.

I kept trying to start a conversation about real stuff - stuff we had done together, stuff we wanted to do. Things that had happened in our lives. I hadn't seen this crowd in two years and every time we started to catch up, it ended up getting derailed into a tangent about complete dross.

and finally, as we were walking through the woods piss drunk, I realized that I was frustrated and bored, and so stopped talking altogether, and I picked up a stick and I broke it over somebody's back.

And they stopped talking, confused, and tried to make sense of it as I walked into the woods, grabbed an armful of sticks and started hucking them at the fuckers. I threw sticks right at their stupid conversation. Then suddenly eveyrbody everybody was laughing and throwing sticks and yelling.

And still laughing, we continued to roam, growing more insane, until we ended up in the big metal scrap pile behind the sculpture lab. And I found this big metal can thing that you could push like a lawnmower, and it made a HELL of a lot of noise, and it was pissing off everyone so I kept doing it louder and more annoying as we walked. And as it got more obnoxious, it got more funny. I can't explain it, but you know what I mean if you've been there. We were all laughing ourselves blue in the face because this trash can I had insisted on dragging along so fucking obnoxious. Somehow that degenerated into us throwing the damn thing as far as we could over and over again and laughing like dizzy baboons as it crashed cacophony onto the pavement. And we were all laughing and screaming and laughing even harder because we were drunk and nobody was hung up by anything. and for a moment we couldn't imagine being hung up on anything ever again.

Screaming hysterical nothingness.

This is the most beautiful possible form of anarchy.

I've got this red hot fantasy, baby. You feeling kinky? You and I are gonna do a little bedroom role-play....


I'll dress up as Abraham Lincoln. And you...

[ALSO, EDITORS:]

I'd like to call attention to the numbering that we've been assigning to Intermittens issues. We're not tied to publishing 1 issue per month, nor is it necessary to publish in the order that people have called dibbs. I'm worried be that people might waiting to put together their issue because they theoretically have several months before it's "due". That's poppycock for traditional magazines, but not necessary for DIY outfits like us.

Right now we're theoretically scheduled up to issue #8. But KC, feel free to release yours before this summer!

In general, don't worry about the issue numbering. It might be more useful to rename the issue threads to "Intermittens: Your Subject" (instead of an issue number). Publish when you're ready. We'll try to make sure we have at least one per month, but we shouldn't be afraid to publish faster than that. I'm excited that we have six issues in development right now.

ALSO, EDITORS: keep your threads updated with what resources you're missing to make your issue come together. It's possible that you can find some help or advice regarding layout or graphic design or what have you.

ONE MORE THING: If you've got a minute, make an account on Intermittens.org -- there's not a lot there at the moment, but soon enough there will be lots of resources for collaboration... Including the ability to take submissions over the web from spags who don't even post here.

BUT THEN I SAID

Discordianism and the concept of KopyLeft go hand in hand. Although just a small part of the counter-culture gestalt, I believe that the Principia Discordia was probably one of the earliest expressions and strongest champions of this idea, which has since seen such concepts as the "Open Source Software" initiative, with endeavors such as the Linux OS. Remember, if it's not KopyLeft, it's not Discordian. This concept is at Discordia's very heart, ye and its spleen, gonads and pineal gland. Or something. I remember stumbling across the Discordian internet site some meatboy had constructed and copyrighted - I laughed and laughed at the sad-arsed bastard. No doubt Eris will accordingly soften him sorely.

         -The Rev. DrJon Swabey, from the intro to the Apocrypha Discordia



How do you guys feel about this? Should all Discordian works be KopyLeft? I like the idea that if I say something sort of cool, somebody else might take it, polish it up, and use it for something really cool. I feel that once an idea leaves your mouth, it's alive in a way you can no longer control.

I think that this notion of this is inherent to Discordia. There's a sort of zen-buddhism implied in Kopyleft. Kopyleft forces a detachment from any territorial stake in your ideas. It forces us to communicate and entertain each other in a way where we have little to personally gain - it's communication for communication's sake. Not for the market, not for the ego, not for the benjamins.

I think the Kopyleft principle is alive and well in this community. For example, we create a lot of our own channels of entertainment. We have a magazine, a radio station (coming soon!), and about a zillion pdfs, meme bombs, and miscellaneous marginalia. None of this would be possible if we weren't comfortable taking, breaking, remixing and replaying each other's work.

I think about the Meme Bomb thread, and how we have probably a half dozen "best of" collections. It's now difficult and unimportant to determine who said what. The vast majority of the meme bombs aren't creditable to a specific author without some dilligent searching. Most commonly, the meme bombs are attributed to the community - an interesting concept, to be sure! Is this ideological socialism? Is our communication better when there aren't any pissing contests about who controls what ideas?

Please note that I'm not trying to start a thread about the merits and flaws of the copyright system, or whether artists should get paid for their work. I'm interested in discussing the notion that Everything Discordian Should Be (K). What's your take on it?

here's piece I wrote... I'm not overly fond of the meter, but it was one of those things I could only get out of my head by writing down. So here it is.




I'm a bad consumer
culturally irrelevant
mind is full of tigers
and ideas so malevolent

I hate my stupid wallet
the cards inside aren't part of me
there's bile in my gullet
and economic anatomy

  protest, protest
  and shake your fist
  grab your stuff and
  pull and twist

  grab the future
  have a tryst
  protest, protest
  and shake your fist

at this rusty rotten spectacle
this sad retracted testicle
this sagging sappy vegetable
his inertia is invincible

I'll raise the fever, give 'em hell
Instead of watching, now I'll yell
Disconnect them, break the spell
(but I'm the jailor AND the cell)

  riot, riot
  revolution
  fire is
  the absolution

  pollute the air
  with unpollution
  riot, riot
  revolution

I won't be a culture-shill
I changed my life from gray to red
I'll reverse the values they instill
and do the opposite instead

I'm full of death, I'm full of fight
I'm smoking wrong and burning bright
I'll sacrifice myself tonight
so life is better now... right?

  rebel, rebel
  and shake your crown
  build a bridge and
  burn it down

  stake your cross
  into the ground
  rebel, rebel
  shake your crown

I knocked the products off my shelf
and now the shelves are empty
I should have rebelled against myself
that tyrant has consumed me

nobody heard, no one awoke
like driftwood in the sea
they chose their role in this sick joke
their punchline punches me

  wake up, wake up
  'cause you should know
  that if you hate it,
  let it go

  and if you love it,
  time to go -
  wake up, wake up
  for the nine to five show

I'm in a funk right now. Allow me to spew about it... maybe conceptualizing it will give me a toe-hold.





Some people would point out that it's because my biosurvival has fallen into question. The foundation of my whole Maslow-Hierarchy-Of-Needs is unsteady and that puts everything into question. I can't possibly build the top bricks of happiness because money is on the table. And we all know that a dollar has a lot more tangible value to our wellbeing than the insignificant amount of economic freedom it represents.

It makes me sick, you know? To think that engaging in any of this so-called subversive thought, this so-called reality hacking, has any power higher than self delusion. Maybe we can make a beautiful, dynamic illusionary world and go live there, but at the end of the day, if paycheck is short, we're still stuck, suffocating in our lives. If all the promises of the self-proclaimed Awakened fall short, and all the promises of those circle-jerkers in the sixtiest fall short, and all the culture is moving too fast and too steady to be jammed, where does that leave us? Individuals, powerless in the face of the wild, heaving ocean.

I admit it, I sold myself to the revolution and at the moment I'm nauseated by it. I can't go forward with the personal revolution because I'm living in a low quality existence. I know money's not supposed to be important, but I'm sick of living in the ghetto, I want to be out of debt, I want to send my hypothetical kids to a good school. But it seems like there's absolutely no way to do that without selling out and making myself into some sort of super-consumer. A salesman with a suicidal grin. He's selling himself to the highest bidder but he doesn't really believe in the product.

I wish I could get out of it, and get back to having the Authentic Experience. Now my friends, when they have time to be my friends, sit around and talk about the fun we used to have. Now coming home and kissing my beautiful girlfriend has become routine, cliche, divested of life.

Years ago, a piece of driftwood floated by, and there was a message written on it in my handwriting. It said, "Ignite Yourself -- while there's still time!" And with Eris as my witness, I did. I read everything cool I could get my hands on. I dressed up like a crazy person and went out into the pedestrian traffic jam and put my weird out there like weirdbait, hanging out of my pants like I was trophy fishing. And for a while it seemed like it was working.

But then something happened - or rather, it didn't happen. There were some little victories, but I got sucked back into the rut, the cyclical chase of debt and redemption, just drifting and having nothing to be proud of. I feel like I'm buried under all this inertia and I have no motivation to crawl back out. I need new friends, I need a new job, and I need to reprioritize my life. I think. Right now I'm all locked up in the black iron prison and I don't fucking care about anything.

I guess I'm in search of the Authentic Experience and I'm just not looking very hard. Because I'm just a consumer right now, a restless, malfunctioning unit of our economy. It seems like all my problems could be solved with more money. And there's a rebellious sixteen year old deep in me that is fucking pissed off at the cabbage I'm becoming.

My motto used to be "If you're bored, you're boring". But at the present, I have never been more bored in my life. All the rewards that culture has to offer - family, inner peace, comfort, prestige - it all seems hollow and meaningless. Like I'm burning myself up to reach financial stability, but upon closer inpsection, the carrot at the end of the stick is a rotten turd. I don't want to do anything but lie down in bed and close my eyes for about ten or fifteen years. I'm disgusted with society, but especially with myself. Maybe I'm just seeing the worst parts of society reflected in myself right now, but I'm tired as hell, and I'm just going to roll over and take it.

There is no better alternative to participation in this sick nightmare. Let's be honest - I can't just go Kerouac and jump a boxcar to freedom. Part of the problem is that I sold myself on this fabulously exciting lifestyle, full of action and weirdness. It was a speed I can't keep up. Some kid will say "I heard you used to be cooler."

I don't understand what the next step is. I'm told that I should try to maneuver myself out of depression, but I'd rather get stoned off my ass and watch Family Guy reruns. And click refresh on the craigslist job section.

It just makes you sicker and sicker every day until you just can't take it anymore.

Dear ass-cannons and tard-bibs:

Today is Cramulus' birthday. If you would like to help him celebrate, please write a story starring him. Minimum length is one sentence.  Suggested genre is Action.

For example:
"Cramulus," the old man gasped, "I'm dying."

Cramulus extended his hand, palm up, and said "Keys to the jet."

The old man tossed Cram the keys and promptly died. Cram jumped into the jet and vowed to avenge his death, but instead just spent an entire tank of jet fuel flying around and listening to "Rock You Like a Hurricaine" on repeat.


THE END

[The world will end in 2012.]

The world will end in 2012.





I know what you're thinking. You're thinking about the lack of rational evidence for any eschatology surrounding the year 2012. You're thinking about the hysterical misinterpretations of the mayan calendar, which doesn't actually predict the "end" of anything. You're thinking about Terrence McKenna's obsession with the end of novelty, and how he made his predictions based (in part) on the i ching, not math or science. You're going to remind me that Kurzweil's predictions about the singularity won't come to fruition until at least 2030. You want to tell me all the reasons that I'm wrong. And honestly, you'd probably be right.

But listen---

• The World will end in 2012
• Nothing's gonna happen in 2012

-- which of these two beliefs is more exciting?

We have heard all sorts of people, when confronted with evidence that their beliefs aren't really grounded, retort with some variation of "Beliefs don't have to be rational!"

Well CHEERS to that! The way I see it, in December of 2012, you can either choose to face the End of Times with a calm demeanor or a fucking crazy one. When I think about it that way, the choice is obvious. I'd much rather be worked up to a froth, handing out pamphlets, shouting at churches, and wearing a giant sandwich board that says DUMB. I want to grow a beard and smoke DMT like it's my ticket to Heaven's Gate. I want to be thrown out of establishments. I want to wheel a gong on top of a building and ring it over and over again, shouting "YOUR TIME HAS COME, HUMANITY. THIS IS THE DEATH GONG, AND IT GONGS FOR THEE."

Remember the excitement that preceeded the Y2K bug? I was out there on Dec 31st, putting up posters, handing out pamphlets, shouting at traffic. Remember the nail-biting anticipation, as the ball descended, that in mere moments the power would go out and the streets would be filled with the cacophony of the End Times? And then the ball dropped, the clocks turned over, and everybody breathed a sigh of relief. Or in my case a sigh of dissapointment. I want another shot!

On 6/6/06 I assembled a bunch of assholes on the beach to chant pages from the necronomicon. The intent was to awaken mighty Cthulhu, who will drive humanity from this planet like rats off a sinking ship. The way I see it, even if it only had a 0.0001% change of ending the world, that's a bigger chance of ending the world than any other action I've ever taken. It doesn't matter that it didn't work, at least I was trying. I want another shot!

Why believe in the apocalypse?

one word, people:



HOPE.





2012 or bust.

I've been reading up on the strife engendered by the Discordian Works page, and I wanted to share some of what's been going on. Recently, I went over to 23ae and posted a notice about us winning the battle at the O:MF page. If you check out the comments, our buddy DrJon Swabey bristles against good old Rev Uncle BadTouch...


the first comment sets up the conflict:

Now what we need to do is get the Discordian Works article back where it should be. It listed a dozen Discordian works, until two editors who disapprove of anything post-Principia hacked it to pieces. It was a battle, but unfortunately one of the Mal-Contents was a SYSOP/ADMINISTRATOR.

right. sysops kill discordian works. we've been over this. that's about as much as I'd known about it



so DrJon kindly clarified for us:

His Scrambledness the Dev.RoktorJon - @Not Necessarily Who I Claim To Be: ...

And one of the two warring parties you mention wasn't a Fundamentalist Discordian at all, but was actually strongly associated with a rather loud and self-opinionated NeoDiscordianesque cabal, which has been embarking on a sockpuppet wikiturfing selfpromotional campaign for the last few years.

And the reason all of this happened was because the Fundamentalist Discordian was a sysop and got pissed off with the spaghead sockpuppets going on about stuff he didn't recognise as Discordian: for example, advocating Child Sex.

The stuff you talk about that gets "cut fast" has been almost purely the product of and promotion for that one NeoDiscordianesque cabal. It's been totally unrepresentative of and misrepresentative of Discordianism as a whole. And given how vastly weird and wonderful Discordianism is, that's saying something.

Myself, I've come to the opinion that the types of folks seeking Validation for their brand of NeoDiscordianesquism through recognition on Wikipedia are a good example of what I'd technically call "spagging wanksplats".

Which is not to say they shouldn't be applauded for their efforts to promote themselves, and not to say they're not a valid expression of NeoDiscordianesquism.

But it most certainly is to say that as far as I'm concerned, I'd rather not be used as cannon fodder in a wikiturf war, let alone have the only information about my work -- the writings of 40 years of Discordians -- be as a stepladder for someone else to go on about how spagging wonderful they are... let alone be insulted and abused by anonymous sockpuppets.

It most certainly is to say that as far as I'm concerned, such folks can go fuck themselves.

So it should be clear that DrJon is writing about Uncle BadTouch. Uncle BadTouch and Dr J go back and forth a bit, and Uncle BadTouch gave the PD forums a slight tip of the hat, sort of) is interesting in that it contains .  But what's interesting is that he links to the wikipedia admin's characterization of him...

http://shii.org/knows/Discordianism

Well I'll be damned! This wikipedia admin, shii, is a Discordian himself. And all along we thought he was some draconian grayface - but actually he's been trying to keep Uncle BadTouch's version of Discordia from presenting itself as a core part of Discordia.

Going through shii's site, he seems to be a total bad ass. Look at this: http://shii.org/knows/Freedom_From_Atheism - are we on the same page as him or what?
The guys' site is full of great stuff like that. Like http://shii.org/knows/Time




We should get him here, damnit.

[keep]

Check it out, bitches. After months of debate, the wikipedia article on Operation Mindfuck was voted keep.

article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mindfuck
discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Operation_Mindfuck

It should be safe for now. Special props go to Triple Zero, who posted the best citations (IMHO) in the discussion.

If one more person blames unseasonable weather on Global Warming I am going to ram a ballpoint pen though their pants, directly into their fucking urethra.

If you've made art which you feel comfortable being reappropriated by Discordians, post it here.

When we're putting together booklets, pamphlets, documents, websites, any sort of media, there's always a struggle to find good images. And I know that there are a ton of artists out there who'd love to see their work in use, especially if it's for some awesome creative project. So if you're not too territorial about your art, post it here!

Please note whether your work is protected under copyright, kopyleft, creative commons, whatever... Nobody wants to step on your "intellectual property", so editors should be made known that they're allowed to crop, chop, swap, or slop all over your art. Or not.

I had an idea that would make this subforum more useful for everybody: a cook book thread which indexes and links to all the recipie and "cooking tip" threads.

as an example of what I mean, check out this nerdy thread: http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1046575 - it's a 'table of contents' of useful threads at that forum.


Just tossing the idea out there into the aether in case anyone agrees and feels motivated...

The point of this thread is to tell a complete story in three sentences or less. The shorter the better.

for inspiration, you might want to check out http://www.onesentence.org/stories/popular/









I returned home to find the damned dog waiting for me, tail wagging loyally, seemingly ignorant of the fact that he had been buried for three days. In time, I began to find the rotting undead dog a better companion than a dog which needs to be walked and fed each day. My priest, concerned, said that if you love something, set it free, but I'm shopping around for a better afterlife.

 So how was your weekend?            Not long enough! heh heh heh
                     /                                 /

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4408414/23_Discordian_eBooks

A Pocket Full of Chaos.pdf
Aeternus Ille Discordia.pdf
Apocrypha Discordia.pdf
Apotheosis Psycherotica.pdf
Condensed Chaos.pdf
Discordia - A Little Game about a Lot of Chaos.pdf
Discordianism Brochure.pdf
Jonesboria Discordia.pdf
Memoirs of a Daydreamer.pdf
Metaclysmia Discordia.pdf
OR KILL ME!!.pdf
Ommiterre Libellus.pdf
Principia Discordia (Wholly 1st Edition).pdf
Principia Discordia.pdf
Principia Entropius.pdf
Summa Discordia.pdf
The Black Iron Prison (Discordia Revisited).pdf
The Book of Chaos and it's Virtue.pdf
The Book of Eris.pdf
The Book of Life.pdf
The Devia Discordia.pdf
The Wise Book of Baloney.pdf
The Zenarchist's Cookbook.pdf

This thread is for finding out about our stuff being posted or discussed elsewhere on the web.

Specifically we're looking for evidence of OMGASM, The Black Iron Prison, Golden Apple Seed Missions, or really any talk about the PD forums.

If it seems appropriate, please use hxxp to link to forums or blogs. The aim is not to participate in the discussions linked here, but to observe the transmission of our ideas. If our memes are being transmitted, even if it's people tearing them up, it is good evidence of their strength.





use -negative operators to sort out stuff which isn't about us, but shares common words. the following search string will weed out a lot of noise.

Code Select Expand

"black iron prison" -valis

Here's some stuff I made

















hm, with fractals, do you say "made" or "found"?

Intermittens Staff:

Writers:
Payne - will write a General column
Cainad - writes "Who Killed the Lulz"
RWHN - will do "some writing"
Hoopla - Advice Column / Glorious Antics
Manta Obscura - some column
Requiem - Horrormirth (current events)
Nigel - Pranking
Iason - take some of the questions from Billy Graham's daily column and answer them from a Discordian perspective
Jenne - Speaking as a Mother


Artists:
Telarus - will provide doodles or layout on demand
Nurbldoff - Illustrations (suggestions must be provided)
Harlequin - Artwork


Misc.
Khara - Miscellaneous assistance ("I'm in to do whatever is needed.")
Vexati0n - Something
LMNO - something
Faust - hosting & distribution
Payne - pool boy, fetch me another mint julep

This is where you say,


"I'm interested in writing a regular column for Intermittens about ______.

or "I'm interested in being a staff member who ______" (draws art) (lays out magazine) (distributes magazine to five or six different websites)



so like someone might say, "I'll write a science column"
or make us some cutups
"I can draw silly doodles for marginalia"
maybe you can do an interview
or a puzzle
or a comic strip




when someone steps up to edit an issue, they'll post the THEME
and you'll riff on that until you've got

• a little less than a page (room for graphics)
• a spread
• a longer article, 6pages MAX
• a graphic, a sidebar, SOMETHING

this will encourage editors to step up and do the editing
because they know some people will be backing them up with fresh content.

Do you have the AWESOME ENOUGH
to put your name on something NEW?

[all Discordian works on the web]

This is the first GASM I've come up with in a while which I intend on making a big fuss about. So please help out by participating / spreading the word, because the project is pretty ambitious...

LITGASM is the attempt to tag all Discordian works on the web. It was first described in INTERMITTENS, my spaggy Discordian magazine thing.

The problem is that when you're new to Discordia, you've probably read the PD, but nothing else. Where is the other stuff? What have Discordians been up to for the last 50 years? ---other than spagging around on myspace, livejournal, etc etc etc....

I would like us to create a central suppository of Discordian Works, so if you're into Discordia, you don't have to zip all over the web to find it.

So what's a Discordian Work?

• Sermons
• Rants
• Essays
• Images
• Music
• Specifically Discordian Blog Posts
• Religious Crap - rituals, ceremonies, holydays, chants, etc etc
• Whatever else you feel is appropriate

What you can do:

-Spread LITGASM to other Discordian people and places
-Get a del.icio.us account and start tagging stuff

Tag All Discordian works with both the tags "litgasm" and "discordian"!


Thoughts? Ideas?

Download Here

This was a quick and dirty PDF made in three hours to satisfy both a need to produce something and to procrastinate.

I intend for this to be a start, of sorts, of something more. What more? That's really anybody's guess.

Pay close attention to LITGASM, mentioned in the introduction.

I didn't want to jack an otherwise totally focused thread. Non-D&D-spags may feel free to chime in with asinine comments.

here's the post

Cram, a Demi-Lich would fucking DOLLYWHOMP the Tarrasque.  That is, as long as we're talking 3rd ed. or 3.5.  I never played 2nd, other than Baldurs Gate, which I understand is a bit different.

no fucking way

A) 3.5 Tarrasque is immune to most evocation
B) Spell Resistance
C) The tarrasque would just make a chart describing everything the demilich is about to do.

So the Demi-Lich kills him with Necromancy?  They can eat souls like 8 times per round, they've got all manner of spell like abilities that they could probably kill it with, without even resorting to casting spells, let alone epic-magic.

here are the stats:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/tarrasque.htm
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/demilich.htm

I'm pretty sure the tarrasque would win



reasoning:

A) the demi-lich's one-shot kill ability (Trap the Soul) allows the tarrasque a fortitude save at DC 36. The tarrasque's fortitude save is 38, so it literally can't fail. The tarrasque is also immune to the level drain, which is otherwise the reliable way to kill just about any big bad guy in 3.5

B) a tarrasque's full attack does about 100 damage a round. Demilich only has 129 hp.

C) To stand a chance, the lich would have get pretty creative with its wizard spells; even so, it'd have to roll above an 11 on spell resistance to affect the tarrasque.

[fiction by Cramulus]

fiction by Cramulus


Travis Monicker sighed to himself. It was subtle; the audience didn’t even notice. His eyes were twinkling with drama, his teeth bared in a rictus of excitement. “Paul, your case has been made, and you’ve been judged by a jury of your peers.” Travis spoke slowly, drawing out the anticipation of the verdict. All the studio lights were on Paul, a balding middle-aged man from Pasadena. His eyes anxiously darted left and right.

“The public has spoken--” Travis held up his reader to the camera, showing the results of the internet poll. “--and they think you should take a dip.”

“No! Please!” begged Paul, eyes wide with fear. The tears from his emotional moment had barely dried. Paul’s fists banged against the plastic tank as Travis hit the DUMP HIM button. Paul looked anxiously as the diving board he was standing on slowly retracted into wall. When he had only a few inches left, Paul took a big breath and stepped into the pit of vermin.

Travis Monicker, the voice of the people. Travis hosted a weekly game show called Jury of Peers. It was a popular show, and had just been renewed for its fifth season. Similar to courtroom reality TV shows, each of the contestants was “on trial” for one reason or another. Some had been cheating on their lovers. Some had borrowed money and squandered it. Others were simply disgusting people. The contestants weren’t being tried for crimes, per se – that was for the law to handle. They had broken social rules, customs, or taboos. The sentences were often mildly painful, humiliating, or disgusting. The verdict of the trial was determined by an internet poll. Literally millions of people showed up on the Jury of Peers website and cast their vote for what should happen to this week’s lineup of hapless defendants.

Paul, a germaphobe, thrashed around, choking with disgust. The tank was filled three feet deep with worms, cockroaches, centipedes, spiders, all sorts of crawly nightmarish things. Paul coughed until he vomited, his eyes red with tears. Bugs had gotten into his hair. The spotlight on the tank flashed as the intense music ramped up. In order to escape, Paul had to find a key at the bottom of the tank. Some contestants spent upwards of ten minutes suffering in their own personal hell before mustering up the nerve to escape.

Travis, numb to the horrific display, watched listlessly. He would be off camera for the next few minutes and enjoyed the break at the climax of the trial. He took a long, slow drag off his cigarette. Paul yelped a shrill shriek as a big mamma cockroach crawled up his leg and into the darkness under his shorts....



read more here:

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/cramulus/index.php?title=Jury_of_Peers

[Singularity Summit 2008 Reviewed]

found this on Cliff Pickover's Reality Carnival

http://singularityhub.com/2008/11/02/singularity-summit-2008-reviewed/



Singularity Summit 2008 Reviewed
November 2, 2008 – 8:12 pm

Singularity Hub is proud to deliver the web’s most comprehensive coverage and analysis of the Singularity Summit 2008.  The Singularity Summit is the premier annual event for those that are interested in the singularity.  Below you will find our high level summary, followed by a link to a much more detailed description with pictures.

On Saturday October 25, 2008 I attended the Singularity Summit at the Montgomery Theatre in San Jose, CA.    An impressive lineup of speakers, including Ray Kurzweil (de facto singularity advocate), Peter Diamandis (Founder/Chairman of Xprize Foundation), Vernor Vinge (famous science fiction author), and Justin Rattner (CTO of Intel) were on showcase for the roughly 500 attendees.  The summit was thought provoking, inspiring, and overall a success.

The summit began promptly at 9:00am and continued throughout the day until 6:00pm with a few breaks in between and a one and a half hour lunch break.  Here are the Hub’s major takeaways from the event:

1.  When people become believers in a near term singularity (a singularity that may come in their lifetimes) they radically change their behavior in terms of risk tolerance, eating habits, and investment horizon.   If large numbers of people begin to believe in a near term singularity this poses the possibility of enormous and potentially dangerous upheavals for society.

2.  Even if a true singularity is not reached within our lifetimes the singularity summit reinforces the vision that tremendous technological change beyond our imagining is coming in the next 40 years.  In the next 5 years an explosion in interest about the singularity and the pace of accelerating technology may occur.

3.  According to Ray Kurzweil, solar energy is an information technology that is experiencing exponential growth.  Solar energy production has doubled every year for the last 20 years and is now only 8 doublings away (that is about 10 years!) from providing nearly all of the world’s energy needs.  The implications of this trend are huge and warrant careful consideration for the environment, investment, politics, etc.

4.  Peter Diamandis announced that the Singularity University (SU) will be launched in the near future.  The Hub’s Keith Kleiner will be a founding member of SU and we will have much more to say about SU soon!

5.  According to Intel CTO Justin Rattner Intel has a solid roadmap that will ensure that Moore’s law will continue for at least another 10 years, by which time computers will be at least 1,000 times more powerful than today’s computers

6.  Virtual worlds will continue to gain traction and functionality as people continue to recognize and leverage the unique advantages that these worlds offer versus the physical world.

7.  Computers may be able to beat humans at chess and air hockey, but they are still a long way off from emulating human emotion and social behavior.  Demonstrations today of the cutting edge in computer emulation of emotion and social ability were downright pitiful.  Of course it is possible that we will make big leaps in the coming years, but today’s demonstrations were not encouraging.

"a malformed packet could also be an emergent signal""

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/10/evidence_of_a_g.php

interesting food for thought

This is fodder for something I'm brewing about the beliefs of "irreligious" people (Church of Google, Pastafarians, Discordians, Subgenii, Cthulhu sect, etc) I'd like to post some variation of this poll in different irreligious forums and see how it compares to our results. I'll tell you my hypothesis later.

If I'm missing poll options, let me know.

http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=188312

fast forward to 6:00

watch the whole "The Word" sketch.

at about 10:00 he's talking directly to us.

I was pulling together material for my upcoming Portland vacation/fiasco, and compiled a lot of the stuff we've been working on into one sexy file. It's big, but here it is:

http://www.cwyohba.org/noexit//cramulus/POSTERGASM_volume_BUTTS.pdf



alright cats, it's MISSION: YUO.

Put these suckers up, snap a picture, and flickr 'em.

[EDITED TO ADD: HERE ARE LINKS TO PDFS:]

(I forget from whence I lifted this idea.)

Very simple: Print out a few of these cards. Then get rid of them.



EDITED TO ADD: HERE ARE LINKS TO PDFS:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/17456504/Pirate-Pass-Off-Cards-Large-With-Ninja-Card
http://www.scribd.com/doc/17456465/Pirate-Pass-Off-for-Avery-Business-Cards

this game works best at conventions, concerts, club meetings, college campuses,
or anywhere people are gathered.

The fun thing about it is that the card will go through cliques very quickly - and then the players will have to find someone else who hasn't been fooled yet.

If you want, have people write their names on the back of the card when they get it, so you can keep a log of where it went.

You might also include "Please return to <your name here> at the end of the day".

?

Man is free at the instant he escapes from the deep to the shore, turns to the perilous waters and gazes.

    -Voltaire / Dante




Love, which absolves no beloved one from loving, looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was much like another, and the sea is always the same.

     -Dante / Kerouac / Conrad




It is the stillest words that bring on the bullet. Between the eyes of every endangered panda, static comes on doves’ feet.


     -Nietzsche / Palahniuk




My lord, be rul'd by me, be won at last;
we shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
The cruel father and his traitorous sons,
To whom I sued for my dear son's life;
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
make them know, what 't is to let a queen
Kneel in the streets and beg for grace in vain. —
Take up this good old man, and cheer the heart
That dies in tempest of thy angry frown.
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.

     -Milton / Shakespeare
       (Titus Andronicus punishes Satan, Tamora tells off God)






http://en.wikiquote.org/ is an invaluable resource for making these. Try it out yourself, it's an interesting activity.

[Project:]

Tossing some food into the thought tank:

Project: design and conduct a scientific experiment which measures the effect of a sigil.

The sigil would be designed to affect the external world in a measurable way, like increasing the number of google hits for a specific phrase. No one but the designer would know this phrase (thereby preventing participants from consciously effecting results). The participants would charge the sigil using a time-old formula for acheiving gnosis ( ). Over time, we would observe any fluctuations in hits for the target phrase.


Once data is collected and analyzed, we could then roll it up like a newspaper and hit people with it. Or maybe it'll hit us.

In writing the forward for the Etc. Discordia, I've been wrestling with the concept of "irreligion". The Etc. Discordia builds on the Principia, rather than striving to replace it. So I wonder, if this was a newcomer's introduction to Discordia, how much of the religious angle is necessary to convey the core meaning of Discordia? The Principia was full of rituals, chants, humorous hierarchy, mythology - it dressed the Discordian idea in priest's robes. But is that necessary? And if so, which parts of it are necessary?

I know this is a conversation we've had before, but I'd like to gain some fresh perspectives on it.

The Principia Discordia has enough religious dressings that you can treat it like a bible. In fact, that's probably how I was originally attracted to Discordia. I was estranged from Christianity, found that Taoism isn't a good fit for being a teenager in our culture, and ended up latching onto this zany irreligion. What PARTS of the Principia are necessary to carry the dialogue to that level? And if we were writing it today, what would those passages say?

Why Discordia is more relevant than ever in the year 2008?



As time marches on and culture gets weirder and weirder, I think Discordia becomes increasingly relevant. I'd like to discuss why Discordia is a better choice now than it's ever been.

Here's my take, and I'd love to hear yours:

At its core, Discordia has some very valuable lessons about ignoring cultural programming and navigating our fractillian society on your own terms. Its satirical approach towards religion, something that was once so sacred we couldn't joke about it, is an attitude we can carry into numerous other straightfaced territories. Gender, politics, the economy, war, terrorism, our expectations for the future, your goals, your flaws, your life -- these are things that we can easily misunderstand if we take them to be Real and Serious and a Big Deal. Which isn't to say that they're not a big deal. But that it's better to take them with a grain of salt.

When we take something seriously, we get rigid, we get tunnel vision, and we become (in some ways) indentured to it. Discordia is about tearing down walls internally as well as externally. In this decade, where there are so many conflicting messages being shouted at us, it's important to differentiate between What Matters and What Doesn't. And the crystal lesson in the center is that people probably take more stuff seriously than is healthy. Healthy for all of us. Discordia is about using flexibility and humor to cope with the dangers and paradoxes of modern living. It's about escaping the two-man con where both choices are bum, and become an active (rather than passive) character in your life's story.

I think this is the most interesting and confusing period of history to date. Historians will struggle to understand what it was like to live in the 21st century. The Bureaucracy is getting bigger and bigger, and sicker and sicker. There is a great cultural demand for agents of change who will challenge the existing order and suggest that something better will follow. The heroes of our day are the people who are kinetic enough to weave a new tapestry from this threaded culture, and not get weighed down by the dross of the human condition. I'm not interested in the next logical step, I'm interested in that cool stuff that's totally off the beaten path. This is the modern Discordian's role, to exist outside of binary choices, to make objection and change part of the hegemony, and to enjoy oneself despite our programming. We are the silver lining to the cultural cabbage patch. This is not just a society of robots, and we are evidence of it.

Personally, I don't see Eris as a Goddess in the same outdated way that the Christians or Jews or Ancient Greeks think of Gods. She's not some force in the sky, regulating the world by will. You can't communicate with her through prayer. Personally, I see Eris as a force similar to the internet, similar to the spirit of protest, similar to hair metal. She's not the force, but the attitude through which Bureaucracy is transcended into Aftermath. She is the feeling of finding freedom rather than formula. She is the punchline at the end of a decade long shaggy dog joke. And in that I think she has more to offer than the sepulcher and bureaucratic tangle of other contemporary edifices like religions and ideologies and static.

So if you ask me, the Principia is 49 or 50 years old, and it's more relevant than ever.





thoughts?

I'm looking for one or two (at most) volunteers to read over our current draft of the Et Cetera Discordia and give me some feedback.

We've been working on this thing for so long I'm not sure I know what it looks like to outsiders anymore.

any takers?

[Taleb's top life tips]

“The only way you can say ‘Fuck you’ to fate is by saying it’s not going to affect how I live. So if somebody puts you to death, make sure you shave.” -Taleb

Here's an article I found on our boy Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article4022091.ece?print=yes&randnum=1212675666154

It's a good insight into Taleb, and documents a few of his mannerisms and habits. Here are some good quotes:

Startlingly, this great sceptic, this non-guru who believes in nothing, is still a practising Christian. He regards with some contempt the militant atheism movement led by Richard Dawkins.

“Scientists don’t know what they are talking about when they talk about religion. Religion has nothing to do with belief, and I don’t believe it has any negative impact on people’s lives outside of intolerance. Why do I go to church? It’s like asking, why did you marry that woman? You make up reasons, but it’s probably just smell. I love the smell of candles. It’s an aesthetic thing.”

Take away religion, he says, and people start believing in nationalism, which has killed far more people. Religion is also a good way of handling uncertainty. It lowers blood pressure. He’s convinced that religious people take fewer financial risks.

This quote is pretty much directly from the Black Swan, and summarizes Taleb's opinion on eggheads.

For the non-mathematician, probability is an indecipherably complex field. But Taleb makes it easy by proving all the mathematics wrong. Let me introduce you to Brooklyn-born Fat Tony and academically inclined Dr John, two of Taleb’s creations. You toss a coin 40 times and it comes up heads every time. What is the chance of it coming up heads the 41st time? Dr John gives the answer drummed into the heads of every statistic student: 50/50. Fat Tony shakes his head and says the chances are no more than 1%. “You are either full of crap,” he says, “or a pure sucker to buy that 50% business. The coin gotta be loaded.”

The chances of a coin coming up heads 41 times are so small as to be effectively impossible in this universe. It is far, far more likely that somebody is cheating. Fat Tony wins. Dr John is the sucker. And the one thing that drives Taleb more than anything else is the determination not to be a sucker. Dr John is the economist or banker who thinks he can manage risk through mathematics. Fat Tony relies only on what happens in the real world.

The central point is that we have created a world we don’t understand. There’s a place he calls Mediocristan. This was where early humans lived. Most events happened within a narrow range of probabilities – within the bell-curve distribution still taught to statistics students. But we don’t live there any more. We live in Extremistan, where black swans proliferate, winners tend to take all and the rest get nothing – there’s Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and a lot of software writers living in a garage, there’s Domingo and a thousand opera singers working in Starbucks. Our systems are complex but over-efficient. They have no redundancy, so a black swan strikes everybody at once. The banking system is the worst of all.

“Complex systems don’t allow for slack and everybody protects that system. The banking system doesn’t have that slack. In a normal ecology, banks go bankrupt every day. But in a complex system there is a tendency to cluster around powerful units. Every bank becomes the same bank so they can all go bust together.”

Taleb on investing your money:

And you and me? Well, the good investment strategy is to put 90% of your money in the safest possible government securities and the remaining 10% in a large number of high-risk ventures. This insulates you from bad black swans and exposes you to the possibility of good ones. Your smallest investment could go “convex” – explode – and make you rich. High-tech companies are the best. The downside risk is low if you get in at the start and the upside very high. Banks are the worst – all the risk is downside. Don’t be tempted to play the stock market – “If people knew the risks they’d never invest.”

good quote on human nature:

“Let’s be human the way we are human. Homo sum – I am a man. Don’t accept any Olympian view of man and you will do better in society.”

and finally,

Taleb's top life tips

1 Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.

2 Go to parties. You can’t even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.

3 It’s not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.

4 Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act — if you can’t control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behaviour. You will always have the last word.

5 Don’t disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time. We don’t understand their logic. Don’t pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific ‘evidence’.

6 Learn to fail with pride — and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error — by mastering the error part.

7 Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words ‘impossible’, ‘never’, ‘too difficult’ too often, drop him or her from your social network. Never take ‘no’ for an answer (conversely, take most ‘yeses’ as ‘most probably’).

8 Don’t read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if the news matters is if you hear it in cafes, restaurants... or (again) parties.

9 Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet.

10 Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them.

[CALVINBALL poster pack.]

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.

[a distaste for organized religions]

One thing I think most of us have in common is a distaste for organized religions. (surprise!) Many of us were raised in a religious environment, or at the very least were exposed to religion, but aren't "religious" anymore. Why? What happened?

I'm curious to hear about other people's experiences with Organized Religion. What made you decide it was for spags?

[SO HOW IS THIS A GASM?]

I was thinking of starting a wiki in a "choose your own adventure" style. If we publicized it as a GASM, we could even get a bunch of Discordians telling the same story.

Back in the Olden Times (circa 1996) there used to be a game called addventure, which was basically a choose-your-own-adventure wiki, located here: http://www.addventure.com/cgi-bin/read.pl/addventure/game1/game1.db3/page/1.html

Some of it was hilarious, some was awful, some deadended, but I spent dozens of hours navigating through, exploring it, and adding my own paths and storylines.

One of my complaints was that at parts, it just got weird. Or an editor would make 30 choices in his room, and then would only write out one or two of those paths. But in wiki format, where anyone can edit each other's posts, we could really fine tune it a bit.

I thought "There's gotta be other people on the web doing this", and did a cursory search. I found this wikia community http://cyoa.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page , which is about Choose Your Own Adventures, but also about creating them. I think it doesn't have enough people active to really make it work, though.




SO HOW IS THIS A GASM?

I view this as an opportunity to write a fun game that we can get outsiders to participate in, but also a way to subtly sneak our memes, jokes, and attitudes into some written output. Being a GASM, it'd be fun to see how big we could make it.

We'd need some volunteers to step up as moderator/administrators. Adminning a wiki is pretty easy - you've just gotta periodically check up on Recent Changes, and roll back any vandalism. And if you've never worked in wiki format, wikicode is only a little more complicated than BBCode (which we're all obviously familliar with). (actually, Chloe just learned wikicode and she thinks it's easier than posting on a forum)



SO WHAT IS THE STORY ABOUT?

Or rather - what does it start OUT about? It'll take off in its own directions once we've got some editors working on it. (that is - IF people think this is a cool idea and are willing to run with it and take ownership of it)

We might want to pick a theme for the story, like the Illuminati. Or if we want a short-term, hot-topic wiki, we could pick something topical like the Election 2008.

I think it starts off like any choose your own adventure novel. The main character, you, (a 9 or 10 year old boy) wake in the morning. AND THEN...



what do you guys think?

I was talking to St. Mae last night. (the owner of discordian.com) She said she was contacted by a guy who says he was collaborating on a book with Kerry Thornley before he died. She said it was a book on Discordian Demonology, and catalogued the numerous Discordian demons.

She's trying to figure out the best way to distribute it to the community. I think it'll probably be PDF'd and hosted on discordian.com for their ten year anniversary.

I'm very curious. 

Triple Zero and I are working on the Et Cetera Discordia, the book composed of stuff submitted at the Discordian Cyberspace Masquerade. We're including the "Bare Minimum BIP" document penned by the SSOOKN, but we think it'd be best if we had some sort of short lead-in which describes where the BIP idea came from. To people unfamilliar with the concept, I think it's helpful to explain the motivation and background that prompted that flurry of thought.

Does anyone feel up to writing a one or two paragraph submission?

Airport Security







next person does B

I have a little brown messenger bag which waits by the door for me like a puppy wanting to go out.

In my bag, I carry a few pages of stickers, some markers, post-it notes, pope cards, my notebook, a camera, two fake moustaches, and a folder containing a few hundred posters. I like to walk around the neighborhood, putting up flyers, making changes to signs, and generally having fun.

One day, past midnight, a one-eyed bum approached me on the street. "What've ya got there?" he asked. "I seen your pictures around the neighborhood. What ARE you doing?"

This question always stumps me. It's a funtime activity I've never really attached a name to other than "putting up stuff".

Searching my brain for a quick explanation, I eventually told him, "It's art," but the word stuck in my throat. Well I guess you could argue that anything is art, but I don't really consider this art.

As I lay in bed that night, the question turned in my mind: What AM I doing?

For one, I'm taking back my environment and gradually transforming it into the place I want it to look like.  I just like making everybody's day a little bit more surreal, and this is a really visible way of doing it.

For two, I know that somewhere out there, there are other people like me. Other people who appreciate these weird little intrusions into pedestrian reality. My posters are signposts saying "I'm here, and you're not alone."

And for three, it sends the message to everyone that public spaces are public property. We all modify our environment by living in it. The sounds and smells and rhythms of the neighborhood are an organic reflection of its occupants. Putting up posters is just like trimming the hedges or mowing the lawn.

Walking through the neighborhood with my bag over my shoulder, my cabal at my side, I'm reminded of don Juan Matus and Carlos Castaneda on their way to Ixtlan, trying to walk with the entities and intelligences of the desert. We're urban shamans, befriending the spirit of the neighborhood. While you go on your ventures, I reccommend this attitude, one of respect and stewardship for your environment, your companion on this journey.

I've been regularly putting up posters in this neighborhood for about a year now, and I think it's working. At first, they'd dissapear quickly, but they're staying up much longer now. I think people are either laughing at them (and leaving them up) or are getting bored of taking them down. I like the fact that when I walk from point A to point B, I get to chuckle at the cool stuff hung on the telephone poles, walls, and trees, the moustaches drawn on posters, the stickers in the phonebooths. It feels like MY neighborhood. I am having such a blast doing this, I can only hope that somebody else out there is digging half as much as I am.

I don't have any agenda higher than that. That's why I tend to avoid posters with political or ideological propaganda on them - people have a lot of defense mechanisms when they sense someone's trying to sell them something. I just want them to stop for a second and be aware of their environment. I want to shake them, if only briefly, out of their pedestrian autopilot. And after seeing a few hudred of these signs, maybe they'll join me in modifying their environment for the better. Or maybe when they realize how easy it is to have fun FOR YOURSELF, they'll loosen up, just a bit.

If you want to join me, but you're stuck for ideas for what to put up, search the web for our code word, PosterGASM. I've collected quite a bit of material over at http://www.blackironprison.com/index.php?title=POSTERGASM. I also advise you to take pictures of your work and post it on flickr.com with the tag "POSTERGASM". That way, you'll KNOW you're not out there alone. There's a community of people who also dig these kinds of shenanigans, and we love it when other pranksters choose to help carry the torch into the Strange Times.

May your stapler be full and your stickers be sticky. May your streets be filled with laughter. And may your posters hang high, long, and deep.

[Let Go]

this is a marginalia postscriptum to Go OMF Yourself



Bung Fu the Fool stood buck naked before the monk Nopants. Eventually, Nopants looked up over his morning newspaper. Surprised to see a peen at eye level before him, he spit coffee everywhere.

"Somehow," said the monk, who himself was naked from the waist down, "I was not prepared for that."

"Good morning Wise Master Nopants!" said Bung Fu cheerfully. "I did what you advised: I Let Go of everything so I could learn to swim on my own."

"That's bullshit," said Nopants, pointing at bung-fu with a spoon. "You're just parading around naked because you think it'll somehow enlighten you."

"But master, that's what you do!" cried Bung Fu, embarassed.

"No," said Nopants. "I do it for me. You're doing like me. You haven't let go of anything. You just grabbed my shrapnel and made it your own."


Bung Fu thought about this. "Mise Waster Nopants, what am I supposed to do after I let go? I can't just let go of everything, that's not a good survival strategy."

"You're right," said Nopants. "But it's not really about letting go. It's about being able to let go. It's about realizing that all that stuff you're carrying around is mostly dead weight. So learn to live without that dross."

"And then what?"

Nopants leaned forward as if he was about to whisper a lesson or a great secret. Bung Fu leaned in, eager for instruction. Nopants reached out and slapped right in the goddamn monkey face.

"Think for yourself, shmuck!"