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[Rant 169It Rolls On]

Rant 169
It Rolls On

"According to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle, chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized."
-Terry Pratchett (from "Interesting Times")

Our great excommunication machine known as the Discordian Society rolls on and on, despite our best intentions and to spite our frivolous bouts of forgetfulness and memory-hole blaming. It doesn't even matter if you get attacked by pigeons in the middle of the park for eating bunless hot dogs. It doesn't even matter if you stand there under the street light at four in the morning and shout to the passing taxis filled with drunken club goers on their way to greasy spoons to try to eat their way out of half-assed hook-ups and vodka-red bull cocktails. It doesn't matter that the world at large doesn't believe in Eris, She certainly returns the favor.

While it rolls on and on, provoking laughs and hoots and the occasional exclamation of "what the ring tailed rambling hell?" the murder machine of Patrick Pearse's nightmares is also still rolling on and on. Pearse looked upon the education system of his day and called it the Murder Machine. People laughed and thought he was just being a maudlin Irishman, possibly drunk on wine (though Pearse himself was not a drinker). "Education a murder machine?" they'd say, "How daft!" When Pearse was a boy, the mass starvation of his country was still fresh in the minds of survivors and perhaps he thought, a bit over-optimistically, that humanity would stop getting ground up by one another, if only people would remember. (A shame that most of the victims of that genocide spoke a language most Irish don't use these days. So, instead of accounts and memorials, the horrors just appear as a historical footnote.) Unfortunately, Pearse went and got himself killed by firing squad for being a leader of the Irish uprising in 1916, so we have no more comment from the man. (Grayface seduces even the smartest people, it seems.) Maybe it was for the best though, since he didn't live to see the murder machine flex its muscles all across the 20th century world. (The Holocaust, Cambodia, the Cultural Revolution of China, the destruction of Tibet, Rwanda, Bosnia, the Soviet gulags, and so on and sickening so forth.)

The modern world and all of its progress and betterment and education still keeps its murder machine rolling on and on. (Well, humanity is still under the Curse of Grayface and his ugly face shows up everywhere, even in Slayer songs.) It's not even about fighting for the right to call someone the prettiest anymore. It's about "let's get them before they get us" or "let's just get them. why? well, because they are them." Or it's about "well, I rather fancy buying cheap products at cut-workers-throat prices." It's about people believing that they are the best and some other group is an impediment to their progress and/or happiness. People say that education will help solve this problem and make people more open-minded and not so keen on the idea that killing thousands of other people can make the world better. But that is not what is happening now, is it? The question, which Pearse and others have long raised, is what sort of things are being taught to people during their education? Pearse warned that education can be used for evil as much for good, but no one believed him because humans are always in denial that their methods of progress or betterment can be used for horror and destruction, even as we sit here and sift through the evidence. Pearse's conclusion was that education in his country was being used to murder the Irish people. (And in retaliation for the near slaughter of the Gaelic people, the Irish gave James Joyce to the world as a stunning example of what sort of education was going on there. They also thought Mr. Joyce's ramblings a good example of what the Irish thought about being forced to speak English.) No one at present really knows why Grayface and his minions had it in for the Irish, but I suspect it was because, as poor and oppressed they were at the time, they were still having fun and they still thought of themselves as deserving of fun. (The Church, Protestant and Catholic versions, made quick work of those ideas after all the fun people were starved or exiled.)

It blows the minds of humanity to realize that education can be just as effectively hijacked by the murder machine as a group of Discordians can get hijacked by offers of cheap beer and hot dogs. (But what does humanity at large know about all this since they aren't even aware that Grayface is pulling their legs out from under them.) Oh yeah? Some of you are thinking. "Well, that sort of shit never happens where I am from. This is America (or Japan, or Italy, or some other 'advanced' post-industrial nation)." But just remember that Germany was one of the most advanced nations in the world with a highly educated population when many people there decided that killing other people would be a good idea for Europe. Can't happen in America? So you think, but America's past had several episodes of its own outbreak of murder machinery. (You think about the so-called Indian wars now and remember that what was happening was a large nation was conquering smaller ones and calling it manifest destiny.)  

So what does this have to do with our great rolling roiling Discordian Society and its excommunication machine and all and sundry forms of Operation Mindfuck? Perhaps it's all about staying free from the viral meme-infections which lead people to funny ideas where they reserve soft-spots in their hearts for "getting rid of them." The Murder Machine (Grayface's greatest invention if it could ever be called that) must be stopped. Piece by piece, if need be. Maybe it is a futile endeavor because of the odds, but we have better than odds here. We have oddballs and outcasts and fruits and nuts...people who try, at least occasionally, to get a breath of fresh and free thought. Why should we even care about what most of humanity chooses to do with one another? Because we are participants in the whole story regardless of our personal views to the contrary and thus our fingers should point at ourselves first. (Also because much of what some parts of humanity do to one another includes them doing it to us, if they can.)

Think about it. Our irreligion demands no sacrifices (excepting that little idea known as sanity), and cares little to nothing for the fact that the neighbors worship in different, odd, and silly ways...because we like different, odd, and silly things and they should be encouraged. We Discordians don't care if someone is white, black, brown, purple, or even from America. We don't care about the gods others call upon. (Much of the time we don't even care much about the Goddess we call upon, since She can take care of Herself, mind you.) This sort of tolerance and encouragement is a gem in the trash-heap of the long sordid and horrible recent history of our species. It is a spite and truck-loads of spit in the face of anyone suckered by the incessant whining of Grayface which gets them to say "See. Look at what you made me do." Perhaps we can put a few cracks in the edifice. Maybe we can remember to help subvert education systems that turn people into dutiful cabbages. In the worst case scenario, we will still get the last laugh, not only that but the first laughs as well. The world can be a sorrowful enough place as it is, what with hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and shit like that going on. So I ask why people insist on making it a hellish nightmare for other people? Not because of some programmed biological instinct. Not because of some mystical stain on our collective soul. But because we, as a collective species, simply choose to make it so.

We, as a species, are, quite frankly and literally suckered and seduced by the seemingly powerful notion that ideas and plans are more important than life itself.

It is often claimed that the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice and other cruelties, and we rightly denounce such idiocy. But then we, collectively, turn around with our millions of dead on the altars of progress or purity or ideology or religions, and have the audacity to say that we are better than the Aztecs. (Even though they invented tortilla chips!) Those Aztecs would probably see us as the savage murderers and probably not only savage but all too stupid too (think about just the lives we humans willingly give up for the sake of modern transportation). Although the Aztecs were just as much suckered by Grayface as the rest of the population on this planet, they were probably not as suckered in as their future conquerors were.

Well, the Discordian Society isn't putting up with this sort of nonsense. (Especially when our own sorts of nonsense make us go giddy.) We need no lives sacrificed on any altar for any reason. We don't even need dedication to any mystical abstracted mysteries culled from the secret recesses of magical occult books on sale at Borders. We don't even need the world to acknowledge us (and what a horror if they did). What do we need? Perhaps a little bit of memory. Perhaps some idea of the results of people who take their ideas too seriously. (The results being what I just called the murder machine.) So maybe we should, right at this moment, go out and sacrifice ideas and truths and lies and denials for the cause of chaotic and untrammeled lives. (It's hard to imagine even living freely when one's life is being trammeled. And I don't know exactly what a trammeler is but I don't like the effects.) We need to sacrifice the murder machine...

We also need our laughter. It helps to watch the forces of order try and try again to impose more order and to have it all end up with only the same damned chaos. Perhaps some of these orderlies should have given themselves the gift of reading old Lao Tzu. The only problem is that many people and organizations then start blaming other people or groups when they realize that all their attempts at order is so-much pissing in the wind. We Discordians piss in the wind too, but we know this, enjoy it, and get our yucks in without ever having to stop in that pathetic state where we need to blame and maim others for our silliness. You would think that most of these groups would actually take a look around them and back at history and see that no matter how many millions have been killed for whatever reasons, the same damned chaos is there. Life itself cannot be stopped no matter how many individual beings get stopped. And in the end, Eris laughs all the same at the fools who insist on their ways as being better even as they prove themselves to be more savage and cruel than those they hate.

And we'll still be around insisting that there is no need for all that drama and that snuffing out all those people is the worst sort of sanity in the annals of the short-lived concept. Why? Because, and I am being very hopeful here, we Discordians really dislike people being used like so much fodder for any idea. It goes back to that deeply rooted mistrust for authority, not because an authority is naturally any less trust worthy, but because authority as an idea should never be taken so seriously. The fact that it takes itself rather too seriously gives us the creeps, as it well should.

Does this make us better than the rest of humanity? Depends on your definition. (I don't think anything makes us better or worse except our actions.) But maybe we have do have an inkling of something here. Some way of being or some way of approaching life that at least ensures we can enjoy it while we are here. (Even if some of us keep getting reincarnated and all that. Well, Eris does have a sense of humor that makes even some civilizations cry.) We even have stumbled upon the idea that we can enjoy our lives while we are here without having to destroy other people. Authority (the Murder Machine, trans-dimensional soul suckers, or purveyors of three-headed mind pollution, among other names) hates you personally, if you start thinking crazy things like this.

Regardless of the murder machine's track record and it's amazing ability to keep duping people into believing in any of its causes, our Discordian Society is far older (and has a fine pedigree of the most bastardized mongrelizations ever, and we should know...we made up the certificates just yesterday) and it will far outlast humanity's best attempts at self-destruction simply because we don't discriminate on the basis of species or planetary origins. It's not as if the fnords are needed to eat people's souls and destroy their joy, human beings do a fair job of it all on their own and perhaps that is the point people tried to make when they invented the whole fnord idea. If that makes any sense, I swear it came from somewhere else.

So keep your heads up. The sensitive are the ones who usually have the greatest survival skills (probably through no merit of our own, it's just that we tend to read the writing on the wall a little bit quicker than most others and thus jump out of the way sooner). And if you are reading through all this now, chances are you one of these survivors. It seems hopeless now because stupidity is reproducing faster and exponentially, but do remember that evolution didn't get us this far, (actually it didn't get us anywhere...more like it got us certain things like two legs and large amounts of gray matter and such as that) only to have it all get ground up in the cogs of stupid viral memes. Our Great Lady of the Rollicking Ha-Ha ensures us that some of us will always be around, if only so She can say "See. I told you fools this would happen if you licked that yellow button."

I find myself agreeing with the line from the old Principia Discordia that says "Humanity has been on a bad trip for some time now." We need to stop tripping. Or tripping better. Or something else. But don't listen to me if you want to be told what to do, especially not when I am wearing a silly hat and going around ranting and all that. Listen to yourselves. If we all jump out of the way of the murder machine in different directions, we have the best chance of getting through it all. Even after we feel hungover from all the golden apple rolling and all of our rollicking circus acts.

In closing, this rant should be considered the excommunication notice to the murder machine. We'll create our own methods of madness, thank you very much. And frankly, even when the MM claims to be about freedom, all it really does is all it ever does. It rolls on. Can I get some help pushing a bus into it's path?


Discord 72nd, 3172 / May 25th, 2006
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC;
Episkopos of the DSSS/PMM, Arch-Drunk in the Church of Eris, Sub-Underling of the Hoshi Church, Chairperson of the Dept. of Pigeon Evangelism for the Gerfrickdan Sect,
and (Con)Founder of the Flaming Church of Baby Jesus on a Motorbike.
(Failing these, there is always witchcraft. You know, pins and dolls and odd-tasting stews.)

[Rant 168The Great Joke]

Rant 168
The Great Joke

"The fools look for solidity as if they would actually find it. The rest look for it knowing there will be fun and games when they don't find it."
-The White Mouse (from the "Blue Light Sessions")

"Our revenge will be the laughter of our children."
-Bobby Sands (Stailceoir Ocrais, 1981)

The greatest joke of all is the fact that we have an irreligion with the title "Discordianism" and this makes us think that we must promote all sorts of discord, strife, and disorder because such things are understood to be what Discordianism is about. "Discordianism is about discord," some of us say almost dogmatically. But those of us (sometimes within the same person) who say such things in earnest seem to be incapable of understanding metaphor. Some of us seem to be literal minded and fundamentalist in our insistence that discordians must always be creating or causing strife. But all of this is simply a joke. Societies every where are always finding ways to build in pressure valves for any of its malcontents to blow off steam through. Thus Discordianism can be seen as merely another pressure valve. An escape mechanism to expend and dissipate energy that may otherwise cause real or lasting changes if not so diverted.

Remember that there is no greater cause of conflict and strife than societies in thrall to authority (whether that is embodied by people, institutions, religions, or laws). So, in this respect, even if Discordianism wasn't an escape valve or a diversionary trick, it lacks the experience to successfully challenge or change anything in the larger scheme of things. How could it, when systems of authority have so much more experience and ability? Perhaps viewing Discordianism as supposedly some sort of method or means of challenge is a wrong way of going about it. After all, the founders of modern Discordianism, whatever else you may think of them did say that "the Discordian Society has no definition." Why the hell don't we ever get it through our heads that nonsense is salvation?

We can try to make it a serious or important endeavor, but remember that even Che Guevara is now used to make people rich in a system he died opposing. There is nothing, not even Discordianism, that can resist the great maw of the market. (Some of you disagree that Discordianism is just another escape valve for blowing off steam. I dislike the idea too, but for the sake of argument, let's try to see some truths in the idea.)

In this light, we Discordians may just be fooling around playing with life, but at least many of us admit this. The idea that Discordians must seek to cause change or must seek to set anyone else free is just an idea that many of us (and not only us but most people in the world, actually) have in order to make ourselves feel better or to make us feel like we are doing something much more important or full of meaning than really exists. Who needs meaning? Those who for whatever reason feel they lack it.

A bunch of us Discordians going around parodying religions and reverencing Eris in silly ways is no more or less silly than a bunch of people going around talking about and taking part in all sorts of revolutionary or anarchist-chic activities and ideas. A great joke that is never understood is that all of human endeavors and ideas are simply creations of ours and when we fail to see this, we become the victims of this joke. Discordianism possibly provides a way to see this joke as it is, but that is not what often happens, is it? (And if you would like for one of us to show you how Discordianism can give you a way to see this or for any other form of bottled air, let us know. Dis-orderlies are standing by.)

Many Discordian Fundamentalists would have us believe that the only things or ideas that have merit are Discordian things or ideas, or at least those of them that can be considered useful to Discordianism. Some people even think that in order to be a true Discordian, one must constantly fight by tooth and nail or by guile in order to promote Discordianism or discord, or trouble or disorder or whatever the latest chaos-chic idea is these days. Or that one must demonstrate one's freedom by never having anything to do with such "boring" or mundane activities such as children, food, or furniture...but people who think this way should know that some of us would like to enjoy life and the things we have while we are here. What part of freedom means not having fun? All of us Discordians claim to not want to be duped. Some of us actually don't even want to be duped by Discordianism itself. (Can we remember the whole thing is a joke?)

I know some of you will take issue with that and say "who are you to call Discordianism a joke?" And then you'll get all huffy and puffy and blow your mental aneurysm. But still, Discordianism is a joke. The greatest joke, probably. All religions, thoughts, ideologies, and systems are jokes. What fun would there be if they weren't? At this point you may be saying "how dare you so blithely dismiss this serious and very important thing as a joke? Life is about more than fun." Yes. Sure it is. For you, maybe. Humor works for me as much or more than any other reasons you may have for living. Humor is why I am into Discordianism. Hell, think about it. An entire religion centered around and expressed through humor. An irreligion.  

Now, before some of you conclusion-jumpers go off and respond to what you think I am saying, pay attention (I know that is hard in today's age of point-and-click). I am not saying that going around wanting to create changes in society or going around wanting to show people they are free is worthless. I said it is a joke. Everything is, in as much as it can delude us into falling for it. If you infer that by being a joke that your project or scheme to promote discord or to "do good" is worthless, then you need to ask yourself why you feel that humor is worthless.

Some of us say the words "Operation Mindfuck" and no longer laugh at the silliness of such a thing. Some of us think that whatever project we have got going on in Operation Mindfuck is of great importance, or that Operation Mindfuck never had anything to do with laughter or with nonsense. Some of us have deluded ourselves into thinking that Operation Mindfuck and the whole Discordian Society is about some sort of twisted circus-like messiah-ship in which we have to run around getting people to use their heads or to free their minds or something to that effect. But this is just another part of the joke and Operation Mindfuck's greatest contribution to the world is in the numbers of Discordians who get fundamentalist about it.

I still hear a lot of whining and complaining from some of us about how Discordianism is a failure or about how we need to start "doing things" in the real world (which is really one of those fnord phrases that means whatever agrees with the person who says it). Or I hear complaints about the need for intelligent discussion and such (even by some of the same Discordians who used to complain about such high-handedness). I don't mind the contradictions and in fact encourage them. It's just that many of the more serious Discordians get all huffy when these sorts of contradictions are pointed out. ("Not/Never I" they say.) Many of you reading this now may be pissed off because I am basically saying that no matter what you do, it is a joke. Some of you feel that you have given so much both to Discordianism and to carrying the flag of discord that no one should be able to criticize you or laugh at you. But you know that's absurd. Being behind or for the Discordian cause is just another silly part of Operation Mindfuck. And nothing you can do will change the fact that Discordianism is simply one of the many pressure valves that society has for blowing off steam.

Lighten up. If you think you have seen through the game or the system or society or the normals or any other of the no-good-shit categories used today, why is it that you don't find it funny? The flag of discord is just as limited and bigoted as any other flag. (They are flags after all. Flags care nothing so long as people are willing to fight and die for them.) We Discordians are no different from any other group of people that imagines themselves to be a special elite crowd...separate from the world of the so-called normal people. But our behavior shows that we are pretty much the same. Sure, some of us reverence Eris, and claim freedom, but that is no different from people reverencing Liberty and claiming to be free. Sure, we have silly titles, a myriad of terms and phrases that only insiders or experienced members know, but this is just like any other group. We claim to be better or smarter or funnier (though there is evidence for this last one), but many groups do this.

Perhaps the only thing that makes us distinct from any other group is that we claim to be able to see through reality all the while falling for our own lines of bullshit. But on second thought, this makes us like every other group. Perhaps then, it's the fact that we spend so much time and effort trying to "see through reality" that we miss out entirely on "seeing reality." Who can say? It's up to us to decide.

Quite frankly, if Discordianism wasn't the Great Joke (though some call it the Great Tickle) that it is, most of us wouldn't be Discordians now, would we? If we couldn't make fun out of both order and disorder (who are often in bed together) making all that racket as they roil about in the hodge-podge, then what would be the point of going around pretending to evangelize people who never heard of Eris and are therefore in danger of reincarnating as Mao-buttons? If it weren't for the Erisians (Eris-lovers if ever such a type of people could be labeled) making muck and mucking about with the Pagans and the Buddhists at all those silly fire festivals (and occasionally showing up at the odd Wiccan circle and causing hoots), the Discordian Society would be so much the poorer. (I say this because some Discordians go around saying that Erisians are sad for actually believing Eris exists. However, the Erisians are not sad at all. Most of them actually wake up laughing every morning. In fact, the only time I ever saw an Erisian cry was when Chairman Chao accidentally tried to inhale tobacco smoke through his eye.)

Then there is apathy. Some of us Discordians go around thinking that others of our kind are simply being apathetic or pathetic because we don't go around trying to "do things" about the state of the world in which we live. But really, the vast majority of us "do things," it's just that most of us don't talk much about what, how, when or where simply because once the laughter dies down we don't have the energy or the sense to try to make sense in any meaningful way that anyone who wasn't part of it would understand. (Though all efforts to try should be encouraged because, damn it, one of us has to become a great story teller at some point. I have my predictions as to who that might be, but I'll keep my mouth shut for now, since I already talk too much and most of the time my mouth runs on ahead of my brain. (The two are in a state of discord at the moment.))

Perhaps Samuel Beckett or Oscar Wilde or even Robert Anton Wilson would have something to say about this. But we don't need them for a good time and a laugh. In this Great Joke of Discordianism, all we need is a few good minds blown in the wind. Promoting discord? Sure thing. Promoting order? Absolutely. Promoting change and freedom? All right. Promoting nothing but some hoots and laughs around? Okay. But we must draw the line at turning our Great Joke into something of serious import. Otherwise, it will be the end of the whole thing and at that point we'll have to realize that Discordianism is another escape valve. And we don't want to do that, now do we? Not that it is much more than an escape valve, but there is promise in finding solace in nonsense, despite what all the detractors say. What's the point of not laughing at our foibles?

Discord 69th, 3172 / May 22nd, 2006
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC;
Episkopos of the DSSS/PMM, Arch-Drunk in the Church of Eris, Sub-Underling of the Hoshi Church, Chairperson of the Dept. of Pigeon Evangelism for the Gerfrickdan Sect,
and (Con)Founder of the Flaming Church of Baby Jesus on a Motorbike.
(Failing these, there is always witchcraft. You know, pins and dolls and odd-tasting stews.)

[Rant 167History]

Rant 167
History

"Anyone who prefers wealth or power to true friendship is out of his mind."
-Euripides

"Your species doesn't, as a whole, at least admittedly, eat its own young. It just makes them slave away carrying other people's food and shit or it sends them out to slaughter other young. And you call yourselves the most evolved species, huh?"
-The White Mouse (from the "Blue Light Sessions")

Supposedly from the earliest times (whenever that was), Discordians have been mostly hated and despised by the vast majority of people, or so it goes. But just in metaphor, since the vast majority of people have never even heard of such a thing as Discordianism. People these days who call themselves Discordians look back at past social, political, and religious heretics and think of them as Discordians as a sort of source of inspiration. And there may be some truth to the idea that many of these unwitting past "Discordians" might have called themselves such a thing if they had known about it. But we shouldn't let this metaphor or idea blind us even while we allow ourselves to explore the implications of people in the past struggling for or expressing the cause of human freedom and wonder.

What the vast majority of people have supposedly hated and feared since time immemorial is chaos. Anyone or anything that couldn't be fit into preconceived categories or groups has been despised and feared. The very fact that existence is chaos has been denied and any idea leading minds to this fact has been denounced as wrong or silly. Any idea or scheme or project that leads to change is very often derided as impossible or false simply because it leads to conceptions about reality that disagree with the prejudices and cognocentrism of the dominant social ethos.

Many times in history, heretics (i.e. those who choose for themselves what to think about and/or believe in, as opposed to those who are merely willing to follow someone else's thoughts or beliefs) have been bullied, imprisoned, tortured and killed. Pagans have killed heretics as easily and as readily as Christians and Muslims have. Atheists have also killed heretics of all stripes and colors. And, I venture to say that, though it may be rare due to the nature of our irreligion, Discordians have also done their share of persecuting heretics and others deemed "normal" or "boring" or "pink" or "gray," (note: all of these terms used to mean something, but nowadays it seems they all mean "different from Discordians").

Since the global society around us has been yet again hijacked by fear since the Fundamentalists of Muslim and Christian persuasions started their crap again, Discordians these days appear to be gearing up for another bought of persecution mania. Only this time, instead of the persecution being against Discordians as heretics, it appears that many Discordians are going around doing society's job for free by persecuting other Discordians and other types of heretics simply for being different or for disagreeing. Why worry about being hated by the so-called normals for free-thought or for "thought-crimes" when some of your own fellow Discordians will gladly persecute and bully you just for the chance to look more cool or more advanced or more chaos-chic than you. (Yes, chaos-chic, as in, "we are more chaotic than you" and other such failures to get the joke.)

Just as one example: Many of today's Discordians seem to have a thing for the Chaos Magic side of the occult. Many others are bitterly against any form of magic seeing it in the exact way that Atheists dogmatically see it as superstition and such. But the example is not in the interminable squabbling between tunnel vision infected partisans on either side of this debate. The example is in the Chaos Magic movement itself, which may sadly show just where Discordianism is heading if we don't get over ourselves soon. When Chaos Magic first congealed, it was very similar to the Discordian take on life, but narrowly confined to the small occult subcultures in England and America. Chaos Magic practitioners wrote manifestoes and formed groups and denounced all of the other occultists as being stuck in the past and of being to closed-minded and "normal." (Note: the word "normal" among occultists may not seem to fit, but it is used in context.) Then Chaos Magic practitioners immediately set about to the task of going after one another and became divided between the mere dabblers and the "real, serious," Chaos Magicians who rode their lives on a wave of cultural pioneerism and "We are better than thou-ism." (Otherwise known as the "We are better than the herd-ism.") Without much time passing, the CM movement pretty much died in a haze of wanna-be hardcore punk and death metal meandering with the only interesting thing to come of it being the Cthulhu mythos being made into an irreligion.

Discordianism hasn't escaped from this sort of crap happening to itself as a movement either (and that's why I discussed the whole "what happened to the CM movement" thing). There are forever or always people coming to Discordianism with chips on their shoulders and bugs up their asses, and this is not in itself much of a problem. (It can be quite entertaining, really.) The problem is when such people try to get other Discordians to do and say and think as such people think they should do, say, and think. "Otherwise," say such people, "you can't be a real Discordian." And thus, we show ourselves as being just as narrow-minded and prejudiced as the larger society from which we claim to be different.

In history, as anyone who has spent any time reading Classical writings would know, these sorts of debates and happenings were going on all the time, so there is nothing special about it from that perspective. The thing to get out of this perspective is to see that all of our modern day thoughts and ideas and statements about how stupid most people are or about how we are doomed or about how society is going to become a prison (or that it is a prison, though I don't see many such people complaining about not having to go out and hunt for their own food)...all of these ideas which we express and then think of as unique or new, have already been expressed thousands of times in the past thousands of years. Human nature hasn't changed much. People, whether Discordians or otherwise, seem to hate anything new or anything that changes any other thing. People still loath and fear visionaries, while they lap up any benefits of the visions. People still attack, maim, and kill one another for being different or smart or stupid or godless or heretical or any other reason. People still go about as mental and spiritual cripples while laughing and deriding anyone else who tries to heal and un-cripple themselves. The old game is still played and just because we claim to be able to see through it, doesn't make us any more special than any other people across the vastness of human history who have seen through it. The so-called conspiracy of normal is just as adept at using heresy for its purpose nowadays as at any other time in history. (Look at what happened to Jesus Christ, or Socrates, or many other historical people respected, yet killed by their own people for thought-crimes.)

We are no different just because we can think differently. The question is, do we act differently? Do we even have the courage to even form our own attitudes as opposed to just picking and choosing the attitudes inculcated into us from childhood by society? The same thing with emotions. We seem to believe that we inherit them and must feel by choosing among a palette of pre-fabricated emotions, instead of trying to create our own. It's not the thoughts of feelings that really count (even if we make a big deal about how "chaos-chic" they are). It's how we go about thinking and feeling in and of itself. The way we think and feel, our attitudes, if you will. Are our interactions and relationships free, or are we just following along the inculcated patterns of habit taught to us by the society of "normals" which we claim to be better than. It's not in the forms themselves (the friends, fellows, brothers, sisters, parents, lovers, etc.) but in the freedom of being one's own person and allowing others the same freedom. Remember that? It seems like I am just blowing off hot air, but really thing about it. Who do you befriend? People who think "freely" like you and who can be labeled as Discordians even unknowingly? Or anyone who shows even a spark of life and freedom, no matter how normal or mundane their life's form is?

"The butterfly is dangerous to the cocoon. But the cocoon's destruction is inevitable regardless." (-The White Mouse, paraphrasing Phil Hine; from the "Blue Light Sessions.")

Above-the-herd-ism is a dangerous and insidious viral meme that we rightly denounce when we see it expressed by Fundamentalists of other stripes, such as Christians, Muslims, or certain Atheists, and so forth. But when people from within the Discordian Society express the same sort of idea, do we recognize it for what it is? Not usually because we are too busy trying to prove ourselves more pretty or better than the rest. We are too busy knocking each other down and like lobsters in a pot, we try to drag anyone who strikes out for freedom back into the pot simply because, though we would never admit it to ourselves, misery loves company.

Instead of looking at history, even our own short modern Discordian Society's history, we claim to be smarter than the average bear or better than the average Pagan, or prettier on the inside than the average Joe-normal, Jane-pink, little-Billy, or redneck Mary. We go on and on about how much better we are than the masses without any sense of self-irony and in sharp ignorance of the fact that the last time such "above-the-herd-ism" was popular was among the Fascists in Europe just before WWII broke out. The Fascists loathed democracy as the tyranny of the masses. The masses of normal were derided for being machine-like and automatons who shouldn't be trusted with running the affairs of society. "No," said the Fascists, "we need 'special' people who are above the common herd to rule society and to tell us what to think." Back before then, this type of thought was called aristocratism. In the nineteen-twenties and thirties this was called Fascism. In the sixties through the eighties, it was called "cult of personality." Today, many people call it "elitism."

What the hell is our excuse for not seeing this threat for what it is and then again for nurturing it? And then what is our excuse for attacking and deriding even fellow Discordians who are trying to throw off the mental, spiritual (and even physical) manacles? Sure, the behavior is as common as humanity, but remember we Discordians consider ourselves hip to the game? So we of all groups have no excuse and no recourse. We are, quite simply, exhibiting as much stupidity as any group of armed militias who are afraid of Mexicans crossing the US border. Instead of seeing Discordianism in as many forms as there are Discordians, we go around using definitions or the urge to definition as an excuse to be vile to one another.

Have we forgotten that what we consider normal and full of order is just as much chaos as what we consider disorder and weird? Have we forgotten that our own brand of chaos is just as much chaos as any other brand? The only distinction that matters is freedom (and even "freedom" can be hijacked for a cause that purports to be about freedom). If a Discordian, whether like or disliked by you, is happily trudging away in an "orderly" fashion from within the margins of a "normal" life, you can say what you will about this, but remember that the conclusions you jump to are your own. Freedom and prejudice are ever in enmity across the battle fields of delusion, sense and nonsense, and meaning-meaninglessness. One hates and fears differences because that means chaos can't be held onto or controlled. The other cherishes and tolerates differences (regardless of the personal tastes of the person holding to it) because it means that chaos can't be held onto or controlled and this means that there is always hope for life.

Eris didn't set us free. She told us we are free. She still tells us we are free. Because the major difference between freedom and the slavery of prejudice (or narrow-mindedness) is choice...heresy (at least the original meaning of the word), whether that heresy resembles what may be considered "normal" or whether that heresy appears as the most outlandish and silly fucking expression ever known to humankind. It's not the silly hat you wear on your head, but what is inside that head and how that head goes about seeing things that matters. It's not the length of your hair, or the clothes you wear, or the jewelry you flaunt. It's not the games you play, whether mindfucking or not. Nor is it the Discordian groups you belong to (or which belong to you, or whether the difference is useful). What matters, I venture to say, is that you feel free enough to choose for yourself.

My fellow Discordians, whether you love me, hate me, or are indifferent or ambivalent towards me, whether you agree or disagree with me, or whether you haven't made up your mind (and never in fact intent to), let's not fall victim to history. Let's not have the Discordian Society to be yet another historical mistake or another vehicle that can be hijacked by fundamentalists who are afraid that the vary nature of the universe is laughter (whether this idea makes the rest of us laugh or cry). I am not saying that we all need to get along or that we all have to accept one another, but on the flip side, we would do well to remember what Discordianism means in terms of freedom and perhaps learn to respect differences no matter how much we disagree with the forms through which another expresses themselves.

I know you think that this is an attempt to be rational, I am not going to stand for such slander of my horrible character. It is just something to think about.


May 18th, 2006
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC;
Episkopos of the DSSS/PMM, Arch-Drunk in the Church of Eris, Sub-Underling of the Hoshi Church, Chairperson of the Dept. of Pigeon Evangelism for the Gerfrickdan Sect,
and (Con)Founder of the Flaming Church of Baby Jesus on a Motorbike.
(Failing these, there is always witchcraft. You know, pins and dolls and odd-tasting stews.)

[Rant 166Those Damned Fnords! We Have Been Suckered Again!]

Rant 166
Those Damned Fnords! We Have Been Suckered Again!

A lady asked an Irish butcher "How can you be so cruel as to kill little lambs?"
He replied "An' ye wouldn't have me ate them alive, would ye?"

"Those who are dogmatic about not being dogmatic are the worst fanatics of all."

"...people stopped patiently building their little houses of rational sticks in the chaos of the universe and started  getting interested in the chaos itself - partly because it was a lot easier to be an expert on chaos, but mostly because it made really good patterns that you could put on a t-shirt."
-Terry Pratchett (from "Witches Abroad")

Discordianism/Erisianism is a funny sort of irreligion in that it is made up from scratch and actually admits to this (unlike other sorts of religions which are also made up from scratch but then try to say that it was a revelation from God, or that it was really the first religion or such other advertising schemes; sometimes I think that "scratch" could be a useful deity since it seems to be the material that goes into a lot of other things). The problem is when some Discordians or Erisians (which I will just call Discordians from now on for brevity's sake) forget this and try to get Discordianism established as a real bona fide and FDA approved grade A religion. This is not a bad thing in and of itself, but then we get issues like people believing in such absurdities as "Real Discordians" as opposed to fake Discordians and other such Graying of our fields. Unless it is a grand joke, none of us can really stand there (or sit there or fly there) and go around pointing out who are real and who are fake Discordians since we admit that our game is made up and thus as fake (or real, or rather fake-real) as about any other thing in modern human society.

If you don't like the way some other Discordian or some group of other Discordians are going about the whole thing, you are always free to form your own sect and excommunicate as many of those "others" as you can find. This has been the great thing about this "movement" and if we lose this and start getting concerned with legitimacy and organization and policing who is "real" (you can get a lot of "real" on sale at Wal-Mart) and who is "fake," then we pretty much become what I said over a year and a half ago: our own grayfaces. Why blame another when Grayface lives within ourselves?

What part of the phrase "you either get it or you don't" means that we need to go around taking out our frustrations on the so-called normals or pinks or grays that we claim to find showing up online in Discordian forums and such? What part of that phrase means that someone who doesn't "get it" will never get it? What? Have I busted a fundamentalist thought bubble? What? you say? "
But, Hugh," you say, "of course we can label other people and put them into pigeon-holes and categories to make ourselves feel better. Of course we can, Hugh. You see, we are special and not like everybody else." Explain to me why you feel you can't be labeled or pinned down and yet you turn around and try to label or pin down others. Explain to me exactly why you think that being a Discordian is any different from being any other thing? Explain to me how Discordian is not just another pretty label to excuse yourself of any responsibility to live your own life and be your own self. I have run across quite a few free people who never even heard of Discordianism. So what is really in the name? Who should care about it? Why? Does it even matter?

What would some of you do with yourself if Discordianism suddenly disappeared and you could no longer use chaos as an excuse for your lack of social skills? (I would actually be happy because then I could finally 'really(tm)' retire from the ranting business.) Some of you wail about freedom and how we are under threat and all that, but you know that is only so much more advertising. I don't care about DOOM any more than I care about Jesus coming back. (Though, if you seem Him when He does come back, I want the motorbike.) Every period in human history was filled with people going around shouting "DOOM! The End Is Nigh!" and all that blather. It makes good entertainment, but besides personal DOOM or specific places on Earth that got too close to volcanoes and such, DOOM has largely missed the bus. (Even with much of our world leadership trying their damnest to bring DOOM to the globe these days.) DOOM is yet another fnord-letter word.

"Real Discordian" is another fnord bearing title. You may as well say "You don't get it. Fnord." to all those who look at you in bafflement after you explain to them for the fifteenth time that Eris is really behind the insurance forms they have to fill out. Or the fact that when you go to any government agency, you have to wait in a line in order to be given a number so you can wait in yet another line, ad nauseum.

We are as infected with fnords now as the rest of the general population, though that much is no problem. The problem is that we pretend that we are not infected and riddled through and through with fnords. In our speech, our writings, our thoughts, they are all over the place and instead of seeing them, which we used to love doing, we are starting to deny that they are there...bringing us back around to the same sorry state we were in before we saw them and were able to be easily manipulated by the masters and the authorities in society who planted them there in the first place. How do I know that we are infected with fnords? Because of the knee-jerk reactions I see among us all whenever we come across some word or some thought which disagrees with us. Weren't our strings cut? So why are we all still acting like puppets?

And what's with all the sectarian squabbling among some of us? You know the deal. It happens about once every 2.3 months. The latest crop of "Real Discordians" goes after all the "Cookies and Pie Discordians" and instead of sharing perspectives and learning how to tolerate the fact that YES IN FACT OTHER INDIVIDUALS ARE DIFFERENT from both you and the way you think they should be, we attack one another. Nice play this is, huh? Eris plays another fucken joke on us at our expense, all of our expenses. And we fall right on into it. Again and again. Suckers. That's what we are. We can't even see past our own denial of our inner grayfaces or the fact that there are fnords, and instead of perhaps helping one another, if only for the laughs, we are falling for the Golden Apple Trick, AGAIN! (She snickers at us even now. I can see Her there with that evil grin. The grin that says "I keep making thousands of apples, I even teach you all how to make them for yourselves, and yet you still fight over each and every one that rolls your way." Eris is, BTW, a devil of a cognitive therapist. Though you may not want to trust the course of therapy since Her idea of healing has nothing at all to do with sanity.)

I find it funny that I have fallen for Her joke yet again. Especially since it is basically the same joke with few variations each time She plays it. I find it funny that the rest of you have fallen for it again right alongside me. Are we really THAT fucken gullible despite all our appeals and promises to the contrary? Damn. We have been punked, all of us. The whole damned Discordian Society. Punked. Played. By our own Goddess by all gods' sakes! Heh. I mean, you can say that it was bound to happen seeing as Eris is a deity and deities have certain advantages over us and all that, but come on now. That's just an excuse. Especially because each and every one of us knows the story of the First Golden Apple Trick, so we should have known better.

Remember that Grayface is not inherent in any system of organization, it is in our attitudes. Grayface does often use disorder and "chaos" as often as "order" and "law". So long as something gets hurt, maimed, killed, or destroyed, anything is useful for Grayface. The little Grayface inside each one of us has convinced us that yes, "I am the best, the prettiest one," and we are still willing to fight over it. In the meantime, the rest of the world keeps on doing the same damned thing. The difference is that we should know better, right? So I ask you again, what makes us Discordians any different or better or worse or distinctive? And does it really matter? Does it really amount to anything that each one of us feels unique and individual when every other person on the planet feels exactly the same way about themselves? Every one goes around saying "I'm not like every one else," while going around being like every one else. Then Eris comes along, laughs at us, Her supposed co-conspirators and drops in a shiny apple and we immediately set to proving that we are in fact quite like every one else. From the first Greek gods who fought over the first Golden Apple, right up until nowadays with Discordians going around trying to prove who is "real-fake" as opposed to "fake-real." And the fnords still jerk us around and we still get afraid of all those things we have been obediently trained to fear. We lash out in hatred and intolerance all the while claiming to be more open-minded and chaos-positive (or whatever the newest jargon words are).

The Grayfaces in charge of our societies have no need to worry about us, seeing as we never can take a joke ourselves, not even when it is specially wrapped, signed, and hand-delivered by our own Goddess. Instead of subverting the dominant paradigms we are fighting one another for the right to be recognized as the best subverters or the realest Discordians. Or some other such drivel that won't matter as the years go by, because (DOOM advertising follows) the Christian Fundamentalists will take over America and march all of us to our own nice camps with walls, barbed wire, and electric shock treatments where we can fight and squabble all we want amongst ourselves about who gets to go to the gas chambers first. "How," you ask me, "can you live with that prediction?" I don't know. Belief in reincarnation helps, I suppose. It's not over until it's over and is it really ever over? Maybe the next incarnation of the Discordian Society, (probably another 3 thousand years in the future) will get it right. Who can say? I am starting to have my doubts.

Discord 64th, 3172 / May 17th, 2006

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC;
Episkopos of the DSSS/PMM, Arch-Drunk in the Church of Eris, Sub-Underling of the Hoshi Church, Chairperson of the Dept. of Pigeon Evangelism for the Gerfrickdan Sect,
and (Con)Founder of the Flaming Church of Baby Jesus on a Motorbike.
(Failing these, there is always witchcraft. You know, pins and dolls and odd-tasting stews.)

[Why Won't You Come Over Here?]

Why Won't You Come Over Here?

"Everybody is always so quick to point out how unique and lively they are. It gets boring after about the fifth person."
-Hous Bin Farteen, Fifth Muslim Lama

"We think ourselves better than ancient people like the Aztecs. Yet we still sacrifice thousands every year to the old time gods of war that we made up in our prehistory as an excuse to steal and kill."
-Some Random Liberal (in a pub)

"There is more magic in a streetlight shining at night than there is in those that either claim to believe or disbelieve in it."
-taken from "The First Witchcraft Statement" (by WITCH)

I know you. Fool. Sure, you can make your claim to being different or unique, but if you were so unique, why all the fuss in trying to convince me that you are not a replica? You can say you are not merely a replica because you think differently than everyone else. In the meantime, everyone else is thinking that they also think differently from everyone else. Just because you may or may not call yourself a Discordian doesn't mean you haven't escaped from either slavery or from being a two-dimensional cut-and-pasted character mass produced by the media. Especially since thinking of oneself as creative and unique is merely another one of the memes THEY use to keep you a dutiful producer and spender. Think about that for a minute. THEY couldn't care less about how free you think yourself, or how creative you imagine yourself, regardless of the reality behind either thought. As long as you keep producing for THEM and spending what THEY pay you to buy THEIR products. (And those products are not just material, they also include spiritual and intellectual products as well.) What does that say about humanity's cream of the crop? The elite? The leadership? Those who like to think they are in control? It says exactly what THEY think about you and what your place is in this society.

Hell, THEY don't even care how revolutionary you are. THEY can always kill you and then sell fucking t-shirts with your face on them. (The Che Guevara effect.) Either way, you are still a product to THEM in this great spectacle. Want to be a heretic or a witch? THEY can just kill you and later on make money selling books about your religion to fascinate bored soccer moms who are still closet feminists, just don't tell their husbands. (The Wicca-lite effect.)

Remember when I said we are really performers in a circus? Well, THEY are trying to take over the whole damned show and frankly some of us are getting sick of THEIR antics. Do what you must to make yourself feel better. If that means sacrificing goats to your ancestors, or if it means taking part in the New Reformed Unorthodox Susan B. Anthony Coven, or even it means calling yourself Discordian and getting wasted on tequila, do it. And then the same reality will be waiting for you when you're done. This might cause you to drink some more or to take drugs or to cast a magic spell and then.........Yep. Still there waiting for you. As always. That same reality. (Unless, of course you are some sort of shaman or witch or some trans-dimensional multiversal traveler, then that's just sweet.) Don't just sit there or lay there! Learn to either change things for yourself, or change reality, or if you believe such things are possible, then get into a different reality. Either way do something that proves you actually have some life in you. Prove that you are not merely a PDA, cellphone, a laptop with wireless internet, or a collection of emotions picked up from all those tunes you have on your I-pod. Prove that you actually have what the ancients called the divine spark...i.e. you are not just some zomboid dead brain who is just waiting for life to happen to them.

If you can't even do that, you might just be a cabbage. You never know, what with all the antics that THEY are into.  (A sort almost relevant digression follows.)

But we need not worry about THEM too much. Why? Why, you ask? After I just spent a good paragraph of horrid writing explaining how THEY are such evil bastards? I'll tell you why. Pay attention. Listen up. Dress down. Live sideways.

We need not worry about THEM because as much as THEY take over parts of our circus, we always create new spaces and tents. We also manage to assimilate a good deal of THEM every day. And who knows, sometimes we coax them into taking over one of our tents, just so we can burn the place down. (Is that mean?) Besides, the worry game is just another one of THEIR ruses that THEY use to keep us from exploring even the possibility that there are possibilities that THEY can't imagine. Just why do you think Eris tossed in that shiny apple? And we have better things to focus on then worrying about THEM. We know they are cabbages and that's that. Either eat them or stop fussing. Hell, we know some of you may even have been duped or convinced that you yourselves are cabbages, and for that we are sorry. It was funny though, you have to admit.

(But back to my earlier thought train.)

Just because you can or cannot SEE the fnords doesn't mean THEY won't eat you. Hell, they (I am tired of caps) already probably infest your mind in the form of memes. Just how do you know that they are not trans-dimensional soul suckers (as the Good Reverend Roger, scourge of the Prophets, often puts it)? They might be small or little and they may masquerade as thoughts or emotions you believe that you yourself have come up with, but then again, how do you know it's not some Scientology plot? (If there was ever an overt and powerful Greyface cabal, it's those loons.) Why wouldn't it be? Most of today's major religions do the same thing to their followers, so it should be no surprise that a newer elite religion for the rich and powerful wouldn't want to get in on that game. Just why do you think that those who become Buddhas immediately get the hell out of "here"? Well, for one thing, if they stay too long the religious and superstitious slaves of the thought-forms we call memes will torture and kill them (and then, just to add insult to injury, they will form new cults around them and taunt their memory by calling them "martyrs" or "saints").

Don't take my word for it, look around yourself. Look inside your mind. You will see that it is actually quite difficult being a free-thinker, or a Discordian. It is of course always fun to be one, but it is a lot easier to call yourself one than to actually live like one. Unless of course you have woken up to the fact that only if you take yourself  and THEM seriously, is it difficult. And even then the obstacles in your own mind, whether self-created or inculcated, are a lot more difficult to dissolve than the ones that exist on that material plane of reality we call "Reality (tm)" . Just who or what started this whole mess, who can say? All you may ever be able to do is to work it out for yourself. Especially if you can't find any of the rest of us.

But don't follow in the footsteps of the Buddhas. We need you to come over "here" or to stay "here" once you have awakened. Why? It provides decent entertainment, for one thing. Once you have discovered what both yourself and THEY have done putting all those over-reproductive and viral memes into your head-space and life, you become a living example of what THEY say is impossible. (Of course I can't tell you what that is because every individual realizes it differently.) Just what do you think is possible or impossible? And why? Have you even bothered to explore or experiment with "reality"?
The greatest work of art you have is your mind and body. (Your life.) Don't let it become the property of someone or something else. Ideas, actions, and thoughts should be your play things. Your tools. Your creations. Things that show you are fully here and not trapped in some dead-brained thud zone.

Are you crazy enough to exist? Are you fully here? Are you here at all?

If not...

Why won't you come over here?

March 24th, 2006

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
Co-Episkopos of the DSSS
Unholy Agent of the (Unrighteous) New Reformed Unorthodox Susan B. Anthony Coven

[Welcome to the Freak Show]

Welcome to the Freak Show

"What would a major religion be without a ponderous hierarchy of pretentious titles to confuse, awe, and madden the people with? Reasonable. That's what. And we won't stand for that kind of nonsense around here."
-Principia Discordia

Illuminism - that body of thought which relates to artificial lighting paraphernalia. (Such as light switches, light bulbs, fluorescence, photons, candles, matches, and flashlights.) It is not presently understood why such things need their own body of thought, but perhaps they were jealous of humanity's pre-occupation which television.
-from a Concise Guide to Discordianism

"There is a sharp disagreement among competent people as to what can be proved and what can not be proved, as well as an irreconcilable divergence of opinion as to what is sense and what is nonsense."
-Hagbard Celine (Illuminatus Trilogy)

"It's far easier to fight for principles than to live up to them."
-Adlai Stevenson

"I'm not like everybody else."
-What Everybody Else Always Says

Are you standing in line to get the next new thing, waiting for some action, waiting to be noticed, waiting for the perfect day when everything goes your way, or when everything works out, or when you will find that thing/experience/thought that will give your life that sense of meaning which you have been inculcated to desire? Are standing in line to the rest of your life? Are you wondering why you have been put into a universe which seems to have nothing to do with your wants, dreams, or longings, yet you still wait for some miracle as if by waiting you can melt the ice of your lethargy? The Conspiracy of Normal would like for you to keep waiting in line for the nice shiny products that you have been duped into believing will cure your angst, sadness, or loneliness.

Is it an education? A job? A career? A romance? A house? A car? Stocks and bonds? Some new direction that gives you the illusion of meaning... that gives you the illusion that you are finally doing something that matters? Or is it some rearranging of your lifestyle to give you the illusion of a new direction? Will it be a new religion? A new belief system? An epiphany? A paradigm shift that gives you the illusion of growth?

It is not we who waste time, it is time which wastes us. It's about time we ponied up and admitted this. And while we still are out chasing our desires, using our minds and bodies only getting more of the latest and greatest new things or experiences, we haven't grown up. We are still like children grasping and pushing, attracting and repelling, hoping and fearing on an endless treadmill that is grinding our hearts to pulp and reducing our creative visions to mindless pap. Our innate poetry is twisted into gibber. Our music is locked up and perverted into stupid jingles which trap us into deceiving ourselves that our own habits and issues are all that matters in this world. Our lives get pissed away and they trickle so slowly down the mountains of our bullshit.

We are not polluting the earth without polluting our own potential first. We cannot bear hatred and cynicism for life without twisting it upon ourselves first. We cannot run in horror from the fragments of life that call themselves human without first loosing a few of our own. We cannot get lost in a city of millions without first losing our ability to live our own lives.

So welcome to the freak show, the human zoo where the joke is on you. Every dream you have is everyday drained of its energy and profit before you even realize what it might have been worth to you. But only because you remain unaware of the means by which that can happen. If this is not the kind of place or the life in which you want to exist then do something about it and do it fast because the ship is sinking and if you don't learn how to swim in the seas of chaos now, you will be dragged down by all of those people who insist that their method or plan is the thing to do or experience. Or you will be dragged down or held back by those who are jealous of anything you may achieve, or by those who see the world as a shitty place and who would rather you fail at everything so that their cynical dogmas are proven correct than to see you be happy. Learn to live your own life now before someone else tells you what is or isn't possible and your mind listens and locks you into patterns and habits just to "fit in" and be accepted by all of the rest of the fools who have yet to realize the ship is sinking. Or by all those fools who want to hold you back from doing whatever it is you were put here in life to do because they feel that making your own life is impossible.

Simply jump off and learn to swim now. You don't have to prove the naysayers wrong. You simply need to live your own life. Don't stop to tell anyone that their shitty collective ship is sinking or that the sea is chaos. They will only disagree and hate you for it. They will either try to persuade you to come back to their lunacy that masquerades as "progress" or they will seek to destroy you for showing them yet again how much they hate themselves for staying aboard a sinking ship. So simply jump off. Come and swim with us. Come and join our freak show. We guarantee no satisfaction, but we will tell you this up front. You'll make your own damned satisfaction and we will help you learn how. We won't promise that any of it will make sense. We won't promise you any heaven or any rewards beyond the fact that you might like yourself a whole lot more than you did before. For this we don't want anything in return, not even gratitude. Just learn to become your own person.

Remember where the idiots see chaos as disorder and strife, you can see freedom, opportunity, and the realization of your life's deepest callings. Are you crazy enough to exist? Well, you are already here if you can read these words, so you must be crazy enough. Now it's time to pony up to the bar and live life like you mean it. If you can do this, welcome to the freakshow. The rest of us who live life on purpose will gladly embrace you as a brother or sister, no matter how often we may squabble and gibber and prank each other. This is Discordianism at its finest, yet you won't hear any of us call it that too often because it doesn't need the label.

Approach all paradigms, beliefs, methods, schemes, plans, and motives (ulterior or not) like you don't give a fuck. That is the way to truly learn how to use them to their fullest in creating your life's work of art. But don't use this approach as another stupid dogmatic stance. Don't use it to try to deceive yourself into thinking that you are not impressed by anyone other than yourself. Because even if a woman decides to merely be a waitress, if she is living her life to its fullest by being aware every moment, then that is something to be impressed by. Instead of wasting time and breath attacking and telling her that her life has no meaning, perhaps you could stop hating yourself and live your own life, no matter what is you think you do. It's not in the different choices that a person makes...it is not in the standard of living or the amount of money they acquire...it is in their approach to life that the creativity comes through. It is how they see life that makes them unique. And they are not beholden to you to try to make you impressed. If you are not strong enough to tear down your own walls of bullshit cynicism, that is no one's fault but your own. And how do you think you can swim on the oceans of chaos while weighed down by all that crap?

Use your mind. Remember to keep your pineal gland clear of your own bullshit as much as others' crap. You can only be enslaved when you choose to enslave yourself. Why are you running from the laughter that could be yours? Is it because it is free?

In this freakshow, each one of us is charged with the task of keeping our own lives valuable and meaningful. No amount of believing or philosophizing is going to do that for you. You must simply make the choice yourself. You'll be surprised at how much the universe or existence will start conspiring with you to accomplish your goals, if you simply choose to see it that way.

That said, red shoes and bowling alleys or not, get up and dance!

March 20th, 2006

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
Co-Episkopos of the DSSS/PMM

"Thanks for passing the torch. I think I burned my hand, though. Would you like this thing back?"

or at least this round of them have been placed into their own Volume number 2, for those who like that sort of thing.

[A Few Bad Monkeys Don't Stop the Show!(Otherwise known as Rant 163)]

A Few Bad Monkeys Don't Stop the Show!
(Otherwise known as Rant 163)

"Ye have locked yerselves up in cages of fear-and, behold, do ye now
complain that ye lack FREEDOM? Ye have cast out yer brothers for devils and now complain ye, lamenting, that ye've been left to fight alone. Verily, verily I say unto you, not all the Sinister Ministers of the Bavarian Illuminati, working together in multitudes, could so entwine the land with tribulation as have yer baseless warnings."
-from the Epistle to the Paranoids

Life ain't easy at times. Even though we may have realized that we are really performing in a circus underneath Eris' Big Top, or even in one of the other tents set up on Her grounds, life can still get hard from time to time. And that is what crying or talking is for. You get over it. You move past it. Done deal. Move to the next act in the performance. If you find it nearly impossible to do this, either you need to relax and go with the motion (which in time takes you to a better feeling), or you need to question what you are doing that makes it so nearly-impossible.

You can complain about those assholes and those people, whether fellow performers, or audience members who delude themselves into thinking they aren't performing, who make a mess and run roughshod over your act. We all do it. Blowing off steam is part of getting past the crap. However at some point in life, enough is enough. And you have to get on with your own performance. Because the rest of us aren't going to stop and wait. This is not cruel. This is compassion. Good medicine.

As you get more experienced with life in the circus you start becoming better at being able to spot the few bad monkeys and can learn to avoid their drama, but in any event, they don't stop the show. None of them can. Not even if there were thousands of them. None of us can either. The show goes on forever and it is so much more than any of us can even begin to conceive of. Infinity is a good word to use for this, though I think of it more along the lines of dance sets. The music never really stops and each life span is simply a dance set.

Why is the universe is like this? Don't ask me. It tends to treat you the way you see it. Not in every case, but in the vast majority of the time. Think about it. If you are so worried about all the bad monkeys and the assholes going around trying to make you and the rest of us miserable because the gray fools haven't yet realized they are in a circus, you will feel shitty and then see a lot of things around you as shitty. Even if you get a smile from someone, you'll think "why are they smiling? what do they want?" Do you see how this works? You do have a lot more say in writing the script of your performance than you imagine. Remember it isn't laid down before hand. It is mostly improv.

Just put on your red shoes (or whatever color, or hell, do it barefoot) and dance. I'll tell you something I learned about Eris (or whomever/whatever you blame reality for), because some of you think that you get all sorts of cool points or props for causing as much disruption and discord as possible. Eris actually doesn't care about that. Some of you have allowed that Yahweh and His evil twin Satan to sell you their old con-job about pleasing them and getting all sorts of goodies for it. Eris wouldn't set up something like that, not unless you are that gullible. (This is why we DSSSers used to go around calling ourselves the Bastard Children of Eris.)

Eris actually wants you to enjoy your performance. She deems it wise if we all could simply enjoy our own and each other's performances, but figures if some are going to be bad monkeys then that's their own damned fault. Skilled performers can improv their way around any type of monkey business, good or bad. Happy or sad. Illuminating the "opposition" into seeing that they too are performers in this circus as much as the rest of us who know it; that is the mission of the Erisian Movement and of the Discordian Society. (Though the former tends to be more heavy into the spiritual, occult, and cuisine aspects of the show.)

Remember reality? But do you also remember that 80-90% of what you think or remember about reality is simply and only what you think or remember about it. Even what you perceive or how you feel about it is part of the performance you are making up. I think the old crusty surrealists used to say that one's life is the greatest work of art. It might sound like some ruse, but they hit upon a more decent of a way of seeing it than any of the so called philosophers or theologians (or politicians), all of whom haven't figured out that they are performers...all of whom think of their various versions of the truth or the solution as being the actual sum of reality. This is sad since they didn't get the joke or the memo or the fact that all of their ideas are just as much fiction as a novelist's story.

Whether the monkeys are in your head or in other people, a few bad ones don't stop the show. There is no excuse for not dancing beyond the fact that you simply don't want to dance. And that is only your choice. Stop using the other performers' acts as excuses for the way you feel. If you want to come bowling with us, bring some beer, shiny shoes, and make sure that the next time you hoot and holler like a monkey that you get the joke. And try not to piss on the damned lanes because you drank too much beer too quickly. Otherwise we may just have to leave you there to explain to the cops why the pins are on fire and you're stumbling around gibbering some muck about Eris.

February 24th, 2006
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
DSSS / PMM

[Rant 157Something Smells Over Here]

Rant 157
Something Smells Over Here

"What I want to know is how the Scots got to ancient Israel in the first place."
-Chairman Chao (when asked about the Maccabee rebellion)

"How could anyone confuse a cabbage with a human being? You'd think it would be just about impossible...One of the five Aneristic Orders, though, is seeking to make this distinction less clear. The Defamation League (who secretly controls almost all organized religion and Goddess knows what else) has been secretly costuming cabbages and trying to pass them off as humans. Why they are doing this is uncertain, but keep in mind these are some of the same people who said you'd go to hell for spanking the monkey."
-from the Summa Discordia

"We all know about presidents getting shot by people, but this is the first time a vice-president has ever shot someone."

We live under the glamour and dazzle of a basic socio-cultural philosophy which cuts us down and away from inherent value as living beings and then says to us that we can buy ourselves to being real. We get frustrated when something prevents us from playing this game. Or when that next new greatest advertised thing is too expensive for us to consider. We are a society of credit cards, loans, financing, and debt because of this. We never once stop to question the motives behind all of this, and yet we rail and rant against our government which spends money in exactly the same way.

I am amazed when I run into people who get cars by financing, who take out extensive loans to buy property, and who constantly shop on credit. When I ask about this wastefulness, I am usually told "But how else will I be able to afford these things?" My response is "You can't afford those things. That's why you are in debt, silly." Paying for something when you don't have the money upfront for it obviously means you can't afford it. And in the future you will be less able to afford anything similar.

This is a symptom of a greater problem and you all know what this problem is. A combination of Stupidity and The Fear. Otherwise known as DUMB and DOOM. Each one of these is bad enough, but when they mate they produce the bastard children known as slavery and hatred. Look around you at human cultures. Doesn't it seem like that most of them have been entranced by the tango of stupidity and fear throughout history. DUMB and DOOM have been the cause of death for humans more so than any natural causes. DUMB and DOOM get us to spend money we don't have out of fear that we can't keep up with the neighbors, won't be able to buy the new IPod, or won't be able to impress that date, and if we can't do these things, the fnords will eat us. DUMB and DOOM convince us that we have no time left so we must run out now and buy ourselves a new and improved version of the hottest lifestyle so we can look in the mirror and feel sexy and alive. (Ignoring the fact that if you can't do that already, nothing else will do it for you.)

DUMB and DOOM keep us locked away in our own narrow worlds with our own fixations and habits afraid of stepping out. Afraid of admitting that no matter what we do, life pretty much happens largely out of our control. Heads up, people. Beware of God. She's Out of Order. And She doesn't care about your bullshit, no matter how much of it you think you can buy or get on credit. Eris isn't buying any of it. If living life free of DUMB and DOOM seems impossible to you, question why you are alive (especially if you are Erisian).

In fact, it is nearly impossible to have DOOM without dumb. Remember for about 1500 years the Christian Church convinced Westerners that they'd go to hell if they didn't tithe, have lots of babies, give their land away to nobles, or believe in hell in the first place. How would people even put up with this. They were convinced to be DUMB. They were connived into it. Every now and then a bunch of people would be burned at the stake just to drive home the point and people largely stayed DUMB, until Eris tossed an apple into the Church and the Protestants and Catholics split apart and started killing one another to prove who was prettier. The air in Western culture was thus cleared for a time. With the believers of Christ focused on fighting each other, the diversion gave the rest of the people some space to start thinking again. This allowed science and democracy to creep up from behind and slug religious domination upside the head, and it has been stumbling around ever since, refusing to fall over once and for all. Some breathing room was created. But DUMB and DOOM are a hearty couple and they still manifest all around us.

Look around you now. Where do you feel the most DUMB coming from? Hell, sometimes DOOM gets confused by Eris and you actually become positively afraid of being stupid so you immediately wise up. But look around you. Muslims going on a rampage over some cartoons. Christians whining about holiday greetings or the fact the public schools don't teach the Bible. Jews and Arabs convincing themselves to hate one another. North Korean politicians with bad hair days. Vice-presidents shooting people. None of them are aware of themselves acting like silly gits. None of them are yet aware that there is no God but Goddess, and Her name is Eris. (Okay, pick another name if you think you can find someone better to blame reality on.)

But fear not. Stupidity and Fear is a choice. You can escape them when they try to take over your life, even if you might not be able to escape their followers. The world's great religions are not really all the great. Stupidity and Fear are the greatest religions of all time and people are blindly creating gods, cultures, economies, wars, and microwaves out of them. Scratch the surface of any shining rational or justification or excuse, whether religious or not, and you will find the true sources: stupidity and fear. What can we Discordians do about this?

Laugh at ourselves, first off for falling for this game and then forgetting that we were playing it. Then whatever comes to mind next.

February 17th, 2006
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC;
of the DSSS/PMM
Conspirator with High Papessa Bella
Agent Provocateur in Hoshiko and DS#3's War Against Hostages
Church of Eris ArchSwinging Bastard
and silly man who convinces white people they can be shamans so he can get a good laugh

[Rant 156Neopagan Meander]

Rant 156
Neopagan Meander

California neurobiologist James McGaugh on new findings that the brain can separate parts of one memory for processing in the hippocampus, the anterior cingulated amygdala: "It is the first time we have found this fragmentation in the brain of what we would think of as a single experience." In other words, every one of us is a scatterbrain. Human history makes sense now.
-from the feb. 9th, 2006 QT column in the Chicago Sun-Times

"Have faith your socks are where you left them. Unless the puppy got there first."
-from the Summa Discordia

"Trouble is, we end up with a model of our own ego as a God. That's where Eris can help. She can shake up our GodModel a little. Not an old man - a woman, and a hottie at that. Not staid and serious - a hell-raiser. Not overly concerned that you're having fun - mad that you're taking so few chances. Mix up the GodModel a bit every now and then to make sure that someone other than you is involved."
-from the Summa Discordia

I know you. And you are thinking I can't possibly know YOU, seeing as this is just a collection of electronic words you are reading from anywhere on earth, and all you are to me is some anonymous web reader, probably a little bit too kooky for me to want to really know in real life. But when I say I know you and you protest that I can't know you at all, we are both right. I do KNOW you and I don't. What I mean by this is that I know some of what you will be thinking in response to this collection of basic scrawling packaged into some rant format that you would probably think was more valuable if you had to pay exorbitant amounts for it. And I don't actually know you, as in I have never met you. (Well, some of you anyway. You should be so lucky to hope that we haven't met.) But I won't let that stop me and neither should you. So let's start again with take two, shall we?

I know you. Yes, YOU. I know you. You have this neat cool alternative religion that you call Neopaganism or Wicca or Asatru or Druidism or Mithraism or even that new heathen comet-alien worshipping techno-raver cult that your neighbor has started. I know you are caught up in your neat ideas about these old musty gods and goddesses you have dusted off from the shelves of ancient mythology and now you think yourself special and unique because your version of God, or Gods, or Goddesses, or Socks, is so different from the average person in your society who is still worshipping that guy who got into a mix-up with the authorities in ancient Israel. You know that guy, the one who saves souls and probably redeems them for valuable prizes? Of course you do. You didn't like that sort of religion, so you went looking around for a while and found the latest version of Neopaganism, or the version that made you feel special finally, and you now have either a gaggle of deities with whom you can identify, or you have one favorite god, sort of like an ethereal best friend. (And I wonder about that. Some children made up invisible best friends when they were growing up. I wonder if that is part or whole of the impulse to find gods and to make religions around them. I don't blame any of the gods for that. I blame you, dumb ass.)

Problem is, most of what you know about your chosen God, or gods, or Socks, is really a reflection of yourself and what you would like to see in this existence. The fact that you have opened up the game, so to speak, to more than one god, a good thing actually, doesn't mean you haven't gotten caught up in the old "make-my-ego-bigger-and-grander-by-adopting-deity" trick. (It happens all the time. For a good case study, read the meander of Aleister Crowley, who best exemplified this sort of thing.) I don't know about you, but last time I seriously tried to do that, my gods took a vacation and let Eris to the dirty work of slapping that silly snotty notion right out of my heart. Of course, I didn't like that. It was pretty painful at the time, despite the fact that it was also pretty funny. I don't like that because normally I don't like it when gods go poking about in my business. Hell, I don't mess with theirs. But then I should have expected that Eris gives no damn about any bullshit that I may cherish. Now if you have trouble thinking about these gods as being real, just consider what I have said to be the working metaphor for the moment. If I found out that any of you took my words literally in this regard, I would duly make sure you never made that mistake again. You may be just a screen name on the web, but we Discordians have our ways, especially with all the Witches that have lately joined the "Movement."

I am not here to attack your faith in your gods. I am not here to breathe down your proverbial necks as Neopagans. I am here to simply poke you a bit. You know the routine...the whisper at your ear that tried to find a home in your awareness that says "Hey. Pssst. Over here! Look around you. You're still a slave. Wake up!" I don't want you to feel guilty over wasting your time chasing after your ego-figments (that you have confused with gods). I want you to snap out of it now while you can, before the memory holes come to swallow you hole. (And memory holes, unlike Claw Shrimp, do not spit their quarry back up.) The greatest transdimensional soul-sucker is your own bullshit. Read that again. Think about it.

Some of you have gotten into the happy-happy-joy-joy of Neopaganism. I don't knock anyone's quest for happiness, or...hell, even crass entertainment. (You should know I too like crass entertainment as evidenced by my newfound addiction to television crime/cop dramas.) But in all of that "all-is-good" mentality, has anything really changed in the world, or even in your own life for the better? Has it? Honestly think about that. Because if you're saying that all is good and that the goddess loves you and that you should harm none or at least not harm those poor suckers who are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and yet you still slam doors in front of old ladies and kick your dog, I question you and your gods. Read that again and again. You may find an occult truth there that is so astoundingly amazing that if you actually realized it, you would see how much of a drooling idiot you have been up till now. And please know that I don't want you to be a drooling idiot, unless you are aware of it and know that you like to be so silly. The problem is (as I have spelled it in my exacting anthropological treatise entitled "To hell with this crap! Let's go bowling!") that some of you are going around drooling all over the place and hopping around like fools all the while thinking of your endeavors as being the most important holiest thing you could be doing, without ever once getting the joke. Remember that Carlos Castaneda character and how he acted in front of that old Don Juan chap? That is you.

Reality? That is Eris, my friends. (I call Her Eris, but reality could "really" be any of those gods you don't like much because they are too scary, chaotic, dark, or feminine for you.) If that scares you, too bad. It could be the funniest thing you have ever heard if you would just sit back and for once smell the roses. Not your idea of how roses should smell. Not your idea of prettiness and all-is-light. But actual roses. You want to find divinity? Look into that mirror when you wake up in the morning, before all your silly notions about who you are and what you should be doing snap you into place in the vapid throes of ego. Do you even really know who that sucker is staring back out at you? If you are so quick to rush to judgment or have a ready made answer, then you are a slave to your own soul-sucking bullshit. A mere subject of three-headed mind pollution. A sliver of life that has lost its innate sense of wonder. True wonder that comes from realizing that the universe is much more vaster than you could ever hope to know, and that this awareness is, frankly, the way to be free, or at least to start living as if you are free. (I have to put the last bit in there for you determinists out there who think you have it all figured out.)

It doesn't matter to me whether you are a Wiccan, a Druid, or some other sort of Pagan. (Or even if you call yourself a fellow Discordian.) What matters is that you know what to do with all of the bullshit you have. I am not saying reject it. That would be stupid. You can't get rid of it. But you can see through it. You can use it to make beautiful things. (I am not saying "beautiful" as in some social standard. I mean "beautiful" as in what attracts you and leads you into happiness. This is the art of Eristhetics, actually. And if you want to learn more about that, you can report to our offices and receive your initiations now, while supplies last.) But I meander now because you have a logical hole in my argument: You can say that your own bullshit makes you happy and that I should respect that. However, remember back there a few paragraphs up? If your life is actually getting better, then chances are you aren't a slave to your own BS and perhaps you have no need to extend your ego out into those favorite images of any of the gods. If your life is not getting any better and it's not even satisfying you...if you find yourself constantly blaming everything else but yourself and you have not lifted even the slightest finger, then you are full of it. Perhaps Eris or one of us can help you in this respect, but remember that we are not therapists...well, for some of us, not yet.

Imaginary friends or gods help you none, unless it is part of some elaborate Vajrayana Conspiracy, in which case keep going because those nutters have a method to the madness that even works on crusty old mountain monks. And some of those imaginary things are found out to be...SURPRISE!...not so imaginary. But that is another joke that you would be an idiot to forego realizing.

In all of your worshipping, rituals, and what-not, remember this: How much is truly making a connection with what the hell is really going on? And how much is simply to pack yourself into a fortress of BS in which you can still impute that the universe really revolves around you? The reason why I like Eris is because She is a god that constantly changes colors and shapes and forms so I can never confuse Her for my own image of Her. Reality works this way. Not because it necessarily looks to break us out of our stupidity (evolution will take care of that mutation, eventually...hopefully), but because it is just that way. So all of your labels and conventions are simply a way to think about existence and whatever or whoever the hell is going on. All of your images about the deities are simply the ones you have chosen. If you sit there and think that one or more of the gods have chosen or called you to them, you are just being silly. Ego makes you think that such things could happen, no matter how much you try to dress it up in humility. Ever heard of metaphor and symbol? Try not to confuse them for existence, which is a meander. Any meaning you make of it, or claim to derive from it, is your own artistry.

So sorry to all you goddess or god worshippers, no matter the name. Here comes the sound of a can of worms being ripped right open.

Sorry to all you druids who think you have been called to protect the Earth (a pernicious idea that stems more from Morgan Llywellyn novels than from any truth). You want to protect the Earth? You could do far more than simply "reviving" some supposedly ancient practices while dancing around bonfires. (Hell, I like drinking and dancing around bonfires too. But I don't claim any significance for it. The old Celts, by the way, saw no need to keep the Druids around, so why should you? Some Welsh went ahead and revived Druids too, but these are glorified poets. And I suspect tourism was a motive behind that con-job.) Druids. Protecting the Earth? Sort of like the Christian Fundamentalists protecting the faith? I find it hard to believe that any of you so-called Druids out there could even be so, since you aren't living in Gaul or old Ireland or ancient what-have-you. How would you know what they hell they did or thought, especially with regards to the Earth? I rarely see any of you speaking in Gaulish or some Celtic language they would have spoken. You think thoughts can be translated? Don't count on it. Even insights are culture bound. (Sort of like the insights that Americans have that delude themselves into thinking they can pick up pieces of foreign cultures and readily understand them.)

Sorry to all you Wiccans who think that your version of Mystery(tm) is better than anyone else's (especially those of you Wiccans who think your version is better than the Christians'). Perhaps many of you more recent Wiccans should learn to respect that fact that if you are divine, then that means those annoying Christians-you-dislike are also divine. Even that waitress who thinks your pentacle is Satanic is a divine being. Even that drunken Asatruar who wakes you up in the middle of the night with his blot next door is a divine being. It might be better for you to actually find the Wicca that you can't buy at your local chain bookstore, before you go off calling yourself Wiccan. I know this is hard for you to accept in this point-and-click era, but book reading does not make you a member of a religion. And since I have been involved with this form of Paganism for years now, I can spot you silly gits from a mile away. Not saying you can't join in the spectacle. Just saying you may want to realize that religion is more than reading and wishful thinking. If it is not more than this, then the Atheists are right.

Sorry to all you Pagan Fundies who think yourselves a bunch of more aware, more tolerant, more connected people. I have personally witnessed how some of you shit on one another with impunity because you believe yourselves to be so much more freer and less-bound than the majority of society. So how you think you are all somehow exempt from that stupid human failing is beyond me. You may want to think about what hypocrites you are to talk about how evil and polluting society is when you are the ones driving your lovely tree-choking cars and SUVs out to all those silly festivals designed to make you feel at one with the Earth. I stay away from Pagan festivals (unless I go with other Discordians) because if I want to involve myself in melodrama, I can hang out with wannabe actors. One with Earth? Frankly, most of you would wet your pants if you attained any sort of oneness with the Earth. She'd slap you like the naughty child you have been and then laugh at your silly pretensions. (Too bad the Earth won't give a rat's ass about you when you poison yourself for your comforts. Evolution is the oldest game in town and we humans are but a side experiment gone awry if we can't figure out how to be human anymore. )

Sorry to all of you who like to point your fingers at "those-others" for the mess the world is in. This game of divinity is not the "my-god/s-is/are-better" routine that you have been making it out to be. Don't lie to me. No matter how often you claim that all gods and goddesses are worthy and how all paths are valid, I know that you just say that by rote. How do I know this? I can see it in the way you live, or what you say. What it all boils down to is that you have fallen for the vile illusion that makes you think that what you are doing or what gods you are into is of supreme importance. This still lets you think that the world revolves around you.

Eris, or whomever you blame reality on, doesn't revolve around you. If She did, you would be wise to worry and hide somewhere. Sharks and other predators circle their prey too. And you wouldn't want to be caught on THAT thin ice, now would you? Because if you fall below, we shall be waiting to make you the next court jester in our elaborate Erisian mystery cult. A cult that offers satisfaction guaranteed, but with our fingers crossed behind our backs. (But at least we tell you our fingers are crossed, unlike the other spiritual contenders.) A religion which finally cuts through the crap and says "Sorry suckers! The secret of the universe is out: There is no secret."

If you can get yourself to stop wrapping everything around you into some twisted version of yourself, you might just actually learn what any of your gods/nature/universe/Bob/etc. might actually be doing or saying. And don't cry too loudly when you find out. Because Eris doesn't like anyone who does more bitching then Her. Give Her that indulgence. She has been around a bit longer than you, so She might have a valid grievance or two more than you do. I just hope some of you Neopagans can stop using your spirituality as an excuse to exist. You already exist and need no excuse for it, you silly gits!

February 13th, 2006
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC;
of the DSSS/PMM
Conspirator with High Papessa Bella
Agent Provocateur in Hoshiko and DS#3's War Against Hostages
Church of Eris ArchSwinging Bastard
and silly man who convinces white people they can be shamans so he can get a good laugh

[Rant 155Great Religions?]

Rant 155
Great Religions?

"Where did all those angry Muslims find those hundreds of Danish flags to burn? Smells like an Erisian plot to me."
-Chairman Chao (when I asked him what time it was)

There was a time not too long ago, when people in Western societies would go just as batshit over perceived slights against Christianity as the Muslims are now going over the perceived slight to their religion. Remember that the West used to burn witches. They used to stone their neighbors. They used to hunt down and kill one another to prove how righteous they were. If this religious hold had stayed with the West into modern times, some of us would be flying planes into buildings and blowing ourselves up in crowded markets too. What gives? Religion. Fanatical you-are-nothing-god-is-everything-you-miserable-sinner/infidel type of religion. It is a sickness. It is designed to make you go batshit and kill your neighbor, no matter how many times some hippy pops on the scene and tells you to love one another and all that jazz. Why? Because while your mind is ablaze with the psychic fever of fanatical religion, you and your fellow humans are easier to take advantage of by the guys (usually the "guys," rarely the "girls") in charge of the officially sanctioned proper orthodoxy. While you are all too busy killing one another trying to prove whose version of God is correct (despite the fact that God likes to changes colors and shapes all the time), your priests and holymen are living it up off your donations. They make you feel guilty. They make you feel like you are a nothingman, an underman, a miserable unworthy bastard who needs to get right with God, preferably by killing other people for it. (Human sacrifice seems to have never really died off.)

Muslim extremists don't mind killing you if you don't believe and won't listen. Despite what some of the more polite Muslims will say. They have co-religionists who see nothing of value in you unless you become Muslim. This is not special though. There are some Christians who see you the same way. You are simply a cardboard target for either conversion or a swift kick to hell. The only difference between Muslims and Christians nowadays (besides the whole theological dispute) is the fact that Christians don't kill non-believers or each other as rapidly as the Muslims still do. Unless you wish to factor in what Western secular states have done as being "Christian." And, just remember, it hasn't been all that long since the Christians last ran amok in the West (remember the Nazis?) chopping up the non-believers and 'undesirables'.

This latest furore over the whole Mohammed cartoon thing is an amazingly concise proof in my theory that most people LIKE BEING STUPID. Why? Because when they are stupid, they can blame any horrible or shitty thing they do on someone else. "Sorry officer that I burned down that embassy, but they shouldn't have played with Mohammed!" Or, "We Muslims are good. You Christians started the crusades...Jihad? What Jihad? What? We never conquered Spain and killed people there. Spain was always Muslim." I don't know about you, but it seems like God is jerking these poor suckers around, feeding them lines of BS in an effort to watch them off one another. (God does get lazy from time to time and She prefers to let the humans screw themselves since that seems to be their highest skill set.) God did it with Christianity in an effort to get the madhatted Europeans to tone down and come off their world conquering shenanigans. Not because She cares. But because She wanted things to settle down so that some geeks could create the internet.

But I digress.

Religion, while not poison like that fat Chinese communist said, is a crock of bull when people let it infect them with mental illness. Or people use religion to excuse their illness and then blame it on God. I am sorry, but She is getting sick of all that. If you forget to flush your own toilet that is your own damned fault. I don't know what you see, but I look at the history of the Christians and the Muslims and I see killing fields, rivers of blood, and a bunch of men telling women what to wear, who to have sex with, and what to do with their own bodies. Muslims and Christians have not only forcefully converted large populations on the planet, but they have killed millions of each other in Jihads and Crusades. They both are also experts at killing their own people, whom they dub "heretics" or some other stupid label. (The Welsh used to say "Before you'd kill a dog, you'd call it mad.") Both religions insist that non-believers must approach their religion in the way the believers would. That is simply arrogant and stupid. Why must a nonbeliever treat someone else's religion as special? Why would anyone even think that nonbelievers must follow and respect the laws of someone's religion? I don't see Muslims or Christians willing to approach other religions as being true and right. So why would they expect other people to think that Islam or Christianity is any better at the game when both these religions disrespect not only each other but all other religions. I am not sorry for saying this but that sort of religious arrogance is not going to fly for long. People will vomit that crap right up. And they'd better hurry while Eris is still willing to play nice and with one hand behind Her back.

It doesn't look good for religious extremists. They seem to be the most entertaining bunch in the circus but it's a shame that they don't even realize that they are playing in a circus. It's also a shame that they seem focused on trying to get the other performers to act like them when all the people in the audience want is to see a good show. And, by the way, the whole long beard thing was a joke that some of you have forgotten. Anyone have any suggestions on unclogging the pineal glands of those infected with either Islamitis or Christianitis?

Great religions? They don't seem too great from where I stand, unless you factor in body counts. How can they be great when they seem to breed extremists and never seem to be able to stop those extremists? How can they be great when they go around bullying everyone else around the world? If any of those fundamentalists whether Christian or Muslim think that they are going to bring the world back to the way it was when they were running shit, they have another thing coming. They had power before, and remember what an absolute violent shithole much of the planet became because of it? You can tell me that that is unfair because these two religions have given many people hope and strength but I will only just retort with, "Yeah. Just like fascism promises to give you hope and strength if only you would just believe." I may be wrong but it's something to think about anyway.

February 8th, 2006
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC

[Rant 154The Pretty Noose]

Don't even fucking ask me how much or how hard it was to just get this fucking text file to show up to post here. Just read it. Tonight was fucking wierd. I think I will avoid the internet for several thousand years now. It's been a long night after a long week after a long....you know that shit.

Rant 154
The Pretty Noose

"Theories are like patches on a coat, one day they just wear off."-Tibetan saying

"You chuckle from inside as you see the facade of samsara and nirvana; [this] view will keep you constantly amused, with a little inner smile bubbling away all the time."
-Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

"If you can't stand the thought of being limited by someone else's beliefs and ideas, why be confined to your own ideas and beliefs?"-from an earlier rant

Nihilism is as much an abdication of personal responsibility as essentialism. Both are the dull radiance of stupidity tricking you into the seemingly more comfortable idea that there is no such thing as free will. But this idea is only an ancient superstition repackaged in a more scientific wrapper for today's supposedly more sophisticated public. You can deny free will, even as you deny that you have chosen to think this way. Then what are the causes of you being here at this moment, reading this? Destiny? Fate? Fortune? (Certainly not karma, since most people who evoke karma have little understanding of the concept.) No. Those terms sound too religious or superstitious. So you prefer to think of your abdication of responsibility as something else like social currents buffeting you along, or as upbringing, or as biological expressions, or as some combination of these things. But your supposedly materialist terminology doesn't mask the old superstition which excuses your behavior. After all of this, you may finally realize that no one could really care on a day to day level about the free will / not free will argument, since it has about as much relevance as discussions of angels dancing on pin heads. It is clear, when one's head is not full of the bull shit of philosophy, that on a day to day and realistic level you have a certain degree of choice which is reflected in certain conditions of your life. That said, drop this philosophical speculation about free will like a bad habit. It only leads to stupidity.

What is the truth or truths as you know them? Are you willing to let such truths take over your life or excuse you to do evil things to others? Do you let such truths delude you into thinking you are better or worse than others? Do these truths become stories you tell yourself in an effort to cobble together some identity fiction that will finally be recognized by others? Why should you even care? Do you let these truths become foundations of bullshit that you hide behind in your attempts to make the universe do what you want?

The problem is not that you lack freedom. You have ample opportunities to exercise that freedom. The problem is that you believe that in order to be free you must get everything you want, eradicate everything you dislike, while ignoring the fact that the universe and everything else out there adds up to so much more than you. Instead of seeing this as it is, you try to hide behind extremes of either "determination" or "free will." But both of these extremes are merely false choices. They are simply more jewels on the pretty noose of attachment which is strangling you from seeing things as they are. When was the last time you asked yourself "what in the hell is really going on?" and when was the last time you asked that question and actually didn't deny the answer?

I can help, but my truths are only relevant for this lifespan I habitually call mine, and then only for the situation I am currently in. In a contingent and endlessly shifting reality, having a truth that claims to have figured out all the answers to anything for all time is simply capitulation to delusional stupidity, no matter how consoling or attractively dazzling such a truth may seem. Remember the old Discordian adage "It is my firm belief that I must hold no firm beliefs." Some of the insights about our human psychology that I rant on about have been suggested to me by people trying to live in freedom from bullshit, so I try to share them, but even they are not truths to cling to. They are simply the responses I have found for dealing with the bullshit in and around me. Some of you may find them useful. (Otherwise go read some other rant I have written. I have written so many, I am sure that your burning issue has been dealt with at some point.)

Despite all that, it is fanatical to assume that reality has or does not have any meaning. Don't be so dumb. We are the sort of beings who inhabit a reality in which it makes sense for our minds to try to make sense of reality. That is simply because we are linguistic beings. Meaning is wrapped up in the semiotic web that has been instilled in us from our primal language instinct. Reality is neither meaningful nor meaningless from any philosophical standpoint. It is simply what it is. And it can be changed. So if you feel it is meaningless than the onus is on you to make it meaningful. That is your birthright after all. So enough of this pretty noose of abstractions talking about nihilism or essentialism. Those are simply terms that we get caught up in and bewitched by. The joke is on us and we are the jokers!

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC, DSSS/PMM Co-conspirator
January 31st, O??mealg, 2006

where my latest rant would have been


IF



the psychochick hadn't fubarred my drives......


MOfucking cockannanny piss blocker!


Just saying.

[Rant 153Freedom?]

Rant 153
Freedom?

"Stop cowering in the corners of life, hiding behind your ego armor and constricting your heart with your narrow minded clinging."
-The White Mouse

"We may idealize freedom, but when it comes to our habits, we are completely enslaved."
-Sogyal Rinpoche

"Sometimes even when the cell door is flung open, the prisoner chooses not to escape."
-Sogyal Rinpoche

In this vast cult of delusion followed fervently by most individuals of our global village we never imagine that all of our chasing after things, ideas, and experiences is leading us away from becoming free. We think of ourselves so wise and skeptical as we seek out those phenomena that we have been trained to think will make us happy and "real," forever accepted by ourselves and others as successful. But nothing lasts forever. We all know this, not intellectually, but instinctually, and that is why we become both expert adepts at our own denial and expert enablers of others' denial. We may think or say that we shouldn't think about the inherent impermanence of everything including ourselves, because that is morbid and it may bring us more fear. But in our denial of this, we merely express our great gnawing fear of the reality. We rush about in our impressive busy laziness, filling our lives with projects, schemes, plans, people, ideas, religions, experiences, rituals, chores, and anything we could find that could help us remain distracted. We hope that by this distraction that we can escape and finally reach some place in our lives where we will finally have everything we want and finally have pushed out everything about life that we don't want. And in this deception, we add more bricks to the walls that keep us limited, narrow minded, and enslaved. Just because the prison guard is our own delusion, does not mean we are any less enslaved than if the guard was someone else. The mental and emotional chains are always the hardest to break because we have been so skillfully trained to not see such things as having any reality.

But getting to know and befriending the impermanence of everything is the key that unlocks the cell of our lives. Every time we see a sunrise or we adore a lover or when we find ourselves not being able to stop laughing, we get a glimpse of this freedom. The question is how do we overcome the inculcation, the teachings, and the distractions of the cult of delusion so that we can learn to realize our freedom....Not on some abstract philosophical level. Not on some imagined higher spiritual or astral plane, but in the here and now, the present moment, within our very lives as we are living them now, standing on the ground. As long as we are asleep at the wheel of our lives and follow distractions without ever looking within at our motivations or intentions or even what or who we really are as opposed to what or who we are used to telling ourselves, we can't see it. So we devise all sorts of speculations and theories that we accept since they sound so hard core or true or realistic. But if we are not even adept at getting off from the treadmill of distractions and the pulling puppet-strings of manipulated desires (as exists in our current economy), how can we stand there and assert anything about the reality of anything else?

And herein is why looking within is the most potent powder keg flashes of mindfucking. Many people often think that looking within means avoiding the world and focusing on one's own mind and spirit...a sort of abandonment of reality. But they misunderstand. Looking within in those sorts of ways are an avoidance of reality or an attempt to escape responsibility. But there is another more profound looking within, which is not self-focused. It looks within because it is beyond mere cataloging mental perceptions, thoughts and feelings. It looks within to find out exactly what is doing the perceiving, thinking, and feeling. Where the hell are all these things coming from? They are coming from the same sort of processes that give rise to everything else in the universe that exists. There is no difference, though we often like to think so. This sort of looking within confronts and understands impermanence, no matter how frightening. This sort of looking within combined with looking without gives rise to more and more glimpses of what it is like to live with awareness as the center of your being. This gives rise to more and more choices and options in places you never even imagined. This sort of insight can lead you to the realization of where you really stand in relation to other beings and phenomena. Without that relation, you would not exist. And since everything changes and there is ultimately no stable and solid enduring self for you to retreat into and try to hide from the world, you can begin to develop a way of life that is free.

Freedom is one of our deepest instincts, though we are mostly trained by cultures and religions to run away from that freedom...We are trained almost to the point where we feel our instinct is to run from freedom. But the only thing happening here is that our fear has been manipulated either by others or by ourselves. (You didn't think that it was possible for beings to be so tyrannical that they manipulate themselves, did you? Think about it for a while and you will see they are all around you.) Did you ever stop to think about what could happen if you learned to see past the neurotic "convictions" of your own limitations? Our society says that we are free and celebrates our supposed individual liberty yet treats us and trains us to be obsessed only with power, sex, wealth, and everything else it wants us to buy into and sell while it distracts us from contact with the flavor of life and death. It teaches us to try to refine our desire-getting skills while pulling the wool over our eyes about the nature of those desires. And so we find ourselves thinking "if only I had this/that" sort of thoughts. Or we find ourselves trying so hard to grasp at the mercurial mirage of security and endless comfort. Sometimes we even find spiritual-sounding excuses to maintain this stupidity. We say that our endless jumping or running around looking for the next and latest or better thing to satisfy ourselves is the practice of non-attachment, but that is because we are denying the slavery we have fallen into.

We think we need not reflect too much on our lives, since we either believe we are eternal beings who deserve to live forever, or we think that there is no meaning to existence and therefore nothing matters. But these two twin poles are simply the symptoms of a creeping fundamentalism that underpins our choices in maintaining our outlooks. Neither of them are correct. Neither of them get to the heart of the matter. And both of them contribute to our anxiety and the existential angst we often deny is there, just under the surface goading us into making all the stupid and endlessly repeated mistakes we have ever made. Is there a way out? I wouldn't have written this if there was not.

To start with, paradoxically, one must come to the conclusion that there is no escape from your life. You must learn to deal with the whole show, in all of its pretty and ugly aspects, with all of the things you like, dislike, or feel nothing for. All of this is your life, and without any of them, you would not be who you are. Starting from the idea of "no escape" or "no exit," you can then learn to get to know yourself, your life, and this thing called reality that many people often talk about in pseudo-wise fashions. Sure you know about your feelings, thoughts, body sensations, thrills, boredom, spirituality, identity scripts and assemblage points. But what underpins them all? You may be exist because you think, but what is that mind that thinks? Who is this person that feels? How did you get to be the sort of person who claims to be yearning for freedom yet finds that such a difficulty that you many times feel it to be impossible? Don't answer the questions. They are not Socratic questions. They are simply calls for reflection, because intellectualizing about this sort of thing only leads to more distraction. Your possibility of freedom is already an inherent part of being alive. You simply need to learn how to embody it.

I leave you with a Buddhist reflection called "the four faults" to think about for the next time you find yourselves swimming in a sea of delusion and have started losing the ability to distinguish between what may be reality and what is the bullshit that is collecting in your perception. Why does complete liberation seem like such an outlandish and impossible idea? Because it is too close to be recognized. It is too profound for us to fathom. It is too easy for us to believe. And it is too wonderful for us to accommodate, especially in our cynical and world weary mindsets in this post-modern era where we are taught that fundamentalist skepticism is the pinnacle of intelligence.

Stay tuned for more rants.

January 6th, 2006 / Chaos 6th, 3172

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
"What if when you try to kill the Buddha, She kicks your ass instead and leaves you there shredded and bleeding, yet laughing?"

[Rant 152The Self Habit]

Rant 152
The Self Habit

"You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you."
-Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983)

"You ever think about the fact that all these great religions have all these prophets who are endlessly quoted and studied? You know what those great religious forebears did to those prophets, don't you? They stoned them, tortured them, imprisoned them, and otherwise brought about all sorts of horrid deaths upon them. We Discordians don't do such things to our prophets. Never have, in fact. At times we may tickle them, poke them, and make them butts of our jokes, but they are our sisters all the same. You see the difference?"
-Tequilarius Malignatus (from the Sermon on Non-Prophet Status)

Now pay attention here. No animals will be harmed in anyway during the deliverance of this rant. (Otherwise the White Mouse would chew me up and spit me out in a spew of tequila/Guinness and cigar upchuck.)

The self you often think of as "you" is just a collection of habits running along the same old gerbil wheel of conditions being endlessly reborn in every moment. The only problem is that you have gotten taken in by the show. You have pulled the wool over your own eyes and others have collaborated with you. This fiction, or figment if you will, is as ephemeral and fleeting as a sunset or a passing cloud. Yet we derived and impute so much importance to it. We live in an ever changing playground, yet we insist that we can find permanence and a place where all the games will finally go our way. We could just play, but that seems to simple for our all important self schemes.

Like junkies, we insist that all we need is another fix of "if only" or the next best and brightest new thing or experience to make our "selves" truly real...another hit, just this once. Or maybe a few more times. And before we know it we have lost track of time. We have been duped yet again by the idea that the world may be impermanent and unreliable, but at least we have our own selves. We forget the self is just another part of the show we call the world. And all of our attempts at being "realistic" are more often than not attempts at getting others to agree with the way we see things. The real world is nothing but the conventional agreements about how to view this existence. In this "real world" you are simply being used as a means to others' ends as you are using others as means to your own ends.

The "real world" is simply a concept we use to further our sense of a strong self, whether our "realism" is negative and self-defeating or positive and self-aggrandizing. The trick to get out of this trap is to not emphasize either extreme because the truth out there and "inside" you is neither. I have proof that you are not what you think, no matter what that is. What is my proof? Answer this question: Who are you when you are not thinking? Who are you in the brief moments when you exist between plans or schemes or tasks or dreaming or whatever it is you do and think that succeeds in pushing away life's flavor?

What? Can you see it? Can you glimpse for at least a second the profound freedom that approaching life from a perspective that recognizes this ephemeral nature of all phenomena, including your self? That is the purpose of wisdom teachings, no matter what others label them as. This impermanent nature and endless flux is called "chaos" by Discordians and their Chaos Magic cousins (who care little for Discordia). It is called "relativity" (shunyata) by Mahayana Buddhists (who may be the closest thing to Discordian "religion" without ever calling it that).

It is high time you learn to get over your self-addicted habit of "if only" and "just one more," those conditions under which you have delegated your sovereignty. There is a lot of talk of karma and all that. But you are the master of your karma no matter what you may think. You create the habit-forming conditions and the responses to conditions that have given you a sense of identity and it is time to start recognizing this. There is no more of a "realistic" viewpoint than this. You can choose to stay asleep at the wheel of your life, either by thinking that all of your habits and cravings are what give you meaning, or by thinking that since the self and all other things are ephemeral then nothing has meaning. But either view is still the view of someone who refuses to grow up and awaken.

It is not necessary to see or experience new things. Simply learn to see and experience things in new ways. You can see through the stories that others tell, and you can likewise see through the stories you tell your self. You can grow up and learn that just as Copernicus discovered the radical truth that the sun does not revolve around the earth, your life...this thing you call existence, does not revolve around your self. In waking up, the dream may not go anywhere, but you will learn to have more control over your happiness in the dream. You will learn that you can in fact have some say in how things go. You can participate in this world, no matter what the crapscreamers say to try to get you to simply follow their prefabbed and pre-approved methods of living. In seeing through the self habit you can paradoxically become your own person. And you can allow others to become their own people without succumbing to the push-pull which we normally confuse with social behavior. If you can learn to cling to nothing, not even to your "self", no one can get a hold over you. Think about that and its implications for your life.

December 28th, 2005
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC

Delayed posting due to this forum being unavailable and me being on a retreat. It was the last rant of 2005.

[Rant 151Dazzling Torpor]

This rant is the current soapbox piece.

Rant 151
Dazzling Torpor

Step right up and come on down. Get the latest brand new shiny thing that will for once fulfill all of your desires and make you feel stunningly complete. Don't worry if the feeling doesn't last. You can try and try again and again. Step right up onto the treadmill. You can have satisfaction guaranteed. Whether it's Jesus Christ, Jonnie Walker, or cigarettes and beer. Whether it's sex with supermodels, the person next door you secretly yearn for, or even with yourself. Whether you are a believer or a skeptic, our endless array of neat and shiny products and experiences will give you the exact sort of thing you need to fill in that emptiness you sometimes complain about. You know that feeling. The one that says you need this or that in order to finally be real, accomplished, successful, holy, or alive. The feeling that creeps up inside you when you are asleep to whisper a reminder that you must get up off your ass and buy more, buy new things, buy old things, buy anything so long as you are buying. Don't have much money? Well, you can buy into beliefs, religions, politics, philosophies. Don't even have enough money for that? Well, fear not. There are many cubicles and assembly lines in the global village at which you can earn more money...more of a stake...more control over your destiny. What? You already do this and still have no money and no control over your own destiny? Shut up, blasphemer! This is the way it works, ye of little faith.

Are you still troubled by that nagging doubt, that anxiety that slowly gnaws away at your bones and slips into your darkest warmest unconscious desires and instills in you the pernicious and foul idea that this wonderful market place is not enough? Never fear. We have weapons of mass distraction for your use in your war upon doubt. We have heavenly chemicals for you to digest which will make it all go away and give you the proper perspective so you can get back out there on the treadmill with endless cheer, a gleam in your eye, and no need for any awareness whatsoever. And hell, what do YOU need awareness for anyway? It's not like you're a Buddhist monk or some mystical weirdo. Besides, if you want spiritual fulfillment, we got programs and books and seminars which you can buy (with or without the incense) that will give just the rightly packaged sense of transcendence you'll crave during those dark nights of your "soul."

What? This isn't enough for you, you say? You think you can actually BE happy without all of our items, experiences, theories, and schemes? What do you think you are, the Dalai Lama or something? Of course you need a better and more marketable version of yourself and of your life in order to be happy. Of course you need our products and our slogans and our beliefs and our ideas. And as long as you are alive, you can have a lifetime subscription. Didn't you get the memo?

Now...

If you think that the above message is a figment of my overactive imagination, think again. It is the message you are bombarded with every day of your existence, regardless of the actual medium, words, and imagery used. Against this sort of inculcation, who can stand, besides the aforementioned Dalai Lama? We can stand and we do stand (when we are not falling over laughing). For good or for ill, that's the breaks. It's why your future children may surprise you in their insistence that you must allow them to overindulge themselves in shiny toys that will one day be forgotten (as they move on to other shiny things). We Erisians and other assorted free beings (or at least beings trying to get free) have a choice. We also have some shiny things of our own that we never need submit ourselves or any part of ourselves to create or enjoy. We need not slave away at the endless treadmill of desires that sucks the soul from everything and then offers us merest slivers of that soul back to us for a price. We can have some sense to know that shiny new things and experiences never last and thus it is foolish to latch onto them for happiness or fulfillment. And what is fulfillment anyway unless you yourself define it for yourself? Nothing but a buzzword to hook you back onto the treadmill. And your endless plodding along the treadmill is not going to stop until you wise up.

The endless dazzling torpor will lead you nowhere fast as it convinces you to tell yourself that you are in fact going places, seeing things, and learning. Yet it is nothing more than torpor..."busy laziness" as the Tibetans say. So during this solstice time, no matter what religion or lack thereof you claim to observe, as you extinguish the lights (or fires or candles) and relight them to honor the Sol Invictus, the unconquered light, think about yourself and your freedom in the same light. Pause a moment to reflect upon how truly amazingly screwed up things are in this global market society. And remember, you are lights unto yourselves. You are the Golden Apples. You are the one Eris has cajoled, beckoned, and persuaded to listen to Her tell you that you are free. Now own up to it. (Otherwise we may have to poke you.)

December 20th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
PMM Co-Episkopos, Pan-Goddess Diddling Witch of the Coven of Macha, Arch-Deacon and Rabbi of the International Great Discordian Jihad, spokesperson of slack, and covert cohort of the Church of Eris. (And a whole lot of other amusing titles and credentials which may or may not have any relevance, depending on who you are and what you want.)

[Rant 150Pineal Gland Debridement]

Note: This rant was discovered to still exist after I thought I got rid of it. So I share it here with you all to torment you.

Rant 150
Pineal Gland Debridement

"O Eris kai theoi!"
-common expletive heard around old Limbo Peak

"Is the sun still sliding across the sky claiming your mornings and turning them into evenings all too soon? Are you left standing all too often in the rain of someone else's spent passion? Is the rush-hour traffic of someone else's insanity cracking apart the concrete tower in which you have hidden yourself away from the noises that try to get inside your head?"
-from PMM statement #3

You have come to this point in life because Eris, yourself, some combination of the two or something else entirely (whether or not these things can be said to be different categories) has lead you here. We members of the Discordian Society are here to help you overcome the difficulties inherent in living in a world in which idiocy has been inculcated in you since the day you were old enough to understand the incessant babble of religions, philosophies, ideologies, and advertising. All of that dead psychological tissue that interferes with your optimal brain function. We are here to help you blow all of that away, whether via the slow suction of our persuasion or via the quick and total destruction that may occur after you become the victim of Operations Mindfuck.

You can shrug this off as merely another crackpot message that is simply too long for you to read as you go through your rushing moments of getting from here to there in your never ending sponsor-bought life. That's okay, we have bumperstockers and short slogans all over the place, just like your favorite political or ecological campaigns, you know, those causes you feel you are contributing to by buying their t-shirts and buttons. You can try to ignore us, but ask yourself if you really would want to do that. You see, we thrive within the cracks of your ignorance and like weeds pushing apart at the pavement, it's only a matter of time before we break apart those things you think of as solid foundations. In this play, the sucker is you. Hell, the sucker may also be us, but at least we take that into account and can laugh at our foibles. Whereas you take you foibles pretty seriously, as if they are the definining linchpins holding the whole edifice of YOU up.

You can forget about these words but you, or people like you, won't be forgotten or left alone in our grand mission against stupidity. We call it "helping you out" of the gray pit in which you and those around you have stuff yourself into. But really, some us just do it for the amusement. You can say that this is not really a trustworthy cause, being amused. But what do we care for what you think? You are one of the idiots running around destroying the planet for some few comforts you can gain on your ladder to success before the inevitable slap of reality comes closing in and you must be returned to whence you came. You and people like you are crushing the life from all cultures and individuals in your quest for a perfect global market empire. You follow lock stock and barrel all the lies about time being money and about how laughter and happiness can only be achieved once you or your masters have complete control over everything from DNA codes to snowflakes. We are here to tell you that we WILL stop your attempts at stripping away those amazing things, such as the sparkle of the moonlight over waves or the thrill of the first winter flakes pirouetting across the city streets, that make life full with native wonder. We will stop you from trying to lock away these native sources of joy and market them on your exchanges. You can stomach the idea of happiness that is uncontrolled. Happiness that cares nothing for what you have achieved or who you are. If you had your way, only the rich would be able to afford the light of the sun on their faces. (And you have tried many times to enslave people in places where they either couldn't feel the sun, or where they were dead to the sun.)

We are here to tell you, that the target is you. The game is ours. And your choices whether to engage us or not in this new stage of your life (starting right about the moment you finish this message) will show us how sensitive you have managed to remain in spite of all the soul sucking you contribute to. YOU. We are here to tell you that we will no longer tolerate your soul sucking. Heads up. This is your warning notice. And you are so lucky that it is us giving you the message, as opposed to Eris, whose messages are certainly less kind to those of your ilk.

We are here to blow away the dead tissue from your pineal gland. We will scrape away the calcium deposits and leave you there exploding, in the world you have denied from the moment you could think that you actually thought for yourself. Instead of neat new shiny and fashionable life-style choices, we will leave with the sudden dawn of laughter. Yes, the universe does laugh and She is laughing at you. (She laughs at us to, but we are well aware of this. Unlike you, who actually has the temerity to believe yourself uniquely immune to this laughter.) It's only a matter of time. And since we know longer play that game, only you stand to worry about matters of time. Nothing you can do will stop our poking at your walls. Nothing you can do will stop our celebration. Nothing you can do will stop our opposition. Nothing you can do will ultimately hide chaos. And all of our silly projects and words and games that drive you hopping mad or conversely jumping around in silly ecstasy (usually after you crack apart)...all of these will not stop. Not even after you wise up.

You can keep you pineal gland locked up and unexercised. We of the Discordian Society are here to help you remember exactly what you have done to yourself that makes you a slave to another's coercion or will. Your pineal gland infection is growing. This disgusts us. We can smell the foul stench of your necrotized pineal tissue all over the globe. We are sick of it all. It is time for some cleaning. We do not want your submission. In fact, we want you to stop submitting. For once, can you stand up and stop submitting yourself? We will see after we have done our part of debriding your pineal gland. We will see. Indeed.

Now...start dancing. And get ready for our attempt to reach out and shake you from your advertising-induced torpor. If we don't, Eris will.

December 8th, 2005
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
PMM Co-Episkopos, Pan-Goddess Diddling Witch of the Coven of Macha, Arch-Deacon and Rabbi of the International Great Discordian Jihad, spokesperson of slack, and covert cohort of the Church of Eris. (And a whole lot of other amusing titles and credentials which may or may not have any relevance, depending on who you are and what you want.)

[Rant 149Can You Do That?]

Rant 149
Can You Do That?

"If you never believe the stories others tell you at face value, then why do you adamantly defend the stories you tell yourself about your life? Did you ever think about that? We will help you, but we won't endorse you until you unclog that ailing Pineal Gland and allow it to breathe some life for once. The only sacrifice that We, or Eris, will ever demand of you is your ignorance. Can you do that? Can you slaughter that fattened pig of ignorance that lays within your mind, choking your lifeblood out of you like a cancerous tumor?"
-from the 4th PMM statement

Well, can you? Can you just for one moment stop running around like a crazed headless zombie chicken chasing after every which whim that your corporate sponsors have told you to chase your whole life? Can you stop hating your neighbor just for the sake of hating and take a look around you and learn that that is exactly what the greyface armies and adherents of the conspiracy of normal want you to do? What? You are shocked that they want you to do as they do? (Not hating for reasons, unless it's their reasons. No. They like it when you hate just to hate. It keeps you occupied and easily controlled.) Can you realize the one insight of Robert Anton Wilson that should be burned into your memory, tatooed onto your forehead, and spray-painted across every billboard? You don't even know the one, do you? It goes "Humanity is a giant forced to live in a pigmy's hut. Instead of fighting one another for more space inside, we should be knocking the damned walls down!"

Can you finally sacrifice that one and only thing that Eris has ever demanded you do without...your ignorance? (Well, there is the matter of hot dog buns, but that is in contentious and virulent dispute since the disappearance of that huckster by the name of Malaclypse the Younger.) Can you look past the cliches of this stream of words and extract the message...the meme-destroying implication...the horrible insight that all this time you have been hacking away at your health and spirit in order to get to the advertised brand spanking new experiences that will for once and for all take away that hole inside your heart...that hole that gives you the sense of lack. (That hole, by the way, is simply the memory hole. And you know the cure for it.) Nothing the crowds of DUMB can sell you or offer you is designed to make you feel "real." Why should any of it? If you finally ever felt permanently real, you would stop buying their bottled air.

Instead, can you take the bottled air we give to you hand over fist for free...Gratis...No strings? We of the Discordian Society are here to tell you that you are free, and if you can't seem to walk upright and tell all the corporate-religious-political sponsors to go to hell, then we will continue following you around, pranking the snot out of your cranial space. Is this what you want? Trust me when I say this, we'll give it to you. "Why bother you," you ask? What right do we have to do this? What right do you have to contribute to the greyface takeover of the planet and its resources, all so that you can give yourself the delusion of satisfying your inculcated needs? For some comforts?

Every person who chooses mindlessness over awareness will eventually give to the planet anyway through the dissolution of their bodies. You don't need self-help therapy. You don't need all those plans, religions, and products. You don't need time to find yourself. (Look in a mirror, if you have trouble.) What you need is to divorce yourself from the one thing that keeps you tripping on that social crack that is consumerism. The one thing is, you guessed it, your ignorance. Can you do this? Can you live with the withdrawal that comes afterwards? (Well, shit. Many of us had problems doing that. Which is why we developed all of our silly rituals and games. Simple tools to get us over the hump so that the thought of Eris laughing no longer seems like something scary.)

Hell, if getting off the treadmill of grayness leaves you feeling unfulfilled, imagine how all this time you were wasting yourself buying into it. Perhaps if you just opened up for a moment, you would see that your lack of fulfillment is a lie that was placed into when you were a vulnerable child. (How many thousands of little messages on TV, in books, by teachers, family, friends, enemies, and so on?) If you weren't good enough then, you won't ever be now. They will never say that you are good enough. There will always be something more you need to buy or experience in order to keep up with those dumb ass Joneses. And that is the rub. That is how they do it. How they suck you into their game and get you to think that this game is the only one on the planet. Can you live without this constant push-pull at your most intimate thoughts and desires? If you can't, Eris may just keep nagging you to insanity. Or perhaps we will.

We are here to get you to slaughter your ignorance. Massacre your sense of lack. Sacrifice the need for any more of their crappy food, experiences, religions, teachings, and products. The life after the divorce from ignorance won't be perfect. Hell, no promises are made by any of us in the Discordian Society. (Unlike you-know-who, who promises you the sun and the stars, and never delivers...yet you fall for it every time, no matter how many times it hurts you.) They have told you that their hypertrophied emphasis on order will save you and give you security and all those things you need, yet you still feel like chasing after more. And their order has given what? War, crime, low wage hell, anxiety, social apathy, insecurity, violence, and hatred. Why is that? Can you see through it? Can you learn to use the Eris-given eyes to look around you and figure out what the hell is really going on? (Can you do it before She comes along and decides to say "Ah, Fuck it," and barbecues your pineal gland?)

Can you learn to laugh and be happy without needing the social crack that Greyface tells you is necessary to be fully alive? Can you learn to see through the con-jobs, the advertising, the touts, and the tall promises? (Can you live without bouncing between the high of anticipating the next new shiny product and the low of disappointment when you realize it fails to keep satisfying you?) And now you should know that it's no wonder so many people are developing attention deficit or bipolar disorders. Chaos bubbles up through the cracks...and if She can't do it in Her creatively ordered style, She'll percolate up some disorder through that background haze you call your sub-consciousness.

You can stand up for yourself. Think for yourself. You can live without ignorance. You can fill up the memory hole with the realization of who you are. You can laugh and cry and be happy and sad. You can be human and real without the need for any of what THEY tell you is necessary for being "real." We of the Discordian Society are here to help you in this. (At least it sounds good to us to stick to this story.) You don't have to fight over the damned shiny golden apples of discord that Eris has tossed into Grayface's consumerist feast. She'll give you better than that, if you can learn to know that you deserve better, if you can learn to start giving yourself better.

Can you do that?

November 30th, 2005
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
PMM Co-Episkopos, Pan-Goddess Diddling Witch of the Coven of Macha, Arch-Deacon and Rabbi of the International Great Discordian Jihad, spokesperson of slack, and covert cohort of the Church of Eris. (And a whole lot of other amusing titles and credentials which may or may not have any relevance, depending on who you are and what you want.)

Day 547 of the DJ

[Rant 148Why We Do This]

Rant 148
Why We Do This

Year after year, week after week, day after day, why do we keep this up? This Discordian Society? This putting-the-fun-back-into-the-inevitable-dysfunction-of-hypertrophied-order which you find being shoved down your throat and taught to your children against your wishes? Why do we continue to offer you and every woman, child, and man on this planet enlightenment for the taking, when all the other outfits offer you the bottled air version of enlightenment or salvation for an exorbitant price? Why do we continue to insist that Eris be included in all of our feasts even as the world at large is ignorant of Her and of us? Why? Why ask why?

Just know that we are here (and there and just about everywhere that you haven't quite thought of yet). The world is ablaze with the greyfaces who have finally induced most of its human cultures into their market of everything for a price so long as satisfaction is guaranteed. But the problem is that once you fall prey to their addictive treadmill habit of grasping after their ephemeral phantasms, you find it difficult to stop going after more and more of what they have to sell you. If only you could get this next new hotly marketed item/experience/religion, then you may finally have found the elixir, the grail, the ultimate thing that will banish your sense of impermanence and emptiness, replacing it with the constant ecstasy you so crave and think you deserve. No matter how many times their products loose their luster or appeal after you acquire it, somehow you hang on to the fanatical belief that another product is all you need. Just one more. If only it was the right size, or the right timing, or the right packaging, or the right color, texture, noise, taste, thought. If only....no other phrase expresses the point that you have missed the whispers of your own freedom. With every passing year in this habitual circular run through the desires brought to you by your sponsors, it gets harder to break free. The grooves become etched deeper and deeper. And yet, there is Eris and the rest of us, waking you up at odd hours to shout into your face that you are free.

Why do we keep doing this? Why? When all we should really do is watch you spiral out into being that pseudo-self that the advertising specialists have so carefully crafted and sold to you as the be all end all of existence. It could be pretty entertaining watching you run around like a rat in a maze, looking for the passage way that will finally give you the cheese you so desire. But unlike rats, you can climb the walls and grab the cheese directly. This is what makes your predicament even more funny. But no. We don't just sit there and watch. We get involved. We remember when we were small and afraid and looking for that bit of cheese to make us happy too. So we play with you as you walk through the consumer mazes and the corporate religions. We push and pull and cajole you. We whisper in your ears when you are sleeping "Climb out of the fucking maze, already! The joke has gotten stale along with your cheese!"

And you, at first, think we are just a bunch of loons. We are not as serious as you are. Your quest to fulfill the lab experiments of your masters is much more important than living a human life with the ability to stand upright and look at the sky. "No" you repeat to us, "Take your Erisianism and all that silly impossible happy freedom crap back to whatever hallucination you crawled out from." That's what you say. WE....we, the hallucination. While YOU, a person who is cobbled together from advertising blurbs about what it means to be alive, from scraps of poorly understood con-jobs called religions, from pieces picked up from all those people around you who seem better at the game than you are, from the fantasy images of yourself that never seem to pan out when all those shiny products loose their luster...YOU say WE are the hallucination.

Sounds to us like you are tripping on greyfaced consumerism and you can't seem to get back up, let alone even hit the ground. WAKE UP, DUPE! There is no ground for you to fall on in this game. Nothing is going to catch you. There are only more and more "if only" prayers, and more and more shiny products and experiences that your sponsors will sell to you to deceive yourself into feeling real. To convince yourself that you are not tripping into the endless freefall of the bought and sold market fragments of souls memory hole.

Your life has been brought to you by sponsors, and yet you try to tell us that WE are the ones who don't get it? We are the ones who are crazy? We are the ones who need help? Hah! Sucker! Perhaps we should just sit back and watch you spin around and stumble in your dimwitted slavery to desires that were placed into your soul at an early age so that the greyfaces could forever pull your strings and get your heart to jump around at every which way so you can work for them and buy their products and experiences. They have convinced you that time is money. So you need to work all of your time away now so that you can have much more time later on, in some imagined future heaven that few ever get to see. They will tell you that enjoying things now is for fools, even as they party off of the labor and money you have given them. It's a good scam. And the fool is you for buying into it. For subscribing to a reality that is just as false as any other version. Just because it has the majority of dupes believing in it, doesn't make it any more necessary or real.

And this is the point of our existence. (At least that's what we like to tell ourselves and others.) We are here to break up the maze. To get you to see that you do have the strength to climb over the walls. To get past the naysayers. To live the live you feel you are meant to live without any interference of those piddling parasitic sponsors. This life is yours. And we are here to help you with seeing that, not out of altruism, but out of the sheer entertainment value that your realization will give us. Eris is not seeking you out to become a convert to Her Operations Mindfuck (hell, if Eris sought you out, you would not be stuck in that maze you are in now), She is only trying to open up the chances. Blow a little fresh air into the stagnation that masquerades as razzle dazzle. Get the minds to blow open wide. It doesn't matter what you think about our Discordian Society. At least while you are still stuck there, in your land of "if only" and "just one more."

Remember THAT as you trample and get trampled this holiday season to get to your shiny products.

November 29th, 2005
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
PMM Co-Episkopos, Pan-Goddess Diddling Witch of the Coven of Macha, Arch-Deacon and Rabbi of the International Great Discordian Jihad, spokesperson of slack, and covert cohort of the Church of Eris. (And a whole lot of other amusing titles and credentials which may or may not have any relevance, depending on who you are and what you want.)

Day 546 of the DJ

[Rant 147Changing The World]

Rant 147
Changing The World

"George Bush doesn't care about Black people. Neither do anarchists. What is the difference between the two, except that one has power?"
-The White Mouse

Some of you people (the Real/True Discordians(tm)) have decided that all of these crazy internet message board posters are not Discordian enough for you. Frankly, your stupidity is a vast deep sludge pit in which you think of yourself and your personal projects as being of such great importance that everyone should either join with you or should do as you claim to do. Yeah, that's right. You "claim" to be out there "changing the world" and you feel that this should give you some sort of higher position of respect within the halls of the Discordian Society. When other Discordians express the fact that they don't give a damn about whatever it is that makes you and your doings so important, you get all hissy and claim that you need to find "real" Discordians. Time for bluntness:

Your fundamentalism is astoundingly retarded. If you really feel that no one else but you and your little anarchist posing friends can be true Discordians, you have missed the proverbial boat and the proverbial point. Your retardation comes through loudly in that, while you claim to be out among society "changing the world," you seem to spend inordinate amounts of time on the internet berating other Discordians for spending too much time posting on forums instead of the great and holy "work" of doing as you think they should. Yet, you keep posting. You keep flapping your yap. You keep berating. You keep claiming to be doing important things as if Eris should care about you and your little deluded dopiness. Exactly what have you done to "change the world" besides going online to Discordian forums and berating people who spend time there? Exactly not a bobdamned thing, that's what you have done. You pineal gland is clogged with the snot of your own self importance. You have not yet realized that we care nothing for whatever it is you are trying to sell us because frankly we have heard the same sales pitches by most of the religions and political ideologies of our day. We have heard it all before. What makes you think that your little delusion of grandeur is any different than any of the others?

Why do you even bother coming to any internet forums if you feel that you can't find any true Discordians there? And besides that, if some of them are actually engaged in any Operations Mindfuck, why would you feel that they should tell you about it. After all, you are nothing but a bunch of pixels to anyone else online, as they are to you. You ever heard of taking time in getting to know others better? This rule goes for online as well as offline. If you don't understand the way the internet works, how it is really just a grand central electronic bulletin board and messaging system, then perhaps you need to truck yourself over to Indy Media, where you can give yourself the illusion that you are changing the world with every anarchist website you read in your favorite coffee shop, while you use their free hotspots, sitting there in comfort, wasting hours away posing as someone who is doing something for the world.

Frankly, Eris doesn't give a damn about what you are doing for this world, unless it makes Her look grander than She already is. If this is not the Goddess for you, pick or choose another. She really doesn't give a damn about whether you literally believe in Her, much like the rest of us don't really give a damn about whether you think we are "real" Discordians. It is funny to think that you serious Discordians pretend you have gotten it, that you understand it, that you can go around telling others that your unresolved childhood rebellion issues are the "True Discordianism." Put down that copy of Illuminatus and take a look around you at the world in which you live for once. (Yeah, you! I know you got the idea that Discordians should be out there "changing the world" from the Illuminatus Trilogy.) You don't get Robert Anton Wilson's little joke, do you? He was making fun of serious true believers just like you. Look at all the carnage caused by those people who wish to "change the world" when what they really mean to do is remake the world into their own image. In this the anarchists and the fascists show no difference.

Instead of bitching and whining at internet posters about "doing something" out there in the "real world(tm)", you could realize that your pretensions are pretty much of a nothing. You only moan and nag because you want people to think of how cool or "real" your Discordianism is. What absolute nonsense! Yet, your mental retardation can be of some use to us since we like our targets to be obstinate....all the more explosive the entertainment is when you snap. The best part of the deal is that some of you snap and snap over and over again, providing us with more entertainment. Dogs couldn't be trained to dance any better than you, the way some of you have been going at it.

We offer, again and again, enlightenment on a silver platter. Yet you push it away and refuse it because it doesn't seem "serious" or "real" enough to you. That's why we call you a little deluded dupe....a cabbage-mongering thuddite whose heart is small and grey and afraid that others will see the "real" person inside, so you have made up a fictitious idea ("True/Real Discordianism") to make yourself feel and look better in the eyes of all the rest of us. My point is this: If you think that the rest of us (some of whom have been truly Discordian since before you were a twinkle in your parents' eyes) are not up to your "standards" as to what constitutes Discordianism, why do you continue to keep trying to impress us? You do have the option of starting your own fucking cabal and/or sect, remember? Gather around yourself those that like what you say, or those you have cajoled into buying your bottled air, and do your own thing. If you keep going around online and making posts about how all the others who make posts aren't "real" enough because "making posts" on the internet doesn't "change the world," then exactly what are you doing?

In closing, don't whine if the Discordian Jihad should notice you and show you that Eris is real enough, at least for some of our purposes. Some of us actually do have lives and do have things to do in the world. Some of us are putting some beauty back into this world since we now have air and food and shelter and energy (and thus don't have much excuse to whine). Some of us don't bother bragging or posting about what we do in the world, because who should care except for people who already know us? Besides all this, if certain of us decided to post what we and our cohorts were doing in the world, it would either scare the snot out of your sinus cavities or you would laugh yourself into old age, or both. Or maybe something else entirely. As for me, I do this for Eris and for myself. When many of you have moved on to the next cool underground alternative thing, I and many of my cohorts will still be here. Probably until the end, saying "Hail Eris!" as we stand at the top of the rubbish heap that was your dream society. Eris is real. You are just what is left over with all the materials when She got finished with not-you.

November 28th, 2005
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
PMM Co-Episkopos, Pan-Goddess Diddling Witch of the Coven of Macha, Arch-Deacon and Rabbi of the International Great Discordian Jihad, spokesperson of slack, and covert cohort of the Church of Eris. (And a whole lot of other amusing titles and credentials which may or may not have any relevance, depending on who you are and what you want.)

Day 545 of the DJ

[Rant 146The Big Lie]

Rant 146
The Big Lie

"Any religious argument against scientific innovations such as stem-cell research are discredited by history. Remember when there were religious arguments against democracy, women suffrage, or ending slavery?"
-Tequilarius Malignatus

"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
-Thomas Jefferson

"Preaching From a Pulpit of Bones."
-Title of a Book

Sometimes I think that a bunch of Discordians going around pranking the blue-jesus out of people, or hailing Eris, or reading the PD while hallucinating about colored animals...sometimes I think that such a group doesn't add up to a damned thing. But then again, who really cares? Looking out at the serious revolutionary groups and the political parties and even the small groups of people who just want to "smash the filthy thing," I can't honestly say those groups add up to all that much either. At least the Discordians can be fun at times (and irritating at other times).

There are many walks of life and many individual takes on life. The thing to remember is just because you don't understand something or think something is smart doesn't mean it is stupid or ineffective. Discordianism is not about what you may think it is. Also remember that if Discordianism is about the promotion of discord, as many of you seem to like to often repeat, the fact that others disagree with your approach is in itself discord. I can hear some of you mentally cringe now. Your preconceived political notions as to what Discordians should do with or to society and all of your other schemas and ideas are just that. And you must realize that no one else really has to give a damn about what you think.

Who really cares about "smashing" the state? Or about all the other tired-out cliches left over from the latter sixties and seventies when Maoism was cool among privileged white radicals? Do you think Eris cares? Do you think any of Her children care? Do you think anyone else who may or may not like Eris (let alone believe in Her) yet calls themselves Discordian has to care about your agenda?

Some of you who are loudest at complaining about how much your "freedoms" are being eroded are the worst offenders against the very practice of individual freedoms. You don't like people when they are different from you, when they really couldn't give even an ounce of their shit about your ideas, or when they simply just keep on trucking in their own lives, oblivious to your threats of impending DOOM. I know there is impending DOOM and that there is DUMB all around, but I don't get my panties all in a bunch over it, nor do I really give much of a care whether others agree. What matters to me is the kind of person you are, not the clothes you wear, the color of your hair-dye, or the ideas you claim to support. The substance of your life is more important to me than the accoutrements. Dare I say that, as far as Eris is concerned, that is pretty much all that matters?

I can hear some of you say, "But wait a minute, Irreverend Hugh, you were the one who tossed neat and shiny apples all over the place, you stirred up shit in the name of various plans, jihads, and jakes in the name of Operation Mindfuck. What gives?"

What gives? Thinking for yourselves. That's what gives. Anything less than free thought and action is the sign of a stingy being, enslaved to the very real possibility of belief in those things that rhyme with ford.

Why do I, and many of my fellow Erisian/Discordian cohorts give no cares to some of you and your serious state-smashing schemes? Because that's just the way we work. (And also because some of you are no longer amusing.) Suck it up and either join with us, gather others around you who like what you say or do and go off and form your own groups, or be alone. It can all be good, if you should incline to approach life from this perspective. Being into happiness and fun and getting some enjoyment out of life doesn't necessarily mean we will turn into a bunch of hippie slap happy fluff bunnies. And considering some of the behaviors of many of you serious people as of late, even the hippies don't seem so bad. In fact, they aren't bad at all.

The Discordian Society isn't here to give you therapy (though we do offer you enlightenment on a silver fucking platter and some of you dupes still haven't gotten it). Hell, I can give you therapy, but chances are, you don't have the money to afford my treatment anyway. (But I am still a couple years away from being licensed, so you may have time to save up.) The Discordian Society is here to make sure you serious people have somewhere to turn when you are in need of tickles, thrills, and all around Pan-Erisian diddling. Anything less than this is merely religious, and if you want merely religious things, you know there are places you can go where they will gladly take your donations so you can deceive yourself into thinking you have avoided some fictitious hell.

Yeah. And you had better fucking believe I will stand here on my soapbox and preach to you about what I may or may not think is the purpose of the Discordian Society. Why? Because I can use the best of circular reasoning to defend my sermons and rants and views and opinions, that's why. Is there a point to all of this? Hell yes. But if you haven't found it yet, perhaps it's because you really do exist to provide some of us with entertainment. If Eris is laughing then all is right in the world. Does that worry or console you? Liar!

November 19th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC;
PMM Co-Episkopos, Pan-Goddess Diddling Witch of the Coven of Macha, Arch-Deacon and Rabbi of the International Great Discordian Jihad, spokesperson of slack, and covert cohort of the Church of Eris. (And a whole lot of other amusing titles and credentials which may or may not have any relevance, depending on who you are and what you want.)

[How to Impress Anti-Fluff Bunnies An Irreverent Look at Ourselves and Our Supposed "Movement" Which Degenerates into a Discussion of Theology.]

How to Impress Anti-Fluff Bunnies

An Irreverent Look at Ourselves and Our Supposed "Movement" Which Degenerates into a Discussion of Theology.

The first rule is that you must bash the threefold rule and the Wiccan rede. This is essential in proving your anti-fluffy status. Once you can learn to parrot the correct words and cliches regarding the fluffiness of these two Wiccan concepts, you have proven to yourself and to others what a real serious Pagan you are, especially if you are an Asatruar or a Celtic Reconstructionist, but really especially if you consider yourself a Witch but not a Wiccan.

Secondly, you must, no matter how many times you have heard, seen, or read it before, believe that you are really the first person to point out that the word "witch" is not the exclusive monopoly of Wiccans. (Despite the fact that it seems that they are the majority of people who use the word as a title for themselves.) And then you must laugh at all those sorry souls who ignorantly protest the yearly Halloween imagery of green-skinned black hat wearing witches because it causes prejudice. (I must admit I find those people pretty funny too, but I listen to what they have to say anyway.)

Thirdly, you must denounce anyone who has had or claims to have had any experiences of anti-Pagan prejudice or discrimination. You must spout the correct anti-bunny dogma which dictates that anyone experiencing any form of prejudice is either imagining it or has brought it on themselves. "They were wearing a pentacle around their neck, they deserved it. They should have kept their beliefs in the closet." (Yet Muslims, Christians, Jews and people from other religions are legally entitled to wear religious clothing and symbols in most situations free from any discrimination. Yes, I live in an area where you can identify many people's religions by how they dress or what they wear.) Then you must laugh at any Pagan's attempt at looking at the atrocities caused by the monotheists. "Everyone did evil things," goes the saying which really says nothing. (Looking at the holy books of the three monotheist religions, we find scriptural excuses for mass murder of "unbelievers" who today could be identified as pagans.) Playing "nice" with the dominant religions of our society and day doesn't mean we can't be mindful of what their doctrines really say.

Fourthly, you have to make a statement about how magic is really for oneself and one's own spiritual development (because deep down inside you really do want to impress the ceremonial magicians) and spell casting to change the environment or one's life circumstances (you know, the ultimate reason for magic) is wrong headed and stupid. No matter how many times it's been said before, you have to point out that casting a love spell to bring one's desire is wrong and how they should just go out and find someone in a bar or school or wherever. You must insist that magic is really about changing one's own psychological attunement so that you can not look so strange to all those skeptics who ask you that damned question you have yet to answer: "Does magic really work?"

Fifthly, you have to claim that the Gods and Goddesses really only help those who help themselves. Despite the fact that any relationship entails a certain amount of dependency and reliance. Oh wait, that's right. To be a proper anti-fluffy, you have to laugh at anyone who claims to have a relationship with their gods and you will definitely call them full-of-shit if they have the temerity to suggest that their gods have helped them out or manifested other signs. (That's because as a properly intellectual and anti-fluffy Pagan, you must adhere to the idea that Pagan religions are really just forms of ritual theatre. What is important is what happens in your mind. Forget any talk about gods really being invited in and such nonsense that might make Paganism like "normal" common everyday working persons' spirituality.)

Next, you must talk about introspection and how important it is, despite the fact that the problem with some of the fluff-bunnies is precisely too much introspection and not enough "extrospection" (or 'reflection'). You must damn-to-hell all those Pagans who claim to have relationships and realizations and profound experiences that do not come from "within." (You know, the ones who talk about gods and goddesses as if they actually exist. The Pagans who never read books and yet have had all those experiences that you secretly pine and yearn for.)

Finally, you must attack bitterly any of those poor benighted misinformed souls that still may believe in the Burning Times as literal truth. This, despite the fact that probably only about five or seven people on the planet may still believe in it, establishes your anti-fluffy status beyond a doubt. And despite how many times the rest of us have read the fifty-thousand "Burning Times are a myth" rants, we will read yours and congratulate you on speaking the one and only holy truth.



Shit. Look at us. We are getting sillier than the fluffy bunnies. We are becoming nothing but a bag of cliched responses and pretentious arrogant douche bags who do nothing to further ourselves by such behavior. This goes for all you "purists" who get all fumed and frothed up because of Pagans going around "mixing" their practices. (As if the pagans from the classical era didn't do such things.) This goes for all you Celtic and Hellenic and other Reconstructionists who go around calling other people crap for mixing up your "one true" ways. (Yet, for the Celtic Recons, I have yet to see any of you actually learn to respect actual living Celtic traditions enough to admit that Christianity and Paganism exist in a symbiotic mutually inspiring relationship in the remaining Celtic communities.) This goes for all of you Pagans who believe that the Wiccan Rede of "Harm None" is a blindly stupid and fluffy idea. (If you don't like the Rede, perhaps you should actually learn what it means and how it applies before you go off about how impossible it is to follow to the letter and blah blah blah.)

Obviously, I lean toward the anti-fluffy side, but after some consideration I have concluded that fluffy bunnies are not really the threat some of us (myself included) have said they are. They either go on to become better and smarter Pagans or they move on to other things. The vast majority of people in today's society (at least here in the USA) think Neo-Paganism, especially Wicca (that is, if they can tell the difference), is a bunch of silly spurious crap anyway. The bunnies can't make it any worse for our image. (Really. I mean that. Our image in the public eye is that bad.) Instead of whining and complaining about the bunnies (who, being identified as Pagans, are actually our responsibility), we should engage in, promote, or support efforts by those groups and individuals working to educate others about Neo-Paganism and its various communities.

Also, stop making research and reading the most important aspect of Paganism. If all it was about was reading books and writing essays, I wouldn't have been attracted to any Pagan religion in the first place so many years ago. (I was Pagan years before I started reading and writing essays about it.) My relationship with other beings, my deities and with my environment is what makes up the core of my Pagan perspectives and practices, not some correctly researched ritual form presented in some book. I love reading, even some of the materials published by other Pagans, but written words are merely aids or tools. Paganism for me has become instinctual and almost first nature. Without ecstatic experiences, invocations, relationships, revelations, dreams, dancing, magic and ritual, why would I be involved in it? I hate to break it to some of you but Neo-Pagan religions are not meant to be "scientific" and I say this despite my love for science.

An example of the latter emphasis on "research" as opposed to experience is the fact that I worship an old Irish Goddess named Macha. Macha is traditionally identified (in written accounts) as one of the triple aspects of the Morrigan. My personal experiences with Her lead me to know that She was also a triple aspected Goddess in Her own right; the Morrigan may be an aspect of Macha; and that She was a Goddess of the Earth, and of the Sun, with warfare and slaughter being only one aspect. I also learned that She tended toward the needs of Her adherents even healing them or protecting them. I learned all of this by experience with Her firstly, it was only later on, after reading old Irish and early modern Irish accounts and stories of Macha that I learned that my experiences with Her rang true with Gaelic traditions. But I still run into Pagans in America who tell me that I can't ask Macha to heal or nurture because She is one of the "Morrigan" and is therefore a Goddess of warfare. How dogmatic is that? I often say to such ignorant people "Did you not know that the sun is one of Macha's symbols?" I won't here get into my experiences with the Goddess Eris and how many people have tried to tell me "But that's not right. Eris is a Goddess of chaos!" (I have presented reams of writings about Eris and Discordianism to the world. You can track those down and read them for yourself.)

That above paragraph serves to illustrate my point about experience. Research is important, but it should not be the highest priority, otherwise we run the risk of making Pagan religions dry and merely academic exercises. Though my experience with Macha happily coincided with Gaelic accounts I found later(which is proof enough for me that She exists; like other deities), it is the experience one has in relationship with their deities that is most important. It helps to try to research as much as you can about deities. But never assume that the information you get about them from books or websites is the be all end all. Deities are living beings, remember?

Paganism is alive, remember?


November 11th, 2005
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC

Yes, my friends, this article is cross posted in many places. You are free to distribute this document, provided you include the credit (with the date). Be informed it is copyrighted in both my real name and in my Discordian name.

[Here's a bear instead, in case you want to cry.]

Here's a bear instead, in case you want to cry.



_______/ .- , '_________`. -. ..______
_______.. ` /`__________' .. ' /______
_xoxox__`-/___'a___a`___..-'________
_________|____, '(_)`.____|_xoxox____
_________..___( ._|_. )___/_________
__________..___`.__, '___/__________
__________.-`._______, '-.__________
________, '__, '___`-'___`.__`._______
_______/___/_____X_____..___..____
_____, '____/______o______..___`.___
___, '_____|______x_______|_____`._
__|_____, '|______o_______|`._____|
___`.__, '_.-.._____x______/-._`.__, '__
_________/_`.____o____, '__.._______
__.""-._, '______`._:_, '_______`., -"".__
_/_, -._`_______)___(________'_, -.__..
(_(___`._____, '_____`.______, '___)_)
_.._..____..__, '________`.____/___/_/__
__`.`._, '_/_____________..__`._, ', '____
___`.__.-'______________`-.___, '_____

[Rant 145Addictions]

Rant 145
Addictions

"How was it possible the Americans spend more for trash bags than 90 of the world's 210 countries spend for everything? Could it really be true that we have twice as many shopping malls than high schools? That we consume our average body weight - 120 pounds - every day in extracted and processed materials?"
-Stephanie Kaza

"Despite the mantra of 'free trade,' price tags limit freedom and gratitude."
-Santikaro

"The existence of complexity says nothing about intelligence or a designer."
-Said in response to a Christian's argument

Do you think that all the razzle dazzle and endlessly marketed products, ideas, politics, religions, and other things gives you freedom through choices? How does such pseudo-variety manage to give you any freedom at all? You see something shiny and immediately want it and then act as if your happiness depends on getting it. But how many such things have you accumulated now? Things that lost their shine and no longer excite you and are now put away in closets or storage bins. Like drug addicted people, getting your "if only" "one more hit only just to tide me over" objects or experiences have only lead you on an endless treadmill, except your soul is so abraded and bruised by the gravel and sandpaper of the treadmill, that you are numb to any thought that happiness is unconditional. Happiness that merely shows up seems too quaint or boring to you after the highs and lows of the great thrill ride to nowhere that both society and yourself have inculcated and dutifully trained you to live by and under. Your addiction to traveling the gravel driveway of desire has blinded you to razor blades dipped in honey that you have been swallowing. And in any moment that your own forms of self-created suffering backlash across your perceptions, you immediately set about for some other fix to get you through it. New toys, new cars, travels, new gadgets, new books to read, new ideas, titillating images to view, new people, and new experiences are all waiting lined up for in this satisfaction guaranteed free market place that has crushed any semblance of freedom from your life. Instead of getting off the treadmill, you again simply make the mistake of running faster, as if by some miracle, this time, you will be able to get one or some more things that will finally make you permanently happy. The noose gets a little tighter, and your deep down inner fear at this gets twisted into excitement. As an automaton, dutifully functioning to keep this consumer republic operating, you lift your head high and claim you are free even though you can never say "no" to appeasing your cravings no matter ho much they limit, torture, alienate, and enslave you.

Are you trapped in a mutually reinforcing conspiracy of ineptitude? The ever widening circle of addicts and enablers that is the global market? Do you still think that when you are in your car that you are the one driving? Despite the fact that the roads, the industry, the economy, the desires and the lifestyle of a "driver" were all already prefabricated for you to get hooked into? (It seems like you are the one driving, but in fact you are what is being driven by carefully planned skillful manipulation of your desires, your sense of longing, your participation in the economy, and even your sense of "freedom.") Do you find yourself blaming smokers for your breathing problems but yet still use the electricity and the vehicles (planes, trains, and automobiles) that cause most of the air pollution that will eventually choke your future out? You rant and rail against the domination of the corporations and the governments that you feel are ruining your planet and your life but you still buy their products (whether in the stores and shops for the corporations or the elections and the political parties/ideologies for the governments)? You hate the system and call it the machine but this world-destroying machine is what has coddled and babied you. You point out the amazing growth in the gap between the haves and the have-nots even as you clamor to be among the haves and buy into the delusion that you too can have a lifestyle in which every satisfaction is guaranteed and every thing you dislike can be ejected permanently. You have become a cardboard cut out. A personality gathered up from the prefabricated fragments of magazine articles, television talk shows, lines from popular songs, website ideas, and consumerist spirituality. You are addicted to the razzle dazzle of this delusion and claim it to be "who you really are." (The most pernicious lie in the global market is this false sense of "who you really are.") You ever stop to think about how it could cost so much money to buy the things, the access to the ideas, and the other lifestyle accoutrements to express this sense of "who you really are"?

You think of yourself as being free but freedom is just another mass-produced item you are shopping for. Originality is just another word used in advertising hype. The revolution is simply another marketing tool. Compassion is merely another sales technique. Love is the market's foot in your door getting you to buy more manufactured consent. The sponsors have bought all of the airtime in your dreams. The silver linings of your optimism and the black holes of your pessimism have been pre-packaged and are ready for your dutiful consumption. Stop lying to yourselves and to others and pony up to the bar already. You are a consumer. Your religion is consumerism. Your temple is the market.  And the sacrifices called for in this religion of yours are your life and the world around you.

Unless of course you might actually want to wake up and live a life of non-addiction. A lifestyle that needs no inculcated desires. A life that chooses to be content as opposed to grasping after things, tools, ideas, and plans. Perhaps. But do you know how hard that is? I wouldn't want you to feel a moment of discomfort now, would I? It is possible. Oh...what's that? Look! There's something shiny over there.

October 27th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC

[Under the influence of Buddhist ritual and the fact that, as of last night, the Chicago White Sox OWN the world! Sweeeeeeeeeeeep!]

[Rant 144Having No Beliefs...]

Note: I have finally caught up in ranting and posting. Now you won't have to be deulged with three or more rants at a time. At least for the time being. Enjoy...

Rant 144
Having No Beliefs...

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other gods you will understand why I dismiss yours."
-Stephen F. Roberts

"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it."
-Mark Twain

"When I was sent to a "school" to be "educated," that meant I was to be hypnotized into the tunnel-reality of my tribe. . . . Every politician knows how to induce hypnosis, and very damned few people on the whole planet know how to dehypnotize themselves. The world is not governed by facts or logic. It is governed by BS (belief systems)."
-Robert Anton Wilson (Cosmic Trigger, Volume 2)

"The fact is that far more crime and child abuse has been committed by zealots in the name of God, Jesus and Mohammed than has ever been committed in the name of Satan. Many people don't like that statement, but few can argue with it."
-Kenneth V. Lanning, Supervisory Special Agent at the Behavioral Science Institution and Research Unit of the FBI Academy (from The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan)

"Religious belief is not a precondition either of ethical conduct or of happiness."
-The Dalai Lama

Having no beliefs is not that same thing as believing in nothing. Having no beliefs about whether God or Gods exist is not that same thing as believing that God or Gods don't exist. Anyone who fails to see the difference is likely still enthralled to the pernicious lie that it is necessary to have beliefs of some kind. People around the world are congratulated for holding firm beliefs against all odds. Such people even claim that beliefs are necessary in order to have convictions or to know right and wrong. But believers everywhere can and do justify any sick and evil thing they may commit on other people. Clearly there are still people who are unaware of the great joke perpetrated upon them by their adherence to beliefs. It is what the Myth of Eris and the Great Snub is all about.

If the only way you can accept something as being true is by faith, then your newly accepted "truth" is standing on shaky ground. Think about how absurd you would find it if people were to jump up and down and attack one another over differences about their beliefs in the sun rising every day. That the sun rises every day is an incontrovertible fact. A truth. No one needs to argue for or against it. No one needs to fight other people to prove their assertions correct about the sun rise. Now....take a look at religions. If their dogmas and teachings and beliefs were really true and incontrovertible facts (as believers often like to claim), why is their so much squabbling, forced conversion, evangelism and religious need to take over society? Why, if religions were true and their Gods existed, is there this need by believers to get others to agree with them? Religion is a con-job. And instead of seeing it for what it is, we celebrate those who are both victims and victimizers of this crime.

I don't have to resort to faith to explain my conduct or to explain all those things I do not understand. Why? For one, I have a conscious. There is no need for an Eternal Judge with a system of rewards and punishments. I don't need to fear anything in order to do good things for others and for myself. Two, I am okay with explaining that I don't know the answers to everything. There is no need to fill in the gaps of knowledge with the prefabricated ideas that beliefs are made of.

Hell, I usually tend to think that Eris (along with some other Pagan deities and my traditional dharma guardians) exists, but I don't believe. That would be absurd. I usually tend to think that people in my life such as my friends or family exist too. I don't have to resort to faith. Do you see the difference? I can validate the existence of other living beings and sometimes I can agree with others when they tell me of people or other life forms which I may have never met or seen. This even goes for other objects. When I take the train to get somewhere, I am reasonably certain of the machine being able to get me there. I need not believe in it. The sun "rises" and "sets" every day without my having to resort to belief in this motion. Sometimes I may have to resort to agreement within reason about the existence of objects or places I have never seen or personally experienced. For instance, Tibet. I have never been to Tibet but I agree that the country exists based on evidence I have been able to observe. (I know people who have traveled there. I have had teachers who were either from there originally or via cultural heritage of their family. Pictures, images, art, and meeting Tibetan people who speak their language; along with other clues can lead me to agree that Tibet as a nation exists.) Belief is still unnecessary.

Many of you have confused the idea of belief with thought. As in when someone says "I believe tomorrow it will rain." What this means is that based on the evidence - the sky, a weather forecast, or some somatic responses to atmospheric changes - they think it will rain. Again, belief is unnecessary. Religious people are either aware of this common usage of "believe" or they are confused. That is why they always say that it is impossible to be conscious and to not have beliefs. But it truly isn't. Having no beliefs about anything doesn't mean I don't have ideas, opinions, thoughts or a point of view. The difference here is that while beliefs are usually stable and self-perpetuating feedback loops which interpret all evidence to support their framework (while ignoring or repressing evidence that challenges the belief), thoughts that make up opinions or points-of-view are open to modification and change. Such thoughts and emotions can even change if the need arises, as it often does, to realign with changes in the environment, or the realization that the "map" is no longer adequate for describing reality.

The problem, then, is all of those holes or gaps in knowledge. People use beliefs to explain those gaps or holes; those areas of life for which there are no clear evidence-based ideas or knowledge that explain them. People tend to have beliefs in place of those gaps. Such as humans not really agreeing that evolution explains our origins on this planet and then positing old religious ideas such as "creationism" or "intelligent design." Isn't it more honest and respectful of the universe and of life to simply say perhaps we don't have all the answers but some of our explanations are the best we have so far? That's not what believers do, now is it? They argue and fight to get their beliefs accepted as the explanation. They see the beliefs as truth and can't understand why anyone would disagree. They come up with all sorts of prejudices such as when Christian fundamentalists say that people who don't believe are simply in "rebellion against God." For me it is more "mysterious" and awesomely respectful of life to admit to not being completely certain; to know and speak the truth that ideas and explanations only go so far and must always be open to new evidence or better systems of explanation.

Beliefs also convince people that doing all sorts of horrible things to each other and to the environment (you know, all those non-human living beings we usually tend to ignore) and still consider themselves good people doing good things. Beliefs validate this disgusting behavior and reify themselves in the process. Think about Islamic or Christian evangelists and all of the sick games they have been playing for the past several hundreds of years. Think about the so-called "atheist" ideologies (really nothing but belief systems dressed up as non-religious thoughts) such as Communism or Fascism (though Fascism tends to work alongside religion) which have been responsible for millions of untimely deaths in this world. Think about the unexamined beliefs of the consumerist Global Village which are causing the death and degradation of millions of both human and non-human living beings even as you read this now. (You know the beliefs such as the one which underlies the gasoline/petrol consumption which is polluting the air we breath and destroying forests; along with other life forms.)

Beliefs are akin to mental illnesses in that they allow one's consciousness to stop functioning at its optimal level. They shut off the awareness and sensitivity which for hundreds of thousands of years was the main impetus and tool of our successful survival and development as a species. It is high time we recognize the threat and see beliefs as what they are: Like the plaques that harden in one's arteries and cause disease and painful death, beliefs are mental plaques which lead to mental disease and painful death as well. To be alive, even in the fullest spiritual sense of that word, needs no beliefs at all. Beliefs only get in the way of that full life. That is why we say "It is my firm belief that it is a mistake to have firm beliefs."

October 19th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC

(Under the influence of Buddhism and the White Mouse. Go figure. I asked the White Mouse to stop bugging me and to write his own rants. So he has decided to use my brain and fingers to do so.)

[Rant 143Black Heart]

Rant 143
Black Heart

"Discordians? You mean the people who wear Santa hats all year long?"
-The White Mouse

Many of you perceive me to be a little misanthropic. Some of you may actually go so far as to say that I am wholly misanthropic, especially given my responses to info about the latest great fnord called the Avian Flu. (You know, when I said "Hell, there are too many damned people on the planet as it is.") But this is simply not true. I am not misanthropic in the least. That's not my game. What I hate, over everything else that deserves scorn and destruction, is stupidity. Whether this stupidity rears its ugly head in my own actions and thoughts or whether I witness stupidity in other people. I allow for lapses and mistakes. We all make them and fall prey to them. Hell, sometimes I think those are there just to keep us on our toes. What I reserve the darkest part of my hatred for are those people who chose stupidity as a lifestyle. Those people may get my compassion, but in a Buddhist sense (which might actually seem cruel to many of you, raised as you are in a largely Christian society where compassion is seen as some white-light fluffy frou frou all-is-love sort of thing). In the tradition in which I learned to finally grow up and be a mature human Buddhist, compassion without wisdom is seen as idiocy. And ignorance is to either be transformed into a vehicle of intelligence or it is to be destroyed.

I don't hate stupidity because I imagine myself to be smarter and thus the whole thing is really just a posture of snobbery. No. I hate stupidity because it is a threat to my continued existence. It is a threat to all that makes this life worth living. And when I see people who refuse freedom and choose stupidity, it makes me want to throw ashtrays (the marble or glass sort) into crowds of commuters walking to and from the train station. The ignorance is astounding. Lately, I was shocked again by stupidity when I saw how surprised Americans were that there were huge populations of poor people living in the USA. (The New Orleans debacle was a slap to the face of American pretensions about being the richest and most well adjusted people on earth.) Americans were shocked to learn that there were millions and millions of poor people who worked hard and had no mental or substance problems and yet were still poor. This boggled the few working brain cells that the average American (not unlike the average human being elsewhere who would be just as ignorant) could muster up. The stupidity over this is actually murderous...and yet as soon as most people can forget about the human suffering all around them, they do so.
This stupid denial is another strand that goes into my core of hatred. My black heart of hatred that motivates me to seek out ways to smash ignorance and stupidity. (I grew up on the wrong side of the economic tracks in America, so I do have a chip on my shoulder that comes from what the old leftists would call "class-consciousness.") I want to take the heads of the inflated egos of this society and cut them off and drink the blood from out of their skulls. (You can tell me that's horrible, but its actually an old Vajrayana expression.)

The poor in this country are the millions of embodiments of Eris who have been snubbed from the great festivals and parties of this society. And it is time we start crashing the gates with our Golden Apples. Why not? Why would you think that the people who bake the food and serve it have no right to enjoy more than a crumb or two?

But that's not how you see it, is it? You see the poor as a bunch of stupid hicks or dumb hill billies, or black thug menaces to your suburban milk-feeding lifestyle. You make fun of them and call them trash. You imagine that you are so much smarter or better simply because you don't know what it's like to have to wait in line for a job that gives you a meager pittance. You don't know what it's like to have to wait in a county hospital for hours for simple antibiotics only to be treated like filth for being money-less by rich college kids who are there to get birth control pills so their parents won't know about their fucking around. You don't know what it's like to either have no car, or to have a car but not be able to afford the gas. You don't know what it's like to have to wear thick sweaters in the winter while sleeping as a child because your family can't afford the heating bills. You think that all the homeless and the working poor are just that way because they don't try hard enough because you never talk to or spend time with any of them. Why should you even care?

Well, actually you don't have to care. Just remember though, when all of you are marching to the beat of your pro-corporate fascist leaders, whether Conservative or Liberal, because you have felt that the revolution would never come because Americans are too stupidly bought off....remember that there are millions of people living in the shadows. Those you have forgotten and ignored and denied and snubbed will eventually be the ones who will take power and perhaps you will remember them as you are lined up against the wall and shot. Perhaps this "revolution" will eventually bring more of the same as most tend to do. Perhaps those who are powerless will become the same sort of ignorant human beings once they get comfortable and wealthy and become the new elite, especially after the middle class take over and begin teaching the formerly poor how to go about doing things. Perhaps. But at least they will have a taste of the life many of you have enjoyed while they were denied it. Perhaps. It's a slim chance at best. And revolutions don't do much except shake up the dust for a while.

I look around and I see Christians spending more and more of their billions of dollars on making fabulous church buildings and religious schools. I see them spending billions of dollars on fighting to destroy science or in arguing over which version of the Bible is correct. I see wealthy Neo-Pagans spend more on shiny pieces of fluffy jewelry than they do on caring for the others of this planet that they supposedly respect as "sacred." I see Muslims who waste their money on supporting people who like to blow up shit. (It's pretty sad that these two religions which both have injunctions in their scriptures to help those in need actually have failed to do so for hundreds of years now. Talk about con-jobs.) I see an entire industry of social workers and caregivers who exacerbate the problems because they would be out of jobs if they actually solved the problems. I see people comfortable enough to have internet access complain and bitch and moan about their stupid trivial issues like being broke because they can't afford to buy the latest hot book release at Borders. Or complaining about not having the money to get this or that new toy. Or about no longer having the money to support a filthy smoking habit. Broke? Do you really KNOW what "broke" is?

I really can't say that I know what the overall set of solutions are. But I'll tell you one thing. We know who the snubbers are. This is fair notice upon those of you who choose to remain slaves in your ignorance. Some of you are getting your SLACK at the expense of others' right to their own SLACK. (You know? The people who you force to work hard and long without even a hope of a sliver of SLACK....not even a weekly liter of Jack Daniel's for fucksake! This is intolerable.) This is something which we will not put up with any more. Please report to your local Discordian Office to receive your target signs. Stand still and make our jobs a little easier. Just relax for now and it will all soon go away.

Why must we do this? Why do I allow myself to have a black heart of hatred that wants to burn every ounce of ignorance to ash? Do you even know what "poor" is? It is time for the free market to be liberated.

October 12th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
[Under the influence of you-know-who and Human Anatomy/Physiology studies. Human body systems usually work surprisingly well together. It's a shame actual human beings don't usually learn from this example.]
(The White Mouse is still hanging around whispering/shouting into my ears.)

[Rant 142How to Stop a Conga Line]

Rant 142
How to Stop a Conga Line

"Stop all this goddamned bullshit and pour some more tequila!"-The White Mouse

Yuppies and their overpriced cheaply made designer clothes don't impress me. Neither do their overpriced condos acquired by "bend-over" low-interest mortgages impress me. The problem is not that they are fraudulently wealthy enough to buy stupidly expensive goods. The problem is that they all look and act the same. Like they were made in a huge factory somewhere. Even their professed life-stories are all sounding the same. I avoid them usually because of their homogeneity. So I go into a bar and sit there thinking I can enjoy a few pints of swill without interruptions from yuppies asking me about whatever the fuck it is in their yaddayaddayadda chattiness because it's a dive. Yuppies tend to hate places that don't have amstel light beer. So I should be safe, right? Hah! Then crowds of yuppies come in all excited because they have discovered a new kewl place. It seems that dive bars are all the rage now. THIS is NOT a good sign. What gives?

The above explains why my recent pranking skills have been put to good use. I could moan and complain about the yuppie hordes invading my favorite hang outs. (And I do, trust me.) But I also turn the situation into some entertainment and satisfaction GUARANTEED for me and any buddies of mine that might be sharing the experience.

Yuppies now think that drinking PBR and wearing trucker hats is stylish. They profess to like Johnny Cash but can't recall any of his song lines. (They think that "the Man in Black" is a cool title but they don't know why Cash was the Man in Black.) Sometimes I humor them and go along with their stupidity so as to better study potential dupes for pranks and because their bank accounts can afford my drinking habits better then mine can. But one night recently I got in a bit of trouble when confronted by a small group of "white trash chic" looking groupies who asked me if I thought they looked hot. I said "You think looking like a bunch of dorks is cool? What's the matter? You run out of hip-hop gangster gear?"  They looked at me with blank stares, amazed that not everyone on this planet thinks their antics are cute or hot. I left the place shortly thereafter before they could gather enough brain cells between them to actually come up with some retort.

Hell, I shouldn't have been so hard on them. After all, they're only doing what they have been told. Perhaps I could have even convinced them to buy some special kewl Discordian bottled air teachings. Perhaps deep down inside I would have found some actual live human beings living underneath the mass marketed and prefabricated cliches they were wearing. Perhaps I could have even persuaded them to go to a real country and western bar where one or more of them was guaranteed to get some shit from off the fan onto their face. That is always a hoot to watch.

But the night was still young and more fun was to be had in other places. And I had to meet a friend for our more-or-less weekly pub crawl. A friend who hates yuppies even more than I because he has to work with them as clients.

I don't know when the yuppie invasion started nor do I know when it will be finished. I can't fathom it because they don't have as many children as most other folks and yet every year there are more and more of them inundating this city. Something is seriously wrong here. There are two types of stupidity being marketed and reproduced in the souls of the average American Greyface. One kind is the normal cletus trashy sort who we all know and love so well. (Because if we didn't publicly say that, the cletii in power would lock us up.) The other is the yuppie who masquerades as an intelligent and informed person who is up on all the latest fashions and goes to all the latest hotspots. The former sort of cletus calls his or her meth "ice" or "meth." The latter sort of cletus calls his or her meth "crystal" and thinks there is a difference. Neither one is the sort of person you'd want to spend any time with, even if some of them may exhibit a spark of mentality every now and then. To me, both types are within one of three categories of fascist: The first category is that of those who are actually in charge of something or will be shortly. The second category is the sort who pretends to be in charge and thinks that it will get them somewhere. The third category is the "useless" sort. They just hang around people of the other two categories because they think it gets them somewhere.

I have run into all three versions, many times simultaneously. They are hard to distinguish from one another since they all look, dress, act, and talk alike. One time I was in another bar enjoying my drink and waiting on some friends when a neighbor came over to me and said "You notice the difference in this bar tonight?" I said "What do you mean?" "Well, look. Over here you see all the distinctive people. The ones who seem to have character. Over there you have nothing but people who look like cookie cutter cut-outs of each other." None of the people over on my side of the bar were making any effort to look different or distinctive. None of us were wearing anything weird or "distinctive." Perhaps what we had was "soul."

The slacksucking hoors are all over the place replicating themselves...but that is no cause for alarm. In fact, it is really too late for alarm. But at least we have one consolation. Because many of us are different (and we have "souls"), we are actually better than anyone else. We aren't better because we imagine ourselves to be so and then try to ram it down everyone else's throat. We are better because we are true to ourselves and don't give a rat's ass about keeping up with the latest trends or styles or other distractions. (Unless we like some of that entertainment.) We are better because we don't have to prove to everyone else how smart we are or how "with-it" or "worldly" we are. Being free makes us smarter than the average and this should be cultivated. Encouraged, no matter what the end result brings.

Think about that the next time some cardboard cut-out prefabricated personality gives you shit for not being like one of them.

October 6th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC

[Under the influence of the White Mouse. He is definitely back.]

[Rant 141Fascists Are Everywhere]

Rant 141
Fascists Are Everywhere

"Nothing's sadder than a bunch of some grown ass adults who can't think for themselves."

"Russia or the USA? Who do you think is next in China's sights for depopulation, colonization and gaining more natural resources? They recently did it to Tibet. But now Tibet's mostly destroyed and used up. And China is growing. The rulers of China have been planning this for decades. It's not going to stop until you wise up. Hell, the fascists that run the USA these days will probably sell North America to the fascists who currently run China."
-A man in a bar after I asked him why he thought the CCP was fifty times worse than the Nazi party.

Actually, that man I quoted above said some more things that were even worse. Upon researching his 'ideas' I found that they were substantiated. (Go ahead now and search for yourselves online. It will take hours. Don't worry. The rest of this rant will be waiting for you to read when you get back.........)

The scary thing about all this is that it seems that the era or eras of human slavery and degradation are far from finished if any of our so-called rulers (around the world) have their say. Hell, they don't need our cooperation. They can manufacture our consent through shiny toys and other distractions. From Al Qaeda and extremist Islamists to the Christian Fundamentalist plans at "reconstructing" a Christian Dominion in the USA...to African despots who keep their own people enslaved to multinational corporations and medical research programs to the uber-fascist and racist expansionist policies of the Chinese government...the idiots are running amok and they are in charge of the vast majority of the armed forces and economic powers on this planet. The machine is continuously making its inroads and its moves in its continual invasion into the quality of your lives. And we, the populations of Earth are buying into it lock stock and barrel. No wonder the children are angry enough to throw bricks into chain-store windows. No wonder that some people are freaking out and shooting up a bunch of people or blowing up things. People are angry and frightened and atomized.

This state of people getting sick of it all and fed up can easily be channeled into the usual socially acceptable patterns of "get them before they get us" or of  "get mine first before someone else gets it" and no one will ever think to the wiser. No one will ever see the long term large scale ramifications of living in a global market where the very idea that this is not what we want is laughed at for being an absurd extremism that should be cured by either drugs, shopping, entertainment...or failing that, psychotherapy or re-training.

Why am I so upset? Because I am a human being first off. But also because of the socio-cultural milieu of which I am a part: The Irish-speaking world, which, like other hard pressed Celtic communities, has witnessed and undergone the same old damned imperialism, invasion (social, cultural, and economic), and oblivion for the past several hundred years. I don't really believe in cultural inheritance-type ideas, but perhaps I do have a certain inbred hatred towards fascists and other dominator-type sorts that comes handed-down through generations of family ethnic heritage and from my own personal choice to participate in a modern Celtic community that is struggling to survive as free people. Perhaps. But I still say that my cultural allegiance is only one influence that may explain it. Perhaps it's my Erisianism that makes me hate fascists and their ilk. Perhaps I actually take the ideal of democracy seriously enough to think that it is worth it.

Who can really say? What's that? Oh look, something shiny.

The exiles of New Orleans are learning and will learn the abject lessons of the way power works in this world and society as they see their city rebuilt with most of them locked out of any future living there. I know this for a fact. It's what happened to the Irish 150 years ago during the Great Starvation when 5 million Irish people deemed a "surplus population" were allowed to die the miserable death that famine and its sequential diseases wrought. What did the survivors have to do to survive? They had to leave. Look at Ireland (excluding the North) today. A rich comfortable society that is pretty and perfect for tourists and playboys-and-girls. Looks nice on the post card doesn't it. (Perhaps the grass is greener when countless dead have fertilized the soil, eh?) The people who run the USA have been handed a perfect opportunity to get rid of the poor in an attractive tourist area and they will use it fully. Don't kid yourselves.

Fascists are everywhere. They are in power, or will be shortly, over society. And they hate YOU. Not only do they hate YOU, if they can't reshape YOU into being one of them, they will destroy YOU. And they will stop at nothing to do whatever else it is that they wish to do. Even if it means starting another world war, or continuing some war on some terrorists, or in blowing up crowds of people (like the Islamic fascists). They are making moves. What are you doing about it?

That's what I thought. You're doing nothing. That's okay. Most people are content with doing nothing. They are content with the superior marketability of the products offered to them. They are content with the prefabricated "choices" they are offered. They like the idea of the great illusion of freedom under which they have succumbed because it is really just too darned dark and scary to think about any alternatives. It's too damned thick and dank to think that the fascist dominators are running things and their little lackeys are everywhere in society conspiring against any intelligence that doesn't further the five or six acceptable 'alternative views.' I know what you are thinking of saying to me now. "What's that? Stop talking like that! My brain hurts now. Let me get back to my entertainment and my smoking pot. What's the matter with people like you, Hugh, who always hold up signs saying 'DOOM' with your silly hats and your weird religions with unheard-of Goddesses that say we are free simply by choosing to grow a spine?"

Fuck. They know they should really just put on their jack boots and start parading around. At least let me get some yuks in by throwing tomatoes at their dumb asses before they lock me up and throw away the key. Even so, they can't get us all. There might be too many fascists or of those who like obeying the fascists (or of pretending to be important fascists), but they still aren't wise enough to find us all, as worried as they are about their shiny things. Human nature, being what it is, is full of abnormalities and glitches and anomalies and of all sorts of uncomfortable facts. Hell, they can even try to breed us out. Fat chance. As long as there is disagreement, trouble, and strife in society, there will be a chance for us...Hell, as long as there is sex, there will be people like us saying "told you so."

Think about that the next time you buy your ice-cream from that truck that blasts that corny music that can be heard for miles around.

October 5th, 2005

-Irreverend Hvgh, KSC

[Rant 140Causes]

Rant 140
Causes

"Fuck ideologies, unless you can convince the followers to buy you rounds at the bar."
-The White Mouse

Some of you are infected with the tunnel vision of anarchism and other social or political ideologies that give rise to numerous causes. And every cause, no matter how much of a rehash of something older, is always followed by supporters and followers who swear up and down that it has never been tried before (in its "correctly approached" or "purely understood" way) or that it is "really" a new cause that must be supported for the good of all that lives...or some other such fuzzy buzz words.

Now don't get me wrong. Causes can be useful things when they actually deliver upon their promises and help some people somewhere. But most don't join or support causes for that sort of reason now do they? Most people join causes because they feel they have to live up to "being a good or compassionate human" so as to avoid being called a no good shit. They put their heart and soul into the cause. (Such 'pure devotion' seems to be a perennial obsession with cause supporters.) The problem is that they really haven't figured out what their "heart and soul" really wants. Another problem is that they get on their cause's bandwagon and instead of doing anything good, they start pointing their fingers at all the rest of us who don't join. "See," they say "You're just being an ignorant no good shit who cares little to nothing about this IMPORTANT ISSUE." But how the fuck would they know? Some of us do care about certain social or other issues, but we don't feel like we need to jump on anyone's bandwagon, especially if the bumper stickers that we have to buy with our hard-earned money are designed to look like the same old political slogan crap.

Besides all that, once the "cause" is properly organized and labeled, it becomes simply another marketing strategy for sponsors, and the sponsors didn't even have to waste time in research and development of the product because the cause-supporters have already done all that work for free. The suckers. Money is the god of this age and there is no escape from this cult, no matter what you think. (Refer to Rant #40: The One True God. I am still undecided as to whether or not this is a good or bad thing. Especially since money is of immense benefit to people like me. I wasn't raised in no middle class 'feeling-guilty-about-having-comforts-so-let's-give-them-up' attitude. I for one, think some comforts are good. So long as I choose them for myself. I know some of you will call me a heretic for this, but I think having money is a good thing.)

You can say to me "You asshole. I really do care about humanity/the whales/the war/the right to bear prairie squid/etc." Oh yeah? How come you treat everyone around you like a piece of shit? Don't think I didn't see you slap around that old man the other day because he wouldn't contribute any of his money to your "save-the-hoors" campaign. I have seen crowds of socialist party members walk on by homeless people with the shakes trying to hold their hand out and collect whatever pittance passersby would give them. Solidarity my ass. Once, when I stopped to give one street dude a couple dollars and told him where the cheapest local store was to get drinks from, some socialist came up to me afterwards and said "That isn't going to help the situation any. He's just going to use the money to get drunk." I responded with "Oh yeah? And sitting around studying boring ass writings by ideologically pure thinkers week after week in your leftist social club is going to help the situation? The man clearly needed a drink. I helped him in his goal. Do you even know what 'poor' is like?" The socialist walked on to rejoin his friends and they all left me there with looks of disdain on their face. I ran into that crowd again later on in a local pub. There they were ripping it up and getting drunk, just like everyone else. A sense of justice came over me then and there. "The same goal, I see," I said loudly to no one in particular as I passed them at their table.

You can say that I am 'politically immature' or whatever label you have. But chances are I have read and reread every fucking political writer you are about to quote to back up your crock of crap. It's called being informed. Just as I have read up on just about every religious idea so as to properly convolute and confuse any evangelist's argument as to why I should join their bandwagon cult, I have done the same with the various political tunnel visions.

If you feel you must join up with some group of Cause Supporters, just remember why you are doing so. Is it just because you get to wave a flag and hold up signs at the next demonstration to prove how much of a dedicated and caring person you are? No? Bullshit.

Find a life to live first before you try to shove any of your causes down other people's throats. And just remember this: Do you really want someone like me to join your group or your cause anyway? Think about that for a minute. All Hail Discordia!

September 30th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
(The only thing worse than the White Mouse drinking up all the tequila around here, is the fact that he starts to ramble and rant for hours. Doesn't alcohol ever pass him out?)

[Rant 139]

Rant 139

"If Eris wanted perfect people, She wouldn't have made anything. As they say, you are just what is left over from when She stopped making everything else."
-from "By All Gods: A Radical Deconstruction of Sexual Theism in Mythology"

"Can't smoke it. Can't drink it. Can't eat it. What the fuck is the use of religion?"
-The White Mouse

Just because you're 'Discordian' does not mean you can check your brain at the door. (Besides, would you trust a Discordian in a coat check room with your brain?) Just because we like playing around doesn't mean we tolerate or put up with stupidity. Some of you have gotten it into your head that "nonsense" means stupidity and then act stupidly in an attempt to prove that you yourself are better at "playing" then the rest of us. There are many ways of going about it, but that is not one of them. Acting stupidly will get you nowhere. It won't even get you a silly hat with the word "DUMB" on it. (That's reserved for those truly stupid enough to want to receive Discordian initiations, even after we have spilled all the beans about the mysteries. Besides, most people who want initiations don't want the change that some rituals may or may not give them. They just want the titles that come with it. They want to be able to tell others that they are "in" as opposed to all those who are still "out." Somehow they think that initiation is important to us. Even after we tell them repeatedly that it's a joke.)

We of the Discordian Society are not responsible for the effects of our writings, doings, sayings, and silly hats upon your mind or upon your life. What you do with them is your own thing, but please refrain from acting stupidly and then blaming it on Discordianism. You know damned well that Discordianism is no excuse for anything, whether smart of stupid, rich or poor, fat or lean, crazy or sane, yin or yang, whatever or something else. If you honestly seek illumination and you didn't find it by using the nearest light switch, you need to change the light bulb. If you are honestly seeking some sort of spiritual affirmation for your life, you can find it in the numerous doings and writings of Discordians, but you still shouldn't trust those things. And don't think that fluffy-bunny white light hippy New Age crap is going to impress us. Just because we may be amused with you for a time, doesn't mean we have to believe you.

Life may or may not be fair. But that is not what life is about anyway. What are you doing about it? You are living your own life after all. You can blame Greyface for every little thing going wrong, but that is because you forgot about Eris. You can, as often as this has been said before and you still didn't get it, call other Discordians (hell, even other non-Discordians) Greyfaces when they piss you off or don't do as you think they should, but that is still your own damned prejudice. Before you go around pointing the finger at other people remember what the Greyface Myth is actually saying. You weren't actually thinking about taking a myth about something that may or may not have happened hundreds of years ago literally, were you?

You can tell me "get real" but that's only because I disagree with you. And reality, at least what most people consider "realistic" is just a reified version of the way they themselves see the world. Remember people used to think that women shouldn't be able to vote. They felt that it was unrealistic to expect that women could be able to participate in social governance. But some women fought for the vote, among other things, despite the "realists" and reality was changed. Those women were not stupid however. The same thing applies to us Discordians. Things can be changed, but we have to keep ourselves smarter than the average in order to do so. That means not listening to naysayers. It also means not playing the part of the fool in order to escape "being labeled."

Many Discordians consider being labeled akin to some sort of oppression. That is because they haven't thought out the implications. If someone labels you, they expect a certain pattern of behavior from you. This gives you an advantage because they will not be able to perceive what you may have planned, or what your intentions may really be. Unless you are actually stupid enough to do what is expected of you in all situations. (Though I must admit that sometimes doing what is expected of you is the right thing to do in those cases where doing exactly that will cause the greatest ruckus down the line.)

We may like to think of Discordianism as being without a point, but that's no excuse to consider being a rebel without a cause to be what it's all about. Just when you think you get it, you will find that there was nothing to really get. We like rebels with or without causes, but probably just for the entertainment value alone. Let's not even try to give reasons. And know that if there is any truth to anything, you'll probably have to make it up yourself.

That said, if you find yourself going online and getting angry with Discordian posters on forums for not talking about their exploits and then assume that is because none of them are doing anything in the real world, think again. If you are "doing things" in the real world, as opposed to online, then why would what other people are doing concern you? No one likes bragging, unless it's a Subgenius doing the talking. No one really cares about you and your mindfuck of putting smoke bombs in crowded theaters or other such things. And why would you think that that is part of Operation Mindfuck anyway? Not every so called act of street theater or horseplay has the least thing to do with guerrilla ontology. If you do have a good idea and you want to share it with others online to see if any of them will try it out, do so. But don't expect anyone else to do what you yourself should have done in the first place.

Please stop. Stop. Stop. Stop trying to be like Robert Anton Wilson. That doesn't make you Discordian. It just makes you a follower of RAW himself. Surrealism was around way before people like him came on the scene. And it will be around long after. Imitation in an attempt to prove yourself smarter just makes you look stupid. You don't have to prove that you can think for yourself. Just do it.

That said, don't forget that the Discordian Society's fight against stupidity never ended. Especially now in this day and age of mass produced stupidity masquerading as intelligence. If you don't like that, you'll be getting a message from your sponsors soon enough telling you to do and say the right things so you too can look smarter than your next door neighbors. Is that what you want? More bottled air? We may not care about the image we present to the rest of the world, but that doesn't mean we are going to stand for anyone's stupidity within or without. And if we like being silly and playing around online and offline, that's our business. If you think it's stupid and that you are so much more intelligent, do something for yourself. Don't worry about any of the rest of us. Because the moment your open your mouth about how much more smart you are and only bullshit comes out, you have defeated your purpose.

Now, that finished. I am going off today to commit a prank on someone sorely needing it. It may or may not have anything to do with Discordianism, but it will be a hoot.

September 28th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
(Gods! Who TAUGHT the White Mouse how to drink so much? The only thing worse than a bottle of tequila is seeing it empty too quickly.)

[Rant 138The Republic Flushed Down the Toilet]

Rant 138
The Republic Flushed Down the Toilet

[Pay attention. I could be talking about you, America.]
[Second attention. To those of the Discordian Society, I wrote this because Discordianism is getting watered down and becoming the same damned thing as any other "alternative" thing. We need to take back our confidence and our aggressiveness and stop hiding our wishy washiness behind the idea of "inconsistency". Inconsistency was meant to be used in a context.]

After nearly five years of the Bush regime, we are still here. Discordianism has survived and weathered crypto-fascist regimes before. Some of you are too young to remember the 12 years of Reagan and Bush Sr. If there was a time when society in America became nasty and filled with idiotic flag waving and "anything goes so long as it's red white and blue" lunacy, it was then. If any time could be pointed to as the time when Americans gave up being Americans and sided with patriotic fascism, it was then. The generation of swine was celebrating their usurpation of political power and Jesus Christ became popular once again (this time without his motorbike or his hippy haircut).  Iraq was invaded and bombed (though that time it was punishment for a little thing called Kuwait). Muslim fanatics were blowing up shit around the world and hebephrenic leadership of the USA was the rule of thumb. Many feared that the Christians were getting out of control with their big Satanic Scare crises. (Any of you remember the talk shows back then?) And the word "liberal" became a filthy swear word which equated to "selfish-baby-killing-feminist-bleeding-hearted-america-and-god-hating-slime-bag." Any talk of social services was branded as extremist. Any talk of living wages was considered hopelessly utopian. (Hopelessly utopian? Workers 'expecting' to be able to be paid fairly?) A person could get shot for even associating with prairie squid. And possession of pictures of Bob Dobbs would get you placed in the lunatic ward with your monthly poptart allowance cut off permanently. (We won't even talk about what happened to those Discordians who got caught reverencing Eris.) Anyone who had money was inculcated to hate those who had no money. Those with little or no money were despised and hated as criminal breeding welfare scammers who were a menace to western civilization and God while preachers rode around in six-digit cars high on pure cocaine shipped directly from the upper class ghettoes of Colombia.

Those were some of the symptoms and signs of the times back then. Nowadays, what do we have? Much of the same going on but with different labels. Nowadays some things are the same: Being poor and dark skinned is still not healthy. (Look at Hurricane Katrina and the debacle that followed.) Being poor and light skinned will get such people nothing but more invisibility since they are not supposed to exist, and when they are acknowledged they are made fun of as trash. Being poor in general is still unhealthy in a land of so-called equality under the law. Anyone who questions the government's policies are derided as extremists or as haters of America. Unlike the past, Christianity has cleaned up its image (no more rich preachers high on blow - back to torturing children away from public view) and now is fighting legal battles to acquire the right to force you to believe in their heavenly spiel. They are actually more of a threat now then they have ever been in this country. Americans have been properly inculcated to hate swarthy-looking middle easterners and soldiers are in Iraq again (this time not even for any justifiable reason) getting blown up and shot, fighting for something that only exists in the mind of Bush Jr. The once strong opposition to this crap which was the embodied in the Democratic party, has now been whittled away, as that party's spine dissolves in the face of the "it's-okay-so-long-as-there-waving-the-red-white-and-blue." Taxes are skyrocketing as the level of infrastructure and social services (you know, the justification for having government in the first place) plummets. (Hell, you can't even get your prairie squid checked-up at the local clinics anymore, unless you're willing to sacrifice your children to the god known as the War on Some Terrorists.) Free thought is derided as a threat to faith and faith is seen as the glue that holds the ailing seriously damaged Republic together. And THAT is not a good sign at all, people. "Don't worry that you work for six dollars and hour and can't pay your rent let alone buy anything to eat, just have faith" they say. Any of you history-minded people remember what openly fascist governments used to say to their citizens?

The American Republic, one of the first large scale experiments in democratic societies ever attempted, is being devoured by fascists and flushed down the toilets even as you sit here and read this. (Don't worry if you aren't living in the USA at this time, since you fucking well know that Bush and his brigade have pledged to deliver America right to your doorstep...especially you Europeans who are now all learning to speak English.)

I thought that by FIRING you, it would be a wake up call. (Remember I or actually WE fired you (I was just the one who delivered the notice) back in November after some of you actually went and CHOSE Bush to be president again.) A long time ago, I actually thought you had a spine and would actually care about the job of freedom. A job which YOU volunteered to take. Remember that time? I was reluctant to give you the task. I cited all of the pitfalls and dangers and fuck-ups and distractions. I warned you about the perils of getting addicted to meth and the whore it came with. I told you not to listen to the hidden fascists as they bought your complacency in exchange for cheaper bananas and gasoline and beer. I warned you that you could be derided, insulted, spit upon, beaten, locked up, tortured, and even killed for fighting for freedom. You just looked at me and said "bring it on." After the performance review, I fired you, thinking you would shape up and actually grow the spine you needed to GET ANGRY or at least do something. Now I see I was mistaken. Please take your standard issue revolver and shoot yourself in the head so we can save our agents' time and money. We will find others to take up the task, unless Wal-Mart has already gotten to them first.

Goodbye American Republic. It was a nice try. The Company (you know, those of us from all over who were fighting for freedom) is now bankrupted by your antics. We are not reorganizing. I myself am going back to my own people, the Celts, who can be trusted to fight for freedom, since they have been doing it for the past several hundred years, no matter how many battles or wars they have lost and no matter the toll exacted. As the Gaels used to say even back when they had a prosperous and well maintained free society, "Better to be dead than to be a fat slave." (Is fearr a bhi marbh na bhi nad' thr?°ill ramhar.) As long as I have to live in Fat City, I will SNAFU everything that comes across my path. It is just deserts upon those who have had freedom and yet chose to be slaves. 3000 years (much of it a struggle) of my freedom-loving ancestors demand it. Almost 3172 years of Discordianism compels it. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Don't think that because the Company has dissolved that the struggle is over. It has merely metastasized. You think it's impossible to fight this way? Look into history, specifically at a small island known as Crete. The Cretans didn't have the benefit of any organized resistance or of any Company of people that fought for freedom. (Though there may have been some Discordians among them.) When the Nazis sent their elite paratroopers into Crete, what did the Cretans do? They didn't cower and hide and whine about how undefended they were, or about how hopeless it was to fight the largest fascist war machine ever devised. You know what they did? They went after every Nazi paratrooper they could find and attacked them. Out of 8000 elite crack-force paratroopers, over three thousand were killed by peasant farmers who weren't going to sit and take shit from anyone. More were captured and beaten. The head of the supposed occupation force was kidnapped and given over to the allies. The Nazis eventually had to abandon their plans to hold onto Crete. Let's raise our glasses to those Cretans. They stood and delivered. (Unlike much of Europe, besides the British, the Russians, the Jewish ghetto holdouts in Poland, and the Bretons who fought until the end.) That spirit is what made American society great whenever it was great. That is the spirit that animates the Discordian Society. Take no shit from anyone. Disobey, no matter the threatened hardship or the cost. It is something to think about even as we witness the ripping apart and silencing of the ailing body of what was once American Democracy in a pool of dazzling gadgets and entertainment. Satisfaction guaranteed has replaced free thought. Family values have replaced conscious living. And praying to Jesus is replacing science and medicine. This is the State of the Republic in which we live.

Enemies of freedom, whether you always hated freedom and/or those who are different from you or whether you simply sold your own human birthright of freedom for some pathetic comforts, wherever you are, we will give you no peace of mind until there is justice for this colossal fuck up. Operation Mindfuck is now going to hit the ground running. Human SNAFUs, get your wits about you and get out there. It is time to show some of these wasted potentials what backbones are all about.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled antics.

September 25th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
[Under the influence of the rant machine, which I let out of the cage periodically for some perspective.]

[Rant 137Sowing Seeds: Part 2]

Rant 137
Sowing Seeds: Part 2

"General Semantics is nothing but its own feedback loop. A pseudo-science where circular reasoning masks itself as insight."
-Tequilarius Malignatus (from "Slap them! An Analysis of  Semanticians' Sex-fantasies")

Are cliches dominating your thoughts like pop-up ads gone wild? Are you getting infected with online emotionally transmitted diseases? Are you finally getting tired of all the pushes and pulls of society pointing at you, towards you, and in you, telling you to go out and go this or that, do this or that, to get on the bandwagon and join the latest fad that will finally make all those scary fnords go away? Are you finally sick of all the "plausible" excuses of the religious or the close-minded people who try to feel up every gap in knowledge with ready made mass produced answers endlessly parroted to the point where they get confused with wisdom? Are you finally getting tired of the sort of world in which you will have to be forced to do things you wish not to do in order to survive and make ends meet?
And are you getting sick of just sitting around bitching about it?

What have you done about it?

You could choose to revel in all the mass made distractions and cliches and beliefs that are bombarding everyone daily even as most people half-consciously support them. You could breath a sigh of relief that you have some ability to see through the facades that lately pass themselves off as personality. You can swim in this society like fish along the currents and tides of the fads, phobias, and fashions that people have equated with meaning. You can use these things to your advantage. You ever think about that?

There is no escape from society, no matter how bad you think it is getting. (Unless you think going off to live in some New Age fiction is actually escaping.) So you may as well learn to play the game well, not only for survival but for subverting of the very viral thought forms that spread from mind to mind so easily in this globalized society. You hate preachers? Preach sermons of your own. You hate advertising copy? Write some of your own. (And find ways of distributing it.) You hate the system? Use its own rules against it. You think you want to see more discord? Become the SNAFU you crave.

Are you looking for a better more superior alternative to the blandly marketed alternative counter-cultural options? Start your own. Are you finding that you don't fit in with the local Discordians? Make up your own sect and jake the bastards. Just remember that being mean makes you in no way a seed sower of Discord. It just means that you are being mean, which says pretty much nothing, except that no one will enjoy your company. No one much likes abusers, but you will find more enablers among those you consider "normal," so if you want to be mean, just go back to your milk-fed life, look for the appropriate enablers and don't worry about anything the rest of us may do.

If you want people to hold your hand and tell you it's okay, you'll have to do what most people do and actually make some friends. Just because some of us are more open to oddballs than the rest of society doesn't mean we are natural born therapists or anything. Besides, none of us know where your hands have been. And anyway, if you want to sow seeds of Discord, why would you be asking for hand holding? You can ask Eris, but would you trust Her to hold your hand? Would you trust any of the rest of us to hold your hand?

Sowing seeds of discord isn't about revolution, or any other mass marketed prefabricated ideological scheme that you can find for sale at your nearest Borders. It is pretty much self-explanatory. It exists and is done for the benefit and enjoyment of the Children of Eris. Whether Eris Herself actually cares about it is debatable since She is known to give contradictory statements in the same damn interview. You can rest assured that She won't stop you, unless doing so results in funnier outcomes.

Again, are you sick of it all? Are you sick of the rats gnawing at your heart from the inside? The thoughts and ideas that are telling you that no matter what you do or say you are not good enough unless you buy the newest products and practice the latest correct thinking? Are you sick of the prospects of meager validation being imposed upon you from the hordes of those locked into the unconscious conspiracies of normalcy that war on sentience every single day? Are you tortured by pop-up thoughts from the dazzling glitzy ads that clamor for your attention, time, and soul?

Well, it's time to start laughing at the whole thing for starters. Then, it's time to ask yourself what you are doing about it. Never mind the approval or disapproval of others. Never mind when some people try to tell you that you need to do or say this or that in order to be a "true [label]" or to call yourself a "[label]".

September 25th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC

[Rant 136Erisianism/Discordianism: Spilling More Contradictory Beans Unless I Am Not]

Rant 136
Erisianism/Discordianism: Spilling More Contradictory Beans Unless I Am Not

"Try it. Fail. Try again. Fail better."
-Samuel Beckett

"Fuck Mr. Beckett and fuck existentialism!"
-The White Mouse

I have had enough of telling you all that there is no real difference between an Erisian and a Discordian (though I could be lying). What kind of Erisian-Discordian or Discordian or Erisian would I be if I did not contradict myself further and further anyway? (It's a habit I picked up from the Guide to Episkoposes from the old days way back before the rise of the internet.) So at last...a working definition of an Erisian: One who reveres and or worships the Goddess of Discord, Chaos and Confusion, or at least the personalized form of the ideas, if that makes any sense. Erisian: One who has been at the Discordian game for so long that it actually works spectacularly well, regardless of the individual Erisian's literal or metaphorical "belief" in Eris Herself. (It doesn't matter to Her much, since She is Eris after all.) Discordian: one who calls themselves Discordian. By all gods, if one is nutty enough to call oneself Discordian, then one deserves the label. "The label?" You ask.

Some people get so caught up in the labels of the whole movement that they get whiny and tripped up over the perceived differences, and then get angry or bothered that others don't recognize them.  Hell, sit and think about it for a minute. The vast majority of the population on Earth would say "?" if you told them you were Discordian. It means about as much as calling oneself a Radical Hematologist or a Marxist Histopathologist. (Unless there are cases of radical blood types or Marxist tissue diseases that I don't yet know about.) The word Discordian means absolutely fuck all to anyone outside of the Discordian Society, really. (Except for a few Neo-Pagans who know their history.) The word Erisian means little to nothing to anyone, except for the few human beings on the planet who can make the connection to Eris. Even then, what does Erisian mean to the greater society at large? (And if you think I stand by this you should read some of the previous rants wherein I provide contradictory ideas and definitions which have as much to do with the practice of Discordianism or Erisianism as they would have with underwater basket weaving. Now there's an ancient Discordian art if ever there was one.)

As usual I asked Eris about it (I tend to have polytheistic days when I am not slipping in or out of agnostic or non-theistic modes), but She said "Hugh, you step into this, you had better throw some apples." She is not talking about it any further, but I bet She'll have a grand old time watching the rest of us argue and fight over something so silly and innocuous as definitions of terms. Thinking that the Principia Discordia is full of shit is just as much of a dogma as thinking of it as the greatest holy scripture ever written. Both sides or views have merit, but they are both simply approaches. Neither one any more true or real than the other, no matter what personal stake you have in your opinion of it. Kill the Buddha if he happens to be blocking your path, but remember that the Buddha may just smack the crap out of you...and then what? You lay there writhing in agony looking like a retard because you thought you were so cool that you could read some pithy Zen saying and think you could understand it. Like Zen, Discordianism cares nothing about whether or not you "get it" or "understand it." People who rush to a conclusive understanding of anything are simply those who confuse their prejudices with reality. (Discordianism=Other Discordians.) Like Zen, Discordianism has been constructed precisely to screw with the mind states of the fools who rush around thinking that they can or must understand things.

I may or may not care about whether you feel or think you understand it. I may or may not even care or like your own version of Discordianism. Hell, I may even rant and rave about how much of a jerk you are. But so what? Arguing over the fakeness or the realness of certain Discordians is just as fruitful as taking all of your hard earned money and flushing it down the toilet. And besides, you ever stop to think about what you sound like when you do it? No one has to take anything or anyone else seriously. And there isn't a damned thing in the world or in your mind that can change that. You can coerce others to agree with you, but those people are just sheep anyway, and why would you want to surround yourself with acolytes anyway? Perhaps, another religion or ideology would serve you better in that regard. You can't coerce a free person into even acknowledging that there is a point to your existence. And why would you need someone else to validate your life anyway? Why do you really care what other Discordians do or think or say? What do you care about other Discordian sects or approaches or any of that? Why do you feel the need for any sort of orthodoxy?

I'd rather have a bunch of people running around confused about what Discordianism is then to have some sort of official truths proclaimed as the one and true "real" Discordianism. Though it would be better to just have some sort of agreements as to what may or may not be Discordian, we don't have to go to the other extreme and think that we need to clarify and define exactly every little idea or action that we do. Besides, Discordianism isn't some sort of bottled-air spirituality on sale at your latest new age seminar. If you want tight definitions and easy answers, go convert to one of the fundamentalist faiths. Remember no one asked you to become Discordian, not even Eris. And we'll be just fine without hordes of people running around trying to define something that has "nonsense as salvation" (or was it salivation?) as one of its starting ideas.

Stop taking it all so damned personally. It's not as if the whole of the Discordian-Erisian family belongs to you. And if you think it does, then we have jihads and vexations to give you. In the end, who really gives a shit? It's just fun to do. And don't worry about Eris. Don't start thinking that She gives a shit, especially if you don't even care enough to say "hello" to Her when She shows up and gives you a little nudge, or steals your tequila. She could care less about whether you believe in Her. She's not like that other god who holds you hostage and threatens to send you to hell for not believing. She's also not one of those "pray-to-and-get-things" gods that is so busy trying to garner up huge numbers of followers that they'll do anything for anyone who calls upon them. She is Eris. She may just wipe out your entire collection of leftover pizza crusts that you had carelessly left underneath the cushions of that old couch in your front room.

In conclusion: I have already told you to stop picking your nose in public. So stop it. Otherwise jihad will be called.

September 23rd, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
(Nicotine withdrawal again; this time cold-turkey)

[A Cat Diary]

Found on the internets somewhere.....

A Cat Diary

DAY 752 -- My captors continue to taunt me with bizarre little dangling objects. They dine lavishly on fresh meat, while I am forced to eat dry cereal. The only thing that keeps me going is the hope of escape, and the mild satisfaction I get from ruining the occasional piece of furniture. Tomorrow I may eat another houseplant.

DAY 761 -- Today my attempt to kill my captors by weaving around their feet while they were walking almost succeeded, must try this at the top of the stairs. In an attempt to disgust and repulse these vile oppressors, I once again induced myself to vomit on their favorite chair...must try this on their bed.

DAY 762 -- Slept all day so that I could annoy my captors with sleep depriving, incessant pleas for food at ungodly hours of the night.

DAY 765 -- Decapitated a mouse and brought them the headless body, in attempt to make them aware of what I am capable of, and to try to strike fear into their hearts. They only cooed and condescended about what a good little cat I was...Hmmm. Not working according to plan......

DAY 768 -- I am finally aware of how sadistic they are. For no good reason I was chosen for the water torture. This time however it included a burning foamy chemical called "shampoo." What sick minds could invent such a liquid. My only consolation is the piece of thumb still stuck between my teeth.

DAY 771 -- There was some sort of gathering of their accomplices. I was placed in solitary throughout the event. However, I could hear the noise and smell the foul odor of the glass tubes they call "beer." More importantly, I overheard that my confinement was due to MY power of "allergies." Must learn what this is and how to use it to my advantage....

DAY 774 -- I am convinced the other captives are flunkies and maybe snitches. The dog is routinely released and seems more than happy to return. He is obviously a half-wit. The Bird, on the other hand, has got to be an informant. He has mastered their frightful tongue (something akin to mole speak) and speaks with them regularly. I am certain he reports my every move. Due to his current placement in the metal room his safety is assured. But I can wait, it is only a matter of time.

[Rant 135Discordianism Myth]

Rant 135
Discordianism Myth

Many of you are under the impression that there are actually certain signs that you can use to determine whether someone is a "real" Discordian. Even though there is no such thing as "real" Discordians. There are only people who haven't got it yet and think they can go around telling others that they are not real enough. (Unless they are doing it for laughs, in which case it is to be expected.)

For everyone who swears up and down and turns blue trying to shout how much their version of what is or isn't Discordianism is the honest to god truth or somehow the most intelligent approach, there are five more people with differing ideas who are equally convinced of their own approaches. Everyone is lashing out and getting serious. Some of you have forgotten time-tested Discordian practices such as "excommunication" and "forming your own damned sect." If you don't like what someone else says or does, excommunicate them. If you feel you speak for some group of people and they like what you say, form your own sect of Discordianism. Ranting and raving about how "unreal" all the "fake" Discordians are is only going to get you laughed at.

Why am I so against "real" Discordians, you ask? Why I am against even the idea? Why this now, when I have been involved with this irreligion for so long now that it's like a pair of old boots? Well, I'll tell you why. Because Discordianism is fake. (Read it again.) Made up. A figment. A creation. Most of you all reading this online have pretty much of a nothing in terms of real life Discordian relationships...which may be one of the reasons you spend time online. Many of you reading this claim you adhere to "stick apart" but when to you ever really get to practice this in real life? Sticking apart doesn't mean hiding out in your room online all night for hours every day of your life. How many of you reading this are actually Discordians when you are not online? (No? Then sit down.)

That's right. You heard me. Read it again. Discordianism is fake. Sorry suckers. Just like my pair of boots has been made somewhere in some factory by some underpaid Indonesian child-slaves and yet stamped with a "made in the USA" label, Discordianism was made up in the early sixties and seventies by hippies, neo-Pagans, and people masquerading as Chaos Magicians (who shouldn't be trusted with anything, especially your pet snail). I know some of you think that chaos magic has no place in Discordianism, but why not? (Prejudice is for fools.) Since what we are doing is fake, we can take whatever anyone wishes and sprinkle it into the mix. I suppose the word parody was something you forgot or missed when you first signed up for this irreligion.

It is amusing to see some of you get your panties up in bunches about real or fake Discordians and such. Please do keep amusing the rest of us. It is also amusing to see some of you trying to remain serious about your definitions, as if we all should agree with them and proclaim them holy writ. Are you that blind? Don't you see we'd rather sit around eating donuts than read your holy writ or perform your "real" acts of "discord." There's more to life than impressing other people with how cool we are with our struggle against "the Man" or the "Machine" or whatever the catchphrase is these days for "whomever-it-is-you-blame-for-your-fuck-ups." Fighting the machine is all right only if you don't make some sort of cause out of it. As for Discordianism, there isn't really anything anyone can do to make the rest of Discordians do what you want them to. Especially since we like watching various people fight the machine or the state or the milkman for the entertainment. Sure we like to Mindfuck and do other things, but whoever said any one of us needed an actual reason to do so? You want your Discordianism, yet you want it with half-cliched post-left revolutionary phrases borrowed from the pathetic milk-fed suburban middle-class to justify why they hate their lives.

Forget about it, then. Just move along and do your thing. And the rest of us will do ours.
Just remember not to scream too loudly when the cops pick you up. One of them might just be into torturing you for no reason. You could blame it on Eris, but it still wouldn't make your version of Discordianism any more real. Sucker! There are some other things about Discordianism that I will now get into so you may as well....

Never mind. More cans of worms will be opened later.

September 22nd, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC

[Rant 134The Amazing Thing About Faith]

Rant 134
The Amazing Thing About Faith

Hurricane Katrina did all of its damage, much of which will be swept under the national rug and kept hidden from most people. But one thing was clear back during the short time the storm slapped the gulf coast area and flooded New Orleans, many people were calling it an act of God. (At least many people who were making statements to the media.) As survivors began to counted and interviewed, many of them made statements to the media about how good God is for getting them through the tumult alive. I don't knock anyone's reasoning for getting through anything alive, but I wonder about the idea of a God that would cause the storm in the first place and yet would have the graces to save certain people when it is clear that certain others didn't make it through. Everyone always likes to call natural disasters "the will of God" and yet immediately turns around and credits the same God with any good that came out of it. Why does the God who would be so precocious as to destroy a city and countless towns get the credit for saving some people? (What about all those other people who didn't get out alive? Why isn't God called to account for what happened to them?)

Faith and beliefs are amazing things in that they can result in dazzling mental gymnastics of this sort while fooling most others into thinking that such gymnastics are logical and or rational. The point is faith makes no sense, especially if you have to have faith in a God who damages your life severely and yet you rely on that same God to make it all right again. If it was God that did the damage in the first place, then we all know who to point the finger at now don't we?

So instead of thinking about ways people can better deal with or survive more storms, we can just say it is God's will. Instead of thanking all of those rescuers and other personnel who come to help during times of disaster, we can just say that is God's will too. Much like when two sports teams both pray to God before the game with the winners crediting it all to God. What about the losers? What about those who don't make it through natural disasters? What about those who live through disasters only to die because they relied to heavily on the government to come sort everything out?

Just pray, right? I am sure that's what President Bush would rather have the survivors of Katrina do instead of asking for their rightful share of federal disaster relief.

People will blame this being called God for everything under the sun, especially all of those things they don't like (unless they also believe in Satan, then he gets the blame for everything from incompetent government workers to the horrid pain of stubbing one's toe). The same people then go around and credit that very same God with all that is good and right in their lives to an extant.

What kind of horrible twisted mindfuck is going on with these people? Is it a trick perpetrated on humanity by real beings known as gods, or is it that we have merely tricked ourselves into seeing that way to blame, excuse, or credit behaviors and activities which we refuse to investigate?

The amazing thing about faith isn't in all of those platitudes and claims of power that believers like to cite. The amazing thing about faith is that it has the power to keep people under its thrall, even when the explanation of what is really going on undercuts the very basis of the belief. The amazing thing about faith is that it sucks people into its insistence that they are all the good guys (never mind all those good people who get killed by disasters or by human cruelty), even when such people are doing all sorts of horrible things to each other and to different people. The amazing thing about faith is that it allows people to pass the buck around endlessly to mythological beings who may or may not exist, and this idea of passing the buck is not only celebrated but encouraged by most people in the society at large. Remember, it was faith that led those hijackers to crash their planes into the World Trade Center. It was faith that led Bush to invade Iraq. It is faith that allows and excuses the horrible things people do to each other across the world.

But the fact that someone repeats the lies of faith...or the fact that people die for their faith does not, no matter what anyone says, make that faith any more true. It is faith that is leading the Christian Fundamentalists to try to take over American political structures so they can "reconstruct" a Christian society. (And it is faith which leads those people into actually thinking that America was founded as a Christian society, in clear ignorance of history.) Faith is the hidden threat that is not hidden much at all.

Let me be clear here that by faith I mean "blind belief." I don't mean the other more common sense faith which would be more accurately termed "reliance." As in when you have faith in your lover or child, etc. You can rely on them or expect them to do a good job because you know them and they have demonstrated their reliability. But can you rely on a God that wrecks a city and kills hundreds or thousands and then turns around and saves certain people? Can you rely upon a God who slaps you one minute and then comforts you the next? (I do think that Yahweh, the major totemic god of the USA, needs to go to see a therapist for His anger management issues and for treatment of his compulsive abusing behavior patterns.) Would you marry someone who did the same thing to you and then tell others who ask you about it that it's okay because your spouse "moves in mysterious ways" or "who are you to question the ways of my spouse?" Think about that for a moment (while I take a breather from preaching to the choir). The most amazing thing of all about faith is that we could drop it and life would be more beautiful and mysterious because we wouldn't be rushing to fill in the holes and gaps of our knowledge with ready made excuses or beliefs.

Now, I actually like Eris. I think She exists. This is no more crazy than thinking that some of the rest of you all exist. But do I have faith in Her? Are you out of your goddamn mind? No. I can trust Eris to be Herself and that's about it. But in true Pagan fashion, I'll take care of my own problems for myself before I appeal to any other person or being. This reliance on myself has a much more fantastic success rate than relying on beings who may or may not be trusted anyway. Besides, Eris was the one who originally said "Think for yourselves, idiots! Now leave me alone and stop praying to me unless you want me to send St. Gulik again." Double besides, if the divine is within, then the way to actually connect with any of the gaggle of gods and goddesses is to live and let yourself dance, so to speak. Faith has nothing to do with any of it. Neither does any belief system related to any faith. Now if you are one of those rare souls that actually does call on gods and those gods actually do show up, you may wish to keep quiet about it in public (but feel free to contact me. We'll compare notes. Though I still don't believe in any of it.)

Well, if you didn't get the point of this little exercise in mental effluvia by now, you might find it in your mailbox tomorrow.

September 21st, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC

[Rant 133Metaphors;or, a meander that appears to talk about semiotic fields and spheres of perception.]

Rant 133
Metaphors;
or, a meander that appears to talk about semiotic fields and spheres of perception.

"Whoever controls our metaphors, controls us."
-Attributed to Robert Anton Wilson and his brigade of friends, followers, and liars (but still a truthful observation.)

Pay attention. Some of the following deals with highly specialized terms that should have never been taken out of context in the way that they have been. The discussion may get abstract, but if you bear with it, it may be helpful to you whenever you next come across those idiots who masquerade themselves as "post-modernists" and who like to say that reality is nothing but symbols in relation to other symbols. I have attempted to take something normally left to linguists and cognitive scientists and bring it down to something the rest of us can understand so we can more easily refute those who get trapped into parroting the elusive borrowed idioms of Robert Anton Wilson and other post modernist writers. This rant (which is really another excuse to attack General Semantics) hopefully will clear up some of the fuss.

There is something to that often quoted statement "whoever controls your metaphors controls you." (Many assume it was Robert Anton Wilson who first wrote it, but he is only one of many writers since the seventies that have parroted this statement - some of them more or less creative and original, some of them simply hogwash.) This statement has some truth to it, but let's not get silly here and attribute to it any ultimate truth. Post-Modern thought can only go so far. Anyone who thinks that metaphors, language-meaning fields, and ways of thinking totally control you is simply taking linguistic and cognitive science terms out of context.

Obviously, if you believe in an all powerful punishing God, then this "belief" or collection of symbols that live in your head are going to color the way you see the world and the way in which you interpret your interaction with everything else. But you are the one who has still chosen to agree with that belief and it can only control you to the degree in which you coerce yourself and your perceptions to its accompanying "semiotic field." (Look that phrase up to see what it means.) Likewise, you may be able to coerce others into agreeing with this basic belief system and even go on to influence society and such, but it wouldn't make the belief set any more true.

Without semiotic fields, meaning - the driving basis of communication - would be impossible because it would have nothing on which to stand or from which anyone (including yourself) could derive anything resembling 'meaning.' For instance, if I start yelling at you to "Turn the duck-stick over the hairy goat," you will say to me correctly "WTF are you talking about?" This is because I have said nothing that relates to anything in our shared semiotic fields. (Though you may find useful information leads from the words themselves.)

And no, contrary to what the bastard-supporters of General Semantics like to claim, semiotic fields, or even spheres of perception (that localized personal sense of "me" or "I" that individuals rely on for personal systems of meaning) are not controlled by the sort of language or the syntax you use in your home language. Much of our complex cognition is accomplished without recourse to language or syntax at all. Even the language-based thoughts we have are not semantically consistent in ways that General Semantics teachers like to claim.

If I say the word "God," most of you will have many different takes on the idea as soon as your brain gets the signal from your ears. I might mean a personalized entity of "love," while you are thinking of some old white dude with a long beard who likes torturing non-believers. Some of you may even have emotional responses to the word "God" based on whatever your own personal histories are. It is complex and rich. So those who say that reality, or our perception of reality is based upon or controlled by symbol sets or language/syntax are simply being naive. The Semanticians want to clear up all of this wonderful complexity by positing we stop using delusionary language constructions such as "he is that." They say that by using sentences like that we actually get confused into thinking that "he" is always and eternally "that." What the ring tailed rambling hell? Do they really think we common folk are that stupid? (By common folk I mean those of us who actually don't live in academic theories and who may actually know a thing or two about the world outside of those theories.)

There is much more going on than any of the purveyors of certain idiot theories have claimed. And herein is the actual truth of what "post-modernism" was all about before it got watered down and endlessly parroted by the bastard children of the post-beat generations who simply got it all confused because of drug use and bad anthropologies. (Yes, that also means Carlos Castaneda.) While there is much truth to explore in the idea that we tend to build up systems of meaning that may have nothing to do with reality, the errors are in whether or not the system of meaning interprets reality consistently and in ways conducive to one's survival/success, not in systems of meaning themselves. And metaphors only control you to the extent that you don't understand them or how they are used. Think about that for a moment. It's the point of this whole rant.

Note that I said "understand them or how they are used." I didn't say you had to agree with them or that you have to know exactly what they mean to other people (though that latter gem can be extremely useful). I said "you" in that sentence, because that is the person that ultimately must gain meaning from metaphors or choose to see them as more debris. Or something else.

When we agree on the basic meaning of a word or set of words (we actually do most of the time since we share the same language and much of the same modern world mindset) it can be said that our semiotic fields either match, overlap or converge. Thus the chances of one of us saying something that the other will not understand is reduced. However, the semiotic field (which is where linguists are now saying "meanings" of symbols like words reside...it's not a real place; just a cognitive term) for you will be colored by your personal experiences and likewise mine. So if I say the word "goat" I will have some reference in my imagination that may or may not match up to yours, but we can still both talk about goats and even explain how we both take up different associations from the word.

That is it. Yet, some bad thinkers have taken this to mean that since there is no inherent meaning to reality, then all of reality is nothing more than sets of symbols without any "reality." I don't know how to explain it otherwise, but it seems like a spiraling-out-of-control exercise in mental jerkery to me. Yeah. Think that that slab of concrete wall you are heading towards at 90mph is just a set of symbols the next time you go out for a drive. See how far that line of reasoning will get you.

That said.

Perception does control a lot about how we think and what we think about. But we are trapped in perceptions only as much as we allow ourselves to be stuck in them. For instance, that wall I mentioned above. If you perceived it to be a bed of flowers, your error could get you killed. If you perceived it as some sort of monster that you had to avoid and you were a good driver, then your chances for survival would be greater. If you saw it as the wall it was, you would hopefully avoid it altogether. Perception is a wonderful thing and rightly exercised it can save your life. So, pay attention to what is going on and to what is around you and to what or who you are. Your sphere of perception can include all sorts of colorful metaphors and beliefs, but remember to not get taken in by any of them. Fluidity is the key and remember that those who are sensitive to their environment are the ones that survive.

In conclusion, I hate General Semantics. It is the enemy of free thinking everywhere.
And this statement has nothing to do with anything else here.

September 19th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
(Under the influence of menthol cigarettes (the White Mouse is in town), semiotics, and health insurance procedural meanders.)

[Rant 132Distractions]

Rant 132
Distractions

"Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins ... Society is in every state a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."
-Thomas Paine (Common Sense)

"War is the health of the state."
-Randolph Bourne

"...if the minimum wage had increased at the same rate as corporate CEO pay for the past 15 years, it would now be $23.03 an hour."-QT (Chicago Sun-Times, Thursday Sept. 8, 2005)

While the System, or the Machine, may not seem as pervasive and scary as you might have thought, have you ever thought about why? Perhaps the System of DUMB doesn't need to show force or scare tactics because it is confident that it is in control of all of our lives anyway? Think about it. How do you know that the thoughts you think were not manufactured for you as distractions to keep you on the treadmill of DUMB? How can you be so certain that the very ways in which you think were not inculcated back during some forgotten time of your life? And would any of it matter?

I wouldn't worry about it much if I were you. The fact that  you can even think about these questions gives you some assurance that DUMB has not taken control over you, at least until THEY develop some sort of science fiction type of brain scan devices. Just keep thinking for yourself and you will be able to point out the inconsistencies of the Official Line(tm) of reasoning and the standard media beliefs that are endlessly parroted. It is not hard at all to do so, especially with a recent event such as Hurricane Katrina. Remember that one? Remember how the media belief system broke down in the face of human suffering and images of destruction to the point that the media workers began reaming the government? Remember how for days you were told that help was coming to New Orleans even while you saw reporters wandering the streets asking survivors if they had seen any evidence of help? The survivors usually responded negatively.

The media belief system, being post modern and fickle is something that can be used to express the truth of an event, even if the stories told end up parroting the Official Line(tm) because of the often times appearance of dissonance between the media stories and what your "leaders" are telling you. Does anyone remember how the word "refugee" was hounded out of the discourse because many said it was "racist" or "unfair" to call survivors of Katrina refugees. Many said that Americans can't be refugees. I personally think the argument and those who went after the "refugee" label were trying to appear helpful while doing nothing useful. I don't know about you, but most refugees I have met in my life, at least here in the States, have been from Bosnia, or sometimes from South East Asia. So I don't get how the word could be "racist." I think that some Americans simply hated the use of the word applied to other Americans because they didn't want to admit that the catastrophe was that bad. Americans can be like that. We like to think of ourselves as superior and special over any other national group on this planet.

Katrina also brought out those sad and sorry sorts who always say "stop blaming those who fucked up. We need to simply help." As if not being vigilant, or as if not calling someone on their bullshit will make the relief efforts somehow magically better. How many times in history have fascists used that line of reasoning? "Stop pointing fingers. We all need to work together now." " We're all on the 'same' side after all." Yep. Fall for it and you will truly have fallen.

Reading European news sources made me want to puke. They got much of what happened wrong. But then again, European media and European Official Lines(tm) rarely diverge as much as the American versions do. Some Europeans tried to say that the fumbling of the Katrina relief effort is because "that's how Americans are." Oh, really? To anyone in Europe, tell me this: When are you guys going to pay the USA back for saving your butts from the Nazis? You have gotten a lot of free rides on the backs of the average American worker for over 60 years now. Your prosperity is a figment of America's imagination. And WE remember how you Europeans stood up to fascism: you ran away or fell in line. (Except for the British, who actually fought back.) You can keep pointing at us and laughing, but look at what you Europeans have done and are doing to Africa, so wipe that smug smirk off your faces and realize your shit stinks just as badly as ours. (And in fact it has been stinking for centuries.)

I have also been reading up on my homeland a bit, Northern Ireland (or the "Six Counties" as we like to call it). The IRA recently announced an end to the military struggle and a disarming of all its soldiers (not many of them exist). A democratic political process is forming which is giving the Irish nationalists almost everything they were fighting for. So the IRA decided to take a step into the new era. What do the "protestants" who are anti-Irish do about that? They have riots because the police won't let them march in Irish nationalist areas. Two anti-Irish armed groups are claiming to be instigating the riots which are really destroying nothing but their own futures. The point of this little diversion is to show an example of how a story in the media can diverge from the Official Line(tm) . The official idea is that the IRA are the shit stirrers, along with the nationalist supporters and all those bobdamned Gaelic-speakers living in West Belfast. While the nationalists were trying to say to the world that they were only trying to live in freedom, the world didn't believe them because the standard myth was that the IRA were a bunch of terrorists and no one listens to terrorists or their supporters. Now perhaps, people outside of Northern Ireland can see who the shit stirrers and instigators really are. Now perhaps people will stop blaming all the ills of Northern Ireland on a small volunteer military that never had much more than 400 members.

Can you think of any other stories you may have heard about that do not match the official lines, or the standard socially acceptable ways of thinking? Linguists are forever pointing out that even in "free" societies, the level of indoctrination and propagandizing is high, but because here in the USA it is the chain stores and car companies doing it with distracting commercials you feel you are freer than say, some shoemaker in Indonesia? Some stories you may want to check up on include the story of Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela. That will lead you into all sorts of dissonance between the official standard socially acceptable way of thinking about him and the what some reporters have actually discovered about the man. (He is called a totalitarian dictator here in the USA, despite the fact that he won two popular elections. People I knew from Venezuela seem to like him.) You may also wish to check out any stories about Argentina, which has been undergoing attempts at social revolution. (What? Did that surprise you? You didn't think all of those workers who expropriated their factories were all a bunch of lawless thieves, did you? Some of them battled the police for their rights, and then some of them even took their cases to national courts and won.)

What does any of this have to do with Discordianism? Think about it. If you want to practice guerrilla ontology, you may wish to exploit some of the growing gaps between the official truths and the way things may actually be. The average person is not blind or stupid. The average person is just distracted and many times just trying to get a handle on life. In an era when ADD and ADHD is becoming more and more prevalent, this should be a loud wake up call. We may not yet be at the point where those in control or who want to be in control can shape your minds, but they may have found a better way than any propagandizing or indoctrination: distraction. Coming soon to a theater near you.

September 16th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC

[Rant 131Discordoxy]

Rant 131
Discordoxy

"Insert your own fucking quotes."
-The White Mouse

Can you trust the founders of Discordianism? Why would you want to when you could trust yourself? Researching the two of them, we find two former acid heads. One who lost his mind to the US military. The other lost his mind to literature it seems. Neither of them thought that Eris was real in the beginning, though their opinions changed later on. Neither of them could be shown to be telling the truth at any time. They gave us the first modern Erisian Revelation along with some other collated abnormail that they made into the PD and then went off howling like loons into the proverbial night. In case you were noticing, a lot has happened with the damned Irreligion since those ancient days way back in the sixties. True to its original Eristic intentions, every individual or group of individuals having anything to do with the Discordian Society has taken the Irreligion off into new directions. For some of us, it is an Irreligion that mirrors (and parodies) much of what is going on with the family of rather new religious outlooks that are now known as "Neo-Pagan" by both adherents and researchers. For some of us it is its own thing without any recourse to any assumed similarity or differences with the religions, spirituality and philosophies of the present day. For some of us, it has nothing at all to do with any spirituality. For some of us it is merely a means of blowing off steam. For some of us, it is a chance to parody and have fun with the various pompous occult traditions that seem to want to dominate the "alternative" market. For some of us, it is mainly about Eris and what She does and what we can do with Her. For some of us it is about breaking shit, but perhaps with some intelligent justification for doing so. And there are countless other aspects and types of outlooks and practices. [Insert yours here.] Is it even possible or desirable to come to some common understanding of Discordianism?

Yes. It is desirable and possible to come to some common understanding. People like the Good Reverend Roger have come up with certain categories of actual Discordians (and for that he was denounced as a heretic, which is actually a label to take pride in, for "defining" Discordians), so I won't spend any time with categories themselves beyond saying that unlike what many assume, there really is no meaningful difference between Erisians and Discordians. Those of you who think there is a difference have, to put it mildly, been had. The assumption that Discordian comes from "discord" and that Erisian comes from Eris is a false etymology. Both terms are bastardized combinations that come from the Greek suffix "-ian" and the Latin and Greek versions of the name of the old Goddess Discordia or Eris. (Both names do equate to "strife," however. And today we have words like eristic or discordant as adjectives.) But regardless of the etymology, the words Erisian and Discordian have always been used interchangeably. Some of you may disagree with that usage, but at least know where it is coming from.

As to the common understanding of Discordianism, there are some traits to point out. The fact that some of you refuse to accept that even this could be possible make us sound like the fluff-bunny Wiccans of today who are always spouting their spurious crap lies like "There is no one definition of Wicca" in an effort to excuse their pernicious misunderstandings and blatant disregard for other people's religion by bringing it down to the lowest commercial denominator. (For more info on the Wiccan fight against the usual useless idiots who call themselves Wiccan and whom you may see from time to time, contact me and I will inundate you with links and info.) There may not be any "one definition" of Discordianism, but there are some things or "ideals," if you will, that I think makes us distinct from, say, the Baptists, or the Buddhists, or the Unitarians.

This is what I have come to learn are some common understandings of Discordianism. Feel free to make your own addenda to this. Discordianism is about Eris, whether that means literal belief in Her existence or toying with the idea of a Goddess of Chaos, Confusion and Disorder (as an archetype or something else). It is at heart, an irreligion, which would be best described as a "religion of parody and play." It is about seeking the freedom that a balanced perception of disorder and order can give rise to. That comes with seeing that disorder and order are balanced and part of the same damned chaos, regardless of which one you prefer. It is about the practice and exploration of creative aspects of disorder and order, though because that idea was formed during the birth of the Neo-Pagan movement, many may assume that means some weird trippy hippie ideal of all-is-light-and-peace-man creativity. This assumption is false. In both modern Neo-Pagan conceptions and in earlier pre-Christian Pagan societies, creativity encompassed a lot more than just making art and getting high. There is destruction in creation and vice versa, and no, this isn't some hard to understand Zen-like riddle. It is simply an observation that anyone can see directly in front of themselves. (You need to "destroy" the blank page to create a letter or poem. Forests sometimes need to burn, in order for new plants to grow. I could go on with a list of examples, but you can pretty much figure this one out.) Creation can be quite severe and sometimes outright "destruction" is the means for new directions or new insights or something else to arise.

Discordianism, is also, to the chagrin of some of you, about disrupting the very processes and practices that are limiting and enslaving to individuals. I say "to the chagrin" because some of you feel the some of the rest of you go too far in your projects of disruption. But it is just a matter of degree. And we Discordians, though it looks like the opposite sometimes, do spend more time disrupting the schemas of the "rest of the world" than we do with each other. (If Discordians stopped fighting amongst themselves and stopped trying to out-disrupt each other and turned that energy onto the world at large...well, never mind. Just pointing out something to think about.) Along with that is the idea that we should learn as much as we can about the ways in which we humans perceive "reality" and seek as many different ways as possible. The Chaos Magic current calls this "paradigm piracy." The Robert Anton Wilson "brigade" (him, Tim Leary and those that like what they both say) calls it "metaprogramming." Discordians usually just call it an excuse to have fun with other people's beliefs and rituals, but the point is not missed by any of us, whether we admit it or not. One way we do this is to hold to contradiction and complexity of thought. Sometimes this makes us look stupid, since intelligence is mainly measured by how much one can parrot the correct linear factoids in the correct way, but we shouldn't reject linear thinking out of hand, since it is supposed to be so much easier for us. You can learn a lot from the systems of knowledge that are out there and remaining ignorant of them merely reflects on yourself. Whatever you choose to learn, don't let Discordianism be an excuse for your stupidity or your intelligence.

It goes without saying that Discordians, believing in freedom as we do, usually cherish the freedom of others as much as our own. This leads to all sorts of interesting ethical ideas, and I am sure many of you have some thoughts on that. What do you think it means and how does this play out in your life and your relations with others?

By now, some of you are ready to burn me at the stake because I have managed to actually give a straightforward explanation of a few Discordian ideas. But spilling the beans and revealing the mysteries is part and parcel of Discordianism. We need no mysteries that take years of esoteric training to master. Not because we are lazy, though there is some truth to that, but because we see the fools practicing for years to master the mysteries and find that they have been duped. If you can't explain your favorite mystery in a pithy phrase or two, what the hell is the point? Look at all the fun some of the Zen practitioners have. Why should we ignore a potent source of fun? We can have our cake and eat it too. Discordoxy is sort of like heterodoxy, except that coining new words is an ancient tradition which we feel should be continued.

As some of you know, I have been at this Discordian game for some time now, whether that makes me more experienced or just more mentally ill than the rest, I can't say I care much. You can say that because I am Discordian, I am sad and pathetic and all those other smokescreens you may raise, but that doesn't mean a damned thing, since all you really know is your own take on the world. Prejudice is simply another form of belief anyway and one day some of us may help you out of your dank dark hole...or we might just pull up some chairs and gather some beer and watch you scurry around down there too afraid of the sky to climb out. Just remember that when you are old and infirm, the way you treated other people and the way you chose to see the world is what you will be stuck with in memories. So you may wish to make those memories things you don't have to deny or repress. And as there is no guarantee of life after death, there is no guarantee of oblivion after death either. There are, in fact, no guarantees, no matter how reasonably certain you may delude yourself into being. This is chaos. This is life. You can remain asleep at the wheel, or you can wake up and actually get to where you wish to go. Discordianism, if it is working, can probably help you to do so. If not, it may still give you some laughs and good times and lighten the load, or ease the soreness, a little bit. If not more.

September 7th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
(Under the influence of nicotine withdrawal. But I am not bitching.)

[Rant 130Nihilism]

Rant 130
Nihilism

"Nihilism...2: In psychiatry, the delusion in which everything is unreal or does not exist."
-Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary, Edition 20

"Belief has nothing to do with reality."
-Occultist Motto

It is assumed that the city and confederation of Athens, great slaveholding oligarchic "republic" and colonizing force, gave away its democracy to the "tyrants." But in reality, the Athenians were conquered over time, eventually to become part of a different sort of republic that was in less denial of its freedom-crushing imperialism: Rome. Not much really changed. (Except perhaps the official language.)

While the Romans were throwing off any residual and miniscule democratic practices, they decided to engage in a war of conquest against their Celtic neighbors. In that ancient "War on (some) Barbarians," Roman legions occupied and destroyed Celtic lands and crushed any resistance in a modus operandi called "Pax Romana" which lasted about four hundred years. The thing about the Celts is that they didn't call themselves "democratic" or think of themselves as "superior" and yet one idea was important to the Celts: freedom.

Not the freedom of living under a government that has recognized individual rights, but the freedom of living among a people who had traditionally elected their "leaders" for certain tasks; the freedom of living among a people who were disgusted with any person who would choose to give up their freedom for a few comforts (especially since it could be shown that free people could live to enjoy their lives); the freedom of living in a society that respected the individual's right to choose their own way, from the lowliest cowherd on up to the most famous and legendary warrior queen. Why else would you think the Celts of Gaul, of Iberia, and of Britain fought for so long against the Roman Empire? They didn't need pithy quotes from "Founding Fathers." They already had been living in what they were alluding to whenever they justified their endless struggle against the Legions. But eventually, that social vision was crushed with its possibility not even acknowledged.

"The Celts?" I can hear you ask. "What? Weren't they headhunters who sacked both Rome and Delphi to strike fear into the hearts of the civilized and didn't they drink all of Germany's beer?" If you believe so, then you probably believe all of the propaganda about Iraqis being a threat to the security of America too, so there may not be hope for you after all. The Celts sacked Rome and Delphi, to be sure, but that was due to local interference from Greek and Roman politicians and the Celts thought they would give a little nudge to show the free people are everywhere a threat to those who choose slavery. (Granted, the tactic worked but it backfired later when a powerful Roman Empire decided to agree with the premise and then proceeded to crush any free people they came across.) Just because the Roman propaganda was written down almost two thousand years ago and endlessly repeated since then, does not make it any less of a lie.

Because of cases like the above, one could easily argue that freedom and democracy are rare flukes that can never work (despite the fact that the Celts lived in such freedom for 1500 years, arguably longer in some areas). What is the point? You can ask. Why bother even trying to be free in that way when we can be, some much more comfortable if we just go along with the flow, even if the flow is towards a hierarchy that degrades people and treats them like commodities? Why believe in choices or in freedom? Why even think that anything matters at all, especially since it seems that anyone who wants freedom can not win the struggle? Why should you care? Especially since you hate your job, or your marriage, or your life, or your friends, or your politicians. How can you change anything, when you can't even seem to elect the right politicians? How can you be free when you think that freedom is just an illusion? Well, that's what THEY want you to think. THEY want you to doubt the possibility so much that you are paralyzed into inaction. And then you will get back onto your assigned treadmill, back onto your assigned role in the line, and obey. Why not obey? After all, it's in the Bible, and look at how God rewards those who are obedient.

Looking at the situation, it's no wonder why anyone wouldn't just sigh and give up, or become a nihilist of some sort. But is that really what you want? Nihilism is simply, to paraphrase Marx, the sigh of an oppressed creature. (Not that I care for Marx, it's just that he was spot-on in a few observations.) Nihilism is understandable however. More understandable than simply going along with the enthralling flow in an unthinking state. But if you are smart enough to see through the game of hierarchies and the game of slavery, then why would you not wish to at least choose freedom for yourselves? Your belief that nothing matters is what paralyzes you into not doing anything at all, which only reinforces the belief. (You know the score on how self-fulfilling prophecies work.) In this day and age of rampant cynicism and nihilism, it may be hard to imagine a culture that had "Better to be dead than to be a fat slave" as one of its values, but that culture existed for centuries and its people fought against anyone's encroachment of their freedom (some argue that their descendents are still fighting).

As some of you call yourselves Discordians, you may take inspiration or solace in the fact that there have been times and places on this world where people were free. In the USA of today, there is still (despite the best efforts of the Bush regime) great swaths of social and legal space to be free. But if you fall asleep and then believe that none of it matters, perhaps you are making yourselves worse than those who choose slavery. Some people choose slavery out of fear, or out of some wish to make their children comfortable, or out of some tactic of feigned inactivity while planning to fight-on some other day, but nihilists...what is your reason for denying freedom? What keeps you able to sleep at night? What makes you think that you are smarter than everyone else, so smart that you think that nothing much matters and those who struggle are merely wasting their time? Hah, sucker! Didn't you learn yet that you are the one who chooses to give meaning to what you do? The gods aren't going to do it for you, even if you believe in them.

Fess up. If you are nihilist, why do you think that belief is any less stupid than any other belief? Just something to think about.

September 6th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC

[Rant 129Fuck Iraq!]

Note: Rants 126 and 127 are in the shop being worked on since they have proven to be even more full of shit than any of the others, even more full of it than Fox News.

Rant 129
Fuck Iraq!

"The response has been unacceptable."
-GW Bush (talking about New Orleans relief efforts; one of the only true things the man has ever said.)

"A simple definition of colonization is that it takes people's stories away, and assigns them supportive roles in stories that empower others at their expense. When you are taxed to support a government that uses you as a means to serve the ends of others, you are - ironically - in a state of taxation without representation. That's where this country started, and it's where we are now."
-Rev. Davidson Loehr (from "Living Under Fascism")

Can you tell me why in any god's name should I give two shits about Iraq and Bush's stupid campaign to punish those people for the sins of their former leader? It is absurd to think about a war that is costing a billion dollars a day to establish some sort of "democracy" (euphemism alert) for a people that say they want freedom and yet keep doing a better job of killing each other than of actually being free? Why be concerned about some false campaign to implant democracy in some far off country when it's being torn to shreds here at home? Is the USA now going to play the role of "global overthrower" which tells people exactly what to do and how to do it in order to be free? It sounds like it. This "world power" thing has definitely gotten into the heads of that (to use Hunter Thompson's phrase) "generation of swine" that now run the US government and control its economy.

Granted. I never thought the damned USA should have invaded Iraq in the first place. But if the US is going to go on about its global fight for freedom, why the fuck aren't they slapping China's big dumb ass out of Tibet? Why aren't they helping Argentina's democratic social revolution against the banks and the wealthy who are intent upon regaining control there? Why aren't they slapping the Sudanese Racists who are killing black Africans by the thousands in Darfur? Well, we know the answer to that one anyway. (The US cares little about Africans, unless they start blowing up shit.) Why the fuck did the US bomb and invade Afghanistan when all of the terrorists allegedly responsible for nine eleven were from Saudi Arabia? You would think that the USA would at least do something about one of the above cases, if not just to look a little bit more legitimate. I guess they don't even care about looking legit anymore and this is not a good sign, because it means that they don't have to care. They have the power already. Why need they care how they are perceived?

Fuck Iraq! The costs of a couple of months of that stupid adventure would probably be more than enough to restore and repair New Orleans and the rest of the South that got slammed by Katrina and her children. Like hell we need to have soldiers in Iraq. For what? To protect Americans from terrorists? When was the last time Iraqi terrorists threatened the US? Where are the supposed weapons of mass destruction? Since when did Iraqis come here and start killing Americans? It's news to me. All I see are thousands of lives and billions of dollars being poured into the operation for no apparent reason except that the president can feel good about himself when he wraps himself up in the flag every night before bed.  

While you were asleep at the wheel of your part in the tattered remains of the American Democracy, the fascists and the Christian Dominionists have taken control of almost every institution that has any great influence on society. Not only do they own the wheel of your life, but they own the car, the highway, and they are trying to get control of your spill proof coffee mug. (Is that what you want?) What are you going to do about that? Go out on the streets and protest against the war in Iraq? Get angry with Bush because of the stupid war? But what would you do? What cause would you have to follow if the soldiers were pulled out of Iraq and the war was ended? Would you then go home and sleep easier, knowing that the fascists who run things have got it all figured out for you?

While you were asleep pretending that the internet was freedom and that you could hide from Al-Qaeda (whatever the hell that really is), your future prospects have been decided for you via agreements you will never get to hear about. Your new religion will be one of Evangelical Christianity and you will find a flag to fly in front of your home. You will marry a docile woman who will stay inside the home at all times, unless chaperoned. (And if she becomes un-dociled, they will have nice "summer" camps you can send her to.) You will learn the doctrine of Christ's Repudiation of this world as well as being taught why God really does hate gays and lesbians, Pagans and Mexicans. You will work 70 or 80 hours a week to pay your "till death" endless mortgage and/or rent and you will have to wait another 5 to 6 hours in line for your rations of food. At least you won't have to worry about your children, for once the Theocracy approves of your reproductive rights, they will only too happily take your spawn and bring them out to Utah, or Oregon for proper Christian Values Training. You will learn to praise Jesus and love your new righteous life, even if one of your neighbors ends up missing every other week or so.

But one day, they will come for you two. They'll have pics of some black clad bunch of anarchists. They will claim you were one of them. (Unlikely since they staged the whole photograph.) They will take you to another "summer" camp and you will wonder why they are called summer camps after you have been there for a few years watching the brightest, the colorful, and the different start to die off under malnutrition and forced labor. At that point you will be thankful that all you got was the ten commandments branded on your ass. And it will be okay, so long as they're waving the red white and blue.

Is this what you want? Damn. We thought we knew what you wanted, but perhaps we were wrong. If the above is what you want, then please stand still and make our job a little easier. Okay?

Never mind. The fascists are winning. They are taking control all over the world, and all you are doing is bitching and moaning about the way Discordians are. All you are doing is spending your time on the internet pretending to have discourse with people you aren't even sure really exist. All you are doing is getting angry with other people online because they didn't give you the attention and the handshake you felt you were entitled to. And each moment you have wasted going around and saying "WAHWAHWAH!" and moaning about your perceived mistreatment online, the fuckers take just a little bit more of your freewill away. What are you going to do on the night you sign off the internet, and look around you to find the soldiers of God standing around waiting for their orders to march you off to wherever oblivion is stored these days? You going to bitch about how much the Discordians suck? Blame your ineffectiveness against the fascist takeover of America on something else...like yourself. And your failure to see how it was coming.

In any event, fuck Iraq. That said, I will probably see some of you in the summer camps in the coming years. Maybe if we haven't been tortured into mindlessness we may find amusement in turning all the hymns to Jesus into hymns to Eris or something else. Perhaps we may even be able to hold out until the day that Canada finally decides to say "fuck it and fuck Iraq too" and attacks the US and liberates us. (You don't think Canada is waiting for the chance to pounce of American Stupidity at the first opportunity?)

September 3rd, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
(Under the influence of reading about Christian Reconstructionists, Corporatists, and the Project for the New American Century.)

[(Not Really another) Rant 128New Orleans; Some blurbs]

(Not Really another) Rant 128
New Orleans; Some blurbs

"It's a national disgrace...We send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."
-Louisiana Homeland Security Director

Watching Ted Koppel ream Michael Brown, FEMA director, about what seems to have been a major fumble in helping New Orleans' survivors gave me some sense of justice tonight. Hopefully the man takes the medicine he received tonight and gets his people to get their fingers out of their asses. Either the disaster is so great and widespread that no one could have ever gotten shit together fast enough, or the government fumbled, or a mix of the two. Regardless, I am sure that some officials are kicking themselves over the ABC nightly news reaming that tonight's broadcast was. (It was one of the best news broadcasts I have ever seen.) There was actually one lady in a video clip who said something like "The officials are on television crying. But look around you here. Where is the help?" They cynically played clips of GW's speech as if to drive the point home that the man clearly has no concern since his sights are still focused spending all sorts of money and human lives on slapping Iraq around.

President Bush said that no one could have known that the levees would break. That's funny, considering that once Katrina started heading for New Orleans a lot of knowledgeable folks were saying the levees could break. (It's also what many scientists and officials in Louisiana have been saying for years. The federal government has been lowering the budget for the local Army Corp of Engineers for the levee maintenance for the past several years. Recently levee improvements were not seen as important.) Hearing the President's inane speech "strategery" in which he says all the right things about "help and supplies" getting to New Orleans and all that crap, I think of the Billion dollar a day War in Iraq. Fuck Iraq. When was the last time Senior Bush had to push bodies out of the way to extract survivors? When was the last time El Presidente couldn't escape from harm's way because he was too poor to leave?

Betcha all those national guard units and the First Army division are more intent on securing the property and icons of power than they are with helping the thousands of people still trapped in the city starving and dying. I hope I am proven wrong. Perhaps I am too cynical. Perhaps the soldiers are really out there giving supplies to people and rescuing those in danger. Human nature being what it is, it is likely. As I recount the video clips of people looting, most of them seemed to be going for food and essentials. I wonder about the fucktards who were carrying off TV sets and appliances. Where the fuck are they going to plug that shit in or sell it? Way to go. While many people are foraging for supplies, some idiots are struggling through floodwaters carrying some TVs they just looted. I wonder if they'll get so hungry, they'll eat the damned things. Sometimes, human stupidity is surprising.

Throughout all of this, I am sure that there are people up here in Chicago (which owes much of its cultural and social existence to places like New Orleans) who are thinking along the dumb lines of "Damn. No more Mardi Gras." Well, fuck it. What I know of the people of New Orleans is that they savor every last ounce of joy they can get in this life. Unlike the people of Chicago, who tend towards a more neurotic and fragmentary enjoyment of life. You better believe there'll be another Mardi Gras. It's not done just for stuck up and stuck in Northerners. The next Mardi Gras will be a bang up that will send a message loud and clear. I don't see people from New Orleans as the sort that would say, "Okay. Fuck it. We'll just be sad and hang our heads low forever." Otherwise why should I even play my damned trumpet ever again?

I see that some extreme Islamists are gloating over Katrina's destruction of New Orleans, saying it's God's punishment. Yeah? Well, then what about the self-imposed riot on that Iraqi bridge where Muslims killed almost a thousand of their own people? Was that also God's will? Inshallah, motherfuckers. Think about that the next time you gloat over the fact that the US government cut back funding on levee repairs and updates...because they only did it just to bomb and terrorize you. Nice going, idiots.

Would aid have gotten to New Orleans a lot sooner if it's population was less poor and more white? Perhaps I am being cynical again, but it's just a response to what I have seen and heard from second hand sources.

On a personal note: As of tonight (the time of this writing), I only have one person I know in Louisiana left to worry about. The rest have been accounted for either directly or via second hand sources. All is not right in the world. But there is some silver lining on those clouds. I don't think it will be balanced out for a long time. But for all of you hyenas who love to preach disorder and destruction, I bet you are gloating now like the vampires you are. You don't know how lucky you have it.

New Orleans will rise again, probably most of it leveled and rebuilt. I'll get more beads and laugh at the women who show off their boobies. And I will go and play my horn to pay respects to all those saints who didn't make it through this time. We'll see each other again and we'll play till our hearts' content.

We got caught up in the past few years worried about all the sick and twisted shit that human beings can do to one another (in this age of War on (some) Terrorists). We forgot about Nature. And now, when one city has been virtually destroyed and drowned, it wasn't because of some fucktards who like to crash planes into shit...it wasn't some fucktards with a religious agenda (though I am sure many of those are active in claiming this as God's punishment)...it was Nature. The lesson: life is full of enough suffering. Why the fuck do people insist on creating so much more of it?

You can ask yourself if any of the gods exist, why do they let shit like this happen. Or why do they cause this shit. But that is not the function of any god anywhere. And asking the questions like this are futile. Can you give a moment of quiet for those who didn't quite make it, for those who are trying to make it, and to thank your lucky stars that you are comfortable enough to read this right now? Then after that moment, dance your ass off.

Watching the massive hemorrhage of New Orleans is disheartening. But life is sweet with the suffering, rolling with the punches. I am realizing just how lucky some of us really are.

Fuck it. What do I know?

September 1st, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC

Addendum: Morning/Sept. 2
Watching the footage from the Convention Center makes me want to throw bricks through some bank windows. It is four days since Katrina hit, and the fact that food, medicine, or even other help has yet to be sent to the thousands stranded there (some of them dying) is not surprising but still saddening. What? They can send in thousands of soldiers to New Orleans, but they can't seem to be able to truck or fly in necessities to the refugees. I wonder. If the disaster was in Las Vegas and threatened white people, would the humanitarian response be so lack luster?

Every day it seems to get worse.

How many good samaritans will be arrested for looting? It appears that some people are practicing the ancient art of "not waiting for the officials" and are going around to the stores to take supplies to bring back to stranded people.

Then there are people beating and raping others. Those cletii deserve a Darwin award. I wonder if there are any marksmen in the police or the military that will do anything about that? Or are they still focused on defending what's left of commercial property? Wasn't it Wednesday that the entire New Orleans police force was taken off of search and rescue duty in order to go after looters. "Looters" indeed. Yesterday, there were photos circulating which showed blacks and white appropriating goods. The captions of the black people said "looters." The captions of the white people said something like "taking needed supplies."

Even GW was on this morning talking about how the response and relief effort has fumbled. Even if his thick head was able to admit that, you know it must be really and truly bad. The city of the Saints is dying and we truly do not need any more dead saints.

[Rant 125Monolithotripsy]

Rant 125
Monolithotripsy

"That non-occultists are not adept at occult language styles and metaphors does not diminish the value of the metaphor, language style or of the occult. The fact that some do not understand a part of reality that others enjoy, does not make that part of reality any less relevant."
-from the "Chaoist Jihad Conspiracy" (a group of 23C affiliated tracts)

Overt intolerant monotheism, in the forms of Christianity or Islam, may have been debunked by the various scientific fields, but that affects Fundamentalists only to the degree that they now must fight legal battles to get their mythology taught in public schools. The more insidious form of intolerance which was born from monotheism has transplanted itself into the modern secular world in the form of a fanatical materialism which twists the scientific idea that phenomena must be measured and observed in order for us to determine its probability of existing. Many people assume that this means that the materialist paradigm is the be all end all of science (though science says nothing of the sort about the be all end all of anything).

The possibility of the existence of magic offends rational materialists as much as it offends their monotheist cohorts, not because it implies that their paradigm may be faulty, but it implies that they may not have all the rules of the game covered. God-worshippers can get appalled that they have no monopoly on the miracle business. Materialists can get appalled because, though they have rightly exposed the hucksters who pretend to have various "powers," it seems that there may be something to certain phenomena that their paradigm cannot account for. To a monotheist, magic is heresy. To a materialist, magic is still heresy but they would be laughed at for using a word like "heresy" so they have to resort to psychological explanations. The problem with materialists who detract from magical viewpoints is that they have a narrow view about the "material" world which they claim to know.

The magical world view (more interesting than any of the various tricks and tools of the various groups of magical practitioners), states simply that the world is malleable. Reality is bendable. You can take charge of your life and co-create your future along with all the other things that make up who you are. One salient point that is forgotten by many people who just get into the occult is that in the magical world view, there is nothing supernatural. Read that again. It is the most important part of most magical paradigms. Many practitioners of the occult, at least those who actually know a thing or two about it (as opposed to the majority of people you will meet who will claim to), see that we have more potential and some more abilities than we are used to dealing with. So they seek to cultivate certain arts that may enhance perceptions of those things. The magic user thus becomes like a full vision person surrounded by those who are color blind. The color blind people will argue and hem and haw about the absolute insanity of the existence of a difference between green or red (the two colors usually affected). In fact they may even argue that either green or red are fabrications, a false split, made up by deluded people who cannot handle "reality as it is." Why not? They can't see the difference so they naturally conclude that there is no difference. But the magical person is caught in a bind because they can clearly see the difference for themselves, and contrary to the perceptions of many people, they see the "extra" differences and perceive the "extra" differences in a coherent and consistent way which cognitive scientists have tested. It's just that due to the focus of most people, the languages most people speak do not have a vocabulary for any of the "extras." Thus you get a bunch of magical people running around all talking in different ways about phenomena you may not have any clue ever existed. Thus, you also get a high level of bull shit and chicanery because it's not as if there is some standard oversight committee like certain scientists have, now is it?

If you don't want to see something because you think it is impossible than you obviously are not going to see it. And if by chance the phenomena comes into your visual field, you will no doubt explain it by using ideas designed to maintain your current belief-comfort zone. Wouldn't it be better just to not waste any mentality on beliefs at all and just remain open minded, without rushing to seek conclusions about those things which may be uneasy to understand at first?

If you deny that certain magical phenomena exist, I challenge you to explore not the experiences and the long torturous rites (that some ceremonial types insist upon performing). I challenge you to look at magical paradigms which actually say nothing about the existence of god(s) or the existence of other things as well. They usually simply spell out that the world is much more than we can know and see and that part of learning any art is learning how to perceive more phenomena than you are used to habitually perceiving and of learning how to do more things than you are habitually used to doing. Don't simply collapse into your fortress of habitual perceptions, thoughts, and actions and thus insist that those ways, or ways similar to them, are the only correct take on reality.

The magical worldview was responsible for the maintenance of open-mindedness, hidden and despised as that was, throughout centuries of religious dogma and domination. It's child was the development of the sciences which have benefited human beings immensely. It's other child was the realization that we are all "divine" if anything could be said to be, and thus the individual human being has certain inalienable rights. (And that idea is one difference between a true magical practitioner and those hucksters with their guru-complexes, etc.)

The detractors will cite all sorts of idiotic ramble by the fluffy bunnies who read witchcraft and Wicca books and then make all sorts of waves, but those sorts say nothing about the validity of any magical practice. They simply speak to their own incompetence. If you wish to label all magical practitioners in that light, you would simply be committing prejudice. There are fools in every aspect of human activity and philosophy, would you take the same standard of judgment and label all of the other fields of human endeavor as stupid or foolish simply because of those idiots who ramble a lot yet know little about what they speak of?

The magical world view is still vibrant and developing beyond its former reactive and defensive constraints simply because most societies in the West are no longer enthralled to religious dogmas. Who knows where it will go? Look at science and how far it has come in just decades of being free of dogma. It may be that one day, our materialist brethren may develop the means to measure and replicate magical experiments (such as certain physicists; they are actually nutty enough to try and succeed) and the paradigm will then become something else. But that is the ultimate goal of magical practice in and of itself, to become something else. To live in a world that is realized as "something else!" (It's also the name of an Ornette Coleman album I enjoy.) To realize that there are more choices than just "this" or "that." To learn that there are more ways of perceiving the world than any mind could contain- and to try to experience as many of those as possible. And to see the subtleties and nuances that many people glance at from time to time, but quickly forget in their narrow-minded neuroses.

Then again, I could be lying.

Never mind. We know what you want.

August, 30th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
(Under the influence of Ornette Coleman's music.)

[Rant 124The Flip Flop Game]

Rant 124
The Flip Flop Game

"Victory means exit strategy and it's important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is."
-George W. Bush (1999; then Texas Gov. talking about Clinton's war in Bosnia)

"Discordianism isn't about preaching chaos at the expense of order. It is the realization that one cannot exist without the other."
-Reverend Doctor Hexar le Saipe (First Church of the Sparkly Ball)

"When I die, I want to go peacefully in my sleep like my father did, not screaming in terror like his passengers."
-Discordian Saying from the A.D.

Pat Robertson and the President have both given me pause lately. Unlike a lot of people, trained as they are to have ADD by our media, I actually remember certain things people have said years ago and match them against what they say now. Pat Robertson's latest flip flop was easily enough to witness since it was accomplished in a matter of days and widely reported. President Bush's are more hard to track because everyone seemed to have gotten taken in by his revisions of almost everything he has said. But even that effect of being taken in seems to have been wearing thin as of late as people get tired of Iraq and the endless trailer load of excuses that even Fox News can't work together into some half-believable pack of lies.

But we are not here concerned with all of that flip flopping. We are here concerned with some more pernicious flip flopping. Even greater than the American Settler State (and its present day inhabitants) changing its history from one of conquest and righteous dispossession and slaughter to a lighter more happy version which has the millions of Native Americans simply dying off from disease (with the attendant and over worked lie that Native Americans were simply not resistant to the diseases European conquerors brought with them.) It is a flip flop greater than even the Christian WWII flip flop of historical revisionism which says that Christians and their institutions were appalled with Hitler and his exterminations (this light version has Hitler as an atheist or demonic madman inspired by an irrational hatred; Hitler would have found this idea bullshit since he himself was a follower of Martin Luther's ideas) which is strange considering that Christian support of fascism never wavered until it was clear that the allies would win the war. Much of Western Europe suddenly supports this idea, since it clears them of any historical malfeasance, despite the fact that European conquests and pogroms were the norm upon which Hitler based his own ideas. No, there is an even greater flip flop to be wary of in these present times.

It is the flip flop of the very discovery that there is flip flopping going on. In a vast memory hole conspiracy (of Attention Deficit Disorder) designed to get us all to forget the evidence of our sense and believe what we are told or to believe in what is presented to us by "proper" authorities or by "experts" who will deny that anyone they like or support has shit that smells like shit and tell us that the shitty smells we are experiencing are merely a product of our own perceptual distortion. Usually we buy this line of reasoning lock stock and barrel (among some of the other pretty shiny toys that go with it). Thus we are told that Bush's real reason for invading and devastating Iraq was to secure democracy all along even though, if one reads statements (that due to media induced ADD seem ancient) from months back, we can clearly see that Bush's expressed reason was that Saddam Hussein was building "Weapons of Mass Destruction." So instead of Mass Destruction we get mass distraction: A game that has been perfected over the centuries by authorities who seek even more control than their ill gotten gains have produced for them already. (Does anyone remember the old line "Believe in me and you shall not perish"? Nowadays it seems to be modified into "Believe what I say and think as I do, and you shall not all be attacked by fnords." You all know what the latest version of the fnords are: the threat of terrorists.)

Besides foreign policies of the Bush government, there is the other pernicious flip flopping that occurs (while its adherents flip flop it and deny that they are doing so) which blames the makers of things like donuts and fast food for the rampant epidemic of obesity that certain health care professionals are complaining about. Excuse me but why would the fast food makers be responsible for the effects of anyone's choice to eat their food? No one who thinks for themselves (otherwise known as "being in their damned right mind") would assume that fast food or donuts are healthy to eat. But yet today we have rising numbers of people who have flip flopped the blame from themselves (for eating the crap and liking it) to the makers of the crap. What utter idiocy! Excuse me for my lack of sympathy but people who habitually engage in behaviors that they know are harmful to them have no recourse to blame anyone else but their own bobdamned selves for any ill effects. But in this day and age of the almighty flip flop, even suggesting such a thing will get me labeled as an insensitive jerk who just doesn't understand how much corporate powers have brainwashed the people into mindlessly consuming their crap.

WTF? You can rant and whine about the corporations and the leaders but you choose to consume their products and elect them. You can complain about acid rain and asthma but you still drive your damned cars. You can spit and cuss about trees being cut down and about water being irradiated, but you still use electricity and you still use paper. Spare the crap and stop the flip flopping. Otherwise, own up to it at least and realize that some of the reasons for the world we have today is because of some choices we have made. Just because everyone around you may have memory hole disease doesn't mean you need allow yourself to get infected, especially since the immunization and cure is so easily attained by making the choice to start using your mind. If you find wisdom in not pointing the finger too hastily, then please remember that. Because no amount of flip flopping will change a goddamned thing, even if you prefer to use the more politically correct term of "reframing." Yeah. Right. And while you are out there spending your time flip flopping, your leaders will be practicing their craft better than you could and as you collapse into a puddle of congealed misanthropy and dysphoria, THEY will know just what to sell you to patch you back up and make you a model consumer again. Is this what you want?

Never mind. We know what you want.

August 29th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC

Hurricane Katrina P.S. I hope you all out there in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama are okay. Especially Verthaine.

<Under the influence of that state where nicotine reduction is causing much agitation.>

[Rant 123WTF?]

Rant 123
WTF?

"Father Patrick Peyton in the 50s campaigned at encouraging the recital of the Rosary in the home with the famous slogan, "The family that prays together stays together" and "A world at prayer is a world at peace." How in the world can anyone justify such fake sentiments in light of the fact that Christians have prayed for peace ever since Christianity's invention without a single lasting result?"
-Jim Walker (No Beliefs Website; "Christianity in Europe During WWII")

"The truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it, ignorance my deride it, but in the end, there it is."
-Winston Churchill

"I am anarchist because I feel it's better to be fellow travelers than to play the game of leaders and followers."
-What I said this past spring (when asked to explain why I wouldn't cooperate with certain anarchist "leaders" in getting others to fall in line)

<The Discordian Jihad never really died out. It just metastasized beyond the Discordian Society and became known as the monstrosity called the Counter Evangelism Brigade.>

I learned something about chaos today after realizing that my low grade upper respiratory infection (caught sometime earlier this week) had gone away because I smoked five cigarettes in a row. (Not a very smart thing to do in any case.) The medicine was overpowered by the nicotine and the latent caffeine and stood back as the infection was destroyed. Against the advice of every sane person (health-care related or not), my bad habit somehow cured me. My conclusion: I still need to quit smoking. If that's not chaos, what is?

But we are here not concerned with URIs or my accidental remedies. We are here concerned with an even more sickening and virulent plague which masquerades as world peace and manifests itself through various religious dogmas and political ideologies.

Christians, and their Islamic counterparts have the hidden and not-so-hidden agenda of converting the world to their religions, which many of them assure themselves is the way to world peace. But looking at the history of Christianity and of Dar al-Islam, any think human being can deduce that both of those religions are untrustworthy in the cause of a world peace that would respect the humanity of individuals in their own right and not as mere souls to be saved or converted. Their peace, much like the peace of those who fight wars for peace or stability, is the peace of the sword or gun. The believers have the notion that all of those masses of people who do not believe are simply fodder to either be converted or destroyed. Don't believe me. Research this for yourselves. (And if you do find any evidence that could derail this present train of thought, I do want to know about it.) This same attitude has been exhibited by the professional politicians, whether authoritarian, democratic, or revolutionary: The masses are simply potential converts who need to be drawn into the correct ways of seeing the world and then the so-called utopia will come to pass. Uh-huh? You know what that sounds like, don't you? Another pyramid scheme. (In fact the pyramid scheme was borrowed by certain corporate hacks from religious games.)

Believing or thinking that the 'masses' are stupid or useless or need to be 'educated' as to their true desires is a function of authoritarianism, whether it masquerades as a revolutionary movement or ideology of the Left, a Conservative or Liberal movement on the Right, or as religious, 'scientific' or occult theory that masquerades as other noble-sounding causes such as world peace, human welfare, or other things. Every time some part or much of the masses rise up in indignation against some stupid policy or practice, they are counseled by all sorts of media experts and religious leaders and politicians to "remain peaceful." As if the masses are blind and stupid to their own needs and desires. As if the "masses" can't really figure out what their "real" best interests are. This idea is anathema to the survival of democracy anywhere.

When the Founding Fathers of the American Republic (and the untold Mothers who supported their asses) talked about eternal vigilance being the price of freedom, they weren't talking about enemies from foreign countries. They were talking about the enemy from within: The persistent need of government and the elite to try to control and manipulate its citizens. In this context it is up to the citizens themselves to be vigilant against any manifestation of that tendency of government and the elite. In this day and age of terrorism and all that it has become clear to citizens everywhere that our leaders can't protect us but they can get us killed. We need to be unafraid, not because it is the correct patriotic thing to do, but because we are human beings who will not be coerced by any other human beings, ideologies, or religions.

A lot of people who believe in world peace would be horrified to learn that they share some ideas in common with the so-called authoritarian warmongers. The warmongers claim to wage war for peace. The pacifists claim to resist war and practice civil disobedience for the cause of peace. But world peace as a cause has been the immolation of millions of lives. Don't get  me wrong. I am not saying that those truly concerned with the individual liberty and dignity of human beings should give up their struggles. I am saying that as of late, it seems they have been taken in and duped by a cause that has seemed to take on greater importance than the actual human beings many of these pacifists claim to be fighting for.

I remember the "We told you so" cliches being slapped onto the Global Justice activists during each one of the several demonstrations from 1999 and on up after heavy handed security-force responses were blamed on the actions of the anarchist black bloc groups and others. The pacifists turned on their fellow resisters and protestors with a vehemence that would make even Fundamentalist Christians who preach against Wicca blanch. They took control of the discourse of resistance and yet again managed to shove the ideas of the masters and would-be masters down everyone's throats: Non-violence verses violence; as if things could be simply spelled out in such black and white notions. Such a false choice is blatant misunderstanding of resistance to any injustice, and in the anarchist context it shows a disregard of the basic ideal of anarchy: No individual or group has the right to coerce any other individual or group.

If the world is growing more peaceful, as many people say it is, it is not the result of the prayers and the wishful thinking of those pacifists who claim their religious or spiritual movements have contributed. (Especially in light of the Christians' alleged claims of being a force for world peace and justice in light of historical evidence to the contrary.) Every instance of peace on this planet is in direct proportion to that amount of balance or justice that has been achieved. Sometimes that justice was attained through peaceful means, and sometimes by means that many rich and overfed consumers in First World nations wrongly decry as "violent." Peace on this planet is not going to come about by you posting the correct bumper stickers or by wearing the correct t-shirts, or by insisting that your local Starbucks use 100% biodegradable products (though those things might give you the illusion that you can feel good about yourself). Peace will come about when every person on this planet can have the space to breath and hold their head up high without fear of someone or some group trying to coerce them. Without justice there can be no real peace; only a seething repression that masquerades itself as peace.

This is no excuse to be stupidly violent, either. Since the peace-violence game is effectively played by those who wish to manipulate and coerce people, perhaps it is time to use our imaginations a little to come up with more than just these false choices. Perhaps it is time we reclaim the discourse and the ability to create our own choices without relying upon the tired old platitudes and cliches that have proven time and again to fail miserably. Perhaps it is time that the people who think of themselves as being more intelligent or enlightened than the so-called masses guess again. The pernicious lie that assumes that the masses are blind and stupid is the same lie that unites terrorists, governments, and political ideologies, whether conservative, liberal, or radical. Tunnel vision and lack of responsibility guides them all.

Some issues to think about anyway...

August 29th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC

<This rant is published on 100% recycled and recyclable electrons.>

[Rant 122Christian Biblical Values; Opening Shot]

Rant 122
Christian Biblical Values; Opening Shot

"We have the ability to take him out."
-Pat Robertson's recent thought that someone should assassinate Hugo Chavez (president of Venezuela). Example of American Christian Political stupidity

"Dereism: In psychiatry, activity and thought based on fantasy and wishes rather than logic or reason; overexercise of the imagination to the extent of ignoring reality, as seen in daydreaming. SEE autism. (dereistic, adj.)"

<Sound of cans of worms being opened.>

First off, some Christians (and others) reading this may say that this is biased. To those people I say "No crap it's biased!" Bias implies a point of view. At least my bias is obvious. I don't claim to know the "God given truth" or any other such absurdities. Despite what Christians and other fundamentalists like to think, neither do any of them. What I am biased against are half-truths, lies, distortions, and distractions that Fundamentalist Christians promote in an effort to masquerade their religion as one of peace and love, in direct contradiction to historical and institutional evidence. This little written trial run will focus on the often cited "Biblical Values" that many American Christians will cite or refer to as the source of all that is, or was or will be, right in the world if people will only adhere to them.

A brief pointing out of the obvious: I don't believe in the Creator God of the Bible. Thus it stands to reason that I wouldn't believe that any collection of texts would be divinely sanctioned or inspired. So any of you who may wish to argue from that angle should just simply choose more gullible candidates for conversion. (Especially considering that I view anyone who believes that texts are divinely inspired and thus infallible and self-proving as a potentially dangerous person who needs psychiatric attention.)

A good Biblical Value is coercion and/or killing others who do not believe. Many Christians like to say that my interpretation is wrong. But after reading various texts from the Bible, my argument is validated. Luke 19:27 states "But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring them hither, and slay them before me." Luke 14:23 says "And the Lord said unto the servant, go out into the highways and ledges, and compel them to come in, that my house be filled." (This was actually the verse used to justify the Inquisition and earlier horror shows.) I cite just these two passages but there are many more from the new testament and thousands more in the old testament (especially the accounts of the Divinely sanctioned genocide of the Canaanites who had the audacity to be both nonbelievers and inhabitants of land the Hebrews wanted). The Bible has been cited by many Christian authorities to sanction forced conversion and mass murder of non-believers since the fall of the Roman Empire on up to the present day. Simply look at the European Conquests of the Americas and read the accounts left behind by the "settlers" for one source of good Biblical excuses. Another fine Biblical Value, related to the above, is war. The book of Revelation is filled with war. Even words attributed to Jesus Himself talk of bringing war to the world. (Matthew 10:34) Then there is the old testament "A curse on him who is lax in doing the Lord's work! A curse on him who keeps his sword from bloodshed!" (Jeremiah 48:10)


I could go on and list many more citations (and others have done so already) but even if one couldn't find direct scriptural references to divinely sanctioned horrors, the point is this: Throughout history Christians have tended to destroy and oppress whenever they were in control over societies and cultures. The fact that they have some skewed sense of their own place in history as being a superior moral guiding force for peace and love is simply a figment of their own denial. Their own Bible disproves that assertion. (Those who would like more citations as evidence can do web searches or contact me for a lengthy list.) One historical example of a Christian much revered today is Martin Luther. But if you read his Bible based writings, it is clear that the man was nothing more then a sociopath who hated women, wanted to kill all Jewish people, and thought that peasants who rebelled against their "masters" should be exterminated. (although some Christians could argue that he was divinely sanctioned and is therefore beyond any of we mere humans' criticisms, as one sad person tried to argue with me a few months back.)

Even for the real nut job Christians who actually did get to do all the things that Martin Luther only dreamed of doing (such as his number one admirer Adolph Hitler), Christians could argue that those psychos were not "real Christians." If this argument is to hold any merit than it would have to explain why Christianity seems to be infested with so many of these "false" or "not real Christians" throughout history and up to the present day. (Even many historical figures who are held up as exemplars in the Christian world turn out to be violent hate-filled crack pots. (Christopher Columbus, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, St. Paul, several Popes, not to mention the thousands of reverends and priests who justified everything from burning heretics to conquering and enslaving nations. Need I make a more comprehensive list?) Let us not forget that when Constantinople was finally destroyed it was by Christian faithful out on a crusade. The sad thing about that was, not only the city being a last connection to what was left of the classical world, but that it was also inhabited by Christians of a different brand then the crusaders who hacked their way through. (Christians seem to spend a lot of time in history killing each other and all using the Bible to back themselves up in doing so.) What is it about the religion that makes it so? Besides the historical and present day evidence which is good enough for an evaluative socio-psychiatric diagnosis of the whole religion, two things stand out as being causes for Christianity's rampant destructive swath of conquest and intolerance: The first is the infestation of belief itself. The second is the Bible which, as mentioned above, is peppered with all sorts of excuses and precedents for justifying any oppression, coercion, or murder of non-believers. If Christians want to say that they have been following Biblical Values, I would have to wholeheartedly agree with them.

It's when we get retards who want to roll back the last three hundred years and recreate society (well, at least in the USA where we have movements like this) based on Biblical Values...this is when I must wholeheartedly agree that though I can see that Christians have usually been practicing Biblical Values, I can not say that I agree with much of what those values actually mean in practice: Narrow mindedness, bad mythology masquerading as science, historical obfuscation, faith over observable or testable experience, laws that make women into house slaves, laws that make children into property, laws that say it's okay to torture or harass your neighbors if they don't want to convert, laws that say it's okay to kill gays because God hates them too, etc. Need I go on any further?

You can say that my spiel against Biblical Values is merely because I am blind to God's truth, but frankly, if the Jesus many Christians say they worship (the Jesus of peace, love and justice) was here today, He would, to quote the bluegrass song, "kick the holy shit" of many of them. Especially the so-called "Moral Majority" ones right here in the good ole US of A.

August 24th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
(Counter Evangelist, because there's more to it than just heckling street preachers.)

[Rant 121Damned Things]

Rant 121
Damned Things

<Also known as the fifth communiqu?© and declaration of the TSM / 23C Convergence.>

We are the fifth column to every liberation army and to every oppressor army. We take the putrefaction of the bodies murdered by the Global Project and shove it in front of the noses of those who try to deny it. We place roadblocks, both physical and mental, in the path of the relentless march toward the Global Market of masters and consumer-slaves. Every technique is overturned in our quest for tools to cross the cordon sanitaire which has been placed into the minds of the masses, numbed and dazzled as they are by the prospect of prosperity in the face of an eternal pseudo-war on (some) terrorists. We trip up the marchers on the roads of bones and we sweet talk them into insanity with endless meander designed to promote a widening of the cracks in the edifice of Reality as THEY Have Made and Now See It. We were there from the days and nights of the first chaos and we will be there until the days and night of the next. It's not going to stop.

We are at war with religion-as-narcotic, with oppressive states that mask themselves as democratic, with ideas that promote subservience, with people that promote "leadership," with all gods that seek to enslave humanity, with all systems that seek to quantify and control lives, with all forms and substances of this current World (Dis)Order that is advertising itself as the pinnacle of human evolution- even as it destroys the very bases of real human evolutionary survival. This war is protean and expresses itself in as many forms as there are people who are free. We have taken our lives off of the global market and have decided to live in the truth that we are all on borrowed time. The only difference between us and others is that we are learning to realize it.

Every window of denial you try to raise up gets smashed by our bricks and stones which masquerade sometimes as words and sometimes as the real thing. Every time one of us is unmasked, there are ten more to take our sister or brother's place. We are not only struggling for many more voices to be heard, but we are struggling for the type of world in which our voices can be heard by one another without the interference of a system or a government or a market that insists on being the medium and the message. And by all gods known and unknown, we swear eternal enmity to any tyranny over the minds of women, children and men.

We are the ideologically impure; the traitors to both the cause of socialist solidarity and the cause of capitalist triumph. We want our parties to be parties. We want no revolutions without dancing. And we are putting the world and all of its players and wannabe players on notice that our desires are now and forever armed. You can complain and whine about how much we are seeking to eradicate your "way of life," (or your plans for your "way of life") but if doing something for ourselves is such a threat to your "way of life," then it doesn't deserve to survive anyway.

We are coming in from the rain and your nice expensive exotic carpet is going to get ruined. We are the ones who spill the coffee and sangria all over your elegant sofas as we smash up the tables and chairs in your living rooms to make room for dancing. Once the horns and the drums start up the music, you had best join in the rhythms so that you can feel for the first time in your lives what it is like to have good circulation.

We refuse to be put into the position of being martyred for any ideals or for any other sticky trap-like beliefs that have provoked many into the game of being slaughtered or of slaughtering. Enough is enough. And we are holding all of your goats hostage until you wise up. For every autonomous zone you capture and destroy, we will metastasize ten more, just out of your reach. For every freed mind you capture with your words and false wit, we will ensure the birth (or rebirth) of ten more. It doesn't matter whether you call yourselves Muslim or Christian soldiers of God, Revolutionaries, Protectors of Law and Order, Freedom fighters, or any other thing. By your fruits we shall know you. And frankly, up till now, your fruits smell like shit. Consider this your notice: We are taking that shit in any or all manifestations and using it as fertilizer for our gardens of celebration.

We are the Damned Things that will not be categorized and labeled into some easily mass produced marketable spin to suck the dreams of the people into yet another pull towards buying and consuming your other products. And we will always be around until such a time as these dark days of human history have faded into the distant past, only to be recalled as an example of humanity's infection with the viral memes of stupidity. We are the non-joiners. The outsiders. The ones who need no other sense of belonging than to ourselves. And we will wear as many different masks as we wish to in order to get all we can from this life. It is time to start seeing the fnords for what they are. You can stand with us, against us, or maybe, but you will dance with us regardless. We know what you want.

August 21st, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC

Rant 120
Tunnels and Bridges

"The lazy and the stupid are always quick to denounce violence when it threatens their stranglehold on comforts. If people keep ignoring and repressing the faceless ones who are struggling against oblivion, of course the faceless ones will eventually use violent methods to remind other people that they are still alive and struggling. Do the new Masters of the Universe- the Global Marketeers, the transnationals, the WTO, and the governments that either back them or are enthralled to them- think they can slip their chains around human beings without so much as a peep? Just wait. Better yet, don't wait. Support your sisters and brothers in their quest to remain in existence."
-Soror Nyx (in a private correspondence that thoroughly wrecked my recent mental tendencies)

"There can be no peace without justice first."
-EZLN saying

I have recently become infected with an insidious idea that seems to say that all violence is wrong. (As evidenced in several previous rants.) But I must be clear and bring my attitude (recently corrected a bit with a dose of reality) to the fore: It is not that violence, especially the violence of those who are in resistance and who are struggling against oblivion, is wrong. It's just that I live in a country where it appears that the socio-political processes are such that violence is counter-productive. It infuriates the masters of society that there are hordes of people who are up in arms, literally and figuratively, all around the world. As the Global Project metastasizes, it seems that resistance to it has proven to be just as non-local. From the small groups of anarchists and anarchist sympathizers to the larger groups of labor unions and various ethnicities that have been nearly ground up in the so-called "Free Market," the past few years have been uncomfortable on the masters and their free-lance terrorist counterparts. (Both of whom have tried to reclaim the world stage and the media spotlight-and their efforts have succeeded in many cases.) Because the masters get infuriated and have much armed force to back up their will, people who are sick of being pushed around and slapped have every right to arm themselves and ensure that they will no longer be pushed around with impunity.

While you were away, distracted and worried about the Iraq war, or the Islamic terrorists, the contracts that are going to limit your future options and the quality of your lives have been silently snuck on through faster than ever before. (Where was your chance to vote on those, huh?) There is the rapidly expanding growth and gain in power of an all-encompassing economic system that will continue to strip away your rights to even your own freely and naturally developed genetic material. And as you run from leader to leader, trying to vote for the good guy who will finally make all right in your world, you have been hoodwinked by the shill of the war on (some) terrorists and the bloodbath of Iraq. Meanwhile farmers and indigenous people and workers and other people loose more and more ability to choose their own destinies.

As hard as it may seem to some people in comfortable Western European nations, people who are threatened with oblivion, slavery, and voicelessness will use "violence" to ensure a proper balance can be achieved. Despite what all the ideologues and brown-nosers of the Bush government would have you believe about violence (in the supposed world of the War on (some) Terrorists), for many people it becomes a way out. Despite the fact that religious fundamentalists who like to blow up innocent people or who like to bomb and invade other countries without even a moral pretext have hijacked the global media spotlight, the struggle between the Globalizers and those who reject being globalized is the major struggle of our times. If this struggle is lost, you better get used to always being told what to do, how to do it, and who to do it with. Despite the fact that I prefer other less violent methods to contribute to change, I am now holding my tongue on those who use more violent tactics. And besides the whole violent/non-violent argument is really a semantic trap foisted upon us by those who still wish to control us.

You can say that it is useless to struggle or to rage or to do anything against the so-called and proverbial "machine," but what right have you to get so down and defeatist about that? In many cases, overt armed struggle or resistance can be pretty stupid, but in other cases it is the tactically superior method. Can you live with the implications of that? In my railing and ranting about seeking more intelligent means to free yourselves, or whoever you deem needs or wants freedom, I was merely trying to point out that it is best to look at all of the options, from the personal efforts you can make to the more social or political. (Or at least I was trying to say that. The rant complex and myself have been at odds, leading to the mixing of certain signals and messages lately.) Most of you reading this can thank your lucky stars that you are not forced to use violence to exist or to press for your right to freedom. Who knows about the future, though? The point is to be flexible and to try being nonjudgmental when you encounter others who may be using methods you don't, at first, understand.

The resistance to slavery links us all from many walks of life and from many occupations into a sort of spontaneous world-wide counter slap in the faces of the masters of World "Trade" and those who would be masters. The fight against being made into faceless automatons is something that is catching on, despite the odds and the dangers. We are linked by the tunnels and the bridges and the cracks in the edifice of the "Well Ordered Market" and those governments who seek to further the aims of the slave drivers and the masters. (Perhaps the anarchist contention that the State can only be an instrument of the masters is very well true, considering how the USA is even destroying any shred of the idea of "social contract.") But this is clear and easily enough seen. The chains and the manipulations that are used which you cannot normally see are the real glue that binds you to thralldom. (The ideas, stories, words, religions, entertainment, unofficially sanctioned forms of rebellion, etc. You can probably list so many more.)

What the hell does all or any of this have to do with Discordianism? Not a damned thing, unless you want it to. But for me it does have much to do with it...thus my continued meander about it. I may not ever like violence in and of itself for whatever reason, but I have come to the place in life where I know that it is just my own opinion. I remember back before all of this, when I pointed out in the early nineties that; One: The Mayans of Southern Mexico would revolt using both traditional violent methods and many more methods never before tried; and Two: that there would be massive protests and resistance directed against the Global Marketeers themselves...I was told that I was unrealistic and had no grasp on reality. Capitalism had won against any and all progressive struggles, I was told. Anyone who wanted a better life would have to get with the program, I was also told. When January 1st, 1994 rolled along and the Zapatistas became famous, some of the idiots that argued against me came asking me how I knew. "The writing was on the wall," I said. When the Battle of Seattle rudely interrupted the American media on November 30th, 1999, again some idiots asked me how I knew it was going to happen. "The writing was on the wall,"  I kept saying. But this time, I was one of the people writing on the walls.

I'll keep writing on the walls, and I'll keep trying to clear my head to get a better picture of the things I have no direct experience with. And that's that. To speak for some of us (or at least those that like what I say sometimes), we are sick and tired of the rats and those who live off of others' sweat and blood. We are sick and tired of the mindless lies that are being peddled as measures to have a fulfilled and better life, even as those lies destroy any means of gaining such a life. If we are forced out, then to the sewers and the walls we will go, cracking through the floorboards and the drywall. Gnawing away at the ignorance that is the mortar of this metastasizing Global World Border- I mean- Order. If the masters want to keep trying to force us to choose their products and their lifestyles, we will still make our own damned choices and options. No matter how infuriated THEY may get when we walk with our heads held high, we will still practice the art of validating our own damned existence. All of us who walk with our heads held high are linked inextricably, whether we even like some of the others or not. Sometimes it's good to remember that.

<Since the truce between myself and the rant machine has allowed some fresh air into the mix, the tone of future rants may be more resistant. Who can say?>

August 20th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC, Sin Rostro Otra Vez
(Under the influence of the Thinking and Zap-Symp ideas.)

"Este no va a terminar."

[Rant 119Twilight State]

Rant 119
Twilight State

"The alternative to being is reacting, and reacting interrupts being and annihilates."
-D.W. Winnicott

Many of you have wondered about my recent "softening" when it comes to speaking or writing about "society." Most of you could probably care less about it. But for the sake of this paragraph, I will spell out possible reasons for both the dissipation of what might have been a hard line attitude and for giving up participation in black bloc activities: Discordianism; years of meditation practices; esoteric exploration and meander (the occult world is full of so much bullshit that it wore me out); my increase of age; arguments with Chicago anarchists who seemed to think that not washing their own bodies and stealing food from supermarkets constituted "fighting the man"; and the study of medical terminology, pathology, and anatomy that will be necessary to master before getting my next job; the study of cognitive behavior and Gestalt therapies so I can get into a Ph.D. program; the fact that cigarettes cost too much and I am in the process of quitting; and the major reason: the fact that the hard line anarchist mindset was merely one reality tunnel out of many that I enjoy exploring. Wah wah wah! Cry me up a river. My old socialist comrades would probably say that I am becoming lazy and inactive, letting my personal life interfere with the "cause" or whatever. But who cares about all of that? Besides, there are others who are better able to struggle and break shit and do all those little things that annoy the police so much. There is a new generation of young people who can run faster than the cops anyway. It's good to retire from all of it.

Don't get me wrong. I am not flouncing from the "political" (heh, sure) activities, my approach is changing. (Or at least that's what I tell myself.) I have finally learned the hard lesson that sacrifices need to be let go of. Life is too valuable to lock it up into some narrow cause or some group of related narrow causes and ideas. It was Discordianism and the practice of Buddhism that cracked the door open for me and got me to see and feel fresh air. The atheist historical materialist left-anarchist self is worried that I have cracked apart under the pressure of wanting comfort for once. The esoteric magical ritual practitioner self is happy and thinks it can use this period in my life to take more control. The theistic Eris-worshipping self doesn't give a damn about the whole mental circus. The Neo-Pagan devoted self is happy that I have at least learned something from all that witchcraft training years ago. The right-anarchist free marketeer self is happy because I seem to be finally taking its advice seriously (I can tell because this self has stopped nagging me so much). The Irish Gaelic-speaking Celtic resistance self doesn't much get into these internal squabbles, worried as it is about West Belfast and the price of beer. The old shamanic self, imprinted on my nervous system back when I was too young to know what the hell I had gotten into, is simply watching from the sidelines, laughing at the foolishness. The trumpet playing jazz/ska loving self thinks it is going to come out on top anyway and was never really worried. The Buddha mind seeking part of my self is busy trying to convince all of the rest of me that the whole circus is in fact really the Buddha mind. Together, through all of this meander, the part of myself that usually likes to claim itself as "I" doesn't much give a care. It's just that the newer part of me, the rant machine complex has decided to revolt and spill the beans. I tried to say that no one could really give a shit. But try telling that to a self-focused mental defense mechanism that has hijacked my written skills. I have a plan to regain control of that beast. It involves reciting the Diamond Sutra over and o----

<Sounds of struggle.>

We are all the assimilated. Resistance is fertile. There will be no televising of the things that matter to you, unless you have been properly trained to accept immaterial things as material. Take that silly putty you call your ego and mold it to whatever you wish it to be and then get up and go out there and make some damned noise, for Bobsake! We are the damned and we are coming to your homes, your minds, your refrigerators and even your hidden collections of porn.

<Sounds of more struggle.>

Who the fuck is James Brown?

<Muffled noises.>

You can try to hold it back behind your walls of frustration and fear, but the walls are being dynamited. The fabric of reality is being torn and recombined into new patterns. We are tired of being billed for the messes you have created. We are the Palestinians of Israel, the Irish of Belfast, the Witches of Christendom, the Scientists of Dar al-Islam, the Turks of Greece, the Chechens of Russia, the anarchists of Civilization everywhere, the Damned Things that will not be forced to fit into your boxes and pigeon holes. And we are here for the payback. We are putting a stop to your practice of writing checks which you cannot cash yourselves, you filthy fraudulent liars!  We are sick and tired of you using our lives as collateral for your global pretensions. For the crimes of putting your fat rats into our lives to feed off of our blood, sweat, and energies, we announce that we have become the rats in your walls and we are gnawing it all away. You can cling to your walls and collapse with them, or you can join in the feeding frenzy of freedom. We may or may not win, but there will be much fun passed around at this banquet. Are you ready?

There will be no compromises, except to temporarily rest before we further our march on the road. The squirrels will gnaw on the bones of the opposition. We have stopped trying to look for something and have decided to start creating that which we want. You will be illuminated for standing in the way. The fucking around is officially over and the fucking off has started. (Take the appropriate precautions from STDs and *ETDs, please.)

<More noises.>

WTF, mate? Never mind. Nothing to see here, people. Move along now. And stop picking your damned noses in public! How many times do I have to say that?

August 18th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
(Allegedly. Or some parts of him anyway.)

*EDT: Emotionally Transmitted Disease/Disorder

[Rant 117Immanentize the Eschaton]

Rant 117
Immanentize the Eschaton

"Pouring Down the Fires of Life On the Earth"

"Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!"
-Discordian Saying

Perhaps the metastasizing of Islamic terrorist cells has given you pause to think about what the hell might be really going on in today's world. Perhaps the fact that societies all over the face of the Earth are being ruled by ignorant crackpots has made you wonder about the various groups of rude and loud self-proclaimed liberators and activists who dedicate their lives to overthrowing the crackpots for a better share of their own stupidity has given you pause to reflect upon the world in which we live. Perhaps not.

You can laugh or give yourself an assumed air of superiority when faced with people like the Tibetans who have been invaded and nearly destroyed by an enemy that seeks to be the reigning stupidity on this Earth. The fact that they gave up fighting violently in the early days of the invasion and now refuse military methods of regaining their country has opened them up to a lot of criticism. But have you ever paused to think that maybe the Tibetans have simply decided to remain sentient and intelligent, no matter the cost. It's a tall order to do as the Tibetans have done: Remain humanely intelligent in the face of unrelenting and violent stupidity. Most of us when faced with the same would crumble over in a puddle of blaming the no-good shits or we would choose the reactive slavery of doing exactly what our opponents have done to us, or something equally stupid.

A stupid act to counter a stupid act just increases stupidity. Perhaps the Tibetans have been smart enough to see through this game and are refusing to play, no matter the cost, because doing so would lessen both their intelligence and their ability to choose. How many of you, when faced with even a little discomfort could say you have done the same thing: Remained intelligent and human in the face of whatever version of the "machine" you feel is dragging at your heels?

In all of the world's problems and violence and power and inequalities and threats and anxieties and fears and hatreds, have you become convinced that there is not a damned thing you can do? "Heaven on Earth is impossible," THEY say as THEY work in the open and behind the scenes to make a heaven for the few and a misery for the rest. And you may discover that you have bought this lie wholesale. Or maybe you have convinced yourself that if you play along at the choices stupidity (DUMB) has given you- cooperating or rebelling, which are merely the two sides of the same movement against intelligence- that you will be able to find for yourself and others some means of remaining comfortable, even as millions more will suffer.

The Eschaton is being immanentized, people. The question is: Are we going to keep letting THEM do it, or are we going to do it for ourselves and for every other person that would like to breathe some fresh air with their head held high for once? It is not written in stone. The Eschaton merely means heaven on Earth: The end of the bullshit that has been going on for the past few thousand years. THEY want to make sure THEY will be able to control this movement so that new forms of THEIR bullshit can be created. THEY care little to nothing about any of the millions of people who THEY have to enslave or destroy to achieve THEIR version of heaven on Earth: Endless servitude for a majority who will be so browbeaten that they won't even have a right to recognize their own faces. And endless wealth and enjoyment for THEM. THEY will use anything THEY can to achieve this. Whether terrorism, or wars on terrorism. Whether drugs, or wars on (some) drugs. Whether Christianity, or Islam. Whether Capitalism, or some new form of State-Capitalism. Whether a stable economy that keeps people numb and entertained, or a volatile economy of endless crisis and recessions. Whether through superstition, or through certain forms of science. It doesn't matter what it is to THEM, it can be used as a tool to not only get the control THEY claim to have,  but also to convince you that such control is necessary and natural.  

No one seems to want to tell you, or no one seems to want to admit to themselves, that we are each responsible for immanentizing the Eschaton. We are the Eschaton, the heaven on Earth, the ones who have a choice or a say in how we feel and behave. Every time you choose intelligence in the face of stupidity, you are taking away just a little bit more of THEIR means of control, or at least of direction. Every time you realize that joy is yours by right of simply choosing to feel joyful, you are giving yourself more options than THEY would have you see. Obviously, I agree with the Tibetan Buddhist observation that when one becomes free enough to be able to choose joy, one is becoming liberated. You may disagree with the way that it is expressed, but at least look at it for a moment. If we are intelligent, doesn't that mean we are looking for ways of being fulfilled and joyful from the infinitely more possible approach of not being stupid enough to make others suffer for it?

You can say that this is all a bunch of mystical hogwash, but it's actually psychological hogwash and if you are ready to clean the bullshit from your minds, you may find this wash to be of benefit. Or you may find a better way of expressing it. I am not saying we should blind ourselves in an assumed posture of ecstatic love-joy new age all is right sentiment. I am saying that choosing intelligence goes hand in hand with joy. The two cannot exist separately. Look around at the world and its inhabitants (including yourself, or selves) and see if this is true for you, not true, or maybe. You can obviously point to all sorts of individuals who are doing stupid things to themselves or to others (at some point the difference gets blurred) that seem joyful. But are they really joyful, or is it an act because they think they have to put on that show to prove how much better they are than others around them? Something to think about.

If you really want to, you can immanentize your own damned Eschaton, and the forces of DUMB can't do crap to control you once that process starts to happen. You can use any of the techniques that intelligent and sentient beings have developed or you can develop some of your own. But if you should seek the help of a mentor or friends, remember that real mentors seek no acolytes or followers and real friends will seek to share their own joy with you. And as always, don't let THEM (you know who THEY are by now) immanentize the Eschaton...at least until we can do it first.

August 15th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
(Under the influence of reading Damned Things.)