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Shrapnel: My thoughts.

Started by LMNO, June 24, 2008, 05:50:16 PM

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Adios

Quote from: Cain on June 26, 2008, 01:05:08 PM
The Origins of the Poop-flinging Primate.

Pud Pounding Primates '08.

Triple Zero

Quote from: Verbatim on June 24, 2008, 11:52:13 PM
Here's my lame attempt at this:

QuoteHere's my lame attempt at this:

You may find yourself wondering what this is all about. Well, in the late 1950's, a couple of Americans, notably Kerry Thornley and Gergory Hill (under the names Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst and Malaclypse the Younger, respectively), put together a little book called Principia Discordia. The two were obviously very stoned when they wrote it, but they somehow managed to get a few brilliant ideas into it, along with quite a few quaint jokes.

Fifty years later, some of us still find these jokes funny, but most of us consider the underlying ideas in the Principia as relevant as ever.

When I say "we" or "us", I mean the ladies and gentlemen that frequent PrincipiaDiscordia.com. "We" are more a loose association of "I"s than a "we" as such (and there is very little we can agree on), but for the sake of clarity let's just make believe for a bit.

So at some point in 2006 - before yours truly came along, as a matter of fact - some of "us" started talking about where the PD stands in the present Robot Future. The Principia said a lot of things - even contradictory things - and definitely elicited a chuckle, back in the day. The Principia says Nonsense is Salvation, and that we should not take ourselves so seriously.

But here in the Future, it looks like people all over the world are determined to take themselves way too seriously.  Actually, it seems many, many people these days are dead serious - and dead isn't necessarily a good thing. So obviously, Thornley and Hill's message still has a place, here in the Future.

However, my esteemed colleagues wondered, is the Principia Discordia really still the ideal way to deliver this message?

This question lead to a flurry, nay, a long succession of new ideas on PD.com. "We" started pumping out new pieces of writing, afflicted as we are with an irresistable urge to put words together, forming sentences, delivering thoughts to the Series of Tubes that is the Interwebs. In these new texts, we tried to take what we undertood to be the old Joshua Norton Cabal's greatest ideas, and make these our own. Rather than go on about the Law of Fives and our pineal glands*, we began to take what seemed important and relevant to us, and put for new concepts around it.

Several new concepts developed and emerged from these discussions. There was even a plan to produce a series of pamphlets, each portraying the issue from a different angle. One such pamphlet, Black Iron Prison, was not only completed but has seen one revision since. Plans are underway for a third edition. Other concepts were a mystical/theological look at the issue, and a modern horror-mirth based pamphlet called Lollercaust (LOL-ercaust, get it?).

So yeah, "we" don't necessarily ramble about the AMAZING NUMBER 23 or even talk all that much about Goddess. But if you think PD.com has no HA-HA left in it, look again.


*Which, science has now learned, produces Melatonin, a hormone that may modulate wake/sleep patterns.

I don't think the ending was any good, nor the beggining or the middle, but I was trying to keep the thing general enough so it's not only good for BiP v3.2. If you guys think it's any good (I do not trust my own judgement) I think it can be tweaked and taylored for use in different ways. Also, it could theoretically use a little more humor, both towards Hill/Thornley and towards itself.
I'm tired. And I have six more hours of work to go. :'(

(edited for stupid mistakes. work is so distracting.)

:mittens:

but i can't figure out, who wrote this? Silly or Verb?

anyway, this "lame attempt" sounds to me like a perfect introduction for the main index page on the principiadiscordia.com site. (which i'm still working on, but RL business is keeping it a bit on the backburner)

right?

also

"On the Origin of Feces by means of [natural] [selection]" (too lazy to fill in punny words here)
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

Bebek Sincap Ratatosk

Quote from: triple zero on June 26, 2008, 06:09:28 PM
anyway, this "lame attempt" sounds to me like a perfect introduction for the main index page on the principiadiscordia.com site. (which i'm still working on, but RL business is keeping it a bit on the backburner)


I agree 1"000"% ;-)
- I don't see race. I just see cars going around in a circle.

"Back in my day, crazy meant something. Now everyone is crazy" - Charlie Manson

Verbal Mike

That was my own lame attempt (just used the quote tags to separate it from the commentary). And I am ridiculously flattered.
Unless stated otherwise, feel free to copy or reproduce any text I post anywhere and any way you like. I will never throw a hissy-fit over it, promise.

Payne

Just wrote this for Crams latest pamphlet, but I like it, so I'm posting it here too.




Once upon a time, a little baby was born. There is nothing remarkable about this- I'm told it happens every day- and there was nothing remarkable about this baby, except that it was you, or me, or them.

This baby was pristine, a sponge for information and experience. Little though it was, it was growing rapidly, learning every thing it could as fast as it could. It had to, you see, because it's a big bad old world out there.

Everything it learned chipped a little bit of its personality away, or added a bit to it, every packet of information, every experience. Much like that saying about sculptors "freeing the statue" from the crude stone its encased in. Except that the sculptor is blind, like that woman in the Lionel Richie video (hah! "Hello, is it me you're looking for?!" except she's blind...), but I digress.

The tools that are used to "sculpt" this baby into the badass human that will stride the earth on two hind legs, using it's opposable thumbs like it just doesn't care, is what I call shrapnel.

It's when you are told about God, it's when you fall in love for the first time, it's when you realise, as a baby, that bawling your head off will have your mother come running.

It's the "ripples" of things that happened long ago, still affecting us today. The shrapnel thrown out by history, causing us to throw out our own shrapnel into the future. It blows your mind, it really does.

Shrapnel is necessary, and vital, to who we are, to what we do. And for Discordians, it can be a tool. It's another medium for spreading a little bit of chaos. It's not "good" or "bad", though you may want to assess which bits of it you have sticking in you that aren't really needed. Unwatched, that shit can fuck you up.

In conclusion, Shrapnel is an idea that has yet to find its time. In the right hands, it can be a kick ass suit of armour AND a big-fuck-off flamethrower. For me, being aware of it is enough until some wiser heads can show us how it works.

Okay, I'm done preaching at you for now, I'm back off to my ivory tower, where I'll probably look for that Lionel Richie video and laugh about it all night.

The Good Reverend Roger

" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

LMNO

Ah, good times, when I was able to hold a coherent thought in my brain and extrapolate attempted bursts of wisdom.

Verbal Mike

Huh, totally forgot about this. I think "BIP 3.2" was the new edition I was trying to put together for some reason, which I appear to have completely forgotten about at some point.

And it's amusing, reading my "lame attempt", to notice that even the little bit of humor about the Internet being a Series of Tubes now seems quaint and irrelevant... Only four years have gone by. After half a century, no wonder the Pricipia is so full of ex-funny.
Unless stated otherwise, feel free to copy or reproduce any text I post anywhere and any way you like. I will never throw a hissy-fit over it, promise.