Topics

436

Think for Yourself, Schmuck! / The Black Iron Prison - v2

« on: July 18, 2007, 05:00:00 pm »

The Black Iron Prison
Professor Cramulus edit

presented in PDF format, .doc available

comments, meme bombs, additions, art, edits, et cetera
all appreciated

437

Or Kill Me / PROFESSOR'S LOG

« on: July 16, 2007, 11:45:15 pm »

PROFESSOR'S LOG
APPLE DATE Confusion 51, Year of Our Lady of Discord 3173

It's a great time to be a Discordian on the internet.

I just realized that yesterday was Confuflux. It's the height of Confusion, right before the dawn of Bureaucracy. So it's a great time for Discordians, a point of balance between order and disorder.

and it's a great time to be a Discordian in general.

This weekend the Yonkers contingent met up with some of the Boston cabal. Members of the Wrath of MSPaint Cabal met face to face for the first time. That One Guy, who I didn't really know that well prior, ended up being a super-cool dude. Suu is just as hot and awesome as I had hoped. Richter is the MAN and his swote has no bounds. Everybody had a fricking blast and I can't wait to road trip up there and hang out with them again.

The Black Iron Prison forum has a fresh coat of paint and is buzzing with very exciting activity. There are some great new ideas over there - the Shrapnel Project, which now has a home on the BIP wiki. We've also seen some very large steps in revising the Black Iron Prison pamphlet. This is how diamonds form.

And Ratatosk you mischievous squirrel bastard, that passage - the beginning of the Occultus Forma Discordia - is excellent. Had I read that back before I found this board (when I was very enamored by those pinealist memes) I would have dove in here head first. I think that it's a great leap in bridging the gap between your Discordians and your Erisians. Can't wait to see how this develops.

And Cain, one of our favorite fearless leaders (perish the thought!) it looks like you've been through a lot and rather than it weighing you down, you've been charged by it. Cain's willingness to put human drama aside and try to form a bridge with EB&G feels like a breath of fresh air.

I'm excited
invigorated
jazzed
and over-hyped
to ask And Now What?

Rock on                     
my sons and daughters
                 go rock on
/                           

438

Think for Yourself, Schmuck! / Forward Progress

« on: July 16, 2007, 03:19:41 pm »

split from the From a BIP reader thread.

Cramulus' Suggestions for forward progress


1. identify the specific sections of the BIP which are considered too dark or too preachy (the two most common complaints about it).
2. modify them on the wiki.
3. take all this stuff and put it in a new PDF-book. In this book the BIP metaphor is mixed in with humorous stuff such as meme bombs, Discordians in History, the Parable of the Gong, a lot of Vex's stuff, and other more "high content / high humor" passages. Add art ranging from crazy cutups to WOMP nonsense to actual art from Fred, Syn, Vex, Silly, and the numerous other skilled artists on this board.


5. profit


Which specific sections of the BIP do you think are too dark or too preachy?

Provide links to the wiki. (hm, seems to be down at the moment)

439

Literate Chaotic / Nonbiological Thinking

« on: June 28, 2007, 03:40:35 pm »

some interesting stuff to chew on... I know it's long, but I found it really cool



Tinker Toy Brains
CLIFF PICKOVER
Computer scientist, IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center; Author, Calculus and Pizza

If we believe that consciousness is the result of patterns of neurons in the brain, our thoughts, emotions, and memories could be replicated in moving assemblies of Tinkertoys. The Tinkertoy minds would have to be very big to represent the complexity of our minds, but it nevertheless could be done, in the same way people have made computers out of 10,000 Tinkertoys. In principle, our minds could be hypostatized in patterns of twigs, in the movements of leaves, or in the flocking of birds. The philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz liked to imagine a machine capable of conscious experiences and perceptions. He said that even if this machine were as big as a mill and we could explore inside, we would find "nothing but pieces which push one against the other and never anything to account for a perception."

If our thoughts and consciousness do not depend on the actual substances in our brains but rather on the structures, patterns, and relationships between parts, then Tinkertoy minds could think. If you could make a copy of your brain with the same structure but using different materials, the copy would think it was you. This seemingly materialistic approach to mind does not diminish the hope of an afterlife, of transcendence, of communion with entities from parallel universes, or even of God. Even Tinkertoy minds can dream, seek salvation and bliss—and pray.



Half-Man, Half-Machine: The Mind of the Future
source: http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_35/b3644022.htm

Raymond C. Kurzweil is the author of The Age of Intelligent Machines, published in 1990, and The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, published this year. He is the founder and chairman of Kurzweil Technologies in Wellesley Hills, Mass., as well as five other companies that still bear his name or are still operating under new ownership. He spoke with Business Week Senior Writer Otis Port about the separate and joint futures of human and artificial intelligence.

Q: Do you have any doubts that a superior intelligence will emerge in the next few decades?
A: No. It's inevitable. For example, nanotubes would allow computing at the molecular level. A one-inch cube of nanotube circuitry would be about 1 billion times more powerful than the human brain, in terms of computing capacity. That raw computing capacity is a necessary but not sufficient condition to achieve human-level intelligence in a machine.

We also need the organization and the software to organize those resources. There are a number of scenarios for achieving that. The most compelling is reverse-engineering the human brain. We're already well down that path, with techniques like MRI. But we'll do better because the speed and resolution -- the bandwidth -- with which we can scan the brain are also accelerating exponentially.

One means of scanning the brain would be to send small scanners in the form of nanobots into the blood stream. Millions of them would go through every capillary of the brain. We already have electronic means for scanning neurons and neurotransmitter concentrations that are nearby, and within 30 years we'll have these little nanobots that can communicate with each other wirelessly. They would create an enormous database with every neuron, every synoptic connection, every neurotransmitter concentration -- a precise map of the human brain.

So we'll have the templates for human intelligence, and by then we'll have the hardware that can run these processes. So we can reinstate that information in a neural computer.

Once we can embody human thought processes in a nonbiological medium, it will necessarily soar past human intelligence -- for several reasons. First, machines can share their knowledge electronically. With humans, you spend years teaching language to each child. [But] once any one machine has mastered something, it can share that knowledge instantly with millions of other machines over the global wireless Web, which we'll have by then. So a machine can become expert at any number of disciplines.

Secondly, machines are far faster. Electronic circuits are 10 million times faster than neural connections, and machine memories can be far larger and much more accurate. However, machines do not yet have the depth of pattern recognition or the subtlety of human intelligence. They can't deal with emotions and humor and other subtle qualities of human intelligence.

Once their complexity matches that of humans and they are able to master the skills at which humans now excel, and those abilities are combined with the ways in which machines are already superior -- that will be a very formidable combination. It'll get to the point where the next generation of technology can only be designed by the machines themselves.

Finally, while the complexity of the biological computational circuitry in humans is essentially fixed, the density of machine circuitry will continue to grow exponentially. By 2030, a $1,000 computer system will have the power of 1,000 human brains; by 2050, 1 billion human brains.

Q: Won't we end up feeling like pets?
A: Those same nanobots that can scan the human brain will also provide a type of neural implant to extend human intelligence -- expand your memory and improve your pattern-recognition capabilities. Ultimately they will augment human intelligence quite profoundly as we go through the 21st century.

We are doing this today, after a fashion. We now have neural implants for Parkinson's disease patients that actually reprogram their neural cells. The implants literally turn off the symptoms of Parkinson's as soon as you throw a switch. It's very dramatic. These patients are wheeled in, their bodies frozen. Then a switch is thrown to activate the neural implants, and the patients suddenly come alive -- their symptoms are suppressed by the implant.

With microscopic nanobots, we'll be able to send millions or billions [of them] into your brain. They would take up key positions inside our brains and detect what's going on in our brains. They would be communicating with each other, via a wireless local-area network, which would be linked to the wireless Web and intelligent machines, and they could cause particular neurons to fire, or suppress them.

This will enable us to artificially boost human intelligence dramatically. Ultimately, the majority of thinking will be done in the nonbiological parts of our brains.

Q: If nanobots are sitting inside our heads and controlling the brain, how will we know they're not fooling us with false signals?
A: Well, actually, another thing we could do with this would be virtual reality. If we had nanobots take up positions by every nerve fiber that comes from all of our five senses, they could either sit there and do nothing, in which case you'd perceive the world normally -- or they could shut off the nerve impulses coming from our real senses and replace them with simulated nerve impulses representing what you would perceive if you were in the virtual environment.

Q: So we wouldn't be able to tell the difference at all between the real world and a simulated world?
A: Right. It would be as if you were really in that virtual environment. If you decided to walk, the nanobots would intercept the signals to your real legs and send back all the sensory signals of walking -- from the changing tactile pressure on your feet to the air moving across your hands as you swing your arms. It would be just as high-resolution and just as compelling as real reality. You could actually go there and meet other real people. So you and I, instead of being on the telephone, could be meeting on a Mozambique game preserve, and we'd both feel the warm breeze on our faces and hear the animal sounds in the background.

Eventually, anything you can do in real reality -- business meetings, social events, sex, sports -- could be done in virtual reality. As the technology gets perfected, we'll be spending more and more time in virtual reality, because it'll be more and more compelling. Going to Web sites will mean going to a virtual reality environment. Some will emulate real environments, so you'll visit the Web to go skiing in the Alps or to take a walk on a beach in Tahiti. Others will be fantastic environments that don't exist, or couldn't exist, in the real world.

Q: Let's go back to machines that design new machines. Doesn't that open the potential for them to evolve a nonhuman intelligence -- utterly different ways of thinking?
A: Sure. Once we have intelligent systems in a nonbiological medium, they're going to have their own ideas, their own agendas. They'll evolve off in completely unpredictable directions. Instead of being derived only from human civilization, new concepts will also be derived from their electronic civilization. But I see this as part of evolution -- a continuation of the natural progression.

Q: But couldn't it pose a threat to the human race?
A: I don't see an invasion of alien machines coming over the horizon. They'll be emerging from within our human-machine civilization. We're already quite intimate with our technology. If all the computers stopped today, essentially everything would grind to halt. That was not true just 30 years ago. At that point only a few scientists and government bureaucrats would have been frustrated by the delay in getting printouts from their punch-card machines.

Today we've become highly dependent on computer intelligence. It's already embedded in our decision-making software much more than most people realize. That's going to continue to accelerate.

Next, we're going to be putting these machines into our bodies and into our brains. So it's not going to be humans on one side and machines on the other. There's not going to be a clear distinction between humans and machines. We'll be using nanobots to expand human intelligence, and over time, the bulk of our thinking will be done in the nonbiological parts of our brains, because that part of our brain will continue to grow as technology advances. But the biological part is not growing.

Q: There won't be a clear distinction between us and them?
A: No. Ultimately, you're going to have nonbiological entities that are exact copies of biological brains. They will claim to be human, because they will have all the memories of the original brain. So there won't be a clear distinction between what's human and what's not.

But remember, this will be emerging gradually from within our own civilization. It's the next phase of our own evolution. It's only a threat if you believe things should always stay the same as they are today.

That's not to say there aren't any dangers. An obvious one is uncontrolled growth of these nonbiological entities in your body -- nonbiological cancer.

440

Or Kill Me / The Parable of the Gong

« on: June 27, 2007, 04:56:51 pm »

The Parable of the Gong
As told by Professor Cramulus, OBNOXIOUS JERK cabal

There was once a young Discordian called Golden Rod. Early in his illumination, he wondered what season his country was in.

Perhaps it was in the season of Discord, on the cusp of Bureaucracy. Surely, Order was rising to noxious levels.

Or perhaps it was already Bureaucracy, on the cusp of Aftermath. Surely, Disorder was rising to obnoxious levels.

So in his quest for An Answer, Golden Rod sought out the Discordian monk Nopants. Nopants dwelled in a basement because it would be obscene for him to go outside. Golden Rod freed himself from his leggings and descended the stairs. Below, Nopants sat on a cushion in a gross lotus position.

"My wise friend Nopants, I have come to ask you a question,” said Golden Rod, “What is Bureaucracy?"

“In India,” said Nopants, “they tie elephants to trees using thin cords. An elephant could easily snap the cord, yet they remain tethered in place. Why do you think this is?”

Golden Rod itched himself and shrugged.

“When the elephant is young,” intoned Nopants, “she is too weak to break the cord. She tries, but eventually she gives up. When the elephant grows up, she does not try to escape her puny bonds because she believes she will fail.”

“So the cord isn’t the thing keeping the elephant in place,” said Golden Rod. He squinted at Nopants, “That’s very interesting, but what does that have to do with Bureaucracy?”

“Bureaucracy,” said Nopants, “is waiting for a red traffic light in the middle of the night when no one is coming.”

    Across space and time, a gong sounded.

Golden Rod left the basement and returned to the real world, thoroughly confused. As he drove home, he ran five red lights. His mirth rose with each light. By the end of the voyage he was giggling like a ninny at his newfound freedom.






Years went by and Golden Rod continued drive towards Aftermath. He ignored stop signs, blew through red lights, and opened his moon roof despite danger of falling rocks.

“Sweet Merciful Ass!” cried out Bung-Fu the Fool as he clawed at the dashboard. “You’re gonna get us both killed!”

‚ÄúNonsense! I am self-emancipated from these mundane traffic laws,‚Äù cackled Golden Rod.  ‚ÄúI am a harbinger of Aftermath!‚Äù

“Do you always drive like this?” said Bung-Fu as he buckled his seat belt.

Golden Rod nodded. "Always."

Meanwhile, the monk Nopants was wheeling his gong across the street towards his basement. He patiently waited for the light to turn red, then pushed the ponderous percussive instrument upon the pavement.


     The collision made the exact sound of enlightenment.

441

Think for Yourself, Schmuck! / Ego Sickness

« on: June 07, 2007, 02:42:52 pm »

Ego Sickness

You know how a virus works? It goes into a cell and changes the code so that the cell only produces more virii. In a way the virus steals the cell's identity, making it a part of a viral system.

If you ask me, the worst phase of being sick is when you've been sick for so long you forget what it's like to be well. In a way, you've lost a bit of yourself and become the virus.

People catch and spread memes like viruses. They're contageous, self-replicating little buggers. Like any virus, their goal is to spread themselves, to become a large, healthy, self-sustaining colony. We have to be careful how we handle memes because at a certain point its difficult to tell the difference between when we're using the memes and when the memes are using us.

This is not to say that memes are harmful diseases. But some of them can be if you get infected, infested, obsessed and invested.

One of the most pervasive and prevalent memes in this modern world is the meme called I Am. We live in an overpopulated era, floating in a sea of interchangable people. In this ocean our biggest life perserver is a sense of individuality - the notion that each and every one of us is unique, distinct. One wants to say "I am not the crowd. I am not the group. I am not just another cog in the machine."

We jump through personal hoops to distinguish ourselves from the others. We customize our identities so as to retain a sense of self, a buoy bobbing in the tide of the collective.

But this ego meme can become a disease. In moderation, it helps us understand ourselves. In excess, we define ourselves. In time, these definitions become rigid, inflexible.

Consider, for example, the "C student". In his attempt to understand himself, he internalizes "I am a C student." Armed with that identity he has no drive to do better. He accepts "who he is".

Or consider the average voter. He identifies with a political party and probably agrees with them about many things. The party tells him which sides of any given issues to support - no need to think for oneself there!

It can be a sickness.

The Machine, of course, is programmed to capitalize on this sickness. There are a variety of memes available to customize your identity. What color iPod do you want? Which TV shows are YOUR TV shows? What brand of cologne smells like YOU?

I am not suggesting that people abandon their sense of self. But I do think that people get addicted to self-definition and it leads to inflexibility.

(Don Juan speaking to Castaneda) "Your father knows everything about you", he said. "So he has you all figured out. He knows who you are and what you do, and there is no power on earth that can make him change his mind about you". Don Juan said that everybody that knew me had an idea about me, and that I kept feeding the idea with everything I did. "Don't you see ?", he asked dramatically. "You must renew your personal history by telling your parents, your relatives, and your friends everything you do. On the other hand, if you have no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with your acts. And above all no one pins you down with their thoughts.".

(...) "But that's absurd", I protested. "Why shouldn't people know me ? What's wrong with that ?"; "What's wrong is that once they know you, you are an affair taken for granted and from that moment on you won't be able to break the tie of their thoughts. I personally like the ultimate freedom of being unknown. No one knows me with steadfast certainty, the way people know you, for instance". "But that would be lying". "I'm not concerned with lies or truths", he said severely. "Lies are lies only if you have personal history".

"You see", he went on, "we only have two alternatives; we either take everything for sure and real, or we don't. If we follow the first, we end up bored to death with ourselves and with the world. If we follow the second and erase personal history, we create a fog around us, a very exciting and mysterious state in which nobody knows where the rabbit will pop out, not even ourselves."

We’re hand in hand in Aftermath
the age of what will be
Horizon smoke is rising
from the wreckage that is We

And in the smoke what shapes will form?
What phantoms will we make?
For we are made of form and formula
but also dross mistake

-from Hand in Hand in Aftermath

442

Think for Yourself, Schmuck! / Is it time for a jailbreak?

« on: June 05, 2007, 08:53:10 pm »

I'm wondering what sort of things you can do to see the shape of your cell.

One of the dangers of a successful jailbreak is complacency. You escape into a better cell and then rest there. This is not to say that it's necessary to constantly reinvent yourself and your environment, but one should be careful not to think that their escape is ever over. The best time for a jailbreak is often the time you need it the least.

So what's my cell made of? For me, it's the place I live, the goals I have, the language I use to describe my world. It's the Colbert Report every night at 11:30. It's my body and its drives. It's my hobbies and interests. It's my sense of static self.

But I like a lot of that stuff - how can I tell what parts of it to cut out? How can I distinguish the bars of my cell from the things I use to decorate it?



For me, a change of scenery is the most effective tool. I like to take off for one or two weekends a month and spend time doing something else entirely. I need to go away and be somebody other than me - then when I come back to myself I can look around with a fresh perspective.

It's a ritual that I reccommend to everyone. Go be someone that's not you. Hang out with new people. Do something unusual, something out of character. Challenge yourself in a new way. These small reinventions of self give you a sense of the shape of your cell. If you're staring at the bars all the time you often forget what they are. A good self-liberated prisoner eagerly anticipates the discomfort of novelty.

So what about you guys? How do you know it's time to escape?

443

Principia Discussion / Discordians in History

« on: May 22, 2007, 07:29:35 pm »

Discordians in the Middle Ages

Discordians flourished between the fifth and fifteenth century. This was a period of great cultural, political, and economic change in Europe - change which Discordians violently shook like a collicy infant.

Discordian Writings

It it not known whether medieval Discordians were literate. They commonly wrote in the incomprehensible Zwack alphabet. Discordians held that most people, even nobles and priests, were too hunchbrained to make any sense of their baffling script. Contemporary cryptologists believe Zwack to be incomprehensible gibberish, but modern Discordians hold that these scholars are merely too hunchbrained to make sense of their baffling script.

The Inquisition

In 1478, the Spanish Inquisition was begun by King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile. Although it was not publicly revealed until after his death, one of Ferdinand's advisors, Peter Pie the Pious, was a Discordian saint. St. Pie pushed King Ferdinand to seek out converts from Judaism and Islam residing Spain. The inquisition was originally intended as a distraction from St. Pie's major project, sleeping with Queen Isabella. The inquisition rapidly got out of hand as zealots began burning heretics.

Despite his success with Isabella, St. Pie was saddened by these violent developments. He made a private apology to the Discordians of Spain, but it was lost on them as they were busy being burned to death. Wracked with guilt, he fell on his sword in 1490. His final words were "Fili Prius meretrix," or "Bros before hos".




Discordians in Colonial America

The Witch Trials

In 1692, Discordians invented the first game of SINK when the Queche Quidditch Qabal threw Goodwife Tabatha Croft in the Connecticut river. When the local constable demanded an explanation, Rev. Sandwitch of Bologna replied that they were testing to see if she was a witch. The constable thought this was such a good idea, he brought his wife to the river and tested her for witchiness. This meme spread and evolved until all the women in town were soaking wet. Later, they were burned at the stake.

please pick a period or event
and add your own historical facts and crap

444

Literate Chaotic / Core Themes of Discordia

« on: May 22, 2007, 04:39:13 pm »

I decided to split off the "enough" thread to address this--

All this discordianism crap is pretty much breaking down into a few distinct principles:

Pattern Recognition.
Primate Territorialism.
Reality grids/filters.

What other things do you think are part of Discord's "core themes"?

High Madness / Weirdness has been mentioned.


I ask because when it comes time to rewrite the book on Discordia, it'd be nice to have a sort of checklist of what should be included.

445

Apple Talk / Why I'm excited for the ROBOT REVOLUTION

« on: May 17, 2007, 03:48:00 pm »

Why I'm excited for the R0B0T REV0LUTI0N
by Professor Cramulus

Alright, we all know that when the shit hits the fan, humanity's back is going to be up against the wall. But the thing is that the robot revolution is going to be real sexy. We'll WANT to submit to them. Rawr!

Your robot girlfriend will be anything you want and more. You can customize her appearance to match your taste, whether you want a swedish bikini model or a tentacular hentai zombie!

She'll have personality packs you can install. You can configure her to act and talk like a naughty schoolgirl, a naughty dominatrix, a naughty UN Ambassador, or even a naughty nurse!

Robotic girlfriends are superior to meat-based ones in every way. They'll never nag you about anything, they'll never cheat on you, and they'll never leave you.

All the vestigial systems which come standard on a meat-based girlfriend have been removed in the robotic model, such as periods, aging, and orgasms.

A variety of protein pills will be available. By changing her "diet" you can change her build or hair color. You can sculpt her from slim and trim to pleasantly plump and back to the undernourished waif setting in a short three week diet cycle. These cycles take months, if not years in the outdated human models. and unlike humans, robots do not get stuck in one setting.

Your robot girlfriend's nipples will be dials. One will be a volume control, the other an AM/FM tuner

Your robot girlfriend will have a keg in her stomach cavity. She'll secrete delicious beer through her tongue, tears, and hoo-hoo. Most people have wanted a girl to pee on them, but don't like human urine. Now you can have Heineken urinated into your eager mouth!

You don't have to be insecure in any way around your robot girlfriend. Robots can be programmed to think your penis is gigantic, even if her records obviously indicate otherwise.

My robot girlfriend is going to have a wireless modem which receives live feeds from cameras placed around the room. She'll take in all camera streams and instantly edit them into high quality porn footage. Her eyes are functional video projectors, so she can project the porn onto the wall as you rail her from behind.

When not in use, her butt unit will stream funky porn music.

Holy shit my robot girlfriend is going to have rockets on her feet so we can fly around as I pork her over and over again.

Hate condoms? Worried about getting your robot girlfriend pregnant? Scientists have developed a birth control patch with 80% efficacy!

See, the Robot Revolution is the sexiest thing to happen to mankind. With options like these available, no one will want to date a smelly girl. When given a choice, they'll pick the stainless steel fembot every time.

"Check out the nodes on that robo-ho!"

For humanity, the end will come not with a bang, but with a moan of ecstasy

So presented with these facts, I must ask...

446

Apple Talk / Professor Cramulus's Sexuality Experiment - PARTICIPANTS NEEDED

« on: May 15, 2007, 08:00:47 pm »

PARTICIPANTS NEEDED

Procedure:

• Get yourself really close to orgasm
• Immediately prior to orgasm, click on one of the following links: Link A, Link B, Link C, Link D, Link E, Link F (all NSFW ... but you shouldn't be participating at work anyway)
• You must stare at the image for the duration of your orgasm
• Report short-term and long-term and results here

Do it for SCIENCE

447

Or Kill Me / The Pineal Gland (LOL)

« on: May 10, 2007, 05:10:07 pm »

Yeah, I'm going there.

The Pineal Gland is a little pea-sized thing deep inside your brain. Until the 1960s, nobody really knew what it was for.

Descartes (who was doing his damnedest to connect the mind and the body) called this mysterious gland the "seat of the soul". This is why the Pineal Gland is sometimes compared to a gospel choir singer's butt. Get up off your pineal gland and SING - for grand old Discordja!

The pineal gland is associated with the sixth chakra, Ajna, also known as the third eye. The third eye is open to dreams and imagination, but not the physical world. Some people think that if you wake up your pineal gland, you can learn ~telepathy~. Some people believe that a hemaphrodite deity named Ardhanarishvara (bless you!) lives there. This is supposed to symbolize the unity of subject and object, of self and the world, of this and thou and that. But Discordians know that Ardhanarishvara is actually just a bisexual Eris Discordja. Get nasty with that hottie, Discordja!

The Pineal Gland produces melatonin, a juice which gets you into the circadian rhythm. You activate yourself during the daytime and slow yourself down during the nighttime because the deity that lives there is trying to balance you out. Trying to make personal sense out of these cycles. (That's imposing a grid of order on chaos, ya dig?) Most people have a lopsided pineal gland, which is unfortunate, because it means they're never really in the Now, they're tipped towards some other part of the rhythm. Maybe they're waiting for the good part of the song? But they're missing this part!

But when you get in synch with the rhythm, that seat of the soul rhythm, you're gonna be overcome by the music of ERIS. you're gonna snap your fingers to the gospel of ERIS. You're gonna throw your hands up in the air and PRAISE ERIS. You're gonna yell TESTIFY and HAIL ERIS and ALL HAIL DISCORDJA.

Because the new day is coming - the new wave is coming - the revolution is coming and it's not against anybody.  If anybody, it's against who you were and for who you will be. They've got us conned into thinking that a revolution is a fight, and can you win or lose or chicken out. But it's not a battle, it's a change. And it doesn't end in victory or defeat - if the revolution succeeds, it doesn't end at all.

The revolution isn't against, it's for. It's for you, and it's for me, and it's for all of us all singing gospel and it sounds like a mess because we never practice and we never harmonize. But it's a great mess like John Coltrane would make, like ad lib would make, like improv would make. Like Eris Discordja is snapping her fingers with the rhythm and she says take what you like, leave what you don't. Be who you are, and be who you're not. Take her lead, because you're gonna be Eris and she's gonna be you. And All Hail Eris, 'cause she Hails You Too.

448

Literate Chaotic / The Invisibles, by Grant Morrison

« on: May 05, 2007, 05:59:23 am »

Now I'm not someone who reads a lot of comics. But I devoured The Invisibles. Like Illuminatus!, I think its one of those things that all Discordians should read at some point.

The Invisibles are a sect of Discordianesqe hero types who fight the forces which are trying to control and conform reality. But it's more than that. There's a lot of drugs, explosions, philosophical banter, chaos magic, and obscure literary references too. If that's your shtick, I think you'll dig it.

Many people believe that The Invisibles was the inspiration for The Matrix. Morrison says they essentially plagiarized it "plot by plot, detail by detail, image by image." (he's not pissed, just wishes he got credit) But it goes a lot further than the Matrix - those of you who wish the Wachowskis pushed the conceptual envelope a little further will probably find what you were looking for here.

Compare/contrast the scene where Agent Smith interrogates Morpheus with this snippet:

The Invisibles is three volumes. I've uploaded the first volume. It requires a .cbr viewer, which can be downloaded here.

I've had to break it down into a bunch of different files so 4shared.com doesn't freak out.


links to 4shared.com removed as they no longer worked. Instead, here's the Pirate Bay torrent:

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/3356276/%5BComics%5D_The_Invisibles_(The_dopest_shit_ever)

As a side note - there's a plotline towards the beginning which seems a little bit slow. Later in the series, Morrison says he regretted how it turned out - too much crazy jibba jabba and not enough action. I won't tell you which one it is. And I don't think it's that bad. But if you get a little way into this and then are all "The Professor lied - this is boring!" just hang on--

Towards the end of volume 1 (the files I've listed above), it gets really intense. It gives me goosebumps remembering how awesome it is.

Here's a snippet more from the beginning:

anyway, I hope you guys dig it as much as I did. When I'm in a funk, I read the Invisibles to motivate me to get off my ass and go shake shit up. Grant Morrison's a genius.

449

Literate Chaotic / The Filth, by Grant Morrison

« on: May 03, 2007, 04:05:56 pm »

The Filth was a short (13 issue) comic written by Grant Morrison. It was the project which followed The Invisibles. In many ways, Grant intended for it to be a sequel, of sorts, to the Invisibles. I think if you include Flex Mentallo (which I've never read), as the first part, he considers it a trilogy. No recurring characters, but lots of recurring themes.

The Invisibles is (sort of) about fanatic freedom fighter folks who are fighting the forces of conformity. The system is the enemy (or so it seems).

The Filth is on the flip side of the coin. The main characters are part of the "system". They're battling horrible things which shouldn't exist in an attempt to cleanse reality and maintain Status Q (the way things are).



Like all of Morrison's stuff, there's a lot of twists and turns and confusion and Discordian themes. A lot of discussion about identity, reality, and what lies beyond it. I think it's a pretty good read and is a great companion to the Invisibles.

For your consumption, I've uploaded the entire Filth series in jpg format here--

Issues 1-7
Issues 8-11
Issues 12-13


Enjoy!


Professor Cramulus
"Somewhat Better than Kidney Dialysis!"

450

Bring and Brag / We Stand Hand in Hand in Aftermath

« on: April 23, 2007, 09:11:41 pm »

(This is a draft for the Age of Aftermath magazine project.)

We Stand Hand in Hand in Aftermath

The present's almost over
and it flows away from me
Reflecting back a memory
it drifts into the sea

They say we see sepulcher
in this bureaucratic tangle
but the field of poppy culture
is just one camera angle

We bathe in time, an acid bath
and We dissolve, perplexed
So begins the age of Aftermath
exhaling what comes next

We're hand in hand in Aftermath
the age of what will be
Horizon smoke is rising
from the wreckage that is We

Remembering, forgetting
this cultural bazaar
Bureaucracy is setting,
so arise the morning star

And in the smoke what shapes will form?
What phantoms will we make?
For we are made of form and formula
but also dross mistake