Lust, Groucho:47, 6007 YD
The Chaliceblog is currently showing a good reason not to test Discordians on the concept of whether Discordianism is a genuine religion or a parady religion: as if there is a difference.
This was the original post:
Yesterday night, I was organizing the books in our library. I put theCSO’s Discordian books in the fiction section.
He says they are theology.
If you’re not clear on what discordianism is, here’s a decent explanation.
My argument is that Discordianism strikes me as a parody of Catholicism. If “Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf” ran for president to highlight the absurdity of the American political system, then put out a book about politics, I wouldn’t put it in the politics section. So why would I put a book produced by paraody religion in “theology?”
His is that nobody died and put me in charge of deeming what’s a religion and what’s not.
To some degree, this is a stupid argument. He expressed surprise that I was so insistent that Discordianism not be treated as a valid theology and that I became so passionate about the matter. (I may relent and stick it in Philosophy.)
Part of my annoyance was that I had the Discordians confused with the Church of the Subgenius. I read up on the Subgenius Custody Case recently and while I agree with the general sentiment that the mother shouldn’t be penalized in custody matters for her religion, even if her religion is basically a parody. But I agree in the same halfhearted way that I agree with Happy Feminist that in a custody battle between a spousal abuser and a white supremacist, the white supremacist should win.
I’ll kid you not, y’all, the Cleveland Free Times’ description of these Subgenius events this woman was going to depressed the hell out of me. “Whee! Let’s take a guy named Steve and change his name to ‘Lord Jesus Christ’ and parody the ‘Passion of the Christ’ and there need to be dildos! Lots of dildoes! Why? Because Conservative Christians hate that and that inherently makes it worth doing!”
What the fuck is up with that?
It’s like how the first three minutes you spend at LandoverBaptist.com it’s hilarious, and then you realize how much time how many people have to put into that site and how much they have to hate Christians to make a site that extensive that is devoted to making fun of Christianity in the nastiest ways they can think of.
I’m sick enough of YRUU kids telling me all sorts of bitchy things about Christians that they learned from their parents. I can’t imagine the kind of hate the SubGenius woman’s son is picking up, all in the name of “humor.” Because we all know that humor is innocent and fun and NEVER has an undercurrent of nastiness beneath it. I’m not ignoring the relgious freedom aspects, I’m not advocating making these people stop. But I seriously think they need to grow up.
CC
This arrogance this post displayed naturally raised the ire of many Discordians, and for those it didn’t raise the ire of, it simply provided a prime oppurtunity for Lulz. Either way, a shitstorm erupted in the comments section of The Chaliceblog. As a direct result of said shitstorm Chalicechick posted the following remark in the Parody Relgions section of Sites In Focus:
Chalicechick Says:
January 14th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Advice to all bloggers: Don’t insult the discordians. It’s just not worth the trouble. The voice of experience.
There’s a lesson in this somewhere.
Why did we do the whole Passion-of-the-Christ-with-dildos thing?
It was unbelievably, gut-bustingly funny at the time. You pretty much had to be there. Someone who finds that “depressing” has clearly never participated in absurdity for absurdity’s sake, nor reaped the therapeutic and slack-giving benefits of laughing their ass off.
Its not too remarkable that at times Discordians and Subgenii get a little confused with each other (especially since there is a great deal of cross pollination) but that this is something that started with where the Principia should get put in a library, and it devolves into why Subgenii are weird humorous hateful people. So reading the rather long series of comments was rather fun showing how both Discordians and Subgenii should only be trifled with when you really really mean to do so. Something she mentions that she has figured out, perhaps a little trial by fire, but survived and understood nonetheless. If only Discordians & Subgenii could succeed like that more often.
If Eris didn’t want them to be trolled, she wouldn’t have had them cross the bridge in the first place.
Humorless people are fucking hilarious. And, yes, Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke, including me. I wonder where she files away Nasruddin and 10,000 Zen maniacs?
It’s a sick, sad world, and therefore good for morbid yucks.
LOL
Discordianism is a joke religion, of course, but calling it a “parody” is just insulting. The obvious resolution to “where in a library does the PD belong?” question is, get a barrel full of copies of the PD, and make sure there’s one in every section.