Category Archives: debate

Daily Telegraph fail

Articles by others, current affairs, debate, FAIL, lail, politics, quotes, Tactical Polyvalence, The Dismal Science, wingnuts

Warning: “Do nothing” wankfest ahead.

Via the Telegraph:

We need more risk and less regulation of the financial sector

Um, OK?

Capitalism is based on innovation.

Adam Smith rang.  He said “did you even READ my fucking book?”

But innovations are not always well understood when they first turn up. People buy too many of them and pay too much for them.

I just want to quote this as evidence the market does not always work perfectly and people are not rational consumers.  This will become important in a minute.

That is what happened in this crisis. People paid too much for financial products that they didn’t understand.

And sold them for too much.  And floated an entire economy on the basis they would keep selling forever and would never drop in price.  Oh, and there was something about lying to investors and firing people who disagreed with that assessment, using things like evidence and projected trends.  So not so much a naive mistake and more like carefully calculated get rich schemes.

Left to function alone, the market would have punished those that had invested in the companies that lost.

And everyone else, for good measure.  The market approves of collateral damage.

Companies going bust and investors losing their money are not a “failure of capitalism”.

Not even if they are making a yearly profit, yet go out of business due to a lack of credit during more quiet seasons?  Because that’s what is happening.

It is capitalism; and if you don’t like it, then you don’t like the system.

If you love Communism so much, why don’t you live there?

There was no need for the British government to bail out the banks last autumn.

Apart from that whole “turning into the next Somalia” thing, and everyone knows Somalia is a healthy and functioning market economy, with reported growth in such vital areas as piracy, terrorism, warlordism and mercenary work.

The wrong policy response – the one adopted – was to reward investor error.

Yeah, those silly investors, believing banking CEOs.  They should have beat them until they told them the truth about the risks they were taking!  Jack Bauer would do no less.

It saved the capitalists made rich at the expense of private capitalism.

If you hate that so much, why don’t you move to Cuba or something, Che?

Calls for heavy-handed regulation to restrict the actions of banks are the flip-side of acting so as to undermine the market’s means to punish poor decision-making.

Yeah, not allowing financially risky decisions with the threat of jail is totally not a punishment when compared to what The Market will do.

This means there will be less risk-taking in the economy as a whole – less innovation and experimentation, less diversity and dynamism.

I cite the Open Source Movement as proof people cannot innovate without a profit motive.

We will have an economy that grows more slowly and a society that is less tolerant, offering fewer opportunities for those who have no money but good ideas to get ahead.

Whereas a worldwide economic depression every couple of years won’t make people more intolerant or offer fewer opportunities at all.

The financial sector is unlikely to be able to return to sustained profitability without significant restructuring of a much more radical nature than the current favourites of creating “boring banks” and “bad banks”. Governments are now the major shareholders in these institutions, and they should insist upon their restructuring.

Typical commie, looking to the government to solve all your problems.

Imagine if, instead of all that, we had used £100 billion or £200 billion for tax cuts to stimulate the real economy.

Yeah, but imagine if we had used £300 billion to stimulate the Really Real Economy (for Realness).  Or £400 billion to titillate the Somewhat Less Empheral Economy.  Or, and I will admit we are pushing the boat out here, £500 billion for The One True Objective Economy That No Rational Person Can Deny?  What then, eh?  That’s the problem with you Commies, your lack of innovative thinking.

Ye gods, that was the biggest pile of fail I have ever read.

Attention: Revolutionaries

Anarchy, Black Swan, Chaos, current affairs, debate, FAIL, Law and Disorder, media culture, politics, rant, society, strife

Capitalism hasn’t failed. The people who run it have. While at a basic level, Capitalism comes down to “I have greed, and you have need. Let’s do a deal!”, we all know there is much more to it than that. Otherwise none of us would get worked up over Globalisation(tm)and workers rights and the like. There is obviously a social element to Capitalism, both from “our” point of view, and also “theirs”.

Given this very human element, there comes a time where dead wood needs to be cut out of the system – for it to run at maximum wealth-creating efficiency. We normally call these recessions. The weak fall, the strong and the innovative survive. When you postpone a recession with massive public borrowing, that’s all you are doing – postponing it. Artificially propping up the weak can only last for so long before they fall off, like balancing a ball on a very thin stick.

When you get a recession, every weak element in the system will be tested. If you’ve postponed it, they’ll be tested massively. And they’ll fail, epically.

So, I state again, the reason why everything is completely fucked now isn’t so much the system (as flawed and distasteful as it may be), but the people who have allowed 2 or 3 recessions to hit us at the same time. Any system you replace Capitalism with will still be run by pretty much the same people. Even if they have different faces, they’ll still have the same flawed ideas. And we’ll be fucked again.

Change the ideas, THEN the system, and you may be onto something.

Why Discordia is more relevant in 2008 – Discussion

current affairs, debate, Discordianism, Humour, Internet - a series of tubes, Law and Disorder, Law of Fives, media culture, Occult, Operation:Mindfuck, personal, politics, slack, society, Technology, terrorism, Trolling, war

Ripped this discussion, built on Cram’s earlier post and musings, from the forum.  Enjoy.

LMNO:  Because so far, nothing else seems to be working.  Because Discordia is about models, not absolutes.

Baron von Hoopla:  Bingo.

Cramulus: [to LMNO] that’s a great angle.  Could you expand on that a bit?

GA:  I don’t know about more relevant, because I wasn’t around 50 years ago.  It seems to me that the Cold War was in pretty dire need of some lightheartedness, even more than our current War on Terror.

It just seems relevant to me because I personally had (have?) a problem with taking things far to seriously.  And because many of the people around me have concepts like ‘mandatory’ and ‘forbidden’ and apply them to things that are really optional.

I makes me sad when people tell me that things like religion are to important to joke about, or old propaganda posters too offensive.  It bothers me when I get suspended from school or hauled before Loss Prevention for reasons like “I know that this is just a misunderstanding, but we must follow procedure.”  It hurts when I look around my infosphere and see nothing but advertisements, especially when those ads are meant to make people feel bad about themselves.

The world is ruled by an endless morass of strictures and convention, and no one wants to take responsibility for them.  People are perfectly content to let the train follow its own momentum down the tracks, even though they don’t like where it is or where it is going, because this is Policy, it’s what Everyone (the everyone in “everyone knows that…”) has Decided.  Rules and traditions might be annoying, but it’s Not In Our Power to do anything about them.

LMNO:  In today’s so-called “Information Age”, most of us are constantly bombarded with stuff.  Perhaps not with ideas, so much as pure input.  While for the most part this input is pretty much bias-neutral, an increasing amount of it is being supplied by people who have an angle.  What’s more, to get through to the growing population of Jaded Couch-Dwelling Fuckheads, there has been a new approach of making the stuff more-or-less self referential, as in, “we know you know we’re trying to manipulate you.  See how cool that makes us?”

So, what do you do when you are flooded by 50,000 points of view?  The old way was to have Rules and Tradition and Procedure and Black and White. To take that stuff and cram it into a narrow worldview, distorting what little information you actually notice.  Which only serves to hold you back, slow you down, and shut you up.

Our way, the Discordian way, is to make Temporary Models, make new Game Rules, to grab hold of the stuff and ride it out, making connections as you see them.  You do your best not to have your views manipulated by stuff, and you do your best not to manipulate stuff to fit your views.  Which serves to keep you on the Edge of What’s Going On.

At least, that’s the general idea.

Continue reading Why Discordia is more relevant in 2008 – Discussion →

Discordia ’08 – Why it’s relevant to me

debate, Discordianism, personal, philosophy, Principia Discordia, rant

Discordia will always be more relevant to me personally than in any kind of “cause” or “movement”.

Yes, things in society are fucked up, yes “everyone” thinks that “everyone” else wants things to be this way, and there is nothing that they can do about it as individuals. Yes, they are wrong.

But all of this means nothing to me.

I am not an activist, I don’t go out of my way to try and convert people anymore. I used to, but then I thought it was mandatory or at least expected. Since I decided for myself that it wasn’t, I don’t do it. I don’t expect people to wake up unless they want to do it themselves, I certainly don’t expect it to ever make sense for them unless they do it in the hardest and unfunniest ways, but that may be my jaded and bitter inner self talking.

Discordia is not a movement, it is not a purpose, it is not a cause. It’s a state of mind. A state of mind that connects a diverse group of people who wouldn’t give each other the time of day if they met socially in other circumstances and didn’t have the call signs Discordia offers, the “fluff” like 23, Eris or Principia Discordia.

I like that. I like talking to people who I normally would never talk to, who would normally never talk to me.

Discordia is at times an excellent way of tying some of us together to work on projects that normally would never be worked on, like Paths and Shrapnel, PosterGASM and some of the weird and wonderful art projects that have grown out of these forums.

I like that. I like working with people on plans and projects that may have some relevance to how I think about my life, or can help decorate it in a way that makes me question what decoration is.

Discordia will always be relevant to me in some way because of this. Its worth far outweighs the effort of getting anything back from it.

I like models, I like art, I like exploring the weirder aspects of our psyches, and the even weirder methods of exploiting what we find.

I like to laugh, hate, cry and love, as we as humans are meant to, not as we have been conditioned to. As I’ve only learned to do with some intense soul searching and some pain. Discordia has been the chair I’ve sat down in when I’m weary, the desk I’ve used to write some of the most personal and important things I’ve ever written, it has been the mirror in which I’ve seen what I am, what I was and what I want to be.

And I’ve learned to not care what others are thinking about it all, except in specialised circumstances, for example: when I feel like it.

I know what I’ve learned, I’ve learned to question what I know, and I’ve learned to learn more, always learn more.

For me, Discordia is a question, an answer and everything else in between, and it is so huge that I could spend a lifetime exploring it.

Is Discordia relevent? Certainly for me, maybe for you.

Civility vs Decency

Articles by others, blogs, current affairs, debate, media culture, politics, rant

This is a spin-off from my post yesterday about Quentin Fucking Letts, but its something I’ve been considering for a while, and wanted to talk about more, as a general trend within current political discourse, especially among the “opinion-formers” in the media.

Its hardly a novel or surprising insight, I’ll be the first to admit. I know that its a particular aggravation of the brilliant American blogger HTML Mencken, of Sadly, No! fame and the more I see it within our own papers and political discussions, the more it pisses me off.

Some people, it seems, are far more in favour of civility in a discussion than actual decency. As anyone who reads me fairly often knows, I am hardly the poster-child for civil discussion. I rant, I swear, I mock and I troll. “All your carefully picked arguments can be easily ignored” and all that. But I think, underneath it, I am a fairly decent person. Not in the ‘decent left‘ sense, hell no, those people are the poster children for Civility over Decency (especially as Alan ‘Not the Minister’ Johnson’s lack of concern for human rights shows), but in the basic sense that no matter how nasty or cutting or rude I am, I’m only violent in my presentation of language.

In short, I’m not the sort of person who calls for pre-emptive attacks on enemy countries. I do not condone torture. I despise ‘extraordinary rendition’, hate racial profiling, cannot stand people who barely disguise their bigotry and blood-lust under the guise of cheerleading the “war on terrorism” and the war in Iraq especially. I don’t think we should be throwing out everyone whose skin colour is a little too dark, nor cutting benefits for those most at risk in society. I don’t think we should deny gays, atheists, Muslims, transsexuals or anyone else rights that the majority enjoys.

That’s decency. Having some motherfucking respect for the people around you, not demonizing people who have never hurt you, not acting like a jerk simply because “I’ve got mine, and fuck everyone else”. Or cowering in a corner going “oh no, the scary people different to me are here, we must deal with this immediately!”

Because, lets face it, when you dig behind the supposedly ‘respectable’ and civil writing of papers like The Sun, or the Daily Mail, or especially The Express, that is all that is left. Its dressing up ugly and vile opinions in nice sounding tones. A perfect example is that insufferable cunt Peter Hitchens, who just recently denied that homophobia has any real meaning. Well I’m sure gay people all over the world who are being killed, denied rights, attacked and smeared for their sexual leanings will be SO glad to hear that.

But you see, he said it in a nice way, with clean respectable words and no swearing, so he’s perfectly alright!

Whereas on the other hand, all those nasty people over at the Guardian who were saying rude things about Thatcher are evil and nasty leftists. Never mind that none of them are contributing to a set of beliefs designed to deny Thatcher any of her basic human rights. Never mind that Thatcher put in place policies that did ruin many peoples lives, to benefit a few. Oh no, the problem is all those horrible and sweary Guardian types, who refuse to shed a tear at the idea of Our Great Leader passing away.

Well fuck that, and fuck anyone who thinks in that way. Oh boo-fucking-hoo, the nasty little leftists won’t be all nice and civil when discussing your sacred cows? Civility is “manners masquerading as morals”, to quote Sidney Blumenthal. Its about an unspoken social code that relates in absolutely no way to the actual ethical ideas. Its a way of controlling the forms of argument, of dismissing people without actually having to refute what they say.

Noting the letters that Lett’s reprinted at the Mail, the common theme among them seems to be that Thatcher’s leadership did not enrichen or improve their lives, so why the fuck should they have to kowtow to her and her legions of brainless followers and admirers among the press corps? Letts doesn’t answer that, because he can’t. The idea of treating such a woman as a great leader worthy of such honour is disgusting, and the level of invective it deserves is well beyond that expressed in the Guardian. Presumably Letts would have us all drink tea with our little finger’s sticking out while discussing the pro’s and con’s of torture and genocide as well.

The fact is that you simply can’t fight some people and the ideas they espouse by being civil. You have to let people know that they’re vile, hateful scumbags with no sense of standards or simple human decency. You have to stand up to them and (rhetorically) kick them in the balls. Repeatedly, in some cases. This whole “oh I respectfully disagree with your views on kicking out all the ‘Muslim terrorist scum infesting this country with foreign diseases‘” bollocks has to stop.

And yes, I am an angry leftist. If you call yourselves a decent fucking human being and you look around at the state of current affairs: a supposedly left-wing government tearing down civil rights and engaging in pointless foreign wars while the gap between rich and poor rises, and a bunch of cretinous reporters in the tabloid media who are willing to give them hell over the only few things they have done right, then you’d be fucking angry too.

And if you don’t like it, Letts, you can blow me.

Teh great Atheist Conspiracy…

conspiracy, debate, Lulz, media culture, religion

I know I really should leave such things to Anton Vowl, as he is so much better at them. But I was trolling around the Daily Mail messageboard on a slow Friday afternoon when I saw the topic title….

“are atheists infiltrating organizations such as education, government etc?”

and I just knew it was going to be a clusterfuck of epic tinfoil hattery and right-wing paranoia. I was not disappointed.

In the thread about the dreaded Heinz Mayo “gay” ad, one respondent stated that atheists are infiltrating organisations that influence government, educational policy, etc.

Can atheists really do that? After all, they are not an organised as such. Is the real truth merely that more people are rejecting religion and becoming de-facto atheists, such that the proportion of atheists in all sorts of organisations is increasing because of that, i.e. it’s mere statistics?

Is it really a conspiracy?

A sensible start….surely this cannot last. Atheism debates are like those on abortion…pure flamebait.

YES Mikey my man, oh yes!! Read Peter Hitchins, an ex-communist..

The communist party used to say…go out and submerse Into the establishment, government, schools, authorities…I’m not quoting but find out Mikey. Look at government… the number of ex-communist party members and ex-marxist types…

YES, THE COMMUNIST CONSPIRACY IS BACK IN FASHION! POST #1 BITCHES, AND WE’RE ALREADY BACK TO THE 1950S, BOO-YAH!

Just look at the members in the NUT to find out how far these people have infiltrated education and the ‘elf and safety brigade in local councils are teeming with them. Even the higher ranks of the police have them in abundance.

Reminder: if lots of educated people agree, its not because of superb reasoning skills and access to more factual information, its because they are being manipulated by a conspiracy.

I haven’t read anything this funny in a long time! “These people” indeed. Atheists were around long before anyone caught religion, and do you know what? We’re not communists, marxists or fascists, we’re just people who lead ordinary decent lives without believing in any gods – and you sound so horrified, as if we’re trying to undermine society!

Atheist disinformation agents have even infiltrated the Daily Mail!

i think you are right. you only have to look at Great Britain with high teenage pregnancies, broken homes, political correctness and not being allowed to make judgements about peoples’ lifestyles. There are people being shot dead for being in the wrong place.

I think having christian values did keep people on the right track.

Goddamn those fucking Atheists and their lack of morals making it unacceptable for me to persecute teh gheys. I see no unintentional irony in my previous statement whatsoever, either.

The people that have infiltrated our society have no religious preferences. They probably call themselves atheists but their religion is Marxism. They don’t worship a deity, just an idea that is a proven failure. I suppose that’s the difference: nobody has ever proven that God does not exist whereas Marxism has been tried and has failed miserably.

But that won’t stop those who are hungry for power over the proletariat. Antyjax is obviously familiar with the type, and there are thousands of them, in education, local government and the criminal justice system. It isn’t an organised conspiracy, but each of them are following the teachings of Gramsci and the Frankfurt School.

I’m sure that sounded really smart in his head.

Atheists tend to have the evangelical zeal of all religious zealots. They are so arrogant in their personal beliefs and self esteem, that they will not brook alternative belief systems!

All the PC claptrap, about renaming Christmas and the like, are all down to Atheists in Local Government.

What makes their actions all the more disgusting are their attempts at blaming Muslims, or Hindus, etc.. These unfortunates find themselves beset by Press Commentators, blaming them for something for which they have no knowledge, or inclination! To the contrary. They mostly enjoy the family aspects of our CHRISTIAN celebrations!

(The Muslims also hold Christ in high esteem and see no reason why they should not celebrate Christmas alongside Christians!……… Go to Saudi Arabia and you will find that out in short order!)

Yeah, goddamn Atheists and their Winterval! Religious nutters of the world, UNITE and let us be rid of this menace.

The point of the Bible, and Christianity is to promote harmony and a moral life. The 10 Commandments are good rules for morality, and which every decent human being will follow naturally. As our community has gone away from the church and the fear of what comes next (heaven, hell?), we are heading for barbarism. This is already clear by what is happening in every inner-city and now suburban streets with young men and woman being killed in cold blood for little or no reason. All religions have their own version of the 10 Commandments which again are moral pointers for the followers.

To go to the original question, Jax has answered it pretty well in my opinion. So yes I do really believe that atheists have infiltrated government at every level, hence it will reach the education system. Private church schools, I suspect, are an exception.

Britain was harmonious back when peasants believed the King ruled by the divine grace of God, and I approve of this system. Speaking as an agnostic.

I am more alarmed that teachers are using their jobs to poison the minds of our young children with their left wing convictions. It isn’t as if the teaching profession can be proud of their acheivements as so many children leave school without the ability to read or write properly. Universities are having to train youngsters the basics before they can persue the courses at Uni.

As for the police they have alienated the majority of the law abiding population with their policy of appeasing criminals and taking ot out on the rest of us.

Because ignorance and irrational brutality are hallmarks of all Atheist thought.

I cannot see God but I can have faith In God’s existence. Science may someday come to a proof of the truth or falsehood of a creator, but It Is In no position today to do either. If you say..”I see no evidence that there Is a God” fair enough. But go as far as saying..”I know there Is no God” and you have taken a leap of faith as large as that of any theist.

Although theists are better, because they are right. Or something.

I’m a Christian and I believe In God. It’s really quite easy, I believe there Is one God. He actually Loves you, and you try to mock and sneer, and yet he still Loves you. But I don’t actually have to explain my BELIEF to you, rather you have to explain your ASSERTION that there Is no God?? And you have to do a lot better than “I know there are no God’s because there Is no evidence.” You have a BELIEF that there Is no God, and that Is fine. But you don’t KNOW. So for all your assertions, you’re not being very assertive are you?

Because asserting an unknowable without evidence is an excellent system of logical thinking.

I believe the heading of this post is misleading and would be less so if it read “are the extreme left infiltrating organisations such as education ,government,etc.
the answer is yes they are and always have done just because tony blair denied them the right to stand as labour candidates doesn’t mean they have gone away or changed their beliefs they are still out there burrowing away into all aspects of our lives,and i don’t believe it will be long before they rear their heads again and feel safe to come out into the open again.

They are in all probability atheists,but that is not the b all and end all of their beliefs but may be the basis for them.
The question is ,are they a danger to our society must be an undoubtable yes,but is far more outreaching than just are they atheist !
Many atheists are content in their non belief,and content to let the rest of us believe what ever we want.

The extreme left are not .

Atheists are a front for the Communists! COMMUNISTS!!12!

I find it unbelieveably funny how non believers get so upset about something they don’t believe in

ok, you don’t believe in God. thats your choice. but why do you get so angry and upset with those of us who do believe in God? I find that it is especially the Christian faith which gets such anger etc directed towards it

I do not for one second believe in the hindu religion. However I don’t get all worked up and angry about it. Let them believe what they do.

atheisem is a belief aswell btw


Well, last time I checked, it wasn’t Hindus who had a majority in this country. But of course that couldn’t be the reason, could it?

On numerous occasions, I have had an atheist say to me something along the lines of

“we don’t know what caused the universe”

yet they will boldly claim that there is no evidence of God. If God caused / created the universe then it stands to reason that the universe (in fact all of creation) is evidence of God. Are you able to prove that God did not cause / create the universe?

Incidentally, to answer your question about why I believe in God, there are two reasons.

1. I believe what is said in the Bible about Him. The central theme is that before God, all have sinned and the punishment for that sin is death. God loved the world so much that He sent His Son Jesus Christ to die on the cross so that people can be forgiven of their sins. Only in Christianity can I find this redemptive message where salvation is based on what Jesus Christ has done, not on some works-based method present in all other religions.

2. Since becoming a Christian, I have the testimony in my life as to answered prayer, or how God helped me through a difficult situation. The personal evidence for my faith is therefore my testimony. Now others can choose what alternative explanation they give to what I attribute to God at work, but description of something doesn’t alter what it is. It only affects one’s perception of it.


Logic is really wasted on some people.

The Internet, Me, and why I don’t give a fuck.

blogs, counterculture, debate, FAIL, forums, Internet - a series of tubes, personal, rant, satire, society

The internet was created as a network to allow humans to mostly interact with others and share knowledge. Amirite? Much like the cruel open world, we’re all mean here, arrogant, and yet faceless. Why do I leech on for my daily dose of the tubes? Besides some form of ridiculous co-dependence, the internet has allowed me to remember that humanity, even at it’s most amazing and selfless hours are still nothing but a collective of douchebags spreading their douchebaggery abound whilst flaunting their epic douchitude. And I find it amusing.

Do NOT come to me asking for help, posting threads of pity or buttons of Paypal on pages asking for donations to keep your website alive or to keep your bunny alive. Eat your bunny plz, post pictures, grant us thee folk of the internet the horrormirth we desire to continue our lives in a sick, twisted illusion of awesome. I am awesome, because I tell myself this on a daily, as it helps me get through my day with no medication requiredâ„¢!

I don’t tell you about my debt, my marital issues, my financial stress and overall hatred of my current status quo in great detail and outside of general jest, because you’re not listening. I did the Livejournal thing for a while, and all it did was create an abundance of drama I haven’t seen since middle school anytime I posted about something a wee bit wrong in my life…then I remembered I didn’t read my friend’s shit anyway, so why the fuck bother?

I don’t listen; you don’t listen.

I began a brief ritual of ‘Wednesday Rants’ on the ol’ LJ during my Sophomore year in college in an attempts to at least bring some sort of reason into having the damned thing…it didn’t work, and I abandoned it rather quickly, as the answers I either got were my friends of the best variety giving me empty praise or some faggot twisting it into bullshit. Therefore, I felt like I accomplished nothing. I often think of posting on Verwirrung, and feel that in short, it will really only benefit those here anyway if at all, because outside of PD.Com, no one could give a fuck about this site, but perhaps they need to? Maybe? Who knows. I highly doubt anyone here will get anything from this smear on the blog.

I’m not an entirely cold human being, no…but I have my moments. I am close to those I allow to be close, care for them, laugh and cry with them, but my shell is a woman that rarely smiles. This doesn’t mean I’m upset, it means that I just don’t care to unless I have good reason. There was a Daria episode in which the football alum from their high school died because the fucking goal post fell on his head or some shit, and it was pointed out that the reason Daria never smiles is because she ‘thinks’. I often use this as my excuse when I’m asked about my sour countenance. The reaction I get is usually an odd look and a, “But I think too, and I smile, so smile, damnit!” My retort is typically, “Well, maybe you aren’t thinking hard enough?” And leave it at that. I also like leaving my thoughts to myself.

…I also hate my teeth, but that’s another tale entirely.

The internet is my escape from thinking, sometimes WAY too much. It allows me to be creative during work, or gaming, it allows me to sit here and giggle like a motherfucker all day long as I leave this forum tabbed on my browser. The internet is a collective of minds that do the thinking for me, and I like it that way, because it gives my tired brain a break. No doubt others do the same.

So why should I give a fuck about what’s wrong with your life anyway?

GTFO my internet with your piteous throws of fits and excuses as to why you NEED to be accepted or WHY you’re different. We’re faceless, mindless-minds who congregate to feed off of your insolence like sociopath vampires…hiding our identities while we attack you with little or no remorse. If you need a shrink, GO TO A SHRINK, don’t come here, to the internet to find answers because Wikipedia gave you a link or you felt lucky on fucking Google.

Of course, one could always allude the internet is like a gang that you need beating into, which means that you better lay there and get it over and done with quickly to avoid severe injury…rather than putting up a struggle.

Oh fuck it, I really just wrote this to conjugate forms of douchebag. You all may go about your business.

Clergy to the Freaks

Aneristic Delusion, children of Eris, debate, Discordianism, FAIL, forums, Trolling, Uncategorized

It’s a strange, chaotic world out there. It’s incomprehensibly huge and also so tiny it’s like your own personal cell. It’s miraculously beautiful and suicidally ugly. It’s both claustrophobically overcrowded and desolately lonely.

 

There are a lot of people – in this case I’ll use that nebulous “us” – who use weirdness, humor, and insanity as a means of coping. Perhaps lunacy allows some to achieve a sort of homeostasis, an equilibrium with the ubiquitious dynamics and pressures of modern living.

 

Over at the PD Forums we had a debacle yesterday. One of our newer members, Daruko, had a sort of “internet breakdown” when confronted by some opposition. It was both funny and hard to watch. The guy in question is a 25-year old father of two, who is “in dire need of some sillyness in his life.”

 

Somebody asked Tim Leary what to do after they had Turned On. He said, “Find the others.” And then they show up at our door.

 

Continue reading Clergy to the Freaks →

John Gray kicks up a storm at Comment is Free

Articles by others, books, Christianity, debate, Fascism, Hindus, Islam, Judaism, media culture, Paganism, Pastafarians, philosophy, religion, review, Science, society, terrorism

While some of you may remember that I was not totally impressed with the conclusion to John Gray’s book, Black Mass, I nevertheless found it a good and enjoyable read, which tied up the links between utopianism, religion, the Enlightenment and secular extremist movements rather well. Gray’s got a lot of perspective in his worldview, which I like. He instinctively understands both the historical context of the movements and how that applies when considered in the current context of events.

Which is why I am enjoying his book review/Comment is Free article. Gray committed the hideous crime of knocking down a few New Atheist sacred cows, and so the usual suspects have come running, howling and moaning with their usual strawmen about atheist inspired terrorism, totally ignoring the context of the argument or addressing any of the issues.

I have yet to see a commenter actually address his point about repressed religion being much like repressed sexuality, or the origins of secular liberalism being tied into the history of Christianity, and Nietzsche’s critical attacks on this. I have yet to see someone either deny that belief in such secular follies as free markets, global revolution or the global spread of democracy and progress are any less ridiculous than belief in a god, or try to claim they are in some way different.

Sure, the comments page may be filled with 300+ screaming monkeys trying to make Gray look like an idiot, but if they think they succeeded in this task, they’re only fooling themselves.

Even a committed agnostic such as myself can take pleasure in such a spectacle.

Goals for One Line Meme Bombs

counterculture, Dada, debate, Discordianism, forums, Law and Disorder, Operation:Mindfuck, society

I’ve been plastering White Plains NY with memetic masterpieces on and off for almost a year now. A wguke ago, I made The Meme Bomb Collection, Volume Aleph, and it got me thinking about the meme bombs we’ve been generating.

A lot of the meme bombs we’ve come up with are effective in that they are self-contained information packages which in themselves suggest an attitude or position.

My favorite meme bombs are the ones which…

–Give the reader pause. It’s really easy to get lost in the “zombie lurch”, the “9-5 crawl”, the “pedestrian trance”, or whatever you want to call it. I like meme bombs which jar the reader out of that and make them suddenly focus on the present moment rather than where they’re going. Some meme bombs which accomplish this are ones which successfully address the reader. “Hey! You, in the Khakis!” (if you’re actually wearing khakis, it might be startling).

–Suggest something bigger going on. Such as “Congratulations! You’ve just found clue #3! The man in the green jacket will tell you what to do next.” These meme bombs make reality seem a little bit weirder than the pedestrian might expect. Is there some crazy game going on? When and where is it happening?

–Provoke critical thought. Such as “miscarriage is manslaughter“. When taken at face value their meaning seems clear – but they actually suggest something else entirely.

–Add some levity or humor to the reader’s day. I really wish people would stop taking their day-to-day shit so seriously. Sometimes hearing a joke or seeing a funny graphic right in the middle of your walk back from lunch is exactly what you need. The BIP refers to this as rearranging the machine’s local components to (hopefully, eventually) provoke a change in the whole system.

–The Absurd and the Surreal. The Principia calls these Mondos. like “If the telephone rings today, water it!” At first they seem to make sense, but the more you think about them the less sense they make. Personally, I get these phrases stuck in my head all day. “The womb is a prison – FETUS LIBERATION FRONT!”

I like meme bombs which appear friendly or light. Some of the meme bombs developed by the PD Community are hostile and bitter, or preachy and cerebral. Frankly, far left propaganda tastes just as bad to me as far right propaganda, so I dislike political meme bombs. I also dislike the ones which specifically seek to make people feel worse without provoking action. (such as: “Your wife is cheating on you.“)

I also feel that graphics and icons are essential to getting the reader’s attention. An attractive visual packaging makes the memebomb more likely to be remembered.

An ideal memebomb is something which the reader will repeat to others. Little kernels of wisdom are good for this, but I feel that most of them are a bit too dense or “heavy” to pierce the pedestrian trance.

a discussion from PD about memes and graffiti follows…

Continue reading Goals for One Line Meme Bombs →