The Et Cetera Discordia

Culture-jamming, Discordianism, download, Professor Cram's Fun Lab

In 1958 or 1959 (we’re not sure which), Eris, the Goddess of Confusion, sent an Emperor Penguin to a bowling alley in California. It appeared before Malaclypse the Younger and Lord Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst and inspired them to create the Discordian Society: a tribe of philosophers, theologians, magicians, scientists, artists, clowns, and similar maniacs.

The Et Cetera Discordia proudly celebrates 50th the anniversary of this prophetic vision. It is a collage of the funny, weird, and often profound writings and art created by numerous modern (and post-modern) Discordians. This book is an invitation to join them in exploring, celebrating, and remixing this strange and exciting century.

A bit of background: Triple Zero and I had this idea back in 2008. The original idea was to create a quick one-shot internet forum which gathered content for quick publication of a new Discordian text celebrating Discordia’s 50th anniversary. So we threw THE PARTY AT LIMBO PEAK, an intentionally shortlived Internet forum, where people could post anonymously and then later unmask themselves at the end of the party. The project got out of control and we took a million years to finish it. And the finished product is a beautiful 128 page paperback, the latest addition to Grand and Glory Old Discordjia!

The Etc. Discordia can be purchased in paperback or downloaded for free in PDF form here.

Anarchy, CRAZY PREPARED, Humour, Science, Stuff, Technology, Violence, Ye Olde Tymes

Can you make a sharp tool out of trash?  How do you expect to be CRAZY PREPARED if you can’t?

http://www.geocities.com/knappersanonymous/bottle.html

Downsides:

-May break.

-Easy to do wrong, tricky to do right.

-Easy to injure yourself.  (Don’t do this at a party after drinking.)

Upsides:

-Even your failures will be sharp.

-Use the debris of the fallen glass towers of man to arm yourself.

-Honor forgotten Gods with your adherence to the old ways.

-Fun trick for parties. (When sober.)

Office Life

Big Bizness, CRAZY PREPARED, philosophy, Uncategorized

Supposing you complete primary and secondary education in a semi generic field, life has one great parking lot for all aspiring world changers: The Cubicle.  Jobs you can get will involve varying degrees of virtue, interest, and money, but regardless, you will likely spend time in one of these baleful anti – productivity pods.  This is not a workspace as much as it is a crucible (notice the word similarity?), for your sanity.  As always, advice is never definitive, but here’s what your author has seen work.

Primarily, WORK.  Figure out what’s expected of you and DO IT.  Not hard, just exacting over long periods of time, and it gets very old fast.  Still, this job makes you the money that keeps you afloat and in housing, food and fun, so attend to it.  Nothing good comes of having to move back to the parent’s basement, (If you’re lucky enough to have the option.)  Whatever you’re doing is better than the job you DON’T have.  This WILL bend the brain, and induce boredom and sleep, which segues us to other topics.

Food and drink are another obvious thing to keep at hand.  Coffee.  Lots and often.  Bring an espresso machine to your desk if allowed. Otherwise, water and snacks to keep you from getting cranky and snapping at the drones you’ll be surrounded by.  Keep friendly, keep frosty.  The job you’re doing can likely be done by any drone, but it won’t get any more interesting if you can’t hack it at the basic level.

SLACK OFF.  Preserve the job, but don’t let the sanity go away.  Read, post on internet forums, write, anything, but always have something you can do to keep yourself occupied at your desk.  Don’t let it become the priority, but don’t let the job rule your life either.
LMNO, fellow writer and schmot guy, recommends using this as the reason for figuring out how to do your job more efficiently.  Take care of business so you have more time for your own stuff.
(Get QUICK with ALT – TAB to avoid scrutiny from co workers and supervisor types.)

Finally, go home.  Get out of the office and do other things.  Keep active and have fun.  If you find yourself worrying about work at home, or loosing sleep over it, find another job.  What you do to live should be worth the 40 hours a week, and not rule the numerically superior off time.

Intermittens: Lesser Poop

books, Culture-jamming, Discordianism, download, Humour, memes, poetry, Propaganda, satire, shameless self promotion, surrealism, writing

Well after several weeks of dilligent effort, it’s finally done.
Lesser Poop is a DIY Discordian Magazine of “Bathroom Reader” style content. Lesser Poop contains low brow humor, awful jokes, really short stories, exercises to mindfuck yourself, and much more. Most of the art is by Cramulus. Most of the text is from the principiadiscordia.com/forum community.

Intermittens #6: Lesser Poop

The Druze

ChaoSkeptic, Islam, memes, religion, Trolling


There is a little known sect of Islam called the Druze. They are a small group mostly located in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan. Their faith is similar to that of other Ismaili Shi’a Islam with a little bit of Gnostic Unitarianism thrown in for good measure. What makes the Druze interesting though is the number one Pillar of their faith:

1. (Truth in words) Speak the truth to other Druze. However, lying to unbelievers to defend yourself or the community is OK.

That’s right, rule number one of Druzism is that you don’t talk about Druzism. And if you do talk about Druzism, feel free to lie through your teeth about it. This, of course, makes it completely impossible for outsiders (especially anthropologists) to study their religion. As Daniel Dennett put it in Breaking the Spell:

But if it was true, this would create a dilemma for any anthropologist: the usual method of questioning informants would be a hopeless wild-goose chase, and if he made the ultimate sacrifice and converted to Druze himself so as to gain entrance to the inner sanctum, he would have to admit that we on the outside shouldn’t believe his scholarly treatise, What the Druze Really Believe, since it was written by a devout Druze (and everybody knows that the Druze lie).

This naturally leads you to a Liars Paradox: if all Druzes lie about their religion then how do we know that they are telling the truth about their First Pillar? Maybe the Druze have become expertly adept at knowing when to tell the truth and when to tell a lie. They know to mix honest fact in with complete bullshit to constantly befuddle anyone trying to discover what they really believe.

And that seems like an admirable quality to me. Since beliefs are so immutable and silly in the first place why should we treat them so seriously? Lie about your beliefs as often as you can. Completely confuse your friends by telling them you are a Baptist Pagan. Mindfuck your family by saying that you believe every word of both The Urantia Book and Dianetics. Tell them that you believe six impossible things all at the same time! It’s not like they can prove you wrong anyways. Follow the path of apologetics everywhere by coming up with the most twist pretzel logic in the history of man. And tell them that Eris made you do it.

Instructions Included

Art, bizarre, CRAZY PREPARED, HIMEOBS, review, Science, Stuff, Technology

http://www.instructables.com/

I am addicted to this site.  Bored at home?  Slow at work?  Waiting for your friends to get ready to go somewhere?  Pull this place up and LEARN something.  While writing this, your author has learned how to make a forge from a torch and a can of beans, a set of beads to count kilometers while walking, and a “Boba Fett” helmet from old carboard. 

Practical, outdoorsy, or frivolous, Instructables is a great site for accumulating info and ideas no matter how much of it you actually make or use.

Accepting submissions for: LESSER POOP

Uncategorized,

Lesser Poop

will be the “Bathroom Reader” edition of Intermittens. It focuses on short submissions which you can enjoy during a brief shitting sitting. It’s the perfect issue to leave in the bathrooms of coffee houses, bars, doctor’s offices, etc. NOW ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS!

Especially crude, stupid, or idiotic submissions are preferred. I am aiming for about 20-25 pages of low brow content. I may do some interviews, but I probably won’t be running longer, more serious pieces. Think about stuff which would be fun to read while you’re on the can.

In case you missed it, the title is a reference to this page of the PD: Greater Poop.

Already included: Very bad jokes. Very short stories. Exercises to mindfuck yourself.

Try out intermittens.org‘s brand new super powers by submitting stuff here. (you’ll need a login)

I’m going to endeavor to throw this thing together fairly quickly, so submit early!

also, check out Intermittens.org, our kick ass front door for the magazine.

Chaos Magic and the Dark Side of the Moon

ChaoSkeptic, Discordianism, magick, music

I am not a expert at Chaos Magic. Hell, let’s face it, I downright suck at it. As a skeptic I barely believe that it exists. I personally feel that it is just a way of putting yourself in a trance like state that changes your subjective view of your surroundings. It is just an occult tradition that has no traditions. It is DIY and MYOB religion. It is the refusal to listen to anyone else when it come to what works for you.

And it almost never works for me. I’m entirely too antsy for meditation. I can’t sit still for more than a couple of minutes before my skin starts to crawl and my muscles rebel against me. Pagan rituals don’t seem to work for me either. I just can’t turn off the disbelief center in my brain. I also couldn’t do it back when I was a Christian. I’d often hear people after a service talking about how “the Holy Spirit sure moved here today” and be completely dumbstruck by the concept. It was just so foreign to me. Props or pageantry don’t seem to help either.

Having said that, there are a couple of things that do actually put me in the ultra-fine religious state of gnosis. I’ll just cover the first one in this post and talk about the others later on.

One thing that seems to work about 75% of the time for me is a simple music relaxation technique. As I’ve said before I am a very auditory learner and music can have a very strong effect on my psyche. First, I isolate myself in a distraction free room, which isn’t easy when you are married and have a 2 year old. The only equipment I need is an MP3 player and a good pair of headphones. I’m not an obsessive audiophile but good headphones are a must for this. I like hearing every single note clearly and it helps to block out any background sounds around you. I then lie as still as possible while listening to an album with an ethereal feel to it. The old standbys like “The Dark Side of the Moon” almost always work. I get chills every single time I get to “Us and Them”. I’ve also used Radiohead’s “Ok Computer” and Broken Social Scene’s “Feel Good Lost”with good results.

As with any Chaos Magic this technique doesn’t work for everyone and doesn’t work every single time. This particular technique can get me into a shallow trance-like state and positively affect my mood. However it doesn’t seem to be good for much else. I’ll get to the more powerful stuff next time around.