The Gods were annoyed

To say the least.

But they had no choice 'cause we had rented the space fair and square. The ink on the contract was dry. The Gods' job was to clear out and spend the week on an all expenses paid booze cruise through the Astral. Our job was to party like it's 2012. Apollo, in his little white vacation shoes, flipped me off on the way out. They had just heard the news, that Limbo Peak had been rented out by Discordians.

[Insert 000's pic of kolonoskopos and hairacles]

See, when Triple Zero and I reserved the place, we wore these sweet masks. I was Hairacles and he was Kolonoskopos. We told them it was a masquerade ball, but we didn't tell 'em who was on the guest list.

When Zeus found out it was Discordians, he got all bitchtits. "Eris worshippers?" he thundered. "Aw Hera, they're gonna foul the pool..." Someone whispered in his ear that skinnydipping was listed several times on their agenda. That old windbag's bitchtits practically burst out his beardhole. "I forbid the pool entirely!" Sure thing pops. Yeah, we'll be good guests. Hey, where do you keep the towels?

See, our Lady Eris is celebrating 49 or 50 years or so since she sent her penguin to freak out those spags Mal and Omar. Since then, it's been more or less a constant party - like something Crowley would envision while balls deep in some ass trance. So in a way, we're celebrating 49 or 50 years of constant partying with an even weirder party.

So 000 and I -- er -- Hairacles and Kolonoskopos tried to contact as many "Discordians" as they could find for this bizarre masquerade bash. And when the party started, they came in droves. They jibbered in Russian. There were mittens and win in every discussion.

Weird people in their anybody suits. We're all over the place like tossed cookies.

[insert the beach etc.discordia ad]

Now there's a lot of "Discordians" out there on the web, and they're not organized really well, so there's no telling how much of the iceberg we crashed. But I think we got a good sampling. It was cool, because all these foreign networks collided. They swapped ideas and put some pee in the idea pot. And this book is the toxic soup that we squeezed out of it.

The idea, originally, was to produce a book really quickly. I had this idea for a booklet I wanted to write about why Discordia is a kickass way of dealing with this crazy decade. I mean, the Principia is practically 50 years old, but it keeps getting more relevant. Even my daily commute to work feels like a stanza from Lewis Carroll. So I put together some thoughts, but I wanted more people to give their spin on things. So I had this idea for a one-shot internet forum.

To make a long story short, we set up the Internet Cyberspace Masquerade (also known as the Party on Limbo Peak). So everybody put on made up identity masks and showed up at this forum. It would only be open for one week, so there was no time for a culture to form. No time for in-group/out-group follow the leader in-joke/bad-joke memetics. Separated from their networks and social backup, people were forced to talk straight. It was an interesting experiment.

And that's the energy which launched this book. A bunch of random factors coming together to form a social collage. I think that's a good thumbnail of the Discordian society right there - there are artists, hackers, occultists, pranksters... in short, the remnants of Norton's Empire. Surrealist tricksters who live on the fringes, colorful iterations at the edge of the fractal. They've got all these great ideas, but those ideas are scattered all over the board. I say let's cut 'em up into kibble and assemble them, collage style, into a ransom note to reality. Let's make a primordial stone soup.

And since the Masquerade, the book has continued to grow. If anything, I want it to stand as a signpost, reminding future generations that though many of our forefathers have fallen (rest in peace Greg, Kerry, Bob, et al), we're still here. We're still doing stuff. Are you?

So this book is about some of the energy going on right now. It's a rough sketch of the view from Limbo Peak. It's like taking a tape recording of a party conversation. Only a snippet. This book is a collage, a few cutups, itself a cutup. Take the parts of it you like.

For those of you who are reading this but have no idea what Discordia is, maybe I should offer some brief explanation. Discordia "is" a religion in some sense, a philosophy in some sense, a joke in some sense, a movement in some sense and a recepie for disaster in some sense. What these five senses have in common is Chaos. The meme at the center is Eris, the Greek Goddess of confusion. She doesn't take much seriously.

Discordia showed up in 1958 or 1959 (depending on which part of the Principia Discordia you're forbidden to believe), and

Zarathud tugged at my leg. "Look at that," he said, pointing to the ceiling. On the ceiling, big bright red letters spelled out the word GOAT. What? Why did someone write GOAT on the ceiling? I never resolved this question, and it itched in my brain like spagfire. For weeks afterwards, I would look up every time I went in a building. It was like a compulsion -- I couldn't go through a door without looking for the absurd.

Bacon Cone Nixon hears The Word and says, "Extremely subtle, confusing changes; funny. Extremely large, confusing changes; possibly funny, if done with a high level of forethought. I like to plant products in people’s houses, and do shit like replace their half-used jug of milk with a half-used jug of different milk, or put a handful of mayonnaise packets in their butter compartment, just because it’s subtle enough to make them question their own realities. Adding magazines to their bedside table or stuffing a pair of socks under the blanket at the foot of the bed, or adding a pair of shoes in their size to their closet, are also good. You can choose things which really DO fuck with people’s MINDS, making it a MINDfuck and not just an irritating obvious prank."

But sometimes it can be obvious. Like putting your e-mail address on a crazy poster and hang it cool. You'll attract the sort of people that send e-mails to people who put up crazy signs. I've been leaving weird stuff on the train for years, and now I'm starting to see weird stuff that I didn't even do. You know those posters on the train for aspirin and vacations and musicals? Somebody cut out a donkey head and carefully replaced someone's face. I didn't even notice until I got close. A week later, the mystery prankster had cut up a lottery ad and made a collage out of the casino ad. Brilliant stuff.

Have you heard of the Retail Cabal? It's every Discordian that works a crappy retail job and made it into a shrine to Our Lady. Like when I worked for Lord Tayloron, and I spent all day writing FNORDS on every single bill I could get my hands on. (FNORD YOUR ONES!) Years later, I'd get a FNORDed dollar bill as change. The writing and style was very distinctly not mine. (and there was no moustache on Washington) So put your weird out there like weirdbait. Let it hang out, spaggy pants. These things are signposts to the Others.

And this book is a signpost too. It's a callout that we're here, we're real, and you can be a real one too.

The PDF for this book is available and kopyleft. That means you can make it yours. Print out your favorite pages, add your own. Sell 'em for all I care. Make cutups. Give it out and make it happen.

Zarathud, it turns out, is a big fan of the cutup hamhock. You'll notice he wandered through the book and made his own edits. He's had a lot of fun rearranging stuff and making it "better". He approached me at the party and said, "Hey, can I be in the book?"

"Sure," I said into the megaphone.

He told me he was worried that since he's the Saint of the fourth season, Bureaucracy, people think he's a total square. Well it's true that he's not very creative, but he's got quite the knack for odd juxtapositions. As it turns out, he's a big fan of the cut-up method. I had two essays I wanted to show you about cutups and collages. One from The Art of Memetics, and one by William Burroughs. Zarathud liked the pieces, so he shuffled them together during his lunch break at the Jade Emperor's Bureaucratorium. (Zarathud works in the food court of this Chinese Bureaucratic-Heaven)