The BIP is not a Discordian work: discuss

[P3nT4gR4m]

Something about the whole fucking attitude reminds me of cartesian dualityism

[Triple Zero]

LALALALA I CANT HEAR YOU FROM OUTSIDE MY BOX

[Arafelis]

I'm a little disturbed that you want me to give background information about myself in response to a question about an earlier post. But I'll go along with it. I am in fact 16. And gender, er, well, I don't give that sort of thing much thought. Doesn't weigh on my mind much. So let's just say androgynous. I've read RAW and both the original and refurbished and POEE site. I do have a passing interest in linguistics. I enjoy Japanese traditional arts and assorted custard desserts. Any more information and you'll have to buy me lunch.

Anyway, back to the original topic: The thing I was confused about is that you seem to believe that the way in which the BIP uses fnords offensively makes in not quite Discordian. What is it about using fnords to affect others and their thought processes unDiscordian? Is it so even when the intent is to alter their thought processes towards a more liberated state?

I want that information because I feel like the top level post ought to answer your question, but it obviously doesn't.  So I need to know who I'm talking to in order to craft something a little bit more targeted.  It's not your name, sex, and blood type I need to do that -- just a general sense of who you are, who you consider yourself to be.  I took the time to read back into your post history about a year, but a lot of your posts are really... well, short.

I'd be happy to buy you lunch, if you want to fly me out to sunny California from the.. well, also sunny, presently, but that's kind of an aberration... depths of the Philadelphia suburbs.  I'm not thinking that's much for a good economic trade-off, so I guess my question is, do you take gift cards?

No, not really.  Anyway:

"Fnord" is used by the authors of the Principia Discordia elsewhere to mean words, terminology, and conventions that are designed to interrupt someone's ability to objectively analyze a situation.  We see this shit all the time in the media.  I mean, headlines are built for it.  Take the headline of a local paper from not to long ago: "SWINE FLU SUSPECTED IN COUNTY."  You read the article and discover that there is (at least) one person in the county who was tested at a hospital for swine flu.  There are no results back yet.

Does that mean people ought to be worried about swine flu?  Hell fucking no.  But what is the effect -- arguably the intended effect -- of printing a headline like that?

One of the things we've got going for us as Discordians is the ability to see these "fnords."  (They're not quite what Wikipedia calls 'weasel words', necessarily, so I'm just going to keep calling them fnords.)  We can read that headline and laugh about it, or phone the editor, or whatever.  But one of the things very rarely done in the original body of Discordian works was to use fnords as a tactic against other people, or at least people we're trying to sort-of-actively convert.

That doesn't mean anything that does so automatically is not-Discordian.  OM and other pranks are pretty much all about the care and fneeding of fnords.  But it's a bit like the 'black magic' of Discordianism.  So first, I'm cautioning the authors to be aware of that.

Then I'm going on to say that if that's their goal, they're not doing it very well.  At least, not well enough.  In my endlessly over-humble opinion.  If you want to scare somebody, to fuck with their sense of grounding and reality and make them think they're standing on a crumbling sand bar in an ocean filled with shoggoths and the shark from Jaws, you don't do it by running up to them and shouting, "YOU'RE STANDING ON A SANDBAR IN THE MIDDLE OF SHOGGOTH-OCEAN.  ALSO THE SHARK FROM JAWS IS THERE."  Which is kind of how the BIP reads to me.  I don't doubt it was cathartic to write, and it's a bit cathartic to read, if you're already In On It.  But that's not quite the same.

I'm trying to offer kind of a key to the original post, rather than a complete re-post.  Does my OP make more sense to you now?

You don't need to know everything about a person to talk to them. Surprisingly, because I am capable of using language, I am capable of expressing quite complicated ideas to a broad audience, people who I may never know at all! This is why we have things like 'the written word'. It's pretty astounding, I know.

Yeah, but it's not always that effective.  Who do you communicate better with: a crowd of strangers, or a group of people you know?

Okay, okay, for you it may be the crowd of strangers.  For me, it's the other one.  (And I feel bad, because I want to reply to this flood of responses right now, but I don't have the time to read up on all the people I'm replying to.)

Discordian works, however, are a particular subset of the broader context, so the rest is only arguably related. It has been established, I think, that the majority of people here believe the primary characteristic of Discordian work to be an attempt to broaden the horizons of readers (who we may never meet or know in any real sense!) outside of the general assumptions that they live their daily lives in.

I think this conversation is one we're going to be having for a while.  I don't think that assumption is wrong, but I think there is a lot more, or at least potentially more, to what Discordian works mean/contain/do.

You could consider it fighting FNORDS with FNORDS if you like. But I suspect if you keep using that terminology, you might get lynched.

Oh, geez.  Surrealistic suburban noir always gives me gas.

This is one reason why it would be useful if you could reformulate your argument in modern day language. Another reason is that quite a number of the people on this board have never read the Illuminatus Trilogy, actually there's a good amount of them that have never read the entire PD either. Still some of them consider themselves Discordians, and some of their opinions are considered valuable.

The third and IMO most important reason is that being able to formulate your argument without "Discordian Jargon" shows that you actually are aware of what you are specifically trying to express, that you are capable of thinking for yourself and having critical thoughts about your own opinions and not just parrotting someone else's words and ideas.

It's jargon, sure, but in-community jargon.  I think I explained above pretty well what I mean when I say 'fnord,' although I'm a bit surprised to find that the community congregated around PD doesn't already have a solid sense of it.  I can understand that there's a varying level of 'background literacy,' but I feel a bit like a Jewish scholar who's being asked to talk about Judaism to a group of rabbis, but not use the term 'mitzvah' because not everybody knows exactly what it means or where it's from.

I knew I was going to be sorry for something.    I'm going to leave my reply to Nasturtiums as my 'proof' I have some kind of idea of what I'm talking about -- and my explanation of the term.  I feel a bit too besieged at the moment to really try the tabula rasa thing just yet.

I'm bored, and I don't like your tone or word choices.

Geez, I always thought the T-Shirt was a lie, but here I am: I slept, and the clowns ate me.

Discordian works can't sell something? Really? The Illuminatus Triliogy isn't selling something? "Reality Is What You Can Get Away With" isn't selling something? Cosmic Trigger, Angel Tech, Zenarchy... not selling eh?

I'd characterize several of those works as selling as little as possible, and one of the things they're not explicitly not selling is fnords.  But I'll accept my chastisement meekly.  Ish.

LALALALA I CANT HEAR YOU FROM OUTSIDE MY BOX

You keep your ears in your vagina? 

[Kai]

The BIP isn't exactly a Discordian work.

Hey, I'm sorry.  

I dunno what for yet, but I think I'm going to get told soon.  

I might be sorry that I didn't pick a side, but I'm selling a case anyway.  That's kinda disingenuous.  Or I might be sorry that I'm criticizing the BIP, because I've definitely never put up my own Discordian works on a site, and I do think that's a pretty noble goal.  Or, I dunno.  Maybe I'm sorry that I'm going to opine that there are things that really fnordaren't Discordian, which runs counter to the spirit of the movement.

The BIP isn't exactly Discordian because it's selling us something.  Specifically, it's selling us fnord.

Here's what the first page of the BIP says, but I'm going to help you see the fnords.  Some of them.

You think you just woke up here one day, right? FNORD Think again. It was your whole life that brought you to this. Fact is, you were born to be here. Go ahead, look around. I'll be here when you get back.

Looks smaller than it is, don't it? Sometimes, it doesn't even feel all that bad. But stillÉ You look through those FNORD bars, and you see all that you're FNORD missing. Hopes. Dreams. What could-have-been. Here, put your palms up to the Black Iron, grab the FNORD bars, let me show you something.

FNORD Feel that? That's all the books you've read. And that entire FNORD wall over there is your adolescence. Look FNORD up: It's your CD collection. The FNORD floor you woke up on? Your parents. Like I said, you were born to be here. It's your life, it's the FNORD cold FNORD trap of your own existence. You painted yourself into a FNORD corner.

So, now you're wondering why you feel FNORD trapped here, in your own life. Why now, why today, can you see the FNORD bars of a Black Iron FNORD Prison that you made for yourself? Because you stopped reacting, and took a couple of steps forward. You thought you could do what you wanted, you tried to be self reliant, and FNORD bang. You smacked your head against the FNORD wall.

What's that? Yeah. That's when the FNORD claustrophobia sets in. When you didn't know you were FNORD trapped, everything was fine. But now that you know, you can see your entire, FNORD tired, FNORD monotonous life stretch out before you, FNORD trapped in these 4 walls, these 6 sides. Breathe, kid. It's just abject FNORD FNORD panic that you're feeling right now. Some even say that this is what FNORD death feels like: An unchanging life, immune and FNORD unfeeling to what you FNORD really want.

Look around you. Look at these cold, FNORD black bars. The FNORD colorless ceiling. The FNORD hard ground. FNORD That's your universe. That's the world you're going to be living in for the FNORD rest of your life here in FNORD Prison. You're going to live out your life in FNORD quiet FNORD desperation. Or, not so quiet if you decide to take the rife/bell tower route. Either way, FNORD long or FNORD short, it'll feel the same. FNORD Dead, unchanging.

So, if you're interested, I'd like to invite you to a jailbreak... (DRONF!) Just turn around.

It's bad juju, man.  We know the fnords are out there, but using them offensively?  This is our left-foot path.

But here's the deal: That doesn't quite make it not-Discordian.  This was written by someone who knows there are fnords out there.  The thing is, I'm not sold they can really see them.  This is black magic written by Good Charlotte.  You've got the candles and you've a candance and I hope to somebody's God you remembered the salt, but I'd still bet against you on demons showing up.

Until you know what you want, you can only get things you don't.  Do you want to chase them out of the darkness with the slavering jaws of FNORDs?  Then you're going to need to be a lot more ruthless.  Do you want to play the kindly woodsman like Omar and Mal?  Then drop the wolfman mask.

Hail Eris.  But hot or cold, man, or she's gonna spit it out.

"If you think this all was just a ha-ha, go back and read it again."

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The BIP isn't exactly a Discordian work.

Hey, I'm sorry.  

I dunno what for yet, but I think I'm going to get told soon.  

I might be sorry that I didn't pick a side, but I'm selling a case anyway.  That's kinda disingenuous.  Or I might be sorry that I'm criticizing the BIP, because I've definitely never put up my own Discordian works on a site, and I do think that's a pretty noble goal.  Or, I dunno.  Maybe I'm sorry that I'm going to opine that there are things that really fnordaren't Discordian, which runs counter to the spirit of the movement.

The BIP isn't exactly Discordian because it's selling us something.  Specifically, it's selling us fnord.

Here's what the first page of the BIP says, but I'm going to help you see the fnords.  Some of them.

You think you just woke up here one day, right? FNORD Think again. It was your whole life that brought you to this. Fact is, you were born to be here. Go ahead, look around. I'll be here when you get back.

Looks smaller than it is, don't it? Sometimes, it doesn't even feel all that bad. But stillÉ You look through those FNORD bars, and you see all that you're FNORD missing. Hopes. Dreams. What could-have-been. Here, put your palms up to the Black Iron, grab the FNORD bars, let me show you something.

FNORD Feel that? That's all the books you've read. And that entire FNORD wall over there is your adolescence. Look FNORD up: It's your CD collection. The FNORD floor you woke up on? Your parents. Like I said, you were born to be here. It's your life, it's the FNORD cold FNORD trap of your own existence. You painted yourself into a FNORD corner.

So, now you're wondering why you feel FNORD trapped here, in your own life. Why now, why today, can you see the FNORD bars of a Black Iron FNORD Prison that you made for yourself? Because you stopped reacting, and took a couple of steps forward. You thought you could do what you wanted, you tried to be self reliant, and FNORD bang. You smacked your head against the FNORD wall.

What's that? Yeah. That's when the FNORD claustrophobia sets in. When you didn't know you were FNORD trapped, everything was fine. But now that you know, you can see your entire, FNORD tired, FNORD monotonous life stretch out before you, FNORD trapped in these 4 walls, these 6 sides. Breathe, kid. It's just abject FNORD FNORD panic that you're feeling right now. Some even say that this is what FNORD death feels like: An unchanging life, immune and FNORD unfeeling to what you FNORD really want.

Look around you. Look at these cold, FNORD black bars. The FNORD colorless ceiling. The FNORD hard ground. FNORD That's your universe. That's the world you're going to be living in for the FNORD rest of your life here in FNORD Prison. You're going to live out your life in FNORD quiet FNORD desperation. Or, not so quiet if you decide to take the rife/bell tower route. Either way, FNORD long or FNORD short, it'll feel the same. FNORD Dead, unchanging.

So, if you're interested, I'd like to invite you to a jailbreak... (DRONF!) Just turn around.

It's bad juju, man.  We know the fnords are out there, but using them offensively?  This is our left-foot path.

But here's the deal: That doesn't quite make it not-Discordian.  This was written by someone who knows there are fnords out there.  The thing is, I'm not sold they can really see them.  This is black magic written by Good Charlotte.  You've got the candles and you've a candance and I hope to somebody's God you remembered the salt, but I'd still bet against you on demons showing up.

Until you know what you want, you can only get things you don't.  Do you want to chase them out of the darkness with the slavering jaws of FNORDs?  Then you're going to need to be a lot more ruthless.  Do you want to play the kindly woodsman like Omar and Mal?  Then drop the wolfman mask.

Hail Eris.  But hot or cold, man, or she's gonna spit it out.

http://discordia.wikia.com/wiki/Pinealist

[Arafelis]

I'd consider myself more of an anerist than an erist.  But that's my first encounter with that wiki -- thanks for that, whatever else your intentions were.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

You've claimed to be 16 on these boards.  Is this accurate?

If you're comfortable with it, I'm also curious what gender you consider yourself.  (Your posts indicate androgyny; is this an accurate gender assessment?)  I am not concerned with your sex.

I'm asking because your post content is not significant enough for me to build a profile, and my initial post is clearly insufficient to communicate with you.  I'm not interested in talking over or around you.  My next query, regardless of the answers to the previous two, will be how much of the 'background' Discordian material you're familiar with (The writings of RAW, Leary's works, Taoism, the contents of either the original or refurbished POEE.org, etc.  Semiotics and experimental linguistics would be on the list, but your post content does touch on those subjects).  If there's something else you think would be more relevant instead, please share that.

I'm so glad you've come to show us what a Really Real Discordian is like!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

"Fnord" is used by the authors of the Principia Discordia elsewhere to mean words, terminology, and conventions that are designed to interrupt someone's ability to objectively analyze a situation.  We see this shit all the time in the media.  I mean, headlines are built for it.  Take the headline of a local paper from not to long ago: "SWINE FLU SUSPECTED IN COUNTY."  You read the article and discover that there is (at least) one person in the county who was tested at a hospital for swine flu.  There are no results back yet.

Does that mean people ought to be worried about swine flu?  Hell fucking no.  But what is the effect -- arguably the intended effect -- of printing a headline like that?

One of the things we've got going for us as Discordians is the ability to see these "fnords."  (They're not quite what Wikipedia calls 'weasel words', necessarily, so I'm just going to keep calling them fnords.)  We can read that headline and laugh about it, or phone the editor, or whatever.  But one of the things very rarely done in the original body of Discordian works was to use fnords as a tactic against other people, or at least people we're trying to sort-of-actively convert.

Dare I say... fucking DUH. Why are you explaining, and overexplaining, the buttfuckingly obvious?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It seemed like a good idea at the time.  Why'd you feel it necessary to quote my entire post for a one-line reply, then rip off've P3nT4gR4m's insults?  Surely you've got a few of your own.

That's not your entire post, Brain Trust.

And why would you think I read Pent's posts? Fuck that guy.  

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

LALALALA I CANT HEAR YOU FROM OUTSIDE MY BOX

[Arafelis]

The BIP isn't exactly a Discordian work.

Hey, I'm sorry.  

I dunno what for yet, but I think I'm going to get told soon.  

I might be sorry that I didn't pick a side, but I'm selling a case anyway.  That's kinda disingenuous.  Or I might be sorry that I'm criticizing the BIP, because I've definitely never put up my own Discordian works on a site, and I do think that's a pretty noble goal.  Or, I dunno.  Maybe I'm sorry that I'm going to opine that there are things that really fnordaren't Discordian, which runs counter to the spirit of the movement.

The BIP isn't exactly Discordian because it's selling us something.  Specifically, it's selling us fnord.

Here's what the first page of the BIP says, but I'm going to help you see the fnords.  Some of them.

You think you just woke up here one day, right? FNORD Think again. It was your whole life that brought you to this. Fact is, you were born to be here. Go ahead, look around. I'll be here when you get back.

Looks smaller than it is, don't it? Sometimes, it doesn't even feel all that bad. But stillÉ You look through those FNORD bars, and you see all that you're FNORD missing. Hopes. Dreams. What could-have-been. Here, put your palms up to the Black Iron, grab the FNORD bars, let me show you something.

FNORD Feel that? That's all the books you've read. And that entire FNORD wall over there is your adolescence. Look FNORD up: It's your CD collection. The FNORD floor you woke up on? Your parents. Like I said, you were born to be here. It's your life, it's the FNORD cold FNORD trap of your own existence. You painted yourself into a FNORD corner.

So, now you're wondering why you feel FNORD trapped here, in your own life. Why now, why today, can you see the FNORD bars of a Black Iron FNORD Prison that you made for yourself? Because you stopped reacting, and took a couple of steps forward. You thought you could do what you wanted, you tried to be self reliant, and FNORD bang. You smacked your head against the FNORD wall.

What's that? Yeah. That's when the FNORD claustrophobia sets in. When you didn't know you were FNORD trapped, everything was fine. But now that you know, you can see your entire, FNORD tired, FNORD monotonous life stretch out before you, FNORD trapped in these 4 walls, these 6 sides. Breathe, kid. It's just abject FNORD FNORD panic that you're feeling right now. Some even say that this is what FNORD death feels like: An unchanging life, immune and FNORD unfeeling to what you FNORD really want.

Look around you. Look at these cold, FNORD black bars. The FNORD colorless ceiling. The FNORD hard ground. FNORD That's your universe. That's the world you're going to be living in for the FNORD rest of your life here in FNORD Prison. You're going to live out your life in FNORD quiet FNORD desperation. Or, not so quiet if you decide to take the rife/bell tower route. Either way, FNORD long or FNORD short, it'll feel the same. FNORD Dead, unchanging.

So, if you're interested, I'd like to invite you to a jailbreak... (DRONF!) Just turn around.

It's bad juju, man.  We know the fnords are out there, but using them offensively?  This is our left-foot path.

But here's the deal: That doesn't quite make it not-Discordian.  This was written by someone who knows there are fnords out there.  The thing is, I'm not sold they can really see them.  This is black magic written by Good Charlotte.  You've got the candles and you've a candance and I hope to somebody's God you remembered the salt, but I'd still bet against you on demons showing up.

Until you know what you want, you can only get things you don't.  Do you want to chase them out of the darkness with the slavering jaws of FNORDs?  Then you're going to need to be a lot more ruthless.  Do you want to play the kindly woodsman like Omar and Mal?  Then drop the wolfman mask.

Hail Eris.  But hot or cold, man, or she's gonna spit it out.

http://discordia.wikia.com/wiki/Pinealist

Learn2scroll, Train Bust.

Also: Basically what you're saying is you think like Pent, but slower?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Quoting that post was significant for the setup, with the link being the punchline.

Did Pent post that link first?

Oh. I didn't think so.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

By the way, Arafailis: http://discordia.wikia.com/wiki/Really_Real_Discordians

Congratulations on being a cliche.

[Arafelis]

C'mon, kiddo, follow the parsing!  What I said was, you quoted an entire post for a single line reply (your first post).  Then, in your second post, you did the other thing.

Your, uh, wiki page.  That you created just now.  It says things on it I find amusing.  Can I subscribe to your newsletter?    (I may have done so already!)

[Triple Zero]

"Fnord" is used by the authors of the Principia Discordia elsewhere to mean words, terminology, and conventions that are designed to interrupt someone's ability to objectively analyze a situation.

, no really. cite the PD for me on Fnords. Only page 10 shows the word a couple of times, but doesn't really say anything about it, or use it in that fashion.

One of the things we've got going for us as Discordians is the ability to see these "fnords."  (They're not quite what Wikipedia calls 'weasel words', necessarily, so I'm just going to keep calling them fnords.)  We can read that headline and laugh about it, or phone the editor, or whatever.  But one of the things very rarely done in the original body of Discordian works was to use fnords as a tactic against other people, or at least people we're trying to sort-of-actively convert.

except for some Discordians that like writing "Fnord" on dollar bills.

or taking Fnord to mean what you're describing here (which is again slightly different from the one RAW made up--really it would help if you'd use normal words to express your thoughts),

there is the disinformation spreading Adam Weishaupt Society Cabal, they employed headlines that (I think) you would consider to be Fnords.

and the situational sign pranksters, partly inspired by RAW's Markov Chaney character, changing signs into things that are even more infuriating to people, making them more Fnordy, right? the point there is to slowly but deliberately push the signs into absurdity, hopefully making people a bit more aware.

the BIP employs these "Fnords" for yet another reason. not to subconsciously worry people, either. some of the examples you picked are obviously just artistic license and writing style. but others are on purpose, a slap in the face, not to scare or confuse or hide, but really the opposite. it forces people to consider things they would rather not, things they might be trying to run away from. I'd call those inverted Fnords, if anything.

Discordian works, however, are a particular subset of the broader context, so the rest is only arguably related. It has been established, I think, that the majority of people here believe the primary characteristic of Discordian work to be an attempt to broaden the horizons of readers (who we may never meet or know in any real sense!) outside of the general assumptions that they live their daily lives in.

I think this conversation is one we're going to be having for a while.  I don't think that assumption is wrong, but I think there is a lot more, or at least potentially more, to what Discordian works mean/contain/do.

That's why he said "primary characteristic". Not "only characteristic", so yeah there's more.

And if you believe the primary characteristic to be something else, good for you.

But there's not much use in discussing which view of Discordianism is the right one, now is there? Ask two discordians, get three answers, after all.

And FTR, I don't believe it's the primary one either, but just one of the many possible characteristics that a Discordian work can have.

This is one reason why it would be useful if you could reformulate your argument in modern day language. Another reason is that quite a number of the people on this board have never read the Illuminatus Trilogy, actually there's a good amount of them that have never read the entire PD either. Still some of them consider themselves Discordians, and some of their opinions are considered valuable.

The third and IMO most important reason is that being able to formulate your argument without "Discordian Jargon" shows that you actually are aware of what you are specifically trying to express, that you are capable of thinking for yourself and having critical thoughts about your own opinions and not just parrotting someone else's words and ideas.

It's jargon, sure, but in-community jargon.  I think I explained above pretty well what I mean when I say 'fnord,' although I'm a bit surprised to find that the community congregated around PD doesn't already have a solid sense of it.

Nah it's just one of the lesser useful terms in Discordianism, I think. As I said before, in the PD it's just a nonsense word. Not until RAW uses this word as part of his Illuminatus conspiracy it--sort of--acquires the meaning you explained, except in the I3 it is an actual invisible word placed there by the Illuminati against which people are brainwashed as kids to feel discomfort about, as opposed to a partial sentence that worries people.

So that's already three different interpretations. Sometimes people will talk about "Fnord as in the Illuminatus Trilogy" to talk about the fictional invisible word, like someone would talk about "the Force in Star Wars" or "Spice in Dune".

When trying to express a concept like yours, however, there are usually regular English words or phrases that express the same notion, except with more nuance and accuracy instead of vague ambiguity. Like, for example, FUD (Fear Uncertainty & Doubt) or indeed "weasel phrase", etc.

In that sense, a lot of us do have a solid sense of the word Fnord, it just happens to be different from your sense of it. Which makes sense, because it's not really a rigidly defined word.

I can understand that there's a varying level of 'background literacy,' but I feel a bit like a Jewish scholar who's being asked to talk about Judaism to a group of rabbis, but not use the term 'mitzvah' because not everybody knows exactly what it means or where it's from.

No, rather think of it as speaking to a group of christians, jews and atheists with various backgrounds in religion, and being asked not to refer to the Commandments by their number because everybody orders them differently and has a vastly different interpretation of them.

I knew I was going to be sorry for something.    I'm going to leave my reply to Nasturtiums as my 'proof' I have some kind of idea of what I'm talking about -- and my explanation of the term.  I feel a bit too besieged at the moment to really try the tabula rasa thing just yet.

no man, true initiation never ends. just dropping a few terms and book titles doesn't mean you know what you're talking about. (often it even signifies the opposite--you know the kind of people I talk about, right?)

I can't assume that you know what you're talking about until I know what you're talking about. I used to have a little teaching job, and the best way to show that you know what you're takling about is being able to explain it in a clear and unambiguous matter.

how about instead of telling us we're doing it wrong, you write an essay (in the Or Kill Me subforum preferably) the way you would have explored and explained the concepts of the BIP, that jives more with your idea of Discordianism? cause even if I don't agree with you in some parts, I bet we would enjoy reading that.
we're pooping out new media all the time anyway, the BIP is just one thing among many. and there's also plans on re-issueing the thing in a 2009 edition (see the Think For Yourself subforum), so go for it

another thing I'd like to hear from you is if you can work out your definition of Fnords more precisely. also a separate thread in OKM subforum would be a good place--not this thread, or this forum, apart from the pool on the roof there's not much to find here for SRS BZNS discussion. Just, expect the bit about Fnords to meet more resistance than your personal vision of the BIP. But so far it seems you can take criticism fairly well, and if you can keep the condescending tone down to a minimum (exactly in the way I do not, in this post--I know, sorry), that discussion will be interesting and possibly even broaden your personal ideas about Discordianism as well (really, it can happen, even if you read all the books and got all the DVDs)