Annotated Principia Discordia

[Cramulus]

Hey cats. I've started a project at 23ae.com called the Annotated Principia Discordia.

The Principia is dense, sometimes confusing, and contains a lot of obscure references. I'd like to examine those things and hold them under a magnifying glass. I'm curious about what sorts of things Mal and Omar were thinking about when they put it together.

Every Thursday, I'll post another section from the 5th ed Principia and share my notes, observations, and other crammings.

The first section is posted now. http://23ae.com/2011/10/annotated-principia-discordia-page-5/

A lot of this will be old news to the PD scholars on this forum. But I am already finding some cool stuff that I had never noticed before.

As an example, here's a section from the upcoming entry about the Pentabarf:

Let's take a look at this line:

    after 10 weeks & 11 hours of intensive scrutiny he discerned that the message could be read by standing on his head and viewing it upside down.

These are not just random numbers. There's a joke here if you look for it.

10 weeks and 11 hours is a specific amount of time:  1691 hours.

Notice anything funny about that number?



If you stand on your head and view it upside down, it's still 1691.

Right-side up or upside down, it's the same thing. Mal and Omar are telling us that opposites are balanced, another recurring Discordian theme. Mal-2 already touched on this theme in his Greater Poop interview where he tells us "False things are also true".

The Principia will return to this on page 00009, where there's a Niels Bohr quote: "The opposite of a trivial truth is false; the opposite of a great truth is also true. "

I enjoy pretending I'm a monk studying the bible or something, meditating on some old illuminated manuscript.

I invite you join me in sharing your own observations on each section.

[Triple Zero]

Whoa, I LOVE THIS!

How did you find out that bit about the Persian verse?

Are you going to do the pages in random order or did you start at page 5 because it's sort of the front page minus the introduction?

Special tip/request: can you either tag the posts or put them in a category or something so that you can easily browse them all?

[Cramulus]

Thanks Trip!

How did you find out that bit about the Persian verse?

I've been a fan of the Rubiyat for a while. I've got a really nice 50 year old copy on my bedside table. Fitzgerald published four different translations of that verse, and Kerry's version doesn't match any of them.

Are you going to do the pages in random order or did you start at page 5 because it's sort of the front page minus the introduction?

I actually realized a bit too late that I'm using the page numbers listed on our site rather than the real page numbers.

I started on that page because I didn't want to review the RAW intro, it kind of speaks for itself.

Special tip/request: can you either tag the posts or put them in a category or something so that you can easily browse them all?

Yep! I made a Principia Discordia category where you'll be able to see all the posts in the series.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Cool project!

[hooplala]

I think is amazing Cram.

The style is a tad too colloquial for my taste, but it does work, and I don't have any better suggestions on tone.  I've already learned a lot just from the little bit that I've read.  Love it!

[Telarus]

Oooh! Awesome, I need to read this and contribute!

[Bu🤠ns]

Thanks cram...posting for updates!!

[Pæs]

Thanks cram...posting for updates!!

[moose]

This is a great idea (a trivial thing to say on my part, but that won't stop me). I am surprised that annotations and commentaries along these lines aren't widely available. You can find fifty different versions of one enigmatic little book, and yet there's such hesitance to get into the nitty-gritty details and explore the weirdness of it all. That observation about the "ten weeks eleven days" was great, it's one of those things that's so easy to overlook. That's some good thinking ya got there smartypants. Keep it coming.

[Kai]

Love this, Cram. I want more.

When I was in high school, I wrote a commentary on the Tao Te Ching, and it made me really sit down and think about every chapter, every line, to try to squeeze the hell out of it. I was trying to figure out not only what the author may mean, but what it may mean to me and other people. It was a really good exercise.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

posting for updates

[Cramulus]

Second post! Today we're talking about the Greater Poop interview which occurs before the title page.
http://23ae.com/2011/10/annotated-principia-discordia-page-6-greater-poop


So far, I've written enough of these to last through the New Year - frustrating to see them trickle out 1x per week. But that's definitely better than posting like 7 in one day and then a month of silence.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I'm digging this, Cram!

[Cramulus]

Hey Telarus - for next week's entry, I'm going to mention the official Discordian document numbering system

As I understand it, this code: ODD# II/2,xii;68Chs3136

means this document was written by Mal-2 on December 26, 1970.

What does the II/2,xii part mean? I know it's supposed to represent which sect of Discordia the document comes from. But which one is II/2,xii?

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Hey Telarus - for next week's entry, I'm going to mention the official Discordian document numbering system

As I understand it, this code: ODD# II/2,xii;68Chs3136

means this document was written by Mal-2 on December 26, 1970.

What does the II/2,xii part mean? I know it's supposed to represent which sect of Discordia the document comes from. But which one is II/2,xii?

How were you even able to decipher...

Oh, right. Discordian Calendar. 68th day of Chaos, Year 3136. I forget we have one of those.