On Who I Am & What The Hell I'm Doing On Your Lawn!

[The Wizard Joseph]

Ah trix.. iirc you got here about the same time I first did. I have paid my royalties in interpretive dance. Sorry you were not here to observe, but I assure you the dance is valid currency in several dimensions of consciousness. You need only cash in your new assets. Debt handled.
Now if you require help polydimensionally cashing in.. why I would be happy to assist for a reasonable fee!

[The Wizard Joseph]

I'd like to switch over to a bit of "What The Hell I'm Doing On your Lawn" and then get back to a not quite linear narrative about my life.

The truth is I'm not doing much. As yet.

I have some difficulty adjusting to new modes of communication and some hesitancy about interacting with PD at all. The difficulty of changing my daily habits to regularly communicate will be overcome with persistence, time, and repetition. This I can do, but it will take a bit of intentional effort. The hesitation is a stickier creature and deserves it's own paragraph. (Ok maybe two)

I hesitate on two points. One is that I was taught 'better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open up your boca and remove all doubt'. I tend to be quite taciturn IRL. I am open, even outgoing, with friends.  The rest of the public gets a mask and performance, or silence, all just a calculated play in the Game. I don't want to play that game here. I wish to make friends and learn. I know this will take some time and earnesty.

The other point is an odd obsession that this place, or thing, or (m)emetic construct (sic)... or whatever PD is brings on me. What I mostly mean is that I become preoccupied by the terrible, marvelous doings here, on occasion, to the point where it could cause... say, a traffic accident.
"I swear to Gawd Officer, he just came right on through the stop sign grinning like a ninny!  Ya shoulda seen his eyes..."
Mahap I'll just get things thrown at me by friends trying to bring me back to the conversation here in meatspace while my brain is vigorously trying to chew down some gristly, tasty bit from here@PD.COM. This distraction brings some modest risks, but I think I can handle it. I definitely think it's worth while to try.

For now I intend to work on  getting into the habit of writing things on my phone. I have an acceptable writing app and can edit or add pizzazz in your forum's neato utility box as needed. I already lost one write up for here to an app or, more likely, user glitch and have no intention of repeating the mistake. Hope to get into reading the threads more as well, though I know this is what brings on the fits..

Sure as hell beats the morning newspaper!

[The Wizard Joseph]

  I sometimes think that I might have been quite a little computer hacker had my early exposure to the information age gone differently.  I was in maybe 3rd grade and reading well above my age when my parents brought home a Macintosh.  It had screen and computer all in one and basic color, one button mouse,  and a very nice keyboard.  Mom had pushed Dad to get it so she could write. I was truly enchanted by it.

I spent all the time I could playing with the paint program (Macpaint) and playing what games I could find. I remember Dark Castle particularly well. My brothers were also fascinated, especially by the games, but had been deemed too young to touch it by Mom Inc. This did not exactly stop them.

One day Mom went into a rage because her Macwrite program had apparently been locked out. She blamed me. I have no explicit memory of doing it, but admit to much monkeying with the things. She banned me and my brothers from touching it, locked it away, and eventually lost interest in the thing herself. There was never so much passion in my heart for computers themselves again, just an appreciation for their utility.  During this time in my life there was a lot of other tribulation that I hope to touch upon later ITT.

Other than a Nintendo some years later that was about all the computer exposure I got until high school. I had well and truly burnt out on several levels by then. But that tale would require getting well ahead of myself. Suffice to say my formative years went by isolated from the world of infotech.

More later, must go on

[Reginald Ret]

Well, if I had a lawn, I'd welcome you to trample all over that shit.

Since I do not, I instead welcome you to trample all over my Discordia.

Yes, MY Discordia.  I own it.  All of it.  And you fuckers still owe me royalties.

I should probably read the OP, or really any of the posts in this thread, rather than just replying to the title, but I'm overtired and if I was to give a fuck it would have to be to my SO, even though I'm sure you are hot stuff.

Whatever I'm going to bed.  I'll read this thread tomorrow and then realize how stupid I am, yet again.  Gotta have something to look forward to, ya know.

I found it entertaining. So there's that.

[The Wizard Joseph]

I think I like the idea of swapping over to an analysis of my Discordia experience every now and then in the present tense. Maybe now and again I'll inject these 'what I'm doing on your lawn' bits.  I do want to mostly focus on relating my past to the folks here, but in fact who I am is not that.

I'm a mildly frustrated super primate poking out text with his bare hands on a magic rock the functions of which he barely comprehends. The poor bastard with a head full of Discordia among Other Things that he has no clue what to do with and sometimes only barely manages to keep together is me.

I'm not sure if the Discordia is helping or not. I'm not sure I need help even if it is.  I only know that I DISAGREE with what I was taught about the cosmos and yet not in toto. I disagree enough to find myself wandering for more than answers but also so I can have some peace.
Sometimes home is where the hell is.

I see here a small group of exceptional minds that seem to me more or less in the same boat. Too bright to believe the lie... and yet what else have ya got? This particular tiny little piece of the thing called Discordianism here at PD represents to me a whole bunch of replys to the question.  Replys I will surely find agreement and disagreement over.

Guess this means I'm just standing on the front lawn of the temple of Discordia and just disagreeing my little heart out. Fist high in the air, but not pointed at God. Not really pointed at anything really, but mad as hell.

Eris must think I'm just adorable,
not that that's what will save me.
Not convinced I need to be.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I see here a small group of exceptional minds that seem to me more or less in the same boat. Too bright to believe the lie... and yet what else have ya got?

I've got science.

[The Wizard Joseph]

I see here a small group of exceptional minds that seem to me more or less in the same boat. Too bright to believe the lie... and yet what else have ya got?

I've got science.

What like all of it? That's not very sporting.

[The Wizard Joseph]

In third grade a bitter old woman named Hansen became my math teacher. Noting that I was both gifted and disruptive she assigned me EXTREME amounts of extra rote arithmetic homework and talked my trusting parents into letting her do it. Said it would make me even better at math and of course teacher knows best right? All the same basic functions. No new math to be had, just a desperately busy and quiet boy. My folks eventually figured out what she had done, but by then I had already come to hate it and had taken a few punitive licks from my misguided father for my complaints and 'laziness'. This greatly reinforced the negative association about homework and math in particular I was developing.

In high school I remember a detention teacher tried to buy time one day with the old "add all the integers from 1 through 100" trick. 5,050 derived by 101*50. I let bastard sit down before I asked him (I think teach was male) to please come check my answer. He said I was wrong and to do it again. He was either an idiot or presumed I was, probably both.  I told everyone the answer. I somewhat remember getting in trouble for this and being sent home. I was probably already in detention for truancy anyway, but it could have been for 'student conflict'.

That evil bitch Hansen simultaneously sharpened my talent and ensured my hate of it's use. Public school is freaking diabolical.

Third grade was the same year I read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and both lost faith in movie monsters and realized I had trouble fitting in because I was like the creature that thought and felt and was not a real threat to people but was also not one of them because I had been made different. I was not yet bitter enough to hate God over it, just hurting from all sorts of things, and wondering why the movies made the creature out to be a dangerous dullard.

After I attempted suicide halfway through fourth grade and my parents got me on antidepressants and put me in a Christianazi private 'Christian' school I began to hate God.

[Doktor Howl]

In third grade a bitter old woman named Hansen became my math teacher. Noting that I was both gifted and disruptive she assigned me EXTREME amounts of extra rote arithmetic homework and talked my trusting parents into letting her do it. Said it would make me even better at math and of course teacher knows best right? All the same basic functions. No new math to be had, just a desperately busy and quiet boy. My folks eventually figured out what she had done, but by then I had already come to hate it and had taken a few punitive licks from my misguided father for my complaints and 'laziness'. This greatly reinforced the negative association about homework and math in particular I was developing.

In high school I remember a detention teacher tried to buy time one day with the old "add all the integers from 1 through 100" trick. 5,050 derived by 101*50. I let bastard sit down before I asked him (I think teach was male) to please come check my answer. He said I was wrong and to do it again. He was either an idiot or presumed I was, probably both.  I told everyone the answer. I somewhat remember getting in trouble for this and being sent home. I was probably already in detention for truancy anyway, but it could have been for 'student conflict'.

That evil bitch Hansen simultaneously sharpened my talent and ensured my hate of it's use. Public school is freaking diabolical.

Third grade was the same year I read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and both lost faith in movie monsters and realized I had trouble fitting in because I was like the creature that thought and felt and was not a real threat to people but was also not one of them because I had been made different. I was not yet bitter enough to hate God over it, just hurting from all sorts of things, and wondering why the movies made the creature out to be a dangerous dullard.

After I attempted suicide halfway through fourth grade and my parents got me on antidepressants and put me in a Christianazi private 'Christian' school I began to hate God.

I had a teacher in 4th grade, Mrs Conway.  All the parents loved her.  Aged teacher, loads of experience, grandmotherly look.

When the parents weren't around she was a sadist that took particular pleasure in humiliating 4th grade kids.  I did a little jig 20 years ago, when I discovered she had died.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

In third grade a bitter old woman named Hansen became my math teacher. Noting that I was both gifted and disruptive she assigned me EXTREME amounts of extra rote arithmetic homework and talked my trusting parents into letting her do it. Said it would make me even better at math and of course teacher knows best right? All the same basic functions. No new math to be had, just a desperately busy and quiet boy. My folks eventually figured out what she had done, but by then I had already come to hate it and had taken a few punitive licks from my misguided father for my complaints and 'laziness'. This greatly reinforced the negative association about homework and math in particular I was developing.

In high school I remember a detention teacher tried to buy time one day with the old "add all the integers from 1 through 100" trick. 5,050 derived by 101*50. I let bastard sit down before I asked him (I think teach was male) to please come check my answer. He said I was wrong and to do it again. He was either an idiot or presumed I was, probably both.  I told everyone the answer. I somewhat remember getting in trouble for this and being sent home. I was probably already in detention for truancy anyway, but it could have been for 'student conflict'.

That evil bitch Hansen simultaneously sharpened my talent and ensured my hate of it's use. Public school is freaking diabolical.

Third grade was the same year I read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and both lost faith in movie monsters and realized I had trouble fitting in because I was like the creature that thought and felt and was not a real threat to people but was also not one of them because I had been made different. I was not yet bitter enough to hate God over it, just hurting from all sorts of things, and wondering why the movies made the creature out to be a dangerous dullard.

After I attempted suicide halfway through fourth grade and my parents got me on antidepressants and put me in a Christianazi private 'Christian' school I began to hate God.

I had a teacher in 4th grade, Mrs Conway.  All the parents loved her.  Aged teacher, loads of experience, grandmotherly look.

When the parents weren't around she was a sadist that took particular pleasure in humiliating 4th grade kids.  I did a little jig 20 years ago, when I discovered she had died.

There are far too many of those.

People who for some reason, somehow, get some kind of sense of power and validation out of making children feel small and powerless. Which is particularly pathetic considering that children ARE small and powerless.

There's this myth that low pay for demanding hours means that only people who love teaching children will become teachers. While there are some teachers who are teaching because they love children, the reality is that the lack of competitive pay has generated a lack of competition for the job, and a resulting lack of competition for getting into teaching programs, and a resulting lack of quality in some of the people who are accepted into them, some of whom only applied to a teaching program because they were rejected from all of their first-choice programs. I've seen it happen. I don't know how often it happens, but I know that it does.

[Doktor Howl]

In third grade a bitter old woman named Hansen became my math teacher. Noting that I was both gifted and disruptive she assigned me EXTREME amounts of extra rote arithmetic homework and talked my trusting parents into letting her do it. Said it would make me even better at math and of course teacher knows best right? All the same basic functions. No new math to be had, just a desperately busy and quiet boy. My folks eventually figured out what she had done, but by then I had already come to hate it and had taken a few punitive licks from my misguided father for my complaints and 'laziness'. This greatly reinforced the negative association about homework and math in particular I was developing.

In high school I remember a detention teacher tried to buy time one day with the old "add all the integers from 1 through 100" trick. 5,050 derived by 101*50. I let bastard sit down before I asked him (I think teach was male) to please come check my answer. He said I was wrong and to do it again. He was either an idiot or presumed I was, probably both.  I told everyone the answer. I somewhat remember getting in trouble for this and being sent home. I was probably already in detention for truancy anyway, but it could have been for 'student conflict'.

That evil bitch Hansen simultaneously sharpened my talent and ensured my hate of it's use. Public school is freaking diabolical.

Third grade was the same year I read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and both lost faith in movie monsters and realized I had trouble fitting in because I was like the creature that thought and felt and was not a real threat to people but was also not one of them because I had been made different. I was not yet bitter enough to hate God over it, just hurting from all sorts of things, and wondering why the movies made the creature out to be a dangerous dullard.

After I attempted suicide halfway through fourth grade and my parents got me on antidepressants and put me in a Christianazi private 'Christian' school I began to hate God.

I had a teacher in 4th grade, Mrs Conway.  All the parents loved her.  Aged teacher, loads of experience, grandmotherly look.

When the parents weren't around she was a sadist that took particular pleasure in humiliating 4th grade kids.  I did a little jig 20 years ago, when I discovered she had died.

There are far too many of those.

People who for some reason, somehow, get some kind of sense of power and validation out of making children feel small and powerless. Which is particularly pathetic considering that children ARE small and powerless.

There's this myth that low pay for demanding hours means that only people who love teaching children will become teachers. While there are some teachers who are teaching because they love children, the reality is that the lack of competitive pay has generated a lack of competition for the job, and a resulting lack of competition for getting into teaching programs, and a resulting lack of quality in some of the people who are accepted into them, some of whom only applied to a teaching program because they were rejected from all of their first-choice programs. I've seen it happen. I don't know how often it happens, but I know that it does.

This was back in 77/78, but yeah.

And I was just perceptive enough to know that I would never be believed.

[The Wizard Joseph]

In third grade a bitter old woman named Hansen became my math teacher. Noting that I was both gifted and disruptive she assigned me EXTREME amounts of extra rote arithmetic homework and talked my trusting parents into letting her do it. Said it would make me even better at math and of course teacher knows best right? All the same basic functions. No new math to be had, just a desperately busy and quiet boy. My folks eventually figured out what she had done, but by then I had already come to hate it and had taken a few punitive licks from my misguided father for my complaints and 'laziness'. This greatly reinforced the negative association about homework and math in particular I was developing.

In high school I remember a detention teacher tried to buy time one day with the old "add all the integers from 1 through 100" trick. 5,050 derived by 101*50. I let bastard sit down before I asked him (I think teach was male) to please come check my answer. He said I was wrong and to do it again. He was either an idiot or presumed I was, probably both.  I told everyone the answer. I somewhat remember getting in trouble for this and being sent home. I was probably already in detention for truancy anyway, but it could have been for 'student conflict'.

That evil bitch Hansen simultaneously sharpened my talent and ensured my hate of it's use. Public school is freaking diabolical.

Third grade was the same year I read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and both lost faith in movie monsters and realized I had trouble fitting in because I was like the creature that thought and felt and was not a real threat to people but was also not one of them because I had been made different. I was not yet bitter enough to hate God over it, just hurting from all sorts of things, and wondering why the movies made the creature out to be a dangerous dullard.

After I attempted suicide halfway through fourth grade and my parents got me on antidepressants and put me in a Christianazi private 'Christian' school I began to hate God.

I had a teacher in 4th grade, Mrs Conway.  All the parents loved her.  Aged teacher, loads of experience, grandmotherly look.

When the parents weren't around she was a sadist that took particular pleasure in humiliating 4th grade kids.  I did a little jig 20 years ago, when I discovered she had died.

I don't have confirmation on her demise, but she was similar to what you described. More of a 'tough but fair' reputational veneer over a spirit more dried out than her then probably mid 70s shamble of flesh. Like goiter sized neck folds that made her look like an evil turkey. In some twisted sense I think she justified her cruelty as actually good teaching, bought her own hype maybe and 'it ain't done right anymore' attitude. Just picking at the memory to describe her has me physiologically responding with tension and short breaths.

There are far too many of those.

People who for some reason, somehow, get some kind of sense of power and validation out of making children feel small and powerless. Which is particularly pathetic considering that children ARE small and powerless.

There's this myth that low pay for demanding hours means that only people who love teaching children will become teachers. While there are some teachers who are teaching because they love children, the reality is that the lack of competitive pay has generated a lack of competition for the job, and a resulting lack of competition for getting into teaching programs, and a resulting lack of quality in some of the people who are accepted into them, some of whom only applied to a teaching program because they were rejected from all of their first-choice programs. I've seen it happen. I don't know how often it happens, but I know that it does.   

The school was called Red Apple Elementary. It was public but prestigious for what my hometown had available. The sort competitive parents would spend a night in to ensure a place in registration. The school apparently had a tradition of this. They did have some marvelous teachers and I got a very good education for an American public school before I crashed from violence, stress, and a growing sense that the world was horribly WRONG.

LOL! I remember very good one named Gutenberg of all things, 2nd grade maybe and English teacher for sure, who ironically taught me to write in print. Cursive was the domain of the third grade elite.

I definitely ran into the LCD sort of teachers you describe later in junior high and highschool. The stint in the private Jesus camp was the beginning of a fall from grace in a bunch of ways for me but from the rest of 4th grade through 5th I got a REALLY good education in terms of learning skills but it was filled with bloatware of the worst nose-in-air elitism and head-in-arse faith I've ever seen to this day as I can recall ATM. Lots of the kids were from rich families and mine was lower middle class with three kids and lots of medical bills, no small number mine.

The rich kids hated me and feared me. Smarter. Funnier when in an OK mood. Much bigger and some few mean little bitch boys discovered MUCH stronger.  I was by this time suffering bad childhood obesity and a special acne God reserved in a little jar next to the grapes of wrath for the Italian-Irish.

It wasn't all bad. Several kids from my childhood church went there and my brothers also got pulled and sent to keep us together. Dad has been almost miraculously successful in making us stick together. More on that later.

Half way through 6th grade my folks were asked to withdraw me. Too disruptive again I guess.

Must have been the apple
I threw one day
or the way kids all spoke
behind my back.

They said hit the road please.
Thanks for the memories.

And you jerks can go hang with your Lord.
Maybe He'll forgive you for me.
But that's historically
a 50\50 bet.

Not just a reply to your posts guys but a bit of story progression too. When I post here again soon I'll bring it back to my current experience here as relates to PD.

And to be clear I love the tiny bit I know of historical Jesus and most things I 'know' of 'biblical' Jesus. Will even go so far as to say centuries of prophecy were fulfilled by chance or design in his life and by his obedient and willful sacrifice

Way ahead of you guys! Let me just get that for you.  This is not sarcasm. I have my doubts holstered but I can play devil's advocate for either team.

BUT apocryphal Jesus is where they really hid the bodies ontologically. 

And these fucknozzles worship
*ahem*

Big Papa Boom Boom,
Skyking of the Uberflock,
and Giver of Unlimited Easy
Plastic Jesus.

A quite recent and horrifically parasitic lloigor that feeds on pride, greed, and stupidity.

Label says it's the real thing. Religious institutions are not subject to false advertising suits. I'm not saying there's a connection but the dots are right next to each other as some say.

Then there's real Jesus. His name was Joshua and his peeps called him the Logos way before logos were even a thing.    I believe that the Hebrew brand name was Yeshua. Be careful of brethren that call him this though, some of em are totally nuts.

And the rest are merely kind of nuts 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

My youngest had a very, very, very good 5th grade teacher. One of the few. She and her classmates talk about him with great fondness and regret that he is no longer at their school, because he inspired them to want to work hard and do well.

[Cainad (dec.)]

I spent all the time I could playing with the paint program (Macpaint) and playing what games I could find. I remember Dark Castle particularly well. My brothers were also fascinated, especially by the games, but had been deemed too young to touch it by Mom Inc. This did not exactly stop them.

Macpaint and Dark Castle were the bomb-diggity. Sometimes the color would stop working on the Mac I had but the programs still worked.

[The Wizard Joseph]

My youngest had a very, very, very good 5th grade teacher. One of the few. She and her classmates talk about him with great fondness and regret that he is no longer at their school, because he inspired them to want to work hard and do well.

Some of the few classes that I actually did homework in were out of respect for a teacher that either called me out on my shitty attitude or earned my respect by otherwise giving a shit. I wasn't many. I'm really glad your daughter has had at least one good one so far, and yeah they don't tend to last long.

The one I remember best was a science teacher named Dilly.  If you slept in his class he'd quietly walk over to a lab table, pull a support rod, drop it next to your desk to wake you and ask a question relevant to what he was teaching that day.

We bonded when I answered and promised to stop napping. He was good shit.