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[Mission statement:]

This thread is for discussion about the magazine we've been talking about all week. Even if our idea hasn't coalesced into something solid yet, we have a LOT of good discussion and good energy. I do feel we're capable of producing something that we'd all enjoy, and by proxy other Discordians would enjoy. So let's have at it in ernest!

I'm volunteering to step into an editor position. I don't want to do it alone - one or two more co-editors (at most) are necessary so that if I get IRL busy/distracted/high on power/completely batshit, the project won't get left behind.

All the stuff is still in the discussion phase, so feel free to inject your hot steamy thoughts wherever you'd like into this thread's body.

[Discordia Magazine Title]
(title pending)

Mission statement:

Discord Magazine seeks to prove that Discordia is alive and well. It's is a sampling of what's going on right now in Discordian culture. It will examine current trends and themes present in the Discordian 'stream.

Target Audience:
Discordians. It would be nice if other people could pick up an issue and enjoy it as well, but for the most part the magazine is "for Discordians by Discordians"

Article Brainstorm List

• Robert Anton Wilson's Funeral - there was a ceremony for him a few weeks ago in California. So far, there's been no coverage of it. We'll talk to some people who were there and report on it.
• Threadjack: A column about Discordians on the internet. One idea I had would be to interview moderators of the major Discordian forums and get them to compare / contrast their boards
• Movie Review: The Number 23
• Eris vs Wikipedia: The Wikipedia entry on Discordian Works has stirred up a lot of controversy recently. In short: because Discordia is so decentralized, and no one / everyone is an "authority", the editors are having trouble figuring out which books should go in the wiki entry and which books are just crap some guy's published. Reverend Uncle BadTouch has been in the front lines of this battle, it'd probably be nice to get some words from him.
• Cabal Spotlight: a column in which we'll look at a real-life Discordian cabal and see what they're all about
• Sticking Apart: A column in which two Discordians argue with each other about some topic   
• The Flying Spaghetti Monster: an article which canonizes our new patron saint. It's about time some Discordians made some sort of "official" notice that he's in our pantheon now
• Jake Contest - ? I dunno, sounds like a cool idea. We could get Discordians from various other factions to compete or something
• Tract Marks - Discordian lit review.. this might be merged with the Wikipedia article
• The Pulpit - a section in which we'll publish 2-4 rants, sermons, or essays written by honest-to-goddess Discordians. This is the part of the mag where we're allowed to be all preachy grabass

What's the magazine going to be called? here's a few suggestions:

• Discordja Magazine - KISS
• Eristocracy
• Eristocracy Now! - sounds like a political mag, but the Discordians will get it
• The Even Greater Poop - a reference to the Greater Poop, a fictional (?) magazine in the principia

What we need now:
People to sign up to write the above articles. If you want to take one, call dibbs so we don't get five people writing movie reviews. These things should be roughly 2000  - 4000 words. Less is okay too. Whatever we decide on as the "cover" article can be longer.

The above articles are just suggestions - if you have a great idea for an article, Go For It

We need someone to do layout and design

We need someone to find / make graphics and images

Although we'll surely disagree about a lot of stuff, we need to make sure we're all basically on the same page... the collective intelligence of this forum is much greater than the sum of its parts.



let's not talk about funding and actually printing it until we have some substance. I expect issue 1 will be in PDF only unless some crazy magic happens.

I do like those titles. I just said Discord Magazine 'cause I forgot about Threadjack.

but the title of a magazine, especially one nobody's heard of, should indicate what the magazine is about

A Discordian should see the title and think "cool, this is relevant to me, I'll click the link"

That's not to say the title couldn't have a subtitle like

"THREADJACK: for Discordians by Discordians"
"FREESTYLE LIFE: the journal of Discordians everywhere"
"FREESTYLE: What would Eris Do?"

[Mission statement:]

Can I venture a stab at a mission statement? I'm not sure if we're talking about publishing a BIP magazine or a Discordian magazine - both have been discussed in the last few days. My intuition is that we should write a Discordian magazine that just happens to focus on the BIP and our ideasphere - that'll give us a fairly broad audience.

Discord Magazine
(title pending)

Mission statement:

Discord Magazine is a sampling of what's going on right now in Discordian culture. It will examine current trends and themes present in the Discordian 'stream.

Target Audience:
Discordians. At present nobody knows exactly how many there are out there. Also, nobody knows how many would be willing to pay a few bucks for a magazine about their "religion". But luckily, most of them use the internets to communicate with each other, and we have total access to that.


Each issue will include something like:

• thumbnails of things happening which are relevant to the Discordian community (eris bar and grill, the Portland Discordian scene, discordian bands)
• spotlight on a cabal
• a fair amount of sermons, rants, and articles by Discordians (ie think for yourself shmuck, and now what?, fiction, BIP, etc ad nausea)
• tons of zany graphics
• interviews with prolific Discordians and their ilk (like RAWs living relatives)

Goal:
The first issue will test the feasibility of such an endeavor. We intend to put together enough articles to make a 20-page magazine. After we have some substance, and some research on who might buy such a thing, we'll try to pin down advertisers to fund a printing.

If we can't come up with the resources to print, we'll publish it in PDF form. Maybe from that, we'll get the myriad Discordian commutinies foaming at the mouth and have some idea whether it'd be possible to generate capital from a printing.

If we were able to put together an attractive product I would have no objection to fronting one or two hundred bucks towards print. I'm sure if we put our hearts into it we can collectively scrape together enough cash to do it.

Okay, just got off the phone with my old editor.

We paid $3/issue because we needed a quick printing, which essentially doubled the cost. If we don't mind it taking a while to print, we can get

1000 copies of a 20-page, 4-color magazine for between $1.40 and $1.60 per copy

A lot of these bridges will be crossed when we come to them.

we should go with the model that any profit made will just be pumped back into the next edition?

I think so. There are going to be some costs, like printing. As I recall from a cheapass magazine I used to work for, if we order a set of like 1000 glossy full color magazines we can get them printed for like three bucks a pop. (edit: that's probably a bit off - if we're interested, I can go dig up the real numbers) I think the people who throw down the benjamins for this should get reimbursed, then if there's any left, profit should be invested into further issues.. The trick here is to get advertisers.

(this is all assuming we're talking about something like a magazine, which is totally feasible)
hmmm but to whom do we sell it? How do we cover our costs?

When we sell this cow, we're all gonna be smokin' blunts rolled in $100 bills




$$$ BLING BLING MOTHAFUCKAS $$$

Use whatever you want from me.

Change it better if you like.


credit if appropriate
and please link me or let me know so I can glow about it

develop a style that translates well into print with minimal production and editing time

I've wrote about 10 different answers to this and I'm not satisfied with any of them.

That's a hell of problem you've brought up there... 

In My Opinion --- the "style" of the text needs to be:

• accessable - any asshole should be able to read it and understand it without knowledge of our complex metaphors
• engaging - it should be interesting to read
• relevant - ...nuff said, I hope

The specific format of the text does not need to be standardized. We could do a mix of sermons, rants, essays, socratic dialogues, AIM dialogues, and diagrams, as long as they fit the above criteria.

The BIP booklet, for example, does this nicely. The format and tone of the pamphlet changes from page to page, and I feel that actually helps it stay interesting. Plus if you (the reader) find one style boring, turn the page and there's a different approach. It well reflects the commutiny we have here and our various approaches to solving this "problem".

I also found that eclectic style quite useful to convey the complex ideas in the BIP. It's not something you can summarize quickly, and the multifaceted approach seemed to work.

Tone is another issue entirely.

my reply to the OP:

Thread paleontology isn't going to be useful to us unless we have a somewhat clear goal. LHX's original proposition:

Desired result:
instead of having people being told to 'Think for Yourself' -
provide context, warnings, benefits, and applications

audience?

• Discordians?
• Other Jerks?

And is the goal to produce a brochure?

the OP also sounds like the goal might be the evolution of the meme. Think for yourself about And Now What, etc.

Why 5? There's a passage in Illuminatus! where someone asks that. Hagbard (I think) shows them a picture of a guy with six fingers on one hand. The caption is something like "If we had evolved like this, it would be the law of sixes".


What about the phrase

"Think for yourself about ______".

At some art school I visited, there were these bumper stickers everywhere which said "Art is         ". In some cases people had written in stuff in the blank (I saw one in a bathroom stall where someone wrote in "shit", for example)

We could fill in the blank ourselves for as a heading for specific rants and stuff. Think for yourself about the machine. Think for yourself about voting. Think for yourself about individuality. Think for yourself about pretzels.

If we printed stickers, they could be put in places where we could fill in the blank with relevant things. Like on the front of a magazine rack it could say "Think for yourself about fashion"



Regarding the OP -- I feel that any effort we make to reorganize ourselves towards a specific goal is a good effort. These new beginnings come with a lot of fresh energy. It also forces us to rethink refine recycle all that shit we were talking about last week.

What kind of monthly columns would you see in a Discordian magazine?


I imagine the letters to the editor would be quite hilarious.

I heart this sermon because it's nice to feel like we're in charge now and then. Like that we have power other than freedom. Cause we're not just victims of all these shitty machinations. Fuck yeah, Rog!