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[Let Go.]

Found at the Cyberspace Masquerade. Probably written by Hoopla or the Concordia guy. This is a followup to Part Five: The Golden Secret

Be the Trouble You Want to See in the World

or

Go O:MF Yourself

Celine reared back as if I had waved offal under his nose. "Objectivists?" he pronounced the word as if I had accused him of being a child-molester. "We're anarchists and outlaws, goddam it. Didn't you understand that much? We've got nothing to do with right-wing, left-wing or any other half-assed political category. If you work within the system, you come to one of the either/or choices that were implicit in the system from the beginning. You're talking like a medieval serf, asking the first agnostic whether he worships God or the Devil. We're outside the system's categories. You'll never get the hang of our game if you keep thinking in flat-earth imagery of right and left, good and evil, up and down. If you need a group label for us, we're political non-Euclideans. But even that's not true. Sink me, nobody of this tub agrees with anybody else about anything, except maybe what the fellow with the horns told the old man in the clouds: Non serviam."

Robert Anton Wilson, Illuminatus!

Eris loves activists.

Here in the Strange Times, there's a million billion crawly little critters trying to ride you down the river. See, you're floating through chaotic, shrapnel filled rapids. The foamy waters are brimming with symbols and images and squiggles and good causes. It's easy to cling to one like a life preserver and ride it for all its worth. You're clinging to some right now. You are a sticky meme, and you're trying to stay afloat. It's only human. 

The first part of the Golden Secret is to Let Go.

You grabbed onto that that symbol and that in-joke and that good cause because they were at the right place at the right time. When you're receptive, it's convenient to get on a raft made of religion or politics or some other made-up ideology. It's easy to assemble an identity out of tastes and values and shrapnel floating by. Over time, some of that stuff stops supporting your weight. Right when you're about to go under, you reach out and grab onto some other piece of shrapnel. You cling to it and use it to hold your head above the waters. At some point, you saw some stuff and met some people, and their shtick appealed to you, and you internalized it, and now you think that stuff is a part of you. 

Fast forward to the present: you're riding down the river in a barrel, your knuckles white as they grip your life preservers. Your pockets are stuffed with photographs, and there's cultural water in your ears. Let GO already. You don't need that crap. That's somebody else's crap. Learn to swim on your own.

The second part of the Golden Secret is to Ignite Yourself, While There's Still Time.

I'm advocating activism. I don't reccommend you go find a cause (or some other bullshit) to serve, I'm reccommending you get up, get out, and DO something. They've got you trained like a circus lion to watch the world and then react to it. They want you to be a passive observer. The face on the money has you trained like Pavlov's dog. That's how the Machine works. It's made of perfectly predictable parts. 

You could get bored. You could get numb. You could be alone in a sea of people. These are the dangers of modern living.

There's something out there which will make you excited just to wake up in the morning, and it's not spending your hard earned money on the latest You've-Gotta-See-This blockbuster. That shrapnel is just a distraction. The voices of the cultural chorus are a distraction too, because really, you're not one of Them.

You're a freak. You're weird in ways not even your best friends can understand. This is the Strange Times, and there are no groups of people, only individuals standing next to each other. 

There's somebody in your life who you look to for direction. The one with the plan. The one who has great ideas. The one who seems to know what's going on. Kill him. Take his job. Become him. Quit waiting for somebody else to come up with something fun to do. Quit waiting for rock bottom or some other excuse to change what you don't like about yourself. Cough up all the water in your lungs and BREATHE you'll drown if you don't BREATHE for the first time ever BREATHE.

This isn't a lesson you can learn once and internalize. This is an ongoing challenge to constantly reinvent yourself. This is a neverending battle you must wage against your comfort and your identity. If you think you've learned this lesson, then you stink of complacency. Initiation never ends. 

Keep moving. Stay kinetic. 
   Be the trouble you want to see in the world. 

Go O:MF yourself.

Hail Eris

Can you think of ways which we can "program" accelerated forward motion into the GASM meme?

For example - to encourage a culture / etiquette where
If someone suggests a GASM and you'd be willing to help, you should say so. (thereby encouraging them to move forward)

Be willing to lead projects even if they're not originally your idea. Once a GASM is launched, it belongs to the community.




a page on the wiki could explain the etiquette more specifically

What kinds of posters have potential to change people's minds concerning the other posters in the area?


I want to keep in mind that of the people who SEE our posters, only a fraction of them are taking them down. (I suspect Unwitting Illuminati Agents) What posters address those people so that they might view our posters more favorably?

• Obvious Art is Obvious. Hang famous, recognizable art. Stuff like the Mona Lisa and the Persistence of Memory, that the average joe looks at and says "That's art." (and clearly not vandalism) Test your target area to see if obvious art stays up longer than the other stuff. If so, try to associate your posters with art by posting them in close proximity.
• A poster explaining that the posters in the area are officially authorized
• A copy of the first amendment

that's all I can think of for now -- any other ideas?

This thread is for posting games and things which I think are cool.



First up is a relatively short and sweet computer game called

Trilby: The Art of Theft.



You're a master thief. You have to break into buildings and steal stuff while avoiding notice. It's somewhere in between a stealth, adventure, and puzzle game. (mostly stealth) The Art of Theft has a very film-noir / caper novel vibe. The graphics, while reminiscent of older computer games with blocky pixels, are polished and attractive.

I found parts of the game difficult, but ultimately very rewarding. It takes a few tries before you learn how to properly roll past swiveling cameras and dip by laser grids. Sometimes it's really tricky to pick a lock before a guard will turn around and notice you. But when you pull it off, you feel Liquid Cool.

The Art of Theft has about seven levels. If you're dilligent, you could probably complete it in 4-6 hours.

For me, it was 4-6 hours very well spent.


here's a gameplay video
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=tH9KNwZq55w


Edited to add:

hah, almost forgot. You can download it for free HERE: (PC) http://downloads.escapistmagazine.com/games/yahtzee/artoftheft.zip

I've had this one brewing for a long time. It still needs some fine tuning, and I would really like some honest feedback.

LOVE CRAMULUS







The Strange Times^TM

This morning I looked out my window and I saw a unsettling and surreal painting sprawling out to the edge of the sunrise.


Jedi and zombies, vampires and ninjas, cat suits and kings, robots and chameleons, prophets and the profane, and everybody's together, eyes match forward, getting on the train.


We call it the Strange Times. This is the state of modern living.


We live in a world weirder than any realm any explorer could ever hope to map. This is a world where your nervous system, tangled with fractals creeping like vines, extends its tendrils into the modern jungle.


Rule 34: if it exists, there is pornography involving it. There are lollypops with bugs in them. People get surgery to look exactly like Barbie Dolls. There are humans that have become lizards and tigers. The guys in suits have all become cyborgs. Children don't just play Cowboys and Indians anymore, now they play Self Aware Artificial Intelligence versus the Benevolent Plutocracy.


It's the strange times and every human being, even the boring ones, are unspeakably, unknowably weird.


Everybody used to be into the same stuff, you know? Everybody was at cocktail hour, everybody was into the Beatles, everybody was bathing together in the mainstream. But something happened as the stream got quicker, it forked out into a million little tributaries. The mainstream isn't a river anymore, it's an acqueduct and a sewer all at the same time. It's underneath us, always moving, carrying along all these images and symbols and the familliar sound of the ocean. Ideas bump into each other, and sometimes they STICK, and that's how we get things like a music gadget you can masturbate with, or Japanese game shows dubbed with slapstick comedy banter. It's not because these ideas are good ideas in of themselves, it's because the mainstream keeps juxtaposing these bits of shrapnel in new ways. It's all being churned up, and the whirlpool keeps getting faster.


Nothing has prepared us for the Strange Times.


If you think you can study history and make some educated guess at what's going to happen next, you're dead wrong. Yeah humans are still humans - those poor shit flinging monkeys, trapped inside their nervous systems. When you zoom out, they're not individual drops of water, they're the swell and pulse of a wild ocean. That hasn't changed in six thousand years. But these times are different. There is wholesome sex in bathrooms and righteous violence in the highschools. Kingdoms make war upon each other not by sacking cities, but by cutting deep sea internet cables. Super-memes collide and bounce off each other like sumo wrestlers, every single cell in their bloated bodies contains a lonely and confused human being. Our language is not evolving quick enough to keep pace. Words like "Good", "Evil", "Know", "Learn", and "To Be" are woefully inadequate to describe the modern world. These are the dangers of modern living.


We spent thousands of years living in caves, working the fire and the rock. Then we caught the City virus, and the city spirit used us to build hundreds of temples. We spent generations in the sun, tilling the fields for the Nobles. Then we fled into darkness of the factories, the air choked with the din of industry. In hindsight, it seemed to happen in a predictable way. Build, destroy. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Sunrise, sunset. Now we're in a world that doesn't sleep. If it's light here, it's dark somewhere else, like a snake biting its tail. People on the other side of the world are your neighbors, but there is an interminable distance between you and the guy next door (who you've never actually met). You see them every day, but the people on the train will remain strangers, and stranger still.


Odd juxtapositions are the sign of the Strange Times. Comedians are doing impressions of the King. The Catholic Pope looks just like Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars. We sit in the dark around a flickering campfire and listen to the news man tell us stories about the Dangers of Modern Living. The news man knows that when you juxtapose an image with the story, it creates a new meaning which is somewhere in between the ear and the eye. And if we zoom out a tiny bit, the story is juxtaposed with the house that the TV is in. And if we zoom out, that house is inside your head, next to all these other symbols and squiggles and values.


And then at some point, someone thinks its sexy to dress up like a cartoon cat.


Nobody's prepared us for the Strange Times, and there are literally billions of humans that can't cope with it. They could deal with being serfs, they could deal with being soldiers, those are simple lives with simple choices. Now its come time to make a new story for themselves by assembling all these weird symbols into a lifestyle, a personality, a set of values. And they just don't know how to do it. They look to culture to get clues for how to swim and be happy and break even in this weird world, and all they see are porn models and ninja turtles and humane terrorism and the extreme left and the extreme right and nothing is centered.


If it was as easy as just dealing with the sun and the crops, however hard it might be, people would pull through and maintain. But there are million choices and complexities and nuances and shrapnel flying at you like throwing knives and pillow fights and semen and bananna cream pies.


We think it's best to laugh.

After seeing a Pratchett quote that LMNO posted, I decided we probably should have some sort of central area for good "Think For Yourself" quotes.

I just made a page on the wiki for Quotes relating to the Black Iron Prison.

http://www.blackironprison.com/index.php/Quotes

I know we've collected a lot of these - mostly Pratchett, and a little Hesse.
What else should be added to this list?

At request, I made the following page at the wiki to let people know what needs to get done.

http://www.poee.co.uk/bip/index.php?title=Task_List

Feel free to edit it with other projects. This should be a way to get help, and also a way to find something to do if you're bored or have excess energy.

What sort of things is this community good at?



What sort of things are we bad at?






This is intended to be a constructive way of examining our own egregore. (see the Art of Memetics thread) This thread is for for constructive thought intended to help us understand what our capabilities and limitations are.

Possible Topics to discuss:

Output - the pamphlets, flyers, and projects we produce
Web Presence
Social Support for New Discordians and Other Freaks
etc

[BROUGHT TO YOU BY]

So this weekend I treated the WRATH OF MSPAINT CABAL to a showing of that musical production that all you spags are in. I usually don't like musicals, and this one was no exception. Had I not had a lot of friends in it, you wouldn't have forced me into that theater without a straight jacket and a bulldozer.

Annnnyway, the WOMP Cabal seated ourselves in the front row and waited in rapt attention for the first ever performance of A FAPCAB NAMED DESIRE.

For those of you who aren't familliar with the play, it stars LMNO as a cab driver. That's about all I could make sense of. The rest of it... well... It's as as incoherent as Robert Anton Wilson mixing acid and benzedrine. The dialogue is like someone had a computer translate the script into German, then Spanish, then back to English. The acting was so bad I couldn't tell if it was intentional. The props and sets looked like they were hastily thrown together at the last minute by drunks and drug addicts. This was a bad play - poorly written, poorly directed, poorly performed. Don't go see it. In fact, go tell other people not to see it.





Listen, I know you guys have been rehearsing for weeks and weeks. I know your little hearts were in it, so I don't want to hurt your feelings. But I'm the kind of friend who will tell you if you've got something stuck in your teeth. This show was just plain bad. The house was packed at the beginning, and empty by final curtains. The audience was lucky to get any ovation, let alone a standing one. When they came out for the final curtain call, rotten fruit was thrown. And in all fairness, the only guy clapping was Payne, and he was so drunk I think he might have been trying to *fap* but just misspelled it.

So without further ado, are some pictures and reviews from FAPCAB.



BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE WRATH OF MS PAINT CABAL

The Professor Cramulus exonerates on an important threat facing every human being.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvubyoR2XnQ

A Google search reveals that we did, in fact, make this word up.

Now it's time to figure out what it means.


I take it to refer to an instance where you're so horrified that it's funny. It describes the STFUBAR state of modern living - a series of contradictions and paradoxes which are both surprising and predictable. Current events which are disgusting but amusing at the same time. It's the thin line between laughing and screaming.

ITT, list things which evoke horrormirth





My number one horrormirth moment this month was watching the "anti-corruption" governor of New York get busted for ... you guessed it: corruption. But not just that - you know how they found him? They peered into his bank transactions using the Patriot act. 





There's this beautiful spot I pass on the way to work. An elegant bridge crosses over a beautiful brook. The beauty of this scene is compromised by a big green sign on the bridge which says "NO GRAFFITI". Nice job keeping thugs from scumming it up!





My roommate is against music piracy. He buys all the music he owns, and has an extensive legal digital music collection. Upon downloading the latest version of iTunes, it installed DRM crap in every single one of his songs. Now he can't play them on his laptop. BUT AT LEAST HE ISN'T PIRATING THEM!






Roger informs me that laughing/screaming was the original use of the  icon.

[Round two]

ALRIGHT SPAGS

Round two
Post ITT to request a board buddy and nemesis.
WOMP Cabal will fulfill requests to your utmost satisfaction or annoyance.


I'm picking my own to get things started.

I pick Golden Applesauce as a buddy 



and as my nemesis... Random Probability 

This is where we'll link to other buzz about OMGASM





found some here:
http://forums.vsociety.net/index.php?PHPSESSID=e8ee126207067002318c3169015108bd&topic=12052.0

[OMGASM]

So in part to explain my absence over the last week or two, I'd like to talk about the pranks and projects that have been consuming most of my time. Here's the website upon which this stuff is housed.

Colbertgasm wrapped up in early March. It was a total success  - basically we flooded Stephen Colbert with snail mail supposedly from the Bavarian Illuminati, attempting to "recruit" him. In order to accepted our invitation, he was instructed to utter one of our memes on the air.

On March 2nd, he said "23 Skidoo" on his show. It made sense in context, but when he said it, he leaned in a bit and put quotes around it with his fingers. We believe that it was a secret coded message to us, as per our instructions. Possibly unrelated: A few days later (maybe it was a Friday?), he talked about flooding the President with mail inviting him to go eat Hot Dogs. A good laugh was had by all. To some extent, we hacked the media. Or maybe we just created another weird celebrity / subculture in-joke. Doesn't matter - it was fun.

I'm also working on EggGASM, which isn't so much a - prank - as an attmept to encourage people to hide plastic easter eggs with cool things in them. This is a form of street art, propaganda, or just a fun activity depending on your motivation for participation.


These are small scale things, but they're part an ongoing attempt to build a community of pranksters around this idea of OMGASM.

OMGASMs (Operation Mindfuck: Golden Apple Seed Missions) are a sort of "open source" prank network, a way to get people in the Lunatic Fringe to connect and share stupid ideas. Maybe even to participate in each other's projects.

We have a web structure set up in which ANYONE can post a prank, even to their own website. If they bookmark it properly (with this web application called del.icio.us) their prank and any media anyone creates for it will show up on our Mission Feed. This feed is automatically generated by tags from del.icio.us and flickr.com, and will show - at a glance - where you can find media related to a given prank. It makes it easy to centralize efforts which are taking place on multiple websites and in differing web communities.

The Colbertgasm prank is a good example of how this is supposed to work. On my own, I might have been able to send 20 or 30 letters. But it was much more powerful and effective to get dozens of people all over the country to play. Ratatosk wrote up the original article, I edited it and tagged it so it showed up on the feed. People wrote sample letters for others to print, and I hosted them on the wiki. In short, we made it really easy for people to participate, even if they just stumbled in from the web and had nothing to do with the community of lunatics which were pushing the idea.

The OMGASM structure could perhaps serve our ends, too. (our being this course) It is theoretically a way to tell lots of people that we need help with a prank. Those who are interested will participate. It is well suited for pranks which get better with increased participation, and pranks where the pranksters are geographically distant from one another.


My real challenge, however, is to get people involved in OMGASM. We've networked in a few web communities, but I won't consider OMGASM a success until people start hosting their own pranks on their without the motherly coaxing of the PrincipiaDiscordia.com community (the major co-conspirators of this project).

SO: If we set up a prank through the OMGASM network, and it seems fun to participate, we will probably get a handful of Discordians to tag along too.


One of the big discussions surrounding OMGASM is "Why should I, as a random person from the web, help you with your prank / cause / game?"  This question has caused me to explore the idea of setting up a prank for strangers to participate in. My thought on the matter is that when orchestrating a large prank, it must be "scaffolded" - that is, there should be a spectrum of reasons to play along. Some people prank "for the lulz", meaning they like to do it just because it's fun. Other people prank for a "Good Cause". A prank which gets a lot of participants is one which both supports a "Good Cause" and is fun to participate in, even if you don't care for the cause. That way we won't exclude each other if our motivations differ.


I'd like to propose that a letter-writing campaign may be one of the most parsimonious ways to get the class to unite in a prank. We would pick a target, and then all write to him or her. The best method is to approach from multiple angles - e-mail, snail mail, personal visits to his house, phone calls, et cetera. If we target someone with "media credibility", we have the opportunity for our effort to springboard to a more visible level.

Letter writing campaigns require little effort to participate. It only costs the participant 41 cents and a few minutes of his time. It's also one of the things that we can all do together despite our geographical separation. Here are some possible letter writing targets:



Target: Newspaper editors
Angle: Letters to the editor which argue multiple sides of a fictional cause.
Goal: get the newspaper to take our fictional cause seriously.


Target: Jack Chick (the guy who writes really out-there christian comics)
Angle: Letters warning him about a group or cause (like Discordia, Anonymous, or The Screenwriters Guild of America)
Goal: get him to write a tract defaming said group


Target: Newspaper editors
Angle: create a buzz surrounding a made-up drug. The more over-the-top, the better. Includes letters from concerned parents and youth groups. See also: Jenkem
Goal: create an actual reaction against a drug that no one does, or to get a common household product pulled from shelves due to its utility in concocting a drug.


Idea from Ratatosk: cause outrage at a fictional cult with bizarre practices... then, once everyone is denouncing it, expose the prank and point out that scientology practices the same things that the fictional cult practiced.


Target: Neighborhood watch groups, PTA, concerned citizens groups
Angle: Warn them about dangerous animals (like African Bees) that have wandered into their area due to climate change (Ahhh! Global warming!)
Goal: Have local groups spreading tips on protecting yourself from malaria (or whatever), or checking your boots for  scorpions, or some climate-inappropriate safety warning.



Target: Some celebrity
Angle: send fan mail thanking them for participating in some political or environmental cause
Goal: Have the target actually take up that cause, or at least publicly address it.


Target: A mayor, congressman, or lower-tier political figure.
Angle: Concerned citizens are dissapointed with him for the things he said about _____ during a public appearance.
Goal: To have the politician issue a statement or retraction addressing something he actually had nothing to do with. This would be extra funny if it were something totally absurd like the statement we're angry about is "Garfield: The Movie was the greatest movie ever made." How could you say that? Hasn't he seen ____? It was much better.


season to taste

   

http://www.poee.co.uk/bip/index.php?title=EggGASM

originally from http://23ae.com/index.asp?post=404

EggGASM is an annual Golden Apple Seed Mission. The object of the game is to hide cool things inside of plastic eggs and hide them for people to find on Easter.

[23 Things To Amuse Yourself While You Wait]

I've finally updated my 23 Things To Amuse Yourself While You Wait trifold pamphlet and scanned it into PDF

I've made some modifications, too.

http://www.cwyohba.org/noexit/cramulus/23%20Things%20to%20Amuse%20Yourself%20While%20You%20Wait.pdf
http://www.scribd.com/doc/14860822/23-Things-to-Amuse-Yourself-While-You-Wait (added to scribd 5/2/09)

This is a great pamphlet to be left on trains, busses, the stops associated with both, waiting rooms, or anywhere where people have a little bit of time and are bored.

[Chaos]

So according to the Book of Uterus, there are five seasons:
Chaos, Discord, Confusion, Bureaucracy, and Aftermath.



And these stand for stages of Order and Disorder. We can look at any society through this model and chart the rise of Order and it's eventual shift into Disorder. As I understand it:

Chaos is the beginning - it's a stage where nothing's even started yet. It's just an idea. "In the beginning there was nothing." I think of America's Chaos stage as colonial times. It wasn't America yet - just a loose idea of America. Edith Hamilton (in her retelling of Greek Mythology) says "First there was Chaos, the vast immeasurable abyss, outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild."

Then there was Discord. And some stuff happened

Confusion comes next - it's the stage where the disorder in the system must be squashed out, and as a result, Order is imposed on high.

Bureaucracy is stage four. In numerology, doesn't Four have the connotation of Perfection? It's a stainless steel machine which - though it may not work perfectly - exists to create a sense of an ordered society.

Aftermath is what comes next. It's the decay of Bureaucracy that can lead to its replacement with something better. Aftermath is the beginning of the next Chaos. It represents a shift from the values which required / justified / reified Bureaucracy.


So here we are in Western Civilization, in the year 2008. What Season do you think we're in?





---For my part

I think there's a camp that believes that we're in Confusion, and that things are gonna get worse before they get better.

And I think there's a camp that believes we're in Bureaucracy, and that to escape from this stage we've got to learn not to ADJUST to all this mess, but to replace it with something more comfortable.

And certainly arguments could be made for the other seasons as well.



Me? I think Bureaucracy started on September 11th, 2001.

Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
-Larry Niven

You only think you have Free Will^TM because you don't understand how The Machine^TM works.*
The fact is, you can't even understand The Machine^TM. It's too big and complex for one of its components to comprehend. Individuality, Discordia, even your flawed interpretation of The Machine^TM is part of its Process.

If you wish, you can think you're escaping The Machine^TM by acting contrary to the majority of its parts. Counterspin is necessary for the Process.

*this is an exponent of mechanics, which is an exponent of physics, in which "free will" is immaterial

[Cain]

So this was actually two different discussions which sort of drifted into one another. It was suggested that someone should go post it. I've made a gap where one ends and the other starts.


Cain   [[Regarding posting over at Colbert Nation…]] but I intend to make friends, not start fights
Cramulus   sometimes it's so hard not to start a fight
Cramulus   I'm finding that at MLA. I'm just itching to disagree with these people.
Cramulus   Especially with their whole notion of a prank as a method of social change. Like it's a "Good Cause" to be a trickster. Meh.
Cain   lol
Cain   I know what you mean
Cramulus   It's the exact same sort of bullshit people talk about "white magic"
Cain   sometimes, I do a prank because it amuses me
Cain   horribly egotistical, but very true
Cain Alignment Shifts to: Chaotic Neutral
Cramulus   and the MLA main forums... the more I read them (which has been very little) the more I dislike them
Cramulus   it's like everyone there only wants harmony and intellectual masturbation
Cramulus   It's such a Leary / RAW Circle Jerk
Cain   sounds like the conformity of the nonconformists
Cain   but sometimes, I really wonder if these guys are stuck in the 70s
Cain   where are the modern day "Leary's and RAW"
Cain   for example, I think Joesph Matheny and James Curcio are far more interesting and equally as smart as anything those two did
Cramulus   Well they have their own icons now. Nowhere as provocative as Leary and RAW... RU Sirius is one of them. David Rushkoff. Grant Morrison to some extent. Phil Hine, Peter Caroll...
Cain   thats true....still, from much of what I see on, for example, Disinformation, suggests they are pretty stuck in a rut when it comes to people with cool ideas
Cain   thats why I like the Grey Lodge/Alterati crowd
Cain   less circle jerking and reminiscing about drug overdoses, moar cool content
Cramulus   I have a friend who hangs out at Disinfo -- says they're undergoing this ironic period right now... that they want to be "counter culture" and throw down the existing icons. But meanwhile they're becoming VERY attached to their OWN culture
Cain   they've been like that since I've been going there, I've felt
Cain   so 2004 or so
Cramulus   I listened to Rushkoff give a talk about the future of Counterculture... and he was talking about how "our culture embraces pills as medicine. WE embrace pills because they're FUN! woo!"
Cain   jeezus christ
Cramulus   and I sort of groaned there... because he's using that We very broadly. Creating that sense of, "we're part of the counterculture movement, so we dress like THIS and do THESE things and take THESE drugs."
Cramulus   it's lame
Cain   Curcio once wrote an article called "wake up neo, the counterculture is dead"
Cain   I'm starting to agree with him
Cain   if you uploaded my Rogue Discordian collection, its in the culturehacking notes
Cain   "I was flooded with harassing emails from irate hipsters. In one way or another they were criticizing me for pissing in their counter cultural swimming pool with my MTV flavored urine."
Cain   "The ideals the counter culture were based on, once upon a time, are close to my heart: self-expression, freedom, an element of egalitarianism, and most importantly, compassion. When did it become about toothless political movements, cool-points, and self-defeatism? Where does this negative reaction to anything popular come from?"
Cramulus   what's that from?
Cain   culturehacking
Cain   I'll find a DL link
Cain   http://greylodge.org/gpc/?p=529
Cramulus   Isn't it kind of weird this nested and subnested iconoclasm we seem to be in?
Cramulus   Discordia is in part a rebellion against [something]. But we don't get along real well with other Discordians, and we sort of have our own little subsect of PD-Objectivists who are a rebellion against Orthodox Discordia. And then within the group which we should really jive well with (disinfo, MLA, etc), we never reach harmony - we just continue to poke and twist and rebel against whatever it is they're doing.
Cramulus   deeper into the rabbit hole
Triple Zero   well
Triple Zero   we ARE a religion based on the fucking goddess of STRIFE, aren't we?
Triple Zero   i mean if there's any proof that you can actually invoke the spirit of some goddess or other via just talking about it and mental masturbation (aka magick), please come have a look at our lovely PD forums.
Triple Zero   i came to that conclusion already in my (fairly short) lurking period
Cramulus   well the dominant tastes on the board lead to another weird sort of groupthink
Cain   our kool-aid is qualitatively better, however
Triple Zero   nearly everything semi-serious we discuss on the forum is related to aspects of Eris and related topics. also, if we start get too much "fluff" or whatever, somebody who's still got Eris' Fire burning in them will pull the group back to these topics. it's no wonder the forum works the way it does.
Cain   also, James Curcio has a fucking cool band called subQtaneous, which is another reason to like his shit






Cramulus   I wonder what's going to take place with this somewhat large influx of newbies we've been experiencing lately
Cramulus   I'd guess it probably has to do with the large amount of OMGASM advertising we've been doing
Cain   THEY SHALL LAUGH AT OUR FIVE JOKES, OR THEY WILL DIE
Cramulus   Right off the bat, before they even post, we know that a large handful of them are not going to "fit in" - which leads to our rather colorful Sink or Swim game
Cramulus   I think the "interesting" part is that we're going to reach a sort of split... that there are people that want the n00bs as a part of our Discordian army. *cough OMGASM cough* And there are also standards we impose on who we want to hang out with. I'm interested to see how many of the new kids come through this socializing process.
Triple Zero   hm, that's an interesting prediction for the future
Triple Zero   on the other hand
Triple Zero   if things get too n00bish fluffy on the PD boards, i suppose HQ will get to see some more action
Triple Zero   or the WOMP people might retreat back to p3nt4's place
Cain   that would be a cowardly way out.  I'd much prefer an open and frank discussion with the people involved
Triple Zero   i mean not for definite, but more as a place to make plans without getting threads jacked with inane banter
Cramulus   I mean, look at this: http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=15198.msg486121#msg486121
Cain   maybe, but even so...
Cramulus   If the newb influx continues, this is just the tip of the iceberg
Triple Zero   Cain, i can see your point, but in cram's scenario, that would probably end up with n00bs chased off the board
Cain   we should adopt a process of socialization
Triple Zero   and a smaller personal army
Cain   small personal army = fail
Cain   its mass or break the law
Eve   woooo
Triple Zero   yea
Cramulus   Yeah-- well the 50 post guideline is the alpha and omega of our socialization process - which isn't bad
Cramulus   I think the trick is to engage people in critical debate rather than flaming them -- at first. Like the guy who said "Well RAW is the beloved genius behind Discordia, and Thornely... well he FOUNDED it!"
Cramulus   and he got some "O RLY" rather than a "GTFO", which I think is really positive



anyway

I just want to clarify that all this n00b talk is NOT intended to be a way of making newcomers to our community think like the established users do. We certainly don't want any codified "standards" that everyone has to adhere to, nor do we want an "in-group / out-group" mentality... We're just saying this whole socialization process is interesting.

As for the culture / counter culture / counter counter counter culture discussion...
Do you guys feel this way too? That "we" seem to be on the fringe of the lunatic fringe? (On the slightly more coherent side, as it were?) Aren't there some inherent ironies in identifying as a member of a "counter-culture"?

and where do we go now?

I finally threw some text up for GASMGASM. Feel free to edit.

http://www.poee.co.uk/bip/index.php?title=GASMGASM

In a paralell universe, principiadiscordia.com is host to a forum for hardcore neopagans and RPG enthusiasts. Post what your username might be in that universe.




Cramwolf del Shadowspear

Alaric "Doombringer" Darkblade

Crystalfang von Lyonstryke

Magick_Moustache




ETA: obviously this is an excuse to post the worst usernames you can think of.

[LULZ/SRSB]

LULZ/SRSB

LULZ and SRSB are twin brothers, born to the Goddess Eris herself. It is unclear who the father is, and therefore LULZ and SRSB have become known as the bastard children of Eris, and thus extending the pattern of the Original Snub into human procreative culture.

LULZ and SRSB are tasked with maintaining the fine balance between eristic and aneristic forces in the universe. As brothers do, they are locked in eternal play, rivalry, and self-reflection. Neither is absolute without the other.

from Irreality

[Valentine's Day]

Alright spags, the day has finally come where I use this subforum for actual food related posts.



So today is Valentine's Day. I get back from work at 5:30 and my girl has class from 6 to 10, so I volunteered to cook some candlelit dinner type thing.

Problem being that I have very little practice in the kitchen other than really simple stuff (pasta and meatsauce, burgers, chicken, etc). I'm hitting the grocery store after work to pick up materials and then making ... something...

Any ideas for what I should make?

The most complicated thing I've ever made is this dijon tarragon chicken dish which was great. But I had my girlfriend's help (truth be told she did most of it). This time I'm flying solo.

Exclude the following ingredients: seafood, mushrooms



HALP

[What This Section Is About]

What This Section Is About

This section is for creation, discussion, and dissemination of Golden Apple Seed Missions, or GASMs for short.

GASM is a new Discordian buzzword that means "Assistance Requested". It refers to "activitist" projects which would be more fun or effective if more people were doing it.

This is a specific kind of prank where the effect is better with more participants. For example, in ColbertGASM, we snail-mailed Stephen Colbert from a zillion anonymous sources. His interns generally throw out his mail, but when we flooded him in a deluge like that, he had no choice but to respond to us on the air.




Where are the OMGASM websites again?

The OMGASM Wiki - http://www.blackironprison.com/index.php?title=OMGASM

GASM Feed - http://principiadiscordia.com/gasmfeed - check early check often







Why is this necessary?

Quite simply: because some pranks are exponentially better the more people are involved.






But the Principia Discordia says that Discordians are supposed to stick apart!

For the love of goddess, don't quote scripture at me! Is it against the RULES to work together?

If you ask me, the reason this rule is in place is because your average Discordian is a rather disagreeable character. It can be really frustrating for us to work together. But if we can get past that and just participate in each other's projects, we can create some really cool stuff.

Other neophilic irreligions are busy with large-scale stuff too. Look at the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Project Chanology. These guys know that to get anything BIG done, they've got to work together.

Besides,
IT'S MORE FUN TO STICK APART
WHEN WE DO IT TOGETHER





What makes a GASM work?

So you've got an idea for a jake or prank or project, and you want help. Here are some tips to make your idea take off:

-Keep it simple. If your GASM can't be explained in a paragraph or two, most people won't have the attention to follow.

-Make it FUN. Participation in the Mission should be rewarding in of itself.

-Make it easy for people to participate. Don't make people generate their own material or do their own research. Make it Discordianproof.

-Expect to do most of the work yourself. Sad fact: It's not enough to build the funwagon, you've got to drive it too. Sometimes this will involve pushing it through mud and rain and harpies towards Funtown.




Let's keep this subforum moving. The more we think about this, the more likely that The Best Idea Ever will come out of the morass

Aw yeah we've got a shiny new subforum now!

re: POSTERGASM

over here I was ruminating on why people take down the various things I put up. Some people feel it's their responsibility to "clean up" and remove things which "don't belong". Commercial posters seem to stay up much longer. So here is my attempt to address this - I've create posters which look like the sort of things which don't get taken down.

Check it out:

http://www.cwyohba.org/noexit//cramulus/Postergasm%20Collection%20-%20Volume%20Dingus.pdf

[February 17th - 23rd]

I'm working on the Colbertgasm wiki page. Here's what I need your help with:

• I need to find videos or references to the explicit Discordian references on the Colbert Report
• We need to pick a date to flood them with letters. This project will not achieve its intended effect unless we hit them with zillions of letters in a short amount of time. I'm suggesting (off the top of my head) February 17th - 23rd
• We need Jon and Steven's contact information. This might be found on colboard.com or comedycentral.com. A phone call to their HQ might reveal something too.
• Colbert's Writers - since they have nothing better to do - have been having an awesome time pranking the public. Youtube has some videos of this - there may be explicit news elsewhere. Can anyone dig up some links for me? I can't access youtube at werk.

Can anyone help with these?

I was posting these in the PICS thread but decided to centralize them here.

All these covers come from http://www.gamebooks.org/show_series_images.php?id=30 - make yuor own!

This thread is to spitball and brainstorm ideas for project OMGASM.



Before we start mass-broadcasting OMGASM (too late, to some extent)
we should have a few GASMs set up, so if people are interested, they have an obvious way to participate.

It's also essential that our projects look like they already have people participating. I don't care if we have to fake it. If it looks like the whole of Discordia is behind us, everyone else will follow suit.

So other than putting up zany posters and meme bombs, what sort of things should Discordians do on a mass scale?



I'll get us started --


COLBERTGASM - a project to bury Steven Colbert and Jon Stewart with discordian mail. Ratatosk started this up a few months back, after Colbert made two very explicit Discordian references on his show in one week. We should flesh out this idea and post some sample letters for people to print and mail.

http://www.poee.co.uk/bip/index.php?title=POSTERGASM

[And here's the conditions:]

It was 2003. I was a junior in college at SUNY Purchase. Which was a kind of bizarre place at the time.

I was living in this really zany apartment that had some kind of lunatic hivemind. One night, my sidekick Keiran and I decided that we needed beer and realized that we didn't have any, but we were cool enough to just go get some.

So we put on these pirate outfits. Well to be honest, it was kind of like rockstar / pirate outfits. And we got this crossbow thing we made out of wood and bungee cord, and cutlasses, and we printed out all these stickers with a skull and bones on them. And then we disembarked.

Kieran and I went door to door one Saturday night, and we knocked on the door and said
ARRRRRRRRR we said, we're the PURCHASE PIRATES and we OWN this place. So listen here, ye yellowbellied landlubber, ye can JOIN OR DIE.

And here's the conditions: If you choose DIE then fuck yew and get yuor ass fucked full of AIDS. FOREVER. Instead: JOIN. You get a cool Jolly Roger sticker to put on your door. And you get the following privelege:

any time you're in trouble and need safe harbor, or any time you're bored and need something to do, you can go to any door with the pirate sticker. You'll be like a brother to them. And if any pirates come to your door in search of safe harbor, you have to take them in and treat them like they fucking rule. And by the way, if you want this sticker, you have to give us a tithing of beer.

And you know what, we got drunk night after night for free.
We gave out a few dozen stickers,
and we made a few gross friends.

It spread like stupidfire. After a few weeks, everyone had heard of the pirates and wanted to party with us. We had so many fun and ridiculous public spectales: public executions, rum for strangers day, ballpipe matches, larceny for charity, the beer for chicks foundation, the pirate charity fun, fiasco 100% of the time. and that's just the tip if the iceberg.

So that's how one small idea (let's go get some beer)
made us lead by example (I want to be a pirate too)
and turned into some kind of local explosion (hey you guys, let's all be pirates)

The End.

[TO-DO LIST]

I've started a centralized archive of writings related to this big project we've been talking about recently.

http://www.poee.co.uk/bip/index.php?title=OMGASM

This is important because when we recruit people, we need a quick way to tell them about it without forcing them to dig through our forums and read lengthy threads.

There's a ton of information we discussed that we need to distill into independant bites of information. This will be something we can direct people towards when they want to get on-board.

EVERYONE who has posted or thought about this project is encouraged (uhhhh REQIURED! ~lol~) to help out in building the wiki supporting it. See here:

TO-DO LIST

- We need to figure out what the OMGASM front page should contain. I think it should host all the propaganda we might use to snooker people into our clutches. Images, essays, rants, the sort of things that get people fired up. Stuff we encourage people to edit and repost on other Discordian forums. HOW CAN YOU HELP? Go through the threads about this project and paste relevant posts or ideas in this thread. Someone who wants to help will upload those ideas to the wiki. If you have free time, be that guy. Don't worry if it looks pretty, we'll clean that up later. If you're the kind of person who's good at layout and design, do that.

-I think the front page should have a history which explains the origins of this idea. There was an FSM thread which started the ball rolling and challenged us to one-up them...and now the ball is rolling. HOW CAN YOU HELP? Write the history of the project. Or at least make some notes on the History page for people to edit into an article later...

-Right now we need more images and stuff like that - Vex has started us rolling, could someone please upload his images to the wiki? Barumunk, you're a graphic designer right? Other image people should get on board too! HOW CAN YOU HELP? If you don't have graphic design skillz, find relevant graphics and upload them to the wiki!

-There are no current Golden Apple Seed Missions. This is a big flaw in our project - before we start broad recruiting pushes, we need to have some things in place for people to participate in. HOW CAN YOU HELP? Write up a mission for other Discordians. More importantly, get a Digg and del.ico.us account and tag existing missions (when they appear).



I've used the word OMGASM for lack of a better name. I think Vex proposed The Game at some point, but as a correlary between this project and The Machine^TM.

[HAIL ERIS]

HAIL ERIS




did you hear that?

listen carefully...




ALL HAIL DISCORDIA





...it might be the last time you ever hear it.



By the time you depart from this world and drink the punch at limbo peak, Eris may be lost and forgotten by the 21st century. She'll wait for another era, when humanity won't cast her aside like an uppity bitch. Those grayfaces the Romans did it. And we're on that track right now.

It's ironic, really. Thanks the the incredible Chaos (read: Order + Disorder) of the Information Age (read: information + misinformation), there are more Discordians & kin than there ever have been. And people, in their blessed creativity, are taking Discordja in directions that Mal and Omar and RAW couldn't have imagined on their strangest trip ever. And yet over the years we have slowly drifted from the lunatic fringe into the lunatic margin. In a mere moment we may be off the lunatic all together. What has HAPPENED to Discordja? We should be exploding like fireworks filled with whoopee cushions but we're so unheard of, so fringe, we barely even exist!

I'm not saying we should get all mainstream or some shit. I'm just saying we would all benefit if we could pool our resources so we can all accomplish our goals. Whether they're putting up absurd flyers or drawing moustaches on movie posters or spreading some awesome meme bomb or whatever it is you want to do, you could do it on a bigger cooler scale if you had help. Or maybe you don't have any good ideas but you've read the Principia and Illuminatus! and Fight Club too many times to let life pass by without giving it a violent shaking.

There's hope for popes. Scope this dope:

Let's say your episkopos or your cabal or your congregation or your self wants to accomplish something or other, and you don't have the resources to do it yourselfves personally. Let's say you're all hot and bothered about Operation: Mindfuck and you want to drop your meme bomb in a wider radius than you have access to. Or whatever your project is. Be creative.

You write it up as a GOLDEN APPLE SEED MISSION. Write what it's about, and tell people how they can participate. Make it FUN. Then, you post it to the interfnord or hang it up on your wall or mail it to your friends or whatever. GASM is our new code word. It means Assistance Requested. It means you don't mind having your shit fucked up by a bunch of Discordian asshats.

Because look, lunatic fringe joke religions are a dime a dozen deez days. And we Discordjians are gonna get left behind and forgotten unless we adapt to the times, people. In the olden days of Discord, they passed the word around with words of mouth and pamphlets and stuff. Now it's the Internet Robot Future and the whole world has its digital ear pressed to your gibbering mouth. We should be flourishing in this age. They say Discordians should stick apart, but people are treating that like a RULE. And as a rule, Discordians break ja rules!

So be on the lookout. Operation Mindfuck has mutated after having sex with the internet. The OMGASM is coming. You can help too. You just gotta

A) Help out people who post Golden Apple Seed Missions.
B) Be Active (whatever that means for you). Make your activities so exciting or cool or hilarious that others want to join you. Then let the fnordosphere know about it so that they can play too.

This idea will actually work if you (you PERSONALLY) actually participate, and don't just read this thing you're reading right now and go "Hm, that sounds like a cool idea, I wonder if it'll actually work."



kaBLAMMO


Did you hear that?


It's taking off RIGHT NOW!


No, I'm serious-- look outside RIGHT NOW!



hahahah holy shit

When you see it, you'll shit grins.

Hail Eris

In this fucked up modern world, shouldn't there be an evil charity?

When you donate money to a cause, you feel good because you're in some way making the world a better place.

When you donate money to a negative charity, you are funding the worsening of the world. Because nihilists, assholes, and regressivists need a place they can fund too.


When I was a kid I watched the show Captain Planet, and I thought that blue guy with the green mullet was so lame I wanted to grow up and start a pollution factory. I fantasized about releasing a ton of CFCs into the atmosphere, dumping garbage into the ocean, suing eco-friendly companies, and generally provoking the wrath of do-gooders and treehugging spags everywhere. Well shit, there's still time to accomplish all of this.

I should set up a paypal account so that people who are in a bad mood can donate money that I will spend on megaphone batteries, spraypaint, stink bombs, knives to leave in gang-territory, that sort of thing. I'd use the time bought by my donation money to clog bathroom stalls in police stations, key cars, and otherwise waste people's time and resources.

Hey, it may not be making the world better, but at least I'd be making a difference.




Edited to add: DONE. Go here: http://www.cwyohba.org/noexit//Negative%20Charity.html


(Now before you all jump on me, note that my tongue is planted firmly in-cheek)

[things to look out for:]

Does anybody remember the animated Ghostbusters cartoon? I'm a fanatic Ghostbusters fan (my flatmate Nomad and I can communicate entirely in fragments of ghostbusters quotes) and as a kid watched their cartoon every Saturday morning. One particular episode left a big impression on me. Titled "Collect Call of Cathulhu", it's written in the Lovecraft genre. In High School, when I discovered Lovecraft, that episode's gnothic chanting bubbled up from memory and I began a maddened search for it.

But lo, the internet was young, and it was impossible (at that time) to find.

Imagine my delight when last night's youtube search revealed the episode in its entirety!

So without further ado, I present to you, The Collect Call of Cathulhu.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QFpOEhJwPy4&feature=related - Part 1
http://youtube.com/watch?v=KF8M1Erwvg0&feature=related - Part 2
http://youtube.com/watch?v=al7jpbu9w_Y&feature=related - Part 3

things to look out for:

• August Dereleth is, apparently, a chick
• Shoggoths are scary as hell
• the episode is fairly faithful to the genre. Including that the characters have to spend hours and hours reading boring old books
• Cthulhu is somewhat easier to defeat than Lovecraft would lead us to believe

a line from the episode:
Peter: I don't see what's the big deal. [The Necronomicon] is just a book!
Ray: Yeah, and an Atomic Bomb is just a couple of rocks slammed together.

THE line of the episode:
Janine: (talking to Peter's date) "Ghostbusters are heartbreakers, kid. Don't get too close to 'em."


and for a bonus level of weirdness I discovered a few years ago:

Peter Venkman is played by Bill Murray in the movies.
In the cartoon, his voice is played by Lorenzo Music.
Lorenzo Music used the same voice for Garfield (the cartoon)
Bill Murray did the voice of Garfield for the Garfield CGI movie

For the Garfield movie, Bill Murray was essentially doing an impression of Lorenzo Music. Who was, in turn, doing an impression of Bill Murray. I call this the Musical-Murray Continuum.

IS YUOR MIND BLOWN YET?

So on the 27th of December, on what should have been World Evolution Day, Chloe and I celebrated Moosemas. Moosemas is a Grand Old Discordjian Holyday which was discovered in 1984. I just learned about it this year while studying at The Invisible College. Well Chloe and I were bored and she said "LETS MAKE A CAKE" and before we thought about it in any way we were already out the door to go buy cake mix and eggs and stuff.

So halfway to Stop & Slop we started to wonder what we were celebrating. And we decided on Moosemas. So as we talked about it, this Moosemas thing kept getting momentum, and we invited a bunch of people over, and we had a grand old Moosemas. Here are some of our activities:

MOOSEMAS LIST

Made Chocolate Moose
Drank Peppermoose tea
Moosed around
Made hot Applemoose Cider
Moose Beer
Sang Moosemas day songs
ate triscuits
watched Moosemas specials (bork bork bork: http://youtube.com/watch?v=CRIwuxqKyyk)
Moosed out
took photos for next year's moosemas day cards



And though we didn't get any pictures of Ean or Moose or Nomad or Biana, they were there too. All these pictures were taken using Chloe's shitty laptop camera, so excuse the awful quality / content.



MERRY MOOSEMAS, HO HO HO HO




Chloe looks kind of spaced out, it must be from all the moosenog.


Here's our pineal cake:



the chocolate was so slippery, the number 23 immediately began to drift apart:



A Grand Old Moosemas was had by all



St. Nicklemoose bless us, every one!

Silicon Valley






     or should I say

Sodom

        is burning

My wife looked back
and disassembled downwards
into a pile of parts.

dust to dust, I suppose.

The architects of Babel:
did their system crash
crash our sins
                as well?
Is there anything outside the network?

And a thousand years later
after all the sand has burned to glass
and the valley is dark and wide
                                               and lonely
We will think
byzantine circuitry
                             taboo

403 - forbidden

you pervert

Population Control

Tessa and I carved our initials into a tree,
like kids,
giggling but serious.
I used a pocketknife
& she used her laser.

[That cherry red laser:
At low intensities,
it feels better
than flesh]

We're the perfect match, her & I
She can't love her own kind-
  they're not programmed to receive
But I appreciate
  her nodes, her patches, her upgrades
She knows what I want
with three-decimal place accuracy.

She's calculated
how to make me fall in love
with her
alone

She's my one malfunction
which crashes all the rest
my system can't restart now
that she broke the turing test

When my ex-girlfriend Terra came back
I tired to leave
But Tessa just stood there
like the tin-man
rusted in place
scanning me like headlights
reflected in deer eyes

I oiled her with affection

When she started to move again
her arms coiled around me
"You would leave me?" she asked tearfully,
"You would leave me for flesh?"

No honey, I say,
you're my nested loops
and you're my copper wire
you're my flash drive
you are my decompiler

we'll never have kids

Users


I don't understand what you mean--
what are all these "users" you're talking about?
(all these alleged "real people")
All I see are ip addresses.

There are four parts.
Each part has 256 possibilities.

It sounds like a lot.

In a small group, each one appears unique
in a large group, its just a blur of numbers hey

hey
you've got the lion and the lamb hey
you've got the bull and the eagle hey
you've got about four billion combo nations hey hey
and thats all you've got

psycho logic taxonomy
numeric teleology


and that's all
you (pl) are

2007 shall forever be known as the year when the Wrath of MS Paint Cabal was conceived. Cramulus and Payne (and also Suu, D-Cup, Richter, and a cadre of other assholes) created many awful things in 2007.

This thread salutes them.

Basically I'm going through my photobuckets and picking out my favorite pics... along with some captions perhaps.




Some of you may remember that Payne came onboard here right as AKK was fading away. For the n00bs, I'll briefly recap: AKK annoyed the shit out of everyone here and refused to go away. There came a point where we were DESPERATE to change the board somehow. The next n00b that stepped onboard, Payne, was greeted as the harbinger of a new age. We decided that we would love him no matter what a toolbox he was, just because he was NOT AKK.

If I recall correctly, Hunter S Durden actually noticed him first, as a newly registered user with 0 posts. Hunter made a thread telling Payne to fuck off forever because he sucked. Hunter's such a card!




I think the following image was related to a joke about Hunter killing goth kids.

\











Cain had asked if anyone wanted any free papers or books or something from JSTOR or some other archive. This is the nerdiest picture I could make in response. I think the quote is actually from triple zero?







I conducted some statistical research on the STFUPID Cabal, and found the following:











Cain rallied together a bunch of people to troll Mystic Wicks, but I think Idem and I were the only ones that stepped up to the plate.




Also I became sort of obsessed with robots.













and it would be dangerous to note or fail to note that His Imperial Majesty's Elite Orbital Bomber Squadron did irrevocable damage to the entire internet at once.






more to come....

[WAKE UP DAMNIT!]

Jumpin' Jehoshaphat!

You actually noticed this sign!

Not many people do. I mean, try standing over there and watch it for a second. A lot of people pass by, but very few even look. But you, YOU, there's something about you. You're more perceptive than THEY are.

And I know, I know.
You're busy, and you've got someplace else to be.

I don't have your attention for long, so I'll be brief.

WAKE UP DAMNIT!

At any given moment, a very few people on this planet are AWARE of their surroundings. Most people are zoned out, barely conscious. They're not using their brains, they're just coasting along. Reacting to things as they'll come. I see a nation of scholars and warriors and poets who are DRUGGED INTO STUPIDITY. A nation of DaVincis who are BORED TO SLEEP. And by what? Well I tell you this - they're doing it to themselves.

And the average human has less than three original thoughts per week. Have you had one yet today? Really think now... and your precious opinions about things don't count towards the grand total - merely reacting to stimulus isn't a demonstration of your brain power.

So listen,
you and me, we're both conscious - for the moment. But in a few minutes, we're going to slip back into the Machine. The Machine? It's the Machine that we're all making with our daily rhythms. Our general lockstep mania. Our religion of current events. We're going to go back to that in a minute. You and I are going back to sleep.

It's cool though. The trick is to realize that you're dreaming. Train yourself to stay aware. You did it at least once today, you can do it again. And do us ALL a favor --

HELP WAKE EACH OTHER UP


It's the least you can do. Do it as a favor to me, like I just did unto you.




PROFESSOR CRAMULUS, KSC





This page is Free - free to be copied and distributed, modified, or torn down in an angry fit. Do What Thou Wilt.

[1. Disconnect from sources of conventional thinking]

5 Ways to Develop Independent Thought
by John Wesley

(from: http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/5-ways-to-develop-independent-thought/)

A classroom full of 10-year-old students is asked to solve a problem with children crossing the street on the way to school. The children come up with ideas that have been used successfully in other places: traffic calming devices, overpasses, fluorescent jackets and speed limits. All these ideas are conventional, exactly what the teacher wants to hear.

Except for one. A student recommends that the school board sell the property and move the classroom online. This is not what the teacher was expecting.

This idea may not be practical, popular, or even possible, but when it's ridiculed by the class it might be the last independent thought that the student dares to express — the death of another independent thinker.

Independent thought is not popular — it is absolutely, pricelessly, rare. Nothing you read about in the papers or see on the television is independent. Whatever we take in from the popular media is regurgitated conventional knowledge. There is nothing independent about most of the world.

This is a tragedy — independent thought is essential for progress. Conventional thinking moves us forward gradually at best (at worst it pushes us backwards). Independent thinking is required to achieve any substantial jump in performance.

Logically, when we think like everyone else is thinking, the best we can expect is to achieve what they're already achieving. If our aim is to over-achieve, we need to avoid the same banal influences and think impossibly. We need to become independent from conventional wisdom.

Fortunately, you don't have to be particularly intelligent or well educated to think independently. Consider small children. Conventional wisdom says that shoes are for wearing and bananas are for eating. Independent thinking allows children try eating the shoes and wearing the bananas on their feet. Their lack of conventional wisdom and utter disregard for how others view their decisions allows children to experiment without anxiety. In this case they may be wrong, but in other cases they can be shockingly right.

Using these 5 strategies you can develop your independent thinking ability.

1. Disconnect from sources of conventional thinking

Instead of plugging into your TV, PC, or library for answers, think for yourself first. Without cutting yourself off from the world, you can increase your capacity for independent thought by limiting the conventional opinion you absorb. This means reducing the media you consume and the level of devotion you give to it. Independent thinkers aren't necessarily contrarian, but they don't agree with the status quo by default. They devise new criteria for perceiving the world rather than seeing everything through the screen of their computer.

2. Immerse yourself in experiences that conflict with your current perspective

Instead of substituting a new conventional thought for the old one, deliberately seek out experiences that challenge your views. These experiences may exist in foreign cultures, unusual subcultures, or between the pages of a book you disagree with. The point is not to adopt a new train of thought, but to disrupt the conventional railroad.

3. Watch the process from a distance

Leaving your normal life behind can give you the freedom to see issues from another perspective. Watching the world instead of eating it up gives you the peace of mind to think for yourself. Standing still from time to time gives you the opportunity to ridicule your own beliefs and explore new angles.

4. Randomize your sensory inputs

Instead of visiting the same places, eating the same foods, and talking to the same people, you can actively pursue new experiences. Many people cling to the familiar to simplify decisions and create a sense of security. If you truly want to think independently, you need to get outside your comfort zone.

5. Practice disbelief

Without becoming a cynic, you can develop the habit of instinctively distrusting thoughts that rely on conventional wisdom. Instead of assuming that these "truths" are self evident, suspend judgment until you've have confirmed that there is reality behind the logic.

If all of this sounds too difficult, consider what can be gained from independent thought. Even microscopic steps towards thinking independently will increase your contribution to the world. You will see opportunities and solutions that others overlook. You will obtain a competitive advantage over less creative thinkers. Most importantly, your thoughts will be your own and not just recycled media.

Think independently and you create a world of limitless opportunity. But don't take my word for it...find out for yourself.

http://www.cwyohba.org/noexit/docs/SCHR%c3%96DINGER'S%20CAT%20TRILOGY.pdf

Edited

http://www.cwyohba.org/noexit/cramulus/two_mindfux.pdf

two images posted in Apple Talk which I liked enough to make into PDFs

This thread is for stuff I've made or assembled:



23 Things to Amuse Yourself While You Wait - This is a silly one-page pamphlet designed to be left on trains, bus stops, truck stops, waiting rooms, or anywhere where people are sitting around and waiting. Actually, it could go anywhere. Contains Discordian thought about Robots and Cabbages. Also available in .doc

Meme Bombs: Volume Aleph - some of my favorite meme bombs, in PDF format, enhanced by various wingbats and dingdings to make them more eye-catching.

5160 Discordian Labels - labels jacked from poee.co.uk and resized for 5160 size stickers.

5160 Meme Bombs - Some of my favorite Meme Bombs put onto 5160-sized stickers

5160 PD Ad Bombs - 5160-sticker-sized ads for the PD.com forums

Black Iron Prison Booklet - Cram's revision of the BIP booklet, in half-page size and arranged for printout.

Black Iron Prison Full Page - Cram's revision of the BIP booklet, in full-page size. Pages are in order for reading online.

BIP DOC - Black Iron Prison in MS Word format, so you can change, format, and edit it yourself.

Moar Labels - Moar meme bombs, one-liners, and bizarre graphics on a 5160-sized sticker page.


here's the link to the directory where all this stuff is stored:
http://www.cwyohba.org/noexit/cramulus/

[Vex,]

Some logic says I probably shouldn't be posting Vex's stuff for him,
but at the moment he's busy assisting his wife's spawning.

Also, I'm in the mood to post this shite now. And it's Kopyleft anyway. So screw yew.
Vex, when you get around to it, you should post some of the stuff I missed. Especially the robot stuff.


So anyway here's a lot of Vexati0ns propaganda:

[PRESENTING...]

PRESENTING...

MEME BOMBS
Volume Aleph

This volume contains 14 pages of Grade A material from the One Line Meme Bomb thread. Wingbats and Dingwings have been added to make them more eye catching.

A one-page cover letter provides IMPORTANT PROTIPS for hanging and distributing meme bombs.

Print and Go!

[- VS -]

- VS -

Are you Conflicted? Anxious? Doubtful? A Shadow of your Potential Self?

It's likely -- in fact, it's almost certain -- that your are living off balance.


There are two drives at war within each of us - the creation and maintenance of order, and the reckless breakneck chase of disorder.

Visualize a skinny nerd walking a big dog. The dog is trying to pull the nerd where he wants to go, and the nerd is gripping the leash with white knuckles. And you are neither the nerd nor the beast, but both at the same time.



Cut to:
Ancient Athens was a pretty hip joint. In its day, it was the central nexus of rational thought, a unique oasis in a world where most people were busy screaming and stabbing each other with spears. They had this word in Ancient Greece, Arête. Ar-uh-tay. It means Virtue. It means Quality. It means Heroism. And it requires balance.

Odysseus, the preeminent Greek Hero, was not a straight-laced do-gooder, a shield of righteousness and a spear of justice. He was kind of a bastard. He lied, he cheated on his wife, he insulted the Gods, and he killed more people than Rambo. He was both a man and a beast at the same time. But he was not weighted down by his personal Disorder, he made it into one of his virtues. That's Quality. That's Arête.

See, the Athenians believed that man has to romance his chaos. They spent most of the month worshiping Apollo, the God of Light and Reason and Harmony and Rational Thought. But for one or two days out of each moon, they ignored Apollo and worshiped Dionysus, the God of Drinking and Orgies and fantastic fucking Parties.

They had huge, unbelievable festivals which swallowed the whole city. Everybody in the Athens would put down their day-to-day selves and spend all night chanting and dancing and drumming and wearing strange masks. They really let their hair down. One might expect violence, human sacrifices, people fucking in the streets. It's not just about having a good time, it's about experiencing those aspects of ourselves which we flee from, like fear and rage and sloppy drunkenness and uninhibited ecstasy.



Who participated in these festivals? Unlike the present day, it wasn't JUST the rebel kids: youths on the cusp of adulthood whose chaos hasn't yet been bled out of them by the Machine. The Bacchanal was attended by both the rich and the poor, the smart and the dumb, the old and the young. These festivals were what they needed - they needed to FREAK OUT and let the animal loose.

See the Athenians thought this was necessary for sanity. If they were going to get their Important Stuff done during the week, they knew they needed to kick out the jams on the weekend. A Greek Hero is balanced between Apollo and Dionysus. He's a warrior AND a philosopher. He's a good guy AND a scoundrel. He is a man, but he is also a beast. He is Apollo, but he is also Dionysus.

"Don't suppress your nature," the Greeks are saying to us. "Once in a while, party with no hesitation or regret. Let your beast loose."

Let yourself succumb to emotions like panic and fear and joy. Allow yourself to get lost in a riotous crowd all cheering at the same time. You'll lose your identify for a little while. Then when you put your Apollo back on, you'll be tempered.

And where are we now? I look around and I see very few people who know how to ride their beasts, let alone take them for a walk every so often. People are afraid of that aspect - they don't want to look in the mirror and see a frazzled, cracked out animal, bloodied and drunk, but still smiling. They'd prefer to see the guy with the neatly combed hair, confident and rational, comfortable and reasonable. The kind of guy who doesn't make waves. A go-getter with everything to lose.



You can't keep the beast tranquilized forever. One day it's going to leak out through your tension and anxiety. It's going to make your rational-self uneasy. And when you're loosest, it's going to claw its way out of your heart and murder all the philosophers and poets and innocent bystanders. It's going to hurt them and it's also going to hurt you.

The beast is, by its nature, not comfortable. It's emotional. It's savage. It's unpredictable. The beast is what you're trying to escape with your breathing exercises and iPod. With your drive for homeostasis and your metronomic routine. Living the way we do, we've all learned and internalized dozens of techniques to keep the beast in its cage. But it's going crazy in there, waiting for a moment of weakness to spring out and tear shit up. Your beast is a big strong dog, and your Rational Thought is a skinny nerd trying to walk him but barely in control. Who's in charge here? Who's leading whom? If you have mastered Arête, one checks the other but they move in unison.

So there it is. Arête. It's not a mastery one learns by living by the rules and being in control every day. It's not experienced by becoming the most rational, controlled, stand-up person you can be. It's found by tempering your brain with your balls. It's pouring your fire into a shot glass and drinking it
straight up,
no chaser.

Hail Eris