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boop

wait, which lulu links? It still looks like the sale page on lulu is ok -- did some existing links to that page change?

https://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/et-cetera-discordia/14326592 gives me a 404

Lulu links are now borked

First up, https://qgpennyworth.com/portfolio/go-on-its-ok/

Now that Holy Nonsense 2020 is done and the website is caught up enough to post to, I'll be doing an upload a day of individual works, including the image and pdf files, and all the meta info I have access to. Gonna do my best not to drop the ball on this one.

Win what??

I'll give you a hint.  It's the size of a birthday cake

Is it a birthday cake?

What about losers?

I didn't realize this, but Holy Nonsense dropped on Maybe Day. That's gotta be some kind of omen.

I swear to fucking cod there is a 100% effective incantation to create a new page for Holy Nonsense and it is "I think this is the final layout!"

to keep content fresh, I recommend we pick a theme and each post our answer. How about social security numbers to start!

no rules about not complaining about this thread!

Why is it that when people get into religion or mysticism they so often wind up obsessed with apocalypses? The mad preacher with a sign reading THE END IS NIGH is a trope so old and pervasive I could be writing this rant in 1952. Don't folks know it's BAD, ACTUALLY, to wrap up your mystical identity in the trappings of Apocalypse? Don't people know that cheerleading the end of the world is REALLY FUCKING STUPID? I'm looking at you, Cthulhu cultists.

But I'm looking at all you bitches way too into dystopian lit, too.

The fact is, we are living in a culture OBSESSED with apocalypses.  Zombie Apocalypses, Climate Apocalypses, whatever the fuck the Preppers think is gonna happen when Obummer or Sleepy Joe comes for their guns, the Apocalypse America is built on,* the one the Evangelicals are praying for every night... The fact that I can list so many that are so intimately familiar to you as a reader is already a giant red flag.

You didn't choose the memetic soup you were going to be born into. It's not your fault that you're cohabiting this planet with a bunch of self-destructive hairless primates, and it's hard to be surrounded by that cultural noise without picking up a little bit here and there. But you need to be AWARE of what you're ingesting, and you need to EXCISE some of this apocalypse cheerleading bullshit. Because it's killing people. Not fictional people, not potential future people, but really alive humans right now. 

America is Obsessed with Apocalypses
And America Outsources Its Problems

You can't understand what's happening in the Middle East without understanding the history of European colonialism and anti-Semitism and WWII and the Holocaust but you ALSO can't understand it without knowing that a significant, organized voting bloc in the US wants very badly for a specific apocalypse to happen, and getting all the Jews to move to Israel is one of the steps on that path. You can't understand Climate Change until you remember that there are people who honestly believe they are in the last generation of humans to occupy this planet. You can't understand anything that's happening in politics without constantly reminding yourself that a small but extremely loud subset of voters WANT TOTAL SOCIAL BREAKDOWN. The Call Of The Void, writ large.

And look, I really do empathize. I've spent my time in the hopeless pits of powerless rebellion. I've shut down in the face of problems too large to hope to affect. I've had dark nights at 3am where all I wanted to do was give up the present and try to imagine an end that, while probably not pleasant, might at least have some meaning? Some significance? But it's a trap, and you've gotta claw your way out of it.

The way out isn't gonna look how you expect, either. You might need some time being a bad guy, to break those chains of "good people don't." You might need to give up on politics and start running a goat larp. You might need to spend every morning for 6 weeks taking pictures of the flowers in the gardens in your neighborhood. Your escape won't look like mine, like anyone else's.

But When You Break Out
You're Saving A Piece Of The World.

fuck I love all of this. New HN section coming up

So once upon a time I was hanging out with a porn star and her husband when their neighbors come over for a visit and they're like DON'T TELL THEM ABOUT THE SEXY THINGS JUST CHILL AND WE CAN FUCK AROUND WHEN THEY'RE GONE and I'm a dumbass and more than a little drunk so sure whatever fine. Eventually I decide to break out a deck of cards and perform my favorite party trick: Drunk Tarot.

There is a RITUAL to Drunk Tarot. You have to sit on the floor with me. You have to posit a question or at least a subject. You have to shuffle the deck. And, most importantly, you have to give me a sip of your drink.

Drunk Tarot is performed with a standard 52 deck of cards, borrowed from the host. I explain that the suits of a playing card deck map to the suits of a tarot deck: diamonds to coins/pentacles, clubs to rods, spades to swords, hearts to cups. The layout is always the celtic cross, because it's big and fancy looking.

After doing a read for our host and hostess, one of the friends asks if he can go. He has seen this ritual play out. He shuffles the deck, I take a sip, we lay out the cards.

10 of spades shows up in the distant past slot.

I make a face. "This might be a mistake, this card is supposed to map to the ten of swords, which often represents a violent or untimely death..."

He loses his shit.

"HOW DID YOU KNOW MY COUSIN GOT MURDERED?????"

I got it explicitly because it was black pasta when not cooked. Really wanted to goth pasta... it was a mistake.

squid ink keeps the color when cooked. Someone donated some squid ink spaghetti do not ask me why.