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Animal Chin, in addition to being an excellent film, is where I suggest you begin your journey.
All true skaters, are seekers of Animal Chin

Dungeons & Dragons Prison Ban Upheld

Prison officials said they had banned the game at the recommendation of the prison's specialist on gangs, who said it could lead to gang behavior and fantasies about escape.

So. I'm perusing youtube videos of the Pittsburgh G-20 protests. I'll link to the more lulzy ones.

Brian Todd gets teargassed
Vague shot of crust-punks maybe being beaten? I dont know.
OMG! (hilarious commentary)
kid gets disappeared
This is probably one of the best arrest videos I've ever seen, but the problem is you dont have a clear shot of the kid before it happens. Not surprising considering the speed of the whole thing, the person filming had to book it to get it at all.

also:

Probably due to a typographical error at the White House, the G-20 summit is being held in Pittsburgh September 24-25, 2009. During that time, Pittsburgh is being beset by a horrible rampaging mob that is causing chaos. There are be protesters, too.

So far, not as lulzy as the G8 summit in Seattle, or the global scientology protests.

Thou Shalt Not Hesitate

The lesser part of my soul is smoke and mirrors, that which occupies my body and performs but the most mundane tasks, that which pays my rent and bills, that which appeases my girlfriend without passion (firstly), also appeases myself and the renter (and my boss, and and bill collector) secondly. The greater part of my soul exists despite this, in defiance of my own conscious, acting against my will in direct defiance... urging me towards acts of self destruction, which the lesser part excuses as acts of passion, though I know no passion remains. What is my body now but an empty shell, that I shall destroy at my own leisure? I am completely content in this interpretation of it. That dreams be nothing but useless reminder of a memory, of what I once called a soul.

The future? My future is debt, something once I resisted to the very detriment of my being, broken bones go unfixed, a broken education to be mended through wikipedia, a broken soul to be mended through what? Eris? Chaos, at the very core of my being, earning me what? Street Cred? Not if you dont say it, not if you dont learn the Boast. Valuable life lessons learned, but I still dont CARE. Who is going to make me give a fuck? A difficult burden to place on the most ancient muses, not Calliope, but perhaps Melpomene... however, I still intend to manifest my own destiny. So the question remains; What do I want? I still dont know.

I find comfort in a few things in life, and willingly dedicate myself to these things. Entropy. Hopelessness, Death, and Decay. This is not to sound mall-goth, I just find comfort knowing that the wasted efforts of my life will someday be recycled energy. Knowing that this cycle does not end with me, and that perhaps humanity should not feel so self righteous about possessing consciousness itself. Bleak winters, hard times, a troubled past... this is a legacy to be proud of, and pain itself is a valuable experience. Experience itself, its valuable... no matter what; All manner of so called negative feelings are to be cherished, because at the very least we are experiencing, though some feelings perhaps justify the thought that I would rather not experience at all.

Though, In my case, I would.

I want all the pain life has to offer.

Barriers that exist between human beings are the barriers of perception, where one person begins and another person end can be ambigious outside the immediate perception of the self. To fall back on solipsism is to insist that nothing outside of the immediate existence of the self can be proven, Cogito Ergo Sum, words immediately excorsized by the reality of personal violence, pain, and inhumanity. In other words, if only the self exists, the self must be a nihilist, otherwise it might not work so hard to provide itself with the means of its own self destruction. In other words, it can be assumed that there is a reality to the existence of others, as demonstrated by their influence on us in our every day lives, either intentionally or by simple circumstance.

" That which is above is like that which is below and that which is below is like that which is above" - Some Asshole

The human species now widely populates nearly the entire earth, with the exception of antartica, we find a way to support ourselves and survive in one form or another on every single continent of the planet. We consume resources on a massive scale, and expand essentially at an exponential rate, we are continuing to grow larger as a species. Communication also draws us closer. Consider for a moment the impact of power, electricity, mass transit systems, sattelites orbiting the earth bouncing radio and microwave frequencies from one spot to another virtually instantaneously. Consider the importance of something like the internet, not to mention the fact that our communications systems grow more complex and more intermingled with every moment that we continue to grow and expand as a species, the basic idea here is that the next form of evolution is not a physical evolution. Not strange to imagine, considering that human beings havent really evolved physically ever since we first began to function as hunters/gatherers, but rather every form of human evolution has been abstract (the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, the technological evolution.) These basic ideas have been floating around for a long time. The entire cyberpunk literary movement has been packaged and sealed for pop-culture consumption, these things are now safe for us to think about. Lets move on.

In the prior paragraph, I began to touch on ideas that were first introduced to me by An Ecology of Man by SPR Charter. The book itself is a series of essays, each of which touches on a facet of a broader concept. Some of the major points I want to bring up here are as follows: the human species is expanding exponentially similar to a bacteria or a virus largely due to our ability to rapidly adapt to new environments and our lack of natural predators; like bacteria we have needs and consume resources in order to survive and to support ourselves; anything that expands exponentially such as a bacteria will continue to do so until it eventually exhausts one of its natural resources at which point it suffers cataclysm and is either completely eradicated, or else its reduced to a state where it essentially has to start over (thusly giving those resources time to replenish, if possible.) Charter does a much better job of breaking all of this down, our natural resources, their approximate availability, and pretty much every aspect of this topic one by one. Regurgitation of old ideas that not everybody is necessarily aware of. Next!

To rip on another idea. Schr??dingers Cat by Robert Anton Wilson (save your jeers, I take the guy probably about as serious as any hardened skeptic.) Well, simply put, the biggest thing that I got out of this book was one thing... as the technology curve continues to advance, and human population does the same, it is entirely within the grasp of small groups of people or even an individual to gain access to technology (if technology continues to advance, we can infer that the possibility of weapons or tools of warfare become more accessable and more devastating) it becomes a simple matter of time before the ability to cause global cataclysm is easily accessible to just some asshole. Nikolas Tesla claimed that he could probably destroy the world if he wanted to, and somehow he probably wasnt lying. Scary thought. This is what I see as being one possible outcome of our chosen path, being mechanization, communication, and education.

All of a sudden, I can understand the motivation behind seemingly idiotic policies like 'No Child Left Behind', although I dont agree with the spirit of dumbing down the public out of fear. To me, these sort of things stink of classism, and there are a lot of things in current events that lead me to think in this direction. Taxation, obviously, means a hell of a lot more to the poor than it does to the wealthy (even when you figure that percentage wise, the rich may pay greater taxes than the poor) based on the fact that the money gap is staggeringly huge. To have millions of dollars in liquid assets at your command would mean that to you, a few hundred thousand, can be sacrificed easily in order to achieve your aims. A good example of that are the cases where large corporations can commit various types of violations, environmental ones being the first that come to mind, simply because the massive fines still manage to fit within the profit margins. Immediately consider what those hundreds of thousands of dollars would mean to an entire community in the ghetto. When you are willing to look at the world honestly, you will come to realize, that it is naturally predatory. Even if somebody who is born poor can crawl tooth and nail up the sliding scale of this system, the simple fact is that they will probably never be in a position to help anybody but themselves, because acquiring those means is staggeringly difficult. Even if they could, they probably wouldnt, that kind of ascension requires one to begin thinking critically of every decision, and the world has a way of making people cut-throat and dishonest. Have you ever answered honestly on a personality test set in place by a corporation for some miserable job you wanted to get? Did you get the job?

Out of politics again for a second. Human conciousness is evolving. Think of the human brain as being a large collection of individual cells held together by synapses communicating back and forth to each other across synapses via electrochemical signals. Think of each individual human being, from all walks of life, living and communicating to each other daily. Think of the internet, one cell from halfway across the world can send an impulse that is recieved by another cell millions of miles away. Think of the rise of computerization and communication, billions of human beings forming a network of communication that is globablly accessible by different types of cells. Think of television, literature, and music, one single message communicated to a mass group of cells. Sure, there might not be a self-aware macro-concsiousness yet, but the way things going I think there is good money that there eventually will be (assuming, of course, that certain factors are met.) This is my agenda, I am pro-evolution. (incidentally, I'm listening to Bobby Digital right now, and I think its very cool that the Rza just sampled Portishead. )

Ok. So I've established my vision of a human macro-consciousness, again not a very new idea, I'm not very well read on my C.G. Jung but I'm pretty sure I'm beginning to approach his vision of collective consciousness. This too is also a huge part of Meme-Theory. Words and ideas as viruses, the path of fads as they spread from place to place, human beings can easily be seen as individual cells of a larger organism from this standpoint. Blood cells deliver oxygen from place to place, brain cells generate electro chemical signals that perform and control a large variety of functions, etc etc. I dont want to get too heavy into human biology, its not exactly my thing, but the metaphor can be stretched out a lot more. To put it simple, it is my belief that the human species is essentially in a foetal state, and whatever organism it is that we happen to be is a little to large and abstract for a human being to easily fathom.

So from here, I find myself wanting to get back into 'conspiracy theory' a little bit. I realize that from a political standpoint, my ideas might seem radical, but the truth of it is I only have a passing interest in politics. In other words, I care enough about politics only in terms of how it begins to approach my general interest in the proliferation and evolution of the human species. In other words, I dont want us die. As we expand exponentially, we consume resources more rapidly and these resources are subject to an increased demand, and as it happens to stand right now natural gasses, fossil fuels, and crude oil form the backbone of a lot of our military, industrial, and technological systems. This is something that causes global tension, in terms of those resources, and we see world superpowers competing openly over control of these things. This of course, is not the end all be-all, it just happens to be a place and time where we are right now. New world superpowers are forming (the E.U. is a good example, and I've heard rumors of a South American Union not being too far off, but we'll just have to wait and see how that one plays out.) Also, the cold war never really ended. If you think about it, the cold war was a term we invented for the tension between the United States and the former USSR, but that type of tension is not something thats merely limited to two countries and its been ever present in our history, and becomes even more so as the world becomes smaller.

To put that whole section of the rant simple, as the world gets smaller and the technological curve continues to rise, we witness a general rise in global tension.

The next couple centuries are going to be rough, but I dont think we can unlearn anything that we have learned, and we are going to go through some hard times. Global warming is the next issue on my itinerary. Given the current pace, scientists expact that within a hundred years the polar ice caps will be at a point where they will completely melt during the summer months. As to how this will effect the world, and our ecology, on a global scale... we can only conjecture. I have enough faith in the human species that we will be able to survive that particular environmental change, but the earth is something that doesnt stay the same. This is playing havoc on a lot of things, tsunamis and hurricanes are becoming more and more common, and of course the water level of the worlds oceans is probably going to rise substantially. We can pack tight in together, and live in smaller spaces, because humans are pretty good at that sort of thing. We have megalopolises already, but a lot of coastal cities are in for some major stress over the next fifty years or so. The other thing is that this is already playing havoc with the Gulf Stream, so England and Europe are probably going to get a lot colder (more representitive of their location in relation to the earths equator.)

I guess you could say that we still have natural predators. There is the earths climate itself, there is disease, poverty, and famine, and there is also the human factor. Our own technology holds the possibility to undo us, and if that happens, we'll never be able to evolve.

You might be able to tell that I'm starting to wind down a bit, I'm approaching a point where I'm not even sure whats best for us as a whole species. I think its necessary for us as a whole to begin to think globally in order to survive, and I think its necessary that we provide education and high quality of living in order to expand (first within our own individual societies, and then globally, evolution is contagious.) The sad part about this, is that there enough ignorant people in the world to screw up any and all efforts we have of being progressive, especially when a large majority of people within our own society screw it up even more by villifying progressive thought. Warmongering and rabid nationalism are the trends of the day, and there is little that can be done on an individual level to change any of that.

When you get right down to it, there is nothing that I can do physically to have a substantially positive change on the world as a whole, all I can do is reach out to the people close to me and try and do some good there. And all this do-gooding is kind of difficult to do, especially when we live in a predatory society where even taking care of yourself and making sure you dont get completely fucked over is a full time job. Add to those factors the fact that I am inherantly human, and therefore probably just as stupid and ignorant as a lot of other fools in this world, all of this self righteous rambling doesnt do a god damned thing to change the fact that I make, and have made, some seriously stupid mistakes in my lifetime.

Oh well. We'll just wait and see how everything turns out. Personally, all I want to really do is sit on the sidelines in a lawn-chair with a beer in my hand. If everything turns out well, I'll be happy, and if not... I wont be surprised, but at least I will be entertained.

Good luck, and good night.

Because this deserves its own threads. I will post a long list of bands that I like, and maybe some short comments on them, and other people will post things, and we will all be happy and respect each other and eat flowers BECAUSE I AM A GIANT BUG AND LIKE TO EAT FLOWERS!!!


Monstrosity (floridian, george "corpsegrinder" fischers first band)
Hate Eternal (floridian, the notable Erik Ruttan on vocals/guitar)
Morbid Angel (floridian, Trey Azagthoth might be my favorite solo-ist ever, as he signed my birth certificate)
Sinister (from Texas I think, not very good, but their version of To Megatherion is my favorite)
Carcass  (U.K. , may have invented grindcore, lead singer didnt actually want to write meaningful lyrics so he purchased a medical thesaraus. This lead to album names like Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious. Their old stuff is more grindy/thrashy, the new stuff more rocky. Key members later on join swedish Arch Enemy)
Slayer (because Reign in Blood is a good album)
Metallica (Master of Puppets and Ride the Lightning ONLY)
At the Gates (swedish, later ripped off by the entire american hardcore scene)
Gates of Ishtar (melodic thrash, swedish)
Gorguts (begins as straight death metal band, later becomes extremely jazz influenced and weird. 'Obscura' may just be my favorite metal album ever. This band once had two guys named 'Steve' and one guy named 'STEEVE'.)
Eyehategod (classic sludge metal, probably abused heroin)
Iron Monkey (UK, classic sludge metal, probably abused heroin. Album covers feature the art of MIKE DIANA (www.testicle.com) )
EARTH (weird noisey drone group, tribute to black sabbath with Ioma had a fucked up hand and tuned to a LOW E. Later inspired SUNN 0))) )
Sunn 0 ))) (nuff said)
Khanate (another stephen o'malley joint, actually has riffs and lyrics, but songs are about fifteen to twenty minutes long. good music to listen to while you snort ground up crows beak in a hot windowless room. )
Anal Cunt (mediocre grindcore, funny song titles)
Anal Blast (OK grindcore, funny song titles)
Cephalic Carnage (really weird jazz influenced grindcore, band smokes way too much pot)
Scholomance (hard to classify, death metal based, probably never played live due to fact that the band has WAY too many instruments)
Hypocrisy (classic swedish metal band, hard to classify, starts out as bad black metal but becomes what I would describe as atmospheric death metal on the fringe of doom metal. Obsessed with alien abduction. Really good band up until they break up and reform. I suggest The Final Chapter as a good starting place)'
Zaraza (weird canadian/polish industrial metal band, puts most of their songs on the net for free.  http://zaraza.ca/ )
Sigh (japanese thrash metal... nuff said)
Unholy Grave (OK japanese grindcore)
Spazz (LEGENDARY punk/grindcore/power-violence unit from East Bay.)
His Hero is Gone (somewhere in between the screamo/powerviolence scene, and the metal/grindcore scene. Not bad)
The Locust (yeah. )
Orchid (Chaos Is Me = classic. Everything else = teh Suck)
Thus Spake Zarathustra (more screamo/powerviolence)
Zahn (german screamo/powerviolence, happens to be my last name as well. Strange coincidence.)
Agalloch (very interesting mix of metal and classical guitar, kind of like really slow opeth)
Opeth (what might be the single most talented band in all of metal, musically speaking, kind of like what dream-theater would sound like if they actually wrote decent music.)
Skepticism (Funeral Doom, Finnish, HEAVY pipe organs)
Thergothon (Funeral Doom, Finnish, very very low vocals. For lack of a better description, it sounds like H.P. Lovecraft.)
Unholy (Doom, Finnish, this band sounds like they were heavily influenced by pink floyd... which actually comes out sounding kind of cool.)
Shape of Despair (funeral doom, unsure of nationality, very melodic and entrancing.)

Thats all for now, my fingers hurt, I have a novel to write, and I'm off to watch YOJIMBO.

[Et moriendo docebo!]

I'm transcribing this from the liner notes for Second Grand Constitution and Bylaws by the Secret Chiefs 3,

I know that at least Horab is going to appreciate this shit.

Call us old-fashioned, but whenever we self-righteously draw our pagan bow-strings back, our arrows are aimed at Beauty and Truth. We usually miss. But we try to make sure those ill-shot arrows hit ground somewhere near the region of Entertainment!

It is an invisible part of man that sees the invisible world.

Once you are familiar with Book T (having remained unmoved by the spectre of Death) you may pass through the "Source of Life" at the psycho-cosmic center (Qaf). Here you will gain access to the Hurqalyan World, or "Eigth Climate". We hope you will try to keep some material evidence of your sojourn, because it is impossible to mark out a path which leads from the traditional seven climates to the "Eighth Climate" and your tracks will certainly be obliterated.

Et moriendo docebo!


The "descent" of eternal Forms onto the terrestrial Earth must be rightly understood. There is no "material incarnation" but, rather, the silhouette, the Image, the shadow of the soul is projected into the world of the temporal, where the Image is epiphanized. In a sense the Forms have been entrusted to a "tomb" (our terrestrial Earth) which is situated at teh endpoint of the hierarchy of universes, and it is from this "tomb" that they must be resurrected. It is the Image of the Form which is reflected as it's coincidentia oppisitotum in the mirror of the senses. This additionaly means that what we call "physical" is but the reflection of the world of the Soul. To see things as they are in the Earth of Hurqalya, that is to say seperated from the sensory mirror in which it is reflected, requires the "eye of the world beyond" (Chashm-i Barzakhi) which is itself an organ of the Soul. In other words, "the Earth of Hurqalya represents the Earth in it's absolute state, absolved from any 'empirical' appearance evidenced by the senses. and yet it is the real appirition restored only by the "barzakhi eye". We hope that we are effectively clarifying that physics itself is an essentially a psycho-spiritual activity, and that you will therefore find the "meta"-physics of this "body of ressurection" more and more meaningful.

Any mere description is a flake of snow held up to the Hurqalyan Flame - a flame with ultimately resides in the heart. We can tell you that exhaustive training in harmonic perception (the percieving of an identical sound, verse or thingon several levels simultaneously - see Ta'wil) will help attune you to the special modes or frequences known only to those posessing the Hurqalyan Ear. But listen... ...can you not at this very moment hear a faint echo of the strange and enchanted music of Na Koja Abad?


It is a dilemma of rationalism to be restricted to a choice between two terms of banal dualism: matter OR spirit, history OR[/i] myth. It is a dilemma of UFO "believers" to be subjected to Relentlessly Brutal Ass-Rapes by Hollywood's grey-ing shithole before plugging-up their own asses with "government documents". Of course, all these pre-school level disinformation games make the still-uncovered REAL story a mirage (Miraj) all the more tantalizing to our X-Files-Obsessed "believers" (who are literally everywhere). We wish them no ill-luck... But we do maintain that an imminent Fake Contact will eventually be brought to this world by the collective and multi-nationally-sponsored Nigredo of "Our Own Stupidity", and a subsequently "Merged Church and State/New World Order" type of bullshit universe will have to be considered just desserts for thsese dopey 'X' and 'neXt' generations...

If you have rationally established communication with the Imam of your own being[/b], instead of irrationally placing your faith in the decaying part of existence, you shall not be forced like others to behold the disintigration of that which you have termed "yourself", because you will have gradually perfected what is known as your Ressurection Body[/b]. (The Twelfth Key of the Royal Art will give access to the Permanent Garden. However, the entrance is heavily bolted and the key is buried where the winds, the manslaughter, the reflection and the ruin of men are found together.)

The Princes of This World would have you believe that Tenderness and Kindness are signs of weakness and despair, rather than manifestations of strength and resolution. For this reason, the boundary line of our warm-and-fuzzy compassion is drawn at their necks... and waits to be filled in by the Inkpen of our Scimitars!!!!

Homily to Smarty-Pants
Truth that needs proof is only half-truth
    and no, History does NOT repeat itself
         outside the minds of those who do not know history!!!!!

Our celebration continues! Our revelry is an "Expectation of Joy" at the Appearance of the Imam of the Qiyamat! But unlike other religous fanatics, the Gucci Buddhists, or the ever-present passive/aggressive hippy milquetoast militia, we will TAKE NO SHIT from ANYONE!

Sure, the dull and ignorant will always end up admiring heartless dickheads like Napoleon, Ghengis Khan, Julius Ceasar etc... but while the Tyrant was busy conjuring sweet wine from sour grapes, we were secretly auto-cannibalizing raw angel flesh and using it to reanimate the corpses of long-dead pagan gods, who were then obliged to forcefully buttfuck this malignant "man of the world" into bloody remission. Hey, he wrote his own PRISON SENTENCE. We're just helping him "get to know himself". Besides, we live in a Museum Without Walls. We don't have to explain a Goddamned Thing!

Truth can be found in the flowering of symbols, but unfortunately the rational intellect fails to penetrate this area when it believes in "explaining" everything to itself. How it renders everything superfluous!!

The "below" of the barzakh actually begins at the boundary of the emerald rock (Qaf, the celestial pole and mystical Sinai, the axis mundi and "still point of the turning world") where it simultaneously limits and conjoins Time and Eternity, the immaterial and the sensory, Space and Infinity.

Who comes from Beyond the Mountain of Qaf? "It was there that you were yourself at the beginning, and it is there that you will return... no matter how far you go it is at the point of departure that you arrive there again." It is a self in the "second person" that you find there, a superior self "from beyond the mountain Qaf." "When he emerges from the Spring (haqiqat), he has achieved the Aptitude that makes him like a balm, a drop of dew which you distill in the hollow of your hand by holding it facing the sun, and which then passes through to the back of your hand. If you are Khezr, you also may pass without difficulty through the mountain of Qaf."

Lest we be accused of a Mamby Pamby New Age ecapism, we challenge any hardened Prince of This World to be MAN ENOUGH to face the ordeals symbolized by our "imaginary" Journey in Darkness, and come out of it in any state other than that of a castrated and blubbering simp!

Let it be no secret that the Operations of Alchemy (al-kemi) are known among Shi'ites as the "Wise Men's Mirror". Shaikh Ahmad: "the wise have made a Mirror in which they contemplate all the things of this world, whether it be a concrete reality ('ayn) or a mental reality (ma'na). In this mirror, the resurrection of bodies is seen to be homologous to the resurrection of spirits."

In the Golden Pool (barzakh) of the Rose Garden things above and below are seen as 'inversions' (retrosum) in the mirror-like water made of sunlight of the glistineng aurum aurae. Who can distinguish the sun setting toward it's surface from the sun rising toward it's surface? In this conjunctio, this Miraj, the terrestrial elements of the "Egg/Stone" are merged with those subtle elements which receive their influx from the Heavens of Hurqalya.

The desire to lay the esoteric bare prematurely as an exoteric literalism is doomed to failure. Until Qiyamat, no esotericism can be anything more than a witness, recognized by a small number, ridiculed by all the others, and cannot progress but shrouded in the night of symbols. Surely, the Black Light obscures much, and man's conscience is dislocated, causing the transgression (Black Iron Prison) which has led to the decline in his cognitive powers to the point where he has "forgotten his rememberance". But relax! Time is simply a "delay of Eternity" for such unfortunates. It's their business to read the oracles truthfully, and attempting to "save" or "release" these prisoners usually only extends their delay...

The manifestation of the Hidden Imam (who currently resides in Hurqalya) is not an outward event to be expected, but rather a disoccultation that gradually takes place as the traveler, ascending Qaf towards Hurqalya, brings about the real event of the awaited Imam within himself.

If we, as Hurqalyavis, can see things in the theatrum of suprasensory universes, we will have closed the coffin on this "representative theater" and our only real Work will be to 'part the red sea' between this and the real "Theater of Cruelty".

As demonstrated daily on these forums.

We are outside the inside of the proverbial box, and inside the outside of the proverbial box. The danger of the trend of individuality is that it becomes a trend, and insomuch, is also a parody of itself. Like the initial "great snubbing", this is the prank that is played on those who come to learn of the prank and try to emulate it. It is my belief that the underlying principle of our order (yes) is individuality, and the internal trappings of our order (yes) the fnord. Set us free, and we will gladly leap from one bondage into the other... because the light hurts your eyes, you'll gladly remain in platos cave.

The lessons that I have learned from Eris are unique to me personally, and while I will share them with you, I may not necessarily share them with you. The lessons you have learned from Eris are unique to you, and while we may share them together, we might not necessarily share them together. We are still learning, you and I, we are not yet truly free... for it is my belief that freedom is entirely subjective.... freedom from what? Freedom from the nine to five office job, freedom from the human condition, freedom from fear, freedom from the law? To be free, there must be a counterpoint, something that you are truly free from, because absolute freedom would mean absolute power, absolute control, nothing outside the self would hold any sway over it (or its environment)...  while this is not necessarily impossible, you and I are probably still human beings who are bound by something outside the self. I've yet to meet anyone who was truly solipsist, to the point where they held absolute sway over all things, at least... I dont think I have.

My lesson is pretty simple. Hate, fear, pain, and all manner of negativity are things that exist. They are necessary, they are out there, and they can be overcome or even embraced. The ultimate decision of what my life is is mine alone, and I even have the choice of surrendering it to the random forces that exist in the universe, but in the end It is my strength of will that forces me to pursue the idealized version of myself that does exist. It is my intention to manifest that.

It amazes me that discordianism has painted such a happy-go-lucky face on Eris, who even in her more benign aspect, has always been harsh.. Remember that the Principia even encourages heresy agaisnt discordianism itself, and there is a reason for this, because if we were even bound by "our" own rules we'd be hypocrites. It is my belief the tone of the principia is a product of the time in which it was written, and the egos of the ones who wrote it, but that its still a valuable tool of learning. Like anything, though, one must beware of its trappings... the written word can rule the reader, and this can be just another form of slavery.

It doesnt matter to me if you're one of those neo-pagan types who believes in Eris in the literal sense, or if you're the type that sees her entirely as metaphor. Either way, a deity is a representation of a concept, mutable to a sense but immutable also. Eris will always be the same goddess that snubbed, the same who walked the fields of troy prolonging the lives of wounded and agonizing soldiers, but she also represents the drive to become better than our fellow man, to be superior, and to overcome. The strife we suffer today is the catalyst that brings change to our lives, or rather, causes us to effect change upon ourselves. She is also that. She is also everything the principia paints her as. I myself do not believe in anything literally, it is all metaphor, but it doesnt really matter. Even if Eris is merely the inner personifcation of a concept that is entirely alien to human thought, she's still a good teacher.

Our pain, our suffering, our hatred, our filth. All of these things exist. We are free to do with them whatever we want, or to put them down and walk away from them.

We are free to do whatever we want with, and to, this world... as well. One discordian will try to tear all the walls down, and another will be building that wall at the other end... but either way, thats a personal decision.

I'm rambling, and have been, because I'm hyper off of caffiene and have a really bad headache, and smell like the donut stop. I dont care, its what I wanted to do, so fuck you if you've got a problem with that.

"That which does not kill you, makes you stronger."

"... and in the darkness of chaos, they fooled Crom, and took from him the riddle of steel."

"Wolfman has nards."

[WHAT GOOD IS YOUR HEAD?]

WHAT GOOD IS YOUR HEAD?

The mysteries of a nightmare
or the ill magic of hallucinations
or even the way you are
conditioned to react
to an image of the moon
delivered straight into your eyes -
Why do they hide
what these things really are
and how they operate?
Why do they only answer
in such confused and conflicting terms?

The reason is simple.
Because who knows what might happen
if you could understand
the whining of nightmare-dogs
in your dreams
or the voices in your head
that never tell you
anything you want to hear
not to mention why you feel
a certain way
when images invade your eyes
and intrude upon the brain
that floats in the darkness
inside your head?

What would happen
if you knew what
these things really are
and how they operate -
What would happen to you
as a person who understands
what it means to have a head?

With this knowledge
you certainly might decide
to take your head right off
and just sit quietly in the dark
of your new headlessness.


WHAT HAPPENS TO FACES

A tear in the face
it was as if you were dreaming
because they never said a word
and you were hiding
in a place
with no one around
when a tear in the face
and all the things
that came out
put an end to the world
that you always thought you knew.

And as if you were dreaming
a tear in the face
made you awake in a darkness
unlike any you have ever seen.

They could easily tell you
and then say you were dreaming
about a tear in the face
of a world in a mirror
where faces are glass
and are smooth
and are shining
till the glass starts to crack
all the faces are broken
and their scars are the shadows
that you always knew were there.

And as if you were dreaming
a tear in the face
was the last thing
and the worst that you ever saw.

They never will speak
even when you are dreaming
about a tear in the face
of a face that is made
of all the flesh that is grown
like a world in the body
that bursts forth from the darkness
shimmering in the darkness
or quivering for just a moment
in the face of a face
that will always be unknown.

But it was all so much dreaming
you finally see
it was just so much dreaming
you finally know -
a tear in the face
they would have to tell something
about something like that...
about a tear in the face.

         
WHAT BECOMES OF THE BODY

A little black box
they can hide
in the darkness
where it can never be found
and opened to you eyes
not because they are kind
or because they are wise
but only because...

A little black box
they can hide
in the darkness
is just the right thing
to keep you forever guessing
what they never would tell you
not that they are really concerned
you ever might find...

That little black box
and take out like toys
what is contained inside
and unearth all their secrets
such as how they deceive you
till the death of your body
and make you believe
that there actually might be
a little black box
that they hide in the darkness.

I was just thinking about it, and I realized that there are a few things that piss me off.

1. The Titties & Beer Mentality. I'd like to include all manner of fart jokes and jock type humor here, and mind you I'm not pulling the PC card, I just make a distinction between "funny" and "not funny". This is coming from a person who is capable laughing at other peoples misery , I laughed all the way through Requiem For A Dream (come to think of it, I can really only laugh at fake/staged misery, not the other kind). Anyway, I feel this addresses all of the fat chicks/beer bong crap that goes on here. Its not that its offensive, its just that its fucking lame.

2. People who type like they are fucking retarded. Seriously, I'm glad that years of drug abuse gave you insight into the inner mysteries of the universe... its too bad you lack the capacity to communicate it to anybody.

3. Self Pity. Y'know, its ok to feel like shit or to be depressed once in a while. I just wouldnt make a habit out of it.

Hey, you know what? Thats pretty much all I've got right now. I feel much better about life, though, getting all that off my chest. Now I'll go back to looking at the rest of the forum and slowly building up my anger again.

Oh dear, it seems like we've got quite a conundrum. You see, we are growing exponentially as a species, tell me when exactly are we going to need more oxygen? Maybe we as a species will grow so cancerous that we'll choke out all forms of life on the planet, not just including ourselves. We ourselves, having (apparently) overcome the process of natural selection are at a point where we could increase potentially exponentially.

When you think about it that way, all of the apparent stupidity that our race exhibits is built into our genes specifically for that purpose. Some sort of psychological throwback of the human species to become its own predator. This might explain why, as there are more of us (as a species), we (as a species) invent more creative and convenient ways to murder and enslave each other.

Because make no mistake, the human species is a predatory one.

Now its been said that the human species has the ability to change. We have done this on a massive scale. Consider what the ability of mass communication does to a species. One could argue that it would be correct to refer to all of the human species as being one entity. One could, or one could be nitpicky and start arguing about what "life" is. There is a scientific definition for it, and this hackneyed philosophical road needs not mentioned.

Given all of these hypothetical possibilities, should I as a person be immediately concerned with the state of the human race? Why bother even worrying about it? The key point, and I stress this very much as I can, is that any one of us can drop dead from any random cause at any moment... and that on a geological timescale the life of any species on this planet is the same way.

Live life how you want to live it. Its better than being scared of terrorists and extra-terrestrials.

Any information I am fed is immediately dichotomized, and I see how it is possible to agree with either side depending on the information you are being fed. Remember, kids, even though your just a part of a giant computer, you personally are still capable of error. This is a part of the system on which we run. Also, it is possible for two opposite statements to both be true.

["It wouldn't be that big a stretch to categorize my writing as Hate Literature against women . . . in this Fascistic Feminist country"]

Anybody familiar with the man? He's the madman/genius behind the Cerberus comics... and he's a very prolific and well spoken misogynist. He writes tons of lengthy articles for anybody who'll publish them (Comics Journal, Etc) but he says a lot of really horrible things about women. Nobody is entirely sure if he's serious or just does this to get a reaction out of people, but it nearly got his comic canceled (cerberus has been going for over twenty years, its a run of 300 issues and he's very near the end of it.)

I'll see what I can link to regarding him.

http://www.theabsolute.net/misogyny/sim.html

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Zone/9923/isim.html


"It wouldn't be that big a stretch to categorize my writing as Hate Literature against women . . . in this Fascistic Feminist country" - Dave Sim

''If you read 300 issues of 'Superman' or 'Spider-Man,' '' said Sim, ''they don't make sense as a story or a life. When I started 'Cerebus,' uppermost in my mind was the thought that I wanted to produce 300 issues of a comic book series the way I thought it should be done - as one continuous story documenting the ups and downs of a character's life - Dave Sim

I have to say, that I really really like Cerberus and Dave Sim... but I dont agree with him. He's a lot better than Steve Ditko anyway (I'll take a misogynist over an objectivist any day of the week.)

A famous comic book writer.
Some of his more famous works:

From Hell
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the comic is awesome)
The Watchmen
Swamp Thing (when it was good)



I advice anybody who likes comics to read the Watchmen. By far the single greatest comic I've ever read. By far.

This is a must read for lovecraft fans. Robert W. Chambers is one of the authors upon whom the Cthulhu Mythos was based (lovecraft took names and such from him and used them in his own stories.)

Amazingly, I found the full text of The King in Yellow on the internet. Its a collection of short stories (the first few are lovecrafty, the last three are not really).

Here You Go.
http://www.litrix.com/kyellow/kyell001.htm

"All attempted organizations and systems and consistencies, some approximating far higher than others, but all only intermediate to Order and Disorder, fail eventually because of their relations with outside forces."

Has anybody else read anything by this guy? He's fucking insane.

It seems he wrote most of his material in the 1920's, and he seems to be the epitome of a lovecraftian character. He was obsessed with unexplained phenomenon, and he did research on scientific journals of the time for over twenty years.

I just bought the Complete Books of Charles Fort today, but most of his material is public domain. Book of the Damned is available on http://www.sacred-texts.com/fort/damned/damn01.htm

I wanted to start a thread where people would state their thoughts on philosophy to a certain degree, to perhaps coax people to speak about their own thoughts (and also to give myself a venue by which I can present my own). I will begin.

I've been enamored with pantheism, in some of its aspects. Pantheism is usually seen as defining the concept of god as the universe, or simply all of existence. I'm not truly theistic in this sense, because I dont literally worship anything, nor do I necessarily believe in any deity (self aware, or otherwise) as have tended humans tend to personify them.

I can best describe this through a metaphor involving numbers, although I warn you that I am not particularly brilliant when it comes to mathematics.

If you take everything that exists, and look at it as an objective whole you can say that it is One thing. Then you see anything that exists as a part of that (like an individual human) and say that it is essentially nothing more than a subdivision of that whole. You can divide one a million different ways, and you still have just one thing.

Technically the value of the universe in this case is a variable, because each of its fractions relate to each other. You have a chaotic system, but no matter what each of those fractions do you will still be able to add it all up and look at it as being an objective whole. There is a duality with that.

I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this, but I find that I always try to distance myself from human perspective in anything. I see humans as an aspect of nature, unique in that they are self aware and can create, yet not unique in that what they do is relatively inconsequential in universal terms.

When I think about what the human race is, I look at its cities and its networks of energy transfer and intercommunication, I see a primitive neural network being built, I also see massive equivilents of many other systems that we see in the human body... or in, say, a fungus.

I think an alien entity might think that the entire human race was simply a fungus, and not intelligent at all.

I think each individual human is little more than a single cell of a gigantic fungal bloom, and whats more... they are relatively unconcious of this fact. We build our worlds around our own perceptions, and as a result we tend to be vain and self centered creatures. Each individual human tends to be concerned primarily with its own needs, or worse... its wants. We like to do things that make us feel important, and we like to convince ourselves that these are noble aspirations.

We are unique, in a weird way, at least on this planet. We are evolving very quickly, but not necessarily in a literal physical sense. Technology has eliminated survival of the fittest as a factor in evolution, and now technology is the next phase of evolution. (television, the internet, highways, etc).

I do not apply negative or positive connotations to these things. These are merely passive observations, and I feel that the very concept of "good" or "bad" are purely human in their nature, and not a part of the nature of the universe as a whole (positive and negative, on the other hand, are. No connotation, just presence and absence).

When I try to imagine the relationships between opposites, between positive and negative magnetic poles, between positive and negative particles of matter, etc... it leads me to believe that this great cosmic mass is nothing more than a chaotic whirlwind of activity caused by all of these forces interacting, and that eventually there will merely be a primordial cosmic soup of very low frequency energy where nothing at all will happen. A great equilibrium, if you will.

Right now, this is how Zahn sees things. I'd like to hear peoples opinions on my opinions, and I'd like other people to state their own opinions so we have a frame of reference. Thank you.

Also, for reference, I'd like to say that my interest in philosophy began with eastern culture/history when I was very young... and although I've evolved a lot since then, taoism is still a huge influence on my thoughts.

Positive and Negative forces are the frameworks of the Tao, and its great because you can almost literally apply it to a variety of scientific fields. It seems to me like the Tao has true merit as being the underlying force of the universe, or at least a fairly close human understanding of it.

Thanks again!

I like those books.

I'm Re-reading the first one right now, but i'm lazy so I'll probably just go to sleep.

All in all, they're probably the most illuminating books I've read so far. (with the possible exception of The Godfather).

(this has been post FIVE FIVE FIVE, Thank you and good night)

How many of you have seen

www.explodingdog.com

?"

[I Have A Special Plan For this World]

By posting this, I am revealing to you fellows something that is sacred to me. With the exception of one verse in the middle, this prose is Bad - Ass. I'm transcribing this, so respect it.

Its one song, 20 minutes long. Its terrifying. Its beautiful.


I Have A Special Plan For this World



By David Tibet and Thomas Lighotti

When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone. When everything you have ever wanted is finally done with. When all of your nightmares are for a time obscured as by a shining brainless beacon, or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world. When you are calm and joyful and finally entirely alone, then in a great new darkness you will finally execute your special plan.

"One needs to have a plan", someone said who was turned away into the shadows and I had beleived to be sleeping or dead.

"Imagine", he said, "all the flesh that is eaten. The teeth tearing into it, the tongue tasting its savor and the hunger that taste. Now take away that flesh", he said, "take away the teeth and the tongue the taste and the hunger. Take away everything as it is. That was my plan, my own special plan for this world."

I listened to these words and yet I did not wonder that this creature I had beleived sleeping or dead would ever approach his vision, even in his deepest dreams or his most lasting death. Because I had heard of such plans, such visions, and I knew they did not see far enough. That what was demanded in the way of a plan needed to go beyond tongue and teeth, taste and hunger, beyond the bones and the very dust of bones and the wind that would come to blow the dust away. And so I began to envision a darkness that was long before the dark of night, and a strangely shining light that owed nothing to the light of day.

That day may seem like other days. Once more we feel the tiny legged trepedations, once more we are mangled by a great grinding fear, but that day will have no others after. No more worlds like this will follow, because I have a plan. A very special plan.  No more worlds like this... no more days like that.

"There are but four ways to die", a sardonic spirit might have said to me.
"There is dying that occurs relatively suddenly, there is dying that occurs relatively gradually, there is dying that occurs relatively painlessly, there is the death that is full of pain. Thus by various means they are combined, the sudden and the gradual, the painless and the painful, to yield but four ways to die... and there are no others."

Even after the voice stopped speaking I listened for it to speak again. After hours and days and years had passed, I listened for some further words. And yet all I heard were the faintest echoes remind me "there are no others... there are no others...". Was it then that I began to concieve for this world a special plan?

There are no means for escaping this world that penetrates even into your sleep, and is its substance. You are caught in your own dreaming where there is no space, and are held forever where there is no time. You can do nothing you are not told to do. There is no hope for escape from this dream, that was never yours. The very words you speak are only its very words, and yout talk like a traitor under its incessant torture.

There are many who have designs upon this world and dream of wild and vast reformations. I have heard them talking in their sleep of elegant mutations and cunning annihliations. I have heard them whispering in the corners of crooked houses, and in the alleys and narrow backstreets of this crooked creaking universe. Which they, with their new designs, would make straight and sound. But each of these new and ill concieved designs is deranged in its heart, for they see this world as if it were alone and original... and not as one of only countless others whose nightmares all proceed as a hideous garden grown from a single seed. I have heard these dreamers talking in their sleep, and I stand waiting for them as at the top of a darkened flight of stairs. They know nothing of me, and know none of the secrets of my special plan... while I know every crooked creaking step of theirs.

It was the voice of someone who was waiting in the shadows, who was looking at the moon and waiting for me to turn the corner and enter a narrow street, and stand with him in the dull gaze of moonlight. Then he said to me, he whisphered, that my plan was a mistake. That my special plan for this world was a terrible mistake.  

"because," he said, "there is nothing to do and there is no where to go, there is nothing to be and no one to know."

"your plan is a mistake", he repeated.
"This world is a mistake", I replied

The children always laughed at him, when they saw him hopping by. A funny walk, a funny man. A funny funny funny man. He made them laugh sometimes, he made them laugh oh yes he did he did he did he did he did. Oh how he made them roll. One day he took them to a place he knew, a special place, and told them things about world... this funny funny funny world, which made them laugh sometimes. He made them laugh, oh yes, he did he did he did he did. Oh how he made them roll. Then the funny man who made them  laugh, sometimes he did, revealed to them his special plan his very special funny plan. Knowing they would understand and maybe laugh sometimes. He made them laugh, oh yes he did he did he did he did, their eyes grew wide beneath their lids... and how he made them roll.

I first learned the facts from a lunatic in a dark and quiet room that smelled of stale time/space.

"There are no people, nothing at all like that. The human phenomenon is but the sum of densly coiled layers of illusion each of which winds itself upon the supreme insanity that there are persons of any kind, when all there can be are mindless mirrors laughing and screaming as they parade about in an endless dream."

But when I asked the lunatic what it was that saw itself within these mirrors, he only rocked and smiled, then he laughed and screamed and in his dark and empty eyes I saw for a moment, as if in a mirror, a formless shade of divinity in flight from its stale infinity of time and space, and the worst of all of this worlds dreams. My special plan for the laughter and the screams.

We went to see a little show that was staged in an old shed past the edge of town, and in its beginnings all seemed well. The miniature curtain stage glowed in the darkness while those dulls bounced along on their strings before our eyes. And in its beginnings all seemed well, but then there came a subtle turning point, which some had noticed and I was one... and quietly left the show, though I did not because I could see where things were going. As they antics of those dulls grew strange, and the tiny strings grew taught with the tiny pullings of tiny limbs. I wanted to witness what could never be, I wanted to see what could not be seen... the moment of consumate disaster when puppets turn to face the puppet master.

It was twilight and I stood in the greyish haze of a vast and empty building, when the silence was enriched by a revurberant voice.

"All of the things of this world", it said, "are of but one essence for which there are no words. This is the greater part which has no beginning nor end, and the one essence of this world for which there can be no words is but all the things of this world. This is the lesser part which has a beginning and shall have an end, and for which words were concieved solely to speak of."

" The tiny broken beings of this world, " it said

"The beginnings and endings of this world, " it said

"for which words were concieved solely to speak of. Now removed these words and what remains?" It asked me as I stood in the twilight of that vast empty building, but I did not answer. The question echoed over and over, but I remained silent until the echoes died. And as twilight passed into evening, I felt my special plan for which there are no words, moving towards a greater darkness.

There are some that have no voices, or none that will ever speak, because the things they know about this wold ,
because the things they feel about this world ,
because the thoughts that fill a brain that is a damaged brain,
because the pain that fills a body that is a damaged body,
exist in other worlds, countless other worlds. Each of which stands alone in an infinite empty blackness for which no words have been concieved and where no voices are able to speak. When a brain is filled only with damaged thoughts, when a damaged body is filled only with pain, and stands alone in a world surrounded by infinite empty blackness and exists in a world for which there is no special plan.




(weird)
When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone. When everything you have ever wanted is finally done with. When all of your nightmares are for a time obscured as by a shining brainless beacon, or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world. When you are calm and joyful and finally entirely alone, then in a great new darkness you will finally execute your special plan.

(weirder)
When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone. When everything you have ever wanted is finally done with. When all of your nightmares are for a time obscured as by a shining brainless beacon, or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world. When you are calm and joyful and finally entirely alone, then in a great new darkness you will finally execute your special plan.

This is a story by thomas lighotti... enjoy!




Before there occurred anything of a truly prodigious nature, the season had manifestly erupted with some feverish intent. This, at least, was how it appeared to us, whether we happened to live in town or somewhere outside its limits. (And traveling between town and countryside was Mr. Marble, who had been studying the seasonal signs far longer and in greater depth than we, disclosing prophecies that no one would credit at the time.) On the calendars which hung in so many of our homes, the monthly photograph illustrated the spirit of the numbered days below it: sheaves of cornstalks standing brownish and brittle in a newly harvested field, a narrow house and wide barn in the background, a sky of empty light above, and fiery leafage frolicking about the edges of the scene. But something dark, something abysmal always finds its way into the bland beauty of such pictures, something that usually holds itself in abeyance, some entwining presence that we always know is there. And it was exactly this presence that had gone into crisis, or perhaps had been secretly invoked by small shadowy voices calling out in the midst of our dreams. There came a bitter scent into the air, as of sweet wine turning to vinegar, and there was an hysteric brilliance flourished by the trees in town as well as those in the woods beyond, while along the roads between were the intemperate displays of thorn-apple, sumac, and towering sunflowers that nodded behind crooked roadside fences. Even the stars of chill nights seemed to grow delirious and take on the tints of an earthly inflammation. Finally, there was a moonlit field where a scarecrow had been left to watch over ground that had long been cleared yet would not turn cold.

Adjacent to the edge of town, the field allowed full view of itself from so many of our windows. It lay spacious beyond tilting fence-posts and under a bright round moon, uncluttered save for the peaked silhouettes of corn shocks and a manlike shape that stood fixed in the nocturnal solitude. The head of the figure was slumped forward, as if a grotesque slumber had overtaken its straw-stuffed body, and the arms were slackly extended in a way that suggested some incredible gesture toward flight. For a moment it seemed to be an insistent wind which was flapping those patched-up overalls and fluttering the worn flannel of those shirt-sleeves; and it would seem a forceful wind indeed which caused that stitched-up head to nod in its dreams. But nothing else joined in such movements: the withered leaves of the cornstalks were stiff and unstirring, the trees of the distant woods were in a lull against the clear night. Only one thing appeared to be living where the moonlight spread across that dead field. And there were some who claimed that the scarecrow actually raised its arms and its empty face to the sky, as though declaring itself to the heavens, while others thought that its legs kicked wildly, like those of a man who is hanged, and that they kept on kicking for the longest time before the thing collapsed and lay quiet. Many of us, we discovered, had been nudged from our beds that night, called as witnesses to this obscure spectacle. Afterward, the sight we had seen, whatever we believed its reason, would not rest within us but snatched at the edges of our sleep until morning.

And during the overcast hours of the following day we could not keep ourselves from visiting the place around which various rumors had hastily arisen. As pilgrims we wandered into that field, scrutinizing the debris of its harvest for augural signs, circling that scarecrow as if it were a great idol in shabby disguise, a sacred avatar out of season. But everything upon that land seemed unwilling to support our hunger for revelation, and our congregation was lost in fidgeting bemusement. (With the exception, of course, of Mr. Marble, whose eyes, we recall, were gleaming with illuminations he could not offer us in any words we would understand.) The sky had hidden itself behind a leaden vault of clouds, depriving us of the crucial element of pure sunlight we needed to fully burn off the misty dreams of the past night. And a vine-twisted stone wall along the property line of the farm was the same shade as the sky, while the dormant vines themselves were as colorless as the stone they enmeshed like a strange network of dead veins. But this calculated grayness was merely an aspect of the scene, for the colors of the abundant woods along the margins of the landscape were undulled, as if those radiant leaves possessed some inner source of illumination or stood in contrast to some deeper shadow which they served to mask.

Such conditions no doubt impeded our efforts to come to terms with our fears about that particular field. Above all these manifestations, however, was the fact that the earth of those harvested acres, especially in the area surrounding the scarecrow, was unnaturally warm for the season. It seemed, in fact, that a late harvest was due. And some insisted that the odd droning noises that filled the air could not be blamed on the legion of local cicadas but indeed rose up from under the ground.

By the time of twilight, only a few stragglers remained in the field, among them the old farmer who owned this suddenly notorious acreage. We knew that he shared the same impulse as the rest of us when he stepped up to his scarecrow and began to tear the impostor to pieces. Others joined in the vandalism, pulling out handfuls of straw and stripping away the clothes until they had exposed what lay beneath them -- the strange and unexpected sight.

For the skeleton of the thing should have been merely its two crosswise planks. We verified this common fact with its maker, and he swore that no other materials had been used. Yet the shape that stood before us was of a wholly different nature. It was something black and twisted into the form of a man, something that seemed to have come up from the earth and grown over the wooden planks like a dark fungus, consuming the structure. There were now black legs that hung as if charred and withered; there was a head that sagged like a sack of ashes upon a meager body of blackness; and there were thin arms stretched out like knobby branches from a lightning-scorched tree. All of this was supported by a thick, dark stalk which rose out of the earth and reached into the effigy like a hand into a puppet.

And even as that dull day was dimming into night, our vision was distracted by the profounder darkness of the thing which dangled so blackly in the dusk. Its composition appeared to be of the blackest earth, of earth that had gone stagnant somewhere in its depths, where a rich loam had festered into a bog of shadows. Soon we realized that each of us had fallen silent, entranced by a deep blackness which seemed to absorb our sight but which exposed nothing to scrutiny except an abyss in the outline of a man. Even when we ventured to lay our hands on that mass of darkness, we found only greater mysteries. For there was almost no tangible aspect to it, merely a hint of material sensation, barely the feel of water. It seemed to possess no more substance than a few shifting flames, but flames of only the slightest warmth, black flames that have curled together to take on the molten texture of spoiled fruit. And there was a vague sense of circulation, as though a kind of serpentine life swirled gently within. But no one could stand to keep his hold upon it for long before stepping suddenly away.

"Damn the thing, it's not going to be rooted to my land," said the old farmer. Then he walked off toward the barn. And like the rest of us he was trying to rub something from the hand that had touched the shriveled scarecrow, something that could not be seen.

He returned to us with an armory of axes, shovels, and other implements for uprooting what had grown upon his land, this eccentricity of the harvest. It would seem to have been a simple task: the ground was unusually soft all around the base of that black growth and its tenuous substance could hardly resist the wide blade of the farmer's ax. But when the old man swung and tried to split the thing like a piece of firewood, the blade would not cleave. The ax entered and was closed upon, as if sunk within a viscous mire. The farmer pulled at the handle and managed to dislodge the ax, but he immediately let it fall from his hands. "It was pulling back on me," he said in a low voice. "And you heard that sound." Indeed, the sound which had haunted the area all that day -- like innumerable insects laughing -- did seem to rise in pitch and intensity when the thing was struck.

Without a word, we began digging up the earth where that thick black stalk was buried. We dug fairly deep before the approaching darkness forced us to abandon our efforts. Yet no matter how far down we burrowed, it was not far enough to reach the bottom of that sprouting blackness. Furthermore, our attempts became hindered by a perverse reluctance, as in the instance of someone who is hesitant to have a diseased part of his own body cut away in order to keep the disease from spreading.

It was nearly pitch dark when we finally walked away from that field, for the clouds of that day had lingered to hide the moon. In the blackness our voices whispered various strategies, so that we might yet accomplish what we had thereto failed in doing. We whispered, although none of us would have said why he did so.

The great shadow of a moonless night encompassed the landscape, preserving us from seeing the old farmer's field and what was tenanted there. And yet so many of the houses in town were in vigil throughout those dark hours. Soft lights shone through curtained windows along the length of each street, where our trim wooden homes seemed as small as dollhouses beneath the dark rustling depths of the season. Above the gathered roofs hovered the glass globes of streetlamps, like little moons set inside the dense leaves of elms and oaks and maples. Even in the night, the light shining through those leaves betrayed the festival of colors seething within them, blazing auras which had not faded with the passing days, a plague of colors that had already begun to infect our dreams. This prodigy had by then become connected in our minds with that field just outside of town and the strange growth which there had taken root.

Thus, a sense of urgency led us back to that place, where we found the old farmer waiting for us as the frigid aurora of dawn appeared above the distant woods. Our eyes scanned the frost-powdered earth and studied every space among shadows and corn shocks spread out over the land, searching for what was no longer present in the scene. "Gone into the earth like something hiding in its shell. Don't walk there," he warned, pointing to the mouth of a wide pit.

We gathered about the edge of this opening in the ground, gazing into its depths. Even full daybreak did not show us the bottom of that dark well. Our speculations were brief and useless. Some of us picked up the shovels lying nearby, as if to begin the long duty of filling in the great aperture. "No use in that," said the farmer. He then found a large stone and dropped it straight down the shaft. We waited and waited; we put our heads close to the hole and listened. But all we seemed to hear were remote, droning echoes, as of countless voices of insects chattering unseen. Finally, we covered the hazardous pit with some boards and buried the makeshift enclosure under a mound of soft dirt. "Maybe there'll be some change in the spring," someone said. But the old farmer only chuckled. "You mean when the ground warms up? Why do you think those leaves aren't falling the way they should?"

It was not long after this troubling episode that our dreams, which formerly had been the merest shadows and glimpses, swelled into full phase. Yet they must not have been dreams entirely, but also excavations into the season which had inspired them. In sleep we were consumed by the feverish life of the earth, cast among a ripe, fairly rotting world of strange growths and transformation. We took a place within a darkly flourishing landscape where even the air was ripened into ruddy hues and everything wore the wrinkled grimace of decay, the mottled complexion of old flesh. The face of the land itself was knotted with so many other faces, ones that were corrupted by vile impulses. Grotesque expressions were molding themselves into the darkish grooves of ancient bark and the whorls of withered leaf; pulpy, misshapen features peered out of damp furrows; and the crisp skin of stalks and dead seeds split into a multitude of crooked smiles. All was a freakish mask painted with russet, rashy colors -- colors that bled with a virulent intensity, so rich and vibrant that things trembled with their own ripeness. But despite this gross palpability, there remained something spectral at the heart of those dreams. It moved in shadow, a presence that was in the world of solid forms but not of it. Nor did it belong to any other world that could be named, unless it was that realm which is suggested to us by an autumn night when fields lay ragged in moonlight and some wild spirit has entered into things, a great aberration sprouting forth from a chasm of moist and fertile shadows, a hollow-eyed howling malignity rising to present itself to the cold emptiness of space and the pale gaze of the moon.

And it was to that moon we were forced to look for comfort when we awoke trembling in the night, overcome by the sense that another life was taking root within us, seeking its ultimate incarnation in the bodies we always dreamed were our own and inviting us into the depths of an extraordinary harvest.

Certainly there was some relief when we began to discover, after many insecure hints and delvings, that the dreams were not a sickness restricted to solitary individuals or families but in fact were epidemic throughout the community. No longer were we required to disguise our uneasiness as we met on the streets under the luxuriant shadows of trees that would not cast off their gaudy foliage, the mocking plumage of a strange season. We had become a race of eccentrics and openly declared an array of curious whims and suspicions, at least while daylight allowed this audacity.

Honored among us was one old fellow, well known for his oddities, who had anticipated our troubles weeks beforehand. As he wandered about town, wheeling the blade-sharpening grindstone by which he earned his living, Mr. Marble had spoken of what he could "read in the leaves," as if those fluttering scraps of lush color were the pages of a secret book in which he perused gold and crimson hieroglyphs. "Just look at them," he urged passersby, "bleeding their colors like that. They should be bled dry, but now they're. . .making pictures. Something inside trying to show itself. They're as dead as rags now, look at them all limp and flapping. But something's still in there. Those pictures, do you see them?"

Yes, we saw them, though somewhat belatedly. And they were not seen only in the chromatic designs of those deathless leaves. They could show themselves everywhere, if only briefly. Upon a cellar wall there might appear an ill-formed visage among the damp and fractured stones, a hideous impersonation of a face infiltrating the dark corners of our homes. Other faces, leprous masks, would arise within the grain of paneled walls or wooden floors, spying for a moment before sinking back into the knotty shadows, withdrawing below the surface. And there were so many nameless patterns that might spread themselves across the boards of an old fence or the side of a shed, engravings all tangled and wizened like a subterranean craze of roots and tendrils, an underworld riot of branching convolutions, gnarled ornamentations. Yet these designs were not unfamiliar to us . . . for in them we recognized the same outlines of autumnal decay that illuminated our dreams.

Like the old visionary who sharpened knives and axes and curving scythes, we too could now read the great book of countless colored leaves. But still he remained far in advance of what was happening deep within us all. For it was he who manifested certain idiosyncrasies of manner that would have later appeared in so many others, whether they lived in town or somewhere outside its limits. Of course, he had always set himself apart from us by his waywardness of speech, his willingness to utter pronouncements of dire or delightful curiosity. To a child he might say: "The sight of the night can fly like a kite," while someone older would be told: "Doesn't have arms, but it knows how to use them. Doesn't have a face, but it knows where to find one."

Nevertheless, he plied his trade with every efficiency, pedaling the mechanism that turned the grindstone, expertly honing each blade and taking his pay like any man of business. Then, we noticed, he seemed to become distracted in his work. In a dull trance he touched metal implements to his spinning wheel of stone, careless of the sparks that flew into his face. Yet there was also a wild luminousness in his eyes, as of a diamond-bright fever burning within him. Eventually we found ourselves unable to abide his company, though we now attributed this merely to some upsurge in his perennial strangeness rather than to a wholly unprecedented change in his behavior. It was not until he no longer appeared on the streets of town, or anywhere else, that we admitted our fears about him.

And these fears necessarily became linked to the other disruptions of that season, those extravagant omens which were gaining force all around us. The disappearance of Mr. Marble coincided with a new phenomenon, one that finally became apparent in the twilight of a certain day when all the clustering and tenacious foliage seemed to exude a vague phosphorescence. By nightfall this prodigy was beyond skepticism. The multicolored leaves were softly glowing against the black sky, creating an untimely nocturnal rainbow which scattered its spectral tints everywhere and dyed the night with a harvest of hues: peach gold and pumpkin orange, honey yellow and winy amber, apple red and plum violet. Luminous within their leafy shapes, the colors cast themselves across the darkness and were splattered upon our streets and our fields and our faces. Everything was resplendent with the pyrotechnics of a new autumn.

That night we kept to our houses and watched at our windows. It was no marvel, then, that so many of us saw the one who wandered that iridescent eve, who joined in its outbursts and celebrations. Possessed by the ecstasies of a dark festival, he moved in a trance, bearing in his hand a great ceremonial knife whose keen edge flashed a thousand glittering dreams. He was standing alone beneath trees whose colors shined upon him, staining his face and his tattered clothes. He was seen standing alone in the yards of our houses, a rigid scarecrow concocted from a patchwork of colors and shadows. He was seen stalking slow and rhythmically beside high wooden fences that were now painted with a quivering colored glow. Finally, he was seen at a certain intersection of streets at the center of town; but now, as we saw, he was no longer alone.

Confronting him in the open night were two figures whom none of us knew: a young woman and, held tightly by her side, a small boy. We were not unaccustomed to strangers walking the streets of our town, or even stopping by one of the surrounding farms -- people who were passing through, some momentarily lost. And it was not too late in the evening for some travelers to appear, not really late at all. But they should not have been there, those two. Not on that night. Now they stood transfixed before a creature of whom they could have no conception, a thing that squeezed the knife in its hand the way the woman was now squeezing the small boy. We might have taken action but did not; we might have made an effort to help them. But the truth is that we wanted something to happen to them -- we wanted to see them silenced. Such was our desire. Only then would we be sure that they could not tell what they knew. Our fear was not what those intruders might have learned about the trees that glowed so unnaturally in the night; or about the chittering noises that now began rising to a pitch of vicious laughter; or even about the farmer's field where a mound of dirt covered a bottomless hole. Our fear was what they might have known, what they must certainly have discovered, about us.

And we lost all hope when we saw the quaking hand that could not raise the knife, the tortured face that could only stare while those two terrible victims -- the rightful sacrifice! -- ran off to safety, never to be seen by us again. After that we turned back to our houses, which now reeked of moldering shadows, and succumbed to a dreamless sleep.

Yet at daybreak it became evident that something had indeed happened during the night. The air was silent, everywhere the earth was cold. And the trees now stood bare of leaves, all of which lay dark and withered upon the ground, as if their strangely deferred dying had finally overtaken them in a sudden rage of mortification. Nor was it long before Mr. Marble was discovered by an old farmer.

The corpse reposed in a field, stretched face-down across a mound of dirt and alongside the remains of a dismantled scarecrow. When we turned over the body we saw that its staring eyes were as dull as that ashen autumn morning. We also saw that its left arm had been slashed by the knife held in its right hand.

Blood had flowed over the earth and blackened the flesh of the suicide. But those of us who handled that limp, nearly weightless body, dipping our fingers into the dark wound, found nothing at all that had the feeling of blood. We knew very well, of course, what that shadowy blackness did feel like; we knew what had found its way into the man before us, dragging him down into its savage world. His dreams had always reached deeper than ours. So we buried him deep in a bottomless grave.

THOMAS LIGHOTTI

[totally]

The Dogmatic Commandements of Binderian:

1. I am the Lord your (fucking) Bizzle, thou shalt have no other Kizzle Bizzles besides xDA BINDx.

2. Honor my fucking sweetness

3. Honor my thousands of Nicknames

4. Keep Sacred the Arm Pump

5. AEHHHHH (laugh)!

6. Thou shalt not Spin-Kick thy neighbor, unless he's not fucking sweet

7. Dude, you gotta be all smooth & shit if you want bitchez

8. Dude, don't get fucking caught creepin' 'n shit.

9. Only take what is fucking sweet, or what may provide you with additional sweetness, any other things will be Jhor upon your Wheel of Sweetness

10. Don't cop another man's sweetness, unless you can knock him out with one spin-kick.

If we all followed the example set by Lord Bizzle, we would have 300% more sweetness, 126.7% more spin-kicking, & about 412% more laid-backness.

"Be fucking sweet unto others, as you would have them be fucking sweet unto you, dude"


















I am the binder that is binder that is sweet, I am the binder that is not binder that is not sweet. I am the binder that is not binder, and I am totally sweet, dude.