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Before I go into a dark hallway I always tell myself to punch the ghosts.

Because if there is a ghost there, I don't want to hesitate. I don't want to cower, or cry, or stare in disbelief. I don't even want to run. No, if there is a ghost in my way, I am punching it.

Why?

Because it's probably not a ghost. It's probably a friend pulling a prank and they fucking know better so they're going to get punched and that's fair play. Or maybe it's Mr. Jenkins wearing a rubber mask, and the meddling kids have yet to arrive. No need to bring the mystery mobile around, boys and girls, I've got this one.

Or maybe it's a hallucination, bad air or subsonic hums or sleep deprivation running wild. If nothing is there, nothing will get hurt, and I will know that I did not hesitate, did not cower, and that the illusion cannot harm me.

But even if it is a ghost, a really-real ghost, there are only two possible things that can happen: either I punch it and my fist goes through unharmed and unnoticed, or I punch a fucking ghost in the face. And if my hand goes through, it cannot hurt me and I have nothing to be afraid of. If I hit it, it is a physical thing that I can subdue, and that's nothing to be afraid of either.

Always punch the ghost.

[print booklet]

CC-ND-NC as usual, attribution is tied to the document.

This is a print booklet file. Print doublesided (duplex) flip on short side, then fold in half for delivery. I'll work on an online shareable version eventually.

Hey LMNO, remember when I didn't catch what Shrapnel was and you tried to explain it, but I was still a little fuzzy? I found a better thing.



Done up as separate half pagers, if anyone wants to see: http://imgur.com/a/Yu6Or

I'm really sorry to dump all this on you right away, but I didn't know where to start and this is a place where people can freely communicate with each other and you all seem like the type who can realy deal with the crazy s*** that the world is built out of, or maybe I'm wrong and I'll get kicked out of here but I don't care anymore I have to tell someone you have to believe me I don't even know if I can believe myself anymore but I saw it, it's real, and I swear to god I'm not crazy.

My mom coddled the hell out of me when I was growing up. I was an only child in a nice little suburban family, but mom insisted on staying home with me and wouldn't let me go to the public school because its full of bullies and crackheads and she didn't want anything bad happening to me so I never really left the house or made any friends. I mean, I left the house sometimes for like going to the grocery store or errands or crap like that, and she would let me talk with other kids while we were out, it wasn't one of those creepy control things, and she's take me to church every sunday and I'd sit there quietly asking god why I was different from everyone else because I could tell, you know? I could just tell there was something weird, something wrong with me that had been wrong since I was born and there was nothing nobody could do about it. Not even mom. But god didn't talk to me because I'm not crazy. I just sat there looking at the big old wooden cross behind the priest and nothing ever happened.

I don't know who my real dad is. I wouldn't even know that he wasn't my real dad if I hadn't heard them fighting one night and he said he was this close to walking right the f*** out that door and that monster upstairs was her problem and not his and when was she going to do something about it and ther was some banging and I heard mom cry but I didn't do anything because what do you do when that happens, you know? Nothing. Cops don't even want to do anything. She wasn't bruised up or anything that week, so maybe he was just hitting things. I don't know. I know he always hated me because I'm wrong and he knew it and he wanted me to be better but he just couldn't make it happen and every time he tried mom would get in the way and tell him that I was too delicate for all that, never get a husband, and he'd laugh and say of course she's never going to get a husband and then I'd cry and he'd say he was sorry but he was never sorry you can tell when people mean it and he didn't.

Anyway, that was a lot more than I meant to write, I'm sorry, but I think you need to understand that this is my whole life, this is everything I have. I didn't wake up one day and go "HOLY COW I'M DIFFERENT!" it's not like this is some coming of age nonsense that people go through I read Catcher in teh Rye this is definitely not that. No. I was always off, like a plug that didn't fit right in the socket only the socket was the world around me.

Mom got me a razor, for my legs and my pits, because all that's starting to get a little out of hand and I want to be able to wear nice things. She showed me how to use it and I swear I was really careful but I cut myself anyway, right on that little bump of the ankle where it sticks out. I never got cut before. I knwo that's probably weird, I hear things about kids skinning their knees and stuff so I guess that's what's normal but remember mom didn't let me go out and roughhouse or play around much. I cut myself and there was something underneath it. I could see it. Like those stories of people getting their bones broken and trying to pull them out because they look like tree limbsstuck in there, but it's just their own femur cracked in half. There was somethign under there, and I had to get it out. This dark green scale underneath the blood and thin crust of skin. Only I couldn't get it out, because it's me.

I just tore half my leg skin off. I don't know what will happen if I take it all off, I don't think I want to know. It's still bleeding some but I wrapped it up with some gauze right around the edges where I tore the skin and under pants you can barely tell but I need to know what the hell I am and what's going on with me. I heard stories about the lizard people, but I never thought it was a real thing. And who the f*** is my father?

This is a dumb metaphor I use for the garbage in my head. If there's a nugget of something here that can be expanded, let's riff on it. If it's too specific to my brainmeats, feel free to ignore.

I used to use the term "brain weasels" to describe the various intrusive thoughts that I have to deal with on a distressingly frequent basis. It ended up not being sufficient for me, because there is a qualitative difference between the nagging, peanut gallery level of negative self-talk and the more clinically relevant stuff. For a while, my therapist and I tried classifying the brain weasels by scale, and then by scale and frequency, but it wasn't until I was on a call with a shitty client that the correct solution finally presented itself.

Shitty client made me want to tear my hair out, so instead of listening (partner was also on the call) I scribbled a little potato looking blob, with itty bitty stubby limbs and giant round eyes, with a gleeful smile and just a hint of angry eyebrows. "Everybody who says they love you is lying or stupid!" it announced. This is a Potato. Potatoes are those dumb, persistent negative thoughts that pop out of nowhere and try and trip you up. Potatoes get kicked.

Snakes are different. Snakes aren't blunt like Potatoes, asserting whatever nonsense they're up for directly. Snakes imply. "Oh, hey," the Snake says, "look at that staircase! I wonder if it would hurt if you fell down it. You're not dizzy, are you?" Snakes are the goddamned worst. You can't kick a Snake, you just have to ignore them and try to keep moving.

I picture both of these things as inky, blobby messes (Snakes being longer, skinnier, and less smiley than Potatoes), and the ink I see as the material of my internal experience of consciousness, my mental landscape. My brain isn't all scary, I can move that stuff around, too. There are a lot of times I have to mentally armor up, and when I do it's the same inky stuff that makes up the Potatoes and Snakes and Memoryphages and all the rest of the mess in my head. And when I make worlds in there to escape in or to plan out real world actions, it's all made of the same stuff.

Manning will be released May 17th 2017, rather than serving out her full bullshit sentence. Julian Assange said earlier he'd surrender to the US if they let Manning out.

Official popcorn thread.

You want to be in the foxhole with the atheist. When the bombs are falling and the mud and shit are one toxic substance coating everything and nothing smells or sounds real anymore you want to be next to the atheist, and never let anyone tell you otherwise. The atheist is not going to fret over their soul when civility collapses, they will do what it takes to get through. The atheist knows that the dead do not get to change their story and the atheist knows that their only hope of immortality is their legacy and they will not let their legacy be "I abandoned my friends in their darkest hour." The atheist is not afraid of the dark.

You want to be in the foxhole with the atheist, because the atheist is not counting on seeing you in the afterlife if this all goes wrong. The atheist will not give up on CPR. The atheist will not give up on anything, because they don't trust anyone or anything to get the job done if they fall. The atheist is not counting on reinforcements or miracles, they make their own.

You want to be in the foxhole with the atheist, because the atheist prays by working. The atheist prays by breathing another second. The atheist has no gods but their companions and losing you is the same as losing their faith. They will not let it happen. The atheist will fight. Without concern for their morality, without concern for the heaven they get into, without delusions of martyrdom or virtue. The atheist will fight in ways you cannot, will not, and they will do it for you.

He loved enormously. His love was not a passive affection or admiration, it was not quiet or well-behaved. His love made demands, and the demands were that he do all he could for those close to him and that those close to him rise up into the people his love knew they could be. A love that saw the flaws and cracks along with the strengths and beauties. A love that did not hide from the difficult or frightening but sat in the uncomfortable space and worked.

He loved enormously, and everyone who came close felt it, and no one escaped the gravity well once they fell in. Friends and ex-husbands and second wives and all, and in-laws were never merely family "in law." He surrounded himself with family, and there was no distinction between those he helped bring into the world and those who found their way in later.

He loved enormously, and to imply that it was merely platonic love would be to erase a piece of his humanity. He loved his girlfriend and one of the last comforts he took from this world was seeing her safe and sound. He loved his wife and made a point of making her blush on her death bed, and in their wedding photos, and more times than any of us could count or imagine.

He loved enormously, and it was never more evident than when he was holding a baby, and we gave him so many babies to hold. It was only fitting, because it's hard to imagine anyone but an infant being able to match him for pure unconditional and uncompromising love. A love that is fierce and solid, that makes demands but cannot imagine giving up or pulling back.

He loved enormously and left nothing in reserve.

I make squiggles for people sometimes. This week seems to be one of those times. Post here if you'd like me to make one for you, and say nasty things about the other people who post so I can make them accurate. I'll figure out some method for taking pictures of them eventually.

I am breathing
And as long as I am breathing I can change
The story being written is the air we breathe

It's time
Get out your pitchforks
Get out your bullhorns
Do not be afraid of the fight in front of you
Your virtue will not save you
You must be courageous
It's contagious
Let it swell through you and yours

I am breathing
And as long as I am breathing I'm not done
I will stand tall and I will not run

Did you think Revolution would come easily?
That you would win it at the ballot box
And everything would be fine?
Did you think there would be no tears?
No pain? No heartache?
Not this time

He does not stand for me
He is not anything I want to be
And if he is yours I do not know you
I do not want to know you

I am breathing
And as long as I am breathing my will is mine
I will not make peace with the intolerable

They will put me in the ground before I bow to him
They will lock me up before I follow him
They will hang me in the public square
Before I concede a single inch to him
He is not my king
Is not my sovereign
I am not sitting down this time

I am breathing
And as long as I am breathing I can fight
History is written in the air we breathe

"The monster could only speak in the gaps between clouds, the mechanism of its voice recharged in the darkness and released in the light. We were too close to the critical hour, and the skies were defiantly clear. Not a single cloud marked the still blue dome of sky over the placid, blue sea. So we called the weatherman."



I just found that written on a notepad in my room. It's in my handwriting, but I have no memory whatsoever of putting it down.

http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/18/12775742/who-is-chuck-tingle-fake-explained

when devils say "you cant live as a buck or a ladybuck" i say YOU CAN LIVE AS ANYTHING YOU WANT EVEN A PLANE OR A CAR this is not a poking joke this is to say LOVE IS REAL YOU ARE PERFECT AS WHOEVER YOU WANT TO BE EVEN IF YOU WANT TO BE THE CONCEPT OF TIME.

Some people, some people can live their lives in pursuit of happiness. Experiences, accolades, stuff, influence, kids, whatever. There is a thing that will make them happy, and they can feel it and keep it and sustain themselves on it indefinitely. Maybe they don't know what exactly will make them happy, maybe there will be false starts, maybe the luster on their happiness will dull over time, but it is still possible for them.

These people are not generally called to Discordia.

Discordians -- or at least, a subset of Discordians -- cannot be happy with "happy." Discordians are only happy when they're fighting. They fall asleep on vacations and sink into depression when the going is easy. It doesn't matter what a Discordian is fighting, could be an international tickle fetish conspiracy, could be each other, could be the goddess-damned weather. We live and breathe to fight. Not to win, not to make the other guy see the error of his ways, not even for our legacy.

We live in deserts and in frigid coastal towns. We live in environments where our sexuality could get us beaten or killed. We live with axes over our heads, where the sun never shines and the bridges sing every night. This is not an accident.

We can't keep friends worth a damn half the time because we are fueled by fighting and it is exhausting and we burn out and fall down and get back up again only to fight. We get kicked out of parties and singled out in the office and can't stand Thanksgiving because everyone keeps telling us we're not supposed to fight and they don't know that they're telling a fish to stay out of the water, that without the fighting we'll shrivel up and die. And we don't fight with fists half the time but with words and song and art and poetry and the hunch of our shoulders and the occasional well placed boot.

As long as we're fighting we can live. Happiness just isn't enough.

"You aren't real!" I say. "It doesn't matter!" but he is bleeding and the hole I wrote into his neck does not allow him to utter any clever last words he is gasping and sputtering and the blood is ink I spilled I scrawled on napkins and notebooks and the margins of drafts we needed to punch up the stakes for the final confrontation and someone had to die and I made the choice and he is dying and I've killed him I've killed him his eyes roll back and if the actor blinks we'll edit it out in post but this isn't the actor the actor will walk away will wash off the fake blood will change out of the ruined clothes will take off the putty skin flaps will roll his eyes back into focus will live and take another job and breathe and he's not breathing he won't be back I've done this it's my fault I've killed him he barely lived and now he's dead and I can't leave him here like this I can't leave it like this but the scene is moving on without him and he is left behind to be carried off by unseen morgue attendants in unwritten scenes and no one will see him ever again and he's not real but does that really matter?

I'd like to get naked with you.

I'd like to curl up with the lights down low, and the curtains drawn, and the blankets close. Because you are kind and strong in the ways that I want and need, and it would be nice to be naked with someone, and I think I could be naked with you.

I'd like to slough off the costume I'm wearing, the boots, the skirts, the underthings. This charade of responsible, sane adulthood is exhausting, and you know me better than that anyway. Let's be somewhere safe, and warm, and soft, and ditch everything scratchy and false. And you can touch my untanned skin, the doughy bits and the publicly obscene, and see this body as it is, without shapers or flattering cuts or corsetry. I'm so rarely naked at all, you see, and it would be nice to be naked with you.

I'd like to pierce the base of my skull, and pull away this flesh. I'd like to extract myself from this human suit, and give my limbs a stretch. My wings have been tucked away so long I don't know if they work, and the starlight hasn't fallen on me since I made my way to Earth. I want to shake my mandibles out, and bend my second knees. I'd like to show you everything my compound eyes can see.

Oh it's such a sadness, to be clothed all day, to bend to mere taboo.
I think it would be nice, just once, to be naked with you.

http://www.businessinsider.com/tech-billionaires-want-to-break-humans-out-of-a-computer-simulation-2016-10

Many people in Silicon Valley have become obsessed with the simulation hypothesis, the argument that what we experience as reality is in fact fabricated in a computer; two tech billionaires have gone so far as to secretly engage scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation.

I am constantly being told
by men
who write
that they will unravel
the mystery of me

That they will put pen
to paper
and draw forth
some real person
out of the chaos before them
and they will sort it into words
and phrases
and turn me real
Name me
like Adam did the beasts of yore
and thus save me
from this mess

They swear this
because men who write
are addicted to drama

Not one has done it yet

They are mistaken
of course
I am not the princess
no manic pixie here
Monster Girl is me
all claws and teeth and bones
and hidden anatomy
Nightmare Girl am I
with my eyes
of earth, sea and sky
no checkboxes can hold
Defiant Girl, forever
my feet planted
shoulder width
arms up
hair back
scarred and scary me

My heart is a furnace
and my soul is the howling void.

Thou shalt wear shorts under thine skirts. Leggings or pants are also acceptable.

Thou shalt have hair as long or short as thou please, but thou shalt always be able to get that shit out of thine face.

Thou shalt not wear shoes that thou canst not run in. Exceptions shall be made for shoes that thou canst cast off in a hurry.

Thou shalt not fear getting in a fight.

Thou shalt not break laws casually or by accident.

Thou shalt vote, and thine votes shall be made based on some small amount of research, even if said research is done minutes beforehand on thine phone.

Thou shalt sign petitions in real life and not merely on the internets.

Thou shalt get thine hands dirty.

Thou shalt learn to ask for help effectively, even when thou doth not know who to ask.

Thou shalt do joyful things, for without thine mental heath thou art useless to everyone.

We'll never be entirely detangled, no clean cuts and closure for us. We are messy stitches and open sores and only time will stem the oozing from our damaged souls. There is no making this right. It is broken and so are we.

There is nothing I can say or do and nothing you can hear that will make this heal better. I will always be the villain of your story, the weakling, the one who ran away, the one who wouldn't listen or couldn't understand. I will be smaller than, meaner than, a porcelain doll with a frowny face that shattered in the fall. You will never see me as I am, and the you in my head is impossibly distorted. We will not reach each other again. There is no fixing the fragments we've left behind.

I cannot claw myself out of you. I cannot take back the pieces of my past embedded in your memory, the infected cysts of what we were. They belong to you now, and they will travel places I cannot see and be turned towards ends I cannot imagine and there is nothing I can do about it. You will always have this ammunition. I will never be safe.

There are no goodbyes that will fix it, and we've said goodbye too many times already. We cannot extract the shrapnel from our wounds, and the attempts just keep us bleeding longer.

I hate you. I don't. It's no good. Goodbye.

Love does not stay where you put it
Love is not shelf-stable
Love is not a mountain or an anchor or a deeply rooted tree
It is a puddle of radioactive mercury.

Love does not conquer anything
Love will not save you
Love is neither sword nor armor nor strongly fortified keep
It is a hummingbird in flight.

Love will not solve your problems
Love is not all you need
Love cannot even hold itself together without constant effort
It is a cottage in constant need of repair.

Love does not stay where you put it
Love has no pause button
Love has no objective existence or basis in reality
It is two people who grow together, or apart.

You there!
With your internet connection!
With your good health and dental insurance!
Don't you know that other people don't have access to those things?
Get rid of them!
You can't help the underprivileged
Until you abandon all the things that the world has given you
Get miserable!

You there!
With your disposable income!
With your Pokemon Go and your comic books!
Don't you know other people are suffering in the world?
Stop having fun this instant!
You can't address the ills in this world
Until you are as unhappy as the saddest human alive
Get miserable!

You there!
With your mediocre job!
With your heart and lungs intact!
Don't you know the cops are killing people?
Stop getting by!
You can't fight systemic oppression and injustice
Until you abandon all your life support systems
Get miserable!

Inspired by Cram's "Nobody's Looking" poster, this is designed to be printed and cut in half for double the gasm per page. Stick it up anywhere there are security cameras. Add whatever stamps/calls to action/marginalia you like, and I will take requests for variations on this theme (more background, less background, alternate fonts, etc.). As always, pdfs are a little nicer on your printer and have been checked for proper embedding.

Love so you feel like your chest is collapsing.
Love like a supernova.
Love in the streets, in your home, in your school
Love like you're dying.
Love right in their fucking faces.
Love everybody.
Love messily.
Love without reservations.
Love the people who don't love you back.
Love the people who can't love you back.
Love your haters.
Love sinfully.
Love so you can't think straight.
Love with sloppy kisses and high fives and hugs from strangers.
Love with whips and chains.
Love under the covers in a darkened room.
Love in the sunshine.
Love your spouse, your partner, your friends-with-bennies.
Love your exes.
Love platonically, erotically, romantically, endlessly.
Love unbounded.
Love with blood on your hands.
Love with tears.
Love so they file a noise complaint.
Love like a teenager.
Love like an idiot.
Love so it hurts.
       Don't stop.

[double sided, flip on short side]

All these flyers are designed to be printed double sided, flip on short side then cut in half where the gap is. The result for each single sheet is two half page flyers with text on the front and back, with "down" being down on both. You'll be able to see right away if the printer messed up, you'll have the second half of the wrong thing behind your first half.

• Effort and Results/Normal: http://imgur.com/a/IWdrb
• PsychoMetaphysics/To Arms: http://imgur.com/a/gTPj6
• Chasing Green Butterflies/Guerrilla Surrealism: http://imgur.com/a/MoZXh
• Handcuffs2/On Being Terrible: http://imgur.com/a/egRCy
• Liberty (Letter to the Cabbages)/Systems vs. The System: http://imgur.com/a/oQMgq
• Why They Hate You (needs two copies to print properly, or just fold in half like an animal):http://imgur.com/P29HfFR

[print only]

This design is print only, combining Roger's "Plato's Cave for Domesticated Primates" and Cram's "The Monkey Experiment." Print double sided and fold in half so that the title pages are on the outside. It'll make sense in your hand, I promise. http://imgur.com/a/ZBMON

[print only]

print only with link to peedee at the end of the last page. http://imgur.com/a/2GTJ5

[print only]

I'm just gonna do one thread for these, because a) they're a little complicated and b) I don't wanna bump everything off the front page.

Multifold flyers are print only. They are designed to be printed double sided, flip on short side although if you mess up the flip it's kinda nbd. Once it is printed, fold in half so that the fullsheet is on the inside, then fold in half a second time so that the halfsheet is inside. The resulting flyer has two quartersheet designs visible (back and front) and is easy to put into hands.

• Without Permission/The Man/Pretentious/Pope Card: http://imgur.com/a/xA5Fw
• Parable of the Sacred Bull/Who Is This Demon/Impolite/Pope Card: http://imgur.com/a/2kdWi
• Pants!/Plant Your Seeds/Eris Hails You, Too/Pope Card: http://imgur.com/a/gqeCl
• Salt Your Data/Breathe/Ulcer Medication/Pope Card: http://imgur.com/a/5DHsp
• Tomorrow People/Golden Secret/Ninny/Pope Card: http://imgur.com/a/QYFaS
• Forget Activism/Honest Book of Actions (Conscience)/Powerful Men/Pope Card: http://imgur.com/a/ETCB2

Below are half page multifold files. Because this shit wasn't complicated enough. Print doublesided, flip on short side, then cut in half, fold and fold so that the pope card is on the outside.

• First: http://imgur.com/a/gvTWt
• Second: http://imgur.com/a/xLF28

No images for the third or fourth multifolds.
Third is Cuttleflag/Right Tool For The Job/Naked With You on one side and Fury/Always Been Free/Breathe on the other. I meant for the Breathe and Naked ones to be swapped, but no worries.
Fourth is Fucked Forever/Nevertheless/Cultural Wasteland on one side and Streakers/Shit Which Happens/Iconoclast's Manifesto on the other.

[Print only]

Print only version of Reverend Doctor Hexar le Saipe's "Chaosophy." I believe the words were released Kopyleft under some damn thing but I can't for the life of me remember where. Images are kopyleft safe

http://imgur.com/a/rfL8u

[FOUR]

THREE FOUR whole versions of this one!

First three based on this design: http://imgur.com/a/agENj

Roger's Sermon #9: There Are No Bars Or Cages, CC: ND, NC, A as usual. These versions are print only. Grayscale for people who don't want to pay for color, full color for those who do, and plain for those who have janky printers/hate backgrounds/plan on photocopying.

New Version! I prefer this to the old one, but feel free to use what you like.

[two versions]

This is two versions formatted for print only of Cain's Hearts and Minds essay. One version has a grayscale background, the other is plain text with some borders. If you've got a janky printer, want to save some ink, or don't like the background, use the plain one.


http://imgur.com/a/6NcAU

[print only]

This is laid out for print only. Three pages are Howl's Politics of the Average Joe, fourth is filler, everything is Kopyleft approved for your non commercial, no derivative works needs. You can remove the filler page and replace it with whatever if you feel so inclined, just don't be a dick about it.

http://imgur.com/a/y4qKY

Going to the silly rainbow parade, gonna flyer the shit out of all the pretty people. I have the set of pope cards from last year, but I want to include some stuff like the Strange Times pamphlets. I think the Notes on an Inconvenient Universe may be too dark for the mood, but maybe some of the other stuff from Holy Nonsense is okay? Maybe there are some essays on Saturday Night that would work and be okay for distribution? Maybe someone gets inspired and writes a new thing in the next week!

Toss out any ideas here. I'll generate print and online versions of anything and everything and hand out as much as my budget allows.

Breathe. You can't tear down the world if you stop breathing, so breathe.

You haven't won and you may never win and you aim so high you know you'll never get there and you have to stop beating yourself while you're down or you'll never get up you have to breathe.

This world will kill you, it will tear you in half and grind you to paste. Your hopes and dreams are handles sticking out of your forehead and the fates or some other assholes will use those handles to steer you like a wagon and if you give up caring about things it won't get any better and you can survive this and maybe help a little and it will hurt but you have to breathe.

There's glass in your lungs and poison in your veins and everything you love will die in the end. The sun will explode and galaxies will collide and the universe will die a slow, boring death and there's nothing to be done about the laws of physics but that is trillions of years from now and you can only do something about now and it matters, you matter, you have to breathe.

You don't have to make peace with it and you don't have to accept it and you don't have to stop being the kid who would cry at a mall opening you don't have to be perfect you can't be perfect you just have to keep trying and breathe.

I love you. Breathe.

Should I buy these eggs?

Because we don't cook a lot of them
And I don't want them to go to waste
But if we don't have any I skip some foods
That I'd otherwise like to make
And they're not all that expensive
But I'd hate to take them home
Just to rot
And I don't know if I should buy these eggs.

Because there was a car following us
From the office to the store
A black sedan with square-jawed passengers
And when we were in the produce section
One of them got out
Walked over to our car
And stood by it before leaving
And maybe they were just placing a GPS
Or taking one off
But maybe it was something worse
And when we get in the car it will explode
And scatter our corpses and groceries everywhere
And the eggs will splatter dramatically on the pavement
An unintended casualty of our assassination
And these eggs really didn't do anything to deserve that
They deserve to be cooked and eaten
Not b-roll for the 6 o'clock report
But I might want to make omelettes
And are the white ones cheaper?
(Nope, brown is less this week)
And I don't know if I should buy these eggs.

There is a moon.

Somebody is going to come along and tell you you have to Question Everything because what you perceive and what I perceive are two different, potentially completely unrelated things. Because *your* headache might not be *my* headache and all attempts at empathy are delusion and there are no shared public objects, only consciousnesses bumping into each other talking nonsense about things that we can't possibly understand or even agree on. They will make you question the existence of the moon.

Fuck that guy.

There is A MOON. There is not a moon for each and every one of us, JUST. ONE. MOON.  It hasn't been here forever and it won't last forever either, but here and now, as you and I are breathing THERE IS A MOON. It is not painted on the background. It is not an allegory. It hasn't been replaced with an identical duplicate while you weren't looking, and they didn't swap it out for a different model in the international release. THERE IS A MOON.

It EXISTS, and existing is a thing that objects are capable of because THE MOON IS THERE. It has properties we can measure and when you measure them or I measure them or Xinglbratt from the Marcabian Empire measures them those properties are CONSTANT because THE MOON IS A THING THAT EXISTS. It has pock marks from old collisions where it EXISTED SO HARD SOMETHING ELSE STOPPED. It's covered in dust that will give you MOTHERFUCKING MOON CANCER which is a THING that is REAL and can FUCKING KILL YOU DEAD.

It EXISTS, and it EXISTED. It taught your ancestors about measuring time and sloshed around the tide pools when life was small and weird. It shone on Kingdoms and Empires and FLATWORMS, and it shone on them ALL THE SAME.

There is A MOON and it is made of REAL THINGS and you can point a laser at it in just the right spot or send a piece of REALLY REAL EQUIPMENT into MOTHERFUCKING SPACE to take pictures of it and send them back, and as long as you know how to send things into space you will see the same pictures of the same places because THE MOON IS A THING THAT EXISTS.

SONGS are SUNG about it, TIDES HAPPEN because of it, BUZZ ALDRIN put his GODDAMNED FEET ON IT.


Or Kill Me.

[for the time being, this one thing is not kopyleft.]

I don't know if this fits anywhere, or if it's relevant to anyone's interests. for the time being, this one thing is not kopyleft.

Kopyleft forever, built from public domain.

You're welcome.

What's the deal with the copyright/kopyleft on the things in the reading list on the main site? I'm specifically asking about the Letter to the Cabbages, as it has no author to harass directly, but it would be a good thing to know in general.

http://laughingsquid.com/kermit-the-frog-fozzie-bear-hilariously-engage-in-improvised-existential-banter-in-1979-camera-test/

Well Fozzie, the thing of it is though you're not a real bear. You're not a real natural bear. I mean, you're talking about a bear in its natural habitat...What do you have, you have sort of a fake fur. You've got foam rubber. You've got foam rubber and fake fur. You're an artificial bear. Have you ever seen a bear with a magenta nose?

Ingredients:
     >  2 boxes uncooked manicotti
     >  2 lbs sweet italian sausage
     >  1 onion
     >  1 to 2 red peppers (or a bunch of the itty bitty ones)
     >  so much shredded mozzarella
     >  large jar marinara

1) throw sausages in the oven until they are done. You know what done sausages look like, don't worry about it.
2) start water for pasta
3) chop onion and peppers
4) cook onion and peppers in a pan with some butter or oil or something, not too much, maybe a tablespoon or two tops.
5) put pasta in water when it boils
6) slice and halve sausages, throw in with the vegetables and turn down the heat. They will be best friends.
7) drain the manicotti before they get all floppy or this will never work
8 ) motherfucker half of these are already floppy
9) no, it's okay, I can do this, start stuffing the manicotti with pepper/onion/sausage mix
10) this is way harder than it needs to be
11) fuck why doesn't anyone like ricotta? This would be so much easier if I could just pipe in the filling
12) add some mozzarella inside the stuffed pasta for extra delicious.
13) are you kidding me? I only have three done and it's already been ten minutes?
14) I have shit to do
15) balls, all the rest of these are floppy as shit, I'll never get them stuffed
16) fuck it, lasagna
17) toss remaining pasta, pepper/sausage/onion mix, and sauce in a pan with layers of mozzarella. be sure to cover the top
18) pop that in the oven for about 30 minutes

[print-only]

Attached is a print-only pdf containing Notes on an Inconvenient Universe II, III, and IV. Written content is CC: ND, NC, A by Roger, images are kopyleft or public domain, and fuck you if you give me credit for layouts.

To use this file, open locally and set your printer options to landscape orientation, duplex or print on two sides and flip on short side. This should take two sheets of paper. Put the inside one on the inside and the outside one on the outside and fold in half. Staple if you are fancy.

THERE IS A TYPO IN THIS VERSION AND I DON'T SEE AN OPTION TO REMOVE ATTACHMENTS. PLZHALP.

Hey, you know that thing? Somebody sent me a bunch of words to format and I apparently got a quarter of the way through before flaking out and never opening the file again? Anybody remember what the copyright/kopyleft was on that thing, or who any of the authors are?

I'm not 100% on this, think it still needs some work and there's no real conclusion, but it's a start



There are real magicians all around us. Not stage magicians, not "illusionists," but real life honest to goddess mortals who have conquered the fear of death and affect reality through sheer force of will.

You can be one, too.

Now, some folks will tell you that in order to do this you need to buy a lot of books, or do a lot of drugs, or some combination of the two. They'll talk at you about sigils and crystals and pyramids and focusing energy. They'll tell you about Terrence McKenna and his psychonaut adventures like they're genuine insight into the workings of the mind.

And for some of them, that's how they get to be magicians.

But for most, they end up being the same person but now with an expensive hobby and maybe some brain damage depending on their choice of chemical enlightenment.

And the worst part is this isn't the only path to get there – or even the most efficient!

The best magicians don't think of themselves as magicians at all. They describe themselves as actors, as con artists, as hackers or politicians. They learn how things work, and they tell the world a story that the world believes, and suddenly reality itself has warped just a tiny bit. They tell stories to themselves, to other people, to machines, and the stories affect the world.

Now, you can't just start telling stories about anything and expect to change everything. There is a process to it, even if it's not staring at a candle in the darkness. I'm not going to tell you this is the One And Only True Path, but here's some common themes I've seen in the magicians I've watched at work.

1) Getting Ego Out of the Picture
Your Self, the innermost essence of who you are, is a fragile thing that needs to be protected. That's why people get their undies in a bind when you call them out on not being the kind of person they think they already are. To affect the world, you've gotta lie and lie hard, and that means not getting flustered at the wrong times. You'll need to be able to compartmentalize your shit.
Magicians can accomplish this by shielding or annihilating the ego. I recommend the former. Pen names are one way of getting the job done, or full blown"personas." Think of Stephen Colbert, or Mark Twain. Anonymous has an "out of the box" solution, just slap on their branding and go!
If you really want to annihilate your ego, stare at yourself in a mirror in a poorly lit room until your face begins to vanish.

2) Tear Everything to Pieces
You're never going to learn how shit works if you don't learn how to tear it to pieces. This goes for physical objects as well as ideas. If you got a western education, you already have some training in this, just start using those skills on media reports instead of 19th century English lit. What are the themes? What are people trying to tell you? What is the end goal and how are they getting you there? Pay attention to the music and sound effects in movies, learn how foley artists do their thing. Learn about costuming and color palates and set design. Go to a concert and just watch the lighting guy do his thing. Look for the strings.
Of course, you should tear apart some real things, too. So much of what we interact with on a daily basis is complete magic to us, but it was all designed by people! You can start to see the pieces, learn the practical magic of creating objects that are sufficiently advanced for most users. Binge some factory porn. Dismantle a Furby.

3) Get Out There and Do It
Decide what you want to change in the world, figure out what the angles are to create a story that will get your foot in the door, and go tell it. You may need friends to help, but don't let that get in your way. There are more people in this world who want to wreck shit than you can possibly realize.

My favorite Christmas present of all time
Was a set of jewelers' screwdrivers
All the little philips, flat and hexes
For tearing down machines
My father got it for me when I was sixteen
And I still have it today.

I remember one day at school
I was sitting in the bathroom
Staring at the fixtures
Because you have to stare at something
And I noticed the screws
Could only be turned one way.

They were designed so they could be tightened
But never unscrewed
And, I reasoned, this was because they didn't want
Any kids to tear apart the bathroom stalls
Which means bathroom stalls
Can be torn apart.

I started looking around the school
And everywhere I saw un-safetied screws
Holding together pieces of things
I took for granted as "solid"
The desks, the walls, the bookshelves
They could all be torn apart.

Giddy with my realization
I wanted to tear down the world
I mentally dismantled the schoolbus,
The movie theater, the park benches
I unmade an alarm clock
And broke my father's chisel.

One time I took apart a rotary phone
The faceplate, the dial, everything
I broke all the way down
To a little box of goo
That I still don't know the purpose of
It would never be a phone again.

And sometimes I think this attitude
Explains what happened to my head
Because I learned what brains are made of
And identities
I ate lots of ideas that were bad for me
And tore my shit to pieces.

I think I telephoned my brain.

Never fall in love with a Discordian. Seriously, I cannot stress this enough. They don't do things by halves, or even by wholes: everything is 169% ALL THE TIME. You want to get a Discordian flowers? She hijacked a truck full of roses and abandoned it in your driveway. You want to give him a card? He's already spraypainted a love poem on a national monument. It's in iambic pentameter and somehow he managed to fit the word "fuckstick" in there and it works.

Going on a date with a Discordian is about equally likely to end in sex or felonies, with a significant chance of the sex being a felony depending on local custom. Discordians are serious about having a good time, and you are not prepared. You will learn to hate the word "adventure."

Never give a Discordian your heart. They're tinkerers, you see, and they have to learn how things work by tearing them apart. You will never get your heart broken quite the same as a Discordian vivisection. The world is full of Horrible Truths and the Discordian will want you to LOOK AT THEM together, and think this is a romantic activity. Discordians are always
     getting fucked in the ass by Nigel,
         but that's not so bad.

My heart has been encrypted
With a one time pad
Sanitized and salted
Behind firewalls ironclad

My heart is stored remotely
In a foreign server farm
Where they shred FBI requests
(Al Qaeda's two racks down)

My heart's behind a password
And biometric key
If you want to steal my heart
You'll have to go through me.

...is so vanilla that actual vanilla looks daring and exotic next to him.
...owns twenty suits. They are all the same suit.
...enjoys a single scoop of unflavored icemilk with his daily multivitamin.
...has two children; has had sex exactly two times.
...plays pot limit Omaha with low-fat pretzels.
...willingly consumes tonic without gin.
...starts each morning with a bowl of plain grits.

The Horrible Truth finds us all eventually, the kinds of people who Question Everything and Look For The Strings. Sometimes you only catch a corner of it, a little sliver of the Enlightenment Miserable that needles your brain and won't let things rest. Sometimes you witness yourself That Which Cannot Be Unseen. People die, governments fall, hopes are crushed, buildings burn. There are reasons for all these things, and they are not always the Official Versions TM of the story. It's a fact that every once in a while a conspiracy comes along and gets shit done, and the people who know the Horrible Truth are inevitably painted with the same brush as the people who think they can hear the stars talking in their fillings. They holler and go mad with frustration, trying to bring the masses to the whole of the Horrible Truth.

The Doctrine of the Minimum Viable Truth states that it is better to focus on the smallest, least controversial aspects of a Horrible Truth than to focus on the Big Truths behind it. That it's better to bring people to a middle ground even if that middle ground contains significant untruths or omissions than to attempt to drag people kicking and screaming to full enlightenment.

Let's use my favorite example: the 9/11 Truthers. This group believes it has found a great and profound Horrible Truth: that the US government orchestrated the September 11th attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center buildings, killing thousands in a pre-meditated false flag operation to justify the passage of some truly horrendous legislation and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, which has itself led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Memetically, this Horrible Truth has a lot going for it. It has hooks in "the government is evil," "look how smart I am to have figured this thing out," "everything happens for a reason," "somebody is running the show," "things are not as they seem," "powerful men are capable of great evil," and even "the call is coming from inside the house." When someone is infected by this Horrible Truth, they follow the research of other True Believers and become experts in the well-developed ARG of Trutherism. Like Jehovah's Witnesses, they have an answer for every potential criticism or argument, armed to the teeth with annotated photographs and expert analysis. And, like Jehovah's Witnesses, they make very few converts.

The low conversion rate infuriates Truthers to no end. After all, we're not talking about a small event: three buildings were destroyed and the entire western world witnessed a terrifying display of human tragedy and loss on live television. If that was staged, wouldn't you want to know? Wouldn't the world deserve to know? We've grown up on stories of the Horrible Truth being revealed at the last second, exonerating our heroes and sending the villains to prison. But the real world has never, never worked that way.

Truthers divided discussion about the real tragedy of 9/11, wasting untold mental and physical energy on screaming at the government for doing something which it may or may not have done, and on screaming at the public for not getting on board. The public, annoyed by the Cult of Trutherism, deepened its acceptance of the Official Version TM and refused to engage in any discussion about government malfeasance in regard to 9/11 and its aftermath.

The whole Horrible Truth whether it is true or not, is not worth screaming about. As soon as you mention 9/11 Truth in any context, you immediately turn away anyone who is not already a True Believer, and they will not hear anything else you have to say on this or any other subject.

The Minimum Viable Truth, in the case of 9/11 Truth, is that factions of the conservative movement were planning to take advantage of a national catastrophe to promote their own disastrous agenda, including the erosion of privacy rights and the invasion of several sovereign nations. In comparison to the Horrible Truth, this may sound small and irrelevant. After all, how can you be shocked and angry about people taking advantage of something tragic when you have already accepted into your heart that those same people willfully engineered their own tragedy? But without the prior context of the conspiracy story, this Truth is terrifying and awful in its own right. Like an abusive partner, people entrusted with tremendous power abused the traumatization of an entire country to further their own agenda and harm the people already hurting.

The Minimum Viable Truth is compatible with most belief systems, it doesn't engender the same kneejerk FUCK OFF TRUTHER that the Horrible Truth does. The evidence supporting the Minimum Viable Truth isn't cloistered away on the sketchier parts of the internet, it lives in the headlines, it's in the public domain documents. To believe the Horrible Truth, one must accept a series of assertions about the chemical properties of jet fuel and conspiracies of construction workers and cleaners who never mentioned the thermite being installed and the human ability to consciously murder thousands of their own people to forward their own goals. To believe the Minimum Viable Truth, you only have to believe that people are willing to take advantage of a bad situation.

There are smaller truths too, but the Minimum Viable Truth is the one that turns hearts and minds against the assholes pulling shit, that points them at better questions and helps them make better decisions about who to vote for and what policies to oppose. The heroism of the FDNY is a Smaller Truth, it is evident in every aspect of their performance on that miserable Tuesday and the days and weeks after, but it does nothing to turn the hurt and horror to a productive end. Smaller Truths can derail conversations, but the Minimum Viable Truth unites.

Let's talk about another example.

Michael Hastings died in a car crash is a Smaller Truth. Michael Hastings was murdered via his car being hacked and blown up on the California streets by the CIA because he was investigating a story that was even bigger than his takedown of General McChrystal is a Horrible Truth. The Minimum Viable Truth is that Michael Hastings was afraid someone was going to tamper with his car, and we now know that remote hacking of cars of that type is possible and was possible at the time of his death. And I am a True Believer, not in the bomb part of the story but that the reporter was launched at a hundred miles an hour into a tree not by tragic accident but because he was a shit stirrer of the highest caliber, and I have seen The Strings enough to know that hacking a car is well within the abilities of his enemies, and murder is not outside of their comfort zone. But I tell people the Minimum Viable Truth. I tell them it's a possibility. I tell them what could be, based not on my gut or what another True Believer said but dispassionate analysis. And maybe I am a traitor to my tribe for not hollering the Horrible Truth from the mountain tops, but when I infect others with this truth it sticks.

It all comes down to what your goals are: do you want to change the world, or do you want to be right?

They were happier than either of them had any right to be. They never said I love you, or indulged in excessive displays of affection. She liked the touch of his hand, the measured firmness of his handshake, the comforting weight on her hand as they sat together, the gentle pressure at the curve of her wrist when they danced. He liked the fire in her eyes, the curve of her smile, the way her hair tickled his nose when he held her. They took no shit from anyone. They had no time for delicate words or hurt feelings.
Their happiness was punctuated by terrifying bouts of paranoia, exacerbated by episodes of real spies and assassins invading their home and bed. They broke every promise they ever made, and forgave each other anyway. They fought like professionals and fucked like they were keeping score.
They never regretted a thing.

I will be aiming for an April batch of cookies.

Comment with any dietary restrictions, PM shipping address if I don't have it already.