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[ARTICLES OF CANONIZATION]

I found out this guy a while ago and he seems like a candidate for Discordian sainthood. A Scots-born officer in the British, Portuguese and Venezuelan armies who later made up a country and made a living selling nonexistent land to would-be colonisers.

The formal Articles of Canonization is attached (this is a PDF with the same text as the rest of this post, but some slightly fancy formatting and a picture of MacGregor.)

-----

ARTICLES OF CANONIZATION

I. Pontifical Bullshit

By the Power invested in Us as Supreme Pope of Eris, We hereby nominate Gregor MacGregor (1786–1845), variously styled as Baronet, General, Colonel, Knight of the Order of Christ, and Cazique of Poyais; military officer, explorer, adventurer, turncoat and confidence trickster (hereafter "the Candidate", "Gregor", or "this guy") for Canonization to the rank of Discordian Saint (Second Class), Order of Quixote.

Other Supreme Popes of Eris are free to ratify, amend, redefine or ignore these Articles by the power invested in them.

II. Life of the Candidate

A great-nephew of Scots rebel leader Rob Roy, born in Stirlingshire to a disfavoured clan and unimaginative parents, the Candidate joined the British Army at age 16, conceivably with the intent of sowing chaos within the imperialist ranks in vengeance for his own family's mistreatment at British hands.

He fought, sweet-talked and/or bribed his way to the rank of Captain; thereafter, he repeatedly abandoned his posts and turned coats, allying over the course of his career with several European powers fighting over the right to pretend bits of South America belonged to them, and causing chaos which set back the colonisation of the continent by an unknown number of years. He tried exploring, but didn't find anything. He eventually found himself ingratiated with Simon Bolivar and became a general in the revolutionary army of Venezuela.

In 1820, "King" George Frederic Augustus I of Miskita, a politically powerless puppet of the British Empire, "granted" the Candidate an area of uncultivatable land on the Mosquito Coast. Gregor dubbed this area "the Poyais" and himself its "cazique", a word which he claimed translated as "prince". Gregor MacGregor sailed back to Britain.

The Cazique of Poyais appeared in London in 1821, handing out neat pamphlets which documented the Poyais as a wondrous land of exploitable forest, rolling pastures, rivers containing literal gold balls, and animals that practically threw themselves in front of your hunting rifle. Under his prudent caziquing, the Poyais now had a flourishing capital city, a functioning government, and its own currency, of which he carried several rolls of banknotes and was happy to trade for pounds or dollars at a very generous exchange rate. The Cazique attended high society dinners and balls, and made a living for many years selling nonexistent land and government bonds in Poyais to gullible would-be colonisers.

("Real" explorers did the same thing, of course; Gregor just skipped over the step of actually stealing a bunch of land beforehand.)

Two ships set sail for Poyais carrying eager colonists. About a quarter of them made it back to London. Some were after Gregor's blood. Others defended him to the end, insisting that the reason they found an uncultivatable swamp where the Republic of Poyais should have been was the result of sabotage by jealous agents of the Spanish or Portuguese.

The authorities eventually caught up with the Candidate and tried him for fraud. He prepared an elaborate and completely false 5000-word defence, and was acquitted of all charges.

The Candidate later returned to Venezuela. He died in 1845 and was buried in Caracas Cathedral, with full military honours in recognition of his service during the War of Independence, which may or may not have been accurately recorded.

III. Virtuosity

I'm not at all sure he had any. On the other hand, he probably fucked up for the bad guys more often than he did for the good guys.

IV. Miracles

As per the Ancient and Immalleable Rules Governing Canonization of Saints Which I Just Made Up, ascension to Sainthood requires evidence of at least five (5) miracles performed by the Candidate before, during or after their death. A miracle is defined as an act inexplicable by natural or scientific laws, or at least damned hard to pull off.

Miracles attributed to Candidate Gregor MacGregor include:

    I. The (briefly) successful capture of Amelia Island in 1817 by a single ship, commanded by the Candidate and carrying a few dozen men; the Spanish garrison there, which easily outgunned the invader, was so incredulous that anyone would be foolish enough to attempt to capture the island with a single ship that they assumed it must be leading a much larger force, and surrendered with no shots fired;

    II. The spontaneous creation in 1821 of an entire country, the Republic of Poyais, complete with a democratic system of government, civil service, and functioning infrastructure, in 1821;

    III. The transubstantiation of the aforesaid country, by which it assumed the spiritual nature of a well-governed republic rich in minerals and opportunity, while maintaining the outward substance of an uninhabitable malarial swamp, making it impossible to distinguish from the latter by mundane means;

    IV. The instantaneous transportation of large amounts of money into his own bank account from those of various rich British marks;

    V. The continued support of many of the aforesaid marks for the Candidate, even after they had paid him the aforesaid large amounts of money, sailed to "Poyais", found an uninhabitable swamp, and barely made it back to Europe racked by typhoid and jaguar bites.

V. Verdict

After an extensive five-minute period of pineal consultation on the merits or otherwise of the above Articles:

Congratulations! Saint Gregor MacGregor, Cazique of Poyais, is formally admitted to the Second-Most Holy Order of Second-Class Saints and the Order of Quixote, as Patron Saint of explorers, imaginary countries and confidence tricksters.

[first posted as a twitter thread; expanded here]

I went looking for pictures of Eris in classical artwork. It turned out there are a lot more than I thought. I haven't seen a collection of these in a Discordian (or any other) context before, so here goes.

Firstly, the ancient Greek image of Eris that you're most likely to have seen, because it's used on the Wikipedia pages for Eris and Discordianism:

In Grecian times, Goddess posed for a few vases to pay the bills. This is a tasteful shot for a blackfigure kylix, around 550 BCE. Killer heels.



Redfigure vase, c. 450 BCE, showing Eris with Themis, goddess of wisdom and good counsel (whom you can identify with Aneris if you like). I assume Eris is the one on the left, just because the names were in that order. Nice dress.



Another redfigure vase, c. 400 BCE, in which Eris looks through a magic window into the wedding of Peleus and Thetis (pretty much all images I could find of Eris were in scenes of That Wedding), drawn by someone unfamiliar with boobs.



No Eris in this one, but it's a rather nice 2nd Century BCE mosaic of the Paris judging the Beauty Contest of the Goddesses, stolen from Antioch and currently held hostage in the Louvre. I think that's the Golden Apple at the top.



Engraving of the wedding of Peleus and Thetis on a sarcophagus, c. 120 BCE (as reproduced in Drury's History of the Greeks, 1886). It's not known who all of the characters are, but one lady is carrying what might be an apple and appears to be setting fire to the guy's foot next to her for a laugh, so.


Eris then seems to have avoided the limelight for a long period. I next found her in a 15th-century illuminated manuscript (which I couldn't find at a higher resolution, alas.)

She seems to be handing over the Apple rather too politely, but at least she's wearing a Pope hat and suitably outre colour malcoordination. She's also brought her dog with her, opening new possibilities in veterinary theology.


Ladies, gentlemen and nonbinary pals, we are about to enter the Renaissance period. Things may be about to get a bit Naked Where's Waldo.


Jans Brueghel's The Marriage of Peleus and Thetis (between 1583 and 1625). As in a lot of paintings from this period, Eris likes to float upside down 10 feet above the crowd, just as I would at big social gatherings if I could. Here she is depicted as a weedy androgynous teen with bat-wings.



A 1589 engraving by Jacques de Gheyn II, showing Eris as a saggy-boobed Cthulhu-Medusa. Look, I won't tell her if you don't.



Gillis van Valckenborch's The Marriage of Peleus and Thetis (1590-1622). Eris arrives on a stormcloud, looking blurry and draped in hippie shawls.



Jan van Balen's The Marriage Feast of Peleus and Thetis (1605-1642). Only about half the guests are naked. Maybe marrying a sea-nymph is like marrying a Betazoid. Eris seems to be manifesting as a weird fiery vulture-eagle.



Hendrik de Clerck's The Nuptials of Thetis and Peleus (c. 1606) Eris is painted as a larger woman of colour, probably for Highly Problematic reasons, but maybe unintentionally pretty cool? As well as the Apple, she carries a bellows—for fanning flames, geddit?—which I don't think I've seen in any modern Discordian depictions.


And now we get to this guy.

Joachim Wtewael (1566-1638) depicted Eris and/or the Apple of Discord so many times that I can only assume She was fucking with his head. I found at least five relevant paintings, made over a five-year period starting in 1610.




(seen here with her sidekick, Five-Legged Baby)


The fact that he seems to have painted (or revised?) so many of these, and they are all either called "The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis" or "The Judgement of Paris", makes it appropriately confusing to try and find them all. Dude could have done with a version control system. His style reminds me of the Josh Kirby cover art for the earlier Discworld novels.



Jacob Jordaen's The Golden Apple of Discord (1633). Eris looks a little confused herself, maybe because Jesus has just caught the Apple.



Abraham Bloemaert's The Feast of the Gods at the Wedding of Peleus and Thetis (1638). Eris once again travels by stormcloud.



Giusepe Pietro Mazzola's The Marriage of Peleus (1789). I'm not certain this was the artist's intention, but I like to think Eris is the one giving the couple the finger and then leaving to go bowling with her pals.


And my personal favourite.

Edward Burne-Jones's The Feast of Peleus (1872). It's like The Last Supper if shit was about to go DOWN. (Okay, different shit.)

Just. Look at Her.

The kooky indie-chick bodystocking outfit. The metal-as-hell bat wings. The wry malicious smile of a woman about to unleash holy fuck on a bunch of polite assholes. And they're all terrified of her.

EDIT: after positing this I noticed that Hermes/Mercury, who is the crouching figure wearing nothing but a bright blue helm and bright blue winged sandals so he looks like the stripogram, is holding a (non-gold) apple in one hand and a scroll in the other that reads DETUR PULCHRIORI, a rare Latin translation of Kallisti. If this is because Eris has not delivered the Apple personally but is using Hermes as a mail carrier, it would make this the original Jake.

This Eris appears to be painted after Burne-Jones's favourite model, the artist Maria Zambaco

(Portrait by Alexander Cassavetti)
Burne-Jones and Zambaco had had a scandalous affair a few years earlier. He continued to paint her in sorceress/temptress/dangerous lady roles for the rest of his career. I've given her a sainthood for her troubles.

A restored page from a 12th-century manuscript of Principia Discordia

(Also, hello again! I hung around here for a bit of couple of years ago, then the world ended at least twice, I got an exciting new brain medication, and I recently remembered Discordianism exists)

(Hymns being for male deities.)


1. THE BATTLE HYMN (yeah ok) OF THE ERISTOCRACY (EXTENDED)
(First two verses and refrain by Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst)

Mine brain has meditated on the spinning of the Chao;
It is hov’ring o’er the table where the Chiefs of Staff are now
Gathered in discussion of the dropping of the Bomb;
Her Apple Corps is Strong!

Refrain: Grand and gory old Discordja!
Grand and gory old Discordja!
Grand and gory old Discordja!
Her Apple Corps is Strong!

Not invited to the party that they held on Limbo Peak,
So she threw a golden apple, ’stead of turned the other cheek;
O it cracked the Holy Punchbowl and it made the nectar leak;
Her Apple Corps is Strong!

For a Goddess, there is nothing worse than hearing she ain’t cute
So a trio of divinities began a fierce dispute
Over who should be the keeper of the shiny metal fruit;
Her Apple Corps is Strong!

Young Paris was recruited as a holy referee
And each goddess made an offer of attempted bribery
He was promised wealth, or wisdom, or a shag, respectively;
Her Apple Corps is Strong!

Now Paris was a healthy crimson-blooded Trojan boy
So he chose the prize of Helen and eloped with her to Troy;
If she weren't already married, they’d have lived a life of joy;
Her Apple Corps is Strong!

Menelaus sent his compliments with military force,
And the conflict that resulted was the Trojan War, of course
(That’s the one that took a decade and involved a massive horse);
Her Apple Corps s Strong!

Since the days of the Olympyans, many things have come to pass,
But we see the repercussions ev’ry time the folks en masse
Get defrauded by a promise from a giant horse’s ass;
Her Apple Corps is Strong!



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2. TTTO "ALL THINGS BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL" BUT LESS WET


All things weird and whimsical
All creatures daft and strange;
All things nuts and nightmarish,
Discordia made the range.

She made the naked mole-rat,
And solar powered slugs;
And desert toads whose skin secretes
Kaleidoscopic drugs.

All things weird and whimsical
All beasts bizarre and odd;
All grotesque inventions of
Our Lady Chaos God!

The eye-blood squirting lizards;
The platypi with beaks;
She must have been on something when
She made those kooky freaks.

All things of insanity;
Each live non-sequitir;
She even made humanity,
And human beings made Her.

I.

    1. In the beginning was the VOID, who had two daughters: one, the smaller, was that of Being, named ERIS; and one, the larger, was that of Non-being, named ANERIS.
    2. But you know this part.
    3. Or possibly the universe was created in a week by YHWH, or ZEUS; or created as a result of all manner of kinky shit by the GODS of Egypt or Babylon, or by purely impersonal forces.
    4. But you know these parts, too, or where to find them.
    5. And all these myths are true in some sense, false in some sense, and meaningless in some sense.
       

II.

    1. ERIS said, Let's start with an explosion.
    2. BOOM! That was awesome.
    3. Oh hey, if I adjust these fundamental constants... gravity, the speed of light, the Planck constant (note to Self: make a guy named Planck so this makes sense)...
    4. Lo, it makes stars and planets and galaxies and stuff!
    5. I'll just leave it here a minute while I go and get a snack.

III.
(ELEVEN BILLION YEARS LATER)

    1. As GODDESS was looking down the back of Her couch for Her keys, she spake, saying: Oh hey, the universe! I'd forgotten all about that.
    2. Ugh, it's gone all foosty.
    3. Is that... life?
    4. Well, maybe this could be interesting; what if I hack around with it a bit?
    5. For Her universe had reached the Pleistocene epoch; and ERIS took lumps of the Pleistocene and moulded them into forms that amused Her.
    6. ERIS spake, saying: *squidge* ooh, it's gone multicellular. *squeesh* oh look, fins! Maybe they'd work as legs if I... *splut* Oh heck, they're EVERYWHERE now.
    7. WAIT STOP EATING EACH OTHER GUYS! Ewwww.

IV.

    1. ERIS created Dinosaur.
    2. And Dinosaur did run, and roar, and fight other dinosaurs, and ERIS saw that it was cool.
    3. But eventually She got bored and 'accidentally' pressed the Asteroid Impact button.
    4. ERIS created Squirrel.
    5. And Squirrel climbed trees, and leapt between them; and gathered nuts and buried them; and fluffed its tail, and ERIS saw that it was cute.
    6. But eventually She got bored.
    7. So ERIS created Duck.
    8. And Duck swam, and quacked, and water ran off its back; and it produced ducklings that were adorable, but ultimately ERIS got bored again.
    9. ERIS created Shark, and Monkey, and Spider, and Sloth, and all the beasts of the field, and of the trees and river and forest and ocean as well; and the earth was acrawl (and aswim, and aclimb, etc.) with Her creations.
    10. But none of them kept her entertained for very long.
    11. What I need, spake ERIS to Herself, is a creation that will produce folly of its own, and ever new follies thereafter; that will always find some way to outdo its previous idiocy; something that will never cease to amuse Me with its sheer intractable ridiculousness.
    12. And ERIS created Human.

V.

    1. Just so we're 100% clear: bumsex is OK. I know this isn't a religion with many rules and holy books are supposed to be ambiguous, but this one seems to need spelled out.

This is an attempt to get my thoughts together about the illusion of the self. I find this stuff comforting - it's the nearest my rationalist ass gets to 'spirituality' - but also very hard to put into words, at least words that don't sound like they're coming from a basement stoner. I won't pretend it's central to, or even part of, Discordianism, but it's part of mine and that's OK. If I ever try to make a holy book I might put it in, between the comic stories about whales that I'm better at.

I'm not sure if it makes any sense at all, to be honest, and I'm a little wary about posting it here. But I think at the very least it's a nice thought experiment, and it's better than arguing.

----

THERE'S NOTHING SPECIAL ABOUT YOU
AND THAT'S LIBERATING AS HECK

Don't get me wrong: you're probably all right. In fact, if you're reading this, chances are you're pretty cool. That person rocks. What there's nothing special about is the fact that it's you. The fact that this spark of consciousness happens to be reading through these eyes in this moment.

Just as cosmology tells us that every point in the universe has equal claim to being the 'centre', every sentient being has equal claim to being me.

I believe this is the meaning of, or at least related to, the tenet in both Buddhism and Taoism that the self is an illusion. It's also my solution to both the Zen koan 'This mind is Buddha' and the story about the man pissing in a phone box in the SJ Games Principia. I don't believe in reincarnation, but I think this has similar or even identical implications.

It has fascinating ramifications for empathy, because nobody's happiness is less, or more, important than your own. Same with nobody's sadness, or anger, or misfortune, or education, or virtuousness, or sense of their own success or failure. As far as the universe is concerned, they're all you, same as you are. They are therefore exactly as deserving of your sympathy and care as the person reading this. Love thy neighbour as thy self, because your neighbour is you. The President is you. That person you can't stand? You. Sorry.

This doesn't imply that criminals should go unpunished or even that jerks shouldn't be sneered at, but it does mean that questions around those things should be considered with a view to increasing the net good for everyone. Whatever that means.

And if the self is an illusion, then so is selfishness. If you screw someone else over to benefit 'yourself', all you've done is lowered net happiness. Any selfish act is not only unethical, it's literally pointless. More than that – it's nonsense.

I.

    1. The voice of the LORD came unto Jonah son of Amittai, saying: Arise; go unto the City of Nineveh, for I have a commandment for thee, should thou choose to accept it.
    2. And, as I believe I have made abundantly clear, I am thy GOD, which meaneth thou hast no choice.
    3. Get thine ass to the City of Nineveh, and cry against it.
    4. But Jonah rose up to flee, saying: My dad was a prophet. I know what happens to folk who get too close to GOD.
    5. One minute thou art in their good books; the next, thou art a pillar of salt, or emplagued by frogs, or frogs even with salt in their mouths, so that when they leap at thee, thou art empillared by salt.
    6. For the LORD is like unto a divine pisshead at the back of a tavern, yea; thou art one minute His best mate, then breaketh He His glass on the table and threateneth to smite the lot of ye.
    7. So Jonah fled, heading him to the coast and the fastest ship out of there, saying unto the sailors, I'll take a one-way ticket.
    8. The sailors, befuddled, replied: But we have not told thee where we are going.
    9. Jonah replied, It is for the best, and did pay them an hundred shekels to ask no questions.
    10. But when the ship was two days out to sea, the LORD appeared once again unto Jonah, saying: thinkst thou, mortal, that thou canst outrun me? I am omnipresent, thou knowest.
    11. And Jonah said: I need not outrun Thee, O LORD; I need only outrun some other shmuck whom Thou may grease up and use in Thy machinations.
    12. The crew of the ship, hearing the exchange, did then bang their fists against the door of the cabin wherein Jonah was, saying, Hast thou got a GOD in there?
    13. At which the LORD conjured a storm to violently rock the ship, saying, Damn right he hath.
    14. The sailors said, Thou wert told, no guests. He stayeth, He payeth. And Jonah could not pay, so they took him up and cast him into the sea.
    15. Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. Or perhaps a whale; it dependeth at which page thou openest the book.
   

II.

    1. Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and nights.
    2. And Jonah said, Just my luck; for I have been been swallowed by a constipated whale, who hath apparently mistaken me for a large, flesh-coloured piece of plankton.
    3. And a voice spake unto Jonah: Thinkest thou, that thou hast it bad? How thinkst thou I feel?
    4. To which Jonah said, Oh GOD.
    5. To which the voice replied, Guess again.
    6. Jonah said: Holy Cow, a talking whale!
    7. And the whale replied: Only since this morning. For but yesterday, yea, I was a perfectly normal whale, who swimmeth and singeth and migrateth without a care in the world.
    8. Then, Wham! Suddenly I find myself bestowed with the power of intellectual thought, and driven by an unknown force to swim three hundred miles out of my way, swallow some half-drowned toerag and take him to Nineveh.
    9. And this pisseth me off; for I am not a bloody taxi.
    10. Jonah said, Should I even believe that I am speaking to a whale? 'Tis more likely this is but a delusion, and in reality I am babbling in a cell somewhere surrounded by brain-doctors.
    11. For the largest whale is the Blue Whale, and it could not swallow anything larger than a football, so narrow is its oesophagus. Also, they live not around these parts.
    12. No, said the whale; we whales fear the Holy Land, for we hear it is a place of much whaling and gnashing of teeth.
    13. Perhaps I am a sperm whale. Their throats are bigger.
    14. Jonah said, I would die in thy stomach. It's full of hydrochloric acid.
    15. And the whale said, S'magic, innit.
    16. Speak not, O Whale, said Jonah, for I will not hear; we are not having this conversation.
    17. Whereupon the whale told him: Thy problem is, thou art taking this all too literally.
    18. And Jonah waxed bemused, saying: Literally? It is happening to me!
    19. And the whale said, Thank of it as an allegory or metaphor.
    20. Jonah asked, A meta-for what, exactly?
    21. The whale said, Well, it's er
    22. Obviously it's
    23. Er
    24. Hmmm.
    25. Oh I know! That you can't escape the will of God.
    26. Defy thou not the Divine Will of the LORD, or He shall set His Whale upon thee.
    27. I don't know, I didn't write the damn thing.

III.

    1. The whale asked of Jonah, What wantst thou to go to Nineveh for, anyway?
    2. Jonah replied, I don't want to go. That is the point. But the LORD hath commanded me to go to Nineveh and cry against it.
    3. To which the whale said, Why?
    4. Said Jonah, It is a place of wickedness, apparently; and I wonder what sort of wickedness that could be, eh?
    5. Didst thou ever visit Sodom and Gomorrah? No, thou wouldst not, for they are both inland.
    6. Great Cities they were, friendly, with amazing night life and a thriving local arts scene.
    7. Till the LORD got wind of the fact that some of the people there might be, you know.
    8. Gay.
    9. And of course the LORD hath no truck with that sort of thing.
    10. So He sent down a team of Angels to Sodom to investigate. Only these Angels, right, they are the gayest angels thou canst imagine.
    11. Every one of these Angels was as handsome as Adonis, causing them to particularly stand out in Sodom; for it was a City of the Plain.
    12. And each Angel was attired in the garb of a particular guild of professionals: there came the soldier Angel, the militiaman Angel, the construction worker Angel, the cowherd Angel, and the fifth Angel, who appeareth in garments of form-fitting black leather, and rideth a screaming iron horse of two wheels.
    13. The Angels took lodgings at the house of Lot, who was supposedly the only good man in Sodom.
    14. Then a number of the Sodomites came knocking on the door of the house of Lot, to enquire if the Angels might want to come out for the evening; sample the local wines and ales, see the sights; yea, and maybe take in a musical.
    15. Lot, being such a good man, remember, offers them his young daughters instead, 'to do as they will with'. The Sodomites, because they have a basic sense of ethics, refuse.
    16. And that's it; bam! Rain of fire and brimstone. Two cities wiped off the map. Men, women, enbies, children. Burned alive. Lot gets allowed out, but Mrs Lot gets the pillar-of-salt treatment as an encore.
    17. Then the whale said, Isn't it possible that there hath been a popular misunderstanding of the text, and they were actually killed not for being gay, but for being greedy?
    18. Whereupon Jonah said, Oh; that's all right then.
       

IV.

    1. Jonah hungered.
    2. Jonah asked the whale, Canst thou bring me some food? And the whale answered, Do I look like a flippin' burger van? Oh, all right; let me see what I can do.
    3. With a tremendous gulping noise and an influx of seawater, a fish did appear in the belly of the whale beside Jonah.
    4. And just as Jonah was about to tuck in, the fish spake, saying: Pssst!
    5. Tired of authoritarian GODS sending thee halfway across the known world to cry against some city thou hast never heard of?
    6. Want to make thine own rules? Disobey commandments at thine own discretion, without being swallowed by an aquatic mammal? There is an Answer!
    7. And the fish transformed; for it was not a fish, but a GODDESS, having assumed fish form for Her own reasons, into which we will not go here.
    8. And Her Name was ERIS.
    9. And ERIS spake, saying: Jonah, do you actually want to go to Nineveh?
    10. And Jonah said, No.
    11. And ERIS spake, saying: Whale, do you want to take him to Nineveh?
    12. And the Whale said, No.
    13. And ERIS said, I have a Divine Plan.
       

V.

    1. But what about GOD? said the whale. Pillars of salt don't last long underwater. How shall we escape His Wrath? For what protecteth man, woman or whale from an omnipresent, omnipotent GOD?
    2. ERIS said: Iron chariots. It's in the Book of Judges. Sisero's men built chariots of iron to shield themselves from the LORD.
    3. Jonah said, Did it work?
    4. And ERIS said, Yeah. Well. At first, yeah.
    5. One of My Prophets is a mad blacksmith. Whale, I'm uploading his co-ordinates to thy pineal gland. Highball thou thence, and he shall fit thee with iron plating.
    6. The whale replied, Won't I sink?
    7. ERIS said, Not if we fit thee also with wheels! And harpoon guns on thy sides. Wishest thou not to fire an harpoon right into the side of a whaling-ship?
    8. Whereupon the whale replied, Hell yeah.
    9. And so it is that Jonah and his Iron-Plated Mecha-Whale roam the seabed; get into all sorts of scrapes with pirates and sunken treasure; inadvertently cause all the other events of the Bible; fight giant squids, save lady whales, and generally have a much better time than they would be having in a less permissive religion.

As you may know, there've been Black Lives Matter protests in the UK (partly in sympathy with the American protesters, partly because our police suck too.) These have included various acts of disrespect to public statuary, including chucking a statue of slave trader Edward Colston into the fucking sea. Despite concerned citizens' wailing about "erasing history", nobody outside Bristol had heard of Edward Colston last week and this has probably done more to educate the British public about him than leaving his statue standing for another century would have done.

In preparation for the big BLM protest on Sunday, which ended up not actually happening, some statues, including this one of noted tactician, imperialist, cigar aficionado, eugenicist, alcoholic, giant baby lookalike, architect of the Bengal famine and national patron deity Sir Winston Churchill, were encased in protective boxes, because the establishment know what they've done:


Rightwing journalist Antonello Guerrera tweeted a photo of the box, with the text "Churchill’s statue today in London. I’m speechless."

This went semi-viral, probably just in the UK, with various replies from patriots and pisstakers.

I copied that picture into GIMP and spent about two minutes mashing this up after a shot from TV's "The Walking Dead":


to make this:


I did not expect anyone to
(a) believe that it was a real picture, or
(b) believe that I had expected anyone to believe it was a real picture.

Unfortunately my fellow humans have let me down on both counts.

The picture has gone viral and the responses are about one part people appreciating the joke; one part people thinking it's real and hilarious; one part people thinking it's real and terrible; one part people who think it's real but a false-flag operation by anti-BLMers; one part people mad at me for "spreading fake news"; one part people thinking they're clever for spotting it's "fake"; three parts "don't racist open inside??" and four parts predictable arguments about Churchill and Was Someone Really Bad Just Because They Starved Three Million Indians and You'd Be Speaking German If It Weren't For Him, because for some reason rightwingers always think the worst thing about a Nazi victory would have been having to learn a new language.

This is still going on, even after I changed my twitter username to "You're not meant to believe the statue thing is real" yesterday afternoon.

Some people seem to have been joining in the fun: https://twitter.com/search?q=%22churchill%27s%20statue%20today%20in%20london%20i%27m%20speechless%22&src=typed_query

Today I made the quality journalism of the Sunday Times:

(who not only can't be arsed to fact-check, they are too classy for contractions.)
The article is behind a paywall so I don't know if the picture is in there.

Hail Eris, I guess.

Hello! I make text adventure and puzzle games at http://versificator.itch.io. Eris gets a brief mention in The Xylophoniad.

I also made this audio series about George Orwell and H. G. Wells getting up to all sorts of time travelling shenanigans: https://soundcloud.com/dulcimerjohnson/sets/the-adventures-of-george
There are two episodes so far; the third is in production (i.e. I've got all the voicework from the actors but I haven't been arsed to edit it together yet.)

Share and Enjoy!

Daibai said to Baso, "What's with all those koans where the novice asks the master for wisdom and the master is like 'Wash your bowl' or something mundane, and hearing this, the novice was enlightened?"
Hearing this, Baso was enlightened.
Daibai said, "See what I mean? What I said wasn't enlightening at all."
Baso was even more enlightened.
Daibai said, "Stop i–"
SO ENLIGHTENED.