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Quick idea. Here's the prank:

We create a little archive of text files. These files appear to be the "discordian secrets". They might be actual Discordian texts, sermons, etc. They might be stuff we made up. It might be single pages from existing stuff. Some of it might be gibberish.

The vault is password protected. On the page somewhere, there's a unique string that appears nowhere else on the web.

Then we create posters that contain that string, as well as the password to the vault. The password might be a puzzle of some sort, or we could just be straightforward about it. The posters are distributed and put up in cities all over the place.


People who are intrigued by the posters will google the string. This leads them to the website. Those that figure out the password get access to these secret files. In their minds, this is a reward. That text will get more of their attention. They'll tend to think that these files are "significant".


---that's the whole idea! It's just a really roundabout hook for Eris. If we can present it in a way that's surreal, intriguing, and makes you feel like you've discovered some kind of secret conspiracy, you'll be more likely to be CURSED with the MADNESS.

[The Back story]

The Great Poop Prank of 2006
a true story by Professor Cramulus

You had asked about Discordian weddings. I have a story about a Discordian wedding, but it's in the middle of a story about one of the greatest pranks I've ever pulled.

It was 2007. I was living in the Obnoxious Jerk Cabalhouse in Stamford CT. The OJC was a group of loud Discordian spags that spent most of their time shouting for no reason and carrying on like assholes. That's another story.

My cabalmate Golden Rod was the priest at his Sister's wedding. The sister didn't really know anything about Discordia, she just knew that he was a registered minister in Connecticut (Thanks ULC!). Golden Rod warned her that a Discordian wedding would probably have some sort of awful twist. She said that would be cool.



The Back story

Now let me back up a bit. Golden Rod and I are best friends. In the year that this story takes place, I was pulling an epic prank on him.

Golden Rod was a master at the video game Halo. He played in national tournaments. He won money. He played every day. At this point in our story, he was kind of deep into it. You couldn't even talk to him, he'd be glued to the TV in his room for 8-12 hours at a time.

Golden Rod had just bought his first computer of his very own. There had always been one in the house, but he had never owned one. He was kind of a newbie at computers. When he installed AOL Instant Messenger, all sorts of people came out of the woodwork to say Hi. Prior to this, he was only online for like 15 minutes per week. So if you actually caught the crazy bastard online, you'd want to say Hi.

One night, I sneaked into Golden Rod's room and changed his AIM Profile to say, "Hi, this is <name omitted>'s roommate, and I'm pulling a prank on him. I'd like your help. Please contact him some time in the next 3 days and tell him you had an incredible dream, and he was in it. Make up anything you want, but during this dream, he craps his pants. You can use AIM, but it's better to call him, e-mail him, or contact him some other way. Please don't spoil the joke by telling him what's really up!"

Without going on too much about Golden Rod's personality, this was really the perfect prank for him. Believing that multiple people were having dreams about him is the sort of thing that would get into his head. He would be skeptical, but a part of him would really want to believe that something mystical was happening.

For the next week, the messages poured in. "I just had this crazy dream, dude! I was on the subway, and there was this homeless guy, and he shit right on the floor... and when he turned around, IT WAS YOU!"

At first, Golden Rod was amused. But after three or four people had told him similar stories, he began to suspect something was up. But here was the problem - a lot of the people who were coming out of the woodwork to talk to him weren't even friends. A bunch of them were people he had met online, or at some remote show or convention - he hadn't talked to them in YEARS. There was no way somebody contacted all of these people. He couldn't figure out what node connected all of them (it was himself, all along!).

Some of my friends delivered FANTASTIC performances. Golden Rod grilled them hard and they held up under pressure, acting shocked when they heard other people were having similar dreams. Some of their performances had him convinced that at least SOME of these poop dreams really happened.

By day 3, Golden Rod started to get worried. "I honestly don't understand what's going on," he told me, "It's either an elaborate prank, in which case somebody has been VERY clever, or Eris is sending me some message through the dreaming."

"Maybe it's a prophecy," I said, "Maybe you're going to crap your pants."

"That's what worries me," he told me, "Every time I fart, I think to myself, oh fuck, it's happening. I've been crapping like crazy so I don't shit myself at work or something."

"I know what's going to happen," I replied, smirking, "You're going to be stuck in traffic on I-95, and there will be no bathroom. You'll shit your pants, then you'll have to sit in it for an hour."

"That is the worst thing I can imagine," he said, brow furrowed with genuine worry.

"Maybe you should just get it over with," I suggested. Golden Rod's brow furrowed again. Then there was silence. He was really considering crapping his pants on purpose!

I saw his brow furrow again. "I'm gonna do it," he said.

I waited.

He couldn't do it.

"You might as well do it here in the apartment while you've got clean underwear in the other room," I said.

He told me I was right. He tried to crap himself again. But he couldn't bring himself to intentionally shit his pants.

He was so confused. Are all mystical experiences like this? he wondered. If this is a prank, I can't figure out who's behind it. On the other hand, if Gods really are real, why am I worshiping this awful fecally-obsessed harpy?




The Wedding

A few days passed. Golden Rod had worked himself up to a state of poop-anxiety. He said his butt-cheeks were clenched all day. He was seeing poop everywhere. He knew the prophecy was coming true, whatever it was.

A cabalmate of mine ("Hideously Superfluous K") actually crapped his pants by accident after eating at a buffet. This was a sign.

It was Saturday. Golden Rod was wearing his finest, officiating over his sister's wedding. It was a beautiful day, despite the cranky constipated infant (being held by Golden Rod's mother).

Golden Rod said some nice words, he said some silly words, he said some sweet and sentimental words. Then he wrapped up the ceremony with a "You may kiss the bride." The bride and groom began making out.

All hell broke loose.

The infant SUDDENLY and EXPLOSIVELY recovered from her constipation. You know what happens when you put your thumb over a hose nozzle and water sprays everywhere? Liquid shit blasted out of the kid's diaper. It got all over the flower girl's head and face. Golden Rod's mom was covered in shit. It kept coming out. The mom ran towards the bridesmaids, trying to pass off the fecal spray hose. The bridesmaids panicked, screaming, flailing around, falling all over each other, getting covered in shit. The whole congregation exploded in laughter, terror, disgust, amusement, you name it. Golden Rod raised his hands into the air, concluding the ceremony by shouting "ALL HAIL DISCORDIA".




Waiting for the other shoe to drop...

At this point, I wasn't sure what to do. Should I tell Golden Rod that this has been an elaborate prank? Or should I just never tell him, leaving him with a feeling of unease and mystery for the rest of his life?

Eventually I realized that it's a prank, and it's for MY entertainment, so I should try to wrap it up.

I tried to tell Golden Rod, I really did.

I went into his room one day while he was playing Halo. I put his AIM profile up on the screen. He didn't even know what an AIM profile was, but it was the key to the poop dream mystery. It was the only point shared by all these different branches of his social network. I said, "When you get a chance, check this out."

He said, "I will," but he didn't look up. I went to bed, locking my door behind me.

Golden Rod never did check out the monitor. His girlfriend eventually came home and closed the window without reading it.

The next day, before bed, I went back into his room. "Did you check out that thing?" I asked.

"Nah," he said, "Christie closed the window. What was it?"

"Check it out," I said, putting the profile back up on the screen. I surpressed my giddy giggle and left the room.

He didn't check it out. Hours later, his computer restarted itself, and the window was closed.

The third day came. I told myself that if he didn't get it today, Eris probably wanted him to be left in the dark.

I said, "I know you didn't see this, but you really do need to look at it. You'll thank me later." I turned the monitor towards Golden Rod, who was busy blasting people with an assault rifle in Halo.

"Yeah sure," he said, waving me off. I figured he wouldn't see it. I went to bed and locked my door.

That night, Golden Rod DID check it out before he went to bed. I remember waking up briefly at 4:30 AM to him yelling "MOTHERFUCKER!" in shock and surprise.

But nobody was awake. He couldn't flip out about it, nobody was there to hear his outrage. And my door was locked. So Golden Rod bottled it up and went to bed.




The next day, I drove into Connecticut for a party at a friend's beach house. Golden Rod was there, but we didn't talk about the prank. The party stretched late into the night. Eventually, the sun was coming up over the Atlantic Ocean.

Somebody said, (totally randomly) "I had the weirdest dream the other day."

At this point, steam began to come out of Golden Rod's ears. His eyes bulged. "I saw," he said, breathing heavily, "I saw my AIM profile..."  All that rage he had bottled up began to escape.

I grinned. "And...?"

"And.... YEEEEEAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHH!" ---- that was the sound he made as he choked me.


The next 30 minutes were spent as he called up every single person that told him about their dream. This was 5 AM so he woke up everybody he called. This one poor girl was in the hospital with meningitis, she couldn't even sit up, and he yelled at her all the same. "YOU WERE IN ON IT TOO?" he shouted into the cell phone. She hung up on him. He called back and kept yelling. Eventually, his phone ran out of batteries.

"That's it," he said, "I'm out of here."

He pushed a rowboat into the ocean and paddled away.




He actually did get lost at sea, and was stranded in the boat with no water as the sun came up. When he eventually came back, he was sunburned like a lobster, dehydrated, crashed out on my friend's deck.

"All I have to say," he said to me, thoroughly exhausted, lying face down in the sand, "is that you got me. You got me real good."



And that is the story of the Great Poop Prank of 2006.

This topic has been moved to Principia Discussion. If we don't keep this place organized, it'll become self aware and destroy us.


http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=31571.0

Last week, 3 million of us beat back America's attack on our Internet! --- but there is an even bigger threat out there, and our global movement for freedom online is perfectly poised to kill it for good.

KROM - a global treaty - could allow nations to conduct warfare over the Internet. Negotiated in secret by a small number of rich countries and corporate powers, it would set up a shadowy new regulatory body to transmit startling pornographic imagery -- and even impose scatological web filters -- on people they say have harmed their business.

Europe is deciding right now whether to ratify KROM -- and without them, this global attack on Internet freedom will collapse. We know they have opposed KROM before, but some members of Parliament are actually attracted to shock porn -- let's give them the push they need to reject the treaty. Sign the petition -- we'll do a spectacular delivery in Brussels when we reach 500,000,000 signatures!

Tripletits was right. This topic has been moved to Propaganda Depository.

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=18902.0

[In the Spirit World of Ideas]

The Spirit World of Ideas

Memetic processes occur in a space which is not tied to physical geography. We can think of memetic interactions as taking place within "meme space", a virtual place that occupies the memory of a communication network. This is analogous to a "cyber space" which occurs within one's mind. It is within this meme space that we will visualize memetic systems and nodes interacting with one another.

Memetics is a tool for describing the process through which culture is generated and inherited. The basic idea is that memes (units of cultural inheritance) are transmitted (and modified in the process) between communication nodes. A node could be an individual or an organization - anything capable of transmitting information and receiving feedback. Ideas are refined through feedback loops - for example, if a company produces an offensive commercial, they receive feedback in terms of sales and PR, and if they're intelligent, they will change how they communicate until they're getting better feedback. Our culture is a complex network of these feedback loops.

Typically, we look at the world from a human-centric point of view - we are independent actors, we have free will to choose our own actions, and information is nonliving -- it's inert, it's just data!

There is another way of looking at things though, and I think this is sometimes a more useful way of understanding behavior/culture/current events. I call it the Spirit World of Ideas. (sometimes called "memespace")

In the Spirit World of Ideas, information is the real life force in the cosmos, and we are just the dumb hardware designed to carry it.

An idea has its own life cycle. Small ideas are like bugs - they have a short life span, so reproduction is a challenge. Big ideas start off small, but as they gain representation in the world, they acquire defenses, they make redundant copies of themselves, they diversify, they mutate, they better reward their hosts. (Much like flowers - bees don't carry pollen for flowers with no nectar!)

To explain this way of thinking, let's look at a big idea -- say Christianity. Christianity started off as a small cult. Something about that idea provided a benefit to people, so they internalized it, talked about it, spread it, reaped the benefits (benefits like status, community, and mayyyybe some spiritual experiences). Lots of versions of Christianity appeared - the gnostics, the catholic church, et cetera. Christianity planted itself in a lot of different types of soil. Some soil was more fertile than other soil.

Christianity competed with other ideas for territory, particularly the Roman religion. The territory isn't physical, like churches or kingdoms, the territory is people's minds. (meme space) The Roman religion defended its territory by destroying the physical idea carriers. Christian writings were suppressed. This is natural selection in action -- only the most coherent, powerful, and organized versions of Christianity survived. It's like using vaccines to build a super-virus.

You can see how we can talk about ideas independently of human beings. We can describe ideas as their own semi-autonomous cellular organisms, capable of living, reproducing, producing waste, and one day dying. If we describe ideas as organisms with their own identity, then it makes sense to look at humans as the environment in which these ideas live. We humans are the landscape of the Spirit World of Ideas. We are a physical site where bundles of ideas compete, a bridge between the twin planes of biology and information.

In the Spirit World of Ideas, what we think of as Free Will is just the process of one idea within that bundle beating the others. It's able to exert more control over its host than its competition by exploiting the reward systems of that particular biological landscape. Your process of choosing (be it a religion or what to have for lunch) is an act of natural selection. Speaking to other people about ideas is like being a bee, carrying pollen for our own reasons, yet in doing so, we perform an essential role in something else's reproductive process.



That's the brief explanation about how to see the Spirit World of Ideas.

The board is quiet today! And the rest of my work for the day consists of mindlessly transcribing mountains of text, so I've been distracting myself. So here's a shitty internet meme. I never do these things, so forgive me this once.



My answer was from a grammar textbook...

"Ask and answer yes/no questions about the simple past."

FUCK

We are makin dudes poop
We are makin dudes poop
We are making poop dudes

Who knows

What poop dudes do
in the dead of the night
in a dream that's divine

They have poop mouths
and poop jobs
This they realize
with poop eyes

so full of shit

Lights out, naked in the stall
reliving the creation myth
   (except Kronos isn't THAT hungry)
those poop dudes poop the divine

Their ideas are so hot you'll shit too.
Stay the fuck back, monkey!
MY ideas, MY poop!

When you hear the poop idea,
you'll be a little dude too--
a dude made out of poop

We are makin dudes poop
We are making poop dudes

who knows?

who gives a shit?

Lo! Sing it from the mountains and streams!

Hey hey! Hurl it from the plateaus and bridges!

Then pee

[best single-posts]

You see that link right underneath the topic of this post, to the left of the timestamp? That's a Single Post link. It's a link to THIS POST itself, but none of the replies. This is a new feature here at the PD forums, and I'd like to play with it.

This is a contest to find the best single-posts in the archives of the PD forums.



How is this different than the "Best Post Of The Day" thread? Generally, the POTD thread is to draw attention to great posts that have just been made. This thread is about going back in time and finding single posts that are cool to read. You're not allowed to post anything from the POTD thread.

Remember, you're looking for awesome posts, not awesome threads. Finding a great single post may take a bit of hunting.


Behind the curtain: The "Real" Goal is to find some great content that we can use to lure more victims collaborators to the Peedy forums. We want to find great little snippets which are funny, clever, intriguing, creative, enlightening, beautiful, or charges you up. Look for stuff that people would pass around, link their friends to, etc.

Eventually, Faust may code us a sexy single-post display format, so we can link people to single posts and it'll be set on something like Official Stationary. At that point it'll be pretty easy to mine this thread for links to blast out onto the net.


OKAY GO!

[Reality]

I just picked up Zen Without Zen Masters by Camden Benares, aka the Count of Five.

If you're into Discordian Zen, you'll dig this book. The book contains about 120 koans, each one is only a few paragraphs long. I'll share a few in this thread.

For those of you into Discordian History, you'll enjoy the numerous appearances of Mal and Omar. A few of the chapters describe conversations which took place between some of the classic Discordians -- conversations which are also referenced in the Principia. For example----


Reality

In a discussion Bert said that reality can be described in many ways, but the description that an individual accepts is the one that conforms to that individual's preconceptions. Omar expanded on this by defining objective reality as the fantasy that has received the majority vote and subjective reality as personal fantasy. Mal concluded the discussion by saying "Reality is the original Rorschach."










Here's some others I liked:

Illusion and Reality

Expounding on his knowledge of gurus and their system,s Ralph said, "Any system that prepares you for enlightenment by a description or a nondescription gives you the tools to build the illusion of enlightenment. If this is done with skill it is perhaps impossible to tell the difference between the illusion and the reality."

Lucas replied, "Perhaps there is no difference."








Belief and Creation

Today I heard about a new thing called whatamores. I now believe in whatamores. If you can live in whatamores and if we can form a mutually acceptable definition, we will discover large amounts of circumstantial evidence proving the existence of whatamores. When we believe enough, there will be whatamores. Do we really want any?




Science and Magic

Science and magic are frequently different maps for very similar territory. Following the past of least resistance, science ignores magic's hard-to-travel path. Magic uses myth and science uses ambiguous terminology: Semantically, both say the same thing. Each principle is expressed as "An unknown something is doing we don't know what." Each law is a variation of "It did it again."




The Artist's Enlightenment

An artist, depressed and almost unable to paint, consulted Sam, a Zen-oriented therapist, for aid in coping with his problems. He asked what the fee would be, explaining that his income had dwindled since he was doing fewer paintings. Sam said his fee would be two paintings. The first, to be titled Despair, was to be completed before the therapy began; the second was to be titled by the artist and was to be started when the therapy ended.

The artist painted Despair and presented it to Sam, who looked at it and then threw it into the blazing fireplace. The artist walked out. He returned a few days later with the second painting.

[Apples To Apples]

I wanted to share this kopyleft game I found on the net. You can buy a deck real cheap, or make one yourself. They give away the PDF for free, you just have to print it (preferably on cardstock) and cut it out.

http://www.cardsagainsthumanity.com/

The game has a lot in common with Apples To Apples. Everybody gets 10 white cards, which are basically nouns.

You take turns being the Czar. The Czar draws a black card, which is like a category or question. Everybody passes the Czar a white card (face down) which they think best answers that question or fits in that category. Then the Czar decides which of the white cards was the most hilarious answer. That player gets a point.

For example:



We've been talking a lot about copyright and the entertainment industry. If we don't like the MPAA et al, what's the alternative? Cards Against Humanity is facing in the right direction, it's an example of a cool game that came from the copyleft movement. The creators set up a kickstarter, quickly received 300% of the money they wanted for the game, and released it to the public. They got paid, and we all get free entertainment.

I am printing these out RIGHT NOW.

There must be a topic about this somewhere already...

From what I can tell, Dudeism is another neophilic irreligion. It seems like a mix of Taoism and the Big Lebowski.

An ancient philosophy that preaches non-preachiness, practices as little as possible, and above all, uh...lost my train of thought there. Anyway, if you'd like to find peace on earth and goodwill, man, we'll help you get started. Right after a little nap.

The idea is this: Life is short and complicated and nobody knows what to do about it. So don't do anything about it. Just take it easy, man. Stop worrying so much whether you'll make it into the finals. Kick back with some friends and some oat soda and whether you roll strikes or gutters, do your best to be true to yourself and others – that is to say, abide.

I found it because I found this weird version of the sacred chao while looking for copyleft imagery. This Discordian thinks dudeism and eris are in accordance, check it out:  http://dudeism.com/smf/index.php?topic=1973.0

Like us, they've even got their own version of the Tao Te Ching, the Dude De ching: http://dudeism.com/tao/ - this was clearly written in the same way we wrote the Chao Te Ching; they started with a chapter from the Tao Te Ching and played with it until it felt like something from The Big Lebowski.




much like Discordia, this is a big joke with a note of no-this-is-for-real at the core

[Kopyleft Notice]

This thread is for brainstorming trifold pamphlets. The idea here is to just throw out a bunch of pamphlet ideas, even if you have no intention of making one.

Kopyleft Notice: Any text or idea posted in this thread could be picked up and developed by somebody else. so don't post content you're not comfortable giving away.

Here's the rough structure... this is mainly to help you get started, you don't have to have the full concept thought out. Feel free to post bits of a concept, and leave a bunch of ???????s in the parts you haven't figured out. We'll chat about the idea and maybe come up with something to put in the blank spots.



Concept: a short description of the pamphlet's intention or goal. Is there a specific issue you want to raise awareness of? a specific idea that you want to draw attention to? Is there something you want to combat or address? A common misconception you want to challenge?

Front Cover: Generally, this is a title and an image. Sometimes you draw people in with a big question.

Inside: You've got about 200 words per panel to make your point. I wouldn't go over 200 or 300 words per column. And you should probably think of what images would go with the text. The body of the pamphlet is actually 4 pages, which people generally read in the following order:

Inside (left): a brief summary
Inside Flap: (the back of the inside right column)
Inside Center,
Inside Right

and finally, there's the

Back Cover: closing words and a hook. This could be our website, an e-mail address, or a way to get involved. The back cover launches the reader into action.



I have been ITCHING to make something awesome and then go blast it everywhere. So let's see if we can come up with something cool which will be fun to distribute.

This has been my obsession as of late.

It started when I discovered that Rodney Dangerfield had a hip hop single called "Rappin' Rodney"



Behold and Despair: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLGxWPtgodo

It's pretty catchy, actually. And No, Rodney doesn't "rap", he just delivers a bunch of his classic one-liners with some backup singers. The whole thing is hilarious because (1) there is no way in hell that this was Rodney Dangerfield's idea (2) at one point in history, this is what music producers thought rap music should sound like.

[end-game scenarios]

         IMPENDING DOOM HAS ARRIVED

       And Five Days Prior to This Occasion The Apostle The Elder Malaclypse Shall Walk the Streets of Whittier Bearing a Sign for All Literates to Read thereof: "DOOM", as a Warning of Forthcoming Doom to All Men Impending. And He Shall Signal This Event by Seeking the Poor and Distributing to Them Precious MAO BUTTONS and Whittier Shall be Known as The Region of Thud for These Five Days.      -Principia Discordia, p53

It's 2012. So obviously the world is really ending* this year. There are a few great end-game scenarios. Maybe this will be the "end of the mayan 4th world" and the 5th world will begin and Quetzalcoatl will be elected president. Maybe the technological singularity will happen and our world will be replaced by some kind of digital dystopia. Things become obsolete faster than they can be manufactured. Machines learn to learn and they stumble forward without us like toddlers taking their first shaky steps. Maybe the American Election will tip the global scales of power and snakes and blood and fire will spill out of it. Maybe Terrence McKenna is right, and by Dec 21 2012, we will have gone through every possible combination of ideas and cultural movements, we'll run out of "novelty", and in order to deal with it, humanity will become something new. Maybe there'll be a neuroscience breakthrough and we'll become part machine, part of the internet, leaving or old human shells behind like obselete 5.25 inch disk drives. Maybe aliens or Cthulhu or Niburu or Bachmania or something. Maybe the worldwide protest movements will succeed, the world order will crumble, and be replaced by a new one. Maybe the Internet's tangled distributed nervous system will become self aware and a new organism will be born, a collective consciousness with its own free will which is both made by us and independent of us. Maybe Iran's nuclear weapons program will succeed and there'll be an international spark which causes a full-scale nuclear war, wiping all of us from the face of the earth. There are a million ways that 2013 could look completely alien to us here in January of 2012.

We Discordians are not required to believe the "correct" things, in fact, life's a lot more fun with a few creative delusions. I love to get wrapped up in Apocalypse Hysteria. Before the Y2K thing happened, I was out there with a giant sign warning people about THE END. During the Rapture I screamed myself hoarse. And I'm planning on getting all bent out of shape about 2012. If you've never gone completely batshit about the end of the world before, you should try it out. You get a chance every few years, but I think this one is special. Discordians have their own Eschatology. According to our mythology (which we are forbidden to believe), before the world ends, Malaclypse the Elder will return and pass out Mao buttons to poor people in California1. In the Illuminatus! Trilogy, Malaclypse's last words to humanity go something like "When our day comes, the sun will rise in the west!" Then he walked into the Pacific Ocean and was never seen again. Our calendar ends with The Aftermath [of Bureaucracy] fading back into Primal Chaos, the unformed and undefined state of things-to-come. The interesting part (to me at least) is not the return to Chaos, but the transformation of Bureaucracy into Aftermath. (this transformation is the essence of Discordian Alchemy). Those worldwide protest movements are working on it. This is the new age of Discordian mythology. When the Planet Eris was discovered, it marked the beginning of the New Discordian Era. We're a non-prophet organization so we didn't see that coming. But it was probably an omen of some kind. But we don't quite have enough information to get really tweaked out about it. If I'm going to work myself up into a good froth by this December, we're going to need some more predictions about the End Times.

Eris has spoken to me. I can tell it's really her. She says that many of you have a vision of the apocalypse. And what's really going to happen* is probably a goulash of your weirdest and truest ideas.

So here's my question for you, Discordians: What's going to happen? How is this world going to end? How will we be sure it's coming? How will we get worked up into a good froth about the Apocalypse? What are we going to be freaking out about over the next year?

PROPHECIZE, SPAGS

When somebody asks me why I'm going so crazy about December 2012, I want to look them right in the eyes and say......

THE END TIMES ARE HERE.
NOBODY EXPECTS THE TRUTH---
---IT'S EVEN WEIRDER







_{*for real this time}

http://techland.time.com/2012/01/12/sopa-reddit-confirms-january-18-blackout-wikipedia-and-others-may-follow/?iid=tl-main-mostpop1

It's on — at least partially: Reddit has announced that it will go dark for 12 hours to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has said that he hopes to coordinate with the site so that Wikipedia does the same. Will other sites join in? Should we prepare for the Great Internet Strike of 2012?

Writing that it's "not taking this action lightly," Reddit announced on Tuesday that it will black out its site on Jan. 18 for 12 hours, starting at 8 a.m. E.T. During that period, the site's content will be replaced with "a simple message about how the PIPA/SOPA legislation would shut down sites like reddit, link to resources to learn more, and suggest ways to take action." The company will also run a live video stream of that day's House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing on Internet security, intellectual property and economic growth.

An infographic from Gwenbol of flickr... does a pretty good job of summarizing the nodes connected to Eris.

The image is a bit too large to post at full size... right click -> view    for the full image




there's also a french version

This video was inspired by the Principia Discordia

it's in Portuguese so I have no idea what's going on. It looks pretty dramatic though!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7V9PIE9Z7E

[Not]

What Makes You Not a Discordian?

I'm curious to hear people's opinions on this.

http://www.mortesubita.org/magia-do-caos/livros-caoticos/principia-discordia/principia_discordia_mortesubita.pdf

tip of the hat to yatto for finding this

http://www.reddit.com/r/fifthworldproblems

• One of my bathrooms is stuck in 2011. Will next month's water bill be charged to multiple timelines?
• My adrenal gland and Jupiter's Great Red Spot are in trans-dimensional opposition.
• TIL that slowing down time makes it possible to count to infinity
• I accidentally deleted 1,500 seconds from my alternate timeline.
• Bacon from pigs doesn't exist here. In fact, pigs don't even exist, and my bacon comes from fetuses. WHY?!

THE BACKSTORY

Christmas / New Years. Everybody's asking what you've been up to. I've been self-publishing! I show them the sexy hard copies of the Chao Te Ching.

They ask, "What's Discordianism?"


I'm asking my office building manager if I can hang a sacred chao and a golden apple from the office x-mas tree. He tells me that I can, but he wants to know what Discordianism is.


Somebody asks me why my car has a Hail Eris bumper sticker. Who's Eris, and what's that mean?


in all of these situations, I come up blank.


How can you describe something like Discordianism, in short form? We've got a "Discordianism is [sic!!] one sentence" thread, but one sentence is too short.




WHAT I'M SEARCHING FOR:

A quick way to explain what Discordianism is to somebody that's never heard of it.

It must have a punchline.

Preferably it would include a way of including the listener in the group of Discordians, sort of how hearing about the pope card makes you a pope.

In This Thread,
we're talking about Discordian Letterhead.

Here at PD, we've got a lot of rants, essays, good posts with hot one-liners. We'd like to share these things with others, creating a trail of breadcrumbs into the MADNESS.

Faust has suggested that we might be able to get a button which turns an individual post into a PDF, or something to that effect. Something you can print out and tape somewhere, or hand to somebody. In my imagination, this has an official Discordian letterhead on top.

So what should our letter head look like? What should be included? Does anybody want to try their hand at design?

I've been reading a blog called Anti Teachings For Young People. There's a lot of great content there for people interested in stuff like western-zen, no-mind, ego-death etc..

Recently, they made a post indexing a bunch of videos about THE SELF. I've been slowly working through them, and finding them very enjoyable, so I'm sharing the link with you cats:

http://anti-teachings.tumblr.com/post/14987178227/self-and-the-new-year

Let us know if you find a video in there which is particularly interesting!

[DISCORDIANISM]

Source: the Book of Chaos And It's Virtue



GLOSSARY OF TERMS
RELATING TO DISCORDIANISM
By Chaplin Sinatra Fonzarelli


DISCORDIANISM: Like Wicca, it started off as a religion for pot-smoking hippie bums who wanted to pass off their bullshit as a philosophical statement. The key difference was it was full of jokes plagiarized from the Marx brothers. Somewhere along the line, like many obscure things that deserved to stay obscure, it got co-opted by sweaty, anime-downloading computer nerds and has become some stupid inside joke on message boards full of assholes, giving it as much meaning and significance as All Your Base Are Belong To Us.

THE CHURCH OF THE SUBGENIUS: Discordians who get bored of saying "Fnord" and "Hail Eris" and wanted to make up new nonsense phrases and pretend like saying them while giggling was a constructive act of activism.

THE PRINCIPIA DISCORDIA: Between "My First ABCs" and "The Essential Guide to Star Wars Ships" in terms of literary importance

THE BOOK OF THE SUBGENIUS: Like the Principia Discordia, only 100 pages longer, and it costs 20 bucks instead of being able to find it on Google.

THE ILLUMINATUS TRILOGY: A plagiarism of Joyce's work filled with nerdy pop culture references and pretentious rantng.

SCHRÖDINGER'S CAT: A plagiarism of Vonnegut's work filled with nerdy pop culture references and pretentious ranting.

ROBERT ANTON WILSON: A man who has accumulated a small fortune selling plagiarisms of Joyce and Vonnegut filled with nerdy pop culture references with pretentious ranting.

MALACLYPSE THE YOUNGER: Some "wacky" nom de plume of a man who probably wrote The Principia Discordia in a stained tie-dye T-shirt on a bongwater-stained couch while listening to a highly worn LP of Freak Out!, The White Album, or The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Wasn't smart enough to copyright his work so probably died alone and penniless on a gutter while clenching a Coke bottle pipe filled with schwag, while his buddy Robert Anton Wilson eats steak for dinner in his dining room.

KERRY THORNLEY/LORD OMAR/A BILLION OTHER STUPID PSEUDONYMS: Wrote ten crazy Xeroxed rants about Libertarianism and thought his friends were agents of the Illuminati, now posthumously considered a genius.

STEVE JACKSON: The poster boy for the official point of transformation of the vast majority (ie: 40) of Discordians changing from hippie slackers to D&D nerds who wish they could have been alive to be hippie slackers like their parents.

FNORD: A word invented to be used in the boring, pointless signatures, "hilarious" spam, and half-hearted graffiti of Discordians. Might have been a slightly funny inside joke between RAW, Thornley, and Malaclypse, but the Internet beat it into the ground like it does everything

23: The fact that that number can sometimes be seen somewhere is proof of an elaborate evil conspiracy/magical cosmic force that protects and strengthens all Discordians

THE BAVARIAN ILLUMINATI: The 19th century version of the Discordians. IE: They had great ideas but we're too lazy and fuckwitted and unorganized to get anything done so instead they just made a bunch of bullshit. So obviously the Discordian society idolizes them.

THE POEE: 12 members strong.

THE DISCORDIAN SOCIETY: 18 members strong.

WWW.PRINCIPIADISCORDIA.COM: An expensive domain name that somebody pays for solely to host a 60-page book that can be found for a yardsale at 25 cents, or in it's entirity on the first 13 pages of a Google search. In other word, a nerd who felt the obligation to make a site that wasn't about what bands they like or how similar to Hitler Bush is.

ERISIANS: Discordians who insist on being called something else to be difficult

ERIS/DISCORDIA: There is a disagreement among Discordians and Erisians as to her nature. Discordians think she's a cartoon character with magic powers who help them out and who they fantasize to while masturbating, (that is, when they're too lazy to open up their porn folder or turn to the Dryad page of the D&D Monster Manual) Erisians think the same thing although they sprinkle it with some Taoist metaphysical stuff.

OPERATION MINDFUCK: A way to make the world a better place that apparently involves trolling conservative communities, writing notes on bathroom walls, making up little pieces of paper that say "LOL U R TEH POPE" and being too afraid to hand them out to people, and contemplating all of these brilliant ideas on a message board and being too lazy to do any of them.

JAKE: Like a mindfuck except more childish, if that's possible

WWW.POEE.CO.UK: A website with a professional-looking appearance and informative content. This makes it's owner Syntapgjax, a Fake Discordian, since obviously the definition of "Discordian" is "someone who can't get their shit together"

FAKE DISCORDIAN: A term thrown around a lot for practitioners of a religion that embraces ontological freedom and equality. It's actually a redundant term.

"WE DISCORDIANS MUST STICK APART": An excuse for not having your shit together

CHAOS MAGIC: If Wicca is people who need an authority figure to give their minds permission to use magic adopting books form Barnes and Noble as such, than Chaos Magic is the same, only with Google and Alice in Wonderland.

ZENARCHY: A term used by Discordians who have to pretend they're too enlightened to use terms like "Anarchist" to describe their political belief, so they use a term that sounds deep but is actually an unfunny portmanteau, like "Zenarchist" so they can pretend they're too cool for politics.

THE LAW OF FIVES: An important lesson in epistemological relativism becomes an inside joke among people who make stupid polls on the Internet to waste their lives away

COPYRITE/KOPYRIGHT/KOPYRITE/COPYLEFT/KOPYLEFT: A term that's obviously Discordian because of the lame pun. Spawned Wikipedia, which is what sexless nerds use as an authoritative source of knowledge, in the same way imperialist intellectual elitists used the Britannica.

DISCORDIAN SAINT: Someone who the government hasn't forced to take their meds yet

THE PRINCIPIA DISCORDIA.COM FORUMS: Where you can read jokers bickering like the cast of MASH towards the end of the show and pretending that they're better than 95 percent of DeadJournal users somehow. Also full of long, drawn out, pointless rants that just reiterate the same uninsightful points. Discordians are nerds who don't have enough sex.

A modern adaptation of an old story

A young Discordian named Nopants's car broke down on his way to the market. His friends in the car all said "Awww! This is going to be expensive to fix. That's terrible!" Nopants said "Maybe..." The mechanic closed the hood and told him that it was lucky he came in when he did. It turns out the engine had a much more expensive problem that they caught before it exploded in a deadly fireball. The car was fixed, but Nopants was broke. So he applied for a job in a big office building. He nailed the interview and was told he could start on Monday. His friends were overjoyed for him. "Congradulations on getting that job, that's great news!" Nopants replied "Maybe..." From then on, he spent his days staring at four gray cubicle walls, entering data onto spreadsheets. It was a boring, dead-end job full of stresses and bereft of meaning. Years passed inside the stale office building. One day, another position within the company opened. It offered good pay, meaningful work, and an office with a window. Nopants interviewed, and was perfect for the job, but a lot of people had applied for it too. A few days later, Nopants's boss told him they weren't hiring him for that position. Nopants's family was frustrated on his behalf, "We're really sorry to hear that, Nopants. That's terrible news and you deserve better." "Hmmmm," said Nopants, "Maybe..." The next week, the company was bought by another company, and the position Nopants applied for was made redundant. The person in the office with a window was laid off. Nopants had become good at filling out spreadsheets, and had enough spare time to work on his art and poetry. His cubicle walls were no longer gray, but covered with silly collages that made him laugh like a ninny. One day, a girl was passing his cubicle, and saw the artwork within. Intrigued, she started up a conversation with Nopants, and they hit it off. Soon, they started dating. "I'm so happy for you Nopants," said his friends, "You two make a great couple, and I'm sure you'll live happily ever after!" Nopants smiled, "Maybe..." And for a few years, they lived happily. But eventually the girl became enamoured with someone else, and left Nopants for a spag who worked in sales. The spag gave Nopants the "finger guns" every time they saw each other in the hall. The girl clinged to his arm and avoided eye contact. "Aww Nopants," said his family, "It's too bad she left you," Nopants laughed, "Maybe..."

The Chao Te Ching is a meditation on the Sacred Chao, a yin-yangish symbol which represents everything worth knowing, and also a lot of stuff not worth knowing. In 81 brief chapters which parallel the Tao Te Ching, this modern Discordian text synthesizes ancient Taoism and irreligious Zenarchy. This manual teaches how to discover your inner spag, the silly fool who, through laughter, is neither confined by apparent order or bewildered by apparent disorder.

The Chao Te Ching is a local production. LMNO and I put it together, and we had submissions/advice from Burns, Cain, Faust, Honey, Hoopla, Kai, Lies, Ratatosk, Requia, Roaring Biscuit, Telarus, and Triple Zero.


Buy the paperback for under ten bucks here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-chao-te-ching/18759432

Read or Download the whole PDF for free here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/34652650/Chao-te-Ching

This is a continuation of the IMAGE SEARCH CHALLENGE

The idea is to find the origin of a target image.

We got the last image pretty fast! I asked triple zero for another image to puzzle out, and he supplied this:


[image is larger than you see - it has been shrunk down a bit to fit in your window.]

So let's try to puzzle out where in the world these photographs were taken.

I'm celebrating Moosemas THIS SATURDAY! 

I've been blasting the office building manager with e-mails about having my religion represented in the lobby holiday decorations. Yesterday he called me up and asked how he could help. When I told him that I would be satisfied if he hung a a cartoon moose from the X-Mas tree, he told me he "had to make a few inquiries" and that we'd talk in person today. THIS IS GONNA BE FUN.

(Also known as the Stockholm Sarcasm thread)




Thank you, daily routine, for being so comfortable. I love nursing at your teat and I can 't imagine it any other way.



Thank you, nerds vs bullies narrative, for ensuring that I have kept sporting events outside of my realm of normal activities. I guess I'm much happier indoors. Nope, no plans for the superbowl.



Thank you, stubbornness, for making insularity seem like the most pleasant way to live. Now I'm the king of the insula!




Thank you, parents divorce, for making me averse to having kids or getting married. All relationships end in divorce or death, so why bother, right?



Thank you, pride, for keeping me from apologizing about that thing. I'm still carrying it around.



Thank you, sitcoms and cartoons. For a lot of my tastes and values.



Thank you, bank account, for reminding me to put a price tag on everything I do.



Thank you, first world problems, for making me feel like I've got something to whine about.

I was thinking about the widespread lack of creativity in contemporary mainstream cinema.

Apparently, it's a lot easier to market an idea that people already have an emotional attachment to
    than to come up with a new idea.

So Hollywood keeps remixing moments from our childhood. And we keep eating it up like the sugary-candy cereal your mom didn't want you to eat while watching Saturday morning cartoons.

Video games are out of control. These days, successful video games combine the best things about movies and the best things about novels. We're looking at a new form of fiction, and we're in a period of extreme creativity. (tangential thought: I wonder who will be the James Joyce of video games?)

But the creativity will run out one day. And they'll look backwards on previous successful video games and say "That worked. People loved that franchise. Let's just do that again".

I mean, we're seeing it to some degree already. They're re-releasing the original Halo for its 10th anniversary, but DIGITALLY REMASTERED. They seem to re-release Super Mario Brothers every few years. (Before the Wii, anybody remember Super Mario: Lost Levels?) But what will happen when the stuff which is considered original now gets a fresh coat of paint, a fresh perspective?

Will our grandkids play remakes of Skyrim? Will they reboot Solid Snake into a new mid-east narrative? Will Altair and Ezio Auditore and Desmond assassinate JFK? Or will video games have moved beyond controllers and consoles at that point, and that'll be like remaking some outdated IP like Pac Man? (another franchise that refuses to die)

I just wonder what happens when the creativity runs out.  What will the remake of Mass Effect look like? Will RPGs have evolved into something else by then? (it does seem like all the genres are bleeding into each other. FPS's now have experience points and a leveling system, RPGs have become a type of action game. Gone are the days where if you forget to drink water, you die)

Where is this death contraption going, anyway?

[bi·o·pi·ra·cy]

The word of the day is BIOPIRACY


bi·o·pi·ra·cy     n.    The commercial development of naturally occurring biological materials, such as plant substances or genetic cell lines, by a technologically advanced country or organization without fair compensation to the peoples or nations in whose territory the materials were originally discovered.


from http://wakeup-world.com/2011/10/11/indian-government-files-biopiracy-lawsuit-against-monsanto/?mid=52

Representing one of the most agriculturally bio-diverse nations in the world, India has become a primary target for biotechnology companies like Monsanto and Cargill to spread their genetically-modified (GM) crops into new markets. However, a recent France 24 report explains that the Indian government has decided to take an offensive approach against this attempted agricultural takeover by suing Monsanto for "biopiracy," accusing the company of stealing India's indigenous plants in order to re-engineer them into patented varieties.

Brinjal, also known in Western nations as eggplant, is a native Indian crop for which there are roughly 2,500 different unique varieties. Millions of Indian farmers grow brinjal, which is used in a variety of Indian food dishes, and the country grows more than a quarter of the world's overall supply of the vegetable.

And in an attempt to capitalize on this popular crop, Monsanto has repeatedly tried to commercially market its own GM variety of brinjal called Bt brinjal. But massive public outcry against planned commercial approval of Monsanto's "frankencrop" variety in 2010 led to the government banning it for an indefinite period of time.

But Monsanto is still stealing native crops, including brinjal, and quietly working on GM varieties of them in test fields, which is a clear violation of India's Biological Diversity Act (BDA). So at the prompting of various farmers and activists in India, the Indian government, representing the first time in history a nation that has taken such action, has decided to sue Monsanto.

"This can send a different message to the big companies for violating the laws of the nation," said K.S. Sugara, Member Secretary of the Karnataka Biodiversity Board, to France 24 concerning the lawsuit. "It is not acceptable ... that the farmers in our communities are robbed of the advantage they should get from the indigenous varieties."




Fuck yeah! Monsanto is pretty high on the list of evil megacorporations that cyberpunk fiction warned us about. They've done immeasurable harm to American agriculture, and I'm sure agriculture of other countries as well, so it's nice to see SOMEBODY out there is pushing back against them.

It's an interesting use of the word "piracy".. until now, I never would have considered that sequencing the genetic code of an eggplant might be a form of piracy, if only because until Monsanto, nobody owned genetic code.

This seems like a logical extension of gene patenting... I mean, if something like Golden Rice is a protected piece of IP, the IP had to come from somewhere, right? In America, farmers get sued all the time because their crops DNA has been contaminated by Monsanto DNA. Courts have forced American farmers to destroy their own seed banks, some of which were cultivated over the course of centuries, because they may contain patented seeds. So if this holds up, then where did Monsanto get that IP? They're not building crops from the ground up (no pun intended), they are derivatives of something. And until Monsanto established that you could patent genetic code, nobody owned any genetic code.

It's really such a shame that the American agricultural lobby didn't protect our farmers through all of this. Best of luck to you, India.

[NOT UNDER MY ROOF! -]

Do you sell stuff which might make a good gift?

If I'm going to be spending money on X-Mas presents, I'd rather give $$ to you cats than to some awful retail outlet at some awful mall. So in this thread, hook us up with links to your swag!



Here are my crafts!!


NOT UNDER MY ROOF! -
http://cramul.us/2011/06/not-under-my-roof/
an awesome card game! Instead of sitting at a table and playing cards at each other, the cards you play push your opponent into other rooms in the house. It's a "get up and move around" alternative to card games. The object is to throw your opponent out of the house and shout NOT UNDER MY ROOF!!



The Et Cetera Discordia: the Masquerade Party at Limbo Peak
http://cramul.us/2010/12/the-et-cetera-discordia/
An awesome book celebrating the 49th or 50th anniversary of the Discordian Society. It includes essays, art, rants, and other garbage by many of the people on this board, and other members of the ErisWeb.

[the Noid]

The latest installment in the Elder Scrollz series comes out today. I'm so excited that I'm making a constant high pitched eeeeeee noise.

In Skyrim, you can "be anything you can imagine". A limitless world of endless possibilities and infinite choices. You will become the character of your utmost fantasies, thrilling the world with your acts of heroism and daring-do.

Who will I become on this epic quest of righteous destiny?

I will become the Noid, the twisted and insane Dominos Pizza mascot from the late 1980s.



I'll crusade all over the frosty northlands of Tamriel, cooling down people's pizzas, and giving them clayanimation handjobs. My primary skills will be blunt weapons, stealth, and love.


Are you guys picking this shit up? What are you going to play as?

I work in a city called White Plains. It's called that because of the way the fog rolls off the Bronx River and cloaks the city in a thick white mist.




My camera phone doesn't do it justice, but it looks beautiful here sometimes. It's like this almost every morning in the Spring. It's mysterious, like a dream city, misty canyons of concrete and glass.



My commute takes me through the fog. The rest of the day will be filled with question and answers, tasks and tribulations -- the drive to work in the morning is free of these things. I am alone in my car, carried forward by the momentum of the 9 to 5. Thoughts coalesce in the fog, things that I couldn't think at any other point during the day. This is still dreamtime.



Through the fog, and the phantoms of last night's dreams, I can barely see the building where I work.



Last night: Dreams of the old house where I grew up, anarchy and sexuality under the floor boards, father returns, there is conflict, but I am resolute.

Suddenly I am in the office dream world. My dreams lead here, to the glassy trance of the day.

Due to a scientific or magical mishap, you end up with an identical copy of yourself. The clone looks/acts/thinks/feels exactly like you do. It has your memories and experiences too. It is not aware that it is a clone.

What happens when you two meet?

I was wandering through the youtubes and ended up watching a bunch of vids of Richard Dawkins acting like a d-bag. People who would "like" those videos also like other videos in which atheists appear to be wrong.

And this is a treasure trove of lulz. Search for variations on "atheist owned", you'll see. The cats which post these videos are doing a victory dance which is hilarious to watch from the outside.

SO --- This thread is for posting snippets of anti-atheist high-fiving.



Here's "The 1 question all atheists fear" -- here's the question: "Show me evidence that god does not exist." This guy thinks that this makes atheists hypocrites who live in blind faith. I wonder if he can prove unicorns don't exist.

"Why Atheism is Dying and will Die out" - summary: now that we have the INTERNET, it's much easier to find out about the spiritual world. You can see miracles on youtube.

"CNN to atheists: you're gonna die first." - Did you know that if you don't believe in something supernatural, how can you believe you have the supernatural power to survive? that's why faith is not going away!

"Bill O'Reilly Vs Bill Maher Religion Debate" - Not an "atheist owned" clip, but I like this clip just for Bill O'Reilly, author of "Pinheads and Patriots" saying "Here's what I believe: love thy neighbor, and don't call people stupid just because you disagree with them politically." Also, Bill Maher is a douche so it's a kind of pwnage.


Got any more?

File under "metacommentary"------------

Here's another really creative non-profit startup:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hypothesis_a_peer-review_layer_for_the_internet.php

Their goal is to create a collaborative annotation standard which allow data on the internet to be easily peer reviewed by both experts and crowdsourcing. Essentially a "community peer review".

If you're using their system, you'll see little heat marks on the margins of websites. These marks lead to reputation-weighted peer commentary. This structure is independent of the website itself - it can run on the whole web without the consent of the people it comments on.

Slated to launch in early 2012.

[JUSTIN BIEBER]

WE THE PEOPLE
GATHERED HERE IN THIS THREAD
OBJECT
TO BEING FORCED TO POST
ON THE "BIEBER FEVER" BOARD
                         /






WE DEMAND
THAT THIS FORUM BE RETURNED
TO ITS RIGHTFUL NAME
"THE CAT PENIS SUPPORT FORUM"
\                   





ALSO: RESTORE THE FORUM SKIN
"CLOSET HOMO IN
THE FLORIDA KEYS"
IT WAS LOVELY
\             
                       




THOSE ARE EVERYBODY'S FUCKIN DEMANDS






UNTIL OUR DEMANDS ARE MET _{OR WE GET BORED}
WE PLEDGE TO USE JUSTIN BIEBER AVATARS
AND PLAY THE DRUMS

I first heard of Frank Luntz on the Colbert Report on Aug 16. He is a communications consultant (read: propagandist) working for the GOP. Luntz is a pollster, meaning he does really fine analysis of language, communications, and their effect on public opinion. In absolute seriousness: He is the modern incarnation of a court wizard. He is an expert at psychic warfare.  I find him completely fascinating, and I think he's worth paying attention to.

Here's Luntz coaching Stephen Colbert. Colbert has hired him as a campaign consultant; I'll be really curious to see where this is going. http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/394777/august-16-2011/colbert-super-pac---frank-luntz-commits-to-the-pac  - This interview is fascinating. I feel like we're peeking behind the curtain and seeing exactly how rhetorical machinery works.

Luntz's job is to get deep into the American psyche and tease out exactly what it wants. He then figures out what language most effectively taps into those hopes and fears.



Luntz is a memetic mercenary. An ontological alchemist. Luntz is the guy who framed the "estate tax" as the "death tax". He wrote the memo which became the Bush White House's playbook for dismissing global warming. (the American people are uncertain about the science, therefore you need to make them feel that the scientific community is uncertain too.)

Luntz draws a lot of heat. And it's a well placed anger - his work is incredibly manipulative by nature. It focuses on the form, not substance, of communication. And it's really effective, that's why he's worth keeping your finger on.

In this video, Penn and Teller try to take him down a peg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If9EWDB_zK4 -  they explain exactly why polls are bullshit. Watch how Luntz uses effective language to make somebody give two completely contradictory answers without even realizing it.


In this short video clip from PBS' Frontline, Luntz defends his famous "climate change" memo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yz8UwRsWPA -- he doesn't believe in the content of the memo anymore, but he insists that whether you agree with it or not, you gotta admit that it was genius. Watch him effectively shift the goal posts in this interview to move it away from being right/wrong. It really is a work of art.




Here's a long one, but it's absolutely packed with interesting stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhdLGvcOuMM --- Luntz spoke at a luncheon at the Goldwater Institute last year during the healthcare debate. (Fast forward to 5 minutes, that's when Luntz starts talking) The room is filled with right wing politicians and big name donors. In this video, he goes over some of the linguistic tai-chi and psychic warfare he's developed for the 2012 election.

To the people in this room focused on tort reform: Americans are not particularly sophisticated. They think torts are a french pastry. Can you please call it "Lawsuit reform"?

The longtime PD members will recognize that Luntz shares a lot of characteristics with Ben "Call Me Doctor" Mack. I've never seen anybody wield political language this precisely. Watch how during the course of this speech, he insults nearly everybody in the room. He establishes that he's not just some fat fuck who sells books, he's smart as a whip, and you should pay attention to him if you want to know what's up.



Short video - Frank Luntz on the six critical components that determine the success or failure of a political party: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DOy9mQZy8M

Frank Luntz addresses Ron Paul supporters who are killing his platform: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0mS35mqnRE&feature=related -- In this video he talks a bit about how mudslinging works.

It's all smoke and mirrors! Here's a short clip which exposes a layer of manipulation. Fox News showed clips from a Frank Luntz poll of "random citizens". This video shows the same "random citizen" in two different videos, clearly indicating that he's a paid actor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3BDvfAf2c4&feature=related


Politics aside, I find Luntz and his work fascinating. Let us know what you think, and please share any other Luntz media of interest.

[The 6 Stupidest Internet Reactions To Shocking News Stories]

I liked this article:

The 6 Stupidest Internet Reactions To Shocking News Stories
http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-stupidest-internet-reactions-to-shocking-news-stories/


Back in 2007, we had a group here called the Adam Weishaupt Society, a secretive cabal which competed over who could come up with the most persuasive fake news, we discovered a number of these "typical stupid reactions". One of our notable adventures took place about two weeks after the video game Halo 3 came out, we ran a fake news article about how a guy in New York died from dehydration while playing. This article spread pretty effectively and we were all cackling as we read people's reactions to it.

But after the first wave, all the other reactions were identical. I think we tripped 3 out of 6 of the "typical reactions" in this cracked article.

I like this cracked article because it's metacommentary. It's commenting on how people comment, and that can lead to shifts in communication patterns.

I now invite you to demonstrate these reactions in the posts to follow. 

[What are we looking for?]

2011 is wrapping up. I'm wondering if we should document what our corner of the Discordian Society has been up to for the last year. Maybe we should release some kind of periodical which captures it.

So here's my idea: use this thread to cross-post the best PDdotcomforum content from 2011.

What are we looking for?
Stories, rants, quotes, meme bombs, WOMPs, other images, etc.
articles about stuff that's happened this year
blog posts written this year
reactions to this year's big news items

We are only interested in ORIGINAL CONTENT.
We are only interested in THINGS THAT CAN BE REPRINTED / REDISTRIBUTED.

I'm really interested in meet ups, pranks, group projects, and other times when Discordia has manifested in 3D IRL.

Who is putting this thing together? Nobody yet. I'm starting this thread because collecting all the material is actually one of the hardest parts. I will volunteer if there is enough content and nobody else wants to do it.

Are you guys interested in this idea? If enough people are interested, and willing to help put it together, we will all have a souvenir of this crazy year we've spent together.

We are of course open to any submissions at all. If you want to put together a crossword puzzle, word search, whatever, we'll print it.

aaaaaaand BRAINSTORM

Chinese? Japanese? I have no idea.

I'm curious about page 00012 of the Principia.

It has this image on it.




I am really curious what that chinese-food-menu looking thing is. So I did a reverse image search at tineye and found that somebody made a t-shirt of that image?? weeeeird, what a random thing to turn into a product.

http://www.cafepress.com/discordianist.15930772#

that page gave me a better resolution version of the image.



Can anybody here help with translation?

I fed the image into an OCR scan website and it outputted a bunch of chinese characters. Feeding those characters into Google Translate produced the following garbage results:

;. L. | ..
..;|...'| E.. \
Lu Chui rocky hill turn yu cicada 〃
.|;|.| ith |.
.
The situation.
.|.|. j.; | ..
Rangfanjingcheng
Saoyinianxi

The word "situation" suggests that maybe this is from the i ching? Every chapter of the i ching has a line like "The situation is expected to improve."

I'm grasping at straws. Can anybody assist?

I found this and thought I'd share: http://fnordgasm.tumblr.com/

It looks to be a tumblr photo blog which shows currency that has been "fnorded". Anybody who googles Fnord is sure to find THE TRUTH (of the pance crapping variety). This is part of an oldschool Discordian project called "Fnord Your Ones"

Am I in the right place? I drank some lake water and I'm sick as hell.
My symptoms include:

• abdominal cramps, watery diarrhea, vomiting, foul flatus, and fever
• loss of appetite, malaise, fatigue, and weight loss

I need MEDICAL ADVICE
from a QUALIFIED PROFESSIONAL
right NOW

Interesting idea --- a social network which gives you half of the ad revenue they make from your profile.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/17/chimein-social-network_n_1016634.html


They're calling it an "interest network," not a social network.

I'm looking for the series of posts about somebody's pilgrimage to the Brunswick shrine in Whittier CA, the location where Discordia was ehhh "discovered". There were pictures. Anybody know where that thread is?

Hey cats. I've started a project at 23ae.com called the Annotated Principia Discordia.

The Principia is dense, sometimes confusing, and contains a lot of obscure references. I'd like to examine those things and hold them under a magnifying glass. I'm curious about what sorts of things Mal and Omar were thinking about when they put it together.

Every Thursday, I'll post another section from the 5th ed Principia and share my notes, observations, and other crammings.

The first section is posted now. http://23ae.com/2011/10/annotated-principia-discordia-page-5/

A lot of this will be old news to the PD scholars on this forum. But I am already finding some cool stuff that I had never noticed before.

As an example, here's a section from the upcoming entry about the Pentabarf:

Let's take a look at this line:

    after 10 weeks & 11 hours of intensive scrutiny he discerned that the message could be read by standing on his head and viewing it upside down.

These are not just random numbers. There's a joke here if you look for it.

10 weeks and 11 hours is a specific amount of time:  1691 hours.

Notice anything funny about that number?



If you stand on your head and view it upside down, it's still 1691.

Right-side up or upside down, it's the same thing. Mal and Omar are telling us that opposites are balanced, another recurring Discordian theme. Mal-2 already touched on this theme in his Greater Poop interview where he tells us "False things are also true".

The Principia will return to this on page 00009, where there's a Niels Bohr quote: "The opposite of a trivial truth is false; the opposite of a great truth is also true. "

I enjoy pretending I'm a monk studying the bible or something, meditating on some old illuminated manuscript.

I invite you join me in sharing your own observations on each section.

(a work in progress, post will be edited as I edit it)
It demands your attention.

It demands that you state your position in the form of a sound-byte which can be re-contextualized by another sound-byte.

It demands a remake of yesteryear's summer blockbuster, the one with the hairy hippies on drums and mud, but with this year's celebrities.

It wants to roll up your energy and sell it to kids on the street corner in a dime bag they have to hide from their parents.

It demands that you smoke that energy in secret and get all excited, fuzzy headed, forgetful, then you want more, and it's got some, but the next hit's gonna cost you.

It demands a glass jar full of passion, on display, so we can see the passion through the glass without getting any on our hands.

It demands that by end of the episode, we return to the nuclear sitcom family you saw in the opening credits.

It demands that you stop bringing up its disease, because that is embarrassing to both parties.

It demands your attention to these issues right now, before it listens to you.

It demands that you stop talking over it.