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Reposted as for ECH's request:

There was a point in time that never existed when honorable men sat on thrones of air through which they fell. And the people, never satisfied with the truth, wanted lies and entertainment, wanted saviors to save them from some evil invented in the minds of mediocre men who had not yet realized that good is never good enough, as the Cold War of Words escalated and the world feared for each plant and microbe with each new invented bomb, with each misdirecting act of war to cover private indiscretions. The monkey's in suits dancing to accordian tunes rejoiced at the pretty colors, neither shocked nor awed nor sympathetic for the plight of people thousands of miles away in a place so devoid of "humanity" it was a crime for it to exist. And, something grew larger with each laugh as missles flew from ships an impossible distance away and there was anger, and a desert of fire ants ready to give them hell with a rifle. Swarming distant cries, resistance from all corriders when dreams of heaven float on both sides, misunderstood misdirection that never made it through the haze of flies on dead bodies bloated in the hot sun. How simple how sane the moments the insane incite, and how cold are thoughts of steel and hot fussion in disturbed neurons reserved for a select few thoughts from now on.

-Zurtok Khan
Oct. 12th, 2006

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
-Albert Einstein


I was reading Joseph Cambell's "The Power of Myth" last night, and in answer to one of the questions his interveiwer is asking he relates the story of the 3 temptations of Jesus while he was fasting.

Jesus goes out to fast for 40 days.  So, Satan comes and is all up in his face, "Yo, motherfucker, if you're hungry you can make these rocks into bread."  Jesus declines.

So, Satan tries again, "Look at all these people here, they could ALL be your bitches if you wanted them to be."  Again, Jesus declines.

In one last attempt Satan says, "Alright, dude, if you're so holy you don't need any of this shat, why don't we go to the top of the Temple and you can throw yourself off to allow God to save you, just to show how holy you are."

The way I picture it Jesus put a little smile on his face and says, "You should not tempt the Lord, your God."

I've read this before in the Bible, but it never struck me as so funny, or as Ironic.

Here's Jesus saying, look, God is happy to help you help yourself, but if you're a dumbass, he is going to laugh at you, just like the rest of us.

I guess this just proves that Eris had her hand in the Bible too.

After all, if you tie the noose and put your head in, you deserve to be hung.

Everything is a dangerous drug except reality, which is unendurable.
-Cyril Connolly

You can play at the life you wish you had.  But, too bad, you don,Äôt.  You can try and break physics with your caveman tools, but it,Äôs stronger then you are.  You wish to live a life, a fantasy, in a world where nothing is beyond you, in a world where you are the center of attention at all times, and the pivotal world defining moments are on your shoulders.  But, it,Äôs all an illusion, just like everything else you surround yourself with.

You wish for a virtual reality so you can ignore the one you,Äôre in.  You want a world where you can take what you will, and you are stronger then everyone else, you can grow stronger then everyone else, in whatever way feels good to you at the moment.  You have followed your passion for escapism down the rabbit hole and found the same emptiness.  Soon enough the Queen of Hearts will walk by, but you she will ignore.  You,Äôve already lost your head playing games within games within games not realizing that materialism is materialism even in your preferred contrived settings.

All the worlds you have conquered have actually conquered you.  All the games you have played have actually played you.  No matter how few rules and constraints they put on the game, it is still a facsimile.  No matter the passion, the psychological addiction that you attach yourself to it with, it will never be real.

That same passion put into something else has such potential for change.  But, it is wasted on worlds behind the monitor.  Alice fell into the world behind the mirror.  You will never visit there.  She was Lewis Carroll,Äôs acid trip.  You will never achieve anything so useful if your life is committed to such a banal pursuit.

Then again, I,Äôm being quite rude.  Look at the things you,Äôve done.  You,Äôve sat there and molded a seat to fit your ever-spreading asscheeks.  You,Äôve achieved status in a system that the rest of the world could care less about (beyond the fact that everyone could potentially achieve that status at the same time, making it ultimately useless).  You,Äôve amassed wealth in the form of pixels on your screen.  You,Äôve surfed the downward spiral.

Then again, perhaps it is better to closet yourself from the world.  You,Äôre going to die fat and alone of a heart attack eventually.  You might as well enjoy your life while it lasts.

Personally, I,Äôll be out getting some sun and reading a good book.  Give me a call when the carpel tunnels gets so bad you can,Äôt move your hands, I,Äôll be sure to pretend to listen.

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
-Oscar Wilde


Religion is not rational.  Humans are not rational.  Animals are not rational.  We do things that do not follow any particular logic.  We follow our feelings, which we may or may not understand, instead of our heads (in many cases).  Of course, I haven't even touched on the subject of differential logics across cultures, but that is a rant for another day.

As much as modern science would like to believe that it is wholly rational, that it will deconstruct the world into understandable (by human standard) bits, it's wrong.  Not that it isn't useful, but it is not everything it's cracked up to be.  Satisfaction is never guaranteed.

Science is opposed to the Experiential world.  That is, those things that cannot be measured with an instrument time and again.  Rocks are science, spirts are not.  But, many people the world over experiance spirits.  Is this some mass dilusion?  Quite possibily, but it is important not to totally disregard the whole idea, I believe.  There are a thousand thousand thousand possibilites to the universe, closing ourselves off to one of the ones that seems to pervade every society seems a tad short sighted.

Our Enlightenment veiw of the world has suppressed certain things in the human character as it has come to it's own illogical conclusion.  Thoughout the scientific movement of the last few hundred years (but mostly in the last hundred) people have thought that science would stamp out religion as people's rational mind overcame their primitive religious mind.  But, these people have been proved wrong in their predictions again and again as religion has thrived in all of the settings in it was thought to opposed to.

As an Anthropologist I have come up against this question time and again, what evolutionary purpose does religion have, and why is it here?  While I find this question interesting (and have read some facinating articles on it), I wonder if these people are not missing something in the scheme of things.  There are things that a human being can do that have no evolutionary purpose (presumably) because they take so much effort to learn, look at some of the things that the Shaolin monks have taught their bodies to do that no one else ever has.  We are looking for the evolutionary significance of things without ever considering that our bodies are here and now, that they are present and working and provide every answer we need.  

Looking into the past can certainly provide us with many useful tools, and the understanding of our bodies in terms of it's evolutionary history has provided us with some useful tools (particularly in the areas of health).

Humans have been conceptualized as the most Economic of Animals.  We are conciously economic, that is, while other animals make risk vs reward judgements (starving birds will not eat small grubs for instance, but will wait for larger ones), we make judgements in time and space with these ever advanced minds.  Yet, we often make judgements that irrational.  Call it signaling, or anything else you'd like, but we still give ourselves the short end of the stick from time to time.

Through this long and drawn out series of seemingly unconnected words, there has been one theme on my mind, we are something more then science can describe alone.  There are a vast aray of questions that science, not quantem physics, string theory, chaos theory, neuroscience, biological chemistry, evolution-ecologiy, ad absurdem, simply cannot answer.  The answers will have to come from ourselves, our feelings, and our experiances.

Or, not.  Nukes will cure the problem very well.

You have been fooled.  You are a fool.  You fool other people.  Other people fool you.  The television lies.  You lie.  Other people lie.  You eat shit out of a can put in there by a machine that also lies.  Yes, machines lie.  They do it better then people, because you,Äôve been trained to think they do not lie.  Yes, that is botulism in your string beans.  You,Äôre now dead.  Yes, that is botulism in your forehead, it,Äôll make you look better, I swear.

We are obsessed with superiority.  We are intrigued by mystery.  We are dependant upon machines.  And, despite everything else we die anyway.  But, we want to look good doing it.  

Death is a nasty, messy business.  There is little dignity in death.  You can try to put it there, but shit still stinks, and corpses still rot.  Get over it.

Taxidermists never work on humans.  Though, once I kissed a dead dear on the lips, while dressed as a preacher who was a member of the KKK.  It,Äôs all rather involved.  But, the dear still looked rather nice.  I,Äôm sure grandma would look great mounted on the wall, don,Äôt you?

There are things in life that will never be pretty.  No matter how much we wish to run from biological fact, we can never outrun the very thing providing us with our locomotion.  Society today runs from the facts, rather then facing them.

If you can,Äôt run, hide.  If you can,Äôt hide, then the Gestapo will be happy to help you comply with regulation.  

If you do not fight the Jihad, the quiet things will creep up on you and kill you slowly.  Better to fight them out in the open and let them kill you like a man.  At least then we,Äôll have some respect for you.

But, there is no dignity in death.  Though, the way you live, there is no dignity in life either.

Your alarm clock holds the secret you've been keeping from yourself.  You don't want to wake up.  You don't want to go through another day of fake smiles, fake laughter, a fake, badly acted, life.  But then, it is everyone else who has the life you're sure you're not leading.  A life asleep as you walk, a zombie in nice clothes making faces at all the passing cars, as monkeys hoot and howl, staring at their blinking screens processing useless information at a thousand miles a minute.

But, you, my friend, are not one of these people...are you?  

What we ridicule other people for can tell us one of two things, these are the things we have seen within ourselves, the dragon we have brought down built armor of it's scales, or the things within ourselves that we are most unwilling to admit.

You have moved past the banal existence that the rest of humanity finds it's self in.  Just keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better.

I'm sure dragons don't bite.  Why not place your hand inside it's mouth?

Wasting my time in the waiting line
-Zero 7

You can sit there and wait for your internet to queue up to a chat room so you can talk to people 5,000 miles away you might make you feel better about being lonely, sitting in your parents basement (or even your own home).  You can leach on to reality TV to make your useless existance feel less...useless.  You can waste hours at a time staring out the door waiting for the mailman to come deliver your bills and catelogs for you to buy things from to relieve the you of the endless tedium that you're stuck in.

You can hope, and pray, and wonder when you'll find something to fill up the empty cup.  But, Jesus is just a long standing fashion, and the cup doth not runneth over, brother.  You can sit and meditate on the universe and how you may or may not be real, how the world may or may not be real, but just like the sand you're watching fall through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives.  Yet, we fill them with nothing but hoping, scratching, yearning, bleeding, beating, hurting, and running from the very thing we are.  Right here.

You can't avoid the fact.  No matter how much you'd like to, you lose, when you wake up in the morning, for a breif moment before you realize you're in bed, and you have to get up and go to school/work/whatever, there is a small glimmer of your true self shinning through to show your concious mind what it could become.  But, we have become so practiced at extinguishing the spark that we have yet to learn anything from it.

I am but the same old parrot repeating the same lesson over in over to myself.  Hoping, ever hoping, that I will learn the lesson by teaching.  But, I know the pit fall here, you can't teach the lesson til you've learned it yourself.  

The louder you yell fire, the less time you have to wait in line.

Reality is a crutch for people who can't cope with drugs.
-Lily Tomlin

Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting. [/i
]-Alan Dean Foster

Studying Judaism has proven only one thing to me, you can never be Jewish enough.  Just like, you can never be Discordian enough (see where this is going now?).  You can never be rich enough, strong enough, powerful enough, enlightened enough, illuminated enough, funnay enough, goodlooking enough, or even smart enough.

We are countinually trapped in these patterns, downward spirals of what we have to be, what we have to follow and how best to be and follow those things.  After awhile the only people worth calling people are those who are ,Äú-enough,Äù, those who we feel have walked far enough down this path, worked hard enough, or were born right to be considered people.

Eris, of course, thinks this is all rather funny.  During one conversation I had with her (while sitting in my Anthropology of Judaism class, no less) she mentioned, ,Äúall you apes look the same to me.,Äù  Of course, she had very little room to talk, seeing as she was speaking through a small picture of a Neanderthal that I had drawn instead of listening to the Professor.  I,Äôm sure there is something ironic there, but I,Äôm still not sure what it is.  She is probably still having giggling fits over it.

You see, it,Äôs not that Eris thinks that we,Äôre all equal (we,Äôre really not), but she can,Äôt tell us apart most of the time unless she feels like putting effort into it (and, we all know how that goes).  Eris, my dear ladies and hate-shitters, doesn,Äôt care whether you a great Rabbi, ranter, or preacher.  She,Äôs gonna fuck with your head anyway.

So it,Äôs useless to say ,Äúwhy me,Äù  or, ,Äúgod I hate you so much because you let something happen to me that has happened to the rest of the universe,Äù or something like that.  Instead, I prefer to look up at the sky, shake my fist, and say, ,Äúwhen this is over can I have a lollipop?,Äù

Or not.  It,Äôs probably better to let some 500lbs hairy man rape your nostrils on tape so you can make $300 or $400.

The price of freedom is constant vigilance.  Or, so the saying goes.  He who wants to be free must constantly guard himself against the encroachments of other men upon his freedoms.  To be free one must choose to take freedom over slavery.  It I the first choice you will ever actually make, or the last choice you will never make.  In many ways it is only the paranoid who will keep their freedom and, perhaps the insomniac who cannot go back to sleep, and so he watches with nothing better to do.  Or, perhaps, some it is combination of the two.

Why, freedom, though, I have asked myself repeatedly.  Why is it better to be free from these attachments (thank you Buddha), addictions, persecutions (which may or may not exist), and all that, ad absurdum?  What good does freedom do, anyway?

If we are born slaves to ourselves, our desires, and our wants is it not natural that we wish to be free of these things?  Is it not right that we wish to rise above the scum that floats on the surface of our life like some disease?

Perhaps we only want freedom because we think it will cure us of our ills.  It will free us from sadness, depression, anger, and all of those ,Äúnegative,Äù emotions.  We seek to rise above our Paleolithic mentalities to make ourselves something more then human, something more then we are.

Who are we kidding?  We piss, shit, burp, and eat just like the pigs we think we are so far above.  We animals in the crudest and most vile sense of the word, and at every turn we are confronted with the pure viciousness of the world we live in, yet we hide behind our offices, and our clothes, and computer screens and scream that we are more then animals we have evolved from, that we are more then the creatures that we subjugate, that we are more then the jungles out of which we walked.  And, yet, we are none of it.  We are not free until we choose to be.

But, being free does not dismiss our weaknesses, and animal persona,Äôs, being free means having a choice about that matter of whether to stoop to your animal self, or to rise above it.  What we rise into I do not know, some higher power, some infinite void, or some state more painful to the eyes then red-hot pokers.

All I really know is this, I,Äôm not paranoid enough to be free.  Yet.

Eris is an Anthropologist.  Or, at least she likes playing with Anthropologists.  That, or the Anthrpologists have been taking some of the hallucinogens that they like to study and pass off "as another drug people use to make themselves religious, so something."

Eris came to me today while I was reading an article.  She stuck a feather in my ear and tickled it until I looked up to see her concentrating furiously on just barely gracing my skin with the feather.  Then she laughed at me, cocked her head at the screen and pointed at it saying "Bulltshit!" in a happy laughing way.

I went to another article, and again, this was repeated.  So, I looked up Eris, and stared into the dark vortexs that people think are her eyes (they're really not eyes, she is after all only a reflection of the person looking at her), and ask quite simply, "If it's all bullshit, then why the hell am I reading it?"

She looked at me, let out a little laugh, and said, "Do you know where the bullshit isn't?"

Then she poofed.  Bitch.

Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.
-Chinese Proverb

What you don't see with your eyes, don't invent with your mouth.
-Jewish Proverb


So, I'm sitting here trying to write poetry.  That's not working.  So, I'll make you all suffer (as I only very occasionally push my poetry on your eyes).  I have been contemplating the WHY of Emo for the past few minutes, because I have nothing better to do.  Why has it sprung up from the deapths of the dark souls that I can't understand to make me giggle at it's stupidity.  The only answer I can see is that of misperception.  Of course, that is the rather obvious answer.  Which brought me to my next thought, Emo bois and grrls are no different from Fluffy Bunnies.  Their perceptions are both screwed up to the point they don't function without their security blanket they call "beliefs" of one kind or another.

But, that does not address the WHY of the issue of extreme misperception (please to note: I mean to make a difference between misperception and a difference of opinion, there are many people who disagree with me on various issues that don't suffer from extreme misperception).  The WHY, I think, is that both Emo bois and grrls and Fluffy Bunnies have been taught that the world, or humanity, or whatever else is imperfect, that it is missing something essential.  The Emo crowd says, "Fuck, there's nothing we can do, so lets wear black and pretend to slit our wrists."  while the Fluffies say, "Well, then we'll have to THINK! it into existance."  They have been fed static and thus think that there is no decipherable signal because it is not apparent.

Whether the world is perfect or imperfect is up to debate among egos much larger then mine.  We experiance only so small a part of the world, I fail to see how you can extrapolate from that small test sample the true state of the world.  That I think is the problem, hubris.  They are sure they are right, they are proud of their right-ness, and they flaunt it in some form or another; either by wearing pentacles and worshiping the Great Vagina in the sky (and telling everyone who doesn't that they are wrong) or by wearing black clothes and singing about their Misery.

If we tell people enough that they are disenfranchised they will eventually believe it, and in doing so, give up.

The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity.
-Harlan Ellison


So, here I am, browsing the books in Barnes and Nobles, looking for a Christmas present for one of my friends.  I'm looking through the women's studies section.  The women's studies section is located in the same isle as the New Age section.

Little twerp goth boy is sitting on the floor talking to his friends bitching about how Wicca is so different from Paganism that it shouldn't be considered Pagan.  Then, he starts looking through the books "ripping" each of the authors apart for having such a stupid veiw of Paganism, or Magic(k), or whatever it is that he doesn't agree with them saying, based solely upon the cover of the book, seeing as he isn't intelligent enough to actually read and draw conclusions at the same time, he simpy takes out the first step.  Then he comes upon "The Green Witch's Bible" and starts talking about how he's a Green Witch, and blah blah blah blah.  It was all rather droll, and stupid.  If his compainions had had half a brain cell not under the influence of the pot I could smell wafting from their direction, they would have told him to STFU and stab him with herpes infected knives.

So, I know they're not going to do it.  I'm browsing books, looking at Tarot cards (because I know someone else who wants some of them..) but they don't have the deck I want.  Here's my chance, "punk" boy is sitting there jabbering still.  I turn and stare at him.  I don't say anything, I just give him my best "ohh my god, how much cocaine did your mother have while she was pregnant with you, you are so fucking stupid I think I the entire world is worse for having you here, shitstain."

Well, of course, he's not so high he doesn't notice.  He looks up from "reading" about how to be a Green Witch (seems to me he wouldn't have to read about it if he was a Green Witch...) and looks back at me confused, "Dude, what?"

Here I figure I have two choices.  I can tell him how much of a stupid shitstain he is, or I can just play with his head.  The majority vote in my head goes for playing with him.  I just give a huge "invountary" shudder.  "Do you know where Green Witches came from, son?"

"Uhh...they were persecuted durring the burning times like everyone else, and all their records were burned, so we're not really sure."

"No, there you're wrong.  They're actually a conspiracy started by the Catholic Church to get you to realize that you need to start worshipping Jesus again."

"No wai!  Dude, how would you know?"

I laugh, "I'm writting a book about it.  It's about the various means the Catholics are using, and have used, to convert Heathens like you and I back to their midst."

"Oh my GODDESS!  That is so cool, so you're saying it's bad to be a Green Witch because someone will try to force me to worship Jesus and God and all that shit."

"Yup.  You know not the dangerous path you walk down, my son."

"Wow...what should I become then?"

"A Catholic."

"What????????  Why the hell would I want to do that?"

"It's the last thing they'd expect, you know sneak under the radar, and destroy them from the inside."

"Dude, that is SUCH a COOL idea."

At that, he starts talking to his friends about how to destroy the Catholic church from within, because he's going to go become a priest.

Some people are just stupid.

Human Rights, Animal Rights, Men's Rights, Women's Rights, Children's Rights, Civil Rights, Black Rights, Enviromental Rights, Tree Rights, Abortion Rights, Worker's Rights, Gay Rights, Dog Rights, Cat Rights, Religious Rights, Employer's Rights, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.

*clears throat*

YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS.

Well, at least you have no rights that you don't take.

Yup, that's right.

Unless you take whats yours, you don't get it.

But, you ask, "isn't the goverment here to protect our rights?"

And, I shall now reply, NO.

The Goverment in a perfect world would be here to protect your rights, but as you may have noticed, we don't live in a perfect world.  The goverment is here to do BUISNESS.  It's own buisness, not yours.  Your interests may happen to coincide with it's interests.  If not, then you're fucked like a hooker in New Orleans (in every sense of that phrase possible).  Too bad for you.

Unless, of course, you stand up and start a riot.

"a riot" you ask, "isn't that a bit extreme?"

And, I shall again reply, NO.

You have a choice, you can sit down and take what is given you and go along like a good little proletariat, or you can stand up and take what you want.  You can stay sitting down with the kiddies, or you can stand up and eat your roast beef standing up in the kitchen.  So fucking what, you get crumbs on the floor.  You have to clean up after yourself now, fucko, you've got to take responsibility.  But, most of all you're annoying all the fuckers who think you should sit down to eat tasteless gruel.

You have the RIGHT to do whatever you want in your own home IF AND ONLY IF you take it.

You have the RIGHT to do whatever the fuck you want IF AND ONLY IF you take it.  Of course, everyone else has the RIGHT to do unto you as you have done to them (this has been covered before...)

Take your RIGHTS, OR SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Whinny bitches.

-Zurtok Khan
Has been listening to college idiots whine WAY too often.

The Troof about Discordians is very hard for many people to take.  Mainly because many of them are idiots from the land of Thud, who spew the same shit out of their mouth as they do out of their asses.  Fluffy bunnies detest Discordians.  We deserve it of course, there's nothing quite as fun as dismantling the weak-minded world view of a bunch of new-age neohippies who think that they can free the world by thinking thoughts of love and light (and of course by buying all the stones, tarot cards, and various other magical accoutrement's possible, not to mention all the Silver RavenWolf books that can be easily bought at Barnes and Noble).  A note to Fluffy Bunnies, you will never free anyone by giving in.

So, here is what you should never expect from a Discordian (of course, many of them will give it to you anyway, just to see what happens):

1 - Sympathy.  We know you've caused most of your own problems.  Get a life that involves something other then bitching and moaning to us.  Of course, there are some people that have REAL problems, and most of us feel sorry for kids with Downs Syndrome.  Well, maybe on some level of which we are not aware.

2 - Manners.  Many of us think many of the niceties that society has set down are laughable.  Most of us have basic manners, and won't shit on your chest (unless you make us angry...or ask us nicely).  But really, if you look bad (and don't have something we happen to be sympathetic towards) we will probably tell you.  Partly because it will be fun.  Partly because many of us feel that honesty is the best policy (but only while everyone else is lying).

3 - Agreeability.  This sort of ties in to Manners up above.  Just because all of your stupid little friends think that your ideas are great, does not mean that we will, do, or have to.  If it looks like a pile of shit, and smells like a pile of shit, I will tell you that it's a pile of shit.  We don't care if we hurt your feelings (unless of course you happen to be in the loophole of #1).  Sometimes we agree just to see how absurdly far you will take it, because it is fun for us.  But, please remember, we are all very lazy (the SubGenii have inserted mind probes into all of us...) and you're probably not worth the effort.

4 - Work.  We do what we want to do when we want to do it.  (unless of course it falls under the important previsions of #1 and #2).  You are probably not worth the amount of effort it would take to get a result.  If you happen to be smart enough, you can probably get us to do something by suggesting that it's close enough to what we're doing anyway.  Most of you are not that smart, so give up now.

5 - Love & Light.  Just because we happen to be close to being Pagan does not mean we are happy little Wiccans parading about in our ritual robes and cool velvet cloaks (although, I have been meaning to buy myself a cloak, because attending rituals in the cold desert night air makes my nipples hard).  The whole Pagan thing is coincidence anyway.  Eris was around long before the Greeks got ahold of her very pleasant bosom and convinced her to join up with them.  She probably did it because it felt like a good opportunity for a mindfuck.  Being the Goddess that she is, she was right of course, and it continues to be a mindfuck.

And now, here are some things you should probably expect from a Discordian (although these rules are much harder to pin down, and are subject to more exceptions then the first list):

1 - Attitude.  We didn't get to where we are today (nowhere) by being pussywhiped.  If you meet a timid Discordian he's probably lying.  Don't worry, he'll show his true stripes soon enough (or, because he can cut the butter, he'll avoid anyone who would tell him he's pussywhiped).

2 - Rebel-ness.  Some of us just want to change ourselves.  Some of us want to change the world.  There are support groups for this.  Sometimes they are call prison ass-rapings.  Sometimes they are called mandated therapy.  Sometimes they are called police brutality.  It's okay, we like it that way.  Just remember, if you get in our way we will use the chainsaw on your head.  Most of us have special clothes we wear for when blood splatters.  And besides, you'll be useful in Bella's zombie army.

3 - Eccentricity.  We don't care what other people think.  Yes, we are strange.  Yes, most of the rumors are true (although the Gorilla claimed she didn't know sign language, the story got out anyway).  Yes, our sense of humor is a bit...off color.  We do it because it's fun.  And, because it creeps you out.

4 - Humor. We want to have fun.  Much of the time we don't care if it's at your expense.

5 - A Smile.  It's probably because we're up to something.  Or, because we got laid last night.  Or, because we just farted.  You should probably watch out if one of us is smiling.  No, really, I mean it.

The DOOM is real.  The apocalypse is coming.  You will not be spared.  No one will.  You will die is an agonizingly painful death, involving tortures so obscure they require a rubber duck and some scotch tape (or at least that's the rumor).  DOOM is coming, and don't believe that for one moment you are going to be lifted up.  That whole Jesus thing was a bad joke by Yahweh (He's never had the penchant for jokes that Eris does) that ALOT of people took way too seriously (really, I blame Paul for a lot of it, it wasn't God that made him see the "light" it was a tumor).  There is no salvation, there is no recreation, there is no sanitation. There is NOTHING.  I repeat NOTHING you can do to change it.  You, just like everyone else in the whole fucking universe, are going to have to face it.  It won't be Satan dealing it out, and it won't be Karma.  It won't be any Hindu God, any Celtic, Nordic, or Egyptian God.  It won't be the wykkan lord and lady extracting your intestines through your urethra, or pulling your teeth by means of your ass.  There will be no supernatural anywhere, doing anything (except pretending to not exist).  Remember, NOTHING will save you.  There is NOTHING you can do to change it.  Why?  Because that is the sign of the DOOM.  The DUMB...err, that is...DOOM says that you are STUCK.  LIVE WITH IT WORM.  You WILL be crushed under the heel of your masters.  You DESERVE everything you get, you little ugly piss.  STUCK THE FUCK UP AND TAKE YOUR MEDICENE.

THE DOOM IS COMING.  AND IT'S COMING FOR YOU.

Work, my friends, is not something to be scared of.  It is something to be appreciated.  It simply is the quality of general usefulness (whatever that means).  You will not get jack-shit if you don't get off your ass and take it.  It will be difficult, and you may want to rip the hair out of your head a million times, or even quit, before you make it to your goal.  That is, if it's a worthy goal.  If it's not a worthy goal, then you won't put that much effort in to it.  What's a worthy goal, you ask?  I can't answer that one for you.  You have to answer that one for YOU.

I say this because I see more and more ignorance around me all the time.  Not slack, ladies and gentlemen, for I shall come to slack shortly, but ignorance.  Ignorance is the state of mind and action wherein one assumes that one can attain a reaction without the predicate action.  It is a basic law of physics, and a basic law of life that if someone (or thing) does not push/pull the ball, it will not move.  It will stay exactly where it is.  Inertia is a state of mind and spirit, along with it's typical physical associations.  Ignorance says that these rules can be bent or broken because someone happens to be "special" or some shit like that.  YOU still have to bend the rules.  YOU still have to take what you want.

I am not a subgenius (although Roger has accused me of such).  But, I see less and less slack in the people around me.  Perhaps it is because I understand more what slack is, and what it isn't.  Slack is a state of mind, of course.  That is simple, you probably all realized that before I did (I can be so slow on the uptake with some things).  But, what is this state of mind?  I propose that Slack is the state in which we realize what is worth working for and what is not and we stop worrying about ends and means and all of the piddly little details that get in the way of life.  Or maybe it isn't, maybe it has something more to do with some mystical Taoist philosophy saying something about water eroding rocks.  I don't know.  I'm not that smart tonight.

The point is: If you want it, you've got to work for it.  Somebody always has to pay.  But, if you do it right, you can always get someone else to flit the bill (but only if you put out).

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for Slack.  I am thankful that I don't have to let myself get drug down into absurdity of the over commercialization that is rampant in this society.  I am thankful that when someone tries to yell at me bright and early on Black Friday, that I can laugh at them.

-Zurtok Khan

When did Discordian thought fall into the baleful whole of fads?  When did we get so lost, that instead of doing what we wanted to do, we started listening to what They(tm) started telling us?  Wasn't this all supposed to be about how we are FREE?  Or, do you like the psychic suit?  Does it keep you cold in the winter, and hot as hell in the summer?  Somewhere between the heatstroke and the frostbite I figured someone might wake up.

Think for yourself.  It is THE maxim of the Discordian (bowel) Movement(tm).  In it's way it is the most beautiful of Zen Irony.  Everyone else is telling YOU how to think.  For yourself of course.  Come up with your own ideas, no one else's are worth it.  Or something, I'm not even sure what "think for yourself" means.  It is some strange abstraction of what we do with all the lovely chemicals in our heads that somehow, through the mysterious nature of the universe have given us this "intelligence" thing.

But, there is something here, even in this most overused of statements that has been stamped on, and double checked for accuracy by all of the worlds greatest Corporations (because anyone who thinks for themselves buys OUR product).  It is simple, subtle, and elusive.  And, of course the only reason I found it was because I was listening to what everyone else was saying.  And, there ladies and gentlebugs, is the difference.

To "think for yourself" as it were, means to listen and consider what is happening, what is going on.  It means that you see the events, the "facts" of the situation, and you use your own brain power to form ideas about whether it was 'good' or 'bad.'

Thinking for yourself does not mean being a dick.  There are certain times when being a dick is called for, of course, but please choose wisely.

The Principia Discordia says that "A Discordian is prohibited from believing what he reads."  I believe that this needs to be reexamined and corrected into "A Discordian is prohibited from believing what he reads, unless he has thoroughly thought about it, and considers it worthy of his belief."

Of course, the greatest Irony of all is that I am still telling you how to think.  Think for yourself schmuck.  Don't listen to me (notice, I left this until the end to make you keep reading), I don't know anymore then you do.  Consult your own pineal gland.

-Zurtok Khan
Because I can.

Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival.
-W. Edwards Deming



Everyday when I get on the train to go to school (in order to complete my indoctrination, don't you know), I see the graffiti on a few of the buildings in Salt Lake City.  Now, as you may imagine SLC isn't a place with alot of gang activity (but, we do have a nice big happy cult!), so the graffiti is minimal, and often amusing.  I suspect that much of it was put up by board little Mormon boys and girls who wanted to "rebel" with their sad emo anarchy.

The most prevalent piece of graffiti says, "No government can ever make you free."  I laugh every time I see it.  And, for good reason.  No dogma can ever make you free.  No catma can ever make you free (although it might confuse you, which can be fun for all of 30 seconds).

Discord has no dogma, which is a dogma in it's self, of course.  It is the paradox that is supposed to make you free.  But, no paradox will ever make you free (again, a dogma).  So, where does that leave you?

Do what you want, fucker.  Stop listening to me.  Every teacher ought to make themselves unneccissary.  Every scripture ought to make it's self obsolete.  Every lesson, once learned, need not be learned again.  But, that there is the catch.  Learning the lesson.  People repeat the same mistakes over and over again because they are too fucking retarded to learn from them.  They watch other people make the same mistake that they themselves make, but they are so blind they cannot see that it is not the action that makes them angry, only the reflection they see of themselves.  

Hypocrites, fascists, fundamentalists, ad absurdum.  I am calling you ought.  Learn your lesson and you make yourself free.  Otherwise you deserve all the pain and grief and ridicule given to you.

-Zurtok Khan
Under the influence of various asthma medications giving him a wicked headache.

I'm sure you all know that Aldous Huxley was a prophet.  Or, you think he was the most retarded person you've ever read (things around here almost always swing one way or the other).  But, regardless, it's scary how right he was some times.

I was reading a copy of the Reader's Digest in the breakroom the other day.  As you know I work for the local office of the Evil Empire (Wal-Mart).  There was no one to talk to in the break room (because I don't speak spanish...), so I picked the RD up.  I'm flipping through it reading it's "funnies" (which really aren't all that funny...they lack motorcycles and face-rapping bats).

I come to an article about all the wonderful things that science can do to make your body stay "younger" longer.  They have an interveiw with some lady about how she is getting older, and with all these new advancments, she feels she will be able to stay young and fashionable all that much longer.

As I read the RD, I was struck by multiple things.  The first was my palm to my forehead.  The second, was that the language of the article was so...simple.  I could've read it in 2nd grade.  The third was, "Well, so you have a wrinkle?  And?"  The fourth was that there is something wrong with this.

I read a statistic (yes, I know all about their supposed reliabilty) somewhere that said highschool graduates this year will have 1/4th (or something to that effect) of the vocabulary that highschool graduates did 10 years ago.  I don't know how true it is, but personal experiance has shown me that it most probably IS true.  I've edited papers for people in my classes once or twice, and see that the depth and breadth of their writting is abysmal, I wrote better papers in 8th grade.

Americans have lost the will to learn.  They would rather know what is going on in some reality TV star's life because he/she/it has a "better" life then the normal person, or at least more "interesting."  They take an interest in other people's lives because they cannot believe they have it within themselves to take an interest in their own.  Perhaps they're right.  But, if that's how they're going to be, then fuck them that feed the machine with their mind numbing work, with their pointless drivel, with their whinning and crying and bitching and moaning.  Fuck them if all they can do is sit back and watch the grey fill the room instead of standing up and choosing to turn on a light or open a window.  If they don't stand up to take their own power back, then they don't deserve it anyway.  Fuck them.

Americans are being fed fat lazy pleasures.  And, they are being grown fat on them.  When they don't fit the mold (and by that I mean holocaust victem thin, or buff with a sixpack and young and cute) then there is somehow something wrong with them.  We have psycologists diagnosing ADD in little kids because they happen to have energy.  And the same people are diagnosing fat-ass with depression because he/she's too lazy to go out for a walk (look, I know both ADD and Depression are real...but you can't tell me that "rising" rates of both aren't more closely linked to people believing they have it rather then actually having it).

All in all this place is fucked like some playgroud ball that doesn't get played with anymore because all the kids are too fat and lazy to go outside.

Live damnit.

If you're not happy, change it.  Otherwise shut the fuck up and keep eatting your tasteless gruel.  It's what you're here for, after all.

-His Holiness the Zurtok

There is nothing worse in the universe then religious folk.  Not that I mind religion, but most people take the subject so damn seriously.

On University of Utah campus I am the President of the Pagan Student Spiritual Alliance (the fucked up thing is that I am not Pagan, and neither are the other two officers in the group...).  So, I decided I ought to join up with the Interfaith Council on Campus.  So, I go to a meeting.  I show up in jeans and a t-shirt that says "Chaos, Panick, Disorder, My Work Here is Done."  Little do I know that these people are all very serene (and clueless), and they all show up wearing nice clothes.  So, I introduce myself to the group.  All is well, I explain what my position is, and how it's rather fucked up that I've come to it.  

No one here swears, drinks alcohol, drinks coffee, smokes anything.  The only vice they all have is God.  The only vice I don't have is God.

So, I decide I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, and I don't fuck with them.  I then went to a Dialouge they were holding to get different religious folk talking about their religions.  I figured, HEY, they might be something fun here.  The meeting was supposed to be about prayer.  Mostly, I talked about what Paganism is because no one there knows a thing about it.  I would've walked out of the meeting if I weren't the one talking.  No one wanted to challenge anything, no one wanted to cause the smallest bit of a stir.  Very boring.

What these people need is a kick in the pineal gland.  Or, at least someone to challenge their long held beliefs about how the world works and everyone wants good for them.  That's what the world needs.

Mostly, I'd like to break wind very loudly in the middle of a meeting and then laugh hystericly.

So, you say you're here to start a ruckus?  You say you're here to show the Chaotes what chaos is?  You make me laugh.  Hell, I make me laugh, since I'm doing the same thing that you're doing.  But, I think I do it better, I think I might have to show you.

Laughing, ladies and gents, birdies and bugs, Discordians and Erisians, Humans and Cabbages, is not something that should be undertaken lightly.  It is something very, very important.  You have forgotten how.

There is a sarcastic laugh that has been echoing through these halls lately.  It has been getting under everyone's skin, and grating on bone, pushing buttons.  

It used to be a real laugh, a true, deep belly laugh.  It was the sound of pineal glands being tickled.  It was the sound of lights going on, and friendships being made.

But, who cares about those things?  They aren't real anyway.  They aren't there anyway.  Or, are they?

These forums are attached to the Principia Discordia, yet we are afraid to speak of it?  We mock those who have walked where we have walked?  We are hurtful and hateful to the people who are only seeking the things we sought in our time?

You have read a thousand things telling you that you can be free.  Here is yet another.  You are still caught in your psychic suit of armor, and your skin is still burned by it.  You think that because the suit is a different color that it is better, it is more free.  You are wrong.  You have merely trapped yourself again, but this time you refuse to admit it.  Of course, I'm not talking to you, I'm talking to everyone else here, everyone else who isn't "free" (which is a crock anyway, since you can't be free, right?).

Thornly and Hill may have been stoned hippies in their time, but who the fuck cares?  Does it matter where the message comes from if it is a good one?

I'm sure I'm wrong here on many points, according to many of you.  That's fine, if I am wrong at least I excel at it.  But, I do know something I didn't know before.

I can laugh whenever the fuck I feel like it.

Now, ask yourself, do you feel lucky?

Eat a third and drink a third and leave the remaining third of your stomach empty. Then, when you get angry, there will be sufficient room for your rage.
-Babylonian Talmud

There comes a point when you finally allow yourself to see the bullshit.  It's all there, arrayed infront of you.  Some of it in nice patterns trying (but failing abysmally) to point to something better.  Most of it just lays there looking like bullshit.  You constantly add in your own load of it, along with everyone else.  Here, there is no mind, only reaction.  Here, there is no better, only the same boring, dull.

You complain about it, but by doing so you're just adding to it.  Bullshit, you see, is the best of the meme's.  You may think certain religions are good at it, but nothing is a better meme then bullshit.  Bullshit is eternal and forever.  You will never get rid of it.  It's simply not possible.

Sometimes, someone rubs bullshit in your face.  The first time you can ignore it.  The second time you can ignore it.  Eventually it comes to the point that you can't ignore it any more.  You have to play the game you thought you were above (because somehow you're better then everyone else), and rub bullshit in everyone else's face.  You play for awhile, sometimes a long while, and then retire from the arena, tired and able to take more before you're forced to dish more out.  You laugh for awhile, cause you feel like you're allowed at this point.

Then, the cycle repeats it's self.  Sometimes you've grown more mature, and you're in the arena a much shorter time then before.  Sometimes, you've grown more immature, and you're in the arena for much longer, attempting to master the craft of shit slinging.

One day, if you're lucky you'll never have to go back in.  You'll have enough self knowledge, and self control, to ignore it.  Lucky you.

Shit happens.  Either you make it happen, or it happens to you.  Or, much more often, both.

The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.
-John Cage

There is only one admirable form of the imagination: the imagination that is so intense that it creates a new reality, that it makes things happen.
-Sean O'Faolain


When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
-R. Buckminster Fuller

I have not ranted in a long time. I have whinned and I have written things, but no truely good rants.  I have many reasons, mostly I had nothing to say (which is the best reason anyone ever had not to speak), partly I didn't feel like saying it.  When you are your own scripture, why speak it outloud?  Ahh, but as we have all discovered in our time the best way to keep a secret is out in the open.

So, what have I been on about this last while?  A little bit of this, a little bit of that.  The pure chaos of communiting to school everyday (anyone who wants to see pure chaos needs to take public transit more often) has been enlightening.  I've been hot and cold with a girl for awhile (I know, shocking!).  I've even trusted a psychic to be right...and she was.  But, most of all, I've been searching for a vision.

What is this vision that I've wanted?  You know, I'm still not sure, but it seems rather pretty.  I've been planning (as I may have mentioned a couple times) an event that I hope will be very successful with the Pagan Community in and around Salt Lake City.  I've been using every ounce of creativity in my being to bend the universe to my will to this effect.  And it has taken every ounce of creativity added to most of my willpower to get it to this point.  It's strange...the event is a month off and I'm already feeling a sense of pride and happiness in my work.  It is the act of the work that I am enjoying.  But, this still is not the vision.  I found my vision for this Panel on Paganism, "Present Understanding - Future Cooperation" (http://pssa.crossworlds.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=30 to understand this particular vision...), and it is precisely what I wanted.

I have been searching long and hard for my vision for my Term Paper in my Magic, Myth, and Religion class (being an anthropology major means I get to take cool classes...).  I still haven't found it, it's being occluded.  As soon as I find it, I will take it and make it.

The point I want to make here is the importance of Vision.  If you can't see what you want, then you won't get it (of course, this isn't a problem if you don't want anything).  Once you know what it is that you want, then the hardest step has been achieved, all you have to do is walk/run/swim/type to your destination, and it will be there waiting for you.  Of course, there will be obstacles, no one can stop those, but you can walk over them.  The only successful people in the world are those with Vision, and I am not talking here solely in monetary terms (although it's easy to see there).

Know what you want, and take it.  This is the clear mind of the Buddhists.  The end result may be worthy, but the work is also just as worthy.  You cannot have the end without the means, but to practice the means with no end...well, I'm not sure what that is, but it feels wrong, or maybe it feels right and I don't know what I'm feeling.

My mind feels more refreshed by good work, by focused and loved work, then by resting has ever made it.  Not-doing (in the Taoist sense, and I think the Subgenii may have simply been making a play on words...or not, they don't seem that clever) is not sitting on your ass, it is enjoying what you are doing, and not seeing it as work because you love it.

So mostly what I'm saying is Love what you Do, and Do what you Love.  This is the path to happiness.  Of course, you may have to do things that you don't like, but feel free to change your paradigm to include liking that...it's not hard.

For behold, I have had a vision in the desert, and it has brought me joy.

It was revealed to me that I am a Control Freak.  I suppose it is quite true.  I must do everything, and have my hands in everything.  I'm also a perfectionist (this part I knew), nothing is ever good enough, except in rare cases, which always involve me taking care of the problem.

The tarot reader (who revealed to me my Control Freakishness, which I have checked against my friends, who all agree that I'm a Control Freak) told me something rather interesting, I need to hand my problems over to someone else, a higher power as it were.  She was right.  She told me I need to let my intuition/feelings guide me a bit more, my "logical" mind was getting in the way (can it really be logical if you're following it and it is a detriment?).

I figured, what the hell?, it can't hurt to give it a try.  It worked.  Strangely enough.  Her advice (and infact, her synopsis of my life lately) was dead on.  When I become disgruntled, I become less and less creative, the less creative (ie. the less poetry I can write...) I become the more disgruntled I become.  It's a wonderful downward spiral that I was caught in.  

So, I handed over my problems to someone else.  Not sure who.  I closed my eyes and said, "Hey, you over there, you can have all these, I don't need them."  And, they were gone.  I don't have to have my problems.  They aren't required.  It was one more way I was trying to control my life by saying "I must have problems to define myself by."

I feel better.  I don't have to have problems anymore.

Thank you.

You see my friends, the bible has got it all wrong.  The real Jesus was not, white, and he wasn't Semetic either, unlike many people have been lead to believe.  All great philosphers are either Indian or Chinese.  In this case, he is a little bit of both, making him slightly better then usual.  

Jesus was, actually, a chinese chef.  Mostly his followers called him "Sweet & Sour Jesus" (eventhough his name was actually Joe and he was from China town).  He gained fame through his cooking, that whole fasting thing was actually just a diet he was on because he loved his cooking so much (if you think BGP is fat, then you should see Jesus before the diet!  Remember kids, never trust a skinny cook!) he could not stop eatting it!

Many of the things he said were actually recipes, not all of this mumbo jumbo in the Bible.  We owe the invention of Sweet and Sour Chicken (and pork, but don't tell the Jews!) to Jesus.  He also wrote the recipe for Orange Chicken that Panda Express uses today.

Mostly Jesus walked around (this was part of the diet plan a la Subway and that formerly fat dude Jared) giving food to people so that he wouldn't eat it.  Some people thought that this was all a good idea, but not good enough, so they started giving food to people along with a message (this is where fortune cookies come from) that would say "Be nice unto one another."  or "Give not the unhello to your neighbor!" or " Peace be with you when you've eatten at Sweet and Sour Jesus's place!"

Thee moral of the story is, think of Jesus when you're eatting chinese food, he probably invented the recipe.  Ohh, and share.

(This is just my conception of Jesus, which makes it right.  Which is, of course, the wrong answer!)

There is much to be said for being an egoist.  Most of it is said by the egoists themselves, of course, but that is a rant for another day.  What I am here to talk about today is the dangerous kind of egoist.  He is dangerous in the same way that Bush is dangerous.  First, he does not see the difference between the two kinds of knowledge, second, he does not believe in his own failability, third, he cannot admit his own behaviors, and fourth, he believes that token gestures of generosity make him a better* person.

We shall begin with the second point as it ultimately lays the groundwork for the other three.  Man as a being is failable, or at least believed to be generally so.  I accept it as a given, so we shall assume it as one of our premises here.  It is a simple thing to attribute failability to someone else in all measures; it is simple to blame fast food for the fact that someone is fat.  It is a difficult thing to allow one's self to take responsibility for one's own actions; it is difficult for many people to blame their obesity on their own choices in eatting.  The point here is that when examining a question of failability, the self is often the culprit, although the ego attempts to deflect the blame to someone else.  This is the first trick of the Enlightenment Circuit, it places the blame on others, assuming that the self is an ultimately infailable thing that is simply caught in a circumstance that may appear to be failable.  This is, of course, not the case, the self has nothing else it can blame because it is the culprit.

The inability to admit self-destructive behaviors, and in some cases constructive behaviors, is tied intimately with the Issue of Failability.  It ties in well with the blaming of circumstances, and is ultimately a lack of insight into the motivations behind the exibited behaviors.  While this may seem to be the same thing as the Issue of Failability, it is not the same.  One could admit failability to quite an extant without admiting it as a self destructive behavior.

I shall take a moment here to explain point one as it has not become expediant that I do so; the difference between knowing and knowing.  I veiw people as having two kinds of knowledge, the first is analytical facts refering to the fact that Joe has brown hair and that 2+2=4.  The second kind of knowledge is the knowing of the self that refers to the overcoming the Enlightenment Circuit, which is my ultimate goal within this writting (that is, the explination of what it is, thus helping to disolve it).

We are now left with point four, the Belief in Token Gestures.  This belief is perhaps the most absurd of the four points in that it takes the small, random, seldom acts and attempts to relate that to the overall betterness of the person.  This relates to such things as donating 50 cents to disaster relief - once, or thinking "if I had the money I'd sponser a child in country in Africa" and then feeling warm fuzzies because the want makes you better.  Helping people is a habit of action, not a habit of want.  You are no better for wanting (although wanting is the place to start).  

There is what I consider to be an obvious and overt interchange between these four issues.  First, if man does not believe he is failable he  does not see his destructive behaviors, nor does he realize that want is vastly inferior to action, and if does not know the difference between knowing and knowing he will not be able to work towards taking responsibility for his own actions.  Thus it becomes clear why I call it a circuit.  It is a circular process wherein all steps feed into the next.  I call it the Enlightenment Circuit because a person caught within it believes he is in a state of Enligthened Rightness at all times, while he is actually acting on the level of maturity of a 10 yearold.

Of course, what do I know?  My Enlightenment Circuit pushes just as much shit as the next person.

*Def: Better - A quantitative judgement inferring some kind of higher moral/mental status.

So you think everything is black and white?  You think the world is the way it is and that is the way it is?  You 'know' that everything is right with the world because you're looking through rose colored glasses?  You 'know' that the world is full of shit because that's all you're smelling?

Dichotomy, Models, Graphs, Statistics, and all of the other abstractions are wrong.  They are certainly useful tools for understanding things, but they are ultimately useless.  A Model is a simplified version of what is ultimately a complex problem (it wouldn't be a problem if it had a simple answer, would it?), and ignores so many of the varibles that while it may get you thinking along the right path, can never really be trusted.  Graphs are no better.  Statistics are even more dangerous, because we take them so seriously.  52% of all 6 month olds drool more then Roger.  That doesn't make the other 48% bad, and it doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with them, only that they drool less then Roger.

Dichotomy is the most dangerous.  Greyface vs. Discordian.  Madonna vs. Whore.  People are bad, people are good.  Eris exists, and Eris doesn't exist.  I think we need to get over this attitude about sides and good vs. evil and all that shit.

Everything is varying shades of grey, nothing lands on the extremes, it might be closer to one side or another, it might be close to all the way.  That's of course what we have Gods for (and what are Gods except models of our own universe, thus making them exist and not existing).  Satan is the ultimate evil and Yahweh/Jehovah is the ultimate good if you're a Christian.  It's rather nice of them to play at it for us.

None of us here is a "perfect" or "true" Discordian.  It's not possible to be.  No one, not even Good ol' Bushy boy is a "perfect" or "true" Greyface, no matter how hard he tries to destroy the world.

Our beloved (or behated) Chaos, Order, Constructive, and Destructive, are just Models for tendancies.  We need to treat them as such.  No one of us will ever become the embodiment of one of them, the ripple effects we cause with every action will see to that.  That's what we have Eris for.

Of couse, now I'm not entirely sure what it is I've written.  I think I got my point across, but I shall reiterate:  Dichotomy and all of it's relatives are simplifications of the more complex issues, they put your feet on the right path, but don't become tied to them, because they will only hold you down.

Or something like that.

[sarcasm]
There is nothing here to see folks.  The train crashed.  People's desacrated bodies are lying mangled in the road.  Go home.  We'll take care of it, because we're the ones in charge.  We know better then you.  We are trained to handle these things.  We'll take care of you.  Do not cross this line.  There is yellow tape everywhere, and you know what that means, stay back!

Please go home and think inside the box.  There's nothing outside it anyway.  Well, anything that's outside it will be scoffed at.  Of course, you knew that already.  You don't want to cross the line.  Then you might be different, right?  And if you do that you'll be alienated because Jesus won't love you any more if you think.  And, science will hate you if you have faith.  Of course, you knew that.  And, we all know you wouldn't want that.

If you don't agree with us then you are wrong.  You know that Intelligent design is correct, because if it isn't then we're all going to Hell in a handbasket, because that somehow means that God isn't real!  You know that evolution is real and that Heaven and Hell are psychological dillusions meant to be scoffed at.  There is no magic.  Your life is bland consumerism.  New Technology and Progress are the only things to live for.  Give over it.  Nihilism now!

[/sarcasm]

Well, now that that's out of my system, I feel much better.  Please ignore any and all police tape, red tape, blue tape, scotch tape, or whatever other kind of tape you can imagine (but remember, Duct Tape is like the Force, it has a light side and a dark side!).  Please do not pass go, do not collect 200$.  Please go to whichever square on the board looks best to you.  If you don't like any of the squares please feel free to make your own.  Hell, claim the whole board.

Of course, why am I telling you to do anything at all?  Isn't that somehow anti-Discordian or some shit?  I'm sure you can all write down all the anti-Discordian things you want.  Blah-blah-blah-fucking-blah.

I'm fed up with all the Discordian shit that's being shoveled around here.  DO YOU SMELL WHAT IT IS YOU ARE SHOVELING?  No?  Maybe you have a head cold.  Go to the Doctor now, he's the only one who knows anything about your body.

I thought the whole point was that everyone was a Pope (or Mome).  I was wrong, I know.  Everyone is a Pope when you feel like sounding generous enough to satisfy some strange part of your mind for a bit.  

I think I'll name this part of your mind the Enlightenment Circuit.  The Enlightment Circuit makes us feel better when we think we are being more "enlightened."  It makes us feel good because we think we are somehow better then the rest of the world because we are generous enough to allow other people to temporarily share our same exaulted status.  It's part of the ego, of course, but it's the specialized part that's best at making it's owner look like a jackass.  Mine is of course over acted.

But, you don't want to hear about that, because that might mean you have to admit things to your self that you'd rather not.  Or maybe you already "have."  But, it's probably the Enlightenment Circuit playing tricks on you again.

The Enlightenment Circuit is really just the minds Police Tape.  Remember, you can't cross it.  You're not good enough because you are already too good.  

Or something.

*this ones for you Roger*  

Every day people are straying away from church and going back to God.
-Lenny Bruce

Things that are done, it is needless to speak about...things that are past, it is needless to blame.
-Confucius

The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out. Every mind is a building filled with archaic furniture. Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it.
-Dee Hock


Or, I suppose I should say, every day people are leaving their parents basements and finding themselves.  That is, of course, hopelessly optimistic, but nonetheless it is the way i feel about the whole damn thing.

We often tie ourselves to circumstances, for no real reason.  We say (or are told) that this is the way it is.  It cannot be another way.  The world you live in must be purified, bacteria are evil.  Whether of the spirtual or mental kind.  But, most people do not look for the good in such a thing.  Bacteria are everywhere, and not all of them cause sickness.  I regress.

Circumstances are the product of our own choices.  Not anyone else, not the universe (it doesn't give a shit about a piece of semi-sapient carbon running amok in a back water galaxy).  You have the power to change them, or become a leach on to other people because you choose not to do what needs to be done.  Because you are too weak, or too lazy, or whatever your exuse is.

It is time to pick yourself up off your ass and get out of your computer chair or off the couch and go find a way to change the circumstances you have found yourself in.  Either the conditions or your perception.  You are the only one with the power to free yourself from the bonds in which you have been put (by yourself, of course).  You - not God, not Eris (although you may or may not be Eris or God, so that is up to debate).

Ghengis Khan said, "The only Good is a Done Thing."  The only satisfaction comes doing something, something with a purpose, or something without one.  If you wonder why you so often feel so angry and vulgar, take a look at what you've done, or haven't done (either in the "enlightened" zen fashion or not), and consider if you have done anything.  If you have not created the Good of a Done Thing, then you ought to give it a try.  I'm sure Mommy and Daddy won't mind, they'd like you to get out of their basement and stop spending their money.

But, that is not enough.  You should leave your church of self oppression, the feelings that you have about yourself on the inside.  If they are the kind that limit you, then you should go to find God within yourself.  S/He is there, I promise...since I was the one who stuck him in your ear.

One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.
-Georg Christoph Lichtenberg


The more people talk, the less they know.  Which is why I shall continue to talk about people being wise, because I am not wise, and the more I talk about it the more someone will think I am.  Or, I suppose thats the point of doing all this talk.  (of couse it's not, but I'm a big fan of tounge and cheek humor).

Of course, how can you share your wisdom without talking, typing, writting?  You can't.  Well, you can, but you have to actually be with people, you know those other things made of meat that look vaugely like you that you see when you exit your mom's basement.  Wisdom is best shown by action, but words suffice when they must.

Illumination is not the act of talking about Illumination, it is the act of alchemy within the self, and not the circumstansial alchemy some speak of.  It is the act of changing the perception rather then the reaction.  The reaction is a neccisary step, but it is not enough.  The reaction will not have to be quelled (for it will be different and appropriate) when the perception of the event has changed.

So, what does all this mumbojumbo swamp talk mean to you?  Well, I'm not sure it means anything.  It might if thats the point you're at.  But, if you are your own holy book (and you'll know if you are, if you think you are then you better double check), then it doesn't mean alot, because you've got it figured out already.

The Illumination will not be Televised.

So here I am fucking around with the people in Buddhist chat (because it's fun), and some random person who barely speaks enligsh strikes up a conversation, and I understood a universal troof.  I follow my penis, because it is in front of me.


[01:32] qaiser_haroon: hey do know wat is Bhudhism
[01:32] saintzurtok: Yup, it's sticking your thumb in your ass and laughing at the universe.  Nothing special.
[01:33] saintzurtok: Who are you?
[01:34] qaiser_haroon: i m nothing but i just want to know about Bhddhism
[01:34] qaiser_haroon: can u say me something
[01:34] qaiser_haroon: i mear do u know abt this
[01:34] saintzurtok: I know about nothing, but I can probably answer your question
[01:35] qaiser_haroon: u please
[01:35] saintzurtok: Ask away
[01:36] qaiser_haroon: simple wat Bu?hddism
[01:36] qaiser_haroon: Buddihism*
[01:36] qaiser_haroon: wat is its origion
[01:36] qaiser_haroon: origin*
[01:37] qaiser_haroon: who is the founder of this
[01:38] saintzurtok: Buddhism started with a dude in india a couple thousand years ago.  He's not important.  His name was Siddhartha Gotama.  He was an Indian Prince.  He walked off and became enlightened about some goat cheese (or was it the lack of goat cheese?) and then people listened to him for awhile.  He died, and now I wonder why people listen to a half starved man from thousands of years ago.
[01:38] qaiser_haroon: hello
[01:40] qaiser_haroon: whay especially for goat cheese
[01:41] saintzurtok: Because Goatcheese is fun.
[01:41] saintzurtok: So are goat testicles when it comes to it.
[01:42] qaiser_haroon: people follow him just for a fun of goat cheese
[01:42] saintzurtok: I am sure some of them do.  I do not follow him, though.
[01:42] qaiser_haroon: to whom u follow?
[01:43] saintzurtok: I follow my penis.
[01:43] qaiser_haroon: nice
[01:43] qaiser_haroon: why u follow this
[01:43] saintzurtok: Well thank you, my penis appreciates your approval.
[01:43] qaiser_haroon: i mean wat is a great thing in this
[01:43] saintzurtok: I follow my penis because it is in front of me, no other reason.
[01:44] qaiser_haroon: u too follow it just for a fun
[01:44] saintzurtok: Well, it is a pleasure organ.
[01:45] qaiser_haroon: well u wordship only for pleasure
[01:45] qaiser_haroon: is it
[01:45] qaiser_haroon: ??
[01:45] saintzurtok: What is there but pleasure?
[01:46] qaiser_haroon: harm is also there
[01:46] saintzurtok: Nope, even harm is just pleasure in disguise.
[01:46] qaiser_haroon: have u tasted the pain
[01:46] saintzurtok: Yes, who hasn't?
[01:47] qaiser_haroon: no body escaped
[01:47] qaiser_haroon: wat felt in pain
[01:48] qaiser_haroon: i m sure in paid there is  somebody who  is power powerful than u
[01:48] saintzurtok: Can I touch your Penis?
[01:48] qaiser_haroon: no u cant
[01:48] qaiser_haroon: u r far away of me
[01:48] qaiser_haroon: u cant
[01:49] qaiser_haroon: can your penis help u in this case
[01:50] saintzurtok: Yes, my Penis is all powerful.

The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within.
-Mahatma Gandhi

[Sarcasm]
You know, Eris really ought to time her visits to better fit my schedule.  All of these unscheduled enlightenments are really rather disturbing.  Of course, it is possible that my Pineal gland forgets to give me the messages, but that's another story.
[/Sarcasm]

Chaos will not be restrained, I am sorry to say.  It will do what it wants to do.  There is no help for it, that is the state of things.  So, stop wishing you can change it all and bend it to your will.  He who wishes to change will change, he who secretly wishes to say the same while paying lip service to change will be laughed at.

You cannot schedule Illumination, it will come as it comes.  There is no map to show you the way.  And, no one else to show you the way (including me).  The Buddha attempted to show his students the path.  Too bad for him.  He said a few nice things, and people got on with life.  Some people wanted to be him.  Hell, I even have a carving of his face hung around my neck right now (he's laughing very, very hard).  But, no one can walk anywhere for you.

It is nice to have something to aspire to.  But, do not aspire to be anyone but yourself.  You will fail.  Sorry.

I recently had a visitation from Eris, she told me that there are 4 kinds of people:  People who do not dream because they cannot stand it when their dreams do not come true;  People who only dream because they haven't learned to live their lives; People who dream only by convention because they are so integrated into the herd; and, People who do not need to dream because they have everything they want.  They are the Sensitives, the Addicts, the Herd, and the Content.

The Sensitives get mad when things happen out of their control, Illumination is for other times.  The Addicts don't notice.  The Herd only gets mad when they get told it's time to be mad.  And, the Content just sit there and smile.

The Illumination will not be Scheduled.

Your approval is neither desired or required.
-To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar

I'm walking through the desert
And I am not frightened although it's hot
I have all that I requested
And I do not want what I haven't got
-Sinead O'Connor

My dear ladies and gentle thugs.  I have made many mistakes.  The first was wanting someone's approval.  The second was valueing that approval above my own.  The third was thinking that this was the right order of things.

I was given a Pineal Gland for a reason.  And, Goddess dammit I am going to use it.  I know for a fact that none of you would ever live your life the way I will live mine.  Similar, perhaps.  But, never the same.  I know that you all think a wide variety of things about me.  Cool.  But, I will no longer make that anything more then it is:  Much Ado About Nothing (thanks Willy).

I can no longer live my life the way anyone else wants me to.  I know none of you expect that out of me.  But, I live with two people who do.  I finally realized that today.  Their "good" is nothing but how they think I should live.  We parted ways at a cross roads and as our paths diverged I have been split in half.  I'm about done.

I think I'm going to quit my job, and throw caution to the wind.  I'll do what I want to do.  It's okay.

Humans have an odd habit of thinking someone owes them something.  Some Anthropologists and Psychologist and their ilk have determined that many animals must have an natural tendancy toward simple economic theories in order to keep track of their enviroment.  In humans this drive has been pushed harder and farther by either evolution or society.  I think it's a combonation of both, personally.

Eris, my friends, owes you nothing.  Neither does the rest of the universe.  She brought you here.  To some of us that is gift enough (the fact that we're here, not that you are).  To some of you, it was the greatest injustice that has ever occured.  Trust me, I feel the same way about your existance.

You were dealt a hand of cards, and now you have to play it.  We have all seen people who've been dealt a very bad hand, who manage to be very happy, as well as though who've been dealt a very good hand who are very unhappy.  The way you start out is not an indication of where you'll end up.  The only thing that is an indication of where you'll end up is your choices.

You can talk of fate all you want.  But, I've always thought fate was a piss poor excuse for people who were too afraid to take charge of their own lives.  The only weakness is allowing your fear to rule you.

You have done nothing for the rest of the universe, but you still think we owe you something.  You exist, and you go about your piddly little life doing nothing but feeling miserable.  And, yet you expect something from us?  I fail to see where we are in your debt.  Simply because you are afraid that standing up and taking life by the balls will mean you'll have to be (are you ready for it?) RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR ACTIONS, does not mean that anyone else should have to pick up your slack.

Of course, as usual, I am not talking to you.  I'm talking to everyone else.

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
-Buddha

Bitching and moaning seems to be a favorite pasttime around here.  There is always something to complain about (including people complaining!).  It's easy to find things to complain about.  Sometimes it's even fun.  But, it doesn't get you anywhere.  Unless you'd like to become some bitter hopeless person sitting in their mother's basement wearing all black and listening to Dashboard Confessional.

Emo, ladies and gents, is not a joke.  It is real.  All the bitching and moaning and yelling and screaming going on around here is Hardcore Emo.  You're all being the fucking Emo OpieZ you joke about.  Or, at least thats what you choose to do around here.  I hope for your sakes you're different people in the world where you actually have to get along with people or get fucked up (being a jackass online proves nothing when theres a thousand miles between two people, being a jackass to someone's face like you do here will get you fucked up or thrown in jail).

I'm fairly sure that you all know this anyway.  I'm just blowing smoke.  You know it, but you don't want to admit it.  Or, maybe you feel that being a jackass to people can make up for some insecurity you have (the Scrid confided in me the other day that Hugh has a small pecker   ), or something, I'm not Dr. Phil, I dunno.  But, I'm fairly sure that the only people who are miserable, are the ones who want to be miserable.

Go slit your wrists and get it over with.  Fucking Emo OpieZ.

P.S.  If you think this message was not for you, read it again.  It probably was, unless you're Bella or the Gnome.

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
-Herm Albright

He is able who thinks he is able.
-Buddha

Somewhere along the way Eris planted in someone the idea that there are no True Discordians.  This is wrong.  Eris, as we all know (and have experianced at her hand) enjoys contradicting herself.  It makes us reach for things, it makes us get beyond our puny human concerns and experiances.  But, that's a story for a different time.  All people are above the authority of the authorities, if you'll remember.  Everyone is a Pope of Chaos (with or without their card).

I am a True Discordian.  Before you get out your stones and start flinging them at me, let me explain.  Everyone is a True Discordian.  Does that mean that I have the right (or the sense) to tell other people what makes a Discordian?  No.  It means that I have every right to do what I want.  In the end Discordian (and by this I include you Erisians, but I find your need to find new and different titles annoying) means nothing more then human (which any cabbage should have picked up a long time ago).  It doesn't even mean a special kind of human.  We are all the children of Eris, like it or not.

You are a True Discordian too.  You have every right to the life you want to lead.  Have fun.  Does this mean you have the right to be a prick, and try to force your perception of reality on others?  No.  I would hope (and I know how foolish this hope is) that anyone defining themselves as Discordian would be the type that could live and let live.  I would hope they would be a human that has not given into the opiate of the miseried masses, and could see the humor.  I would hope they would be able to live and let live.  But, all Utopia's more perfect in the imagination then in the world, but you can always ad a bit of that Utopia to the world.

Anyone who says there aren't any True Discordians doesn't get it.  Anyone who claims that they know what other people don't get should be shot on site.

You are a human.  Every human is a True Discordian.

I've decided I know how to stop prison riots.  With guns.  Lots of guns.  When prisoners riot they should bring in the national guard and shoot the fuckers.

The same goes for people convicted of rape, child molestation, or anything like that.  Of course, in these cases their genitals should be put in a plastic shredder and then they should be shot 3 days later.

The Liberal Pussies in this county need to shut the fuck up about crime, they aren't doing anything good.

What, you think I'm being too harsh?  The punishment should fit the crime.

When we start actually punishing people for their crimes, they will think twice before being so heinous.

That is all.

I was recently driving through Wyoming.  Don't ask why.  You don't want to know.  But, anyone who's driven through Wyomind knows that it is not an experiance that one should repeat often, if ever.

I was struck with an odd sensation as we drove, and there began to be some large rocky hills (not yet mountains) with yet more rock on top of them.  These rocks-on-top looked like giant piles of shit.

And then Eris revealed to me that the universal relevence of some things is that they have no universal relevence.

Now, I want chocolate cake.

Dear People of the World,

I am writting you this letter because I am fed up with your mass neurotic behavior.  Not that any of you will really understand, but I suppose it will make me feel better to say it.

America:  

You sit on your fat ass all day and watch your screens going "boing!" at work, then you go home and watch a bunch of the "interesting" or "beautiful" people on TV acting for your amusment.  Reality TV should be destroyed.  If you need to so desprately feel some kind of emotion, WHY DON'T YOU TALK TO THE FAT LUMP OF LARD YOU CALL A HUSBAND OR WIFE WHO IS SITTING NEXT TO YOU?  These people on TV do these things for the money, not for your amusement.  They think you are as idiotic as they think you are for watching such trash.

China:

Control is not love.  Control is not healthy for the people being controled.  Communism is a dictatorship attempting to show it'sself as benevolent.  You cannot control human behavior.  Get over it.  You're not really Communists anyway.  You're a bunch of fucking retards playing at political idea's that were dead before they began.  Utopia does not exist.

N. Korea:

Same goes to you.

Europe:

I'm glad you have your fierce independance.  Or whatever you're happy to call it.  You are not so fucking important, just because you "ruled" (i.e. destroyed) the world for so many years does not make you better then anyone else.

Africa:

I'm sorry.  I'm sorry that everyone else is too fucking blind fighting their puny wars over oil to give you more then pity.

Religious Fanatics Everywhere:

You aren't getting your 10 virgins.  You're not going to heaven.  You will reap what you sow.  And you are sowing the seeds of hate.  You will get what you give.  Or, at least I hope you do.  That's what you deserve.  If you were what you profess to be, you'd be helping Africa.  Or something equally worthy.  You DO have the power, despite the fact you choose to use it for solely selfish means.

- Zurtok Khan

The problem with most Message Board Suicides (MBS) is that most people leave the traditional and appropriate things out.  Those whom you are attempting to make feel guilty need to feel the lows of the depression to which they have pushed you.  

Forgetting to add things such as, "No one understands me, and the only people I've ever reached out to just wanted to anally rape me with sporks."  really tends to leave the reader without feeling the emotion.  Remember, creativity is always a good thing!  Emo music is your friend (and it is recommended that you listen to as much Emo music as you can before witting the final draft of your note).

One should always describe the act of self desecration that one is going to preform.  Instead of leaving it at "I'm going to go slit my wrists now."  One truly needs to say, "I am going to go grab the largest knife I can find and kill my little dog* (the only being in the universe who loves me, unlike you fucktards!!!)  with it, then I will drench myself in his blood and slit my wrists from wrist to elbow while screaming 'SATAN TAKE ME' at the top of my lungs, until the Dark Lord himself comes to take me."  This really does add to the guilt factor, knowing how far you were pushed so that you could plan out such a terrible death for yourself just adds that nice little polish to any MBS.

There are two schools of thought on listing the names of the people who pushed you to your suicide.  They are (obviously) to name, or not to name.  When one chooses to name the culprits of ones despair it makes those people feel extra guilty, this is the depth approach (it also has the added benefit of making everyone else on the board hate those people!).  When one chooses to say something to the effect of, "I won't name who it is, but you know who you are!" then one puts a small bit of guilt into everyone on the board, this is the breadth approach.  It is also possible to take a middle of the road approach, but not recommended as that diffuses the full force of the guilt, resulting in a lessened overall guilt level.

Please consider these things carefully in your next MSB note.  Remember, if other people don't feel guilty about it, then your death was as worthless as you are.  You dirty little piece of motherfucking shit.

*No cute little puppy dogs were murdered in the witting of this article.  That was saved until afterwards.

So, you're praying to the Great Spirit, the Creator of Everything...and you're doing the talking?
- Cool, Dead Indian Guy on Dharma and Greg

Prayer.  Prayer is for the arrogent.  Well, at least in the way we normally think of it.  I mean, really.  If you first take the assumption that there is a big Guy/Gal up there somewhere who actually cares what you do...and sees everything...and knows everything...and can do everything...well, wouldn't that make the whole prayer thing obsolete?  Wouldn't it make it the height of arrogence to say, "Hey, you!  I know you know everything, but I think I know more then you, so give me something that I want, because I want to feed my EGO." (Thank you, Hugh)

I can understand prayer on some level.  No real believer in Yahweh/Allah/whoever wouldever pray, at least for things on this temporal plane.  All things, one would assume, would be provided.  When an intelligence that is so vastly supieier to yours (so vastly that it incompasses everything), don't you think he's/she's already provided you with what you need?  And, that it is NOT a new Ferrari?  

I can understand praying about the Otherworld.  I mean, you're scared shitless about it, and you want some comfort.  Alright, have a pacifier.  Sure, it's a bit infantile, but I can respect that.  I do infantile things all the time, so you can go ahead and have your security blanket.  Salvation is a fine thing, but praying for it never got anyone there.  Empty words and lies to yourself about how you'll do better tomorrow are never going to get you anywhere.  

So, what is there to pray for?  Hrrm, this took me a bit of thought.  There is Patience.  And, perhaps Thanks.  The Patience to endure the oft arduos tasks set before, and Thanks...because even omnipotent beings need to feel appreciated every once and awhile, or else they get bitchy.  

But, why am I telling a bunch of Discordians-who-obviously-know-better all of this?  Who the fuck knows?  I'm sure most (if not all) of you have prayed before.  Whether in some different perception of Eris that I know not of, or to other Gods in times you may-not-want-to-remember-for-whatever-reason.  It is our EMO moments when we cry out to the universe about how terrible life is, and how it should be different.  But, I suppose that makes prayer more Juvenile then Infantile.  Either way.

Please, slap the Sage silly.

I.   The Goddess did come unto Grug and did give Grug an apple.

II.  Grug being a cavemen, did not know what to think of the apple (and, infact, was not sure how to think).

III.  The apple was shiny and golden, and smelled good.

IV.  Grug did bite the apple and did see that it was good.

V.  From the seeds of the apple did Grug make other trees for such apples.

VI.  And The Goddess did see that it was good, and did bless the many apple trees so that some them did become pears and oranges and tangerines and kiwi and strawberries and all manner of fruits of all the different shapes and sizes.

VII.  Grug's wife Griga did take the apples from Grug and did cut them up and put them in a pie.

VIII.  But, Griga was a very bad baker (she was the first one to do it, after all, I consider that a satisfactory excuse) and the pie was as hard as stone.

IX.  All was not lost, however, as Grug attached the apple pie to a stick, and invented the first unicycle.

X.  Thus one may see that The Goddess in her infinite wisdom invented the wheel with a golden apple, and that those who do not snub the proffered apple will prophet.

Secret agent man, secret agent man
They've given you a number and taken away your name
-Johnny Rivers

Of course, now he's not so secret.  We all know that they're trying to take away our names, and our faces, and turn us into bland ricecakes.  They'd like it if we all fit like cogs in the machine turning without asking questions and making discoveries and using our Free Will(TM).

The secret's out, secret agent man.  We all know who you are.  We all know you're coming.  We just don't know WHEN, and thats the clincher.  Of course, you're watching us and you're waiting for the time our guard is down and we've stopped laughing and making life fun for ourselves (and maybe even those few people around us who don't quite get it but enjoy the ride any way).  

I don't know if that day will come.  If it does, I will laugh in your face and ask you for a hot dog.  Or maybe a golden apple.  Or a Red Onion.  Or, nothing at all, because that might make you get all happy that you think that I need something from you.  I don't, you know.  All I get from you laughter.  More of it then you can imagine because every joke goes right over your head, and when you're faced with someone who think's he's so intelligent, the irony is all that much sweeter.

Just remember secret agent man.  We like your name.  We also like your address (which we have) and your phone number (which we also have).  We are watching YOU.  Mostly because you're a side show freak.  But, dammit, you are the PRETTIEST side show freak I've ever seen.

It's all been done before.  I got told that the other day by someone.  It's all been done before, so what's the point?  I sat down to consider this question.

First, my premise is that it has all been done before.  Not saying that it's true, but there is a good possibility.

Many people had been mindfucked before Discordianism came around under it's current title.  Many people (presumably) have been illuminated.  Many people had tried the whole militant humor thing.  All of it.  So where does that leave us?

The point is that the world OBVIOUSLY didn't get it the first time, or the second.  And, despite the many attempts that Discordianism has made to do all of the above, almost no one laughed.  Some of the few who did are probably here.  Some of them are scattered to the winds.  Some of them, I think, are the winds.

Speaking of the wind, I think we ought to take the onus off of the Ill Wind.  It was never the Ill Wind's fault it couldn't blow any minds.  It was the fault of the mind's it was blowing past.  As a very cool black man in a long leather trench coat said, "I can only show you the door, you have to walk through it."

Just because the Ill Wind didn't blow any minds, doesn't mean it didn't try.  And, besides, is the Wind going to stop blowing just because it's blow somewhere/someone already?  I think not.

(I should note that the conversation is made up...I think)

If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.
-Anna Quindlen

They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.
-Emily Dickinson


You are stuck in your own head for a reason.  Goddess did not give you voicemail inside your skull because she didn't want you to have it.  You cannot somehow save an experiance for later.  You have no new messages, and no old ones for that matter.

Of course, we all know that Goddess doesn't exist, so the fact that you do not have voicemail inside your skull may not have anything to do with her wants and wishes, but thats alright.  You still don't have voicemail (unless you're a dirty cyborg...in which case...will you be my friend?).

Why am I all up in arms at this whole voicemail thing?  I'm not entirely sure.  I suppose I wanted to have a message in my personal messages folder thingy.  But, alas, I have none.  I wanted some communication between me...and someone.  I don't know who someone is, but he's very slippery.

Then, it struck me that I don't need no stinking messages, I need a nice shot of Tequila, and maybe an herbal supliment.  There is no substitute for experiance.  A message left by myself for myself in the future would be meaningless, I'm sure I would still go ahead doing what I was doing, after all, I have no clue what the fuck is going to happen.

What's here and what's infront of you is real.  Not some God in a far off planet (the Mor(m)on's believe God sits on his ass all day on planet Kolob) smoking weed and dropping acid.  There are no ideals for which to die.  There is only what you see, hear, feel, taste, smell, and above all what you think.  Or not, none of that may exist. Or, it all could.

What, you think?  Huh, you think?  Don't you sprain yourself when you try to do that?  Sounds awefully painful to me.  Stop that!

People's actions are often our mirror into ourselves (I've mentioned this before, I believe), only through them can we begin to see into ourselves.  The thoughtless masses of sheep allow those of us on the fringe to see what that means.  Not that we're on the fringe, we're in the middle of the fray, walking off the cliff with the lemmings.  Or maybe there is no herd.  

So, I have to say thank you to Roger, and Turd, and all the trolls out there for yelling and screaming about how the world is not the way they want it.  You have no voicemail in your head.  You cannot delete the things the universe/Eris/Bob/whatever-the-fuck-is-controling-it-all puts in your path.  You can learn from it, or you can resist it.

But, what do I know?  After all, I'm not a Real Discordian(tm).

I suppose the things closest to us, when show to us through another medium besides our usual perceptions, can be taken in and processed less subjectively.  Of course, everything remains subjective, what I see you do not see in quite the same light, that is obvious.  If eveyone saw everything the same way, we'd all be the same.  Perception is one of the main differences between people.

SLC Punk http://www.sonypictures.com/classics/slcpunk/ .  Strange movie.  Strange place.  No, I don't claim to be a punk.  Punk is dead, if it ever was.  The hippy movement is dead, if it ever existed.  Movements, I've decided don't exist.  Discordianism, whats that?  It's a thread, a filament.  Easy to break, easy to disguise.  There's one in every generation, theres one in every time and place.  A thread.  Rebellion.  A thread.  It's all the same idea.  We're sharing it.  Some of us just have the balls to do it.  Some don't.  I think in some ways everyone wants to, like the geek that sits in the corner of the cafeteria, watching the Jocks and their ilk wondering, "What the fuck is it like to be cool?"  While the Jocks look back at them and think one of two things 1) the idiot, "Like this." or 2) the cerebral (rare!), "I whats it like to be left alone for a goddamned minute?"

I suppose I've been in both places.  Every place.  I've been the center of attention, hell I LIKE being the center of attention.  And, I've been left to my own devices.  I suppose I like that too.

But, I don't suppose this is all about me.  But, of course it is.

We share the idea, the spark, the thin thread that connects humanity.  Some people go for the ride.  Because it's fashionable, because it's "counter-culture," whatever.  And, then there's the few who don't give a damn and do what they want.  The "real" anarchists. or perhaps they're simply the Real Anit-Christs.  That's what all the conservatives and yuppies are afraid of after all.  Someone who does what he/she wants, regardless of fashion, or "counter-culture" or any rules or mores they might have.

Of course, a Real Anarchist would never talk.  Funny thing just poped into my head.  How can you "live" Anarchy(tm) when you're enslaving the myrid of atoms and subatoms and whatever-they-come-up-with-next within your body.  Simply, an Anarchist doesn't exist.  They couldn't.  Like the monks I've heard about who learned to walk through the Great Wall of China because they realized the full nature of reality existed as space, the Real Anarchist would disapait into chaos, disobeying all the rules.

I'm off again, and I'm on again.  I finally understand, in some measure, that Discordians don't exist.  I'm sure I'm missing out on some aweinspiring truth here.  But, Greyfaces don't exist either.  It's a mixture.  Everyone is pulled both ways, or maybe I'm the only one pulled both ways, that whole Picses thing.  You can't be both, and you can't be everything, and you can't be neither.  I suppose thats the problem with any sort of dichonmy when reffering to humans, we don't exist in the pure state of imagination.  There's something else here, but I don't know what it is.  Maybe all we are is someone's imagination manifesting it's self.  Maybe "God" is a chiaua having one grand (as in big) dream after dropping some acid.  I'm still not sure.  

I keep repeating that.  I suppose you've got to learn to accept that fact.  Or, I've got to learn to accept it.  I'm not sure.

But, I geuss I do know one thing about myself now.  I'm one vain son of a bitch, and I just don't fucking understand.

But, somehow I get the feeling that neither do you.  Shall we spew our misunderstanding together?  Or shall we stick apart?

He came from under the water
to dance with you
from a tribe who know the Jive
He's a master on the dance floor
like a gin and tonic from LMNO
he'll make you sweat, he'll make you swear
he's the Scrid, and he likes you.

He put up the signs,
they point the way
to Penael Gland Goodness
and a wicked hangover
he's got the secret
to make to sweat, to make you swear
he's the Scrid, and he likes you.

Just about enough tentacles
he's got a way with a broom
that must've made Malaul swoon.
He's the sweeper of the Open Bar,
and the cleaner of Mangroove's big nose.

He's the Scrid
Yeah, He's the SCRID
and he likes you.

I think we all need a bit more EGO around here.  We need to brag about something, or at least I want to brag about something.  You should all join in, Solidarity(TM) is the onlything that makes anything right.

This was all inspired by an Asatru Ritual called a Bloat, where you drink lots of mead.  In one of the rounds of drinking you get to brag about yourself.  Do so now.  The mead is optional, but preferred.

/brag
So, like, the other day I was visiting a friends house, playing computer games.  Being the dork that I am I failed to realize that I had park in the spot NEXT TO visitor parking, and there was a boot on my car.

So, I call the parking enforcement company, and tell them to come on out, yo!

Dude comes out, and we start talking.  He's shocked, he's never had a calm, civil conversation with someone while removing the boot from a car.  I looked at Dude quisically.  Why am I going to get mad?  It's my own fault for being a dork.

Dude did not quite understand this.  He was in a slight state of shock when he left.

Mindfuck achieved.

/end brag

So, how about you?

I suppose it's simply my nature to find the small shining light in the middle of the darkness.  Perhaps that's why when I write about the city, it comes out like this.  There's always Hope, somewhere, no matter how hard They try to crush it.  So...yeah.  Somewhere, a Light Shines in the City.

Black-Rose Molly Rides Again
She stood on the street corner. Ready. Doing on this street corner what you know people do on street corners. She waited. She liked it this way. A bit of excitement and the guilt of hearing her mother's voice in the back of her head telling her what she was. But, the City didn't care. It was just The City, and she was just Shirley, or as most people knew her, Black-Rose Molly.

No one quite knew why she liked to be known as Black-Rose Molly. But, she didn't care. She had her reasons. Everyone has their reasons, she thought, secrets that they keep from everyone else, simply because they can. They liked it that way. She liked it that way.

It was one of those mornings where everyone feels the same feeling about getting up. Wednesday, the worst of them all. A cold dreary day, but it somehow hummed with the electricity of a thousand minds strumming the same long-forgotten tune. Some folks would tell you that all days in the City were cold and dreary. But, Black-Rose Molly knew that that wasn't true. She remembered a man. Not a name, just a face and a feeling. His warm arms embracing her flesh that must've been ice in comparison. Of course, it was more that he melted the ice that was her. Then, like everything anyone loves in the city, he was gone. POOF.

A black car had turned the corner up the street. Expensive. There was only one reason expensive cars drove down this street in the morning. And, what a morning it was. The subconscious vibrations seemed warped around the car. Blue, dark blue, no the car was black. It was the person in the car that was dark blue. His presence so full that being in a room with him was feeling smothered, no matter how big. It was useful for him, even though he never noticed it, he knew people gave in when he walked in, because it was him.

The car stopped in front of Black-Rose Molly. Her dark maroon lipstick complimented her unfathomably deep green eyes. The Client could tell that there was something about this broad that even penetrated him. He'd never seen someone quite like her before.

"Goin' anywhere I'd like?" BRM asked.
"Depends on what you like," said the Client

She thought for a moment about this particular man, whether he was the right kind of client for her. "I suppose I like where ever you're going," she said with the perfect mixture of allure and thoughtfulness brought on by practice.

"Hop in."

They sat considering each other for a short while. Each considering the other. They were opposites, they knew. He was so large (but of a normal stature and weight), and yet she was so...invisible, or perhaps intangible, that his presence couldn't force her to do anything. Neither knew what the other was thinking or feeling, and that unnerved them both, so used to reading people at the drop of a hat.

The client bent forward and whispered something in the drivers ear. She sat and wondered what it was, his face gave nothing away.

A short while later they pulled up to a coffee shop, a bit run down, but the place you knew had a great cup of brew because it had competed with all the Java-at-every-street-corner Inc. fads, and come out no worse for wear, if a little under the gun. This caught her off guard, this was not the neighborhood that this car lived in. The man would be powerful anywhere, but this car would be stripped fast. Really fast.

He felt a bit of triumph, he could see the confusion on her face.

"Coffee?" he asked.
"Of course," she said, regaining her composure, but knowing that she had lost the first match.

They walked in and found a table. The barista looked at them, and grinned a bit in a way that said he wished he could afford a woman like that. No one could afford a woman like that.

They sat and talked, about nothing whatsoever. It was something neither of them had done in a long time. Equals. She got him, and he got her. They lost count neither was winning or losing.

The hive mind of The City was humming with the sound of a thousand voices strumming the same instrument in unison. There was something going on here. Until tomorrow, when Government Inc. shot all the band-mates. Then Black-Rose Molly would be dead, or gone, or at the very least different. And the Client would go back to do what he normally did. Running the city underground, or maybe he was a senator. Who cared? Who knew? Nobody, and The City didn't care.

I am no longer a hippy.  I proclaim Eldora the board hippy.  Being a hippy is 1) too expensive (I'd have to revamp my clothing to do it correctly, and weed costs alot), and 2) too much fucking work.

Here is what I am:

Someone who likes to look on the bright side every once in awhile, or maybe most of the time.  You may not like it, but it's not all dungeons.  There are forces on both sides of the spectrum.  Get over it.

A disgrunted Wal-Mart employee.  Well, this isn't what I am so much as what I do.

Someone who's very often confused.  No, not because I'm some kind of uBeR l334 Discordian or whatever.  I'm simply confused.  I write it out.  Then, I'm just as confused, but...well here's a line from a musical artist (who most of you will probably hate, but get off it, you're not the authority on music):

2 AM and I'm still awake, writing a song
If I get it all down on paper, its no longer
inside of me, threatening the life they belong to
And i feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd
Cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud
And I know that you'll use them, however you want to

Call it emo, or whatever the fuck you want to.  Get over it.  Some people have EMOTIONS.  I'm not a depressed fuck thinking that the world has done me such great injustice by allowing me to be born.  I LIKE LIFE dammit.

I like to write poetry.  Many of you don't like poetry, or my style.  Good for you.  I don't care any more.  I used to.  For some godforsaken reason I used to.  Now, I don't.  You're not that important to me (alright, I'll admit that I admire and respect a couple of you very much).

I write some really amazingly bad rants, and from what I can tell some damn good rants.  Ohh well.  On both accounts.

I go through my existencial (a word which I can't spell, and don't care atm about wether or not I can) crisis's sometimes.  Maybe these are a bit emo.  But, it's not so much depressed and cutting myself as it is dazed and confused that there's something out there so big and wonderful that I'm apart of, a peice of.

I know that I will one day change something.  Big.  I know it.  I know there are many steps from here to there, and there are times when I fall down and need a little help up.  Those are some of the times I come here, cause I know that in the end, if I shift through the bullshit and negativity (not that you should all become bright happy fairies, never said that!), I'll find that little piece of whatever-the-fuck I need, and I'll be able to move on.

Thank you.

Or, if you like, forget you.

But, what do I know?  I'm just...something.