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Mithtur Professor thur, if I thtay here, will I turn out kwathy like mithtur Thornley did ath well thur?

I found one. It's the School system.

The machine grades its beef by making it perform. If you're incapable of making the grade, you're marked for nothing important in life. If you make the grade and do what they tell you, you succeed, but along their guidelines. If, however, you don't follow the rules but show high intelligence? You're labeled a wild card. They target you for induction into the machine so you don't become another loose bolt getting stuck in the gearheads, messing up the design...

True, but not as true as it used to be. These days many of the most "successful" people were pegged by the schooling system as failures. I might be hopelessly optimistic in thinking so, but I believe the whole monster machine of schooling in the Western world is on the brink of collapse. I believe it will be sudden, but that it is inevitable.

(On the other hand, I have been known to be a fanatic supporter of Sudbury schools, so feel free to ignore me on this one.)

Thanks! Many of these are beautifully relevant, somehow.

Not sure how well that will work. If you're spreading funny, yet subversive pamphlets, the angsty pseudo-anarchist will still be the immediate suspect.

I think we had this discussion (briefly) a few weeks ago...
I'm of the opinion we need to just start as many GASMs as possible (as in, start threads for as many as possible, calling people to join) and see which ones stick.
The idea of the GASM is that it spreads by being appealing for people to copy. If you start a thread for a good GASM, it will stick.
Besides, if we have two great GASMs we have two great GASMs - but if we have a hundred terrible ones, there's going to be one AMAZING one somewhere in there.

You don't have to post something for anyone to consider. Just post it, and when someone is looking for stuff for a pamphlet, why, they might just choose your piece for inclusion, if it fits.

Awesome ideas there, bringdown. Definitely going to remember those whenever I find/found a local Cabal.

This thought inspired a (very) short story I just wrote:

   Saint Verbatim was stoned one day, idly jacking off in the privacy of his own room, when Eris walked in on him. He clumsily zipped up and straightened up, as he recognized her immediately... But something seemed amiss.
   "My Goddess woman, you're hideous!", he exclaimed in shock.
   "I bed your pardon?"
   "You are bloody damned ugly. Gaah. What ever happened to the whole 'beautiful wicked woman' thing you had going?
   "Eh, I decided to shake off that meme."
   "Just like that?"
   "Goddess of Chaos and Confusion, remember?"
   "Yeah, but, I mean, damn. That's fucking hideous."
   "You're repeating yourself Verb."
   "Meh. Well, if you're here you must want something from me. I'd kinda like to get back to, you know..."
   "Nah, just wanted to startle you, shake things up a little, you know, whatever. Bye ass-wipe."
   "Bye, dog-face."

Just a thought - why are we accustomed to portraying She Who Done It All as beautiful?

I loved both of those, Hoopla! Thanks.
I get the feeling it may be an almost insurmountable task to put together a pamphlet that is funny to anyone who reads it. One kind of person may be turned off by the mythological setting of Snub #5, whereas another kind of person may not get "Modern Sisyphus" just because the characters are stoned.
These may not be the best examples but you know what I mean. Maybe the dream of a single all-enROFLing Lollercaust is not something realistically attainable? Maybe it would be better to target a few specific sub-culture groups and write pamphlets specifically targeted at each, with in-jokes at all? The humor of the Internet age is, after all, mostly made of in-jokes.

Okay, I may still be prime newb meat, but I've seen you Elder Ones say "someone has to write that damn Lollercaust already" too many times.
Let's brainstorm.
Cram posted in another thread that he will post some materials later today.
Did anyone else have some more specific ideas for this pamphlet, Way Back When?

Why is it important to strive to break out? I really don't see it as a prison. Rather, I see it as a grid of reference points I use to make sense (or nonsense) of my universe. I don't want it gone, or at least not until I'm done having fun. Obviously I can change my grid as I see fit, expand it to encompass more perspectives, and I like that.

I think one of the main points of BIP is that very often, the grids we use are not the grids we would really choose. One of those is the chunk of grid that says "some grids are better than others", which makes us often settle on the first reality tunnel that happens to pique our interest. More often than not, the first reality tunnel you bump into will be one that other people have settled in. This whole thing has crazy sinergistic power that basically means most of what most people believe is likelier not to be the grid that you would choose, just the grid that others happened to choose. As a pothead I think you can understand the concept of entering a very different state of mind, altering your own reality - in a way, this is what BIP caused me to do. It has made me re-examine facets of my personality/Prison/grids that I had always managed to convince myself I hang on to for good reasons.
I wouldn't say this has made me happier, but I'd lie if I'd say I wasn't glad this happened, if I'd say I wasn't grateful for this pamphlet.
That said, no one piece of scripture will resonate the same with all who read it. If you don't like the pamphlet and its metaphors, go find ones you like better.

(I also wish the pamphlet were more light-hearted, by the way. It just may not be a realistic thing to wish.)

Well, I think the most traditional approach to implementing this calendar is to flat out ignore it.
But yours is a close second!

"just a tool" sounds almost like an oxymoron to me. Tools change everything. Tools change the way we think, the way we live, absolutely everything about our lives.

Okay, so I found the assertion that people often consider certain BIP Bars part of their personality when they're not, very illuminating. In a way, it made me understand very suddenly who I am (and I'm grateful to you who wrote the pamphlet for that, by the way.)
But I've been wondering now if Bars don't still quite directly affect who we are. I'm beginning to think they do.
Case at point, I was recently romantically involved with someone you might label feminist hippie. For a while she had me very cautious about male tendencies towards aggression and over-assertiveness, and while I now realize I got too caught up in that specific reality tunnel at the time, I can't help but notice that I now only like pron where the woman seems to be enjoying herself (this was not a main criterion to me before). My personality seems to have been affected in a rather direct way by a Bar I spent a while building and later discarded.
Or maybe I just haven't really torn off that Bar yet.