Messages

Jenne--I salute you for actually parenting.

Discord--please to be employing Y and O key. I might be the only one here who finds it difficult to take someone seriously when they are being addressed as "U," in which case I'll shush up. But ow. I am fairly certain you made good points, but I will get back to you on that.

RWHN--You bring up "for the child's safety" and "brainwashing." I completely agree with what you've said, but I just want to bring this up purely for the sake of bringing it up. In the case of many religious parents (such as my aunt and uncle, for example) they think that what they are indoctrinating into their children IS for that child's mortal safety, just as much as teaching them not to jump off the roof is, perhaps even more so. I personally think that's dumb. But how do you determine where the line is drawn? How do you determine when something is actually for the child's safety or if it's simply your own biases coming into play? What's "good" for a kid is so damn subjective.

Of course, I am a prick and will gladly pass judgment on religious people raising their kids as drones, even though I have no children of my own. But we all need our own little foibles, I suppose.

I believe it was Jenne who mentioned in another thread that it's not so much breaking out of the BIP as being conscious of it and how that subsequently impacts your life. It was very well put.

Don't worry so much about where you are in relation to the BIP, so much as how you choose to use your understanding of its existence.

I can't think of any better endeavor than helping kids not grow up to be stupid fuckheads.

I can.

But I can't figure out how to get the nuns in the milk-jugs.

Slice, dice.

Rinse, repeat.

Bad Religion is so full of win... Some of my favorite of their songs would be "I Wanna Conquer the World," "The Answer," "Flat Earth Society"... Yeah. Lots of good songs.

That is a rather excellent song list, I have to say. [insert golf clap]

Nice list of motivational bands there.

Any Bad Religion to be showing up?

I am curious how "nothing would seem like it does" without us perceiving the seeming.

Did that make sense?

Even within the realm of "stupid humans," perception is wildly varying. The roomies and I were having one of those drunk philosophy talks the other night about people we know who exist in COMPLETELY different realities, who just perceive the world completely differently from the "norm," if you will. But every one of these so-called realities are subjective. Perhaps my roomie's ex-girlfriend was closer to "actual" reality, if you will, than he and I are. But who are we to say?

There are concrete things (such as barstools, for example), but how people respond to them, etc, happens on a huge scale of variation. So how can we even say things would "seem" different if we weren't here to say how it seems?

Or am I just ending up saying "if a tree falls and no one is there to hear it, does it make a noise?" I don't know. I had a point when I started.

'cult' is has many of the same trappings. It seems to be generally described as a 'movement' which is a bit more vague and carrys less negative connotations.

Cult does have lots of negative connotations. But tends to also carry with it an element of the ridiculous and/or laughable. And everyone likes a good lail now and again.

I would not describe Discordianism as a cult in any serious sense, but I would just for the fun of it sometimes.

ROCK! My goal for tomorrow is to grab as much of the V for Vendetta, Invisibles, and Filth comics (in paper form!) as a birthday present to myself, but this will certainly be put to good use 

V for Vendetta is fabulous. Infinitely superior to the movie, though they over all did a decent job with the film, on a scale of comic book movies.

Someone dropped a suggestion of the Promethea books around here. They're really good, nice Alan Moore stuff, but a bit, uh.... well, MAGDJICKQUEY. Gorgeous art, but I wouldn't recommend those for most of the embittered misanthropes around here. Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan is magnificent, though. It's been a while since I've read it, so I don't know if I can qualify it as "Discordian" or not, but it's damn fun.

-Darth Cupcake
Former DC/Vertigo employee... does it show?

Isn't debating whether or not something is a religion just like debating whether or not something is art? Or trying to figure out whether a song is "pop punk" or "post punk"?

splitting semantic hairs here, I think.

No, especially if you are talking about making others aware of Discordianism.  The word religion can evoke all sorts of connotations to an individual.  In fact, a couple of folks who used to post here thought the BIP was looking too religion-like and they didn't want anything to do with it.  For the record, I think they didn't really understand what we were doing, but you can see what kind of an affect that "religion" idea can have on people. 

Troof.

People tend to have a knee-jerk reaction to the word "religion," not necessarily because of religion itself, but because of connotations and associations. Just see the thread on superstition/religion/spirituality. With the way people tend to respond to religion, I feel like one might do better describing Discordianism as a cult. 

(tangent for the History of Discordia booklet: in what period of history would Discordians instigate Order rather than Disorder?)

Genghis Khan could be called a discordian in this sense.  When the norm for northeast Asia was warring nomadic tribes, he sought to unite under a common tribe, so food, and  basic necessities were more easily available, as well as increased defenses, etc.

Also, I don't remember if it was Genghis Khan, but I think it was... One of those crazy warlord fellows used to stack up the severed heads of his enemies into pyramids. Once the heads began to decompose, the decomposition process would cause them to glow in the dark.

Thus, huge glowing pyramids of heads. HUGE GLOWING PYRAMIDS OF HEADS!

This is all I remember from high school world history. It is all I care to remember. It is genius! I don't know if it necessarily counts as Discordian per se, but huge glowing pyramids of heads. Yes!

I really like the last two lines of part 2.

Of course it's just a metaphor. But I think the point is that there's no need to over think said metaphor. Take the cell and run with it.

Don't worry about adding in everything like wardens and architects, etc etc etc. Just take the metaphor and work with what's there, rather than trying to spread it too thin. I think, at least.

Like I could use my car as a metaphor for something and then someone would say, "But you drive stick, and that totally doesn't work with your metaphor." And then I'd have to go stabbity stab with a grapefruit spoon. It's not pretty. The lesson here is: look at what the metaphor is after, rather than going after over thinking it and expanding it unnecessarily.

Sorry, LMNO, if I completely derailed that.

am i correct in assuming that we're merging the citizens of belgium and france for the purposes of this thread?

No. Belgians all taste of chocolate, obviously. The French are a little more, well, stinky.

I started a scooter gang. We'll fuck you up AND we get 70+ miles to the gallon.

Fuck scooters, you just can't beat Aussie Bicycle gangs, they run red lights AND kill the elderly, AND get away with it. And all at absolutely zero cost in terms of fuel.
Beat that, scooter boy.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/man-struck-by-cyclist-dies/2006/08/28/1156617253330.html

Cripes. That's hysterical. Of course, if that happened in the US of A, bicycles would be banned and people would have MySpace pictures of ribbons speaking out against bikes...

In Paris, I used to watch scooter drivers get road rage when they cut each other off. They would get off their scooters and actually start yelling and hitting each other in the middle of the street. Then people in cars get out to yell at the guys for blocking traffic, so on and so forth. Hissy fits causing gridlock FTW 

I'll trust the hail eris bit was tongue in cheek.

Nope. Prof Cram is actually a Baptist IRL. Srsly.