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It's true, RAW is not exactly a map to Discordian. My words were slightly imprecise.

At any rate, I just thought it was kind of funny, and a nice WTF. It does rather inspire me to insert Robert Anton Wilson into other places where he does not belong. Any of you sell anything on Etsy or eBay?

Deoxy has been around for a very long time. Highly recommended. I'm not sure how old they are, but maybe 8 years? Maybe more?

--St. Mae

I like to sew things, and I am currently working on a ridiculous Halloween costume. I was searching online for buttons to add to a vest, and I found these really cool buttons that look like gears. They're appropriate for my costume, so I clicked to look at them in more detail. The description caught my eye:

JH98899 - Steampunk Gears Button - Nickel finish - 5/8". See our other metal Steampunk buttons, including gears, wheels, clocks, gadgets and flywheels in silver, copper and brass finishes. Picture these buttons finishing up your elaborate Steampunk garments, whether you are anachronists, salvagepunks, dieselpunks, pulp devotees, rakes, bounders, flâneurs, steampunks, neovictorians, demimondaines, Edwardian scholarly types, airship pirates, or a member of the asylum for the chronotemporally dislocated. Steampunk is a style of dress and/or lifestyle based in the worlds of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Robert Anton Wilson and Alan Moore. It embraces the alternative possibilities of the Victorian England period, where steam power runs elaborately geared machines, women wear corsets and eccentric villains challenge the good guy with outrageous gadgets and inventions. Here is the Wikipedia Definition: Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, alternate history, and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s. Specifically, Steampunk involves an era or world where steam power is still widely used-usually the 19th century and often Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, alternate history, and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s. This technology may include such fictional machines as those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne or real technologies like the computer but developed earlier in an alternate history. Other examples of Steampunk contain alternate history-style presentations of "the path not taken" for such technology as dirigibles, analog computers, or such digital mechanical computers as Charles Babbage's Analytical engine. These are great for Steampunk, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Farscape, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Star Wars, Firefly, Stargate, Doctor Who, Science Fiction, fantasy, X-Files, Lord of the Rings, Serenity

...Robert Anton Wilson?

In case you'd like to see these buttons for yourself, here's a link to one of them:

http://www.amazon.com/Steampunk-Gears-Button-Nickel-Finish/dp/B004XU19BC/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&m=A1IY0P9H3N8IZK&s=generic&qid=1318360916&sr=1-6

There are several different styles, colors, and sizes. They're all sold by the Patterns of Time Amazon store.


--St. Mae, Discordian.com

Aww, Cram, you warm my heart!

Most of my anecdotes from the a.d days are personal.

*I apparently said something clever once, because other active members of alt.discordia gave me the K.S.C. title that I carry today. I know it's a title people usually claim for themselves and thus is occasionally more meaningless than true or false, but it meant a lot to me back then so I carry it with me.

*One of my best posts to alt.discordia was detailing a FREE WATER prank. The idea was that water is normally free at water fountains and such, so offering people free water is somewhat suspicious if you do it right. The post detailed an idea to set up a table with little dixie cups and a FREE WATER sign. You would have the table manned by people with clipboards and surveys to ask how people felt before and after drinking the water, and possibly water jugs with different labels so you can carefully record who had which water (all filled from the same tap, of course).

This post got a pretty good response, and I think I sent myself a copy in a long-defunct archive. Unfortunately, I cannot for the life of me find it in the alt.discordia archives, so maybe it was before the Usenet archive started. If anyone finds this, I will totally send you $23. Anyways, several years later, I met a random Internet Discordian and we got to talking and he started telling me about the best post he ever read on alt.discordia. Turns out, it was this post. Kinda cool OMG moment.

*alt.discordia is where I first encountered St. Tim the Canonizer, original founder of the Church of No Dead Saints. When driving cross-country, I stayed at his home and he canonized me. That's where I picked up the Church of No Dead Saints that I run to this day.

*I'm still in touch with a few alt.discordia personalities, notably jcs bimp, Karl Musser of the Cartographer's Conspiracy Cabal, and acb (who used to run the psychoceramics mailing list, for being and discussing crackpots). Kristin Buxton is still around the internets somewhere. Her Discordian website was mentioned in RAW's _Everything is Under Control_.

I started posting to alt.discordia in ~1993 through a local dial-up BBS that had Usenet access. I was 15 at the time. I finally got my own account on the internet proper in late 1994. Alt.discordia was my first internet home, and greatly shaped the person I am today. Reading through my archives there is a mix of nostalgic and painful, fond adolescent memories and awkward "oh god, I said what?!" moments.


--St. Mae, Discordian.com

I'm wondering if we'd really have to worry about this whole payment thing you've found, MS. I checked with my friend, and apparently Radio KoL doesn't pay royalties because they don't have enough listeners. There's a threshold under which you don't actually have to pay, and I'm pretty sure that we'd be under that. We'd still have to pay for hosting and possibly software, but it seems like we wouldn't have to pay nearly as much if we're not doing that.

My understanding is that Radio KoL has forums. My DJ friend there suggested that you should go to the radio forums and post and ask advice there, people would be likely to be helpful.

I'm not sure I want to or can commit to a regular DJ shift, but I'd do it once in a while. And I'd pay $5 a month just to support this because it's a project I believe in. Not only that, but also I will promote it to the Discordian.com announcements email list and on the site.

I have some friends who are DJs for Radio KoL (Kingdom of Loathing). If you'd like to talk to one of them about the technology they're using and how it's all working out for them, I'd love to put you in touch.

Speaking of that, you should find out how the number of listeners is decided and what happens if you go over. If I promote this to my 500+ person mailing list one day and like a hundred people come listen, will 50 of them not be able to listen, or will we be charged extra? Or will it average over a month and maybe still work out to ~50 people a day? How do they handle spikes in traffic?

My guess is that the average number of listeners will be pretty low, but there will be a few huge spikes as I email my list and as we post this around places (if you want, I can do promotion for this the same places I post about KallistiCon, and I could try to get it on BoingBoing if we want to do that). Before you sign contracts, you should make sure you understand what happens in these instances so there are no surprises as far as money goes.

I'd do it every once in a while. I'm an award winning public speaker, and I have a huge music collection.