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My daughter came and told me she couldn't do the research for her penguin paper yesterday because there was something wrong with Wikipedia. So I had to sit her down and explain what was going on and why this was important, and especially why this was important enough for Wikipedia to go down. And now she has to do her penguin research tonight and over the weekend.

I would like to think that there were other parents out there that were forced into the same conversation, whether they knew about SOPA before the blackout or not.

Oh... That's actually pretty nice. Thanks!

is that permission to run without a by-line, or...?

Okay one last tidbit:


And I say unto you: yea, verily this is some fucked up shit right here, but I must put the bite on you if you want more letters to come after your name.
- Queen Gogira, to Sinister Fish Hat on the night of his embrace

Last one: REMEMBER

Remember:

Because one person did one idiotic thing that one other person took exception to, we're not allowed to talk about this. That's right: one person. In America, in the twentieth century, we are being denied our right to worship freely and openly. The first breakthough in magical theory in centuries, the one thing that could give us an advantage over our foes, and we're forced to talk about it in hushed voices behind closed doors.
They disband us and they exile us and they hunt us down like animals. They burn us at the stake and crush us with boulders, yet we survive every time. This is the strength of the Old Gods, the blood that beats in these withered veins. We will die a thousand times and a thousand times be reborn. We wear new skins and spout new philosophies and invoke different faces of the same Goddess. We will paint and dance and sweat and sing in the darkest of prisons and the most sterile skyscrapers; in dirty city streets and perfect landscaped gardens.
They cannot stop us.
Ever.

Almost done now: ON JOY


On Joy:

There is a tendancy among BSW's (especially those of the round geometrical object persuasion) to assume that because something is joyful it is either weak or wrong. This is the depths of Grayface philosophy, and it has even led some Discordians to surmise that perhaps Grayface himself was one of the dead people Eris liberated from the Underworld, which would put a very interesting spin on things indeed.
We know, however, that there is joy in the heart of Eris, for Hers is the Garden of the Weird and Beautiful. Her eyes twinkle with mischief at the thought of a good troll, and She smiles when Her apple seeds take root. Bitterness does not grow in Her Garden, nor does cabbage. In Her joy there is strength, and that which makes Her smile cannot be wrong, although it can sometimes come at the expense of others.
Therefore let it be resolved that if there is joy in your heart, it should be allowed to thrive. And if there be no joy in your heart: refrain from peeing in everyone else's cheerios, or the beatings will commence until morale improves.

But wait! There's THE DEMISE OF THE MYSTERIOUS DR. HAND


From the Book of Very Bad Ideas:
The Demise of the Mysterious Dr. Hand

It came to pass that in the Circle of Miskatonic the Mysterious Dr. Hand concocted a scheme to undo the curse of the Sun God 's wrath. For he was a lifelong student of the arts of alchemy, and in his quest for the philosopher's stone had uncovered a great secret. The power the sun held over the BSW's was not of a physical nature, but spiritual. Therefore it stood to reason that altering the spiritual nature of the sun would by needs alter or even remove the harmful effects.
The beauty of his plan was its simplicity. It has been known since the very dawn of man that gold held within it the power and blessings of the sun, and that this holy metal had strong ties to the spirit of that heavenly body. So, too, has it ever been known that the metal of the moon is silver, and they are bonded together like the mother is to the child: apart but always one. Dr. Hand realized that the answer had been staring us in the face all along.
The ritual was easy enough to work out, the sigils and incantations had been established long ago. The only thing required was the material to establish the sympathetic connection. We were going to need a shitload of gold.
Dr. Hand purchased a large bus and set to work modifying it for our purposes. The windows were blackened, armor was added and weapons stored in hidden areas. We were going to invade Fort Knox. And it would have worked, too.
Unfortunately word got out, and the powers that be decided that armed assault on a government installation would be bad publicity, and everything went downhill from there. Even the bus got torched.
The sad thing is that it could have worked, and if it had it would have helped everyone, not just our little Circle. We could have made the world a better place for BSW's everywhere, but they destroyed our scheme before it could even get off the ground.
The moral of this story is never let them know what 's up until it's too late for them to stop you.

  ~Humble Lady Ermine Who Lies Dreaming

Next: THE CIRCLE OF ERIS


THE CIRCLE OF ERIS
AND HOW IT CAME TO BE

Queen Gogira Pennyworth, Dweller in the Sinking Lands, KSC, BSW did come to the land on the banks of the Miskatonic seeking knowledge. For, lo, she had turned 18 and was kicked out of the house of her father and mother and forced to survive on their $20 a week allowance at the University. In these times she was not known as Queen Gogira, but it'd be much more confusing to have to call her by different names, so we're just going to stick to the one she uses now and hope that doesn't piss anyone off too much.
In the University, she did meet many people, and many of their names have been forgotten. And she did get drunk and have sloppy make-outs with a number of people as well, and many of their names have been forgotten. And many courses were taught, and exams taken, and the knowledge from these things, too, was forgotten.
But she did not forget Lord Barron Sinister Fish Hat, HLPSM, BDW (who also went by a different name back then). Nay, Queen Gogira and Sinister Fish Hat did spend many nights together when they both should have been doing something else, and they did many times make the sloppy make-outs, and they did expound on the nature of the Universe at length with no real knowledge of it. And this was as it should be, for College Students are maggots pretending to be flies, and this is their place.
And in the midst of their expounding, Good Jester Hinkleman, KSC (who did go by that name at that time) did mention a book that he thought the two of them really aught to read. Casting aside their textbooks, Queen Gogira and Sinister Fish Hat did read the strange text, and it did reveal unto them many secrets. And they decided that there would be a cult of Eris, and set to work gathering the people that they made-out with sometimes and convincing them somehow that it was a good idea.

So things were, until Queen Gogira went clubbing one night. For that night she was being stalked by a creature that she could not understand, though she did not know it. Armed with a fake ID, Queen Gogira did become grossly inebriated at the expense of many a foolish young man, bt also at the expense of the Mysterious Dr. Hand. And Dr. Hand did take Queen Gogira aside, and did do something fucked up in a good way to her, and she did feel kinda faint. But, though her blood alcohol content was high enough that it could be measured in percentages rather than parts per million, Queen Gogira did recall Dr. Hand when she awoke the next morning. Thus it was that Queen Gogita sought out Dr. Hand the next time that she was in the club, and something vaguely resembling a relationship formed between them. And in these times Sinister Fish Hat was often jealous, but he did comfort himelf with other women, and Queen Gogira was cool with that. In time Dr. Hand did reveal himself to be a Blood Sucking Weirdo and did put the bite on Queen Gogira.
Dr. Hand did bring Queen Gogira into the Circle of which he was currently Hierophant but not pay attention to a lot of what was going on. She did pay attention to Dr. Hand's plans, though, and thought them to be a terrible riot. Others in the city, however, did not. Soon the Circle was disbanded, and Dr. Hand was being hunted by the other BSW's, and general chaos ensued. And while Queen Gogira was saddened by the fall of  the Circle, she could not help but rejoice in  the rise of Aftermath.
Humble Lady Ermine who Lies Dreaming, BSW did lead the Circle to safety, and they did hide themselves among the more desirable enemies of the establishment.
And though Dr. hand did fall to the bloodhunt, Lady Ermine did not allow Queen Gogira to be destroyed by the enemies of her sire. For Lady Ermine, too, was a childe of Dr. Hand, and she pitied her kind-of-a-sister. In her land there was a great tree of some kind which may have been relevant, and in this tree was a house which had but one window, which could be blacked out from the inside. It was here that Queen Gogira hid in the Dark Years of which there was a number, and that number was not important enough to remember.*
When the Dark Years ended, Lady Ermine did present Queen Gogira to the reconstituted Circle. The other BSW's were amazed that she had survived, and Queen Gogira, who had spent a lot of time thinking about all this, did have a great many persuasive things to say about Eris. And nobody else had any better ideas.
So, that's it.

*Discordians, like the Ancient Greeks, cannot be counted on to get the facts straight.

Do you play silly games with silly people pretending to be vampires? Do you happen to play the latest iteration of that game that specifically created a society for vampires who worship ancient goddesses? Do you really want to piss your storytellers off? Well then, have I got some heretical bullshit for you!

First up: ERIS IN THE UNDERWORLD


Eris in the Underworld

In the old days, when the Gods ran around knocking up maidens and turning into animals and generally making a ridiculous mess of things, Eris was very upset. No one ever invited her to the gatherings at Mt. Olympus, and they always seemed to be too busy for her. Only poor, ugly Hephaestus would give her the time of day, and even he got nervous when she started talking to his wife. No one welcomed her into their homes, though they could not bar her from coming into their lives.
In fact, the only place that Eris couldn't go was the Underworld. There she held no power, for there is no discord among the dead. Like most people confronted with such an obstacle, Eris went straight to work trying to get into Hades.
She tried bribing Charon, since that seemed to work for all those mortals who broke in, but he did argue at length about which kinds of currency he could accept, and proclaimed that he could not make change and lo, there was confusion. And Eris did wish that she could turn off that shit every once in a while, but she could not.
So instead she jumped inside the skin of a dead man*, saying he really didn't need it anyway and this was important.** Charon was kind of a moron, so he let Eris in with her dead-man-suit and this time he didn't even complain about making change. Because of this, Discordians sometimes wear the skins of others, so that they can avoid carrying around a pocket full of dimes and nickles.
Eris toured the Underworld, and saw many things that were pretty weird. Confused by the suffering, she went to confront Hades, the Lord of the Underworld, whom she liked to call "Gary" or "Hari-Fishnut" (so that he didn't get a swell head). And Gary was not pleased that Eris had come into his domain, and he did make faces like unto the constipated man and the fat man in summertime. And Gary said unto Eris:

"Why did you have to come down here and ruin everything?"
And Eris was most unhappy, since she didn't deserve this treatment and she really hadn't done anything yet. She considered messing with Gary's marriage, but Persephone didn't really like him anyway, so that would be a waste. Instead, Eris found some of the people who were being punished without chance for redemption or reward and she took them out of the Underworld. Because Eris knew that the place of suffering was to create change in men, and there was no change among the dead, so what the hell did Gary think he was doing anyway?
When Cerebus tried to eat the people she was taking out, Eris set his three heads to arguing with one another. She thought this was a wonderful lark and swore to get around to doing that again some time if she remembered.
Later, Eris realized that she'd let a Great Evil into the world, but since concepts like "Good" and "Evil" were kinda funny and quaint to her, she didn't give it too much thought. The criminals and rapists and people who talked in movie theaters that she let out of Hades made a new and messed up race of blood sucking weirdos, who had to hide from the Gods all the time lest they get thrown back into the Underworld and put up with an even more pissed off Gary.
And that's where Vampires come from.
But really not.


* Interestingly enough, when Eris was in the Underworld she ran into Johannes Grinbottom, KSC of the year 2012, who was most upset that all his years of worship and time travel he should wind up stuck in the Underworld with no skin. In response, Eris turned him into a cabbage.
** Was it?

Okay, "celebrated" was probably the wrong word.  "Supported"? 

I dunno, the thing is that women who go on and on about a woman's right to choose should not be criticizing the choices those women make. Or at the very least they should not be criticizing any choice as "anti-feminist" because the whole damn point was to let women make those choices in the first place.

You know how sometimes when you're in the middle of a dream you get this sudden flash of insight into what's going on and why everything around you is behaving the way it is, and sometimes it's completely relevant to your waking life and completely changes how you see the world? This was not one of those.

"Oh! Of course the giant dogs hate me, because I'm dead!"

Please accept this as a token of my love
http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/3968/greenbutterflies.jpg

I will add any attribution you like.

I am completely in love with this.

Also cuddlefish

You should replace "Hollywood" with "RIAA and MPAA" if that's what you're getting at.

My mother explained the two party system to me thusly:

Republicans think that Government ruins everything it touches; Democrats think that Big Business ruins everything it touches. They're both right.

So here is a question. Where I live my children and I are the minority.  I have found, on more than one occasion, that the prejudice is rarely, if ever, in our favor.  Yet if I bring it to anyone's attention, I'm the one called racist. 

For example, when we were robbed recently the black officer actually asked "What did you expect, moving into this neighborhood?"  My response was "What?  Because I'm white I should expect to be robbed?" to which he just shrugged.

I think anytime anyone regardless of race or religion is treated with prejudice it is wrong.

Wow. The point isn't "because I'm white, I should expect to be robbed" but rather a whoooole slew of fucked up attitudes on behalf of the cop:
1. Because you're white, you don't belong in that neighborhood
2. That hood (where whites don't belong and therefore, must be populated with non-whites) is one where robbery is expected and normal
3. Only non-whites have a good reason/excuse for being in a neighborhood where robbery is expected and normal

Alternatively:
1) Because you clearly don't like getting robbed, you don't belong
2) This place has a statistically observable higher instance of crimes like theft
3) If you don't like getting robbed, maybe you should not live somewhere with a pre-existing high crime rate

It's easy for white folks to jump on the "OTHER PEOPLE ARE RACIST TOO!" idea, but the fact is that even if you have to deal with racial prejudice in your local area as a white person, chances are pretty good that a) your family hasn't been subjected to those pressures for hundreds of years, resulting in fewer opportunities for socio-economic advancement and b) it's just your local area, and you still reap the benefits of being a white person in a predominantly white society on a larger scale.