Discordian Dates, Etc.

[Cain]

I'm with LMNO, I never bothered with it because I never saw it as being funny or particularly interesting in the sense of telling me something I need to know.

Though apparently, some argue (lol, Wikipedia code phrases ITT) its actually a fairly well designed calendar, considering the fuckups we had getting to the current Georgian one.  Greg Hill probably did it in that case, since he was a mathematician.

[Triple Zero]

well you can hardly make it more complicated than having alternating months of 30 and 31 days, except for the middle two, and the second one which is 28 and sometimes 29 days. also having one (or sometimes two) days left in a year when you used up all the weeks wasn't quite the stroke of genius either. never mind naming some of the months after numbers, but of course the wrong numbers.

i know there are all sorts of historical reasons for it but damn, what a trainwreck. a perfect example of the Machine gone stupid. humans have a real way of getting themselves stuck in a stupid situation. like the QWERTY keyboard, the australian railways (though they fixed that one in the end, afaik), MS Windows for the PC / Internet Explorer, character encodings, HTML specifications .. and probably much more.

so it kinda makes sense a discordian, when confronted with all the disorder in the traditional calendar, would make the discordian calender quite orderly (except for the zany names, which aren't really that more zany than the current system actually).

although some of the examples i named show that it is possible to change specifications/acquire interoperability, for example HTML specs are slowly but steadily becoming more standard with the webstandards movements. it just takes a whole lot of hard work and dedication.

[Darth Cupcake]

I concur with Cain and LMNO.

Sure, I could take the time to sit down and learn the Discordian calendar, but I feel I have better things to do with my time. Books to read. Infants to drop kick. Etc. It can be entertaining, but I think the usefulness of it is pretty strongly correlated to what "flavor" of Discordianism you subscribe to, if you will.

Cram mentioned his use of the Discordian calendar to talk about holy days, etc. He does the Over The Top style really well, especially in person. I don't pull it off so well, so I go for a slightly more stealthy version--the calendar thing just doesn't jive with my style.

I can't say that I would criticize anyone for using it. I might not laugh, but I won't criticize, because it's about what works for each person. I will roll my eyes and make a snarky remark if anyone expects me to actually know what date they just told me, though.

[LMNO]

If someone used the discordian calendar on me, I'd just say, "what is that in Gregorian?"

I do like the names of the days, though.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I think that the names of the days and the names of the seasons also make great "esoteric bullshit" to babble at people when heaping Discordianism on them. A dissertation on how the seasons are representative of the stages that all systems go through has converted more than one cabbage to Our Lady.

(Of course, some point after conversion I remind them that its all bullshit)

[hooplala]

I concur with Cain and LMNO.

Sure, I could take the time to sit down and learn the Discordian calendar, but I feel I have better things to do with my time. Books to read. Infants to drop kick. Etc. It can be entertaining, but I think the usefulness of it is pretty strongly correlated to what "flavor" of Discordianism you subscribe to, if you will.

Cram mentioned his use of the Discordian calendar to talk about holy days, etc. He does the Over The Top style really well, especially in person. I don't pull it off so well, so I go for a slightly more stealthy version--the calendar thing just doesn't jive with my style.

I can't say that I would criticize anyone for using it. I might not laugh, but I won't criticize, because it's about what works for each person. I will roll my eyes and make a snarky remark if anyone expects me to actually know what date they just told me, though.

My intention wasn't really to negatively criticize (although I suppose I did), but to comment on what seems to me to be precariously close to promoting dogma.  Now, to be fair, nobody that I know of is actually insisting anyone has to use the Discordian calendar . . . so its not really dogma at all . . .

I guess it would just make me giggle if there were hundreds of "Discordian Calendars" - just imagine how Wiki would try to deal with that.

Does this make sense?  I didn't mean to diss anyone.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I concur with Cain and LMNO.

Sure, I could take the time to sit down and learn the Discordian calendar, but I feel I have better things to do with my time. Books to read. Infants to drop kick. Etc. It can be entertaining, but I think the usefulness of it is pretty strongly correlated to what "flavor" of Discordianism you subscribe to, if you will.

Cram mentioned his use of the Discordian calendar to talk about holy days, etc. He does the Over The Top style really well, especially in person. I don't pull it off so well, so I go for a slightly more stealthy version--the calendar thing just doesn't jive with my style.

I can't say that I would criticize anyone for using it. I might not laugh, but I won't criticize, because it's about what works for each person. I will roll my eyes and make a snarky remark if anyone expects me to actually know what date they just told me, though.

My intention wasn't really to negatively criticize (although I suppose I did), but to comment on what seems to me to be precariously close to promoting dogma.  Now, to be fair, nobody that I know of is actually insisting anyone has to use the Discordian calendar . . . so its not really dogma at all . . .

I guess it would just make me giggle if there were hundreds of "Discordian Calendars" - just imagine how Wiki would try to deal with that.

Does this make sense?  I didn't mean to diss anyone.

It's a good point. I don't really use the Discordian calender IRL... but I occasionally lead people to believe that I do. When you say that today is Prickle-Prickle, the 23 day of Discord YOLD ... people look at you funny. Then they go to Wikipedia and think that they've been exposed to something real (Wikipedia is great for adding weight to Discordianism LOL).

I think that being Discordian might be tricky sometimes. If you're too Discordian you'll shock people, but in a "That guy is crazy" sort of way... which if that's what you're going for is Good. However, you can also be Discordian in a way that makes people think "This person is involved in something much larger than I realize". The latter is really what I find most effective in "breaking open the head".

Being a crazy individualist seems like fun, but it doesn't have the psychological appeal to potential converts

For example, I've been with this company for 8 years. I have done Turkey Curses at VP's, invocations in my cubicle and for quite some time I had a Discordian Calender hanging up on the outside of my cube. One of the people near me came in one day and said "I saw a news article about your people". She produced an article which talked about this couple which had a bizarre incident. Basically on their way home (long, quiet, country road) they were startled to see a glowing 3 foot tall Ronald McDonald standing the the middle of the road. (It was a plastic molded figure with some sort of light bulb or something inside). They continued down the road and saw another, and another and another... for a mile the Ronald McDonald's continued and stopped right at their driveway (the only one in the nearby area. They assumed this was some sort of threat and called the Police. When the police got there... there were no Ronald McDonalds anywhere (they eventually found one in a ditch).

That was the only story, but this co-worker was convinced that I would know about it since it was obviously part of the Discordian Movement (I have no idea who the hell did it). So I let her think that I knew all about it. I smiled and nodded as I read it and then handed back to her with a wink and said "I Know Nothing".

She converted.

[Cramulus]

For example, I've been with this company for 8 years. I have done Turkey Curses at VP's, invocations in my cubicle and for quite some time I had a Discordian Calender hanging up on the outside of my cube. One of the people near me came in one day and said "I saw a news article about your people". She produced an article which talked about this couple which had a bizarre incident. Basically on their way home (long, quiet, country road) they were startled to see a glowing 3 foot tall Ronald McDonald standing the the middle of the road. (It was a plastic molded figure with some sort of light bulb or something inside). They continued down the road and saw another, and another and another... for a mile the Ronald McDonald's continued and stopped right at their driveway (the only one in the nearby area. They assumed this was some sort of threat and called the Police. When the police got there... there were no Ronald McDonalds anywhere (they eventually found one in a ditch).

That was the only story, but this co-worker was convinced that I would know about it since it was obviously part of the Discordian Movement (I have no idea who the hell did it). So I let her think that I knew all about it. I smiled and nodded as I read it and then handed back to her with a wink and said "I Know Nothing".

She converted.

[Verbal Mike]

I'm going to bump this since it's still on the first page and I don't think I have enough to say for a brand new thread.

I used to completely ignore the Discordian calendar just like LMNO. A couple months ago I started trying to work independently from home (language services - still trying, by the way) and realized the whole 7-day week rhythm is a little off my personal needs. So, since I'm on Linux, and ddate is just a few taps away, I've set myself up with a simple system whereby the Discordian week determines how much I work:
-Sweetmorn: No work. Do whatever.
-Boomtime to Prickle-Prickle: Work-for-money is the first priority
-Setting Orange: Any work left over from the midweek gets priority (I call this cleanup); certain projects that are serious but not work-intensive and make me no money get priority right after them.
I try to limit errand-running to Sweetmorn and Setting Orange because I waste enough time without leaving my room.
I find this system very comfortable, though I have yet to get enough of a workload to make it financially stable. Another major glitch is that the world is completely out of sync with it and often I have social events inconveniently breaking into my midweek.

[Jasper]

I love the ddate thing, I never would have guessed to try it.

[Reverend Ju Ju Booze]

One of the billion reasons that made me switch to Linux...
ddate combined with Ubuntu's fish desklet...

[hooplala]

I just looked up the ddate thing - its Latin to me.

[Jasper]

It's simpletastic.  You just punch in ddate on the terminal in Linux and it spits out the Discordian date.

[LMNO]

I'm thinking Hoopla was making an oblique joke.

[Jasper]

Oh, I see it now.

Still waking up...