Another Sacred Ritual: Stirring The Pot

One thing I like about this sublime faith is that there actually are no rituals. At least they aren't built in. But you can certainly come up with your own. The 'Bavarian Fire Drill' described in Illuminatus! is a fine example. But again, I would hate to see anyone's imagination limited by what has gone before.

One I just heard about was The Bookstore Maneuver, currently in use in a town that prefers to be nameless, on the West Coast. My contact there is fond of taking books out of the "Atheism" section, the ones with noncommital titles, and sliding them into the "Christianity" section in hopes that someone will start reading it and have a bit of a start when they realize what they're looking at. Heh.

That's the Discordian equivalent of going to a restaurant seeking to take care of those hunger pangs, and asking for "mild spice" in your Pad Thai. Now, I'm wondering what would happen if you slipped in something like The Book Of Lies by Aleister Crowley. I can't remember whether it says anything obvious on the jacket like "Crowley was a prominent drug addict and Satanist." He might be too well-known for it to work, but you never know. I like to picture some exceptionally rigid type getting a ways into Crowley's poetry, and suddenly flinging the book into a corner so he can go home and scrub himself with Lava. That would be "extra spice," with a bonus side of Squid.

Man, I don't think there's a bookstore in my whole county that has an "Atheism" section! But I have many opportunities to engage in one of my personal rituals, 'Enjoying The Discrepancies,' when I'm in the town where I work. Here's a for-instance: there were only 2 bookstores there for years, until the trade-in-your-old-paperbacks place folded. The only bookstore left in that overwhelmingly Pentecostal town is, um, Wiccan.

Another discrepancy to enjoy is the way Wicca, an unseasoned potato pancake of a religion if there ever was one, gets fundies ALL UPSET. If they knew what they were fighting they might disperse in confusion. Either way, DISCORDIA WINS. I once sat and listened in horror as a guy I knew described how picketers closed the Wiccan bookstore down and rode the owners out of town on a rail. It seemed typical for a place that is so Klan-friendly. I went down much, much later to see who had taken over the storefront, and to ask whether they had the joint exorcised before opening for business.

Well, sir, the Wiccan bookstore was still right there. Hee hee! Sometimes the reality of the Discordian saying, NOTHING IS TRUE, is downright bracing. Now if only they would stock some more interesting books, I might actually buy something. All that mealy-mouthed New Age stuff about the Triple Goddess is pretty hard for me to stomach. Sure, it's as valid as any religion out there, but the books put me to sleep. At least the Bible has some good bloodshed in it.

This Sounds Too Good To Be True!

I read about this company in a magazine -- Discover, if I recall correctly – and I was so excited I looked it up on the Internet. What a laugh! This guy in Ohio has come up with a process to make diesel fuel out of chicken’s feet and old Barbie dolls. That’s right, he can make plastic into tractor gas. His invention (man, did he remember to get it patented?) promises to tidy up some of those loose ends that irritate us so much, like the landfill problem and the OPEC nations shaking our economy the way a terrier shakes a rat. And what’s the inventor’s name, kids?

APPEL.

I know you like it as much as I do.

I’m fighting the impulse to ask whether he’ll turn out to be the Appel that laid the golden egg, or the Golden Appel that just kind of…lays an egg. I appear to be losing the fight.

Honestly, Some People...

When I Googled for that article again, the one talking about how a Viennese court is trying a test case possibly granting restricted human rights to Chimpanzees, I found this, a rather different take on the story compared to the objective reporting offered by CNN.

What this knucklehead fails to understand is that assigning human rights to Chimps, far from threatening his white supremist perch on the top of a world of inferior races, this simply gives him fresh opportunities to exploit Chimps. Keep close the words of the Gorilla in Illuminatus! who explained that if it came out that Gorillas can talk, most of them would be slaughtered, and the last survivors would be put to work as machine-lathe operators. This is exactly why Gorillas never talk if they can help it. This is why Mr. White should not really worry about this lawsuit.

But on another level, he is right to worry. A shift in Ape Rights would also afford new opportunities for different idiots, like the person who published an article in Social Work magazine, arguing that since some Gorillas have been taught to sign, that means all Gorillas should be offered special-ed rights. Which is another way of saying that they need to be dragged out of their jungle homes and forced into public schools. That would afford the Gorillas a whole new field of opportunity, not in terms of furthering their careers, but more in terms of going to the principal's office for throwing feces at the art teacher.

Think about it, people. Today, we have seen the beginning of the process that culminates in the war you saw in Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes. Actually, when I read Internet discussions like Mr. White's, I realize that when the Ape Revolution comes, it will not be a bunch of Gorillas in coveralls with stolen crowbars. In fact, it has been going on for years and consists of Mr. White types wearing sheets and gang-raping what they consider to be members of a different, inferior species. Where the hell did I put my blowgun?

Wait, here's the original article for comparison purposes.

A Book For You To Read

OK, I haven't read it yet myself, but in a way that's the best time to recommend a book -- it comes to you unsullied by my opinions. (At this writing my opinions can't discourage you from reading it, either, in case I turn out to hate it.) (Because, Scrod knows, anyone reading this blog would end up blinding obeying my every whim. Right?)

Oh, the book? Click here to take a gander at a relatively new paperback on The Goddess Of Chaos. The title is certainly intriguing, along with the jacket art. I wonder what's inside there? I love judging a book by its cover, frankly. It's like finally looking behind Door Number Three. Sometimes you turn out to be dead right about it, and sometimes your assumptions just turn around and kick your teeth in.

I'm torn about whether we need more books on Discordia or not. There's something about writing down your thoughts on a subject that forces those thoughts into a certain shape, and certainly people who are impressed by that sort of thing tend to assume that if you published a book, you must know something about what you're writing. So they tend to, you know, sort of lemming after the author as if he or she were some sort of authority. Look at all the Discordians out there who feel restricted to saying things like "fnord" and quoting the Law Of Fives as if that were everything there is to Erisianism, because the only book they've read on it is Principia Discordia. Pshaw! If you think that THIS Goddess, of all Goddesses, can be crammed into that purse-sizedbook, I've got a news flash for you.

In that sense we need many, many more thoughts on the subject, nice new ones that don't merely lemming after Malaclypse, Omar and Lady Randomfactor. Check out The Book Of The Sub-Genius for some fresh thoughts on Chaos. I frankly find some of that book wretchedly dull, but that doesn't mean I don't like it or recommend it to anyone I think can, you know, handle it.

But don't we flirt with calcifying Chaotic thought if we write more about it? Possibly. Don't we risk attracting the attention of the Goddess if we produce more books, articles, and artwork on the subject? Hell yes, AND IS THAT REALLY A GOOD IDEA?

But if we don't write, and sculpt, and discuss this subject, will it not wither away from human consciousness, robbing millions of the chance to really get their asses kicked by reality? Me, I would hate to see that happen.