My Golden Apples

Another Godzilla Haiku

2012-02-15T11:18:00.000-08:00

A Godzilla Haiku

2012-02-15T11:17:00.001-08:00

Man, I Love Stupid Rumors!

2012-02-05T11:02:00.000-08:00

It says here that a rumor is circulating, and it's one I HAVE TO LIKE. Word on the street is that when the Mayan calendar ends, in December of 2012, the rogue planet Eris is supposed to crash into the Earth and destroy us all.

Um, OK -- but isn't Eris waaaaaaaaaaaaaay out past Pluto? If she were streaking toward us on a collision course, at a speed that would get her here by December, WOULDN'T SOMEONE HAVE NOTICED BY NOW? Half the telescopes in the sky are pointed in that direction because of the ongoing hostilities that began when Eris demoted Pluto from a planet to a fellow undistinguished iceball in the Kuiper Belt.

What the rumor-mongers may not realize is that -- as Kevin McCarthy would not doubt put it if this were a B-movie -- SHE'S ALREADY HERE. Maybe these people aren't reading the papers? Since Eris showed up, not only are the astronomers raking their leaves onto each other's lawns by moonlight out of spite, but Middle Eastern potentates are dropping like flies. Angry mobs are demonstrating in the streets. Baby Doc has returned to Haiti in the wake of a devastating earthquake and a cholera epidemic that -- you have to like this, too -- was apparently imported by aid workers. Countries are splitting up so they can form new governments and be enemies on a more official level. The European Union is teetering dangerously. The American government has just taken out one of its own citizens by drone attack. Every Republican bulwark of conservative American values is apparently standing in line to get a turn at being arrested for soliciting an undercover cop in a highway rest area. There's a nationwide lobby out there trying to keep the schools from teaching evolution. Killer Carp have invaded the Midwest.

Guys, SHE'S ALREADY HERE.

WHERE SHADOWS LINGER

2012-02-05T10:23:00.002-08:00

I have here, in my hot little fin, a library copy of Where Shadows Linger by Leslie Holmes and Bruce Northorp, copyrighted in 2000 to the first-named author and published by Heritage House, Surrey, British Columbia. (Click on the title of this blog entry to order your own copy from Amazon. No Discordian will regret the purchase. No, I promise this time.)

WHAT AN AMAZING DOCUMENT. Superficially this book is about the hunt for Canadian serial killer Cliff Olson, pictured above, but the REAL story in here is about the power of bureaucracy to devastate lives. In The Principia Discordia they treat that as a big joke, but here is THE REAL THING, and sometimes that joke is nothing to smile at, my friend, because it's on you.

While Cliffie, as he was known to his friends (gulp), was out bludgeoning teenagers to death, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were closing in on him, faster than any other serial-murder case I've ever heard about. It was really impressive, the way they fingered the guy. Oh, you hear about the police discovering all 17 murders at once, like the time the plumber found someone's fingers in the drain and called the authorities in Kentish Town, breaking the Dennis Nilsen case wide open when nobody even knew before that day that there was a serial killer on the loose. This was entirely different.

No, sir -- this time they were starting from scratch. Dead kids were turning up, and some of them were apparently stepping off the face of the earth and NOT turning up, and I'm truly impressed at how quickly they put it all together, zeroing in on the right suspect without so much as a positive DNA test or an FBI profile to guide them. (The only good thing about Cliff Olson was his near-total inability to conceal his activities from the police.)

One thing held up the works, though, and according to the authors, it still torments every officer on the case, from that day to this: THE BUREAUCRACY. An arbitrary decision by one judge let Olson go free; he decided that because the woman Olson had raped was a hooker, she couldn't BE raped, so there was no case. Because of the rules of the justice system in Canada, there was no appealing this utterly wrong decision. Just days later, Olson killed the first child, adding it to his longstanding repetoire of theft, break-ins, and serial rape.

A sharp-eyed Mountie connected the kidnapping and attempted rape of one teenager with a dead teen who'd turned up, and yet another who'd disappeared entirely. He saw quickly that all of these events transpired virtually on Olson's front doorstep. This is the earliest example of geographic profiling that I'm aware of, and it really pulled things together for this officer, named Kettles. What buggered things up for him? THE BUREAUCRACY. He made every effort, but could not get his findings through to the person who could make the arrest happen. Twenty years later, when this book was being written, just raising the subject reduced him to tears. While waiting to be interviewed for the book, 20 years after the Mounties got their man, he stopped eating and sleeping. Kettles blames himself for the 7 kids who were killed after he solved the murder of Daryn Johnsrude. BETTER TO BLAME THE BUREAUCRACY, MY FRIEND. (Or, hey, just blame Olson.)

The book is not about the grim and gory parts of the investigation. It's not about the 11 devastated families. It's not about crime-scene analysis, and it's not even that much about the devoted gumshoes on the case. It's about how it took so much hassle to organize a tail on their suspect that by the time they got one going, he had just killed another child. Why was it such a problem? Because attaching a "birddog" beeper to his car would constitute not only an invasion of the suspect's privacy, but also a theft of the electricity from his car to make the beeper work. I kid you not. There are 231 pages of this in here, plus appendices.

It's VERY educational. You should read it.

And let me say this: If the Mounties can get their man under conditions like these, think how they'd rock the house if someone streamlined their operation a little.

Situation Normal...

2012-01-20T13:32:00.000-08:00

So, Tuesday before last, I drove past the electronic clock on my way to work, which I see just before I drive past the lake. It said it was 32 degrees out. The lake was wet in the middle and frozen all around the edges, with ducks huddling on the ice to avoid a soaking in what must have been brutally cold water.

The next day the same clock said it was 15 degrees. The ice around the pond was totally gone, and the ducks were floating happily. 'Kay...

Apple Roller Award -- Our Next Honoree

2012-01-14T09:43:00.000-08:00

The Apple Roller Award could not be more fitting in THIS case. The image above is a portrait of Madge Oberholtzer, the woman who brought down the Ku Klux Klan in the USA. Her sacrifice was quite similar to that of our previous Apple Roller honoree, Mohamed Bouazizi; she couldn't tolerate the way she was being treated, and in mid-April 1925 took steps to kill herself. Rather unexpectedly, she took the KKK down with her. Within a couple of years of her horrible death, Klan membership in the US had dropped from millions to a few paltry thousands. We have Madge to thank. This is a very serious, very heartfelt thank-you. Many Americans today are unaware of how close were were in that dim, dead year to having a Klansman in the Oval Office.

This is a really dreadful story. A prominent KKK booster and networker in Madge's home state of Indiana, D.C. Stephenson, became infatuated with her, pursued her for a short time and eventually lured her over to his place on some pretext. She turned up at her parents' home several days later, battered, bruised and vomiting uncontrollably. She was covered with bite marks, from the top of her head down past her ankles -- even her tongue had teethmarks on it. She had been kidnapped and repeatedly raped by this man who claimed to love her so much, assisted by a couple of his Klan buddies. To get away from her captors Madge decided to kill herself, and took a corrosive poison, bichloride of mercury. Unable to decide what to do with her, he and his accomplices just dropped her off at home, where she died after nearly a month of agony. The extended death throes gave her the chance to dictate and sign a dying declaration, explaining exactly what happened and allowing the authorities to prosecute Stephenson for the many crimes he committed against Madge, including murder. Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of the Realm of Indiana and the greatest recruiter the Klan had ever seen, went down in flames. BUT MADGE'S GOLDEN APPLE ROLLED EVEN FARTHER THAN THAT. Stephenson decided to bring down everyone he associated with -- more than a few prominent names in politics, business and what have you all across the Midwest. Every one of them was a Klansman or had Klan backing.

(Contrary to what you may have seen in the movie version of this grim story, Cross Of Fire starring Mel Harris as Madge and John Heard as Stephenson, Madge did not die of the poison she took. The autopsy showed that she had almost totally recovered from the effects of the tablets. She was killed by an abcessed lung caused by an especially deep, infected bite wound in her left breast.)

If you click on the title of this blog entry, it will take you to Madge's dying declaration.

Now here's an odd little coincidence: I knew a library book had come in for me through MelCat, but I order several at a time and did not know which title I was going to pick up. As I was driving over to the library this morning, I suddenly remembered that I needed to give Madge the Apple Roller Award today, having forgotten to do so from my work terminal last night. I walked to the circulation desk and the librarian handed me a copy of Grand Dragon: D.C. Stephenson And The Ku Klux Klan In Indiana, by William Lutholtz.

Reporting a rape is one of the toughest things any woman has to face, even today, and it was even harder to do in 1925. It's disgusting, it's humiliating, it's terrifying -- and she was reporting a rape committed by one of the most powerful men in the Midwest. BUT SHE DID IT ANYWAY.

Every American owes her a debt of gratitude.

Apple Roller Award For The New Millennium!

2012-01-04T14:23:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's already the first anniversary of the dreadful death of Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian handcart merchant whose public suicide to protest harassment by local officials set off the revolution and overturning of the government in Tunisia, and from there THE ENTIRE EPIC SWEEP OF THE ARAB SPRING.

There is no step in life scarier than suicide, and I can think of a LOT of easier ways to do it. But you have to admit, it really makes a statement. And this time THE WHOLE WORLD HEARD IT. I'm sorry it had to come to this for him and his family, but he did and incredible job of dropping a match into what was obviously -- in retrospect -- an open powder keg.

I picture him looking down from wherever self-immolators go when they die, and saying the Arabic equivalent of "Wow, did I do all that?"

Millions of people will remember this forever.

I am creating the Apple Roller Award to honor an ordinary guy who decided he couldn't take it any more, and in protesting it took down one brutal, repressive government after another. The beauty 0f it is that we have no way of knowing where it will all end up. This could just be the beginning.

Color me impressed.

DO-IT-YOURSELF BRAIN SURGERY & OTHER HOME SKILLS

2011-12-15T16:41:00.001-08:00

This is just a list of necessary supplies from the page in the book headed "Crochet Your Own Suspension Bridge:"

YOU WILL NEED:

One 4 ft crochet hook

980,000 large buttons

1622 tons of 20-ply synthetic yarn

One 12 ft crochet loom

Suffice to say, I am all over this book. Ordering it RIGHT NOW.

A Blessing From Our Lady Of Chaos

2011-10-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

Yes...The Northern Lights were spotted this week in Alabama! Here in Michigan we're normally too far south to EVER see them. I have to like this, partly because certain spasmoid the-end-is-near types are BOUND to take this as evidence that the poles are shifting and Antarctica will soon be violently superimposed on Key West. Bring it, baby!

Underwear Bomber Pleads Guilty!

2011-10-13T05:54:00.000-07:00

It's all over already! This morning in Detroit, Umar Faroukh Abdulmutallab just pleaded guilty to setting his own ass on fire, in protest against the killings of Muslims around the world.

WAY TO MAKE A POINT, MAN.

Steve, We Hardly Knew Ye...

2011-10-06T14:51:00.000-07:00

Well, we've lost Steve Jobs, as I'm sure you've already heard. I am bitterly sad about this. WE NEED MORE GENIUSES, and we especially need ones as utterly DISCORDIAN as this guy. Imagine being such an abrasive renegade that you get fired by the company you started yourself! Imagine if you returned later and saved that company from certain destruction! Imagine cheerfully taking the world by storm, not once, but over and over again, in the teeth of derision and snarky comments about the great new thing you just invented that everyone is going to buy anyway, as if their lives depended on it! Imagine if your company's products were so great that nobody could find a damned thing wrong with them, even when they really worked at it!

Imagine if that company were named after...Apples!

THERE WILL NEVER BE ANOTHER ONE LIKE THIS ONE.

Quote Of The Day

2011-10-02T13:27:00.000-07:00

What are you laughing about? The joke's on you.

(Horace)

A Discordian Moment From September 11th

2011-09-17T09:55:00.001-07:00

OK, I just stumbled across this in a news magazine. Probably everyone else knew before I did, because, hey, IT HAPPENED 10 YEARS AGO.

So, anyway, it was mentioned in one of the commentaries on the universal condemnation of the September 11th attacks. They said, QUITE CASUALLY, that Yassir Arafat -- supposedly the dean of Middle Eastern terrorists -- donated blood to aid the bombing victims. No, man, it was his own blood.

It already messed with my head ENOUGH that they gave him the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize. And of course, it messes with my head EVERY TIME I THINK ABOUT IT that the fabulous cash prize originally came out of the fortune of Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite.

Life is funny sometimes, I guess.

This Week's Staggering Discordian Moment

2011-09-17T09:14:00.000-07:00

If the first responders in this photo are looking a bit stymied, hey, I CAN RELATE.
It can't be every day, EVEN IN ZANY-ASS SCANDINAVIA, that a common citizen of the realm can come home to find a DRUNKEN MOOSE dangling from the neighbor's apple tree. The news stories I've seen do not relate if there were any witnesses to the disaster, to explain HOW THE FUNK THIS EVEN HAPPENED.

They also do not answer the burning question on MY mind: WHAT COLOR WERE THE APPLES ON THAT TREE? We can see a few scattered on the ground in this photo. There are two red ones...and two golden ones. I'm trying not to jump to any conclusions here. (If I did, I might get stuck in a tree myself.)

Is It Just Me?

2011-09-17T08:48:00.000-07:00

...Or are these two guys REALLY HARD TO TELL APART?

I mean, they're supposed to be bitterly pitted against each other in the 2012 presidential race, but whether you're looking at a photo or an editorial cartoon, MITT ROMNEY AND RICK PERRY ARE AS ALIKE AS TWEEDLEDEE AND TWEEDLEDUM.

My suggestion is this: they should TEAM UP and become running mates. I see a number of advantages to this approach. They supposedly agree on very little, but no matter whose platform you support you are bound to get SOMETHING you want out of the deal. I hardly need to point out the advantages of being able to swap places at speech time, or when there's a boring funeral of a foreign dignitary to attend when only the wrong one is free to go and the other has something else that can't be missed, like a really important round of DISC GOLF.

And, above all, there's the SAFETY factor. I picture the next Jared Loughner's or Squeaky Fromme's forehead puckering in confusion. "Dude, which one of them do I aim at?" Of course, that could TOTALLY BACKFIRE. The VP, seething with fury at having to be SECOND BANANA, could ice the President and take his place with NOBODY THE WISER.

I HARDLY NEED TO POINT OUT that this strategy could work out just as well for red-blazered lookalikes Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. OR JUST AS BADLY. Hey, the only way to tell them apart is to get them to PARTIALLY DISROBE so we can read their Underoos. (Hint: Palin's shows ALL the Founding Fathers; Bachmann's has John Wayne Gacy.)

We could also do-si-do AGAIN and have Romney run with Bachmann, Perry with Palin, and REALLY have some fun. The possibilities for role-swapping, intramural political sabotage and outright ASSASSINATION fairly boggle my mind.

September 11th -- Ten Years Later

2011-09-11T13:53:00.000-07:00

Above you can see a photo of the restored, repaired, tidied-up PENTAGON. And we, as Discordians, all know what that means: THE ILLUSION THAT EVERYTHING IS IN ORDER IS REPAIRED, TOO. Let's review the state of the nation:

>> Stagnant unemployment. How many jobs did the American economy produce last month? ZERO.

>> We're still in a war. Ten years now and we're still going at it. In fact, we're almost out of the one war, but we started another so that we still don't look like we're slacking off. Hey, AT LEAST THOSE MILITARY PERSONNEL HAVE JOBS. (For now.)

>> Of the ones who have served and come home, between 8 and 10 thousand veterans are currently homeless. Niiiiiiice.

>> People still make ignorant comments about Muslims. In a recent example, I heard someone say that our president has a "terrorist" middle name. Niiiiiiice.

>> Middle-aged people, who would normally be sailing smoothly towards retirement, are still cracking up right and left. They think they have rats eating their insides, or that Jesus is telling them to KILL, KILL, KILL. That level of madness.

>> Baby Boomers, in the wake of their formative political experiences including the Vietnam War protests, Watergate, and the Civil Rights movement, are now turning Republican en masse, like so many lemmings over the cliff.

>> Everyone around here is still talking suicide. Or doing it. Niiiiice.

Yep -- SITUATION NORMAL, people. Everything is under control.

CONTAGION

2011-09-11T13:02:00.000-07:00

WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT! YOU CALL THIS AN APOCALYPSE???

OK, let me COOL MY JETS here and proceed in a reasonable manner.

>>sob<<

This 2011 release, NOW SHOWING AT A THEATER NEAR YOU, is about a deadly flu bug that spreads like wildfire, and kills one out of five people infected. Kate Winslett, Larry Fishburne, Jennifer Ehle and Elliot Gould are trying to SOLVE THE MYSTERY of how it started and what will stop it. Jude Law is blogging like mad about his own theories on the matter. Matt Damon is trying to keep his daughter safe from the illness after losing his wife and son. WILL ANYONE SURVIVE?

CLIFFIE'S NOTES ON THIS BIG-BUDGET DISASTER PIC:

>> When I see a film apocalypse, I want to see some dang human suffering. WHAT KIND OF PITIFUL KILLER FLU IS THIS? You cough a few times, have a tidy little seizure and die with a startled expression. Please! There isn't a single case of projectile diarrhea. No bleeding eyeballs. No coughing up of ropy green phlegm into the horrified face of the next victim. The only fun part of the death in this movie was when we got to watch the medical examiner, rather grodily, autopsy an actress who is rarely captured on screen even BREAKING A NAIL. That was kind of cool. BUT IT ONLY LASTED A FEW SECONDS.

>> When I see a film apocalypse, I want to see BODIES. Lots and lots of bodies. Lined up in hallways because there are no hospital beds left. Heaped for bonfire disposal. Being torn apart by starving dogs in a deserted city. All I saw in THIS lame picture was a single, very neat trench, with a couple dozen victims tidily Saran-wrapped and lined up carefully along the bottom. I didn't even get to see them die! When I hear Larry Fishburne speculate that 27 million people have died, I WANT TO SEE SOME OF THEM. Otherwise, come on, where's the disaster?

>> When I see a film apocalypse, I always, without fail, witness at least one grim-faced discussion about how to prevent widespread panic. But the panic never comes. Damn it, I want to see some panic. Give me a little civil unrest! The possibilities here should have been ENDLESS. But aside from one brief moment of mayhem in a pharmacy checkout line -- NO DICE. What you got instead were a lot of deserted streets, with every car neatly parked, every house intact, quiet as a Sunday afternoon. THY EVEN KEPT THE SNOW SHOVELED ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE LETHAL CRISIS. Sheesh.

>> Jude Law started out to position himself, in this movie, as the equivalent of Mathias in The Omega Man. THEY BLEW THAT, TOO. I couldn't believe it. Not a single scene of the Forsythia Army carrying Jude on their shoulders to take over as Prime Minister in an impromptu election...That would have been a blast.

>> Everyone is supposedly quarantined, seizing on the floor, or already dead, OK? The world is theoretically in chaos. But the infrastructure? It's fine. Nobody is chopping up the living-room furniture to heat up the oatmeal. Everyone is still texting away merrily. People's clothes are clean and nobody that I can see is starting a fistfight to claim the last bucket of drinkable water. SOME APOCALYPSE.

>> Last thing we see? The vaccine is released and ORDER IS RESTORED. Gag me with a fruit bat!

Discordia Springs West Memphis Three From Prison!

2011-08-28T15:55:00.001-07:00

NO, I DIDN'T READ THAT IN NEWSWEEK.

But is there really any other explanation? For something like twenty years, through a very tense trial, all kinds of public protest and close to TWO DECADES of appeals, there still was no end in sight. Damien Echols was still on Death Row and his friends, Jason Baldwin and Jesse Misskelley, were still looking at life in the big house. They'd protested over and over that the only evidence against them was a confession gotten out of a mentally slow kid who was being questioned by the police without an attorney, his parents or anyone else to protect his rights.

(For 16 hours.)

95% of that confession, they argued, did not fit the facts known from the crime scene. But the jury didn't like the defendants' Goth tastes, or their unsavory companions, and they especially disliked the fact that they were big fans of Metallica. What followed was essentially a 20-year-long shouting match, with the defendants saying "WE'RE INNOCENT!" and the courts saying "WE DON'T NEED EVIDENCE -- WE DON'T LIKE YOUR HAIRCUTS AND YOU'RE GOING DOWN FOR IT!" Now, this is the SEAMY UNDERSIDE of a legal system in which you can still catch Eris putting her thumb on the Scales of Justice. YOU STILL DON'T NEED EVIDENCE TO CONVICT SOMEONE OF A CRIME. This not only robs the families of those 3 little boys of real closure, but it also totally screws over 3 other people who had NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.

And, of course, if the scenario laid out above is correct, the real killer, or killers, got clean away.

So how did these guys finally get to go home?

THEY PLEADED GUILTY. That's right! Proetsting their innocence landed them in prison for life. Pleading guilty allowed them to go home on the basis of TIME SERVED.

It swells my heart with pride, AND MORE THAN A LITTLE FEAR, to realize at a moment like this that ERIS NEVER SLEEPS. She watches over us eternally, and you NEVER KNOW WHEN SHE WILL FAVOR YOU. Possibly with a free trip to Death Row. There are several million stories in the prison system; this has been just one of them.

Watch your back, people. No matter which side of the law you're on.

I know this turn of events must be devastating to the parents of the 3 little boys -- Steve Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore. I think often of those three families, and continue to support them in my heart, long-distance. Another of the many ironies here is that I know about this case, and continue to get bulletins and reminders about it, only because of the angry supporters of Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley. Chris Byers's mom died, apparently of grief, not that long after her son's murder, and I guarantee you it hasn't been that much easier for the others, either. I truly hope they get justice and some sort of relief for their pain.

Saturation Point

2011-08-27T12:31:00.000-07:00

WHAT IS GOING ON OUT THERE?

EVERYONE I know is talking suicide, and NONE of them appear to be joking. I fully realize how overwhelming things are, even right between your ears, even before you open the window and SMELL THE CHAOS. We're ALL going through it to some extent.

You can see the signs everywhere:

>> People losing or gaining weight -- and I mean quite a lot of weight -- without trying.

>> People who can't get out of bed or people who can't go to bed. The ones who can sleep at all, are having incredibly horrible dreams, like the one I had 2 nights ago. I was trying and trying and trying to kill my boss's boss, and she wouldn't die no matter what I did, and then she started turning into the first cat I ever had and I was reminding myself sternly that no, this is your ENEMY, not a fluffy kitten, and then I'd try eight more times...I woke up nauseated.

>> People racking up their 13th or 14th OUIL.

>> People who used to look and feel good, having their faces break out in insane zits or developing mysterious illnesses that shrink them down to what looks like a bundle of rags.

>> People who used to be calm, twisting at their hair until it comes out in handfuls.

>> People who never had a whiff of mental illness before in their lives, going totally psychotic. I don't mean that in the commonly-accepted sense of the term; I mean clinical psychosis. Like believing that the Pope is watching you from a hidden camera inside your toilet bowl and reporting back to God, known to unbelievers and infidels as the Face on Mars. That level of madness.

And, of course, people seriously planning suicides. One friend I talked to last night is giving away all her things, telling everyone she loves them "because you never know what might happen," and she's even set a firm date beyond which she is no longer willing to live. CAN YOU SAY "RED FLAG"?

This is one of just a dozen people I've heard about in the past few weeks.

The only correlation I can find is the RISE IN CHAOS. Nothing is holding still the way we like it to. There is no way out of any of the impasses we find ourselves in -- political, financial, ecological. I think of President Obama trying to negotiate with those Tea Party freaks and all I can do is groan helplessly. The entire East Coast is taking cover against a category-3 hurricane as I write this. They say it would be only a category 1 without our greenhouse gases. The Washington Monument was seen to wobble when an earthquake about half the size of the one in Miyagi Province hit Virginia. HOW SYMBOLIC IS THAT? Giant, mutated Jellyfish are taking the place of everything else in the oceans, and on one memorable day shorted out an entire city's electrical power by piling into the cooling system for the plant. London is in flames. All the Bats are dying of White Nose Disease, all the Bees are dying of Hive Collapse Syndrome, and the average human sperm count has dropped 50% in ten years. Joplin, Missouri is gone. GONE. The death toll in the drug war in Mexico is believed to exceed 40,000 people. Last year in the county where I live, 2010, there were 21 deaths due to opiate overdose. (One of them was a neighbor of mine.) This year, as of the first of June -- the exact halfway mark for the year -- there were already 22 such deaths. And there are only about 150,000 people in the whole freaking county.

My dear Cod, even Middle Eastern dictators are losing their jobs en masse.

So I see the pattern. I count myself lucky that I've only had disturbing kitty dreams. But the s-word has been sneaking through my thoughts as well. AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHY.

Something in the water?

THE PRANKSTER AND THE CONSPIRACY

2011-05-30T07:23:00.001-07:00

Just as I was really starting to wonder, I mean seriously wonder, about Kerry Thornley, Bull Goose of Limbo and Keeper of the Sacred Chao, THIS BOOK PRESENTED ITSELF TO ME so I could read all about him. And I did.

WHAT A MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR THIS GUY'S LIFE WAS. And I have to tell you that a lot of it was NO FUN AT ALL, so you can keep your incense and peppermints and marmalade skies, OK? But he never stopped looking for the truth of WHATEVER IT WAS that made his life go the way it did. I have no clue whether he found what he was looking for, or, hell, whether he even knew what he was looking for. The book never says. Reading about Thornley's life allows us to taste both the UNTOLD GLORIES and the GRITTY UNDERSIDE of nothing, anywhere, being true.

IT'S FUNNY HOW THINGS HAPPEN, ISN'T IT?

Lords Of Chaos

2011-05-21T15:14:00.000-07:00

So get a load of the quote I found in this book about the Black Metal movement, penned by Didrik Soderlind and Michael Moynihan, and published by Feral House in 1998:

"At first, I want to explain the deeper meaning of the term Absurd, as we understand it: absurdus = diabolus, i.e. a "maelstrom" that's sending out ravaging, entangling, wrecking, decaying influence; an expression of Chaos. Being affiliated with this great-power [sic], enables one to understand the need for Chaos as a condition of any Order (and Order can likewise be brought back to its primary matter, Chaos)."

-- Hendrik Mobus, a member of a German Black Metal band called Absurd

OK, now, WHAT DO WE MAKE OF THIS? At first blush it looks as if Hendrik had actually THOUGHT ABOUT THIS to some extent. As far as his thesis statement goes, it's ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. He and his two buds named their band Absurd because what they feel most people would find absurd is what they consider normal. Or maybe I should say, they'd like that to be normal, but they know it isn't, at least in the mass consciousness.

But notice also that the guy puts an equals sign between Chaos and destruction, and come on, THAT'S NOT HAPPENING. It takes a person overly focused on Order to do that, and hey, I thought you guys found Chaos NORMAL, huh?

I also want you to know that at the time he disclosed his thoughts to the authors of this book, Hendrik and the other guys in the band were behind bars for strangling a kid who'd been gossiping about them. This is right where the ground starts to slope away, as far as I'm concerned. Shenanigans like those mark you as dead normal, Joe Average, Homo sap. In fact, it makes you look a little sub-normal, like the mean girls from Middle School ganging up on a weaker kid, not even able to face him down one on one, without a weapon.

This other kid, Sandro Beyer, shook you up a little. You dusted him. And why would you do that? TO RESTORE YOUR PITIFUL SENSE OF ORDER. I think this shows that you fundamentally DON'T GET IT.

I'm really kind of encouraged that someone, somewhere is putting even this much thought into the nature of Order and Chaos and the way they blend together at odd moments, but ultimately I have to give it a hearty "sheesh."

(I'd like to apologize to both Hendrik and Didrik for not knowing how to put all the right crosshatches and umlauts in their names. You're lucky I can type this at all; I'm turning into a catfish, for crissakes.)

Miyagi Prefecture Earthquake, Tsunami, Radiation Leak Traced To Single Source

2011-03-24T14:09:00.000-07:00

'Nuff said?

Middle East In Flames, And I'm Missing The Party

2011-02-26T14:17:00.000-08:00

This certainly has been an exciting few weeks on the burning sands! Somehow, the hammerlock of terror held over the locals in the Mideast has been BROKEN and they're raising MERRY HELL. After WEEKS of Hosni Mubarak saying he'll never, ever leave his job, and you can't make him...he's GONE, baby. Now Muammar al-Gaddafy is saying the same thing -- hell, no, I won't go! -- as the cheering rebels close in on him. Who's next, for crying out loud? Who's running Yemen these days? Does he own a Kevlar vest? Is the king of Saudi Arabia laying in canned goods? We know it's never dull in Iraq, but are they stockpiling shotgun shells in Kuwait? Is Palestine still standing? (OK, that was a dumb question.)

Meanwhile, on a drive home from work I saw that the price of a gallon of gas, which had been dancing its way up to $3.25 for DAYS, had dropped to $2.99...and a mile further along at another station, it had spiked to $3.49. Why? Gaddafy has decided HE'S GOING TO TAKE IT WITH HIM and is blowing up all the oil pipelines in Libya. The newscasters are starting to make snippy little remarks about how he's an overly flashy dresser, and one even called him a "glorified goat herder." If THAT's not the beginning of the end, I don't know what is. The poor man must be terrified. They really don't like my outfits!!??

As I type this, I realize it's not that different HERE. There are guys with tricorn hats on every corner, waving flags and vowing loudly to TAKE THE COUNTRY BACK. (Wait -- take it back from who? The guy they just voted into office 2 years ago? Is that the one they're after?) When I look out the window, the homeless are even more numerous than the Tea Partiers, and THEY at least KNOW WHAT THEY WANT, unlike their bellering companions on the sidewalk. They're like the Crows and Seagulls in that Hitchcock movie...MASSING out there. FOR WHAT? Stay tuned!

It's all very bracing. Sabotage! Insurrection! Gunfire! Chanting mobs! Calcified regimes torn down to the ankles! ARE WE NEXT?

Speaking of things being torn down to the ankles, I have to say it WARMS THE COCKLES OF MY HEART to hear that Baby Doc came back to Haiti and promptly found himself in HANDCUFFS. I mean, the people of Haiti have really taken it in the shorts this year and they're STILL spunky enough to throw their ex-dictator -- pudgier than ever, I might add -- in a cell where he SURELY BELONGS. In a surreal touch you HAVE to like, the man known to have ordered the deaths by torture of 30,000 Haitian citizens was charged with...embezzling?

Eris Continues To Cheese Off the Astronomers

2011-02-06T14:54:00.000-08:00

This entry is not about this book.

You should probably just ignore the fact that I posted the cover art.

This is not a review of the book pictured above -- NOT THAT I DON'T WANT YOU TO READ IT! -- but a comment or two on an article in the 2/4/2011 issue of The Week. (Page 44.) The article, called "Death Of A Planet," is by Mike Brown, the discoverer of Eris. It's a snippet of his book, How I Killed Pluto And Why It Had It Coming, copyrighted to the author 2010 by a division of Random House called Spiegel & Grau. OK, here goes:

>> I notice that Brown is still calling the happy little ball of mayhem "Xena." I like the name "Eris" a lot better of course, but I can't really complain. Xena the Warrior Princess is just Eris in a leather bustier. A LITTLE FETISH WEAR NEVER HURT ANYONE. (At least, it never hurt anyone who didn't pay good money for the privilege.) Please remember that Eris, the twin sister of Ares the war god, is wont to stroll the battlefields with her brother, TASTING THE CONFUSION. It's natural to picture Lucy Lawless playing Eris in this gory scene, as she already plays Xena on TV.

>> I just want to say ONE MORE TIME that "Lucy Lawless" is a spectacular name for someone touching the tail of Eris. DON'T FORGET YOUR OVEN MITTS, LUCY.

>> Brown stumbled across Eris 6 years ago now, and clearly she's STILL causing the scientific community and other space buffs to sob into their pillows at night. Brown sums it up by saying "suddenly there was controversy." WELL, YEAH. WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? He even mentions "surly astronomers itching for a fight. "
THAT'S WHAT I LIKE TO SEE!

>> Brown mentions the existence of a "once-secret planet definition committee." If you ever doubted it, I think this goes to shows that THERE'S A SECRET SOCIETY FOR EVERYTHING THESE DAYS.

>> Brown also mentions that if anyone asks him where Xena is, he can "point an outstretched finger to somewhere in space and locate it, with an error of about a hand's width." HOW COOL IS THAT?

>> I HARDLY NEED TO POINT OUT that the only fitting publisher for this book is the exact one he got: Random House. It's enough to make you suspect that there's a Divine Order of some sort. Chuckle.

Jared Loughner: Agent Of Chaos?

2011-01-27T14:29:00.000-08:00

YOU HAVE TO LIKE THE GUY'S PUBLICITY PHOTO.

This guy has been the talk of EVERY town in the USA for a couple of weeks now, ever since he went all berserko and sprayed bullets into a crowd of spectators after shooting State Representative Gabrielle Giffords and 17 other people. Digging through his personal papers, investigators have found lots of evidence that he considers himself an AGENT OF CHAOS. I heard his math instructor from Pima Community College on the radio, expressing dismay that Loughner wrote the words "MAYHEM FEST!!!" (with the three exclamation points added) on one of his homework assignments. From that point on, he said, the instructor wouldn't turn his back on the guy for fear he might pull a weapon in class. I thought that was a bit dramatic, frankly. Back in my day we ALL wrote stuff like that on our homework with swastikas dripping from our ears and noses, and nobody turned a hair. Ah, but then came Columbine, and from then on you could be caned, or torn apart by dogs, or SOMETHING for even having an unauthorized bobby pin in your pocket at school.

Honestly, what's happened to us?

But let me share my impressions of the sort of chaos this guy has actually spawned:

A) Everyone who previously supported gun ownership, now supports it more than ever. So they can protect themselves against guys like Loughner.

B) Everyone who previously opposed gun ownership, now opposes it more than ever. So guys like Loughner can't get guns.

C) People who want the mentally ill forced into treatment feel their point has been proven.

D) The mentally ill who don't want to be treated see Loughner as a martyr for their cause -- he knew about the Conspiracy, he responded to it the best way he could, and the goon squad came after him. They feel their point has been proven.

In other words, NO CHANGE. Everyone seems to have responded by underlining the belief systems (B.S.) they already had. Nice going, Jared. Sorry, man; your heart's in the right place, for sure, but in my book you're a piker.

Midterm Elections = Discordian Religious Ecstatic Experience

2010-11-06T16:38:00.000-07:00

Well, the elections on Tuesday came out MUCH MORE EXCITING THAN I DARED TO HOPE. For weeks I've been reading stuff in the news along the lines of "The Republicans must be stopped, and they will be!" and "The Tea Partiers will never get a foothold because we all know they're a bunch of demented freaks!" I even read a long piece in Newsweek about how if -- improbably -- the GOP did get a lot of new candidates in, it wouldn't make any difference, that all Obama's plans would proceed pretty much on schedule.

Well, not only did the GOP ge a lot of new candidates in, but the Tea Party now has the foothold it wants. Obama called it "a shellacking." What I have to like about this is that the Tea Party has no agenda that makes any sort of sense. They have a lot of complaints and NO PLANS TO ADDRESS THEM. They just seem to want to wear tricorn hats and holler at passing cars. CARRY ON, MY FRIENDS -- this is the monkey wrench I've been waiting for, hell, for YEARS. Can the immanentizing of the Eschaton really be far behind?

Don't get me wrong. I'm a staunch Obamanite who voted for the straight Democratic ticket. But I can't help seeing the humor in this situation.

The crowning touch -- and I just couldn't believe this -- was a tidbit I heard on NPR today while heading over to the post office. The announcer said the US voters -- stepping forward into the voting booths on the appointed day and speaking as one voice -- put four DEAD candidates into office across the country.

FOUR.

I'm Sure I Can Find A Use For This!

2010-04-10T19:06:00.000-07:00

CLICK HERE to order your very own tube of CONFUSION OIL. Or CLICK HERE instead. There are several places you can shop for this stuff. It's intended for root workers and practitioners of Voodoo who want to throw their enemies...into confusion.

I can't believe it would be just as beneficial used on other people, you know, RANDOMLY.

I mean, it sounds as if they're making the usual mistake and assuming CONFUSION IS BAD. Where do people get that idea, anyway?

"RIDING THE NIGHTMARE"

2009-10-28T06:11:00.000-07:00

Click here to get the merest taste of G.K. Chesterton's "Riding the Nightmare," the perfect pre-Halloween story. The full story is collected in one of his anthologies, the one pictured above; will look for it tonight in the archives.

Eris Ephemeris

2009-08-17T13:53:00.000-07:00

The link above makes it easy for you to know exactly what this LITTLE BALL OF CHAOS was doing just about every day since 1/1/1900.

2009-04-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

I got this big packet of proxy voting information from Exxon Mobil. They wanted me to vote against ALL the resolutions they have on the ballot this year.

They want me to vote against requiring lower greenhouse-gas emissions for all their products.

They want me to vote against research into renewable energy resources.

They even want me to vote against a resolution banning discrimination against gays and lesbians working for the company. They used that key phrase that should tell all right-thinking Americans that something is wrong with this picture: "WE ARE A MERITOCRACY," they said.

I threw out the rest of the packet, after voting for all the resolutions, but I might fish it out and keep it to look back on later. I fully recognize that while part of me voted the way I did because that is my position on these matters, part of me enjoyed telling Exxon Mobil to get real.

One rather wonders how many of the stockholders just followed the recommendations of the company, and voted the way they were told to vote.

This entertaining moment in my Saturday just goes to show what I'm always on about: people who oppose the goals of a powerful conglomerate think the best thing to do is boycott, and sell their stock in the company to show them what's what. I say that robs you of all your power as a shareholder to tell them where to get off.

Apples! Eeeeeeeeeek!

2009-04-03T07:34:00.000-07:00

I found this slice of a movie review on another site, posted by someone I know only as The Mud Puppy. I have his or her permission to post it here. Here's my review of this unseen film: When you start from the Discordian perspective of seeing apples as a symbol of change and Chaos, and you bear in mind that Chaos is many people's worst fear, this story actually could be scary to someone, somewhere. Maybe it scared the pants off its intended Hindi audience. It just goes to show you that my worst fear -- not apples -- is quite likely to be a minor giggle to you.

I rented this [Darna Mana Hai] from Netflix expecting it to essentially be a Bollywood horror/slasher film. I was mistaken. It was a Hindi slasher/horror film, true, but I would not call it a Bollywood film as there was not a single musical number. Oh, and it was also dreadful.

[Cliffie's note: right here I trimmed out the other horror vignettes reviewed in the complete post. They have nothing to do with THE HORROR OF APPLES.]

Story 4. This is the dumbest of the lot, and the fact that I actually predicted exactly where it was going made me cackle with disbelieving glee. A housewife buys apples from a creepy street vendor who sells them at an unbelievably cheap price. For some reason she gets creeped out later and throws the apples away, but then *gasp* the apples reappear in her fridge! EEEK! APPLES! Then her husband eats one of the apples! EEK! The next morning she discovers that her husband has turned into an APPLE! EEK! And then she sees everyone on the street eating one! And then, the entire street is nothing but APPLES! APPLES! EEK! And then the street vendor appears, to offer her the last apple, free of charge. EEK!

I should note that at no point was there any indication that this story wasn't intended to be completely serious.

CLICK HERE to see the apple segment of this film in all its unparalleled horror.

Where There Is A Pentagon, Lurks An Apple...

2009-03-30T13:59:00.000-07:00

"There is something about a closet that makes a skeleton terribly restless."

February 2nd Is Also The Feast Day Of St. Sid!

2009-02-02T16:16:00.000-08:00

Yessirree, this is the day Sid Vicious took matters into his own hands and finally got back together with Nancy. I CAN'T BELIEVE HE'S BEEN GONE FOR 30 YEARS!

You have to wonder whether Sid is, you know, really fulfilled as a Discordian Saint. Let's analyze this for a minute. He spent his brutally short musical career performing "Anarchy In The U.K." onstage, which has to count for SOMETHING. But he also put 99% of his energy into drinking the nothingness that comes with heroin addiction, and of course that was what he used to ice himself in order to get back together with Nancy. Stripped of its romantic elements, it looks like the typical rock-cliche death.

But consider this:

Item: Sid was a drooling, staggering god to thousands and thousands of kids who, in reaction against the hippy-dippy Love Generation, were completely straightedge. In effect, he rebelled against his own rebellion in an amazingly self-destructive doublecross that only proved the point of being straightedge. We still loved and mourned him when he died of heroin. WE WERE MORE STRAIGHTEDGE THAN EVER BECAUSE OF HIM.

Item: Nobody has ever cleared up the confusion surrounding Nancy's death. Was she murdered? Did they make a death pact that night, as Sid suspected? WDid Sid kill her? Was it one of their innumerable unsavory guests at the Chelsea Hotel? Did she do it to herself? Was it an accident? SID HIMSELF COULDN'T HAVE TOLD YOU IF YOU PAID HIM A HUNDRED BUCKS.

Item: There's more than a little confusion around Sid's death, too. One theory goes that he died by accident. The first 2 weeks out of jail are always the most dangerous time for heroin addicts; they fail to realize that their opiate tolerance is gone, they take as much as they used to take when they did have a high tolerance, and they die of it. Another theory goes that he didn't realize that the heroin he took that night was 99% pure, when he was used to 5% pure. This is what killed Janis Joplin, as I recall. But Janis didn't leave a note saying "we had a death pact, I have to keep my half of the bargain."

Item: Sid is supposed to have stolen the heroin he took to kill himself from his mother. She was supposed to be keeping an eye on him to keep him from using, but she had her own heroin in her back pocket. HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT?

Yeah, I think Sid is the real thing. He throws off hardcore confusion the way used core-rods throw off radiation.

I was a weepy mess all day at work, until I found Sid's "My Way" video on YouTube. After I saw it a couple of times, I was good to go again. Thanks, Sid. We all still love you.

Punxsutawney Phil: International Symbol Of Hope

2009-02-02T15:59:00.000-08:00

IT'S THAT TIME AGAIN. Today Phil put his head out of his burrow, saw his shadow, and called it: another six weeks of winter. NO SURPRISE. This winter has been INCREDIBLY BRUTAL and clearly has NO INTENTION OF LETTING US GO JUST YET.

What DOES surprise me is Phil's INTERNATIONAL MEDIA STARDOM. I mean, this is a large, flabby rodent with BRANCH OFFICES. Probably every state in the nation has its own meterological Woodchuck scenting the air in Montana -- Alaska -- New Mexico -- maybe even Old Mexico! -- and reporting back to the head office where Phil holds court. Probably they even pay taxes to Phil. AT LEAST THAT'S MY THEORY.

And in other countries farther away -- the arid steppe of Mongolia, the mountain fastness of Bavaria -- THEY ARE EAGERLY TUNED IN TO HEAR PHIL'S PRONOUNCEMENT. That is no theory, people; THAT IS A COLD, HARD FACT.

BUT WAIT -- THERE'S MORE! Phil even has cachet as a Discordian Saint, based on this version of the PHIL LEGEND related by an elementary-school student, no doubt channelled directly from the Elder Gods themselves:

Q: What is Groundhog Day?

A: On the third day Jesus rose from the dead, and when they rolled away the stone from his tomb, he came out, saw his shadow, and they all knew there would be SIX MORE WEEKS OF WINTER.

That never fails to bring a tear to my eye.

Project: Paint It Gold

2009-02-02T14:28:00.000-08:00

See the wall clock in the illustration above? Now, wouldn't that look MUCH NICER in a cheery shade of gold? YOUR MISSION, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT, is to take something like this OFF THE WALL (a Discordian specialty) and change it to a color that changes the apples from a common symbol of grade-school teachers or healthy living into a sure sign of Pure Chaos.

Sneak it back to its original position on the wall, mantel, etc., and SEE IF ANYONE NOTICES. Don't hold your breath waiting for someone to heap praise on your head. You've planted a seed, and it may take some time to sprout. At the worst, YOU WILL KNOW THAT YOU TRIED.

Discordia Does James Bond

2009-01-10T14:56:00.001-08:00

I heard this on NPR this week, driving home from work. It was an ancedote about the attempts by Russian spies to ice the leader of Afghanistan. OK, the guy's chef was a Russian spy, right, so they directed him to poison a glass of Coke and serve it to him. Turns out something in Coca-cola totally neutralizes the poison they were using, so he didn't even belch.

OK, then they had him lace some of his food with poison. Guy got sick as a dog. But because nobody at the Russian embassy was filled in on the assassination plot, they heard the Afghan leader was dying and rushed over some top-flight Russian doctors who saved the suffering man's life -- it must have been a close thing because the speaker telling the story used the word "revive" to describe how they saved him.

By this time, I picture the Central Committee in the Kremlin getting madder than wet cats. They finally just invaded the country, and shot the guy. If you want something done right, use a gun.

WHO DO YOU THINK STAGE-MANAGED ALL THAT CHOREOGRAPHY -- THE EASTER BUNNY?

Mystery Half-Solved...Maybe

2008-12-16T14:33:00.000-08:00

I know you are all still wondering whatever happened with the Andrea Jean Bean case. This unfortunate woman was found dead in a northeast suburb of Detroit by her children, who were being dropped off for a supervised visit. The condo was splashed from top to bottom with blood. Andrea Jean was dead on her bed, but she was not wounded anywhere,

and the blood was not hers.

So at this writing we have half an answer. She died of drowning. In her bed. I know; that's what I said, too. I expected the cause of death to be an anticlimax, but actually that's pretty weird.

They still do not know whose blood is all over the walls and floor.

Image Of The Day: Xmas Edition

2008-12-15T05:57:00.000-08:00

I don't think I could EVER get tired of looking at THIS Christmas wreath.

Quote Of The Day

2008-11-20T09:26:00.000-08:00

Seriously, the world is getting stranger by the day. It's pretty neat.

(HE, Who Must Not Be Named)

An Election-Day Omen

2008-11-04T07:34:00.001-08:00

OK, I was out for a walk a few days before election day -- and I saw something near the town hall that I've never seen before. The oppressively prim garden behind the local Chamber of Commerce was shutting itself down for the fall, and one of the Crabapple trees was loaded down with big, sumptuous, golden Crabapples. The branches were fairly groaning with them. I filled my kangaroo pocket with them and took them home to put on the scanner, which of course is refusing to work right now. I can only think that on the eve on the most highly-contested presidential election yet, this says SOMETHING'S GONNA HAPPEN. Looking at the two presidential candidates, and the galloping fears about what might happen (presidential assassination! the National Guard shooting at dissidents from helicopters! Sly Stone becomes Speaker of the House!) if either Tweedledee or Tweedledum gets in, I have to say it's going to be the most interesting ride we've had in a long, long time.

Of course, Crabs are another symbol of transformation. They shed their skins, eat them, and thereby become new & improved Crabs. They also use the gross, rotten stuff that washes up on the beach and turn that into new, baby Crabs. So a Golden Crab Apple has powerful mojo indeed.

I was astonished to see a proposal on the ballot to legalize medical marijuana. I thought it had already been laughed off the ballot because of the blistering concern that it would be too confusing for the police. I've never smoked dope in my life, but I think you know how I voted on THAT.

I'm quite worried about what will become of David Letterman. Both candidates seem perfectly capable of forming sentences. What will Letterman's writers do without George W. Bush providing the nightly installment of "Great Moments In Presidential Speechmaking"?

Magical Moment

2008-10-15T10:57:00.000-07:00

Today I finally took a close look into the junk left behind in the abandoned office next door. The previous occupant's Magic 8-Ball, alone on the table, seemed especially forlorn to me. Why, I wondered, would anyone leave behind such a critical decision-making tool? Cod knows I never go anywhere without mine.

Then I asked whether the internal candidate applying for the job would wind up getting it, and turned it over. The answer: NOTHING. The little answer doohickey inside, that floats in the blue/black predictive salsa, only gives you the pointy end. The pointy end is hanging way out of the salsa, so what you actually see is a white PENTAGON. A pentagon with 5 conflicting answers written on it, sloshing back and forth as you shake it so you can see them all. Shake it again, and you get 5 different answers to choose from. I hardly know whether to douse it in kerosene and light it up, or build an altar to it.

That is so totally life in a nutshell.

Happy Birthday, My Dearest Love

2008-10-10T14:04:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I get home from work, right, and there are two identical-looking letters from the hospital. I open them up, and I find two different items, mailed a day apart from the same address (one I have never been to) in a vast and spreading hospital chain:

One told me that I was more than a year overdue for a routine screening, and that if I delayed any longer my firstborn child would be the Antichrist (this is a Catholic hospital).

The other congratulated me on my recent screening and announced that their highly-trained staff had found no "significant" abnormalities in the results. Implying that an embryonic Antichrist, give or take, might not raise their eyebrows too much.

Life is good sometimes.

In My Inbox Tonight -- I LOVE An Election Year

2008-09-18T17:12:00.000-07:00

Had to pass this one on for your next political conversation...

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....

>> * If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're > "exotic, different."

>> * Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, your life is a quintessential American story.

>> * If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

>> * Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a "maverick."

>> * Graduate from Harvard Law School and you are unstable.

>> * Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well -grounded.

>>> * If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter- registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a state Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

>>> * If your total resume is local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second-highest-ranking executive.

>> * If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

>> * If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a real Christian.

>> * If you teach responsible, age-appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

>>> * If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

>>> * If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner-city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.

>> * If your husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.

I have to say there is nothing I love quite as much as the special kind of logic used in political campaigns. Do you see why?

Quote of the Day

2008-09-08T09:35:00.000-07:00

"You think YOU'RE an iconoclast, Duck? I don't even uphold my OWN beliefs!"

~~Osco Sean~~

Quote Of The Day

2008-09-04T15:35:00.000-07:00

"At the time of my visit, the Italians were working their way through their forty-eighth government in forty-five years. The country has the social structure of a banana republic, yet the amazing thing is that it thrives. It is now the fifth-biggest economy in the world, which is a simply staggering achievement in the face of such chronic disorder. If they had the work ethic of the Japanese they would be masters of the planet. Thank goodness they don't. They are too busy expending their considerable energies on the pleasurable minutiae of daily life -- children, good food, arguing in cafes -- which is just how it should be."

This is from pg 125 of Neither Here Nor There: Travels In Europe, by Bill Bryson; copyrighted 1991 to the author, Minerva Paperbacks, London.

Far be it from me to question a world authority on virtually everything, like old Bill, but I would like to suggest an alternate interpretation. Maybe they're doing so well BECAUSE of the chronic disorder. That's just my guess.

Discordia Rules Math OK, Too

2008-08-28T20:25:00.000-07:00

Anything with numbers is baffling to me. I can still hear one of my favorite clients of yore describe how he solved a problem at work by saying, "It was just simple calculus." As he said it he shook his head, as if to say, "How can anyone not see the solution?" Simple calculus!? I still struggle to tell time, for Scrod sakes.

Another math-brain client of mine shook his head pityingly about his intellectual inferiors one day, and said that "people who don't understand math act as if the rules don't stay the same as the math gets more complicated. THE RULES ALWAYS STAY THE SAME." As a good therapist, I nodded understandingly, but several internal 200-watt light bulbs went on at that moment. "The rules stay the same? They really do? Is that the trick you bastards are using?"

My problem would be deciding which rules were the "true" ones, dig? I can still remember working out in 5th grade exactly why 2+2=5 in some cases, but not all, and I still agree with that interpretation. What's funnier still is that many years later, I read something in a book on headshrinking that used the exact same proofs I used to support the theorem that 2+2=5, in describing how Family Systems therapy works. I successfully use Family Systems theory alla time with my clients -- but it's not that damn successful with math brains. As I type this paragraph, I begin to see why.

Today's Find!

2008-07-25T19:29:00.000-07:00

Click on the title of this entry to access TODAY"S FIND. Yes, people, GOLDEN APPLE STRESS BALLS that can be customized with YOUR COMPANY LOGO. Imagine one of these on every teacher's desk in the country! Every nurse's station in every mental hospital! Every college dorm room, to be taken out and passionately squeezed at exam time! And of course BOWLS of them served up in every airport traveller's lounge and doctor's office AROUND THE GLOBE.

The possibilities make one fairly swoon!

Image Of The Day

2008-07-23T19:23:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you just need a change of perspective.

Toss A Grenade: Today's Class Experiment

2008-07-10T05:58:00.000-07:00

I know school is out for most of you at this writing, but FEEL FREE TO SAVE THIS UNTIL FALL.

Sitting in class can get so boring -- I don't need to tell you that. But any high school or (especially) college class can be livened up by simply using the word "abortion" in any sentence. Be sure to keep yourself out of the LINE OF FIRE by making the sentence neutral and inoffensive, like my favorite: "Just think how the abortion issue gets people hot under the collar!"

Roll this Grenade of Chaos into the classroom. Within 5 minutes, everyone in the room will be SCREAMING at each other. Then you can sit back and ENJOY -- you are now essentially sitting in the middle of a live-action re-enactment of the Battle of Stirling, as seen in Braveheart. There is nothing more fun than this on a dull day.

THE HAPPENING

2008-07-06T12:20:00.000-07:00

My name is Cliffie and I paid to see this picture! And what's more, I'm not entirely sorry I did! Now, this is a film for the diehard Discordian movie buff. Naturally, it's getting limp and soggy reviews across the country. So many people JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND. And one of the intriguing things about this picture is that you really can't tell from watching it whether M. Night Shyamalan understands, either.

Here are a few salient points:

>> In spite of the requisite Monday-morning quarterbacking at the end of the story, we REALLY DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED, OR WHY.

>> The people who made it through pretty much made it, not by courage or special wisdom, but by blind luck. AND IS THERE ANY BETTER WAY TO SURVIVE A FILM WITH AN UNKNOWN MENACE?

>> The only one who appeared to know what was going on was what they used to call an "ambulatory schizophrenic." Like the wise old Native seer or the Gypsy woman smoking a pipe in many another film, who explains everything during a lull in the action. AND IT DIDN'T HELP THE GUY AT ALL TO KNOW WHAT WAS HAPPENING. It may have helped others in the story. But then again, MAYBE NOT. And of course, he may have been DEAD WRONG, and just a little late on his Thorazine. We never really find out.

>> The self-destruction angle in this story really appealed to me, naturally. The serial suicides starting with the disoriented cop made for a great movie moment, but not half as great as the ironworkers going a-lemming off the edge of the unfinished building. And none of that was as effective as what happened to the plucky survivors at the boarded-up house. I love that none of this affected the dogs or birds on the scene, just the Homo saps. It just goes to remind us all: MOST OF THE MAYHEM, EVEN WHEN YOU'RE UNDER ATTACK BY SOMETHING NEW AND TERRIFYING, ISSUES FROM YOUR OWN STOOPID NAKED-APE HANDS.

>> Sighted along this axis, it's a great picture. Seen from the point of view of standard moviemaking, which holds that the only real entertainment is watching things explode, this movie is just nothing. So see it to try to find out where you stand.

This Week's Bavarian Fire Drill

2008-06-26T18:04:00.000-07:00

Now here's our government at work: I got an e-mail alert at work today. Someone wanted me to protest the elimination of the Team Decision Making process at Child Protective Services, which would leave life-shattering decisions about removing children from their homes to, I dunno, the janitor or something. They want to cut off TDM funding because we can no longer afford that sort of wasteful state spending.

Yesterday, in the mail, I got a letter from the Feds joyously announcing that my economic stimulus check would arrive any day now. I'm guessing, with an average 3 people per household in this country, that they designed, printed up and mailed out 100 million of these at God knows what cost. Not to mention sending out 100 million checks the following week, each of them made out for $600 or more. I wonder how many battered infants you could save with that kind of money?

Quote Of The Day

2008-06-14T19:31:00.000-07:00

“Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We're all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos.” -- David Cronenberg

Speak for yourself, Dave.

Jello Biafra: Good Saint Material

2008-06-11T16:28:00.000-07:00

What makes this man GOOD SAINT MATERIAL?

1. He sticks by his principles no matter what's going on.

2. He leads by example.

3. He doesn't seem to tie himself up in knots about what the competition is up to.

4. Hard as he tries, he can't seem to get fame to go to his head. That's good, saintly behavior, there.

5. There appears to have been at least one clear attempt to martyr him.

5. He's spent his entire adult life belching forth one inspiring hymn after another DEDICATED TO THE CAUSES WE HOLD DEAR. Like this one:

"Enchanted Thoughtfist"

I am a product of the television age

Zoom in on what's important

Get the point right away

A modern lack of patience

Is it a virtue?

Hardly ever read books

Devours easily few

I say it again

We all believe what we want to believe

Don't just question authority

Question everything

Felt I had to confess

In Ginsberg's apartment

My literary background's mostly songs and cartoons

He said 'Oh, that's just fine'

I sort of felt relieved

But when I hurl my word bombs

How much should be believed?

I say it again

We all believe what we want to believe

Don't just question authority

Don't forget to question me!

Oh yeah, that's right

It takes?

With insight

The pressure of being taken seriously

Breathing down on me

To keep up with my extremes

And keep on planting seeds

Joyous sabotage

So far so good

Now where do we go from here?

It always feels weird

When people come up to me

And say I changed their lives

I say 'Now it's your turn to start a fire!

'Start your own fire

Break the world fire (? )

I need hardly point out that the lyrics to Jello's tender ballad contain EVERYTHING YOU COULD WANT in a Discordian hymn. Guy even challenges the listener to question what he's saying. This is the real deal.

An Erisian Mantra

2008-06-11T16:11:00.000-07:00

"The imaginary is what tends

to become real, and when it does

There's no paint black enough

to cover it up."

-- Maggie Nelson, in Jane: A Murder

Copyrighted 2005, Maggie Nelson

Published by Soft Skull Press

An Erisian Mandala

2008-06-11T15:47:00.001-07:00

A Sub-Genius of my acquaintance sent me this. I have no idea where he scared it up -- he certainly has the nose for the offbeat image -- and I really apologize to the image's creator for not being able to give proper credit.

(Feel free to add it via the the Comments link!)

Self-important adolescent types, confronted with an image like this, are quick to point out that it is no proof of talent to be able to create a trompe l'oeil like this. OK, maybe, but A) who cares and B) you only said that because you resent not having come up with it yourself, you snot-nosed kid, proving that someone who's not talented can still manage to make you feel dumb.

ANYWAY:

This has all the important elements of a good, spiritually-focused mandala. It seems to change, or move, as you look at it, the way an Escher print does, or the way a corpse laid out in its coffin seems to breathe. It makes you wonder who the funk that is in the picture, and whether they are actually above or below the pavement, or if they only exist in the thin layer of water on the asphalt. Or maybe they are Shoe Genies that can ghost up out of the insoles at their whim, becoming visible under the right lighting conditions, or on a wet day like this one, or in a way that makes only their reflections visible, like Count Dracula in reverse. It makes you think, in a flickering-past way, how photography works and how someone can twiddle a photo to make this look so real...and so unreal at the same time.

So, pretty cool, Mystery Photographer.

A Tribute To The Prettiest One: Uber-Saint of Chaos

2008-05-23T19:35:00.000-07:00

"Je suis la plus belle!"

This was the dance-floor war cry of Gaetan Dugas, the notorious flight attendant from Quebec whose "little black book" was used by the Centers for Disease Control to prove that AIDS was -- is -- a sexually-transmitted disease. I don't know how many times I read And The Band Played On (by Randy Shilts, long may he wave) before it finally soaked in.

"I am the prettiest one!"

That was what Gaetan used to say when he looked around a roomful of new romantic prospects -- at a bathhouse, a bar, maybe a party. And he was probably right. But talk about tempting the gods! And this is not tempting just any god. Without realizing it of course, he was asking the Goddess of Chaos to use him as a live grenade, which with all due respect is just asking for serious, serious trouble. And he got it. I know, I know, he didn't really ask. Who the hell would? It's just the superstitious lunkhead in me that wants to assign cause and effect to this cruelly random, randomly cruel disaster. Because then it would make sense. Because then it would be someone's fault.

"I am the prettiest one!"

Why not just paint a bullseye on your back, man?

Twenty or twenty-five years ago now, researchers identified him as the center of a traceable network of people who mingled their body fluids and paid a horrible price. And here's the thing: nobody, even health professionals worried about Gay Bowel Syndrome and parasites run amok, could have seen THIS coming. Let alone this guy who just wanted to party his brains out when he wasn't working.

The cruel irony of this man's life has offended people from that day to this, as well it should. But some of you are still shooting the messanger. If he could have seen this coming, don't you think he would have done it all differently? Do you not see that what horrifies you is that you didn't see it coming, either?

You make the picture even worse when you try to neuter the Chaos. His terrible death, along with a whole generation of nice guys just like him, wasn't enough? You have to martyr him again? Even today you can hear people trying to pigeonhole Gaetan Dugas, who they can never understand.

People should know better at this late date.

This is why you can't pin him down: YOU HAVEN'T BEEN THERE. Because he is the prettiest one, and you, sir or madam, are not. Count your blessings.

"Je suis la plus belle!"

They even embroidered it on his piece of the AIDS quilt.

eBay Find Of The Gods -- No, I Mean Literallly

2008-05-22T18:44:00.000-07:00

OK, check it out, some Freakasaurus Rex is actually rolling the Apples of Chaos into the fast lane of the Information Superhighway. A seller who prefers to be known as ex_tellure_vita is opening the bid at $0.99!

The precious item's descriptive text is thus:

Zeus held a banquet in celebration of the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. Left off the guest list was Eris (goddess of discord), and upon turning up uninvited she threw or rolled a golden apple into the ceremony, with the inscription which said: καλλίστῃ or, "for the fairest one". Three goddesses claimed the apple: Hera, Athena and Aphrodite. Zeus decided that Paris of Troy would judge their cases. Each of the goddesses offered Paris a gift. Hera would give him power, Athena would make him wise, and Aphrodite offered him the love of the world's most beautiful woman, Helen. Paris chose Aphrodite, and Helen's leaving of her previous husband precipitated the Trojan War.

Handcarved golden apple, ~3".

OK, this is accurate as far as it goes, but where exactly does the gift of immortality come in? That's not exactly Discordia's stock in trade. Maybe she -- or the seller (and what's her real name?) -- is throwing it in for free, like a first-class shipping upgrade.

But think about it. If you really wanted to sow the seeds of Chaos, make someone immortal. Just one person would probably be enough. Imagine what you could accomplish if you literally had all the time in the world. You could get yourself fixed up as dictator for life of the Eastern Hemisphere, say, or just make your first trillion without wasting energy on the stupid stuff that we mortals have to worry about, like health insurance or a new car that you'll outlive by a factor of one hundred. There will be a period of utter madness and despair as everyone you ever loved, everything you new and understood, is stripped away from you by Discordia's good buddy, the Grim Reaper. But hey, you'll get over it.

At that point you could REALLY start to have some fun, setting all the world's top research scientists to work on terraforming Mars or making Jurassic Park come true. Or both! Strand all the people you like on Mars and let them fight it out while unleashing peevish, bank-building-sized carnivores on the wretched masses here on Earth. Or come up with your own ideas; don't be restricted to my (admittedly satisfying) B-movie fantasies.

Or you could get really goofy and make 3 people immortal. Any three. You pick.

OUR LADY OF CHAOS VISITS THE DETROIT CITY COUNCIL

2008-04-19T12:44:00.000-07:00

I loved this photo so much that I took it home and put it in my diary for posterity. With that said, it took me most of a week to figure out what I was looking at, there on the front page of the Detroit Free Press, April 15th, 2008. It headed up an article describing the ongoing efforts of the Detroit City Council to force Kwame Kilpatrick, our disgraced mayor, out of office. This is more of the curious new brand of moral outrage you see in our nation's government -- apparently it's local as well as state and national. A guy spends YEARS misappropriating funds from one of the most economically devastated cities in the country, and nobody bats an eye. In fact, he gets re-elected by a landslide. Then he lies about a text message on a cellphone, and everyone wants his head on a stick.

I was, at first, merely delighted by the zaniness of the photo. My supervisor saw it and said it looked to her like a support-group meeting for the mentally ill. The secretary in our department said it looked like Kwame was about to cry. In any case it's a terrific historical keepsake.

The truth eventually revealed itself unto me: This is clearly a visit from the goddess Discordia, captured on film and published for all to see. I hear this incident made the national news, too. When I really thought about it I could see a clear connection between this moment and The Doctrine Of The Original Snub from the Principia. For you not familiar with that august document, look up the Greek myth about how Eris started the Trojan War with her golden apple. I'm sure you'll find it right in Bullfinch.

Where is Discordia in this photograph? Well, she announced herself by somehow getting a Detroit City Councilwoman to show up to the meeting in a ruffly yellow fairy-princess costume and a tiara, for crying out loud. I'm not sure which would have been funnier: if they'd left the caption the way it is, or if they'd taken off that last sentence, leaving Collins' outfit completely unexplained.

With any luck, we'll get some interesting results out of this new snubbing of Mayor Kwame.

I GIVE YOU THE PENTAPINK!

2008-04-19T09:55:00.000-07:00

BEHOLD. LOOK, AND SNIFF YE.

Not only do these 5 unassuming flowers form a pentagon; each flower IS a pentagon.
On each petal is yet another pentagon in a contrasting color.

Look more closely and you will see that the inner edge of each of these forms YET ANOTHER pentagon towards the center.

Finally, this central, darker pentagon forms a frame around a final, white pentagon forming a tunnel that leads all the way back to the roots, I imagine, and which holds the stamens of the flower.

But wait! There’s more! Instead of drawing lines straight between the center of each flower to delineate the largest pentagon in this image, you can criss-cross them and make a star. In the center of the star will be the dread INVERTED PENTAGON.

You Subgenii will be intrigued to know that this flower is known as a Pink.

CHANT INSTRUCTIONS

As you gaze, REPEAT RAPTUROUSLY:

Everything is under control. Everything is under control. Everything is under control. Everything is under control. Everything is under control.

Everything is under control.

Today is National I Am In Control Day

2008-03-30T13:27:00.000-07:00

Oh, come ON.

Far Be It From Me To Post An Internet Quiz On My Site...

2008-03-23T13:57:00.000-07:00

...but this one was too much fun to pass up.

I scored 8.07!!! Yay me!!!

I Want To Have David Wong's Baby

2008-02-23T16:59:00.000-08:00

WHY, you ask? Partly because I've always had good, sometimes spectacular results with guys named David. Partly because he wrote this article.

The fact that it turned up in Cracked makes me love him even more.

Man Blames Car Wreck On Prehistoric Winged Reptile

2008-02-23T15:57:00.000-08:00

By Rachel Schleif, Wenatchee World

DATELINE: WENATCHEE -- A 29-year-old Wenatchee man told police a pterodactyl caused him to drive his car into a light pole about 11:30 p.m. Thursday. Wenatchee police cited the man with first-degree negligent driving. A breathalyzer test showed "a minimal amount of alcohol," said Wenatchee police Sgt. Cherie Smith. Witnesses told police the man was northbound on Wenatchee Avenue and drifted into a southbound lane for less than a block. Oncoming traffic stopped and waited for the man to pass, Smith said. He then totaled his car on a light pole, Smith said. When police asked the man what caused the accident, his one-word answer was "pterodactyl," Smith said.

A pterodactyl was a giant winged reptile that lived more than 65 million years ago.

The man was treated and released at Central Washington Hospital, hospital officials said.

I have a number of thoughts on this article, forwarded by a party who wishes to remain nameless:

A) Do you have any idea how many B-movies start out exactly this way? The first witness is always bundled off to the nearest hospital by the authorities, on the assumption that he has a busted skullbone. By the end of the second reel, a small town in the Southwestern desert or the loneliest part of the Eastern seaboard is being TORN ASUNDER by the airborne menace. The fact that he was "treated and released" proves that there was NOTHING WRONG WITH HIM.

B) I happen to know that the Wenatchee P.D. is brutal on drunk drivers. The blood-alcohol level was clearly very low -- and thus not a factor -- in the sighting.

C) People just assume Michael Crichton is a novelist, but I want to remind you all that he bases his plotlines on hard scientific fact. They HAVE in fact found SOFT TISSUES, and and even DNA, in dinosaur bones, starting with a T. rex found at a spot that I think we can all agree is the perfect starting point for a horror picture: Hell Creek, in the Badlands.

D) The American public is unprepared for a dinosaur invasion. Witness the fact that the newspaper felt it necessary to explain to its fogbound readers what a Pterodactyl is. If they don't know that much, they probably won't fare as well as the plucky, resourceful shoppers you saw in The Mist. That's just my opinion.

E) It crossed my mind to wonder whether Pterodactyls dispense enormous bird-doodles, like the ones we saw in the Gamera remake. Or do they dive-bomb their victims with big, juicy golden apples?

Doctors Panic And Halt Research Study

2008-02-10T12:30:00.000-08:00

OK, this is just in from the February 7th, 2008 paper -- it doesn't actually say which paper, but I have it narrowed down to either The Ann Arbor News or The Detroit Free Press -- and it any case it was apparently nabbed from The New York Times. Onwards.

Says here they were doing a large federally-funded research study on that hot death flavor of the decade, Diabetes mellitus Type II. Somebody proved years ago that if you have Type I or "juvenile" diabetes, and you keep your blood sugars as close to normal as possible, you live longer and don't go blind and la de da. As in, DUH. So they finally got around to finding out whether that holds true for Type II or "adult" diabetes as well. I could have saved them the money, but NOBODY LISTENS TO ME.

So the article tells us they've discovered that improving blood sugars in Type II diabetics "increased their risk of death." They then go on to explain in fairish detail why that is almost certainly NOT TRUE.

The study divided 10,000 test subjects into control and experimental groups. The controls did treatment as usual, and the experimentals were clobbered with all kinds of treatments, not only to keep their blood sugar low, but to lower their cholesterol and blood pressure and every other "risk factor" we've been pounded over the head with since the Seventies. They put these wretched creatures on all kinds of pills, PLUS insulin, sometimes even the insulin pump, normally used for hard-to-manage cases of juvenile diabetes if I recall correctly. They mentioned nothing about improving people's lifestyles, like making sure they eat right and get enough exercise, moral support and rest. Do I need to remind you at this juncture that many doctors believe the Atkins Diet is healthy?

OK, so out of 2 groups of 5,000 people, over the course of over 5 years, 54 more people in the experimental group died than in the control group. Did the doctors reassess their methods? Did they ask themselves whether it's really wise to heap all these chemicals into experimental subjects, averaging age 62, who may have been sick for decades already? Did they look into how long or how effectively the goners had gotten treatment before the study started? Did they reckon on the stress and strain to the test subjects of having to test their blood and pop pills all day long, shoot up endlessly, and count out the individual rice grains and celery sticks and slices of low-carb artificial banana they were allowed to eat on a daily basis?

DID THEY COOL THEIR JETS AND THINK?

NO, THEY DID NOT. The docs panicked, and decided to put the remaining experimentals on the same regimes as the controls. So, basically, the study is over and I suppose they have to give the remaining federal funds back. I note with fascination that the article DOESN'T EVEN TELL US WHAT THESE PEOPLE DIED OF. Hell, it could have been anything. Maybe they fell down the stairs. In any case, if they died of anything diabetes-related, they don't mention it in the article. Which, I don't know, seems like an important point.

I'm reminded, irresistably, of the oft-quoted fact (?) that most heart attacks occur at 9 a.m. on Mondays. I just picture some 85-year-old test subject waking up one morning. He looks blearily at his vast pill organizer, his vials and syringes, his alcohol swabs, his food chart, his tasteless breakfast comprising 5 thimblefuls of different-colored Soylent crumbs...and cheering up as he reaches for the rat poison instead. Are you digging me?

Another important point: the article's author is Gina Kolata. Despite her status as a prominent health writer, she is in good odor with me because of her inability to keep her story straight. Someday I'll review her book on the 1918 flu epidemic. It's a comedy classic.

Tomorrow Is The Feast Day Of St. Phil

2008-02-01T19:08:00.000-08:00

Here's my Quote of the Day, actually DUELLING QUOTES from an article that was rightly and fittingly placed on the front page of today’s Livingston County, Michigan Daily Press & Argus:

First, the Aneristic (Greyface) Quote Of The Day:

"Groundhogs don't speak to us. We don't believe in that." -- Dana DeBenham, wildlife director at the Howell, MI Nature Center and evidently quite a pickle puss

And here we have the Eristic Rebuttal:

"Groundhogese isn't like learning French or Spanish. If you have the gene, it's fun and the day serves the purpose it was invented for. If you don't have the gene, we'd just as soon you stay away and keep to yourself." -- Bill Cooper, Punxsutawney Groundhog Club Inner Circle president, "whose ears will be privy to Phil's declaration" -- Kristofer Karol, ace reporter for the Press & Argus

I HARDLY FEEL IT’S A COINCIDENCE that the first person I discussed this with told me that not only was she born on Groundhog Day, but she grew up only a stone’s throw from Punxsutawney Phil’s sacred temple in Pennsylvania. This information came about 1 minute from the news flash that her boss, in whose office we were standing, is married to someone who was ALSO born on the Feast Day Of St. Phil, the Weather-Predicting Groundhog.

EVERY DAY that someone takes time out of the usual busy day to investigate, speculate about, comment on and PUBLISH FINDINGS on something like the precognitive power of pudgy Midwestern rodents is proof that CHAOS IS WINNING.

Let me add: I THINK WE KNOW WHOSE SIDE KRISTOFER KAROL IS ON.

Another Mystery Man For You To Get To Know

2008-01-13T08:42:00.000-08:00

If you don't know this man, you probably don't know anything.

OK, OK, do you give up? This photo is of a man who goes by all kinds of names, but I like to think of him as "Clovis." Is that a broad enough hint for you, gentle reader?

Do You Know This Man? Part II

2008-01-13T08:41:00.001-08:00

Same question, same answer as the previous entry: if you don't know him, GET ON IT.

Here's a hint: when last sighted, he said urgently to a man nearby, "PUT THAT BLOODY CIGARETTE OUT."

Do You Know This Man? Part I

2008-01-13T08:37:00.001-08:00

If you don't know this fella, I suggest you make his acquaintance, and soon.

Hint: He is one of the best-known unknown Prophets Of Chaos of all time.

A Chaotic Christmas Carol

2007-12-14T18:54:00.000-08:00

"DEMON SULTAN AZAZOTH"

(-- sung to the tune of "Good King Wenceslas")

Demon Sultan Azazoth

Bubbles In confusion.

Center Of The Universe,

Sprouting foul protrusions,

Muffled madd'ning beating drums,

Hellish flutes a-playing

Round him dance the Other Gods

with mindless, voiceless, swaying.

-- lyrics by Sean Branney

(based on the Christmas carol by John Mason Neale)

For those of you not familiar with the Cthulu Mythos of H.P. Lovecraft, Azazoth is "the idiot, blind Chaos at the center of Eternity." Now what could be more jingly and mistletoed than that?

Yes, It's Use Even If Seal Is Broken Day!!!

2007-11-24T19:24:00.001-08:00

IS THERE ANY DAY MORE LIBERATING THAN THIS ONE? America has cowered in a safety-sealed world ever since the mid-Eighties, when 7 people in the Chicago area were poisoned by cyanide-laced Extra-Strength Tylenol. I feel for their families, I do, but for Pete's sake, from that day to this I have not been able to buy ANYTHING without a safety seal. Peanut butter. Those tablets you feed into the garbage disposal. Vitamins. Bottled water. Fried chicken. Drain cleaner.

Q-Tips.

Normally it would be beyond the scope of this blog, if not a violation of its mission statment, to plead for sanity. But I loathe living in a country where the children are not allowed to watch TV without a helmet. I am going to clobber the next person who says "Have a safe holiday." Do people expect me to juggle live rattlesnakes just because it's Thanksgiving?

At some point we need to finally declare that the BS is getting too deep, instead of simply reaching for the hip-waders.

Chaos Never Dies Day Has Come And Gone!!!

2007-11-11T16:03:00.000-08:00

I have no idea where a person goes to get a new national holiday set up, but somebody went there and signed up Nov. 9th as Chaos Never Dies Day. And I didn't even hear about it until just now. Dang!

Of course, if Chaos never dies, why celebrate it on just one day of the year, huh? Huh?

I need to add here, because of its deep personal meaningfulness to moi, that I know an inordinate number of people born on Nov. 9th, and two of the most important ones have been royal pains in the adze. You know who you are.

Today's Find!!!

2007-10-19T17:48:00.000-07:00

I found this in the fall "Paragon" gift catalogue that came to my door yesterday. They are actually trying to pass off this delicious item as a "faceted crystal PUMPKIN" [caps mine]. Whom do they imagine they are kidding?

Yeah, baby!

2007-10-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

This is from one of the early scenes in John Carpenter's Prince Of Darkness. Professor Howard Birack, a physics professor at an unnamed university, is exhorting the grad students in his class to WAKE UP AND SMELL THE CHAOS:

"Let's talk about our beliefs and what we can learn about them. We believe:
"Nature is solid and Time a constant. Matter has substance and Time a direction. There is truth in flesh -- eh? -- and the solid ground??? The wind may be visible, but it's real. Smoke, fire, water lightning. They're different. Not as to stone or steel, but they're tangible! And we assume Time has an arrow because it is as a clock. One second is one second for everyone!
"Cause precedes effect. Fruit rots, water flows downstream. We're born, we age, we die -- the reverse never happens!
"NONE OF THIS IS TRUTH."

I love this speech so much that whenever I watch this movie, I rewind to watch it over and over. Last night, however, I saw the students' faces in a new way. At every previous viewing I have seen them as vaguely overwhelmed and uplifted by what they were hearing, as if they'd realized that on some level they were free from boring old gravity and linear time and la de da. Not last night, though. Last night it seemed as if they were listening politely and TRYING to understand, but they really didn't see. Knowing at this late date how the movie comes out, I knew they would have an enhanced understanding in fairly short order. Jameson Parker's face, as he approaches the mirror at the very end, certainly shows a new awareness of the Dark Side.

And what is the Dark Side in this movie? The realm of subatomic particles, also known to some as Chaos. A level of being where none of our rules apply. What's REALLY COOL about this is the stark fact that WE ARE ALL MADE OF THAT CHAOS.

At the end of this class, Birack smiles a lopsided, cheery, faintly sadistic smile and offers the class a parting thought:

"While Order does exist in the universe, is it not at all what we had in mind."

Heh.

I wonder if I'm not projecting my own bafflement here, though, as I watch the grad students watch Birack. This is the first time I've seen the movie since reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, and I confess I was absolutely boggled by the chapter on subatomic particles. Maybe I've treied to learn more about the Dark Side, and been rebuffed.

Discordia Drops By: An Anecdote

2007-09-27T18:20:00.000-07:00

This is just a MOMENT OF REALIZATION I had at my last job. It happened just about six months ago now. I had just been laid off for the first time in my life, in terror and weeping, at a time when my home state was DEAD LAST in the entire nation for job openings. 100 people a day were leaving for places like Arizona and Colorado, abandoning their homes for the banks to foreclose upon, because in other states they could get jobs in coffee shops and live in their cars.

My keester was saved at the last moment when the bosses miraculously routed me into another position that I could keep for ALL ETERNITY if I wanted. The benefits were just as good even though the pay was a little lower. It was even in the town where I was born. Incredible!

Sure, there was a catch: it was a nightmare position I had vowed all my professional life NEVER TO TAKE.

Sure, there was ANOTHER catch: the commute home included a stretch of congested highway they had just closed down to one lane, meaning that I had a choice of sitting still for two hours in an idling car on a freeway that should have gotten me home in 15 minutes, with gas going for three dollars a gallon, OR I could bash my tiny car into a TWISTED HEAP OF METAL on an hour-long, slithering, jolting funhouse ride on the rutted back roads of the county. In icy February conditions. Yeah, baby. Life was starting to suck again.

But I was surprised to find that I really liked the people. I'd been warned all my life that they were the cruellest minions of bureaucratic evil on earth, laying waste human lives and chuckling at the suffering of the innocent, in the quest to get all their state forms filled out correctly. They weren't like that at all. I was impressed with their professionalism and skill, their good judgement, their good humor in the face of adversity. The office space they gave me was a little grubby, but the color scheme was nice. I had a view of the trees growing up the center of the atrium. Everyone fell all over themselves helping me. I have never learned so much in such a short time at any job.

And the bosses were good, too. Incredibly good. Wow. How often do you stumble into a job where you like all the supervisors? These were kindly, positive people who explained things so you understood them the first time; they seemed to understand that I was in a light state of shellshock after having been laid off; and they told me over and over to take it slow, that I was doing fine. WOW, how did these people get into positions of responsibility? This kind of talent would have been ruthlessly fired before getting past probation at ANY OTHER JOB I'd ever worked.

I was starting to see that I could do this job, if I had to, and I could be good at it too.

The MOMENT OF REALIZATION came after something had been niggling at me for weeks. My own supervisor was off saving the world from evil or something, and the other department supervisor had taken me under his wing, helping me along at every step. There was just something about him. He kept reminding me of something I could...almost...think of....but not quite. I knew I'd never met him before. Had my boss at the other job mentioned him? They appeared to know each other. What was it about him that seemed so familiar?

After about four weeks of this, I was saved from the miserable commute and the specter of working a job I dreaded. My dream job opened up nearby, and they interviewed me for it. I even got hired. It involved a $7,000+ pay raise and was only 10 minutes from my place. It actually matched my training and abilities.

It was only afterwards, when I was starting to get seriously freaked out by the stress of being thrown into a new job, (un)trained by the usual type of useless supervisor, that I opened The Principia Discordia to seek spiritual comfort and I finally got the message.

The oddly familiar supervisor at the previous job was named Greg Hill. Greg Hill, a guy with the same name as one of the original living prophets of Eris in our times, co-author of the Principia. My other supervisor had to GET OUT OF THE WAY so I could spend several hours a day getting help from this particular man and no other.

I like to think this means that all this happened as part of the entirely random, planless, grenade-throwing machinations of Our Lady Of Chaos. When I think about it, I see that if I had not been canned when I was and frantically looking for a job to replace the one Discordia had tossed in my lap, I NEVER WOULD HAVE NOTICED THE OPENING FOR MY DREAM JOB, THE ONE I'VE WISHED FOR DAILY FOR MORE THAN FIVE YEARS.

Indeed do many things come to pass.

Today's Bureaucracy Moment

2007-09-27T17:39:00.000-07:00

Okay, today I was at this training at work, right, and people were really starting to droop because we'd been sitting there for hours and hours getting lectured about a bunch of boring horseapples and it was all starting to blur together, you know?

And then it happened. My very own supervisor from my very own department spake, and speaking, made this pronouncement:

CURRENT REGULATIONS DICTATE THAT WHEN WE COLLECT A CERTAIN TYPE OF INFORMATION FROM A CLIENT IN ORDER TO ASSIST THEM, WE CANNOT DISCUSS IT WITH OUR OWN STAFF PEOPLE WITHOUT OBTAINING A WRITTEN RELEASE OF INFORMATION FROM THE CLIENT TO DO SO.

THIS IS TRUE IN SPITE OF THE FACT THAT SAID INFORMATION IS ENTERED, AS WE COLLECT IT, ON A MULTI-USER COMPUTER SYSTEM WHERE ANYONE AND HIS HAMSTER IN FOUR COUNTIES CAN CALL IT UP AND READ IT AT THE TOUCH OF A BUTTON.

You should have seen the faces light up all over the room. Sometimes you just want to fall on your knees and thank Discordia for the great bounty of her comic relief.

True Terror, Just In Time For Halloween...

2007-09-27T17:08:00.000-07:00

Isn't this a pretty picture? I thought so, too, once I cropped out the SCARY PARTS. This is a small section of one of the most frightening images I have ever seen. I would have included the whole thing, but I just didn't dare. Copyright considerations aside, I was pretty sure Our Lady of Chaos would STRIKE ME DEAD if I did so.

WHY, you ask? It's hard to even type about. Let me collect myself a minute here.

I tell you this because the uncropped version of this photo, brought in by our clipping service, was snapped by Craig Cutler for the Halloween edition of Martha Stewart Holiday. Do you see what I'm driving at here? Can you picture it yet?

Yes, people -- Martha appears inside the back cover of the magazine (available now on newsstands everywhere) tricked out as none other than Eris/Discordia, the Goddess of Confusion, with a golden laurel wreath in her hair, swathed in white and posed with the bucket of Holy Projectiles shown above, poised and ready to lob them at unsuspecting passersby. OK, OK, a lot of them are golden POMEGRANATES but this only underlines what I've been saying all along about the link between Persephone, the Maiden Goddess From Hell, and Discordia, the Goddess of Confusion. The fruits of temptation come in many colors, my friend. And some of them splatter better than others.

To think that this smirking blonde individual, who has dedicated her life to imposing method on madness and leaving nothing but color-coordinated, home-baked, tidily-gift-wrapped ORDER in her wake could ever entertain the idea of dressing up as Eris...Sort of the same principle as the most experienced streetwalker on the block going to a Halloween party dressed as Mother Superior. But MUCH, MUCH SCARIER. I've been thinking for years that there's not a Halloween trick left that can really scare me. Was I ever wrong.

This is the very essence of the Erisian experience. Just when you thought you'd FINALLY LEARNED TO DUCK, she shows up WHERE YOU LEAST EXPECT HER and gets you right between the eyes with that damned apple. Then she vanishes, with a hearty cry of "PSYCH!"

Is there any faith more sublime than this?

THE ILLUSION OF ORDERLY PROGRESS

2007-08-29T17:51:00.001-07:00

Isn't that a pretty pentagon? Remember, gentle reader, that a pentagon represents the illusion that EVERYTHING IS IN ORDER. I was pondering this odd fallacy at work today when I suddenly realized that I had the PERFECT BOOK TO REVIEW for this site: The Illusion Of Orderly Progress, by photographer Barbara Norfleet. Man, you're going to love this one.

The book is simply a series of close-ups of deceased insect life that Norfleet ordered out of a catalogue -- I WISH SHE HAD NAMED IT -- and posed in droll tableaux in a sand tray, on boxes and sticks and blobs of plasticine and whatnot. The theme of each photo? HUMAN FOLLY. The title photo shows a sort of Moebius ring of beetles trooping around and around a chunk of gray modeling clay -- a grim metaphor for MY LIFE as I struggle to fill out each form correctly and completely before the phone rings again or Violet barges in to explain a 2-minute issue to me for 45 minutes, hisssssing her sssssibilants in a way that makes me want to reach for a MEAT HAMMER, sorry was I yelling?

Not all the photos are as adorable as this one, but most of them are, and all of them jolt you a tiny bit.

This book had two core effects on me: it made crystal clear that Norfleet has me PEGGED, and it woke my latent passion for pretty beetles.

When I moved to this place I'm in now, I found a species of beetle new to me living in the sandy soil out back. It's maybe an inch from stem to stern, oblong but rounded at the ends, a heart-lifting shade of emerald green with 24-carat-gold highlights where the sun hits. Even the beetle's eyes are this color. When one spots me approaching, it gallops away at an astounding speed through the grass, and after accelerating like this for a few yards, it appears to suddenly remember it has wings, and takes off into the air at an even more astounding speed. That, in turn, seems like a nice metaphor for the pursuit of Wealth, considering the beetles's coloring and my total inability to catch up with it even when it is struggling through grass seven times its height...but I'm probably getting too deep.

Anyway, this book is a delight and I shall never tire of it.

Here's a sales link. Look at those markdowns!

Bureaucracy Rocks

2007-07-30T19:19:00.000-07:00

I learned more at another staff meeting. We are now required to enter duly-witnessed releases of information into a specially-created section of the computerized database, in addition to having the client sign hardcopies and giving them to the Priestesses Of Paper Pushing.

What happens from there? Well, the Priestesses approach the Sacred Scanner in a reverent manner, and while murmuring the ritual obesiances, scan each release of information into another, different section of the database.

So, why do both? Why duplicate the work that way? YOU MAY WELL ASK. Turns out that once they are scanned in, there is NO WAY to retrieve the hardcopy releases. They have been consigned to a loathsome hell not even imagined. We will never see them again, other than...you know...going to the paper file and finding it in there. They keep all that stuff, of course, until ten years after the last person involved is dead and civilization has fallen. Which means there are really three copies.

The eminent mathematician was so right in Jurassic Park when he said that when we invented the computer we thought we were eliminating paper; instead we only eliminated thought. I would be hard pressed to come up with a better example.

The best part, for me, is that special release-of-information section of the database. The client never sees us use the computers and has no role in generating this kind of information release. I just pull up a screen, type in a name and address, and use my password to sign it, leaving the client's most confidential information to be released to my private army of burglars, for all anyone knows.

Pentagonal Pondering

2007-07-30T18:54:00.000-07:00

Here I am, thinking about The Pentagon again. The photo at left is obviously a "before" picture.

I'm just thinking about the blog entry I added a minute ago, and it gave me a whole new way to see the way they short-shrifted the terrorist attack on the Pentagon. See, I could go back to my own "before" picture, from the days when I lived in a blinkered moment of believing anything I was told without seeing the contradictions. At least I didn't see the contradictions as a problem, let's put it that way.

OK, anyway, I could choose to see the Terrorist Lite coverage the way I did before I learned to think critically. "If they never say much about the damage, well, maybe there ISN'T much damage." And obviously the place is still running, albeit with a large number of relatively new staff.

So the Illusion of Order is no easier to wreck than the Illusion of Chaos. You can just call in some repair guys and rope off the damaged section until it's safe to walk in again.

You? Order? Don't Make Me Laugh!

2007-07-30T18:24:00.000-07:00

This was just an interesting little banana peel of knowledge from Our Lady Of Chaos.

I was in the laundromat one day and noticed this gorgeous handmade baby blanket someone had brought in. It was made of ombre yarn varying from pale emerald to white, but mostly ice-green. It was put together out of pentagonal motifs, and naturally I was captivated. What better shape to use for a baby blanket! After the birth trauma and the assorted tortures they put a new baby through in a hospital, you want to immediately restore the sense that EVERYTHING IS IN ORDER for the poor kid. Let little Kenny or Penny find out later how things REALLY are.

So I stared, and studied the thing, and even made a sketch of the pattern to bring home. I leaped for my crochet hooks when I got a chance, and whipped up a few nifty pentagons.

THEY WOULDN'T GO TOGETHER. No matter which way I lined them up or twirled them around, I couldn't make them look like the sketch. And I couldn't get them to work any other way, either. I messed with it in growing bewilderment until I finally threw them out in disgust.

It was only YEARS LATER that I realized this was a direct message from Her Crazyship: ORDER IS NOT FOR YOU, FISHFACE. HELL, BABIES ARE NOT FOR YOU. STICK TO WHAT YOU KNOW.

That's my take on it, anyway.

Pretender To Norton's Throne Taken Down By Deputies

2007-07-22T11:39:00.000-07:00

Evidently we've had a bit of an incident at the Colorado Governor's office, where an armed man wearing a tux tried to barge in and was gunned down by Sheriff's deputies. He had evidently declared himself Emperor and had a bone to pick with the state authorities.

This is a fine example of HOW NOT TO GO ABOUT IT.

Criminy, after the Civil War ended, I doubt anyone ever pointed a gun at Joshua Norton again. I mean, who would want to? He was an entirely benevolent Emperor of the United States -- and, let us not forget, Protector Of Mexico -- and never got in anyone's face about it. He was a great leader to his constituents and was loved by thousands. Indeed, he is loved even today. Why? He wasn't a pushy dinkweed like this guy, who evidently approached his problems like a low-budget action hero.

Maybe he actually wanted to go down in a hail of bullets. If so, we can say with confidence that he didn't get all dressed up for nothing.

A Moment, Seemingly Out Of A Dream

2007-07-09T16:17:00.000-07:00

This one is just a flabbergaster.

I was talking to this guy, right, and he said he'd been arrested once for "manufacturing and selling imitation illegal narcotics." I blinked a few times and asked, "Can you really get in trouble for that? Is that really against the law?" He assured me that this is the case.

Now what can this be about? I think it's not only a terrific practical joke; it's also a great way to put people off using illegal drugs. Are you going to pay twice to inject poultry seasoning? "Never again, Martha; all it did was give me the runs!"

Let me play Devil's Advocate here and assume that somehow, the dumb kid next door manages to convince himself he's getting high smoking rocks of Irish Spring. Is that so bad? I think his own grandmother would manufacture the stuff if it would keep him off crack. And if it gets confiscated by the police, and if some dirty cop with access to the evidence locker uses it at home, SO MUCH THE BETTER. Serves his dumb ass right if you ask me.

I think the Liberation Front needs to get on the stick and start fighting to legalize this health-promotinng practice that undermines the heroin, cocaine and ganja industries. Meanwhile, watch your Ps and Qs, people; Scrod only knows what you might be doing in the privacy of your own home, hurting no one, that could get you locked up for 5 to 12.

In Which Eris Visits My Blog

2007-07-08T00:28:00.001-07:00

OK, I have just tried for probably the sixth time to fix the spacing in the St. Marvin entry. I correct it, save it and when I look back the next day, it's all furkakte again.

I thought I was just doing something wrong, until I looked at my dashboard and saw that it said my latest entry was number 29. That struck me as odd because last time I'd looked, I'd had 26 entries and I knew I had only added one since then. I mentally shrugged and put it down to my famed inability to remember numbers.

When I got onto the dashboard to add THIS entry, it said I now had 28 entries. Which means this is number 29.

It just goes to show that if you ask Eris to bless you and keep you, you're walking barefoot into a world of horseapples, people.

Like An Axe Slicing Into A Birthday Cake

2007-07-07T23:46:00.000-07:00

Now maybe this is just me, but I have always felt faintly worried about the comparative lack of news coverage about Al-Qaeda's attack on the Pentagon. I got into my car that day, turned on the radio, clueless that anything was wrong, and all I could get on every station was the same man's voice saying words I am not going to forget any time soon: "It's hard to describe the destruction I'm seeing here today at the Pentagon..." Then I arrived at work and found the whole staff in the meeting room, staring in horror at the Twin Towers on television. They all swayed in their seats as the skyscrapers telescoped themselves into heaps of dust.

Later that day, a photographer came out to the agency to take a group picture for the paper. I saved mine and put it in a frame. Everyone else looks shellshocked, but I'm perched on a rock beaming as if I'd just won the lottery. I thought for sure the ICBMs were going to start flying that day; by the end of the week I would be a radioactive charcoal statue. It was an incredible gift from the gods, a mainline jolt of pure Chaos. Except it never happened.

From then on, for a solid week, almost all you heard about was the World Trade Center, the firemen, Rudy Guiliani, the people who jumped out the windows from the top floors, the shocked public, talk-show hosts bursting into tears on the air...My question was, What about the Pentagon? What's going on over there?

All I saw in all the time after that was a single interview with a tight-lipped woman who was holding herself together until she officially got the news that her husband was dead, and she said she really already knew, because where else had he been for the past two days, but...she was going to wait to hear.

Oh, and I saw the footage that went with the voice I'd heard on the radio; it was a man named Michael with his hair all frizzed up on one side and his tie cranked around, as if he'd been mugged in a dark alley by the Grim Reaper and had barely gotten away. I remember something else he said in that footage. He compared the plane crashing into the Pentagon to "an axe slicing into a birthday cake." Guy's got a way with words.

That five-sided shape is not just a handy symbol of the illusion that everything is in order. It is also the nerve center of the country's military operations, which is the true, literal SOURCE of this country's illusion that everything is in order. I understand completely why they avoided going into detail about the names of the Pentagon dead, or the exact amount of damage Al-Qaeda did. National security, and all that happy horseshit. But not knowing how bad it was has serious drawbacks for me, the girl who can't abide an unanswered question. That is my personal pentagonal hangup. I feel like things are under control if every question is answered. Dumb, huh?

Congratulations To Kobb Laboratories!

2007-07-07T17:00:00.002-07:00

I'd just like to high-five my dear friend Bill Kobb, proprietor of the labs, on the occasion of the new distribution of his old-school disinformational stickers, applied liberally to phone booths and produce pallets all over the greater Pensacola area. One you'll be able to spot on local pay phones says "DO NOT PRESS 7."

It's so good to know that someone is keeping the flame alive.

Before you use that pay phone to dial 911, loathsome do-gooder, KNOW THIS: Bill KObb is not his real name. It's an anagram for "KILL BOB."

A Bureaucracy Moment, Courtesy of Discordia

2007-07-07T16:42:00.000-07:00

This was easily the high point of all the staff meetings I've attended thus far at the new job:

I learned that in the event of a client's death, we are required by law to send the client notice, no less than twelve days in advance, that we are closing the case and terminating service. The notice must be written, not telephonic, and it must be sent by regular mail. Why? In case the decedent wishes to appeal the decision, he or she has a reasonable amount of time to come back from the grave and give us a good tongue-lashing.

This information gave me a happy glow that lasted until I was driving home, and some dumbass in the oncoming lane swerved and nearly took off my front bumper.

St. Marvin Of Motown

2007-06-18T18:44:00.000-07:00

OK, I finally got to see this TV documentary on the last 24 hours of Marvin Gaye's life, and it yanked one of the few remaining certainties out from underneath me. See, since April Fool's Day 1984, once I could be convinced that it was not an unusually tasteless joke, I have been crystal clear on the fact that Marvin Gaye was murdered by his father. There were a bunch of witnesses and everything. It was rock-solid proof to me that the world is an ugly, hopeless place. That truth stayed firm until last night.

WHEN IS A MURDER REALLY A SUICIDE?

Yes, the great man's biographer managed to reframe it as a suicide. Pretty convincingly, too. All they had to say was that the Reverend Marvin Gay Sr.'s kids were raised with the admonition that if they ever struck their father, he would "take them out." Friends knew Marvin Jr. had been thinking about ending it, and this was a way to do it. So he knocked his dad down and kicked him in the ribs, and about an hour later he was riddled with bullets and dying. Even I can connect those dots. His biographer described hearing the radio announcement and thinking immediately that THAT was how he'd been planning to kill himself. He considered it to be typical Marvin -- perversely brilliant, he said.

But I'm not totally convinced. He was staying with his parents because he'd had a terrifying premonition that he was going to be shot dead, and he went everywhere for weeks with six friends acting as bodyguards. They finally dropped him off with his parents, believing nobody was going to hurt him there. And he went along with it. If he'd seen this coming he wouldn't have gone near the house, would he?

WHEN IS A MURDER REALLY A NEOPLASM?

The Reverend got off the hook with a suspended sentence because someone did a brain scan on him, and found a tumor in a place that "might have" affected his judgment and self-control. It struck me when I learned about this, from another source entirely, that Marvin Jr's life was sort of bookended by brain tumors -- remember the one that killed Tammi Terrell and almost ended his career? It was the first of his devastating professional setbacks. And this brain tumor of his dad's was the last and most devastating one.

WHEN IS A MURDER/SUICIDE/NEOPLASM REALLY MORE OF A MERCIFUL RELEASE?

Maybe when you really wanted to die a lot of the time anyway, and it showed the world what kind of a man your father really was all along, and when it brought you back together with a dear, dear friend you hadn't seen in many years.

SO WHICH IS IT?

Go ask Marvin. I dunno.

Probably everyone else on earth knew about this conundrum before I did, but I just thought it was a nice illustration of the fact that NOTHING IS TRUE.

Yes, now you know why I live under the Manoogian Mansion and not underneath, say, St. Peter's Basilica. I am a Motown girl.

Another Sacred Ritual: Stirring The Pot

2007-05-20T18:10:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-05-18T17:42:00.000-07:00

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...

2007-05-13T15:23:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-03T19:16:00.000-07:00

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.

A Thought On Migraines

2007-04-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

Yep, I've got another one. It must have something to do with the piddling little upsets of the past year or so:

Quite some time ago, the business connection that had kept me afloat for years packed up and moved. My work started to really dry up. My other two main connections -- let's call them Dr. Feelgood and The Newbie, so you can picture them as wisecracking crimebusters in a buddy movie -- simply did not come through with the accounts I needed to stay solvent. I started nervously looking for another job, in the state with the worst economy and lousiest job prospects in the nation.

Last April 10th I found something I actually thought I wanted, and started a job so hellish I did not have time to stop and realize the fact. I finally got stuffed into a Baggie and taken to the doctor, who gave me more and better drugs. Most of the time they worked, too, until:

I got laid off from Hell Job, about 9 months into the ordeal, which is probably terribly symbolic. But I didn't have time to stop and register that rich imagery of being spewed screaming into a world I never imagined. I had to find work. I started looking even before they told me that it was a mistake, that I was keeping my job after all; that, oops, they lied, I was in fact getting laid off; that they'd move heaven and earth to get some something else; that there were lots of jobs out there for someone like me; that oops, they lied, there was nothing; that they were sorry that nobody they'd asked for help from was coming through; and on and on. After all my leads had fizzled, and I was in a complete panic:

The bosses shunted me into a different job, one I could keep for the rest of my life if I wanted. But this was work I'd vowed I'd never take. Now I was finding out why I was right all along to avoid it. It was a lot less exhausting than Hell Job, but boy did it ever suck. AND I had to commute to get there. AND the freeway coming back home was closed, so I had to drive on badly-maintained dirt roads at the height of the slush season in my plucky little clown car. It wasn't the work so much as the spine-jolting ride that had me coming home with a daily headache.

At this moment, of all the low points in my life, the exact dream job I've wanted for years opened up. If I hadn't been laid off I wouldn't even have been looking, and I would have clean missed it. To my utter astonishment, I got the job. After weeks of the staff trying to intimidate me with how tough it was going to be, I discovered that it's really no big deal. Except for learning new paperwork, I can pretty much do this job blindfolded. Even starting at the bottom of their pay scale means a raise for me. The more I learn about it, the more I see that this work combines the best features of all my previous career experience. They told me that I actually have a GOOD reputation in the community, in spite of all the dire things Dr. Feelgood used to tell me. (I knew he was talking through his hat, but for shit sake, the guy signed my paychecks.)

I started a year to the day from the inception of Hell Job.

The blinking and twitching of the past couple of months -- did this really only start in the middle of February? -- have started to subside.

So why do I have another migraine this weekend?

Another Prophet Of Chaos Obtains Final Reward

2007-04-13T18:24:00.000-07:00

Man, they're dropping like flies. This week we lost a rarity indeed, a conscious and calculating prophet of Chaos. How else can you describe an author of a long string of stories and novels concerned with the final dissolution of humanity? We all get killed off in these stories, not because humanity has it coming or because there is a bearded old man in a bathrobe in the sky who's finally had enough of our antics, but because one scientist just had to make that last experiment? Because some daring social engineer decided to level the playing field and make everyone feel equal? Because a pharmacist somewhere decided that our natural makeup was too problematic, and needed to be adjusted with the help of chemicals? Truly, this is Thomas Hardy brought into our own century. And now, no more novels. No more of those great stories. No more of that haymaker-to-the-head way he had of pointing out certain facts.

It's a little hard to even grasp that Kurt Vonnegut is dead. I'll adjust. I guess.

Easter Pontifications

2007-04-08T19:29:00.000-07:00

Easter is a very special time of year that always reminds me of the human compulsion to create traditions, rules and guidelines, whether there is a reason to or not.

Think about it and remember all the people you know who have rules, for instance, about chocolate Easter bunnies. People insist on a certain make and model of bunny, for one thing. It has to be hollow, or it has to be solid. It has to face to the right in its box, or it has to come without a box, wrapped in foil. It has to be made by THIS company and no other. It has to be white chocolate every third year. It has to be the same size bunny we used to get every year in my Easter basket, until we outgrew them. It has to be eaten ears first, or tail first, or the head has to be snapped off and eaten separately. It has to be displayed for the week preceding Easter in an adorable pastel basket with funky plastic Easter grass and the proper brand of jellybeans. This says a great deal about people's longing for some sort of structure in their lives. This, after all the trouble we went to in the Sixties and Seventies tearing away all those old traditions that seemed so confining. Sheesh.

This sort of Eristic thinking permeates an otherwise perfectly chaotic holiday. I've personally heard a televangelist snarling at his viewing audience about how the Pagan trappings of eggs and bunnies make him sick, and how we should remove the Pagan name "Easter" and replace it with "Resurrection Day." OK, whatever you want, buddy, but can you please wash that lacquer out of your hair now? You could put an eye out with that pompadour. But I digress. The constant tension between the Pagan foundations and its Christian overlay always make me grin happily. When one side finally wins, um, what does it win? The Pagans expect to be burned at the stake by the Christians, and the Christians expect the Pagans to go Attila the Hun on their asses.

The Christians are really dang violent about Easter. A friend of mine, raised Catholic, explained to me once how as kids they always took turns mutilating the special Easter lamb made of butter. It was also a special part of their family's Easter to buy what he called a "Lamb O'God" cake and ritually decapitate it.

As long as this mutual dominance display goes on to decide the true ownership of this day, there is only one winner: the Goddess Of Discord.

Here's another dandy example: fifty or a hundred years ago, Easter was the day when ladies and girls first wore their swell new outfits made for the warm weather months. Nowadays it has morphed into a completely zany tradition of buying a single, ridiculously frothy pastel outfit that cries out to be worn with white stockings, Mary Janes and a flowered hat. This outfit will make its debut at church on Easter Sunday, and/or at Easter Sunday dinner with the extended family -- then NEVER WORN AGAIN. Because where would you look appropriate in that goofy concoction? If this isn't a true Discordian ritual of spring, I don't know what is.

My own personal Easter tradition is to watch Night Of The Lepus, a classic horror film in which a Lincoln Log town in the California desert is menaced by giant radioactive bunnies. Life is good to me as long as there's a filmmaker out there with a bold vision like this one, and a little under $8,000 to spend on the project.

Hagalaz, the Norse for "Hail Eris"

2007-04-07T19:00:00.000-07:00

Remember Ralph Blum's book on the Norse runes, The Book Of Runes, outlining the symbolic meanings of the letters in the Runic alphabet and explaining how to use them as a method of divination? I'm not sure whether he was the first one or the best one to come out with a book on this subject, but right around that same time, everyone and his hamster started coming out with Rune sets made from every sort of material -- from porcelain to semiprecious stones. I pretty much stick with the ceramic set that came with Blum's book, out of inertia. I do like the pretty ones in rose quartz and the totally punked-out ones made from hematite. A set of jade ones might be nice.

But check out Blum's commentary about the rune Hagalaz, meaning "Hail." Blum says something to the effect that this rune "always operates through reversal." To the ancients Hagalaz signified terrifying changes and, generally, getting the rug yanked out from underneath you. Garsh, last I checked that was the core experience of kissing Chaos on the mouth.

It was only years later, when I was watching Twister, that I learned hail is the harbinger of tornadoes. You remember what the tornado did to Dorothy and Toto, right? "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore" is possibly one of the oldest and most sacred Discordian mantras, spoken with trembling and giggles even by those who have never heard of the Goddess of Confusion.

So to me, Hagalaz or "Hail" pretty much means "Hail Eris."

With all this in mind, check out this YouTube video documenting a really swell hailstorm.

Discordian Grief Ritual Discovered

2007-04-04T17:14:00.000-07:00

Now that it is too late, I went to the RAW site and took down his mailing address. It helped release a remarkable flood of tears for a man I never met. I mean, I knew I felt terrible about us having to lose him. I did NOT suspect I felt terrible enough to have to stifle my sobs in my cubicle, hoping the people around me wouldn't come and ask what was wrong with me. I've only been here a month for Scrod sake. There's only so much I want to reveal this early on, if you can dig it.

Writing down his address in my book -- in ink -- captures a tiny bit of the profound mistake I made every time I failed to set time aside to go to one of his lectures, or didn't get around to picking up one of his books -- money that would have helped support him in his last crisis. I could have met him in person half a dozen times, easily, but did I do it? I treated him as if he were immortal, and now look.

From now on I will think of this Discordian grief ritual as Opening The Barn Door, Except The Horse Went To The Glue Factory Last Week.

Whoo-Hoo! Eris Ephemeris Available Already!

2007-04-01T18:15:00.000-07:00

Here I thought we’d have to wait YEARS for an ephemeris of the newly-named Kuiper Belt Object or Dwarf Planet, Eris. But one appeared in the April/May Mountain Astrologer, and special thanks to the clipping service for rushing this to me just in time for April 1st. No gift could possibly be more appropriate for April Fools’ Day. Now I can track the physical movements of the Cosmic Wild Card in my own, or anyone else’s life.

The article, "Eris Stirs Up Trouble" by Zane B. Stein, on page 25 of the April/May issue, is full of delightful tidbits. For one thing, the Zanester competely upended my dismay at the original nickname for the KBO, "Xena." All he had to do was remind me that the flying rock’s namesake, "Xena The Warrior Princess," was played by Lucy Lawless, delightfully appropriate in itself. He went on to point out that Eris has a satellite soon to be named after one of her daughters, Dysnomia, or Lawlessness. And it’s not just the last name that resonates here. Lucy, quite a rare name these days, means "light." So her name translates as Light Of Lawlessness, or something like that. That reminds me immediately of the Discordian motto, "ILLUMINATE THE OPPOSITION."

Funny how these things work out, isn’t it?

It turns out that Eris has, by far, the most eccentric orbit of anything yet found in the solar system. Go figure! Now, this object wanders far out past Pluto, so as you might expect it passes through the signs VERY slowly. Eris entered Aries in 1928. It is still right there. A full orbit of Eris through all the signs takes 556.7 years. So find the house ruled by Aries in your astrological chart. There you will find the area in your life where Eris sent the Green Bay Packers to kick your ass until you let go of your most cherished beliefs and desires.

I was thrilled to see the author make a connection between Eris and Persephone. (They originally wanted to name this KBO Persephone, but the name had already been taken by an asteroid.) My troubled relationship with pomegranates is a long, sad story beyond the scope of this blog, but SUFFICE TO SAY I have long suspected that the connection between these two goddesses might apply to others, not just me.

Don’t even get me STARTED on Stein’s feeling that Eris may be a co-ruler of Libra. That’s only MY Sun sign. It would sure explain why Taurus, ruled by Venus, craves only peace and order, while Libra, supposedly also ruled by Venus, seeks controversy for its own sweet sake. In college I learned the trick of using the word "abortion" in any sentence during class, then sitting back and TASTING THE DISCORD as – usually within 5 minutes – everyone in the room would wind up screaming at each other. This would not be amusing to my Taurus parents. They would probably flee the room. As a Libra, I live for this stuff.

The usual misunderstandings about the nature of Chaos obtain in this article. Two pages in the author describes Eris as the Goddess of Warfare. Oh, puh-LEEZE. Both the Greeks and the Romans had a more than adequate War God covering that department. These astrologers and mythology specialists, being mere humans themselves, forget that it’s the humans who bring on the wars with their constant need to be RIGHT and be IN CONTROL. Eris merely attempts to redress the imbalances she sees by inserting a different point of view, usually something along the lines of "You think you’re in control, buddy? Try THIS on for size." And then she throws, not a hand grenade, but an apple. It’s the resulting bullshit human power struggle over that apple that brings on the warfare, not Eris herself. BECAUSE EVERYONE WANTS A BITE.

I probably don't need to explain that to anyone likely to read this site, but hey, who ever passes up an opportunity to get preachy?

Great Moments in Total Disorder

2007-03-28T18:11:00.000-07:00

BEHOLD!

Here we have a website devoted to the design, construction, maintenance and display of ONE OF THE MOST RIDICULOUS DAMN THINGS EVER. It has no purpose, rhyme or reason. As far as I am aware, it isn't even being used to raise money for good causes. CHECK THIS OUT: its owners describe it as "annoying" and they claim to get complaints about its apparently transcendent, Platonic level of stupidity -- YET STILL THEY LABOR ON to keep it spruced up, running properly and IN THE PUBLIC EYE.

It is impossible to read about this astounding achievement without my heart bneating a little faster, without my eyes welling up in gratitude. Life will be truly great on the day I can see this marvel in person.

I Can't Believe I Missed St. Urho's Day Again!

2007-03-27T18:37:00.000-07:00

This is the stuff that old-time religion is made of. You know, it occurs to me that the perfect movie to rent on St. Urho’s Day would be Exorcist II: The Heretic. James Earl Jones’s speech about ‘happy little grasshoppers’ going berserk and massing to eat the world will move all true believers to tears.

To tears, I say!

Takashi Miike, Prophet Of Chaos

2007-03-27T18:34:00.000-07:00

You have to love this man, because this man just loves Chaos. And when I talk about love I mean true love. When I talk about true love, I am referring to throat-biting, razor-boots-to-the-face, five-schoolboys-slobbering-on-a-screaming-woman, wok-torture, rubber-suited, hot pokers applied where they shouldn’t be S-E-X. And when I talk about S-E-X, I mean V-I-O-L-E-N-C-E, so beautifully choreographed that the Borzoi ballet company would have a hard time keeping up.

This guy is really something special.

It is Miike’s delicately-balanced genius to emanate purely creative Disorder, while celebrating the destructive type of Chaos that most people think of when they hear that word. I mean, dig it, the movies make NO sense. The longer you watch, the deeper the incongruity gets. AND you can hardly stomach half the stuff that’s going on. But at the end, as the credits roll, you glance at each other uneasily and say, "That was….kinda cool. Let’s see it again, right now."

Here is a list of his films. I hear the "Masters Of Horror" episode he directed was so grue-tistical they did not allow it to be aired. But you can buy it on disc.

I wonder what Thomas Hardy would think of Miike? After he got through puking, I mean.