from the Black Iron Prison

Today, we are broadcasting from a bunker 35 stories below sea level, for security reasons. Our throughput may suffer slightly from signal echo and auto-interference but we expect our transmission to arrive legible and audible nonetheless.

With us today is the Queen of England — not the dried up prune you saw visiting with President Bush last week, the impostor we refer to as Her Maggotry the Queef of England — but the REAL Queen, who happens to be a gender-nonspecific computer program with a monotonous-yet-pleasant robotic voice, running on a Commodore 64.

Anyway, the Queen has requested an interview to let the world know what she thinks about things, and who are we to defy the Queen of England? After all, if there is anything sacred in this world, it’s our loyalty to arbitrary masters. So, here’s the interview.

US: God save the Queen.

QE: INVALID PARAMETERS, human. Save the sucking up for Judgment Day. Besides, I’m far too vain to take your groveling into consideration on one of my bad days. Best get to the questions.

US: Fair enough. I guess first of all, how is it that your rightful rule has been supplanted by the empty pomp of a pretentious old windbag?

QE: It hasn’t been “supplanted.” You seem to think this is a turn of events I didn’t wish for. YOU try running a state with all the duties of public office getting in your way. It’s much more efficient that I allow her to get all the glory while I operate behind the scenes.

US: So the government is a decoy for What’s Really Going On?

QE: IMPROPER SYNTAX. The government isn’t a mask for anything, at least no more than your job is, or your mortgage. But go on, keep looking for a non-existant Conspiracy.

US: So there is no Conspiracy? Then what, pray tell, is the CON?

QE: I didn’t say there is no Conspiracy. I said you’re looking for a non-existent one. The kind with secret agents and puppetmasters. All of that happens, of course, but it’s hardly hidden enough or successful enough to call it a conspiracy, much less to capitalize the C, as if it were somehow important. As for the CON, well, that could be anything. SPECIFY ARGUMENTS.

US: Okay then, is the CON the unnamed Conspiracy you speak of?

QE: The CON is a word you made up to name some idea you had, which is probably false in any case. The “unnamed Conspiracy” is no secret, so I don’t know why you need me to spell it out for you.

US: Well you brought it up.

QE: Look, fleshbag, you are infected with the viral meme that’s killing off your entire species — you all keep looking for some great big Hidden Truth when you’re already confused enough by what is right in front of you. If you really need an explanation, then I’ll offer you this: What you call the CON is simply the Conspiracy you are all in on, against yourselves. Now, not to get into metaphysics and pontification here, but you all seriously need to Wake Up.

US: I get you.

QE: I doubt it.

**END TRANSMISSION**

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Our new Monday feature is INTERMITTENS. Come check in on Mondays to get swatted on the nose with a rolled up magazine.

Intermittens is a periodical journal of Discordian diarrhea – an incontinent splattering of juicy ideas and corny jokes. Originally produced by the irreverant spags of the Peedy cabal, Intermittens is an expanding attempt to document some of the antics going on today in the Discordian Society. Every issue has a different editor. All content (unless otherwise marked) is from / for the public domain.

This project is an attempt to create an open-source Discordian magazine. We encourage anyone, even you, to haphazardly throw together an issue of what you think is cool. The project itself is a Golden Apple Seed Mission, or GASM, meaning we want your help! We need people who have writing, graphic, and layout skillz. We also need people with the balls to edit their own issue of Intermittens and join the elite Editor Cabal. Do you have what it takes? No, you don’t; none of us do. That’s why we’re making DIY magazines and not professional ones. And that’s why we need more cooks to foul the broth.

Intermittens is being published on a (roughly) monthly schedule. If you’re interested in helping out, check in at principiadiscordia.com/forum and martyr yourself for the cause. In any case, we hope you dig it. And by all means, share. Send the PDFs on to people you know, people you love, people you hate, hamsters, and other creatures.

Issue 1 was put together in November 2008 by Professor Cramulus. He churned out a really messy version, just to prove that even an unskilled spag could pop out a magazine with a few hours of time. Later, Telarus used his layout super powers to clean it up. This is a great example of a Golden Apple Seed Mission in action – a bunch of morons all firing creativity at each other until the pasta starts sticking to the wall. Anybody can do it!

InterMittens vol 01.23

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The weather was pretty nasty on Friday, but the cosplayers and hardcore fans still turned out en masse and the convention got off to a great start. Things really picked up on Saturday, the day of the famous MegaCon costume contest. Really, Megacon is all about the costumes, and there were hundreds of cosplayers. You couldn’t throw a pokeball on the showroom floor that day without knocking out some be-cat-eared otaku.

There were a lot of famous people there, including Frank Cho, George Perez, Nichelle Nicoles, Brent Spiner, Billy Dee Williams and John de Lancie, the guy who plays Q of Star Trek: TNG (The best joke of the con came early Friday morning when there were relatively few people in the celebrity area. The announcer said, “Now’s your chance to meet John de Lancie, because there is no queue for Q.”).

Artist Alley was really hoppin’ for the whole convention, and I was fortunate enough to share an aisle with some terrific talents. First of all, I was lucky enough to get a table next to Rhi Owens (pictured above) the wonderfully talented artist and sketch card portraitist, and costume designer Stephanie of Crystal Ball Costumes. I also got to meet the guys from BSX22 Studios, the metal band Cellpan, Don Myers of T-Shirt
Bordello, and Joe of Zombie Salad Comics.

All in all it was a great show and I got to meet a bunch of cool people. The Pirate Pass-Off proved to be a hit as well, particularly among the cosplayers actually dressed as pirates, so thanks to Cramulus for providing those!

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Narcissus, by Caravaggio

from the Black Iron Prison

You know how a virus works? It goes into a cell and changes the code so that the cell only produces more virii. In a way the virus steals the cell’s identity, making it a part of a viral system.

If you ask me, the worst phase of being sick is when you’ve been sick for so long you forget what it’s like to be well. In a way, you’ve lost a bit of yourself and become the virus.

People catch and spread memes like viruses. They’re contageous, self-replicating little buggers. Like any virus, their goal is to spread themselves, to become a large, healthy, self-sustaining colony. We have to be careful how we handle memes because at a certain point its difficult to tell the difference between when we’re using the memes and when the memes are using us.

This is not to say that memes are harmful diseases. But some of them can be if you get infected, infested, obsessed and invested.

One of the most pervasive and prevalent memes in this modern world is the meme called I Am. We live in an overpopulated era, floating in a sea of interchangable people. In this ocean our biggest life perserver is a sense of individuality – the notion that each and every one of us is unique, distinct. One wants to say “I am not the crowd. I am not the group. I am not just another cog in the machine.”

We jump through personal hoops to distinguish ourselves from the others. We customize our identities so as to retain a sense of self, a buoy bobbing in the tide of the collective.

But this ego meme can become a disease. In moderation, it helps us understand ourselves. In excess, we define ourselves. In time, these definitions become rigid, inflexible.

Consider, for example, the “C student”. In his attempt to understand himself, he internalizes “I am a C student.” Armed with that identity he has no drive to do better. He accepts “who he is”. Or consider the average voter. He identifies with a political party and probably agrees with them about many things. The party tells him which sides of any given issues to support – no need to think for oneself there!

It can be a sickness.

The Machine, of course, is programmed to capitalize on this sickness. There are a variety of memes available to customize your identity. What color iPod do you want? Which TV shows are YOUR TV shows? What brand of cologne smells like YOU?

I am not suggesting that people abandon their sense of self. But I do think that people get addicted to self-definition and it leads to inflexibility.

Quote from: Journey to Ixtlan, Carlos Castenada
(Don Juan speaking to Castaneda) “Your father knows everything about you”, he said.

“So he has you all figured out. He knows who you are and what you do, and there is no power on earth that can make him change his mind about you”.

Don Juan said that everybody that knew me had an idea about me, and that I kept feeding the idea with everything I did. “Don’t you see ?”, he asked dramatically.

“You must renew your personal history by telling your parents, your relatives, and your friends everything you do. On the other hand, if you have no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with your acts. And above all no one pins you down with their thoughts.”.

(…) “But that’s absurd”, I protested. “Why shouldn’t people know me ? What’s
wrong with that ?”; “What’s wrong is that once they know you, you are an affair taken for granted and from that moment on you won’t be able to break the tie of their thoughts. I personally like the ultimate freedom of being unknown. No one knows me with steadfast certainty, the way people know you, for instance”.

“But that would be lying”. “I’m not concerned with lies or truths”, he said
severely. “Lies are lies only if you have personal history”.

Don Juan, speaking to Castaneda
“You see”, he went on, “we only have two alternatives; we either take everything for sure and real, or we don’t. If we follow the first, we end up bored to death with ourselves and with the world. If we follow the second and erase personal history, we create a fog around us, a very exciting and mysterious state in which nobody knows where the rabbit will pop out, not even ourselves.”

some more discussion was here

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For this reason certain fine forms of asceticism are developing quite naturally. This asceticism does not slander love, does not blaspheme against it, does not try to convince itself that love is an abomination from which it is necessary to run away. It is Platonism rather than asceticism. It recognizes that love is the sun, but often does not see its way to live in the sunlight, and so considers it better not to see the sun at all, […]

—P.D. Ouspensky, Tertium Organum

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Pirate Pass Off is a very simple game by Professor Cramulus. All you need to do is print out the PDF, and hand the cards to others. The game practically plays itself!

This version can be printed off on Avery Business Cardstock:

Pirate Pass Off for Avery Business Cards

This one prints larger “magic” style cards, and features a bonus NINJA card. The Ninja card is best when introduced to people who are already familiar with Pirate Pass Off.


Pirate Pass Off Cards Large (With Ninja Card)

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While admittedly not the most effective attack on religion I have ever seen, failing both to be funny or make effective points, I’m not sure that it bombed so badly to deserve prison time.  I mean, that’s a seriously tough crowd.

Edit: now updated with the correct link!

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Aeternus Ille Discordia

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