Canonization: Cyrus Teed

Cyrus Teed was one of the few who have spoken directly with Our Goddess, Eris Nancy Discordia, and because of not only this, but also for his unflinching devotion to promoting her Divine Madness, he has been canonized in the First Church of Discord.

Teed, born in 5839 YD, was a cousin of another who came in contact with some form of Mystical Touch, Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, and while working in his "electro-alchemical laboratory" received an electric shock which sent him into blissful reverie. While in this other world he was contacted by the Goddess, who told him that She alone had created the world, referring to Herself as 'She What Done It All', claiming the well-known Christian Male god had nothing whatsoever to do with the formation, but claimed full credit nonetheless. In doing so, She informed Teed, he had created gross falsifications about how it all worked, and moreover, had allowed scientists to twist the lies even further.

The Universe, She lectured, was NOT as we had been lead to believe, natch. She, however, would enlighten Teed on how things really were, and he would resolve the war between science and religion with the hot scoop: The Universe consisted of solid rock from here until Goddess only knows where . . . one hollow spot in the center of it all is where we live. According to Her divine testimony, human beings live on the inside of the planet, not the outside. Gravity thus does not exist, and humans are held in place due to centrifugal force. The sun is a giant battery-operated contraption, and the stars are merely psychedelic refractions of its light.If any proof of the Goddess's identity was needed, it may be found in the divinely ludicrous postscript to Her message: that Teed should end racism by uniting the Whites and the Blacks, while keeping the Orientals out of the country altogether, a trait he had in common with another Discordian saint, St.Bean.

[The management at DU HEXEN HASE! would like to point out at this juncture that we do not endorse the views on race held by all of our saints. We both love, and despise, people of all cultures and walks of life. So there. -Ed.]

Teed changed his name to Koresh (the Hebrew version of Cyrus) and formed a new religion named Koreshanity, attracting thousands of followers. The group set up camp in Estero, Florida eventually planning to usurp the insane popularity of Christianity. It was, alas, not to be: in 5907 YD Teed was beaten severely by the town marshall, a member of the Illuminati, and died shortly thereafter. His followers, who -like Teed- followed the Goddess's theory of reincarnation, believed Teed would come back to life, so instead of burying him, they propped him up in the traditional Discordian meditation device: a bathtub. After several days, local health officials stepped in due to hundreds of complaints of something smelling worse than a White Castle burger, and forced the burial of Teed, thereby ruining his chances of reincarnating back into the same body, and effectively closing down Koreshanity. Some say you can still hear the Goddess giggling near Estero, Florida to this day.

And so, as Pontifex Maximus, I hereby rename Cyrus Teed as 'St.Teed'.

Combustable Jesus

A six-story statue of Jesus Christ was struck by lightning and burned to the ground, leaving only a blackened steel skeleton and pieces of foam that were scooped up by curious onlookers Tuesday.

The "King of Kings" statue, one of southwest Ohio's most familiar landmarks, had stood since 2004 at the evangelical Solid Rock Church along Interstate 75 in Monroe, just north of Cincinnati.

The lightning strike set the statue ablaze around 11:15 p.m. Monday, Monroe police dispatchers said.

The sculpture, about 62 feet tall and 40 feet wide at the base, showed Jesus from the torso up and was nicknamed Touchdown Jesus because of the way the arms were raised, similar to a referee signaling a touchdown. It was made of plastic foam and fiberglass over a steel frame, which is all that remained Tuesday.

No comment.

A New Teaching

It came to pass one day that two students of Zaurn the Grey were sitting in the school garden, marveling at all their newfound knowledge. Nearby, the Heirophant was quietly reading a comic book.

Pohkaroo turned to ZauZajer and said: 'Zaurn the Wise taught me today about the true nature of solidity. He taught that seemingly solid objects are, in fact, made from tiny particles. They appear to our eyes and fingers as solid, but in reality much space is between these particle, in a relative sense.'

ZauZajer stroked his goatee, which meant he was pondering. 'Interesting,' said he. 'for Zaurn the Erudite taught me today that vision and touch are the results of signals being passed to our minds from the outside world. We see, yet we are verily as blind as a Srizzlefish. For all we know our signals may be crossed and our vision and touch may be all lies.'

Pohkaroo stared for a moment at the flagstones under his feet. 'Do you realize what this means?' he asked.

'I think I do.' ZauZajer answered, with a tremble of fear in his eyes.

'With so much uncertainty, how can we know anything?' Pohkaroo squeaked.

'Yes!' cried ZauZajer. 'With so much uncertainty we ourselves may not even exist.'

The Heirophant, overhearing the discussion of the two students, strolled over. 'I overheard your discussion, because I was eavesdropping.' said he, then went on in this manner: 'If I may, I think I may be able to help you both with your problem. That is, if you would like the help?'

'Yes!' cried Pohkaroo. 'We are lost!'

'Please!' wailed ZauZajer. 'Enlighten us!'

The Heirophant smiled, rubbed his hands together briskly, then put a hand on each of the student's shoulders. He leaned toward them, conspiratorially. Pohkaroo and ZauZajer leaned in, waiting for the answer.

The Heirophant swiftly knocked both of the two skulls together, letting out a ringing GONG sound.

Thus, were both enlightened.

Unearthed RAW Interview

The Cobbler And Bean

One hot arid day in the small town of Langtry, the inimitable Judge Roy Bean stuck his head into the doorway of the town cobbler. "Hey there old man," Bean said. "have you ever seen me before?"

The cobbler stopped his work. "No," he replied.

"Then," cried Bean, with a laugh. "how do you know I am me?!"

With that, Judge Bean disappeared in a puff of smoke. Thus, the cobbler was illuminated.

Amazing Randi Came Out

Is this news?  I guess so.

James "the Amazing" Randi, prominent skeptic and debunker has come out of the closet, at age 81.

Read more here.

Return of the Fnord

Eric White certainly isn’t the most dangerous criminal in Portland, but his crimes are among the most visible blights on this city.

The scraggly 22-year-old from Newport, Maine, started writing the nonsense word “fnord” on buildings, signs and sidewalks around town in early 2003. He estimates there are now upwards of 1,000 such tags spray-painted and written in marker throughout Portland, and countless more in other parts of the United States, Canada and Mexico.

According to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, the word fnord originally appeared in the Principia Discordia, a cult treatise written in 1965. The term was popularized in the Illuminatus! trilogy by sci-fi writers Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. In Shea and Wilson’s work, the word is said to appear in newspaper and magazine articles about current events, and to cause a vague sense of unease in readers who’ve been programmed not to consciously notice it.

White’s done some of the tagging himself, but since he moved to town a few years ago, four or five others have taken up the tag, as well. One of them, 24-year-old Harry Bishop, is with White in the Cumberland County Jail. The pair were arrested on the night of Oct. 17, after a drunken fnord-scrawling spree on buildings and cars along Marginal Way.

Last June, White was arrested, jailed for three days, and fined $150 for spray-painting the word on the Cumberland County Civic Center.

After this latest arrest, White was originally charged with a felony — aggravated criminal mischief — because the damage from the tags was estimated to cost over $2,000. That charge has since been changed to four separate counts of criminal mischief, a misdemeanor. He is being held in lieu of $5,000 cash bail, but during a recent interview, White said he expects that will be lowered to as little as $500 at the end of this month – a sum he can pay with some of the $6,000 he said he has saved in a bank account.

In person, White is an easy-going, soft-spoken young man – a demeanor one might not expect from someone with the words “sick” and “fuck” crudely tattooed between his knuckes and finger joints. The Bollard interviewed him in jail on Oct. 21. An edited version of that interview follows.

The Bollard: Why would you do something like this? Why write ‘fnord’ on a building?
White: I’ve read one of the books, and it just struck me as a really fascinating book.

According to the books, ‘fnord’ is a word that people can’t consciously see. Do you think people can’t see it?
Originally I didn’t even think anybody would get the connection, besides, like, maybe one or two in a hundred people that might’ve read this book. Then thePortland Press Herald started publishing what it was.

But yeah, it is supposed to be a subliminal message. It’s supposed to cause anger, confusion, and all kinds of different stuff. And it seems to be working, ’cause it does piss a lot of people off. A lot of people around town hate me.

Is this a form of ‘culture jamming’ [activities meant to force people to consider the negative effects of mass advertising]?
Yeah, like [culture jamming], like Ad Busters…. That’s what I would hope to get across, but I don’t think it would ever work…. I think maybe a few people may be inspired to go out and do something, but I really don’t think it’s going to affect many people at all. I don’t think society’s ready to change yet, which kind of sucks.

What angers you about society?
When I look in the newspaper and see 217 new laws passed this session in Congress. We don’t need that. The law originally started out as common law. It was basically a judge that decided whether you encroached on someone or their property. Like, ‘Did you hurt this man or did you hurt his property somehow?’
Just the way things are run, people – I’m at a loss of words right now.

Do you have any other tags?
Just that.

How long have you been doing this?
When did the Iraq war start?

The invasion began in the spring of 2003.
I came to town the same day the Monument Square protests started, like the official start of the Iraq war. I’ve been doing it ever since then.

What brought you to Portland?
I was originally going to head down to Boston for a little bit because there was nothing to watch on TV. I got tired of playing games on my computer and tried turning on the TV, but there was nothing on TV, so I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll go to Boston.’ I gave up on my plans to run for [Palmyra] City Council. [A town near Newport, west of Bangor]

How many tags do you have up?
Probably close to a thousand, and it’s not just me. There’s a bunch of people that do it. There has been a bunch of people, but it’s down to about five different people actively writing it now. There’s people in Bangor doing it. It’s in Canada, it’s in Mexico, it’s from California to Maine. Every stop on the Greyhound from California to Maine has it.

So this is an international thing?
No, the Canada thing was me, probably like five or six years ago when I was up there, before I even started doing it in Portland. Mexico would be another friend of mine. An ex-girlfriend got people started because she lives in Bangor.

Where have you been living here in town? Do you have an apartment?
I was living with my ex-girlfriend at the time. Kind of. On and off. When I came in [to jail], I was actually working on getting an apartment. I’ve got like $6,000 in the bank and I get close to $600 a month, so I figured I could go in with a friend, but then the friend I went in with wrote a statement [to the police]. I don’t really blame her that much. She’s kind of slow in the head.

How do you choose where to write ‘fnord’?
It depends on how drunk I am. That’s the only time I’ve been caught for it. This is my third time being caught.

What happened the first time?
I faked a seizure and went to the hospital. They treated me for an overdose that I didn’t have. I just started pretending to foam at the mouth, shaking all over the back of the cop car. I dropped some vitamins on his floor.

I went to the hospital. They gave me a ticket. I went to court. I got like a $90 or $150 fine or something.

The second time I got, I think, a $250 fine [it was $150]. But now they’re not offering me restitution or anything. I tried getting the lawyer to talk to the D.A. and say, ‘Hey, [White] can pay restitution.’ I can do whatever – clean up the tags. A lot of people are going around the city for community service cleaning up tags. They’re refusing to let me either do community service or pay fines. They just want me to do straight jail time.

I’m sure that’s what the victims would want – either me out doing community service or paying for their stuff to get cleaned up.

Do you target businesses owned by large corporations rather than mom-and-pop operations?
Yeah, normally I do city and state property only, unless I’m really drunk.

Have you been working here in town?
I’m on disability right now, for lack of a want to work.

So what’s your disability?
Ergo phobia, fear of work. A bunch of mental stuff, basically.

Are you getting treatment?
I don’t really need treatment. It’s just not wanting to work. I have no problem with working if I’m working for myself. I’ve been considering running an ad in the newspaper for computer repair. I’d probably be less motivated to be walking around drinking five liters of wine everyday and writing on things.

Did you graduate from high school up north?
Yeah, I got a G.E.D. and I’m gonna be starting college, hopefully the next semester or the one after.

Where?
SMCC [Southern Maine Community College] or wherever.

What do you want to study?
Chemistry and philosophy.

I think most of the public thinks the people who write graffiti tags are just idiots, but you’re not stupid, you’re preparing for college. Is the public’s perception true?
Depending on the people. It’s just like anything else. I’ve met really stupid people that do it and I’ve met some other people that do it. But a couple people are pretty smart and some of them do have, like, a message. Like there’s somebody named Learn.

Yeah, I’ve seen that around. Learn’s still around, huh?
[No answer]

Maybe?
He did part of the legal wall behind the Asylum.

Have you ever hooked up with those kind of graffiti artists?
Nah, I really don’t have much skill. I don’t even really call it tagging.

What do you call it?
Mindless vandalism.

Are you sorry for this latest spree?
Yeah. Like I said, I normally don’t tag private businesses, unless I’ve got a reason to, like I don’t like something they’re doing, or whatever.

Whatever the result of these latest charges, will you stop doing this when you’re free again?
I’ll just leave my markers at home when I’m drinking. Cause this time and the last time I got caught I was drinking, and I’m pretty sure the one before it, too.

After you got caught the last time, did you just go right back at it?
Yeah.

Is there anything the city can do to stop this?
To stop me, money would probably be the best thing to take away from me. I don’t have much of it. But they are smartening up some to stop graffiti. All the articles in the Portland Press Herald get read a lot, and people start complaining about it.

They’re also, after they clean off a tag on heavily tagged things – those traffic-control boxes get tagged a lot – they spray this stuff over it that makes it easier to clean off with water and soap or whatever.

Hopefully taggers will just get more creative. Like, when I was arrested, they caught me with a bottle of hydrochloric acid. If you dump that on cement, it bubbles up green and smokes a little bit, but as soon as it rains, that one spot where you dumped it will be bleached white.

Chemistry.
Or hydrofluoric acid will etch into glass.

I saw a tag like that on the new bus shelter on Congress and Center streets.
I think they used glass cutters, ’cause I’ve seen a bunch of those around. Starbucks [the one on the corner of Middle and Exchange streets] is covered with ‘em. I heard those are like $900 windows.

Was there a chase before this latest arrest?
Me and my friends were going into Arby’s to get something to eat, and as soon as we turned the corner around Arby’s there was a cop there, and then two other ones pulled up.

Do you think the cops are getting any better at catching people like you?
No. They’re not that smart. [Reading from the police report]: ‘In most cases the males used the tag “fnord.” In one place, they wrote: “fuck yo cat.”‘ I don’t think either one of us wrote [that].

You didn’t write that?
[Laughing.] No….

I know down in Boston, it’s a felony if you get caught. Somebody was arrested for it down there, got out on bail; a couple days later, just left the state. I believe he’s actually in here right now. I’m not sure if he’s been sent to rehab yet or somethin’. An ex-friend of mine.

Have you seen any tags here, in the jail?
Normally, yeah, there is usually one in whatever cell I go in.

Have you ever put yourself in life-threatening situations, climbing high building and such to do this?
I’ve climbed up ladders before, scaffolding.

Last winter, someone stray-painted ‘fnord’ in big letters, with white paint, on the bricks in front of Longfellow’s statue. Did you do that?
Allegedly that was me.

Last year, someone wrote ‘fnord’ on a stop sign on Lewis Street, right by where I live, so it said ‘Stop Fnord.’ Do you remember that one?
No, but for a while I was making stickers that said ’stop writing,’ in tiny letters, then ‘fnord,’ in big letters. Occasionally I’ve written ‘ford.’ I’m guessing people either get the joke or think I’m an idiot.

I saw one on a candidate’s sign recently.
I was pulling those up for a little bit and bringing them up to my girlfriend’s; turning the signs around, the paper ones, and writing weird things like, ‘Vote Jesus for Savior.’ I really don’t think I can get into trouble for that, unless they’ve got some sort of permit to put those there. It’s basically the equivalent of littering.

Do you think having these arrests on your record will hurt your ability to find work in the future?
I don’t really want to work. I just want to go to college to learn. I’m not really looking for a career… I might be self-employed.

Do you want to be an artist, or a writer?
Art. I’m not really good at writing. Art, computers, chemistry, that’s my only interests.

You mentioned philosophy. What sort of philosophers are you into?
Nietzsche, random stuff.

Do you have any other charges on your record?
I got probably 20 charges, but they’re all really nothing. I got a disorderly conduct at the Monument Square protests, and I got a couple of thefts, drinking in public, carrying a concealed weapon – even though I don’t really think a flare gun’s a weapon.

A flare gun?
Me and my friends walked around town shooting off flare guns, probably about a year ago – just shooting them up into the air.

The police report says ‘fnord’ is like your religion.
Fnord isn’t a religion, but it comes from the Principia Discordia, which is a religion based around discord. It’s pretty interesting.

It’s mainly a stupid religion. It’s not really something you take seriously-seriously, but it’s fun to take it semi-seriously. There’s only five rules: every Discordian must eat a hot dog, sans bun, on a Friday. That comes from like a variety of different religions… The last rule is a Discordian is prohibited from believing what he reads. You just get done reading these five rules that are supposed to be the things you run your life by, and you’re like, huh?

When will you stop doing this? Will you be 30, 40, 60 years old and still at it?
I don’t know. I haven’t grown up much in my life. Probably someday it’ll stop. I’ll probably be 30 years old, still getting picked up for disorderly conduct, criminal mischief or something.

Are you worried about that?
Just as long as I keep my charges like nothing serious. I’m a pacifist actually. Never even had a violent crime.

Original story here.

Celine's Laws

CELINE'S FIRST LAW:

National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity.

Reflecting the paranoia of the Cold War, Celine's First Law focuses around the common idea that to have national security, one must create a secret police. Since internal revolutionaries and external foes would make the secret police a prime target for infiltration, and because the secret police would by necessity have vast powers to blackmail and intimidate other members of the government, another higher set of secret police must be created to monitor the secret police. And an even higher set of secret police must then be created to monitor the higher order of secret police. Repeat ad nauseam.

This seemingly infinite regress goes on until every person in the country is spying on another, or "the funding runs out." And since this paranoid and self monitoring situation inherently makes targets of a nation's own citizens, the average person in the nation is more threatened by the massive secret police complex than by whatever foe they were seeking to protect themselves from. Wilson points out that the Soviet Union, which suffered from this in spades, got to the point that it was terrified of painters and poets who could do little harm to them in reality.

At the same time, given the limitation of funding and scale, the perfect security state never truly emerges, leaving the populace still vulnerable from the original threat while also being threatened by the vast and Orwellian secret police.

CELINE'S SECOND LAW:

Accurate communication is possible only in a non-punishing situation.

Wilson rephrases this himself many times as "communication occurs only between equals." Celine calls this law "a simple statement of the obvious" and refers to the fact that everyone who labors under an authority figure tends to lie to and flatter that authority figure in order to protect themselves either from violence or from deprivation of security (such as losing one's job). In essence, it is usually more in the interests of any worker to tell his boss what he wants to hear, not what is true.

In any hierarchy, every level below the highest carries a subtle burden to see the world in the way their superiors expect it to be seen and to provide feedback to their superiors that their superiors want to hear. In the end, any hierarchical organization supports what its leaders already think is true more than it challenges them to think differently. The levels below the leaders are more interested in keeping their jobs than telling the truth.

Wilson, in Prometheus Rising, uses the example of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Hoover saw communist infiltrators and spies everywhere, and he told his agents to hunt them down. Therefore, FBI agents began seeing and interpreting everything they could as parts of the communist conspiracy. Some even went as far as framing people as communists, making largely baseless arrests and doing everything they could to satisfy Hoover's need to find and drive out the communist conspiracy. The problem is, such a conspiracy never existed in any form. Hoover thought it did, but any agent who dared point out the lack of evidence to Hoover would be at best denied promotions, and at worst labeled a communist himself and lose his job. Any agent who knew the truth would be very careful to hide the fact.

In the end, Celine states, any hierarchy acts more to conceal the truth from its leaders than it serves to find the truth.

CELINE'S THIRD LAW:

An honest politician is a national calamity.

Celine recognizes that the third law seems preposterous from the beginning. While a dishonest politician is interested only in bettering his own lot through abusing the public trust, an honest politician is far more dangerous since he is honestly interested in bettering society through political action, and that means writing and implementing more and more laws.

Celine argues that creating more laws simply creates more criminals. Laws inherently restrict individual freedom, and the explosive rate at which laws are being created means that every citizen in the course of his daily life does not have the research capacity to not violate at least one of the plethora of laws. It is only through honest politicians trying to change the world through laws that true tyranny can come into being through excessive legislation.

Corrupt politicians simply line their own pockets. Honest idealist politicians cripple the people's freedom through enormous amounts of laws. So corrupt politicians are preferable according to Celine.

Life, Summed Up In One Photo:

A Literary Deconstruction of the PD

by: Cain

What religious narrative in this present day, teaches us such lessons in fabulous morality as the Principia Discordia?  Does any other belief system teach that uncertainty and ambiguity trump order and discipline?  Or that order and discpline themselves contain an a priori possibility of the state of uncertainty coming into play?

This discourse of order and disorder, from where does it arise, this formidable tradition that includes Lao Tzu, Heraclitus, Nietzsche, Artaud, Dali, Duchamp, Tazara and Deleuze?  Does Discordianism truly belong to this august, if mutuable geneology?  

From the outset, the introduction to the Principia introduces ambiguity, foreshadowing Barthe's Death of the Author.  The nature of the author of the tract is purposefully concealed and denied, in an attempt to escape the tyranny of subjectivity, pinning the blame instead of a vast number of culprits, perhaps to show the futility of subjectivity as a starting point for a critique.  Yet the authors are nonetheless identified, so does this not make a mockery of their post-structuralist stance?

Not necessarily.  For the claimed authors are in fact fictional constructs themselves, as we well know.  Furthermore, their approach to their work is detatched, almost bemused by their own interests and obsessions.  The irreducibly textual nature of the work is thus reaffirmed, and the simplistic, postivistic attempts to criticize the Principia with simplified versions of its own arguments are easily dismissed.

The apparent eccentricities of the text, such as Wilson's claims about the time-travelling anthropologist, are often dismissed as harmless as whimsical diversions on the part of a critic who required some form of ‘creative’ escape from the exigencies of high-powered theory. This attitude, typical of Anglo-American criticism, draws a  firm line between the discipline of thinking about chaos and the activity of writing which that discipline is supposed to renounce or ignore in its own performance. Criticism as ‘answerable style’ (in Geoffrey Hartman’s phrase) is an idea that cuts right across the deep-grained assumptions of academic discourse. It is, as I shall argue, one of the most unsettling and radical departures of Discordian thought. A properly attentive reading of Wilson brings out the extent to which critical concepts are ceaselessly transformed or undone by the activity of self-conscious writing.  His subversive tactics come down to an inordinate fondness for paradox disguising a commitment to order and method.

The interview of Malacypse the Younger by the Greater Poop illustrates not only the need to draw boundaries between meta-fictional philosophical discourses, but also to transgress these boundaries when the cease to have utility for the reader.  This boundary was always subject to periodic raids and incursions by the more adventurous Proto-Discordians, especially those poets and novelists among them who felt uneasy with a discipline that drove a doctrinal wedge between the two kinds of writing. The issue was more than a matter of critical technique. What the orthodox Proto-Discordians sought in the language of poetry was a structure somehow transcending human reason and ultimately pointing to a religious sense of values.  Thus the autonomic-reflexivity of poetry became not merely an issue in aesthetics but a testing-point of faith in relation to human reason. Behind the Proto-Discordian rhetoric of irony and paradox is a whole metaphysics of language, where poetic and religious claims to truth are bound up together. At the same time there were those who assented in principle to this discipline of thought but found it in practice hard, if not impossible, to live with. 

The Greater Poop reporter like Barthes, asserts the critic’s freedom to exploit a style that actively transforms and questions the nature of interpretative thought. In itself this marks a decisive break with the scrupulous decorum of critical language maintained in the Situatioist's wake. This is to argue that theory, in so far as it is valid at all, is strictly a matter of placing some orderly construction upon the ‘immediate’ data of perception. Barthes and Malaclypse totally reject this careful policing of the bounds between literature and theory. Where the post-Situationist's proposed a disciplined or educating movement of thought from perception to principle, they discovered an endlessly fascinating conflict, the ‘scene’ of which is the text itself in its alternating aspects of knowledge and pleasurable fantasy.

Q: Why Are There So Many Different Kinds Of Discordians?

A:  Discordianism is the open-source religion, in that most people who adopt it and use it seriously bring their own flavour and new ideas to it, improving it and making it their own.  One person's personality is starkly realistic and practical, so his version mirrors that.  Another's worldview is closer to the original recipe by Thornley.  Cosmic poetic absurdism with a dash of mysticism.

Other Discordian practices incorporate a fundamentalistic view of Eris as an unkind goddess of disruption and strife, a doctrine which finds favor quite naturally among the ranks of trolls.  Some people (myself) take Discordianism as a foil for a Vonnegut-esque worldview.  

(Answer was written by Felix, here)

2nd Circuit, Posing As 6th Circuit

Maybe Logic forums, I'm looking at YOU.

The Nature of the Universe is Self-Evident

by: The Good Reverend Roger

The nature of the universe is self-evident.

It's a huge, cold empty place, with the occasional - or at least one - algae covered rock. On this rock live monkeys. The monkeys act really dumb a lot of the time, but sometimes they find time for better behavior, and make friends. The universe then punishes the monkeys via their own bad wiring, and they part ways, and go back to being desperately unhappy.

The End.

Poe's Visitor Doesn't Show

A mysterious visitor who each year leaves roses and cognac on Edgar Allen Poe's tomb in Baltimore, Maryland, has missed his rendezvous for the first time in 61 years, the Poe Society has said.

"He did not show up this morning," Jeffrey Savoye, secretary and treasurer of the 380-member society, said.

Each year since 1949, the 100th anniversary of Poe's birth, a individual, often wearing a cloak, left a bottle of cognac and a few roses at the foot of Poe's tomb, usually at night, in tribute to the legendary poet.

"Occasionally he showed up early, like 11:00-11:30 the evening before. But normally it's from midnight to 5:00 am," Mr Savoye said.

About 50 people waited in vain from Tuesday night to watch the "Poe Toaster," as the visitor has been dubbed. Many had travelled from across the United States for the 201st anniversary of Poe's birth.

"As far as we know, they have not missed a year until now," Mr Savoye said of the Poe Toaster.

The original yearly visitor apparently died in 1998, but left the pilgrimage up to his two sons.

"We were left a note some years ago saying that the original toaster had died... We interpreted the message that the torch will be passed... We are assuming that two sons of this person have been carrying it on," he said.

"We don't know who they are."

The visitor's absence this year only deepened the mystery over his identity. One name mentioned as a possibility was that of a Baltimore poet and known prankster who died in his 60s last week. But there is little or no evidence to suggest he was the man.

There is an alternative tale of the toaster's origins, one that the Poe Society vehemently disputes.

Sam Porpora, the former historian at Westminster Hall, claimed in 2007 that he was the original Poe toaster, saying he came up with the idea in the late 1960s as a publicity stunt. But the details of Porpora's story seemed to change with each telling, and he acknowledged that someone had since made the tradition his own.

In 2001, as the Baltimore Ravens – named in honor of the bird in Poe's most famous poem – were preparing to face the New York Giants in the Super Bowl, the toaster left a note that praised the Giants and said the Ravens would suffer "a thousand injuries." Then in 2004, amid tense relations between the United States and France over the invasion of Iraq, a note said Poe's grave was "no place for French cognac" and that the liquor was being left "with great reluctance."

The Legend of Zaurn The Grey

1. When the world was still young and called Pangaea by the gods, a man came from out of the sea clad in robes of black and scarlet, his hair was long and brilliant ivory white; his skin a powdery light grey; his eyes golden. He beheld the inhabitants of Pangaea: little more than Hairless Apes, with no idea of Intelligence; Consciousness; Morality; Illumination; Credit Rating . . . these were little more than common animals. He pulled himself up to his full height, placed his slim smooth hand onto his chest, and said in a strong, beautiful melodious tone: ZAURN. The Hairless Apes looked up at him, scratched their heads, scratched their crotches, sniffed their hands, then looked back up at Zaurn the Wise. Zaurn pointed at one of the Hairless Apes, and said forcefully: MAN. Then, he placed his hand back on his own chest and repeated: ZAURN. One ape scratched his chin, cocked his head to the side and repeated: “Zaurn.” Thus was communication known to Humanity.

2. Soon after the Hairless Apes conquered speech Zaurn the Magnificent blew their minds anew. He wrote on a nearby wall his name, which at that time was spelled: IA. He gestured to the name, IA, then told the Hairless Apes that it referred to himself. One ape scratched his balls, approached the writing on the wall, pointed to it, then pointed at Zaurn the Brilliant, saying “Zaurn.” Thus was writing and graffito known to Humanity.

3. Zaurn then instructed the Hairless Apes that they really must name everything, for If It Is Not Named: It Does Not Exist. The apes quickly began to name everything around them, with various levels of success: if a good word didn’t immediately present itself they would make up a word on the spot, such as “boob” or “diarrhea”, thinking a better word would eventually present itself in the future.

4. Zaurn the Verbose was pleased, and his golden eyes twinkled, but mentioned that there was still much more for the Hairless Apes to learn, for he had yet to teach them about the important concepts of RIGHT and WRONG, which were intrinsically intertwined with the heavy concepts of GOOD and EVIL . . . it would take a long time to explain these Objective Truths to the apes, and an even longer time to get into the esoteric concepts of WORK and LAZINESS, not to mention such crucial topics as NORMALCY.

5. Once the apes knew what was RIGHT and what was WRONG, Zaurn the Grey was truly delighted: the Hairless Apes were both Free and Trapped simultaneously, just as EIEIO, the Goddess of All had intended. EIEIO, the Great Kaos, had sent Zaurn the Grey to the Hairless Apes to both free and ensnare their minds: giving them the gifts of speech and communication so that they may be able to form thoughts and thus become more than they are;, while at the same time having these thoughts bind and constrict their ideas, through endless labeling and defining so that it takes true imagination and magick to break beyond.

χάος

by: Golden Applesauce

IN THE BEGINNING:
Everything was CHAOS, which is notoriously hard to work with.  It came to pass that a piece of chalk (which was made of CHAOS, naturally) was procured and used to mark the CHAOS into sections.  This made things much easier. It was now possible to ignore a great deal of CHAOS (for example, the sections like those marked "Things That Don't Really Exist", "Things That Can't Hurt You", "Africa", and "Barbers Who Don't Shave Themselves") while focusing on parts with labels like "Good", "Interesting", "Things That I Can Have Sex With", and "Things That Are Useful In The Part Of CHAOS Called 'The Real World'".  It's a past-time of people (which are little sub-sections of the one marked "Things That Are Hard To Categorize") to go around making their own labels.  Some people like to work together, and use each other's labels (you can categorize more stuff this way); others work independently (that way, you can put all the labels right where you want them).  At some point the practice of keeping little sections marked "Areas Of CHAOS That Somebody Mislabeled" got established, and spawned endless additional practices, a great deal of which are found in areas with labels like "Strife", "Categorizing Somebody As A Malicious Fool", "Yelling Really Loudly", and "Open Warfare".  This wasn't that bad for a grand total of 1.4 seconds before everybody agreed to extend the zone of "Things That Really Are That Bad" to encompass the entirety of "Things That Happen When CHAOS Gets Mislabeled".  After that first debacle, people have spent a great deal of time and effort trying to make sure that every label is itself a member of "Labels That Are Correct", and also a great deal of time on subproblems like trying to populate a region called "Ways To Tell If A Given Piece of CHAOS Is Labeled Correctly" - so far the intersection of that one and "Things A Significant Fraction Of Things People Agree On" is empty.  Suprisingly, few have questioned the decision to include "The State Of A Label Being Correct" under "Things That Can And Should Be Achieved."

IN THE PRESENT TIME:
Everything is still CHAOS.  Whether or not this is a good idea is open to debate, but so far nobody has suggested anything other than "Null Universe", which we don't like very much.

Quake With Fear, My Vegan Friends:

this excerpt can be found at the following site: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/science/22angi.html

But before we cede the entire moral penthouse to “committed vegetarians” and “strong ethical vegans,” we might consider that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas clay pot. This is not meant as a trite argument or a chuckled aside. Plants are lively and seek to keep it that way. The more that scientists learn about the complexity of plants — their keen sensitivity to the environment, the speed with which they react to changes in the environment, and the extraordinary number of tricks that plants will rally to fight off attackers and solicit help from afar — the more impressed researchers become, and the less easily we can dismiss plants as so much fiberfill backdrop, passive sunlight collectors on which deer, antelope and vegans can conveniently graze.

“Plants are not static or silly,” said Monika Hilker of the Institute of Biology at the Free University of Berlin. “They respond to tactile cues, they recognize different wavelengths of light, they listen to chemical signals, they can even talk” through chemical signals. Touch, sight, hearing, speech. “These are sensory modalities and abilities we normally think of as only being in animals,” Dr. Hilker said.

Now, please excuse me, while I go make like Andy Warhol...

Who Gives A Shit About Liberty Anymore?

Some yahoo jackass spends five hours trying to put together a bomb on an airplane and suddenly the entire continent goes berserk. Apparently it never occurred to anyone that these sorts of measures never work because nobody tries exactly the same method ever again. It also apparently didn't occur to anyone that the fuckhead would-be terrorist was clearly a complete and utter moron who couldn't put together the potential bomb through an entire cross-Atlantic flight. I'm assuming someone gave him an overview of what would be necessary at some point, but he was apparently doodling in his margins, or checking his text messages.

Here's the lowdown, folks: you can't screen for crazy. If someone wants to fuck with you on a plane, they will find a way, no matter WHAT you do, so why put all the innocent good people through all this nonsense? If you fly in an airplane you choose to take your life in your hands, terrorism or not. It's a fact. We all need to get used to it.

My proposal is this... the back of each seat on an airplane is equipped with a weighted baton. To be used as a weapon, and with no other purpose. Could someone start something with this baton? Certainly, but he would have a hundred and twenty other people opposed to him, each with their own batons as well. Mob rule, in some situations, can be a good thing. This would counteract the need to screen for weapons on the way in. If someone comes on the plane with a gun, they are outnumbered. Is it possible that someone would still be killed? Of course, but this is the real world, ladies and gentlemen, and the world is not coated in Nerf for your protection. Life is dangerous. Wear a helmet.

EAT IT WITH CATSUP!