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SpagbardCeline:
In Defense of Trolling
Trolling is a public service.
Of course, it doesn’t calm flamewars. However, by causing flamewars, it forces those engaged in them to take on a level of self-reflection they would otherwise not consider. A good troll will not only cause all the irrational emotional reactions, but (as an often unintended but nevertheless socially invaluable side effect) pit those being trolled against each other in a context in which they are exposed to how ridiculous their own beliefs really are.
A flamewar, because it is an ostensibly rational discussion driven entirely by pathos, is a very clear and obvious trace of the irrational or pathological basis at the root of many ostensibly rational beliefs; once someone realizes that some deeply-held conviction is deeply-held because of a single anecdote or some personal psychological need, if they are mature they cease to be emotionally engaged by a simple challenge or a calm discussion of the topic.
There are plenty of accidental trolls, of course. Any culture clash is indistinguishable from intentional trolling, because alternate reality tunnels are alien in unexpected and unconsidered ways. If we were born where they were born and raised as they were raised, we would believe what they believe; until we are challenged with an incomprehensible set of beliefs, we cannot approach our own set of beliefs in a balanced way and consider whether or not they are sensible.
Because alien cultures are getting less and less alien and more and more familiar, the impetus for introspection has become the occupation of two main groups: science fiction authors and internet trolls, both of whom synthesize new and alien worldviews by inverting some detail of an existing worldview and taking it to an extreme.
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John Ohno
http://firstchurchofspacejesus.blogspot.com/
SpagbardCeline:
Reframing the Counter-culture
OK, OK. So, You Are Not So Smart has caught onto the Situationist-era idea that the mainstream feeds upon the oblique edges, which I suppose means that the idea is no longer new to anyone reading this. It’s accepted.
However, it bothers me that this is used as an excuse to give up on the counterculture.
There *is* a machine. It feeds on counter-culture, and it’s fairly resistant to subversion. It is also something worth subverting, insomuch as it is not perfect.
We live in an information ecosystem. There are particular memes that are much more widespread than others, and they constitute a threat to info-diversity. The dominant memes incorporate more fringe memes into themselves, and there is a turnover.
As much as mammalian hierarchies dominate various counterculture streams, the counterculture represents a novelty-aggregation mechanism that is necessary to the survival of the entire ecosystem. The backlash against mainstreaming is in of itself a useful impulse, not because rare memes are more authentic but because rare memes contain more information than common memes (in the sense that, were they pulled into the mainstream, they would cause a larger change in the world). Because the initial impulse toward counterculture is a dissatisfaction with the state of the world (and a greater satisfaction with the elements of some other memeplex), finding ideas that are much closer to your ideal than the current state of the world and spreading them is a very good way of optimizing the world toward your own tastes. Even the assimilation of extreme backlashes is positive, so long as the extremes even out to some non-extreme situation (it’s good for culture to have crazy nazis around, for instance, so long as there are enough hippies to balance them out, and so long as some external factor doesn’t cause a large and otherwise moderate population to act out the will of the crazy nazis or amplify their own actions). The counterculture typically largely represents a progressive or novelty-seeking counterpart to an embedded regressive or novelty-avoiding population, both of which radically alter the set of ideas broadcast to the large middling population that doesn’t care either way about information theory or traditional family values.
So, yes: everything you love will be sold out. That isn’t a reason to abandon it; just as the end goal of having a child is to have them grow up into a full person, the end goal of supporting some counter-cultural media or idea is to have the memetic payload synthesize with and infect the almost-ubiquitous set of memetic baggage force-fed to the apathetic and ignorant masses.
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John Ohno
http://firstchurchofspacejesus.blogspot.com/
SpagbardCeline:
From Kerrythornley.com
This is a separate edition to the one this forum is being used to complete.
Intermittens Magazine is now taking submissions!
WHO?
Who's doing this? KerryThornley.com and possibly you. Intermittens is the magazine anyone can edit, so this is our turn.
WHAT?
In tune with our site, the theme for this issue is "In The Beginning."
What does "in the beginning" mean? Whatever it means to you. Of course it includes information on the beginning of Discordianism. But it could also include the beginning of a well-known Discordian cabal or club, the story behind the creation of a popular Erisian website, how to begin a successful jake, the creation of a Discordian book or magazine, raising an Erisian child, how you became a Discordian, whatever.
We can use essays, stories, interviews, photos, pictures, poems, quotes, fillers, jokes, etc. Even ads (joke or for real). If it's a real ad for a Discordian project, we won't charge but will ask that you buy something through our website's store to help cover our expenses. But that's a request, not a requirement.
BE PROFESSIONAL. Or at least be a dedicated amateur. "I was going to edit this so it would be good but I ran out of time so you can do it" or "here's some random junk nobody liked" likely won't cut the mustard.
WHEN?
Like most things related to KerryThornley.com, we don't have any particular schedule or deadline. If you want to submit something for the magazine, getting it to us by 1 July 2013 should be fine. We'll probably still take things a little after that depending on what we get.
WHERE?
Submit to intermittens [at] kerrythornley [dot] com. Or look for the email address on our website.
IMPORTANT: Put OMAR somewhere in the subject/title of any email you send to us. That way it shouldn't end up in our overflowing spam box.
HOW?
How do you get paid? With access to a free electronic issue just like everyone else. This is a free project! The issue will be released online for free, and nobody gets paid including us.
How can you keep some rights to your creation? If you want to copyright your piece or release it under a GNU or Creative Commons license, you can do so. That could restrict or even prohibit the use of your piece outside of the issue. But the Intermittens issue ltself will be free to all.
IMPORTANT: We will assume your submission is Kopyleft/Public Domain unless you specify otherwise. Keep in mind anything you send us may be used on our website or for other projects unless you specify otherwise. We also maintain the right to edit your piece unless you specify otherwise. If it's a major edit (in our opinion), we'll run it by you before publication--if we can get hold of you. So keep us informed if you change email.
WHY?
Why do this issue? Why not!
PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD!
SpagbardCeline:
Word File (with correct Italics) available on request.
Discord in The Dark Tower: Ka and the Chao
By Episkopos Phi'phy Pho'psy, K.S.C., L.S.D.
Unbeknownst to most, discord has been creeping its way into popular culture. In The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir, a light bulb labeled Sirius falls from the sky outside Truman's house. In Blade Runner, the film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the “replicants” kill twenty-three people during their escape to earth. In The Matrix Reloaded, directed by the Wachowski brothers, Neo can select twenty-three people to rebuild Zion after its destruction. And in One Hour Photo, directed by Mark Romanek, 23 appears on the digital customer queue behind Sai the Photo Guy. Beyond Hollywood, novels and businesses are, perhaps unknowingly, including references to Discordianism. In the Harry Potter novels, a major antagonist is a magician named Sirius Black, and in the real-world, a Taiwanese electronics manufacturer even named a mobile phone after the Goddess of Discord herself, the HTC Eris. Concluding the meaning of, and the reasons for, these Discordian synchronicities is beyond the scope of the author’s present examination. Rather, what follows is an exploration of how the 20th-century, American Discordian tradition manifests within novelist Stephen King's Dark Tower series.
Prolific horror author Stephen King is, by all accounts, a commercial success. His cultural relics include Carrie, Cujo, It, The Green Mile, The Running Man and The Shining, all novels which were made into Hollywood films. But his self-proclaimed magnum opus, The Dark Tower series, hasn't seen the big screen, probably because it’s published across seven books and over four thousand pages long. King’s masterpiece, The Dark Tower, is an epic hero journey chronicling a gunslinger's quest to redeem himself and save the decaying worlds around him. Drawing on classic western motifs and weird science fiction, King creates an awesome and impressive universe for his readers to inhabit with The Dark Tower novels.
The most obvious connection between The Dark Tower and Discordianism is Discordia. To Erisians of all denominations, Discordia is the Latin name of the Greco-Roman Goddess Eris, a sexy personification of chaos and worldly strife. But to Constant Readers of King, it’s a castle near the edge of End-World, Castle Discordia, that contains hundreds of magical doorways which open up to different worlds and times. Furthermore, an on-line computer game, based on The Dark Tower series and hosted on King's website, is named Discordia.
Throughout The Dark Tower, the Law of Fives – that “all things are somehow directly or indirectly appropriate to 5” – is observed. In the Fifth book of the series (surprise!), an army of robots kidnap children every twenty-three years, and all good Discordians know that twenty-three is the holiest of holy numerical relations to Five.[1] The first book of the series, The Gunslinger, is told in Five parts. And in the graphic novel adaptation of the Dark Tower, of which King serves as creative director, the first "chapter" is written across Five story arcs. The second chapter of The Dark Tower graphic novels is not only written across Five story arcs, but each story arc itself is Five issues (comics) in length.
Throughout the books, the protagonist of the story, Roland Deschain, travels primarily with three others and a talking pet: a gang of Five.[2] And Roland's earlier gang, described in King's fourth Dark Tower book, is also Five in number.[3] These gangs, “ka-tets” bound by fate, are held together by a cosmic current King calls Ka, which is some kind of mix between destiny and karma. King's Ka bears similarity to Discordianism's Chao, the smallest divisible unit of chaos in the universe, known too for imposing great influence upon peoples and worlds all around. To Discordians, Ka comes through the Chao; to Constant Readers, the Chao comes through Ka – regardless, both are eternal, turning wheels, bestowing boons on man while trampling unpredictably on their plans.
Ka's as good a time as any to discuss kōans. Anerists[4] allege (wrongly) that Discordianism is merely a collection of funny kōans, or nonsensical and paradoxical Zen riddles. Even if so, riddles are featured in the third and fourth books of the Dark Tower series, when Roland and his ka-tet are nearly killed by a talking, riddling train. Riddling is a well-respected tradition in the Dark Tower universe; like Discordianism, it's more than just fun and games. Riddles can be the hodge or the podge; eristic or aneristic; disorderly or orderly – represented in The Dark Tower as The Red and The White: agents of evil and good, respectively.
Throughout the books, Roland Deschain travels in search of the "Dark Tower," an ancient, magical nexus of worlds, built tall of black stone. His world has "moved on," becoming decrepit and desolate, and he hopes to somehow revert and revive the worlds around him from decaying further by reaching the tower. This tower, the Dark Tower of The Dark Tower series, has allegorical and metaphorical significance beyond King's specific narrative (which the present author won't spoil herein).
The tower, standing tall within a field of thousands and thousands of roses, symbolizes the “alchemical marriage” of the Rosicrucians: linga (the active, male principle) and yoni (the receptive, female principle) bedded together.[5] Through the union of linga and yoni – known otherwise as copulation, intercourse, or fucking – one plus one does not always equal two, but sometimes three or more. This alchemical marriage between man and woman is our only known method of reproduction, without which, everybody we know and love would literally go extinct. Sex has the unique ability to create new life; through the union of two comes three: a newborn, the future of mankind. King doesn't stress this allegory in the series, but any armchair psychologist will agree that erect, monolithic structures are phallic, and budding flowers vaginal, to the human psyche. The Dark Tower, amongst the roses, represents eternal, cosmic coitus, by forces beyond mankind's understanding.
From a more Discordian perspective, the Dark Tower represents our pineal glands,[6] through which we can communicate a-temporally and non-locally with Eris herself, as described in the first holy book of discord, the Principia Discordia.[7] The different reality tunnels we can travel to, and through, are represented by the field of roses surrounding the Dark Tower. King describes each rose as containing a glowing orb that radiates magnificent light from its center. King confirms each of these glowing orbs is its own universe. They are the different reality tunnels we can inhabit by visiting the Dark Tower – our pineal glands, through which Eris speaks different and conflicting truths to everyone.
The final connections between Discordianism and Stephen King's Dark Tower series the present author will elucidate regards Roland's nemesis. An antagonist of many disguises (Marten Broadcloak, Walter o'Dim, Randall Flagg), his most infamous is The Man in Black, mentioned in the first sentence of the first book: "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." Roland hopes to defeat The Man in Black, an evil magician, to locate the Dark Tower.
King relates this magician, Marten/Walter/Randall, with a monstrosity of early 20th-century horror author H.P. Lovecraft: Nyarlathotep, otherwise known as The Black Man.[8] Nyarlathotep is one of the archaic, abominable horrors that compose the Great Old Ones in Lovecraft's horror mythos. In the Dark Tower series, King uses Great Old Ones to describe an advanced civilization of the past. Another of Lovecraft's Great Old Ones, Cthulhu, appears in Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's The Illuminatus! Trilogy as Leviathan, a gigantic sea-beast of biblical proportions.
The Illuminatus! Trilogy, another holy book of discord, features a black mass created by THE BEAST 666 – known otherwise as the Anti-Christ, A.C, or Aleister Crowley – who The Man in Black recites in the graphic novel adaptation of the Dark Tower.[9] Not only that, in the first book, The Man in Black throws Tarot for Roland, and Five books later, it's recommended Roland take Route 93. Ninety-three is a number of THE BEAST 666, and the Book of Tarot is one of his many devices: a corny, aneristic attempt to impose order on the chaos of the universe.
When the Man in Black cries out – “All Hail the Crimson King!” – this present author only hears another more familiar, more holy, Five-word salute: one to Our Lady Eris, the Goddess of Discord and Queen of Strife... the most self-evident Godhead known yet to manifest. Eris looks at The Man in Black, The Dark Tower, and all her other creations, and is pleased. So on the seventh day, she rests... a beauty sleeping her beauty sleep. Hail Eris! All Hail Discordia!
Episkopos Phi'phy Pho'psy, Keeper of the Sacred Chao and Lector of Secular Discord, is Lone Priest of Crocodylus Pontifex, the one true cabalistic disorganization of the High Church of Our Lady Eris, Goddess of Discord, the fairest and prettiest of all.
Notes
1. 23 → 2 + 3 = 5; see “23 enigma” on the Free Encyclopedia.
2. Eddie, Jake, Oy, Roland, Susannah.
3. Alain, Cuthbert, Jamie, Roland, Thomas.
4. Worshipers of Aneris, sister of Eris and Goddess of (Apparent) Order.
5. Shiva the Destroyer and Shakti the Divine Mother. (Decoded: penis and vagina)
6. ofgilead (2013, January 26). The Dark Tower. Message posted to David Icke's Official Forums. (https://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=234587)
7. Ravenhurst, Lord Omar Khayyam, and Malaclypse the Younger. Principia Discordia: Or How I Found Goddess And What I Did To Her When I Found Her; the Magnum Opiate of Malaclypse the Younger, Wherein Is Explained Absolutely Everything Worth Knowing About Absolutely Anything. 4th ed. Port Townsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited, 1990. Page 15.
8. According to Lovecraft, Nyarlathotep wanders the earth in different forms, one of which is The Black Man: a hairless, hoofed man, dark black with Caucasian features.
9. The scripter of the graphic novel adaptation, Peter David, joins a growing list of graphic novelists to directly reference THE BEAST 666 in their work. Others include Neil Gaiman (The Sandman), Mike Mignola (Hellboy), and Alan Moore (V for Vendetta).
SpagbardCeline:
Fnord Finder (Program)
By Episkopos Phi'phy Pho'psy, K.S.C., L.S.D.
“Fnord” finding program (CC BY-NC 3.0) written in C on Prickle-Prickle, Discord 11th, YOLD 3178. Given a wordlist, this program will output all the words containing the inputted fnord/string. If all the letters of the user-inputted fnord/string appear chronologically, or sequentially, in a word from the wordlist, it's printed to the screen. For example: “clove,” “explosive” and “meatloves” contain the fnord “love”; “monastery” contains “monster”; “whorled” contains “world.”
/*
** GNU/LINUX INSTRUCTIONS
** Navigate to the directory with fnord-finder.c and compile using gcc:
** gcc -o fnord-finder.bin fnord-finder.c
**
** Launch from command line while passing a wordlist to the program:
** ./fnord-finder.bin $(</usr/share/dict/words)
**
** Wait for the program to load the wordlist. When it finishes, it will output
** “What fnord are you searching for?” You then type the fnord/word you want to
** find and hit Enter.
**
** To find words that appear sequentially within others, like "love" in "glove"
** or “hat” in “chat,” simply use grep:
** cat /usr/share/dict/words | grep love
**
** BUGS
** Submit any to spacepope@crocodyluspontifex.com
**
** EXAMPLE
** [user@host:~/fnord-finder]$ ./fnord-finder.bin $(</usr/share/dict/words)
** What fnord are you searching for? illuminati
** illuminating
** illumination
** illuminations
*/
//FILENAME: fnord-finder.c
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
char line[23];
int fnord[23];
int eris;
int i, j, k;
printf("What fnord are you searching for? ");
fgets(line, sizeof(line), stdin);
for(i = 1; i < argc; ++i)
{
eris = 0;
for(j = 0; j < strlen(argv); ++j){
for(k = 0; k < strlen(line) - 1; ++k) {
if(fnord[0] == 0) {
if(argv[j] == line[0]) {
fnord[0] = 1;
eris += 1;
k = strlen(line);
}
}
else {
if(fnord[eris - 1] == 1 && fnord[eris] == 0) {
if(line[eris] == argv[j]) {
fnord[eris] = 1;
eris += 1;
k = strlen(line);
}
}
}
}
}
if(fnord[strlen(line) - 2] == 1) { printf("%s\n",argv); }
for(k = 0; k < strlen(line) - 1; ++k) { fnord[k] = 0; }
}
return(0);
}
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