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The defining feature of cups is that they are full. There's stuff in. Wealth Beyond Imagining! Rainbow pots! Flower pots, anyway, soup pots. Cup-O-Soup, Cuppa Tea. Containers contain. But more importantly, pessimists and Taoists note justly, cups are empty. "There's no there there." The essential part of the cup is not. If it weren't not, there wouldn't be any room for your stuff. The defining feature of a Cup is that it is empty. Drink that Mu-juice.
Cups hold things you want to consume or be consumed by, drink or become drunk upon, be nourished by, digest, consider. Be shaken and stirred. Why not label your next lemonade "insight", your next bath "relaxation"? Write "Love Potion Number 9" on the teapot, sticky-note "$ucce$$" on the Evian. When you drink it, you drink It ("Thou drank that"). Tack a memo to the showerhead, get rained on hot and hard by the message of the day. (Hang a sign on the sky, let the book of the month storm on you! Don't forget, there doesn't have to be a cup, or water, or a sign!)
Cups carry communion wine and psychoactives (oh yeah, and things with suckery tentacles and unpronounceable names) before you've even poured. You're always being dosed with something: why not scry or specify your ice-cream soda's scoop du jour?
"'Now it happened one day that the golden ball, instead of falling back into the maiden's little hands, dropped to the ground and bounced into the spring. The princess followed the ball with her eyes as it sank, but the spring was very deep, and it soon sank out of sight. ...all she saw was a frog, holding its fat, ugly head out of the water. ..."What will you give me if I can recover your toy for you?" ...And they went off to the prince's country, where they became king and queen and lived happily ever after.'
"'Whatever happened to the golden ball?' asked Bernard.
"Over the years, Leigh-Cheri had had some questions about the story herself. Mainly, she wondered why the handsome prince would want to marry a lying little amphibiaphobe who couldn't keep a promise. ...Was he a masochist, maybe? In which case, it was small wonder that he was attracted to such an ill-tempered snip, and they probably did live happily ever after, perhaps with leather accessories."Still Life with Woodpecker: A Sort of a Love Story, Tom Robbins
"Feet first, first time!"safety council swimmin'-hole diving admonition PSA
At the very least there's the tub as the unconscious (individual, collective, dissective and dyslexic, and too dark to see all the way down). That's why Cups are doovy for scrying -- watch squirmy, coagulating stuff (light, melted wax, half and half) float around in their contents evocatively (see the Divination/Game/Meta Key). Or fish chips out of a bag. Cups are the depths of your head, full of similar stuff (i.e. informative, globby). Reach in and feel around; Put Your Hand in the Box ("What is in the box?"). You tell a man something about himself, He's OK for a day; you teach him to fish around in there, and he's entertained for a lifetime. Thoughts, brain, self, inspiration, imagination -- more Imagination than Will ("Silly rabbit, Will is for Sticks!"), and Inspiration is really closer to Not of This Earth.
Discordian Scrying with Screen Window and Happy Drinking Bird
Fill an appropriate scrying dish with water and support it at a height accessible to the Happy Drinking Bird. Arrange yourself and the apparati in a comfortable place in front of a screen window such that the screen is well-reflected in the dish. The slightest vibrations* of the surface of the water will be immediately visible as grey splodges across the black and white grid. Images tend to whizz by, and a tape recorder may be useful for taking them down. Probably building and querent vibrations will create sufficient ripples without an HDB's periodic assistance.
*Turbulence is key for Erisian Scrying. Don't pour oil on troubled waters to calm them, pour it on calm waters to rainbow-slick them (if your cup is duckless)!
Or take the tub as the archetypal Female, cauldron of life, washtub dentata, heh. Tiger-trainer lion-tamer, head in her mouth. The golden ball turned Silver Apple of the Moon, suddenly phasing New. (Periodically-shedding) snakes have been symbolic of female (Shakti) energy from way back -- where do the old stone carvings always show them snaking out of?* Wow, not just toothed: FANGED!
*Goofball archaeologists, thinkin' it was "into," just 'cause a snake is never just a cigar... I mean, how would you get a flaming phallic symbol to crawl up your spine? Um, let's just pretend I never asked.
Or washtub (or its dripping apples) as the Holy Grail (and its cider). Will no one fish out the widow's fruit? Not your shin-kicked fisher king. Whom does this grail serve? The fairest. (Bob's-yer-uncle.)
DivMean: He's just looking for his wallet, fell in during appling. It's got his SubGenius ID in it (I.D. or id, you decide -- license, anyway). Abundance, liquid assets, productiveness, fertility, fruit compote, comfort, slack, overstuffed recliners.
Revd: He's fishing for your wallet (bowling for dollars). It had 'bout $20 inside, prolly. Whaddaya think about them apples? Writer's block, a dry period. Apple Perilous.
"Thank you, Mrs. Edna Mosh....This is KCUF Mobile Two, sending it back now to 'Rabbit' Warren, at the studio." He cut his power. Something was not quite right.
"Edna Mosh?" Oedipa [Maas] said.
"It'll come out the right way," Mucho said. "I was allowing for the distortion on these rigs, and then when they put it on tape."The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
"PUBLIC NOTICE AS REQUIRED BY LAW: Any Use of This Product, in Any Manner Whatsoever, Will Increase the Amount of Disorder in the Universe. Although No Liability Is Implied Herein, the Consumer Is Warned That This Process Will Ultimately Lead to the Heat Death of the Universe.""A Call for More Scientific Truth in Product Warning Labels," Susan Hewitt and Edward Subitzky
"This is what makes unbreaking eggs so difficult."Liber Kaos, Peter J. Carroll (Frater Stokastikos 127, 0 degree Supreme Magus IOT Pact, Our Pestilence Pope Pete I of Chaos)
"Remember, only in Classical Physics does Chaos have anything to do with entropy, heat-death, or decay. In our physics, Chaos identifies with tao, beyond both yin-as-entropy & yang-as-energy, more a principle of continual creation than of any <nihil>, void in the sense of <potentia>, not exhaustion. (Chaos as the 'sum of all orders.')"Communique #5, Association for Ontological Anarchism
"This Work also eats up itself, accomplishes its own end, nourishes the worker, leaves no seed, is perfect in itself.""The Way to Succeed -- and the Way to Suck Eggs!", The Book of Lies, Frater Perdurabo (Aleister Crowley)
"Two young Californians, known later as Omar Ravenhurst and Malaclypse the Younger, were indulging in their habit of sipping coffee at an allnight bowling alley and generally solving the world's problems...""The Birth of the Erisian Movement," Principia Discordia, Malaclypse the Younger, K.S.C.
Clearly, the sugarcubes represent the Lodge. The significance of the creamercubes cannot appropriately be further developed in this place. "Plunge from the height, O Cream, and interlock with Coffee! The White Triangle is the descending tongue of richness; the Black Triangle is the ascending tongue of hearty aroma." (These are the Holy Horseshoe and Handgrenade.) Various arrangements and interlockings, especially spiritual ones.
"...Now sit at the table with someone you love very much and spend the hours from late night until sunrise animating conversation. Inwardly observe the discipline of always keeping in mind a heartache during intervals of the discussion that are light and full of laughter. When you chat of sorrowful things keep in mind something beautiful, funny and hopeful."
*Zenarchy, Kerry Thornley
DivMean: Things are going to get shaken up, twisted, complex. (Hooray!) Fractal labyrinths, infinitely long'n'windey boundaries ("How long is a coastline?") -- before thermodynamic fuzzing sets in -- and surfing on that, or hitchhiking. The marvellous complicated (yet harmonious, hilarious) interactions between individuals retaining individuality. Contentious coexistence, the stewpot rather than the melting pot -- many resources available for the solution of any problem, not just one big bland alloy. Intricacy, wheels within wheels, and Menger sponges within Menger sponges within loofahs within those. Saltbox pictures thereof. No world order!
Revd: things are going to get homogenized; by the time surfaces get interestingly 2 + epsilon -dimensional, the smearing statistical blurring turns it all BEIGETAN. Or, if you've got soy milk in, a FASHIONABLE MUSHROOM TONE. Which is worse, strict, detailed pigeonholing or One Big Boring All-Inclusive Pink Pigeonhole? Longtime lovers who run out of stories and even disagreements and turn into mashed potatoes and other bland or comfort food, folks who start to look like their companion vegetables.
On the other hand, a soft shaking of Whitmaniacal "Which is me, which him?" is a fine thing. 1 + 1 = 1ish isn't a waste, it's an option. Or the reversed card may just indicate the coffee conversation getting increasingly foolish or punchy as the night progresses, a thing somewhat to be desired.
"The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace holds the brew that is true."The Court Jester
"Milk?" called Reg. "Er, please." "One lump or two?" "One, please." "Sugar?"Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams
Objects in cups are cozier than on plates. Discs are naked, cold, exposed. A little furry rodent is held in warm cupped hands; lab bacteria grow on a petri dish. There's a little bit of loving secretness to pouring something into a cup and keeping it. Even something drastic. Between a Cup and a Disc, nailed-to-a-crucifix is a Disc (really, it's a Cup Sharped to a Stick, but never mind). Specimens are on plates; only the most overtly biological samples end up in cups.
Dead things are on discs -- roadkill, steak, 1s and 0s, art completed and presentable rather than art under construction (but even unhidden "under construction" -logo'd web pages are on disks everywhere, drat the things). Even if that's tofu stew in that bowl, there's something hoppin' in there; all soup is primal soup. And what could be deader than gefilte fish (or seitan, for that matter)? But we look in the jar and we Wouldn't Swear to It. It's Entirely Different to be offered something suspicious that's solid, on a plate, there for all the world to see. Liquid subterfuge is on a higher plane of drama. Knowing, keep silent. Now: unseen as well.
At the same time, this shell game is door-number-three-card- Monty Hall. When the third option arises, the magic comes: no longer just the mundane thumb up or down. On this card we see the eternal archetypal airborne CoffeeTeaOrMilk mystery triangle recast in more dangerous form. Confusing advice offered, grave consequences possible... all this operating within an atmosphere of festive dress, laureled temples, and overflowing glasses.
DivMean: He Chooses Wisely (or luckily), not to give away the ending in the (either one) movie, but there it (Rosebud, fnord (jamais deux sans trois (but no bicycle))) is. Evoe!
Revd: he selects at least safely and has two more from the bar afterwards. End of a matter, fortune having favored the foolhardy.
"It [4] symbolizes such ideas as Law, Restraint, Power, Protection and Stability."The Book of Thoth (Egyptian Tarot), The Master Therion (Aleister Crowley)
How can a 4 be so fun and benign? 1. Destruction subverted into just CHANGE by the creative nature of CUPS. (It's like pyramid power: Cup keeps things from going stagnant.) Change sometimes hurts your head. That is sufficient. 2. It's not.
DivMean: Making changes within a single class, paradigm, restaurant, or fiction genre. Staying n-tuply connected. For that matter, this is as stagnant as change can get - topologically, nothing's happened at all. So, no explosive blossoming of spectacular success. Any increase has trailed off, and there may come a decrease: slowing down for the U-turn. You got the (mundane) thing you wanted, but it didn't bring delirious satisfaction. Weltschmerz.
Revd: Making changes within a single psychology book chapter or Food Pyramid stratum. Trading in old neuroses for new and pronouncing yourself cured. Staying n-tuply disconnected. Remember, you can't get blood from a turnip, or morph a jelly doughnut from a coffee mug, unless you're willing to break a few eggs (drill a few holes). Try something very new. As the good book (this one, I guess) says, "A psychosis is a psychosis, but a Manwich® is a meal!"
Also, tabletop hallucinations, especially ones caused by hanging out too long at the Eye in the Food Pyramid.
@@"", Frater Perdurabor, Rx and O.T.C., in Emperor Norton Anthology of Conspiracy Fiction
"The Illuminati are watching me constantly -- but only to protect me."example of "Minor Delusions," Mental Disadvantages, GURPS Basic Set, Steve Jackson Games
DivMean: TAG, you're It! You are afoot. There are clues and corpses, betrayal 'n' deceit, drifting-garbage alleys, agents convivial and reticent, strange fogs, inexplicable disappearances, and great agitation all around. ...You suspect. But your starry bell-jar starts to swirl and it's suddenly too late to follow up on any of them. (Except for the cheesy canapes you stashed in a pocket for later.)
You can hide not, neither canst thou run, nor liberate the means of seduction from out your doséd glass (dizzy glaze), the eve (beans?) of destruction from the New World Hors d'Oeuvres. And, if it was a cash bar, you'd bought that last round! Who'd have thought it of snxxx... Sorry! Sorry! We'll just get him some fresh air, let him sleep it off! Pardon me!
Revd: You can run: around & around in Their little gerbil wheels (within wheels). Weasels wassail but they don't fall down! You can't beat 'em. You may have already joined them.
"'cause you were bred for Humanity / And sold to Society -- one day you'll wake up / In the Present Day-- / A million generations removed from expectations / Of being who you really want to be.""Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day," Warchild, Jethro Tull
When the stream is crowded (or sewagey), who's to say industrial technology isn't back-to-nature? Get over it, suck it up. How does the Sage lead? By following the path of least resistance and starting a pot of tea, expecting company any moment.
DivMean: Remember when six puppies all fit at one bowl? The happy past, Garden of Eden. (Meanwhile, back at the ranch: Atrophied creativity, cossa Massa-said, misinformation, disinformation, pride, miswired symbol-system. Authoritarian programming.)
Revd: Recently-discovered room in the house. New creative approach -- to an artificial problem? The peacenik conflict-mediation solution is this gleaming white appliance? Sure! Maybe! Looks good so far. "The Home of the Future!"
"In my dome of ivory, a home of activity, / I want the answers quickly, but I don't have no energy. / I hold a cup of wisdom, but there is nothing within. / My cup she never overfloweth and 'tis I that moan and groaneth. Some grey and white matter (Give me the Karma, Mama. / A jet to Mecca. Tibet or Jeddah. / To Salisbury. A monastery. / The longest journey, across the desert. / Across the weather, across the elements. / Across the water)""Sat in Your Lap," The Dreaming, Kate Bush
"C'mon, let's go try to find a big poisonous snake!"
"What will we do if we see one?"
"Are you kidding? We'll scare ourselves silly and run around in circles, screaming like a bunch of loons!"
"I look forward to when we're old enough to get our morning jolt from coffee."
"Ahh, I'll bet that wears off quicker.""Calvin and Hobbes," Bill Watterson
I'm trying to cut down on my caffeine consumption
so when I get up I just have one cup of coffee
and I like to have another cup of coffee with my breakfast
and when I go to work I like to get a cup of coffee
like the kind of cup of coffee that you get with a doughnut
'cept I never get the doughnut I just get the cup of coffee
and when I get to work I like to have a cup of coffee '
cause I like to have a coffee when I'm talking on the phone
but It usually goes cold and I need to get another
cup of coffee and it's lunch and I have an espresso.
And when I get back it's not morning anymore
so I have a diet cola and another diet cola
and by then I'm feeling fine and I'm feeling pretty sharp
and I'm feeling pretty wired and I'm getting things done,
but right about two I get this little tiny migraine
and it starts behind my eyes and it moves to the back of my
neck and it moves to the bottom of my spine
but it doesn't get there until five or six o'clock
which is the end of the day so I'm fine so I'm fine so I'm fine so I'm fine,
except when I have to work late when I have to work late which I usually do..."Stress," Strawman, Jim Infantino
"It is caffeine alone that sets my mind in motion. It is through beans of java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes. The shakes become a warning. By caffeine alone I set my mind in motion."origin unknown
"May we live to sleep through the dawn!"Coffee Broken, Haggard Caffeine
DivMean: Probably something will get handed in, a term paper Finished by Fiat, signifying little. Unpleasant times, long dark night. Or: blissing out on the screen-saver (since you probably haven't been taking cream) and your reflection behind it. Catch a leprechaun, loose a genie, hallucinate a gift, dust-bunny by morning. At best, lots of irrelevant (perhaps unholy!) inspiration.
Revd: that special time of night/morning when you start calculating for what amount of disaster in the current project a magnificent Final might compensate. A bad time of night for making promises. Keep going.
"If a type 1 personality is a idealist (optimist ['the glass is half full.']) and type 2 personality is a realist (pessimist ['the glass is half empty']), then I guess that I'm a type 3 personality: a surrealist (crazy ['the glass and the water inside of it are on fire.']).""Type 3," gbaskin@astro.ocis.temple.edu (G. Maxwell Baskin), found on alt.surrealism
"69. Steal cafeteria trays or plates, burn large holes in them, and turn them in to the school washer saying 'I guess the food did it.'"The School Stopper's Textbook: A Guide to Disruptive Revolutionary Tactics for High-Schoolers, Youth International Party
DivMean: Trials by capsaicin, and some darling achievement,
though in a matter somewhat pointless except for the fetishized
endorphin rush: unproductive. It seemed like a good idea at the time
-- well, either good or evil, but crashingly important. But:
whatever. Still water. Then still more water.
Next! Nothing lasting, unless this was some peak experience arranged
for sacred self-programming purposes. What did you Name the chili
before you burned your tongue brain?
Be careful of yourself, and of the other people whose pain you get pleasure from (schadenfreude-style) -- and, for that matter, those whose pleasure pains you.
Revd: Type e personality: not only are the glass and the water on acid, you're the one who dosed them. Rollicking, careless fun, taking the world hot-sauce contest tour. All the best parties end up in the kitchen...
"By doing something incomprehensible, you place yourself outside their magic, and then they lose control."Andrea Juno (interviewing Boyd Rice), Re/Search #11: Pranks
"We've got the second law of thermodynamics on our side!"Discordianproverbrallying cry
"'Tis an ill wind that blows no minds."Sri Syadasti, quoted by Eris in Principia Discordia, Malaclypse the Younger, K.S.C.
"How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?"
"Fish!"
or
"Two: one to hold the giraffe and one to fill the bathtub with brightly-painted machine tools!"unknown
"I <>< surrealists!""(BetcherSweetAssThat) Time is a Turtle," Terrified Ancients of Cthulhu
"If the telephone rings today..... water it!"Rev. Thomas, Gnostic, N.Y.C. Cabal
DivMean: Meditative second-nature spontaneous curious liberation. Complete lovable playful happiness. Spiritual wellness. Some egocentrism? Well, without which not! A consistent foolishness is the harpsichord of surreal minds.
In all likelihood, the 'reaubot is acting stupid as a coping mechanism -- that stuff eats them, too. See I!3's appendix on "Operation Mindfuck" for a coping mechanism for you!, or extrapolate your own. Screw 'em up, weird 'em out, RAWHIDE! The bureaucrat is the gander for which Discordianism is both the goose and sauce. Hint: puppeteer them with your knowledge of their stimulus/response tables. Be anything they don't have a standard procedure for -- or, conversely, be multiple things they have contradictory standard procedures for. Render unto Caesar that which will blow Caesar's mind, and snatch some official-document rubberstamps while you're there.
Revd: spectacular, fiery, pleasantly nihilist, violent, vivid
insurrection. The pursuit of Liberté! Loyal beloved
comrades, mystic guerilla chanting, occult daggers, red flowing silk,
black flowing ninjas, erotic midnight conspiring, psychoactives on
wheels horseback. "I sank The State: I sank 'Colonel Mustard,
in the Library, with the Candlestick'!"
DivMean: Friendship, neighborhood, peacemaking, generosity, inspired contentedness. "Fancy another cup of tea? I wonder what the children are up to." Ignorance of bliss is no excuse. Card of the neophile.
Revd: Ruh-roh, the carpet isn't ScotchGard®ed. "Be afraid; be fairly afraid." Whacking someone with a plowshare, or the hammer that drove it home. Orientation of the neophobe.
"DOG: Inhuman faction. Motives inscrutable. Cannot be stopped by Jail (always is Just Visiting) since the real powers are never seen. Player chooses one of the other special winning conditions and writes it down before play starts."Illuminopoly-v1.1, Dave Van Domelen
"A fair, pleasing, somewhat effeminate page, of studious and intent aspect, contemplates a fish rising from a cup to look at him. It is the pictures of the mind taking form.""Page of Cups," The Pictorial Key to the Tarot: Being Fragments of a Secret Tradition under the Veil of Divination, Arthur Edward Waite
DivMean: Well, at least a statement can be made about the garden. Dear & lovely; tea for a prematurely-dotty English-garden-murder-mystery poet. And a hammock nap or quiet contemplation for the local protective spirit, until need brings a radiant, rattled eruption, sputtering lemonade.
Revd: foreign objects in your mind. Strange ideas, surprising urges. Cybernetic implants.
"And I beheld, and lo a black horse..."Revelation 6:5, St. John the Divine
'1- Alcohol
2- Caffeine
3- Cold Cereal
4- Microwaveable'Subject: The Four Food Groups of the Apocalypse, Newsgroups: talk.bizarre,alt.discordia, From: matta@sun.lclark.edu (Matt Alexander)
"Did you know, young lady," said Watkins to her, "that the Book of Revelation was written on Patmos? It was indeed. By Saint John the Divine, as you know. To me it shows very clear signs of having been written while waiting for a ferry. Oh, yes, I think so. It starts off, doesn't it, with that kind of dreaminess that you get when you're killing time, getting bored, you know, just making things up, and then gradually grows to sort of a climax of hallucinatory despair. I find that very suggestive. Perhaps you should write a paper on it."Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams
DivMean: Hoping for a good recharging cuppajoe daydream; the real world interferes. A development nearly as agitating as caffeine. Congregation at the water-cooler instead: company, talk.
Revd: The intent was an old-fashioned slacking-off coffee break, and you got water-cooler gossip. Tsk.
DivMean: Stoicnaya. Aren't we all glad to find out he had the soul of an Elvis beneath that ruthless n-piece-suit, elbow-patch tweed or priest-collar exterior? He sure is belting it out.
Revd: StolichMaya. Sneaky devil, who knew. But enough already, this is getting painful. The fellow on the edge of the stage whispers maybe you'd better think twice about going through with this tipsy lipsynch. Meanwhile, the vodka you asked for is gin. The bartender sans pité offers neither refill nor refund but maybe a knuckle sandwich chaser. It was pricey, too, nasty thing.
We Do Not Worship
The Goddess of Chaos
Merely Hail Her,
Not much Different
Than the way you hail a Cab.Pages From the Book of Life / Part of an Infinite Series / Collect them All
A Publication of the First Church of Reason
was at http://www.intac.com/~jbauer/apple.html
The estroteric version of the Kallisti story? At the party but not of it, noting social ebbs and flows and fashion victims, something like a chair-in-the-air beach lifeguard. Things are not as they seem (as usual). Maybe that's just fine.
DivMean: This sweetheart is about as kind and gentle as an Eris-invocant is likely to achieve -- beyond that, all subject to CHANGE (as it should be). Flirty and flamgirlant; soul of a clever poet, though not an overly driven or emotional one (not sure what Muse to invoke?).
Revd: Unfocused and off-somewhere like a cup-scryer -- what's floating around in that pink pussycat?
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