Link back to
E'beth's page. Link back to the Deck Talk Index.
[Tom Robbins sticks quote (whip the donkey, stir the moon) now where'd that go? - Skinny Legs and All, re Painted Stick?]
Anything longer than it is wide, and serviceably sturdy, might well be a stick. Magic wands/staves/rods, clubs, 10' poles, axe handles, the uneven table leg that wants sanding, any of the other three legs, a pedestal, penis, or pencil, the prop leg on the back of the easel. (What suit is the Art on the easel? Not of This Earth.) The walking stick to hang a bandana bag on, and the trail taken (and the one not). (What's the bag? A Cup? Bits of String? What's in the bag? Aha!*)
*A little something for later.
Doorstops, kickstarts. Gearshift, joystick. Carrot and stick, with phallus amorethought.
Sticks channel the attention; through them one's will is made manifest. Like the leg bone at the beginning of 2001, only not nearly as dead. Still leafy with green, or reborn releaved with fire. Torches, matches, the blacksmith's heavy hammer. Not the sword, but the pen that sketched its design and forged its certificate of authenticity. Prometheus's stick of sky-stolen fire. Incense, certain cigarettes. Hot dog buns-- wait, those are Cups. Ah, Sticks aren't so clever, for all that. Sticks deliver the message -- pneumatic tube, pass it on, what's the Word? -- but the Cup hears it -- digests, ruminates -- comprehends. Takes it in.
"Children whose clarified senses betray them into a brilliant sorcery of beautiful pleasure reflect something feral & smutty in the nature of reality itself: natural ontological anarchists, angels of chaos -- their gestures & body odors broadcast around them a jungle of presence, a forest of prescience complete with snakes, ninja weapons, turtles, futuristic shamans, incredible mess, piss, ghosts, sunlight, jerking off, birds' nests & eggs -- gleeful aggression against the groan-ups of those Lower Planes so powerless to englobe either destructive epiphanies or creation in the form of antics fragile but sharp enough to slice moonlight.""Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism," Hakim Bey, The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism
"Con:
Even when freshly washed and relieved of all obvious confections, children tend to be sticky. One can only assume that this has something to do with not smoking enough.""Children: Pro or Con?" Metropolitan Life, Fran Lebowitz
The Tar Baby Fairest! B. Y. O. Briarpatch! Children check in but
they don't check out, ever since sugarcane slew the apple (paper wraps
stone). Sort of a sticky Sacred Heart, minus the barbed wire.
DivMean: If you wanna walk around slishing the post-rain mud between your toes, you have to break a few legs. Full force, full speed ahead, full tilt, as it comes naturally. As with so many other spiritual / revelatory events, this is not something to miss on account of squeamishness or ill-timed tidiness. But wash well that wand* before putting it away with the toy box's other Miscellaneous Magical Items for later use as a cabin-building component. Model-airplane glue takes longer to set. Building blocks, unschooled creativity, engineering, design. The components and constructions of children, and more metaphorical versions of the same. *And use bleach if you're sharing.
Revd: you really mind that you've gotten your chin sticky. Sad. Or you're dealing with keeping a sticky young heathen from touching the insides of the nice clean new-car-smelling car or something... which is also dried-up sad, but less a reflection on you (and even less reflection on your fine vinyl).
"Beginning this journey I touched the beech to my left and the yew to my right. The yew -- Ioho in Irish -- is the tree of death and rebirth, a sacred tree of the Druids. On mainland Britain the oak was the central tree of Druidry, but in Ireland it was the yew. ...To the left is the beech -- another sacred tree of the Druids, symbolizing tradition, learning, wisdom, ancient knowledge, books."
The Druid Way, Philip Carr-Gomm
"The High Priestess is seated between two pillars from the Temple of Solomon -- the black pillar of Boaz representing the negative life force, and the white one, Jachin, the positive life force."
"Key 2: The High Priestess", A Complete Guide to the Tarot, Eden Gray
"Stop, Drop and Roll!"
fire safety PSA
Or something. Maybe switch birthy (New Year's) birch or birthy
(winter solstice) silver fir or rebirthy (vernal (fearnal?)
equinox) alder for beech, to go with solstice-eve yew. And Jachin for
Boaz, or not. Sin2 Buddha, cos2 Buddha. Testing
A against B far more than doubles your A information. What is the
meaning in sailing through an impediment -- without the knowledge that
a splat is more typical? What can be said about life without
mentioning death, a lover without mentioning the beloved? Just sorta
there.
DivMean: So you're the one who made it through the tree, you naughty thing. Balance, boldness, shamelessness, strength, ambition, power. But it may wear thin. Meanwhile, try not to cause much physical damage when you mess with the mehums (i.e. mere humans) 's minds. They have no clue what the safeword is. Wisdom, influence. Them watching in wonder. Lead by being lowest, that they naturally flow downhill toward you.
Revd: You're an insufficiently advanced soul to get this one right yet. Just can't figure out which tree light is keeping your Xmas string dead, can you? (The STOP light.) But keep throwing yourself at the ground trying to miss. Restlessness, obstinacy, resolve, injury, revenge.
"High Holy Boss of Religion: Thou shalt not, under any circumstances, read this sentence aloud.
"All: Blasphemer! Blasphemer! Blasphemer!"Act V: The Malevolent Benediction and Spewing Forth of the Holy Laws, Sacred Erisian High Mass of the Krispy Kreme Kabal, Revd. DM Psiqosys
"The Free Widget Foundation was founded in an attempt to increase the quantity and quality of freely accessible widgets."
sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/X11/fwf/README.fwf
"Theorem: Consider the set of all sets that have never been considered. Hey! They're all gone!! Oh, well, never mind..."
.sig of batchelor@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov (Dr. David Batchelor)
An undecidable object. Round pegs, square hole, and a
Magrittely-bowlered reptile. The organic question superimposed upon
(slithering over) the inorganic foundation: do you spell "Kallisti"
with a kaph or a koph?
DivMean: Your personal burning demon dilemma has three horns. "Trilemma"? Think about whether the third choice is really just a mix/tempering/average of the other two (some bumpy forehead between true horns?). See whether there's a fourth that's completely out-of-the-blue different. Expand into another plane and have a real tripod? A far-out way out, for the fairest. Possibly a well-established other offering support. Some light shone on the matter.
Revd: the three prongs of your personal one-slot widget are a strong construction, a completed, successfully built (if insane) thing. But the legs arranged unflatly might lead to overstability, set in your waysness, like in the Picket Fences card.
Me, myself, and I? Tom, Dick, and Harry? A sans-serif shin? Or something. Like a 3-bar two-quark state, maybe. As usual, "unless it's not." Wealth, power. Arrogance? The extra exit may be tantamount to exile.
Henry: ...A small square, no bigger than this room. Not as a gift, I don't want to own it! Simply an understanding between friends -- who know that the land really belongs to the woodchucks, anyhow!
The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
"Property is theft, right? So theft is property, so this is mine."
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Douglas Adams
"Lieutenant Eacher, before entering the service, had been an expert at Contract Law, the rules by which the primates determined and marked their territories. Remember: other mammals do this by leaving excretions which geometrically define the size and shape of the claimed turf, but domesticated primates do it by excreting ink on paper."
Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy, Robert Anton Wilson
"The land belongs to the landlords, right now, because of magic. People worship the deeds in the government offices, and they won't dare move onto a square of ground if one of the deeds says somebody else owns it. It's a head-trip, a kind of magic, and you need the opposite magic to lift the curse."
Simon Moon (I!3)
"The fact that people are collectively imagining the same values at the same time props up the whole system."
Boyd Rice, interviewed in Re/Search #11: Pranks
POSTED: NO BOUNDARIES.
This card complains about the kind of unreasonable property division decision created and sustained only by government edict or the superior firepower of an ill-regulated militia -- stunningly unlikely apportionment of wealth and control of, um, the means of production (productio ad absurdum) necessitating fencing and policing the borders, rewriting history within them, and trying to resurrect the lost (paved) frontier. Fakeness. Theme parks whose residents show simulated wildness (roaming costumed cartoon characters, petting zoo, plastic plant jungle, river rafts on underwater tracks) and whose visitors have simulated freedom to play and run gradeschool riot (while standing in line, channeled smoothly past the disguised employee-only areas).
DivMean: Inside the frequently-whitewashed fences and boxes and alarm perimeters, the suburbilanders rest happily on their laurels and la-z-boys. Tidy landscapes, table manners, linear thinking and the correct fork. Domesticated bliss. But restriction sparks a discontent that theme parks only partially assuage. If good fences make good neighbors, what do good neighbors make? Pilgrims!
Revd: sane distribution of property honored by people not subject to trespass penalties. Limits associated with "appropriate living" (ecological, sociological, etc.). Chaos never got bulldozed for a shopping mall. BTW, a hefty dose of the rather festive Neopaleolithic Zerowork ethic (garden and gather about two hours a day, make art, craft, music and merry the rest) dilutes this card's socialism. An intentionally extraordinary life.
"Vodou isn't like that," Beauvoir said. "It isn't concerned with notions of salvation and transcendence. What it's about is getting things done....it's street religion, came out of a dirt-poor place a million years ago. Vodou's like the street. Some duster chops out your sister, you don't camp out on the Yakuza's doorstep, do you? No way. You go to somebody, though, who can get the thing done. Right?"
Count Zero, William Gibson
"In the battle of life, boldness changes things for the better."
"Five of Wands," A Complete Guide to the Tarot, Eden Gray
"5. Invoke a terrible curse on a malign *institution*, such as the _New York Post_ or the MUZAK company. A technique adapted from Malaysian sorcerers: send the Company a package containing a bottle, corked and sealed with black wax. Inside: ....
"An accompanying note explains that the hex is sent against the *institution* & not against individuals -- but unless the institution itself *ceases to be malign*, the curse (like a mirror) will begin to infect the premises with noxious fortune, a miasma of negativity.
Prepare a 'news release'...""II. Some Poetic-Terrorist Ideas Still Sadly Languishing in the Realm of 'Conceptual Art,'" Communique #1 (Spring 1986) of The Association for Ontological Anarchy
"...thus the most repressed sector of the society acquires a paradoxical power through the myth of its occult knowledge, which is feared and desired by the colonist. Of course the natives really do have certain occult knowledge, but..."
"Gone to Croatan," The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Hakim Bey
Like all sticks cards, here is the channeling/use of
energies. Like all fives, it should make you kinda
nervous. They don't call it "stooping to their level" when
you're the underdog messing with back-room power-over to get
along despite the Powers that do their Being mundanely and physically.
DivMean: Wuggh, it is, though. Life viewed in terms of conflict, contest, and hope for conquest. Lust and cruel violence, the inexhaustible earth-shaking energies that can be brought to bear, and the entities you ask for help. For a price. Or two. Buy now, pay later. They rent you to own. "At your GET IT AWAY! store." A card about sympathetick magic (specifically, the intent more than the objects constructed for focusing: "voodoo dolls" are totally Discs, like charged dartboards with photographs pinned on them). By the way, this is absolutely not a rant against Vodoun, just against anti-personnel curses.
"Take a foot stance as if you were John L. Sullivan preparing for fisticuffs. Face the particular greyface you wish to short-circuit, or towards the direction of the negative aneristic vibration that you wish to neutralize. Begin waving your arms in any elaborate manner and make motions with your hands as though you were Mandrake feeling up a sexy giantess. Chant, loudly and clearly: GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE! The results will be instantly apparent."*As revealed by the Apostle Dr. Van Van Mojo. Appears in Principia Discordia, Malaclypse the Younger, K.S.C.
Revd: Vodoun (maybe anything from New Orleans) is very deathy stuff, but the drumming is the best trip in the world. One might say: to choose blac magick over white, or white magic over black, is to accept a trip composed of both the SPARKLY and the GRAY. But to choose the SPARKLY over the GRAY is an all-SPARKLY trip composed of both blac and white. If one wished to paraphrase Mal-2. Some-of-eachness, deliberate, decorative confusion.
"Bobby, do you know what a metaphor is?"
"A component? Like a capacitor?"Count Zero, William Gibson
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke's "Third Law"
*********************** branden@symphony.cc.purdue.edu ************************
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
"Any technology that is distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
"Any civilization that can't even distinguish its _own_ technology from magic
needs to be hit over the head with a rolled up clue."
*********************** gbrobins@cartoon.ecn.purdue.edu ***********************
- David A. Holland | Any sufficiently advanced bug is
dholland@husc.harvard.edu | indistinguishable from a feature.
"There was my head, huge and white, floating in the ethereal blue! Obviously it's a sign!"
"Of what?"
"Very peculiar high altitude winds, I guess."
"Science sure takes the fun out of the portent business."
"You know, some sort of cumulonimbal thing.""Calvin and Hobbes", Bill Watterson
This is a Technology/Magic card as well as a of vs. of
card. That's not a Japanese garden-gate, it's a transistor,
or maybe Chinese for "6". Look upon my MOSFET's gate: is that a snail
there? Yes, it is!
DivMean: intense attempt to resolve conflict through pure intent to do so, to be pleasant company rather than to win, was successful -- resulting in not just compromise but victory in the matter (love, success?). Messages to this effect.
Revd: Actually, the thing in the background is a Trojan Horse under construction.
"You are hampered by lack of proficiency with your tools."
Fortune Cookie Fortune
"IN BED!"
(chorus)
"Do not dangle the mouse by its cable or throw mouse at co-workers."
Indigo Owners Manual, p. 6-9:"Hardware Dos and Don'ts"
Physical/manual/digital/pickpocketal/legerdemainly/craftsman's
proficiency; adeptness with the aesthetically, ascetically,
ethnically, traditionally, politically, or otherwise, Proper Tool.
DivMean: sufficient courage to give it the Old College Try. Especially since you let on you were an old hand at it. Competition. But the sticks just don't Work Well with Others, damn you, be still! Trying to reason with them. Success possible. Maybe trade your fortune cookie for a fork?
Revd: supreme waste of effort on what becomes a small thing, perhaps resulting in an unfortunate hesitation. Nervous fumbly fingers, red face. Don't let it get cold, or be hungry an hour later because you haven't started eating yet.
"Hot Sweet Cinnamon Cayenne Things (Blood Sugar Capsaicin Magik): ..." or Ginger Ale?
The Zenarchist's Macrobiotic Cookbook
"Nervous breakdowns, earthquakes, love triangles, dead shamans, showering dogs, and magical children (among other things) can take their toll on one."
Outside the Dog Museum: A Novel of Love, Death, and Architecture, Jonathan Carrol
"It's New Year's Eve. Your best friend died in September, you've been robbed twice, your girlfriend is leaving you, you've just lost your job ...and the only one left to talk to is a gay burglar you've got tied up in the kitchen."
P.S. Your Cat Is Dead, James Kirkwood
"How could you do what you just did?
(Are you having a really bad period?)""(Everybody Run:) The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun," Julie Brown
"May God bless and keep the Tsar -- far away from us!"
Fiddler on the Roof, Sholom Aleichem
"How would you feel about life if Death was your older sister?"
"Sandman" T-shirt
Paris bribes the goddesses, for a change. Everyone else called in
sick. They knew (they counted).
Hot Pepper Situations are hot potatoes, delicate things in a brown-and-lumpy (skins left on) and dangerous way. Hot Pepper Situations are hot mashed potatoes (lots of garlic, hard to toss back). But theobromine produces endorphins...
Things are crashing down, all is being lost, your friends hate you, your enemies are laughing, your life just plain sucks. To paraphrase Feynman, Shit Happens in lumps. Try to ride out your soggy-dog Sturm 'n' Drang in a hole somewhere, but make sure the drainage is good before you spend your on-the-outs up-the-creek down a sewer paddleless. When the whole world is against you, paranoia is just a good idea, but it's not the really big guns (dark chocolate). She's got a bullet with your name right on it: she wrote it there with her marker-pen and dotted the i's with little hearts.
Bad Karma -- No Biscuit. This was going to be a "Go Hide Under a Rock: Person in a Hole through No Fault / On the Outs with Everybody Because of Totally External Effects and er Coworkers' Anharmonic Convergences". ...Only it turned out someone had come up with an effective response: "Lie down on the floor and remain calm," setting down some chocolate and backing out all the while. Puzzle solutions, reconciliations. Everything's pushin' up roses and daffodils...
DivMean: Sudden explosive force, quickly passing. Either from you or against you. Too strong and too short to be constructive. Freedom, time to take a walk outside. Quickly-delivered message; quiet, confident (slightly snide?) generosity.
Revd: the absent coworkers' almost-equally-valid response: lie down on the floor many miles away -- remaining calm becomes significantly easier. (Triple-goddesses are nothing to be trifled with. Truffled with?) Cop-out! Off the hook without a paddle. Jealous? Nah. It'll come back to them threefold.
@c he ought to have pulled some on the fishermen off the pier into the
@c water.
"'Fission poles'?"
The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian, Lawrence Block
"The card signifies strength in opposition. If attacked, the person will meet an onslaught boldly; and his build shews that he may prove a formidable antagonist."
"Nine of Wands," The Pictorial Key to the Tarot: Being Fragments of a Secret Tradition under the Veil of Divination, Arthur Edward Waite
This is a pretty badass fish. This one will not be bested, but at
great expenditure (or precise application) of energy on his part.
DivMean: The victor, in a break between combat sessions. Resting up, mending well. Polish the boots and the chrome.
Revd: battle fatigue. Apprehension, doubt.
"No wonder kids grow up crazy....little kids look and look and look at all those X's..."
"And?"
"No damn cat and no damn cradle."Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
"The police would say, 'Well, we don't like what they're doing any more than you do, ma'am, but they haven't really broken any laws. We'd love to put them in jail, but...we can't throw them in jail for putting eggplants on spikes in front of a shopping center!'"
Boyd Rice, interviewed in Re/Search #11: Pranks
"Your mind is totally controlled
You have been stuffed into our mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold.""The Slime," Overnight Sensation, Frank Zappa
"TV -- is it the reflector or the director?""Television, Drug of the Nation," #, Disposable Heroes of HipHoprisy
"Shoot your television"
button from Ephemera
Another underdog battle, but this time the supernatural (well,
unnatural) combatant is the opponent, not the
ally. Parent-or-guardian as Warrior/Protector. If the insurrection is
unsuccessful, the evil to strong to resist, blame the original
decision to have the prince-priest beast babysit.
Don't forget: making fun of TV doesn't get it shot. MetaTV especially fails to do TV any harm. alt.tv.dinosaur.barney.die.die.die just feeds the thing energy. Either destroy the thing, or at least ward it well so no influences escape when you're not looking. Feng shui: must cover glass surfaces (TV, mirrors) or they'll suck out your brain, or something like that. Do a banishing ritual upon turning the thing off. Never invoke without afterwards outvoking, nor evoke and not revoke ("devoke"?).
DivMean: Dissimulation in the guise of fun, costume. Abuse of power, the burden of success -- it was probably a fine production in its backyard puppet-show days. Unjust marketing. Making a fortune. Doing some damage, either Media upon You or vice versa.
Revd: Solution! Self-endangering revenge!
Proud, courageous, capricious, mercurial bearer (and, occasionally, author) of havoc-wreaking news. Blame the messenger. Trying to accumulate power or take revenge?
DivMean: Quick to anger and other emotions -- fierce, blazing, volatile.
Revd: cinematically bad news that isn't true -- or tidal raves. Or stupid little pointless anecdotes.
@c three (burning?) leafpiles -> "the threefold principle of
creation"?? @c -- or fire. burning rake?
"And I looked, and behold a pale horse..."
Revelation 6:8, St. John the Divine
"Ho! Ha! Dodge! Parry! Spin! Thrust! Whoinggggggg!!"
"Robin Hood Daffy"
"Why you're nothing but a pack of cards!"
The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Unexpected strike. Inanimate ambush: fierce, sudden, and
energetic. Also: leaving one plane (possibly just a reverie) for a
mundaner one (in a shower of queensmen leaves,
perhaps). "Blown with her mind!"
DivMean: Spur-of-the-moment type of person or event. Both the pouncy arrival and spontaneous sermon-construction (spontaneous human combustion) of accosting pamphlet-ranters. Especially the entertaining ones. (Discordians recruit by looking like a fun thing to be.)
Revd: The other kind. The don't-let-'em-get-away, watch-you-squirm ones. Sadistic. Or intolerant, thisist, thatphobic. Heterosexuals recruiting. What a lovely philosophical daydream until you found out: So-sorry-you're-damned.
Q: What's brown and sticky?
A: A stick.
What could be Wandsy about
a Counterfeit Elvis stamp? Not only is it STICKy -- it's POSTal!
$.32 worth of deceit. In fact, this card insinuating itself among the sticks is a little iffy, too. Potsage stamps are KNOWN to consort with both BITS OF STRING and things NOT OF THIS EARTH in the ill-lit backs of untidy desk drawers. WHO KNOWS what WHICH CAT has DRAGGED HEREIN!
DivMean: Hey, it didn't come with the regular US Post delivery. It came by rain or snow, by dark of night, down the chimney. Winged feet ground delivery, at 20-minute-pizza speed. Post haste. "Do you know how fast you were going?" -- asked bemusedly, gently. Speed, recklessness, generosity; a kind of justice.
Revd: Q: What do you call a boomerang that won't come back? Biting the mailman, shooting the messenger. Grumpy, intolerant. No biscuit!
"III - A Discordian is Required during his early Illumination to Go Off Alone and Partake Joyously of a Hot Dog on a Friday; this Devotive Ceremony to Remonstrate against the popular Paganisms of the Day: of Catholic Christendom (no meat on Friday), of Judaism (no meat of Pork), of Hindic Peoples (no meat of Beef), of Buddhists (no meat of animal), and of Discordians (no Hot Dog Buns).
IV - A Discordian shall Partake of No Hot Dog Buns, for Such was the Solace of Our Goddess when She was Confronted with The Original Snub."
The Five Commandments (the Pentabarf), Principia Discordia Malaclypse the Younger, K.S.C.
Hail Eris, full of grace,
Holy queen of outer space,
Leading Lady of this place,
Hail Eris full of grace.??
"The Trojan War was just another imperialistic rumble and had no connection with these events at all."
The Dealy Lama (I!3)
"This is another fine myth you've gotten me into!"
Lor L. and Har D., Another Fine Myth, Robert Asprin
This is the card of the esoteric story of The Original Snub of
ERIS, the Eriswise-gentlest version available. (Also "all-around
most-fun-to-believe", which goes a long way toward ordaining it the
One True History.) Dyspeptic Ancient Greek Historians were confused --
see their version on the ERIS of the Most Unkindest Social Cut of
All card.
What really happened (maybe), the thrown pageant-prize apple was a bundle of Kallisti Gold, not metallic Au-gold; the smokin' vibes of the fighting-over-it divinities commenced it ta smolderin', and the resulting ERIS-sent contact-high vision (contact lens?) demonstrated to those present the falsehood of order and categorization (e.g. Good and Evil). Freed thereby from their judgment obsessions, they retired from the godding business. Oh, and apologized. Discuss.
DivMean: Chaos manifesting in a gently (possibly psychedelically) educational way. Beloved teacher, charismatic leader. "Hail ERIS full of grass, LSD, and laughing gas." Chaos both as confusion and as (un)tidying-up, (un)straightening-out of confusion. G'night, ERIS, g'night, beards!
Revd: acceptance of exoteric stories -- external, superficial illumination. ERIS as Discord, vengeance, shifting disloyalties. Think about what's the more likely story, oops, I mean what's more fun to believe: maybe she rolled in a lemur marked K!
Comments to deck@fools-errant.com.
Link back to
E'beth's page.
Link back to the Deck Talk Index.