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"When I collect two solar masses of AOL Disks, I will use them to detonate the Sun" Web Page URL*: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/po/poulosio/poulosio.html Mad Max, Ensign, TRES Corps, Jihad. Finger for more.*URL expired
Gathering and presentation: the Blue Plate Special. Coin or Pentacle cards used to be about money -- but how about the real precious commodity: information (or, in more Discordian terms, surprise)? Also: mobility, delivery, business. Junk mail from online services. Or things of value, transactions, the products of one's craft and the shelf they're displayed on. Display, but with no museum-style foam-core attribution label (by this one, circa then). Let those who have eyes see, and those with traps shut them.
Earth is the element of this suit, seeded or lying fallow. Rotate crops, rotate tires, spin your wheels, spin CDs and vinyl. The ground the pin drops on, the uncup aspects of the call-and-response canyon. "When a monkey hollers in, ..." Monkey in, monkey out. So: books, mirrors, and also The Very Stuff Itself: testable samples, not just the reference book about it.
"Yo, Mama! Io, Mama, Mama!" Daughter Earth, lumpy, solid, brown. (Turkish coffee thick enough to serve on the saucer -- "coats the spoon"? MUA HA HA HA!). The Modeling clay for Magic -- and the potter's wheel it whirled in on? "Visualize whirled peas"? So why is there so much angular motion in such a quiet, basal, foundation suit? Yin and yang chase each other's tails around the t'ai-chi, apple and pentagon infiltrate each other around the Sacred Chao, the world turns. And angular momentum means it's tough to tip it. Dance to that revolution!
The blank white piece of paper is full of texture at some scale, reflecting light in all the rainbow colors and more, already full of information. The firm earth beneath unsteady feet and an explosive scattering of sky encompasses both the macro-tumult, flinging about space, and the micro-turmoil, dense with plowing earthworms and shifting continental plates. You would try to ground yourself in that, adopt it as a source of mechanical stability and a sink of electrical neutrality, a place to stand and plant steady the lever with which to move worlds? Well... cool.
"And every Golden Apple Corps is the beloved home of a Golden Worm.""The Five Commandments (the Pentabarf)," Principia Discordia, Malaclypse the Younger, K.S.C.
"In SUBURBIA, no one can hear you SCREAM.""Zippy [the Pinhead]," Bill Griffith
Material contentment, comfort, and prosperity -- in a 1950's two-car garage and Just-some-extra-protein sort of way. Or, with worm as protagonist (and the apple of the Food Pyramid's Eye!), read the card along the lines of one act of Survival (the worm made it through the Trial by 40 Minutes at 350F) followed by temporary comfort and richness. This makes the next necessary self-preservation effort (not getting eaten) more dangerously ignoreable for this apple-pie-eyed piper.
Revd: the fairest is in grubby reach -- whoops, grubby grasp -- of an autonomous hunter-gatherer barbarian-at-the-gates, a merry one-man band fording the privet moat. Material comforts, but not yours (for long). Should have locked it in the pie safe. And the TV remote lies unguarded inside...
"No hallowed skein of stars can ward, I trow,
Who's once been set his tryst with Trystero."The Courier's Tragedy, Act IV scene 8, Richard Wharfinger"...it is even suggested that Tristero has staged the entire French Revolution, just for an excuse to issue the Proclamation of 9th Frimaire, An III, ratifying the end of the Thurn and Taxis postal monopoly in France and the Lowlands."The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
"There's a golden handshake hanging round your neck,
As you light your cigarette on the burning deck.
And you balance your world on the tip of your nose--
Like a sea lion with a ball, at the Carnival.""Sea Lion," Warchild, Jethro Tull
DivMean: The ability to handle two stressing (or entertaining!) situations at once, in balance, harmony, serenity, and a state of amusement. Using one for insight into the other. (It's a rare pair that statically cancel like weights on a bar; most ebb and flow as they will, independently, and the posture in which one rolls with these punches shifts to compensate.) Riding tides of alternating fortune. Unlearning the differences between the opposites. Mobius strip: a piece of paper with only one side. Exercise: meditate on one of a pair of opposites, then the other, then both at the same time. Then neither (SPOING!). Useful journey. Messages on their way -- by anarchist post, underground newspapers, or pirate radio.
Revd: the illegitimi the courier carborundunt, on and off; at times the grin is just gritted teeth or faked. What's the delay matter?, it's bad news anyway. And the U.S. Postal Service is winning. The opposites remain unreconciled, though even at the peak of each it contains the concept of the other, the seed of it's own revolution, of the Chao's rotation. Trying to cope with even more things at once: torch-juggler trilogy. Change, inconsistency, ups and downs, aimless meandering, discontent with stability.
"Head Enchilada of Miscellany: For the uninitiated shall not know the full meaning of KALLISTI, for they do not understand Greek!"Act I: The Climactic Sacrament of Ecstatic Communion, Sacred Erisian High Mass of the Krispy Kreme Kabal, Revd. DM Psiqosys
*"When did you start drawing?" "Same age you did. When did you stop?" Primordial tao before differentiation into yin and yang, as opposed to after engineering a retrofit enlightement.
DivMean: The essence of the card is in the nature of the jumper and the completion of the stunt: upright, the card denotes ballistic completion, craftsmanship, and a Zen-and-the-art-of-tricycle-stunts style of skill, with some aesthetic attitude thrown in (cf alt.tv.barney-dinosaur.die.die.die): the project is completed successfully. Current Princess of the Hill, she could have sold tickets. Fame 'n' fortune, street credibility to last, calls the next several shots. Next jump, the Moon.
Revd: the opposite. Failure in the attempt to make the planned whole jump, Hit Mr. Purple?!?, lack of skill, no suggestion of the unique character described above, get out of my chocolate factory. She did sell tickets.
"2 + 2 = 5"1984, George Orwell
"How can we separate the concept of space from the concept of control? ... Who can invent for us a cartography of autonomy, who can draw a map that includes our desires?""Post-Anarchism Anarchy", T.A.Z., Hakim Bey
"Whenever I draw a circle, I immediately want to step out of it."I Seem to Be a Verb, R. Buckminster Fuller with Jerome Agel and Quentin Fiore
DivMean: A possessive, materialistic obsession with measurement, precision, cataloging and boundaries, to the point of absurdity. Whatever, folks. After a certain number of decimal places, the pencil's already too wide to notice more digits -- maybe in Indiana they all used those gradeschool logs. Grabby & graspy more than exceeding reachy. "This is mine" more than "That's mine too." Enough, you painted me into a corner already, with a broad brush (but only in four dimensions).
Revd: obsessive possession: measurement, precision, cataloging and boundaries, to the point of oppression. Discontent among the proletariat, queued up and tiring. "Squaring the circle" as a fascist act of brainwashing (center at point A, perimeter By God Right Here). Math heresy, reclaiming the demilitarized stroke-width zone as outlaw territory; a weird wolf pack circling the herd of squares.
"This set, which is fairly uniform throughout any authoritarian society, determines the actions which will, and will not, occur there. Let us consider humanity a biogram (the basic DNA blueprint of the human organism and its potentials) united with a logogram (this set of 'conditioned verbal habits [Gestalt Therapy, Perls, Hefferline and Goodman]')."Never Whistle While You're Pissing: A Guide to Self-Liberation Hagbard Celine, H.M., S.H.
"First murder the IDEA -- blow up the monument *inside us* -- & then perhaps... the balance of power will shift. When the last cop in our brain is gunned down by the last unfulfilled desire -- perhaps even the landscape around us will begin to change... /// Poetic Terrorism proposes this *sabotage of archetypes* as the only practical insurrectionary tactic for the present."Communique #3, Association for Ontological Anarchy
"Cut word lines, cut music lines; smash the control images, smash the control machines.""Quick Fix," William S. Burroughs & Ministry
"Burn your scrip, burn your script.""Nondescript," nobody@soda.berkeley.edu (Tommy the Tourist) on alt.postmodern
"Of course Spare's system works if one believes in psychoanalysis or not, not so much because the existence of a deep unconscious, collective or otherwise, is any more provable than the existence of a soul, but because it subverts the conscious mind and the failure tapes of normal consciousness. Culturally defined consensual belief structures work tirelessly against the actualization of magickal intentions..."
"But the engineering of belief structures is a poor substitute for their suspension."
"Sigils, Servitors, and Godforms," Mark Defrates (marik@aol.com)
ftp://members.aol.com/marik/Sigils.txt
"Exorcism is the other tenth of the law."The Ayes Have *Me*!, R. T. L. Lucifer, Inflate Earth Society
Insert the dominant paradigm! The internal censor.
What if we overthrew the government in a vivid & convivial revolution? Noone would come. Each head has to overthrow its own individual government before that can take. Where's the stimulus-response lookup table you rode in on? Draw a fresh conclusion from this moment's juxtaposition of history and the senses. "What do you get if you cross a then with a now?"
"In the Beginning was the Word"? Bereshith in the woods? No way. Suck up the entropy cost and erase the LogOS! Start fresh from the BIOS! ("Reboot! Reboot! OK!")
#exclude <stdio.h>
An exercise: tape over everybody's ReadOnly tab holes! Join the ScotchBrite® Masons' Scotch Guard! Go around taping folks's left ears shut, or right nostrils,* and explain as much as you feel is appropriate. Let's see what happens! Can't be bad! Every man and every woman is a tsar!
*Why, to facilitate the opening of the gnostril.
"Cut power lines! Cut in the check-out lines! Mash the control potatoes, juice the control tangerines."
DivMean: Classically, a five of discs indicates of material-realm trouble. Indeed, the program includes large doses of the Protestant Work Ethic: society says sing for your small supper. Here, let it additionally suggest information trouble. One's natural aptitude for assessment impeded, artificially overridden, by the greybrains, the thought police. (Sometimes the monkey brain gets it right.)
Revd: Same. Worse. Nine-tenths of the law is no excuse.
"[ping] Heads. [ping] Heads. [ping] Heads. [ping] Heads. [ping] Heads. [ping] Heads. [ping] Heads. [ping] Heads. [ping] Heads. [ping] ...Heads."Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard
"The first two landed in the usual manner. So did the fourth. The third landed on its edge and balanced there. The fifth turned into a small yellow caterpillar and crawled away. The sixth, upon reaching its zenith, vanished with a sharp 'spang!' A moment later there was a small thunderclap."The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
"I'm the dandy highwayman who you're too scared to mention.
I spend my cash on looking flash and grabbing your attention."
"So what's the point of robbery when nothing is worth taking?""Stand and Deliver", ??, Adam Ant
DivMean: a little boost, restart, seed money, backers,
germinal thought, watching the market, good timing (now!). A position
of some small new power influence. A money card: a credit
card, a business card.
Revd: a debit card, an ATM card. Flaunting, overdraft. Banking dead and dusty bills, turned dessicated zombie-pumpkins because no transformational magic interposed before the twelfth bell bong of midnight. But executing bankers is yesterday's trip: good morning, what shall we do today? Cash flowing like water, the sound of one finger hunt-and-poking out an ATM PIN.
paraphrasing others on getting money to circulate:
Impose, just suppose, automatic negative interest, a half-life (the withering away of a piece of the state). Will the locals turn power-tripless sultans, lush and decadent, commissioning art and hallucinogenic hanging gardens? Turn daggerless assassins, festive, stealthy, snakey, starry, playing dice and Hot Potato with melting gold coin through the insubstantial fog of frankincense-and-myrrh visions? Lacquerware and china and a whacking big brass gong on a wood frame, copper and crystal laden with figs, teas, and distinguished wines, cluster alongside richly-draped couches on tatami and Persian rugs in tents hung thickly with tapestries between the otherwise wall-to-wall bookshelves.
An anarchic economic revolution to dervish-dance to. A new take on stringing up the bankers with the guts of the priests: keeping money from decaying by investing it in heaven-on-earth.
"His devotion to yams was unflagging, but he increasingly looked to the water chestnut as an example of endurance, of will and of fidelity to the particular. The water chestnut, after all, is the only vegetable whose texture doesn't change after freezing, changeth not after being cooked."Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Tom Robbins
"Like water that flows through the worlds, serving as it moves along, tofu joyfully surrenders itself to the endless play of transformation."The Book of Tofu, William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi
"And, behold, thusly was the Law formulated: imposition of order -> escalation of chaos!"
"The Gospel According to Fred 1:6," The Honest Book of Truth, Lord Omar Khayaam Ravenhurst
DivMean: The restaurant business, business. Rooted resistance against attempts at alteration. Altercation. Imposition of order -> deliverance of pizza. Americans who steadfastly demand chop suey from the restaurant instead of authentic Chinese food. Bewildered but placid under provocation: "Oh, still no, sorry." Concerned and disappointed: quality business going under, poor crops after much work?
Revd: Vegetable Taoism. Tofu, the other white vegetable! Bread cast upon the waters flows whither the current wills -- it's not some breeding boomerang.
"Successful propaganda must occupy every moment of the individual's life."J. Ellul, quoted in an anti-TTV poster
"...as pop stars metamorphosize into soda pop stars: you saw the video, you heard the soundtrack, now go buy the soft drink.""Television, Drug of the Nation," Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy
"All advertising advertises Advertising."Marshall McLuhan
"THIS IS YOUR TRUE DESIRE"suggested graffiti "for scrawling or rubberstamping on advertisements," Communique #1 (Spring 1986) of The Association for Ontological Anarchy
"The media invite us to 'come celebrate the moments of your life' with the spurious unification of commodity and spectacle, the famous *non-event* of pure representation. In response to this obscenity we have, on the one hand, the spectrum of *refusal* (chronicled by the Situationists, John Zerzan, Bob Black *et al*.) -- and on the other hand, the emergence of a *festal culture* removed and even hidden from the would-be managers of our leisure. 'Fight for the right to party' is in fact not a parody of the radical struggle but a new manifestation of it, appropriate to an age which offers TVs and telephones as ways to 'reach out and touch' other human beings, ways to 'Be There!'""2. The TAZ as *festival*," Temporary Autonomous Zone, A.O.A.
"Somewhere between 'oaf' and 'ozonosphere' lies ...'obsession.'"Collusions: The Demographics of an Electric Messiah, Schuyler Bejesus and A. C. D. Jihad
The Advertising/Consumer/Media Card: Dicey situations, take
care.
There is a hidden layer to the situation, reality is a fraud, or at least sensational. Oops, you're watching a news magazine. Even the six o'clock news must advertise the six o'clock news, and accurate reporting bows to this need. Get a good consumer handbook, or a good therapist, or start drawing chalk circles. View advertising as a psychic attack, and protect yourself accordingly. Remember that the advertising of today will be the underground clip-art of 30 years from now.
Consumerism is the New'n'Improved opiate of the people. Even those with such an eye for n-tuple coupons that they regularly get paid to take groceries home are getting damaged (cultivating an addiction, they pour energy into the consumer paradigm, etc.) at least commensurate with any harm they could do a large supermarket chain. Penny-wise but getting pounded. ("The most moving, spurring, attention-getting word in the US is 'free.'") Whether joining a nice organic co-op is any healthier an energy-sink is a question best left to the individual.
Subverting mass media reinforces mass media: as long as the medium remains the messenger, it remains the greatest part of the message. TV shows that poke of fun at TV camp neither make TV go away and die nor alter its essence. Folks watching are engaging in a meta event they can feel more intellectual and less uncomfortable about. That's shooting your television with a vaccine.
DivMean: Skill and possibly soulless cunning in business, in advertising, in people-programming. Greed and hoarding verging on theft.
Revd: Or, just TV too stupid to bear: that commercial was designed to move you deeply, to push your sizzling hot big red buttons, to play on your less subtle instincts (e.g. pack-hierarchy, territoriality, What Would the Neighbors Think?). Be furious they think so little of you.
"High Holy Boss of Religion: Thou shalt have other Goddesses before dinnertime!
"All: Or not!"Act V: The Malevolent Benediction and Spewing Forth of the Holy Laws, Sacred Erisian High Mass of the Krispy Kreme Kabal, Revd. DM Psiqosys
"Cheese that is required by law to append the word food to its title does not go well with red wine or fruit.""Food for Thought and Vice Versa," Metropolitan Life, Fran Lebowitz
"RolyPolyFishHeads are never seen drinking cappuccino in Italian restaurants with oriental women!""Fish Heads," Barnes and Barnes
"I never left you. The times you saw only one set of footprints was when we both hopped on one foot."??, ??
DivMean: All safe now. Scare off the nasty fellow, and take home a fishie-bag.
Revd: Sneakiness. Maybe stash some silverware while you're at
it. "Do you serve crabs fish here?" "Sir, we serve anyone."
"Awwwww." "Faw down go boom.""The Beguiling," Cerebus, Dave Sim
"(Say something clever, say something clever)...
'I fell on my bottom.'
(D'oh!)"Bart Simpson
@from the almost killed by a frisbee stanzaGolden Gate, Vikram Seth
DivMean: Chance failure in a low-stakes undertaking (there are things worth doing that are not worth mastering) and, in any event, fantastic compensation (successful lawsuit, or you find a quarter on the ground or the rabbit hole that leads to the secret golf-ball graveyard (enormous monetary gain)? impact-induced enlightenment (extravagant information gain)?). Then what? Old too early, and bored. Wealthschmerz?
Curiosity must be unleashed, given slack & enough rope, especially in low-stakes ventures. A surprise often brings rewards of new efficiency, improvement in critical thinking, or at least knowledge of some method to avoid. Anyway, there's a trip to be tripped. Maybe the rabbit hole leads to a mind-blowing chthonic/cthulhic roadtrip. "There's no place like home" if only because in the proper light, Home can be exciting beyond words. Hard to find that light.
Revd: total ineptitude at something unimportant. Everybody
should have an outrageous talent, but also a stupefying incompetence
at something amusing. Over 5 billion heads served severed. Or
tossed. In a row.
"Perspective--Use it or Lose it. If you turned to this page, you're forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that. Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place. You're going to die a horrible death, remember. It's all good training, and you'll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind. Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less-advanced life-forms, and they'll call you crazy."Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul
DivMean: Contemplative, almost to the point of bliss-out. Bookish, mystic. Smoking jacket and fez. Special-assignment fieldwork for an ethereal desk-jockey, quiet but game. Omnibenevolent, omnibrave, sacrificed agriculture-deity sort. Giving, guardian; the Messiah is the message.
Revd: Golden-Rolls guru, car-chasing dogmas.
"And I saw, and behold a white horse..."Revelation 6:2, St. John the Divine
"Upon this rock I founder my church."Episcopope Lfet Hnad Ptah
"Great Overseer of Forbidden Arcana: If participating in the three-legged race at the next family reunion, strive for Honorable Mention!
"All: Or not!"Act V: The Malevolent Benediction and Spewing Forth of the Holy Laws, Sacred Erisian High Mass of the Krispy Kreme Kabal, Revd. DM Psiqosys
DivMean: Serviceable equipment, responsibile, patient; kind of boring. Suspender and belt.
Revd: Plate piled too high (stacked by a single-minded engineer), but also paper-product Karma. The solution is emphatically not nested plates to delay la deluge or to insulate coffee: such squelch just goes with the disposable territory (suck it up). The horse had to be bleached.
"The bass part is extracted from a four track master of a performance from Goteburg, Sweden, 1974 which I had Patrick O'Hearn overdub on a medium tempo guitar solo track in 4/4. . . . A year and a half later, the bass track was peeled off the Swedish master and transferred to one track of another studio 24 track master for a slow song in 11/4. The result of this experimental re-synchronization . . . is the piece you are listening to. All of the sensitive, interesting interplay between the bass and drums never actually happened."Notes to "Rubber Shirt," Sheik Yerbouti, Frank Zappa
"RAW [Robert Anton Wilson] died in 1979; Elvis wrote the Historical Illuminatus! books"from .sig of acbul1@lindblat.cc.monash.edu.au, Reverend Brother Pope Lee Harvey Oswald Smith, KSC WMD SPAM; Episkopos, John Friedrich Cabal; High Epopt of the Secret and Terrible Rite; Chairperson dei gratia, Flat Earth Society -"In your heart, you know it's flat"
A falsely represented thing, regardless of its actual quality. And its worth to a collector may be entirely unrelated to its worth to your ears. Examine carefully. Sift the propaganda on the record jacket, count the sequins on the polyester jacket.
DivMean: Turning them out steadily, by the dozen, whether tedious formulaic ripoffs or inspired references.
Revd: The representation is false, and so is the quality -- dull, plodding, unintelligent -- except for the cover art, which simply rocks. In it for the money, not the driving essence of Elvis. "He has no Elvis in him."
Alternatively, this card may indicate a UFO abduction, or crop circling.
Most Divine Empirical Pedagogical Wizard: Thou shalt not commit adulthood!
All: Pretty Pleeeeeeeeeeez?!?
Great Overseer of Forbidden Arcana: Well, maybe, if you eat all your peas.Act V: The Malevolent Benediction and Spewing Forth of the Holy Laws, Sacred Erisian High Mass of the Krispy Kreme Kabal, Revd. DM Psiqosys
@c something from Auntie Mame
It is clear that the ancient icon of the Three Goddesses, the apple and the young shepherd of Ida, which has been iconotropically interpreted by some early enemy of women in the story of the 'Apple of Discord' (how Paris adjudicated the apple to the Love-goddess) had an entirely different meaning. To award an apple to the Love-goddess would have been an impertinence on the shepherd's part. All apples were hers. Did Merddin present Olwen with the apple orchard? Did Adam give the Mother of All Living an apple?The White Goddess, Robert Graves
How is it that taking a knife to bisect an apple so frequently ends in a distribution similar to that of a queue, which seems so unlikely a priori?(see e.g. http://www.speakeasy.org/~traceyb/thrift3/JanFEb/cheap.html, which they probably got from Surrealist Games, Alastair Brotchie)
She What Done It All. Robert Graves's take on the Doctrine of the Original Snub is this: the whole confusion was folks trying to make historical heads and tails out of a picture of some three-goddess one-human apple-transaction. Nobody lovable wrote it up this way: that he was, rather redundantly, awarding one of them the fruit. Only if there weren't stories all over about triple-goddesses giving humans (e.g. Hercules) Apples of Immortality might one leave it at that. Of course, Eris is really a quintuple goddess (count the points on the star of an apple's southern hemisphere), "but the Greeks did not know of the Law of Fives" [PD] ...except for maybe some Pythagoreans.
DivMean: Playful manifestations of chaos and nuttiness. Mood swings with manic running to madcap and depressive only down as far as ...quiet. Attention Deficit Disorder? Certainly. And brilliant to boot. She wears it well, it feels all right. Rich living, roses in cigarette-holders in teeth. "A single perfect limousine" -- or a dozen. Want a not-bun with that Not-Dog?
Revd: Caprice, indecision, suspicion.
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