junkmail - braindump edition

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And this right outside the DMV building, across the street from the
main Troy police station, and a block or two away from the County
Courthouse…

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And so, as yesterday I ranted profanely and insultingly about someone
else’s sacred rites, today I will give credence to a fake holiday made
up by hippies and followed by lunatics from the internet. We call this “Fair and Balanced” where I come from. And if you’ve read
my previous Discordian essay
(http://misterdiskord.posterous.com/whats-a-discordian-anyway) you
might know that taking turns of mocking religious celebration and
embracing it is perfectly in character.

Anyway to me, made-up holydays are much more interesting than
established ones anyway, because they allow for further introspection.
In a religion which is set out as half-joke, and which has no dogma
and anyway instructs its adherents to never pay attention to anything
they read, there isn’t anything written about what Chaoflux really is,
or what one has to do with it. And but so, I’m going to try anyway. Feel free to disregard me. I’m
only your Pope.

First things first: the Discordian calendar, which no one who is sane
actually follows, consists not of months, but of 5 (always five, the
Law of Fives is never wrong) seasons of 73 days each: Chaos, Discord,
Confusion, Bureaucracy and Aftermath. On the 50th day of each season
is a holiday commemorating that season, and getting in the mind of
transition to the next one. These follow the general gist of things;
the universe itself, most human endeavours, basically everything that
exists goes through these cycles. And so we have Chaoflux, Discoflux,
Confuflux, Bureflux and Afflux. (1) Carrying on. Chaos is the primal chaos that exists at the beginning.
You could call this the Whatever Before the Big Bang, or a human
swimming around the womb, or that lazy period where you get a crazy
idea to start some big project, or whatever. Chaos has the very fine
property that everything is immanent and imminent; anything could
happen. All and nothing exist in equal measures. But at the same time
nothing happens. Order and disorder in perfect balance. It’s a fine
state if you can get it, though I have to think that typically it’s
not so easy in the real world. And it’s only ideal in a sort of
Platonic or idealistic sense. You wouldn’t want your life in a state
of Chaos, because nothing much can happen. If you’re of a buddhist
bent, I see it as kind of Nirvana, or some Christians conception of
heaven: probably something you’d strive for, but if you think too much
of it, it seems kind of boring and useless. But when you’re in it,
it’s totally not, because it it EVERYTHING all at once.

It’s like the old question, why do we have time? So everything doesn’t
happen all at once. And so eventually of this Primal Chaos gives way to some semblance of
order. Reality imposes itself on stochastic bliss. Eventually we must
be born. The chaos of childhood must give way to the various rules and
regulations of being an adult in a society. Our crazy idea to get the
band back together and take over the world as rockstars has to give in
to practicing our instruments and working in seedy clubs for 10 bucks
after working a day job all day. And so on. This is not a bad thing
nor a good thing, but just a thing. Certainly less Chaos brings some
things into sharper focus. But a lot of the EVERYTHING goes into less
focus.

Something called the Aneristic Illusion tells us that Order is always
good and disorder is always bad. This philosophy would tell us that
moving away from Chaos is always a good thing, an advancement, but
it’s not. Remember when you were a child and you thought you could do
anything. There is value in that. Even if you will never, in “reality”
ride a unicorn through space, if you really believe you can as a
child, that’s almost as good. And so when that dies it is a loss. So
in a way Chaoflux as a transition from Chaos to Discord is somewhat of
a sad time, a time for reflection on lost possibilities. But of course the Eristic Illusion tells us the opposite: that
disorder is always better than order. And of course, as people living
in Westernized America this is easier for us to debunk. We know the
value of ordering things. We know that as adults we can do more and
get more done, and even have better delusions than children. An adult
on acid will probably have at least as good a unicorn spaceflight (if
not better) than a child.

And so: go forth today and commemorate the Primal Chaos from whence we
have come. Do something random. Be an idiot. And contemplate on the
transition to Discord, on giving up some of your infinite
possibilities to immanentize those most important to you. And remember
always that we’ll be back through here again, everything is cyclical,
so don’t make like a big fucking deal out of it or anything. There’s
always next year if you fuck it up. And as always, All Hail Discordia. But not too loudly, cause you don’t
want Her to notice you and start paying attention to your life…

—-
1. The fifth (fnord) day of each season is an Apostle’s holy day, and
you are encouraged to make up your own additional holydays as you see
fit (or don’t, what the fuck do I care?)

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So, it’s Lent. The idea being you’re supposed to give something up for
40 days, because god gives a shit whether you eat chocolate or not.
Because let me tell you, god is all up in your grill about what you’re
supposed to eat. Especially in the OT. Dude was hardcore on shellfish. I guess you don’t have to do an eating-related Lent, but you know,
we’re all Americans and if there’s one thing we do to nearly-sinful
excess, it’s eat. Some people also give up like, smoking or drinking
coffee, or booze or something like that.

And it’s all pretty ridiculous. I mean theologically, even. Don’t take
my word for it, I’m an atheist or a discordian or at BEST a Jew. But
listen — if you can appease the cosmic flying beard in the sky by not
stuffing your fat face for 40 days, seriously, this is not a very
difficult religion to abide with. Try 613 mitzvot on for size some
time, OK? It’s not that I’m necessarily against self-improvement. I just find it
tedious that people have to turn to the threat of eternal torture, or
the reward of eternal pleasure, to fucking do something positive in
their lives. And I say this as a person who, for a tremendously long
period of time had no motivation to positively change my life. So
yeah, hypocrisy. Totally. But it’s like, if it takes the Bearded
Genocide Dude in Heaven to make you stop eating Micky D’s 4 times a
week, maybe you just want to consider visiting him that much sooner,
cause that shit ain’t gonna stick as a life habit.

So listen… believe in god if you want to. I might argue with you for
fun, but I know I’m not going to change your mind. But if you think
that Lent is anything but one more way for the various churches in the
world to get you to become a little healthier, and have a little more
money to throw in the kitty on Sunday, you’re fooling yourself. It’s
all bread and circuses. Unless you gave up bread and circuses for
Lent. In which case it’s um… lentils and televangelism? I don’t
fuckin’ know.

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And so my vehicle reached another insignificant but
numerically-interesting milestone. And documented it, because I’m just
wired incorrectly.

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When I was your age(1), we had this thing called being “offline”. I’ve
been around computers of one primitive sort or another almost my whole
life, but only ever owned a real one after I got out of high school,
and it went online. But at that time, online generally meant “dial-up”
which meant “in relatively short doses or late at night, unless you
want to tie up the damn phone line all day”. This was, at first,
during the age of America Online anyway, so you didn’t want to spend
too much money either. And but so this necessitated periods of time
during which one was not, actually online. Shocking I know. And in many ways of course, it is kind of fucking amazing, the level
of like connectivity and information we have available these days. I
still have a moment of future shock whenever I have some inane trivia
question pop up that I can’t quite remember, and I realize that I can
pull out my phone and look it up from almost anywhere in the civilized
world(2). I mean this is fairly amazing, living-in-the-future level
shit here.

But on the other hand, I’ve been living mostly offline most weekends
now for a while. Granted, there’s still the occasional looking at
funny cat pictures, but this is mainly vicarious and on the same level
of watching a TeeVee program or something with someone. I tend to
limit my data consumption as much as possible in favor of human
contact. Sort of a novel new thing for me. I like it. Which isn’t to
say I’m particularly effective, said phone being insidious in an “I’ll
just check my email quickly… oh and see who’s on the Twitter… oh
and check Facebook…” sort of way. And I don’t want to fall into the alarmist camp where you occasionally
see news articles like “IS GOOGLE MAKING US DUM?”, like we’re becoming
incapable of knowledge because we can just look everything up. I’m
just saying I personally benefit from a period of time where I’m not
moving a mile-a-minute browsing this and that and following links and
playing games that go for exactly ONE MINUTE. It’s not something I’d
do permanently, I’m as addicted as the next person, but I’m really
liking taking a break from these things. I like that I can still go
out and drink a bunch of cactus by-product and bullshit about whatever
(granted, it’s often about what evil Google is up to, so by the nature
of my work and my interests, the grim specter of technology is never
far behind).

I don’t know that I particularly have a point to make here. I was just
struck by the idea that, years ago being “online” was a state you
actively entered, and then stopped doing when you were finished. This
is a cultural artifact which has fallen by the wayside, much like
television stopping broadcasting at a certain hour, or the US Senate
ever accomplishing anything(3). So I figured I’d go on about it for a
little bit while I’m unable to figure out a particularly pressing
problem about a web application for work (which is used by the courts,
all of which are online nearly all of the time and which has made
information sharing actually work so that the courts can function to a
more reasonable semblance of sanity [though still VERY far from
actually reaching sanity]). So maybe, be offline a little while and see what happens. The internet
will survive without you. Though of course, it can’t survive without
me for very long…

—-
1. The esteemed Ashleigh is a little bit younger than me, which I like
to use to mock her incessantly, saying things like “when I was your
age…” or telling her things from when I was in college are “before
her time”. And but so, “When I was your age…” has become a sort of
go-to thing for me when talking about the Distant Past. I’ll even say
it to people who are older than me, often to some befuddlement if they
know our relative ages. 2. Except, ironically, inside my own home. Because fuck you, AT&T and
your shitty coverage.

3. Zing!

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This is completely mystifying and more than a little bizarre, but for
some reason I am fascinated by it. Welcome to the weekend, children.
Almost.

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