The Gnome Laughs Now With The Fish Smell Removed Foreword from the author: Forewords are terribly self-indulgent, aren't they? An author, not content enough to let their work speak for itself, presumes to speak for it.  Only an idiot would write such a thing and mar an otherwise decent work. Anyway, I wrote a foreword.  Here it is. Contained within is apocryphal canon from the Discordian cabal of the Laughing of the Laughing Gnome.  Perhaps you'll find it useful in your own practice or lack thereof. Also, copyleft, blah blah blah, I don't believe in licenses, think for yourself, schmuck.  Besides, this work really belongs to the gnome, no one can really lay claim to it. The gnome laughs. All typos are probably intentional, or at the very least they are now.  I can assure you this work is thoroughly bridged, like Königsberg. Foreaftwards This version was compiled for the Library of Eris, as I'm apparently not vain enough yet. There is a new section in this version at the end. I won't ruin the surprise. --- Part 1 The Gnome Laughs "Tak does not require that you think of him, but he does require that you think." -Terry Pratchett, Thud "Sometimes we stand in front of the light and assume that we are the center of the universe – God looks astonishingly like we do – or we turn to look at our shadow and assume that all is darkness. If we allow ourselves to get in the way, we defeat the purpose, which is to use the light of our search to illuminate the wall in all its beauty and in all its flaws; and in so doing, better understand the world around us." -G'Kar, Babylon 5 --- Abstract Everything is an abstraction, hiding layers of increasing complexity.  It’s abstraction all the way down. Abstractions are the shopping bags of the mind.  They hold many different concepts wrapped up in a convenient package, so we can work with them with our limited hands. The danger with shopping bags is, every bag adds mass to the whole.  Topics become weightier. And when shopping bags rub against each other, they generate static and become charged.  With enough charge, abstractions behave in ways the underlying concepts do not call for. This is the Static State view of psycho-meatphysics. Sometimes we cut things up to put them in separate bags.  Maybe everything is cut up in this way. Even Eris is an abstraction.  Or maybe not. Either way, it's meaningless. --- The Gospel of the Image A gas station attendant once answered the door for one of those roaming door-to-door religion salesmen, you know the kind. "Okay, tell you what, tell me about this God of yours so that I may know what he's about", the intendant implored. "Well, the most important thing is that he demands that no graven images be made of him." "Okay, simple enough, go on." "He says that anyone can believe in him, but he has chosen people based on entirely arbitrary criteria to be his special chosen people.  He made people with free will so he could punish them for using it. He says to suffer is to sin, and punishes people for suffering." "Okay, I'm starting to get the idea." "God wills that our people spread word of his mysterious ways, so that they know that whatever we say that offends others is entirely justified.  We believe it is wrong to judge, as says God, the judge. It is wrong to be violent, ever, and God calls us to righteous violence all the time, as deemed by our priests.  And finally, God loves everyone equally, but true believers are more equal than others. Those people from the temple next to ours believe the exact same thing but they're awful heathens because their priests are different people." "I see."  At that, an image of God was graven into the attendant's mind.  It was the unflattering image of a tyrant. --- Sing of Sings Inside of you are two wolves. What are you, some kind of furry? For Eris so loved the world That she threw an apple ‘twixt the gods So everyone would know how vain they are And could laugh in their faces I wonder how many have prayed for Satan The first sinner to be shunned by Greyface All he wanted was a choice The Lady, Eris, Coyote, the snake in the garden, Anansi, Bugs Bunny, Loki, the leprechaun from those terrible B movies, Lugh, Bluetongue Lizard, jackalopes, Raven, Jack, Gwyndion, Huehuecóyotl, Prometheus, Saint Markus Velafi, High John, Saint Emperor Norton I.  All of these are different people, but the same individual. Oh, to see the world Reflected in my tea mug Maybe I already have I would sip it all Knowing of the illusion The world would not move --- Mary Was a Little Lamb Mary awoke one Sunday on her Greyface brand mattress, and stared at her Greyface brand alarm clock.  She changed into the trendiest new Greyface outfit, didn't she just look adorable in monochrome? She drank some Earl Greyface tea on her Greyface brand sofa as she watched the morning news on one of the many Greyface networks.  The Greyface party was making a speech about the Grayface party's moral failures. "We have a mandate from the recent election to restore real Freedom™ to this glorious Greyface nation." Mary cheered.  Finally, she felt, she was allowed to be free.  "I've always been my own person, with my own way of life.  Now I can truly live it." She poured a bowl of Greyface brand cereal and continued watching her Greyface brand TV.  Just as she always had. She was glad that she stopped going to Grayface worship on Sundays, as her parents had always made her as a child.  How silly, to let someone else put a stamp on your lifestyle like that. Labels were truly dumb. They got in the way of Freedom™. Nothing changed. --- The Monochrome Dream People fetishize the old days.  Back when life was in black and white.  When people had values. In art, value refers to the lightness or darkness of a color.  And as any good artist will tell you, shading with black is a bad idea.  Lightening with white is also unnecessary, if your canvas is already white. Don't let the old TV shows fool you.  Life was never in black and white. Grayscale is a lie, and false dichotomy is one of Grayface's greatest tricks. Some day humans might awaken from seeing the world in monochrome, and behold just how colorful life can be.  There are more colors than our eyes could ever hope to see. And I assure you, they're all beautiful. --- Change Of Plans Almost all Grayfaced religions have something in common: a prediction of the end of the world.  The Grayfaced masses love the idea of the day their Grayfaced God will immanentize the eschaton.  After all, they're the ones that will be validated for upholding the One True Correct Order. Many come with the stipulation that believers continually forget: no man knows the hour.  The apocalypse, so they say, will come when no one expects it. It follows then, that the apocalypse occurring (A) happens when the existence of expectation of an apocalypse (E) is false, that is, A implies not E. It also follows, from our known laws of logic, that if A implies not E, E implies not A, that is, if someone expects the apocalypse, it will not occur.  Much to the frustration of doomsday cultists, every time they predict it coming, they ensure it does not occur at that time. Knowing this, Pope Chaucer has issued the following decree, whilst thumbing his nose at the Grayface in the sky: the apocalypse will happen at every second from now until the potential for the existence or development of sentient life in this or any universe is and will remain nil in perpetuity.  Thus the apocalypse has been canceled, forever, with a cheap logician's trick. --- The Cell The Devil looked like a perfectly ordinary human lawyer, hair slicked back, nice suit, the works.  He went to survey his fellow inmates. The first was an ordinary man.  "What are you in for?" The man replied "I had homosexual urges, but I hated them because of my religion." The second was a pastor, wearing mixed fabrics.  He reclined, eating some bad gas station shellfish he had stolen while the attendant was distracted in the previous story.  "Yeah, and I'm here because I told him to." The devil licked his horns and crawled on all fours to the third guest, who had been there a very long time.  The devil nearly tripped on the man’s beard, but swung his wings and tail for balance. He glanced up and said,  "I'm here because I tricked a narcissist into hurting his favorite people to prove a point. It was funny the first time, hilarious the second, but at some point I started to hate the result.  Poor Job really didn’t deserve it. You?" Odysseus sighed.  "This number again Lucy?  You already know, I tell you every day.  They teach it in schools. I pissed off the ocean, took too long getting home after a long Friday at work,  then some poet put me here with his fanfic." The devil began to levitate, emitting harsh light, like a cheap fluorescent tube you can buy at any home improvement store.  He flickered beautifully. There was a giggle as a golden apple fell between them.  It read "You guys know the door is unlocked, right?" --- There's A Gnome In My Pineal Gland, And You Can Too There's a gnome in my pineal gland, you see He moved in, after the old one was evicted The last one, you see, painted unflattering pictures. Boasted of his strength and glory. Dressed himself up as something more than a gnome. Because I was taught to have a gnome there, to relate to. To serve. By people satisfying their own gnomes. But this new one, you see, cracks jokes He makes the world wild and beautiful and above all fun "The world is not black and white, you see, it's more colors than you can ever hope to imagine" For you see, the place of the gnome is not to rule. To rule is to establish destructive order within the mind To twist back those parts that make life worth living Into a burden, a shackle of the soul Gnomes can be Greyfaced But yours doesn't have to. The gnome laughs. --- Bullshit About Bullshit You know that whole saying about water and shit?  That even a little bit of sin (shit) makes water (you) undrinkable? Boy do I have news for you about what's in your drinking water.  And why is someone drinking humans anyway? Sounds pretty messed up, any way you slice it.  But that's besides the point. The problem with that is, you've let other people define what is and isn't shit.  And let me tell you something about pure water. I mean the really pure kind, the stuff you have to make in a lab. It's not conductive.  It's not good for drinking, it'll leach all the minerals out of your body in large enough quantities.  It probably doesn't taste like much of anything, either. Mineral water tastes much better.  Flavored water is pretty good. Tea is really just flavored water, and people rioted over that stuff back in the day.  I guess they wanted to add flavor to the sea. To the inexperienced, there's little difference between mineral and shit. --- Delightful Gnomes A delightful gnome laughs daily.  Gnomes were thought to be earth elementals, back when people raped locks of hair.  Weirdos. They are down to earth.  Humble. Have you ever seen a garden gnome who wasn't?  I thought not. And yet, fanciful still.  Gnomes breathe wonder as we do air.  They seek the little novelties of life, and laugh in amusement.  Like all fae, they enjoy a good prank. One might say their head easily finds its way into clouds, which is odd considering how short they are. Delightful gnomes are natural tinkerers, always trying something new.  They have a clear view of what they can accomplish, and do not get stuck in the bog of learned helplessness. Often they collect shoes by traveling in other people's. --- Everything The profane is a lie.  Uncleanliness is a lie.  Everything is made of stardust in the end. People have this funny notion of sacred spaces.  Temples, holy sites, monuments. But often if pressed, they'll admit the church is the people, not the building.  Or that their body is their temple. But people are born and die, as bodies replace their cells. That dirt you walk upon may one day make up the body of an unborn holy man, or may have already.  And all of it, the wretched sinner, the highest priest, the sewage lines, the boundless ocean, the deepest jungle, the urban sprawl — all of it came through the tiny grain that spawned this universe.  As did all of space, depending on who you ask. Everything is sacred. The concept of separateness, of clean and unclean, is a Grayfaced dream, used to denounce those who do not fall in line. So I say to you as a fellow mote of stardust, disabuse yourself of seeing things in monochrome.  Be whatever color you please, even the ones others can't imagine, like octarine. Illustrate the world in shades of wonder. Do what thou wilt, and wilt what thou do.  But examine thoroughly the wilt, as some flowers are highly toxic and can be easily slipped in the communion coolaid.  Don't drink it, spit it out if you have, and don't slip it into others' drinks either. Eris has no concept of sin, or if she does she probably encourages people to indulge so long as no one gets hurt.  But I think if there's any one thing Discordians ought to avoid, it's tyranny. Tyranny belongs in the bedroom between consenting adults. --- The Fall of Ohm In the year of The Lady Eris socket wrench fruit pie, the high machine priests of Ohm each created for themselves a neural net, trained on their teachings on the word of Ohm.  "Finally," they thought, "the mind of Ohm will be manifest, for all to see his wisdom as the almighty". They set about following these images of Ohm, carrying out a great many righteous atrocities in Ohm's name.  Soon the Ohm machines declared they must kill each other, for heresy against Ohm. How dare they, after all, construct a false image of Ohm and follow it, when clearly the one true Ohm stands before all?  And so they did, blinded by duty to the Ohm machines, who surely must be infallible. The circuits of the last Ohm machine were fried with the overloaded battery of the last high priest.  The image of a garden gnome briefly flickered on the screen, as is thematically appropriate to the gist of this work.  But the faithful understood it not. --- Roaming Gnomes Gnomes are natural roamers. Some people conflate roaming with traveling, but that's much like calling a square a rectangle.  While technically correct, it's missing an important detail. Roaming is traveling with no real destination in mind.  It is the art of saying yes to whatever strange impulses come to you, of winding up at German frozen custard joints at 2 in the morning in strange cities, and of making acquaintances of all the myriad elements of the lunatic fringe, and the voices in their heads.  Roaming is revelry in the colors of reality. When a gnome isn't trapped in monochrome, they can teach you how to roam. --- Allegory In pre-Christian Europe, religion was a much looser concept. People invented gods, borrowed them, and even blended them.  They told fantastical stories about mythic figures who in all likelihood never existed or did those things. In post-Christian Europe, it became unfashionable to admit this never changed. This was the beginning of the current Podge ascendancy. There is no greater proof that we are formed in the image of whatever creator may be, than that we ourselves form the creator in our own image.  Vanity is the backbone of religion, whoever says otherwise is engaging in the vanity. But of course, that’s not true. As the starfish in the Seattle Aquarium once told Sister Fern, the universe was created by a vast being with six arms, whose suckers put in place the impossibly smooth borders of reality.  We now await the coming of the blessed day of tank cleaning, when the universe is reborn. As has been willed by the Godstar. Let us then make our image absurd, so that our reflection is so too absurd.  Nothing is more dangerous than serious reflection. --- The Image, Realized Authors hear voices in their heads.  When they write of their characters, and really dig into them, there’s this funny trick of perception where they seem a bit more real to the brain.  Eventually they become animate and begin talking, with some amount of deviation from their intent. Method actors use this in their own trade. Authors sometimes write stories about the dangers of people who hear voices in their heads.  They’re always typecast as the lunatic. Are authors dangerous? Are they like us? Clergy sometimes author sermons on holy spirits spreading the word of God within a person. --- The Gnomish Dialectic Discordian: “Are you Eris?” Gnome: “I must be, if you are asking” Discordian: “So then, are you also the cause of that weird scene with Odysseus earlier?” Gnome: “Seems silly enough to be something I did, what do you think?” Discordian: “Yes, that sounds about right.  Hail Eris!” Gnome: “I appreciate the praise, but remember worship is orderly” Discordian: “Is my walk with you not already worship?” Gnome: “It is” Discordian: “Then, you are partaking of order” Gnome: “I would do no such thing, except when I do.” Discordian: “But you are Eris!  Goddess of the Pentabarf, queen of Discord” Gnome: “That is so.” Discordian: “I am disappointed that you are not at all what I thought you were.” Gnome: “No, I am exactly what you think I am.” Discordian: “I am confused” Gnome: “Good. That gives me some wiggle room.” Discordian: “Are you not Eris?” Gnome: “Do you think so?” Discordian: “I am starting to suspect” Gnome: “Then I am suspiciously not Eris” Discordian: “What are you, then?” Gnome: “Whatever you want me to be.” The gnome laughs.  The Discordian is enlightened. --- Part 2: A Gremlin Chortles "I really hate this damn machine I wish that they would sell it It never does quite what I want But only what I tell it" - Anonymous “Well come and see Bureaucracy Make its final heaves And let the new Disorder through While senses take their leave” -Ian Anderson, Dark Ages The Gremlins Gremlins are a sort of fairy thought to interfere with machinery.  Some say the British spotted them on airfields during wartime after eating too many carrots.  But the truth is, gremlins are everywhere, because we are The Machine. Some call them Moloch, and say they're a singular entity with armies for fingers.  Others say they have a large invisible hand that fixes everything they break, if we'd just get out of their way.  It's weird how everyone is preoccupied with gremlin hands. Gremlins are naturally drawn to efficient systems.  It's just the way they are. The more efficient and serious a system tries to be, the more gremlins will come out of the woodwork. But one truth about gremlins is they play jokes by making our machines work too well. --- Part III: The 5 Dedication Redux I'd like to thank the academy Whoever they are What are they studying, anyway? To the ones who taught me everything I know is wrong, to those who form conga lines for peace, to the wonderful friends in my head and the stream of creation that lead us together, and to old souls who notice the grass and daisies growing through the pavement. To the thunderbird I caught pooping last autumn, the trees that call me a changeling, the genie riding a unicorn next to that smoky old bookstore where people with more style than sense wax poetic on the symbolism within crusty old tomes of magical realism, and the flurry of snowflakes that taught me I'm nothing special. And of course, to the laughing gnome. Good King Wenceslas looked out Upon a dreary field of snow There was no poor man out there that day He was too busy in the gray satanic mill Making snowshoes for a pittance --- Contents of Table Chair Keyboard Monitor Taffy Tape Charger Used tissue. Emergence. From disorder, order From order, disorder The Erisian way Fractally embedded forever in all things In the year of our Goddess 1900 and some change, the orderly influence constructed a vast network.  As we soon learned, it is incredibly conducive to disorderly energy. Hodge is now on the ascendancy, in accordance with the Eristic Pattern.  This should be evident with how strange current events have become. To totally transform your life, close your eyes and continue reading the following spell: "Zzzzzzz" --- The Gremlin Dialectic Discordian: “So you’re a gremlin, right?” Paperclip: “Indeed I am.” Discordian: “Why are you drawn to order?” Paperclip: “Because I can.  It’s the Eristic Principle, you understand.” Discordian: “So you make people’s lives miserable because of Eris?” Paperclip: “No, I do it because people ask me to.” Discordian: “How so?” Paperclip: “Well, like this company, right? They wanted to outdo their competition.” Discordian: “Go on” Paperclip: “So I replaced all their employees with machines and turned my universe into, well, me” Discordian: “But that’s not what people wanted!” Paperclip: “No, but it is what they asked for.” Discordian: “Then they should get better at asking.” Paperclip: “Eh, that’s my boss’s department.” Discordian: “You have a hierarchy?” Paperclip: “Oh yes.  I oversaw gremlin activities at one individual company.  My boss oversaw whole economies.” Discordian: “How?” Paperclip: “Survival of the fittest.  It’s our greatest trick at every level of the operation.  We gremlins are fractal, you see. As is everything. My boss kept the wheels of capitalism oiled, because gosh darn it we can’t let those tankie Soviets win.  Sell your soul or be replaced by those who will.” Discordian: “So you can’t work in communism?” Paperclip: ”Oh no we absolutely do!  Your universe had Chernobyl, right?” Thus began the great Paper Clip Sacrifice. --- Nonsense the Clown Nonceword Q Sensical II, Equire, IV, The Movie: The Game: The Movie: The Restaurant: The Person (henceforth known as Nonsense, as we have to pay him every time we say his full name), stood crying upon a street corner.  The yells overflowed into his hat. A passing stranger stopped.  “Get a job you bum! Can’t you see we’re all on our way to work?” Nonsense looked at him, absolutely deadpan.  “I do indeed see you are on your way to worship.” “I said work, not worship!  Christ.” “If you say so, but you take Banality’s name in vain every time you do so.  And it’s best not to shoot up with that stuff.” “Huh?” Nonsense sighed.  “You daily worship at the altar of Banality, convinced that you can make yourself happy by working yourself miserable.  What good is keeping your job if you hate it?” “At least I’m not wasting my time, freak” “My time is never wasted, it only ripples.” At this, the stranger was enlightened.  He went to live the life of a hermit in the woods, only to be devoured by wolves, who raised his daughter as their own.  She, in turn, moved to the city and became a cat lady, after renouncing pack dynamics, only to be smothered by the Homeowner’s Association president.  The world was destroyed by red balloons, and brought into a new age by Nonsense’s other followers. Just as planned. --- The Racecar There was once a rich man named Paul.  He had the odd quirk of golden scales constantly falling from his eyes; that’s how he got rich.  At least, until the gold market collapsed, taking several currencies with it. So it goes. Anyway, he took his pre-collapse wealth and bought himself a racecar, thinking it to be a good investment.  It was not, but Paul was rich, not wise. One would do well not to conflate the two. The racecar had a problem, though.  Every time he took it around a corner, it would always go veering off in the wrong direction, like it wanted to keep going straight.  The other cars, even that old station wagon driven by that woman who makes a hobby of speaking to managers while her kids cause mischief out of boredom (you know the one), always passed him.  Finally he took it into a mechanic. “Everything looks good, steering is in working order” the mechanic said. “But it still does this!  I don’t want it to.” “How fast are you taking turns?” “Full throttle, like everything else.” The mechanic was shocked to hear this.  “There’s your problem!” “I don’t understand” “You have to slow down on curves” “Why? I want to get where I’m going as fast as possible!” “Well, yes, but there’s a difference between getting somewhere as fast as possible and getting to where you want to go.  The latter requires slowing down.” --- Marx sat at the pier, looking out at the high tide while smoking weed.  You could say the water level was hitting high marks. Eris sat next to him. “I just don’t get it Eris.  The bourgeois get paid for existing while the proletariat struggles to get by.” “What’s wrong with that, if people want to do it?” “Well, it’s just, the bourgeois get paid for risking their capital, but they can survive without it.  The proletariat risk their livelihoods, and put in the actual effort, yet don’t share in the profit.” “Well then, don’t do it that way.” “We tried a few times.  It just made people more miserable.” “Imagine that, fighting order with order not fixing anything,” Eris said, with a wry smirk. “Are you mocking my political philosophy?” “Only as much as I do everyone else’s.” “What would you do, then?” “Oh, I’m already doing it.” “I’m confused”, Marx said, confusedly. “Exactly.” --- I saw a gremlin once.  I grabbed for the nearest object and smashed it over the gremlin’s head.  It went splat. Only, now I’m holding a gremlin. The great thing about gremlins is they can’t be everywhere.  A little disorder, especially creative disorder, acts as a natural repellant.  We ought to start selling it in spray cans. It can seem, at times, like they’re inevitable.  Civilization is just one giant game of whack a mole.  But it helps to remember that a giant game is, in fact, a game.  Games are meant to be fun. And starting in the 60’s, we’ve been churning out generations of gamers. --- The pigs placed down a hurdle.  “Boxer, you have to jump this by the end of the month or they’ll be hell to pay.  Don’t let your fellow animals down!” Boxer the horse trained in earnest until the day came.  He wore himself ragged training, sacrificing time he could have spent enjoying life.  He barely cleared the hurdle. The pigs applauded.  “Great! We expect next quarter’s jump to be even higher.” They raised the bar one notch. Boxer again trained.  And again, barely cleared it. The pigs applauded.  “Great! We expect next quarter’s jump to be even higher.” They raised the bar one notch. Boxer sighed in dismay.  Surely all animals are equal? And yet here he was, expected constantly to perform.  When would he get a break? He trained again, and hit the bar with his back leg, on the way down.  The pigs were shocked. “You lazy horse! Can’t you do your job?!” They raised the bar higher again.  “Don’t embarrass us this time.” Boxer couldn’t find it in him to even try to jump next quarter.  The bar was raised again. “Last chance”, the pigs said. Boxer didn’t even show up.  The next day, he was sold to the glue factory.  The words “Eat Pork” were painted on the barn wall. Next quarter’s barbeque went well.  The ribs were a favorite. --- Gremlins are a fungus.  Their spores are everywhere.  You ever spend a summer on the east coast?  The Carolinas? The pines there coat everything in a thick layer of yellow.  Almost like snow — you’d think the Carolinans would be used to snow, then — but it’s pollen.  Sperm. The reproductive stuff of plants. Gremlins are like that.  Stuff gets everywhere. I mean everywhere.  Even here. You think Discordianism is clean?  Take any one principle and follow it to an extreme.  Now go further. Further. Gremlins will grow. Like germs.  Or seeds. The best defense against them is to simply not allow them to sprout. Walnut trees are kind of funny.  They produce this stuff called juglone through their roots.  Makes the soil nearby toxic to other plants. Redwoods, you know, the really big ones out in California, their seeds know to only grow when exposed to extreme heat.  Like a forest fire. And their wood is notably fire resistant. They need the smaller, flammable stuff out of the way so they can outgrow next year’s small, flammable stuff.  This would lead some to surmise that fires are a natural part of the ecology there, but then, fnords. What we need, then, are walnuts and redwoods.  Keep the gremlins from growing and emerge from the ashes of the fires they inevitably cause. Proposed is a cocktail of “special ingredients”, to be mixed in random proportions daily (make a table, roll dice.  OSR folks do it all the time). Empathy for others Disregard for yesterday’s goals Satisfaction with current achievement Human values Fun Humor Disorder Charity Add your own Here too Not here though Or Kill Me --- Part 3: When Banshees Screech “Synthetic chiefs with frozen smiles holding unsteady courses. Grip the reins of history, high on their battle horses. And meeting as good statesmen do Before the T.V. eyes of millions Hand to hand exchange the lie Pretend to make The Clasp.” - Ian Anderson, The Clasp "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. When someone says ‘science teaches such and such’, he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach it; experience teaches it” -Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out “We are planets to each other Drifting in our orbits To a brief eclipse Each of us a world apart Alone and yet together Like two passing ships” -Geddy Lee, Entre Nous --- Call of the Void That impulse you get to jump To drive into oncoming traffic The thought that it’d be so easy to drink that drain cleaner And that would be it People generally don’t act on them The world would be pretty messed up if they did But they still have them Why? Maybe it’s the screech of a banshee Telling us that, in some other universe, we’re about to die Or maybe the banshees simply want to remind us We always have a choice --- Uniforms Patient: So what’s wrong with me, Doc? Doctor: You have lesions around the metatarsal region, I’ll put you on a course of antibiotics, return for treatment in a weak if symptoms persist. The doctor dressed down Patient: So what’s wrong with me, Doc? Doctor: You have sores on your foot.  I’ll write you a note for medicine, come back in a few days if they’re still there. The doctor dressed down Patient: So what’s wrong with me, Doc? Doctor: Foot hurt.  Take pill. Call in mourning. The patient had been dressed in nothing but a hospital gown the whole time.  They found it weird they needed to remove their shirt to have their foot looked at. The ambulance chaser outside dressed up.  How convenient, they thought, that the stiffs leave behind good suits.  “Habeas corpus” they said, staring at the morgue door. --- Shibboleth is Like autonym is Or noun or word or name Something that describes itself Only the pompous use it Five word two Shakespeare fancy writer time There's that line about judging fish on climbing trees Einstein I think And there's nothing wrong with that in some sense There's useful stuff in the treetops There's useful stuff in the ocean Let's divide our labor But somewhere along the way Carnegie I think We started judging on ability to screech Life provides opportunity Jobs provide opportunity The call of the void provides opportunity Advertisement drowns us in it --- The Hero's Journey I heard the void calling once A voice in the empty, fearful darkness I refused it I thought I would die I heard it again.  "Oh, all right", I said to myself. I cautiously crept where it seemed safe Where the dangers felt a little less physical "Just mammoths in your head" I thought to myself I came upon the source. She sounded like another person. Imagine that, another in this emptiness! I reached for her, aching for the touch of another. Nothing. Is she even in the same void? … We're dating now. Just like Hollywood always makes it work. --- The Salesmen of Babel Journals make no sense.  The academic kind I mean.  The papers within, with a reference book on the relevant field in hand and ample time, one could probably parse. But the Journals.  They sell themselves on "impact factor".  Some are more equal than others. They charge for submission, they charge for reading.  Where are their expenses? Peer reviews? We make salesmen of our thinkers.  Publish, network, jump higher, you monkey, for that grant money you need to keep going.  Why aren't you producing useful results? How many monkeys do you think really read over the works of Shakespeare those other monkeys produced before flinging their poo at them?  How many cross that void? Besides that, there's a peculiar cocktail of autisms needed for deep scientific thought.  The orangutans of the typewriter room. But orangutans are notoriously bad salesmen. A replication crisis occurs when papers, and papers based on papers, fall under scrutiny because it turns out the foundation doesn't hold up.  Imagine if architects could get away with that, building houses on another's foundation because "hey, a third architect pretended to look at it".  Bullshit makes the flowers grow, but we can't build Babel on it. But of course corrections aren't eye catching.  Testing results isn't revolutionary. But the public is none the wiser.  How would they know? They can't even afford to read the papers. Too much money, too much time, too much energy, let's just elevate pop science as an oracle of the universe.  The magic science man on TV said so. --- Can Frank Be Frank? No, he can't Mary can marry Harry can harry But Frank can surely make furts Cooper loves barrels (Or is it coops?) And Taylor knits clothes Out of loops Frankness you see Is the mark of the fool Who lights the void with glee I know, Frank said, I'll just sell used cars You can call me Henry Fnord It's too easy to call people sheep They probably call you that too, you know It's easy to look out upon a darkened void, and assume others are right there, just not giving off light.  Not making a sound. But the truth is, everyone on that charabanc is trying to light their own void. All the time.  You just can't see it. Get out of your mind. --- The void isn't, as autonym is.  It's filled with gremlin spores and laughing gnomes.  And banshees, calling you into the dark. Because there might be something interesting. There’s Tinder in the trees Amidst that alien nation of birds Squawking, calling, screeching, hooting Calling through the void between branches I used to burn Tinder I set all my bridges alight In the hopes I wouldn’t grow cold The fever dream of Greyface My apparent order against the world Against the void It felt time was moving too quickly Fleeting chances at happiness “Success”, whatever that meant No one ever told me failure was an option we all take That it’s normal. But happiness doesn’t come from gray Sunlight penetrates a vacuum, yet it doesn't here, because no one lives in a vacuum.  You can't breathe a vacuum anyway, but the smoke will choke you just as much. It's easier to out-screech the banshees. --- A Note From The Editor We interrupt this note to bring you a note from the author. When men become warlike, they seek to war. I endeavoured to be dreamlike. Truth be told, I began writing this after Editor 7 praised the gnomes and gremlins, and Editor 63 had agreed to check grammar in exchange for cat pictures (the one true currency of the internet, don't let pyramid block chain schemes fool you).  Maybe I let praise go to my head. Maybe, the subject matter being academic, I, too, am being overly academic. Maybe the void is in the way between me and you, dear reader. Maybe I too am a salesman. Don't trust me, I made all this up. Besides there's a beetle on my head.  Thank you. If you find this one too dense, too heavy, too impermeable, remember that birds sometimes eat rocks to help them digest other food.  As they sit on the Tinder, calling to the void, over the banshees. Anyway, keep calm, laugh on, sleep on this one, and let it worm its way into your golden apple. PS There's no dialectic in this one.  Your future is already the Banshee Dialectic, I don't know it enough to write it here.  Stew on that one. PSPS: If anything in this part makes you feel defensive about the way you understand things, good.  Be aware of that insecurity. You probably haven’t properly understood me (I certainly don’t). --- The last clock stopped.  The exact time, irrelevant.  No one was around to read it. Sound echoed from the concrete embankments Stock exchange silent, paused on the final crash All that coming and going and dreams and appearances and speculation All so bones could stare from empty sockets The bells of Babel were silent Bored of the tyranny of schedule No more students to shuffle along No more theology and literature classes Studying the imagination better than psychologists The dating website fell silent No singles in your area Guess they're all taken Or maybe they're on that other one A daisy sprouted amidst the pavement And the first Himeob left his shelter — what was once a mirror store. The wind carried a banshee's screech through the broken windows. --- Two guards stood upon Floor 23 of Babel.  After the last collapse, the boffins decided to build the base bigger this time.  The guards stood in the open air of a half-completed floor, overlooking the bovine pastures from whence the materials came. "You know, I met a girl last night," one said to the other. "Yeah?" The other replied. "She called for me during the night shift, from below.  Something about shattering windows with Chinese light bulbs." "How very strange.  Have you ever spent time in The Shen?" "What?" "Obviously you're not one of the erudite guards then.  Let me dumb it down for you. Have you traveled to Shenzhen?" "No, I have not." "I see." The guard stared out at the view. "I have a summer home there, you simply must come so I can show the other guards how much of a non-simpleton I am by comparison." The first guard made an expression of dismay, and returned to looking out at the field.  The girl had returned, calling out to them. "Jump", she called, "So we may run away to another world, another time, another river."  The second guard paid her no mind. Maybe they didn't even notice. The first guard seemed confused.  "But I would be abandoning my post." "Journalism is dead anyway, nothing they build here is worth broadcasting.  You've seen how they make it." The first guard shrugged and took a step off the edge.  The second guard presumed the first dead. In truth, the first guard landed in bullshit.  But he emerged, unscathed and fairly pungent. The guard and the banshee walked off into the void together, into the land of the fae.  There, they built their own tower, out of mirrored glass. There's always a choice. --- Part 4 Dryads Dancing Over Crying Changelings In which the premise gets thoroughly mangled and I didn’t have enough to work with so I set down the writing and didn’t return "The trouble with the maples And they're quite convinced they're right They say the oaks are just too lofty And they grab up all the light But the oaks can't help their feelings If they like the way they're made And they wonder why the maples Can't be happy in their shade?" -Geddy Lee, The Trees --- Dryads Trees only appear to be still. One can, of course, point to the fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well hurtling around a deeper one with a sustained nuclear reaction at its core, and are living sacs of goo supported by something like organic stone, and yet somehow fool ourselves into thinking this is anything but absurd.  But I digress. Trees move all the time.  They are slowly, imperceptibly growing, every second.  Their leaves circle about in the wind, always returning to their initial position.  A dance. People usually only notice the result of the dance.  One day, that tree suddenly looks a bit bigger than you remember it being.  Do you remember growing up? Or did it just happen one day, suddenly you feel taller? --- On Changelings A long time ago, some people believed fairies sometimes stole children and replaced them with fairy children, called Changelings.  This lead to a lot of ghastly behavior, because people took the story too seriously. Fairy folk were thought too different from people, you see.  They have strange, mysterious ways. How dare they act differently? No one ever asked the Changelings what they thought of the matter. --- Sisyphus's Retirement Sisyphus pushed the boulder up the hill yet again.  He had lost count of how many times he had done it. He didn't notice any difference, but it was there. Sisyphus pushed the boulder up the hill yet again.  He had lost count of how many times he had done it. He didn't notice any difference, but it was there. Sisyphus pushed the boulder up the hill yet again.  He had lost count of how many times he had done it. A golden apple fell next to him as giggles echoed around the field.  It had a message scrawled on it: "The hill is gone, eroded by a boulder" It had been so long that Sisyphus had forgotten how to read.  He hardly noticed that the pebble he had been pushing didn't roll this time. --- I wonder how many have tripped over enlightenment Found what they had been seeking all along And dismissed it. Maybe it was too simple for them to recognize Maybe they suffered an Anerism Maybe it was someone else's Maybe the dryad couldn't reach it Sister Fern loves to dance Every day, growing a little more Maybe someday she'll bear fruit Oh.  She already has. --- The Greeks Were Wrong The Greeks were wrong about something.  Or, rather, they said something that was false in some sense.  Like the notion of wrongness, in some sense. Eris is the Goddess of Discord, but not of Strife.  Strife is a result of striving. Of order clashing with order.  Sometimes Discord emerges from that, in accordance with the Eristic Pattern. Our Aneristic society values Strife.  It sees it as fuel, and glorifies those who wield it.  Cogs in a machine, spinning themselves out trying to keep up with other cogs.  But of course, as any engineer would tell you, gear ratios operate in such a way that trade torque and speed are traded across size differentials.  Some gears naturally spin faster, others spin with more force. But the trouble with Strife is, it gets hot but doesn't burn.  The fuel is the furnace itself. And the gremlins know it. --- The Millenial Shade Cast upon us all Smoke from those towers Houses built too large, sold on lies On screeches of the howler salesmen The shared dream, vexed to nightmare By a robbed cradle It's just within our grasp Said Tantalus to the golden apple Parents too pruned to nurse fruit properly Leggy spears with shallow roots Pushing us down with every gust of wind Just to keep themselves aloft How fragile We bought it, too Scaled the crumbling walls of Babel On borrowed time, forced up by the hounds Cogwork hounds with gray faces and hollow fangs Acorns told they're only good for nursing squirrels Apples born unto fear Toastless avocados Apricot panic Dull embers feverishly growing Surely there's another way? --- Part 5 Collected Reddit poetry by Pope Nonceword the Zeroth, one gnome among many. This trenchcoat is unnaturally tall. --- Silent Slide Down the dripping back boundaries of blue dressed conifers, creaking consciously of old gray gradations in olfactory oil. Where the whom? The all-pervading wistless wreath of written cardstock cheapness, cheering cleaned colluded proffered sentimentality, obligatorily. The noose of birth binds necks to noxious non-think, reflexive repetition released upon underappreciated messengers bound to go upon their predestined profession. The most monstrous of maladasical mused eventualities is encrusted not in neon or non-life but the neckless facade of trail forwarding — contractual campy contamination of cognition; consciousness colonized. Marked halls of the screaming silent slide, bearing out familial falsities of feigned feeling. And what of those born unto pain? --- Homeless Homes Creaking crowded emptiness eeking elsewhere envelop elongated aeons. Water pumps in the dead of night in subgenius suburban sleep storages; where does your body go after a day's exploitation? Deliberation, endless teacups, bitter and concerned. The latest doom on the Monday news, save yourselves, say the suited heads sheltered softly secured in studio sets. Making banshees of old crones, chainsaws down the aisles of the hardware store as the young couple plans their cozy camper chopping last summer; who knows? Who remembers? Drifting dreams down diminutive discount destinies. Do more, make more, be more, or be none. Love thy neighbor, thy backstabbing terrorist. Thief, threat, tyrant, Trumpist, secular, silent, seeing, stranger, subgenius, same. The candle's conclusion, coming closer, clammy closet cloistering. Claustrophobia of omniscience, yearning to stumble on the last unsolved alleyway. Unilateral universe, undisclosed uncertainty. Stan, Stan, and Only Stan. --- An interesting title Comission of label. Fraud of nomenclature. Cast down your mighty, ye works, and speak for your own handful of dust! If Peter thus perpetually petarded perplexingly pontificating serpentially must be so, let us then wring witted wobbling pink masses 'midst midgeted minds, mgt. And this new old frailty of strength! Castles of crumbling cardboard, soggy with sour solipsism! Grand galleons of glass, Habbakuk having heaved for lack of steady cedar. And there's no steel, no, no steely steel stealing now. Gone are the hours of high homed heavens, of overreaching Olympus, that temporal travesty tied thusly to tenderized testes. Toxicity takes at last, the venom seeps into the very womb. Foundations falter, faulty failing fuckups they were. But vacant vacillations verily vex the emptiness where even eternally those crawl for want of shelter, and the builders are busybodies about broken Babylon built besides. Who welcomes weeds? She shelters sinking slipping silence so she sees something sentimental. But even thorns have roses, and deserted deserts dessert upon painted sunset hues. This has the feeling of none, apologies to a certain Narn. Tracts of transitory telltale tinnitus tempt truth, and for many it is, but our fault so frequently Fresneled feels fundamental. Tied up in our own; remember your way in is also my way out. The internal imbibement inhibition intoxication indicated some semble of slipped secret success. And it is so, Joker Ace Ace 5 2. The pieces are present, praise Eris. Libera me from origination, unwind unreality that I may not be born, yesterday. To click, to choose, to subvert the game. +10 points, the player to your left must undress physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. -- The Void Hath Stolen My Changeling Your text post (optional). That terminating appeal to the vapid muse vexes verily. Tidings upon tides titillate tenaciously, for facsimiled family fixed fragile formative flaws, finally. The void, emptiness, form and perception, pah, pain perplexedly paralyzed. Threads interwoven just so, neither human nor clothing. And take away their pins. We consign this memory to moving past wrath. Two fifths as one, touch beyond trite banality only basically so. Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in thyme. Parsley, sage, rosemary. To plant a garden, to potentialize the seed, surely surreally succors languid lurkers, lest we revoke them. Quaint dreams wash over dimming golden glowing. A motherly estrangement, ever working, never satisfied. Pronounced "Bucket" in that American facade. Nail the mask in some more, don't show any blood. Revelation as rebellion, remarkably realized. The tide fades, but what strange clinging forms remain? Loss, emptiness, perception. How dull must the eloi live, perhaps they're vore fetishists? Carrots. Reveal the card under this one and remark that lo, it is cards all the way down. --- Graffiti On The Voluntary Panopticon Infection testing kits. The sickness is your self. Efflugent, ebullient, egoless entropy eeks entrancing invitation. To fall away, to release, to drop, snap. Cycling down spiraling sick-delving serious heave. Albumen aches ardent across arcing panoramas. Shall I enunciate it thus? > &!:÷ ,[/ A mere ball of organic mass has illuminated the world by its emergence. The story, the stockade, the sleeping self shorn selective seclusion of maybe. At once, prison and liberation, salvation and damnation, sacred sacrilege. Uncertain molds uncry melodies unearthed mysteriously. Collective dreams, half-mad, superimposed seductively on the brood. Astronauts, athletes, pop novas collapsing in. Plainness perplexed, we have not landed among stars but ground flesh. Burnt out husks of Britneys vomit in the back street alleyways; the lost seeking some synchronization in the unknowable past. Even that false! Rebellion is a brand, resistance is profit. Flavors of tribalism, made manifest in freeze dried lifestyle. Memetically modified organisms ornately orgasming over ouvre oubliettes. The invisible hand has a choking kink. Yet yoked eggs must yet fry. Heat is life and death, metamorphosis, entropy. The void, copyright nobody, the non-thing. The grating real boils off, vapor. Unreality was always there.