Ids’ Rendage meeting minutes 012908: A Deistic Virtue Gym μ

Able blue with tilt chill-dot down μ

041887: Lord Ravenhurst interview minutes — If Styx Was Nine

Pungenday, Discord 35, Year of Our Lady of Discord 3153

Lord Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst: “I picked ‘5’ -- it wasn’t a coincidence that I picked 5, ‘cuz I talked to a guy in New Orleans about assassinating Kennedy, who at one point right in the conversation said five is a very important number. He was always telling me stuff he said I should remember... I wasn’t paying attention, I thought he was nuts... So anyway, just in case five was an important number, I worked it into the Discordian since I had a dogma...”
[...]
“‘17’ is about last-ditch reactionaries fighting a battle against the forces of evil against the forces of good...”
[...]
“‘9’ is society being driven forward by its contradictions.”
[...]
“And ‘23’ is people who are the gung-ho communists, like the communist party in China forty or fifty years ago...”
[...]
“That’s basically what I am, a ‘Nine-and-Five’ would be somebody who is middle-of-the-road, ... ambivalent about both capitalism and communism... [tape gibberish]”

[Various mentions of Hitler’s Werewolves, the European name ‘Switzer,’ ‘Oswald’ being a German Crusader name, and moving on from reading Marx/Lenin to Ayn Rand.]

And so went the interview upon a L5P grassy knoll on a warm Pungenday (not to be confused with Pungeon Day). Lots of entertaining red meat for numerology and conspiracy buffs, to be sure. But a peculiar thing was happening as this all transpired.
A man, madras-clad, passes by.
Of no notice.
But then, he again passes and subtle details surface: camera slung around neck, blank expression.
Minutes later he’s there again, at the edge of a crowd staring dead on at this brave clench who dares to confer with their interlocutee in a public place.
Gone.
The interview winds up as batteries wind down; magnetic media slows to a halt.
And there that stranger is again, amidst the passers-by, glaring.

Is paranoia a contagion or is it a buzz? Or is it both -- a contact high, seeking memes and meaningful patterns in everyday sensory input?

Who is this being?

May we fancy some idle speculation?

• Was this Charon of Styx, mistaking Eris for a mere mortal awaiting his Final Ride?

• Was this preppie android an MIB -- one of the notorious ‘Men in Black?’ (Perhaps with his fashion update he should be referred to as a RIP -- ‘Robot in Plaid.’)

• Perhaps it is an individual variation of Lord Ravenhurst’s ‘9’: the good lord, being driven by his own contradictions, projects an obverse isochronal simulacrum of himself -- the Anti-Thornley.

Let us entertain this notion. What do you think?

081387: Les transgressions obligatoires sont une règle d'art

Cervine roadkill, stuffed in an empty aquarium atop a metal stand in a long, empty gallery.
Cue strobe lights.
Cue live punk band.
Artist, take a bow at your cultivated sense of taste and aesthetic of the absurd. Everything’s a metaphor, right? Is this what Dad’s tuition money is going toward? Bet you’ve shown him.
The foetid stench and the rapid flickering of lights are disorienting the bass player.
Cue today’s lunch.

Temp Data Rend meeting minutes 010408: Dan Lurdan and the Wroth Comprador

“Get Off My Plane!” — Crossing the Line at 35,000 Feet

Baying madmen and the burden of 130 passengers’ safety -- the tale of a guy just trying to do the right thing.

On a quiet, run-of-the-mill 2-hour flight on a dusky September eve, Mr. Bixby jetted his way to a corporate conference for the sole purpose of stating the obvious in order to expedite routine business proposals. He sipped his tomato juice as he halfheartedly wandered through the New York Times crossword puzzle. His mind was impatient with getting no-brainer toil over with, along with the weighing thoughts of a certain flight instructor. Mundane anxieties and everyday hovering what-ifs seemed to force him to question every step of the past, present... and potential steps and missteps of a myriad of futures.

Mr. Bixby looked up, inhaled deeply through his nose and glanced around the cabin trying to clear his mind: ‘All these people, just trying to get from Point A to B... all with their own stories, dreams, et cetera, et cetera, no better nor worse off than me... yeah, deal with it.’

“A-dahr a khud qam kilo?”

“Pardon?”

“Bikam el kilo iziyahda?!”

‘Just my luck,’ Bixby thought to himself. ‘Always was a psycho-magnet.’ The gentleman next to him continued to sputter and gesticulate in some foreign tongue.
“Well... they’re probably serving chicken or fish, I would think...”

More responses in gibberish.

Any attempt to defuse the situation with platitudes seemed to agitate this fellow more, as if common sense took a back seat to immediate infantile needs. Oh, and he happened to be wearing this funny belt with these 8-inch cylindrical thingies attached. That, and a white hood on his head with some funny scribble on it.

At this point, Mr. Bixby had one of those epiphanies that appear all too clear, yet all too late.

Ms. Manners has emphasised that manners are the glue that hold society together. We turn the other cheek when we can, lest we stoop to vulgarian levels of behaviour.
But what do we consider ‘crossing the line?’
When someone’s actions threaten the safety and well-being of others. That, and seeing this raving bloke marching towards the cockpit.

It was at this point that Bixby’s superego had a ‘sit-down’ with his id.


RIPPING, FURIOUS, realised and justified anger flowed through Bixby, exploding the nightmare of Freudian introversion with Jungian self-regulation projected upon the whole -- in other words, the superego’s Big Picture took advantage of the id’s volatility. Bixby’s realisation became all too clear as he stumbled toward the cockpit, knowing something was amiss. The superego still had final say, framing the empowered individual in terms of actions that affected the whole.
Which is why Bixby, turning green with rage at the sudden insight of this crisis-in-the-making, spoke as Everyman... with every man’s potential courage actualised, bursting through the literal fabric upon our genteel anatomies: “Get off my plane!”

Brain-guided brawn lifted those robed threats, bullets ricocheting off verdant hide notwithstanding. With a determined jog down the aisle towards mid-fuselage and a cloaked saboteur slung over shoulder, Bixby-Actualised ripped open the hatch and flung the perpetrator into the stratosphere, twirling... screaming... into oblivion.

Ares Den Dig meeting minutes 010208: The Townie Ant