Member of the NEW TRAJECTORIES WEBRING
From Chasing Eris
After we finish eating and pay, we travel to a store to buy drinks before heading down to a famous rock structure at the end of the beach, a Rio landmark known as Pedra do Arpoador. Fernanda has somewhere to be, so she bids us goodbye. It is getting late. Marcelo buys two apples with the intention of offering up each as a devotion to his two Goddesses. He finds one yellowish in colour for Eris and a nicer looking one for Aphrodite.
We climb the rock. There is no kind of safety barrier here, so if you fall it’s going to be painful at best. We are carrying drinks in low quality plastic bags, cautiously stepping up the rock in the limited evening light. We sit. The humid night air is punctuated by cool breeze. In the distance we can see the lights shine out from a favela.
There are metal rings nailed securely into the rock at the very top.
“What are these for?” I ask.
“This is where they chain up the strippers,” Maldonado tells me.
“Strippers?” says Marcelo.
“The police have to come up here every night and chain the strippers to the rock,” Maldonado tells us. “Every night a giant eagle swoops down and eats them. In the morning they come up and there’s nothing but arms. The police then take the arms away so nobody sees them.”
Marcelo is staring out into the sea. The ocean is the domain of Aphrodite. He speaks about the duality of the solid rock coming in contact with the fluid ocean, of the deepness of the night and of the water.
“The ocean is deep and uncontrollable and vast like emotion,” he says. “You can’t control your emotion, but you can direct it. Like a sailboat.” The ocean is tied to love for him, to Aphrodite.
“But, I will ask nothing of love from Eris,” he adds. “Because she is a bitch.”
I chat with Mistre for a moment. Someone passes me a bottle of alcohol. I drink from it and pass it along. Mistre is telling me that he likes to connect with people on a deeper level. He is frustrated by small talk and conversations about nothing. He wants to talk about big things, ask big important questions like, ‘What are you afraid of?’ Marcelo tells us he likes to have big conversations about small things.
Marcelo closes his eyes, visualizing. “I am seeing something,” he says. “A white rabbit on white snow. Does anyone have Internet connection here? Can someone check if this is connected to Aphrodite?”
I google it. Chaos Magicians, unlike many other mystical traditions, have a tendency to embrace technology. My search confirms it. The rabbit is a symbol of Aphrodite.
I’m not sure how Marcelo performed his devotion to Aphrodite, but we’re left with the one apple to offer to Eris in devotion. Our company stands and begins to descend down the rock to discuss the matter.
“You can make art from material,” says Marcelo as we descend. “You can make art from perception. Maybe art and magic are manifestations of the same thing that we don’t have a name for.”
When we reach the rocks below, we stand and look over the ocean. Julia (who is not named Julia yet) tells us that he has sometimes used Julia as a pseudonym. Our company had earlier discussed the Fenderson family (a Thornley concept: the Fendersons are a family one can be connected to just by having the Fenderson surname attached, even against their will), and these two things seem to collide elegantly. We quickly come to the agreement that Julia Fenderson is the right Holy Name for our shaggy haired companion.
Marcelo, meanwhile, is imploring everyone to not even consider hurling the devotional apple into the ocean. It’s pretty clear from the tale of the Original Snub that Eris and Aphrodite do not get along well, and this is his love life we’re talking about, which he would rather not resemble the Trojan war.
Julia, in the end is the most compelling with his suggestion. He wants to recreate the Original Snub by writing Kallisti on the apple, approaching some beautiful girls and telling them it’s a present for the prettiest; if they can agree amongst themselves who the prettiest is.
The progress from here resembles a series of stops and starts, walking a way down the boardwalk before stopping suddenly to discuss the matter, passionate rapid discussion in Portuguese, then continuing. There are disagreements of all sorts. This continues for something like an hour. Kaos Vortek has on him what I’m later told is an authentic Soviet gasmask he bought at a flea market earlier that day. He wears it for some time as we continue down the boardwalk. Eventually, after another passionate debate, we head towards the city of Rio, up and down streets until we get to a club.
Rajiphun Maldonado and Mistre take the apple, with kallisti scrawled across it in pen in to the club. They are gone barely a few minutes before coming back out with goofy grins on their faces.
“We just got trolled by Eris,” says Mistre. They had offered the apple with the attached conditions to a group of three girls. They had agreed, turned around to discuss, and thirty seconds later two of them pointed to the other and said, “We think she’s the prettiest.”
The pair gave over the apple.
All the Discord that had been created by the ritual was amongst the Discordians.
We climb the rock. There is no kind of safety barrier here, so if you fall it’s going to be painful at best. We are carrying drinks in low quality plastic bags, cautiously stepping up the rock in the limited evening light. We sit. The humid night air is punctuated by cool breeze. In the distance we can see the lights shine out from a favela.
There are metal rings nailed securely into the rock at the very top.
“What are these for?” I ask.
“This is where they chain up the strippers,” Maldonado tells me.
“Strippers?” says Marcelo.
“The police have to come up here every night and chain the strippers to the rock,” Maldonado tells us. “Every night a giant eagle swoops down and eats them. In the morning they come up and there’s nothing but arms. The police then take the arms away so nobody sees them.”
Marcelo is staring out into the sea. The ocean is the domain of Aphrodite. He speaks about the duality of the solid rock coming in contact with the fluid ocean, of the deepness of the night and of the water.
“The ocean is deep and uncontrollable and vast like emotion,” he says. “You can’t control your emotion, but you can direct it. Like a sailboat.” The ocean is tied to love for him, to Aphrodite.
“But, I will ask nothing of love from Eris,” he adds. “Because she is a bitch.”
I chat with Mistre for a moment. Someone passes me a bottle of alcohol. I drink from it and pass it along. Mistre is telling me that he likes to connect with people on a deeper level. He is frustrated by small talk and conversations about nothing. He wants to talk about big things, ask big important questions like, ‘What are you afraid of?’ Marcelo tells us he likes to have big conversations about small things.
Marcelo closes his eyes, visualizing. “I am seeing something,” he says. “A white rabbit on white snow. Does anyone have Internet connection here? Can someone check if this is connected to Aphrodite?”
I google it. Chaos Magicians, unlike many other mystical traditions, have a tendency to embrace technology. My search confirms it. The rabbit is a symbol of Aphrodite.
I’m not sure how Marcelo performed his devotion to Aphrodite, but we’re left with the one apple to offer to Eris in devotion. Our company stands and begins to descend down the rock to discuss the matter.
“You can make art from material,” says Marcelo as we descend. “You can make art from perception. Maybe art and magic are manifestations of the same thing that we don’t have a name for.”
When we reach the rocks below, we stand and look over the ocean. Julia (who is not named Julia yet) tells us that he has sometimes used Julia as a pseudonym. Our company had earlier discussed the Fenderson family (a Thornley concept: the Fendersons are a family one can be connected to just by having the Fenderson surname attached, even against their will), and these two things seem to collide elegantly. We quickly come to the agreement that Julia Fenderson is the right Holy Name for our shaggy haired companion.
Marcelo, meanwhile, is imploring everyone to not even consider hurling the devotional apple into the ocean. It’s pretty clear from the tale of the Original Snub that Eris and Aphrodite do not get along well, and this is his love life we’re talking about, which he would rather not resemble the Trojan war.
Julia, in the end is the most compelling with his suggestion. He wants to recreate the Original Snub by writing Kallisti on the apple, approaching some beautiful girls and telling them it’s a present for the prettiest; if they can agree amongst themselves who the prettiest is.
The progress from here resembles a series of stops and starts, walking a way down the boardwalk before stopping suddenly to discuss the matter, passionate rapid discussion in Portuguese, then continuing. There are disagreements of all sorts. This continues for something like an hour. Kaos Vortek has on him what I’m later told is an authentic Soviet gasmask he bought at a flea market earlier that day. He wears it for some time as we continue down the boardwalk. Eventually, after another passionate debate, we head towards the city of Rio, up and down streets until we get to a club.
Rajiphun Maldonado and Mistre take the apple, with kallisti scrawled across it in pen in to the club. They are gone barely a few minutes before coming back out with goofy grins on their faces.
“We just got trolled by Eris,” says Mistre. They had offered the apple with the attached conditions to a group of three girls. They had agreed, turned around to discuss, and thirty seconds later two of them pointed to the other and said, “We think she’s the prettiest.”
The pair gave over the apple.
All the Discord that had been created by the ritual was amongst the Discordians.
From Si Nos Organizamos
Omar Chaban sits on a bed, a pair of orange crocs on his feet. His usually sharp, accentuated features are softened by the dense white fuzz of a thick close-cut beard. His eyes are wrapped in layers of stress, and he wears an unstylish red and yellow jumper, with three quarter jeans. He looks unwell. He is dying.
By the time this image makes it to magazine stands on the cover of the Argentine December 2013 edition of Rolling Stone Magazine, Chaban is dead from Hodgkin lymphoma. Chaban and the infinite nightmare of Cromañón reads the headline.
In the 80s, Chaban cut a much different figure. His brown untamed hair defied gravity, and his eyes were framed by thick yellow glasses, perched atop his distinctive nose. Videos of him in this period show him animated, passionate. He speaks as much with his hands as with his mouth, sometimes explosively showering out rapid fire monologues with a theatrical air, an almost Jim Carrey like plasticity animating his face.
Chaban was an Impresario whose support of the music scene in Buenos Aires was well known. His first major club operation was that of Café Einstein in 1982. His co-founders were Sergio Aisenstein, whose name inspired the club’s name, and Helmut Zeiguer. The club was painted bright pastel colours, and some of the electrical display was made with contributions from Pipo Cipolatti who played in the band Los Twistos. It was a wild place where anything could happen. Once, a performer explained that they intended to bring some objects and destroy them as part of his performance. What he didn’t say, was that the objects were coffins, which he proceeded to smash into pieces with a six foot axe! The club in total could only seat around 80 people. Café Einstein’s candle burned short and fast, shutting up shop in 1984.
After Einstein, Chaban and his co-founders went their separate ways. Sergio Aisenstein moved on to another project, Nave Jungla, a club that took delight in the aesthetic of circuses and freakshows. Many of the staff were dwarves.
Chaban too, followed up with a new club called Cemento in 1985, with his then-wife Katja Alleman. The site was used for theatrical performances as well as rock concerts. Alleman opened the site dressed as a Valkyrie, driven in on a chariot driven by horses, while Chaban sat on the roof.
Cemento was crowded. It was perhaps unwholesome, and it attracted police attention. It was the site of several large conflicts, some involving neo-Nazis. It was dirty, covered in graffiti, and the sound quality was poor. This added to the charm of its grungy rock aesthetic, but ultimately left it vulnerable to competitors with better site and sound.
República Cromañón was a step into commerciality; bigger and nicer than Cemento, it opened in April 2004. Things seemed to be looking up.
In 8 months, the whole of the Buenos Aires scene would be turned upside down.
By the time this image makes it to magazine stands on the cover of the Argentine December 2013 edition of Rolling Stone Magazine, Chaban is dead from Hodgkin lymphoma. Chaban and the infinite nightmare of Cromañón reads the headline.
In the 80s, Chaban cut a much different figure. His brown untamed hair defied gravity, and his eyes were framed by thick yellow glasses, perched atop his distinctive nose. Videos of him in this period show him animated, passionate. He speaks as much with his hands as with his mouth, sometimes explosively showering out rapid fire monologues with a theatrical air, an almost Jim Carrey like plasticity animating his face.
Chaban was an Impresario whose support of the music scene in Buenos Aires was well known. His first major club operation was that of Café Einstein in 1982. His co-founders were Sergio Aisenstein, whose name inspired the club’s name, and Helmut Zeiguer. The club was painted bright pastel colours, and some of the electrical display was made with contributions from Pipo Cipolatti who played in the band Los Twistos. It was a wild place where anything could happen. Once, a performer explained that they intended to bring some objects and destroy them as part of his performance. What he didn’t say, was that the objects were coffins, which he proceeded to smash into pieces with a six foot axe! The club in total could only seat around 80 people. Café Einstein’s candle burned short and fast, shutting up shop in 1984.
After Einstein, Chaban and his co-founders went their separate ways. Sergio Aisenstein moved on to another project, Nave Jungla, a club that took delight in the aesthetic of circuses and freakshows. Many of the staff were dwarves.
Chaban too, followed up with a new club called Cemento in 1985, with his then-wife Katja Alleman. The site was used for theatrical performances as well as rock concerts. Alleman opened the site dressed as a Valkyrie, driven in on a chariot driven by horses, while Chaban sat on the roof.
Cemento was crowded. It was perhaps unwholesome, and it attracted police attention. It was the site of several large conflicts, some involving neo-Nazis. It was dirty, covered in graffiti, and the sound quality was poor. This added to the charm of its grungy rock aesthetic, but ultimately left it vulnerable to competitors with better site and sound.
República Cromañón was a step into commerciality; bigger and nicer than Cemento, it opened in April 2004. Things seemed to be looking up.
In 8 months, the whole of the Buenos Aires scene would be turned upside down.
From Spam Bot Love Song
When You See it You'll Shit Bricks
Look,
left to right, track down to the bottom, and swing to the right.
bottom to top, left moves rightward, bottom to top.
both ways before crossing the road, in someone's eyes when you talk to them,
not into the eyes of an angry dog,
or a stranger at night,
for cyclists before opening the door,
And for fallen power-lines after a storm.
Left to right, up and down.
I spy a kitten, a bird on a pail,
Two pencils, a pizza, a fish and a snail.
Can you find the stormtrooper in the room of pandas?
Can you find the spider in the pile of coal?
Can you find the lowest prices on new and used cars?
Can you find the best legal advice, or someone to love, or someone who knows first aid, or somebody who really just gets me, or somebody who speaks your language, who can find the right legal solution, or Wally, or where in the world Carmen Sandiago is?
I spy a shell, a bell and a knight.
A marble, a truck, and a bird taking flight.
Left to right.
Up and down.
Uh-oh!
Safety Sam is visiting his friend Dave the Dangerous Dingo.
There are eight things in Dave's kitchen that are totally not safe.
Can you spot them all?
Left to right, up and down.
Sometimes it's difficult to tell the difference between things.
A mole and a melanoma.
A bad mood and a breakdown.
A hot date and a rapist.
Can you spot five differences between these two images?
Please click on potential hazards that could interrupt your driving. Give this test your full attention; one day your life may depend on this skill.
Uh oh!
James the Jihadi Jabaru has been talking with Safety Sam's fifteen friends.
He's been telling then that the end of aggressive Western Imperialism is only possible through violent resistance.
Can you find which of Sam's friends have been turned against him?
Look,
left to right, track down to the bottom, and swing to the right.
bottom to top, left moves rightward, bottom to top.
both ways before crossing the road, in someone's eyes when you talk to them,
not into the eyes of an angry dog,
or a stranger at night,
for cyclists before opening the door,
And for fallen power-lines after a storm.
Left to right, up and down.
I spy a kitten, a bird on a pail,
Two pencils, a pizza, a fish and a snail.
Can you find the stormtrooper in the room of pandas?
Can you find the spider in the pile of coal?
Can you find the lowest prices on new and used cars?
Can you find the best legal advice, or someone to love, or someone who knows first aid, or somebody who really just gets me, or somebody who speaks your language, who can find the right legal solution, or Wally, or where in the world Carmen Sandiago is?
I spy a shell, a bell and a knight.
A marble, a truck, and a bird taking flight.
Left to right.
Up and down.
Uh-oh!
Safety Sam is visiting his friend Dave the Dangerous Dingo.
There are eight things in Dave's kitchen that are totally not safe.
Can you spot them all?
Left to right, up and down.
Sometimes it's difficult to tell the difference between things.
A mole and a melanoma.
A bad mood and a breakdown.
A hot date and a rapist.
Can you spot five differences between these two images?
Please click on potential hazards that could interrupt your driving. Give this test your full attention; one day your life may depend on this skill.
Uh oh!
James the Jihadi Jabaru has been talking with Safety Sam's fifteen friends.
He's been telling then that the end of aggressive Western Imperialism is only possible through violent resistance.
Can you find which of Sam's friends have been turned against him?
From United We Fnord
The books are stacked in a pile. We return to Syn’s hardcover edition of the Principia Discordia. This was actually the second time the PD was put into hardcover. The first was published by Revisionist Press. On his blog, Dr Jon says the following of the edition;
According to Run For Cover, a limited edition hardcover of the Principia Discordia was published by the Revisionist Press imprint of Gordon Press in 1976. I've no idea how large the print-run was, but their edition, ISBN 068575085X, apparently retailed for US$250.
Jon also details another interesting tid-bit; that the parent company of Revisionist Press, Gordon Press, was rumoured to be a CIA operation, due to their erratic order fulfilment practices and outlandish prices. This is contradicted by a piece of writing that has circulated the Internet, though the original source is lost;
Suffice to say there is no truth in this rumor, a mixture of a little knowledge and a lot of paranoia. “I wish it had been true about the CIA,” says editor Herb Roseman today. “We might have made some money!”
In reality, the Gordon Press of Brooklyn, New York was a small family business with an eccentric owner. When it closed in 2001, Run For Cover! was delighted to take over the remaining inventory, full of interesting, provocative and indeed eccentric titles, few of which were printed in quantities greater than 200, and many of which are available nowhere else.
Syn’s Discordian journey began with being bored at work. It was an IT job and there really wasn’t much in the way of IT work needing to be done. The company needed someone to tidy up when he first arrived, but the work quickly tapered off.
“Surfing, finding stuff, being interested in all sorts of weirdness anyway, I found Discordia, the forums and all that sort of stuff. I think the first forum I saw may not be there anymore, it was like a roleplay forum or something like that. And PrincipiaDiscordia.com.”
At the time that Syn got involved in the whole shebang, the winds of change were blowing through Discordia. Everyone’s favourite counterculture and recreational criminality publisher Loompanics was going out of business. Loompanics was also the publisher of the much loved ‘yellow cover’ Principia Discordia.
It seemed a shame for such a quirky little book to soon disappear from shelves. So Syn embarked on a one-man mission to save it.
“It would be a damn shame for that to go missing. So that’s why the hardback eventually came out many years later. Might be a year, couple of years after they went out of business.”
While Syn was working on his hard copy Principia Discordia, Ronin Press famously came out with their own Copyrighted interpretation of the Principia; All Hail Eris, Goddess of Chaos and Confusion. The layout, not the Copyleft text, was the only part Copyrighted, but it still pissed people off.
“When we discovered what they were doing, it was like an explosion all over the forums; swearing and all sorts of hell broke loose.”
This would not stand! The PD seemed destined to be replaced by a –shudder- copyright-restricted piggybacker. Syn continued on his mission to produce a new hardcover. He sat at working, using Microsoft Word to put it all together.
Once ready, he contacted a publisher called Exposure Press. It all started off fine. He emailed back and forth with the person in charge, and she told him what she needed; a PDF from his Word files. After a harrowing and horrifying experience trying to iron out the technical details, the book was finally ready for publication. Within a few weeks it was on Amazon.
“I have no real record of how many it sold now, but it was trickling in. I got my cheque every quarter. So that was cool for a while, until it turned out that the publisher was some sort super religious Christian end times Prophetess.”
In September 2008, Guardian newspaper financial segment Capital Letters published a letter from an author who had concerns about their dealing with vanity publisher Diggory Press. The author, a poet, had paid for their books but had received no copies, and no response to their emails. The following January, Capital Letters published a letter from another author in similar straits.
The paper had been contacted since then by ‘over a dozen’ other authors in similar situations. Despite the conspicuous absence of a phone number (and the sudden disappearance of the email feature) the paper managed to contact the author, 38 year old Mirian Rosalind Franklin, for a fruitless conversation, consisting of her asking repeatedly how they found her number, before hanging up.
One of the authors involved in the case reported that the case was seen in August, before being passed on to a later court date, due to what seemed to be obstructionist behaviour from Franklin.
One of the tangential features of this story that proved too delicious to ignore was Franklin’s website [http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com] where she waxed lyrical on her own brand of theology, along with the occasional helpful end-times prophecy. The combination of the obvious hypocrisy of her rants against charlatans and deceivers in the face of Diggory’s shady business dealings, her targeting of darlings of the Christian Blogosphere such as evangelist Todd Bently and politician Sarah Palin, and the general tendency for online communities to eat their own young led to an Internet slap-fight of (ahem) Biblical proportions. Franklin posted her innocence under multiple identities on multiple blogs, and denied every allegation, while her chief antagonist, a character called Stephen T Moyer – one of the three plaintiffs who saw the case through to the end – documented every moment, and pursued his disagreements with her on multiple websites. Amongst the ultimately vindicated fraud accusations, the disagreement also spawned a virulent (and, I discovered with bleary eyes and throbbing head, ultimately un-fucking-readable) theological debate.
Diggory had a number of titles under its imprint. Unluckily for Syn, Exposure Press was one of them.
“I wondered where my cheque had gone one month. Oh, I haven’t heard anything, it’s usually the time something pops up. Nothing happened, didn’t hear, so I thought, I wonder what’s going on. Had a look and the site was shut down. So, OK, the publisher’s site’s gone, so I started to panic there. Not that it was a lot of money or anything, but it was just like, what’s going on? So I had a bit of a Google, a bit of a dig around on the web and it came about that the publisher herself had had some business problems. And it all came out that she had some religious ideas about the end of the world and stuff.
Basically, she took all her clients’ money and ran away. So not only had she started to run away with the profits from Principia Discordia, she’d done this to all her clients. She’d run away with thousands and thousands of pounds. I think the authors- not that I’m an author, not really- got together and took her to court.”
How Syn got his money is unclear to me after our interview, and my research doesn’t clarify it; I later ask him when he received his cash back; was he one of ‘the seventeen,’ the original group of legal claimants, later whittled down to just three on the final day of proceedings? Or did the eventual success of the claimants pave the way for him to claim his money with minimal fuss?
Neither as it turns out. He sent in a request for his funds, and got it. He told me he had ‘no idea’ why she didn’t just ignore him, as she did so many of the other claimants.
“Some of them got their money; I did. But I had to identify myself to [production company] Lightning Source to stop them publishing it, because they were sending her the money. So that’s how it ended up out of print. Because of that experience, it was kind of a lot of work to then start again and then republish it… That experience kind of put me off dealing with a third-party publisher.”
According to Run For Cover, a limited edition hardcover of the Principia Discordia was published by the Revisionist Press imprint of Gordon Press in 1976. I've no idea how large the print-run was, but their edition, ISBN 068575085X, apparently retailed for US$250.
Jon also details another interesting tid-bit; that the parent company of Revisionist Press, Gordon Press, was rumoured to be a CIA operation, due to their erratic order fulfilment practices and outlandish prices. This is contradicted by a piece of writing that has circulated the Internet, though the original source is lost;
Suffice to say there is no truth in this rumor, a mixture of a little knowledge and a lot of paranoia. “I wish it had been true about the CIA,” says editor Herb Roseman today. “We might have made some money!”
In reality, the Gordon Press of Brooklyn, New York was a small family business with an eccentric owner. When it closed in 2001, Run For Cover! was delighted to take over the remaining inventory, full of interesting, provocative and indeed eccentric titles, few of which were printed in quantities greater than 200, and many of which are available nowhere else.
Syn’s Discordian journey began with being bored at work. It was an IT job and there really wasn’t much in the way of IT work needing to be done. The company needed someone to tidy up when he first arrived, but the work quickly tapered off.
“Surfing, finding stuff, being interested in all sorts of weirdness anyway, I found Discordia, the forums and all that sort of stuff. I think the first forum I saw may not be there anymore, it was like a roleplay forum or something like that. And PrincipiaDiscordia.com.”
At the time that Syn got involved in the whole shebang, the winds of change were blowing through Discordia. Everyone’s favourite counterculture and recreational criminality publisher Loompanics was going out of business. Loompanics was also the publisher of the much loved ‘yellow cover’ Principia Discordia.
It seemed a shame for such a quirky little book to soon disappear from shelves. So Syn embarked on a one-man mission to save it.
“It would be a damn shame for that to go missing. So that’s why the hardback eventually came out many years later. Might be a year, couple of years after they went out of business.”
While Syn was working on his hard copy Principia Discordia, Ronin Press famously came out with their own Copyrighted interpretation of the Principia; All Hail Eris, Goddess of Chaos and Confusion. The layout, not the Copyleft text, was the only part Copyrighted, but it still pissed people off.
“When we discovered what they were doing, it was like an explosion all over the forums; swearing and all sorts of hell broke loose.”
This would not stand! The PD seemed destined to be replaced by a –shudder- copyright-restricted piggybacker. Syn continued on his mission to produce a new hardcover. He sat at working, using Microsoft Word to put it all together.
Once ready, he contacted a publisher called Exposure Press. It all started off fine. He emailed back and forth with the person in charge, and she told him what she needed; a PDF from his Word files. After a harrowing and horrifying experience trying to iron out the technical details, the book was finally ready for publication. Within a few weeks it was on Amazon.
“I have no real record of how many it sold now, but it was trickling in. I got my cheque every quarter. So that was cool for a while, until it turned out that the publisher was some sort super religious Christian end times Prophetess.”
In September 2008, Guardian newspaper financial segment Capital Letters published a letter from an author who had concerns about their dealing with vanity publisher Diggory Press. The author, a poet, had paid for their books but had received no copies, and no response to their emails. The following January, Capital Letters published a letter from another author in similar straits.
The paper had been contacted since then by ‘over a dozen’ other authors in similar situations. Despite the conspicuous absence of a phone number (and the sudden disappearance of the email feature) the paper managed to contact the author, 38 year old Mirian Rosalind Franklin, for a fruitless conversation, consisting of her asking repeatedly how they found her number, before hanging up.
One of the authors involved in the case reported that the case was seen in August, before being passed on to a later court date, due to what seemed to be obstructionist behaviour from Franklin.
One of the tangential features of this story that proved too delicious to ignore was Franklin’s website [http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com] where she waxed lyrical on her own brand of theology, along with the occasional helpful end-times prophecy. The combination of the obvious hypocrisy of her rants against charlatans and deceivers in the face of Diggory’s shady business dealings, her targeting of darlings of the Christian Blogosphere such as evangelist Todd Bently and politician Sarah Palin, and the general tendency for online communities to eat their own young led to an Internet slap-fight of (ahem) Biblical proportions. Franklin posted her innocence under multiple identities on multiple blogs, and denied every allegation, while her chief antagonist, a character called Stephen T Moyer – one of the three plaintiffs who saw the case through to the end – documented every moment, and pursued his disagreements with her on multiple websites. Amongst the ultimately vindicated fraud accusations, the disagreement also spawned a virulent (and, I discovered with bleary eyes and throbbing head, ultimately un-fucking-readable) theological debate.
Diggory had a number of titles under its imprint. Unluckily for Syn, Exposure Press was one of them.
“I wondered where my cheque had gone one month. Oh, I haven’t heard anything, it’s usually the time something pops up. Nothing happened, didn’t hear, so I thought, I wonder what’s going on. Had a look and the site was shut down. So, OK, the publisher’s site’s gone, so I started to panic there. Not that it was a lot of money or anything, but it was just like, what’s going on? So I had a bit of a Google, a bit of a dig around on the web and it came about that the publisher herself had had some business problems. And it all came out that she had some religious ideas about the end of the world and stuff.
Basically, she took all her clients’ money and ran away. So not only had she started to run away with the profits from Principia Discordia, she’d done this to all her clients. She’d run away with thousands and thousands of pounds. I think the authors- not that I’m an author, not really- got together and took her to court.”
How Syn got his money is unclear to me after our interview, and my research doesn’t clarify it; I later ask him when he received his cash back; was he one of ‘the seventeen,’ the original group of legal claimants, later whittled down to just three on the final day of proceedings? Or did the eventual success of the claimants pave the way for him to claim his money with minimal fuss?
Neither as it turns out. He sent in a request for his funds, and got it. He told me he had ‘no idea’ why she didn’t just ignore him, as she did so many of the other claimants.
“Some of them got their money; I did. But I had to identify myself to [production company] Lightning Source to stop them publishing it, because they were sending her the money. So that’s how it ended up out of print. Because of that experience, it was kind of a lot of work to then start again and then republish it… That experience kind of put me off dealing with a third-party publisher.”
From ※
“The author is dead, says Barthes, with a bloody sledgehammer hidden behind his back. There is a faint, muffled moaning and groaning in the background, and we may begin to suspect that the author isn’t quite as dead as promised, maybe a little less dead than we might hope, and Barthes evidently thinks so too, because off he disappears, apparently to finish the job. But what fresh nightmare waits for him in those splattered walls? Is it the gasping groan of a slight distance from death, or is it the banshee’s cry of a thing beyond death, past death and through death and going strong, far to the other side? Beyond death, past death, through death; died, buried and undead, undying, a spook, a ghost, a sprite, a skeleton, rasping, gasping and stained bloody, transformed, transmogrified.
We have killed the author, but our methods were not ideal. We have killed the author, and how? We have arranged to have her bitten by a werewolf. We have fed her soup laced with the blood of a zombie. We mummified her, then decorated her with an ancient, cursed amulet. We threw her into a vat of deadly chemicals. We sent a vampire to drink her blood. None of these methods have had the desired effect; the author is dead, that is to say, undead, that is to say gone but ever-present, gone but mutant, mutated, back with a vengeance.
There is a spectre haunting Europe, and this time it isn’t communism; it’s Dickens and Bronte and Wilde and Kafka and Austin and De Sade and all the rest of them, howling hungry ghosts, with red eyes and red pens and they say, ‘this means that’ and, ‘that means this’.
The author is dead, we were promised, but here they are, back again, only a little different. They were going to kill all the authors, they were going to put them in the big machine called Author-B-Gone but somewhere deep in the machine something took place that we weren’t quite ready for, and the creature that stands before us is new but old and we think that maybe that arm looks a little like Ms Rowling, and the eyes are maybe Mr Shakespeare and the chin seems slightly Orwellian, but it’s hard to tell since the whole creature has been dipped in tar and wrapped in metal, and plated with iron blades.
The authors had to be killed, we were told, because if they don’t die, they will ruin everything. You’ll be reading your book, and over your shoulder will peep Mr Conrad warbling about the symbolism of ivory, or watching a film when Baz Lurhmann comes in to talk about the soundtrack. All that will remain will be the text, we were told, but there’s more than the text, because as we try to take it and consume it, love it, hold it close, we are still aware of a pair of occult hands that caress us and start to create form, start to make shape, start to point to symbolism and rhythm and rhyme and connotations and denotations. They killed the author, then mutilated and reanimated her. They killed the author and boiled her down into soup, then tipped over the soup so it could take a hideous, mutant form, and slop and slurp its way into every temple of literature, an angry God that could never be appeased.
The author is dead, long live the author! The author is dead, and looking fitter than ever! The author is armed with heavy artillery, powerful weaponry. The author is putting the books in the freezer, casting them in iron, etching them in stone. They are threading long sharp wires into every word to lend them weight, to give them strength, to render them indestructible. There are many meanings in a text, all sorts of meanings to be found, and the meanings you find are between you and the text, we are told, AND YET, why does it feel that if you step too far from a very narrow set of possibilities, you will be gobbled up by those hungry ghosts, those sprites and zombies and vampires?
The author is dead, like Hitler, and alive, like Hitler, like Stalin, like Nurse Ratchet and we can moan and ask the impotent question, what is this all for? Around what principle, what ideology, around what planet circle these moons of meaning? What authoritarian fever dream compels these ghosts and ghouls and greeblies to sneak up upon us and bark their commands, gnash their teeth and flash their creepy claws? There was a spectre haunting Europe, the last one, the communist one, and it destroyed the state and the state rose again. Here’s to the new boss! The same as the old boss! The King is dead, long live the King! Killed and reanimated, killed and reanimated, a state from a state, an author from an author, an authority from an authority from an authority from an authority, and bro, please, I just want to live in a world where Ron and Harry grow up and have amazing gay sex, and where Gatsby is a black man, and where Mother! is completely literal and where Jane Eyre is an anti-capitalist text and where The Scream is actually a real-ass dog, where Mercutio is non-binary, and Romeo is three kids in a trench coat, and I hear the screams from the darkness beneath and I put back the book.
The author is dead, undead, can never die, can never live, and there is nothing but the text, but the contains the author, in all their infinite horror and authority, and if you shake the book you’ll see it; a million full-stops tumble out, a million tiny authors multiply like flies and spawn into ghosts and ghoulies and grow into skeletons and Hitler-Stalins and there’s no stupid questions except the one you’re about to ask, and there’s no wrong answers except the one you’re about to give and the author is dead but not gone, not nearly gone, not nearly gone, killed and reanimated, a state from a state, an author from an author, an authority from an authority from an authority from an authority
We have killed the author, but our methods were not ideal. We have killed the author, and how? We have arranged to have her bitten by a werewolf. We have fed her soup laced with the blood of a zombie. We mummified her, then decorated her with an ancient, cursed amulet. We threw her into a vat of deadly chemicals. We sent a vampire to drink her blood. None of these methods have had the desired effect; the author is dead, that is to say, undead, that is to say gone but ever-present, gone but mutant, mutated, back with a vengeance.
There is a spectre haunting Europe, and this time it isn’t communism; it’s Dickens and Bronte and Wilde and Kafka and Austin and De Sade and all the rest of them, howling hungry ghosts, with red eyes and red pens and they say, ‘this means that’ and, ‘that means this’.
The author is dead, we were promised, but here they are, back again, only a little different. They were going to kill all the authors, they were going to put them in the big machine called Author-B-Gone but somewhere deep in the machine something took place that we weren’t quite ready for, and the creature that stands before us is new but old and we think that maybe that arm looks a little like Ms Rowling, and the eyes are maybe Mr Shakespeare and the chin seems slightly Orwellian, but it’s hard to tell since the whole creature has been dipped in tar and wrapped in metal, and plated with iron blades.
The authors had to be killed, we were told, because if they don’t die, they will ruin everything. You’ll be reading your book, and over your shoulder will peep Mr Conrad warbling about the symbolism of ivory, or watching a film when Baz Lurhmann comes in to talk about the soundtrack. All that will remain will be the text, we were told, but there’s more than the text, because as we try to take it and consume it, love it, hold it close, we are still aware of a pair of occult hands that caress us and start to create form, start to make shape, start to point to symbolism and rhythm and rhyme and connotations and denotations. They killed the author, then mutilated and reanimated her. They killed the author and boiled her down into soup, then tipped over the soup so it could take a hideous, mutant form, and slop and slurp its way into every temple of literature, an angry God that could never be appeased.
The author is dead, long live the author! The author is dead, and looking fitter than ever! The author is armed with heavy artillery, powerful weaponry. The author is putting the books in the freezer, casting them in iron, etching them in stone. They are threading long sharp wires into every word to lend them weight, to give them strength, to render them indestructible. There are many meanings in a text, all sorts of meanings to be found, and the meanings you find are between you and the text, we are told, AND YET, why does it feel that if you step too far from a very narrow set of possibilities, you will be gobbled up by those hungry ghosts, those sprites and zombies and vampires?
The author is dead, like Hitler, and alive, like Hitler, like Stalin, like Nurse Ratchet and we can moan and ask the impotent question, what is this all for? Around what principle, what ideology, around what planet circle these moons of meaning? What authoritarian fever dream compels these ghosts and ghouls and greeblies to sneak up upon us and bark their commands, gnash their teeth and flash their creepy claws? There was a spectre haunting Europe, the last one, the communist one, and it destroyed the state and the state rose again. Here’s to the new boss! The same as the old boss! The King is dead, long live the King! Killed and reanimated, killed and reanimated, a state from a state, an author from an author, an authority from an authority from an authority from an authority, and bro, please, I just want to live in a world where Ron and Harry grow up and have amazing gay sex, and where Gatsby is a black man, and where Mother! is completely literal and where Jane Eyre is an anti-capitalist text and where The Scream is actually a real-ass dog, where Mercutio is non-binary, and Romeo is three kids in a trench coat, and I hear the screams from the darkness beneath and I put back the book.
The author is dead, undead, can never die, can never live, and there is nothing but the text, but the contains the author, in all their infinite horror and authority, and if you shake the book you’ll see it; a million full-stops tumble out, a million tiny authors multiply like flies and spawn into ghosts and ghoulies and grow into skeletons and Hitler-Stalins and there’s no stupid questions except the one you’re about to ask, and there’s no wrong answers except the one you’re about to give and the author is dead but not gone, not nearly gone, not nearly gone, killed and reanimated, a state from a state, an author from an author, an authority from an authority from an authority from an authority
Faking Eris
“I arrive in New Orleans late at night and begin to walk my bag through the dark and lonely streets. The now famous blue tarps can still be seen waving, the aftermath of a hurricane now a half-decade old. Down the road from my hostel sits half a home, torn open like a dolls house. The city seems to have the memories of Hurricane Katrina etched into it – but they’re not the only memories that lurk here.
Kerry and Greg moved into New Orleans together in 1961. Between this year and 1965, the Discordian society would undergo a period of significant growth. Here Thorney and Hill would interact with a number of figures who would make their own marks on the Discordian Society. One of these figures, a man known as ‘Brother-in-Law’ would boast of criminal links and make provocative political statements, including celebrations of Nazism. He would also go on to converse with Kerry – ostensibly playfully – about the best way to, say, assassinate President John F. Kennedy.
The first of two Discordian congregations, ‘The New Orleans Gathering’ attracted a number of young people. It also attracted the attention of law enforcement. Greg and Kerry were visited by members of the FBI and interrogated about their supposed links to anti-establishment political groups in America. They sat quietly as the agents – at least one of whom was apparently ‘a nice young man’ – asked questions about their work with groups ranging from the Black Panthers to the Ku Klux Klan. When asked about their views on these groups, Greg and Kerry had an unexpectedly succinct answer: they did not have any views on these groups. This did not stop the Discordians receiving a number of threatening letters from organisations such as the KKK – some of which claimed that Discordians would be killed if they attended certain events.
This is not to say that they were above playing up their apparent links to radicalism. In one letter, Greg made a jokey reference to his work with anarchists on a project involving ‘the destruction by fire of several very large buildings full of American citizens’. When asked why he wrote such letters, Greg replied: “Because it amuses me!”
There are a number of stories about the New Orleans Gathering which sound too good to be true – and may well be. In one, a high-ranking member of the KKK attends the ‘Gathering’ and is so impressed by the Discordians that he volunteers to act as a double agent. He is given a copy of ‘The Principia Discordia’, with instructions to give it to his superiors. On reading the text, they are so disturbed that they leave town immediately and are never heard from again.
Elsewhere, Kerry is said to have announced that there was going to be an anti-Vietnam march in front of government buildings in New Orleans. This had the potential to be disruptive – and would have been entirely fictional had Kerry not planted three newspaper articles announcing this march at intervals along his journey home from work.
Other stories are more grounded in reality. Discussions took place about tactics for attacking police – although it remains unclear how serious these discussions were intended to be. At one point Greg asked Kerry: “What do you think the best thing would be? Should we steal their guns off them and shoot them with their own guns? Or should we just shoot them?” In another letter, Greg wrote: “I am very glad I had JB for a roommate for about eight years; he taught me many tricks and interesting items which I am now employing. I am now much more fit as a revolutionary than I ever was before, because of his training.”
There are in fact two stories about how Kerry ended up living with Greg – one is that he was going to move into an apartment with some other students, but ended up moving into Greg’s after finding it cheaper. He would stay there for around eight years. In another story, Greg simply invited him over for tea at the apartment he was moving out of – and Kerry never left.
The New Orleans Gathering would eventually dwindle down to a core of four members: Greg, Kerry, one of their friends ‘Lady Jane’, and Lady Jane’s boyfriend ‘Sir Gregory’.
The group would most likely have dissolved entirely had it not been for the emergence of a new figure in the Discordian movement: a young man who called himself Lord Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst. Lord Omar had recently arrived in New Orleans from Atlanta with his girlfriend Lady Suzy Creamcheese – but it became rapidly clear that Lady Suzy was only part of the picture. The rest of Lord Omar was made up of another young man, Greg Hill.
Greg had used numerous aliases over his lifetime – so many, in fact, that even he himself apparently struggled to keep track of them all. Among other pseudonyms, he would go by the names ‘I.P. Freely’, ‘Dr Haka’, and ‘Gabriel the Marine’ – but none of these could compete with ‘Lord Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst’.
As Lord Omar, Greg came up with a list of 21 basic rules which Discordians were required to obey – the only rule was that they could not conduct themselves according to any rule book except Lord Omar’s – if they did this, they would be expelled from the Discordian Society (another rule was that anyone who attempted to make this rule canonical would be expelled as well).
These rules included:
You must always kill a cat when you meet one on a stair. Do this why? Because it is scientific…
You must never read any of Robert Anton Wilson’s books because he is a meat puppet for some OTHER place and time…
You must not eat any cereal for breakfast because cereal is KILLER FOOD…
You may eat ONLY HONEY for breakfast because honey is killer food…
You are INVITED to join the Discordian Society (D.S)…
No one ever knows what the D.S. stands for… If you ask anyone what it stands for he will tell you that it stands for the “Discordian Society” and if you ask him to define DISCORDIAN he will tell you that it is “the worship or philosophy of Eris, goddess of chaos, or a system of chaos”, and if you ask him what chaos is he will get mad at you because he doesn’t know and there ISN’T ANYTHING CALLED CHAOS OR ANY OTHER KIND OF THING ANYWHERE!
Eventually Greg would come up with an answer to the question: what did ‘Discordian Society’ stand for? His answer was: ‘Disciples Committed Only to Ridiculousness or Something’.
Greg was also responsible for making Lord Omar the patron saint of Discordia – a position which would eventually be taken over by Saint Gulik, a ‘little brown discarnate monkey god from Tibet who has an extremely high I.Q., sexually ambiguous tendencies, and an advanced degree in Tantric Yoga – but no actual body or form whatsoever’.
Lord Omar turned out not to be the only Discordian imaginary friend to have a name derived from the works of Omar Khayyam. Among those to be given this “to be given this infernal name were:
Omar Khayyam Wakefield – an alias used by Kerry Thornley, who said that this was the name he would use when he killed John F. Kennedy (‘Wakefield’ is an antonym for ‘Thornley’).
Omar Cadabra – Kerry Thornley’s secret agent alter ego.
Omar Bakri Muhammed – the leader of Al-Muhajiroun, a now-disbanded UK-based Islamic extremist organisation.
Omar Hammami – an American Islamic militant who joined al-Shabaab in Somalia. He was later killed in a US drone strike.
The New Orleans Gathering would eventually make its way to Atlanta, Georgia – where it was joined by Lord Omar and Lady Suzy ‘Creamcheese’. As Discordians continue to celebrate chaos throughout America, they also began to spread their message overseas – with one of their first disciples emerging in Nashville…
Kerry and Greg moved into New Orleans together in 1961. Between this year and 1965, the Discordian society would undergo a period of significant growth. Here Thorney and Hill would interact with a number of figures who would make their own marks on the Discordian Society. One of these figures, a man known as ‘Brother-in-Law’ would boast of criminal links and make provocative political statements, including celebrations of Nazism. He would also go on to converse with Kerry – ostensibly playfully – about the best way to, say, assassinate President John F. Kennedy.
The first of two Discordian congregations, ‘The New Orleans Gathering’ attracted a number of young people. It also attracted the attention of law enforcement. Greg and Kerry were visited by members of the FBI and interrogated about their supposed links to anti-establishment political groups in America. They sat quietly as the agents – at least one of whom was apparently ‘a nice young man’ – asked questions about their work with groups ranging from the Black Panthers to the Ku Klux Klan. When asked about their views on these groups, Greg and Kerry had an unexpectedly succinct answer: they did not have any views on these groups. This did not stop the Discordians receiving a number of threatening letters from organisations such as the KKK – some of which claimed that Discordians would be killed if they attended certain events.
This is not to say that they were above playing up their apparent links to radicalism. In one letter, Greg made a jokey reference to his work with anarchists on a project involving ‘the destruction by fire of several very large buildings full of American citizens’. When asked why he wrote such letters, Greg replied: “Because it amuses me!”
There are a number of stories about the New Orleans Gathering which sound too good to be true – and may well be. In one, a high-ranking member of the KKK attends the ‘Gathering’ and is so impressed by the Discordians that he volunteers to act as a double agent. He is given a copy of ‘The Principia Discordia’, with instructions to give it to his superiors. On reading the text, they are so disturbed that they leave town immediately and are never heard from again.
Elsewhere, Kerry is said to have announced that there was going to be an anti-Vietnam march in front of government buildings in New Orleans. This had the potential to be disruptive – and would have been entirely fictional had Kerry not planted three newspaper articles announcing this march at intervals along his journey home from work.
Other stories are more grounded in reality. Discussions took place about tactics for attacking police – although it remains unclear how serious these discussions were intended to be. At one point Greg asked Kerry: “What do you think the best thing would be? Should we steal their guns off them and shoot them with their own guns? Or should we just shoot them?” In another letter, Greg wrote: “I am very glad I had JB for a roommate for about eight years; he taught me many tricks and interesting items which I am now employing. I am now much more fit as a revolutionary than I ever was before, because of his training.”
There are in fact two stories about how Kerry ended up living with Greg – one is that he was going to move into an apartment with some other students, but ended up moving into Greg’s after finding it cheaper. He would stay there for around eight years. In another story, Greg simply invited him over for tea at the apartment he was moving out of – and Kerry never left.
The New Orleans Gathering would eventually dwindle down to a core of four members: Greg, Kerry, one of their friends ‘Lady Jane’, and Lady Jane’s boyfriend ‘Sir Gregory’.
The group would most likely have dissolved entirely had it not been for the emergence of a new figure in the Discordian movement: a young man who called himself Lord Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst. Lord Omar had recently arrived in New Orleans from Atlanta with his girlfriend Lady Suzy Creamcheese – but it became rapidly clear that Lady Suzy was only part of the picture. The rest of Lord Omar was made up of another young man, Greg Hill.
Greg had used numerous aliases over his lifetime – so many, in fact, that even he himself apparently struggled to keep track of them all. Among other pseudonyms, he would go by the names ‘I.P. Freely’, ‘Dr Haka’, and ‘Gabriel the Marine’ – but none of these could compete with ‘Lord Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst’.
As Lord Omar, Greg came up with a list of 21 basic rules which Discordians were required to obey – the only rule was that they could not conduct themselves according to any rule book except Lord Omar’s – if they did this, they would be expelled from the Discordian Society (another rule was that anyone who attempted to make this rule canonical would be expelled as well).
These rules included:
You must always kill a cat when you meet one on a stair. Do this why? Because it is scientific…
You must never read any of Robert Anton Wilson’s books because he is a meat puppet for some OTHER place and time…
You must not eat any cereal for breakfast because cereal is KILLER FOOD…
You may eat ONLY HONEY for breakfast because honey is killer food…
You are INVITED to join the Discordian Society (D.S)…
No one ever knows what the D.S. stands for… If you ask anyone what it stands for he will tell you that it stands for the “Discordian Society” and if you ask him to define DISCORDIAN he will tell you that it is “the worship or philosophy of Eris, goddess of chaos, or a system of chaos”, and if you ask him what chaos is he will get mad at you because he doesn’t know and there ISN’T ANYTHING CALLED CHAOS OR ANY OTHER KIND OF THING ANYWHERE!
Eventually Greg would come up with an answer to the question: what did ‘Discordian Society’ stand for? His answer was: ‘Disciples Committed Only to Ridiculousness or Something’.
Greg was also responsible for making Lord Omar the patron saint of Discordia – a position which would eventually be taken over by Saint Gulik, a ‘little brown discarnate monkey god from Tibet who has an extremely high I.Q., sexually ambiguous tendencies, and an advanced degree in Tantric Yoga – but no actual body or form whatsoever’.
Lord Omar turned out not to be the only Discordian imaginary friend to have a name derived from the works of Omar Khayyam. Among those to be given this “to be given this infernal name were:
Omar Khayyam Wakefield – an alias used by Kerry Thornley, who said that this was the name he would use when he killed John F. Kennedy (‘Wakefield’ is an antonym for ‘Thornley’).
Omar Cadabra – Kerry Thornley’s secret agent alter ego.
Omar Bakri Muhammed – the leader of Al-Muhajiroun, a now-disbanded UK-based Islamic extremist organisation.
Omar Hammami – an American Islamic militant who joined al-Shabaab in Somalia. He was later killed in a US drone strike.
The New Orleans Gathering would eventually make its way to Atlanta, Georgia – where it was joined by Lord Omar and Lady Suzy ‘Creamcheese’. As Discordians continue to celebrate chaos throughout America, they also began to spread their message overseas – with one of their first disciples emerging in Nashville…
