a tasty toast

Last summer, I served as best man to my luminous friend Eric at his wedding to my luminous friend Steph. Going thru my files (by that I mean random scraps of paper lying around haphazardly - All Hail Discordia & a Befuddling Mungday to you!), I found th notes I used for th best man toast that I made! I spoke more or less what I see written today on these messy pages. It delights me to see that I wrote it all in E-Prime! [Pats nerdy self on back.]

I did insert an improvised story to illustrate my first impression of Eric when I met him, which I cannot reproduce (& probably didn't comply with th constraints of E-Prime). However, I want to share th rest of th toast with you now, for your delight (I hope you sob!) & for posterity, because I cannot guarantee that I will not lose these pages within th next few months, days, or minutes. (I will indicate where th improvised story fits in with three separation marks.)

I propose a tasty toast to th bride & groom, th groom & bride! Stephanie & Eris, Fauss & Fauss, enter today into a new universe of awesomeness & divine whatnot. Hooray for all!

I met Mr. Fauss at college orientation - he exuded a fascinating weirdness - we had to become roomates. It took a semester to get it worked out, but we managed it twice, & it rocked.

¤ ¤ ¤

I met Mrs. Fauss, Miss Formerly Thompson, when Eric brought her with us on a roadtrip. I found her fun, interesting, & easy to talk to. In short, she also rocked.

Little did I know what started brewing in those days.

Stephanie & Eric each champion peace & compassion, intelligence & wisdom, humanism & transcendence of th normal. Brought together, these attributes can only find strength. In their time, they have grown, grow today, & will grow oodles more.

A beautiful bond has formed here - we all see it - like two spiral galaxies meeting in th void & warping into something new & awesome. It has happened already - this ceremony only confirms it. I for one feel a great joy to have witnessed it.

& thus I propose a tasty toast th th groom & bride, th bride & groom - th Erics, th Stephs, th Thompsons, th Fausses! We have seen two become one, a unison. My heart melts - I feel humbled & alive. So let us raise glass & grin. Together we toast! Hooray for all!

Eric & Steph, I love you guys! Since I have now received my Credentials of Ministry from th Universal Life Church (they hang on th wall above my head as I type to you), do keep me in mind when you decide to renew your vows!

a discordious syaday to ya'll & whatnot & such

I hope ya'll enjoyed, more or less, this 5th day of Confusion, Syaday! On such a day, we Discordians celebrate th life & bulbs of "SRI SYADASTI SYADAVAKTAVYA SYADASTI SYANNASTI SYADASTI CAVAKTAVYASCA SYADASTI SYANNASTI SYADAVATAVYASCA SYADASTI SYANNASTI SYADAVAKTAVYASCA, commonly called just SRI SYADASTI. His name is Sanskrit, and means: All affirmations are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense. He is an Indian Pundit and Prince, born of the Peyotl Tribe, son of Gentle Chief Sun Flower Seed and the squaw Merry Jane. Patron to psychedelic type Discordians. Patron of the Season of Confusion. Holyday: May 31. NOTE: Sri Syadasti should not be confused with Blessed St. Gulik the Stoned, who is not the same person but is the same Apostle." ~Principia Discordia

Incidentally, I enjoyed my Syaday minimally.

I celebrated accidentally by having microwavable Indian foodmush with Tiff.

Wedpud

I did a bibliomantic divination using James Joyce's Finnegans Wake this afternoon on th train. Basically, that means I pointed to a random line on a random page & made note of it to see what advice it offers. I got th following, from page 572:

Live well! Iniivdluaritzas! Tone!

Perhaps it represents a call to enjoy myself & pay attention to sound & color.

[This I set out to do as I wandered in wonder around th Shedd Aquarium today. If you want to experience pure absurd beauty, watch an octopus move from point A to point B; what a ridiculously beautiful world, this!]

As for Iniivdluaritzas! who knows? I came up with an anagram:

vain lizard suit I!

Joyce may not have meant that, but I do like it.

This may represent th beginning of a larger project. I've got lots of little divination systems that amuse me. I tentatively mapped six of them to th six sides of a die for potential use:

1 .. Deck of Lies

[Th Book of Lies by Aleister Crowley consists of 93 chapters & their commentaries; I created a deck of 93 cards allowing me to select from th chapters at random.]

2 .. I Ching
3 .. Tarot
4 .. 8 colors of magick

[Peter Carroll proposes an 8-dimensional model of various "magicks" - I'd roll a D8 to pick one magick to focus on for that day: pure, war, thinking, sex, ego, love, wealth, death.]

5 .. Finnegan's Wake
6 .. 6 Reality Tunnels

[Another Peter Carroll idea. See MUSICK.]

I won't adhere to this too strictly; I'll allow for spontenaity & probably change this mapping as I go. In fact, I have already found that combining th Deck of Lies with th 8 magicks works quite well, so I may combine those on th map & put something else on it. I welcome suggestions.

[I may eventually add Ifa, an African system of 256 stories related to Santeria & Voudou, to th mix, when I aquire this book.]

I do all this to disorder my personal universe & create new pathways for spontaneous growth & other pretentious-sounding twaddle. Also for something to do. Don't call me superstitious; I remain agnostic about everything everywhere.

[Everything is stupid & meaningless, & I fucking love it!]

I hope you've had a ludicrous 23rd of May (Slave Time)!
Much love to all,
~Androse th Nim

MUSICK

This is a digital reproduction of a quite analog booklet I began distributing in Chicago on May 12, 2007 called MUSICK. Th original consists of sixteen tiny black & white pages with lots of words & few pictures. This version contains some scans of th original & some spruced-up stuff. I've added a few pictures, colors & comments. Th latter you will recognize because it will look like this paragraph: purple & italic.

00002

Salutations!

I am Andrew Heathwaite, a.k.a. Nodal Nim, & I welcome you to page two of my manifesto, MUSICK! I've got a few ludicrous thoughts to share with you today: some nonsense, twaddle, paradoxes & chaos that I hope you'll find inspiring. In fact, my ultimate goal with this free booklet is th formation of some sort of MUSICKAL COLLECTIVE (i.e. BAND).

Why th funny spelling, music with a k? It's based on th word MAGICK, thus spelt to distinguish it from stage magic - "magicians" pulling rabbits out of hats & playing tricks on people through deceit & sleight of hand. MAGICK is not th same as magic. Phil Hine, in his illuminating booklet Oven-Ready Chaos, tells us:

"Magick is surprisingly simple. What can it offer?

1. A means to disentangle yourself from the attitudes and restrictions you were brought up with and which define the limits of what you may become.
   
2. Ways to examine your life to look for, understand, and modify behaviour, emotional and thought patterns which hinder learning and growth.
   
3. Increase of confidence and personal charisma.
   
4. A widening of your perception of just what is possible, once you set your heart and mind on it.
   
5. To develop personal abilities, skills and perceptions - the more we see the world, the more we appreciate that it is alive.
   
6. To have fun. Magick should be enjoyed.
   
7. To bring about change - in accordance with will."

00003

MUSICK is an attempt to apply th principles of magick to music.

It is based on th ideas that:

1. You, I, everyone everywhere is a Robot.
   
2. We, as Robots, are programmed by our imprints, our experiences, & th things we decide we "know".
   
3. All that we do, we do through our programming.
   
4. Most of th time, we do not write our programming; it is written for us.
   
5. Metaprogramming is programming yourself - causing conscious changes in your own nervous system. It is th stuff of Shamanism, Magick, & MUSICK.

We, th collective, devote ourselves not to music, but to MUSICK! We challenge all musical programming for th continuous remanifestation of MUSICKAL metaprogramming intended to disorder & free everyone everywhere! We play to free ourselves, but also to free everyone everywhere. One unconscious listening experience (on th street, in a club, anywhere) begins a process of reimprinting / disordering of th mind & its programs through exposure to our highly charged musickal arcana. We play to illuminate!

Think all this is bullshit / metaphysical mumbo-jumbo / twaddle? Good! So do I!

Let's do it anyway!

00004

REALITY TUNNELS

Each individual's unique & very limited view of th WORLD is a reality tunnel. Peter Carroll, in his book Liber Null, suggests six fundamental reality tunnels that people have tended to adopt. He claims that one develops into th next, & that th whole set is cyclical.

1. Paganism
   
2. Monotheism
   
3. Atheism
   
4. Nihilism (Low Atheism)
   
5. Chaoism
   
6. Superstition (Low Chaoism)

"Try each of them for a week, a month, or a year. This exercise may save one an unnecessary incarnation or two."

00006

AGNOSTICISM

Some wisdom from Robert Anton Wilson

"My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any more need to think about anything and might be considered clinically dead under current medical standards, where the absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended.

My attitude is identical to that of Dr. Gribbin and the majority of physicists today, and is known in physics as 'the Copenhagen Interpretation,' because it was formulated in Copenhagen by Dr. Niels Bohr and his co-workers c. 1926-28. The Copenhagen Interpretation is sometimes called 'model agnosticism' and holds that any grid we use to organize our experience of the world is a model of the world and should not be confused with the world itself. Alfred Korzybski, the semanticist, tried to popularize this outside physics with the slogan, 'The map is not the territory.' Alan Watts, a talented exegete of Oriental Philosophy, restated it more vividly as 'The menu is not the meal.'

Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion, 'My current model' - or grid, or map, or reality-tunnel - 'contains the whole universe and will never need to be revised.' In terms of the history of science and of knowledge in general, this appears absurd and arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude."

00008

DISCORDIANISM

is a paradoxical post-modern pseudo-religion devoted to ERIS, th Greek Goddess of Chaos, Discord, & Strife. It mixes humor with truth in remarkable ways.

From Discordianism's holy book, Principia Discordia, here are some illuminating Discordian catmas (opposite of dogmas):

"Convictions cause convicts."

"It is my firm belief that it is a mistake to hold firm beliefs."

" 'Tis an ill wind that blows no minds."

"Nonsense as Salvation: The human race will begin solving its problems of the day that it ceases taking itself so seriously."

"Every Man, Woman & Child is a Discordian Pope."

Here's another good one: "A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing what he reads."






00011

Some thoughts on GAMES. . . .

In everything we do, we are playing GAMES.
Everything is a GAME.

If everything is a GAME, everything is absurd.
If everything is a GAME, everything is arbitrary.
If everything is a GAME, ultimately, nothing is true & everything is permitted.

But most of th time, we don't play games of our own creation.
Someone else makes th rules.
We follow them.
Or if we rebel & break them, we do so according to an alternative set of rules which we also did not create.

Our musickal collective will not play by anyone else's rules. We will create our own & keep them constantly in flux, paradoxical, impossible to follow. In so doing, we will avoid dogmatism & taking ourselves too seriously.

We will disorder th rules through chaotic meta-rules.

Th goal of th game is to transcend th game.

Page 00013 in th original booklet consists of one POPE & one MESSIAH card with th message, "Cut these out to claim YOUR BIRtHRigHt." Rather than copy them here, I will link you to th place where I got them myself: poee.co.uk, an excellent Discordian resource.

Page 00014 is th back page of th POEE cards & contains just a bunch of black & th page number.


00015

Are you utterly confused by all this?

If so, we have more in common than you may think.

So there's th low-down. I'm looking for people. People who live in Chicago, preferably. People who want to play every style of music on every instrument they can find. (Also no styles of music on no instruments.) People who want to play on th streets & begin illuminating th world immediately. People who want to devote themselves to chaos & metaprogramming. This is not about making money or looking cool. It's about MUSICK. It's about being:

agnostic * chaotic * absurd * transcendent * viral

So contact me, Andrew Aaron Heathwaite, at
gtrpkt AT yahoo DOT com * 315-657-6839 * myspace.com/nodalnim

Satbot

Aloha, meine Freunden, mi prami rodo!

I haphazardly conduct experiments & miss work & such, but I will say hello on this Satbot to ya'll.

Satbot : a combination of Gregorian Saturday with Discordian Boomtime - a compromise & complication. 5 Discordian days times 7 Gregorian days equals 35 days (or would it be days squared?). Add th original 12 & you get 47 days. I find gladness in this; 47, as a number, doth generally rock.

		Sweetmorn	Boomtime	Pungenday	Prickle Prickle	Setting Orange
		-sm	-bot	-pud	-pr	-so
Monday	Mon-	Monsm	Monbot	Monpud	Monpr	Monso
Tuesday	Tu-	Tusm	Tubot	Tupud	Tupr	Tuso
Wednesday	Wed-	Wedsm	Wedbot	Wedpud	Wedpr	Wedso
Thursday	Thu-	Thusm	Thubot	Thupud	Thupr	Thuso
Friday	Fri-	Frism	Fribot	Fripud	Fripr	Friso
Saturday	Sat-	Satsm	Satbot	Satpud	Satpr	Satso
Sunday	Sun-	Sunsm	Sunbot	Sunpud	Sunpr	Sunso

Doesn't this make life oodles easier?

(Mayhaps if we take easier to mean more plainly absurd. A noble goal, this easier.)

mercury cafe om 3

Hello, friendlies. I hope you exist in chambers of numerous discordant delights on this day & others. Hi to you.

I played at Mercury Cafe on th eve of this day ('twas Discord 28, y'know). I had conversation & pleasantries whilst also drinking caucasian tea & reading about Egyption God(esse)s. Enjoyment ensued.

.. drone
.. Philosophy of the World [a cover of a song by th Shaggs - solo debut]
.. slip on broken violence now [co-written with N. Borden - solo debut]
.. glamorous & glassy-eyed
.. Deenmark