Giant Ghetto Shaman Head Unearthed in Clifton!

Giant Ghetto Shaman Head Unearthed in Clifton!

Clifton, NJ—Dr. Sterling Hogbein, of the Hogbein Institute and Pro Shop, has startled the archeological community again with his excavation of a giant statue of The Daily Discord’s columnist, the Ghetto Shaman.  Dr. Hogbein has spent much of his career seeking an ancient race situated between the Hackensack and the Passaic River in a land known as Middle-Jersey.

Dr. Hogbein believes this civilization existed in Jersey an astounding forty-thousand years ago.  He also believes the Ghetto Shaman receives nightly transmissions from the Toltec gods and may well be an avatar, returning again and again when the world is in most need of public drunkenness.

“We weren’t sure this was actually the same Shaman until we reached the Basal Paleolithic level (c. 39,000 B.C.),” said Dr. Hogbein.  “There we discovered a necklace comprised of partially consumed chicken wings, possibly of the early Domino’s or Papa John’s variety.  We became certain at the pre-Specialty Brew level, where numerous empty cans of malt liquor products were found.”

The Ghetto Shaman has responded to the professor’s theories thusly, “The only nightly transmission I receive involves a professional woman named Isis.”

The Black Calling the Kettle Pot: or Something Like Fat

The Black Calling the Kettle Pot: or Something Like Fat
The Crank

Chris Christie has undeniably become a rather large figure in the present political spectrum. His ascendency to the big chair in NJ has had repercussions nation-wide. He has managed to squeeze himself into a fight with the unions, using his rather large fan base to garner support for his thin slicing of their benefits. If he does decide to run…er, briskly walk for President in 2012, his will be a big suit to fill, for sure. Christie brings a country buffet full of already tried and true ideas to the table.  Ahhh, I’m being told to stop now…

I know, I know, I shouldn’t have. But I am also a fat man, so I can. One who shouldn’t, however, is ultra skinny-assed Dr. Lamont Hill, a Black political pundit on the left side of Fox’s “balanced” fucking thingy. This guy, in a recent conversation with some local Fox affiliate, came out and stated he thought Christie will not run, for the simple reason he knows he can’t win on account of his…er, portliness. “He’s too fat” were his exact words. Ergo the title of my latest deranged thoughts put on paper. A whole new era in racism has arrived! (Insert Fanfare for the Common Fat Man here.) We have beaten to death the whole Black vs. Beige thing in this last election cycle, so I guess this is the next BIG thing!

Note to Lamont: don’t go there. While less than one third of America is black, we have a shit-load of wide-loads of ALL colors ALL over the place (except Asians, those skinny fish-eatin’ bastards). Don’t you shop at Wal-Mart with your eyes open, pal?  Here in Arizona, the average female is a B.M.W. (Big Mexican woman). Frankly, I have had bigger turds than you, Cleavon Little.

The Nanny state wants to outlaw Happy Meals, trans fats, fast food and the like, to “help us” overcome our obesity.

How fucking thoughtful of you.

Socialized consciousness, eh?  I prefer caramelized consciousness on a slab of meat with some freedom-fried potatoes.  Or, better yet, how ‘bout the Darwin meets Einstein’s school of thought? I make a conscious decision to eat copious amounts of Twinkies, and…well, I believe AlaCarte said it best, “I Twink, therefore I Spam.”  Not that kind of twink…freaks.

Or, I get fat, therefore I will die…someday. Maybe. Or, maybe your skinny ass will get flattened by a bus driven by a sedentary bus driver of, say, 300 pounds.

Just recently, a Doctor (Mark Haub, Professor of Human Nutrition at Kansas State University) went on a “Twinkie Diet” for a month, to show the detrimental effects of junk food. Problem: he ended up 27 pounds thinner.  His bad cholesterol went down, his good cholesterol went up, and he probably threw away his Viagra prescription.  Hmmmm, didn’t quite work out the way you thought, did it?   Kind of like taking a job at the Daily Discord.

We’re here, we’re fat, get mousse to it!

Pppffffft (sorry).

No tea party here, we are “The Keilbasa Party.”

Das Crank

Discord Apology Episode II: Attack of the Groans

Pierce Winslow

Philadephia, PA—It’s that time of the news cycle again.  We have limited our retractions this time to those episodes causing great personal damage or loss of life (otherwise we could be here all day).

Our journal submission Study Finds Sending Water to Flood Victims Ironic did not stay afloat under the peer review process.  Besides, there’s nothing funny about dysentery or cholera—even when worked effectively into a pun.

In our feature, Top 10 Reasons You Should Never Pull the Last Airbender’s Finger, three of the reasons were deemed “a bit of a stretch.”   But, we do stand by our original premise that it is still not advisable.

At the end of the day, The Discord staff admits our feature Global Drought May Spread does not represent journalism at its finest.

Finally, we would also like to apologize to the U.S. Army for endangering our troops in the field during our ill-fated Egg a Radical Muslim Cleric Day.  We are willing to stand by our offer to pay for all of the dry cleaning bills (for any legitimate claim), provided the Imams in question stop calling for our beheading.

Ask The Ghetto Shaman

Ask The Ghetto Shaman

Dear Ghetto Shaman,

I think you’re an f’ing scam. A friend of mine attended one of your “enlightenment” sessions at her university earlier this year, and she told me that you showed up drunk, did nothing but hit on her all night, and the puked all over her after pounding half the punch bowl at the after party. On top of that, she said you broke into the ladies room while she was trying to clean up and stole her bra. WTF dude? I thought you were someone I could trust.

Oh, and BTW, she’s thinking about pressing charges. Pig.

Thanks for nothing,

Roxanne

Dear Roxanne,

Sorry it took me five months to respond.  I didn’t want my readers to get the wrong idea.   You didn’t even say what university?  Besides, I usually only frequent high school bathrooms.  Otherwise, I admit it sounds like me.  A lot.  But, look, why is everyone so shocked about what happens at my Hide the Sacred Sausage Workshops in the first place?  Or, when my flyer for an event says, prepare to receive my Big 10inch Spiritual Transmission, there’s always these annoying lawsuits.  Really, people?  Next you’ll be condemning my Pop-a-Cherry Virgin Healing Retreats.

The Ghetto Shaman

P.S. I’m wearing your friend’s bra, right now.

Dueling Youtubes

Dueling Youtubes
Mick Zano

Nowhere, AZ—Having barely paid off the fines from the last time I was bored, I decided to channel my energies toward Youtube.  Entering this series of tubes that is the internet, I became lost in my own Youtube adventure.  For starters, I played Dylan’s and Guns & Roses’ version of Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door simultaneously.  Never do this.

Dylan sang through Slash’s guitar solo, and then, not to be outdone, Axl Rose sang through Dylan’s harmonica solo.  Other than that, it kind of worked…well, in a ‘God, I would rather be gouging out my own eye balls right now than listening to this shit’, kind of way. 

Warning! Don’t do this for too long, or that cold black cloud starts comin’ down

My grand experiment was almost over before it started, then I realized, if you use the pause button you can help keep the various musicians in sync, sort of.  Next, I played All Along the Watchtower, Dylan v Hendrix.  They were closer in speed than one would think.  But, in the end, no matter how many times I dallied All Along the Pause Button, Dylan just couldn’t keep up with the Jimmster.  

‘scuse me while I pause this guy. 

The clear winner in the dueling Youtubes was Van Halen’s California Girls v Beach Boys’ version.  The speed was really close.  They hung 10—whatever the hell that means—for a long time.  It was beautiful…and by beautiful, I mean, barely tolerable.   You just have to pause one of the two vids so they both start at the same time and it’s like magic, really cheesy beach magic (RCBM).

The Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne version of Poor, Poor Pitiful Me was wonderful played alongside Linda Ronstadt’s version—at least the first verse, anyway.  Jackson kind of shouted over Linda a bit, which is when I realized you can adjust the volume on each vid.  I am not horribly savvy at this You of Tubes.   

Then I played Skynyrd’s version of Free Bird v Skynyrd’s Guitar Hero version of Free Bird.  Turns out, they are identical.  Heh, heh.  No surprise, really.  This was like the control group or something.  I am a psychology dude, after all.  This was the play-cebo, so to speak.  Sorry.  (Edit that one out, Winslow. I wouldn’t want to lose one of my three fans.)

If you crank Cheryl Crow’s volume, she kind of hangs with Axl Rose during Guns & Roses’ version of Sweet Child O’Mine.  This is a little surreal to listen to, though.  It’s like listening to a record backwards, while in a tunnel, while underwater.  It kind of freaked me out a bit, like that time I was listening to a record backwards, while in a tunnel, while…you get the idea.

You Really Got Me:  Van Halen v The Kinks was really frustrating one for me.  It was a deeply disturbing exercise in futility, which I try to limit to my Crank rebuttals.  The old Kinks’ version is waaaay too slow, but then the Kinks’ Live version is waaaay too fast.  So I guess Diamond Dave’s version is just right.

Then, as often happens in my world, things took a turn into the absurd.  I pitted The Kingsmen against Motorhead’s version of Louie Louie.  Little did I know, I had entered one of the darker corners of the Youtube Zone.  No matter how badly these two versions were out of sync, it always sounded pretty good…well, as good as Louie Louie gets.  Maybe I was channeling an old fraternity party?  Maybe it triggered some type of flashback?  But, no matter what I did, I couldn’t kill it; it didn’t seem to matter who was singing what garbled version, guitar solo, chorus, what have you.  The song is impervious to attack.  It’s like the Borg of all fifties tunes.  Well, we’ll just see about that…

For the hat trick, I decided to throw the Kinks’ version into the mix.  Wow, still not bad.  Hmmmm.  I conducted another search…Mr. Morrison?  Yes, I threw in a Doors’ version to boot in an effort to break on through to the other track. This song was the thing that would not die!  The thing with 7 tracks!  I paused and moped by brow.  It’s assimilating all the versions!  It’s the Borg of all fifties tunes!  Did I say that already?

Would one more version cause a tear in the virtual space time continuum?  I starting saying, “It’s alive, alive!” and laughing manically.   This signifies it’s time for my “medication.”

Sometimes you have to push the envelope, so I threw in an Iggy Pop version of Louie Louie and all hell broke loose!  Don’t try this at home!  This many versions of Louie Louie made it very difficult to know what I was listening to, which actually helped.  However, my operating system may never recover; heck, I may never recover.  Now, every time I click on the Youtube icon on my desktop…well, I can swear my laptop has developed a nervous tick.  But I would do it again.  Well, the next time I’m really bored.

Discord Derides Daily Show for Rally Folly

Discord Derides Daily Show for Rally Folly

Philadelphia, PA—The Daily Discord is pursuing legal action against The Daily Show for hosting a rally on the same day, same time, and at the same place with similarly designed rally posters.

“Our D.C. rally got no publicity!” said Discord CEO, Pierce Winslow. “The Ghetto Shaman’s speech and subsequent arrest were simply a footnote, a distraction, a freak show!”

To add insult to perjury, Stewart is denying any wrongdoing and told Rachel Maddow in a recent interview, “There’s no real honor in satire.”

Winslow feels this is an obvious slight directed at the Discord.

“Excuse me?” said Winslow. “Haven’t you read our coverage on Egg a Radical Muslim Cleric Day? We changed journalism to something wholly other that day…like gournalism. And, as for your other comments during that interview, we are a fake fake News organization, which is completely different.”

Here is a Pierce Winslow excerpt from the actual lawsuit letter:

“I believe The Daily Discord is the victim of illegal and discriminatory rally practices. I have fully investigated my rights in this matter—and by ‘I’, I mean I have people for that, and by ‘fully investigated’, I mean I have conducted several non-porn related Google searches (NPRGS).”

Find the entire letter here.

“Bottom line, we spared no expense on those rally banners,” added Winslow, “…well, some expense on Zano’s, obviously.”

Jack Primus, The Ghetto Shaman, and All the Chicken Wings they could Rally

Alex Bone

Washington, DC—On Oct. 30th The National Mall was packed wall-to-wall with celebrities attending the Shaman’s Rally to Retrieve the U.S. Soul. After a long weekend of bashing in the skulls of the foul Darcarre, Jack Primus swung east in support of the Discord’s cause.  Being a fictional character doesn’t stop Primus from doing any number of cool things on a given day. You know that dude, the world’s most interesting man, from those Dos Equis commercials? Jack Primus won’t return his calls.

Jack is the archetypal hero. He captured the new century’s zeitgeist and keeps it chained in his basement next to his morning star.  Primus rarely does interviews, but for the Discord…we paid him—virtual money, of course.
The rest of this post is courtesy of Mr. P himself:

The Ghetto Shaman has given his blessing to Yig.  He is truly wise. Since he’s been receiving death threats from both the Xemmoni underground and the Sharron Angle campaign—both sworn enemies of Yig—I decided to help out my old friend. He asked me to support his cause, protect him from the super natural forces that be, and, of course, buy him some malt liquor products. Actually, I only agreed if GS promised me a plug on the Discord to sell more books.  He also promised me all the chicken wings I could eat. The joke was really on them; I hid an extra eighty in my backpack on the way out.  I heard Zano is getting his “wages” garnished over that one. But GS told me he’s got Winslow wrapped around his little chicken wing and I could muscle-in whenever I wanted.
If what happened at the Mall on October 30th continues to plague America, you’re really going to need the Chronicles of Jack Primus.  It’s not just a book; it’s a survival guide for the coming apocalypse!

To rewind a bit, everything had started out well enough. The Discord was bussing people down to the event. The Ghetto Shaman was reading excerpts of Jack Primus to the cheering masses. But those who could not decipher the Primus Code, never got a bus ride home! This book was their return ticket, you see. Without it, they were forced to hang out at Capital City Brewing—that big dumb brewpub downtown; the one with small portions and rubbery chicken wings. If you get stuck down there and the Xemmoni or the Darcarre get you, don’t come bitching to me. You’ve been warned. They’re in all the major cities, and they tend to know when you know…you know? So now that you know, you better read this book and learn how to stay alive…and don’t order those chicken wings.

I probably shouldn’t have told you that. Can you edit that out, Winslow? Not the staying alive part, the other part about the wings. Sometimes they’re OK drowned in enough blue cheese dressing. But you should buy the book and try to stay alive, of course. Geesh.

So, you want to really know what happened on October 30th? Why GS needed me as he shifted into an alternate dimension? He isn’t called a Shaman for nothing. They did come after him that day—in mass, I might add. You see, anyone and everyone must guard his or her corporeal body during any exercise in soul travel, especially one this important.

When The Ghetto Shaman drank his potion on the Lincoln Memorial steps, those damn Darcarre moved in like bed bugs in an Econo Lodge.  They surrounded us, alongside their unwilling slave, Jeff “come-on-in-guys” Probst of Survivor fame. They didn’t want GS’s message to get out to the people.  They will derail any message resembling Yig’s.  Could you imagine what would have happened if GS told everyone on national television to dissolve our differences and embrace the All Father snake? Yep, you’re right, we’d all be in a state of bliss, with all hunger and wars a thing of the past. Don’t look at me like that… Snakes are all about bliss… duh.  Haven’t you ever read any Graham Hancock?

So when they came, I was ready, or at least I was after I wiped the BBQ sauce off my weapon hand.  GS even helped with the battle; he was pretty bad ass with those chicken bone nunchucks. We gave those Serial Killers a good licking, but the damage was done. They jammed the telecast and those other stooges claimed all the credit for the rally.

Why do you think the special wasn’t on television and they switched all the coverage to those Comedy Central dudes with the weird haircuts and no sideburns?  It was a diversion!  I kept the Shaman safe until the police…er, “took over.” 

There you have it, right from the hero’s mouth.  Some call Primus a Yig-loving fictional freak. Whereas this is true, it’s still not a very nice thing to say. We would rather you stay alive, learn your enemy’s secrets, and read The Chronicles of Jack Primus.

The Bard of Wasilla Tweets!

The Bard of Wasilla Tweets!

Wasilla, AK—Some claim the lady doth protest too much, but is the Tea Bag Queen making a run for literacy? MILF Theatre, in conjunction with Portrait of a Blinking Idiot.com, presents Sign on My Facebook and Tell Me You’ll Vote for Me.

Set your tweets on Elizabethan as Palin conjures some literary magic.  Sarah has clearly done some amazing things with wordage, verbiage, and phonics-age. Act now and receive all of the Bard of Wasilla’s witticisms during this limited time offer. 

You’ll get such classic social site moments as: To tweet or not to tweet, you betch ya’ and Tax cuts are such sweet borrow. And, of course: To suffer the slings and arrows of refudiated progressives.  And, who could forget?  A course! A course! My kingdom for some eduma—a course!

But wait!  If you act now, you’ll get Et tu Brut by Faberge, as well as all 27 butchered words from, Lord what fools these liberal bloggers be.  And what offer would be complete without A plague on both your houses (and, by both, I mean Liberals and Progressives).  If you order right now, you’ll also receive the entire personal collection of Levi thou art a little shit tweets, for no extra charge.

All the world’s a stooge, folks, and we are merely Palins!  Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have busts thrusting and heaving with perky nipples!

Ask The Ghetto Shaman

Ask The Ghetto Shaman

My Journey:

Success! On Oct 30th, I prepared the Mad Dog 20/20 in the traditional Toltec manner of opening the top.  I then procured nutmeg from a local spice store.  Actually, someone scored it for me; I’ve been banned.  I ingested the mixture and exited this dimensional plane of existence, stage left.  I fought the Xemmoni, the Darcarre, and the Spin Monsters to reach the spiritual representation of America—in this case, Sam Kinison.  I lost most of his teachings, because of all the yelling, but I did make out: “YOU F***ING WHORE!!! You used me! You never loved me! I hope you slide under a gas truck and taste your own blood! DIE! DIE! DIE! I want my records back! I want my ****ing records back!”

You should all begin to feel different now, somehow lighter, more-centered, more-connected to the Earth and all of its inhabitants.  Now someone post my ****ing BAIL, BITCHES!  AHHhhHhh!  AHHhhhhh!

The Ghetto “Sam” man

Hawking Names Successor: Scientism, Cthulhu, and the Perennial Philosophy

Hawking Names Successor: Scientism, Cthulhu, and the Perennial Philosophy
Mick Zano

In Stephen Hawking’s recent Reuters article Why God Did Not Create the Universe, he asserts, “There is no place for God in theories on the creation of the Universe.”

Hawking goes on to say the Big Bang was “an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics.”  He then added, “Santa Claus is not real and Angelina Jolie’s breasts are silicone.”

Damn you, Hawking!

The brilliant people of the world are uniting, form of Scientism.  This rise of smartiness is a natural selection—I mean, reaction—to the religions of the world.  Granted, these are totally muffing it lately…and by lately, I mean that in geological time.  Muslim extremists are growing like ragweed and even the Pope has covered up a gazillion or so rapes. Honestly, the guy’s a frigging Bond villain.  Check this pic out:

Cardinal Sinister by Nick Walker
"Flopsy’s dead and never called me papal."
"Flopsy’s dead and never called me papal."

The Problem remains, each individual and each culture moves through Beck & Cowan’s color coded stages of consciousness. There’s no skipping steps.  We are all tribal (red) at birth, but in most cultures one has the opportunity to move beyond this level, preferably while still playing in a sandbox somewhere.  If some upward mobility does not occur, you end up a Nazi, Al-Qaeda, or working for The Weekly Standard (I’m kidding, of course, only some of them are Nazis).  One could also hope that the next phase, fundamentalism (blue), would also be a brief stop on the way to bigger and better memes (let’s say on-or-around puberty).  Speaking of adolescence, this is why the aspect of voting for certain Tea Party candidates at a critical juncture in our history scares the shit out of me…which reminds me of a great Stuart Davis rant:

“The first fucking thing conventional and preconventional stages of development do with democracy is vote in undemocratic, theocratic regimes. Nice. Hamas. Nice. President fucking ‘God is on my side’ Bush. Nice. What are we? Nine? Ten fucking years old? I am so, SO sick of this shit, and you should be too. These arrested adolescents are pissing all over the altar.”

—Stuart Davis

This brings us to Hawking and the many entrepreneurial/scientific level folk of the modern world (orange).  Currently, they’re denying any opening for spiritual thought, because they are understandably disgusted with this mythic version of religion. 

This meme can be summed up with Bush’s I’m going to pray and then decide who to bomb approach to spirituality. The so-called authorities on the subject are, as Davis asserts, “pissing all over the altar.”  As a direct result, all educated folks have renounced the whole Christ and caboodle.

In the last century, anything not involving gross matter is deemed irrelevant—this, despite such twentieth century breakthroughs as quantum mechanics, String Theory, Bell’s Theorem, and the Cookie Monster Paradox (He chews on the cookies, he loves the cookies, yet none seem to enter his gullet?). 

To me, Bell’s Theorem proves the interconnectedness of all points throughout the Universe, but even the facts don’t seem to deter reductionists.  And here I thought that was their thing? They continue to ignore the increasing connection between Vedic philosophies and physics, and the growing body of proof that a brain subjected to meditation operates more efficiently.  And what happens when blood flows more freely in our frontal lobes and neural connectivity increases?  A view of the universe unfolds in an eerily similar manner as it has throughout the ages. This perennial philosophy occurs again and again.  It asserts there is a divine unity underlying all things—except, of course, Ghetto Shaman articles (the Universe isn’t perfect, after all).  

So why would our greatest thinkers ignore the conclusion of the most sophisticated machine on Earth, the human brain?  More importantly, what if those hyperintelligent, pandimensional beings mentioned in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy programmed their ‘meaning of life experiment’ into our very DNA?  Sorry, it’s the pot talking.

We ignore the conclusions of countless contemplatives at our own peril.  This perennial philosophy is a spiritual language, surfacing time and time again, interwoven throughout our archetypes, our myths, and our dreams—not to mention certain Jack Primus novels.

The Upanishadic/Coomaraswamy brand of this philosophy has permeated the heart of all major religions and contemplative philosophies.  And not just Buddhism and Hinduism, it has surfaced in the Gnostics, the Cabbalists, and even the Sufis (aka, the thoughtful versions of today’s watered down versions). In other words, things were going just fine until some fundamental Preacher, Rabbi, or Imam started pissing all over the altar.  Makes me want to curl up with some Kant or Nietzsche and give the whole thing a miss.  In essence, this is what most scientists have done.

For some context on how the west was done, look no further than the field of psychology.  We banished the intuitive, contemplative side of psychology at the turn of the century (right around the field’s inception).  You see, two main schools of thought, structuralism and functionalism, were vying for dominance back in Wilhelm Wundt’s Wunderland (a man heralded as the father of psychology and a strong Prop 19 supporter).  No one ever talks about the implications of this, but two perspectives entered and, to the detriment of the west, only one emerged. 

E.B. Titchener’s structuralism maintained that the goal of the psychologist was to “analyze consciousness into its basic elements and investigate how these elements are related”, an approach focusing on a “systematic self-observation of one’s own consciousness (Weiten, 2004).”

So, of course, his movement was doomed to failure, much like the Z-Party movement and my Rally to Restore Other Important Things and Stuff.  The subjective attempt at ‘mind looking at mind’ was a hard pill to swallow for even early psychologists, after all, positivism and empiricism were already the favored approach for a new field of soon to be, rat-poking Skinnerians (RPSs).  William James pulled the field of psychology toward the more favored approach, functionalism, and Titchener was forced into prostitution (sorry, I was channeling the great historian, Glenn Beck, again). 

In retrospect, this was an easy shift, because James’ functionalism studied things from a more stimulus-response paradigm (aka, endeavors clearly more rooted in the budding field of rat-poking).  In many ways, Titchener’s approach of defining consciousness was ingenious, but he was ultimately assigned to the dust bin of history.  Obviously, we should have continued to pursue both functionalism and structuralism, but c`est la valium.

The field of psychology has never looked back and, as a result, we remain forever separate from our own subjective experience.  A recent poll labels 1 in 10 Americans as depressed.  This doesn’t include people who frequent The Daily Discord (hint: it would much higher).  It also doesn’t include psychotic, mood, or anxiety disorders—to say nothing of addictions.  Not only have we ignored ourselves, we have banished our myths as well:

“Hence we find today, after some five hundred years of the systematic dismemberment of the mythological organ in our species, all the sad young men, for whom life is such a problem.”

—Joseph Campbell

Thousands of years ago, the folks over in early India chose not to ditch the Titch.  First, to keep the rat pokers happy, they made profound scientific discoveries in the objective world around them, but then they shifted their efforts and their focus inward into their own consciousness.   The result was the Upanishads (aka, after a highly sophisticated group of ancients passed Prop 19).

I remember in middle school being enthralled with the Sophists of ancient Greece.  In particularly, Heraclitus impressed me.  Is it a coincidence that, years later, Zeno’s would become my favorite bar?  I drink not.  Heraclitus asserted all of life is flux and change.  Oh, and Zeno’s rotates its taps.  Coincidence?  I don’t drink so.  Later, I discovered Heraclitus also believed in an underlying unity beneath the surface of all things.  He was later barred from Zeno’s for pinching what he tried to philosophically argue was his own buttocks.  No one was buying it. 

“Spirit is motion; it is the invisible animator of motivation of growth and change.  It is the urge to extend, encompass, transform, and become.” And, “Our society does not consciously cultivate or utilize the dreamlike state of awareness.  We are unfamiliar with our deep neural system in which the image and form of our worlds are created and projected.  We have been cut off from an entire aspect of our being.”

—Robert Lawlor (a huge Heraclitus fan and Prop 19 supporter)

In the modern west, consciousness went underground for a time.  Our myths died and, to the chagrin of Carl Jung, our unconsciousness and our dreams died along with them.  This perspective finally reemerged with the likes of Ken Wilber and his Integral Institute.  Oh, and this guy’s huge!  Here’s a picture from my local Barnes and Noble where Ken Wilber is placed right next to the Necronomicon in the flakiest corner of the New Age Zone.

Here’s a picture from my local Barnes and Noble where Ken Wilber is placed right next to the Necronomicon in the flakiest corner of the New Age Zone.

So one of my heroes ends up next to a fictional grimoire, great.  Wilber has synthesized hundreds of psychological theories into a meaningful, understandable perspective.  On the other tentacle, Cthulhu has dragged many a poor soul into the nether realms to feed.  I can see the correlation.  Wilber asserts that meditation can only be subject to the scientific method if you partake in the grand experiment.  He also recommends approaching non-believers thusly:

“The people who raise this objection are almost always people who don’t want to look through the instrument of meditation, just as Churchman refused to look through Galileo’s telescope and thus acknowledge the moons of Jupiter. Let them live with their refusal. But let us – to the best of our ability, and hopefully driven by the best of charity of compassion – try to convince them to look, just once, and see for themselves.”

—Ken Wilber

Wilber wants everyone to start their own interior experiential experiment, through the art of meditation, to see how other insights are available in different/higher states of consciousness.  His views echo the tenets of Buddhism, epitomized in Hesse’s Siddhartha, where it’s not the teaching themselves, but the practice that is the key to enlightenment.  

“To nobody, O Illustrious One, can you communicate in words and teaching what happened to you in the hour of your enlightenment. That is why I am going on my way—not to seek another and better doctrine, for I know there is none, but to leave all doctrines and all teachers and to reach my goal alone—or die (fuckers).”

—Hermann Hesse

I added the “fuckers” part, but it’s clearly implied. Oh, oh, but wait!  In Cthulhu’s defense, his quote “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu” will make you pull off your own ears at the very sound of it (which is important too). 

The Dalai Lama has asked the scientific community to bring scientific methods to bear on Buddhism itself.  He’s willing to change the dharma, if necessary, to further adhere to the objective-side of reality.  He understands the importance of the external as well as the internal aspects of our existence.  Cthulhu, meanwhile, hates the Dalai Lama:

R’lyeh wgah’nag!”

—Cthulhu

You go, girl. On many issues I would still side with the Dawkins, Hawking, Hitchens, and Carrot Tops of the world—especially when the choice is between them or more fundamental thought.  They are still my heroes, albeit in one area, the external world.  As for spiritual matters, they are quite misguided and actually detrimental for moving many along that dynamic consciousness spiral.  They are ignoring developmental psychology, outright.  Besides, Hawking himself discovered the mind numbingly delicate balancing act that exists in our Universe between galaxies forming or everything collapsing into a black hole. He said the chances of such a balance were one in 1059, which is like a trillionth of a gazillionth or some such.  Really?  That just happened? 

Recently, Bill Maher told Bill O’Reilly anyone who believes in God is a “dunce.”  Again, his anger stems from watching the consequences of fundamental thought still playing out in societies across the globe…or, it may be the fact I refuse to return his favorite bong.  I’m sure it’s one of the two.  You can’t ignore the spiral, or the development.  Each level is an integral part in the realm of ever-unfolding spirit. 

Meanwhile, on this ongoing crusade against religious thought, Christopher Hitchens is surely the Batman to Bill Maher’s Robin. In Hitchens’ Slate article on 9/8, he stated, “The taming and domestication of religion is one of the unceasing chores of civilization.”

I would like to change that to:

“Stressing meditation and contemplation is one of the unceasing chores of the enlightened.”

—Mick “not-enlightened-yet-but-still-attending-Ghetto-Shaman-workshops-regularly” Zano

Weiten, W. (2005). Psychology: Themes and Variations (6th Ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.

Dark Rider Sightings Shock Shirefolk

Dark Rider Sightings Shock Shirefolk

Bag End, HBT—A number of men in black were seen riding through Bree and parts of the Shire late last night.  Eyewitnesses claim they were searching for a hobbit known as Bilbo Baggins.   Locals report, Baggins has remained a recluse ever since the Harvard Lampoon referred to him as Dildo Bugger in a popular spoof.  Some believe the riders were searching for a piece of jewelry, or perhaps other things to pawn.

A local wizard named Gandalf the Grey told reporters, “A shadow moves in the east, there are whispers of a nameless fear, and the Green Dragon has a steep cover charge tonight.” 

Gandalf later expounded upon his earlier statements, “The fires of Mount Doom are ablaze, there are worse things than goblins in the darker places of the world, and there are, indeed, strange things afoot at the Circle-K.” 

Here to make sense of that, and more, is our own Mad Dog mystic, the Ghetto Shaman, “Dildo Bugger, heh, heh.  That’s fucking great!”

In other local news, farmer Maggot is reporting crops have been taken from his field again.  He is blaming the dark riders for the mischief.  Roseypalm Glandheaver of Bugger-downs has reported her dog missing.  The faithful companion was last seen pissing on an Ent.

“I can’t imagine what could have happened to him,” said Glandheaver. 

Cobra Sucks: or why at 42 I want Obamacare to Allow Me Back on My Parent’s Insurance

Dave Atsals

In this age of horrible economic times, amidst constant rallies to restore sanity and/or fear, and/or Honor, or to retrieve the U.S. Soul and/or Other Imortant Things and stuff (God, Zano’s an idiot), I would like to vent my frustration about something completely different, the program known as COBRA. 

COBRA, much like the name implies, really bites.  The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) gives workers and their families, who have lost their health benefits, the right to continue group health benefits for limited periods of time under certain circumstances.

Qualified individuals may be required to pay the entire premium for coverage up to 102% of the cost to the plan.  Currently the government is even offsetting some of the cost by paying a percentage of this for the many displaced, disgruntled, and discharged workers across our country.  You know…most of us.

The idea is sound. Let’s face it, people need insurance and this helps people maintain it for a time between jobs.  The operation itself, however, is as dismal as the Daily Discord’s marketing team.  You know…..me.

First, you sign up and you have a large time frame (about 45 days) then payments are due the 1st of each month with a thirty-day grace period.  Basically, I got a monthly payment coupon book with a box on each slip stating payment amount due. 

The block of coupons I received came in on the 15th of the month, so I filled out that month’s coupon, in crayon, and just discarded the coupon sent for the previous month.  I continued to mail my payment in by the first of each month.  Please note, they have no website, or contact number of any kind to make payments.  There’s no way to check on your account—just these old fashioned snail-mail coupons from hell.  In August, I mailed my check out on the fourth, but, heck, you get that 30-day grace period to get it in, right?  Besides, I had never received a late payment notice.  What’s the worst that could happen?

Then I received this letter in the mail on August 16th.  The ‘mailed on date’ was August 10th

Dave Atasls' COBRA letter

Realizing the Family no longer had health insurance (actually hadn’t had any for the last 16 days), I looked through my bills.  I had accrued over $2,000.00 in medical bills during that time period (most of which went to having a mole removed and then placed strategically somewhere else on my person).   Now my mole relocation project (MRP) would not be covered by insurance (to say nothing of my lobomasto-mnemonic-inhibitor—an operation to help me not think about women’s breasts so much).

I called the COBRA people with a verbal tirade that would make the Crank and the Ghetto Shaman proud.  It got me nowhere, just like college. 

I then sent in this letter of appeal:

Dear Cobra Control Services,

This letter is to appeal the termination of my cobra coverage, on July 1, 2010.  I was in error, I believed that the payment I sent in on 8-03-2010 was for August, but it was July’s payment making it after the thirty day grace period.

It was in no way meant to be taken as I wanted to discontinue coverage, which my family needs.  I received no notice as to anything being late and was not aware of my error.  I ask you to consider reinstating my coverage.

If reinstated I would make immediate payment for July and August.

Please contact me at if you have any questions or need further information.

Respectfully submitted,

David Tiberius Atsals

In a letter received from COBRA ten days later I was informed that my appeal was denied and reminded that any medical bills, or mole migration procedures from July 1st on, were now solely my responsibility. 

THANKS!

I have several complaints about this whole confusing process.  No late notices? No way to check account activity?  No notification before the fact that your coverage was terminated?  The worst part of the whole affair, the check I mailed out on August 4th was somehow cashed by them for insurance which no longer existed!

The follow up letter I will be sending COBRA Control Services, LLC will be authored by the Ghetto Shaman and the Crank—after I ply them with enough alcohol, Coca Cola, and nutmeg to “down a rhino.” 

Maybe I’ll even send COBRA a few non-covered bills.  Hell, I can’t afford to pay them anyway.   But I love my new mole!  I look Marilyn Monroe now, sort of, and I can say that now without even thinking about her pookas.   Well, at least not as much.

I then authored this letter to President Obama:

Dear Prez,

Whereas I appreciate extending the coverage to young people until age 26, in my case this falls about 16 years short of the mark.   My parents will happily allow me back on their insurance plan, provided they don’t find out.  Oh, and when you get a chance please shut down COBRA.  It should be replaced with an organization that is at least as technologically savvy as John McCain for fuck’s sake.

Respectfully submitted,

Dave Mortimer Atsals

As Mick Zano would say, I didn’t send the ‘for fuck’s sake’ part, but it was implied.

Post O’Donnell’s Defeat November 2nd Declared National Masturbation Day

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Philadelphia, PA—The Daily Discord has announced their intention to name November, 2nd “National Masturbation Day”!  A large masturbatory event is being planned at the Wank-off Astoria next week and many of the Discordians are planning to attend, bird in hand.  It’s being marketed as a peter-pulling, meat-beating ex-strokeoff-ganza!

“Why would Christine O’Donnell and her ilk support teabagging, but not pud-pulling, in the first place?” asked the Discord’s Ghetto “Shucking-bubba” Shaman. “We came very close to losing a practice very dear to me, but, spankfully, we all went into our individual pulling stations this week and tossed off a vote for freedom.”

When asked if the Discord is a staunch supporter of masturbation, CEO Pierce Winslow, said, “Certainly not.  But, like it or not, it’s a hard piece of reality.” He then cited the controversial court decision, Roe v Wank:  “Ultimately, I want such practices to be kept safe, legal, and rare.”  Winslow warns if we outlaw the practice, “it will simply go underwear…er, underground.  Sorry, that was a Freudian slip-n-slide.”

Celebrate your masturbate, people! And remember, folks, you don’t have to be a member to play with your member.  The first one hundred patrons ride the Super Glide all day, free!  Don’t forget to stop by our Viagra, salsa, and lotion bar, and don’t miss our special guest speaker Paul Reubens! We’re expecting John Boehner to boycott, however John Boner will almost certainly be in attendance.

Void where inhibited.

Apparently Only Five People Interested in Restoring Sanity in Arizona

Apparently Only Five People Interested in Restoring Sanity in Arizona
Mick Zano

Flagstaff, AZ—Deciding against heading to D.C. for my own rally, which is every blogger’s prerogative, I instead attended the Rally to Restore Sanity in my area.  This was a difficult decision for me but, since Winslow wouldn’t let me into the rent-a-car, I opted to stay around town and…damn you Ghetto Shaman!

At 11:00 AM on 10/30 as the D.C. Mall filled up with ralliers, for some rally or another, a woman named Donna held a sign outside of City Hall that read “Vote Damn It!”  OK, it just said ‘vote’, but the damn it was implied.

She said, “I would have preferred Hillary over Obama, but considered McCain until he chose Palin as his running mate.”

Donna, a true AZ independent, seemed interested in a viable third party, but didn’t seem horribly enthralled with the Tea Peeps.  Then I spoke with a gentleman named Doug, who said he’s “disturbed by all the 2nd Amendment rhetoric and threats; all because they don’t like the results of a democratic process.” And he was “upset with all the hatred and intimidation these days.”

I chose that moment to expose my holster, “Shut up, douche bag!” I said, before breaking his rally sign over my knee.

OK, maybe not.  But what were these seemingly sane people hiding? Hmmmm. My interview with Doug was interrupted, because someone started yelling obscenities at the ralliers (only seconds after the above picture was snapped). 

At the time this unpleasantness erupted, there were only three signs out: Vote Now, Your Choice Counts, and Rally to Restore Sanity.  So this “patriot” was either not interested in voting, not interested in sanity, or perhaps becomes enraged by the sight of American flags.  I know what you’re thinking, but The Crank was in The Valley that day (come for the festival a-ya?).

Here’s Doug and a fellow rallier talking down a person offended by any talk of sanity
Here’s Doug and a fellow rallier talking down a person offended by any talk of sanity

We are a divided nation.  But I’m not saying all Tea Party members are morons—sure some of them are steeped in stupid, but the concerning thing is, the majority of their candidates certainly are morons.  That was yet another key point missed by my blogversaries.  And not all Tea Party darlings are bone heads either; there’s Joe Miller over in Alaska who can complete a whole sentence on command, and there’s Chris Christie over in Jersey who certainly has his fair share of hootspa.  I hate hootspa. 

But it’s important we stop pigeonholing ourselves into one camp or another.  I can make fun of Sean Hannity, because he’s consistently pathetic, but I can also quickly lose faith in Keith Olbermann (someone I admired during the Bush years).  My article Today’s Worst Liberal in the World came out in 2008.  In fact, I was critical of Keith before it was popular to do so.  Whereas I figured out some media madness in a few weeks, my friends across the blogosphere never questioned Eight YEARS OF BUSH FOXAGANDA.  This is why they only resonate with those completely immersed in the neococoon, or vodka.

Having such a large faction of society completely devoid of any independent thought is a mortifying.  It scares me more than pragmatism (Fox translation = socialism).  It scares me more than whatever the hell Glenn Beck is scared about (no Prozac script?).  I think it’s the story of our time, which is why I’ve been harping on the subject (to the chagrin of both of my readers).

Bachmann and Angle are as scary on the right as Reid and Pelosi are on the left.  Difference?  Most liberals get that.  Yet Republicans have almost no ability to identify the dangers on their own side of the aisle. In fact, they tend to promote them.  Does that mean they’re morons themselves?  Not necessarily; it could be dementia. 

Fact 1: I do know intelligent people who watch and enjoy Fox News. 

Fact 2: That’s a shame.

I heard a conversation the other day at a coffee shop.

The guy at the table next to me said, “My brother’s from Nevada and he’s like, ‘God, Reid is such an asshole, but then the Tea Party people put up Angle to run against him?  What the F&^%!’”

That quote rather succinctly sums up why I have some faith in liberals and next to none in today’s conservatives.  They’re picker is not only broken, it has been shoved so far up the U.S. psyche’s ass that our country’s zeitgeist is walking a little funny these days. 

Angle, Bachman, Palin, O’Donnell?  Really?  Ethnocentric, nationalistic, fundamental thought is fine—aka, wherever the hell you’re at in the grand meme of things, knock yourself out—but for God’s sake, do it well (hint: you’re not). 

This has been my point all along.  I don’t know how many times I have to say it, but there are valid positions within the Republican Party and there are valid positions within the Tea Party.  Bottom line, we are healthier with a better brand of donkey and a better brand of elephant.

At the rally today, the four people I interviewed were reasonable, intelligent, and informed.  The one guy from the right was yelling obscenities, because advocating for normal brain wave patterns is apparently unacceptable to him.  Hmmm.  Liberals are all over the map with their positions.  Foxeteers are in lockstep or, in some cases, ‘goose step’, fashion.  But I kid the fascists.

Listening and thinking are clearly not vogue.  Politicians have devolved to little more than legitimized crooks, or, as I like to call them, Discord staffers.   This is why I want to stand with some type of Tea Party movement, but in order to do so today I would have to don my Groucho mustache/glasses combo out of sheer embarrassment.  And, as most people who know me would attest, I don’t embarrass easily.  Sure, they’re not all morons, but how can we tell when the person stating their case is, in fact, a moron?  Oh, wait, no M word…er, analytically challenged?

My five minutes at City Hall Saturday reminded me why I would rather be at a Stewart/Colbert rally than a Tea Party or a Beck Rally any day.  The Crank feels most people are moderate.  I say, they seem anything but these days.  What gets my goat is those the most outraged have an outrageous voting record and a tenuous grip on reality (on a good day).

I have entire posts focusing on—not the dismantling of conservatism—but the legitimizing of it. Republicans seem incapable of self reflection, or anything resembling improvement. I also want something better than Air America or MSNBC on the liberal side.  Again, the main difference?  If you lose objectivity on the left, you dive (MSNBC or AA), you lose objectivity on the right, you thrive (Fox News).  As usual, Andrew summed the rally up nicely…the Ghetto Shaman rally, of course:

“It wasn’t ethnically very diverse, but there were many more boomers than I expected. It was very good humored, and one sensed that the entire crowd loathed Fox, felt queasy about MSNBC, couldn’t bring themselves to watch CNN and caught NPR in the commute…oh, and The Ghetto Shaman rocked!”

—Andrew Sullivan

OK, I added the Ghetto Shaman part, but it was implied.   The tanked media was a major theme of the Stewart rally.  Once again our comedians are more insightful than our politicians.  Heck, a news outlet for my meme doesn’t even exist yet.  When will there be an integral news station?!  Well, I could just keep watching Fareed Zakaria all day on TiVo, but that’s hardly the same. 

What I fear is that if we have too many at a ethnocentric/fundamental level, we have very little chance of avoiding a global conflict with Islam.  Too many liberal pluralists, on the other hand, and we’re likely to have Sharia Law in the west.  But if a few more integral folk show up in congress, who knows, maybe we could really fuck things up!

And now, as promised, a Special Comment:

(hint: it’s really not all that special and if you have something better to do right now, like go for a root canal or watch C-Span 2, you might want to do that.)

My original thought was to go line by line with Crank’s last post, pointing out what I meant and how the Foxeteers switch to something completely different (hint: usually involving socialism).  But the Daily Discord is already cutting way too much into my drinking time, so no. 

But the Crank is right about this part: dumb, dumber, dumbest comments are hardy integral.  And, in the interest of good sportsmanship, I’m even willing to drop the M and even the D word from my vocabulary. If, but only if, my fellow Discordians actually read what I say before immediately translating them into Foxisms—nine out of ten of which do not apply to my posts or my position. 

I will take the bite out of my schtick, but, as far as the truly personal attacks, I think that’s another example of the Crank calling the Zano hack.

Meanwhile, Pernick on a recent Facebook exchange called me “clueless” for thinking Bush added more to the deficit than Obama.

And, not to be outdone, the Crank said, “Well, no (Obama had more deficits).  You once said to me that Fox lies, and that you can make up stories, but ya can’t make up facts.”

Two posts ago, here’s me on deficits: “Sorry, but Obama doesn’t count. Capitalism ended in 2008,” and in this week’s post I added, “The last $1.65 trillion Obama spent was a reaction to the collapse. It staved off a depression.”

A few posts back, I showed a graph of all the deficits of the last 8 presidents, minus Obama, and I explained why his deficits didn’t count, because it was all over by then (and still is).  This is borrowed time with borrowed money. The way you guys make it sound, Obama just waltzed in during a little lull in our economy and started seizing automobile manufacturers. Huh?  Do you think Obama blew $1.65 trillion on hats?

Again, just for fun:  Operation Monopoly Money doesn’t count; it was post econolyptic. 

Summary of the economic debate late ‘08:

“Naaah, let’s not do the whole depression thing.”

“Sounds good, George. I’ll print the loot.”

Summary of the economic debate early ‘09:

“Naaah, let’s not do the whole depression thing.”

“Sounds good, Barak. I’ll print the loot.”

Obama’s part in this was going to go down similarly no matter who was in power.  Oh, oh, wait.  Actually, if a true Tea Partier was in at that time, the global economy would have collapsed.  They are, of course, right in principle about fiscal conservatism, but if they had tried that shit at the onset of The Great Recession, it would have been soup line city.  Facts are terrible things.

The deficits that broke America’s back happened during those fiscally conservative Bush years.  And, to some degree, the whole Spendulus thing worked far better than I could have imagined.  I still think we’re heading for a double dip recession, but the crux of our differing opinion is this: I know how to appropriately divvy up the blame, again 60(R), 40 (D), which is about the best case scenario for Republicans.  History will likely be harsher. That’s why I was yelling as loudly as I did circa 2004-2008, when you were all just a twinkle in your founding father’s tea bag.  I saw the big tree and I saw the glazed look in our Commander in Chief’s eyes as he stayed the course. I predicted the collapse almost to the month…so yeah, I’m crazy…crazy like a Fox!

–Homer Simpson at a Beck rally