What lurks around the hyperspace before you is either the greatest work of literature known to man, the biggest load of crap, or a large toaster oven from Sirius. And, as we all know, "or" is not the same as the "exclusive or" (it can't get into the same sorts of clubs, for one thing), so this could very well be all three. Some might argue that it doesn't really matter, and just point out that it's a magnificent mindfuck, regardless.
I have never met any of the authors of these works (unless you count that mysterious man in black who took the money I buried in my backyard and chintzed me on my membership card); nor have I ever authored a famous work which incorporate discordian themes (unless you count several of my research papers, and grant a broad definition of the word generous); nor was I even alive when JFK was shot, Hagbard Celine illuminated, or Jim Garrison got his mimeograph. My introduction to all of this was in 1991, that wonderful palindromic year when I first encountered The Earth Will Shake, and proceeded to power through the Historical Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson. This resulted in my glomming onto more of his books, and the eventual poisoning of my mind into discordant modes of thought.
I've since moved on in my spiritual awareness from my early Discordian days -- now I practice a form of Internet idol worship, while diverting the masses with the intellectual vapidness of Tiltology. In my spare time, I dabble in profane humanism, but try to get other people to think that it's really profound humanism. No one seems to buy it, yet, but I still have faith.
This project -- this transubstantiation of what was once a print media barrage into the divine HTML -- is the brainchild of Her High-and-Mightyness Alabastrozenithenia, Pope Patterson and Grand High Priestess of Tiltology. It's since become a group effort, in an attempt to expand the confines of the document to stretch throughout the erisian hyperspace that is the Internet. Or maybe we're just bored. Still, we hope to eventually have a Principia that Kerry, Bob and Greyface would all be proud of, and that will earn us enough slack points to laugh at the X-ist pleasure saucers when they arrive -- although we don't need slack, we've got Vitamin X.
The other day, a small gnome tunnelled up from closet. His watch was of Swiss make, and I assumed him to be from Zurich, but still, one never knows. He spoke flawless Antlantean, and told me through my pineal gland that what we were doing here was a Good Thing. "The world tries to make itself out to be a very serious place, grasshopper, but We know it to be not true. Peoples is peoples. Heirarchy, pecking orders, fame, fortune -- these make mere mortals into myths in their own time. Tear down these walls (but be sure to put some different ones in their places, so as not to frighten the rubes). Add confusion to people's lives, so'n they might think from time to time. Knock those gurus offa their local maxima. All Hail Eris!"
I may have dreamed it all -- after all, I don't speak Atlantean -- but then again, there was that Yeti sidekick of his. I mean, how do you fake that? Anyway, whether there's a Deeper Meaning to all of this or not, we're young, we're hip, and we're urban (despite living in Salem, Oregon), and we're bringing the Principia Discordia to you for your mind-altering pleasure. Don't have too much fun, now, kids!
By the way, please don't ever suffer under the misconception that this thing is done. Around here, we don't beleive in every fully completing something -- just freezing a release occasionally. We've pretty much wrapped up the HTML-ifying of things, but the links in and out will probably continue to evolve in non-deterministic quantum jumps.
Last modified: 3/27/94
James "Eric" Tilton, Grand High Peacock of Own Religion, tilt+@cs.cmu.edu