The Dice Man

Well I just finished the Dice Man and I have to say, with very mixed feelings. I caught myself saying "well that was genius" and immediately said "really? You think that?!" Well a part of me must have! So as I was about to type I won't be carrying a die with me soon, I stood up and tried to find one from my storage room. I did not however and maybe it's for the best cause my colleagues would probably react oddly. I can however use heads or tails by just grabbing a coin out of my pocket (not flipping it) to decide between options as a catalyst to make me do (non-crazy or stupid) things I would otherwise have an issue with. (My fourth circuit is the most broken of the 8 circuits, nonetheless I'm doing great at work and I think nobody has a clue so far as I'm being very social and having lots of fun.)

I have to say, I don't understand what the freaking hell the rape and murder was necessary for in - jesus christ I just made my fridge stop buzzing by removing the power cable against an element at the rear: really?! and YAAAAAY! - necessary for in the book. I can't say the 2 have never crossed my mind but in the fleeting kind of random mind throw-up way that nobody wants to admit (I've always been way too truthful for my own good), I can say however that I have never considered either action even half-seriously. Now minor spoiler alert, so I'll be typing it in white (mouseover it) in case people are intrigued by the book but are unsure, and I have to say, it's quite a good read so here are 2 spoilers about the rape and murder in case you're not sure you wanna read it this may help (He rapes his best friend's wife who basically wanted it so it wasn't "really" rape, and the murder victim is a child molestor, so it's not that out there., however, it really really could have been). I have to say though I really enjoyed reading it, it's my first fiction book I finished in a while (I think at least, bless my memory) and I loved the writing style, you see some chapters are only a paragraph or a line long cause the die told him to do it that way. Loads of social commentary and it was worth the praise of other authors as you can tell from my mixed feelings at the start of the post. I finished the book at work, and the next one will finally be the Illuminatus Trilogy, I always got stuck halfway the first book cause I lost track of the many characters but am determined to finish it now. (I only read fictional books at work, no matter how crazy they are they are still fiction, I doubt if they find me reading an actual occult book that it would go over as well ;) Loving this new job, being able to read pdfs is awesome and gives me more time in the evening to read the many practical and theoretical books on consciousness I'm devouring at the moment.

Former posts about The Dice Man

"Joe Fineman noted that since two green dice had been found in a prominent place near the bombing of the army munitions depot in New Jersey and Senator Easterman's attack in the Senate on Dice Centers and dicepeople, there had been a sudden flood of incompetent dicetherapists creating stupid and dangerous options for dicestudents; he suggested that the FBI might be infiltrating and trying to discredit the movement. Dr. Ecstein squashed this dangerous speculation by noting that dicepeople could do perfectly all right discrediting themselves without outside help. He went on to suggest perhaps ironically that The DICELIFE Foundation issue a formal statement dissociating itself from any and all bad acts of dicepeople throughout the earth and adjoining planets - to save the trouble of having to issue a new statement 'every other day.'"

Dice Man - Chapter 19

My childhood! My childhood! My God, I've now written over a hundred and ten pages and you don't even know whether I was bottle fed or breast fed! You don't know when I was first weaned and how; when I first discovered that girls don't have any weeny, how much I brooded because girls don't have any weeny, when I first decided to enjoy the fact that girls don't have any weeny. You don't know who my great-grandparents were, my grandparents; you don't even know about my mother and father? My siblings! My milieu! My socioeconomic background! My early traumas! My early joys!, The signs and portents surrounding my birth! Dear friends, you don't know any of that `David Copperfield kind of crap' (to quote Howard Hughes) which is the very essence of autobiography! Relax, my friends, I

don't intend to tell you.

Traditional autobiographers wish to help you understand how the adult was `formed.' I suppose most human beings, like clay chamber pots, are 'formed'- and are used accordingly. But I? I am born anew

at each green fall of the die, and by die-ing I eliminate my since. The past - paste, pus, piss - is all only illusory events created by a stone mask to justify an illusory stagnant present. Living flows, and the only possible justification of an autobiography is that it happened by chance to be written - like this one. Someday a higher creature will write the almost perfect and totally honest autobiography 'I live.' 

I will acknowledge, however, that I did, in fact, have a human mother. This much I admit.

Dice Man - Chapter Twenty

In November I received a telephone call from Dr. Mann informing me that Eric Cannon had been acting up while I'd been away a week at a convention in Houston, that it had bees necessary to increased his medication (tranquilizers) and would I please make a special trip over as soon as possible and see him. Eric might have to be transferred to another institution. In my temporary office on the Island I read through Head Nurse Herbie Flamm's report on Eric Cannon.
It had a kind of novelistic power that Henry James sought for fifty years without finding: It is necessary to report that Patient Eric Cannon is a troublemaker. There haven't been many patients in my lifetime that I would have to label that, but this is one. Cannon is a consciously evil troublemaker. He is disturbing the other patients. Although I have always kept this one of the quietest [sic] wards on the island, since he has been here it is noisy and a mess. Patients who haven't said a word in years now can't shut up. Patients that have stood always in the same corner now play pitch and catch with chairs. Many of the patients are now singing and laughing. This disturbs the patients who want peace and quiet to get better. Someone keeps destroying the television set. I think Mr. Cannon is schizophrenic. Sometimes he wanders around the ward nice and quiet like he was in a dreamworld and other times he sneaks around like a snake, hissing at me and the patients like he was the boss of the ward and not me.
Unfortunately he has followers. Many patients are now refusing sedation. Some do not go to the machine shop for factory therapy. Two patients confined to wheelchairs have pretended to walk. Patients are showing disrespect for the hospital food. When one man was ill to his stomach, another patient began eating the vomit, claiming it tasted much
better that way. We do not have enough maximum security rooms on the ward. Also patients who are refusing or not swallowing their sedation will not stop singing and laughing when we politely ask. Disrespect is everywhere. I have sometimes had the feeling on the ward that I do not exist. I mean to say no one pays attention any more. My attendants are often tempted to treat the patients with physical force but I remind them of the Hypocratic Oath. Patients will not stay in their beds at night. Talking with each other is going on. Meetings I think. They whisper. I do not know if there is a rule against this, but I recommend that a rule is made. Whispering is worse than singing.
We have sent several of his followers to ward W [the violent ward] but patient Cannon is tricky. He never does anything himself. I think he is spreading illegal d rugs on the ward but none have been found. He never does anything and everything is happening.
I have this to report. It is serious. On September 10, at 2.30 P.M. in the Main Room right in front of the destroyed and lifeless television set, a large group of patients began hugging each other. They had a circle with their arms around each other and they were humming or moaning and kept getting closer and humming and swaying or pulsating like a giant jellyfish or human heart and they were all men. They did this and attendant R. Smith attempted to break them up but their circle was very strong. I attempted to break their circle also as gently as I could but as I was so endeavoring the circle suddenly opened and two men physically clamped me with their arms and hands and I was drawn against my total will into the horrible circle. It was disgusting beyond my ability to say.
The patients showed no respect but continued their illegal hugging until four attendants from ward T plus R. Smith rescued me by breaking up the circle as gently as they could, unfortunately accidentally breaking my arm (the lower tibia minor, I believe).
This event is typical of the poor conditions which have developed on our ward since patient Cannon came. He was in the circle but since there were eight, Dr. Vener said we couldn't send them all to ward W. Hugging is also not technically against the rules which again shows the need for more thinking.
The boy never talks to me. But I hear. Among the patients I have friends. They say he is against mental hospitals. You should know that. They say he is the ringleader of all the trouble. That he is trying to make all the patients happy and not pay attention to us. They say he says that patients ought to take aver the hospital. That he says even if he leaves them he will come back. These patients, my friends, say this.
Because of the facts what I have written I must respectfully recommend to you;
(1) That all sedation be given by needle to prevent patients from falsely swallowing their tranquilizers and remaining active and noisy during the day.
(2) That all illegal drugs should be strictly forbidden.
(3) That strict rules be developed and enforced regarding singing, laughing, whispering, and hugging.
(4) That a special iron mesh cage be developed to protest the television set and that its cord go directly from the set which is ten feet off the floor to the ceiling to protect the wire from those who would deny the television set to those
who want to watch it. This is freedom of speech. The iron mesh must form about inch wide squares, thick enough to prevent flying objects from entering and smashing the screen but letting people still see the TV screen although with a waffle-griddle effect. The TV must go on.
(5) Most important. That patient Eric Cannon be transferred respectfully someplace else.
Head Nurse Flamm sent this report to myself, Dr. Varier, Dr. Mann, Chief Supervisor Hennings, State Mental Hospital Director Alfred Coles, Mayor John Lindsay and Governor Nelson Rockefeller. - I had seen Eric only three times since my Jesus session with him and he had been extremely tense each time and done very little talking, but when he walked into my office that afternoon he came as quietly as a lamb into a grassy meadow.
He moved to the window and stared out. He was wearing blue jeans, a rather soiled T-shirt, sneakers and a gray hospital shirt, unbuttoned. His hair was quiet long, but his skin was paler than it had been in September. After about a minute -he turned and lay down on the short couch to the left of the desk.
`Mr. Flamm,' I said, `reports that he believes that you are stirring up the patients to - improper behavior.'
To my surprise he answered right away.
'Yeah, improper. Bad. Lousy. That's me,' he said, staring at he green ceiling. `It took me a long time to realize what the bastards are up to, to realize that the good-game is their most effective method of keeping their fucking system going.
When I did, it made me rage against the way I'd been fooled. All my kindness and forgiveness and meekness just let the system step on everybody all the more comfortably. Love is groovy if it's for good guys but to love the fuzz, love
the army; love Nixon, love the church, whoa man, that is one lost trip.'
While he was speaking I took out my pipe and began filling it with marijuana. When he finally paused I said: `Dr. Mann indicates that if Flamm continues to complain you'll have to be transferred to Ward W.'
`Oh, boohoohoo,' he said, not looking at me. `It's all the same. It's a system, you see. A machine. You work hard to keep the machine going, you're a good guy; you goof off or try to stop the machine and you're a commie or a loony.
The machine may be blowing blacks under like weeds, or scattering ten-ton bombs over Vietnam like firecrackers or overthrowing reform governments in Latin America every other month, but the old machine must be kept working. Oh man, when I saw this I vomited for a week. Locked myself in my room for six months.'
He paused and we both listened to the birds singing away among the maple trees outside the building. I lit the pipe and took a deep toke. I exhaled, the smoke drifting idly in his direction.
`And all that time I began slowly to feel that something important was going to happen to me, that I was chosen for some special mission. I had only to fast and to wait. When I bopped my father in the face and was sent here I knew even more certainly that something was going to happen. Knew it.' He stopped talking and sniffed twice. I took another drag on my pipe.
`Has anything happened yet?' I asked.
He watched me take another lungful and then settled back onto the couch. He reached into kiss hair and brought out a home made joint.
`Got a match?' he said.
'If you're going to smoke, share mine,' I said.

The Dice Man - Chapter 17 (the nr of Rebirth)

Eventually, it had to happen; the dice decided that Dr. Rhinehart should spread their plague - he was ordered to corrupt his innocent children into the dicelife...

...Larry took to following the dice with such ease and joy compared to the soul-searching gloom that I often weal cough before following a decision, that I had to wonder what happened to every human in the two decades between seven and twenty-seven to turn a kitten into a cow. Why did children seem to be so often spontaneous, joy-filled and concentrated while adults seemed controlled, anxiety filled and diffused?
It was the goddam sense of having a self: that sense of self which psychologists have been proclaiming we all must have. What if - at the time it seemed like an original thought - what if the development of a sense of self is normal and natural, but is neither inevitable nor desirable? What if it represents a psychological appendix: a useless, anachronistic pain in the side? Or, like the mastodon's huge tusks: a heavy, useless and ultimately self-destructive burden? What if the sense of being someone represents an evolutionary error as disastrous to the further development of a more complex creature as was the shell for snails or turtles? He he he. What if? Indeed men must attempt to eliminate the error and develop in themselves and their children liberation from the sense of self. Man must become comfortable in flowing from one role to another, one set of values to another, one life to another. Men must be free from boundaries, patterns and consistencies in order to be free to think, feel and create in new ways. Men have admired Prometheus and Mars too long; our God must become Proteus.
I became tremendously excited with my thoughts: `Men must become comfortable in flowing from one role to another' - why aren't they? At the age of three or four, children were willing to be either good guys or bad guys, the Americans or the Commies, the students or the fuzz. As the culture molds them, however, each child comes to insist on playing only one set of roles: he must always be a good guy, or, for equally compulsive reasons, a bad guy or rebel. The capacity to play and feel both sets of roles is lost. He has begun to know who he is supposed to be.
The sense of a permanent self: ah, how psychologists and parents lust to lock their kids into some definable cage.
Consistency, patterns, something we can label - that's what we want in our boy.
`Oh, our Johnny always does a beautiful bowel movement every morning after breakfast'
`Billy just loves to read all the time...'
`Isn't Joan sweet? She always likes to let the other person win.'
'Sylvia's so pretty and so grown up; she just loves all the time to dress up.'
It seemed to me that a thousand oversimplifications a year betrayed the truths in the child's heart: he knew at one point that he didn't always feel like shitting after breakfast but it gave his Ma a thrill. Billy ached to be out splashing in mud puddles with the other boys, but . . . Joan wanted to chew the penis off her brother every time he won, but ... And Sylvia daydreamed of a land in which she wouldn't have to worry but how she looked ...
Patterns are prostitution to the patter of parents. Adults rule and they reward patterns. Patterns it is. And eventual misery.
What if we were to bring up our children differently? Reward them for varying their habits, tastes, roles? Reward them for being inconsistent? What then? We could discipline them to be reliably various, to be conscientiously inconsistent, determinedly habit-free even of `good' habits.
`What, my boy, haven't told a lie yet today? Well, go to your room and stay there until you can think one up and learn to do better.'
`Oh, my Johnny, he's so wonderful. Last year he got all "A"s an his report card and this year he's getting mostly "D"s and "F"s. We're so proud: `Our little Eileen still pees in her panties every now and then and she's almost twelve.'
'Oh, that's marvelous! Your daughter must be so alive.'
`Good boy, Roger, that was beautiful the way you walked off the field and went home to play Ping-Pong with the score tied and two out in the last of the eighth. Every dad in the stands wished his kid had thought of that.'
`Donnie! Don't you dare brush your teeth again tonight! It's getting to be a regular habit.'
`I'm sorry, Mom.'
`Goddam son of mine. Hasn't goofed off in a week. If I don't find the lawn un-mowed or the wastebaskets overflowing one of these days, I'm going to blow my top at him.'
`Larry, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You haven't bullied a single one of the little kids on the block all summer.'
'I just don't feel like it, Mom.'
`Well, at least you could try.'
`What should I wear, Mother?'
`Oh I don't know, Sylvia. Why don't you try the cardigan which makes you look flat-chested and that ugly skirt your grandmother gave you which always twists. I've got a pair of nylons I've been saving for a special occasion: they've each got a run.'
`Sounds groovy.'
Teachers, too, would have to alter.
'Your drawings all tend to look like the thing you're draw, young man. You seem unable to let yourself go.'
'This essay is too logical and well-organized. If you expect to develop as a writer you must learn to digress and be at times totally irrelevant.'

`Your son's work shows much improvement. His papers on history have become nicely erratic again, and his comportment totally unreliable (A-). His math remains a little compulsively accurate, but his spelling is a delight. I particularly enjoyed his spelling of "stundent" for "student".'
`We regret to inform you that your son behaves always like a man. He seems incapable of being a girl part of the time.
He has been dating only girls and may need psychiatric treatment'
`I'm afraid, George, that you're one of our few ninth graders who hasn't acted like a kindergarten child this week.
You'll have to stay after school and work on it.'
The child, we are informed, needs to see order and consistency in the world or he becomes insecure and afraid. But what order and consistency? The child doesn't have to have consistent consistency; it seemed to me he might grow equally well with consistent, dependable inconsistency. Life, in fact, is that way; if parents would only admit and praise inconsistency, children wouldn't be so frightened of their parents' hypocrisy or ignorance.
`Sometimes I'll spank you for spilling your milk and sometimes I won't give a damn.'
`Occasionally I like you when you rebel against me, son, and at other times I love to kick the shit out of you.'
`I'm usually pleased with your good grades in school, but sometimes I think you're an awful grind.'
Such is the way adults feel: such is the way children sense they feel. Why can't they acknowledge and praise their inconsistency? Because they think they have a `self.'
Like the turtle's shell, the sense of self serves as a shield against stimulation and as a burden which limits mobility into possibly dangerous areas. The turtle rarely has to think about what's on the other side of his shell; whatever it is, it can't hurt him, can't even touch him. So, too, adults insist on the shell of a consistent self for themselves and their children and appreciate turtles for friends; they wish to be protected from being hurt or touched or confused or having to think.
If a man can rely on consistency, he can afford not to notice people after the first few times. But I imagined a world in which each individual might be about to play the lover, the benefactor, the sponger, the attacker, the friend: and once known as one of the next day he might yet be anything. Would we pay attention to this person? Would life be boring?
Would life be livable? I saw then clearly for the first time that the fear of failure keeps us huddled in the cave of self - a group of behavior patterns we have mastered and have no intention of risking failure by abandoning.
What if secretly before every agon or game the dice were thrown to determine whether the `winner' or the `loser' `wins'! The prize or the championship, with fifty-fifty being the odds for each? The loser of the game would thus end up half the time being congratulated for having been lucky enough to have lost, and thus won the prize. The man who won the game would be consoled for playing so well.
`But!!! The loser of the game would still feel bad, the winner still feel 'good.'
But I remembered reading in a widely acclaimed book on children's games something which made Larry's affinity for diceliving make sense. I dug out the book and read confirmation of my thoughts with joy. Children, it said ... rarely trouble to keep scores, little significance is attached to who wins or loses, they do not require the stimulus of prizes, it does not seem to worry them if the game is not finished. Indeed, children like games in which there is a sizeable element of luck, so that individual abilities cannot be directly compared. They like games which restart automatically, so that everybody is given a new chance.
It seemed to me that there were two quite different meanings of failure. The mind knows when it is blocked and when it has found a solution. A child trying to solve a maze knows when he fails and when he succeeds; no adult need tell him. A child building a house of blocks knows when the collapse of the house means failure (he wanted to build it higher) and when it means success (he wanted it to fall). Success and failure mean simply the satisfaction and frustration of desire. It is real; it is important; the child doesn't have, to be rewarded or punished by society in order to
prefer success to failure.
The, second meaning of failure is also simple: failure is failure to please an adult; success is pleasing an adult. Money, fame, winning a baseball game, looking pretty, having good clothes, car, house are' all types of success which primarily revolve around pleasing the adult world. There is nothing intrinsic to the human soul in any of these fears of failure.
Becoming the dice man was difficult because it involved a continual risking of failure in the eyes of the adult world.
As dice man I `failed' (in the second sense) again and again. I was rejected by Lil, by the children, by my esteemed colleagues, by my patients, by strangers, by the image of society's values branded into me by thirty years of living. In the second sense of failure I was continually failing and suffering, but in the first sense I never failed. Every time I followed the dictates of the die I was successfully building a house or purposely knocking one down. My mazes were
always being solved. I was continually opening myself to new problems and, enjoying solving them.
From children to men we cage ourselves in patterns to avoid facing new problems and possible failure; after a while men become bored because there are no new problems. Such is life under the fear of failure.
Fail! Lose! Be bad! Play, risk, dare.
Thus, I exulted that evening of Larry's first diceday. I became determined to make Larry and Evie fearless, frameless,
egoless humans. Larry would be the first egoless man since Lao-Tzu. I would let him play the role of father of the household and Evie the mother. I'd let them reverse roles. Sometimes they would play parents as they perceive us to be and at other times as they think parents should be. We could all play television heroes and comic-strip characters.
And Lil and I every conscientious parent - would change his personality every other day or week.
`I am he who can play many games.'
That is the essence of the happy child of foul, and he never feels he loses. `I am he who is x, y and z, and x, y and z only': that is the essence of the unhappy adult. I would try to extend in my children their childishness. In the immortal words of J. Edgar Hoover: `Unless ye become as little children, ye shall not see God.'

The Dice Man

The Dice Man is a novel published in 1971 by George Cockcroft under the pen name Luke Rhinehart and tells the story of a psychiatrist who begins making life decisions based on the casting of dice. Cockcroft wrote the book based on his own experiences of using dice to make decisions while studying psychology. The novel is noted for its subversivity, anti-psychiatry sentiments and for reflecting moods of the early 1970s. Due to its subversive nature and chapters concerned with controversial issues such as rape, murder and sexual experimentation, it was banned in several countries. Upon its initial publication, the cover bore the confident subheader, "Few novels can change your life. This one will" and quickly became a modern cult classic.

The book tells the story of a psychiatrist named Luke Rhinehart who, feeling bored and unfulfilled in life, starts making decisions about what to do based on a roll of a dice. Along the way, there is sex, rape, murder, "dice parties", breakouts by psychiatric patients, and various corporate and governmental machines being put into a spin. There is also a description of the cult that starts to develop around the man, and the psychological research he initiates, such as the "Fuck without Fear for Fun and Profit" program.

It's recommended by RAW and Rodney Orpheus so I got my hands on it, also cause the thought of doing it myself sort of terrifies me a bit, in any case I don't see myself throwing a pair of dice around at work but I may in my free time after I finish the book. To start the migration process to the new version of the software I give support for at work uses a pair of dice as the icon to click, the choice of this image made me laugh out loud the first time I saw it. Though it features sixes on all sides of the dice and there is no real choice to not upgrade as the communication protocol X.400 that the old version uses will be unsupported soon.



The dice decide my fate and that's a shame.
In these trembling hands my faith.
Tells me to react, 'I don't care.'
Maybe it's unkind that I should change.
A feeling that we share.
It's a shame.

Such a shame. Number me with rage.
It's a shame. Such a shame.
Number me in haste. Such a shame.
This eagerness to change. Such a shame.

Star(gate) Trek DS9 Synchromystic Tidbits

Synchromystic tidbit fun time

Plenty to choose from here, after all this is the show featuring president Obama, I mean Commander Sisko who runs the space station DS9 after the CERN 'launch', I mean the discovery of a stable wormhole. There's a clear d and 9 in the CERN logo, and if you really want it to be there you can find an S. You have to admit, the image of the space station next to the logo is interesting too.

From the first episode Emissary synopsis:
Sisko finds that he has encountered entities in the wormhole who speak to him through images of his wife, friends, and crew members. The "wormhole entities" question Sisko's corporeal and linear existence, and explain that they become disrupted when such beings pass through the wormhole.
Sisko attempts to explain how his kind thrive on its linear existence, but the entities point out that he continues to return to the moment of his wife Jennifer's death. "You are here!" Sisko comes to the rationalization that he has been grieving over the loss of his wife and explains this to the aliens.

The wormhole entities could be any kind of entity one might encounter OBE through the stargate of 8th Circuit Neuroatomic consciousness. As the modus operandi of these wormhole entities is very reminiscent of certain altered states of the entheogenic kind; "What comes before now, is no different than what is now, or what is to come, it's one's existence."

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Dax meditating, an exercise where you have to maintain the shape of some kind of energy ball. (1x04 A man alone).

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Dr. Baltar & Dr. Bashir

Lookalikes! Thanks to BSG Baltar, I can finally stand Bashir and can now watch DS9 heh. The actor who plays Bashir, Alexander Siddig was originally Rick Berman's first choice to play Benjamin Sisko, the DS9 commander. Later his lookalike James Callis' character Baltar, also a doctor and womanizer, would become the president for a while in the new Battlestar Galactica.

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Remember this post the Atomium Sync Trail, I saw this DS9 episode recently called "Move Along Home" (1x10), where some characters get trapped in a 'game'. One of the subgames is a game of replicating a hopskotch routine. (I also recently came across the Atomium/Tree of Life image on a magick book in a Red Knight comic book, which I will post here asap.)

Eye-in-Pyramid dice

Haha, it's just a game!

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Interesting architecture on the Cardassian space station. (The Nagus 1x11)

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Stargate Wormhole Action

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For CK and Jake, a leprechaun Rumplestiltskin, oh well ;)
From the episode "If Wishes Were Horses" wherein an alien species tries to learn more about humanoid imagination by making it manifest in reality.

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Odo, the shapeshifting Security Chief. When Odo finally finds his people, he finds out they are the leaders of the Dominion, a ruthless and militaristic state of the Gamma Quadrant. Interestingly, Odo is a name typically associated with historical figures from the Middle Ages and before, clerics and royals mostly. Odo is etymologically related to the names Otho and Otto, and to the French name Odon, and to the Italian names Ottone and Udo; all come from a Germanic word meaning "possessor of wealth".

Terry Pratchett Quotes

I'd rather be a climbing ape than a falling angel.

Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree.

Brave men make good soldiers, but cowards make better strategists.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.

Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.

He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting "All the Gods are bastards."

In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.

In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

As for The Mapp... I suspect it'll never get a US publication. It seemed to frighten US publishers. They don't seem to understand it. That seems to point up a significant difference between Europeans and Americans:
A European says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with me?
An American says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with him?
I make no suggestion that one side or other is right, but observation over many years leads me to believe it is true.

Life doesn't happen in chapters— at least, not regular ones. Nor do movies. Homer didn't write in chapters. I can see what their purpose is in children's books ("I'll read to the end of the chapter, and then you must go to sleep") but I'm blessed if I know what function they serve in books for adults. (on the lack of chapters in DiscWorld books)

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living.

It's not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewere, would much rather you weren't doing.

Imagination, not intelligence, made us human.

Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.

Wikipedia, eh? Must be accurate then!

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out til too late that he's been playing with two queens all along.

Never trust any complicated cocktail that remains perfectly clear until the last ingredient goes in, and then immediately clouds.

I don't like the place at all. It's all wrong. An imposition on the Landscape. I reckon that Stonehenge was build by the contemporary equivalent of Microsoft, whereas Avebury was definitely an Apple circle.

Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.

Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.

Sooner or later we're all someone's dog.

Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.

The intelligence of the creature known as a crowd, is the square root of the number of people in it.

The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

'They can ta'k our lives but they can never ta'k our freedom!' Now there's a battle cry not designed by a clear thinker...

Go on, prove me wrong. Destroy the fabric of the universe. See if I care.

Oh, come on. Revelation was a mushroom dream that belonged in the Apocrypha. The New Testament is basically about what happened when God got religion.

What your soldier wants-- really, really wants -- is no-one shooting back at him.

You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.

You can’t make people happy by law. If you said to a bunch of average people two hundred years ago “Would you be happy in a world where medical care is widely available, houses are clean, the world’s music and sights and foods can be brought into your home at small cost, travelling even 100 miles is easy, childbirth is generally not fatal to mother or child, you don’t have to die of dental abcesses and you don’t have to do what the squire tells you” they’d think you were talking about the New Jerusalem and say ‘yes’.

I think that sick people in Ankh-Morpork generally go to a vet. It's generally a better bet. There's more pressure on a vet to get it right. People say "it was god's will" when granny dies, but they get angry when they lose a cow.

Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon...

I staggered into a Manchester bar late one night on a tour and the waitress said "You look as if you need a Screaming Orgasm". At the time this was the last thing on my mind...

I didn't go to university. Didn't even finish A-levels. But I have sympathy for those who did.

I must confess the the activities of the UK governments for the past couple of years have been watched with frank admiration and amazement by Lord Vetinari. Outright theft as a policy had never occurred to him.

Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb -- they're often students, for heaven's sake.

Too many people want to have written.

Suicide was against the law. Johnny had wondered why. It meant that if you missed, or the gas ran out, or the rope broke, you could get locked up in prison to show you that life was really very jolly and thoroughly worth living.

DiscWorld is based on a slew of old myths, which reach their most 'refined' form in Hindu mythology, which in turn of course derived from the original Star Trek episode 'Planet of Wobbly Rocks where the Security Guard Got Shot'.

They called themselves the Munrungs. It meant The People, or The True Human Beings.
It's what most people call themselves, to begin with. And then one day the tribe meets some other People or, if it's not been a good day, The Enemy. If only they'd think up a name like Some More True Human Beings, it'd save a lot of trouble later on.

You mean nothing becomes everything? Why, yes, sir. Er... in a way, it has to, sir. It could have been anything at all, sir. Even a stray thought. Absolute nothing is very unstable. It's so desperate to be something.

Magicians and scientists are, on the face of it, poles apart. Certainly, a group of people who often dress strangely, live in a world of their own, speak a specialized language and frequently make statements that appear to be in flagrant breach of common sense have nothing in common with a group of people who often dress strangely, speak a specialized language, live in ... er ...

1. All fungi are edible.
2. Some fungi are not edible more than once.

Look, how about this: let's pretend we had the row and I've won, see. It saves a lot of effort... Now, are we going? (Isabella using some linguistic magic in Terry Pratchett's Mort :p)

Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know that in a universe so full of wonders they have managed to invent boredom? Quite astonishing...(Death in The Hogfather)

You need to believe in things that aren't true, how else can they become? (Death in The Hogfather)

Humans need fantasy to be human, to be the place where the fallen angel meets the rising ape. (Death in The Hogfather)

Daily Dedroidify: Alan Watts about the Kali Yuga

Daily Dedroidify: Alan Watts about the Kali Yuga

According to Hindu scriptures the cycle of creation is divided into four yugas (ages, eras). We call each one a Yuga and name them after the four throws in the Hindu game of dice; Krita, the perfect throw of four; Treta, the slightly imperfect throw of three; Dvapara, the throw of two; and Kali, the worst throw of one.

And so the first period, the Krita Yuga ... the longest period, runs for 1,728,000 years (not to be taken literally), during which the whole world is as perfect as a fresh flower and as unblemished as the skin of a young girl. It's beautiful, everything's right and life is glorious.

The second period, the Treta Yuga ... is a little shorter. It runs for 1,296,000 years, during which a small element of evil and decay comes into life and the tips of the petals are very slightly browned.

The third period is the Dvapara Yuga ... running for 864,000 years. The syllable Dva in Dvapara means two, double or dual, so that in this age, the powers of good and evil are equally balanced.

The fourth period is the shortest running for only 432,000 years in which the power of evil and destruction takes over. An age of spiritual decay, violence and hypocrisy. We're supposed to be living in that now, what's called the Kali Yuga ... the Age of Darkness. The Ancient Greeks knew it as the Iron Age.
At the end, your eternal Self takes the form of Shiva, the Lord of renewal through death; blue bodied and ten armed with a necklace of skulls. But with one hand in the gesture called 'fear not' as a reminder that all this is in illusion and play. And then Shiva dances the Tandala dance, the dance of fire in which the material world is destroyed and the Self returns to the state of Pralaya, of peace, uninvolvement, and pure bliss into a new Satya Yuga ... the Golden Age.

"We are living in a time of disintegration and iconoclasm which the Hindus call Kali Yuga. It hurts and frightens us, but is not essentially evil. It is rather a universal passion in which man cries, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' But it is the prelude to a Resurrection, because spiritual growth depends upon ceasing to cling to any form of life for security. Forms are not contrary to the Spirit, but it is their nature to die: their transience is their very life, and a permanent form would be a monstrosity- a finite thing aping God."
Alan Watts

10.000 days in the fire is long enough. You're going home.

Alan Watts Streaming Vids

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...Krishna had a chosen disciple, called Ontaven. This disciple asked him for some guidance, and Krishna told him: In seven days the city Danvaraguay will be destroyed. The period of the Kali Yuga will begin. In this new era the people will be cowardly and untrustworthy and will be lacking of mutual goodwillingness. They will have weak health, be undermined by disease and will live shortly.
Therefore leave the world behind and retreat in solitude. There You will always think of me, You will give up worldly desires and through attentive meditation You will regulate your souls life. Learn to live by thinking, believe that the unvierse is in me and that it only exists because of me; conquer Maya, the illusion of all apparition; visit the wise. May I be in You and You in me.
One that through wisdom and insightful truth rejects vain deceit, attracts the divine light and makes it shine inside himself. His heart will be as pure as the undulated surface of a clear pond, and it will mirror my image. Renounce the spirit of right of property in passing things completely, this is the first step to completion. Only by renouncing totally the earthly matters can greed, selfishness and other urges be fought.
The soul is the absolute ruler of the senses, and I am the absolute ruler of the soul. The space is bigger than the elements, and I am bigger than the space. The will is bigger than the obstacles, and I am lord over the will. Brahman is bigger than the gods, and I am bigger than Brhaman.
The sun is more radiant than all other heavenly bodies, but I am more radiant and inspiring than the sun. In the words I am the wisdom, in all wishes and commands, I am the one that commands that nothing alive can be be killed; in the alms I am the bread; of the seasons I am the inspiring spring.
The truth, the wisdom, the love, the good, the charity, the prayer, the Vedas, Eternity are my images.

From Eliphas Levi: Elements of Kabbala