STONEHENGE OR BUST!
(supplemental notes)
27 May: Excretion manuals; the Game of Consciousness.
28 May: RELICS in Games of Consciousness and Theopoly.
30 May: If Prophesy is a Game, Here are the Rules.
31 May: Fragmentary Notes on Prophetic Systems.
2 June: Objects; Deconstructing Games, e.g. Chess; Others.
4 June: What we want in the next RV: Wet Dreams
FIRST DRAFT, SUPPLEMENTAL NOTES: Below are items I dictated or notated that go beyond the narrative of the report. Much of this material is theoretical in nature. Do not take it too seriously.
Saturday, 27 May 2000. Today's notes: Time travel takes too long; motorcycles & mindcontrol.
Excretion manuals to write:
The Complete Moron's Guide to Shitting In The Woods ...Shitting In The Desert ...Shitting In The Suburbs ...Shitting In The City ...Shitting At The Seashore ...Shitting On The Internet ...Shitting at Alien/Military Bases ...etc
The Game of Consciousness.
A board shall be laid out with a map of, not the brain, of the mind, showing areas of consciousness. The board shall have a hexagonal for movement of pieces, and it shall be played as a wargame. Cards bearing various memes will be available, and players alternately draw cards - let's see, that's for major segments of the game. The player draws a card for a specific meme, that meme having various powers of persuasion and extension, and then take their pieces on the board, and by rolling dice and moving in various directions, attempt to dominate the entire mind. As soon as any one meme conquers 50% of the mind, the player controlling the fewest squares on the board, shall discard their meme, draw a new meme card, and proceed from there.
Different areas of the mind will have different difficulties of conquest. Each move will be divided into two realms, conscious and unconscious, and memes will have various powers, differing powers of persuasion and control during consciousness and unconsciousness. Of course, any meme attempting to conquer any portion of the brain already occupied by another meme has to deal with both the powers of that meme, and the resistance of that area of mind.
As with any wargame, conflict will be resolved by a table of combat and roll of the dice.
We can further divide the duration of play into 3 or more domains, representing different ages of the mind - infancy, youth, early / middle / late adulthood, old age and senility. Let's make that 7 age domains, just to be simple. And resonant.
Play shall continue until any one meme controls the whole mind, OR... make that 90% of the mind. And then maybe either, they've won, OR, the powers of the memes can be adjusted downward and play can continue. Naw, scratch that last. Each turn represents some specific span of time -- a day might be too short, a week or a month might be better, depending on how long you want the game to play.
Certain of the memes, if they gain sufficient control, 50% or 2/3s control, result in the death of the individual. Otherwise, the individual can live to some random or predetermined age, which would be the number of plays in the game. If no player has achieved 90% control by death, then whoever has the greatest portion of the mind under control, wins at time of death.
Parallel games can be played with multiple minds. At the end of each turn, a special round would be held to see which of the various individual minds would prevail in a contest. And for whover does prevail, the dominating meme in that mind then enhances the power of the same meme in the other minds.
Players in the game may control as many memes as they desire, playing against each other, ganging up against other memes; however each move is based on, per meme, not per player. The order of play will be based on the power / strength of the memes - each meme will have a different, unique numerical strength. If players decide to draw extra memes, they take them at random, take their chances. And there should be some table or rule showing how such memes owned by the same player interact, how they enhance or detract from each other. Area of control would still be calculated per meme, not per player. So a player can't add together the territory of all their memes - rather, each meme is interacting with the others to produce the overall result.
Denoting the area to be controlled by each meme could be tricky -- I guess this is gonna be a computer game, not a board game.
Another totally different version of this game would be played as a card game, with sets of memes illustrated on cards -- again, each meme having a unique strength, probably with memes arranged by, yes, strength order and also the equivalent of a suit, showing the type of meme, or the type of concept that the meme represents. Standard card-games can be played, and also the memes [cards] are all collectable. And new memes can be added at any time. Such a meme card-game could be integrated with the Roll-Your-Own Belief System game. Memes could start with the Seven Deadly Sins, then with numerous religions and sects, political systems, logic systems, economic / artistic / athletic systems, all memes. And so it goes.
Sunday, 28 May 2000. Today's notes: Anomalous clouds; unnatural speed; I CAN'T STAND IT!
RELICS in Certain Games
The game of Theopoly (click here) should also include a trade in RELICS.
The game of Consciousness, rather than conquering area - there are a number of specific points in the mind that a meme has to conquer - those points are scattered around the mind with empty areas in betweem, to be traversed. When a meme conquers an area held by another meme, it incorporates that meme's holdings into itself - it incorporates that MEME into itself, devouring it, including its strengths, weaknesses and attributes.
New memes are introduced onto the board thru various portals, the portals of sense: sight, sound, etcetera, taste, smell, and extrasensory. Memes may also be tied to relics, to physical icons -- collect the entire set!
There should be a way to incorporate virus- or amoeba-like properties to the memes. Well, that might work in the computer version, not in the board version.
In either the Consciousness (meme) board game or the Theopoly game, acquiring RELICS gives you more power. To the extent than an unlimited number of saints, shrines, memes, relics are available, the game are open-ended. And collecting an integral part of the play. Every relic should have its own script of powers, attributes, images, capabilities. Each meme should have such a script also. Hell, all the saints should too. And all the shrines. All the objects in all these interconnected games should have such individual scripts to modify the basic rules of the games. Don't call them 'scripts', call them 'charters'. Each charter is supplied as a separate card, which is supplied free with the object itself, but it's separate from it. Songs and poems will not have separate charters - maps will.
Note: see if there's a card game of subatomic particles - collect the entire set! And an ever- expanding card game of extrasolar planets.
Ah, continuing, game / card / collectable / whatever thoughts: Cards depicting great earthquakes and volcanoes, destruction. Cards depicting great plagues. Any other sort of disaster - and of course the war cards, but that goes without saying.
Tuesday, 30 May 2000. Today's notes: Weather control; mind control; feline violence!
There are various kinds of prophesy - certain and uncertain.
One type of certain prophesy is triviality. Predict exactly what you know - of you know that there will be an eclipse, a sunrise, an occultation, at a certain time and place, PREDICT IT! You can't go wrong! As long as your knowledge is hidden from your audience, great. If THEY know anything, though, you could be in trouble.
Another type of certain prophesy is, uh, I don't know the name of this one, but for instance: Let's say that you prophesize that the stock market will go up or down in a certain period. In fact, what you do is, you make TWO prophesies - one, that the market or a specific stock will go up, another that the market or stock will go down. And you send those prophesies out, each to 50 different people. At the end of the period, whichever way you were right, like for instance if the market or stock went up, then to those 50 people, you send another prophesy for the next period, again predicting a rise to half of them, and a fall to the other half. For 25 of those people, you will be right. So to THOSE people you then send out a solicitation, saying, If You Want To Recieve The Next Correct Prophesy, Send Me Money. Of course, this type of prophesy, when structured in just this way, is illegal in many jurisdictions. However, if it's call HOMEOPATHY, it's quite legal.
There's another kind of certain prophesy, and that's to prophesize something over'n'over again. Eventually you may be right. If you continuously predict a stock-market crash, every decade or so you'll be recognized as a wizard.
So much for certain prophesies. Now on to uncertain prophesies, which can also be very rewarding. The basic rules are:
1) Pick a system. It doesn't really matter what system - it can be religious / mystical, mathematical / numerological, geometrical / gemetrial (see [appropriate references] for lists of other kinds of systems.) But -- a system. It may even be randomized.
2) This step is optional. You may employ this step if you wish to gain establish credibility, but it's not absolutely necessary. And that is: survey past events, and plot them within your system. And/or, use your system to predict the past, as an indication of how successfully you can predict the future.
3) Use your system to plot out a prophesy... to predict some future event. You may find it prudent to judge the probability, the likelihood that your prophesy will ensue - or you can ignore all that and just prophesize ANYTHING. If you have used step (2), then when you publish your prophesy you should also publish the background material, showing from which the prophesy derives. And showing the trend that it is following.
Step (4) has two possible variants, (A) and (B).
4A) Note the outcome of your prophesy, revise your system, and try to do better the next time.
4B) Ignore the actual results of your prophesy, and just go on prophesizing as you will.
There is also another entire school of prophesizing, that starts at the same place - you start with a system - but instead of making individual prophesies or even sets of prophesies, what you do is, you build SCENARIOS. This can be lots of fun - this is a kind of Futurology. Now what you do here is, you use your system, tracking (if you have a system that is not just random), track past events and plot out [extrapolate] various scenarios of possible future events. If you generate enough such scenarios at any one time, you have a great likelihood that at least one of those scenarios, or portions of several scenarios, will actually ensue.
There is a hazard here though for people whose systems are religious -- if your prophesy is supposed to be The Word Of God, having multiple scenarios will not engender a lot of confidence in your deity's Word. You can, of course, claim that each scenario is The Word of a *different* God, that They are struggling to force Their own scenarios to occur.
So, those are some of the steps you can follow while prophesizing. Of course there are well- tested rules about prophesizing:
Don't be specific - be as vague as possible - be so vague... that no matter what outcome ensues, your prophesy can be interpreted as being correct. I think it was the old Delphi Oracle who said that a mighty empire would fall, but didn't say WHICH one...
In parallel with that, you can have a prophesy that is contradictory, that in fact has 2 or 3 or 4 possible outcomes, all of which are mutually exclusive, and any of which, if they occur, you can then say, Hah, My Prophesy Was Right!
Again, it's very common to ignore the results of your prophesy, and just go on with prophesies regardless of whether you're successful or not. If you choose to respond to criticism of your prophesies, one useful strategy is to say that you were correct, but that your prophesy occured in a different univers, or in a different time-track. So that, yes, the world DID explode on January first 2000, however that was a world in a parallel universe, not this one.
Another way to avoid responsibility for past failed prophesies is to keep changing your name, always issue new prophesies under different names. Or if you have prophesied that something will occur on a certain date, and it doesn't, then just recalculate dates -- Millerite millenialists have been doing this for almost a couple centuries now.
Similar to saying that your prophesy occurred in another universe, is to say that your prophesy DID ensue, however nobody noticed. Yes, the world DID end on January first 2000, but we were all too busy pursuing our personal interests that we just kept going. (severe wind noise) Isn't momentum wonderful.
So, those are a few basic rules of prophesy. Follow those, any you too can be a successful prophet. Of course, getting people to give you money or power or sex or whatever you want of value in exchange for your prophesies, THAT'S something else - that's a personality problem. Go to acting school. Have fun.
Wednesday, 31 May 2000. Today's notes: Surveillance; sabotage; The Perfection Game.
Fragmentary Notes on Prophetic Systems
Prophetic systems, not from Gardner, from Hillel Schwartz, CENTURY'S END, page 213: "prodaedeutic scenarios, cross-purpose matrices, brainstorming, nomothetics, ekistics, computer simulation, stochastic analysis, prevision, extrapolation, opinion polling, market research, Markov chains, prognoseology, envelope curves, and the Delphi Method for arriving at an objective consensus abot what is possible and what is probable."
If your field of interest has not totally transformed itself in the last generation, or if it is technical and has not totally transformed itself in the last five years, it is probably at best, obsolete, and at worst, bogus.
Martin Gardner writes: "There are five ways in which the sincere pseudo-scientist's parahoid tendencies are likely to be exhibited. (1) He considers himself a genius. (2) He regards his colleagues, without exception, as ignorant blockheads. Everyone is out of step except himself. (3) He believes himself unjustly persecuted and discriminated against... (4) He has strong compulsions to focus his attacks on the greatest scientists and the best-established theories. (5) He often has a tendency to write in a complex jargon, in many cases making use of terms and phrases he himself has coined."
Therefore, it would behoove anyone generating prophesies or new thought-systems to follow those precepts. Especially point (5), neologisms - always coin new words, new terms.
Friday, 2 June 2000. Today's notes: Postmodernism; US Navy Centroid Facility; icy lava caves.
Objects; Deconstructing Games, e.g. Chess; Others
THOUGHTS ON OBJECTS: The frame makes the object. Just as 'art' is anything that can be framed and one can be persuaded to view as art, and 'music' is any sound one can be persuaded to listen to, so is 'text' any string of words or symbols one can be persuaded to observe as text, a 'tour' or 'trip' is any travel one can be persuaded to undertake, and a 'game' is any sequence of actions one can be persuaded to perform in the name of 'play'.
DECONSTRUCTING GAMES: What are the components of games? The players. The space and time in which the game is played. The accoutrements of play. The process of play. The rules of play. Deconstructing these will allow for a participant to take any of those roles. Not just to play upon the board - to BE the board. Not just to roll the dice - to BE the dice. For the dice, the board, the participants controlling those accoutrements, for the clock, all to be conscious participants in the play, to have some conscious, volitional effect on the play. Or, for all these components to be totally random, or semi-random, and still have effects upon the play.
So, deconstruct, reconstruct, any existing game, alloting to the participants the roles of any of the components of the game. Be the clock, be the board, be the dice, be a player, be a rule. Thus a single-player game of chess, wherein the participant is the board, changes the colors and configuration of the board in order to affect the preprogrammed movements of the pieces of the automated players.
A further reconstruction would allow for the extension of any of the components into new dimensions. Again, in the case of the chess game, going into 3- or 4-dimensional play; changing the clock from a single time axis to multiple time axes [cf Hall on different types of time]; changing the number of players; changing the number of pieces. In each case, we've restructured the game, turned it into a new game.
Another extension / restructuring of the game would be changing the rules, changing the paradigms, the goals of the game. Again in chess, or checkers, the goal is for one player to vanquish the other by performing certain forms of attack. Here, the goal is to prevail in a zero-sum game. Restructuring that might make chess a non-zero-sum game where everyone can win and/or lose. The participant who is the board or the clock takes certain actions, makes certain plays, that cause both or all players to win and/or lose. Thus we restructure the game by providing for a participant to restructure the rules. Indeed, restructure the paradigm upon which the game is based.
Or turn chess into a 32-player, 2-team game, one player per piece, and each side / team votes on their moves. Or maybe the pawns revolt, murder the officers, join together into a People's Republic. Or the two teams intermarry their leaderships, merge their kingdoms into an empire, extend the board into new realms. Or aliens abduct / implant / convert various of the pieces.
(Other variants: see an article on Chess 960 and a blog on FAIRY CHESS and search on FAIRY CHESS)
Now, take this process for restructuring, deconstructing, reconstructing, small-g games, multiple-player games which are a subset of athletic Games, and extend extend that to big-G Games, human belief systems. Identify the components, break them down, extend them, reorient them, deconstruct and reconstruct them. Thus political games are often played out on a geographic or demographic 'playing-field', as it were; so, turn the geography, the demography, into a participant, rather than just a passive infrastructure. In fact, redefine one or more of the players as passive infrastructure; and/or extend the domain of some componant, say the geographic or demographic component, into a new dimension, a new direction.
One may ask, How Do We Do This? Good question. The solution is left as an exercise for the student.
OTHER GAMES: If society is a Game, then here are the rules. Society structured as a set of Games. Society as a Game, perform the same structural transformations as with any other Game. Society as an evolved set of Games, social components. Is egalitarianism a desired, desireable, survivable attribute of a society? If egalitarianism is desirable, why haven't egalitarian societies evolved? Why do they not predominate? What's the survival benefit of egalitarianism?
If postmodern criticism is a game, what are the rules?
Sunday, 4 June 2000. Today's notes: Yeti urine? Surveillance impeded? Wasted meat? Area 101: ETs?
What we want in the next RV:
Correct configuration - cab-over sleeper, and long-couch in back sleeper, with midside door. Sturdy side-door step. Adequate storage.
Generator. Invertor. Ladder in back, to roof.
RV built for winter travel. Multiple-mode air conditioner.
Towing package: Big engine & radiators, trailer hitch mount.
Dual airbags. Comfortable captain's chairs. Passenger legroom.
Anti-theft. Electronic locking, push-button entry.
Adequate fasteners on doors & drawers.
Water purification. Built-in coffeemaker not required.
Outside shower, and thus the most minimal of inside showers will do.
Kayak mounts and/or canoe rack / mount. Foldout external table. Gunracks!
External hammock attachments. Automatic leveling would be nice.
Solar-tinted cab windows would be nice,and roll-down sunshades on side windows. Breakout windows. Awning.
Electronic thermometer / compass. Web connection. Optional: onboard LAN.
CD player. Mount for CB radio. Satellite package. GPS! UFO beacon.
Sound system should have front-panel input jack.
All the above (4WD would be nice too) in an under-25-foot package!
Check Consumer Reports online, see if they rate RV manufacturers.
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