h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I would consider myself an atheist, but it is difficult to do so when you realise that ultimately you wont know if you are right until you die....and then it's too late to change your mind.

That was Pascal's Wager... if you believe in God, and you're right, you get to go to Heaven. If you're wrong, you haven't lost anything. If you don't believe in God, and you're right, you don't gain anything... but if you're wrong, you burn in Hell. So, logically, it's a safer bet to believe.

No denying the logic there, but still... bleah.

Yeah, but which one do you pick? I mean, almost all of them are jealous of the others, so you can't really believe in all of them without them getting angry bcause you haven't picked them exclusively above the others. Then, if you favor one above the others, and he turns out to be inept or nonexistant, then you've lost out again. I think it's a no win situation either way, so I chose to believe that whatever is out there doesn't give a rats ass weather I believe in it or not, and thinks it's a waste of time and energy throwing me into eternal torment, so instead chooses to look the other way as long as I don't curse it or anything and I try to be a pretty nice person.

I also kind of like the other saying I've heard. "It's better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven." I have no idea who said that.

It's attributed to Lucifer, but I dunno in which text.

That's what makes Discordianism such a good call, eh? Party party, and Eris doesn't care what you do...

Would I be flirting with disaster if I wished all the gods were like Eris?

Nah, you'd be flirting with Chaos, and She rather likes that.

I always liked the Irish saying about that best--I can't remember it exactly. It basically says that there's no point to worrying in life, since after all there are only two things to worry about: whether you're well, or whether you're ill. If you're well, there's nothing to worry about. If you're ill, there are only two things to worry about: whether you'll live, or whether you'll die. If you're gonna live, there's nothing to worry about. If you're gonna die, there are only two things to worry about: whether you're going to heaven, or whether you're going to hell. If you're going to heaven, there's nothing to worry about. If you're going to hell, you're going to be too busy shaking hands with all your friends to worry about anything else.

And the "rule in hell" bit is Lucifer through Milton--Paradise Lost, I believe.

Hah! Withthat sort of attitude about life, it's no wonder the Irish drink so friggen much. I think Eris must be Irish deep at heart. I wonder if there is a Gaelic equivilant to Eris?

I don't know, unless the Morrigen counts...if that's her name. Crone with the ravens. She's a pretty bleak figure though, as I recall. The Irish are always a bit chaotic--probably all the oppressive background there is. Stephen King once called the Irish "God's white n*****s". I think if you get used to difficulties in life, you just stop caring--and keep drinking.

All I know is that I've always gotten a kick out of my Irish heritage

Have you two ever met? I know Farq's been to Slackworks once or twice...

ummmm...not to my knowledge. Hi there

BTW, I have to say that I am suitably impressed with the fact that you two stopped the Buddhism/Christianity discussion cold. I salute you--and you don't need to guess with which finger!

We did, didn't we? I'm rather proud of that. Put the smack down, yeah! That'll teach Jesus... nail his skinny hippy ass back up on that cross! Rawr!

--Riff

Now wait aminute. I don't remember ever going to anyplace called Slackworks. Riff, have you been borrowing my body again when I wasn't looking? How many times have I told you not to do that unless you are going to get laid!?

I had no idea we were responsible for the halt in discussion. I was actually hoping to hear a little more about Jesus and the money he owes me.

This gives me an idea though. Riff, do you remember telling me about the newsgroup alt.netviking, or something like that? Can you picture what I have in mind?

PS Please to meet you Grey, perchance you would be interested in this little venture as well. I'll let Riff explain if he catches on.

I remember alt.net.viking... did you have something in particular in mind? A netviking raid requires much subtlety...

The people on h2g2 are probably too freewheeling to really be affected by it. These aren't your typical Usenetters, there are generally smart people with good senses of humor...

If this is something like where we stuff everyone in their lockers and pull there underwear up over their shaved permanant magic-markered heads, with their hands tied so they can't get out and hook little viewy-thingies up to their eyes and electrodes to their brains and make them watch the Sound of Music over and over at least ten times and then don't let them go until the brain-waves confirm that they like it, then I'm not interested. It's too time consuming.


Now with that out of the way, what are you two talking about?

Ah, those were the days, eh?


alt.net.viking (or possibly alt.viking.net, or something) was a usenet group that was dedicated to looting and pillaging other usenet groups. They did this by infiltrating and starting innocuous threads that very slowly and gradually got more and more deranged or flaming or whatever, until all the regular posters stopped reading the group. Then they'd party in the ruins, so to speak.

The one example I heard was rec.pets.cats, where a net.viking started a conversation about how his girlfriend's cat really hated him, and asking for advice. He added more details as the conversation went on, about how the cat kept scratching him and biting him no matter how nice he was to it, etc. etc., and every suggestion someone gave him, he would report back later that he tried it and it didn't work, the tone of his messages gradually getting angrier and angrier, talking about how this damn cat was ruining his relationship, and so on. And then one day he just posted, "Right, that's it. I've solved the problem." and refused to give any more details. /Everybody/ on the newsgroup completely flipped out, absolutely convinced he'd murdered this non-existant cat. This MASSIVE flamewar ensued, and soon noone was left but the net.viking and his friends, free to hold their own conversations about beer and fjords and Thor and so forth...

Wow, what an awesome story. Hmmm...I think that would be awful difficult to do here, except on religious threads. Between the three of us I imagine we could make anyone stop reading those...

Then I consider it the ultimate challenge. Let's start with some of the religion threads and then see how long it takes until the three of us are the only ones posting on the thread. I think the religion threads would be particularly fun. We've already conquered that other Christianity thread, let's try for some more! Arrrgh! Pillage, I say, Pillage!!!!

I want to join in! As a discordian, I know how to spread chaos and nonsense, plus I get a real kick out of scaring Christians! So can I join in?

Well, I don't think we've really got any heavy Xians to scare... I annoyed someone a bit on the vegetarianism forum, but I wasn't really interested in carrying out the argument. Dull. You can have that one if you like...


"Oi Buddha! Meditate on _this_!"