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Quote from: Cu'jara Cinmoi, Aphorisms & Definitions, Jan 2013Gun Control: Nature's way of assuring the old cannot be as dangerous as the young. Jan 4/13 Fiscal Cliff: An advanced yoga technique that requires placing one's nose firmly between one's buttocks, while smelling only justice. Jan 4/13Professor: A bureaucratic position created so social misfits could feel important in addition to lonely. Jan 6/13Happy: A neurochemical imbalance of the cock. Jan 7/13Tenure: A social control mechanism designed to rob potential radicals of any incentive to communicate to the masses. Jan 8/13If science is the Priest and nature is the Holy Spirit, then you, my unfortunate friend, are Linda Blair. Jan 8/13Prison: A multicellular organism that consumes social waste and excretes organized crime. Jan 9/13Irony: See, Serious, Painfully so. Jan 10/13University Education: A popular way for young men to pursue their porn, video-game, and marijuana addictions into their early 30's. Jan 11/13Winter: The primary reason Canada is almost entirely empty. Jan 12/13Secularism: Ideology founded on the observation that ideology makes humans even stupider than they already are. Jan 14/13Testicles: Organs too lazy to get out of the sack. Jan 15/13English Professor: Individual trained to be unintelligible to English speakers. Jan 16/13Canada: The geopolitical equivalent of a bad hair day. Jan 17/13Court: A place where the poor go to discover that the rich send their children to law school. Jan 18/13That it feels so unnatural to conceive ourselves as natural is itself a decisive expression of our nature. Jan 18/13Campaign Finance Reform: Proof that corporate greed can create a rock so heavy that not even the Supreme Court can lift it. Jan 19/13Cardboard: Building material commonly used in the construction of personalities. Jan 20/13Plastic: Form of currency designed to row you deep into a lake then drown you. Jan 21/13This? Yeah, well, dope smoke that, motherfucker. Jan 21/13 Heaven: An innovative insurance vehicle that disburses funds directly to the deceased. Jan 22/13 Mortgage: Breakthrough psychological discovery that slaves will work harder if you let them whip themselves. Jan 23/13At least a flamingo has a leg to stand on. Jan 23/13 Brain: Organ ostensibly located in the cranium, but commonly found elsewhere, such as the gastric or rectal cavities, or the cock. Jan 24/13Insight: What happens when a new blindness makes an old blindness its bitch. Jan 25/13Blog: Picture window where words go to and fro pretending not to be nude. Jan 26/13Dessert: Noise preventing toilet paper divination from becoming a true science. Jan 27/13Imagination: Human psychological faculty dedicated to the production of aggrandizing thoughts, irrational fears, and sexual imagery. Jan 28/13Some argue against yesterday. Some argue against tomorrow. But everyone kisses ass when it comes to today. Jan 28/13 Hope: Nonsense sound commonly made when trying to say ‘dope’ while actually inhaling dope. Jan 29/13Definition: This, only more informative. Jan 30/13Infinity: An infamous conceptual sop for mind-numbing tedium. Jan 31/13
Gun Control: Nature's way of assuring the old cannot be as dangerous as the young. Jan 4/13 Fiscal Cliff: An advanced yoga technique that requires placing one's nose firmly between one's buttocks, while smelling only justice. Jan 4/13Professor: A bureaucratic position created so social misfits could feel important in addition to lonely. Jan 6/13Happy: A neurochemical imbalance of the cock. Jan 7/13Tenure: A social control mechanism designed to rob potential radicals of any incentive to communicate to the masses. Jan 8/13If science is the Priest and nature is the Holy Spirit, then you, my unfortunate friend, are Linda Blair. Jan 8/13Prison: A multicellular organism that consumes social waste and excretes organized crime. Jan 9/13Irony: See, Serious, Painfully so. Jan 10/13University Education: A popular way for young men to pursue their porn, video-game, and marijuana addictions into their early 30's. Jan 11/13Winter: The primary reason Canada is almost entirely empty. Jan 12/13Secularism: Ideology founded on the observation that ideology makes humans even stupider than they already are. Jan 14/13Testicles: Organs too lazy to get out of the sack. Jan 15/13English Professor: Individual trained to be unintelligible to English speakers. Jan 16/13Canada: The geopolitical equivalent of a bad hair day. Jan 17/13Court: A place where the poor go to discover that the rich send their children to law school. Jan 18/13That it feels so unnatural to conceive ourselves as natural is itself a decisive expression of our nature. Jan 18/13Campaign Finance Reform: Proof that corporate greed can create a rock so heavy that not even the Supreme Court can lift it. Jan 19/13Cardboard: Building material commonly used in the construction of personalities. Jan 20/13Plastic: Form of currency designed to row you deep into a lake then drown you. Jan 21/13This? Yeah, well, dope smoke that, motherfucker. Jan 21/13 Heaven: An innovative insurance vehicle that disburses funds directly to the deceased. Jan 22/13 Mortgage: Breakthrough psychological discovery that slaves will work harder if you let them whip themselves. Jan 23/13At least a flamingo has a leg to stand on. Jan 23/13 Brain: Organ ostensibly located in the cranium, but commonly found elsewhere, such as the gastric or rectal cavities, or the cock. Jan 24/13Insight: What happens when a new blindness makes an old blindness its bitch. Jan 25/13Blog: Picture window where words go to and fro pretending not to be nude. Jan 26/13Dessert: Noise preventing toilet paper divination from becoming a true science. Jan 27/13Imagination: Human psychological faculty dedicated to the production of aggrandizing thoughts, irrational fears, and sexual imagery. Jan 28/13Some argue against yesterday. Some argue against tomorrow. But everyone kisses ass when it comes to today. Jan 28/13 Hope: Nonsense sound commonly made when trying to say ‘dope’ while actually inhaling dope. Jan 29/13Definition: This, only more informative. Jan 30/13Infinity: An infamous conceptual sop for mind-numbing tedium. Jan 31/13
Nice. I just blew a half hour reading them Probly shoulda asked me to look out for spacing errors beforehand, brother
It's alright, I think I've got all the ones I missed. Now just to do the original italics at some point.Cheers, Curethan. I'm going to have to print a quotable Bakker, condense this shit down to some pithy little book. Lmao. Or Bakker could just publish them that way for me . I'll buy an e-book of Aphorisms & Definitions for a fiver. Lol, It'll give me more interesting things to shout at people from the corner.
QuoteI'll buy an e-book of Aphorisms & Definitions for a fiver."The No-God's Dictionary"?
I'll buy an e-book of Aphorisms & Definitions for a fiver.
+1 Duskweaver.
Quote from: MadnessLol, It'll give me more interesting things to shout at people from the corner.I could stand next to the crazies, reading their bible scripture, with my own megaphone and my own scripture
Lol, It'll give me more interesting things to shout at people from the corner.
+1 for Corner Prophets.
Quote from: Duskweaver"The No-God's Dictionary"?Maybe Jack Chick can illustrate.
"The No-God's Dictionary"?
Quote from: WillemBMaybe Jack Chick can illustrate.The guy who's done more to ruin the credibility of religion than people like Dawkins and Harris could ever dream of? :twisted:
Maybe Jack Chick can illustrate.
Man, those Last Generation comics er awesome .
This one wasn't quite his usual...Okay, that's because I screwed with it using MS paint and made a D&D edition wars parody with it!
Here is a short list of non-referenced Sayings organised by topic.Perhaps it will be helpful. I think I have posted it before, but this thread seems like a good place for it.Much of this is from the Ask Bakker threads but some is taken from interveiws.Compiled it a fair while ago specific to some things I was discussing at the time.In future I think I'll expand the text file by cut/pasting whenever I see Bakker quoted from outside the text in my own or others' posts so that I can update this.Madness, not sure how mod-powers work but perhaps we can move this post and your earlier collections to the front of the thread or launch a new sticky thread with the same name and rename this one to Collected Sayings(discussion). That way we could have the collections on the front page and edit those posts progressively, making the info more accessable for newbies and casual browsers/boardmembers.Quote from: Cu'jara Cinmoi Arboreal ThemesOtherwise, and I cannot emphasize this enough, trees DO NOT have any particular significance to the Nonmen - as I think will become apparent in TTT.The motif you're picking up on plays a far different roll... BenjukaBenjuka is something I've had swirling around conceptually for some time now. I've tried a couple of times to cook up an actual version of it, only to be stymied (things got pretty complicated pretty quick!). The hard thing is determining how various configurations of pieces would reconfigure the rules in a manner that could be manageable. CharactersMore generally, I've been thinking about Martin with regards to this question as well. The difference between his characters and mine, I think, is that he tries to make his characters - even the brutes like Sandor - likeable. Mine all end up being these crazy inversions, where I give the form of a favourite fantastic archetype - like Cnaiur - and I fill it with very flawed and distorted contents. I want my characters to be out and out troubling, whereas - and I in no mean this as a criticism - Martin wants his characters to be 'gritty.' I think it's just a function of our differing goals. Mine are either far deeper or far more pretentious!But Martin does have a clear moral centre with the Starks, and I think this has an overall impact on the way people identify with his characters. The only difference between his work and the rest of the mainstream in this respect is that he's actually willing to use this identification to wring his readers' hearts. It's a much different kind of 'reading buzz' he's aiming for with his works than I'm aiming for in mine - and I think much more accessible. I don't so much want to strain my readers' moral muscles as to interrogate them.Does that sound like a good/fair characterization? Too flattering, maybe? It's always a temptation to try to reason away what might just be a flaw in your work...I self consciously picked three mysogynistic types for my female characters (just as I picked fantasy cliche types for my male characters): the whore, the waif, and the harridan. Earwa is a brutally patriarchal world, much as our own was (which makes our own fascination with fantastic versions of our past that much more peculiar), and I wanted to explore the significance of those types in such a world. Serwe is obviously the waif, the frail innocent wronged by the machinations of a cruel world. As such she had to die.But it was the innocence part, that struck me as the most significant and the most redemptive. Without giving too much away, there is a manner in which Serwe is the most important character in the book.Most people shake their head when I say that... Hell, even I shake my head.Kellhus is an inversion of 'the Young Man who would be King.' My UK editor calls him the 'Anti-Frodo.' He is of course, far more than that besides.Cnaiur is the All-conquering Barbarian (who cannot conquer himself).Achamian is the Wise Sorcerer (who continually fools himself).<How powerful is Akka?>The suggestion is that Achamian's unconventional beliefs and feud with Nautzera are the only things that prevented him from being bumped up the 'administrative class' in Atyersus. Typically, the sorcerers who join the Quorum are the most accomplished, but that isn't always the case, especially as they get older. ChoraeThe basic idea is this: the Quya first developed the Aporos in the prosecution of their own intercine wars, but it was quickly forbidden. The arrival of the Inchoroi allowed several renegade Quya to pursue their sorcerous interrogations, leading to the production of tens of thousands of Chorae, which were used throughout the Cuno-Inchoroi wars.The Aporos possesses a contradictory, or negative, semantics, and as such is able only to undo the positive semantics of things like the Gnosis, Psukhe, Anagogis - even the Daimos. Aporetic Cants have no other effect. Salting is actually a kind of side effect. I would rather wait until TTT comes out before discussing the metaphysics - it has to do with the Mark.---My original idea was for the Aporos to be a 'dead and ancient' branch of the esoterics. I'm still leaning in that direction, but I find the notion of a sorcery based on a semantics of contradiction and paradox almost too juicy to resist! ---Personally, I've always worried that the Chorae may come across as too ad hoc, as mere narrative conveniences that allow a happy (but not very credible) balance between the sorcerous and the non-sorcerous. But in point of fact, that role came after - the Chorae developed independently. From the outset, I've looked at each of the sorcerous branches in linguistic terms, as practices where language commands, rather than conforms to, reality. So the Anagogis turns on the semantic power of figurative analogies, the Gnosis turns on the semantic power of formal generalizations, the Psukhe turns on speaker intention, and so on. And much as language undoes itself in paradoxes, sorcery can likewise undo itself. The Aporos is this 'sorcery of paradox,' where the meanings that make sorcery possible are turned in on themselves to generate what might be called 'contradiction fields.'--- Yes, the depth of the Mark is proportional to the amount of sorcery cast, and the severity of the Chorae is proportional the depth of the Mark.---The issue of the Chorae threshold is also broached in TWP. There is, however, a limited grey zone, consisting of arcane keys, ciphers, and so on, which one of the Few can utter without suffering the bruise or Mark of sorcery. It's the Mark that determines whom the Chorae can kill. If one of the Few can recognize you, then so can those accursed Trinkets...---They're almost as fatal to the Cishaurim as well, though the mechanics differ. The Inrithi would be in a whole heap of trouble otherwise.I've actually structured the different sorceries of Earwa along the lines of different philosophical theories of language. For the Cishaurim, it's the THOUGHT, and not the utterance that is key, as it is in traditional sorcery. The Chorae are each inscribed with metaphysical contradictions, impossible propositions, that undo thoughts as readily as they undo utterances---Physical contact with a Chorae grants an individual and their immediate effects immunity - nothing else.---The Chorae are actually sorcerous artifacts (of something called the 'Aporos'), manufactured prior to the Cuno-Inchoroi Wars (by Quya defectors) as a way for the Inchoroi to counter the sorcery of the Nonmen. The script inscribed across each embodies a contradiction that unravels the semantics of all known Cants - even those of the Aporos! DaimosThe Daimos is a subcategory of the Anagogis, and though the Gnostic Schools have flirted with summoning various 'Agencies' (to use the Nonman term for gods and demons), the Daimos is largely monopolized by the Scarlet Spires. It's a powerful weapon indeed. (Wait and see!) DunyainKellhus is actually a prodigy among even the Dunyain, though any one of them would have us raking their yard and taking out their trash (and loving them for it) inside of five sentences.Before the First Apocalypse the Dunyain were a heretical community of Kuniuric ascetics (originally based in Sauglish) who sought enlightenment (the Absolute) through the study and practice of reason (the Logos). They were a young movement, but they had already suffered sporadic persecution for some time. But since the Kunniat faith practiced by the High Norsirai was not hierarchical, no concerted effort was made to punish their atheism. As for the why the Dunyain would spend so much time with faces when they're utterly isolated (and they are - almost), the issue is indirectly broached in TWP - chapter sixteen, I think. Otherwise, I would point to Kellhus's surprise in the Prologue, when he meets Leweth for the first time. The idea is that the Dunyain have developed this skill for training purposes (to root out passion, one must be able to detect it). The fact that it translates into the ability to dominate of world-born men is simply a happy coincidence (or as you say, Jack, a byproduct).On the other side there is the strange feedback that occurs between emotion and displays of emotion - as evinced by those 'laughing classes' that seem to be sweeping the world. The idea here is that by mastering the display of the emotion (which is under your self-conscious control), you gain some measure of control over the emotion itself. The Dunyain are fond of control.The form of the Kellhus flashback scenes ultimately comes from my days smoking fatties and watching Kung Fu with my grandmother, back when I was fourteen... How I loved that show.---The bottomline, though, is that we really don't know how much it would take to suppress emotions. Sociopaths, for instance, don't seem to experience the 'social emotions' the way normal people do. If this does have something to do with an underdeveloped amygdala, and other emotions share similar neurological convergence zones that act as choke points, then it could simply be the result of a single happy mutation.And don't forget the ancient art of neuropuncture...(lol emote)---Pragma is the ancient greek word for 'deed' or 'act,'---As for the Dunyain, they themselves destroyed their own historical records to better immunize themselves from their 'darkness riddled' past. As a result, no one knows what their original intentions might have been. Earwa and the Five TribesEarwa is actually some four or five times the size of Europe. I put that allusory analogue of the Norwegian coast along the top as a sneaky way to guage the land masses involved.Save for some contact in Jek at the headwaters of the River Sayut, the Xuihianni, the Tribe left behind at the Breaking of the Gates, are entirely confined to Eanna.The castes are strictly hereditary in the Three Seas. There would have been somewhat more mobility in the Ancient North, but only because in many ways they retained the 'freeman' tribal structure of their ancestors.I actually haven't worked out any details for lands surrounding Earwa, and nor do I have any plans to. One of the things that characterizes the ancient relation to the world is ignorance, the sense of occupying a small circle of light in a dark and cavernous room.Actually most of the norsirai from the so-called 'Middle-North' are descendents of Meornish refugees, who would eventually be responisible for the destruction of the Nonman Mansion of Cil-Aujas.All told, I would say the population of the Three Seas would hover around 75 million - just somewhat larger than that of the Roman Empire circa 300CE. Since Zeum has a big role to play in the future books, I'll take a pass on answering that one.Like I say, I want Zeum to be a mystery, to be a 'pregnant unknown' similar to 'Cathay' for the Persians or the Romans. As for the population, don't forget that this number includes Nilnamesh, which is very densely populated.Nilnamesh is Ketyai with a Satyothi admixture, and though it was incorporated into the Ceneian Empire (the famous fortress of Auvangshei, which for denizens of the Three Seas is synonymous with the ends of the world, is actually a Ceneian fortress), it's grip was shortlived and dubious.So far, the deepest the histories go is to the Fall, which is to say, the arrival of the Inchoroi in the last Age of Nonmen. At the moment, that feels plenty deep, and it precedes the Tusk by quite a few thousand years. I haven't been looking at the history of Earwa so much from the standpoint of an 'absolute observer,' as from from the standpoint of what is known or thought to be known at the time of the Holy War. This isn't a rule that I adhere to, just a tendency I seem to have largely followed. There are things from the time of the Tusk I do want to flesh out, such as the conflict between the Old Prophets and the Shamans, the question of how the surviving Inchoroi brought Chorae, the 'Tears of God' to the Five Tribes before the Breaking of the Gates, and the Cuno-Halaroi Wars (Halaroi is the Nonman name for Men). Stuff like that.Men only tried to enter Earwa through the Northern Kayarsus, though no one knows why. The Cunuroi have no record of having to defend the gates from any race other than Men. Gender roles and historical parrallels<in relation to your portrayal of women (and any controversy thereof), it seems to me that the demands of the (Kellhus-centric) plot rather the constraints of gender roles in pre-modern societies have dictated your choice of weaker, more needy female types over stronger ones. Would you say that this was the case?>Not at all. I've always thought that sanitizing gender relations in ancient worlds comes very close to 'selling out.' The only real editorial pressure I received to make the book more commercially palatable was to make it more 'female friendly' - they even wanted me to change Conphas into a woman at one point! Apparently the male share of the fantasy book market is dropping quickly (because of weed and video games, I suspect).Once you decide to portray a repressive patriarchal society, then character becomes the place to explore the inevitable distortions that result. I actually think of Esmenet as quite strong, though in a conflicted (which is to say, unsentimental) fashion.---What you're doing is akin to arguing historical periodization. Arguing similarities and dissimilarities, accidental or essential, is bound to be plagued by interpretative underdetermination. It's always better I think, just to take the 'family resemblances' tack and to try to stipulate rather than to assert. There's no authority on which association-sets are canonical and which are not (as you yourself agreed in a previous discussion, I think, Aiturahim).Personally, for me the family resemblance that works the best is 'Medieval Mediterranean,' but even that could be plausibly contested. It's a mishmash.As for your original questions Aiturahim, yes, I thought about the change, but only because I try to give due consideration to all my editors' suggestions, even if I disagree with their motivations on principal, as I did in this case. The longer I thought about it, however, the worse the suggestion became.Otherwise, I'm afraid I don't share your historicist tack when it comes to questions of gender, which I'm very interested in exploring, and try to approach as self-consciously as possible. I think it follows that I'm not saying anything about women in general by having both of them fall under Kellhus's spell. In narrative terms, Kellhus simply gets what he wants, and he wanted both of them. In thematic terms, my quarry is actually contemporary society, not the 'nature of femininity.'As far as paralleling the First Crusade goes, I'm curious as to why you think this is a problem. I've had a couple of people complain to me about this, but I've been unable to make any sense of their explanations. Certainly you don't want to suggest that historical parallels, even when thematically motivated, have no place in fiction, do you?---The 'too historical, therefore too predictable' criticisms I've encountered previously seem more opportunistically motivated than anything else: an excuse to show-off how much one knows, rather than say anything meaningful about the work. I would think it's obvious that I'm up to something, as opposed to being lazy or derivative or whatever. Your question, Aiturahim, is the decisive one, I think: Why the parallel?I see, and have always seen, the parallel with the First Crusade as one of the thematic keels of the book, but I'm inclined to let others puzzle that out. There just seems something disingenuous about an author decoding too much of his own work. To answer your other question, the world started congealing several years before the story.And I agree with you as well, Damaen: though the Holy War parallels the First Crusade, there remain some significant differences - enough to render the outcome entirely undecidable. I don't think I give any guarantees - especially since the Keebler Elves have yet to show their foul hand... InrithismThe big thing to remember is that Inrithism is founded on Sejenus's reinterpretation of the traditional Kunniat faiths, whereby each of the old gods are thought to be 'aspects' of the God. It is a 'syncretic faith,' both in theme and in practice. The Inrithi have no 'saints,' primarily because they do not parse the worldy and the divine the way we do, but they do have 'Kahiht,' or 'Great Souls.' They might pray to a renowned ancestor the way a Christian might pray to a saint. Piety and the redemptive value of suffering are two of its central themes.<Influence of Hinduism?>I have a copy of the Upanishads which I reference from time to time, but otherwise Inrithism slowly grew from a melange of influences over the course of several years, and just sort of 'happened' to fall into a 'Hinduism + Catholicism' form. I never self-consciously set out to make it 'like' anything in particular. Language bitsMy original idea was to have a layered nomenclature, with the Sheyic versions of different names rendering hard K's as soft C's (parallel to the difference between latinized version of Greek names, where things like the original Kyklops are rendered as Cyclops). But at some point in the naming frenzy I got lazy, and whatever systematicity I originally had got lost in the shuffle - I always told myself that I would 'straighten in out later' and change those hard C's (as in Cishaurim) into K's. LokungThe Scylvendi believe in the Outside, but since Lokung, their God, is dead, they don't believe they have any place in it. And they hold all outlanders accountable for this...They don't believe they have any afterlife. You have to remember too, that just as most religious people have no consistent, systematic understanding of 'noumenal world' that brackets the mundane, neither do the Scylvendi, nor the Inrithi, though the latter have many scholarly accounts of what awaits them. Lokung is indeed the No-God - though this is not necessarily how the Scylvendi themselves see things. Moenghus vs SkoithaThe fight between M and S was actually recapped in an old version of PoN, and until you asked this, Mith, I'd completely forgotten that I'd cut it out. If I remember correctly, in the old version M crushes his throats. It's the way he verbally manipulated the situation that left its mark on Cnaiur. No-God & Stillbirths<re: question asking if it affected animals>Since the Nonmen no longer reproduce, it only affected humans. The idea has been that only the rare animal ever 'awakens' enough to develop a soul in Earwa, but that's not something I've ever explored to date NonmenHere's a clue: since the Inchoroi used the Nonmen as the foundation for their creation of the Sranc and Syntheses, you could use some of their features to get an impression of the Nonmen's appearance.---Nimil, which is the artifact of millennia of Nonman craft and metalurgy, is actually stronger than Dunyain steel, which in turn is stronger than the best Seleukaran steel in the Three Seas.---Unions between the races were rare, as you might imagine, but some interbreeding was inevitable. The first recorded mention of it is in the Isuphiryas, which relates the tale of Sirwitta, an Emwama slave, who seduces an unamed Cunuroi noblewomen, who later conceives a daughter, Cimoira. This is going waaay back, though, before the Womb-Plague.The Siqu need not be Quya, though they could be. The ability to see and work sorcery is heritable, though far less so in Men than in Nonmen. The Quya are in fact hereditary sorcerers.---The southern Mansions were entirely obliterated.---'Mansion' is used both as a term to describe Nonmen cities, and much as the way 'House' is used - as an epithet for dynasties, families, etc.---In my old notes the Nonmen also used totemic devices, but in the multi-form manner that characterizes much of their art. So for instance, a Nonmen representation of a wolf would likely show it occupying two or more postures at once, like sleeping/running.Having Nonmen blood means many things - things, which come to the fore when the Nonmen take a more active role in The Aspect-Emperor.---The Nonmen have no scriptural prohibiltion against sorcery.---<1. Is it possible for unions between Sranc and Men to have offspring?>No. Though it is possible with Nonmen. Nonman = Mek... Oops (Or "How we found out it was Mek in tDtCB)"!<Q.Okay here's a question... if the Nonmen once warred against the Inchoroi and the Consult... then why are they now the "badguys" so to speak? Why do nonmen ride with the Sranc?>The Nonmen are generally 'good,' (in their own myopic, self-interested way), but the problem is that they are all going insane. They're immortals with mortal brains, and the problem is that the longer they live, the more the traumatic events they suffer crowd out their other memories. A group of them, called the 'Erratics,' actually actively seek out trauma as a means to remember. Since the Consult is good at providing horrifyingly unforgettable experiences, a number of Erratics have joined them. Mekeritrig is one of them. Outsidethere's three basic options: Oblivion, Damnation, or Redemption. The idea is that without the interest of the various 'agencies' (as the Nonmen call them) inhabiting the Outside, one simply falls into oblivion - dies. Certain acts attract the interest of certain agencies. One can, and most Inrithi do, plead to redeemed ancestors to intercede on their behalf, but most give themselves over to some God. Doing so, however, puts their souls entirely into play, and the more sketchy one's life is, the more liable one is to be 'poached' by the demonic, and to live out eternity in everlasting torment. Philospohical Influences<re: Deleuze and Guattari?>Never been a fan of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, actually (which is to say, the Guattari stuff). It was the earlier Deleuze of Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Sense that I found more interesting - though I'm not sure I would 'recommend' reading either of those books! D&R, especially, was one of the most difficult books I ever read.Despite the parallel concerns of the relation between anteriority and power, I just can't say I absorbed enough of the Deleuze and Guattari stuff for it to have played an actual formative role in my work. I'd be more inclined to say that the parallels are more the result of me taking the same departure point, which is to say, Nietzsche and Freud.In terms of French post-structuralist influences in a more general sense, I would have to say that early Derrida and the Foucault of The Order of the Things (especially the "Man and his Doubles" chapter) are pretty important. But in a critical sense as much as anything else. The question of veracity, which is almost always translated into questions of power in the French post-structural tradition, is given quite a different spin in my books, I think... I have many, many problems with post-structuralism. I am a skeptic after all. Probability TranceThe idea for the Probability Trance as described comes (in part at least) from Daniel Dennet's Multiple Drafts Model of consciousness, where 'conscious experience' is the artifact of competition between multiple neuro-subprocessors. The Dunyain, the idea is, have developed the ability to direct and access those subprocessors - or 'Legion' as they call them - through the Probablity Trance. SorceryThe sorcery of the Three Seas, Anagogic (and Daimotic) sorcery, arose from its shamanistic roots without the benefit of the Quya, the Nonmen sorcerer caste, whose sorcery was ancient before the Tusk was even written. The Gnosis, the sorcery of the Ancient North, is the result of what was called the Nonman Tutelage, a period in ancient Norsirai history marked by cultural exchanges between Nonmen and Men. The Gnosis is simply what the Anagogis could be, if the proper conceptual leaps were made...Differences between sorcerers sharing the same Metaphysics is determined in much the same way differences in any profession are: native ability, knowledge, training, and experience.... as many women are born to the 'Few' as men, but due to oppression, they have no formal tradition as such: they're typically burned as witches. Neither the Schools nor the mundane powers tolerate sorcery outside the aegis of the Schools, so wizards suffer much the same fate. Sample Timeline exerpt820 - The Rape of Omindalea. Jiricet, a NonmanSiqû to the God-King Nincarû-Telesser II(787-828), rapes Omindalea (808-825), firstdaughter of Sanna-Neorjë (772-858) of thehouse of Anasûrimbor in 824, and then fleesto Ishterebinth. When Nil’giccas refuses toreturn Jiricet to Ûmerau, Nicarû-Telesser IIexpels all Nonmen from the Ûmeri Empire.Omindalea conceives by the union and diesbearing Anasûrimbor Sanna-Jephera (825-1032), called ‘Twoheart.’ After a house-slaveconceives by him, Sanna-Jephera is adoptedby Sanna-Neorjë as his heir.- The cuneiform script and the syllabaries ofthe Nonmen are outlawed and replaced with aconsonantal alphabet, c.835.The Rape marks the end of the Nonman Tutelage, though the relations between the two races would have their mecurial ups and downs until the First Apocalypse. The old Siqu caste, as well as that of the Quya, have transformed considerably over the years. But then that's a story for some other day._______________________________________________________________________________
Arboreal ThemesOtherwise, and I cannot emphasize this enough, trees DO NOT have any particular significance to the Nonmen - as I think will become apparent in TTT.The motif you're picking up on plays a far different roll... BenjukaBenjuka is something I've had swirling around conceptually for some time now. I've tried a couple of times to cook up an actual version of it, only to be stymied (things got pretty complicated pretty quick!). The hard thing is determining how various configurations of pieces would reconfigure the rules in a manner that could be manageable. CharactersMore generally, I've been thinking about Martin with regards to this question as well. The difference between his characters and mine, I think, is that he tries to make his characters - even the brutes like Sandor - likeable. Mine all end up being these crazy inversions, where I give the form of a favourite fantastic archetype - like Cnaiur - and I fill it with very flawed and distorted contents. I want my characters to be out and out troubling, whereas - and I in no mean this as a criticism - Martin wants his characters to be 'gritty.' I think it's just a function of our differing goals. Mine are either far deeper or far more pretentious!But Martin does have a clear moral centre with the Starks, and I think this has an overall impact on the way people identify with his characters. The only difference between his work and the rest of the mainstream in this respect is that he's actually willing to use this identification to wring his readers' hearts. It's a much different kind of 'reading buzz' he's aiming for with his works than I'm aiming for in mine - and I think much more accessible. I don't so much want to strain my readers' moral muscles as to interrogate them.Does that sound like a good/fair characterization? Too flattering, maybe? It's always a temptation to try to reason away what might just be a flaw in your work...I self consciously picked three mysogynistic types for my female characters (just as I picked fantasy cliche types for my male characters): the whore, the waif, and the harridan. Earwa is a brutally patriarchal world, much as our own was (which makes our own fascination with fantastic versions of our past that much more peculiar), and I wanted to explore the significance of those types in such a world. Serwe is obviously the waif, the frail innocent wronged by the machinations of a cruel world. As such she had to die.But it was the innocence part, that struck me as the most significant and the most redemptive. Without giving too much away, there is a manner in which Serwe is the most important character in the book.Most people shake their head when I say that... Hell, even I shake my head.Kellhus is an inversion of 'the Young Man who would be King.' My UK editor calls him the 'Anti-Frodo.' He is of course, far more than that besides.Cnaiur is the All-conquering Barbarian (who cannot conquer himself).Achamian is the Wise Sorcerer (who continually fools himself).<How powerful is Akka?>The suggestion is that Achamian's unconventional beliefs and feud with Nautzera are the only things that prevented him from being bumped up the 'administrative class' in Atyersus. Typically, the sorcerers who join the Quorum are the most accomplished, but that isn't always the case, especially as they get older. ChoraeThe basic idea is this: the Quya first developed the Aporos in the prosecution of their own intercine wars, but it was quickly forbidden. The arrival of the Inchoroi allowed several renegade Quya to pursue their sorcerous interrogations, leading to the production of tens of thousands of Chorae, which were used throughout the Cuno-Inchoroi wars.The Aporos possesses a contradictory, or negative, semantics, and as such is able only to undo the positive semantics of things like the Gnosis, Psukhe, Anagogis - even the Daimos. Aporetic Cants have no other effect. Salting is actually a kind of side effect. I would rather wait until TTT comes out before discussing the metaphysics - it has to do with the Mark.---My original idea was for the Aporos to be a 'dead and ancient' branch of the esoterics. I'm still leaning in that direction, but I find the notion of a sorcery based on a semantics of contradiction and paradox almost too juicy to resist! ---Personally, I've always worried that the Chorae may come across as too ad hoc, as mere narrative conveniences that allow a happy (but not very credible) balance between the sorcerous and the non-sorcerous. But in point of fact, that role came after - the Chorae developed independently. From the outset, I've looked at each of the sorcerous branches in linguistic terms, as practices where language commands, rather than conforms to, reality. So the Anagogis turns on the semantic power of figurative analogies, the Gnosis turns on the semantic power of formal generalizations, the Psukhe turns on speaker intention, and so on. And much as language undoes itself in paradoxes, sorcery can likewise undo itself. The Aporos is this 'sorcery of paradox,' where the meanings that make sorcery possible are turned in on themselves to generate what might be called 'contradiction fields.'--- Yes, the depth of the Mark is proportional to the amount of sorcery cast, and the severity of the Chorae is proportional the depth of the Mark.---The issue of the Chorae threshold is also broached in TWP. There is, however, a limited grey zone, consisting of arcane keys, ciphers, and so on, which one of the Few can utter without suffering the bruise or Mark of sorcery. It's the Mark that determines whom the Chorae can kill. If one of the Few can recognize you, then so can those accursed Trinkets...---They're almost as fatal to the Cishaurim as well, though the mechanics differ. The Inrithi would be in a whole heap of trouble otherwise.I've actually structured the different sorceries of Earwa along the lines of different philosophical theories of language. For the Cishaurim, it's the THOUGHT, and not the utterance that is key, as it is in traditional sorcery. The Chorae are each inscribed with metaphysical contradictions, impossible propositions, that undo thoughts as readily as they undo utterances---Physical contact with a Chorae grants an individual and their immediate effects immunity - nothing else.---The Chorae are actually sorcerous artifacts (of something called the 'Aporos'), manufactured prior to the Cuno-Inchoroi Wars (by Quya defectors) as a way for the Inchoroi to counter the sorcery of the Nonmen. The script inscribed across each embodies a contradiction that unravels the semantics of all known Cants - even those of the Aporos! DaimosThe Daimos is a subcategory of the Anagogis, and though the Gnostic Schools have flirted with summoning various 'Agencies' (to use the Nonman term for gods and demons), the Daimos is largely monopolized by the Scarlet Spires. It's a powerful weapon indeed. (Wait and see!) DunyainKellhus is actually a prodigy among even the Dunyain, though any one of them would have us raking their yard and taking out their trash (and loving them for it) inside of five sentences.Before the First Apocalypse the Dunyain were a heretical community of Kuniuric ascetics (originally based in Sauglish) who sought enlightenment (the Absolute) through the study and practice of reason (the Logos). They were a young movement, but they had already suffered sporadic persecution for some time. But since the Kunniat faith practiced by the High Norsirai was not hierarchical, no concerted effort was made to punish their atheism. As for the why the Dunyain would spend so much time with faces when they're utterly isolated (and they are - almost), the issue is indirectly broached in TWP - chapter sixteen, I think. Otherwise, I would point to Kellhus's surprise in the Prologue, when he meets Leweth for the first time. The idea is that the Dunyain have developed this skill for training purposes (to root out passion, one must be able to detect it). The fact that it translates into the ability to dominate of world-born men is simply a happy coincidence (or as you say, Jack, a byproduct).On the other side there is the strange feedback that occurs between emotion and displays of emotion - as evinced by those 'laughing classes' that seem to be sweeping the world. The idea here is that by mastering the display of the emotion (which is under your self-conscious control), you gain some measure of control over the emotion itself. The Dunyain are fond of control.The form of the Kellhus flashback scenes ultimately comes from my days smoking fatties and watching Kung Fu with my grandmother, back when I was fourteen... How I loved that show.---The bottomline, though, is that we really don't know how much it would take to suppress emotions. Sociopaths, for instance, don't seem to experience the 'social emotions' the way normal people do. If this does have something to do with an underdeveloped amygdala, and other emotions share similar neurological convergence zones that act as choke points, then it could simply be the result of a single happy mutation.And don't forget the ancient art of neuropuncture...(lol emote)---Pragma is the ancient greek word for 'deed' or 'act,'---As for the Dunyain, they themselves destroyed their own historical records to better immunize themselves from their 'darkness riddled' past. As a result, no one knows what their original intentions might have been. Earwa and the Five TribesEarwa is actually some four or five times the size of Europe. I put that allusory analogue of the Norwegian coast along the top as a sneaky way to guage the land masses involved.Save for some contact in Jek at the headwaters of the River Sayut, the Xuihianni, the Tribe left behind at the Breaking of the Gates, are entirely confined to Eanna.The castes are strictly hereditary in the Three Seas. There would have been somewhat more mobility in the Ancient North, but only because in many ways they retained the 'freeman' tribal structure of their ancestors.I actually haven't worked out any details for lands surrounding Earwa, and nor do I have any plans to. One of the things that characterizes the ancient relation to the world is ignorance, the sense of occupying a small circle of light in a dark and cavernous room.Actually most of the norsirai from the so-called 'Middle-North' are descendents of Meornish refugees, who would eventually be responisible for the destruction of the Nonman Mansion of Cil-Aujas.All told, I would say the population of the Three Seas would hover around 75 million - just somewhat larger than that of the Roman Empire circa 300CE. Since Zeum has a big role to play in the future books, I'll take a pass on answering that one.Like I say, I want Zeum to be a mystery, to be a 'pregnant unknown' similar to 'Cathay' for the Persians or the Romans. As for the population, don't forget that this number includes Nilnamesh, which is very densely populated.Nilnamesh is Ketyai with a Satyothi admixture, and though it was incorporated into the Ceneian Empire (the famous fortress of Auvangshei, which for denizens of the Three Seas is synonymous with the ends of the world, is actually a Ceneian fortress), it's grip was shortlived and dubious.So far, the deepest the histories go is to the Fall, which is to say, the arrival of the Inchoroi in the last Age of Nonmen. At the moment, that feels plenty deep, and it precedes the Tusk by quite a few thousand years. I haven't been looking at the history of Earwa so much from the standpoint of an 'absolute observer,' as from from the standpoint of what is known or thought to be known at the time of the Holy War. This isn't a rule that I adhere to, just a tendency I seem to have largely followed. There are things from the time of the Tusk I do want to flesh out, such as the conflict between the Old Prophets and the Shamans, the question of how the surviving Inchoroi brought Chorae, the 'Tears of God' to the Five Tribes before the Breaking of the Gates, and the Cuno-Halaroi Wars (Halaroi is the Nonman name for Men). Stuff like that.Men only tried to enter Earwa through the Northern Kayarsus, though no one knows why. The Cunuroi have no record of having to defend the gates from any race other than Men. Gender roles and historical parrallels<in relation to your portrayal of women (and any controversy thereof), it seems to me that the demands of the (Kellhus-centric) plot rather the constraints of gender roles in pre-modern societies have dictated your choice of weaker, more needy female types over stronger ones. Would you say that this was the case?>Not at all. I've always thought that sanitizing gender relations in ancient worlds comes very close to 'selling out.' The only real editorial pressure I received to make the book more commercially palatable was to make it more 'female friendly' - they even wanted me to change Conphas into a woman at one point! Apparently the male share of the fantasy book market is dropping quickly (because of weed and video games, I suspect).Once you decide to portray a repressive patriarchal society, then character becomes the place to explore the inevitable distortions that result. I actually think of Esmenet as quite strong, though in a conflicted (which is to say, unsentimental) fashion.---What you're doing is akin to arguing historical periodization. Arguing similarities and dissimilarities, accidental or essential, is bound to be plagued by interpretative underdetermination. It's always better I think, just to take the 'family resemblances' tack and to try to stipulate rather than to assert. There's no authority on which association-sets are canonical and which are not (as you yourself agreed in a previous discussion, I think, Aiturahim).Personally, for me the family resemblance that works the best is 'Medieval Mediterranean,' but even that could be plausibly contested. It's a mishmash.As for your original questions Aiturahim, yes, I thought about the change, but only because I try to give due consideration to all my editors' suggestions, even if I disagree with their motivations on principal, as I did in this case. The longer I thought about it, however, the worse the suggestion became.Otherwise, I'm afraid I don't share your historicist tack when it comes to questions of gender, which I'm very interested in exploring, and try to approach as self-consciously as possible. I think it follows that I'm not saying anything about women in general by having both of them fall under Kellhus's spell. In narrative terms, Kellhus simply gets what he wants, and he wanted both of them. In thematic terms, my quarry is actually contemporary society, not the 'nature of femininity.'As far as paralleling the First Crusade goes, I'm curious as to why you think this is a problem. I've had a couple of people complain to me about this, but I've been unable to make any sense of their explanations. Certainly you don't want to suggest that historical parallels, even when thematically motivated, have no place in fiction, do you?---The 'too historical, therefore too predictable' criticisms I've encountered previously seem more opportunistically motivated than anything else: an excuse to show-off how much one knows, rather than say anything meaningful about the work. I would think it's obvious that I'm up to something, as opposed to being lazy or derivative or whatever. Your question, Aiturahim, is the decisive one, I think: Why the parallel?I see, and have always seen, the parallel with the First Crusade as one of the thematic keels of the book, but I'm inclined to let others puzzle that out. There just seems something disingenuous about an author decoding too much of his own work. To answer your other question, the world started congealing several years before the story.And I agree with you as well, Damaen: though the Holy War parallels the First Crusade, there remain some significant differences - enough to render the outcome entirely undecidable. I don't think I give any guarantees - especially since the Keebler Elves have yet to show their foul hand... InrithismThe big thing to remember is that Inrithism is founded on Sejenus's reinterpretation of the traditional Kunniat faiths, whereby each of the old gods are thought to be 'aspects' of the God. It is a 'syncretic faith,' both in theme and in practice. The Inrithi have no 'saints,' primarily because they do not parse the worldy and the divine the way we do, but they do have 'Kahiht,' or 'Great Souls.' They might pray to a renowned ancestor the way a Christian might pray to a saint. Piety and the redemptive value of suffering are two of its central themes.<Influence of Hinduism?>I have a copy of the Upanishads which I reference from time to time, but otherwise Inrithism slowly grew from a melange of influences over the course of several years, and just sort of 'happened' to fall into a 'Hinduism + Catholicism' form. I never self-consciously set out to make it 'like' anything in particular. Language bitsMy original idea was to have a layered nomenclature, with the Sheyic versions of different names rendering hard K's as soft C's (parallel to the difference between latinized version of Greek names, where things like the original Kyklops are rendered as Cyclops). But at some point in the naming frenzy I got lazy, and whatever systematicity I originally had got lost in the shuffle - I always told myself that I would 'straighten in out later' and change those hard C's (as in Cishaurim) into K's. LokungThe Scylvendi believe in the Outside, but since Lokung, their God, is dead, they don't believe they have any place in it. And they hold all outlanders accountable for this...They don't believe they have any afterlife. You have to remember too, that just as most religious people have no consistent, systematic understanding of 'noumenal world' that brackets the mundane, neither do the Scylvendi, nor the Inrithi, though the latter have many scholarly accounts of what awaits them. Lokung is indeed the No-God - though this is not necessarily how the Scylvendi themselves see things. Moenghus vs SkoithaThe fight between M and S was actually recapped in an old version of PoN, and until you asked this, Mith, I'd completely forgotten that I'd cut it out. If I remember correctly, in the old version M crushes his throats. It's the way he verbally manipulated the situation that left its mark on Cnaiur. No-God & Stillbirths<re: question asking if it affected animals>Since the Nonmen no longer reproduce, it only affected humans. The idea has been that only the rare animal ever 'awakens' enough to develop a soul in Earwa, but that's not something I've ever explored to date NonmenHere's a clue: since the Inchoroi used the Nonmen as the foundation for their creation of the Sranc and Syntheses, you could use some of their features to get an impression of the Nonmen's appearance.---Nimil, which is the artifact of millennia of Nonman craft and metalurgy, is actually stronger than Dunyain steel, which in turn is stronger than the best Seleukaran steel in the Three Seas.---Unions between the races were rare, as you might imagine, but some interbreeding was inevitable. The first recorded mention of it is in the Isuphiryas, which relates the tale of Sirwitta, an Emwama slave, who seduces an unamed Cunuroi noblewomen, who later conceives a daughter, Cimoira. This is going waaay back, though, before the Womb-Plague.The Siqu need not be Quya, though they could be. The ability to see and work sorcery is heritable, though far less so in Men than in Nonmen. The Quya are in fact hereditary sorcerers.---The southern Mansions were entirely obliterated.---'Mansion' is used both as a term to describe Nonmen cities, and much as the way 'House' is used - as an epithet for dynasties, families, etc.---In my old notes the Nonmen also used totemic devices, but in the multi-form manner that characterizes much of their art. So for instance, a Nonmen representation of a wolf would likely show it occupying two or more postures at once, like sleeping/running.Having Nonmen blood means many things - things, which come to the fore when the Nonmen take a more active role in The Aspect-Emperor.---The Nonmen have no scriptural prohibiltion against sorcery.---<1. Is it possible for unions between Sranc and Men to have offspring?>No. Though it is possible with Nonmen. Nonman = Mek... Oops (Or "How we found out it was Mek in tDtCB)"!<Q.Okay here's a question... if the Nonmen once warred against the Inchoroi and the Consult... then why are they now the "badguys" so to speak? Why do nonmen ride with the Sranc?>The Nonmen are generally 'good,' (in their own myopic, self-interested way), but the problem is that they are all going insane. They're immortals with mortal brains, and the problem is that the longer they live, the more the traumatic events they suffer crowd out their other memories. A group of them, called the 'Erratics,' actually actively seek out trauma as a means to remember. Since the Consult is good at providing horrifyingly unforgettable experiences, a number of Erratics have joined them. Mekeritrig is one of them. Outsidethere's three basic options: Oblivion, Damnation, or Redemption. The idea is that without the interest of the various 'agencies' (as the Nonmen call them) inhabiting the Outside, one simply falls into oblivion - dies. Certain acts attract the interest of certain agencies. One can, and most Inrithi do, plead to redeemed ancestors to intercede on their behalf, but most give themselves over to some God. Doing so, however, puts their souls entirely into play, and the more sketchy one's life is, the more liable one is to be 'poached' by the demonic, and to live out eternity in everlasting torment. Philospohical Influences<re: Deleuze and Guattari?>Never been a fan of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, actually (which is to say, the Guattari stuff). It was the earlier Deleuze of Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Sense that I found more interesting - though I'm not sure I would 'recommend' reading either of those books! D&R, especially, was one of the most difficult books I ever read.Despite the parallel concerns of the relation between anteriority and power, I just can't say I absorbed enough of the Deleuze and Guattari stuff for it to have played an actual formative role in my work. I'd be more inclined to say that the parallels are more the result of me taking the same departure point, which is to say, Nietzsche and Freud.In terms of French post-structuralist influences in a more general sense, I would have to say that early Derrida and the Foucault of The Order of the Things (especially the "Man and his Doubles" chapter) are pretty important. But in a critical sense as much as anything else. The question of veracity, which is almost always translated into questions of power in the French post-structural tradition, is given quite a different spin in my books, I think... I have many, many problems with post-structuralism. I am a skeptic after all. Probability TranceThe idea for the Probability Trance as described comes (in part at least) from Daniel Dennet's Multiple Drafts Model of consciousness, where 'conscious experience' is the artifact of competition between multiple neuro-subprocessors. The Dunyain, the idea is, have developed the ability to direct and access those subprocessors - or 'Legion' as they call them - through the Probablity Trance. SorceryThe sorcery of the Three Seas, Anagogic (and Daimotic) sorcery, arose from its shamanistic roots without the benefit of the Quya, the Nonmen sorcerer caste, whose sorcery was ancient before the Tusk was even written. The Gnosis, the sorcery of the Ancient North, is the result of what was called the Nonman Tutelage, a period in ancient Norsirai history marked by cultural exchanges between Nonmen and Men. The Gnosis is simply what the Anagogis could be, if the proper conceptual leaps were made...Differences between sorcerers sharing the same Metaphysics is determined in much the same way differences in any profession are: native ability, knowledge, training, and experience.... as many women are born to the 'Few' as men, but due to oppression, they have no formal tradition as such: they're typically burned as witches. Neither the Schools nor the mundane powers tolerate sorcery outside the aegis of the Schools, so wizards suffer much the same fate. Sample Timeline exerpt820 - The Rape of Omindalea. Jiricet, a NonmanSiqû to the God-King Nincarû-Telesser II(787-828), rapes Omindalea (808-825), firstdaughter of Sanna-Neorjë (772-858) of thehouse of Anasûrimbor in 824, and then fleesto Ishterebinth. When Nil’giccas refuses toreturn Jiricet to Ûmerau, Nicarû-Telesser IIexpels all Nonmen from the Ûmeri Empire.Omindalea conceives by the union and diesbearing Anasûrimbor Sanna-Jephera (825-1032), called ‘Twoheart.’ After a house-slaveconceives by him, Sanna-Jephera is adoptedby Sanna-Neorjë as his heir.- The cuneiform script and the syllabaries ofthe Nonmen are outlawed and replaced with aconsonantal alphabet, c.835.The Rape marks the end of the Nonman Tutelage, though the relations between the two races would have their mecurial ups and downs until the First Apocalypse. The old Siqu caste, as well as that of the Quya, have transformed considerably over the years. But then that's a story for some other day._______________________________________________________________________________
+1, thank you, Curethan. I enjoy reading these no matter how many times I go down the list!
perhaps in the curated thread, Curethan's collection should be up above the all the bloggy/twittery aphorisms. I think that's what lurkers and newbies will be most interested in seeing first. Whereas they might just click away after seeing 10,000 aphorisms without ever realizing the treasure buried beneath them.
Bakker's twitter also has some good ones:Creativity: An informal measure of the adhesiveness of our shit thrown at walls. Organized Religion: Vast mechanism designed to orchestrate and optimize the circulation of collection plates. Evolution: The creation myth of the Jewish peoples after they came to their senses. God: Judaic divinity that happens to look, think, and feel like us, and to be like, the most awesome, all-knowing, all-powerful dude ever. Percentages: Ruse employed by nature to round down the amount of life owing and to round up the amount of irritation due.