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"You will find that the State is the kind of
organization which, though it does big things
badly, does small things badly, too."              [Illustration:  the
                    -- John Kenneth Galbraith      Golden Apple]


THE MYTH OF THE APPLE OF DISCORD

It seems that Zeus was preparing a wedding banquet for Peleus and
Thetis and did not want to invite Eris because of Her reputation as a
trouble-maker.*

    This made Eris angry, and so She fashioned a apple of pure gold**
and inscribed upon it KALLISTI, "to the prettiest one," and on the day
of the fete She rolled it into the banquet hall and then left to be
alone and joyously partake of a hot dog.

    Now, three of the invited goddesses,*** Athena, Hera, and
Aphrodite, each immediately claimed it to belong to herself because of
the inscription.  And they started fighting, and they started throwing
punch all over the place and everything.

    Finally Zeus calmed things down and declared that an arbitrator
must be selected, which was a reasonable suggestion, and all agreed. 
He sent them to a shepherd of Troy, whose name was Paris because his
mother had had a lot of gaul and had married a Frenchman; but each of
the sneaky goddesses tried to outwit the others by going early and
offering a bribe to Paris.

    Athena offered him Heroic War Victories, Hera offered him Great
Wealth, and Aphrodite offered him The Most Beautiful Woman on Earth. 
Being a healthy young Trojan lad, Paris promptly accepted Aphrodite's
bribe and she got the apple and he got screwed.

    As she had promised, she maneuvered earthly happenings so that
Paris could have Helen (_the_ Helen) then living with her husband
Menelaus, King of Sparta.  Anyway, everyone knows that the Trojan War
followed when Sparta demanded their queen back and that the Trojan War
is said to be the First War Among Men.

    And so we suffer because of The Original Snub.  And so a
Discordian is to partake of No Hot Dog Buns.

    Do you believe that?

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* This is called THE DOCTRINE OF THE ORIGINAL SNUB.

** There is historic disagreement concerning whether this apple was of
metallic gold or Acapulco.

*** Actually there were five goddesses, but the Greeks did not know of
the Law of Fives.



                             +-----------+
                             | Remember: |
                             | KING KONG |
                             | Died For  |
                             | Your Sins |
                             +-----------+               Ho Chi Zen
                                                             is
5.  An Age of Confusion, or an Ancient Age, is           King Cong
one in which History As We Know It begins to
unfold, in which Whatever Is Coming emerges in
Corporal Form, more or less, and such times are
Ages of Balanced Unbalance, or Unbalanced
Balance.
6.  An Age of Bureaucracy is an Imperial Age in
which Things Mature, in which COnfusion becomes
entrenched and during which Balanced Balance,
or Stagnation, is attained.
7.  An Age of Disorder or an Aftermath is an
Apocalyptic Period of Transition back to Chaos
through the Screen of Oblivion into which the
Age passeth, finally.  These are Ages of
Unbalanced Unbalance.
               HBT; The Book of Uterus, Chap. 3