Tiltology -- Opiate for the Jaded!

So, just what the heck is Tiltology? I'm glad you asked, my son. Fortunately, I've taken the time to generate this for your amusement and edification -- or perhaps for my amusement and edification -- you can never tell. While you're at it, you might check out the Church of Good HTML, as well.

The first question, of course, is what's contained in this document?

How It All Started

Why, it all started with a winter day in 1992, when all my finals were done, and nobody else was around. Was I bored? You bet your booties. So bored that I was started posting vociferously to willamette.news, that paragon of Usenet reproducibility. One of the posts in question answered Brian Brown's question as to why I go by my middle name (and I do still have a copy around of the answer, at least), and contains the first reference ever to "willamette.religion.tiltology", a fictional newsgroup off the top of my head (with a nod to alt.religion.kibology, a newsgroup now only of historical significance, ever since Kibo wandered off in a snit).

After that, things started to snowball, seeing as how I have way too much time on my hands (yeah, right). More and more postings appeared which referred to this fictional group, and the ratio of silly to serious postings increased to an almost ludicrous extent (and not just postings from me, mind you!). It was getting to the point where my ego was about to explode, and willamette.news, which had never been very useful anyway, had degenerated to the point of uselessness for the majority of readers.

The cry went out: what is to be done?

Fortunately, at this time, I was illuminated, and alt.willamette.religion.tiltology was born (not to be confused with what has happened since, which is that alt.willamette.religion.tiltology has been borne). It was April 1st, and what a glorious April Fool's Joke it was!

The Tenets of Tiltology

  1. Tiltology expands to the "R." in Douglas R. Hofstadter.
  2. Beware the Manatees in Black.
  3. In the future, all phone companies will be Taco Bell.
  4. Howdy, howdy, howdy, howdy, howdy . . .
  5. ^[:r ~/.title^M
  6. It will work, dammit.
  7. Twinkies are to be worn, not eaten.
  8. Snow! Bing.
  9. How dumb are we?
  10. *ting*!
  11. "Ghoti" is a four letter word.
  12. I have no joke here, I just need another tenet.
  13. This tenet has intentionally been left blank.
  14. CRIPES!
  15. (generate-tenets (existing-tenets))
  16. Deal with it, punk.

Important Symbols of Tiltology

Twinkies
The All Important Holy Twinkie is either a potent world-making symbol, or a really yucky pastry-substitute. Unfortunately, both Joseph Campbell and Marshall McLuhan were unavailable for comment. The Twinkie has been used as amulet, a ceiling decoration, a name for a winning Internet Hunt team, and as the sobriquet for Willamette's first X terminal. This symbol can be traced back to Nigel, that meme-supplier to the stars.
Vitamin X
Vitamin X is the vim which gives us vigor, and the vigor which gives us vim. This world-renewal symbol is what flows from Tilt into the (not-so) devoted Tiltologists around the world and around the campus. Vitamin X puts pep into your pep, recursively, and, as Douglas Hofstadter might add, constitutes the first two words of this sentence. Without a good day's supply of Vitamin X, you might just have a blase afternoon!
Priestesses
The world-centering (by now, we all should have recognized Religions of Mesoamerica, that wholly remarkable book by David Carrasco, coming soon to a World-Views class near you) symbol of the Priestesses is perhaps the oldest and the silliest of Tiltology. Priestesses are the Tiltological cognoscenti who provide balance against the unbalanced Tilt; the canonical intelligentsia how give clarification the rants of "Eric"; and the bearers of the highly prized but easily dispensed titles of the fastest growing Tiltology in the world! Priestesses are not neccessarily of the traditionally expected gender -- males and females serve equally and gleefully, because we're that kind of forward-thinking religion for the coming millenium. (Yeah, whatever.)

Information About the Archives

Because I was feeling frisky one day (right before the creation of a.w.r.t.), I decided to start archiving willamette.news. Actually, it was because they were talking about me, and I felt like keeping the articles around 'cuz they were great fun -- but that's another story that won't be going into my hyplan. Recently, while I was feeling even more frisky, I started generating a WWW index of the willamette.news archives. (And since I later felt like I was keeping a ton of useless and mostly unfunny crap around in my online disk archives, I'm not archiving it at all. But it is important because it led to the next paragraph, and more directly, to what the next paragraph describes.)

However, the immediate effect of archiving willamette.news was that, when a.w.r.t. was generated soon after, I was easily able to archive that, as well. (And, actually, the a.w.r.t. WWW index has been around about three weeks longer then the willamette.news archive, which provides a nice nesting effect... >=) )

Don't Forget the Supplementary Material!

Now that you've struggled through this, you should also check out information on the Asylum and the Canon. You might also find the ongoing webbification of the Principia Discordia by eager Tiltological priestesses to be intriguing. Finally, be sure to check out the current list of titles awarded by the church.

Last Modified: October 21, 1995

James "Eric" Tilton, Man With Too Much Time On His Hands, tilt+@cs.cmu.edu