Blogger zen

web
log

page
stream

link
share

no dates

no titles

no self-mirror

no self-censor

here are just all
the good things i've found

a million tiny lenses
amplifying

short and sweet

why i liked them

why you may not

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
.

Esprit du sepulcre

"I suppose it's a good thing that most of the world has no idea about what fun hippies had. Otherwise, nothing would work." --Thomas McGuane Nothing but Blue Skies

in an awful way
theresa's suicide
was her generous last gift
to us her friends

we knew her

no one knows why

departing with a bang at 40
like marilyn (at 36)

she'd entered my life c1999
like norma jean in pigtails
in a webzine author photo
(wasn't it feedmag.com?)

an article i didn't link because
i imagined her beauty/brains combo
as rankly unfair
as if
she had all her dreams free
for the asking

but i missed that photo
after 'feed' popped off

so imagine my satisfaction in 2005
to find her blogging
in the closest esthetic tune

kate moss our shared iconess
lynch and pynchon our beacons
the sixties our promised land

she was ever pining
for the summer of love
never traded up that value system
of excess

"I'm kidding about the whiskey,
but I do drink it" she confided
when i fretted her
about her boozing-boasting
"People don't like female debauchery
or female egotism
and I deliberately magnify
both of these small-ish aspects
of my character
knowing I will annoy and alienate.

"I have never been particularly well-liked
by any social group of more than four people
in my life, including my family.
Though I have made up for this
by being intensely loved
by every man I have ever dated
(and reciprocating.)"

(her fave, i'm sure
of many links i slipped her
was KateM and LiLo
sharing a pole dance)

she pre-approved a possible web-tribute
based around her blog-name:

jb: "this article got me thinking
about asynchronous multiplayer games
for mobile phones

"suppose the game's goal
was to think of the wittiest phrase
for a given situation
with your playgroup voting blind on the entries
...wit-of-the-staircase games?" TD: "I love it"




or also this monthly-tribute possibility:

jb: "i've been watching fonda's 1967 'trip'
(for the first time)
and hoping you keep fleshing out the lunar society
because people need that fantasy"

TD: "Yes, this kind of bohemian/intellectual
vaguely sensual community
is the reason, I find,
that most people got into art.
Sadly there is nothing at all
in the contemporary art/film world
that supplies the kind of feeling,
though the longing is certainly still there."

lovesummerdream
of the sustainable party neverending
ever renewable fully imagined

so we'd honor her memory
if we imagine found find
our own local branches

eg minutes:

when: midnight +/-2 30-31 July 2007
where: the LegrandeMall Harmsway
in Karbomala, Middlewest
who: Peewee Benigno, Dustin Wind, Rollo Nuevo,
Blurtus and dTox Unitard, Anus Horribilis,
and Dr Hitler
themesong: "Just Lead the Christian Right On
(dance mix)" by the Frisky Coeds
proceedings: it goes without saying
a good time was had by all

 
 
 
 
 
 
.

Tagportal: jamesjoyce

[bottom post pending]

rather mysteriously
not to say sinisterly
joyce studies are in an
anti-meritocratic rut

ellmann's 'magisterial' biography
has errors on every page
and sytematically denigrates joyce

joyce's carefully designed
program of riddles
has been dismissed
as beneath scholarly notice

conjectures

trilogy tetralogy

epiphanies

Ulysses: settings clocktime

worldtree: PoA FW

50+ Joycean conjectures annotated

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

18 20+ miscellaneous conjectures

This is a companion to my 01Feb 2005 post on rec.arts.books, Fifty Joycean Conjectures. Percentages in parenthese are my estimates of probability (100% = certainty).

1. An atmosphere of one molecule will have an identical temperature profile, and a similar pressure profile, to atmospheres of any number of molecules. (95%)
   
2. Snowflakes are acoustic standing waves. (85%)
   
3. Any pure gas in zero-G can freeze into hexagonally symmetric flakes. (50%)
   
4. ATP is like a blasting cap, and enzymes are springy. (80%)
   
5. Muscle fibers don't need ratchets, they just use ATP's recoil. (70%)
   
6. The pattern of punctuated equilibria is a consequence of sexual stereotyping. (60%)
   
7. ESP involves sexuality, scent and low-frequency sound. (50%)
   
8. (added Oct2005) The ear is a megaphone/transmitter as well as a receiver. (20%)
   
9. (added August 2007) Eyebrows are 'virtual' representations of the shoulders, for signalling purposes; the mouth corresponds to the genitals. (80%/30%)
   
10. (added August 2007) Humans retain light body hair to amplify the movements of vermin. (50%)
    
11. Human males are closer genetically to chimp males than to human females. (80%)
    
12. The first firestarters used meteoritic iron. (30%)
    
13. Humans lost most of their sense of smell when they started cooking their food. (40%)
    
14. Preverbal language is wiser than verbal. (60%)
    
15. Science begins with play, description, and classification. (99%)
    
16. Minoan Crete was a brothel of sex slaves, not a goddess culture. (75%)
    
17. The Iliad recalls a quixotic Minoan attack on Egypt, not Troy. (25%)
    
18. Josiah founded Judaism in 621BC, based partly on Greek models. (40%)
    
19. Ezra c400BC reconciled (by duplication) the Jerusalem and Babylonian variants on creation, Adam and Eve, Deuteronomy vs Leviticus, and Kings vs Chronicles. (50%)
    
20. These represent the only pre-600BC Bible texts. (30%)
    
21. (added Oct2005) Jesus wasn't taken seriously, even by his acquaintances, until they seemed to be getting communications from him, after his death. (30%)
    
22. (added August 2007) The gospels confuse Jesus the Galilean with Jesus the Egyptian. (25%) [more]
    
23. could deodorant increase the divorce rate? [post]
    
24. (added August 2007) Phonographs incidentally record ambient sound as they play. (40%)
    
25. Von Neumann was wrong about hidden variables in QM, and he plagiarised Eckert and Mauchly's cpu-architecture. (75%)
    
26. A simple line is to orthogonal cartesian n-space as a simple hierarchy is to a fractal thicket. (100%)
    

[original date 24 sept 2005]

Short quote

"He's afraid of failure, you know. It's a Jewish trait. They would rather not try than try with a possibility of failure." Nixon on Kissinger in Ehrlichman's novel "The China Card"

The republic of dishonor

how far
is the global war on terror
really a global war on
honor?

Joyce's unfinished tetralogy

given joyce's attachment to symmetry
a portrait/ulysses/wake trilogy
would have seemed lopsided

    _ _________ _________ .
   | |         |         | :
   |P|         |         |S:
   |o|         |         | :
   |r| Ulysses |Finnegans|S:
   |t|         |  Wake   | :
   |r|         |         |A:
   |a|         |         | :
   |i|         |         |T:
   |t|         |         | :
   | |         |         |S:
   | |         |         | :
    ~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ .

unless he hoped to append
"something simple about the sea"

.

Links On The MF-ing Page: a hypertext abc

as we observe the 10th anniversary of 'blogging'
and debate the precise definition of that term

i'll go on record as claiming not only that
rwwl was the 1st proper weblog
but that it's still the
only
proper weblog

an early product of the only proper
hypertext lab on the web

because properly designed experiments
(here, experiments with links)
need to minimise independent variables
(here, like columns and styles)
and pare down each design prototype
to its barest essentials

how best to

• craft linkable pages
  
• craft links to these pages [more]
  
• arrange links on a page
  
• embed links in prose
  
• accommodate prose to embedded links
  

it seems wholly bizarre to me
ten years on
that web trendsetters
have barely begun these experiments

obsessing instead on
standards
stylesheets
and hypothetical semantic 'structures'

some abcs:

• one chapter per page
  
• escape-links at the start of each page for lost visitors
  
• related links at the end of each page for happy campers
  
• similar links gouped, with major differences emphasized
  
• linktext that minimizes disruption while reading
  (eg isolated in 'text buttons' at the end of a sentence)
  
• linktext that tries to manage readers' expectations
  (eg text buttons that specify the filetype, the site, or special warnings)
  
• page metatdata in the headers (not embedded)
  
• pages that thoroughly massage all raw search results on some given topic
  
• timelines or best-first as better organising principles than alphabetical
  

 
 
 
 
 
.

Joyce's Odyssean trilogy

we know joyce determined in 1907
to rewrite 'stephen hero' as the prequel to ulysses
because he needed stephen dedalus
to reach the end of that book
in just the right shape
to serve as bloom's telemachus

and in fact
joyce couldn't finish 'portrait' in 1914
until he'd drafted the opening of ulysses
so the intervening gap would be minimal

(if scylla and charybdis really was conceived
as chapter two
and not relocated until after 'portrait'
had gone to press
that original plan may have left
discernible footprints
in the last chapters of the earlier book)

but if, now, finnegans wake
is really the key to ulysses
with bloom the dreaming everyman

then these three works
are a true trilogy

 
 
 
 
 
 
.

Jesus B

the talmud includes some scurrilous gossip
about jesus the galilean
(eg that his real father
was a roman centurion called 'panther')

but also about
an egyptian healer
of the same name
about the same time
who had magical tattoos

so is it possible that 'mark'
in gathering stories a generation later
for his authoritative gospel
managed to confuse these two
in fact to conflate them

'jesus a' the uncharismatic loner
at odds with jewish law
(his only 'disciple' a backstabbing judas)
whose execution was shattering as john brown's

'jesus b' the crowdpleasing miracleworker
who called gentiles dogs?

 
 
 
 
 
.

Robot Jenny lyrics

80-80, 2-10-0-10-2
Jenny Jenny who can I turn to?

2-6-3-60 5-10-4-10-2
You give me something I can hold on to

8-0-4-6-5-9-3-20-3-4
I know you think I'm like the others before

2-9-4-8-1-18-1-3-4
Who saw your name and number on the wall

80, 9-1-4-13
Jenny, I got your number

5-3-2-8-2-5
I need to make you mine

80, 9-8-4-13
Jenny don't change your number

(weight these rhythms be-tween the li-i-i-ines)
8-6-7-5-3-0-9

(weight these rhythms be-tween the li-i-i-ines)
8-6-7-5-3-0-9


80-80, 4-3-2-4-3
Jenny Jenny you're the girl for me

2-0-0-3-8-2-8-3-0-18
You don't know me but you make me so happy

5-5-2-4-2-3-4 8-5-6-5-12
I tried to call you before but I lost my nerve

0-5-5-1100 8-0-12-1/3
I tried my imagination, but I was disturbed


200 (200) 200
I got it (I got it)I got it

250-24
I got your number on the wall

200 (200) 200
I got it (I got it) I got it

4-0-1-5 4-0-1-5-4
For a good time, for a good time call


80, 5-8-4-19
Jenny don't change your number

5-3-2-8-2-5
I need to make you mine

Jenny I called your number
80, 9-8-4-19

(weight these rhythms be-tween the li-i-i-ines)
8-6-7-5-3-0-9

(weight these rhythms be-tween the li-i-i-ines)
8-6-7-5-3-0-9


80-80, 2-10-8-10-2
Jenny, Jenny who can I turn to?

4-3-5-0-8-9 9-10-40-10-2-2
For the price of a dime I can always turn to you

(weight these rhythms be-tween the li-i-i-ines)
(weight these rhythms be-tween the li-i-i-ines)

Tagportal: worldtree

mirror neurons
must be tasked by the brain
with establishing a ratio
between two 'cultures'
two kinds of knowledge
two points of view

one: the 'external' world
as revealed by the senses
where knowledge naturally
indexes itself
into a 4D cataloguing system

and two:
the internal world
of the psyche running free
(or running constrained)

natural programming-code
trying to monitor itself

indexed only to the shared insights
of the wisdom tradition
the poets and prophets

with no overall shape
no hierarchy of definitions
no formal interrelationships

like a Magic Eightball
mysteriously offering
possibly random fragments of advice

so
my worldtree visualisations
are an attempt to
ground
such wisdom
against the framework
of a standardised graph

a trellis
to hang literature from
and thence to read off
the parameters and dimensions
of complex ideas

visualising
more
stories
love/hate
music
MIDI
interface design
scanned speeches
Pandora.com
videogame music
origins of music
music perception
meditation
tree-of-life
'reality'
lust
poetic logic more
biography
open-vs-closed code-ensembles
gaze
usual stories
innocence/experience
back-and-fill
Joyce's 'Portrait'
worldlines
autobiography
illuminati
everyobject
voice
reading-on-the-web
transparent things
human factors
compassion
zipless blogging
billion-year-old carbon
flickr.com
search engines
documented emotion
web 2.0
finnegans wake
yahoo zodiac
red/green
representing stories in web2.0
feynman
contagion/cure
dynamic radial ontologies
brainmaps, ulysses, and the yahoo zodiac
adler's syntopicon
masks-of-self on the yahoo zodiac
issues/opinions
as-spreadsheet
originality
ego and injustice
conspiracy
extraterrestrials
work/play
money
hellfire
compressing-images-of
biomes
theories-of-everything
polti vocabularies
mondrian
reading
why graph it
locales
family trees
celebrity
quality time
blessing/cursing (as modalities)
freud
atop googlemaps
ego-balance
inspiration
influence (as modality)
orthodoxy/heresy (as modalities)
maslow
testosterone
as-robot-schematics
judgment (as modality)
creativity
mirror neurons
the ESP watch
bullsh!t

Tag says it all

Bremer bales

i've been (mildly) haunted
by the image of GIs in Baghdad
playing football with shrinkwrapped bales
of $100 bills

if each bale was indeed $400,000 [cite]
this is a seventeen-inch stack
17.2 * 2.6 * 6.1 inches (footballs are 11 inches long)

or an 8" double-stack (8.6 * 5.2 * 6.1)

but it weighs 8 lbs (footballs weigh 1 lb)

bill gates has 150k such bales

 
 
 
 
 
.