A Question of Aesthetics

Note to Self: Door Light

Note to Self: She doesn't like it when you open the car door while she's still pulling up her pants.

Surplus Here! Get Your Surplus!

Damn, I should have gone to the university's surplus sale yesterday. Sure, they weren't advertising the overhead projectors I so desperately want this time around, but gosh, it's such a shit show slice-of-life. The greatest thing ever, there is a short story hiding in that place, waiting to be let out.

He wanted to sin with another of his kind

Such moments passed and the wasting fires of lust sprang up again. The verses passed from his lips and the inarticulate cries and the unspoken brutal words rushed forth from his brain to force a passage. His blood was in revolt. He wandered up and down the dark slimy streets peering into the gloom of lanes and doorways, listening eagerly for any sound. He moaned to himself like some baffled prowling beast. He wanted to sin with another of his kind, to force another being to sin with him and to exult with her in sin. He felt some dark presence moving irresistibly upon him from the darkness, a presence subtle and murmurous as a flood filling him wholly with itself. Its murmur besieged his ears like the murmur of some multitude in sleep; its subtle streams penetrated his being. His hands clenched convulsively and his teeth set together as suffered the agony of its penetration. He stretched out his arms in the street to hold fast the frail swooning form that eluded him and incited him: and the cry that he had strangled for so long in his throat issued from his lips. It broke from him like a wail of despair from a hell of sufferers and died in a wail of furious entreaty, a cry for an iniquitous abandonment, a cry which was but the echo of an obscene scrawl which he had read on the oozing wall of a urinal.

--James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Weekly Wikipedia Find: Foxy

Foxy is a fox. Like Mickey is a mouse, and Oswald is a lucky rabbit, Foxy is a fox. But Foxy is not a mouse, nor a lucky rabbit, because Foxy is a fox and should not be confused for not a fox. Foxy had a girlfriend, who was also not a mouse, and also not named Minnie, because she was also not named. Later, unnamed fox became Roxy the fox, girlfriend to Foxy the fox.

Wikipedia by Week

Week Forty-Two: Young Woman with Unicorn
Week Forty-One: Cosmicism
Week Forty: Prisoner's dilemma
Week Thirty-Nine: Demimonde
Week Thirty-Eight: Haemophilia in European royalty
Week Thirty-Seven: Library of America
Week Thirty-Six: Honeypot
Week Thirty-Five: Glasgow smile
Week Thirty-Four: Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel
Week Thirty-Three: Mono no aware
Week Thirty-Two: Royal intermarriage
Week Thirty-One: Amputee fetishism
Week Thirty: Turtles all the way down
Week Twenty-Nine: The Diogenes Club
Week Twenty-Eight: E pur si muove!
Week Twenty-Seven: Unico
Week Twenty-Six: Panopticon
Week Twenty-Five: Legendary
Week Twenty-Four: Ostern
Week Twenty-Three: Kilroy was here
Week Twenty-Two: Jack Parsons
Week Twenty-One: The Wold Newton Universe
Week Twenty: Anonymous
Week Nineteen: Monty Hall problem
Week Eighteen: Brown Booby
Week Seventeen: Dieter Dengler
Week Sixteen: New Jerusalem
Week Fifteen: Technological Singularity
Week Fourteen: Numbers Station
Week Thirteen: Culper Ring
Week Twelve: Mary Sue
Week Eleven: Byford dolphin diving bell accident
Week Ten: Deep-sea gigantism
Week Nine: Bloop
Week Eight: Rat king
Week Seven: Gustave Doré
Week Six: Tomorrow
Week Five: Borscht Belt
Week Four: Swampman
Week Three: Chinese room
Week Two: Ambrose Burnside
Week One: Lolita fashion

Phantom Limb :: Paranoid Schizophrenic

So we all know how when somebody loses a limb, they still sometimes have sensations from they missing limb as a result of some firing synapses connected to nerves that should be in the missing area? Phantom sensations, if you will.

And then there is the sensation among cell phone users, whose phones are set to vibrate, of there phone ringing, vibrating, when it is doing no such thing. The worst of these vibrations is when your phone is not even on you.

Then there was the feeling I experienced the other day. My phone was in my pocket. And it was hot. It was getting hotter. Oh god, what was this heat that was in my pocket threatening to burn a hole in my thigh? Why would my phone do such a thing? I thought you loved me. Then I pulled the phone out of my pocket, and the motherfucker was cooler than a fonzarelli.

Anti-Comedy I: How To Kill a Joke... With Results!

You have a horse. We all laugh at the horse. It is so pretty. I kill the horse. I beat its corpse. I fuck the horse. Then I say, "Look at me! I beat-fuck this dead horse! I fuck-beat your BRAIN!"

Self-Aggrandizement

Today's Homework:

A. Take the person that you are.

B. Exaggerate.

Self-Actualization

Today's Homework:

A. Describe the person you want to be.

B. Become that person.

Weekly Wikipedia Find: Young Woman with Unicorn

There is a painting by the famed Italian Renaissance painter Raphael Sanzio, commonly known by the singular nom Raphael, painted circa 1506 which for the longest time was attributed to a contemporary and listed as St. Catherine until it was restored in 1935 and properly identified.

There is a vastly intriguing narrative and history contained within this Wikipedia entry. Just imagine, the young art history scholars and restorers in the 1930s cleaning this painting, only to discover what she holds within her arms. "You got to be shitting me?!" One exclaims. "Hey Larry, you gotta see this." One calls to another. "Fuckin' 'ell. Is that a unicorn?" High fives all around.

This has been the untold story of Portrait of Young Woman with Unicorn.

Wikipedia by Week

Week Forty-One: Cosmicism
Week Forty: Prisoner's dilemma
Week Thirty-Nine: Demimonde
Week Thirty-Eight: Haemophilia in European royalty
Week Thirty-Seven: Library of America
Week Thirty-Six: Honeypot
Week Thirty-Five: Glasgow smile
Week Thirty-Four: Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel
Week Thirty-Three: Mono no aware
Week Thirty-Two: Royal intermarriage
Week Thirty-One: Amputee fetishism
Week Thirty: Turtles all the way down
Week Twenty-Nine: The Diogenes Club
Week Twenty-Eight: E pur si muove!
Week Twenty-Seven: Unico
Week Twenty-Six: Panopticon
Week Twenty-Five: Legendary
Week Twenty-Four: Ostern
Week Twenty-Three: Kilroy was here
Week Twenty-Two: Jack Parsons
Week Twenty-One: The Wold Newton Universe
Week Twenty: Anonymous
Week Nineteen: Monty Hall problem
Week Eighteen: Brown Booby
Week Seventeen: Dieter Dengler
Week Sixteen: New Jerusalem
Week Fifteen: Technological Singularity
Week Fourteen: Numbers Station
Week Thirteen: Culper Ring
Week Twelve: Mary Sue
Week Eleven: Byford dolphin diving bell accident
Week Ten: Deep-sea gigantism
Week Nine: Bloop
Week Eight: Rat king
Week Seven: Gustave Doré
Week Six: Tomorrow
Week Five: Borscht Belt
Week Four: Swampman
Week Three: Chinese room
Week Two: Ambrose Burnside
Week One: Lolita fashion

Eugenics

I'd soon as not write this post. It would be some how fitting that way, this being the blog that it is. I first mentioned I would write this post back on Friday, August 8th, 2008. That's when I had all my inspiration and ideas. And I quickly wrote down the barest minimum of those ideas, and set it aside; I'll set the date for one week, I said, and save it as a draft. So here it is, one, nay, two, nay, three, nay, four, nay, five weeks later and here it is. Or the best I felt like writing so many days later.

The main problem with eugenics is that it has been associated in the public consciousness with "miscegenation" (what an ugly word-- clearly constructed to have negative connotations-- for such a beautiful thing) and racial cleansing/purity. I think this is another one we can blame on the Nazis.

But I subscribe to the Khan Noonien Singh theory of genetics, of which I derive the name from the character played by Ricardo Montalbán in the original Star Trek series episode "Space Seed" as well as the second Star Trek feature film The Wrath of Khan. I'll mostly focus on him as he appears in the television episode as no argument in favour of eugenics can be made with that awful hair he has in the movie.

Khan is a genetically-engineered übermensch bred free of mental and physical defects, as well as strong leadership abilities, from a pool of Latin and Indian stock. The key here is race diversity. From all accounts, while certainly ambitious (possibly wildly so), Khan was a benign ruler. Thus, I rule that Star Trek lands firmly on the pro-eugenics side. So just remove the dastardly moustache twirling and plans of world domination and we have a pretty good idea of the (theoretical) benefits of eugenics.

Then for an opposing viewpoint, we have the 1990s film Gattaca. I don't recall Gattaca ever addressing the race card, but apparently Blair Underwood was in the cast, so I think I can unequivocally declare the film not viewing genetics from an anti-miscegenation (grrrr) viewpoint. Gattaca's issue with eugenics is that it will inspire a new class system, one where the genetically-engineered will be earmarked for all the highest positions while any normal person (from now on referred to as "normies") will hit a glass ceiling. Further, these earmarks will be decided by probability calculator, so that any normies who exceed their station, any Ethan Hawkes if you will, will be put back in their place.

Of course, another real problem with eugenics is the same problem that surfaces any time one cultural group becomes assimilated into a bigger wider one. The death of the culture, language, heritage of the original group, and all the unique aspects that set it aside. See Modern China and the reason I was so politically offended by the movie Hero for more.

As a normie, among normies who have proceeded as a species for the past however many epochs, its hard to say if I am in support of any real form of eugenics, whether it be traditional or liberal, as it risks limiting genetic diversity. But I will say that I like to consider myself a Social Darwinist. Then again I consider myself a lot of things.

Top Five IX: J.D. Salinger Characters

1. Zooey Glass
2. Buddy Glass
3. Seymour Glass
4. Franny Glass
5. Theodore McArdle, from "Teddy"

Unread: Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction; Uncollected Work

Dedications: Franny and Zooey

As nearly as possible in the spirit of Matthew Salinger, age one, urging a luncheon companion to accept a cool lima bean, I urge my editor, mentor and (heaven help him) closest friend, William Shawn, genius domus of The New Yorker, lover of the long shot, protector of the unprolific, defender of the hopelessly flamboyant, most reasonably modest of born great artist-editors, to accept this pretty skimpy-looking book.

--J.D. Salinger in the dedication to Franny and Zooey.

And to think, that one-year-old would grow up to be Captain America.

Star Trek and Teenage Heartthrobs

Star Trek, and by extension Gene Roddenberry, had a peculiar world view. It's firmly stationed in the nineteen sixties. Indelible and unmoving.

Season one of the show we had our competent, and diversely multi-cultured, cast of naval spacemen. But there was something missing. You can't court everybody with short-skirted, dark-skinned honeys or green-blooded, logic-spouting romanesques. You have to bring in the teenage girl demographic too.

Season Two. Enter Chekov. Not Anton, but rather Ensign Pavel Chekov.

Although Roddenberry had attached an apocryphal origin of placating cold warriors, the Soviet Union, who were also at the time in a space race, he is instead Star Trek's idea of the teenybopper idol, with his mop-top, his foreign accent, and audience analogue youth: the heartthrob. Of course, he didn't talk like 'is, allo, allo, is Chekov 'ere, allo guvnor, but rather with a delightful "Russian" accent, (i.e. "nuclear wessel").

But the The Monkees-esque youth movement courting teenage heartthrob is all right there in the image.

Weekly Wikipedia Find: Cosmicism

Having just finished a collection of some of H.P. Lovecraft's works, this post is less a post on Cosmicism, than a tribute to the mini-cottage industry of Lovecraft wikis that are contained within all that is Wikipedia.

But more particular the cosmicism of the Cosmicism Wikipedia entry refers to Lovecraft's penchant for horror that was not based in the supernatural, but rather a universal, one of un-understandable scientific capabilities and biologies, and the earthbound cults built around this mighty astral beings.

But what Wikipedia doesn't mention, (and I did ctrl+f on the main Lovecraft page, so I'm taking full credit for this) is that Lovecraft's horror is an epistolary horror. All of his stories, or at least the better ones, seemed to be based around academics and scholars researching, delving, stumbling upon seem mysterious thing, place, history and getting involved, often perilously too close, as there story is recounted in letters and diaries.

I will give one brief shout-out to cosmicism though, and that is: cosmic indifference. The idea that God exists, gods in fact, and they don't care. They of course are only gods in that sense of supreme beings who obey a set of natural laws that are beyond all human understanding.

Wikipedia by Week

Week Forty: Prisoner's dilemma
Week Thirty-Nine: Demimonde
Week Thirty-Eight: Haemophilia in European royalty
Week Thirty-Seven: Library of America
Week Thirty-Six: Honeypot
Week Thirty-Five: Glasgow smile
Week Thirty-Four: Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel
Week Thirty-Three: Mono no aware
Week Thirty-Two: Royal intermarriage
Week Thirty-One: Amputee fetishism
Week Thirty: Turtles all the way down
Week Twenty-Nine: The Diogenes Club
Week Twenty-Eight: E pur si muove!
Week Twenty-Seven: Unico
Week Twenty-Six: Panopticon
Week Twenty-Five: Legendary
Week Twenty-Four: Ostern
Week Twenty-Three: Kilroy was here
Week Twenty-Two: Jack Parsons
Week Twenty-One: The Wold Newton Universe
Week Twenty: Anonymous
Week Nineteen: Monty Hall problem
Week Eighteen: Brown Booby
Week Seventeen: Dieter Dengler
Week Sixteen: New Jerusalem
Week Fifteen: Technological Singularity
Week Fourteen: Numbers Station
Week Thirteen: Culper Ring
Week Twelve: Mary Sue
Week Eleven: Byford dolphin diving bell accident
Week Ten: Deep-sea gigantism
Week Nine: Bloop
Week Eight: Rat king
Week Seven: Gustave Doré
Week Six: Tomorrow
Week Five: Borscht Belt
Week Four: Swampman
Week Three: Chinese room
Week Two: Ambrose Burnside
Week One: Lolita fashion

The only thing that really worried me was the ether.

Like a parasite, it latched onto my brain. And I just couldn't shake. My brain, goddammit. In particular my imagination. What does it mean? it asks. Why, why, why does it all depend. I speak of course of this post from Monday, August 25, 2008. While as the comments attest, the ether was working overtime that day. But there was something special about this one. Here is that of which I speak, the mysterious unsolicited text message, reprinted for your browsing convenience:

From:
281-[redacted]
Message:
I FORGOT TO
CHARGE THE
PHONE LASTNIGHT
WE WILL THINJ OF
SOMETHING ELSE
Received on:
Aug 23, 08 10:49am

There is something inspired about it.

The Text Message

so much depends
upon

a phone charged
last night

a day planned
ruined

something some-
thing else

...apologies to William Carlos Williams.

Reading List: Summer 2008

I think I acquitted myself pretty well. Especially made a dent in my ever-growing pile of unread books that I've bought.

preacher book 8: all hell's a-coming*, garth ennis and steve dillon
preacher book 9: alamo*, garth ennis and steve dillon
i shall destroy all the civilized planets: the comics of fletcher hanks*
granta 97: the best of young american novelists 2
tracer, frederick barthelme
the double hook, sheila watson
the sound and the fury, william faulkner
ham on rye, charles bukowski
iliad, homer
mcsweeney's mammoth treasury of thrilling tales, edited by michael chabon (mass market reprint of issue 10 of mcsweeney's quarterly concern)
the starman omnibus vol. 1*, james robinson and tony harris
invisible man, ralph ellison
snow white, donald barthelme
robinson crusoe, daniel defoe
the king, donald barthelme
man in the holocene, max frisch
the catcher in the rye, j.d. salinger
nine stories, j.d. salinger
the call of cthulhu and other weird stories, h.p. lovecraft
franny and zooey, j.d. salinger

*comic books

Misogyny: You know, for kids III

How is that a television show can having me cheering for our main character, as he commits what is at its core, essentially a sexual assault? (Does it help that the women in question probably just sees this as another stop in their business-sexual tête-à-tête?)

Don Draper: Believe me: I will ruin him. Do what I say.

-- Mad Men, "The Benefactor," Season 2

Get all Walden & shit

I wish I went for hikes more.

Weekly Wikipedia Find: Prisoner's dilemma

So here we are, a thought experiment coming back on the scene and kicking incest to the curb. How utterly disappointing. And middlebrow. Seriously now, if someone out there sees the the incestuous deep sea monster thought experiment Wikipedia entry, forward it my way.

This thought experiment, the Prisoner's dilemma, is actually a problem in Game Theory as described by the RAND Corporation.

I'm not going to bother to try to do this one justice so you should probably just read it yourself if you're interested. I'll just mention the point that if two accomplices in a crime are brought in for their crime, and given the chance to betray the other (in separate interrogations, natch), then "rational choice leads the two players to both play defectly even though each player's individual reward would be greater if they both played cooperately."

But remember that movie about game theory Nobel Prize winner John Forbes Nash Jr.--A Beautiful something-- and how it was only so-so, but it had the great scene where Nash and his faculty pals used game theory to pick up girls in a bar. (I believe they decided they shouldn't all go after the blonde--I'm not sure, I only saw it like once. It was so middlebrow.)

Wikipedia by Week

Week Thirty-Nine: Demimonde
Week Thirty-Eight: Haemophilia in European royalty
Week Thirty-Seven: Library of America
Week Thirty-Six: Honeypot
Week Thirty-Five: Glasgow smile
Week Thirty-Four: Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel
Week Thirty-Three: Mono no aware
Week Thirty-Two: Royal intermarriage
Week Thirty-One: Amputee fetishism
Week Thirty: Turtles all the way down
Week Twenty-Nine: The Diogenes Club
Week Twenty-Eight: E pur si muove!
Week Twenty-Seven: Unico
Week Twenty-Six: Panopticon
Week Twenty-Five: Legendary
Week Twenty-Four: Ostern
Week Twenty-Three: Kilroy was here
Week Twenty-Two: Jack Parsons
Week Twenty-One: The Wold Newton Universe
Week Twenty: Anonymous
Week Nineteen: Monty Hall problem
Week Eighteen: Brown Booby
Week Seventeen: Dieter Dengler
Week Sixteen: New Jerusalem
Week Fifteen: Technological Singularity
Week Fourteen: Numbers Station
Week Thirteen: Culper Ring
Week Twelve: Mary Sue
Week Eleven: Byford dolphin diving bell accident
Week Ten: Deep-sea gigantism
Week Nine: Bloop
Week Eight: Rat king
Week Seven: Gustave Doré
Week Six: Tomorrow
Week Five: Borscht Belt
Week Four: Swampman
Week Three: Chinese room
Week Two: Ambrose Burnside
Week One: Lolita fashion

Album Listen List: August 2008

in listening order

illmatic, nas
endtroducing....., dj shadow
we were dead before the ship even sank, modest mouse
perfect from now on, built to spill
"heroes", david bowie
station to station, david bowie
people's instinctive travels and the paths of rhythm, a tribe called quest
daylight, aesop rock
bazooka tooth, aesop rock
licensed to ill, beastie boys
check your head, beastie boys


Some of these felt overly familiar, but I had the sense that I had never listened to them start-to-finish before.

Film Watch List: August 2008

*film has been seen previously/rewatching
†watched in theatre

in viewing order

The Dentist (1932)
Gone Baby Gone (2007)
The Killing Fields (1984)
The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
On Golden Pond (1981)
Rope (1948)
Ravenous (1999)*
Rounders (1998)
Sleuth (1972)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)*
The Apartment (1960)
A Shot in the Dark (1964)
Disturbia (2007)
Pineapple Express (2008)†
Stand by Me (1986)*
Night at the Museum (2006)
The Invasion (2007)
Three Days of the Condor (1975)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Thelma & Louise (1991)
Urban Cowboy (1980)
Tropic Thunder (2008)†
A Night in Casablanca (1946)
The Thin Man (1934)
After the Thin Man (1936)
Another Thin Man (1939)
Shadow of the Thin Man (1941)
The Thin Man Goes Home (1944)
Madeleine (1950)
Becoming Jane (2007)
What's New Pussycat? (1965)
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
The Night Listener (2006)
The Darjeeling Limited (2007)*
The Red Shoes (1948)
The Miracle Worker (1962)
The Apple (1980)
Roma (1972)
Metropolitan (1990)
The Dark Knight (2008)*†
Black Book (2006)
Tom Jones (1963)
Miller's Crossing (1990)*
Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006)
Margot at the Wedding (2007)

Stats
Films watched: 46
Films previously seen: 6
Films watched in theatres: 3

Average # of films watched per day: 1.48

By Decade
1930s: 5
1940s: 6
1950s: 2
1960s: 5
1970s: 4
1980s: 5
1990s: 6
2000s: 13

Conclusion: When I watch something like The Red Shoes, I am reminded why I love cinema. Then I follow it up with something like The Apple.