invocations in eggshell
who’d-a-thunk a sub-par wes craven flick from the 80’s would lead me to items of interest? after watching serpent and the rainbow recently i went off in search of voodoo and found veves. quote: In vodou (Voodoo) practice, veves are intricate symbols of the loas (gods), and are used in rituals. each loa has his or her own complex veve, which is traced on the ground with powdered eggshell or cornmeal prior to a ritual. the ability to draw a veve correctly is considered to be the skill of an initiate. the better drawn a veve is the more powerful in invocation it is. see below for a few examples
more historical androids
picked up a book a couple of days ago called robots robots robots put out in 1978. that’s the same year the now infamous star wars holiday special came out so it’s safe to say it was smack dab in a resurgence of popular culture’s interest in robotics. c3po and r2 did wonders in that regard i suspect. this 70’s date of publication for robots robots robots also just happens to make the title a bit silly. truth be told 85 percent of the book is taken up with automata rather than robots proper. there just weren’t as many robots on the loose 30 years ago. the word “robot” didn’t even exist until 1920. it’s not a bad book, all things considered, and i thought i’d share some of the “robots” contained within… see below
i don’t intend on saying much about automata in general since i’ve already done that (see my earlier post historical androids.) but i’ll include the descriptions for each image as they appear in the book. click all thumbs for full image.
“tippoo sahib’s six-foot tiger, crouched upon a british soldier. when the tiger’s concealed organ was played, the soldier lifted his hand in helplessness.” (some things never change eh?)
“this elegantly clad musical dummy (c. 1885) played the mandolin but was quite speechless when it came to niceties of polite conversation.” (creepy huh?)
“the ‘roboter’ was the sensation of london’s radio exhibition in 1932.” (another shot of “roboter” can be seen here.)
“‘electro’ the robot of the new york world’s fair (1939-1940), accompanied by his faithful robot hound, ‘sparko.’ elektro’s twenty six motions included the ability to smoke cigarettes, count up to yen on his fingers, and recite a speech. he was seven feet tall and made of an aluminum over steel frame. ‘sparko’ begged, barked, and wagged his tail. no man (or robot) ever had a more faithful friend.” (haha! he smoked cigarettes. that rules. for a bit more on elektro see here and here.)
“rickshaw robot. in the year 1868, citizens of newark, n.j., were given an interesting glimpse of a combination of chinese servility and american ingenuity when this mechanical rickshaw man built by zadoc p. dederick took to the streets.” (two comments, 1: chinese servility and american ingenuity? hmmm… 2: zadoc was the inventor’s name?! what the hell was the robot’s name? joe?)
“this steam robot was built in canada in 1893. propelled by a half-horsepower motor which drove jointed rods to move the robot’s legs, it could walk in circles at the end of a horizontal rod. protruding from its mouth was an exhaust pipe from its gasoline fired boiler.”
“robot pilot, c.1925. professor j. popjie settles into the cockpit of his airplane while a mechanical man of his own invention prepares to operate the controls in a flight over brighton, england.” (is it just me or is that king tut?)
“from the illustrated london news, september 1928. an aluminum ‘man’ that rises, bows, and makes a speech.” evidently this was the first british robot whose first duty was to open the model engineering exhibition at royal horticultural hall.
“silent sam: a traffic control automaton. since the 1960’s in the u.s., live flagmen have been increasingly replaced by such robots as silent sam - a battery operated, six-foot-high automaton who can tirelessly control traffic twenty-four hours a day in all weather conditions.” (live flagmen have been increasingly replaced by such robots? news to me. wonder what went so wrong that all them silent sams hit the scrap heap? a crazed murder spree? suffering in silence is bad for you sam!)
“robot built by swiss engineer paul waltensperger. it is said to be capable of doing ‘everything except make love.’” (i can hear this robots screams… “couldn’t you have just spent the extra month to finish the job paul?! christ! everything but make love… just kill me will you please?!” i assume this bot was made in the 70’s since no date is given.)
“‘arok,’ a robot invented by sam skora of palos hill, ill., looks less like a garbage can than dr. satan’s gort. one of his useful functions is, in fact, emptying garbage cans. he is also programmed to act as a butler, waiter, dog walker, and carpet vacuumer. ‘arok’ weighs 275 pounds and is 6 feet 8 inches tall. his master built him from auto parts and home appliances.”
“‘klatu’ is a 180 pound, 5-foot-2 inch robot created by anthony reichelt of hackensack, n.j. its inventor claims that it can do ‘everything from cleaning house and dog walking to making drinks and small talk.’ its name we’re told was bestowed on it as a result of an error in its voice-recognition system. until the error was rectified, the robot repeated “klatu” - the phonetic reversal of “you talk” which were the first words addressed to it.”
now these last two were not actually in the book robots robots robots but i came across them today and figured i’d include them as well.
not sure exactly what the full history of the “sico” robot is. i know they were/are made by international robotics, inc. and i know that they not only hang with sick folks but that they hung out with all the washed-up celebrities from rocky 4 as well. (any robot that has done photo ops with james brown is worthy of my list.)
odex 1, from odetics, Inc. walks on six legs, and weighs in at 370 lbs. capable of reconfiguring its shape to be tall and slender or short and squat, and able to walk in either configuration or anywhere between the two. Each able to lift 400 lbs, the “legs” are versatile enough to be used as manipulators as well. odex is capable of lifting over 2,100 lbs vertically, or carrying over 900 lbs. at normal walking speed. (i include odex simply because he looks cool as hell. for some more images and a link to an article about odex see here.)
lastly, some related linkage:
r.u.r. rossums universal robots by karel capek,1920. (the first usage of the word robot.)
the world’s greatest android projects.
aaai.org’s robots pages.
a history of robots, cyborgs, and androids.
humanoid robotics from the idaho national laboratory.
history of robots from the university of birmingham.
the humanoid robotics institute (check out the short vid.)
robotic orphans. (many consumer bots of yesteryear. see also androbot)
lee’s robo gallery (some more consumer bots.)
so that’s it. hope you enjoyed.
Read Less...
the house painter
william mullingar higgins- the house painter, or, decorator’s companion: being a complete treatise on the origin of colour, the laws of harmonious colouring, the manufacture of pigments, oils, and varnishes: and the art of house painting, graining, and marbling: to which is added, a history of the art in all ages. 1841. i hardly need to include a decription after a title like that! cool book from the times before the arts of “the home” splintered into a hundred different disciplines. of particular interest to artists are the paint recipies. see here for larger versions of each handpainted plate.
what’s that stink?
finally got around to reading harry g. frankfurt’s on bullshit, which has sat on my living room table for months. many folks read this slim volume (it was all over the news when it was published last january) and most people couldn’t suppress a wink or wry smirk considering its content, as though bullshit were not, in fact, a “serious” subject for inquiry. i bought the book with no smirk whatsoever, but with high hopes. i’ve long held an unspoken suspicion that bullshit might be more dangerous and damaging to the human condition than anyone is prepared to accept.
i mean that sincerely and am not secretly winking here on my end, i promise.
when i picked up on bullshit i’d hoped that frankfurt’s inquiry into the subject might address and lend credence to my own suspicions.
the book begins as follows:
one of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. everyone knows this. each of us contributes his share. bur we take the situation for granted. most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. so the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry.
in consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. and we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. in other words, we have no theory…
promising. as it turns out though, the book’s ultimately concerned with defining what exactly bullshit is, and little else. obviously this is perfectly sensible method of approaching the subject. first things first, right? we must agree on a definition before we can go any further.
he approaches a definition mainly by contrasting bullshit with seemingly synonymous concepts like humbug, balderdash, claptrap, hokum, drivel, etc, and drawing a finer distinction between them; essentially trying to zero-in on what bullshit is by calling out what it is not.
the most important distinction is likely that between bullshitting and lying. the distinction being that lying requires an acknowledgement of a “truth” in order to construct a lie in relation to it. bullshit on the other hand need not be concerned with “truth” at all. bullshitting does not require a subversion of “truth” but can ignore it altogether. in as much the conclusion made is that bullshit is a greater enemy of truth than straight ought lies.
frankfurt touches on the question of why there is so much bullshit around (people feel compelled to have an opinion on every subject, even those which they have no knowledge of) as well as the notion of “sincerity” as an ideal for people who do not believe an “objective truth” exists (devotion to the truth of oneself since there is no external truth [postmodernism?] which, itself, he flags as bullshit) but unfortunately in this very slim volume there is no chance to take the inquiry further. my own questions on the subject go unasked and unanswered.
my question about bullshit is essentially what effect does it have, in the long term, on the people barraged with it?
first off i must say that though frankfurt is sensibly noncommittal about whether, in fact, there is more bullshit today than there was in days past i will commit readily to the stance that, yes, there is more bullshit today than ever before, or rather, that each individual is obliged to absorb a greater portion of the total than ever before, which effectively amounts to the same thing.
my reasons? they might be distilled down into two words: technology and capitalism.
if profit is the driving force behind most human endeavors, as typified by capitalism, and technology has exponentially expanded both our reach and our intake of information then i believe it is fair to say each person is faced with more bullshit today than ever before.
selling anything very nearly necessitates bullshit and television, radio, the internet, etc, which statistically each of us spend more time engaged with than ever before, are models run on advertising revenue. hence our (statistically greater amounts of) leisure time is spent absorbing huge quantities of bullshit.
i think the brute measure of “intake per time” must be considered. we can each individually absorb as much bullshit in 10 minutes of internet time as a man in 1460 might come across in an hour of wandering the market. and that’s not even taking into account the proliferation of advertising into non-commercial space. so even if we assume bullshit as a constant each of us is faced with more of it in any given time period.
of course bullshit is not limited to matters of commerce. as frankfurt mentions in his book it is part of general discourse.
we might also think of it then in this way: democracy and ideas of equality can by definition increase the amount of bullshit. sound’s awful but hear me out on a strictly mathematical level. there was a time, not long ago, when whole swaths of the population were not expected to “know” much. their opinions were not sought after, their outlook not valued, their voice not appreciated. women for instance were not consulted on matters of business, or philosophy, or state. in america blacks were not consulted on matters of, well… anything.
in our democratic and equal present each person is theoretically just as likely as another to “know” about any given subject. broader knowledge on everything is available but the likelihood is not greater that anyone would actually possess it. people have more choice in what knowledge they pursue but that does not diminish the odds for specialization.
it would seem to me that mathematically, when every voice must be heard on every subject the chances for bullshit are much greater. not because knowledge can (or ought) to be divided on lines like sex or race but because the ideals of equality and democracy, statistically at least, would seem to allow for more discourse by people on subjects they know nothing about.
not everyone can know about evolutionary biology for example, but that does not stop those ignorant on the subject from speaking about it (at length) in a democratic and equal society.
let me list a few words and phrases here:
spam / media / news / ratings / commercials / t.v. / movies / blockbusters / blurbs / actors / awards / rappers / public personas / models / celebrity / tabloids / cosmetic surgery / professional athletes / pharmaceuticals / “age defying” / diets / “anti-balding” / tell all books / p.r. / advertising / marketing / focus groups / engineered obsolescence / packaging / sloganeering / rhetoric / politicians / talking points / press secretary / partisanism / pork barrel / lawyers / law suits / ambulance chasers / loopholes / war on drugs / war on terror / wmd / “no child left behind” / “haters of freedom” / conspiracy / political correctness…
those are just a few things which pop into my head for whatever reason. if i took time to try and make a comprehensive list of things which came to mind on the subject of bullshit in modern life the list would likely be 10 times as long. if i were to attempt to catalog all the possible causes of bullshit, or all the reasons i believe it is running rampant, this post would also be 10 times as long. but that’s not really my aim.
let me get back to my question: what effect does bullshit have on the people barraged with it? anyone have any ideas? what are the effects of the ubiquity of bullshit?
• do we lose the ability to differentiate between truth and lies because the field is crowded with this smoke screen of bullshit?
• do we become more skeptical, working under the assumption that everything is bullshit, in an effort to distance ourselves from it?
• do we become less open and engaged because we are trying so hard to shut all the bullshit out?
• do we become more and more cynical?
• do we simply get sucked in and become unrepentant bullshitters ourselves?
• do we find it easier to swallow big lies because we are so used to the little ones?
• are we less outraged at true injustice? are we less scandalized by scandal because we are so used to shrugging off bullshit?
• do we lose faith in the idea of “truth” in general? (is post modernism a cause or an effect in regard to higher levels of bullshit?)
• do we stop valuing truth because it’s so frustratingly hard to discern?
• do we become so confused that we stop listening to “experts” and start relying on our own instincts? even in cases where it is detrimental to do so?
• do we become less trusting of humanity on the whole?
• does our opinion of our fellow man diminish in dangerous ways as a result?
• do we assume everyone else is full of shit?
• do we take bullshit as a given a pre-judge anyone unfamiliar to us as a charlatan and enemy?
• does the constant working of the set of intellectual muscles involved make us less tolerant?
• do we fracture into ever smaller groups who happen to share the same views?
• do we become more insular?
• do we become bitter and angry at the sensation of being lied to and bullshitted at every turn?
• does it become harder to connect with our fellow man?
• does it raise our anxiety and stress levels as a species?
• do we take out our anger at being bullshitted constantly on those who don’t deserve it? on strangers or loved ones?
• do our short lives become less enjoyable?
i ask these questions in all seriousness. i know that, personally, i find myself cursing at the television (be it ad spot, politician, or pundit) a lot. i find myself getting pissed off at advertising just about everywhere. i get pissed off by that feeling of having your intelligence insulted by every bit of text on a poster, every sound byte, every slogan, every attempt to convince me of some nonsense. i get annoyed at people for being “friendly” when it smacks of bullshit (think fake smile, small talk, obligatory hello.) i fear i’m becoming ever more cynical, that my fuse is getting shorter, that i have zero patience for a sales pitch or any other disingenuous slab of banter, and that, if possible, i “suffer fools even less gladly” than ever before. i have to assume i am not the only one.
i want to know what the effect on the bullshit which surrounds us has on our psyche. i want to know if it’s causing damage culturally and as a species in general. and if so i want to know why we are so tolerant of it?
Frankfurt’s book is a nice starting point and i recommend it to anyone who hasn’t read it yet. i think, however, that this is a serious subject which deserves further scrutiny.
anyone with any ideas on the subject is encouraged to share them. even if you think this whole post is a bunch of bullshit. ones man’s thoughts are always anothers bullshit. that’s the nature of the stinky infuriating beast.
Read Less...
Unspeakable Edibles
Well, I haven’t posted in a while. Been beat to hell for a couple of weeks, too tired to shovel the driveway. But here’s something I just got to get off my chest: I can’t help but wonder who named some of these foods. The tweedledum and tweedledee, so to speak, of absurdist portmanteau food names, if you ask me (and you didn’t) are: turducken and tofurkey. These are compressed from the names of the ingredients, so: turducken is a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken, and tofurkey is tofu made to imitate turkey.
I can’t let pass without comment any food that starts with ‘turd.’ I can’t. I won’t. Maybe next year I’ll turn 14 and outgrow such things, but it didn’t happen last year, nor the year before that, nor the decade before that…
So, I now nominate the new portmanteau recipes, based not on palatability but purely on my own whim. And, no, I’ll not make any jokes about any sort of ‘balls,’ because Saturday Night Live and South Park got that covered, thank you very much.
To warm up, let’s go oriental/american. An open-faced sandwich containing shiitake mushrooms will henceforth be known as a shiit-faced sandwich.
A chicken, inside a duck, encased in tofu, will be tofucken.
A mynah bird, stuffed with donkey meat, served in succotash, will be sucmyass.
Collard greens with onions and leeks will be called colonleeks.
If, instead of wine, you serve chicken in mountain dew and snickerdoodles, it should be coq-au-doodle-dew. If it’s on a stick, encased in hard candy, it shall be a coq-sucker.
Raw steak served in a mix of tartar sauce, dental scrapings, and bitumen, shall be tartartartartar tartare. Crab rangoon with champagne and a poo-poo platter shall be crab cham-poo (ask your pharmacist). Caramel chameleon is pretty self-explanatory.
Irish sausages wrapped in virginia ham will be virgin bangers. If you wrapped Irish sausages in boston butt, you’d get boston butt bangers, but that would just be silly. Hmm, if you encase the bangers in lady fingers, you get lady fingerbangers. I guess you just can’t go wrong with bangers, eh?
If you seasoned angel hair with a cumin sauce, and baked it in a pie, that’d give you cumin hairpie.
A pumpkin, stuffed with yams, mangos, and mayonnaise, is pumpyamama.
Flan and treacle make feacle. Flan with artichoke makes fartichoke.
Shite and onions will still be shite and onions, but there shall be a restaurant in new york city which caters to a ‘very select clientele’ and offers it at $150 a plate (it’s excreted by supermodels, you know). And busted ravioli is not a food, strictly speaking, thought that doesn’t keep people from trying to eat it.
Two very promising recipes failed to make the cut: van johnson is made simply by smearing one’s johnson with vanilla ice cream, but testing was halted after a painful neck injury. Van dyke, a related recipe, also led to a halt in testing, after a painful groin injury (and a restraining order).
Most mixed drinks already have ridiculous names, so there’s no sport in that; but it’s worth remembering that smirnoff vodka in your egg nog would make it smeg nog.
Hors d’oeuvres, we’ve all heard of; but why must we pronounce it ‘or durvz’? Either ‘horse doovers’ or ‘whore’s devours’ would be an improvement.
And just to show that there’s nothing a human can do that the internets can’t do more gooder, here’s an automatic
disgusting food generator, a page of molecules with silly names, and more people ranting about disgusting foods and combined words.
Read Less...
the history of glasses
apparently no visual instruments (i.e. glasses) existed at the time of the ancient egyptians, greeks, or romans. seneca is alleged to have read “all the books in rome” by peering at them through a glass globe of water to produce magnification. nero used an emerald held up to his eye while he watched gladiators fight. the chinese are sometimes credited with developing spectacles 2000 years ago, but apparently they only used them to protect their eyes from an evil force… just a few meager factoids from the history of eye glasses. if such historical minutia is too geeky for you try this instead.
the forgotten critics of oral tradition
we humans love our stories. they have been a vital part of every human culture ever recorded. today we get our weekly allotment of stories predominantly through the television and movies and before that radio. going further back we got our fix through theater. and if you go all the way back there was the oral tradition, a folkloric amalgam of tales, legends, proverbs, jokes, and popular beliefs which we told one another. if the analogy of movies to oral tradition is solid then what else might our current experience with stories tell us about that of our ancestors?
i was mulling over this question and began to think about our predominant feelings concerning entertainment today, namely that it is in large part utter crap. sequels, straight to video fare, flop blockbusters, t.v. adaptations, re-makes, studio pap, cinemax porn, shit sit-coms, reality t.v., list shows, etc… this left me wondering, “were there sub-par entertainments in the oral tradition as well?” meaning were there stories which went over like a lead balloon? were there flops? were there storytellers who were reviled? who got panned? were there critics? must have been right?
well, i’ve made an attempt to visualize just such a forgotten nook of our collective past and it may have looked something like this-
or not. who knows?
Read Less...
space junk
came across a nat geo story today on the subject of space debris, more commonly referred to as space junk, and the warnings coming out of nasa about its accumulation. i’ve been fascinated by the idea of space junk since first reading about it a few years ago. the fact that there are thousands of human-made doohickies whipping around in low earth orbit, forming what amounts to a “junkosphere,” is wild. since the size of this debris cloud grows by an average of 4% every year it also happens to pose real dangers for humanity’s future space initiatives, be they scientific, commercial, or military.
the first question you might ask if you’d never heard of space junk is “well, what the hell did we leave up there? and how much of whatever it is could we actually have left behind in 40 years?” well…
space junk is mainly comprised of: derelict spacecraft and upper stages of launch vehicles, carriers for multiple payloads, debris intentionally released during spacecraft separation from its launch vehicle or during mission operations. a principle source for this debris are Satellite explosions, especially old upper stages left in orbit with stored energy sources, e.g., residual propellants and high pressure fluids, constitute the largest component of cataloged orbital debris, and tiny flecks of paint released by thermal stress or small particle impacts.
as for how much of it there actual is: approximately 11,000 objects larger than 10 cm are known to exist. the estimated population of particles between 1 and 10 cm in diameter is greater than 100,000. the number of particles smaller than 1 cm probably exceeds tens of millions.
the speeds and force at work are crazy-
quote: In low earth orbit the average relative velocity at impact is 10 km/sec (21,600 mph). At this velocity, even small particles contain significant amounts of kinetic energy and momentum. an aluminum sphere 1.3 mm in diameter has damage potential similar to that of a .22-caliber long rifle bullet. an aluminum sphere 1 cm in diameter is comparable to a 400-lb safe traveling at 60 mph. A fragment 10 cm long is roughly comparable to 25 sticks of dynamite.
for instance:
this 4-mm-diameter crater on the windshield of the space shuttle orbiter was made by a fleck of white paint approximately 0.2 mm in diameter.
these 2 mm impact holes were each made by dust grains.
this image shows the results of a lab test impact between a 1.2cm sphere of aluminum traveling at approximately 6.8 km per sec and a block of aluminum 18 cm thick. this test simulates what can happen when a small bit of space hits a spacecraft. in such an impact, the pressure and temperature can exceed those found at the centre of the earth (greater than 365 GPa and more than 6,000 K.)
now keep in mind these are bits of debris measuring in the millimeters. imagine these impacts on larger scales. for example, here are some pieces of debris which reentered the earths atmosphere.
don’t think the shuttle or ruttan’s space ship 1 or any of the thousands of satellites up there right now would handle a collision with one of these junk chunks too well. can you say “totaled?”
jerry bell had a fascinating piece on the subject in space daily a while back which included this, on the threat of space junk to the international space station:
So how soon can we expect an actual hull breach on the ISS? The National Academy of Sciences addressed this in a 1997 report. They calculated that over the ten years that the fully assembled ISS would operate there was a 19% chance of a penetrating hit on one of the pressurized modules!
a penetration would probably kill or seriously injure any astronauts in the punctured module, due to the shock wave and shower of high-speed fragments. Even if the surviving crewmen managed to seal off the punctured section, it would be depressurized and useless. If the damaged module were in the middle of the ISS, some crewmen might find themselves in an isolated section with no access to the ISS “lifeboat”, condemned to a lingering death from CO2 poisoning like many submarine crewmen who have been in similar situations. It is hard to imagine how the US Congress and the public would continue to support the manned space program after this kind of disaster, on top of Challenger and Columbia.
indeed.
a recent study showed that, even if humans were to never launch another spacecraft, the amount of debris in low orbit around earth will remain steady through 2055, after which it will increase. and of course, with any luck, we will be be launching more spacecraft as time goes on and technology improves. so all in all having a huge,ever growing, junk cloud encircling the planet might put a damper on our space tourism dreams. isn’t it just like us? the planet itself is already cluttered with junk, so now we are cluttering up the space around it as well. i wonder if one day earth will have its own rings, like saturn, only made of old crap? “they will know us by the trail of our junk!”
one thing which has captured my imagination about this debris cloud is the computer modeled visualizations of it. to actually see the planet with a million little specs of crap floating around it… it’s wild. (you can easily imagine each spec represented is a broken toaster, or old rusty car, or a diaper with a highly dangerous payload.)
here’s a recent comp. modeled example-
one thing which i’ve always wanted to see was a projection of each of these objects’ individual orbits laid over one another. unfortunately i’ve never been able to find one. so…
i decided to create a computer model myself. it took 8 months, feeding in huge amounts of data, and slowly rendering the whole mess into a high res image. the initial results were surprising-
as i ran my simulation forward to forecast what we could expect to see as these debris trends mounted and multiplied the results became downright scary! if ever there was an image shocking enough to shake things up and really impress upon people the horrifying threat our planet faces in years to come i believe this is it!!
as you can see things are worse than we thought.
anyhow, all joking aside there are many interesting sites out there focussed on space junk. if your interest is peaked check out:
cords the center for orbital and reentry debris studies. (don’t miss the animation on the front page.)
the nasa orbital debris program office
here is a page dedicated to one particular piece of space junk, a helium tank from the Russian Salyut 7-Cosmos 1686 (Kosmos 1686) spacecraft assembly.
and lastly here is an activity you can do at home which illustrates “the penetrating power of a projectile with little mass but with high velocity.”
hope you enjoyed.
Read Less...
time and a word
...we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless -paul bowles. (see below for more.)
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
-T.S. Eliot
Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
-Ambrose Bierce
We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us.
-Charles Baudelaire
Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
-Carl Sandburg
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
-Groucho Marx
Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.
-Jorge Luis Borge
Time is the longest distance between two places.
-Tennessee Williams
What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.
-Saint Augustine
Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.
-Thomas Mann
Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.
-William Faulkner
Time is a horse that runs in the heart, a horse
Without a rider on a road at night.
The mind sits listening and hears it pass.
-Wallace Stevens
Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.
-Marcel Proust
Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.
-Douglas Adams
Sweet childish days, that were as long, As twenty days are now.
-William Wordsworth
The time of the seasons and the constellations
The time of milking and the time of harvest
The time of the coupling of man and woman
And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling.
Eating and drinking. Dung and death.
-T.S. Eliot
Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.
-Goethe
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.
-Albert Einstein
Time, which shows so vacant, indivisible, and divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. A door is to be painted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood, or oil, or meal, or salt; the house smokes, or I have a headache; then the tax; and an affair to be transacted with a man without heart or brains; and the stinging recollection of an injurious or very awkward word,—these eat up the hours.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Time needs another minute.
-Sly Stone
The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
-Jack London
The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
-Bertrand Russell
Regret for wasted time is more wasted time.
-Mason Cooley
Time is here and you’ll go his way.
Your lung is waiting in the death market.
Your face beside me will grow indifferent.
Darling, you will yield up your belly and be
cored like an apple.
-Anne Sexton
We die only once, and for such a long time.
-Moliere
Time has an undertaking establishment on every block and drives his coffin nails faster than the steam riveters rivet or the stenographers type or the tickers tick out fours and eights and dollar signs and ciphers.
-John Dos Passos
But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day.
-Benjamin Disraeli
___________________________________________
all images from Henry G. Abbott’s The watch factories of America, past and present. A complete history of watchmaking in America, from 1809 to 1888 which is viewable at the smithsonian’s recently launched galaxy of images.
Read Less...
blog noir
it was a tuesday night. no big shakes in this particular quarter of the web. my page was flanked by gutters on both sides as it always is. traffic rumbled into the referrer log at all hours, urchins watching everything. some regulars from the neighborhood stuck their heads in to shoot the breeze. peacay and aitch glanced in the window, hoofing it to one digital library or another no doubt. sebastian and pz sent some folks my way, each with a tip of their snappy fedoras. i was in my office, feet up, tipping a glass. like i said, no big shakes, just a tuesday at the grindstone.
at 7:20 pm, nonist localization, she clicked her way into my comments section from points unknown.
seccssssee said: hello mr. nonist. found you via technorati. pretty well ranked aren’t you? bet you’ve got a lot of hits under your belt huh?
her avatar was mysterious but her gmail address was so short i nearly spilled my hooch. her screen-name fit like a glove, all curvy s’s and round c’s. i figured her for some pro-skirt or chippy trying to drum up traffic scratch with the ol’ flimflam. when i read on i wasn’t so sure…
...was feelin’ low and looking for a laugh or something absorbing; anything to get my mind off of the crumby hours i call tuesday. you managed to give me both. you know your onions mr. nonist. so thanks for distracting me. gonna go and read some more. toodles.
jmorrison said: hey tootse. glad i could butter your digital muffin. thanks for stopping by.
i sat back with my hooch, watching her cast an eyeball over the place just as she said she would. her i.p. checked out. her click paths were deep, her depth of session long. i started to feel like a heel for dummying up. this dame wasn’t some comment troll. my rss feeds dumped stories on my doorstep like a mob of overachieving newsies but now i was distracted. “better delete that ‘buttered muffin’ comment and try to be a gentleman,” i thought.
she beat me to it, damned automatic comment notification! gotta get under the hood and tear that thing out.
seccssssee said: jmorrison huh? what’s the j stand for? jim? jerry? jackass?
“damn it! how’d i get behind the eight-ball so quick?” i wondered. not much of a host was i? sitting there at a desk in a dark, smokey room, with my dogs up, ready to send anyone who tread too heavy out on their ear. why’d i put the url on the door if i didn’t want anyone coming in? “better try again,” i thought. “play nice.”
jmorrison says: sorry seccssssee, didn’t mean anything by it. never can tell when someone’s dropping in just to bump gums. the comments section can get lousy with mugs on the traffic grift, or twists pushing their cams… hell, every bum steer imaginable. i’m only human, and when i’ve got some giggle juice in my belly i’m less than that.
seccssssee said: it’s o.k. j. must get old having to play house-dick everyday. i did take a look around the place btw. interesting…
“interesting?” i suddenly felt aware of the place myself, like a tinsel-town spotlight came through the fiber optics and set everything into relief, all the grammatical errors, the crazy overuse of commas, the spelling mistakes…
seccssssee said: yesiree, you’ve got a nice place here j. warm and dark at the same time. my kinda joint. tell me, how do you keep it in glad rags all the time? what’s your secret?
jmorrison says: glad rags? this ol’ gin mill? well doll, the story’s the same all over, it’s like this- you wake up in the morning and there’s a piece missing somewhere see? a piece which has gotta be big by the feel of the hole in your gut. so what do you do? what can you do? you build a little place. it takes some time. then you start filling the joint with stuff, anything you can find, whatever catches your eye. you tell yourself it’s just to keep busy, just for a lark. you talk to the neighbors, you get into flame wars, you run off at the mouth… thing is what you’re really doing is trying to fill that hole. trying to find something, any damned thing, out there, which keeps you from hurting; keeps the dark shadows off your doorstep. that’s all blogs are. that’s all this place is. anyhow… here i am chinning away, where are my manners? can i offer you something to link? dip the bill a bit?
ads for cock pumps and horse-sex drop into my mail slot with a “ding.” the flat broke nigerians are nowhere in sight.
seccssssee said: better not j. i’ve taken enough of your attention. should probably take a powder. got my own empty spot to try and fill. but listen, thanks again. i’ll come back and see you again sometime. anyway you’ll do alright.
i topped off my hooch and emptied the glass again with a slug. i cracked my knuckles in the dark then touched the keys
jmorrison says: yeah, i might do alright doll, but “alright” just won’t do.
jmorrison says: seccssssee?
the dame had gone, back out there into her crumby tuesday, and i never got a chance to tell her what the “j” stood for.
“jabroney” i said aloud into the glow of my computer screen.
Read Less...
sittin’ on wicker
long before rappers were “sittin’ on chrome” and sippin’ dom on their yachts the funky and soulful cats among us were sitting on something altogether different; they were sittin’ on wicker. yes folks, that is correct, as the older of us can attest there was a time not so long ago when wicker was some fashionable shi’ite. for proof one need only look to the thread which ran through the cultures of 60’s r&b through 70’s funk. the shot of the cool cat loungin’ in his wicker peacock chair (henceforth to be referred to as the “funk throne”) is a classic image which somewhere along the way fell out of fashion. sure today we’ve got bullet proof vests, bentleys, and diamond fronts, but i have to wonder, after 30 years in the stylistic dog-house, how long before some enterprising cultural looter seizes upon this forgotten classic and brings it roaring back?
first, as always, some history:
quote: Although the first piece of wicker furniture in America came over on the Mayflower, the American wicker furniture industry really dates from the early 1850s, when a young grocer named Cyrus Wakefield discovered large quantities of rattan on the docks of Boston. On ships that had been to Asia, the vines were used to keep cargo from shifting on the long voyage home. The properties and possibilities of the strange foreign material fascinated him. He sold his grocery store and started the Wakefield Rattan Company in South Reading, Massachusetts. The product proved so popular that Wakefield was soon importing his own clipper ships full of rattan, which was in great demand by basket and furniture makers. Wakefield then started making his own wicker furniture; he is known today as the father of the industry.
Some time after the Civil War the largest wood chair manufacturer in the United States began using rattan in the making of their chairs. a loom to weave the cane was invented and a way to install the cane seats so that they did not have to be hand woven was perfected. this automation reduced the cost of making wicker furniture dramatically. Before long wicker furniture was everywhere.
Early in the 20th century, as public taste veered toward straighter lines and more simple designs in furniture, Victorian wicker began to be considered too ornate. it had a huge resurgence in popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, however, and wicker furniture became a common sight in American homes once again.
which brings us directly to the appropriation of wicker from the old-fogies and it’s transformation into the briefly glorious funk throne. see below-
humble in-roads for wicker on this notations album cover.
here we see sugarfoot from the ohio players perched on his funk throne.
here we have good ol’ al, on what is likely the most famous funk throne shot of the era.
natalie cole in her queen’s version of the funk throne.
this is an ad circa 1974 put out by a clothing company called, fittingly enough, funk fashions. click the image to read the accompanying text which i believe sums up the inferred associations of the funk throne nicely.
here’s jack lord of hawaii-5-0 fame getting in on the funky action, or trying at least.
a gill scott heron album sleeve which illustrates my long held belief that anything a human can do, a gorilla can do funkier.
the true king of funk, george clinton, takes his rightful throne here on this funkadelic cover.
as with everything else what is at one moment hip eventually becomes lame. here is the blasphemous perversion of the funk throne at the hands of evil ad men. a piece for aloe products featuring a naked bow-tied white guy spells a figurative end to the funk throne’s reign better than any image i can imagine.
and it was exactly so. best i can gather by 1980 the wicker peacock chair and its offshoots, once the proud ass-rest for the stankiest, funkiest among us, seems to have fallen by the wayside and has remained in obscurity to this very day.
initially i’d intended on putting together a few “what-if” images to illustrate my notion that it’s high time for a return of the once mighty wicker peacock chair… i thought perhaps i’d drop kanye or common or madlib into one. as it turns out i accidentally came across an image which removed the need for any photoshop trickery-
yup, that’s the one and only nas chilling in his very own funk throne, and with a carved cane no less. this shot proved to me that my instincts were correct… i now fully expect a resurgence of the mighty wicker symbol of all things founkay. will 2006 be the year? we shall see.
Read Less...
meaning concealed behind meaning
quote: The dirty little secret of the ironist is of course that irony is always parasitic and can exist only by virtue of the earnestness it takes such pleasure in annihilating. Like sentiment, which has been called unearned emotion, the new irony is a form of unearned skepticism. It creates nothing of its own but waits to ambush moral purpose, to play havoc with common sense, to deny reason its moment. The only stand it takes is that there is no stand to be taken, so neither the author nor the audience has to take one.
that’s a passage from Benjamin Barber’s essay in salmagundi called the price of irony (via). it’s an interesting piece which, admittedly, resonates with sentiment i feel sympathetic toward. technically it’s focussed on martin mcdonagh’s new play the pillowman but it’s laced heavily with damning pronouncements on irony in the arts in general.
for instance:
Irony is the postmodern form of conspicuous self-consciousness and suits our era’s puerility – its fey aestheticism and political cynicism — to a tee. It is complacency’s rationalization, disengagement’s excuse, the alienated spectator’s self-justification. The ironic bystander (the phrase is redundant) is the citizen’s jeering nemesis and the poet’s wily shadow trying to make sure that truth and beauty and goodness, those stalwarts of the world before it was disenchanted, do not re-infect the post-modern’s cool voice with hot earnestness. Or make us think too hard or feel too keenly.
and
irony is bad for art — but then what’s art? asks the ironist artfully. It’s bad for audiences — but then who cares? asks the careless spectator. And it’s bad for civility in both the civilizational and civic senses – but then are not civilization and the civic sensibility two of the ironist’s more fetching targets? ask the complacent aesthetes who pass as artists in the age of irony.
and
Irony asks nothing of us. In letting itself off the hook, it lets us off the hook. We don’t just laugh at the cruel and the bizarre – which might leave us feeling some culpability even as we laugh – we laugh at ourselves laughing. We do not merely distance ourselves from our terrors for reasons of psychic survival, we congratulate ourselves on our distancing.
and
Irony is liberation on the cheap; irresponsibility without regret. Puritanism may be too hard to bear; skepticism may be the price demanded by reason; but irony is all too easy. No wonder our infantilizing, attention-deficit, lazy, consumerist times are in love with it. The Puritans make work of play, moderns make play of work, but ironists make nonsense of work and play, seriousness and fun. To be too serious may at times be a sin; and to laugh too much at seriousness may be a greater one. But the ironist laughs at those who laugh at seriousness, somehow thinking this will enable them to recover seriousness without embracing its vices as seen by those who mock it.
Barber is obviously a man whose tired of the whole empty charade. in cultural terms, and in the visual arts most particularly, i’m sympathetic. you might not know it judging wholly by the goings-on here at the nonist. i am certainly not above dabbling in the ironic or post-modern here, but i do so, in this context, without guilt, because as i’ve said i do not consider this form to be “art” at all, but an avenue for experimentation and play. what you will most likely never see, however, is a physical piece of “ironic” art with my signature on it. (if i keep blogging you may never see a piece of physical art with my signature on it of any kind ever again… but that’s another fish.) a “post-modern” story or book? sure the tropes have their uses. and actually, in a way, it’s hard to avoid. the language of deconstruction is so prevalent stylistically that it seeps in as an influence. anyhow, in the broader sense, the “infinity-mirror” of irony is pretty tiresome at this point in my opinion.
then again it’s a tricky subject. there are many incarnations of irony as it has been popularly understood. so i suppose when we huff and say, “i am so tired of all the irony!” we’d do well to be specific. are we tired of socratic irony? or kierkegaard’s version of socratic irony? are we sick of romantic irony? or of self-irony? or is it just the brooklyn, mustachioed, koons’ type of irony? likewise the term itself is so commonly misused that the whole conversation is easily skewed and misunderstood.
further thoughts on the subject from others:
Neither irony or sarcasm is argument. -samuel butler.
The postmodern sensibility begins with Warhol, although it has a secret history that runs back not only to Duchamp, but to Kierkegaard’s reading of Socrates. While irony is part of a great tradition in the west, it is only after Warhol that one realizes that irony is not the preserve of a few quick witted thinkers or artists. The subtle and pervasive weaving of the media vectors of third nature into every and any convention or situation makes irony a fact of everyday life. Irony is everywhere, already. One can’t free oneself from convention when irony itself has become the convention.
As Catharine Lumby writes: ‘What if the role of the artist and the status of the art object were so uncertain that there was no longer a status quo to disrupt? Indeed, where would the possibility for ironic gesture lie when irony had become the status quo? In such a situation, irony might be said to have had its revenge—to turn on those who wield it—and collapse into complacency.’ What lies at the end of this thought is a certain vertigo: the artist or the writer might be the object, not the subject of the creative act. ‘The makers are no longer in control of the ironic possibilities. Rather, it is the objects themselves which mock us for our attempt to fix their aesthetic meaning and value.’ - from the virtual republic’s A Secret History of Sydney Postmodernism.
Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do. - Kierkegaard.
Irony in art is totally dishonest. It’s a very ugly thing. It just cuts into the emotional experience of it and simply destroys the energy. Irony in art is like a sideways sneer: it’s a form of yobbishness, or snobbishness, very much to do with the pathetic yob culture which is now “in”. Mainstream artists are cowards; it’s all fashion. Gavin Turk and the rest - they are New Romantic, not punk rock. They are fashion: that’s why their work is so vacuous. They all rely on ideas, and artists simply don’t have good ideas. -billy childish (formerly of stuckist affiliation) interviewed here.
Pathos has not always succeeded in overcoming irony. Inspiration, by its very nature, can flow along a number of different channels. These channels may either issue from or merge into one stream. Perhaps art lies in the land between two channels. Hegel spoke of the aesthetic significance of irony in art. But then Hegel was engaged at the time in a polemic against Schlegel, and for the latter irony was the highest principle in art. Irony isn’t always self-destructive. It is rather close to the comic. Irony does not have to affirm itself. It need not be an end in itself, for its own sake. An artist who laughs up his sleeve cannot create a great work of art, that is, a work that moves us deeply. -viktor shklovsky, from on einstein.
The reason that art in the postmodern, existential world has reached something of a cul-de-sac is not that art itself is exhausted, but that the existential worldview is. Just as rational modernity previously exhausted its forms and gave way to a-perspectival postmodernity, so now the postmodern itself is on a morbid deathwatch, with nothing but infinitely mirrored irony to hold its hand, casting flowers where they will not be missed. The skull of postmodernity grins on the near horizon, and in the meantime, we are between two worldviews, one slowly dying, one not yet born. -Ken Wilber, from the irony and the ecstasy.
The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive. -Robert A. Heinlein.
here is some further reading on the subject if it interests you-
the dictionary of the history of ideas page.
the final irony.
irony and what it isn’t.
irony and the historical.
irony, nostalgia, and the postmodern.
irony arrows / eros.
i, myself, am comically earnest in the flesh, as most of my friends will likely tell you, and though i’d have loved to have written extensive commentary on this subject, i am something else in addition to earnest; i am lazy. so the links will have to do for now.
Read Less...
my story
well folks i’m very pleased to announce that nan a. telese, of doubleday, has agreed to publish a memoir i’ve written, a non-fiction recounting of a difficult episode in my life, which will be released later this year. it’s bitter sweet in that the story i’ve recounted is a particularly painful one for me, and to be honest, it was extremely hard to write about. on the other hand having made it through the experience i felt sure that others out there could benefit from a frank, head-on, treatment of the subject. though i’m contractually forbidden to share any of the actual text as of yet, i’ve included a blurb below which will appear on the jacket and which may give you some insight.
“imagine waking up in the middle of the atlantic ocean, clutching a parachute made of egg-noodles, and not being able to remember how you got there. imagine that your face is covered in tiny nibble marks, your body is smeared with some soft, spreadable, brie-like cheese, and a bloodthirsty squeaking rings in your ears like a maddening, accusatory chime. imagine that those who come to your aid are octogenarian c.i.a. agents wearing crotch-less wet suits. imagine the endless bare-bulbed debriefing sessions soon carried out in the back room of a siberian nail salon. imagine the fear at being berated by the mob’s most infamous goat farmer.
and now try to imagine the startling memories which eventually come to light. the story that takes shape which will change one man’s life forever. a night out on the town, one too many. a trip to the moon on a stolen banana truck. a crash landing. a welcoming party.
this is the story of an addict who finds himself in the clutches of the cruel, presbyterian mice who live on the moon. the story of his torture at their paws, of their hypnotically twitching whiskers, and their horrifying “room of a trillion mouse turds.” this is the story of one man’s struggle to survive on nothing but moon cheese and his courageous resolve to escape his fuzzy captors, wash his hands, and get back home.
visceral, kinetic, raw, and unpredictable, this is a story of addiction, rehabilitation, and the brutal mice who rule the moon as it has never been told before.
it’s a story for anyone who has struggled with addiction (or bloodthirsty moon mice) and can see no way out. it’s a story of hope.”
as you might expect, i’m very excited about all this. i feel like it’s time that my story was told. i feel that i’m ready to share it with the world and, maybe, just maybe, help someone.
even though i shouldn’t… i just can’t resist. see below for an early version of the cover art!
so waddya think? do those vile mouse turds come across?
Read Less...
will i be rich? will i live forever?
here’s an oldie but goody. the museum of talking boards. like band-aids they are better known today by a brand name- ouija boards. the site has a fantastic little gallery as well as some good ol’ factual history, delving a bit into the victorian fascination with spiritualism which fostered the board’s spread. there are some bits about its precursors the psychograph and planchette and many period descriptions. very cool. meanwhile i figured i’d take this opportunity to unveil three new ouija boards which, assuming the venture capital materializes, will be hitting the market later this year, created by the nonist novelty co. see below.
click each to reveal the mysterious and powerful new boards…
so? what do you think? is the market ready to speak with these spirits?
Read Less...
filling the husk
when i am utterly uninspired, at a loss as to what to post, or eat, or do next; when i am miserable, or in a funk, or have a nasty crick in my neck, i find solace in turning towards the works of humanity’s great philosophers. time and again i’ve found that the simple act of submerging myself in the torrent of their ideas can invigorate me in a way which not even an altoids stuffed habanero with a listerine chaser can manage. i have of late been in just such a funk. consumed with a nasty “empty-husk” kind of feeling which prevents me from writing anything interesting, or relaxing in my home, or swimming the english channel. as such i’ve decided to dip a toe again into those rushing waters of the awe inspiringly brilliant philosophical mind…
from my philosophy by woody allen (from his 1971 collection getting even.)
_______________________________________________
1. critique of pure dread
in formulating any philosophy, the first consideration must always be: what can we know? that is, what can we be sure we know, or sure that we know we knew it, if indeed it is at all knowable. or have we simply forgotten it and are too embarrassed to say anything? descartes hinted at the problem when he wrote, “my mind can never know my body, although it has become quite friendly with my legs.” by “knowable,” incidentally, i do not mean that which can be known by perception of the senses, or that which can be grasped by the mind, but more that which can be said to be known or to posses a knowness or knowability, or at least something you can mention to a friend.
can we actually “know” the universe? my god, it’s hard enough finding your way around chinatown. the point, however, is: is there anything out there? and why? and must they be so noisy? finally, there can be no doubt that the one characteristic of “reality” is that it lacks essence. that is not to say it has no essence, but merely lacks it. (the reality i speak of here is the same as hobbes described, but a little smaller.) therefore the cartesian dictum “i think, therefore i am” might be better expressed “hey, there goes edna with a saxophone!” so, then to know a substance or an idea we must doubt it, and thus, doubting it, come to perceive the qualities it possesses in its final state, which are truly “in the thing itself,” or “of the thing itself,” or something or nothing. if this is clear, we can leave epistemology for the moment.
2. eschatological dialectics as a means of coping with shingles
we can say that the universe consists of a substance, and this substance we will call “atoms,” or else we will call it “monads.” democritus called it atoms. leibnitz called it monads. fortunately, the two men never met, or there would have been a very dull argument. these “particles” were set in motion by some cause or underlying principle, or perhaps something fell someplace. the point is that it’s too late to do anything about it now, except possibly to eat plenty of raw fish. this, of course, does not explain why the soul is immortal. nor does it say anything about an afterlife, or about the feeling my uncle sender has that he is being followed by albanians. the casual relationship between the first principle (i.e., god, or a strong wind) and any teleological concept of being (being) is, according to pascal, “so ludicrous that it’s not even funny (funny).” schopenhauer called this “will,” but his physician diagnosed it as hay fever. in his later years, he became embittered by it, or more likely because of his increasing suspicion that he was not mozart.
3. the cosmos on five dollars a day
what then is “beautiful”? the merging of harmony with the just, or the merging of harmony with something that sounds like “the just”? possibly harmony should have been merged with “the crust” and this is what’s been giving us our trouble. truth, to be sure, is beauty - or “the necessary.” that is, what is good or possessing the qualities of “the good” results in “truth.” if it doesn’t, you can bet the thing is not beautiful, although it may still be waterproof. i am beginning to think i was right in the first place and that everything should be merged with the crust. oh, well.
two parables
a man approaches a palace. its only entrance is guarded by some fierce huns who will only let men named julius enter. the man tries to bribe the guards by offering them a years supply of choice chicken parts. they neither scorn the offer nor accept it, but merely rake his nose and twist it till it looks like a molly screw. the man says it is imperative that he enter the palace because he is bringing the emperor a change of underwear. when the guards still refuse, the man begins to charleston. they seem to enjoy his dancing but soon become morose over the treatment of the navajos by the federal government. out of breath, the man collapses. he dies, never having seen the emperor and owing the steinway people sixty dollars on the piano he rented from them in august.
•
i am given a message to deliver to a general. i ride and ride, but the general’s headquarters seem to get further and further away, finally, a giant black panther leaps upon me and devours my mind and heart. this puts a terrific crimp in my evening. no matter how hard i try, i cannot catch the general, whom i see running in the distance in his shorts and whispering the word “nutmeg” to his enemies.
aphorisms
it is impossible to experience one’s own death objectively and still carry a tune.
•
the universe is merely a fleeting idea in god’s mind - a pretty uncomfortable thought, particularly if you’ve just made a down payment on a house.
•
eternal nothingness is o.k. if you’re dressed for it.
•
not only is there no god, but try getting a plumber on weekends.
_______________________________________________
now, having read that, isn’t it all much clearer? doesn’t everything make more sense? don’t you feel revitalized and ready to once again tackle that burly goon reality? i know i do. such is the power of the great philosophers.
Read Less...
pulling teeth
the idiom which ends “like pulling teeth” is effective isn’t it? you can say it with feeling and you know just what it means. no elaboration necessary. it’s universal. and what single thing is the most “like pulling teeth?” why, actually pulling teeth of course. toothaches and methods of ridding oneself of them have bedeviled humanity since pre-history. everything from poppy seeds to demons to the dreaded toothworm were blamed. everything from amulets to spices to prayer to the application of a toad’s thighbone were tried as remedy. most of the time though a problematic tooth was simply knocked out, “a piece of hardwood or stone was placed against the tooth and struck with a rock or mallet.” anesthesia wasn’t available until the 1830’s! ouch. so just how deeply has the crucible of the tooth embedded itself into the human consciousness?
is it safe to say a culture’s artwork is a relevant indicator of its values? a reflection of its concerns and obsessions? will you grant me that? if so then judging by the amount of artwork dedicated to scenes of pulling teeth i’d have to say the horrors of tooth pain have embedded themselves deeply in the human mind indeed. see below-
as it turns out dentistry and its tribulations has historically been a surprisingly popular subject for paintings and etchings. those featured above are only a handful of the images i found on the subject. (my fave has got to be the guy holding up an entire jaw bone triumphantly, with a crowd of adoring ladies looking on. haha.)
see the national library of medicine page and this french site for a large sampling. (all the above images were culled from these two sites.)
lest you get the idea that the excruciating history of dentistry is a subject limited to the visual arts i offer you the following-
ye dentist man a poem from 1899 by e.a. brinstool (there is also a five canto poem on dentistry by solymon brown called dentologia, though he was a dentists and thus is decidedly biased) and kruft! a brief history of dentistry a collection of “songs” based on the sounds of dentistry. ah such a sweet melody.
(p.s. this post is dedicated to my sweetheart who’s writhing in tooth-pain at this very moment. it’s a continuum, you are united with your ancestors, you are part of a tradition of suffering… for all the good it does. hang in there babe.)
Read Less...
he of the golden balls
enjoyed the pacific asia museum’s online exhibit nature of the beast and thought i’d pass it along (via). it’s an exploration of the way artists of Edo-period Japan depicted animals and the natural world. it’s broken up into three sections: tradition, reality, and imagination. as that last heading hints it deals not only with real animals but mythological one’s as well. which brings us to what this post is really about… one wild customer whom the exhibit reminded me of is the tanuki, an animal which might conceivably be included in all three of the exhibit’s sections in that it’s not only a real animal but a creature of japanese legend as well.
as wikipedia describes it: the Tanuki (??? or ?) is often mistakenly translated as raccoon or badger, but is in fact a raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides), a distinct canid species native to Japan. Tanuki have been part of Japanese myth since ancient times. The mythical tanuki is reputed to be mischievous and jolly, a master of disguise and shapeshifting, but somewhat gullible and absent-minded.
i’d first seen a tanuki in super mario bros. 3, though i didn’t know it. i became aware of the tanuki properly in tom robbins’ so-so novel villa incognito, in which one of the trickster god’s physical attributes figures prominently; namely his huge testicles. and i don’t mean that metaphorically.
again from wikipedia: The wild tanuki has unusually large testicles, a feature often comically exaggerated in artistic depictions. Tanuki may be shown with their testicles flung over their backs like a traveller’s pack, or using them as drums.
from the shinto and buddhist corner: A curious and defining characteristic of Tanuki is its gigantic testes. According to some legends, the testicles / scrotum can be stretched to the size of eight tatami mats. Others point to the word Senjojiki (the space of 1,000 tatami mats) as an indication of the Tanuki’s testes size. Called Kin-tama (Golden Balls) in Japanese, the testes are supposedly symbols of good luck rather than overt sexual symbols (the Japanese are more tolerant of low humor than most Western nations). In the movie Heisei Tanuki Gassen Ponpoko, the Tanuki stretches out its scrotum as a parachute in a desperate suicide attack. In other Tanuki folklore, the Tanuki uses the testes as an impromptu drum, beating out the “ponpoko” sound (no pun intended).
In biological terms, the Tanuki’s large “golden balls” are a true depiction of the real-life Tanuki. According to evolutionary biologists, the Tanuki’s scrotum is large because of fierce competition among Tanuki males for females. Phrased differently, Tanuki copulate frequently, and those Tanuki with larger testes size have a greater chance of getting their genes into the next generation.
evidently tanuki are very prominent in Japanese folklore and proverbs and to this day the tanuki is thought of as the God of Gluttony, Boozing, and Restauranteurs, which accounts for the tanuki statues outside of restaurants and bars, where it “beckons drinkers and dinners to enter.”
i find the little fella kind of fascinating and having been reminded of him i went forth to seek more info. as is sometimes the case with cultural arcana there were more images than relevant texts to be found. so lacking any great links deserving of their own feature, or any great insight of my own, i figured i’d offer up a little gallery of tanuki to distract you from the lack of meaningful commentary…
anyhow, the best summations i found on the tanuki are the sources quoted above the wikipedia page and the buddhist corner’s page.
you might also check out the story in the japan times from 2004, or any of the following links: 1, 3, 4, 5.
as far as folklore goes all i found were the fox and the tanuki, and the slaying of the tanuki.
visually, if your brain can make sense of it, the prints of japan page has some wild tanuki (and non-tanuki) pieces to check out.
and lastly don’t miss this bizarre japanese commercial featuring an impressed little red riding hood and some very prominent tanuki balls.
not exactly scholarship, i know, but the best i could find. meanwhile look out for some scrotum swingin’ tanuki fiction in these parts in the future.
Read Less...