The Agency is a NY Times Magazine piece by Adrian Chen on the hunt for a Russian-run "Troll Farm".
It is interesting. Brew some coffee and take a rather long read.
When you finish (or decide you want to skip to the end), read below (which begins by quoting the end of the piece):
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
This is just adding another node on the network requesting the same information.
Making it higher-ranking. More searched.
You cannot observe the thing without changing it.
You're not just part of the solution, you're also part of the problem.
The things is that as we go forward and stop making sense, you won't find the ability to tell the difference so clear as that old saying. That's the thing about old sayings-- often they are as much about the contemplation as they are about the direct conclusion.
Then again, so too with all things, yes?
I'm back at home with my own coffee.
Thanks again to those who've hosted me over the holidays, but my coffee is better.
For me.
Your coffee is thin and bitter by thirds or too noisy by half or too metal or too dark or too light or too mixed up and blue.
Just the way all other beds are too hard or too light or too dark or too light or too shaped not at all right by the other occasional guests in the house.
When we all look for the same thing it becomes easy to find, though the things we might look harder for offer more reward.
Or at least a different way on through to nowhere so unique that we can't leave the details up to each reading mind.
To mine is the thing while sitting while walking while reading again. While writing and seeing and believing in self
Whether or not it can be explained as an individual or a piece of a manifestation of a bigger thing like an iceberg
Or a different thing like a will-o'-the-wisp or an anglerfish.
How is what we each see choreographed around us?
How is it pre-/self-selected/curated/managed/edited/sorted/remembered?
And then what does it say if we all do it the same way or if we come to different conclusions about what is around us?
What is more likely and which is more true?
Perhaps the reason it is on the list is due to how many times it was read... or some rather than no relation to it being on this list.
Perhaps this means something rather than nothing. But by virtue of it being on this list, it is now more of either nothing or something.
It's a cold world out there...
But then again as we walk we release heat. We burn fuel. We move we eat.
Are we making it warmer or colder? We breed we create more of us to do more of "us".
Are we making it warmer or colder?
Are we asking the right question?
Are there wrong questions to ask?
Heavens, hell we go again on our own.
2016 A New Year.
I will read more things from 2015.
Aka "The Past."
With apologies to Mitch Hedberg:
"Every[thing you read] is from the past".
Which means everything you write is
A message for the future.
We all knew time-traveling was possible.
So possible we'd forgotten we'd already done it.
That we do it whenever we read and write and discuss.
Our past selves so near that the person we're with remembers too.
But by the end we're not ever even the same persons we began as.
So to with the meaning of all things, no?
We try and we try to do our best or our worst and then we're all revealed to have failed or succeeded by the standards of others as/after we pass from this life.
We each could as easily be an elaborate ruse as a truthful direct representation of self.
We then again must return to "What is self" and here we.
A belated toast to all the best we are and were and hope to be.
Whether we ever understand it, it is all we ever mean.
20160102
Longreads 2015 #1
20150211
A Note on Banishmnet
There is a lot of land on earth.
Not as much land as there is water, sure, but there is a whole lot of it.
Not only is there a lot of it, but there are all kinds of different nations, states, cities, towns, villages, communes, and the like spotting the landscape. On top of that, there are different cultures, religions, philosophies and laws. On top of that, there are all of these people. People everywhere. Even in places where no people live, people go and visit and check it all out.
So then why would we ever assume that of all possible places, contexts and cultures that the inside of a prison is the best place for anyone?
To use a common example: Alcohol laws. There are things which are legal one place and illegal in another. Consider the dry counties that dot the US (Sometimes w/ enough concentrated dots to qualify as a "swath"). Most penalties in dry counties are relatively minor.
Ramp it up a notch and consider drug laws in the US. The penalties for marijuana use can be far more punitive.
Now consider the options while disregarding whether you personally believe alcohol and marijuana should be legal or illegal. Should folks who disagree with you on what constitutes "mostly harmless fun" be put into prison?
Have you ever *been* to a prison?
Perhaps we should reconsider simple exile. If you are caught and convicted of certain crimes, you are simply not allowed back to the place in which it is illegal. For example, all those humans driving marijuana out of Colorado to neighboring states could, rather than face jail/prison time can choose to be barred from, say, Oklahoma for life.
Let's consider political prisoners around the globe. Perhaps a better way forward for everyone is to encourage/choose exile. Just because there are intractable disagreements does mandate non-coexistence in the world. Coexistence in the world does not require interaction.
We can argue all day about which crimes this would work for and if there are crimes which demand imprisonment, but the folly of removing people from the whole of the world for things which are illegal in one place and legal in another is troubling.
The notion of "state's rights" in the US has long been code for bigotry and prejudice. What if, instead, we agreed that we all have differences and that, quite frequently, this is nothing worth going to prison over? That we can have a broad federal agreement on what the basic laws of the land are without mandating that every place be homogeneous? What if we can have harsh prohibitions against things based on the values of a community without resorting to depriving humans of their humanity?
We could stand up in our communities for what we believe in while not trampling the rights of others.
The phrase "separate but equal" comes to mind here, but is not quite accurate when we consider the connotations of that phrase. In this case, we're not sorting by prejudged characteristics, we're sorting by actions and choices.
I'd love for a legal scholar somewhere to tell me why this is an idiotic idea (or at least something which I don't understand fully) and point me to the relevant literature.
20150118
What if...
... the evidence that shows
"fatness" resembles a communicable disease is just representing that fat folks tend to like fat folks and skinny folks tend to like skinny folks?
Exceptions abound, obviously, but there seems to be a correlation/causation thing here.
I mean, one 130lb person around a dozen 360lb persons seems as awkward as one 360lb person around a dozen 130lb persons.
On the other hand, if you have five 300lb men around one 250lb man, you've got an NFL QB and his O-Line entourage.
The one 6' person surrounded by four 6'5" and over persons is a point guard.
The one 6' person surrounded by four 5'9" persons is a center.
If content is king,
context is everything.
20150113
Good Morning
Fellow Early Risers
I see your lights on,
some flickering.
And now newly some
late-early risers
still pre-sun though.
Oh, salute to the
Nightowls and the
all-nighters:
A nickel's advice
for free:
Move to NYC.
Us Early Risers
Help ensure birds
ease the earth
Around again and &.
All around the world
the truth of bird-
turning all around
the world.
Or at least on
the Eastern
Seaboard.
It was two hours back
In the black when I
awoke to think
I wasn't where I
thought I'd be.
I was on the edge
of the bed,
You see. Which is
not the comfy bit.
So I got up.
Which is hardly the
lightest thing
To wake me.
Somehow one gets
Used to the cars
in a city.
Or the semis
on a "rural route"
in Pennsylvania.
Or the birds
in subirdia,
Maryland.
On the other hand(
Or in the other
mind) the
inside is
the same.
The same misconceptions,
the same quirks of evolution
the same weird biological success
the same types of insight
the same mental failings
the same digestion
the same dreams
the same scars
the same hope
the same me.
Just a
new set of outside sounds
to engage with
when I'm up up
up before dawn
wherever I am.
whenever I am.
whomever I am.
whatever I am.
Now alarms go off an lights come on in not-so-distant houses.
These folks who have the gall to think they are early-risers.
Barks issue from impatient dogs, bays from hounds.
Impatient cats make the mewlings over kneaded bread.
How Roman.
The rest of the world seems more awake.
Is this, for me, to be a good or a bad?
What is it for others? What is liberty?
What is freedom? Are these words which
Comfort us or challenge us? What of the
Word "Security"?
Now later than quarter past six.
How the hours have past.
Now the lights alight.
How the sky becomes all.
Now the hour lights the way.
How the dawn now shapes the day.
Soon the dreaded/lauded lights can go out and instead I can use a distant ball of incredibly hot gas to keep the planet warm and light my way. Now *that* is a pretty cool deal. All of the rest of the mucking about we humans do is lightweight compared to this Sun and Earth thing. Sure, we're designed for the environment in which we exist (how else could it be? Whether we were shaped by where we existed or designed to exist where we're been placed... this remains the way it must be.) but that a stable enough environment exists to engender long-term communication over time and space through text, video, radio, wired internet, wireless everything... that is... something remarkable.
And we can't tell you what our purpose is other than that we are what we are.
Nor can an ant tell anyone its purpose.
Nor can an anteater.
And yet there are mounds of ants.
And yet there are cities of people.
And yet there are wars between peoples.
And yet there are wars between ants.
And yet we play sports and have games and feasts.
Roman is in many ways just human.
But not in all.
All feasts are not the same.
Nor all breakfasts, for that matter.
Back to reading before breakfast.
I wonder what I'm making?
I wonder what we're making?
20141129
the view
and this is the view
this is all i've got.
these words and these thoughts.
but in my world, it is all you have too. your thoughts, your words. can you turn a phrase, tell a tale spin a yarn? pick a word split a verb change your tense? punctuate abbreviate bloviate? (the sounds and inhuman grunts you make in response are informative.)
and here i am on my low horse trying to make sense of how or why i push everyone away through opinions crisply stated and arguments passionately made. inaccurately because i don't know my ass from your mouth. i mean... i don't know shit about shoot i forgot the point of this potty talk.
this is the way we roll we roll and this is the way we dig our own graves. breath by breath step by step. what else must i convey aside form the simple fact that it is hard to make sense of the rest? the beauty you see may be like maggots to some. the drinks you drink are death not fun to some. the some arenot some but all to some. the all are not all but none to some.
how wide is your vision? how deep are your dreams? how small are our lives and is there anything left to hope for.
i write and type i read and i skim. i work and i work to understand this ridiculous spinning madness i sleep on, walk on, jump off of and land on again despite my best efforts to break free and fly past the oxygen farther and further from the myth of the sun melting my wings and closer and closer to the reality that that is all too calm a description of what a sun would do. wwjd ain't got shit on wwsd.
but then i go again, making object like people and reverse that to make it more common. flip it to make it more remarkable. like a remark one would make. or,,, here i am remarking on remarking on remarkability.
sic sic sic. i read it. i read it again. i left it in. i got no editor, i'm just some non-punk non-kid sitting at his parents' table during a holiday wondering what the hell this all means and why the times i feel most alive are when i'm spitting someone's words back at them all twisted. or when i'm parroting back a song written by not-me. or when or when... what is this but a rush of nothing? where is the satisfaction? what is there out in the world that surpasses this measly nothing i am?
we are all nothing-- i'm nothing special in my nothingness.
if this breath is the same as the last then you're already dead.
ozymandias tells me i can build nothing which lasts and all is illusion of permanence.
the illusion of permanence is an illusion of permanence.
i must find a way out of this corner. i lash out and snap out and behave in startling ways sometimes even to myself. i'm finding disappointment inside and little else of note (though there is definitely some vital bits int he parts left out! like... the kit!).
i'm seven sides of wasted talent with your babyback ribs.
i wish i could roll myself up and smoke me just to see.
i'm done here. the air will never clear.
this is how it comes out. brambled tangled wanting. riffing raffing signing. standing sitting walking. jumping jumping jumping and hitting my head. wondering how i'll ever be dead. but what else instead? the words are all that sing, and i imagine you reading which makes my mind hum and my feet beat the beat. the notion that there is another any other out there who can help me with what's in here... is tooo much to bear since i've not met that many. but then again, what do i help with? what am i good for?
i breath. i supply the plants. i'll supply the worms when i die. i'll push the daisies while i lie.
barf.
another
and now so i publish another piece of shit
Or is this even published if i put it up on a blog that no one reads in the uncharted backwaters of the galaxy?
If i waste all of the work I've put in and the readings and the writings to put these words on the internet for no profit, will you buy me some food tomorrow? Share some wine?
What if I had no talent? What if all I could do was grunt?
Would you be more likely to share or less?
Which is the best or the worst or the way we were or the way we should be?
The way we would be? Is that better? Would based on what? Could based on how?
The best? The worst? We don't even know these words any more. They are simply chatty talk to be a way of 1 or 0, black or white, fight fight fight. We gotta know where you stand, otherwise how will we tell where you'll fall when we split open your head and take out it all?
That is, the stands that you take... are they worth your life?
The life that you breathe as your own... is it worth your stands?
But what if instead of taking stands you sit? What if instead of picking sides you know that the divine or ineffable or merely the sense of order or even the sense of entropy that pervades the universe... what if you know that the sense that is there taken is one of non-judgement? What if rather than the hottest places in hell being reserved for the fencesitters that the hottest place in hell is reserved for every single time you took a stand on anything?
Who the hell said there was a hell?
Who the hell said there wasn't?
What the hell is a hell anyhell?
Just a metaphor? Just a myth?
Then why does it still chill me, despite being brought up without religion? Why does it still gnaw at me like an unfed pup? The same reason it disappears from me when I look it head-on as I cannot contain the concept. Or the way that it runs from my side when there are so many other things to mull over.
This is me. I'm just a guy typing at you. Or... typing at myself in the future. Or... typing at us in the future. Or just typing at the future because I can't reach the past no matter my wingspan or howmany stools I stand upon to reach the cookie jar.
I shout I shout but there's too much to let it all out. I reach the bottom and still there is more. Unlike Pandora's box which mercifully had a floor. These words tumble and tumble until the ventilator blues suck them in, clean them up, and spit them out. But still mine again mine again hit the ore again or again walk away. Dig into the earth and see what there is. Fly into the sky and see what there isn't. Deep into your mind and relax the nothing.
Across the nothing for no one, a wasted effort a shrug.
Naw, this ain't a breakup post... unless I'm breaking up with trying. Or not-trying. I can('t) hardly tell the difference anymore. Or is it just that I'm half-trying at everything these days? Is the future a real thing that I need to concern myself with or is this just some infinite present? Is the life something I have and is mine or will it just be degifted and was just on loan? What the heck is a life anyway but a way of describing breathing?
How is your breath today?
Have you been caring for your breath? Deepening, broadening? Understanding the filling? Grasping the emptiness? Is this just a mental exercise or a physical? Why do I keep giving false choices? Why is there a need to speak in questions? Is there a way to express doubt without a mark that asks?
My breaths might well be pointless, but is that any different from yours? Or the rest of ours? Or the best of ours? When we add up the long sum of humans, will breath be anything other than the most important thing we did?
Are we just alchemists turning stars to poop?
Are we just magician's assistants flooding all that surrounds us with ephemera?
this is what.
This is what, the moment where the clock ticks and i write something profound?
This is what, the breath in which the heart beats until I grasp what surrounds?
This is what, the thought that saves mankind, the action that acts a salve?
This is what, the nothing that begets nothing that begets nothing at all?
This is that, the thing that I excrete on the page and leave for another.
This is that, the shit that I smear on the walls.
when i breathe i breathe all breaths (and so to do you)
when i sleep i sleep all sleeps (and i hope you do too)
when the sun warms the earth, it is all suns.
when the moon lights the night, it is all moons.
there is no place but this. can you make it a happy place?
there is no happy but what you feel. can you make it worth feeling?
how we walk through this time, is how we've walked through all others.
how we wonder and grasp, is how they've all wondered and grasped.
the whole world a single flower, can you show me the way?
the single flower a whole ideal, can you show my the why?
this language is twisting, running and listing to port.
this tongue is now kissing, so profligate a a gift.
the lines are now splitting, scampering this way and that.
the meaning is shimmering, giving us just enough light.
the light is now fading, off to the right.
the dawn is now breaking, on to the left.
with this weight we wander, not knowing our selfs.
with another thought we ponder, no result to lift.
another another another line another.
bother don't bother don't bother my brother.
this word this world this wandering world.
his word her word like there is an other.
all of us y'all of us pall of us here,
tall of us short of us all of us near
the end we all work at not knowing the goal
just as the the doe knows not the foal
yet tends to bend the world to make
the soul that follows us in our wake.
yet again yet again
die again try again
rye again gin again
sin again sin again.
20141027
The Meaninglessness Is Accelerating
The pictures of pets dressed as humans.
The musings and rantings online and off.
The actions we celebrate and mourn and pretend to not know happen an infinite number of times over the course of humanity and that we're not important enough to feel shitty about it. None of us are.
Nor are any of us not. It isn't that we aren't important enough to feel one way or the other, it is that we're using spoons to describe laughter in terms of biochemistry.
The thing is that our feelings are nothing. My statement that our feelings are nothing is itself nothing. And yet this is all we have, this nothing. And we have an awful lot of it. It is more of us than we are of ourselves. Just like those microbes. Just like that soul and spirit and mind and all that we can't get pin down.
Some say emergent phenomenon. This is another phrase for elaborate nothingness.
The diamond is not more than the leaf. They are both more space than they are solid.
It is the structure that is the existence. It is the pattern that makes the repetitions of the pattern itself possible.
And yet this is all there is. This is more than there needed to be. This is all we asked for and more because we never asked for it an never could. Before it was, we weren't. Before we were, it wasn't. Unless there is some other awareness out in existence. Ohbut wait there are many other awarenesses even on this planet. There are animals and plants and... who is to know that a rock lacks awareness? It seems to us to lack agency... but so too does water and water seems to act.
Seems seems seems. This all seems like so much and yet it is so little. It is elementary. Children think this way because this is the way of the world. The curiouser and curiouser you get, the more and more there is to explore. The more and more you don't know. The more you try to grasp the whole, the more you are burdened by the minutiae. You are sure you don't understand toothpaste, let alone the components. And if there is toothpaste, how many things that I don't even know exist do I lack the capability to explain?
What sort of things are the sort of things that I can't know? There must be truths which surpass my current imagination that in mere years will seem like commonplace knowledge. My failure is the success of humanity. The failure of humanity is non-existent as humanity is not a monolith.
Except that it is. It is a monolith which does not self-recognize. We lack the awareness of what we are because if we ask all humans what all humans are, they will all give different answers. Even the ones who pledge to have an identical reading of the world through religion or science will not give identical answers. To expect that there is some full-scale meaning or purpose or the like is too much. But there is no meaning or purpose to lava. That makes it no less monolithic. Nor the seas. Nor the next hantavirusebolachickenofheseafluenza.
That there is no purpose to us does not mean that we will not have some obvious to an outside observer path of least resistance which we will inevitably follow if given a long enough time to hang ourselves. I mean uplift ourselves. I mean our whole. I mean... I do not "mean" well.
I mean, I mean well, but I do not do direct meaning well. I write to understand, to explore, to challenge. Not to tell, convince, believe. I exist to write. I write to exist.
This is a lot like food.
The above, I am told, could for many people be better understood if I use a different form:
Examining the relationship between writing and existence for me is as instructive as examining the relationship between eating and existence for humans.
Think of all the food you've eaten over your life and all of the food you'll eat in the future. How do you feel now?
Think of all the steps you've ever taken in your life and all of the steps you'll ever take in the future. How do you feel now?
Think of the breaths. How do you feel?
Think of the thoughts. How do you feel? Think of all the thoughts of all of the people you've ever known. Think of all of the thoughts that all of the people you know know. Of the people they've known. Of all of your ancestors. Of all of theirs. Of all humans. Of the thoughts all humans have thought others were having. Of all the thoughts that overlapped.
This number is not infinite.
How do you feel?
Remember, the world is spinning, tilting, circling around something which is tilting, spinning, circling, swirling, circling around something spinning, careening, tilting, wobbling, circling around near something else that is rotating, expanding, cooling, ...
If I think of a baseball and then think of a moon orbiting a planet, how many thoughts have a thunk?
If I put it into words is that another discrete thought? If I think it in one language and then another are those separate thoughts? If I think it is more than one language at once? If I think it in a symbol and a picture? What of a framed picture of a baseball orbiting a moon orbiting a planet with rocky rings of debris?
How much is that doggy in the black hole?
Is it even a dog? Has anything actually entered the black hole?
Is there an inside and an out?
What is it we're trying to figure out, as a humanity? If we can identify meaninglessness... what does that mean? Is either meaning or meaningless unavoidable?
I "meaning" itself again lacking in meaning?
If meaning can neither have meaning nor lack meaning, what is meaning?
We attribute meaning to so many things. What has intrinsic meaning? Is there intrinsic meaning?
I'm sure there's more attempt to express meaning, but then there is likely more failure and thus more meaningless as well. If there is more meaningless is there less meaning?
If there are more meanings rather than one, doesn't that diminish all meanings?
20131015
thank yeezus?
Is that the idea here?
Because I'm not sure that the swagger you display is as new as it once was.
Good work though. Nice to expand your palette. Your raps are in your voice these days. We're happy you found it. We're happy you're happy and finding a place for your particular box of crayons.
But you aren't breaking through new walls here. You're just giving us good, solid beats, rhymes and life.
Keep going. Keep recording. Keep building. Keep putting down who and what you are.
But it is never the first time we've heard anything like it before because you're in each of them. You're part of it. We've already heard you declare yourself a king.
Keep going, keep building. Keep going. What do you have in you? Time tells. Ask David Bowie.
Ask the Rolling Stones. Ask Ask ask. You'll never know know know what the trip is like for you until it's too late to tell anyone. Ask BB King. He'll sing each moment of it for you though. Somehow.
What a trip you're on. What a mind twist. What a tweak but a confirmation. I wonder what happens when you type the way I type. The way I write. How much of you is straight and how much of you is indirect? How much is the word as it is the world in your head, and how much is the translation in art? How much imagination. How much desire. How much energy.
By our escape velocity they will remember having known us.
You know there's no exit before the exit, right?
In part because I can't imagine your real life,
I'll just see you on the astral plane.
You don't have to do it for us, yeez.
You can always do it for you, Mr. West.
You're officially interesting enough that you never need pander. Just keep following the dream.
But this album isn't as big a deal as it sounds itself to be. *Damn* fine though.
Thanks.
20120714
External v Internal
(Not to imply that everything is all-or-nothing.)
I've decided that I do not think Romney can be president. He's too fake. He's just a big uncomfortable, scared of being exposed faker of fakiness. He has true belief, I believe, but that is not the lens through which he allows himself to speak, publicly. His public persona's expressed paradigm is far more pragmatic. Far more "polished". By that I mean buffed to a sterling Sheen. Shine.
Mitt Romney suffers from Internal Dissonance Disorder. That is, unlike all of the presidents (and most candidates) he doesn't lay claim to what he actually *is* and express that fully, if thoroughly edited by his team. Romney lays claim to *what you want him to be*. Explicitly. This is a strategy that President Obama used to great success *implicitly*. He advertised Hope, which is something we all want to have. He never has to speak about race, because of the color of his skin. So we project upon him. His intelligence is never questioned. His public persona, while irritatingly frustrated-with-his-sub-par-students professorial in nature, is essentially him. The mistakes that he makes are Obama mistakes. The mistakes G.W. Bush made were Dubya mistakes. Clinton clearly made Clinton mistakes. And so on. What are Romney mistakes?
Mitt keeps trying to be one of us, deny that he's a cold-blooded money machine, claim that he was never moderate and will not compromise, and give the same damn speech to everyone, whether they like it or not. And the speech stinks. Not his ideas or whatever, it just stinks. It is not fun to listen to, and it does not reach out to anything but my wallet and his ideas on what I should do with it. And other wallets around the country, for corpora-eople everywhere. He believes he knows what will fix our wallets. And it is by fixing education and reducing the government that he proposes to do this. Wait... what? Is that because your plan is to replace public sector teacher jobs with non-unionized private sector teacher jobs? Slowly destroy any and all unions piece by piece?
I think I went off there again.
My point is, about about the rest of our lives that aren't our wallets?
I don't know what Mitt feels/thinks about the world. I don't know how Mitt wants to shape the world. I don't know which issues get to the core of him. I know that Mitt is about the Money (and this is America-- That's Great.) but why won't he just say "I love making money, and I am an effective dispassionate calculator of expected returns " and get it over with? Then we can move on to other things and stop with the pretending. Would it put him too close to The Donald?
I don't want someone playing at being someone they're not as my President.
For his failings, President Obama is not different in persona despite his power and his up and down experiences. He has not meet all of his promises, and he has failed and succeeded in his first term. He has put some ideals-based legislation forward in what he believes (and is not too far off from what he expressed as a candidate) is best for the country. This is what most first-term presidents are like. Reasonably consistent persona, reasonable anticipated agendas. Nothing totally dissonant.
Romney is totally dissonant. Publicly dissonant. And frankly, he tends to look uncomfortable with and around his fellow humans.
What happens when he meets with foreign (and domestic for that matter) leaders and all they feel is "goddamnitall I'm not sure his words would recognize his brain in the parking lot"?
If he would just be himself and believe that was enough, or if he could just hide his dissonance better (I would argue that this is what made the first President Bush so weird-- is that his intelligence&willpower allowed him to reconcile most internal dissonance before the brain engaged the body, but having your guard up 100% of the time is impossible. And it takes a damn toll.) he'd be fine. But he can't or hasn't learned that he needs to. Or to be very cynical, he feels that the best cold calculation to election is to appear dissonant. Which seems an odd tactic. Anyway.
If Al Gore was the amazingly life-like candidate who invented the Internet, Mitt Romney is the Wax Statue candidate who refuses to talk about what's underneath his ice-cream paintjob because he's no meteorologist, but golly, he sure knows that D.C. is hotter-n-heck.
20120204
the future world
is just one big viewer-controlled
reality show.
In H3D.
Cameras everywhere
Everyone watches everyone
All of the time.
High Cameras like
Watching Great Migrations.
Personal Cameras like
Watching everything else.
We pay for ad space in the real world
Which is really part of the show's world.
You can't fast-forward through reality
Unless you're watching it at home from your hard drive.
We will record murders and chases and supreme court hearings.
We will record nothing and everything and mundane and historic.
These words are all one word.
20110610
So, what does he mean?
When he types
Our editorial staff wrote a lot for the editorial staff. Instead of writing a daily newspaper, they were writing a magazine that was impressing other writers. We were a second, maybe a third read. The guy going to Wall Street was reading the Journal, the Times, and then us. The guy I would love to have reached was Joe Six-pack, and Joe Six-pack didn't need to read how the GM of the Mets reminded the writer of the Phoenicians. My immediate reaction was the guy reading this paper thinks the Phoenicians play in Phoenix.?
Well, first, he immediately confuses people with himself. That is, if the editorial staff is writing for the editorial staff, then they don't acknowledge that they are different from their audience? Or is it that the author confuses the action with the reason? Is it that he can't understand the perspective of someone who always wanted to write for an audience like themselves with what he believe the goals (business plan?) of the publication should be? Many people write what they write because they got into writing because of reading. That is, if you're not writing pieces like pieces that you like read, why are you writing, exactly?
The way you write depends on the way you read depends on the way you write depends on the way you write the way you read the way you read what you write the way you write what you read into what you write when you write what you read. Or whatever. The point is, the two are inseparable. I know they have separate words, but unlike, say "cake" and "thought", they are not at all connected only by the way that the seconds can contain the first. They are connected by dependence. There is no A w/o B and there is no B w/o A. They are, in the strictest sense, inextricable.
The man speaking is the CFO. The group he is describing is "the editorial staff". Well, it is the CFO's main goal deals with financials. Financial risks, rewards, realities, bottomlinities and the like. The editorial staff is to control the content of the publication. To make the thing that they are writing (as a group) something. What that something is, is (to mess with Clinton) depends on the meaning of what the word is is. The Editorial Staff of a paper is culled from writers. But how? With what purpose?
Well, that depends on the publication. That depends on the whims of the CEO and CFO and the like. If you choose an Editorial Staff (with[out] an E-I-Chief) you will determine what the publication will be. Not that you can always understand what that means, but that you can reasonably anticipate that smart people want to write for smart people. They want to read things written for smart people. Or, even, for people who are smart at what they do. Which is different. However slightly.
The thing about writing, is that it answers the questions which reading answers.
Switch 'reading' and 'writing' and it is just as true.
This is inextricability.
Which market are you trying to pursue? Well, this determines which Editors you should hire. They will determine which writers to hire. The Editors are the audience of the writers. Yes, writers is in lower-case.
Choosing of the Editors is up to... Well who started The National anyway?
Who started this blog?
We didn't start the fire.
We just watched the motherfucker burn.
We Didn't Start the Fire
by Billy Joel
might be every song ever written.
And I can't stop watching it.
I mean: I can, but I really like it.
It is everything. It covers everything. Either immediately or by ap(prox[y])imation. Challenges. Overcoming of challenges. Hubris. Consumerism. Government. Brutality. Death. War.
Passingthebuck.
Then again, what is "the fire"? It seems to have always been here. Is it a desire for something? Is it a reach whose grasp it constantly exceeds? Is it... humanity?
No, Billy joel is not the messiah.
No, the video is not a revelation.
That doesn't mean = irrelevance.
The thing is that it calls into question all other songs, even all other thoughts. how is something you think or feel not an echo of what came previously? A larger circle in the ever-expanding ripple of human cause-n-effect. What of the Schoperhauerian idea* that we are all just echoes of humans who came before? Or was it Borges echoing Herr Schopenhauer?
---
*- However much the plays and the masks on the world's stage may change it is always the same actors who appear. We sit together and walk and grow excited, and out eyes glitter and out voices grow shriller: just so that others sit around and talk a thousand years ago: it was the same thing, and it was the same people: and it will be just so a thousand years hence. The contrivance which prevents us from perceiving this is time.
20110523
So then,
let us think of life
as a process of understanding.
As I know more now than I did then,
I know more later than I do now.
Or, if that is false,
I know different things now than I did then.
Let us then assume an impeccable memory.
Or an infallible diary.
Some method of combining everything you've known.
Some medium in which everything is remembered.
Let us assume that this impressionable thing exists forever.
Let us assume that this memory is comprehensible to the future.
What then would you know in total?
What then would be recalled at the end?
What then, if we extend the end?
If we stretch life to 100, 200, 1000, 2000 years or more?
If we at 30 don't understand as fully the world as do those who are 50...
If we at 50 don't understand as fully the world as do those who are 83.3333...
Well then, do we bound the understanding of the world by the extension of life?
Well then, do we bound the extension of life by the understanding of the world?
Which is the figure,
Where is the ground?
How high can I fly
Before I mimic Icarus?
Before some idea burns my brain out.
Before some identity melts my self to paranoia?
Should we look to those long-lived institutions?
Should we look to those long-lived works of art?
Where in these breaths do I live?
Where in these breaths do I die?
Which is me?
Which is an echo of all who/that came before?
Can an echo be less than all that previously existed?
Can an echo imply anything other than time?
If I die before I wake,
I pray the lord my unoriginality to fake.
Or am I tilting at windmills,
Borrowing from the past?
To say unoriginality exists
Is to say originality exists.
If there is one author
One mind, one story...
Then...
What/who/how/where/why?
20110502
Avail Thyself to Interpretation
There is a point in each book
(Shirley: There usually exists more than one point in a book.)
at which the book opens itself.
The pages read carry enough weight to hold the place of the reader.
The pages to be read still hold enough weight to refrain from rushing the reader.
How like a plateau con una magnífica vista?
Struggle to enter, feel each moment equal, rush to return to the lowlands.
How like The American Dream?
Establish an idea, experience the genius, rush to return to base.
Buy the ticket, take the ride,
motherfucker.
How opposite The American Dream?
Climb up Appalachia, sully thyself in the great valley, fall from the Rocky Mountain High.
California tumbles into the sea.
Blame the San Andreas Fault, naturally.
20110426
In Re The Only One I Read On-Time
It is like I'm making him die.
Right there, on the page, as I read.
A photograph of some soul.
Seeping out, tint by tint.
Unwittingly he'd laid himself bare,
insecurities, inimitable wit and all.
His heart.
His mind.
Here.
"I'm in here."
Willingly taking on the hardest task:
To make me emote in w/r/t The Service.
The knowing unkowingness of it all.
The conniving innocence.
The incongruity.
The clarity.
I turn the page,
and the end draws near.
No more ghost words,
no more recursive characters.
No more implied infinities,
no more painful jest.
With each page turned,
the present becomes the past.
Each page turned,
the end becomes the beginning.
If no one else will write it,
perhaps I will?
If I well-regard the reading,
then I should do the writing
instead of (mak/lett)ing dfw intricately beautifully
painfully mumble muddle w nder through it for me.
20101201
What
Does it mean
that "drunk"may be
one of the few conditions under which adults can discuss their feelings?
That "stoned"may be one of the few conditions under which adults feel the height that is their existence?
What may this h(e/a)ll be?
This "dark twisted fantasy" o(f/r) reality
Why is "altered" the way it makes sense to more than none?
Wtf is wiki(pedia/leaks)
and why am I afraid to link to them directly?
Should I cancel "my google"?
Am I just paranoid for a breath or two?
20101114
i don't know
Why i did it.
This, that or the other thing.
Is there ever a reason for action?
Is there ever a reason for inaction?
This breath is nothing, this act is nothing.
Yet somehow it is all there is. This nothing.
I have taken so many steps. Walking,Running.
I have seen so many suns. Rising,Setting.
That none of them have been special is false.
That none of them have been worthless is false.
There will be so many more to come.
They will be just the same.
Nothing and everything.
How many more can there be before the end of me?
How many more meaningless choices can I make?
How many more breaths without comprehension?
How many more steps without direction?
How can this be the stuff of life?
How can anyone survive 30, 60, 90 years of this?
How can we steel ourselves against ourselves?
The only unassailably worthy goal is to put everyone before my self.
The only problem is that I am not worthy enough to hold that ideal.
There is nothing important about me.
There is nothing important about you.
There is nothing lasting.
There is nothing temporary.
Our actions will be forgotten before the day,week,month,year,decade,century,millenium,whatever expires.
Our consctructions will be erased. Our books will be burnt.
The good things, the bad things.
None of it outlives us.
The good things, the bad things.
None of it can be defined.
Smiles aren't always good.
Frowns aren't always bad.
The life you lead is never
The one you wish you had.
Whatever.
Maybe I shouldn't post this.
Whatever.
Maybe it makes all the difference.
Whatever.
Maybe there's no way to tell and I should shut the fuck up and get over life.
Whatever.
Maybe if i go to sleep here I won't have to wake up. Instead, i'll just be warmed by the sun and caressed by the grass until I feel no pain and i'm younger than I realize. Maybe i'll disperse around the universe and be a part of some matter that matters. Maybe in the next life, maybe in the last. Maybe the best has already passed and I was too busy looking to find it.
Whatever.
Maybe happiness is a warm sun
that finally crashes down on me
as an inferno to release me from me.
20090207
Droptop Moon
There is nothing quite like driving somewhere tropical in a very fast car with no top.
Daysun feels lovely on skull as the warm breeze leads on. The constantsun tempered by the windtunnel between ears. The profile of your idea(l)s hardened by the onslaught of the quickfastnopause acceleration at your toetips.
Permeating Helios imposes his high unrelenting arc of heat upon all. Accept this rush of power and push on for immortality in the infinitude of infinitely divisible/multiplied moments. PushPush Past Zeno's eternally shrinkingnose-leading Tortoise.
[Achilles] ain't got shit on me.
And then, the night. Moonlight through the permeable non-roof: Refreshilvernly. Contemplative reflection of immolating fire, Artemis pierces straight T hr O ugh the soul. Fear of her full glory leaves only glimmering glimpses. Easily unseen in the absence of the burning daylight, a calm consumes. The need for speed subsumed slowly by the need for beauty.
The Sea on this side. The Mountain on that. Poseidon and Gaia lit right by the moonlight. Appreciative views of muted chiaroscuro images provide relief from existence. Brightbeauty now subsumed into glowing radiantbeauty. The rainbow of [intense color]flavors washed out to study how beauty is a [gleaming] one [color]note.
Writ right by the moonlight:
Thank you beauty on and ever anon again
20090203
SW dispatch
It's (all) about the coffee
Finally, a superb breakfast and a great cup of coffee.
Breakfast was an omelet with an actual fruit cup instead of a leftover canned fruit cup. The omelet was light and airy and yet full of the fillings I asked for. The coffee was a light-roast S.American (my favorite!) picked from 4 real selections and 2 fakey-decaf selections.
Finally. For the past couple of weeks, I've been up early in Vegas and various parts of Arizona only to find that all breakfasts are crappy. Which is not too much of a surprise, but you know what? Somewhere there should be a solution. (Admittedly, the $5 steak-n-eggs breakfast at Bill's in Vegas was perfect after the night of $1 margaritas, but that's unusual breakfast. Same with the In-n-Out burger second breakfast on Sunday of New Year Fest.) There is at least one more place in Vegas to check out, and I'll be in LA for at least one early breakfast, but really? I've got to work to track down a place for a great breakfast? And why can't anyone make coffee? Anywhere? This is what drives folks to Starbucks (that and the ubiquity of Starbucks as an "alternative".) Their coffee is way above average, but it pales in comparison to a true coffeeshop. (That said, I've not tried the Clover yet. Anyone up for a fieldtrip to Boston? Oh wait... since the Starbucks TakeClover denies the existence of non-Starbucks Clovers, we have to sleuth to be reminded of places like Cafe Grumpy in my own pseudo-backyard.)
Anyway, the point is that coffee, with or without this Crazy Clover Machine (or the other Crazy Machine) has complex flavors and the notion of "coffee-flavored" is reductionist at best. Like all else, variation is beauty. The normalization that we humans put into the process (witness our mass-produced, easily palatable but ultimately non-distinct food-products at any (non-)local chain restaurant.) is artifice. Manifestation of the human need for an illusion of control over the future (much like cellphones used to call folks when you arrive at a destination and find yourself GASP! All Alone for a minute or two. Instead of accepting divergence, we ask our gadgets to verify the veracity of that patently false [equa/assump]tion: all=alright). The preference for the known over the undiscovered country (if you don't know that reference, I'm not pointing it out for you. Go to school, read a book or get flagellated with a folio until it passes through your extra-thick skull) pervades even our selection of food.
Oh, and the cinnamon rolls are really good with a Stout Coffee rather than a regular cup.
Lesson: Take pride in your work, whatever it is. Encourage others to do the same. As Atmosphere tells us in "Guarantees" The only guarantee in life is life worth dying for." Or take the wisdom that k-os lays out for us in "Valhalla":
"The life you've been looking for is the one that you've led."
So... stop giving me compromised coffee, assholes.