Looking for Something..

standby

2009-10-22T21:42:00.001-04:00

standby

The Hanging Problem

2009-06-09T21:06:00.007-04:00

Where are we going to hang? That's the essence of the hanging problem. And it's different for every person, and, because of this, for every group of people it is defined by its constituent members and milieu within a macrosystem. In this post I will be talking about collective hanging, but reverse engineering to individual theory isn't hard.

To formulate the hanging problem in any given environment at any given time, we can represent the constraints as a series of monadic formulae, the possible locations as variables, and the satisfactions of those formulae as sets of those variables.

This is less imposing than it appears. Take the following example, chosen to illustrate the timelessness of the hanging problem.

Julian W. W. Coddleswarth: I say!
Jean-Pierre-Claude Frogelé: Indeed! Where shall we ang to-day, ma eenozently Eenglish frond?
JC: Well, of course, one must consider the certainly unsportsmanly modern pricing of suitable tobacco due to the entire globe not being presently subjugated by Her Majesty's Empire.
JF: Ah, ah, but ov caurse. On zee ozzer'and, tobacco eez ardly not a nezzezzitee, wouldn't you zay?
JC: Hardly incorrect, dear chap! And let us not forget that our mutual acquaintance Ozzel will be dropping in this tea time's antecedent hour!
JF: Ozz-elle? Oh dear, we moost caunzeedar a chezzbard.
JC: He will most unequivocally not allow our souls to go unchallenged on the board this day.

All that text, and all it boils down to is this:

They want to hang at a place that sells tobacco.
They would prefer to hang at a place that sells tobacco cheap.
They need to hang somewhere they could play chess when Ozzel shows up.

Then, all they need to do is compile a list of the places at which they are able to hang, and add members to the sets, subsequently choosing at will from among the list of locations that satisfy all conditions.

Of course that's hardly a problem. Frequently, there will be no item that satisfies every condition, and this is when the tough, touchy, friendship-annihilating, morality-wrenching questions start flying like flying fish that can and do actually fly. Does the high price of tobacco warrant that our two fellows reconsider their consideration of that clause? Will Ozzel definitely show up? And why are they bending to his will anyway? Have Ozzel bring his own chess set!

(It's because he's just so cool. I heard he joined the Royal Society at age fifteen... and wears sunglasses to meetings. Sunglasses! I wish I was as cool as Ozzel.)

And so, why am I so interested in this? Consider this modern dilemma. (For the purposes of example, we can use the old stalwart standby, the Venn.)

A, B, and C are, respectively, the set of places that are open late, that have wi-fi, and have soft drinks in free-refill form. My comrades and I have still not managed to track down what place, if any, goes in the center that I have marked with the off-putting green question mark. For instance, the 'H' is the Herman B Wells Library in Bloomington, which is in A because at least part of it never closes and B because it has wi-fi but not C, because it's no restaurant, it's a library, silly. The 'P' is Panera, which is in fact not a library, but closes at 9 pm or earlier daily and so though in C it is not in A. Both, though, are and always will be members of D because, well, I'll get to that in a minute.

For the most part, we don't need wi-fi, so unless someone needs to study or we need to work on an internet-integral investment, we can count the intersection of A and C as universally available. With one exception...

See the big red 'S'? That's Steak 'n Shake. Arby's (the 'A'), Donato's, Pizza King, and many other places are open until 11 or 12 or even 1, but only 'S' stays open for 24 hours a day, every day (it would be helpful to have in this analysis included a distinction between "late" and "hella late" but I didn't). In fact, Steak 'n Shake is so exclusive in their owlhood that they've acquired a reputation for it. Before you know it, you can't hang out at Steak 'n Shake. It's just... formulaic. Or, well, I guess. I'm not the one that has the allergy to blasé (though the reaction I have to unoriginality approximates it in this case, I suppose).

So, we can add D, which is the set of all places to go that are not Steak 'n Shake. I should probably have considered this before I drew the diagram because, since 'S' is already placed and it can't go in more than one spot, all that extra space out there is assured to be eternally empty. Indeed, why don't we just go ahead and use this replacement chart. It's marginally less correct, significantly more informative, and on the whole just darn sad.

What a... ... problem.

Time Flies Like an Arrow, Fruit Flies GET NO SYMPATHY FROM THIS HIGHER LIFEFORM

2009-06-08T21:14:00.006-04:00

Fruit flies are trying to molest my bananas. I have yelled at them repeatedly, but they do not understand that since I am a mammal, I deserve the banana more than they do, and that I am millions of times more important than any of them, and just plain better, and so on, but they don't get it. I'm going to have to eat all of my bananas tonight and it's just because of these sickly insects. I tell you, what's the point of inheriting the earth after the death of the dinosaurs if arthropod revivalists keep trying to reestablish the glory days of lesser invertebrates? Take a look at this:

Without delving into the issue of extra-human spirits, can we say unequivocally that this image alone is enough to strike terror into any chordate's soul? What if this creature, the Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, comes looking for me because I beat up on its kid brothers? Or, even worse:

ARTHROPLEURA!!!

Lucky for us, our species' global manifest destiny isn't really in peril because of these guys. Among the reasons I'm not extremely concerned is that neither of them has existed since at least the Devonian period, i.e. millions of years before even dinosaurs showed up. (The picture of the "ARTHROPLEURA!!!" above is from the BBC special "Walking with Monsters". Also it is greatly exaggerated because, hey, television is demanding.) And even though arthropods and such can evolve much faster than, oh, all vertebrates thanks to immensely greater reproductive rates, modern atmospheric oxygen content and other factors pretty much set a physical limit for the largest possible arthropods to be around the size of what they are now:

So the next time that you think twice about swatting that pesky Drosophila, don't. It had its time. We've totally got another few million years coming to us and I'm going to use the next few hours of said inheritance to eat my rightful spoils before they are, well, spoilt.

END ECTOTHERMIC WELFARE
VIVA LA VERTEBRAE
I ♥ MY K-SELECTED POPULATION
etc.

Eno's Drowned Eden Words (one).

2009-06-03T12:52:00.002-04:00

Llama

Die!
Rosy ace decays.
Ore-Ida mall.

Ms. Agrot is a He?!

Halo, berets, bolt lobster.
Ebola—he has it.
Orgasm!

addspacedone

2009-06-02T12:32:00.003-04:00

anyquillisthere

imachocolatestandinfortheiridescent

manifesthersashairyouridearwandafallsapart

templeadabsurdumothersoutherethinkittenfoldsherman

An Hour, Its Might, the Power of Light!

2009-03-31T19:24:00.006-04:00

Well, everyone, I can hardly believe it but it's true. It's over. It's finally over.

Hard to believe that just one month ago it was all worsening and the metrics that alerted us to the crisis in the first place were just climbing and climbing without respite. We looked at our fellow earthlings, unsure of what to do, where to go with our species and the mountains of civilization that no individual had constructed yet which certainly existed, spewing out carbon dioxide as a volcano spews lava. Would we all die a tragic, self-imposed heat death as the planet grew warmer and warmer until the trees melted and the ocean burned and all the lovable things in the world unjustly paid the price for corporate greed?

Thank God it didn't come to that. Today we celebrated in the streets, weeping and shouting, that global warming was over. This must be what winning a war feels like. This feels damn good.

The victory, I dare say, could not have been possible were it not for the relentless efforts of the good people at Earth Hour, the crusading organizers that had the courage and fortitude to bring an end to the climate catastrophe.

As the lights turned off slowly, I felt calmness pervading me. Every flick of a switch bade my heart to turn to liquid joy so much more. Our parents caused this, but it took this generation to fix it, and to that I say: it feels good to fix things.

Now documentaries can return to pertaining to important things people don't know anything about and environmentalism can return to being a wack discipline most of us only care about when approached by that one friend whose thing is that she recycles everything. Green can stop being a trendy color and corporations can relish in finding new ways to sell their products to consumers. Americans can buy whatever cars they want without a hybrid-pushing minority cramming Priuses down their throats. Perhaps best of all, today's youth, the heroes of the climate war, can look up at the pollution-free sky and think to themselves, "you know, I can't wait to tell my children about the spectre that was global warming and the glorious victory that was achieved with Earth Hour 2009."

Nations came together, no! People came together, and we crushed carbon in its tracks. Were I only able to dry my eyes for any considerable length of time and see the new world before us! I don't think I can fully comprehend the miracle yet. Maybe I'm still living in a world before we all turned off our lights for half an hour. Maybe I'll be struck with the majesty fully here in a day or so. God I hope so.

And so, in closing, America, world... Earth... congratulations are to be had everywhere. Good job everyone. It's... it's all over now. I'm going to go let my car idle for the next week. Who's with me?

Hannah's Formula..

2009-03-26T00:00:00.003-04:00

My state with my girlfriend
forthwith with ball point penned
is simple to describe.

If she's a labyrinth,
I'm lost and convicted.
If she is a novel,
my book club has picked it.
If she is the war,
my mind is solely spite.
If she's Mammoth Cave,
I'm a troglodyte.

Were I ten units sharper,
were I a mathematician,
were I a psychosomething,
were I a word physician,
I'd isolate the pattern
that makes me from my ma'am.
I'd input who she is
and output what I am.

My girlfriend is just her;
the function acts on me
and I am f of (she).

There's Life Everywhere; In Pictures, In Photos; In Galaxies, In Photons

2009-03-25T01:54:00.002-04:00

Panels: "Okay. You're God. So what."

2009-02-24T02:06:00.001-05:00

TV Pitch: "Resurrection Catacombs"

2009-02-12T17:56:00.002-05:00

February 12, 2009

Dear studio execs and other producer bigwigs:

Hello! No don't stop reading! You're probably thinking to yourself, "here's just another kid from Indiana with a lame idea for a television show so let's just ignore him." I don't blame you! You probably receive hundreds of ideas a day for new thises or new thats and it must be trying to spend money on the salaries of people that root through them all for you, especially in these desperate financial times we find ourselves in. HOWEVER, if you simply give my pitch (located below this paragraph) a read, I sincerely doubt you will be disappointed with the way you spent your time [vicariously through an underling, of course].

Okay well I haven't settled on a name for it yet but I'm tossing around something like "Resurrection Catacombs" or "Cryojinks". If I haven't sold you quite yet, please read on.

The setting is late twenty-first century America. An offshoot of the Illuminati have decided that the world situation is dire enough to begin the process of bringing famous and talented individuals out of cryosleep. See, it turns out that ever since the invention of suspended animation in 1728 (just one year too late for Newton), this organization has been preserving the world's greatest minds for such a time as, I guess, late twenty-first century America.

At the start of the show only two people have been brought back to life—Thomas Edison and Lord Byron, however over the course of the episodes, more and more historical figures enter the plot and contribute to the overarching goal of defeating the unnamed antagonist(s) that are causing whatever is going down to go down (I have not determined what this is yet but with a crack team of computer animators I sincerely believe we could make some awesome shenanigans. Who loves vocanoes!).

The main characters, though, are those currently in the organization that are doing the reanimating; after all, it's up to them to decide under what circumstances to use the power they have been given. This could be comprised of any typical team of archetypes (the leader, the renegade, the woman (the woman renegade?! Emmy anyone?), the black dude, the scrawny computer whiz, etc.) but I've got my own ideas. We can talk this over at one of many meetings which I would be glad to bring donuts to.

Here's a list of questions you may have.

Who are you anyway?
I am a distinguished author of many a blog post and winner of the Ball Elementary School fourth grade spelling bee (no joke) but seriously I'm a college student with maybe one too many SPECTACULAR ideas.

Why are you sharing this amazing idea with us for free?
After a tedious selection process I have decided that your company is the only one that can accurately bring my vivid, revolutionary vision of a historical figure/cryogenics/worldwide conspiracy to life the way it deserves. The idea deserves your company's flair and reputation.

So what are some possible ideas for episodes?
I'm glad you asked! Here are a few I've thought up:

The team revives Nikolai Tesla, much to the chagrin of Thomas Edison, who views him as a threat and much tension commences. This episode would have to culminate in an electricity battle, only to be stopped by a recently-awoken J.P. Morgan who then delivers a heartwrenching monologue about joining forces to fight the evil that lurks on the horizon.
The organization is almost discovered by the United States government (embodied in the investigator tasked with cracking the case). They relocate to a new headquarters but this episode sets up a long feud between the vigilantes and the corrupt government.
Goethe is revived. Everyone is excited to share ideas and talk with him, but he pulls away and we are all confused about the source of his antisocialism. At the same time, weird occurences start happening around the compound and J. Robert Oppenheimer and another team member are murdered. No one can explain why until the leader deduces that who they thought was Goethe is actually Adolf Hitler! Some kind of battle probably ends this one as well and they stop Hitler before he can kill any more Jews.
This is more of a stand-alone twist, but perhaps we have someone still alive play him or herself? Perhaps, say, Patrick Stewart plays Patrick Stewart brough back in eighty years.

Great! What are some other possible sources of conflict?

The inevitable love that blossoms between members of the team and the historical figures. Perhaps one of the women falls in love with someone brought back and one of the modern men becomes jealous?
All those resurrected now must live without knowing anyone in the world. Do they have any stake in saving a planet that they don't even recognize?
Obviously we are not aware of the evil that lurks below the surface's identity. This will be a big reveal when we finally get around to addressing who, in fact, the protagonists are battling. This might not happen until the third season or so.
The audience has no knowledge of the list of people that have been preserved. When one is brought back, it is therefore always a chance for a twist or fun plot element. "Is Einstein frozen?" is the buzz question we want people asking around water coolers.
The modern team must try to understand the reasoning behind the selection process. Why did their forefathers decide to freeze Byron and not Keats? Why Patton but not Eisenhower? One member of the team has more problems accepting the wisdom of the past than the rest of them and there could be an episode devoted to this.
There are ten unmarked chambers at the back of the resurrection catacombs. We don't know who they are and neither do the characters; under what circumstances will they be opened?! Stay tuned!

Do you have any casting preferences?
I would like to meet LeVar Burton at some point

In short, I'm confident that under the auspecies of a well-paid auteur and my creative mind (I swear, these things just come to me) we can bring this vision to life in a way that no one yet can imagine. If you have any questions regarding the mechanics or implementation of what you see on this page, feel free to contact me. Thanks for taking the time to read this (I'm confident you're satisfied and excited about the future of this program) and I will undoubtedly be hearing from you through your people soon. I don't have people yet (my career is still nascent) but hopefully this enterprise will allow me to acquire some.

Your partner in this plainly successful endeavour,

Eli T. Drumm
Artist

Visting Presence.

2009-02-09T17:54:00.002-05:00

A and B are in a Episcopalian chapel.

A: So why do you come to church anyway. I never thought of you as a religious person.
B: Well obviously not. I guess I like the atmosphere.
A: What, all this quiet and artwork? I mean I guess you could study here.
B: Yeah but I don't study. I kind of, well, exist. When there's not a service going on Lamar opens up the sanctuary for anyone that wants to come in and not a lot of people do, and even if there are a few others they're all pretty observant of the quiet. I can study anywhere but this environment is precious, it really is.
A: Okay but you're a self-avowed atheist.
B: And you're a nihilist.
A: What's that got to do with you.
B: Well nothing, but I'm curious as to why you care.
A: I'm not that much of a nihilist.
B: (soft) All right fine.
A: That's another discussion. What I'm curious about is why you don't feel nervous or get all angry around all this iconography and biblical, you know, stuff.
B: Why, because these are the people that inquisited and crusaded and persecute everyone?
A: Essentially.
B: Why do you see it as a problem?
A: Generally people don't like being around things they don't like.
B: Okay fair. But I've got nothing against this church. I don't not like this church.
A: But all these images stand for something you can't.
B: Okay so I don't believe in God. That doesn't necessarily precipitate a hatred of Christia-
A: HA. Like you've never voiced anti-Christian sentiments before. We all know what you think of religious people and their institutions, B, don't try—
B: Yeah yeah all right you're correct there. What you don't get, though, is that I'm able to separate my political and ethical views from what I enjoy, or the atmospheres I like to exist in, or the media I consume. If there was an artist that, oh, sang his heart out for Jesus, but the music was incredible, I'd have no problems listening to it.
A: I'll believe that when I see it. Of course considering the state of Christian music it's not something we have to worry about testing any time soon, so you're off the hook there.
B: Ha. All right.
A: You know what I think?
B: What do you think.
A: I think that you're a hater of convenience. You have morals and principles and if something that runs up against them is dopey and stupid and discordant and downright wrong you have no problem, you know, whisking it away and debunking or denouncing it, usually quite vocally, but if what you're exposed to is still wrong according to your own laws or whatever but has plenty of redeeming qualities, like this here sanctuary, you're hesitant to be against it.
B: I think if that was the case I'd be a bit more ansty around this environment. Honestly, I swear I'm completely at peace in this place.
A: Hm. I guess I'm skeptical that you can completely separate this beautiful imagery and magnificence and glory and all from the religious impact it conveys.
B: Perhaps not completely. But I'd like to think I'm good at it. I think of myself walking and meditating in this grand room we're in like, like maybe a visitor from the future would examine the present, or that we're in the future and this is a museum of what was once called religion.
A: Eh... I get what you're talking about. I don't like it though.
B: You wouldn't.
A: No I wouldn't. You're more cultural than me anyway, maybe that's it.
B: I'm just better than you.
A: Maybe that too.

Panels: "Must you be so egotistical in your thought experiments?"

2009-02-03T03:06:00.003-05:00

Notebook Options: Managing Oneself.

2009-01-28T10:57:00.000-05:00

Notebook Options: 200 Characters.

2009-01-21T01:19:00.001-05:00

Data and Counterparts.

2009-01-19T01:35:00.003-05:00

Today I signed up for Twitter and Blip.fm, two Web 2.0 sites you might have heard of.

Really I'm not constructed for character limits and rounded edges and whatever, but it looks fun and maybe I could find something out about myself.

You know what. I miss whatever came first on the internet more than I'm excited for what's coming next. The leap from no internet to email and websites was much more exciting than the leap to superfast connections and colorful graphics and instant content is and will be.

Now I check my email to see if I have a Facebook message which has supplanted email as some fucked up de facto online communication medium. Information gets repeated to the point of ludicrous redundancy and really I don't mind for the sake of the work but for the information everywhere it gets in my teeth and on my clothes and it frustrates me.

I'm acting and talking as if the internet has something to teach me about my life and all life. Does it? I mean, it very well could. I don't know.

I really really believe there's a message in all of this and I'm trying to figure out what it is.

Living with Cold..

2009-01-16T14:47:00.003-05:00

What cold.

In desperate climate my ligaments freeze,
in forlorn displeasure I fall to my knees,
in terrible height the gale sails through the tress,
it collects autumn's entrails, it decimates leaves,
glossing my eyeballs, at last each one sees
a girl materializing amidst the breeze.

Though! I am certainly not tired of this weather. I figure it's going to be hot quite a bit in the summer especially if I'm in locations without air conditioning...

but enough times during the day the hypercold temperatures hovering outside exit my consciousness to make room for more important business, whatever that is, until I'm ready to leave the building and I see my coat and scarf and hat and am reminded why I have them. Though it's a ritual to put all of it on, it's not something I ever mind doing.

Today should be a good day. The winter should help me forget about the clear skies.

Said the man to the mouse, "Could you scroll slower than 1000 lines per second, please?"

2009-01-12T17:19:00.004-05:00

There's no music I want to listen to. This is unfortunate for my last.fm play counts which I must keep up with, but there's nothing I can do about it directly. I flip through collections of Calvin & Hobbes or The Far Side and despite the fact that there are thousands of panels and strips and I can't remember the majority through brainstorming, I know every comic and am not surprised whatever comes on the next page; in the same way, though I have over a thousand albums listed in my library I can't remember many and intensely know all of them, the words that follow. It seems I'm always on the Ls when I'm looking at the Ls, there's no word I haven't seen before, there are albums I haven't listened to in years, EPs I've only downloaded and haven't gotten around to the actual listening of. Obscure live sets. Now they all start with the letter H, because I'm there. I start something, double-clicking. I can't get more than twenty seconds in before I feel distaste and either press stop or, more likely, double-click on another album because the mouse has less distance to cover, but then it's the same problem over again. It repeats itself, I've heard all these beginnings before, I'm deeply familiar with the first two seconds of every album in the library. Isn't it too predictable and modern to say that digitizing music cheapens the experience, or that when there's not a jewel case and album art physically being held the music loses something. Maybe that's too, oh, I don't know. I don't think I believe that.

More likely it seems to me that because I have to do nothing in terms of conscious choice I end up with too many options and dislike all of them for being so cheap. I remember back when I was twelve waiting around to record songs off of the radio onto cassettes because downloading Napster was illegal and unethical. Once I even bought an entire soundtrack just to get ahold of one particular track. I hadn't and haven't seen the movie it's from.

In fact, it's always seemed to me more enjoyable to hear a favourite song on the radio rather than playing it yourself from whatever method you wish. I sure don't know the rationale behind that one, but I have a few guesses.

Maybe I need to back off. What if I started listening to CDs through the computer? CDs I own, and instead of just scrolling and clicking I actually insert the physical disc and take it out when I'm finished. D'y'think some kind of "there's only one thing you can listen to at any one time" paradigm would be reinforced, and I'd be all musical again?

But there I go, acting as if there's a step I need to be artistic again. I haven't stopped being artistic, surely. Perhaps I'm more aware of my lack of intense listenings, active, seizuresque. That doesn't happen as much anymore...

Maybe I should move on to something else. Should I pick up a martial art? Should I memorize poetry? Should I practice writing without anaphora? Should I rehearse meta? I need my keyboard fixed.

This semester will be interesting regardless. Surely scrolling through the blurred nameless wastes of album titles is interesting, in a way, ironically maybe?

I have secret weapons.

2008-12-27T03:37:00.002-05:00

This chain will come alive again sometime after the New Year, at least temporarily.

The upcoming third phase of this blog is the THIRTEENTH NOTE OF CHRISTMAS.

Global warming is affecting my bedroom disproportionately, and that's why I'm mute.

2008-08-21T05:57:00.003-04:00

It's a late night.

What is a new experience envelops me in a textured mush of uncertainty, not unlike the mush of snow by the road but uncomfortably warmer and depressingly stickier.

As of now the plan is to travel back six years, to late 2002. I will find what I'm looking for and then recalibrate. No one should return too late and may God help us not to miss lunch. The button will be pressed in twelve seconds.

At this point, the seconds begin dilating until the songs never end while I listen to every one, demanding subsequent clicks right and left and channeling. Some authority tells me I need a box to convert my channeling? What a surprise.

Three seconds, two, one,

What stands in my way is the love of unwanted patrons; I am M111.

2008-08-21T03:48:00.004-04:00

So I decided to give Saturdays=Youth a spin.

And, as usually happens, I linked it to something I could read about on the internet. Before I know it, I'm reading about Messier objects and trying to figure out why I can't find M83 on a map of the local group [of galaxies]. I read that Andromeda is 25 million light-years away and M83 is only 15 million, so either it's so small it's not showing up on this map or I'm missing its name or I'm...

Then I realize that I missed the decimal point between the two and the five, and the scale of the map is much greater than I had originally thought and all of a sudden this galaxy is not only not on the map, it's almost off the monitor.

So I scroll down the list of Messier objects and the list just keeps getting more and more messier so by the time I'm reading about M109 (which probably isn't the most distant of them) at 46 million light-years away I'm hearing a narration talking about becoming a star and being kissed and being young and all of a sudden I feel old. Old and grounded.

Maybe I don't mind being alone as much as I thought I did.

As the stratus arrive parading over the horizon I remember where I receive the energy to type this...

2008-08-14T13:26:00.003-04:00

Why the sun should be so concerned about a dot in its field of shine and whether clouds cover its line of sight to the solar panels that worship it or the panel constructors that love it is beyond me, but I remind myself that the clouds, too, are part of the family of engines that are friends with the sun.

Now the clouds are rolling over the trees across the field, and these are the darker clouds. They bring rain as if they are trying to bring the ocean to me as I can't be with the ocean. I take it the sun wants me to be happy.

Nor am I the first person to be partially entranced by solar worship, understandably. When a beyond-conceptionly huge sphere of fire in the sky speaks, you listen.

So what is sun-music (solarsound)?

... usually you're too bright anyway. My sunglasses are not false idols, but rather a concordance, a bishop, turning my back to you on the top of Mt. Sinai.

To be honest with everyone, though, I side with Selene just as often, perhaps the antichrist, more likely just another human trapped in the heavens in the rocket ship of mythology.

Between Dreams and Nonexistence There Lies Eternal and Infinite Satisfaction..

2008-08-11T21:06:00.002-04:00

A few nights ago I was going to sleep at my recent usual time, probably around five in the morning, I can't remember exactly. I guess I was feeling pretty tired, because as soon I laid down on the floor (where I have been sleeping recently) this brilliant idea came to me. Goes something like this:

Well, I'd like to be able to have what I want. So I'm imagining a device right now that will do this. I would, obviously, like to have this device, so I'm attaching a special attribute to this device: it does not exist, except in imagination, however, as soon as one imagines it, it appears in the real world. (I made this last condition very specific, thinking of one of the few parts on the floor for it to materialize on.) Odd part is how much sense this made to me. It was, incredibly, incredibly rational—the very definition of this object included its real-world existence if it was imagined, which it was...

Soon after I thought of this, there was this slight noise near where I had imagined the device entering our plane of reality. I jumped up, and after a moment of hoping turned on the lights to find nothing.

Needless to say, I was thoroughly disappointed. Perhaps the sound was something creaky or something settling or perhaps it was the sound made by this device rapidly shimmering into and out of our world. If the latter, it makes me think that there's some condition or variable I haven't considered yet and I'll keep working on the logic. Also, I'll be thinking on my first wish.

Seven-twelfths suffix.

2008-08-04T02:57:00.003-04:00

Radiohead concert was tonight; undoubtedly one of the most engaging experiences I've had, at least music-wise. It would really have been wonderful if I had been closer to the stage, and if I had been in the very front row or close in the pit I can't imagine the power, but I'm thankful to have been able to see them live. The more I realize how popular they are the less I tend to like them (or any group), but a performance... seeing the music... it reaffirms my own personal love for the music.

I've been going to sleep so late, but now I'm so tired.

Goodbye, Aleksandr.

Speakers speak?

Inferiority is driving, driving, driving.

I'm going to hang up my list sometime, probably taking down to Bloomington with me so that I can see it more often. Then it will likely keep looking at me. Now I begin the remaining five-twelfths.

Seven-twelfths bytes.

2008-08-03T02:56:00.003-04:00

My mouse isn't working. It right-clicks fine, but a third of the left clicks are no clicks and another third are double clicks. It isn't working out that great and it's taking plenty of time to work through what should otherwise be ordinary tasks, or, I guess, clicks. Single clicks.

Someone's been cheating and it hasn't been me, although I certainly have cheated in the past on completely unrelated issues (though in completely related company). Cheating's probably not the right word, anyways.

If I can't be just alright at being the best, then what's the point?

In the same game in which I had the interesting conversation the other day, I had to make a choice as to whether to merge my consciousness with an AI (a different one) in order to rule the world with justice and rationality or to reduce humanity to a new dark age as to prevent domineering conspiratorial government rule forever. As both are situations I have pined for, it was a difficult choice—I eventually decided on joining the machine. Hope I made the right call.

Is what makes a person great simply the height of the bar of expectation he sets for himself? Probably... I think Thoreau might have been a tool.

I rarely do anything in fives anymore, but I think the last of the seven-twelfths will be tomorrow.

Seven-twelfths slices.

2008-08-02T03:56:00.002-04:00

Who's not slipping away. I sure am along with everyone else. The rest of the universe is, so who's special. Strike that—who's not special.

At the center of the universe is nothing, pure nothing, and the way to survive in spite of it is to construct a layer to protect the mind from this inconceivable vacuum; this is most often humor. For the most part, though, the innermost universal anti-sanctum is unreachable anyhow by the human mind. Some creatures probably dwell there their entire lives without knowing it or anything. And again, a few men manage to slip through the cracks in the cosmic joke, see the face of God, and collapse in insanity, but I think they are closest to what we would call dead. A vacuum will devour what it is not shielded from.

I want paint of a new color to flow down my walls and envelop my previous thoughts in a blank slate (retroactivity would be nice). I want the Internet to erase itself and for chords to work backwards and Sharpies to retract ink and entropy to reverse and the Sun to dim and for polygons to become more perfect.

This person wishes he had someone to talk to. Also, he wishes he would not bungle the experience as he usually does with most conversations. It's like trying to drive a hypodermic needle into a sheet of metal.

And there's nowhere to put things, especially my list, which is under my desk and not looking at me presently.

Seven-twelfths slips.

2008-08-01T01:37:00.002-04:00

So I'm pretty sure the keyboard issue is hardware, which isn't good.

On the opposite hand, the box in which I was looking for an adapter to try and solve the problem contained my cell phone charger, which I had been in search of for months now. I guess God didn't want me finding it until then.

Hip-hop music is calling to me. I've been listening to some good shit recently (up in this bitch). At the same time, I'm rediscovering This Desert Life.

I had an interesting chat with an AI the other day. Here it is.

By virtue of time; where there's a consciousness, there's a future.

Seven-twelfths bits.

2008-07-31T00:42:00.005-04:00

My list is looking at me, and usually I can ignore it. Right now I have it to my left. I am taking it down to look at...

It's remarkably well constructed, matched only by my striking inability to purposefully execute the items on the list. When the end of the year arrives, things will disintegrate, as they usually do around Christmastime.

The E flats and As on my keyboard aren't working. I'm going to try and procure a MIDI cable and hope that the problem is in the USB port. If not, I can't compose in keys that use those notes. Ha. On the bright side, though, this has driven me to using alternative-to-Reason methods of creating music, namely sampling. Some interesting things. Two of them, experiments both, neither of which are that great.

More tomorrow.

2008-07-16T21:01:00.001-04:00

I've been on vacation pretty continuously for like three weeks now.

More to come.

Summer's Not Horrible..

2008-06-24T01:28:00.002-04:00

BAD BAD BAD BAD

NO NO NO NO

deck and deck and decks and decks
deacons and beacons
slaughtered, reported on
but I'm still typing

NOCEBO

I CAN TYPE

STILL!

TYPE TYPE TYPE TYPE

bedroom doom, segmented, wavy, tidal
taking a step back now
pretzels en masse and drugs and liquid
more tides now
coasting through a room I am in

TYPE TYPE

COMPLETELY ACCUSTOMED

BUT IT'S NOT BAD

MAYBE MAYBE MAYBE MAYBE

can't terribly involve myself in my work anymore
he's no artist
he eats pretzels and takes drugs
his biggest fan only blows the already hot air around the room
but he can still type
and it's not bad
certainly
not good but not bad either
continue with the oscillations

BEFORE OPINION SWITCHES

BEFORE THE LOOP STRANGENS UP

BEFORE BEFORE BEFORE

enter:

YES YES YES YES

YES YES YES

Excerpt from Vacatianilopschtran!, Chapter 5: "In which I am subjected to the scrutiny of myself which I am not".

2008-06-21T02:19:00.003-04:00

The darkness faded instantaneously, and it took me a minute or so to gather what exactly I was witnessing; I stood at the ground level of a massive vertical coliseum, in the rows of which were densely packed people, some of whom I thought I recognized. Below me was a sandy stone floor and no other comforts of any sort... but by far the most intimidating element in my new environment was in fact something missing--I could not glimpse the ceiling or roof of the structure I seemed to be held in. The people trailed off into infinity.

And a voice boomed: "YOU ARE ON TRIAL."

"For what?" I shouted back at the voice, again, one that I believed to have recognized. "I have committed no act to warrant such an extravagant ceremony of jurisprudence!"

"WE JUDGE YOU FOR BEING A LIVING PERSON."

At this I was obviously confused. "Now the courts are claiming existence to be a crime!"

Immediately another voice responded, this one female but just as dominating: "WE ARE NO COURT AND WE JUDGE MORE THAN CRIMES."

"WE JUDGE ALL DEEDS," shouted another.

"And what are the consequences if I am convicted?"

"THERE CAN BE NO FURTHER CONVICTION AS THERE IS CERTAINTY OF GUILT."

I remember growing more frustrated. "How is this possible? And if not crimes, then what point does this court serve?"

No response immediately followed, but a second later one of them, a man, jumped down from the first row and walked towards me. When he spoke, he sounded as I did, unamplified by the acoustics of the shocking chamber. "I and my comrades judge you for the manner you lived our life."

"My life?"

"Ours, as we are all the same person. Those of us that are not you, though, merely exist within the realms of probability and this astral plane where you found us."

For being odd, this was odd. "Probability? So you don't exist."

He smirked. "We exist here."

"Explain."

"A biological phenomenon forged the chamber. That is, you and you alone are the result of a specific union of two gametes, and we are those that are not." At this point he gestured at the rest of the chamber towards the ceiling. "Ah, we are arranged by probability. I speak for the individual that you are, in essence, first of, but as you are the version on trial, I am now first."

"So... you are the sperm that would have reached an egg if I hadn't?"

"I am no sperm any more than you are. But I am the extension of that line of events. The world hasn't changed, but you have."

"And why am I on trial."

"Well we all have the collective individual's best interests in mind. That being agreed upon, it makes logical sense that the one of us with the best initial conditions, purely genomic in our case, should be the one to exist."

"So if I fail..."

"I replace you. The process starts until the group decides upon an acceptable life."

Needless to say, I felt unnerved. "But I am the first."

"Yes. Not necessarily the last, though." At this, he openly smiled. I suppose he had no reason to conceal his vested interest in condemnation.

Fuzzy Aphorism Roundup; Week of 8-14 June, 2008.

2008-06-13T03:36:00.004-04:00

Starting off easy: I have more to learn from this than from this. One, it would seem, gets what one pays for.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is twenty times more philosophical than it is correct with its physics and time travel theory.

Political revolutions are more likely to happen, I think, in the technological climate of late eighteenth-century North America than today anywhere. When it takes weeks to receive news and the same time to send orders back, the oppressors have quite a communications shortfall. It seems to me that it's a good thing we entered the current age with as many stable free nations as possible. (This would raise quite a debate between conspiracy theorists; that is, is near-total free speech indicative of a society where the will of the people truly rules or have the individuals and their pet corporations simply adapted to a climate of pulling strings from shadows?)

I lunge into anomie after more than a few hours in front of the television. But, television is certainly not a sin.

Good Lord I'm aging so rapidly it's not funny.

Taking of Natural Resources..

2008-06-11T20:42:00.003-04:00

I.

HUMAN IS A PUZZLE
QUARTETS QUATRAINS QUANDARIES
DOCTORATES TAKE TOP DOLLAR--
FIVE STARS ON SUNDAYS
DON'T MAKE ME START LISTING THINGS
1. NOBODY LOVES ERIS
2. HUMAN ARE THE ONLY ONE THAT COULD EVER LOVE SUCH AN ERIS
SO FORTH AND SO FORTH
HAPPY MINING! ERIS

II.

Dear Sirs:

The International Committee on Nomenclature, Semantics, and Coinage has come to the conclusion that, in the best interests of your community and of humanity as a whole, the system would be considerably more streamlined if, from this point forward, you were referred to purely by the degrees you have earned. A college degree will now superimpose itself over names. This is for everyone's benefit. Those without earned degrees will not be affected at this time.

We thank you for your cooperation and willingness to assist in this matter.

Quite Sincerely,

Your Friends at the ICNSC.

Abstract Critique..

2008-06-08T18:25:00.006-04:00

Excerpt from Blue Planes, Chapter 49: "Exit Community".

2008-06-06T18:54:00.004-04:00

The instant Nigel landed on the ground after jumping out of the port on the doomed C.S.L. Into the Lithe Lea, there emerged behind him a dazzling, blinding light, first blocked by the falling frame of the Lea but soon visible as a vertex, then elongating across half of the entire sky. For a moment he considered using the Closer, which was ridiculous for a fracture of this size, and it slightly shamed him that his mind had brought this up as a solution. It was irrelevant and distracting.

By this time fibers from the other side had anchored the tear to the rocky ground and were pulling the thing open further and further, finally parting enough for small vessels to break through. The first few only detonated, knocking out of the sky what Nigel realized were the remnants of the Coast Guard; after this, wave followed wave and he was left alone on the cliff edge as the invaders made a name for themselves.

His eyes narrowed, widened, then narrowed again. After this he remained motionless.

Lead-In to 'Phase II: Adventures in Hyperspace'..

2008-06-05T14:36:00.003-04:00

Humans and robots of both sexes, it is now, this June of a fifth in two thousand eight that Winfield DeSol presents ADVENTURES IN HYPERSPACE, the second set of entries comprising the ongoing canon of "Looking For Something..".

The restart will see changes in subject matter and significant increases in audiovisual material, but for a grasp for all of us, we will wait and find out.

Hopefully we will see regular updates, cloud-willing.

2008-03-24T23:17:00.001-04:00

in hibernation

The Recently..

2008-02-18T09:18:00.002-05:00

FLY OUT AIRLIFT ME
WAVE INTERFERENCE
HIGH ART HIJINKS
FAZING PHRASING
NOT GOING ANYWHERE
RESET PLAY COUNT
SCROBBLE, SCRABBLE, SCRIBBLE
EXIT NOPE
THE VERY SAME
YOURS TRULY, TRULY

Towards the Center Led By Force and Purpose, Pt. 4..

2008-02-04T17:06:00.000-05:00

There’s a clock on the wall to the left of where his head is and it tells me that right now the sun has risen and in a few hours I’ll be able to see a bit of sunlight before, a few hours later, it will be night again. Those photons will ricochet off of the balcony and into this room, near where my two eyes are at this moment and they will pass right through this space and into the wall opposite, a few bouncing again, around, again, pointless. I’ll be dead by that time.

“Is there any way out?”

“No.”

“So you are just an arm of a machine.”

“Maybe.”

“But you are! You’re just submitting to something.”

“I’m less than an arm. I’m nothing. In fact, there is no machine.”

“No, there is a machine, there has to be a machine.”

The man has a pulse on his belt. In a few minutes, something from there might be over here, or not. Is it part of a machine?

He’s got this… removed expression, his face is glaring at me. If not at me, where would those eyes be pointing, where would that drink in his hands be at this precise moment? His watch makes a small sound, ripples, recognition. “Actually, you know what?” He stands. “I’ve got to get going.”

“Perhaps we can reschedule?”

This causes him to laugh.

“Right. You’re an entertaining one. No, seriously, it’s always a regret when I can’t talk to the contracts before I fulfill them. I was, however,” he looks at his watch, “fifteen minutes late, which I imagine was torture for you, I do apologize, but hey.” He puts his arm around my back and leads me to the balcony, towards the large window. “If life is good and thinking is positive and all that, maybe even toss in an afterlife or two, then that’s good news for ya, mate!”

“If not?”

“Well you have nothing to lose. Or maybe you do. I have no idea.”

“You should have an idea! You’re Death!”

“Fuck no. My name’s Darren.” A pause, and we’re at the balcony. He trips me and I fall over. Something about a syndicate in the background.

Well in a matter of minutes I’ll be dead. I’m surprised at first that the zero-point net hasn’t taken over by now and tossed me onto safe ground but I guess they would have thought of that. Soon enough my eyes adjust and I can see the buildings and crosswalks around, both sides, and also up, towards the sky in the distance. It’s only a small quadrilateral even at this range but it’s shrinking slowly enough because I’m far enough already. And even now, I’m falling, past people and I can’t see their faces and it seems I’ll reach terminal velocity soon enough if I haven’t already. It comes to me that I never found the time to research what terminal velocity is on Earth.

Maybe I’ll hit a crosswalk and die sooner than expected or maybe their fix of the zero-point net isn’t complete and I’ll be found and saved or maybe, or maybe, or. And. No, I’m going to die. A matter of seconds? No, still minutes.

Towards the Center Led By Force and Purpose, Pt. 3..

2008-02-03T23:21:00.000-05:00

“No.”

“So you haven’t accepted it yet?”

“What?”

“You are who I’m looking for.”

“Then why did you inquire?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

I’m about to dispute until I realize he’s right, that it doesn’t matter. So I ask him, “How are you going to do it?”

He looks around the room, his hands in the pockets of his vest, his eyes conveying an expression of… something. At least it is an expression.

“Does it matter?”

“No.”

“Sure it does!” This surprises me. He’s not smiling, but looks attentive and repeats himself. “Sure it does.”

“Why?”

“Well, hold on. You don’t know me yet. Do you have any, ah… drinks? Anything?”

I smile deeply, but it appears as though he doesn’t notice. “The refrigerator.”

He’s holding two glasses of something. I take one after he hands it to me, and following this the good man sits down across from me. “I know enough about you, I imagine. Anything you want to ask me?”

“You’re my executioner?”

“I guess.” He swirls his glass. He looks around the room. He’s marveling at how tight all the seams are, at how there’s no exit. There’s the door and there’s the window and that’s it. “But that’s a dismal way of looking at it.” Swirls. “I guess it is the only way of looking at it, though.”

“No! There’s another way, right? I mean, there’s got to be an exit somewhere. Otherwise something is, well, no, no, there’s just got to be an exit.” I’m surprisingly calm. “You have the power, right? You’re going to make a choice. You’re going to make a choice to kill me or not to kill me and you have that choice in your mind right now but it hasn’t happened one way or the other yet so until it does you can still change your mind!” I’m not pleading with anyone except myself.

“You don’t believe in free will, do you?”

“No.”

“Will you believe in it at your death?”

“No.”

Towards the Center Led By Force and Purpose, Pt. 2..

2008-01-31T11:26:00.000-05:00

There’s some way out of this, there’s got to be! I can run, right? I can leave now and hopefully get far enough away that no one will know who I am, not that everyone knows who I am around here anyway. Sure, they could find me, but that would develop into an unnecessarily taxing search all too fast.

That would get tiring fast, though. I’d have to move outside regulation, and that in itself could land me in confinement, and I don’t… well, I don’t think I love my life that much, to risk something like that. If I was in prison the syndicate could find me easier, but it would be just to their advantage to see me rot in confinement for the rest of my natural life, contemplating choices and all that lead me up to where I am now.

But of course the syndicate doesn’t forgive and it would find me and kill me anyway. So at this point here I am. My mind is racing, trying to find the loophole, but there’s no loophole, there’s only what I’ve been over, and I go over it all again in my mind, trying to find some way out, but there’s no way out, there’s no loophole, there’s only what I’ve seen before and NO! There is a way out. Physics demands it! NO! There is no way out.

Am I this way because of my lack of purpose? Well who has purpose to begin with. Nothing short of a last-minute conversion to some religion could convince me otherwise. So why should this upset me? Why shouldn’t this upset me? There’s got to be a way out. I could go to my refrigerator right now and start eating, eat as much as I could in what time I have left and try to make purpose, and then I would die having given purpose to those bits of food and those electrons diverted

Oh, but they don’t care, they don’t. And I will die and that food will have done nothing for me, it won’t help me survive, and even if it did, what then, I would die eventually, and even if I never died, how is that any different? The electrons don’t care, the food doesn’t care, the syndicate cares, and that’s it, and I’m rushed because of it, and damn it, I care. I don’t want to care, I don’t. I will die. I will die. I will die in minutes. I will never be realized, even desperately.

Those eyes, though, they are permeating and staring at me and I have no idea how long they’ve been there but there they are. His mouth is the next thing I notice, when it says, “You are who I’m looking for?”, and then there’s a man there; he’s wearing a black vest and it doesn’t matter how he entered the quarters, does it?

Towards the Center Led By Force and Purpose, Pt. 1..

2008-01-29T03:33:00.000-05:00

In a matter of minutes an agent of the syndicate will walk through the front door of the quarters, and an indeterminate amount of time afterwards I will be dead. I won’t know that, of course, because, as I’ve already stated, I’ll be dead and incapable of knowing that very fact. It’s not really a paradox, it’s more of a desperate realization.

You know, likely I’m not going to see it coming. Maybe all of a sudden everything will just end and I won’t have any more time to reflect on my situation. I think that would be best. A pulse through the window. Or perhaps my own recognition of my own peril will consume me and, driven only by the possibility of exterminating itself, convince my heart to stop beating and all of those neurons to stop firing and my eyelids to close. I can’t stop going over it, though, and I can’t die until I’ve figured it out.

Ah… from what I remember, though, the syndicate prefers to make known their presence. Those hilarious bastards can harvest some sort of pleasure, I guess, from making me aware of my own death precisely when it happens. The last thing I’ll ever know is a pulse, a slight wisp of pain, and—nothing. Litera—

…

For a moment all of my discontent and anger is directed solely at the refrigerator for misleading me as such. It clicked on, I twitched, the door might have been opening, I knew it was the fridge, I twitched again, I lost myself, but it was right there, I picked it up and found myself again and continued feeling nothing and everything. I calm and remember that it’s not the refrigerator’s fault I’m wrapped in this scenario. There’s another one of those desperate realizations again: my refrigerator is keeping what food is within it cold, for me, but I’ll be gone. And that energy will have been directed here for absolutely no purpose. It has arrived, all the electrons, looking around, being overwhelmed with despair at having no purpose at all, and having absolutely no other choice, melting into the machinery and cooling food.

I wrote a list once of a couple hundred questions I wanted to find answers to before I died. Most were things I could look up in an encyclopedia or on the grid or what not, but a few were those questions that everybody asks that no one has ever found answers to, or at least answers that are universally true. I felt I could tackle ‘em, and now it seems more than obvious that I can’t or ever could. Come to think of it, I never even took the time to research any of the others, either. I’m going to die without knowing the modified circumference of the earth or how many atoms there were in the city or… and without having answered the more important questions, how on earth am I to know whether my knowing the answers to those questions mattered?

Well now I have no idea where I’m headed. There’s certainly no afterlife which means things could only get better… only what if I’ve grown accustomed to that idea and all of a sudden I do exist and it’s extremely dissatisfying because I was looking forward to a long rest of nothingness (of course this doesn’t make sense either because what’s the point of a rest if you can’t even realize what’s going on).

'Does it look like I promise you anything?'

2008-01-28T15:49:00.000-05:00

2008-01-24T11:08:00.000-05:00

The waters have been calm for awhile, and I don't think we're near any sharks. Food's running low, though, and I'm starting to see things. Maybe they're real?

Second Journal from the Ocean.

2008-01-16T02:32:00.000-05:00

29 December—Neptune Station. On Monday we finally created a stable cut. Damian, Andersson, and I managed to work out the magnets and it just seemed like all the other levels fell into place with a pleasant 'snap' (though most of the actual sounds are of low vibrations). To tell the truth, Andersson was the one behind it. Either she was extremely lucky or she has a way with magnets.

As a matter of fact, we dined together last night. This was after the tunnel had been active and isolated for a day or so, so I guess it was reasonable to assume that that's all she had on her mind; of course, it meant the world to me to actually be able to connect with her. Is it that odd that I see tunnels in her eyes? Or that maybe I'm staring into her eyes at all?

The active cut is, as I understand, likely to influence the power distribution more than any achievement the other teams are likely to procure. Dr. Seimhalt and I passed each other in one of the side corridors and he took absolutely no effort to acknowledge my existence. Maybe they are close to something, but I can't stop my own research, partly because it's not entirely my research, but also because it seems that this tunnel has a mind of its own.

All of a sudden there's a renewed interest in our department among management and other teams. I was called from land today, by some corporate decider who was 'proud of my work' and 'wished me the best of luck'. I try not to harbor ill will, and it's probably best I ignore it all anyway. I will say, though, that for me personally it's quite disconcerting to have this stable tunnel into the sixth dimension, albeit isolated, open. Of course we're afraid to close it because it'll likely be hell to open it up again, but I don't know how much I'm all right with just having something like that constantly open, as I sleep, only a mile or two below me. The fields will do their job, but sheesh, it gets to me somehow.

January, Fifteenth.

2008-01-15T23:38:00.001-05:00

The First Januarism..

2008-01-14T02:58:00.000-05:00

I don't feel like I'm a horrible person nor that I should be ashamed when I admit here that I am desperately afraid of my own death. Of course the act of dying isn't what I'm frightened of, it's what comes afterward, as I'm sure it is with the great many of the race that have similar fears.

Of course, it's probably not that many, now that I think about it. After you take out the devout religious folk, those that, as a part of culture, accept death without question or conflict, those that don't think enough to care, and other groups that wouldn't show up, like secular humanists that find some part of the natural world, some stratum, maybe, from which to chisel off a piece of morality and comfort regarding the state of what is greater than the universe.

What if we're just one type of intelligent creature that, in the course of finding our way to the top of the chain of planetary command, adapted using optimism towards infinity as a means to an end, and now that I find myself on top, the means are a greater hindrance than a help.

I spent nine hours of my waking day out of my room and around campus, a few of them eating, a few reading, a few playing, some time writing, walking, etc. I mean, I don't feel like I've wasted any of my time. Today was a good day, I guess. And yet when I extrapolate this... even if every day is as productive and as complete as this one (there are days more so and many more less so), I'll die having accomplished nothing and everything and everyone will forget me instantly.

It's kind of bizarre, really. The best description I've found for myself so far is (thanks to Michael Frayn for this one) an arrangement of material at a particular region of time. So basically, what's happening is that a small part of the universe is averse to changing and shifting form or melding back into the rest of it. I guess I'm a knot, and physics will undo me in time.

I'm not, though, sure that I won't come to greet my future with ambivalence or even welcome arms. Despite my angst, I probably have quite a few years left with which to conjure answers or find them should they exist already.

First Journal from the Ocean.

2008-01-14T01:46:00.000-05:00

12 December—Neptune Station. Dr. Page and Dr. Seimhalt insist they are near to isolating the necessary frequencies for the prisms, but if you ask me, it's a load of bollocks. Come January and the station reevaluates power distribution, their department is going to receive far more than their share because the snobs in upper level management haven't the slightest idea of how to distribute power despite having so much of the stuff. To be fair, I understand where Page is coming from completely, and as a person I admire her personality and she's a hell of a conversationalist (especially on a station with only a hundred souls or so). As far as her professional career goes, though, she and Seimhalt can go fuck themselves.

My mother sent me a package today. I'm not about to mention the regulations on mailed food as long as she keeps sending those cookies. Also, father is having problems with his heart again, but from her tone it's not anything serious. Of course, that's saying nothing and I know it.

Dr. Andersson has been making significant process in operating the tunneller. I don't know whether it's her dexterity with scientific instruments or her golden, flowing hair that has attracted me to her, and I'm not going to try and find out, either.

I'm going to sleep early this circade, so I'll wrap up. We're going to retry the sixth dimension tomorrow with the tunneller and, damn it, I'm going to be there this time. Hopefully it'll work. Also, hopefully Andersson won't be there, for my sake.

-Dr. Sam Whittaker.

Postscript: I'm enclosing a photograph. This was taken using the tunneller's capture lens, and I also altered the colours a bit. What you're looking at here is one of our openings into the fifth dimension. For awhile we weren't able to take pictures because the splits weren't stable enough to last long enough to photograph them, but we've improved the stabilisers significantly. This one, if I remember correctly, lasted for two minutes before it collapsed.

Book Song..

2008-01-13T02:42:00.000-05:00

All books in all libraries ought to be banned.
Though authors can script me to some other land,
my heart feels like tearing in two, for as sand,
with time, trickles out of the palm of your hand,
I finish my books, and, against my demand,
there are no more sequels or sentences, and
the ending was marvelous, touching and grand,
but to have to go back to the world, wake and stand,
knowing your world monotonously manned?
All books should be banned.

First Road Sign.

2008-01-09T01:17:00.000-05:00

It's the secret of how to start a novel, and how to continue it, and how to share it.
It's the solution to world hunger and also my hunger.
It's what you possess when you have something and want nothing else.
Those types of people radiate it, so I understand.
It's in the west or the east depending on who you are.
It's on the wings of Sputnik.
It's a sequence of colours if you want it to be. I don't, though.
It's long and involved.
More often than not, it's in 4/4, which is slightly saddening.
It's your relationship, but different, and you know it.
It's under a blanket.
It's in the dictionary, and it is the dictionary.
It's agreeing with you. You're yourself. It's also chiding for that reason.
It's the sun, but only on earth.

January, Fourth.

2008-01-04T03:40:00.000-05:00

Here's an abbreviated list of things that I would terribly like to be able to do that I currently cannot:

play the guitar.
sing.

One of the poltergeists that's always flying around me is that which is reminding me of my lampreyesque manner of musical relations. I'm taking, sucking, parasiting my way to enjoyment and status, yet returning nothing to the community. Of course, I will admit there's a large dose of hedonism at the base of this wish, however maybe I just want to be able to get along with people. I don't want to feel alone and I don't got nowhere else to belong.

In broader news, it just seems to me like everything is getting always better and always worse at the same time. As soon as I structure something, something falls apart. The darndest part about the whole shebang is that it's absolutely romantic nor anywhere as near as it might sound. I suppose that's been my problem with the past year or two of my life—I could probably deal with being emotionally distraught, hyperbole, deep night, hole in the wall but typing, able in spite. I can't channel Kierkegaard; I end up with no one recognizable because he's no one worth channeling. This, truly, is likely the first writing I've really done in over a week or two. Such truth is disheartening and disillusioning. I thought I could write, you know? And now not only can't I write, but I don't even want to try.

I hate starting paragraphs with 'I', but there it is. I knew I'd age and get all wiser and smarter and more aware of myself. Damn, it's not what it's cracked up to be.

In short, there is more than I care to think about riding on the outcome of the next four months. Probable outcome (negative, as could be expected), I keep on shuffling by and nothing happens that didn't happen in 2007.

Most optimistic prediction, however; well, I've slowly given up most hope of a large switch turning from 'off' to 'on', from 0 to 1, and all of a sudden 90 becomes 270 and Alaska becomes Argentina. Best I can see happening is kind of a cascade of small switches. Like, snap, and instantly Eli is focused and there's kind of a quelling of the sweeping need for the creation of new identities and names because, like, I know I can solve my problems or at least something good at one point, although presently broken, can be made excellent or marvelous.

2008 could be a year of CONTRIBUTION, also of REIGNITION and ORCHESTRATION and ME and CONSTRUCTION and GAME NIGHTS. Maybe my apathy'll focus itself.

Four days in, looking probable.

January, Second.

2008-01-02T03:23:00.000-05:00

When does my CV resume?

2007-12-29T17:20:00.000-05:00

If you would care to talk to me
during my static apogee
the words, because you sent ‘em,
would increase my momentum.

The lights that shine around and illuminate the room
contribute to my comfort, but my shadow splits in slices.
Likewise, my spirit isn’t whole for I spend time with different folks
and, snap! It parts. It parts in earnest due to what entices.

Looking For Something.. resumes January.

Land Coast!

2007-12-11T02:00:00.001-05:00

Why, I'm off for the month of December, not from what I'm looking for (and hence this blog will still exist), but rather from the form of school and every other thing it brings.

C*******s is coming and I'm just not in the mood or in the care or in the season. That's not my fault, though, the ice storm is in Missouri for the second year in a row, with my grandparents, who need it less than I do. Of course, there are probably people my age in Missouri with grandparents in Indiana who are praising the Lord for the same phenomenon.

Forty-five minutes thirty-three seconds later, I'm no more musically talented, I'm just forty-five minutes thirty-three seconds later.

I'd be up for learning to dance, if you think you can teach me, and if you think we deserve each other, and if you think you're the right person.

Keep it up! Keep it up! Keep it up!

'Fly' and 'Freesnow'.

2007-12-08T03:59:00.000-05:00

So Whatcha Want..

2007-12-03T14:57:00.000-05:00

WHY, LANGUAGE IS PERFECTLY ADEQUATE.

fire!

Yes I suppose it is all fine and dandy to read and discuss Frank O'Hara, but in that time couldn't I write something almost as worthwhile and thrice as present?

I WILL DIE
why wasn't multitasking drilled into my kindergarten friends and I? I will die

I DON'T KNOW
I DON'T CARE

Go home, son. You're not built for walls, you're not prepared for them or literature in classes or through glasses. Go be safe. No, I'm serious.

Box Kites of Four Dimensions.

2007-11-29T00:20:00.000-05:00

your head is closest to an oval.
there's no pure geometric shape that's more of a match
but let's not assume an oval is a good fit, either.
I can only look at it in two dimensions
and so it is difficult to verbalize it, it, it,
there's a nose in the way,
but I can make myself ignore that if I need to,
and there're several sockets spread along the surface
but I guess it's necessary to have them

stop nodding, girl, you need not apologize

3423981827371:.

2007-11-20T00:42:00.000-05:00

Nigel! Eh Nigel!

There's no part of this screen that's not moving. The screen here is so soothing, so soothing it's nauseating. But it wasn't always like this and the blues and the greens have a habit of making me think it's the first day all over again. I know it's happening, I can't stop it, I don't want to stop it, I hate that screen. All the acids flying. All the colours flying.

She's going to die. She's not, and neither is he, but she will. He'll die too.

Nigel!

'Where's my drink, mate?'

Unimportant, Nigel. Listen to me.

Why is retrieval so difficult?

'I'm still thirsty!'

'... yes, I know, Mr. Nigel, just one moment, Mr. Nigel...'

Nigel! Nigel!

She was only fourteen. Well, I do what I do.

The Future is Predictable..

2007-11-18T16:19:00.000-05:00

Well dag. I've still got that cold. I realised that I was hungry last night in all my blowing my nose and so I cooked myself a potato and it was all cold on the inside. To think we can cure AIDS and cancer and public transportation is everywhere for cheap and we still haven't improved on the microwave oven...

I've been using that telephone. It was fun for awhile, but no one's reacting how I expected them to and you know they have this new model (like, in the present) out that improves on hologram technology, so maybe this was my entire technology archaeophilia era. And it's over. Dag, it's not fun and it doesn't solve my problems.

I'm going to go eat out with my friend here in a few minutes. Honestly, I just want some hot food. That's not unreasonable, is it?

The Future is Boring..

2007-11-17T15:57:00.000-05:00

I felt sick, so I walked to the pharmacy, and I picked up the cards for the Sudafed, which is kept behind the counter, but then before I knew it the cards for some albums and some futons were also in my hand, and they too are kept behind the counter. Maybe I was planning on lying on the futon while listening to the music while my sinuses cleared up? Why do they even have cards for those things?

Maybe they need to have, like, maybe, a card for NO CARDS. That'd be new.

I've been thinking of trying to find my old wireless landline telephone. I think it's in one of the boxes out in a garage... maybe going back to a simpler technology would be better for me. I don't know.

Earthquakes Call Us to the Things of this World.

2007-11-13T18:26:00.000-05:00

My future and my past are slightly jagged corkscrews,
all my adverbs accordioned across that path,
which, itself, always wants to keep moving!
But forces keep it, along with me, encircling
(a simple machine if I ever saw one).
All my dates and times and places reduce to segments,
coordinates along a the rocky schedule.
Intangibles, in prisms, in atmosphere, inertia.
So if I want to see you, I have to scout a point;
orient myself so I fall into place,
the jigsawed system, we the final pieces
slam with enough force to knock some earbuds out.
Reorient what swings me to vertical
and we are falling, or sliding, sick and standoffish,
crusty, with old plans and trajectories latent on the mantle.
It's a good thing that I'm used to this climate,
for I know in my core that I am never exiting:
ad nauseam 3-D timecircles lack the momentum
to swing me free into uncharted, open space,
oceans, prairies, deserts, Fridays, encounters.

Vector: 11 November, 2007..

2007-11-11T20:58:00.000-05:00

I'm on the verge again. I'm on the verge.

I'm not extremely close, though. But I am close.

The Tinted Word I.

2007-11-08T19:24:00.000-05:00

Your Grand Sublimation..

2007-11-06T17:59:00.000-05:00

Waves and wind and nebulae
(aeronautics, astronautics, oceanography)...
If I was to traverse you, would I find you agree?

I'm afraid for your evaporating soul;
as you delete, I cannot shift to alternate control,
nor can I enter, they've locked a cap for toll

and I don't have the means or homes or ends
to pay for liberation for you, for my sake or your friends'
and so you will just disappear between the exosphere and catch the bends.

DASH 'EM!

2007-11-05T02:29:00.000-05:00

If I was twice your width, I'd kill you.

(to be screamed)

'All music is repetition, which is a major problem.
What is repetition for? For? Seven—eight?'
'Correction; the world is not constructed wif dashes.
Today's pioneers reside in hyphen-houses because
with the same supply one can make twice the
punctuated projects in half-time. And besides,
aren't we about reticulate-community, and isn't it selfish
to demand that much space? With the em dash?
Cut yourself in half or convert to hyphonics.'
'That's ridiculous.'
'What a waste of a good line. You could have said
"That's ridiculous, and I feel sad about it."'

Convincing Points..

2007-11-04T12:09:00.000-05:00

Fully charged Quantumsex, irreducilbly complex

yellow laterostreetmarkers, Fridays

—

She formed a bloodstream reticulatorium
(after the skeletal moratorium)
and I could see in her...
eyes [?]
... .

—

ENCAPSULATE MUSIC, LINGUISTICS

—

In America, bread® comes in sticks®,
consumoresearchquantumtestedorganicoined,
bred in Styx.

—

Your honor, if I was and still am doing my duty for the genome,
if you really think about it,
how am I in any sense, guilty?
We don't wish for the best parts of our species to die
and so if I have, in my time,
slaughtered a few enemies, or perhaps
fucked a few good Christian girls,
it was for survival or reproduction,
plus, between you and me, aren't they the best kind?

—

I don't know what perspective to skew anymore...

Five Minutes in Dawkins..

2007-11-03T17:22:00.000-04:00

'...seductiveness raised power explain improbable unlikely evades improbability riddle stupendous restatement grotesque amplification anthropic answer general discussing capable producing existence determines therefore zones physicists vary everything unknown imagine numbers freer diameter needed twiddle unsatisfying plausible setup eventual almost theoretical analogy sentenced reflect missed bribed suggestion universes multiverse megaverse constants bylaws plethora alternative presumably happen propitious intriguing theory ultimate values destined stabilise equilibrium reverse culminating models expansion cycle billion serial initiated terminated previous understands singularities conceivable forever accordion parallel biogenic daughter mutated selection reproduce predominate...'

Почему? (Илья, не знают. Они некрасивые.)

2007-11-02T23:44:00.000-04:00

A.
—How would you relate that line to the rest of the poem?
—I understand, but to do so would require a poem in itself.

B.
—An imposition of decode. Colourly chatterbox.
—But flip back and look at the date! Commentary abound!
—Focus. We zoom in. A-F, stop, G-Z.

C.
—You shall, then, connectit.
—Why? She is trying to make a statement.
—NO! I have made a statement already!
—.... but we... we had an argument together...
—No. Too many statements.

D.
—Unfortunately, your time is UP.

50,000 Appreciations!

2007-11-01T11:41:00.000-04:00

November, you elegant, relevant, prevalent, marvelous, torturous, tortuous, splendid bastard!

Welcome back, old friend.

Twelve Amps, John..

2007-10-30T22:28:00.000-04:00

I feel like that one guy from Apollo 13. There's the scene where they're all in the planning room, and the flight director is taking suggestions as to what to do with the ship to get it back to earth. All of a sudden, this guys stands up and makes it known that they have to cut back on power usage immediately in order to keep the command module working for reentry. Even though everybody hates the idea, they know he's right. Barring a conspiracy, Apollo 13 made it back home.

I'm on the U.S.S. Western World. With our current way of making music, we are going to run out of new songs far before we splashdown. We need to turn almost everything off. LPs should be illegalised, and EPs should me limited to 2 songs, maximum. Artists must be limited to releasing one of these every two years at the most. Otherwise, we're going to, like, blow up in space or something.

Twenty-Six Letters...

2007-10-28T03:23:00.000-04:00

Animals are not gears. One may not simply perfect one and move on to another. Also, animals are not perfect.

'We have a tendency towards entropy.'

And all of a sudden I could feel my feet being pulled down beneath the sand, millions of troglodytes and billions of neophytes lapping at the wind and there was no one there to die along with me.

'We kill alone, we die alone, we are born alone.'

There is your name, your name in lights, your name in pixels. Your mouth is foreign, whether or not it is smiling.

'We would trade our eyes for chocolate.'

My only weapons left are the scythe, because it draws its power from vocabulary, and the scimitar, because it is there.

'We sing out of key, and yet the door still unlocks.'

You haven't ignited your face in days.

'We slurp your hair and sip your saliva.'

I can't hold this portal open much longer, and I need you to go through it now, before they come through that door.

'We are tall and mathematical to the point of literature.'

Animals are not animals. One may not simply treat them as such. Also, animals are not treats.

'We sense your keyboard and locate you.'

If I could have said something, I would have, but I didn't know... I just didn't know...

'We have working screens working vicariously, working wills and the will to work.'

I love you. There, I said it.

'We watch watches.'

I love you.

'We knead your want into edible logic pie.'

I love you.

'We siphon your organs into what can and cannot be used.'

I love you.

'We are the shallow shadows.'

I love you.

'We are the next generation.'

I love you.

'We are the choreographers and authors and chefs and engineers and writers.'

I love you.

'We do not need you.'

I love you.

'We do not.'

I love you.

I love you.

'We are flying over cities and signing contracts and singing compacts and citing contacts. We need nothing and we desire nothing and yet everything is ours. We need everything, we desire everything, of course, of course. We are transportation and communication. We are your sisters. Nothing is evitable under us, nothing is rainy under our sky.'

You are rain.

Maturation Axiom..

2007-10-24T23:35:00.000-04:00

As one becomes less cloistered,
the world becomes less oystered.

There's a Sphere Hovering Over the Arctic.

2007-10-23T20:35:00.000-04:00

Why, I have the blues. In all fairness, I also have some reds, greens, and a turquoise. But of course I have the blues.

Why, I think I need to take it easier. Maybe I should listen to bluegrass and skip out on the soft drinks for awhile and cut back on the pace. Eli couldn't get away from any of it, and look what happened to him...

Why? Everybody wants something. Everything is conflict. Death through inaction is sounding strikingly appealing about now; that is, not letting other people walk all over me to the point of a gruesome expiration, but rather everyone lying down in the middles of streets and rooms and just dying. Calm... calm... calm. Calm.

Why, yes.

Why I Try to Avoid Deep Arguments These Days..

2007-10-22T03:02:00.001-04:00

Where is the fun in climbing into a catapult to be shot into a gargantuan void of striped blackness and whiteness where there is neither an exit nor a window and within which there is no way of deducing the answers of the questions that the void compels one to answer for no real reason other than pride or instinct, and after all of this one ends up materialising at the exact same location days later in time from the departure point and knowing paradoxically less than when one left?

Flight of the Albatross.

2007-10-20T04:21:00.000-04:00

What person, place, or thing was silent now?
With Earth ending, what reason did exist
to remain quiet, scruples adhered to?

And in the streets were humans wearing masks
to keep the toxins separate from their lungs,
their dogs expired, lying in the streets
and decomposing into nothing new.
The last surviving men cavorted ‘round
parading, driving, slaughtering their kin,
raping former wives of friends and foes.
Tomorrow, none of this would be intact.

And woman also killed her fellow kind
with knives and other weapons free to grab
now that the world was surely doomed to roast.
They cracked the necks of children to prevent
the cries of pain from adding to the din,
then trampled off to find spontan’ous sex.

And yet there still remained a hint of mind
in vari’us individu’ls here and there…
they talked infrequently about the sights,
the helicopters planted in the sky,
the winds constantly blowing gale-force gusts,
the crimsons mixed with oranges in cascades
that fell along the skyline and were lost.
Always, more helicopters on the scene.

And countless rotors never stopped their spin,
they levitated choppers as to fly
across terrain and drop a payload which
was unknown to the oldest of pilots
and in all likelihood unknown to all.
The copters, tens of thousands up above,
refused to stop their cycling blades for God
machine, physics, philosophy, or man.
They coldly peppered black the warmish sky.

And Agatha was watching this unfold
as it had done for weeks on end so far,
commented on by pundits on viewscreens
and politicians, if they existed.
Her bluish eyes contrasted with the reds
that shaded the apocalyptic sky;
her hair of red contrasted with her eyes
that looked forlornly at the foreign scene
and tried to figure out what this day meant.

And while she sighed and waited for her time,
the mural through the window lumbered on,
unfolding as a movie or a dream.
All matter was collapsing on her spot.
In a matter of hours, all’d be gone.
What mattered anymore? Why even think?
It would be minutes now… perhaps seconds…

And at that very moment, with such force
the ceiling disappeared and in its place,
the roof now gone and only sky above,
an Albatross! With eyes of brightest green
and wings of purest white spread out in span
that must have, tip to tip, been fifty feet.
This bird was marvelously present tense
and looked expectantly into the eyes
of Agatha, who understood and knew
her ride had come and it was time to fly.

And with fervor, confusion, and the like
she climbed on back of Albatross and rose
above the hoards of logical zombies
and into scarlet skies across the bay.

And Agatha looked back towards the land
before she vanished into backwards time
which manifested as a bright blue light
inducing nostalgia in travelers.
Someday she would arrive back at this time,
the Albatross returns eventually…

Julius, Caesura.

2007-10-20T02:10:00.000-04:00

I've found my place in history--it comes
with breathing room and seething room. So how,
then, plastered with enjambment (still prepared,
amenitied, sanitised) could I fail?
I request! a book, a scribe, a pen:
amanuensis, write me down. Also, in
learning from the past (for safety's sake)
all of my rivals shall be slaughtered. Hail!

Translations..

2007-10-18T14:23:00.000-04:00

I cannot understand
a word of Polish, though
all that I have to know
relating to the land
is that what I can hear
was written by a man
in languages he can
relate to his career.
If he can write them well
in stanzas, words, and lines
of mortals and divines,
it rings a sylla-bell...
this is the poet's role.
Thus, anyone's a Pole.

The Mephistophelic Manifesto..

2007-10-18T02:32:00.000-04:00

I've grown taller with people, the people in my age group. Together we heightened and widened and lengthened, we learned to drive and to derive, we walked. Some changed their hair colour, some changed their ideas, most altered. No one, of course, had any idea what we were doing, but somewhere along the line one of us got the impression that our parents were different than us, that the entire earth didn't exist except for a small slice that we had been born into and were presently surviving within. The USSR was a name in a book and nothing more; the eastern hemisphere itself was a conspiracy. Now that we realise, though, that we are not special or powerful or at all separate from our parents (and some have yet to come to this, even), our eyes roll back into our skulls and we it is decided for us that we shall float with no control through adulthood, creating children of our own and deploying signs and snares for them in the style of our own experiences.

We are not to this point yet, however. Now I and my fellows are in the university setting, and we know now that picturing ancient Egypt as anything more than stylised hieroglyphics is tantamount to containing the entire universe in a box within the mind. No one can be blamed, of course. It's not our fault and we had no choice in the matter.

And at this moment in space I am picturing a girl I know, knew, will know. She is growing as I am; I see her at intervals where the paths of our patterns (represented as weighted red lines) curve around each other and occasionally collide. The slivers are enough to show me her progressions and yet far enough apart to keep her transgressions hidden... no matter. All I am able to think about is our past and our future, how it is carpeted all around us and how she will grow older and more beautiful and a tad taller and how I am depressingly happy that I have the chance to decompose into adulthood with her and her shifting, static image.

9:00 I.

2007-10-17T03:34:00.000-04:00

Lovely in your mind, in your mouth
Coming from your alphabet
Flight! Don't tel me you're uncoloured
because you aren't! (although you might be)
Flying forward somehow, isn't it unfair
how you force me to be an albatross
birds are certainly fun though
My name is, my name is... albatross

(away from me...

Nuclear Smash!

2007-10-14T01:17:00.000-04:00

Only This… Lifetime…

Happening gladly I watch as it looms
over tree tops and banks making shade in their rooms
and explicity we understand that we’re safe
of course that’s a fallacy quite wont to chafe;
nitrogen flows from the cracks in the wall
where I failed to apply enough nuclear caulk
and my love is next door just like all yesterday
while we wait for the half-life to stop the decay.

Postwλr Pλrenting

Alpha-Particle Rhyme Time

Dream of U-238 split?
Postponement of nucleus reduction?
Fusion machine powering a farmer’s vehicle?
Bomb-induced avian navigational abnormality?
Group around a ‘fungal’ detonation sight?
Word meaning ‘within a nuclear holocaust’?
Fissionable material from a skull?
Chaos caused by fissionable material?

The Philosophy

If the world was to go to war again, I think it might as well be nuclear. We have the technology, we have the will, we have the strategy. I would say it is fitting for the human race in its madness to end up destroying itself via the same technology it used to build itself up to the level it is currently at, though that’s too easy; in actuality, it would probably be more fitting if the entire species and the planet that serves it just kept on building and building into pseudo-eternity with no end in sight. The universe is boring enough for such an unhappy nonending. At least with nuclear detonation we would arrive at some kind of finite finishing, a definite closing to complement the definite beginning. If offered the choice to live forever any sane person would (unless there is an argument I am unaware of) decine said option, though to have the opportunity to live for a ridiculously long increment of time would be a significantly potential plus (providing the long increment is both short enough not to be reasonably compared with the insanity-inducing eternity of the previous option and spent in the company of enough continuing culture to keep oneself occupied). Perhaps the same is true of a species. For us to live forever, somehow, insanity would have to enter into the equation at some point because those equations would simply keep adding up forever and ever until the humans of the far future would hold in their polymered hands a jumbled mess of unintelligible math-mush. And my grandchild would be born, he would learn to learn and count until, when he was my age, he would look back and say the exact same things and look forward and say the exact same things—at the same time, the organism created when we all act our parts as neurons in the grand species-brain would be moaning in sickness and senselessly crying over the prospects and past years it had been alive. Were it able to think, it would say it could not accurately describe its status as ‘alive’, and since it would not be able to think its speculated speculation would be correct. Time and time and time and time and time and thousands of times and time and time over will kill anything. Or maybe give the universe fifteen billion years and whatever makes its home inside it will have adapted to a safe life length: long enough to live and accomplish some objectiveless task yet short enough to retain one’s marbles.

If the world was to go to war again, I think it should be nuclear. It’d be unpredictably fashionable and would please the nonexistent celestial spectators for its value as a plot twist.

3:30 pm..

2007-10-13T18:34:00.000-04:00

Today is Saturday and I have
spite in my cart,
light in my art,
flight on a chart,
night from Descartes,
and pyrite in my heart.

MINISTRY OF RELATIONS ADDRESSES 'ALL TAKEN' RUMOURS, MANY RESPOND.

2007-10-10T04:04:00.001-04:00

BLOOMINGTON, IN, Oct. 10--The Ministry of Relations today, in response to claims of the availability of wild type females in the general population suitable for long-term relationships with, released a statement confirming, more or less, what had been circulating. 'We are neither confirming nor denying the presence of girls that are both (1) wonderful and (2) not already in a relationship, however the science has so far indicated a much higher probability of such parameters being mutually exclusive than not,' the briefing stated. Officials are, nonetheless, shocked that the MR has taken such a public position on the issue; at the same time, few are fazed by the research. Zoë Llovt, noted psychiatrist and frontwoman of the post-post-rock band Zoë Llovt & the Sertralines, said that she was 'initially surprised. When I thought about it, though, yeah, you have those people that're going to be angry by the official comment and yeah, there are going to be mistakes made. But I think it's a good thing and high time that the Ministry publish this. The sooner everyone comes to some kind of consensus on this the sooner we can figure out what to go or where to do next.' MR administrators themselves were, as expected, unavailable for comment. The Minister of Forecasting, Rev. Schtarmza B. Komen, held a press conference on the impact such a public frame of thought might have on the way the MFC performs its jobs. When asked whether or not the MFC would seriously consider scientific speculation (alongside the regular methods of runecasting, time travel, et al) into its predictions regarding the odds Eliia as a whole enters into a relationship any time soon, Rev. Komen commented, 'Well, I'm sure it will factor in somehow or other. The MFC is always looking for new, innovative thoughts and all, but science... how much can science truly say about love?' It is likely this story will progress further as the Minister of Biology has scheduled a rare 'fireside chat' to be broadcast at 9:00 pm EST today. Undoubtedly the subject of available women will be brought up and it will be interesting to see how the Minister tackles this issue.

Wavelengths at Midnight, the height of her Hair...

2007-10-10T03:34:00.000-04:00

My digital clock displayed two forty-five
in spite of the naturalist argument that
although said display said the time, it was not,
and whether that meant our small earth was forlorn
or simply that I owned a clock that was wrong,
?
I'm coloured in rainbows that lighten my skin
you're shaded with charcoal that frightens my cat
she's tinted by tachometer jactitations
?
ABC DEF
colour me treble clef
GHI JKL
shade me Emmanuel
MNO PQR
tint me to leave a scar
STV V... V, um...

and what an absolute pest you are sometimes, Anna.

Coreolic Fire.

2007-10-09T03:43:00.000-04:00

LEIF
Pardon me, but isn't this,
atom bombs exploding in
deathly clouds of hazy sin,
finally the denouement
planet Earth's been waiting for?

MĒSHA
Out the window, plenty more
death spheres make their way to ground.
Orchestra of sweet relief
following the toxic reef?
Playing to the soft brigade
Sunday comes and Sunday leaves,
darkening all Christmas Eves.
Maybe, friend, you are correct.
Terra Prime is at its close.

LEIF
Toss me, then, into the throes.

Architecture & Furnishings..

2007-10-05T14:51:00.000-04:00

Happy Birthday Sputnik; Goodnight, Moon..

2007-10-04T02:22:00.000-04:00

Many years ago there was a man and there was a woman.

They walked the earth together in harmony, talking to each other, singing the same songs at the same times. They watched flowers grow, trees lose their leaves in winter, animals run and die and play. When they looked into each other's eyes they saw their own reflection, and below the reflection, the truth of the other.

Over time massive walls erupted from the earth. Buildings nine miles high and twice as long and four times as wide grew from the bedrock of the earth in uncontrollable swarms so awful and fantastic at the same time. Water stopped flowing through brooks and in its place bolts of electricity and information traversed the rivers of the world.

The man and the woman were, for the first time, separated. Somehow they had found themselves in different locations, both surrounded by unfamiliar sights and a despair brought on by being alone in the staggeringly endless crowd of humans. He did not know where she was, and she did not know where he was.

And so the man called out to God: 'I cannot find rhythm anymore--these houses and roads are molding with no rhyme or reason! Where is my love? Has she died with everyone else?'

And the woman likewise: 'My love has vanished across the plains, he has evaporated into the stillness of the din and without him I cannot hear myself think or love or cry!'

And the Lord understood the pain of the couple. He walked along the planes of dimensions higher than human numbers have the power to express and from the finest quarry in heaven moulded a sphere. He hung it in the heavens, closer to earth than any other object in the entire cosmos, lit by the same light as that of the earth.

When the man and the woman saw the orb glimmering from its position in space, they knew they were looking into the eyes of their companion, for in spite of the horribly spliced mix of culture and humanity separating them, they were individually identical and knew exactly where they were.

And God said that it was marvelous.

Sixteen Dimensions..

2007-10-02T22:20:00.000-04:00

What Does Prematurity Feel Like?

2007-10-02T18:24:00.000-04:00

(excerpted from The Story of Dynamo Pullman)

When the guard pulled the trigger, there was no sound. Despite the firearm having caused an immense ripple through the air in the chamber, however, time had stopped and there was no way for it to be recognised. At the exact same moment, the bullet had left the barrel, passed through skin, bone, organs, skin again, then air, disintegrating into the fabric of nothingness. Zückerman lurched once, ever so slightly, and yet this too, this cacophonic convulsion of his doomed body, was completed in no time whatsoever. He was dying, but in that moment such trivialities were indistinguishable. All stopped.

Though Dynamo was able to think in the temporally crystallised wisp of nothing they were trapped in, the threads of his thought remained perfectly still. He was aware of himself only through the irreverent repetition. Millions of lines ran through a single point in spacetime; airplanes and trains collided, attempting to occupy the same space at the same time.

Zückerman's eyes were perfectly centered, as if they both were endeavoring to say something and, having discovered that the eyes is not a mechanism for narration, were screaming as loud as possible in the only ways they knew how. All of him was trying to pour out nonsensical amounts of information, an entire life's worth! A childhood, adolescence, adulthood amounting to this eternity? Whatever natural laws that govern the physics of Earth were hard at work. Repairing an eternity's cache of illogic in a period of not time whatsoever... and everything would have broken down into unintelligible static if there had existed time to do so.

A mass deletion of memory and future caused by an infintesimally small trajectory collapsed to a point. This never ended. Somewhere we are all locked in this stasis...

Then with ridiculous colour and realistic immensity, the room rocketed back into place, and Wolfgang A. Zückerman collapsed to the chilled floor of the cell, dead.

Stop deluding myself. (the nest is Guernica.)*

2007-10-02T00:59:00.000-04:00

At eight I was brilliant with my body
destroying birds and stealing and crying
palindromic numbers fascinated me and I used paper liberally.
Physical items forming connections through my darling continuum
so I can travel, or could travel
and the figure of God materialized in front of my eyes and physical items

I came here because I was god in my own right.
I am raw power and untamed creativity
Or at least I was, or at least I was told so.
Wave hand colour erupt death squeal smash.
Coordinates, flying bears, dancing bears in doorways.
I am the ultimate authority on rhymes and circles and airplanes, or I was.
Perhaps I was just drawing pictures
But I destroyed birds, and now the nest is Guernica, and that is a picture.

In Illinoise I was brilliant.
In Massachusetts I was brilliant.
And now I have that power developed
and now I will destroy birds for life, in real lives
I kill everything
I collapse my continuum
Alphabet soup disintegrates because of my commands shouted to the universe.
I kill everything.

*(This poem has been reviewed. I know it is confusing, smashed, mashed, and disconnected. If you are the one that reviewed this originally and are under the impression that I have shrugged off your suggestions and questions, I want you to know that such shrugging isn't my intention. To the rest of you, this piece is an exercise based on a poem by Gary Soto; please don't sue me, Gary, I'm giving you credit. Apologies if I have offended anyone, said apologies extending to the bounds of common sense.)

In The Meantimes..

2007-10-01T21:52:00.000-04:00

Pointing..

2007-09-29T03:28:00.001-04:00

Point! A trip to Meijer reminds me of an often overlooked symptom of consumption (taking a far backseat to oil et al): packaging. Everything comes in a box and for some reason or other (food spoilage, sanitation, aesthetics, et al) everything must come in the box. What happens to the boxes? Later a drink from Speedway in a plastic cup that will never be used again, using a straw that will never be used again--the straw itself wrapped in discarded plastic. Recycling is one thing, but it has too many issues to ever really work. I suggest Reusing. Fill a mug; give the earth a hug.

Point! 'The Office' is overrated, or at least it cannot possibly live up to what it has become. When comedy is reduced to gushy, romantic water-cooler conversation the following day and the key force driving the show is a sweet romantic plot thread, it's time to reassess your situation.

Point! I have a new hat. Now I have two hats. One is this kind of brownish striped cap that I've had for a week or so, and I purchased a cheap, um, something else. I don't know hat terminology, I apologize. (As an aside, the hat was labeled with plastic and paper that I threw into the trash without any attention whatsoever. Should I mourn their retirement or something?)

Point! When I really try to deduce why I do anything, I end up with the idea that I have no free will whatsoever because I cannot for the life of me remember immediately ex post facto my reasonings or train of thought leading up to the action. I miss my free will.

Point! No new music can be created; all that can be done is the composition of stylised covers of older tunes paired with different words.

Point! 'You are what you eat' is the greatest aphorism I have to combat my evolution to Chinahood. 'You are what you have' would make me instantaneously Asian. Of course in retrospect either would land me in a factory somehow or other.

Fratricide Futurism..

2007-09-27T01:37:00.000-04:00

It's Worth Analysing More, For I Met a Metaphor.

2007-09-26T22:19:00.000-04:00

Adaptation in Senses, Unnatural Complaining.

Adaptive optics are, according to NOVA, how to see through my atmosphere. Odd that I’m blowing it at myself with my cheaper instruments. The temperature here is fine , and I’ve walked to a room with A/C in order to let my roommate, who had just walked in when I had left, go to sleep. There is a girl sleeping here too so whatever;

now I am lying down in this here hallway, it’s chilly enough. I’ve calmed down significantly from that NOVA. I’ve cooled down. NOVA told me a black hole was at the center of the galaxy, something caused by wicked cold and deathly hot temperatures. Odd I’ve got fans running. And listen to all that noise in the background:

some kind of music, a static hum-fan, my respiratory system, my muscular and skeletals through this here pen. I’m thirsty enough for a drink, granted that would create more noise, but it’d sure calm me down, or cool me,

or silence this here trachea. Does the carpet seem indolent in repeating itself or is that just me?

It’s not something to cry about but if you’re already sniffles from a cold that might be acceptale. And after all, the carpet’s okay, especially with adaptable optics.

The Response to the Response.

Scott tells me I have a message! Hallelujah!

She tells me I am angry! Grrrrrr!!

Get out of my way, commas & periods!

Kathleen: 'You can't read your own work.'

A dichotomous item mash!

'WE ARE REMINDING YOU OF YOURSELF.'

and, as an, ah... aside, I like your bow, Becky.

I am inside when I make my jokes.

How exactly do I pull this off the page?

What might I do with the rhymes of this poem?

Count to 10.

'My Party Has Died of Dysentery And I Have Scribed My Epitaph in 8 Parts.'

2007-09-24T21:04:00.000-04:00

Here lies Eli T. Drumm
or at least he would have lied here
had his last requests not included incinerating his expired body.
-
Polymath, a true Renaissance Man of modern times,
aspirer, lover, philosopher until the end.
Surely the species has lost a fine asset!
-
Of course let's not get ahead of ourselves.
We all know Eli was an incredibly pretentious, judgmental bastard.
I mean, he wrote his own epitaph in third person.
How ridiculous can you get, y'know?
-
Unsure of himself, unsure of others, or of nature or God.
A life spent in the void of this uncertainty
coupled with a wicked sense of humour
and a good, solid, American, Christian upbringing
yielded the fellow you knew or did not know
and the fellow you see before you now, dead
(except he's not actually here, but we've been over this).
-
At this moment, he is either existing or not.
-
Brother, son, owner of his dog and cat.
Friend (often enigmatic but certainly well-intentioned),
lover (or at least he would have been if there existed such a thing
as a functioning, loving, emotional, intelligent, deep, abstract female,
and statistically there was/is though they never met).
-
Astronaut, extraterrestrial, meteorologist in every sense of the word.
-
My life was perfect.

I Should Be Asleep Right Now..

2007-09-23T04:19:00.001-04:00

I am starting to think that my mind knows what is better for me than I do. There's this absolutely brilliant and terrifying spectrum of noise around me all the time and then again I only perceive the slightest bits of it now and again. Something is only music if I want it to be music, if I tell it to be music, the same way that this hall is not as beautiful as a canyon or cat or Calgary or Christine at all. And yet it is. Of course it is. Every single minute detail even in this small hall on the ceiling, feeling the same way I always do during an intense session of stargazing. You just look at the carpet and for a moment let go of all your inhibitions and what you're trying to tell yourself about the carpet, everything your mind-knows-best attitude says about the carpet being a uniform plane on which to walk and nothing else, no abnormalities, nothing worth paying attention to, and you begin to feel angry at the people that might have dropped the hint a long, long, time ago that this carpet wasn't worth looking at. The dots, each one of which enough atoms to feed a continent, with enough persona to love for all time, to never know all the facts about. And I feel this way. It comes at me when I try to leave my place in the middle of things, when I try to reach out to other spectra of size, smaller or larger, mildly more minute, like the carpet, or incredibly vastly larger bodies than myself. Maybe they can think, Jupiter or these weaves of coloured fabric I walk on. Likely it is that they have their own lives, their own families, their own happy suns and daughters and sons. In fact, I probably believe in that more than I believe in the sentience and/or sapience of most humans I know, biology and common sense aside. But please! Let me communicate with them! I cannot reach out to them, talk to them, get to know their dreams or if they even have dreams or words or minds like ours. Such a disconnect exists between what our dictionaries, such horrible, closed-minded things, call life and what life actually is. Even if we are the only aware, aware things in the entire galaxy, wouldn't it be horrible if we went about our entire lives believing wholeheartedly that life is a separate distinction? The Philosophy of Biology reigns supreme over our arrogance, even my arrogance, or, more accurately, the arrogance of a mind that tells me to ride certain coasters and skip others, skip the majority. Don't you want to hear the sounds you never hear, touch the signs and smell the colours that you can never feel ordinarily? And yet I know, I know, I know, I know that to ask for such a wonderful and wonderful and aforementionedly terrifying gift would kill anyone. There are reasons why we only perceive small fractions of sensory input. Come on. I am Winfield, I am human, I am somewhere in the preposterous middle between nuclear physics and behemoth galactic clusters. I have to be where I am, I have to know all about where I am, and I have absolutely no idea why. For some reason, although opposites attract enough, I must pay attention solely to my kind, my size. This is all geographical. And isn't it odd, everything is smaller and larger than me at the same time. I sat up a few minutes ago and all of a sudden I was struck with an intense feeling of wrong placing. Or perhaps that's not the right word for it, but it was something... along those lines... something that existed and was telling me that everything I was looking at and ever had looked at was wrong, that there should have been other snippets in different places, a strikingly dazzling girl walking toward me at deep dusk in a field of grass with a startled and imperative look on her face, a woman crying, her face bleeding for some generic war problem, someone worshiping something, maybe God, who knows, Hands, length, width, bubbles, a cityscape, a human being wishing for solace, solace, solace, solace, solace, solace, solace, solace, solace, solace, solace, solace, solace, solace, solace. And, and. More noise. Someone's coming. Divert myself, divert yourself. Help me. Help yourself. Now I am decaying. I decay. Stop me, or pardon, it's just too late. I want connection. I want connection please. Look at me. I want connection.

Her Attempt at Conversion.

2007-09-20T23:44:00.001-04:00

On a street somewhere with asphalt reflecting sunlight into my glasses
inside with water reflecting words into my ears
there's a girl talking to me from across the table with a name, but of course I don't know what it is
Again and again pelted by stimulation of my ears and eyes
trying to make sense of either of them but all the information is so damn disjointed
Confusing, Disconnected, Mingled, Sliced, Seasoned, Coloured, Colourless...
(I hear those scientists haven't perfected the polarised earmuffs yet)
So hey, what's wrong, what's wrong. What's wrong with me
tell me so that I might, tell me, tell me, tell me,
but all I get is just those disjointed words all over again
with different patterns sprinkled with copyrighted confetti so difficult to get off of your face or out of your ears
shredded books of love, of love in my hair
but it's my hair and a part of me will always hate her for it
Yeah, smile, smile, smile, reboot, read, smile
Let me have those headphones in your bag and I'd tell you just how horrid your music is
with all the same progressions and professions and transgressions
too many and yet they're always right there and I can't insult them.
Reboot, read, smile.
Where am I?
Where am I going? Where am I? Tell me, tell me, tell me.
But the asphalt it just too much and it boils over into my subconscious
tells me something is wrong, takes control, but no, I can control it for a little longer
Much of it all makes sense, tell me, tell, tell!

Sertraline..

2007-09-20T01:47:00.000-04:00

I Can't See Straight or At All..

2007-09-14T22:24:00.000-04:00

Please help me I am driven by my drives
But all I want is love, somehow, rromance
Mail order substance X from Paris, France
Or meld me with some other peoples' lives
Or plant me in a radiant new shell
Or mind control the females in the yard
Or teach me how to lose my natural guard
Perform your actions fast and now and well
For I grow so impatient waiting on
A Love? A wife? A toy? A 'her'? A thing?
We're all so tired from the fast running
I'd take whatever, pack up and be gone
Aw, hell, I'm still at my computer screen
Deciphering what the hell these syllables mean

Trials of the Modern Comedian: 1.

2007-09-14T17:29:00.001-04:00

Group; Nongroup; Companionships?

2007-09-13T22:23:00.000-04:00

Mankind is not unique
in that he can talk and speak;
though with others we'd much rather,
we lose wisdom when we gather.

So today was the sort of fluctuating updown that would, um, never mind. I guess I'm still looking for cool individuals around college, and there are far less of them than I had originally anticipated. I find myself anxious that the people I meet don't care to spend time with me even when I doubt it to be true. Whether or not there is anyone, statistics prevents me from finding people, though I have leads. Tonight was promisingly spectacular, and we'll all see where it all goes when it walks and talks toward the future.

I don't think I believe in free will.

When Dealing with the Basics..

2007-09-11T13:59:00.000-04:00

Repel! Repel! Repel! Repel! Repel! Repel! Repel! Repel! Repel! Repel! Hold strong! Repel!

The only other alternative is love.