also conspiracy theories

or some such... begin your numerological investigations here (base 25 ?!).

Desire, elation, and rage.

A well-known theory of the cosmos states:

There are but three questions:
1. Who are we?
2. Why are we here?
3. Where shall we go for lunch?

Said theory is much-0maligned, being as it was written by an (a) irrascible git (b) for laughs. "Aha!" you might say, that fizhburn guy has been getting to you. His doctrine would be something like:

There are only about two or three really fundamental questions, depending on how you divide things up, which are pretty damn interesting but also pretty much impossible to answer:
1'. Who am I?
2'. What is there?
3'. What shall I do?

And yes, he would put the primes in, just for contrasts' sake. I'll tell you this, that I have to say there are certain questions that take priority over questions of lunch. For instance, questions of BREAKFAST.

Cellphone telemarketing countdown: 12 days.

Less than a fortnight left until your cellphone number will be available for telemarketing purposes. And don't think you won't be charged for incoming calls. You'll be paying to be annoyed. For joy. So:

JUST A REMINDER....12 days from today,
all cell phone numbers are being
released to telemarketing companies
and you will start to receive sale calls.

..YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR THESE CALLS....

To prevent this, call the following
number from your cell phone: 888.382.1222
It is the National DO NOT CALL list.
It will only take a minute of your time.

It blocks your number for five (5) years.

HELP OTHERS BY PASSING THIS ON TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS OR GO TO:
http://www.donotcall.gov/

Belatedly ripped off from our good friends over at The Bellman.

A brief thought.

The argument over private language and the picture theory of ideas relate. Take for instance Locke's concern with "determinate ideas" in the context of the question whether it is possible to express (communicate) the entirety of one's thought about something--not itself purely linguistic--with one's language. It is certainly the case that we do not put all of a thought into the utterances we use to communicate, at least normally. Yet we get by. However this would seem to imply that it is possible that there are ideas (Locke's sense) that are never expressed by words. That is, that there might be private concepts--you could find one of these and make a "private language" by naming that feature of your complex idea of .... or ____. On this conception you'd have some kind of certainty that your neologism applies to (all and) only instances of the idea--in other words it is used to express the presence of this idea, call it P, in one's experience--or, better, in objects/structures in the world. That certainty of application, however, is a bedrock assumption of post-Cartesian philosophy; the assumption criticized in the Philosophical Investigations. (If Kripke can be believed, some want to say.) That assumption is tied up with arguments to the effect that there is something "it is like" to experience ____ distinct from the neural activity in the brain. But this is just the problem, as I see it: how can we plausibly talk about "what it is like" to have the idea of P when all of our arguments conclude that there must be such a thing, yet there is no satisfactory method of saying what P is like?

See also this:
A) I have been delivered a box in the post.
B) What was in it?
A) Something.
B) What was it like?
A) I can't really say. But:

1. No one sends a box without contents.
2. Someone sent me a box.
.: 3. This box has contents.

B) Makes sense.

careful there, Tiger

Okay you. United Statesians. "Americans." Fat slob cheeto-snarfing butt-slapping & tit-staring overblown self-body-&-material-goods-conscious nationalistic Harley-loving child-beating fucking you. Your national holiday of "independence" is coming up. Don't forget to celebrate diversity by pouring one out for all the indigenous tribes you destroyed or decimated. If you can remember any. God, you're so fucking fat. Who was that smart monkey who asked when the Martians will come along and take over for you? I can't believe you're the richest population in the history of the planet, and think that this accident entitles you to shit. Try talking that dessert stuff to a pack of fucking hyenas. Like naked mole rats, but dumber. I can't think of an insult good enough, so I'm gonna have to leave it there. Look behind you for a baboon with a lead pipe, bitches!

Throb

You wake up with a headache. What were you dreaming about?--you would ask if you could stop the gasp that swishes in, between your shivering teeth. Fingers fly to temples, circling like mother goose. The body, your body, lies on its back with its eyes closed, nearly a grimace on its face. But the expression has too much determination in it. You can see it doing this. Meanwhile, at 11 o'clock high, something expands, expands quickly: a supernova bright bubble, its shining dermis all distance away. You watch as if at the final bender of a dying star, from space, distant. Your heart is beginning the weak contraction of the dub side. The wet black of your skull heats like a kiln--you'd scream if there were time, but the pause is gone and all there is left is careening dizziness, body wanting to twitch but too many clouds lie between your signals and its receiver. The inner ear, displeased, rumbles, crashes, spins its roundhouse... to what? Lungs expand and oxygen rushes one, two, one, two into that space, filling and receeding. You sit up, you know where the remedy is. Too late: not one star this time, but galaxies. Between this moment and the end, if there were time--not an issue in this place--you'd let it be known to the powers you don't believe in that you'll be glad to rid yourself of this body. Let them know in a wail, crying, snot dripping down over your hands as you debase yourself on the carpet, sweating. Breathe again. Crawl.

short

am i a clown fish?
dove showed me a haiku, on
sea anemonies.





willows sweep
the sunset wind
a single plum.

Weather Report

Intermittent everything for an interminable period.

A thought about Indiana, USA

Inspired by Negativland. "The Gun and the Bible carved this nation out of the wilderness..."

Weather Report

At this moment the solstice; a brief pausing, a shimmering wet blanket thrown between the fire in the sky and the insects sunbathing, the atmosphere and its inhabitants are all in the moment of parabolic stasis, aphelion, before the falling planet draws nearer its mother again.

For consideration this afternoon.

Locke writes

If the signification of the names of mixed modes are uncertain because there be no real standards existing in nature to which those ideas are referred and by which they may be adjusted, the names of substances are of a doubtful signification for a contrary reason, viz., because the ideas they stand for are supposed conformable to the reality of things, and are referred to standards made by nature. In our ideas of substances we have not the liberty... to frame what combinations we think fit to be the characteristical notes to rank and denominate things by. In these we must follow nature, suit our complex ideas to real existences, and regulate the signification of their names by the things themselves, if we will have our names to be the signs of them, and stand for them. [ECHU Bk. III.VIII.11]

Conglomerate that in your thinking, if you will, with Grice remarking on his own work, giving this account of an argument in "The Causal Theory of Perception":

statements to the effect that somebody was having a sense-datum, or had a sense datum or was having a sense-datum of a particular sort, are to be understood as alternative ways of making statements about him which are also expressible in terms of what I might call phenomenal verbs like "seem" or, more specifically, like "looks," "sounds," and "feels."

[The view just given]may run into trouble. It seems to me to be a plausible view that the applicability of phenomenal verbs is itself to be understood as asserting the presence or occurrence of a certain sort of experience, one which would explain and in certain circumstances license the separate employment of a verb phrase embedded in the phenomenal verb-phrase; for it to look or seem to me as if there is something red before me is for me to have an experience which would explain and in certain unproblematic circumstances license the assertion that there is something red before me. It will be logically incoherent at one and the same time to represent the use of phenomenal verbs as indicating the existence of a basis, of some sort or other, for a certain kind of assertion about perceptible objects and as telling us what that basis is. ["Retrospective Epilogue" in Studies in the Way of Words, sec. Strand One.]

Compare now with Locke, again, ibid sec. 17, about "gold":

I think all agree to make it stand for a body of a certain yellow shining colour; which being the idea to which children have annexed that name, the shining yellow part of a peacock's tail is properly to them gold. Others finding fusibility joined with that yellow colour in certain parcels of matter, make of that combination a complex idea to which they give the name "gold" to denote a sort of substances; and so exclude from being fold all such yellow shining bodies as by fire will be reduced to ashes... Another by the same reason adds the weight... [N]o one can show a reason why some of the inseparable qualities, that are always united in nature, should be put into the nominal essence, and others left out: or why the word "gold," signifying that sort of body the ring on his finger is made of, would determine that sort rather by its colour, weight, and fusibility, than by its colour, weight, and solubility in aqua regia... For by what right is it that fusibility comes to be a part of the essence signified by the word "gold," and solubility but a property of it? ...[N]o one has authority to determine the signification of the word "gold"... more to one collection of ideas to be found in that body than to another.

from ms. dickinson

an poem:

To My Small Hearth His fire came -
And all My House a'glow
Did fan and rock, with sudden light -
'Twas Sunrise - 'twas Sky -

Impanelled from no Summer brief -
With limit of Decay -
'Twas Noon - without the News of Night -
Nay, Nature, it was Day -

On a lack of seduction

we both knew why we were there,
so you asked "would you
like to dance, do you
want to?" but i didn't.
but i can call up clearly the look:
your whiskers and eyes, begging
like a Setter's puppy. are my eyes
deceiving me--or are these a pimp's?
and when i sent you for a drink
already you were in my bed
spent and encouraged to kindly
get the fuck out, fuckhead.
and how you strove to charm me, to appear
so gentlemanly and caring; in
another, less obvious, way, interested.
but i knew your purpose as leaning
your mouth asked me such a neutral question
i couldn't even laugh at it,
so instead i made plans, spiderlike
to wait for your machination
and turn the creature, your lust
against you. i don't care how a man looks
at a woman; i know this look
in my bones. we all do,
but behind these lashes lowered
to demurely allure sits that same dark
creature. you said, "we can
talk better outside." i agreed
tried to conceal my greed
tried to and fortunately chatterboxed
you into my bed, now
empty. and the stink you left
washed and purged,
all in an evening's work. as
it were, your work, for one of us knew
each move in the game far in advance
of your own blind chessmatch feat
of giving not what i cannot ask
but what you feverishly offer.
crystalline purity the prick
has, doesn't it, and i waiting,
waiting, why don't you
mention "getting out of here"
again? and go, sating, sated
why don't you.

eraser, the

in't tha intarweb wunnerful? excerpts

1.u know all the answers
so why do you ask?
i am only being nice
because i want someone, something
yer like a kitten with a ball of yarn
& its doing me in

the more u try 2 erase me
the more the more
the more that i appear
the more the more
the more i try 2 erase u
the more the more
the more that u appear

4.u cannot kickstart a dead horse
u just crush yrself & walk away
i dont care what the future holds
cuz im right here & im today
with yr fingers u can touch me

im yr black swan, black swan
but i made it 2 the top, made it 2 the top
this is fucked up, fucked up

8.we think the same things @ the same time
we just cant do anything about it

so dont ask me ask the ministry

9.no more conversation, no more conversation
u show it 2 me & im running out of chance
all our rooms renumbered and looses tender
dont turn away, dont turn away

sorry audience 'bout sittin onnit 4 so long. thx t. yorke.

achthaeon?

To follow up. Why is it that spiritual belief, even addressing the deity comes upon me at the most unusual moments? I am an atheist, for chrissakes. I must be Romantic in more senses than I had suspected, have so far suspected, for in this I agree with fizhburn, that there is no fucking reason to believe in the actuality of the supernatural. But why, last night, as I held convo with a magician and slight-of-hand man, and he let me taste his wares, did I suddenly feel like a village idiot, completely dumbstruck by that fascination which, creeping up behind me, leaps into my skull and wrests my consciousness from me, like a posession, and turns my attention to the very impossibility of the mundane world and its utter preposterous-ness? (Ultimum absurdum.) F doesn't particularly like these sorts of questions, rather questions like the ones posed above... they strike his prejudices as too French or, at best, too Flemish. I am not so encumbered and, finding myself in a flowery mode of expression, have taken up the task. But to you, gentle Reader, I merely pose the questions as a hypothetical. To rephrase. Our world, ordinary and obvious though the blockhead may take it to be is, in every detail, a complete improbability. Its motions, which we strive to make orderly with Science and Reason, are in reality beyond the ken of comprehension by such puny brains as ours. Simply put, there is no way to understand fully even our lonely island of blue in the boiling vacuum sea, let alone the whole of what a parson might call Creation. Why are not we all, we who duck our heads and dare not look to long on a flower (who actually stops to smell a rose?), who push forward with our self-made meanings, not instead all dead, parched for want of drink, or drowned in forgetting to lift our heads from the stream, simply, like the Buddha, Contemplating? How do we stop, once we begin? Would we, should we want to? Perhaps now I can identify the single thread that ties F and Socrates, and those who came before and between and will come after. But why, oh why, does this happen in this, the most starstuck of months, to me?

this week of hexis

Or rather, a hectic week. Reading, reading--I'm into "Gravity's Rainbow" now--and attending a class (for teaching purposes... of course). Walking in the mornings and afternoons, developing my farmer's tan. How incredible to change, chameleonlike, into summer earthtones. Later, I'll return to snowfox pale and grackleblack coats, but for now... wookie woodgrains and fernish greens. And of course natural blonding streaks in the hair. Can't forget that. Coffee at lunchtime, a bit of cake, lentil soup from the vegan restaurantesque installation in a nearby basement, avoiding the quad (those kids, nearly naked, make me feel a bit uncomfortable--which by the way when did I start thinking of them as children--will I feel that way about people my own age ten years hence?), sashimi brunches, wet drizzling evenings at the pub, bullshitting, resolving yet again to quit smoking, never quite getting to that bit of writing I've been meaning to do, a phantasmagoria of vivid dreams sweating in the early morning elevation of temperature and the humming of a distant fan in another apartment. All this and more and more and inrushing of experience and not a single drop fixed inklike in memory... but more like a technicolor etch-a-sketch and I the toddler wondring out into the fierce energy of our metal and concrete-walled community aspiration, watching the red maple's leaves blow like seaweed in the violet cookout-evening sky. Yes. And tomorrow, that most pleasurable of summer undertakings, that most youthful of American traditions, the Road Trip, visitation like ancestor's spirits joined with lanterns and lasagna, a bottle of chianti, a candle and a firefly by the lake, picnic-ing, memories made, recalled, passed on, I'll be coming to see You.

...to meet you

found a friend without religion
riding on a stolen engine
far too fast 2 pacify u
aint no telling what hes up 2

in time, the night may soften
trust that im still hoping, darling
wooden coin, he called my daughter
no good knowing what came after

met a man with missing fingers
shaking hands with shaded strangers
far too strong 2 pacify u
aint no telling what theyre up 2

thx s. beam.

Weather Report

Wretched, steaming heat, relentless solar radiation, and vitamin D will all be prevalent through the region over the next 48 hours.

freezing

I'm going to only say this once, so listen fucking up. Air conditioning is the worst fucking invention to ever spew out of institutionalized humankind. I'm used to the winter cold and the summer heat here. What the hell though people? You'd think shade and thick brick damn walls would be enough. At least, if you had any tolerance for discomfort. Well TURN THAT SHIT DOWN. I'M SHIVERING AND IT'S YOUR FAULT! GAH! How the fuck am I going to be wearing a parka in June. Piece of shit.

Oh, Hey.

All these people I know from somewhere or other--here and there, last year or last month--how do you show up just where I happen to be looking. I'll admit to a fascination with the pseudo-voyeuristic activity so innocuously named "people-watching." But it's more disturbing, I think, when I know those whom I'm (not so) surreptitiously surveiling. I try to avoid it, now. But damnit people, you're ruining my procrastination over here. It was nice to see you tho'. Except do any of you know Nursing Student Erin? She owes me a coffee, if I recall. Ir maybe she doesn't, perhaps I owe it to her. But I'll never find out if all you people I'm not particularly interested in talking to right now don't stop blocking my eyedar.

All this running through my mind as I look up and take out the earplug from the Nano and quirk a sort of smile at you and halfway hope you'll stop to chat because I don't dislike you and actually now that I think about it I am on the positive side toward you but I also am not one for small talk and it's sort of a chore so I guess I'm glad you have some activity such as meeting with your attorney that will occupy you and you only had a moment to let me know you'd seen me (I saw you long before you spied my hiding eyes) and now you're passing by already wrapped in a soundtrack the replaced earplug sends in stereo to me as I watch a most peculiar music video interspersed with many many black inked sentences termite-burrowing through consciousness, my motheaten coffeeshop experiences.

Weather Report

Steaming clouds roll across the starscape late tonight, after a period of meteor showers like beer bottles littered from the shuttle Atlantis; a sixty percent chance of morning wood across the entire population, forty percent in fraternity halls, higher in outlying regions between the cornrows; this week concentration and seratonin are riding a pressure front moving quickly into the area early Monday and hovering quietly through the work-week.

night terrors and blacktop: 1978

can u help me?
take a picture before i paint over her.
she is beautiful, she was everything.
last night i dreamt of her tracing my scars.

thx Converge.

queenina

thou shalt not two-time [link fixed. --f.]

the other woman finds time to manicure her nails
the other woman is perfect where her rival fails
and she's never seen with pin curls in her hair

the other woman enchantes her clothes with french perfume
the other woman keeps fresh cut flowers in each room
there are never toys thats scattered everywhere

and when her baby comes to call
hell find her waiting like a lonesome queen
cos when shes by his side
its such a change from old routine

but the other woman will always cry herself to sleep
the other woman will never have his love to keep
and as the years go by the other woman
will spend her life alone

thx n. simone.

all this poetry reminds me of a slam

Back in highschool days, the local talent/art/etc. fest put on by a local... organization... featured a young woman who won the poetry slam on the strength of her convictions and the fact that no one had the heart to slap down her cliche'd verse... and i don't know when her birthday is either. but for some reason i'm thinking about her at the present moment. she was about like the one on the left... her name was also Erika. image leeched from Vera B.

krafty

that chorus fr tha north country far:

and i could take another hit for u
and i could take away yr trips from u
and i could take away the salt from yr eyes
and take away the spitting salt in u
and i could give u my apologies
by handing over my neologies
and i could take away the shaking knees
and i could give u all the olive trees
oh look at the trees and look at my face
and look at a place far away from here

give me yr eyes
i need sunshine
give me yr eyes
i need sunshine
yr blood
yr bones
yr voice
and yr ghost

weve both been very brave
walk around with both legs
fight the scary day
we both pull the tricks out of our sleeves

but ill believe in anything
and u'll believe in anything

if i could take the fire out from the water
id share a life and u'd share a life

thx wolf parade 4 xclnt jejune june tune.

A disproportionate number of children born in March

You rang?

notice

she is a woodcutter's ewe,
and she an orphaned lapidary,
your starburnt shoulders must choose.

postprandial

mango lhassa, a firey curry
lamb, lentils
(sweet coffee) and naan
i've cut a nectarine

sticky fingers in my mouth
an orange flavor, almost
like a peach
(sharp, almost cloying,
damp, thunderstorm electric)
or canteloupe

and a whiff of cloves,
cinnamon, allspice
(is that dill as well...)
down-comforter-scents

in with a pistachio,
cool rosewater sip, sip,
and the nectarine begins
(covering my briney sweat)
to drip down my throat
in waves like summer air full
with the bright green smell of leaves

Important PSA

You must gain ninja wisdom.

Credits
Corned Beef Sandwich: breakfast
Sissy Spacek: horse wrangler
Ginuwine: soundtrack
Kleiner Feigling: liquid I am drinking from a black patent leather stiletto.


[NB: derivative joke alert. --f]