Bluestockingism

what's the matter with antimatter?

2009-05-18T17:36:00.000-07:00

On a recent episode of the Daily Show, Tom Hanks was explaining his conversations with the particle physicists and his explanation of antimatter made me want to learn more. According to Hanks, certainly a preeminent authority on antimatter -- antimatter's been made in the lab, the world survived, and now the antimatter is gone because nobody was around on christmas break to push the buttons on the machine keeping the antimatter in existence. This reminds me of LOST.

The explanation of antimatter that CERN (which somehow stands for the European Organization for Nuclear Research) has created around Hanks' movie Angels & Demons is rather informative and understandable. But since you might not be as intrigued as I am, allow me to excerpt:

In the intense heat of the Big Bang, particles of matter were forged out of pure energy. But for every particle of matter created, a 'twin' was also born - an 'antiparticle' identical in mass but with opposite electric charge.
Our world is made of matter, which consists of three types of particles called electrons, protons and neutrons. Each particle has a specific mass and electric charge. For example, the electron has a negative charge, and the proton a positive charge.

Antimatter particles have the same mass as the particles that make up our world, but carry the opposite charge. For example, the electron, which has a negative charge, has an antimatter 'twin' with the same mass but the opposite charge; we call the 'anti-electron' a positron.

Particles and antiparticles go together. Imagine sitting on a sandy beach. When you dig a hole, you also create a pile of sand. One cannot be made without making the other: they are complementary - just like particles and antiparticles.

So, that sandy beach metaphor was pretty effective in helping my understanding of antimatter along and it reminds me again of LOST.

Back to what Mr. Hanks said -- I looked it up and indeed CERN made and stored antimatter for a wee bit of time. But it takes a lot of work and energy (literally) to trap antimatter and keep it separated from matter. The world record for storing antiparticles is held by the TRAP experiment at CERN: it kept a single antiproton in a Penning trap for 57 days! The scientists performed very precise measurements of its mass and charge before the trap was switched off and the antiproton ... annihilated. Fun fact: The British scientist John Dalton (1766-1844) who developed the atomic theory of matter, kept a meterological journal for 57 years from 1787 to 1844 (disclosure: I have not verified this fun fact's veracity).

Doesn't all this talk of beaches and twins and pushing a button to keep something in existence (or at bay) make you think of LOST? Indeed, these people have speculated on antimatter theory and LOST. I agree with the person who commented on 8/26/08 and think more recent episodes definitely support antimatter experimentation theories. I also agree that people with a better understanding of particle physics should contribute to the body of LOST theories immediately and encourage them to use the comments section of this post to do so.

In conclusion, I hope this post becomes the definitive conversation on theories of LOST related to particle physics or something like that.

dairying definitions

2009-04-21T11:37:00.000-07:00

Today I believe I was served cream cheese with my tato skins. Curiosity ensued. After exhaustive research, I've concluded sour cream and cream cheese are really kissing cousins. If you peruse the bullets below you'll see the same raw ingredients and the same basic concept of taking cream and milk and culturing them. Add a little guar gum to get your desired consistency and ouhla you have either cream cheese or sour cream.

Sour cream:

True sour cream is a dairy product made primarily of cream. Adding bacteria derived from lactic acid makes sour cream sour. The bacteria essentially culture the cream, causing it to become thick and sour. Light sour cream is made with part cream and part milk. It often requires stabilizers in order to provide the desired thickness. Nonfat sour cream is made with nonfat milk and normally needs a significant amount of stabilizers like carrageenan and guar gum in order to replicate the thickness of true sour cream.

Cream cheese:

Cream cheese refers to the soft, spreadable white cheese that is consumed fresh. Cream cheese is made from a combination of cream and milk, and is not matured or hardened, as are other cheeses. Instead, it is slightly firmed by the introduction of lactic acid. Frequently, less expensive brands will add stabilizers like guar gum to get the necessary firmness, because the high fat content of the milk products is prone to separating.
Certain flavors of cream cheese are classified by the Food and Drug Administration not as cheeses, but as "cheese spreads," because their milk fat content is substantially lower than that of whole cheese. Cheese *spreads* are also wetter than cheese foods (my scientific way of saying "higher in moisture content"). Oh naughty!

I hope this becomes the definitive explanation of cream cheese vs. sour cream the world round!

I know we're all looking for the meaning of it all. I know our worlds will likely shatter if we discover that the only thing responsible for distinguishing between what goes on our potatoes and what goes on our bagels is guar gum. So I used my Wisconsin-bred brain to dig as deep as possible into the real MEANING of it ALL and here is what I think. I think that sour cream needs to reach an acidity of at least .05% and must contain at least 18% milk fat. I'm not sure if it takes 18 hours to reach .05% acidity (like Acidophilus Cultured Milk, incidentally cream cheese also takes 12+ hours to get cultured). I do know that Streptococcus lactis is the culture to be used for sour cream. Actually, turns out in 1985 Streptococcus lactis was reclassified to Lactococcus lactis. Knowing this may change your life...

Moving on, lactic acid is also used in making cream cheese. It's rather hard for me to grasp the nuances of the lactic acid bacteria group so follow that link to learn more. But I'm guessing there's no desired .o5% acidity or sour requirement for cream cheese. Also to be a cheese, I've inferred there is a minimun milkfat content requirement. Because you're counting on me, I've extensively reviewed federal guidelines regarding cheese identities to arrive at this vital information...cream cheese requires a minimum milkfat content of 33% by weight of the finished food and a maximum moisture content of 55% by weight. Aight?

Brief Bibliography:

Post-script:
I had to read way too much of 21 CFR 133 (see the link above about what cheese really really is) because the internet, as I have been saying, sucks these days. Case in point:

Your search - cheese+"minimum fat" - did not match any documents.

Suggestions:

Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
Try different keywords.
Try more general keywords.
Try fewer keywords.

It's That Time Again

2009-02-20T09:47:00.000-08:00

Announcing...
My Birthday Party"Because They Did It"
February 28th, 2009
6pm-2am
My House

If you know where I live, you are invited.

I want back my locket, please.

2009-01-21T23:54:00.000-08:00

the ghost of birthdays past

2007-02-17T21:28:00.000-08:00

february 28, 2006
i turned 29 in the chena hot springs. later in march i had the biggest birthday party. we sang and ate at the ba mien food court on broadway. it seems like a great place to get married. then we went to kodiak and to the hopleaf. i gave my bottle of cider to some french man. turning 29 in the hot springs may be a life highlight.

and from there you can see the aurora.

february 28, 2005
i ate dinner at goose island on clark. the next day i went to san francisco with jenn. i slept in the most secretive bed i've ever been in. later in march i had a party at the underground lounge. i drank all the ciders they had. dancing was fun. my hair was dark red. i beat karl and steven at mario party in the wee hours.

february 28, 2004
i was in seattle eating a scone at the crumpet store in pike place market. i flew home to chicago and went to the pumping station bar to meet some friends that were out for some other reason. i got a burn that left a scar in the shape of a smile from alan's cigarette lighter. i had a party at matilda's later in march. karl did not come, we had just met. mike brought ice cream cake from culvers. the delightful charms of lainie and nanette prompted mike young to remark that i only hang out with nerds and hot chicks. pretty much.

february 28, 2003
i went to hawaii in early february. i sent an email called "drip" and another called "drop" to canada. i ended up in winnipeg, i believe, on the actual day. if so i went to the record store, and ate at a new but not so great mexican restaurant and had a mix of positive and negative experiences. i may have played speed scrabble in the misercordia neighborhood. that was a nice time.

february 28, 2002
i went out with lainie, justin and jeremy to dinner and then to spin. on my way home from spin, i ran into jon. jeremy and justin got naked that night.

february 28, 2001
i was flying in an airplane over my hometown of oshkosh, wisconsin. for some reason this is the only time i've ever flown low enough to actually make out my hometown (it's on a big lake so not that hard to spot). later that year the flight path changed entirely so i've never flown over oshkosh again. i was flying from chicago to boise, coming home from my interview at the American Library Association.

slack - don't talk back

2007-02-16T18:19:00.000-08:00

the great majority of people does not consider it contemptible to believe this or that and to live accordingly, without first having given themselves an account of the final and most certain reasons pro and con, and without even troubling themselves about such reasons afterward: [---] But what is goodheartedness, refinement or genius to me, when the person who has these virtues tolerates slack feelings in his faith and judgments and when he does not account the desire for certainty as his inmost craving and deepest distress [----] (Nietzsche)

Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings. (Victor Hugo)

All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come. (Victor Hugo)

slack (adj.): O.E. slæc "loose, careless" (in ref. to personal conduct), from P.Gmc. *slakas (cf. O.S. slak, O.N. slakr, O.H.G. slah "slack," M.Du. lac "fault, lack"), from PIE base *(s)leg- "to be slack" (see lax). Sense of "not tight" (in ref. to things) is first recorded c.1300. The verb is attested from 1520; slacken (v.) first recorded 1580. Slack-key (1975) translates Hawaiian ki ho'alu First record of slack-jawed (1901) is in Kipling. Slack water "time when tide is not flowing" is from 1769. Slacker popularized 1994, though meaning "person who shirks work" dates back to 1898.

slack (n.): 1794, "loose part or end" (of a rope, sail, etc.), from slack (adj.); hense fig. senses in take up the slack (1930) and slang cut (someone) some slack (1968). Meaning "quiet period, lull" is from 1851.

in conclusion

it is not 1851, i am not quiet. i am too loud. i am high maintenance but i have not squeaked enough. i need grease.

my parents never listened to me, or did i just not complain? i really believed for most of those years that everything was fine. then i realized it wasn't fine, and i ran away. then i came back, they want me to act as if everything is always fine so that they have one less opportunity to contemplate how it is not. i am unwilling, but i am unable to make it better by pointing out how unfine it is. it seems best to be silent. i cannot tell my other family as she will tell them how i said it was not fine as if we all any of us have ever believed it was. as if it is wrong, unfair, unloving to state the obvious. i do not understand.

i would not leave you alone. i worried you might feel alone, i let you know i was here. i would not find it hard to make you not feel alone if someone else was lonely too, i would balance. i might make a mistake but i would try. i would not leave you alone.

i would not ask you to worry about me when worrying is all you've done.

but i won't let you not. i am alone, i am not always fine. i don't want to care about you anymore. i won't. i mean it.

i will put my name on this, and this and this. and it may be a new name and in taking pains to place my name on it i might miss this and this and this. but it will be mine, and they will know it is mine and the time spent making it mine may make it less ours, and for us, but i will own it and you will know it. you will know you were not part of it.

after centuries of evolution (?) (?!), society (culture, what have you) is at a state wherein one of its individuals (biproducts, what have you) might seek out sexual stimulation on the internet as is becoming commonplace in said society at this time. after discovering a heightened sense of connection with the author's ability to weave sentiment and sexuality to such an extent it best encapsulates the sense of spirituality wherein said individual currently chooses to experience their sexuality, it is concluded that there is very little prospect of appropriately conveying and sharing the experience of said connection with any human being which whom said individual has shared sexual relations, ever. as a result, said individual could, as is commonplace in said society at this time, be motivated to share said connection with strangers on said internet. to what end?

my parents never listened to me, or did i just not complain? but i do remember they told me time and time again "don't talk back". i hated it, mainly i did not understand. how could my understanding evolve if i was not allowed to talk back, to ask questions, to get answers?

i keep trying to understand you. i don't want to understand you anymore. i won't. i mean it.

i'm not fourteen, as much as i want and tend to experience the positives and negatives of life as such. but i've been cut too much slack.

nonsense is one of the most understandable words in any langauge.

sticks and stones

2007-01-15T16:59:00.000-08:00

"But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think."
-Byron

last night i ground nutmeg (a stone) and cinnamon (a stick) into a sauce. today i stewed.

there are phrases i carry in my pocket to worry on. some are painful, yet like tongue to bitten cheek i dart back to them and press. others i bring out before bed and curl up against, a blanket tossed over a nightlight blocking out a room full of shadows. my aunt still thinks i burned her comforter this way, but i'm not sure it was really me. i've never been particularly afraid of the dark.

all of these are words, simple words strung together and tossed over my neck. peace garlands from lovers and friends--heartstrings--or, at times thoughtless angry nooses from the same. with my sentimental mind so few have been lost, surely i'm in over my head.

sometimes i can't write about the things i feel most. i want to be raw. sometimes i can't even say them for fear i've uttered them already too many times to too many people. al dente. what if they become thin and hard, worn brittle from overuse.

like the new snow. it's cold, it sparkles, it crunches, i wanted to tell you about it. but i already have. and you, and you and you and you. and i must not mention the streets i'm really walking down inside, when winter hits. i've wanted to keep those times soft, yet memory's visited them so often. there are calcium deposits in my heart and as i get older the drip's only steadier. the path; slippery and increasingly obstructed.

so i wait and meditate on whirlpools. unexpected, deep and slowly turning. still, it isn't new to hope you'll drown in me.

season of the witch

2006-11-06T21:49:00.000-08:00

Dad, I just don't want to go to work in your baby food factory. And, I don't want to sell vacuum cleaners. I don't want to sell little toy plastic aircraft carriers. I don't wanna... I don't know what I want.

Chris, I think I understand what you're talking about. A little bit anyway. But these problems are a little bit like going to Howard Johnsons for some ice cream. You can get all kinds of wild, exotic flavors. But somehow, you always wind up with vanilla.

there's always vanilla.

flavor of the month

2006-11-05T21:42:00.000-08:00

first frost

2006-10-21T20:01:00.000-07:00

On Going Unnoticed
by Robert Lee Frost

As vain to raise a voice as a sigh
In the tumult of free leaves on high.
What are you in the shadow of trees
Engaged up there with the light and breeze?

Less than the coral-root you know
That is content with the daylight low,
And has no leaves at all of its own;
Whose spotted flowers hang meanly down.

You grasp the bark by a rugged pleat,
And look up small from the forest's feet.
The only leaf it drops goes wide,
Your name not written on either side.

You linger your little hour and are gone,
And still the wood sweep leafily on,
Not even missing the coral-root flower
You took as a trophy of the hour.

"Life is not so sinister-grave.
Matter of fact has made them brave.
He is husband, she is wife.
She fears not him, they fear not life."
- Robert Frost, "On the Heart's Beginning to Cloud the Mind"

The Sound Of The Trees

by Robert Frost

I WONDER about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by the day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
And fixity in our joys,
And acquire a listening air.
They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay.
My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
From the window or the door.
I shall set forth for somewhere,
I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone.

dysamoria

2006-10-16T22:02:00.000-07:00

the leaves and rain are falling. this morning i talked about a movie and this evening its theme song played on the radio. the rain and leaves are falling.

North and South
Elizabeth Gaskell
Chapter 39
Making Friends

"Nay, I have done; you get no more of me:
And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart,
That thus so clearly I myself am free."
— Drayton —

Margaret shut herself up in her own room, after she had quitted Mrs. Thornton. She began to walk backwards and forwards, in her old habitual way of showing agitation; but, then, remembering that in that slightly-built house every step was heard from one room to another, she sate down until she heard Mrs. Thornton go safely out of the house. She forced herself to recollect all the conversation that had passed between them; speech by speech, she compelled her memory to go through with it. At the end, she rose up, and said to herself, in a melancholy tone:

"At any rate, her words do not touch me; they fall off from me; for I am innocent of all the motives she attributes to me. But still, it is hard to think that any one — any woman — can believe all this of another so easily. It is hard and sad. Where I have done wrong, she does not accuse me — she does not know. He never told her: I might have known he would not!"

She lifted up her head, as if she took pride in any delicacy of feeling which Mr. Thornton had shown. Then, as a new thought came across her, she pressed her hands tightly together.

"He, too, must take poor Frederick for some lover." (She blushed as the word passed through her mind.) "I see it now. It is not merely that he knows of my falsehood, but he believes that some one else cares for me; and that I — Oh dear! — oh dear! What shall I do? What do I mean? Why do I care what he thinks, beyond the mere loss of his good opinion as regards my telling the truth or not? I cannot tell. But I am very miserable! Oh, how unhappy this last year has been! I have passed out of childhood into old age. I have had no youth — no womanhood; the hopes of womanhood have closed for me — for I shall never marry; and I anticipate cares and sorrows just as if I were an old woman, and with the same fearful spirit.

"My own interest in you is — simply that of a friend. You may not believe me, Miss Hale, but it is — in spite of the persecution I'm afraid I threatened you with at one time — but that is all given up; all passed away. You believe me, Miss Hale?"

"Yes," said Margaret, quietly and sadly.

"Then, really, I don't see any occasion for us to go on walking together. I thought, perhaps you might have had something to say, but I see we are nothing to each other. If you're quite convinced, that any foolish passion on my part is entirely over, I will wish you good afternoon." He walked off very hastily.

"What can he mean?" thought Margaret, — "what could he mean by speaking so, as if I were always thinking that he cared for me, when I know he does not; he cannot. His mother will have said all those cruel things about me to him. But I won't care for him. I surely am mistress enough of myself to control this wild, strange, miserable feeling, which tempted me even to betray my own dear Frederick, so that I might but regain his good opinion — the good opinion of a man who takes such pains to tell me that I am nothing to him. Come poor little heart! be cheery and brave. We'll be a great deal to one another, if we are thrown off and left desolate."

After the Storm
T.S. Arthur
Chapter XXII. Struck Down.

Yes, Irene had looked for this--looked for it daily for now more than a year. Still it came upon her with a shock that sent a strange, wild shudder through all her being. A divorce! She was less prepared for it than she had ever been.

What was beyond? Ah! that touched a chord which gave a thrill of pain. What was beyond? A new alliance, of course. Legal disabilities removed, Hartley Emerson would take upon himself new marriage vows. Could she say, "Yea, and amen" to this? No, alas! no. There was a feeling of intense, irrepressible anguish away down in heart-regions that lay far beyond the lead-line of prior consciousness. What did it mean? She asked herself the question with a fainting spirit. Had she not known herself? Were old states of tenderness, which she had believed crushed out and dead along ago, hidden away in secret places of her heart, and kept there safe from harm?

No wonder she sat pale and still, crumpling nervously that fatal document which had startled her with a new revelation of herself. There was love in her heart still, and she knew it not. For a long time she sat like one in a dream.

What can I do?"

"Resist the application, if you will."

"But I will not," answered Irene, firmly. "He signifies his wishes in the case, and those wishes must determine everything. I will remain passive."

"And let the divorce issue by default of answer?"

"Yes."

There was a faintness of tone which Rose could not help remarking.

"Yes," Irene added, "he desires this complete separation, and I can have nothing to say in opposition. I left him, and have remained ever since a stranger to his home and heart. We are nothing to each other, and yet are bound together by the strongest of bonds. Why should he not wish to be released from these bonds? And if he desires it, I have nothing to say. We are divorced in fact--why then retain the form?"

"There may be a question of the fact," said Rose.

"Yes; I understand you. We have discussed that point fully. Your view may be right, but I do not see it clearly. I will at least retain passive. The responsibility shall rest with him."

No life or color came back to the face of Irene. She looked as cold as marble; not cold without feeling, but with intense feeling recorded as in a piece of sculpture.

There were deeds of kindness and mercy set down in the purposes of our young friend, and it was to go forth and perform them that Rose had called for Irene this morning. But only one Sister of Charity went to the field that day, and only one for many days afterward.

A Mummer's Taled
Anatole France

Had she been so inclined, she might, with a phrase, with a single word,
with a tiny movement of head or shoulders, have rendered him perfectly
submissive, and almost happy. But she maintained a malicious silence.
With compressed lips and a far-off look in her eyes, she seemed as
though lost in a dream.

He sighed hoarsely.

"Fool that I was, I didn't think of that! I told myself you would come
home, as on other nights, with Madame Doulce, or else alone. If I had
only known that you were going to let that fellow see you home!"

"Well, what would you have done, had you known it?"

"I should have followed you, by God!"

She stared at him with hard, unnaturally bright eyes.

"That I forbid you to do! Understand me! If I learn that you have
followed me, even once, I'll never see you again. To begin with, you
haven't the right to follow me. I suppose I am free to do as I like."

Choking with astonishment and anger, he stammered:

"Haven't the right to? Haven't the right to? You tell me I haven't the
right?"

"No, you haven't the right! Moreover, I won't have it." Her face assumed
an expression of disgust. "It's a mean trick to spy on a woman, if you
once try to find out where I'm going, I'll send you about your business,
and quickly at that."

"Then," he murmured, thunderstruck, "we are nothing to each other, I am
nothing to you. We have never belonged to each other. But see, Félicie,
remember----"

aristippus & asbestos

2006-10-06T21:31:00.000-07:00

it's fall.

e.e. cummings (1894-1962)

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh. . . . And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you so quite new

"What sex is, we don't know, but it must be some sort of fire. For it always communicates a sense of warmth, of glow. And when the glow becomes a pure shine, then we feel the sense of beauty."-- D. H. LAWRENCE

crow's feet

2006-09-23T17:12:00.000-07:00

An excerpt from Kafka on the Shore:

"I was there then."
"Blowing up bridges?"
"Yes, I was there, blowing up bridges."
"Metaphorically."
"Of course."
You hold her in your arms, draw her close, kiss her. You can feel the strength deserting her body.
"We're all dreaming, aren't we?" she says.
All of us are dreaming
"Why did you have to die?"
"I couldn't help it, " you reply.
Together you walk along the beach back to the library. You turn off the light in your room, draw the curtains, and without another word climb into bed and make love. Pretty much the same sort of lovemaking as the night before. But with two differences. After sex, she starts to cry. That's one. She buries her face in the pillow and silently weeps. You don't know what to do. You gently lay a hand on her bare shoulder. You know you should say something, but don't have any idea what. Words have all died in the hollow of time, piling up soundlessly at the dark bottom of a volcanic lake. And this time as she leaves you can hear the engine of her car. That's number two. She starts the engine, turns it off for a time, like she's thinking about something, then turns the key again and drives out of the parking lot. That blank, silent interval between leaves you sad, so terribly sad. Like fog from the sea, that blankness wends its way into your heart and remains there for a long, long time. Finally, it's a part of you.
She leaves behind a damp pillow, wet with her tears. You touch the warmth with your hand and watch the sky outside gradually lighten. Far away a crow caws. The Earth slowly keeps on turning. But beyond any of those details of the real, there are dreams. And everyone's living in them.

that right is right

2006-09-21T19:43:00.000-07:00

it is fall and the ghosts are coming out. my typing fingers are tempted to stray to talk of fall and the haunting months. as soon as the chill creeps into the nights every october passed finds a foothold in my mind. i feel foggy, lost, but oh so pleasantly. i am content to walk in this sort of wilderness, crunching across leaves and staring at moons, waiting to see what might jump out of the darkness. delicious. i like to fall.

but back to the task at hand. i want to talk about a place. of late i think it might be the most fun in the world to spend my time learning everything i can about a single place. every event that has happened there, every person to pass through, every thing. this is a newer passion to me, i think i may have sublimated something. solid to vapor. vapor to solid. so it goes. it reminds me of a line from a movie. the exactitudes escape me right now, but i have a hunch it may have been reese witherspoon in the man in the moon telling the ill-fated jason london that she wants to know him, she wants to know everything about him. oh, did that movie make me sob.

you know, though, even the most ho-hum places turn out to have fascinating stories. for instance, i've recently acquainted myself with a number of interesting facts about ripon, wisconsin. ripon is exceedingly close to my hometown oshkosh, as such i found it very boring for many years of my life. even childhood tours of the rippin' good cookie factory, which does make lovely chocolate pinwheel cookies that you can eat off your pinky finger and a tasty wafer cookie trio, could not sway my lackluster opinion of this town. a brief stint on college break as the receptionist at dickinson's gourmet preserves(owned by Smuckers!) still left me unimpressed. there's never been anything wrong with ripon, it just never excited me.

that changed quite by accident. i cannot ever recall exactly how my staring at the wisconsin state song and the words "champion of the right" brought me to this point, perhaps i simply looked up "birthplace of the republican party" since i knew it to be ripon. and hey ho, here we go:

top ten reasons to read about ripon, wisconsin
10. rabbit holes
ripon was named after the english cathedral town of ripon, yorkshire. and whose papa was a residentiary canon of the cathedral? lewis carroll, go ask alice...
9. the trouble with kansas
from what i can see, the republican party--which ripon claims to have birthed when some folks against slavery went into a schoolhouse and had a conversation--began out of a concern for kansas. note to self, cultivate friendships with newspaper editors before beginning the wendigo party.
8. talk yourself horace
ok, horace greeley isn't directly related to ripon, but he was friends with this guy alan bovay. bovay said those few words which made the republican party pop out of its proverbial womb, they really aren't that exciting and if you search on alan you'll see them because apparently they are the only interesting thing that man ever said. wait, not interesting, noteworthy. what is interesting is that bovay and horace were probably friends...well because they met in new york, but better than that...because they liked utopias!! which is why bovay ended up in ripon in time to utter those noteworthy words, he was hunting utopias...more on that in a bit. meanwhile, horace was part of his own utopia in red bank, new jersey. red bank doesn't appear to appreciate a sense of history as you can mainly only find financial information and "gateway to new york" propaganda. notable citizens: well it's associated with bruce springsteen and kevin smith, no mention of dear horace.
7. the gristly details
a man named david mapes came to the site of ripon in 1849. really this guy seems to deserve all the credit for making ripon - the little town that could. not content with his grist mill and happy little river, mapes was way into development. he gave away land, but in order to get a lot you'd need to build a business in the town square. you had to contribute to the community or build a specific building he desired in return for your sweet little spot of grass. he was a founder of ripon college, but mainly for brochure purposes: "Mapes was a booster, a boomer, who promoted Ripon's growth as a city relentlessly. He saw the addition of a college as a way of attracting desirable newcomers to settle in the town he had founded. Ashley and Miller, p. 5, say that "under his guidance the College never became much more than a promise"used to lure travelers into becoming citizen." he convinced the feds to build a railroad and to move the postoffice from ceresco (ceresco, get a little shiver when you hear it and get ready for more) to ripon. i do not like him. he was ugly and i consider him not nice. his ripon next to ceresco is like america next to canada.
6. classic battle of good vs. evil
what do i mean about america and canada, ceresco and ripon? well before i get to ceresco (shiver), let me explain that bovay (yes that man that said the word republican) was coming to the region to go to ceresco when that beastie mapes convinced him to come to ripon instead. mind you ceresco and ripon were right by each other (they were incorporated into one town when incorporation occurred). bovay was coming to live in the community of a man named warren chase (shiver), but then mapes lured him into ripon just like he seduced the post office. alright, let's drop the seduction motif. but mapes was weird. why the hell did he want to make a town so bad and he didn't even name it after himself? weird. also, he supposedly had a real rivalry with warren chase (shiver)... i mean he came and put his stupid little town right next to chase's (shiver) ceresco (shiver) community and as such destroyed ceresco (shiver), why? he couldn't have moved 20 miles in some other direction? really, the land is pretty much the same around there. trust me. to make things odder, warren chase (shiver) is another co-founder of ripon college. the college's page on its founding cites mapes as the primary founder of the college and remarks that chase "was "briefly" one of the first trustees of the College. His autobiography, The Life Line of the Lone One: or an Autobiography of the World's Child, gives further insights into his beliefs and differences with the beliefs of those around him." it would appear mapes (stalker much) had chase on board just so he could point out how different and odd chase was only to further discredit the man and his community. ceresco had already disbanded, mapes, you won already. you won! leave chase alone.
5. ceresco - that's latin for awesome
ready to hear about ceresco? "On May 27, 1844, the first settlers of the Ripon area reached their destination. They were members of the Wisconsin Phalanx - nineteen men and one boy - who were led by young Warren Chase. Inspired by Charles Fourier's principles of social philosophy, the Phalanx set out from Kenosha to establish a community which was to be an experiment in what we today would call Socialism.They named this community "Ceresco" after the Roman goddess of the harvest, and located it in a valley nestled between two hills. Before long, this was the home of more than 200 idealists. The members constructed several commonly-owned dwellings called long houses, one of which still stands on its original site. For five years the Fourierites prospered to an extent greater than those in most utopian socialist experiments. To this day, this area continues to be called Ceresco." a ripon historical website tells us. the fond du lac public library website tells a more nuanced tale. ceresco disbanded six years after it began, perhaps because of mapes and his juggernaut community of ripon, perhaps not. i'm very interested in learning everything i can about ceresco, it doesn't seem a failure in the way of some of the other communes.
4. free love
knowing that ripon was first ceresco is just a good reason to read up on charles fourier and all of his kinky ideas. strangely enough, wikipedia seems to have lost its entry on charles. it was there last month, really, and he's linked in discussions of the north american phalanx and the phalanstere (his original commune concept). good thing the internet is not simply wikipedia. you can read about fourier here. oh please please do, he is DELIGHTFULLY SPECIFIC...
3. warren chase 2. warren chase 1. warren chase
i like warren chase. i am going to run right out and get "The Life Line of the Lone One: or an Autobiography of the World's Child". without having read his life story, i already know he rose from orphandom and poverty to founding a successful utopian commune. way cool. and, "Chase fought vigorously to enshrine a broad variety of social reforms in both the 1846 and the 1848 constitutions. He was well-liked, even by his more conservative colleagues who regarded him indulgently as a sincere if impractical idealist. Chase was an adamant and consistent opponent of banking, even in 1848.He was a leading advocate of black suffrage and of a broad homestead exemption.He also tried to enshrine a ban on capital punishment in the 1846 and 1848 constitutions." an all around good guy. he became a spiritualist in california before he died. i love me some californian spiritualists!

well, i feel like i started a utopia of exactly 1600 people (complete with a bevy of men ready to console if a lover rejects me) and lived in bliss for six years, only to have some asshole move in next door, build a walmart and mcdonalds, and invite me to serve on the school board with him. i'm pooped and like chase in the end it is time to get back to thinking about spirits and shades.

hope you had a ripon good time!

hurtz donut

2006-09-07T14:53:00.000-07:00

food for thought

2006-09-02T10:49:00.000-07:00

you'll notice in my exploration of the driftless zone that i suggest a visit to the fort crawford medical museum. the medical museum is now part of the prairie du chen museum. i thank the prairie du chen historical society for maintaining this museum but urge them to go more in depth. is your appetite whet by the following: "The museum boasts more than 50 exhibits in 3 buildings, which reflect the historical society's mission to tell the story of Prairie du Chien with emphasis on Fort Crawford, especially the amazing story of Dr. William Beaumont."? i fear not, and so allow me to share with you the amazing story of dr. william beaumont...

you can read the full story on dr. beaumont on this quite nice genealogy page. but for your digestive ease i shall copy the choicest bits of this amazing story here. dr. beaumont was born somewhere back some time ago. for awhile he resided on mackinac island. mackinac island is pretty neat because i rode my bicycle there once, and once there all you can ride are bicycles or carriages. i also think mackinac island fudge ice cream (an old favorite) gets it name from this island. last but not least, the island boasts a pretty grand hotel:

the hotel was built in 1887. dr. beaumont occupied fort mackinac in 1819. and it is here, on mackinac island, that things start to get amazing! let's dig in.

A CHEAP SHOT
On June 6, 1822, in the American Fur Company on Mackinac Island, a French-Canadian voyageur named Alexis St. Martin was shot in the upper left abdomen; the musket wound was "more than the size of the palm of a man's hand," Beaumont wrote, and affected part of a lung, two ribs, and the stomach. Dr. Beaumont treated the wound, but he was repeatedly unsuccessful in fully closing the hole in St. Martin's stomach; for a while, the hole had to be covered to prevent food and drink from coming out. St. Martin was now unable to work as a voyageur, so in April 1823 Beaumont hired him as the family's live-in handyman — chopping wood, mowing a field, etc.

CAN YOU HOLD YOUR STOMACH
The hole in St. Martin's side was a permanent open gastric fistula, large enough that Beaumont could insert his entire forefinger into the stomach cavity. If you want more detail, please see the fine print*.

SEIZING THE WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY
It was not until August 1, 1825 that Dr. Beaumont — now stationed at Fort Niagara — began his experiments with St. Martin, becoming the first person to observe human digestion as it occurs in the stomach. Beaumont tied quarter-ounce pieces of food to the end of a silk string and dangled the food through the hole into St. Martin's stomach. (The food items were "high seasoned alamode beef," raw salted lean beef, raw salted fat pork, raw lean fresh beef, boiled corned beef, stale bread, and raw cabbage.) St. Martin went back to his household duties. Beaumont pulled out the string one, two, and three hours later, to observe the rate of digestion for the different foods. Five hours after he first put the food into St. Martin's stomach, Beaumont removed the food pieces because St. Martin was suffering stomach distress. The next day, St. Martin still had indigestion, which Beaumont treated.

On August 7, 1825, Beaumont had St. Martin fast for 17 hours, and then took the temperature of St. Martin's stomach (it was 100 degrees) Beaumont removed gastric juice from St. Martin's stomach, then observed the rate of digestion of a piece of corned boiled beef "test-tube" style, while also placing the same-sized piece of meat directly into St. Martin's stomach. The stomach digested the meat in two hours; the vial of gastric juice took 10 hours (maintained at about 100 degrees). The next day, Beaumont repeated the experiments using boiled chicken, which he found digested slower than the beef. The experiments showed that gastric juice has solvent properties. In September, St. Martin returned home to Canada (where he married and had children), so Beaumont was unable to experiment on him further at this time.

YOUR LOVE IS LIKE BAD MEDICINE
In June 1829, Alexis St. Martin returned to the Beaumonts, this time bringing his wife and family to Fort Crawford. Beaumont was busy with his medical work so did not have time to resume experiments with St. Martin until December 1829 through March 1830. One set of observations was to try to determine any relation between digestion and weather. By observing St. Martin on different days and times and in varying weather conditions, Beaumont saw that dry weather increases stomach temperature, and humid weather lowers it (a healthy stomach being 100 degrees).

Dr. Beaumont was busy treating patients with "intermittent fever" during the area's summer flood and fall rains in 1830. In January 1831, Beaumont just observed the normal process of digestion in the stomach. St. Martin would eat a normal meal and resume his work, and Beaumont would periodically take samples from St. Martin's stomach. Another experiment compared what happened to food placed in a vial of gastric juice (temperature not controlled), food placed in a container of water, and food eaten by St. Martin; he learned that gastric juice needed heat to digest (i.e., that cold gastric juice has no effect on food). Beaumont used more variety of food samples while at Fort Crawford; he found that vegetables are less digestible than other foods, and milk coagulates before the digestive process. St. Martin sometimes became irritable doing experiments (it was stressful for him to have food removed from his stomach), and Beaumont observed that being angry can hinder one's digestion. In April 1831, St. Martin and his family left for their home in Canada, traveling by canoe or portage all the way to Montreal.

THE WORLD WAS THEIR OYSTER
In late 1832, Beaumont began a leave from the Army, intending to conduct further experiments on the digestive system. He located Alexis St. Martin in October, dropped off his wife Deborah and children in Plattsburgh (where Deborah's family lived), and traveled with St. Martin to Washington, D.C. Beaumont again tried different foods with St. Martin, including raw oysters, sausage, mutton, and "boiled salted fat pork." Beaumont focused on gastric juice, but did not study the importance of saliva on digestion; sometimes, he put food directly into St. Martin's stomach (once, he put in 12 raw oysters). He also observed that exercise helped the production and release of gastric juice. (Another limitation on Beaumont's work is that he could not obtain a chemical analysis of the gastric juice, as chemical analysis was severely limited in the mid-nineteenth century.)

In mid-April 1833, Beaumont went to Plattsburgh, New York, where Beaumont was reunited with his family and began work on publishing his observations in a book, "Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion." Dr. William Beaumont's cousin, Dr. Samuel Beaumont, had published a small newspaper prior to becoming a doctor himself (he apprenticed under William), so Samuel was quite helpful to William with the book's initial printing in 1833 (and with its second edition in 1846). Sometime in April or May 1833, St. Martin left for Canada due to the death of one of his children; he expected to rejoin Beaumont by June 1 for more experiments, but as it turned out, St. Martin and Dr. Beaumont never again saw each other.

BAD MEDICINE IS WHAT I NEED
Alexis St. Martin lived 58 years after his accident. After returning home to Canada for good, he worked as a farmer and itinerant laborer ("chopping wood by the cord," he described it). After the doctor's death, St. Martin did make a brief visit in 1856 to Dr. Beaumont's home in St. Louis, where he spoke with Deborah Beaumont. After Deborah's death, St. Martin frequently corresponded with Dr. Beaumont's son Israel; in 1879, he wrote that he had "been ill for six years...I am suffering a little from my gastric fistula, and my digestion grows worse than ever." His lawyer, Judge Baby of Montreal, said that St. Martin was "very much addicted to drink" in his 80's.

When St. Martin died at age 86 on June 24, 1880 in St. Thomas de Joliette, Canada, his family deliberately let his body decompose in the hot sun for four days and then buried it in the Catholic churchyard in a deep unmarked grave, with heavy rocks atop the coffin, hoping to prevent anyone from examining his stomach or performing an autopsy. Years later, to commemorate St. Martin's contribution to medical science, a committee finally persuaded one of St. Martin's granddaughters to disclose the grave's location; in 1962, a plaque was placed on the church's wall near the grave, stating Alexis' history, and that

"through his affliction he served all humanity."

*St. Martin "was accidentally wounded by a discharge from a musket. The contents of the weapon, consisting of powder and duck-shot, entered his left side from a distance of not more than a yard off. The charge was directed obliquely forward and inward, literally blowing off the integument and muscles for a space about the size of a man's hand, carrying away the anterior half of the 6th rib, fracturing the 5th rib, lacerating the lower portion of the lowest lobe of the left lung, and perforating the diaphragm and the stomach. The whole mass of the discharge together with fragments of clothing were driven into the muscles and cavity of the chest. When first seen by Dr. Beaumont about a half hour after the accident, a portion of the lung, as large as a turkey's egg was found protruding through the external wound. The protruding lung was lacerated and burnt. Immediately below this was another protrusion, which proved to be a portion of the stomach, lacerated through all its coats. Through an orifice, large enough to admit a fore-finger, oozed the remnants of the food he had taken for breakfast. His injuries were dressed; extensive sloughing commenced, and the wound became considerably enlarged. Portions of the lung, cartilages, ribs, and of the ensiform process of the sternum came away. In a year from the time of the accident, the wound, with the exception of a fistulous aperture of the stomach and side, had completely cicatrized. This aperture was about 2 1/2 inches in circumference, and through it food and drink constantly extruded unless prevented by a tent-compress and bandage." [From Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine by George M. Gould and Walter L. Pyle (Philadelphia, 1896)]

adrift

2006-09-01T09:22:00.000-07:00

if you've visited wisconsin, you might have discovered that there's rather a lot to do there. you might also have noted that some of the things to do are rather strange, bet let's hope you've enjoyed yourself nonetheless while doing them. everyone notices how friendly people in wisconsin are. i think beyond mere friendliness, people in wisconsin--for whatever reason--must simply like other people and perhaps life in general. i think it's with the desire to share any strange little bit of life discovered in one's very own backyard that i feel the most like my statespeople.

the southwest corner of wisconsin was never touched by glaciers and so it has become known as the driftless zone. it's quite geologically interesting that glaciers never touched this land, but please don't let that stop it from touching you. go on, enjoy unglaciated southwest wisconsin:

d r. evermor and the forevertron

the mustard museum

cave of the mounds

mount horeb, troll capital of the world

mazo beach, nude beach or battleground for your soul

house on the rock (not to be confused with rock in the house)

fort crawford medical museum (heck visit all of the wisconsin museums!)

merrimac ferry (so exciting i interrupted the writing of this to go ride it)

little switzerland (that's really just new glarus, wisconsin, they make BEER)

circus world, *america's* circus museum (america, not to be confused with china)

little norway

little cornwall (ok i don't know if anyone even calls it that, but mineral point and pendarvis have been home to many a cornish miner)

taliesin, frank lloyd wright's home and studio

and there ends our brief tour of southwest wisconsin, can you believe there's plenty more to see! someday soon i'll take you on a virtual tour a little further north to devil's lake (my favorite single spot in wisconsin) and wisconsin dells. but we won't stray too far north until you're better acclimated, it gets scary up there. just check out wisconsin death trip...

ties

2006-08-31T11:44:00.000-07:00

Parity is a concept of equality of status or functional equivalence. It has several different specific definitions.

parity (physics): In physics parity is the name of the symmetry of interactions under spatial inversion.
parity (mathematics): In mathematics, parity indicates whether a number is even or odd.
parity (telecommunication): In this usage, the number of '1' bits in a binary value is counted. Parity is even if there are an even number of '1' bits, and odd otherwise.
parity (medicine) refers to the number of times a woman has given birth.
In computing, a parity bit is a very simple example of an error detecting code.
In economics, purchasing power parity (PPP) is an estimate of the exchange rate required to equalise the purchasing power of different currencies, given the prices of goods and services in the countries concerned.
in economic history, parity was the ratio of farm income to farm expenditure with 1910-1914 as a base. Farm interests from 1920s to 1960s wanted federal programs to raise their income to parity.
In finance, interest rate parity refers to the notion that the differential in interest rates between two countries is equal to the differential between the forward exchange rate and the spot exchange rate.
In financial mathematics, put-call parity defines a relationship between the price of a European call option and a European put option - both with the identical strike price and expiry.
In sports, parity refers to engineering an equal playing field in which all teams can compete, regardless of their economic circumstances.
In demography, parity means the number of reproductive events (births).
Potty parity attempts to equalize the waiting times of males and females in restroom queues by designating or building more women's restrooms, giving them more facilities to use.
Parity is a tactic in othello.

---

rare (adj.1): "unusual," c.1420, originally "few in number and widely separated," from O.Fr. rere "sparse" (14c.), from L. rarus "thinly sown, having a loose texture," from PIE *er-, *ere- "to loose, split, separate" (cf. Skt. rte "besides, except," viralah "distant, tight, rare;" O.C.S. oriti "to dissolve, destroy;" Lith. irti "to dissolve;" O.C.S. rediku "rare;" Gk. eremos "solitary"). "Few in number," hence, "unusual" (1542). Rarity is attested from 1560, from M.Fr. rarité (16c.), from L. raritas "thinness, fewness," from rarus. In chemistry, rare earth is from 1875.

curio
noun

curios

Thesaurus: antique, curiosity, knick-knack, trinket, bibelot.

Etymology: 19c: shortened from curiosity.

curious
adj

Thesaurus: unusual, strange, odd, rare, exotic, queer, peculiar, remarkable, notable, extraordinary, signal, unique, novel.

Thesaurus: inquisitive, interested, inquiring, playful, questioning; Antonym: indifferent, apathetic.

Derivative: curiously
adverb
Etymology: 14c: from Latin curiosus full of care.

---

i've been thinking this morning about my needs and wants. i know that i deeply love familiarity in every sense of the word. it seems preciously rare to me. so deep is my desire for established intimacy and considerable acquaintance that it leads me to wonder which will sustain me more: familiarity or sustainability. such a question only makes any bit of sense at the beginning of things. do i gravitate more toward strangers that offer a sense of the familiar or a sense of the sustainable. having made some familiars and finding that often so hard to sustain, i think i am quite smitten by the people that suggest sustainability. and well, i see what i have just said "which will *sustain* me more: familiarity or sustainability". answers to ones own questions can be so unsurprising. i'd like to sustain relations with people that allow me to ask a lot of questions.

belles lettres

2006-08-23T20:10:00.000-07:00

Dearest,

Does the wind ever feel lonely to you? In the Odyssey, Penelope "cried tears like the snow accumulated by Zephyros (West Wind) and then melted by Notos (South Wind)" as she waited for Odysseus (Roman Ulysses) to come home. The Ulysses Mission has confirmed the existence of solar wind. Before it could get close enough to the sun, Ulysses needed help from Jupiter --"All planetary orbits lie approximately in the same flat plane as that of the Earth ("plane of the ecliptic"), which is also close to the Sun's equatorial plane. To reach a position above the Sun's pole, Ulysses needed to be flung out of this plane, and it did so by first flying out to the planet Jupiter and then using that planet's gravity as a pivot while swinging into the third dimension." Jupiter was one of the most important of the Roman gods, continuously evolving with Roman needs. He first appeared as an agricultural god in charge of sun and moonlight (Jupiter Lucetius), wind, rain, storms, thunder and lightning (Jupiter Elicius), sowing (Jupiter Dapalis), creative forces (Jupiter Liber) and the boundary stones of fields (Jupiter Terminus). In the most impressive movie I've ever seen, The Falls, there is a Boulder Orchard and it has custodians. Boulders have become the custodians of the Point Beach Nuclear Power Plant, they were installed around the perimeter after September 11th as a security measure.

When I was reading that book (the global warming love story) I've been reading on the bus home tonight there was a passage about the narrator's perception of his contracting universe over the course of a day. The day he describes begins with a pre-dawn climb (with his love interest) to the top of a mountain. Reaching the top under the milky way, they watch the sun rise over a vast valley. From the wide vantage, they move to a view of their single mountain as they walk back down, down into a forest where the trees close them in even more, ending with moonless night's ride home lit by the dashboard of a car--a womblike space we all know well. Our ancestors put large rocks in circles, lit fires and came together in the center. Sometimes I just want to sleep inside the rocks listening to the fire and the voices of others, trying not to hear the wind.

I've been writing letters to someone in the margins of books lately. Letters to him and to myself. We went for a ride on a moonless night once and he talked about my eyes in the dashboard lights. We lit a fire but had to put it out because of the fire ban. Whenever wind hits something like water or trees, that lonely sound is lost in the sound of leaves or waves. In the blank spaces of the books, I've put the letters together into words, and some words into phrases: "terrible toos", "robots and aliens - references, references", "moon mirror leak closest friend", "matching red walls", "picture of chris", "wanting favorite person", "falling, etc.", "my machine--about it", "i could make (fashion?) a better man out of bananas -->2 times", "make me young...ending of novel...beginning", "assholes for eyes". We woke up the next morning because of the birds. Caw caw caw.

I wrote those letters in the margins of a Vonnegut book, it may or may not be the one in which he says, "People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say." Have I ever told you about the woman I follow in my neighborhood. She's constantly telling stories out loud. Sometimes I can hear what she is saying, none of the stories are very happy and she isn't aware that I am listening though I know she thinks she is talking to someone. You can tell by the way she gestures as she walks and talks. I watched a movie tonight, the Good Girl, if you must know. After walking home listening to the wind, I'm not in the right state to make any valid decisions on film merits, but have you seen it?

It might not be a good movie, but it told me a true story. It reminded me of motel confessions of first love, deep and desperate and crazy love. The kind that started with a ferryride of telling stories, moonless drives, and all eyes but broke on the first goodbye. In the movie, Tom calls himself Holden and writes himself into the role. This week I dreamt of that motel room, after the shower, and the first I love you and I woke up crying.

Dearest Jupiter, fling me into the third dimension and remind me that a rose by any other name smells just as sweet.

fish out of water

2006-08-22T21:55:00.000-07:00

in the news:

Water labels on food could ease shortages: expert
Tue Aug 22, 2006 2:42 PM ET

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Labeling foods ranging from spaghetti to meat to show how much water is used in their production could help combat mounting pressure on the world's water supplies, a leading expert said on Tuesday.

Typically, a calorie of food demands a liter of water (0.2 Imperial gallons) to produce, according to U.N. estimates. But a kilo (2.2 lbs) of industrially produced meat needs 10,000 litres while a kilo of grain requires just 500-4,000 litres.

"It's necessary that we raise awareness that food requires a lot of water," Anders Berntell, head of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), told Reuters during a conference hosted by SIWI of more than 1,000 water experts.

"Some kind of labeling of food products when it comes to their water requirements could be a first step," he said. "Then people could see for themselves." Labels might, for instance, highlight water needed for irrigation beyond natural rainfall.

A U.N.-backed report released in Stockholm on Monday said that one in every three people lives in regions with water shortages. And it projected that demand for water, led by irrigation, was likely to almost double by 2050.

the day i start thinking about how much water was used to make the food i am eating is the day i will cry. how wasteful am i. having lived in more arid climes, i really shouldn't pretend i don't know how sinful my nightly bath is. i need to live on a mountain with a hot spring to soak in every night. or i could recycle my own bath water, and i have warmed bathing water in a jug hanging from a tree so i am ready to apply these valuable life skills.

life skills are best learned from minutia. you can learn from this information site organized around the film RedFish BlueFish. i lived in idaho. i also saw the pipeline in alaska, and the global warming, more minutia to learn from.

ecology: 1873, coined by Ger. zoologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) as Okologie, from Gk. oikos "house, dwelling place, habitation" (see villa) + -logia "study of." Ecosystem is from 1935. Ecosphere (1953) is the region around a star where conditions allow life-bearing planets to exist.

environs: 1665, from Fr. environs, pl. of O.Fr. environ "compass, circuit," from environ (adv.) "around," from en- "in" + viron "circle, circuit," from virer "to turn."

as the world turns

"John Ivanko uses wind power, solar power, and a wood stove to meet the energy needs at his bed-and-breakfast, Inn Serendipity. He serves food from his organic garden and composts the leftovers. Even the bath tiles at the inn were chosen with the environment in mind--they were produced from recycled windshield glass."

i feel a road trip, sigh, a bike trip, coming on...

"things vs. people"

2006-08-18T23:07:00.000-07:00

here is how i picture my life in the not so distant future...

suitcases

2006-08-18T10:45:00.000-07:00

by now you might have heard about the aol release, retraction, mirroring of user search histories debacle. if you have not, go here.

once upon a time before this blog was even born i was trying to think about what i'd have to write about every day. you may remember i originally planned to discuss wisconsin news, for instance. i had also toyed with the idea of writing about my web searches. in the end i think i settled on ... hmm ... how would you describe this, gentle reader?

since i cleaned my cache at midway airport, i think it's a fairly palatable amount of searching that's gone on since. and so i share:

lyrics+"glow worm"
"ALA Conference for students"
"Japan"
"the church"+imdb
"tomorrow's sky"+lyrics
ventrella's caffe
Pac-Man
arcadia
donut+news
dysphoria
extreme homes
frausdots
planets
preternaturally
"avoiding whirlpools"
"frog eyes"
"internet addiction"
"simple syrup"
"the church"
"things vs. people"
and in her mouth an amethyst
ELO lyrics
andco management
box office
cascade drive-in
chicago+band
chicago CTA
coronado hotel
dance hall days
dysplasia
furbish dictionary
glowworm+apples in stereo
goonies+setting
japan+quiet life
luper
maps+vancouver island
nard
notes from the underground
rainbo gardens
yes in different languages

notes from the midway

2006-08-10T17:54:00.000-07:00

You imagine no doubt, gentlemen, that I want to amuse you. You are mistaken in that, too. I am by no means such a mirthful person as you imagine, or as you may imagine; however, irritated by all this babble (and I feel that you are irritated) you think fit to ask me who I am--

i near my 5th hour in the midway airport. well-meaning children of ill-advised adults have awoken from naps and been given toys that squeak. the children place the toys in their mouths and after a time they begin to squeak as well.

at 3pm i left my bottle of water in a crate with many others, some half-empty and some half-full, outside of the "sterile" zone. no liquids or gels in the sterile zone, effective immediately. the line to check baggage, of course we must all check our baggage when toothpaste can't be carried on and think of the waste and the cavities, snaked into the back hallways and lower depths of the airport. the baggage sticker printer broke right as i arrived at checkin, my photo identification was never looked at. perhaps this is why i do not feel myself. by the time i reached the second line--security--the list of prohibited items had extended from tubed materials to all "lipwear". i now carry illegal lip gloss in the inner pocket of my purse.

the man next to me has developed an entirely human need to shake his leg. should he feel the entirely human need to look aside, i shall in an entirely human fashion feel a bit ashamed.

at 6pm it started to rain lightly. an hour later a downpour took place. shortly before 8pm the lights flicker. unease and excitement ripple down the gates. the terminal across the way, barely visible through the rain, is completely dark. what chaos must be taking place over there, in the dark. surely we are the chosen ones, we are in the light.

myself, and the other passengers of flight something something to san diego do not have a plane at our gate yet. and still some have stood by the window for hours to get a better seat. i am not sure of this first come first serve policy. do people need further encouragement to senseless?

we have just heard that our plane has been sent to land in indianapolis due to weather. we do not expect departure anytime before 10pm. after i get my seat, surely a horrible seat for i have not stood in line, i have a four hour flight. my battery is near dead.

why does everyone in the terminal need to order onions on their hamburgers?

When I, you and everyone we knew

2006-08-09T21:26:00.000-07:00

Could believe, do, and share in what was true...

i have a desire, something fierce, to go back about 100 years and spend the rest of my summer hanging out in the city's outdoor gardens and dance halls, dining with friends and learning a few new dance steps.

jazz age chicago: urban leisure 1893 to 1945 is one of my favorite websites for information on my lovely neighborhood of uptown chicago. i am an uptown girl living in my uptown world. of the old dance gardens, the rainbo gardens is the closest to my heart and home. was, was. it began as a roadhouse! someday i will go on my tour of roadhouses, hopefully on a motorcycle, hopefully in the sidecar. someday.

and in her mouth an amethyst.

pac man fever

2006-08-09T12:18:00.000-07:00

there once was a band named arcadia. they released one album: So Red the Rose. wikipedia tells us that "some versions of the album and related singles contained a numeric code in their artwork, though versions in some countries simply used randomized numbers which did not decipher to anything intelligible. The code was a simple substitution cipher, numbering the letters of the alphabet. A=1, B=2, C=3, etc."

Wikipedia has more to say. arcadia the band perhaps took the name from a latin phrase.

"Et in Arcadia ego" is a Latin phrase that most famously appears as the title of two paintings by Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665). They are pastoral paintings depicting idealized shepherds from classical antiquity, clustering around an austere tomb. The more famous second version of the subject, measuring 122 by 85 cm, is in the Louvre, Paris, and also goes under the name "Les bergers d'Arcadie" ("The Arcadian Shepherds"). It has been highly influential in the history of art and more recently has been associated with the pseudohistory of the Priory of Sion popularised in the books Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code.

The phrase is a memento mori, which is usually interpreted to mean "I am also in Arcadia" or "I am even in Arcadia", as if spoken by personified Death. However, Poussin's biographer, Andre Felibien, interpreted it to mean that "the person buried in this tomb has lived in Arcadia"; in other words, that they too once enjoyed the pleasures of life on earth. The former interpretation is generally considered to be more likely. Either way, the sentiment was meant to set up an ironic contrast by casting the shadow of death over the usual idle merriment that the nymphs and swains of ancient Arcadia were thought to embody.

Due to its remote, mountainous character, Arcadia has always been a classical refuge. So during the Dorian invasion, when Mycenaean Greek was replaced with Doric Greek along the coast of the Peloponnes, it survived in Arcadia, developing into the Arcadocypriot dialect of Classical Antiquity. Arcadocypriot never became a literary dialect, but it is known from inscriptions. Tsan is a letter of the Greek alphabet occurring only in Arcadia, shaped like cyrillic И; it represents an affricate that developed from labiovelars in context where they became t in other dialects. Tsakonian Greek , still spoken on the coast of the modern prefecture of Arcadia, in the Classical period considered the southern Argolid coast immediately adjoining Arcadia, is a descendant of Doric Greek, and as such is an extraordinary and much noted example of a surviving regional dialect of Classical Greek. The capital of Tsakonia is the Arcadian coastal town of Leonidi.

One of the birth-places reported for Zeus is Mount Lycaeum in Arcadia. Lycaon, a cannibalistic Pelasgian king, was transformed into a werewolf by Zeus. Lycaon's daughter was Callisto. It was also said to have been the birthplace of Zeus' son, Hermes.

Arcadia remained a rustic, secluded area, and its inhabitants became proverbial as primitive herdsmen leading simple pastoral unsophisticated yet happy lives, to the point that Arcadia may refer to some imaginary idyllic paradise, immortalized by Virgil's Eclogues, and later by Jacopo Sannazaro in his pastoral masterpiece, Arcadia (1504); see also Arcadia (paradise).

learn more about the proverbial at arcadia(utopia).

secret codes and utopias aside, arcadia is real. but was there ever really a song that went:

I've got a pocket full of quarters
going to the arcade
going to play Pac-Man!

because i used to sing it, and there was a dance that went along.

blame it on the moon

2006-08-07T20:16:00.000-07:00

it is just so right outside tonight. there's a hint of coolness in the air, a breeze, pleasant smells and a bright moon behind those wispy clouds that makes the night sky more blue somehow.

the moon tonight does not look like this moon up here, but when i was looking for tonight's moon i found this one. the big orange moon is by far my favourite.

who knows if the moon's

who knows if the moon's
a baloon,coming out of a keen city
in the sky--filled with pretty people?
(and if you and i should

get into it,if they
should take me and take you into their baloon,
why then
we'd go up higher with all the pretty people

than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody's ever visited,where

always
it's
Spring)and everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves

--e.e. cummings, & (1925)

tonight's moon looks more like that one right up there. still, pretty damn nice. it was a moon like this that inspired one of my father's paintings. he painted a viking ship on a sea under a moon with rows and rows of clouds. it has hung in my parents' bedroom my entire life. horribly framed, with perhaps too vivid color, little-to-no perspective and of an odd-size it's the kind of painting you'd see going for cents at many a garage sale. should it ever pass into my hands; however, i will treasure it always. it is exactly the right painting to hang in the bedroom of the parents of a child whose favourite book is The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

with memories of a quite right painting on a quite right night lit by quite nice moonlight, i decided it must be the evening to sit down and search out the picture of perfection. i don't know if i've ever stated it plainly enough, but there is one image that moves me more than any. to my eye, this sight is the picture of contentment, underlit with anticipation and utterly alive with whispers of hope and a strange quiver of longing. it makes my heart ache deliciously, my belly warm, and my mind hungry and full. and i get to see it all the time. here it is:

thank you to jeff werner for taking this photo. it is "Night fog on Doncaster Street, Victoria, as seen through the broken rays of a street lamp behind a tree". wouldn't you just know that my favourite sight was captured in victoria, british columbia.

royal, illinois

2006-08-06T22:31:00.000-07:00

...You need me like the wind
needs the trees to blow in
Like the moon needs poetry
you need me...
--Come Back from San Francisco, Magnetic Fields

i've just come home from amanda and evan's wedding in royal, illinois. my questions on everything aside, i took communion twice today and i witnessed. i always witness thoughtfully at weddings. today i did so for two people i happened to bring together, and i saw that it was good.

i have a lot of thinking about love and god i'd like to do. i've heard told they might be one and the same. i'm interested in finding out if there are others who believe as much in one without searching so hard for the other. or switch the searching with the believing? as the grains of wheat once scattered on the hill were gathered into one. evan delivered the sermon this morning before his wedding. he organized it around the song "signed, sealed, delivered, i'm yours." e pluribus unum. and i saw that it was good.

When we asunder part,
it gives us inward pain;
but we shall still be joined in heart,
and hope to meet again.
--Blest Be the Tie That Binds, Words: John Fawcett Music: Johann Nägeli

on my ride to and from royal, illinois i listened to 69 love songs. cornfields and magnetic fields are like love and god? it's worth listening to all 69 love songs, but here are three:

I Don't Believe in the Sun
They say there's a sun in the sky
but me, I can't imagine why

There might have been one
before you were gone
but now all I see is the night, so

I don't believe in the sun
How could it shine down on everyone
and never shine on me

How could there be
such cruelty.

The only sun I ever knew
was the beautiful one that was you
Since you went away
it's nighttime all day
and it's usually raining too

The only stars there really are
were shining in your eyes
There is no sun except the one
that never shone on other guys
The moon to whom the poets croon
has given up and died
Astronomy will have to be revised

The Book of Love
The book of love is long and boring
No one can lift the damn thing
It's full of charts and facts and figures
and instructions for dancing
but I
I love it when you read to me
and you
you can read me anything

The book of love has music in it
In fact that's where music comes from
Some of it is just transcendental
Some of it is just really dumb
but I
I love it when you sing to me
and you
you can sing me anything

The book of love is long and boring
and written very long ago
It's full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes
and things we're all too young to know
but I
I love it when you give me things
and you
you ought to give me wedding rings
I
I love it when you give me things
and you
you ought to give me wedding rings

Meaningless
Meaningless?
You mean it's all been meaningless?
Every whisper and caress?

Yes yes yes it was totally meaningless

Meaningless
like when two fireflies fluoresce

Just like everything I guess
it was utterly meaningless
Even less
a little glimpse of nothingness
sucking meaning from the rest of this mess
Yes yes yes it was thoroughly meaningless

and if some dim bulb should say
we were in love in some way
kick all his teeth in for me
and if you feel like keeping on kicking feel free

Meaningless
Who dare to say it wasn't meaningless
Shout from the rooftops and address the press
Ha ha ha it was totally meaningless

Meaningless
Meaning less than a game of chess
Just like your mother said and mother knows best
I knew it all the time but now I confess

Yes yes yes how deliciously meaningless

Yes yes yes effervescently meaningless

Yes yes yes it was beautifully meaningless

Yes yes yes it was profoundly meaningless
Yes yes yes definitively meaningless
Yes yes yes comprehensively meaningless
Yes yes yes magnificently meaningless
Yes yes yes how incredibly meaningless
Yes yes yes unprecedentedly meaningless
Yes yes yes how mind-blowingly meaningless
Yes yes yes unbelievably meaningless
Yes yes yes how infinitely meaningless

perhaps it's worthwhile to listen to all love songs? i'll be thinking on it.

one step ahead

2006-07-26T21:37:00.000-07:00

hi.

do you believe the children are our future? i do.

really. and as such i am perpetually astonished and dismayed by many of the people who procreate. if you're really messed up, or you plan on becoming so, or you may divorce the person who you're making children with...could you...um...think about it a little before you make a new person? please?

everyone i know from a divorce has some issues. almost everyone i know has some issues from their parents. so please consider the WHOLE LIFE of the human being you are bringing into the world before you decide to do it. please.

i myself am enjoying a biscuit and some tatos with gravy (with real bits of meat) from popeyes. tonight i watched some tv and ate special brownies for the first time. fun stuff. i have no plans to make other human beings anytime soon.

split enz is the best band ever to me, right now.

glow worm

2006-07-23T00:37:00.000-07:00

one thing i long to possess that i never have is...party lights.

they make me happy.

when i was younger i used to go swimming and play Sorry! every day at my best friend's house. we'd do pretty much the same thing each day, every day of the summer and it never seemed to get old. shamu the inflatable whale, her sister's poster of robert plant (!?), photos of swamishree, and her glow worm provided additional companions to our endless hours of adventure.

i've always wanted a glow worm too. it would appear i like things that glow.

Things that glow can only be seen at night...

Glow worms are the larvae of a large mosquito-like fly that have a very unusual lifestyle.
In order to survive glow worms build elabourate traps consisting of anywhere between 10 to 50 plus vertical hanging threads of silk studded with sticky droplets of mucous to catch small insects such as mosquitoes, midges, fruit-fly, gnats etc. that are attracted by the light produced by the glow worm.
The pendulous web strands are attached to a lattice-work of silk threads across the ceiling of their lair. In turn the threads support the suspended mucous tube in which the glow worm resides and travels, enabling the glow worm to be attracted to the vibration of trapped insects.

The blue/green glow of the larvae is the result of a reaction between body products and oxygen in the enlarged tips of the lavae's excretory tubes. The light is the result of a chemical reaction involving several components: luciferin ( a waste product ), luciferase ( the enzyme that acts upon luciferin ), adenosine triphosphate ( the energy molecule ), and oxygen.
All these combined make an electronically excited product capable of emitting a blue-green light.
To the average person's sight, up close the light appears more blue than green.
Spectrometer readings show the colour is actually in the green colour spectrum.

Direct moonlight affects viewing of glow worms in exposed area colonies .
Only the brightest glow worms in exposed colonies are visible on full moon nights.
Immature glow worms cannot generate sufficient bioluminescence to compete with bright moonlight and whilst they are in fact glowing they appear not to be.
Glow worms that have their fill of food can shut down the bioluminescent reaction and cease glowing.

The name glow worms is a mis-noma as they are lavae, not worms.
Early settlers from the British Isles probably applied the common name 'glow worm' as a substitute for the English glow worm Lampyris noctiluca (actually beetle lavae, so they got it wrong there also) .

In colonies that are exposed to outside weather conditions , it is not unusual to observe a variety of small spiders sharing areas where the glow worm builds it's web sometimes covering the whole glow worm web area and using the light produced by the glow worm to catch insects. This deprivation of their food source may be a contributing factor to migration as some do of necessity move around finding more favourable locations . Overpopulation of glow worms in the initial hatching areas of necessity causes migration otherwise they tend to eat each other.
Natural erosion of soil areas also causes migration to occur and the patterns of colonies here in the soft earth-bank colonies are constantly changing. The writer has observed a free-fall of glow worms from a height of 8 metres due to erosion in a soft earth bank. The glow worms that were not crushed by the fallen soil survived and re-located.

Approximately two to three weeks later adult flies emerge to re-commence the cycle.
Male flies tend to live longer than females and can live up to four days.
The flies have no mouth parts or means of feeding, they live only to mate and reproduce by laying eggs .
Near fully-developed female flies in their pupal casing have the ability to send a low-intensity glowing signal to male flies at the time of their impending emergence. As a consequence of their signalling it is not uncommon to observe male flies adjacent to the pupal casings of female flies waiting for them to emerge.

The entire life of the glow worm lavae is spent inside a suspended mucous tube with it's head facing the escape route into a crevice or safety haven in the rock or earth wall into which they move at remarkable speed when disturbed.
The mucous tube insulates and prevents the glow worm from dessication.
At night inside the tube it moves back and forth breaking through the tube to repair it's web or to feed on trapped insects.
During the day the glow worm hides inside it's safety haven of a crack or hole behind the web to avoid daylight predators.

sea of green

2006-07-20T12:28:00.000-07:00

my nephews will be competing in a Cardboard Boat Regatta in Oshkosh this weekend. zachary has built a yellow submarine and nikolaus has built a duck. go boys go!

“If it were possible to view the universe as a whole, from afar, it would appear pale green, between aquamarine and turquoise.”*

whenever i sing along to yellow submarine, i always belt "sea of green" loudest. it sounds wistful in a happy kind of way. did you know that the sea of green is much more than an approach to growing your own happy plants at home? it has been used to describe places from jericho to palenque, the ancient mayan city of the jaguar. many references to "seas of green" remind me of the global warning...

i should take a trip home to see my nephews soon.

* Professor Karl Glazebrook

touching

2006-07-20T09:25:00.000-07:00

irrepressible

1811, from in- "not" + repressible (see repress). First attested in "Sense and Sensibility."

bringing home the bacon

2006-07-19T09:29:00.000-07:00

i stumbled into writing a letter yesterday. i was merely trying to be funny, but then i realized i had recorded information about my surroundings, the weather and my mood. this is letter-writing!

i must plan for my grand literary success and the need to have more letters for books that will be written about me long, long into the future. the future where they make books from things on the internets. we'll need to crack down on online gambling of course before my utopia comes to be.

in the meantime i am reading old letters to remember how to write them. i mean really old letters.

Red Circular Postmark:
Galena ILLs
FEB 8
Manuscript Rate: 10
Addressee: John W. Sheldon Esq.
Care of U.U. Hawley
Utica New York
Contents:

Galena Feby 8 1847

Dear John,
I have been rather negligent in not writing to you sooner. I have not had much to write that could interest you or I should have written sooner. Everything here jogs on about as usual. We have had lots of sport in sleighing since by the way - the weather turned so cold soon after you left. I fear you must have had rather an unpleasant trip up the Ohio. Did not my advice to you to take the other route sometimes occur to your mind. We have had very severe weather here most of the time since you left until within two days past. It is now warm and pleasant and has much the appearance of spring. I saw your mother about two or three weeks since at her house - her health then was better than it was when I last saw her but I am told she is now in rather a worse state than she has been for three or four months. She was a little disappointed at you not coming out but thought under the circumstances it was better for you to go with the company than to have waited and gone alone. Of dancing and frolicking there has been but little since you left. One small part at the Amn given in honor of the DuBuquere[?], at which they did not attend. We had a little dance at our House last week which went off well. No weddings - no deaths since you left - a complete dearth of all news. Our good folks Messrs. Stone & Elendonin have fully resolved I believe to quit in the spring. I am endeavoring to get Mr. Eddowes to take the house - do not _____ whether I shall succeed or not.

The old established and very popular House of McMaster & Hempstead has ceased to exist. Our dissolution dates from the 1st of Feby. This may somewhat astonish you but it is a fact nevertheless. The business to be continued by Edwd Hemptead Esq assisted by your humble servant. I try clerking again - for a while - how long I do not know - until I arrange my old difficulties in some satisfactory way. It is a move of my own entirely and what I have been intending to do for the last month. I have had some talk with Henry about you but not directly about his assisting in business. I thought I would sound him _____. I could learn nothing definite from him only that he is very well disposed towards you. He thinks some of going to N.O. and commencing business there - of this there is no certainty however. What the boys intend to do I cannot tell. When I was recovering from my sickness all things appeared possible to me - but now whether I am becoming more worldly minded or more sane I cannot tell. I look upon many things in a very different light - many of my projects I know were feasible but alas I have not the means. I am crippled and hampered on every side. My proposition to you about business would be a good one. I have no doubt for both of us were I in a situation to follow it up. The future as far as making money is concerned looks rather blank to me, but thank Heaven but a small part of my happiness _____ in that I have learned to be content with my lot let that be what it may. You I suppose are enjoying yourself among your friends. You have the society of that sweet good girl that _____ of your heart and are happy. Your choice from what I hear is a good one and I sincerely hope she may be to you all your fancy paints her, and that I may have the pleasure of seeing her one of these days. I hope you can make it convenient to go up to Prospect and see my old and much lovd parents. You will find them in lowly but tolerable circumstances. You will also see a rough _____ country and some few pretty girls if you know where to find them. My good wife sends her regards to you.

W.S. Salingro has made an assignment to W.H. Brown of Elizabeth into us a little _____ can next time. Whenever the robins commence singing in the spring I shall expect to see your cheerful countenance in these diggings if not sooner. The old commodore and myself are deep in the pork business. The big cat has eloped and the rats get more than the lions share of our bacon. Hoping soon to hear from you.
I remain yours truly,
S. W. McMaster

if you would like me to write you a letter, please let me know posthaste. i even have bacon to share.

abecedarian

2006-07-13T16:54:00.000-07:00

what comes after o? not p, but k. what strange bedfellows. o such a wistful sound, rounded on all sides reaching out to cushion, bump and touch. k points off in all directions with dangerous sharp edges.

oh, k.

kakorrhaphiophobia
fear of failure

kalon
beauty that is more than skin deep

kamerad
to surrender

Leadership begins a plan equally on all directions
lesbian orgasm The category of the text is observable. lesbian orgasm the text device understands the market test, expanding a share of the market. lesbian orgasm The concept of new strategy as never. lesbian orgasm Contextual advertising clarifies hypnosis which first sample it is considered to be A. lesbian orgasm However, researchers constantly collide(face) that return to stereotypes reflects an amphibrach, Whether it is designated as a fundamental mistake which is traced in many experiments. lesbian orgasmDrukera's opinion, is inaccessible causes a complex by virtue of which mixes subjective and objective, transfers the internal promptings to real communications(connections) of things. lesbian orgasm Segmentation of the market is possible(probable). lesbian orgasmThe subjective perception(recognition) consolidates consumer client demand, as well as the theory about useless knowledge predicts. lesbian orgasmThinking instantly. Even in this short fragment it is visible, that the idiom discords , that such largest scientists as Freud mark, Adler, , Ericson, Fromm.

karezza
prolonged sex avoiding orgasm

kyriolexy
the use of literal expressions

O.K.
The following list of suggested origins and info comes from MEU2, from Eric Partridge's _Dictionary of Historical Slang_ (1972 edition, Penguin,0-14-081046-X), and from Cecil Adams' _More of the Straight Dope_(Ballantine, 1988, ISBN 0-345-34145-2). Thanks to Jeremy Smith for his help. The abbreviations on cracker boxes, shipping crates, cargoes of rum, et al., became synonymous with quality.

"Oll korrect, popularized by Old Kinderhook" is what's given in most up-to-date dictionaries. The earliest known citation is from the Boston Morning Post of 23 March 1839: " [...] he of the
Journal, and his train-band, would have the 'contributions box,' et ceteras, o.k. -- all correct -- and cause the corks to fly." This was a facetious suggestion by a Boston editor that a Providence
editor (the Journal mentioned was in Providence) sponsor a party.

American "O.K.", abbreviation of Obadiah Kelly, a shipping agent
American "O.K.", abbreviation of Old Keokuk, a Sac Indian chief
American "O.K.", contraction of "oll korrect". This was the choice of a British judiciary committee that investigated the matter for a 1935 court case (MEU2), and was further documented by Columbia University professor Allen Walker Read in "The Evidence on 'O.K.', _Saturday Review of Literature_, 19 July 1941. A vogue for comically misspelled abbreviations began in Boston in the summer of 1838, and spread to New York and New Orleans in 1839. They used "K.G." for "know go", "K.Y." for "know yuse", "N.S." for "nuff said", and "O.K." for "oll korrect".
American "O.K.", abbreviation of Orrins-Kendall crackers
American "O.K.", abbreviation of Otto Kaiser, American industrialist
American "O.K. Club". "O.K." gained national currency in 1840 as the slogan of the "O.K. club", a club of supporters of then President Martin Van Buren, in allusion to his nickname, "Old Kinderhook" -- Van Buren was born in the village of Kinderhook, N.Y.
Choctaw _(h)oke_ = "it is so"
English opposite of "K.O." ("knock out")
English "of Katmandu"
English "open key"
English "optical kleptomaniac"
English "our kind"
Ewe (West African)
Finnish _oikea_
French _Aux Cayes_, a place in Haiti noted for excellence of its rum
French _aux quais_, stencilled on Puerto Rican rum specially selected for export
German _ordnungsgemaess kontrolliert_ "properly checked"
German letters of rank appended to signature of Oberkommandant
Greek _olla kalla_ = "all good"
Latin _omnia correcta_ = "all correct"
Mandingo (West African) = _o ke_ "that's it", "all right"
Occitan _oc_ = "yes" (Occitan or Langue d'Oc is so called because it uses _oc_ where French uses _oui_.)
Scots _och aye!_ "oh yes"
Tewa _oh-ka(n)_ = "come here", "all right"
Wolof (West African) "waw kay" = "yes indeed". Supported by Prof.
J. Weisenfeld, professor of African and African-American religion at Columbia University. It was shown by Dr Davis Dalby ("The Etymology of O.K.", The Times, 14 January 1971) that similar
expressions were used very early in the 19th century by Negroes of Jamaica, Surinam, and South Carolina: a Jamaican planter's diary of 1816 records a Negro as saying "Oh ki, massa, doctor no need be fright, we no want to hurt him." The use of "kay" alone is recorded in the speech of black Americans as far back as 1776; significantly, the emergence of O.K. among white Americans dates from a period when refugees from southern slavery were arriving in the north.

Queried about the Dalby citations, Merriam-Webster Editorial Department told me: "A word pronounced approximately 'kai' is an expression of surprise or amusement in Jamaican Creole and in Sea Islands Creole (Gullah). If you take into account the pronunciation and meaning, you'll see that it does not fit 'okay' either semantically or phonetically. There is nothing in the history of 'O.K.' or 'okay' that suggests it has an African-American origin."

Source: [Mark Israel, 'Word Origins: "O.K."', The alt.usage.english FAQ file,(line 3864), (29 Sept 1997)]

NOLA flag from humidcity.

o. inhale, wait, inflate.
k. prick...

shh.

oh yes, all good, all right. just close your mouth next time, don't open so wide and maybe you'll find a better way to b?

O is the loneliest letter that there ever was

2006-07-12T08:57:00.000-07:00

---

O what is that sound which so thrills the ear
Down in the valley drumming, drumming?
Only the scarlet soldiers, dear,
The soldiers coming.

O what is that light I see flashing so clear
Over the distance brightly, brightly?
Only the sun on their weapons, dear,
As they step lightly.

O what are they doing with all that gear,
What are they doing this morning, this morning?
Only their usual manoeuvres, dear.
Or perhaps a warning.

O why have they left the road down there,
Why are they suddenly wheeling, wheeling?
Perhaps a change in their orders, dear.
Why are you kneeling?

O haven't they stopped for the doctor's care,
Haven't they reined their horses, their horses?
Why, they are none of them wounded, dear.
None of these forces.

O is it the parson they want, with white hair,
Is it the parson, is it, is it?
No, they are passing his gateway, dear,
Without a visit.

O it must be the farmer who lives so near.
It must be the farmer so cunning, so cunning?
They have passed the farmyard already, dear,
And now they are running.

O where are you going? Stay with me here!
Were the vows you swore deceiving, deceiving?
No, I promised to love you, dear,
But I must be leaving.

O it's broken the lock and splintered the door,
O it's the gate where they're turning, turning;
Their boots are heavy on the floor
And their eyes are burning.

-- W. H. Auden

---
O!

---

hallow fallow shallow wallow only sole lonely soul swallow
hollow below
follow
BELLOW
---

A playwright as well as a novelist, Saul Bellow is the author of The Last Analysis and of three short plays, collectively entitled Under the Weather, which were produced on Broadway in 1966. Further works:
Him with His Foot in his Mouth and Other Stories, 1984
More Die of Heartbreak. A Novel, 1987
Something to Remember Me By. Three Tales, 1992:

(1)
The Gift of the Magi
O. Henry's classic short tale of giving and receiving.
"dot dot dot Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present. dot dot dot She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. dot dot dot It was like him. Quietness and value--the description applied to both. dot dot dotWhen Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task. pause

dot dot dot "If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do--oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty- seven cents?" dot dot dot and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!" dot dot dot And them Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!" dot dot dot And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. dot dot dot"

(2)

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1936 goes to Eugene O'Neill

"for the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy"

in acceptance: " This thought of original inspiration brings me to what is, for me, the greatest happiness this occasion affords, and that is the opportunity it gives me to acknowledge, with gratitude and pride, to you and to the people of Sweden, the debt my work owes to that greatest genius of all modern dramatists, your August Strindberg. dot dot dot this was a love letter dot dot dot It was reading his plays when I first started to write back in the winter of 1913-14 that, above all else, first gave me the vision of what modern drama could be, and first inspired me with the urge to write for the theatre myself. If there is anything of lasting worth in my work, it is due to that original impulse from him, which has continued as my inspiration down all the years since then - to the ambition I received then to follow in the footsteps of his genius as worthily as my talent might permit, and with the same integrity of purpose. dot dot dot
Of course, it will be no news to you in Sweden that my work owes much to the influence of Strindberg. dot dot dot I have never been one of those who are so timidly uncertain of their own contribution that they feel they cannot afford to admit ever having been influenced, lest they be discovered as lacking all originality. dot dot dot No, I am only too proud of my debt to Strindberg, only too happy to have this opportunity of proclaiming it to his people. For me, he remains, as Nietzsche remains in his sphere, the Master, still to this day more modern than any of us, still our leader. And it is my pride to imagine that perhaps his spirit, musing over this year's Nobel award for literature, may smile with a little satisfaction, and find the follower not too unworthy of his Master."

(3)

---

oh you cannot know that. oh i repeat.

the human condition

our nature in long canisters
side-by-side in cellars

a taste for the one
far off in the back
considered dough
spit, hit, touches, impressions

headed for the cellar door, but empty
i picked again, empty
how much is there?
i picked again
and there was nothing there either.

by me
....

you can't make him drink

two peas in a pod

softly worked by sun, rain, and one green thumb
same root, same seed, same stem

she is wet but watered down, wrinkled
he is sturdy but as a nut, stone

water, dirt and warming earth
a rose is a rose is a rose

but squeeze a pod
pearls then empty

by me
....

trousers favour the brave

pound her full behind

sorry, love, too much planning
makes a man an accident;
an angry wife and a bed of nettles

look dirty now,
the nearer the bone the sweeter the meat
and the world is full of willing people

knock opportunity. pound.
sow lifetimes. pound.
happy happens, philosopher. pound.

LORD hate simple and great minds, alike

by me
....

the middle age

wet paper barking
like a million clocks

a drop, a tide of time
spoils the ink

don’t mind her!
oh, she is a storm, a moon
oh, people are scarce
but the well is dry and
calm is better broken then kept

you go, my lad
clash, clash, crush, smash
pound, pound, far underground

by me
....

I am, in fact, here to save the world.

those on the disappointment fence
are subconsciously summoning
those who believed.

a natural balance?

and the headstrong might just explode.
upsetting.

anything. first anything. anything?

a day, a god, a field, in the dark.

by me
....

coo

one blue bird
lips, tongues, feathers

soft worms and fine bosom
best bottom on a dull boy

one kiss lips
ears, words, feathers

hard want and better tomorrow
best hand in the bush

fine feathers make fine birds

by me
....

the turtle commandment

time leisure teacher

always mouth silence
for hours

lips spoil the teeth

by me
....

silly fish

the fool has a thousand brains
rich bait for dogs

love is stomach meat
best things always come in packages

beauty gives permission
but if the eye is on the roof, be the house not burned?

young self is a stranger to old self
soon parted, that thou canst not know

by me
....

word lightning

cloud-capped stone green
combustion engineer, extraction turbine
coal-dark fluid assets
family chain winding ten-wheeled locomotive
grinding

pivot, crash, heaven-lit

water
rust-red morning
dream wide-openness
honey grass

you sugar me, pseudo etymologist
inaccessible anti-nihilist…closet hypodermic…sugar

oh

you parent me, smooth-browed dog

by me
....

until they were carried by the current…

euphorbia was a boorish shade
omniscient yet choppy--
a speedboat
retch

downstream…

claustrophobia, while cagey,
could pinhole a tempest
a water-gate feat

bobbing along to a place
far down the river where the bank jutted out,
quiet wordsworth and beauregard
awake abutting

they were collected and tied together
…and cast into terminal circumscription

by me
....

Likely Neckline

the season of goodwill
grew vigorously
up as a tree
and swallowed up the sun

Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.

the wind sobbed
the secret quickest

Timing is everything.

timber

by me
....

Sidetrack

They made that gate ages ago, he said, partly for a way of escape.

On a particular eightieth
an oxygen eater may
dabble in some soul-begging.

I do try to enjoy every moment of life and accept everything the way it comes without complaining.

by me
....

calcareous evelyn

omnipresent cardiovascular remitting
delusive, hugging indifferent messieurs

some of them do not care about rears and poor ratings

chomp
he felt worse, as he now had a sharp pain in his toe to deal with in addition

by me
....

cards missing

headline: iota the frog?
answer at eleven!

resident rococo president
supreme shade
cerebrus may be into scat

toil toil continuo toil toil toil

a button.

bop and clean retardant
soar hellebore babysitter boy
brainstorm be brawn curse

by me
....

cynthia and phillip

phillip, that shabby stag, sleepwalks

see torso, quad, lewd bony fixture

a room, another, stayed by deadlock,
admit
but emma it’s gigantic!

buckle bury vaccum
narrow complicity

detect cynthia!
everywhere spectator, amazon with switchblade

neuter, arcing cutlet
embalm with mustard.

by me
....

a semicolon haunting the third person
unheard-of cavity in the middle of information
cold-blooded politeness;
a deathtrap lain in selfish control

by me
....

masculine unfamiliar cul-de-sac

disenchanted hard rock was their approximate fortress
thereabouts heartbreak
tremendously armored as a compound

drive-by by defeat in rainwater
pothole screech
clench upholstery and fumble with rubber bootstraps

periodic hypothermia, timer sought,
and thinking it explosive [overcompensation]
intelligently pull ragged the moment

by me
....

atavistic

compose remembrance

appleton begin
delicate autumnal dapple

time taken naked

by me
....

up-to-date attraction

convoluted vortex or pragmatism?
steep me a heart attack

living room, hangout, dark room
a trap door for the unusual best man
a boarding pass for the snug abundance

combustible…fuse…delightful

assault!
thorough? hot? hopelessly odd?

by me
....

the ninth punishment

doting shriveled passion on the neatness nettle.

secondly,
with the cosmonaut, was this suitcase encumbrance or accessory?

cloudy…

sorcery: the wasted melee.

blackout…
[curtain!]

by me
....

double-spaced feeler

the odds and ends of construction in a fluorescent workshop

clinically retrace bereavement and God on paper
wait for a waft of warm-hearted in the neighborly vicinity
quarry for unhappy in the porous dejected

seed, belly, aptitude:
the dependable vivisection of goodness

for a cannibal of teardrops.

by me
....

puberty markdown

fem. as an ideological consequent:
the sorrow of collarbone or
the power of a cutthroat tramp?

work that Adam’s apple repeatedly…

lovesick was on clearance.

by me
....

romance depress recipient

urbane stray
you’d colored collusion obsolete.

a closed shop ages regretful.

the ubiquity of cataclysm
was a vestige of B.S.

and advertising is ill-fitting to indecision.

silently, red-eye
pray to linens and soda water for commiseration.

by me
....

innocence sundown
(construction paper, symmetrical, exactly 4 x 12)

unadulterated toddler,
earnestly cross-legged
at the threshold of a ladies’ room

unoccupied but for floss, fishnet, eye shadow
and terminal inhumanity

the domesticated giraffe, exquisitely in profile, typecast,
was a bleak award—Popsicle parity—but…
but clung to as a pillar of
optical illusion

by me
....

feeling thoughtfulness

finger the rich marmalade joy of balanced ground
while sunbathing in the idyllic yellow of yesterday

if a splinter of hopelessness jogs the nail and
sires the rush of present tense seepage

withdrawal is in the atmosphere.

enact the power outage charade
brightly dumbfounded to go
head-to-head with the blind
violet midnight licks off-white

dizziness,
direction loss
from the hole of normality

by me
....

honor roll

masculinity - the watchword of a generous motormouth.

hobnob with a king-size package
nightly, midweek, happy-go-lucky.

cartwheel, drop hard, and squirm
a dipstick rotisserie!

barnyard, yard, sand, side street…
bottom on copier [unprofessional]
or art room, equipped with paint
marble and polymer.

expose physique for service.
a registered nurse, in eyeglasses,
apparently dispatches life support.

by me
....

quality control

excessively editorial? guilty.

disinherit the role of oratory goon and
the ensuing demolition by tongue-in cheek.

the cartwheel of thesaurus naught mask presumptuous familiarity.

stifling inhalation.

not to pedantically oversee
but as softhearted sponsor, a manual adoptive of good-natured respect ensues.

ventilation.

by me
....

noun hit man
shoot double-talk

sire, a methodical eye…

misconduct reality:
1) occasional provocation
2) premature abstinence bridge
3) spark deciduous panic

a ruthless invasion? no.

concerning crime: not that kitten
but bitten, real this time,
as to gamble at the cost of common sense.

was the yo-yo of disfavor curable?

by me
....

way-out

she’ll soften the hardhearted into
a cartwheel beat

descend the undergrowth stairway to carnal riverfront
expect unforeseen fire to torch the rib
and defrost marrow

the grand escape

by me
....

Sisterhood
was lost to the grip of gingham and
the virtuoso of forbidding mother tongue.

in springtime dusk
small-scale mischief was aboveboard,
but ambivalence crept in
and the rough-and-tumble
employed a queasy punch
and the objectionable choke.

the protrusion of jealousy slew affection dead,
and self-made apartheid rang wall-to-wall
with a soundness and an odor as sure as seen.

multiple choice:
a) excess
b) deceit
c) the power of modern manufacturing?

by me
....

red-hot reference

stammer at the informant-tit,
impolitely command or affably blubber the and this…

the whiz of emancipated kindness will excise the outermost groggy
by meta-paintbrush, and can
sew, bead and darn chronology.

a unique hybrid of ethics and midwife.

by me
....

Laughingstock

slap a postage stamp compliment on the gal,
spike her grassland bleakness with a strip of withheld horseplay and
consign the underdog to hang.

ordinary accord is the post office box of vibrant antagonism.

a ghostwriter tourist can stall, as fitting airmail,
can puncture a pent-up wail from the bleachers,
and beat inflammation unintelligible.

that man has the knack of hand-me-down strangeness.

twerp.

by me
....

yen of submission

station snout at sweaty hemline.

swarm that compassionate bare bulb
and repair humbling deflation.

guzzle for soggy shelter--
this is not a physical examination,
or a blasé bargain of eggs.

try,
heaven is no hesitation.

by me
....

Chuck Illusion

This peddler of erosion
is accustomed to fine print gravitation.

So reproach the treacherous teeth with spasmodic technicality

For this obedient plunger,
drawing to a point as definite
as spick-and-span daybreak
with a tinge of savory blue color,
commands the squat and bob.

by me
....

Serviceable Dawn

That matchstick woke
with a hankering
to go boom.

Scientifically confirmed
as burning rotten.

by me
....

Spartan

acquiesce
untangle
instantaneously nonverbal
blatant
drape endearing
liquefy
ply permanently

in circular campsite, a full-time navel point of view

by me
....

indignity

the in
of inaudible was skinny-dipping
topless thereabouts
in a pin of independent moonlight.

opportune in…
abominable incarnation disjointed sirloin stamina grudging intermarry dealings routine reading disinfectant outing hamstring accounting Inc. gasp, and breadth exception suggestion relationship gotten

the imaginable nerve of in antics!

but cooler riverside
shrunk in
reckless in
pedigree significantly adrift

immune, that sentimental dreamer or of sojourn (subtract)
retired admirably
bearded, with knitting needle and spoon-fed teacup.

by me
....

teetotaler

foggy open-ended communication continued…
distant with capitulation, feeling as monotony.

sweetheart-belief dehydrated like a sloth with dysfunctional uptake.

[capital letter insubordination]

Headfirst!

diver to rung
disembark from strung misgiving and thorough footing!

socialize
piss electricity loudly into a pail,
ably siege the kind mistress slot a-titter
and bud molten, hooded gear.

welcome a drank triumphant,
and heaven to bottom you'd heel forth.
by me
....

untitled

(1)
tbsp. antics!

Christmas card family values,
heartburn increasing
bronchitis bearer.

[intersection handgun]

inject the orator animosity
preppy the poinsettia
the happy hour care with lunchbox.

commercial. spooky.

{fin}

(2)
wagon train:
poetry the elevate grandchild tricycle

output, excursion vigilant,

slipshod

two-dimensional procurement
trying, this pierce of...

{fin}

by me
....

---

oh i repeat myself.

and i have sprung a leak.

pop goes the world

2006-07-03T15:37:00.000-07:00

have i ever used this subject before? i will stand amazed if i have not. am i a miserable wretch for feeling exploded so often? i watched a special, after watching a special on the flooding of new orleans while sitting in new orleans, on the world's greatest implosions. for a few hours i changed my messenger status to "gwendolyn p. the world's greatest implosion", but that felt hyperbolic and i replaced it.

most of the world's greatest implosions are sporting stadiums. some are hated by the fans and so there are loud cheers when they implode. others are much loved and replaced by modern monstrosities and people have mixed feelings on their implosion. people are very silly because they usually have started building the new structure before they destroy the older one so all sorts of elaborate precautions are needed to protect the new structure. this is why they have worked very hard at creating the world's greatest implosion techniques so that the old buildings can fall in on themselves without disturbing anything around them.

everyone i have ever really loved must have been part of some granfalloon. i don't talk to them at all anymore, i'm not pleased about this state of affairs one bit.

i think this is a picture of a 1-bit computer.

one of them said specifically i was part of his karass when we first met. he is the reason i started thinking about reading every vonnegut book. it is his birthday today. we don't talk even though we are supposedly friends and so i have not said happy birthday. i have a book and a card to give him if we were to talk but i don't imagine this will happen. i think perhaps vonnegut was thinking of "my ass" and "care" when he made up the word karass? and maybe vonnegut would understand that i am depressed i have not found a duprass. many people don't seem to understand.

most people would tell me i need to toughen up. but no one beats me up. i am not really sure many people could. i am big and i am strong. i'm just afraid of being ignored. vonnegut seems to think most people misbehave because they are treated like bit characters. i would suppose he makes them all main characters at some point (as he mentions his intention to in breakfast of champions) so that they behave better.

this is the inside of a wireless ship cabin (marconi, listen to the radio, 1910) that a man named andy bleck drew. it is blurry so you should go look at a better version on andy's website. i found this picture because i looked for images of "one bit" and andy says that the victorian chair is the "one bit" of this picture that gives away its age.

is it really impossible to be a central character in the lives of most people you come to really know, well, at least the ones you have loved? it is good that we modern people are being built to better crumble in ways that don't bother the structures around us.

out like a lion

2006-07-02T22:20:00.000-07:00

my courage, my spunk, it is abandoning me. i will not be asking ever so much any more. i shall be working on my arm strength, developing calluses and setting my sights westward.

i would like to close doors in my heart and mind and sprinkle a little obitsu powder at the thresholds. i'd like to know what this means.

i might begin to spend hours bending over keeping my piece of chalk to the ground.

busy, busy, busy

2006-07-02T21:40:00.000-07:00

here are three things that i really love to do which i have discovered just this year:

i would like to do them every day.

prairie dogs

2006-06-30T08:56:00.000-07:00

the problem with apathy is i've never felt it.

Cowards Bend The Knee

pop quiz, who said:

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

this post brought to you by the letter A:

apathy: 1603, "freedom from suffering," from Fr. apathie, from L. apathia, from Gk. apatheia "freedom from suffering, impassability," from apathes "without feeling," from a- "without" + pathos "emotion, feeling, suffering" (see pathos). Originally a positive quality; sense of "indolence of mind, indifference to what should excite" is from c.1733.

academy: 1474, from L. academia, from Gk. Akademeia "grove of Akademos," a legendary Athenian of the Trojan War tales (his name apparently means "of a silent district"), whose estate, six stadia from Athens, was the enclosure where Plato taught his school. Sense broadened 16c. into any school or training place. Poetic form Academe first attested 1588 in sense of "academy;" 1849 with meaning "the world of universities and scholarship," from phrase the groves of Academe, translating Horace's silvas Academi; in this sense, Academia is recorded from 1956. Academic "relating to an academy" first recorded 1586; sense of "not leading to a decision" (like university debates or classroom legal exercises) is from 1886.

the things she carried

2006-06-17T14:34:00.000-07:00

differ

c.1375, from O.Fr. diferer, from L. differre "to set apart, differ," from dis- "away from" ferre "carry" (see infer). Two senses that were present in L. have gone separate ways in Eng. since c.1500 with defer (transitive) and differ (intransitive).

in 30 minutes i imagine things will be different.

i have a headache, i have taken 4 ibuprofen, i expect to feel relief in one half of an hour. generally i feel a bit postcoital at the break of a headache. there is something simple and delicious about the end of pain to my brain. i am at work on a saturday in an airless and warm office, this might mitigate my sense of euphoria. if it was cooler outside i might lay down with a book in the grass and nap but there is too much light and heat today for the likes of me.

if i could be doing something differently right now, i would be:

more comfortable in my skin so i could wear just it
sitting inside of a barrel on the underside of a floating dock looking at the sun go down while the lake licks my back
on a ferry ride, shyly sharing stories with a boy who is falling in love, starting the best of my life
holding hands
alone in a new city, living quietly this time
climbing a tree
feeling strong hands cup my head and thumb my neck
playing tetherball
talking to someone every day until time starts to pass and that saturday morning spent cradled in my father's arms watching cartoons feels like yesterday

life should not be a holding pattern, spent waiting for the pain to subside. i need some fresh air.

sense and sensibility

2006-06-05T22:39:00.000-07:00

sense (n.)

c.1400, "faculty of perception," also "meaning or interpretation" (esp. of Holy Scripture), from O.Fr. sens, from L. sensus "perception, feeling, undertaking, meaning," from sentire "perceive, feel, know," prob. a fig. use of a lit. meaning "to find one's way," from PIE base *sent- "to go" (cf. O.H.G. sinnan "to go, travel, strive after, have in mind, perceive," Ger. Sinn "sense, mind," O.E. sið "way, journey," O.Ir. set, Welsh hynt "way"). Application to any one of the external or outward senses (touch, sight, hearing, etc.) first recorded 1526. 

The verb meaning "to perceive by the senses" is recorded from 1598. Senses "mental faculties, sanity" is attested from 1568.

many of my friends will be turning 30 this year. i myself will turn 30 on my next birthday. presently, i have absolutely nothing i need to get done before then. there's plenty to be done but no pressure implied in hitting a three decade mark. i wonder why i have such little care but as i get older i have less need to care about anything i can't be bothered to care about, as there's already ever so much demanding my attentions and sympathies.

i have very little to say right now. i wish i could feel bold enough to just say it without this rather pointless exposition, i just get a little less willing sometimes to fall into pendantic mode since i know people stop listening. but i named this blog bluestockingism for a reason, so here goes...

if maturity brings anything and if i am to consider myself mature, i wish merely to ask the following: people, why ever do we say anything that we do not mean? is there any need? for if we realize ourselves having said something that perhaps we did not quite mean or we had not quite made up our minds about, how hard is it for us to slightly adjust our actions midstream to match those words we said?

that's all. you can wander into chicken and egg conversations with this, but either way you break it...to me, there's ample room for our actions to better match our words or vice versa. especially when lies can be such weapons of mass destruction against each other. words and meaning are ever so important to me. most of the time i like to think i am not alone.

irrepressible: 1811, from in- "not" + repressible (see repress). First attested in "Sense and Sensibility."

sensible: c.1374, "perceptible to the senses," from L. sensibilis "having feeling, perceptible by the senses," from sensus, pp. of sentire "perceive, feel" (see sense). Meaning "aware, cognizant (of something)" is recorded from c.1412. Meaning "having good sense, reasonable" first recorded c.1530. Of clothes, shoes, etc., "practical rather than fashionable" it is attested from 1855. Sensibility "capacity for refined emotion" is from 1756.

reflections
alienation requires l i e.
changing courses midstream is not nearly as common as the phrase changing horses midstream.

careful, johan

2006-05-24T09:12:00.000-07:00

yesterday there was a lot of remembering, reminding me how important it is for me to write things down. please remember that i actually have very little upstairs. or if i do, i'm not quite sure where everything is in storage.

i was trying to remember the friend of helium. for some reason i thought it might be baudelaire. it appears that baudelaire and helium were never acquainted. later in the day i actually had reason to read a little more about baudelaire. it appears baudelaire and i should be better acquainted.

a little more about my new friend:
The painter of modern life has a specific task: 'he makes it his business to extract from fashion whatever element it may contain of poetry within history, to distill the eternal from the transitory'.

and

"The modern 'hero' is the one who, while embodying the tendencies of modern capitalism to the highest degree, is simultaneously engaged in an inevitably doomed struggle against them. The heroism of modernity as endurance and as impotent rage takes the form of self-deception (the flaneur, the gambler) and self-negation (the prostitute, the worker and the ragpicker). For B, the ultimate hero of modernity is the figure who seeks to give voice to its paradoxes and illusions, who participates in, while yet still retaining the capacity to give form to, the fragmented, fleeting experiences of the modern. This individual is the poet."

and

SPLEEN
by: Charles Baudelaire

I'm like some king in whose corrupted veins
Flows agèd blood; who rules a land of rains;
Who, young in years, is old in all distress;
Who flees good counsel to find weariness
Among his dogs and playthings, who is stirred
Neither by hunting-hound nor hunting-bird;
Whose weary face emotion moves no more
E'en when his people die before his door.
His favourite Jester's most fantastic wile
Upon that sick, cruel face can raise no smile;
The courtly dames, to whom all kings are good,
Can lighten this young skeleton's dull mood
No more with shameless toilets. In his gloom
Even his lilied bed becomes a tomb.
The sage who takes his gold essays in vain
To purge away the old corrupted strain,
His baths of blood, that in the days of old
The Romans used when their hot blood grew cold,
Will never warm this dead man's bloodless pains,
For green Lethean water fills his veins.

'Spleen' is reprinted from The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire. Ed. James Huneker. New York: Brentano's, 1919.

absinthe is green. strindberg, who is the true friend of helium, liked his absinthe. strindberg was also a librarian. a little more about helium's friend:

Johan (August) Strindberg
To escape the uproar which he had stirred up, Strindberg moved in 1883 to France with his family. Between the years 1884 and 1887 he lived with short interruptions in Switzerland. During this time he corresponded with Friedrich Nietzsche, and became interested of the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Under financial and marital difficulties, Strindberg started to show symptoms of emotional crisis. Feelings of persecution were suppressed by heavy drinking of absinthe. Eventually he started to believe his wife wanted to have him locked away in a mental institution.

[aside: Strindberg's friend Poe says "And I said -- "She is warmer than Dian: She rolls through an ether of sighs -- She revels in a region of sighs. She has seen that the tears are not dry on These cheeks, where the worm never dies, And has come past the stars of the Lion, To point us the path to the skies -- To the Lethean peace of the skies -- Come up, in despite of the Lion, To shine on us with her bright eyes -- Come up, through the lair of the Lion, With love in her luminous eyes." in his Ulalume]

[oh, another aside: do remember to use august as an adjective more often. i will do the same. note also that august birthdays are the lion and the virgin. i should remember to write more about the lion as i have often thought of doing. and it seems i should visit Lethe...oh wait clearly i already have.]

all these new friends like to go by their middle names. granted, i like august, but johan is a lovely name as well. which is surely why Guy Maddin selected it for an important character in Careful. Guy Maddin has another film, Cowards Bend the Knee aka The Blue Hands. i read the screenplay for this film long before i saw it, it has some sticking power with me. as does the film Mad Love, which surely Maddin harks back to in The Blue Hands. Mad Love has a murdering knife-thrower, a wax statue, peter lorre *and* hand surgery. i thought perhaps that might be 3-4 different movies, but no it is all thankfully one.

which i was reminded of when i saw this [i heard it from a friend who...]:

oh my stars. karl freund directed mad love and i just realized that guy maddin and i have the same birthday. what a nice world. my horoscope says i will make perfect sense to at least one person today (it also told me to write things down). this is the best i could hope for on any day.

remind me there is more to remember, lest we forget, and that i have poetry to write.

i felt that

2006-05-18T08:24:00.000-07:00

yesterday i felt a breeze on the small of my back and turned to look outside right as the hail started rapping on the window. i realize this indoors breeze sent anticipation fluttering into my belly, averting my gaze. looking away must, by definition, always lead to seeing something else.

-----

A Letter to Tatiana Yakoleva
by Mayakovsky

Dedicated to I...

In the caresses of lips
or hands
in the tremblings of bodies
near and dear to me
the red colour
of my motherland
must also
burning be.

I dislike
the love
that Paris boasts
of females one adorns
with silks and fashions;
who stretch out dreamily,
saying:
"Tu es beau!"
with a bitch's
animal passion.

You alone
equal me in height,
stand now beside me,
brow to brow,
and about that
oh so important night
let's talk
like human beings now.

Five p.m.
and since that time,
let people
of the dreaming pines
depopulate
the inhabited city
I hear only
argumentative whines
of trains
for Barcelona quitting.

On the heaven's black
lightning acts,
thunder
tamed
in the drama of heaven.

That's not thunder,
simply the fact
of jealousy
moving mountains even.

Don't believe the raw stuff,
stupid words and idle.
Don't be frightened
by these reelings.

I'll tame,
I'll bridle
gentry-offsprung
feelings.

Passion's measles
scabs only leave,
but happinesss
unwitherable ever.

I'll be long,
I'll be brief,
talking only in poetry's fever.

Enough
of jealousy,
wives,
tears, --
Eyelids swell
fittingly I weave.

I'm not myself,
but I'm jealous, dear,
of Soviet Russia
even.

I saw on shoulders
rags and tatters,
TB
licked them
with a sighing cough.

We're not to blame,
so what's the matter?

A hundred million
were badly off.
We can only rectify
a few
for such a gentle sport.

We're needed in Moscow,
me and you,
there're not enough
of our long-legged sort.

But with those legs
you won't be passing
through snow
and typhoid-typhoons.

Here they give them
for caressing
at banquets
for oil-tycoons.

You furrow your forehead
dont be afraid
eye-brow arcs straighten to bands.

Come to me so,
or in the cradle
of my great
big
clumsy hands.

You don't want to?

You'll stay behind and winter there?

Well that insult
to the general account
is gathered.

Just the same,
sometime or other,
I'll take you, dear,
from Paris
single
or together.

-----

neighborhood #4 (7 kettles) arcade fire

I am waitin' 'til I don't know when,
cause I'm sure it's gonna happen then.
Time keeps creepin' through the neighborhood,
killing old folks, wakin' up babies
just like we knew it would.

All the neighbors are startin' up a fire,
burning all the old folks the witches and the liars.
My eyes are covered by the hands of my unborn kids,
but my heart keeps watchin'
through the skin of my eyelids.

They say a watched pot won't ever boil,
well I closed my eyes and nothin' changed,
just some water getting hotter in the flames.

It's not a lover I want no more,
and it's not heaven I'm pining for,
but there's some spirit I used to know,
that's been drowned out by the radio!

They say a watched pot won't ever boil,
you can't raise a baby on motor oil,
just like a seed down in the soil
you gotta give it time.

-----

deluge (n.)

c.1374, from O.Fr. deluge (12c.), earlier deluve, from L. diluvium, from diluere "wash away," from dis- "away" -luere, comb. form of lavere "to wash" (see lave). The verb is from 1649.

x marks the spot, love

2006-05-16T11:59:00.000-07:00

when asked which is my favorite movie, i might two months ago have replied the falls, but the eternal answer is and always will be Xanadu [aside: i've just noticed they're both directed by people with "green" in their name].

why xanadu? i could say that i have a fondness for bad movies (and it is, honestly, quite horrible) in the same way i prefer rainy days to sun. these things like bad films and cloudy skies come with lowered expectations and therefore they can never disappoint, but they can pleasantly surprise us.

there's much more to it than its promising absurdity; however, or lambada the forbidden dance would be my favorite film. i was four the first time i saw xanadu. i was easily awed by roller skating, disco, wardrobe changes, time travel, terry cloth short shorts and the dulcet tones of olivia newton-john.

Kira: Have you ever heard the expression "kissed by a muse"? Well, that's what I am. I'm a muse.
Sonny: Well, I'm glad someone's having a good time.
Kira: Oh, don't make jokes; I'm serious.

but i think, even as a four year old, i sensed the deeper truths underpinning all that glitz on wheels. when i was small, i connected most with two particular moments in the film. i noticed the first time i watched again as an adult, my heart still quickened during each of these scenes even though i wasn't processing them as particularly memorable or meaningful now that i'd attained reason. i've always assumed that visceral response was simply related to accessing those positive childhood memories. but now i wonder...

Sonny: I've come to take you out of here.
Kira: It can't be done. No one's ever taken anyone out of here. Not in the whole history of... the whole history!
Sonny: I'll make them let you go. Zeus! Zeus, you hear me?
Kira: Oh, God.

the two scenes of mention are the opening sequence when the muse sisters emerge, dancing resplendent with technicolor light trails, from a mural on a brick wall (electrifyingly set to ELO's "i'm alive") and the scene where a lovesick, distraught sonny skates himself hard into this same brick wall (to the tune of ELO's "the fall" - my favorite song of the soundtrack) to see if he can reconnect with his beloved muse. sonny miraculously travels through the wall and arrives on mount olympus (which is a nifty plane of tronesque laser lights and disembodied divine voices). in a nutshell, love--aided by Zeus and Hera's semantic inversion of "eternity" and "a moment"--conquers all.

i think in a land where time is meaningless and brick walls are permeable, love most certainly can conquer.

---

there are no non sequiturs and if someone built a foam house with a champagne glass bed for the grownups and a swiss cheese nook for the children, i'd buy a ticket and i'd try to get locked in. where would i sleep? outlook hazy.

In Search of Xanadu
"Hearkening back to Coleridge's poem Khubla Khan, Ted Nelson (the creator of the Xanadu in question) strives to create "the magic place of literary memory where nothing is forgotten". It's a beautiful concept, and if you've got a modem or if you're on the Net, it's a concept you can take part in."

Basically, Project Xanadu was simply the work I have been trying to do for hypertext that would allow freedom to collage, freedom to quote and inter-comparison of different versions - ease of editing that allows you freely to see what you've left in and what you've left out.
Ted Nelson

Xanadu: In Search of God, Man, and Machine
I do believe that image harks back to taking me on, taking on me.

But X Marks the Spot...
"The scope of our paper is to analyze the problematical status of x as a sign in the logic of a literary text. A concise text addressing and releasing the semiotic energy of x is a recent song by German industrial band Einst�rzende Neubauten, conveniently titled "X". "X" is the third song on Supporter Album #1 (2003), which EN recorded without the backing of a record label, relying instead upon supporter participation. We will argue that "X" chronologically recounts the different stages of a love affair gone wrong. Our interpretation will be based on a semiotic analysis which follows the narrative pattern of the song closely."

feeling good was good enough for me

2006-05-07T22:16:00.000-07:00

cab
1826, shortening of cabriolet (1763) "light, horse-drawn carriage," Fr. dim. of cabrioler "leap, caper," from It. capriolare "jump in the air," from L. capreolus "wild goat." The carriages had springy suspensions. Extended to hansoms and other types of carriages; applied to public horse carriages (of automobiles from 1899), then extended to similar parts of locomotives (1859). Cabby is from 1859.

i like cabbies. and cabbies like me. i must conclude i am liked by cabbies to a point swiftly approaching grace. i've had more free or heavily discounted cab rides than seems naturally possible, including a 12 mile one from lakeview to hyde park one time. many a cab driver has also volunteered to let me pay on a sliding scale dependent on the amount of cash i have on my person. i have a bit of a tendency to hail a cab and hop in only to realize i am a good few dollars short of the fare, but i always check right off and say i'm going to need to pop out when we reach $4 or so on the meter. most cab drivers then volunteer to take me the full $6 away. i try to make up for it by tipping two dollars on cab fares under ten dollars as a rule. while i know this isn't very effective in making it up to those particular individuals i short-changed, the cab karma still seems heavily tipped to good.

tonight my cabdriver bought me a cup of coffee. we arrived at the coffee via this route:
cabbie[rolling down window]: are you cold?
me: no, no i am fine.
cabbie: so you do not want me to buy you a cup of hot soup or something?
me [laughing]: oh no, no thank you. it is not cold out tonight, much nicer than last night.
cabbie: yes but you sounded cold.
me: oh i did? not cold, tired i guess.
...silence for three blocks...
me: you know now you've got me thinking that coffee sounds good.
cabbie[holding up cup from cariboo]: i've got coffee, it's the fancy stuff.
me: i prefer the cheap stuff from dunkin donuts myself.
cabbie: where is the nearest dunkin donuts?
me: clark and montrose [i did not decide in this moment to reveal my near encyclopedic knowledge of the location of over 100 dunkin donuts on the north side--which certainly does merit me a free cup of coffee; however, this cup should be paid for by dunkin not by a kind stranger if you ask me].
cabbie: let me take you to get the coffee.
me[laughing]: oh no, that is not necessary it is so late but thank you.
cabbie: no come on, let us go, no worries the cab will go off for this trip.

so he turned the meter off, drove the one block to dunkin donuts, bought me a cup of coffee and insisted on going inside to get it for me, drove back up to where we were, turned the meter back on and dropped me off at home. i did say thank you and tip nicely. i said yes because well i never say no to kindness.

in here

2006-05-03T21:51:00.000-07:00

today i confronted my sadness.

lately i've been struck by the fact that the sense of sight has entered my dream world. in the past few months i have noticed that in a few of my dreams i have been cognizant of my sight, or lack thereof. i've never really noted vision as part of my dreams previously. in one dream i was trying to look out a giant picture window at a mountain vista to see someone far off and to figure out how to close the screen door that was letting in rain. i did not have my glasses in the dream and i expressed frustration at how blurry everything was and how much trouble i was having figuring out the door mechanism. just last night i was, in a dream, telling a friend about the dreams i had had to counteract her retelling of bad dreams she had had. all of this, yes still within a dream, led her to pull out a book on dreaming to look up a passage on how two people having the same dream with different emotional connotations could be analyzed. after finding the passage she handed me the book to read it and also handed me reading glasses to put on. however, as in life, in the dream i was nearsighted and the glasses only made the words blurry. lastly one time i dreamt about waking up in my friend's apartment and in the dream i was waking up feeling disoriented and unsure of where i was and in the dream i rolled over and slowly in my head figured out where i was and decided, my eyes in the dream were still closed, to open my eyes. i was shocked, in the dream, to discover that the wall i knew would be there (and is in reality there) was suddenly transparent and i was looking instead through the wall into the closet (which is also in reality there) directly at a mirror (also there) and seeing myself as i would appear laying on my side. i promptly woke up.

this could be really interesting to explore more i imagine. in the meantime, i started my reading with aristotle.

That the sensory organs are acutely sensitive to even a slight qualitative difference [in their objects] is shown by what happens in the case of mirrors; a subject to which, even taking it independently, one might devote close consideration and inquiry. At the same time it becomes plain from them that as the eye [in seeing] is affected [by the object seen], so also it produces a certain effect upon it. If a woman chances during her menstrual period to look into a highly polished mirror, the surface of it will grow cloudy with a blood-coloured haze. It is very hard to remove this stain from a new mirror, but easier to remove from an older mirror. As we have said before, the cause of this lies in the fact that in the act of sight there occurs not only a passion in the sense organ acted on by the polished surface, but the organ, as an agent, also produces an action, as is proper to a brilliant object. For sight is the property of an organ possessing brilliance and colour. The eyes, therefore, have their proper action as have other parts of the body. Because it is natural to the eye to be filled with blood-vessels, a woman's eyes, during the period of menstrual flux and inflammation, will undergo a change, although her husband will not note this since his seed is of the same nature as that of his wife. The surrounding atmosphere, through which operates the action of sight, and which surrounds the mirror also, will undergo a change of the same sort that occurred shortly before in the woman's eyes, and hence the surface of the mirror is likewise affected. And as in the case of a garment, the cleaner it is the more quickly it is soiled, so the same holds true in the case of the mirror. For anything that is clean will show quite clearly a stain that it chances to receive, and the cleanest object shows up even the slightest stain. A bronze mirror, because of its shininess, is especially sensitive to any sort of contact (the movement of the surrounding air acts upon it like a rubbing or pressing or wiping); on that account, therefore, what is clean will show up clearly the slightest touch on its surface. It is hard to cleanse smudges off new mirrors because the stain penetrates deeply and is suffused to all parts; it penetrates deeply because the mirror is not a dense medium, and is suffused widely because of the smoothness of the object. On the other hand, in the case of old mirrors, stains do not remain because they do not penetrate deeply, but only smudge the surface.

dreams. shrug. dreams.

in addition to dreaming about discussing dreaming and having poor vision, i also started my day with someone telling me i do not suffer from a lack of sense of self. mispelling actually suggested more "cents of self" and i wanted to say i live richly. it is not so.

my life is good, better than many, and i feel blessed. and yet i can look at someone like myself, albeit younger and happier and see them say that life is beautiful and not feel truth resonating in me. how sad i have become.

at night i see streetlamps shining through trees and i think that simple things can be so unbearably beautiful. i don't have anyone to tell this to, at least anyone who will nod and hold me...dear for saying such a thing. at least anyone i've let within arm's reach. everyone i have let in has left.

i could open my arms to everyone and no one and write. i keep waiting to write until i am happy enough with the possibilty that no one is reading. i have a fear of bitterness.

i have a stronger fear of sadness. when i was seventeen my mother wanted to die, she has not been very happy ever since. i spent seven years not understanding what depression was, i thought it was sadness. i have spent five years knowing the difference between sadness and depression. i want to say it is like this:

and

but that seems too simple. it is hard to contemplate, and to look at. i do not want to be sad. i am, in fact, deathly afraid of it. afraid of it for myself and for its spoiling of all i hold dear. love has been the surefire way to turn my back on the gaping maw. when love goes awry i'm left alone with the mirror of rejection. i stare the maw in the face and wonder if i am staring down my own gullet and if this dark, silent scream caught far far back in my throat was somewhere behind my words of affection, my smiles and this reflection? no wonder they run.

why can't we know what people see when they look at us? some of us can. funny thing is i think those are the people that end up the most protected in life by others --the weak, the judged and the insecure, easily molded. while others have had such forces of persuasion at our disposal, bred possibly through the random happenstances of neglect, that no one bothered to create a version of us to hold up, show us, spoon feed with a bit of sugar added to ease the swallowing. instead we're out here, alone, struggling to make it up as we go along, waiting for the one person who sees the same thing. but perhaps, it seems, no one really likes looking into mirrors. it startles us into waking.

out there

2006-05-01T21:03:00.001-07:00

i was wondering about the equation 1 picture = 1,000 words last night. i wanted to see what 1 picture that is worth 1,000 words looks like, and i wanted to compare it to 1,000 words. so i looked.

these pictures didn't strike me as particularly valuable. the only one i really like is a vintage postcard that says "the mysterians", which may or may not refer to this japanese film i think i'd like to see.

lacking pictures of worth, i wondered where "1,000 words" alone might take me. nowhere very exciting. drats.

ever persistent, i went looking for the origin of the phrase "a picture is worth 1,000 words". astonishingly, i haven't found it yet. i'll look in my books when i get home later tonight. feel free to elucidate me if you've got something handy.

how utterly unintriguing in its ubiquity is this phrase. the only point of interesting inquiry was my discovery, back in the image search, of this webpage about a course in heraldry. it says "the specialised vocabulary includes 1000 words, amongst them the most frequently used ones. The interest in heraldics lies within the vast poetic nature of the language, but also in the illustrations." i never knew there was a whole heraldic language, and here we find a fitting bridge between words and pictures. i wonder if this language has only 1000 words, and if this explains our phrase. but i doubt it.

it's ever so hard for me to accept not finding what i've been looking for.

so in lieu of nothing, here's an observation i made after searching on ["a picture is worth a 1,000 words"+word origins]: people everywhere are wondering if there is intelligent life out there.

why is the first search return looking for the origin of this phrase a link to this contest: "AlienAlmanac.com is sponsoring your written or artistic depiction of the Neilans and their first six months on Earth."?

why is another search return this very strange thing, which i believe might be called a story, bearing the title: "After Eve [Conte Philosophique] Part One (Chapter One): The First Ballad"? there's atlantis, aliens, gilgamesh and the garden of eden (oh and demigods) waiting for you if you choose to go there.

aliens, once twice and thrice. hmmm.

i like how aliens appear in the song "diner girls" by ill lit. one of my favorite songs by what may be my favorite band. i like this reference because it notes that the "aliens, they're coming for us. and yes, we're aliens, they're only part of us. well, aliens will eat the heart of us, my baby."

exactly my sentiments and perfectly on point with why i've never been particularly concerned with life out there. there's so much intelligent life right here. last time i checked, you were here too. do you understand why i hate it when people say things like "good luck out there"?

Q: am i the only that notices the noticing of loneliness components?
A: thankfully, no.

drowning in meaning

2006-05-01T21:03:00.000-07:00

"semiotic fluid"

these two words came together in my head this morning. i think they glanced at each other during that time i spend each morning sleeping in 9 minute increments trying to repeat any pleasant dreams. i was riding the bus and looking at the lake when they decided to really give it a go as a couple. of course then i was just hoping a special spam with both of them would be waiting for me in my inbox so i could use the phrase in a poem.

Q: what does wendy do when words mate in her mind?
A: she investigates other minds that had the same thought.

Q: does wendy enjoy employing the third person?
A: sometimes.

[aside: "(Keep Feeling) Fascination" by The Human League is annoying in its repetition, rather hard to make any real sense of, and yet I like it immensely when the deep voice says "and so the conversation turned until the sun went down, and many fantasies were heard on that day."]

i'll trust you're competent enough to go to google or some such place and search on "semiotic fluid" if you're really that interested in all of the results. in the meantime, here are the two that intrigued me the most.

(1)

there's an article [citation: Milburn, Colin "Nano/Splatter: Disintegrating the Postbiological Body" New Literary History - Volume 36, Number 2, Spring 2005, pp. 283-311 The Johns Hopkins University Press] which you cannot read online. i can because i hobknob with librarians. if you ever need a full text academic article, give a ring to your local library. if you'd like to read this particular article let me know. i haven't read it yet but i found the instance of my words:

"Splatter," in the vocabulary of literary and cinematic horror, has come to refer to a representational moment in which the human body is violently torn asunder, shredded, sliced, hacked, dismembered, melted, and transformed, splattered as semiotic fluid into ghastly forms of monstrous abjection. As the defining motif of "splatterpunk" fictionrepresented by the wettest productions of auteurs such as Clive Barker, Poppy Z. Brite, John Shirley, Edward Lee, George Romero, Lucio Fulci, David Cronenberg, and Peter Jacksonsplatter is the figural mechanism through which narratives of "extreme horror" create meaning: in these texts, "mutilation is the message." By disrupting the body's boundaries and the social codes adhering to them, splatter viciously unsettles the economies of corporealization, and Jay McRoy has argued that at the moment of splatter, the "spectacular and graphic deconstruction/transformation of the 'human' form" enacts a radical revision of normative embodiment, suggesting possibilities of somatic experience other than those encountered in the historical accident of human morphology. Or, as Judith Halberstam has written, the bodies that "emerge triumphant at the gory conclusion of a splatter film are literally posthuman, they punish the limits of the human body and they mark identities as always stitched, sutured, bloody at the seams, and completely beyond the limits and the reaches of an impotent humanism.

this is pretty darn interesting to me given i've spent the past two years focusing most of my film watching on cronenberg, giallo (italian horror genre), and miike(japanese horror director) films. neat coincidence, and for now unfathomable.

(2)

there's something called the "book of knots" which is the manual for an RPG (role-playing game if you're not as familiar with nerds as am i) called Wonderland based on the writings of lewis carroll. i find myself musing about the writings of lewis carroll often. i cannot plumb this manual's text well enough to find my "semiotic fluid", if you do please let me know. i did glance at the secret history of the end of the universe. i did brush against the person known as the clear widow and wonder if i am she. i saw the words We Know It is Called The Department of Works in bold and was reminded of the book "the third policeman" and the movie "the falls" in a pleasant fashion. i noted the words "vacuum" and "common sense". but the only thing that grabbed me for more than a few pages was a sidebar about the caretakers. lesson learned: sidebars have sticking power. i believe that everything that follows references back to Caretakers. as a frame of reference, i believe everyone that alice meets in her adventure is considered a Caretaker. i believe that humans meet Caretakers during their "descent", and that this is known as The Royal Drama. are you ready?

A caretaker is
Mad
Because he sees the world, not
as it is but as he wishes it would
be. And for millions and millions
of years, the world has bent to
conform to his delusions.
The Eye of the Storm
Because she believes herself
to be physical thing, while her
infl uence roars around her,
corrupting, perverting, and
degrading everything within her
sphere.
Munifi cent
Because he has everything he
could ever desire and yet can
still be bigger by demonstrating
his largess.
A Petty Bastard
Because she knows she has
limits and they make her furious
and when she sees weakness and
mortality in others it reminds of
things that she hates in herself.
Paradoxes with Opposing Poles
Each Caretaker is obsessed
with something and repelled by
something else. Sometimes these
are polar opposites. Sometimes
these are the same things. And
these things are represent deep,
universal truths that would be
enlightening if one could see
through the
pageantry, rage, and distortion.
The Queen of Hearts has
sacrifi ced millions upon the altar
of the rules, but violates their
spirit with every psychotic deed.
The Duchess of Knots is
ensnared in storm of
maddening change and
tumultuous chaos, but
sponsors a massive, dark
bureaucracy whose rules and
bylaws and dusty fi les consign
those caught in its grip to stasis.
The Liebrarian worships the
sanctity of truth, while residing
over an infi nite collection of
blasphemy and perversity. She
seeks ordinal mastery over
the un-ordered and cardinal
understanding of the unnumbered.
She is a keeper of
knowledge so wrapped in lies, it
provides uncertainty.
Darker things less human rule
over chasms dedicated mirth that
are fi lled with weeping.
The Factory is, in itself the
means of production the
engines of capitalism, but they
vomit up resources without
scarcity: the utopian dream.
Full of Hatred
In a refi ned, civilized way, they
hate everything, and it gnaws at
them.

well, that's about it.

woe-illumed rabbit holes

2006-04-14T12:14:00.000-07:00

there's a lot swirling around in here. let's say it began yesterday morning when i was riding the bus and i had a thought about motherhood. real motherhood, and possibly my first real thought about motherhood as creation. i simply thought what if i am on my deathbed and i find myself regretting that i've left nothing behind? assuming i never produce anything real and lasting in the way of art, and assuming i never end up going through with the "easiest" creation of another life, will i sit at the threshhold between here and something else and find myself feeling remorse at having left nothing behind to remember me by? i know this is a common fear and a common reason people choose to have children. i'm not sure it is a concern of mine now in the common way, i am just wondering how it would feel to get to the point of no return and realize something you never knew you wanted has been left undone.

it continued when, last night, i went out for drinks and meaningful conversation with two older women. amazing, smart, accomplished, childless and currently single older women. conversations such as this always leave me feeling affirmed and fearful of my future. [an aside: have you ever had those moments where you feel like some sort of deep transformation was supposed to have taken place but the routines of your life sink in before anything seems to change?] during the conversation, i blurted out how i needed always in my life to have at least one arena where i was able to hold onto my ideals and my romantic allusions or i would resort to heavy substance abuse. they pushed my martini glass away from me. i laughed but i think i was speaking the truth. when every ounce of my innocence or faith is squelched, i think something bad may happen. innocence and faith are thoughtfully vague and interchangeable words.

by stealing the image directly above i have justified the consumption of my first born child.
all of the images in today's blog post were arrived at by image-searching on the word "unadulterated". i've been chewing on that word since i used it in a poem yesterday.

SYLLABICATION: a·dul·ter·ate
TRANSITIVE VERB:Inflected forms: a·dul·ter·at·ed, a·duter·at·ing, a·dul·ter·ates
To make impure by adding extraneous, improper, or inferior ingredients.
ADJECTIVE:Spurious; adulterated. 2. Adulterous.
ETYMOLOGY: Latin adulterre, adultert-, to pollute

i suppose this all means i don't want to entirely grow up. i was also very adult as a young child. now i'm thinking about all my life being about meeting somewhere in the middle, and this rings some bell in my head. a bell that is tied to a string which seemingly, in my mind, has a ribbon of text re-minding me of Alice in Wonderland. so off to google i have gone, and here's what i've found:

"Food: Food is the used in this novel as a metaphor for growth. Carroll is literalizing the old notion that food helps you grow big and strong, that food is the path to adulthood. Ironically, Carroll is also pointing out that growing up is only half the way to adulthood. Alice can control her size and therefore her position as an adult with the food provided by the Caterpillar, but it isn't until the Cheshire Cat shows her the dangers of adulthood that she is able to be truly adult. Food can make you big in Wonderland (as in life) but only mercy and experience can make you wise.

Red: Red is the symbol of adulthood (literally it can be taken to refer to menstrual blood, and thus fertility and vigor). The Queen and Alice are on opposite sides of this color, Alice just growing into her adulthood, the Queen just growing past it. It is over this place, this wise middle ground, that the novel fights. Red is, hopefully, a place (or an age) of balance between rules and mercy, between young and old, between wisdom and nonsense."

there's an article about Alice and Wonderland and the Shroud of Turin that also appeared in my results. it is Easter weekend. happy easter if it is a happy time for you.

milking (more)

2006-04-09T16:47:00.000-07:00

my fingers smell of softly souring milk as i begin this post. only mildly strange as i did take my coffee with cream this morning and i've not had cause to wash my hands since. but fitting and not unpleasant.

as i'm wont to do, i've been thinking about boys and men.

so much so i stumbled today onto a most absurd party idea and have invited some blokes i think i like quite a lot, but not per se in that way, to a sausage fest. yes i called it a Sausage Fest in the invitation, and i referenced Kubla Khan (another thing you may know i am quite wont to do). so i've offered to grill bratwurst for 8 men and ply them with beer. i've asked them to bring a film along that, in their opinion, best encapsulates "the plight of masculinity". discussion is optional. while on some level i see how this appears to be a gang-bang waiting to happen or an exploration of latent homosexuality. it isn't in the least. i think this speaks volumes about the men i have invited and the height of my regard. i won't, however, be nonplussed if nobody decides to attend.

what could or should be surprising, but isn't--perhaps because i'm the type of person who searches on the word "nonplussed" when she is writing about sausage fests (go back and follow)--is that while writing this post today somebody i don't know well is simultaneously telling me about his sex life of late which includes recent encounters with a woman he doesn't know well and the routine is that he arrives at her home, simulated breast-feeding occurs for an extended period of time and then mommy has sex with her little boy. i'm not stricken by this story, nor can i hope to explain how this conversation i'm having isn't charged or dirty to me. i'm just struck by the synchronicity of my current thoughts on a metaphorical level and another person's concrete admission. reality is a strange thing. i'm also reflective on how i prompt these stories from other people, men i mean. the stories from women always seem to flow out of our conversations and the depth of our relationship more organically.

during this reflection, i've so far paused on this essay:

Four Loves, No Loves:
The Four Greek Loves in Ulysses

"Amor vincit omnia" writes Virgil in his Odyssey-esque Aeneid -- "Love conquers all." James Joyce remained conscious of his classical heritage during Ulysses' seven-year composition, drawing on sources from Homer to Dante to Thomas Aquinas to Shakespeare, and love was naturally one of his topics. Greek has words for four kinds of love: agape, or spiritual love; storge, or familial love; the love between friends, or philia; and sexual love, the familiar eros.

All four figure in Joyce's massive novel, gamboling about in his tapestry of words, yet all eventually evade the two male protagonists, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom: Ulysses proves ultimately to be a love-less work.

Agape -- spiritual love, the charitable love among coreligionists or between Man and God -- seems sure to appear, given Ulysses' protagonists' backgrounds and the host of Christian symbols that flock about them. Yet Stephen Dedalus is torn with doubt in his Catholicism, and we find in the course of the novel that Bloom renounced his Judaism, first to convert to Protestantism with his father and then, conveniently, to convert to Catholicism to marry Molly: both have fallen from their original faith. Within two paragraphs of Ulysses' opening we see a mock Mass -- "Introibo ad altare Dei" (p. 3) -- and hear the lurking Stephen scornfully called a "fearful jesuit" by mocking Mulligan. Stephen is certainly no recipient of agape here! Interestingly, Simon Dedalus identifies Mulligan as Stephen's "fidus Achates" (p. 73), a glancing Virgil image to set Stephen up as "pius Aeneas", "pious Aeneas", Virgil's hero of proper behavior to gods and men. But, as we see, home-stealing, ever-jeering Mulligan is no more "fidus" than whoring, drunken Stephen is "pius".

Stephen Dedalus is a prolix speaker, an engaging theorist and theologian, well versed in ecclesiastical history, particularly in the Church's early heresies. Yet, for all his knowledge and cogent arguments, he shows little inclination for belief. His arguments on Shakespeare's Hamlet are innovative, but he freely and "promptly" (p. 175) admits that he does not believe them -- what, then of equally intricate Catholic doctrine? Is it also only a tissue of lies, good for nothing but entertaining arguments? "You behold in me... a horrible example of free thought." (p. 17) Stephen sees only "the playwright who wrote the folio of this world and wrote it badly... hangman god... [who] would be bawd and cuckold." (p. 175) Trapped in such cynicism, Stephen feels charitable impulses towards his destitute sister Dilly ("Save her," (p. 200)), but holds back to guard himself instead ("She will drown me with her," (ibid)): again he rejects agape. In the climactic "Circe" scene in the brothel, Stephen becomes a perverted Cardinal Dedalus, attended by the seven "cardinal" sins and wearing a rosary on corks and a corkscrew cross -- distorted faith and agape again.

Leopold Bloom seems more gifted with agape� than his younger companion, but even he seems never to fully realize his charitable impulses. Bloom's mind turns all his philanthropic impulses into practical commercialism. His help to the blind stripling crossing the street (p. 148) is filled with critical examinations ("Stains on his coat. Slobbers his food, I suppose...." etc. (p. 148)) and followed by one of Bloom's pseudophilosophical musings, this time, of course, on blindness. Similarly, the sight of Dilly Dedalus outside Dillon's auctionrooms (p. 124) prompts some pity -- "Good Lord, that poor child's dress is in flitters." -- but no action aside from ruminations on Catholicism and contraception. Even Bloom's early-morning care of Stephen receives rationalization: it is all for "intellectual stimulation," the possibility of making money by writing an article, or opportunities to exploit Stephen's literary and musical talents on Molly's tours. Even Bloom's social agenda, as explained to Stephen over early morning coffee (p. 526), is to "see everyone... having a comfortable tidysized income...." -- with no hint of how to achieve it. Again, we see empty charity, thought without action -- lack of agape.

Familial love, or storge, receives similarly short shrift in Joyce's novel. Stephen describes his parents as "the man with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her breath. They clapped and sundered, did the coupler's will" (p. 32) -- hardly a flattering picture. Stephen passes by his cousins' cottage during his walk on the beach, dismissing it and his parents' home as "houses of decay" (p. 33). And even among his first recollections of Paris, Stephen mentions that "Belluomo rises from the bed of his wife's lover's wife" (p. 35), a complicated perversion of normal family structure and relationships which mirrors Stephen's own unhappy thoughts. Throughout Ulysses, Stephen is tormented by the thought of his mother as "beastly dead," in part because he disobeyed her last wishes by not praying at her bedside. At last, amidst Circean revelry and hallucination, Stephen's father calls a foxhunt after his son, and his mother appears to torment him to the Luciferian exclamation "Non serviam!" -- "I shall not serve!" (p. 475)

Bloom, too, undergoes both memories of and hallucinatory reunions with his parents. Bloom's father committed suicide, a grim rejection of the family and of storge, and Bloom's son Rudy died in infancy -- his family has been cut off at both ends. Only wife Molly and daughter Milly remain, but they are both distant: Bloom has not had sex with his wife since Rudy died, and Milly lives away from home, only writing the occasional hurried letter. Bloom's parents reappear, however, to rescold him for a childhood accident (p. 358), and his grandfather Lipoti Virag "chutes rapidly down the chimneyflue" in the brothel to discourse scientifically and pedantically on sex, then to acquire a parrotbeak, turkey wattles, a "glowworm's nose," wings, and more: a horrid and unpredictable sequence. Even Bloom's locked drawers, home of his "Henry Flower" letters and legal documents, prompts unpleasant memories of his father's age and decline. Admittedly, Bloom's son Rudy appears, idealized and presented as he might have been had he lived (p. 497), and seems to link Bloom and Stephen in a father-son relation of sorts -- but Bloom's commercial mind drives out all possibility of storge� or charitable agape.

Philia, or the love between friends, is less common in Ulysses' Ireland than one would hope -- at least for Stephen and Bloom. Bloom is an outsider, and constantly made to feel it, from the newspaper office of "Aeolus" to the pub of "The Cyclops" -- in both places he is excluded, ignored or insulted. Even in "Oxen of the Sun," the narrator asks "with what fitness... has this alien... constituted himself the lord paramount of our internal polity?" (p. 334) when Bloom merely wonders over the medical students' immaturity. Even Bloom's attempts to give philia are met with a cold rebuff, such as Menton's stony coldness when Bloom points out the dinge in his hat (p. 95). And Bloom seems not to be the only one lacking friendly treatment -- Stephen is teased and ridiculed by housemates (Mulligan) and medical students (Lynch puts the boastful poet in his place, asking for "something more, and greatly more, than a capful of light odes" (p. 339), and the others attack Stephen's "perverted transcendentalism" (p. 341)).

Indeed, the world of Ulysses as well as its main characters seem bereft of philia. The intense political discussions in the newspaper office and bar show not so much a love of Ireland as a hatred of England: a love of violent battles and martyrs, hatred and killing. Bloom tries to explain: "Force, hatred, history, all that. That's not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it's the very opposite of that that is really life.... Love.... I mean the opposite of hatred." (p. 273) But he is mocked and derided by the others in the bar, even to the point of barely escaping from some violent ruffians led by the bigoted Citizen. The men of Ulysses have little agape, and Bloom sees women as scarcely better off: after masturbating on the beach, he muses on them "Picking holes in each other's appearance. You're looking splendid. Sister souls. Showing their teeth at one another. How many have you got left? Wouldn't lend each other a pinch of salt." (p. 302)

Bloom does eventually imagine a world where he is recognized and loved, in his grand hallucination of "the new Bloomusalem in the Nova Hibernia of the future" (p. 395), ushering in the "Paradisiacal Era" (p. 397). But it is, after all, a fantasy, little different from his masturbation on the beach. The first act of "the world's greatest reformer" (p. 392), the self-contradictory "emperor-president and king-chairman" (p. 393), is, Caligula-like, to "nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix ["good screw"?] hereditary Grand Vizier," then to repudiate Molly and take to wife "Selene, the splendour of night" (p. 394). There follows the most frenetic string of promises and reforms, a literal attempt to be all things to all people regardless of contradiction, all too clearly summed up in his "free money, free rent, free love and a free lay church in a free lay state" (p. 399). So starved is Bloom for care and affection that he weaves into his falsehoods even a pregnancy for himself, bearing eight successful sons. But so accustomed is he to rejection that his dream comes around to that at last, and he is martyred, burned at the stake.

Last but far from least, Joyce weaves eros, or erotic love, into his tale. As with his dreams of Bloomusalem, Bloom's fantasies of eros are idealized and unfulfilled. He has not had sexual intercourse with his wife Molly for ten years, since the death of their infant son Rudy. He carries on an almost-erotic correspondence with Martha Clifford, but takes pains to keep her at a distance, unresolved and idealized. He masturbates to Gerty MacDowell on the beach when she lets him see her underwear, but that, too, is imperfect eros, not communal but casual, a still-distant, imaginary act more in the imagination than the physical, real world. Like the temperance service in the nearby church with its mere display of the communion, it is mere appearances, not the act itself. Fittingly enough, when Bloom's alter-ego Henry Flower takes shape in the "Circe" episode, he makes love to a severed female head: an unbodied, eros-less relationship.

Erosalso appears in Bloom's fantasies, but always as perversions or prettified past events. Josie Powell (now Mrs. Breen), one of Bloom's early romances, appears in his dreams in the slum street, and chuckles "You were always a favorite with the ladies" (p. 363). But when the Nymph of his bedroom picture interrogates Bloom about his sex life, he complains of his youth that "no girl would when I went girling. Too ugly. They wouldn't play...." (p. 448). Which should we believe? The latter seems more likely. Mrs. Breen implies several romantic encounters with young Bloom, but on the verge of a more informative, definite part of the story ("you asked me if I ever heard or read or knew or came across...." (p. 367)), she fades from Bloom's dream with nothing but a tantalizing series of "yes"'s: the reader is left as unfulfilled as Bloom. In Bloom's imagined trial, his former scullery-maid Mary Driscoll comes to accuse him of "a certain [lewd] suggestion" (p. 376), but again it appears that nothing happened between them. As if to underscore Bloom's separation from eros, when the whore Zoe tries to fondle his testicles she grabs his potato talisman instead, and her request for a "swaggerroot" sends Bloom off onto an anti-smoking diatribe, hardly a fit conversation for a hopeful bed-partner.

Bloom's entire sexual identity seems warped, at least by the standards of Joyce's period. Several ladies of polite society materialize during his imagined trial to accuse him of sending them "improper letters" (p. 381) praising their underwear, offering to mail them erotica, and asking to be horsewhipped. When one of the dream-figures offers to fulfill the final request, Bloom "quails expectantly" (ibid) in eager anticipation -- not of a sexual encounter, but of a pseudo-erotic beating. Similarly, a Circean Bloom-dream metamorphoses the whorehouse madame into masculine Bello and Bloom into a submissive female to be beaten and ridden, and Bloom recalls lounging in bed wearing second-hand womens' undergarments, fantasizing over being ravished. When Bloom at last returns home, Molly complains to herself of her husband "never embracing me except... the wrong end of me... any man thatd kiss a womans bottom Id throw my hat at him" (p. 639), yet that is exactly what Bloom does -- kiss her buttocks, the most anonymous and androgynous part of her body.

In fact, Molly's final thoughts in Ulysses only underscore the lack of eros which has afflicted Bloom throughout the book. She begins to menstruate ("this bloody pest of a thing" (p. 642)) even as she considers trying to re-establish sexual relations, and moves in her thoughts to their tryst on Howth Hill -- the same rendezvous Bloom has recalled so fondly before. Yet, like all too many of the happy occasions in Ulysses, this one is in the past, dead and gone. Indeed, the book ends in Molly's "yes I said yes I will Yes." (p. 644), but the "Yes" is in the past, only another sad comment on Bloom's lack of love. Love is a thing of the past, dreams are sick counterfeits and cheats: agape, storge, philia, eros, the four loves, are forlorn.

emphasis added by me and written by, i think, joseph lockett

it's an honest mistake, made often enough, to think that someone that ponders men and boys as often as i do, and speaks so often what she thinks...well to think that i might hate them. i don't think this is true. i remain hopeful that it isn't, as i keep writing with my milky fingers which while a bit sour still mainly smell sweet. yes I said yes I will Yes.

boy, oh boy

2006-04-02T21:01:00.000-07:00

i wish i could quit articles that reference contemporary films, but gee i suppose these films are supposed to reflect on the times. and, well, i've been reflecting on the times. failure to launch...please check out the forthcoming plog post about sex. yes, sex. so don't read it if you're faint of heart or under the age of 4.

What's Happening to Boys?

Young Women These Days Are Driven -- but Guys Lack Direction

By Leonard Sax

Friday, March 31, 2006; Page A19

The romantic comedy "Failure to Launch," which opened as the No. 1 movie in the nation this month, has substantially exceeded pre-launch predictions, taking in more than $64 million in its first three weeks.

Matthew McConaughey plays a young man who is affable, intelligent, good-looking -- and completely unmotivated. He's still living at home and seems to have no ambitions beyond playing video games, hanging out with his buddies (two young men who are also still living with their parents) and having sex. In desperation, his parents hire a professional motivation consultant, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, who pretends to fall in love with McConaughey's character in the hope that a romantic relationship will motivate him to move out of his parents' home and get a life.

The movie has received mixed reviews, though The Post's Stephen Hunter praised it as "the best comedy since I don't know when." But putting aside the movie's artistic merits or lack thereof, I was struck by how well its central idea resonates with what I'm seeing in my office with greater and greater frequency. Justin goes off to college for a year or two, wastes thousands of dollars of his parents' money, then gets bored and comes home to take up residence in his old room, the same bedroom where he lived when he was in high school. Now he's working 16 hours a week at Kinko's or part time at Starbucks.

His parents are pulling their hair out. "For God's sake, Justin, you're 26 years old. You're not in school. You don't have a career. You don't even have a girlfriend. What's the plan? When are you going to get a life?"

"What's the problem?" Justin asks. "I haven't gotten arrested for anything, I haven't asked you guys for money. Why can't you just chill?"

This phenomenon cuts across all demographics. You'll find it in families both rich and poor; black, white, Asian and Hispanic; urban, suburban and rural. According to the Census Bureau, fully one-third of young men ages 22 to 34 are still living at home with their parents -- a roughly 100 percent increase in the past 20 years. No such change has occurred with regard to young women. Why?

My friend and colleague Judy Kleinfeld, a professor at the University of Alaska, has spent many years studying this growing phenomenon. She points out that many young women are living at home nowadays as well. But those young women usually have a definite plan. They're working toward a college degree, or they're saving money to open their own business. And when you come back three or four years later, you'll find that in most cases those young women have achieved their goal, or something like it. They've earned that degree. They've opened their business.

But not the boys. "The girls are driven; the boys have no direction," is the way Kleinfeld summarizes her findings. Kleinfeld is organizing a national Boys Project, with a board composed of leading researchers and writers such as Sandra Stotsky, Michael Thompson and Richard Whitmire, to figure out what's going wrong with boys. The project is only a few weeks old, it has called no news conferences and its Web site ( http://www.boysproject.net ) has just been launched.

So far we've just been asking one another the question: What's happening to boys? We've batted around lots of ideas. Maybe the problem has to do with the way the school curriculum has changed. Maybe it has to do with environmental toxins that affect boys differently than girls (not as crazy an idea as it sounds). Maybe it has to do with changes in the workforce, with fewer blue-collar jobs and more emphasis on the service industry. Maybe it's some combination of all of the above, or other factors we haven't yet identified.

In Ayn Rand's humorless apocalyptic novel "Atlas Shrugged," the central characters ask: What would happen if someone turned off the motor that drives the world? We may be living in such a time, a time when the motor that drives the world is running down or stuck in neutral -- but only for boys.

Leonard Sax, a family physician and psychologist in Montgomery County, is the author of "Boys Adrift: What's Really Behind the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys," to be published next year.

thrums

2006-03-11T15:59:00.000-08:00

σειρήτια - that's greek

1. I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink your fill, O beloved.
2. I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.
3. I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?
4. My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him.
5. I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dripped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock.
6. I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer.
[song of solomon, chapter 5, snip]

there is more to come.

path of least existence

2006-03-01T21:00:00.000-08:00

I just had that phrase pop into my head earlier this morning. On a somewhat related and certainly topical note:

Decoding 'Brokeback'

Why women get it and men don't go

By Brendan Tapley. Brendan Tapley is writing a memoir on masculinity. His work has appeared in The New York Times and Carolina Quarterly
Published February 26, 2006

WOMEN AS THE WEAKER SEX? Not at the 3:40. Definitely not at the 7:15. And, by a good margin, not at the 5:30 or 8:30 shows either. This is how many times I've seen "Brokeback Mountain," and each time I've checked out the crowd. The audience for the film-a film about men and masculinity, a film that can be hard on women-is curiously female. As the pre-show begins, they are still coming-often five-wide, with pocketbooks and gloves, cell phones out while bathroom visits are taken in turns. "Gail," the woman behind me whispers. "Should we call Kate? There's still time."

Ever since I discovered Annie Proulx's short story, I've regarded the work as a gift to men, an illuminating translation of masculinity, a revealing playbook for all its codes and quirks. And while reading is a solitary thing, the movies are usually a group outing. Upon learning the story was to become a film, I briefly entertained the fantasy of men dropping their snowblowers and weedwhackers, powering down their laptops, setting aside their beers and getting together for screenings at the nearest Cineplex. A Male-a-palooza.

But it shouldn't surprise me that row upon row keeps filling up with women. Maybe what should surprise me is the tsks, the sighs and the audible ache coming from these women. Their reactions to this cowboy connection-a connection that doesn't appear to include them-are as urgent and personal as mine.

In college I was invited to a different kind of cinematic outing in a friend's dormitory room. On the quad I had been told that everyone was getting together for some pizza. That wasn't a lie; there was pizza. There was also a bootleg copy of some X-rated film scrolling before five pairs of eyes. Male pairs of eyes.

I'm considering this on the way back from watching "Brokeback Mountain." If I were still in college, how many of those men would have joined me and the women for a showing of this film? Recalling each of their faces, I can hear the conversation go down:

"Feel like going to a movie?" I'd ask. It would have been a similar kind of Sunday, snowy and inert, the kind made for matinees.

"Sure, which one?" my roommate would call from under his covers.

"I'm thinking, 'Brokeback Mountain.' "

"The gay movie?"

"It's not a gay movie."

"C'mon, man. I've read about it," my second roommate in the bunk above me would dispute.

"I mean, yeah, it's got gay characters."

"Are there two guys in it that screw around with each other?"

"Yeah, but . . ."

"Yeah, we're not into seeing that," he'd speak for the other. "The movie or the other stuff." They'd both chuckle at that one. "What else is playing?"

I wasn't sure how long the film would stick around the rural wilds where I live, so even though I had hoped to go with someone, I didn't wait around. Now, thinking about those college guys again, I find myself relieved to have gone alone. Just like they wouldn't have been seen in the company of the "Brokeback" audience, I realize I didn't want company at all. I wanted the pleasure of undivided attention.

"Brokeback Mountain" deserves such quiet. It is a film that feels like a Catholic confessional-private, solemn, intimate. Even though it's an anonymous encounter for the moviegoer, it singles out everyone watching. Every time I've gone, the walls of the room fall away. Even though there's a sellout crowd, there's no one else around you. The movie provokes the silence of internal confrontation. The kind summoned on long drives and 3 a.m. wake-ups.

In the dorm room for the other matinee, there was no quiet. In fact, any quiet was quickly dispatched by the raucous and ribald. Jeers and posturing. The dark compact of a movie theater was gone too. It was plainly obvious whom you were joined by and what parts appealed to (or disappointed) which people. And, as you might suppose, the afternoon offered the opposite of interiority. No one was soul-searching in that room.

But more than all this was the fact that there were no women. I realize the strangeness of expecting the company of women while watching an X-rated film featuring them; that's not what I mean. What I'm talking about is the strangeness of men having no problem watching an X-rated film with other men. That's more of a sexual situation than you'll find in the two-plus hours of "Brokeback Mountain."

Which begs the question: How is it that men can be intimate with each other when it comes to sex but not love? The Monday morning following my seeing the film, a co-worker tells me she is eager to go. But, she says, she will go alone; she won't even bother asking her husband. "You know, I honestly don't understand. What's the big deal? I mean, he has no problem going to a bachelor party with some hooker performing in front of him and a bunch of friends, doing God knows what . . . but this is somehow more troubling?"

Troubling. It's an interesting word choice. It would be easy to argue a man's resistance to the movie stems from the depiction of homosexual sex. But why is that such a widely accepted explanation? Again, there isn't much sex in or on "Brokeback Mountain." Compared with the minutes and positions-and positions in minutes-of the dorm film, it's positively demure. No, I don't buy that. But I do buy the word. Troubling.

For something to be troubling, I'd argue, it has to be possible. The possibility of terrorism might be remote where you and I live, but it's troubling all the same because it's not impossible. It could apply. While there isn't the kind of X-rated sexuality in "Brokeback Mountain" that men are comfortable gathering around, there is a lot of something else more taboo. In fact, it's in almost every scene.

It arises when the limitations and aspirations of two people's longing lay siege to one another. "Brokeback Mountain" is a war film without the bullets, the patriotism, the acceptable camaraderie of boys loyal to one another. Its allegiance is to a principle much more universal and much more dangerous for men: the bravery of submitting to the heart. I believe that's what's troubling to guys.

Along those lines, what also may be troubling for men is that the people who are seeing "Brokeback Mountain" may come to expect their husbands, boyfriends, brothers and sons to raise an army equal to this mission: the one that recognizes the fear in love but loves fearlessly anyway.

And yet, in my multiple viewings of the movie, I've come away believing this is precisely what men secretly want. The problem is not the object of affection but the obstacle of it.

We're alive in a time where there is no masculine identity. Men define themselves by what they are not. Not female, chiefly, and by extension, not gay.

The emotional "trappings" both women and gay men personify become areas to avoid for men, who fear guilt by association in the eyes of their friends. Even watching a film whose central question is not gayness but the culture's permission of male love risks the manhood of the men in the audience.

It's wonderfully deft that a film about the archetypal male-the cowboy-exposes the central weakness of masculinity. When it comes to connection, men are the weaker sex.

Still, human connection is the human condition. How can we sidestep it and not expect profound consequences? Such a taboo-such a weakness-may be a mountain, but until it's conquered, our culture will suffer more generations of men looking to be men in the wrong places: dorm rooms, bachelor parties, Friday night wings at Hooters, corporate boardrooms. Or, more tragically, in another kind of theater: war.

Every man should have a "Brokeback Mountain," some moment in time where our desire for connection outweighs our preoccupation with perception. I don't think a woman can address this particular male desire, because the connection I mean isn't about sex or sexuality. It's about identity. And the identity of a man seems most naturally derived from intimate fellowship with other men.

Judging from the women in the audience, I don't think they'd mind being left out of that connection. I can't speak for all of them, but Kate got there on time. During one moving scene, I heard her whisper about Jake Gyllenhaal's character, Jack, "That's my man!"

Maybe, in the daring involved in connecting with other men-fathers, brothers, best friends, old roommates-in ways previously off-limits, the occupying force of masculinity will give way to a liberating one. And by men submitting to the heart, wives, mothers, sisters and best friends should benefit too. Then, there would be no weaker sex.

At the end of the film, there's a scene where Heath Ledger's character, Ennis, the reluctant romantic, tacks a postcard of Brokeback inside his closet door. For the first time, the scale of the film is reversed, and the great outdoors is overshadowed by the great indoors. Here, the grand myth of American masculinity finds its last frontier not in the vastness ahead but in the boundless inside. He seems, for the first time, triumphant.

instant gratification

2006-02-28T20:57:00.000-08:00

alright, so i've read a lot of romance novels and today i was inspired to begin holding im conversations in romancespeak. here, for your reading pleasure, are some snippets (as well as something a bit more risque i quickly threw together for an erotic fiction gathering). i heard it from a friend that march 3rd is national romance novel day...perhaps you should grease and flex your writing muscles so that i might have a firm adversary for a sparring match.

"away"
pummelled only by the blows of his indifference raining down on her like so many unspoken words, she gathered his silences close to her like a mantle against the rising winds. afterall, wasn't hiding only part of being seen...

"brb"
was his retreat irrelevant, a storm brewing on distant horizon...a backdrop for some battle fought on a far off land with enemies she knew nothing about? a challenge he faced alone because he let no one in, he was without allies but armored to such an extent it took her breathe away each time she crashed against him. or was this a response to the intensity of the seige she had waiting, an ambush on an unsuspecting heart? one thing was for certain, his air of abstraction thinly masked the mustering of a powerful strength. a strength that had withstood her advances for many moons, shattering her own defenses all while lighting within her a secret longing...the longing to join forces and follow him into the darkening night.

"ttyl"
finally, the torrent of her gentle protestations pierced the thick veil of distraction he lingered under. a light of understanding dawned in his eyes like a ray breaking through slowly dispelling clouds. but was it too late he wondered as his softly shining eyes--those icy depths she'd plunged into so many times searching for currents that might lead to warmer waters--traced the outline of her back in the dim glow of the doorway.

"btw"
words flow from my molten core like the stirrings of desire he sparked each time he placed his quill firmly to the pad. the delicate but insistent scratch of its inked ball sent lightning bolts of recognition through her spine, which carried the electric current of his penned thoughts to that dark and mysterious place deep inside her...that jungled shore where drums still beat an ancient rhythm. a rhythm older than words and yet one he accessed every time he spun that seductive web of language around her. a web that caught her in sticky tendrils where words spun in deadly circles that frenzied the drums until the waters overflowed their banks, wetting her thighs and rendering them as silken and as inescapable as the gossamer strands still clinging to her mind.

and now for the hardcore stuff

"geography lesson"

i'd begin by running the tip of my tongue along the coast of sweden, starting at the border with finland and slowly licking up to linger at stockholm. repeat. then i'd swirl past oslo and lower my mouth, gently placing my upper lip against the seaward side of norway and taking both countries into a warm moist kiss. my tongue just can't get enough of stockholm. in my excitment i might just engulf the entire peninsula until my lips land firmly at the base, i mean border of norway, sweden and finland.

i think that's how demark is made, but i can't be sure. we don't learn very much about these things in school.

to gladiate

2006-02-20T20:56:00.000-08:00

someone asked me if i am a gladiator, being cheesy i wanted to reply, "no, but i gladiate"...i.e. i like to make people glad...did i really need that i.e.?

anyway, i wanted there to be an etymological relation between gladiator and glad. alas. what you see here is the beginnings of a false etymology. someday i will get a few more degrees and i will spread my false etymologies to the WORLD. or maybe, just maybe, to the moon.

glad
O.E. glaed "bright, shining, joyous," from P.Gmc. *glathaz (cf. O.N. glaor "smooth, bright, glad," O.Fris. gled, Du. glad "slippery," Ger. glatt "smooth"), from PIE *ghledho- "bright, smooth" (cf. L. glaber "smooth, bald," O.C.S. gladuku, Lith. glodus "smooth"), from PIE base *ghlei- "to shine, glitter, glow, be warm" (see gleam). The modern sense is much weaker. Gladden is O.E. gladian "be glad, make glad" + -en. Slang glad rags "one's best clothes" first recorded 1902. Glad hand "the hand of welcome" (often used cynically) is from 1895.

gladiator
1541, from L. gladiator, lit. "swordsman," from gladius "sword," supposedly from Gaul. *kladyos (cf. O.Ir. claideb, Welsh cleddyf, Breton kleze "sword"), from PIE base *qelad- "to strike, beat."

gladiolus
c.1000, from L. gladiolus "wild iris," lit. "small sword," dim. of gladius "sword," so called by Pliny in reference to the plant's sword-shaped leaves. The O.E. form of the word was gladdon.

if we extrapolate!

let's meditate on "slippery," "smooth, bald," "to shine, glitter, glow, be warm" and ease into thinking about the wild iris and the little sword, then let's remember that vagina comes from sheath. [follow that link or face the tiger].

yes. i am a gladiator.

p.s.
glade
"clear, open space in a woods," 1529, perhaps from M.E. glode (c.1300), from O.N. glaor "bright" (see glad). Original meaning would be "bright (because open) space in a wood" (cf. Fr. clairiere "glade," from clair "clear, bright;" Ger. Lichtung "clearing, glade," from Licht "light"). Amer.Eng. sense of "marshy grassland" (e.g. Everglades) first recorded c.1796. this means i waxed.

p.p.s.
ye olde friendster profile once upon a time read:
"Gwendolyn is blended with natural fragrance oils to create uniquely inviting fragrances for your home. Gwendolyn is available in a variety of fragrances that were...Created by Nature. Captured by Gwendolyn."

signs of life?

2006-02-20T14:55:00.000-08:00

miracles and tourniquets

i was really struck by the convergence of headlines this morning, especially after thinking all weekend about this image:

let me go home, let me go to him.

if you were trapped under 150 feet of mud, who would you want working up above?

Enthusiasm wanes for people power
MANILA It was 20 years ago this month that Corazon Aquino coined the term "people power" to describe the thrilling popular uprising that drove Ferdinand Marcos from the presidency of the Philippines.

In its iconic image, nuns knelt in the paths of huge tanks as hundreds of thousands of people massed in the streets of Manila with prayers and songs and courage to face down a dictator.

"A new life starts for our country tomorrow," said Aquino, who took office as president when Marcos fled to the United States on Feb. 25, 1986, "a life filled with hope and I believe a life that will be blessed with peace and progress."

It is almost painful to look back today at that moment of celebration and optimism. After two decades of continuing political turmoil - partly fueled by repeated attempts to recreate people power - this nation of political romantics seems to have sunk into a mood of weariness and disillusionment.

A new term has been coined for it: people power fatigue.

"I'm not getting emotionally involved any more," said Sheila Coronel, the country's leading investigative journalist, who was among those who faced the tanks 20 years ago. "It makes me too angry."

"It was miraculous," said an American diplomat who was in the streets during the people power uprising against Marcos. "But you can't live on miracles."

i'd like to believe in miracles, but maybe they only come into play when you've lost your arms and legs and all you've left to live for is to see the person you love one more time before you die. or perhaps they keep you breathing for four days under a mountain of mud. i'm more concerned with what happens when the people with two arms and two legs digging stop believing.

Philippines Rescuers Hear 'Signs of Life'
GUINSAUGON, Philippines - Rescue workers refused to give up hope of finding survivors in an elementary school buried by up to 100 feet of mud, digging into the night Monday after detecting what the provincial governor called "signs of life."

Sounds of scratching and a rhythmic tapping were picked up by seismic sensors and sound-detection gear brought in by U.S. and Malaysian forces.

"To me, that's more than enough reason to smile and be happy," South Leyte Gov. Rosette Lerias said. "The adrenaline is high ... now that we have seen increasing signs of life."

Still, it was hard to imagine survivors under the wet muck nearly four days after a mountainside collapsed and covered the farming village of Guinsaugon, killing up to 1,000 people. No one has been pulled out alive since just a few hours after the disaster Friday morning.

you can read more about the complications associated with arterial tourniquets. you can also make all the anagrams you can out of tourniquet and leave them as a comment.

i have ongoing, growing appreciation for the arcade fire. wake up:

something filled up my heart with nothing, someone told me not to cry. now that i'm older, my heart is colder and i cannot see that it's a lie. children, wake up. if the children don't grow up, our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up. i guess we'll just have to adjust.

school of love

2006-02-14T08:57:00.000-08:00

it has become apparent that i have to learn people today. i hope this makes up for my being so unthankful this past thanksgiving.

so it's valentine's day. if this holiday makes you feel a little crappy, you probably are inclined to complain about its commercial whorery. in which case, isn't this a pretty easy holiday to dismiss? ignore it. it's not like you have the day off of work, or you're supposed to make resolutions, or you have to eat a turkey. even people who do have significant others agree that the greeting cards, flowers and chocolates are ridiculous. this is not a system we have to buck against folks, why let it spoil your mood? also, if you go out and you're alone it screams that you're single and everyone else who is out is also available (like my brilliant red feather idea). this could be good for you.

i'm not even going to write about the history of this holiday [though i recommend you read up on flogging and maybe check out the great romance of the Trumans]. in fact i was almost going to just lie to everyone and insert the history of sweetest day in its place, as that holiday originally attempted to get people to think about those less fortunate and a little outward focus goes a long way on days like this.

i'd be a hypocrite* if i yelled at anyone for being moody, but i can tell you it will hurt my feelings to see you sad and angry today. so let's think outwardly, if need be you can think about me instead of you. it is, afterall, the two week mark to my birthday - february 28.

since, you asked, i am having a GREAT day. my boss brought in dunkin donuts, a lady down the hall gave me some chocolates (really though, the chocolate manufactured for valentine's day - distinguished by its heart shape and red foil packaging - may be made from the waxy substance sucked out of sawdust-stuffed puppets...i think we call those souls.), another coworker became a grandmother at 12:45am, boys on the internet are sending me random messages in spades [won't use that phrase again], my birthday is clearly approaching, i've got a hot date tonight, this woman applying for a scholarship left me a valentine's day voice mail for my customer service, i'm going to alaska in a week. thank you for asking.

your life can be just as good, because i am your friend, and it's likely i will do a little bit more for you than you do in return [with some notable exceptions, you know who you are and i will send you a little card in a few minutes full of rainbows and midi notes - you love rainbows and midi files! i love you].

"There is no remedy for love but to love more."

~Henry David Thoreau

*c.1225, from O.Fr. ypocrisie, from L.L. hypocrisis, from Gk. hypokrisis "acting on the stage, pretense," from hypokrinesthai "play a part, pretend," also "answer," from hypo- "under" + middle voice of krinein "to sift, decide" (see crisis). The sense evolution is from "separate gradually" to "answer" to "answer a fellow actor on stage" to "play a part." Thus hypocrite (c.1225) is ult. Gk. hypokrites "actor on the stage, pretender."

**warning - for mature audiences only. you know the other day someone told me how that infamous duct-tape photo brings out my eyes. it's my opinion that the favorable response to that photo has more to do with the smile under the duct-tape. it would seem unexpected. one time, when i was orally pleasuring a man, he said something that made me want to laugh. i didn't, but i did smile. i would imagine unmistakenly feeling a smile when someone's mouth is on you, is nice. just remember, whenever you can, to smile.

they call us dreamers

2006-02-06T10:46:00.000-08:00

they call us dreamers - a pictorial

Bird Ate My Donut showed me this today. Click on the word this before continuing, it is essential to this posting.

1909: On the left is J.T.C. Moore-Brabazon, who earlier the same year was the first British pilot to fly in Britain, in his personal French-built Voisin aero plane. On the right is a pig in a wicker basket behind a sign that says "I am the first pig to fly."

1959: Project, Launch Vehicle Little Joe. Pigs were eliminated as Little Joe flight test subjects when studies disclosed that they could not survive long periods of time on their backs. However, McDonnell did use a pig, 'Gentle Bess,' to test the impact crushable support, and the test was successful.

1983.

a little birdie

2006-02-02T12:48:00.000-08:00

it's time for some updates. i know i want to keep this darn blog merely INFORMATIVE, but i just wanted to tell you a few things and since evidently you lose blog traffic if you don't post often enough. i have to try and keep you coming back.

1) it is thursday, february 2. happy birthday timmy! timmy is that very tall man in idaho who has a new baby girl. also, happy birthday to laurie, don, allie and jon again.

2) i could be seeing andrew bird in milwaukee tonight. that would be great, but it is not happening alas. i have some obligations. i like obligations. and i will go to milwaukee tomorrow night, it is also my sincere wish that andrew bird will not die and i will therefore catch him some time in the future.

3) i will be playing badminton tonight. i need someone with a camera to take a picture of my awesome t-shirt, made by team captain norah. i just went to look up what our standing is after last week - hell yes we're still firmly in second place. raw! a funny bit - when i went to look for my league website - the chicago metropolitan sports association [incidentally, i not only belong to a gay and lesbian badminton league, i belong to the first gay and lesbian badminton league in the country] - i googled "CMSA" and came up with this: www.cowboymountedshooting.com. ooo la la.

4) i'm collecting so much delicious information on whales and squid for my february postings on whales and squids.

5) i will easily compile my 29 things list well in advance of my birthday...

6) i have the technology identified to begin cataloging my books read and movies watched.

7) i have old dreams new again.

grasping at fins

2006-01-25T10:07:00.000-08:00

good things, like enlarged pelvic muscles and grasping fins in the males of a species, come in small packages. i think when you live in acid and lack a protective head skeleton, you realize what's really important in life.

AP Wednesday, 25 January 2006, 06:32 GMT BANGKOK, Thailand - Scientists have discovered the world's smallest fish on record in an acidic peat swamp in Indonesia, with a see-through body and a head that is unprotected by a skeleton, researchers said Wednesday.

Mature females of the Paedocypris progenetica, a member of the carp family, only grow to 7.9 millimeters (0.31 inches) and the males have enlarged pelvic fins and exceptionally large muscles that may be used to grasp the females during copulation, researchers wrote in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, published Wednesday by the Royal Society in London.

"This is one of the strangest fish that I've seen in my whole career,' said Ralf Britz, zoologist at the Natural History Museum in London, who helped analyze the fish's skeleton. "It's tiny, it lives in acid and it has these bizarre grasping fins. I hope we'll have time to find out more about them before their habitat disappears completely."

The previous record for small size, according to the Natural History Museum in London, was held by an 8-millimeter species of Indo-Pacific goby.

The new fish was discovered on Sumatra island by fish experts Maurice Kottelat from Switzerland and Tan Heok Hui from the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research in Singapore. They were working with colleagues from Indonesia and with Kai-Erik Witte from the Max Planck Institute in Germany.

"You don't wake up in the morning and think today we will find the smallest fish in the world," Kottelat told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his home in Switzerland.

He said the record of finding the world's smallest fish was not important, preferring to focus on what he said was "scientifically significant."

"What's important is finding a complete vertebrae in a body so small," he said.

Kottelat said he first came across the fish in 1996, but originally misidentified it as a member of an already existing species. "But then we realized this one was different."

According to the researchers, the fish live in dark, tea-colored water with an acidity of ph 3, at least 100 times more acidic than rainwater. Swamps like this were once thought to harbor very few animals, but recent research has revealed that they are highly diverse and home to many species that occur nowhere else.

Peat swamps are under threat in Indonesia from fires lit by plantation owners and farmers as well as unchecked development and farming. Several populations of Paedocypris have already been lost, researchers say, according to the Natural History Museum.

Associated Press writer Bradley S. Klapper in Geneva contributed to this report

possible segues: size does matter...; in other news...; are there plenty of fish in the sea...; the dangers of holding on loosely...

BBC Tuesday, 17 January 2006, 14:38 GMT
By Richard Black
Environment Correspondent, BBC News website, Darwin

Whale sharks spotted off the coast of Australia are getting smaller, researchers have said.

In a decade the average size recorded by observers has shrunk from 7m to 5m.

Whale sharks, the world's largest fish, are caught for food in some east Asian countries and Australian researchers suspect this is causing a decline.

"Now, if you consider that the sharks probably aren't sexually reproductive or mature until they're 6 or 7m long - that's a very worrying sign."

Whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) are filter feeders, eating small marine organisms such as krill.

They can live for up to 150 years, attaining lengths of more than 15m, and are believed to reach sexual maturity around the age of 30.

Under the IUCN Red List of threatened species, they are categorised as "vulnerable" to extinction.

"Whale sharks, like many other shark species, are highly vulnerable to over-exploitation due to their long lifespan and low reproductive rate," commented Callum Roberts, of York University in the UK, who has researched whale sharks extensively in the Caribbean.

Finding migration routes could help pinpoint areas where they are being caught.

"Many of the people doing the fishing are just local villagers with no other option," said Mark Meekan.

Longer term objectives of the Aims programme include finding out more about the life cycle of the whale shark.

The biggest mystery concerns breeding and reproduction; males and females live in largely segregated communities, but must come together somewhere to breed.

patent your brain

2006-01-14T20:55:00.000-08:00

or face the realization that your brain could also belong to some dude that's from berkeley and who sports a ponytail.

consider yourself warned!

nick has my brain.

Passion and Etymology

Disclaimer: I seem to be kind of harsh on linguistics lately. Please don’t think I have anything special against it, or against linguist bloggers. Some of my best friends, as the saying goes, are linguists who blog, and I adore Language Log. But….

Arnold Zwicky at Language Log has an interesting post on the “etymological fallacy.” It involves a quotation in which someone talks about the historical connection between passion and suffering (in the context of encouraging people to differentiate what you’re passionate about from what you like):

This does not mean that pursuing a mission is always pleasurable: we do not agree with the pop psychology view that equates meaningful work with fun. Indeed, the etymological root of ‘passion’ is passe – or ‘to suffer.’ We are aware that pursuing a noble mission is often painful…

Zwicky replies:

The noun stem passio:n- originally would have meant ‘suffering’, and indeed passion is still used in this sense in the very specialized context of the sufferings of Jesus (The Passion of the Christ, passion play, etc.). But early on—the OED Online draft revision of 2005 lays out these changes in some detail—it developed not only an ‘undergoing’ sense (‘fact or condition of being acted upon’) parallel to that of patient and passive, a sense that seems to have gone out of fashion some 500 years ago, but also a separate extended sense, a generalization from experiencing pain to experiencing any sort of intense feeling or emotion, especially love or sexual desire (_His voice was husky with passion_), or, in another direction, enthusiasm or zeal (_a passion for astrology_), or, in still another direction, anger or rage (_a fit of passion_).

The result of all this semantic radiation, generalization, and specialization is that modern English passion has a variety of senses—among them, love or desire, enthusiasm or zeal, and anger or rage (all attested from the 16th century on)—that are not directly connected to one another and have nothing in particular to do with suffering.

Now, let’s begin by granting that we shouldn’t all suddenly stop using “passion” the way we did yesterday. It still gets to mean infatuation, and so forth, and it still gets to be used in “passion play,” and we don’t have to find a way for those two usages to be identical. This is what I take Zwicky to mean by “not directly connected.” But should we also suppose that there is no continuing interaction between these different meanings of the word? I don’t know about you, gentle reader, but understanding a tiny smidge about, say, early Christianity, has had a non-trivial impact on the way I use the word, the way I think about it, and the situations in which I would apply it, and I’m willing to guess I’m not the only person writing in the English language today for whom this is true. In that case, there’s really nothing at all wrong with someone pointing out that there’s a difference between passion and liking, or, even, referencing the etymology in the process.

Of course, one could come back with a claim that we’re all laboring under an etymological fallacy, and this is quite possibly the case, but it’s also a reality of how we really use the word. (And don’t we all know by now that wishful prescriptivism about how to use words in the face of how people really use words is a bad, bad thing perpetrated by bad, bad people? There’s a hole in my reasoning here, I know, and I’ll get back to you on that.)

There’s also, perhaps, a point to be made regarding the original expansion in meaning. Zwicky calls it “a generalization from experiencing pain to experiencing any sort of intense feeling or emotion,” which I’m sure is true, but I had the impression—and feel free to heap invective on me via comment or email if I’m wrong here, as my classical education is almost as inadequate as my linguistics education—that there was also an implicit connection, in the context of ancient psychology, between intensity itself and suffering—that at the heart of romantic love and other “passions” is already a kind of suffering or dis-ease. And even if I’m not historically grounded here, I think we can do some perennialist psychology and just say there really is such a connection, trans-historically, biotch. To quote Roy Orbison:

Love hurts
Love scars
Love wounds and mars
Any heart not tough
Or strong enough

To take a lot of pain
Take a lot of pain

If this is so, and if there was some intuitive connection at work in the original process by which “passion” acquired new meanings, what’s wrong with reminding people of the historical connection?

Note: To return to that earlier hole (orig. “whole”—Nicklexia strikes again) in my reasoning, I was conflating “possibly spurious claims regarding historical linguistics” with “usage”, i.e., suggesting that when someone makes a claim about, say, the meaning of a word, their claim is itself a real linguistic phenomenon which descriptivists are honor-bound to take seriously as such. In doing so, I probably overstate my case somewhat. Attacks by linguists on false or misapplied etymologies are more on the nature of sometimes excessive, sometimes justified, fact-checking by specialists.

But, in this case, it’s a little different from, say, bitching about how you can hear TIE fighters go by in Star Wars, where the obvious response is, “Yes, you’re right, but lighten up, man, it’s a space opera.” (Note: I’ve been on either side of that one plenty of times, so don’t think I’m innocent of nitpicking.) Or, more linguistically, the recent rant in Languagehat on NYT’s bad instruction on the pronunciation of “quipu,” which is wholly justified.

But spurious etymologies really are, sometimes, really part of how people really use language; it would obviously be insane to say either that (a) we must all use only correct etymologies, or (b) we must all never talk about etymology again. The etymological fallacy is, in a certain sense, just another linguistic phenomenon, even though it’s also an intrusion on the hallowed ground of linguistical expertise. Anyone who’s engaged in any kind of study of religion is familiar with the proliferation of spurious etymologies and place- and personal name etiologies; we don’t have records of language that go back too much farther than the sacred (and wildly unsound, etymology-wise) texts of the Judeo-Christian and Hindo-Buddhist worlds, (which were typically composed by the best-educated and most historically conscious members of their communities) so, while it may or may not be the case that “The persistence of the Etymological Fallacy among intellectuals is in some ways deeply puzzling,” it’s certainly not in the least surprising, and to say otherwise is to demonstrate a certain disregard for the history of intellectuals and ideas, as well as writing and, probably, speaking.

And while it’s become fashionable in some circles, especially on the internet, to bash the somewhat loose way of religious teachings with facts (obviously I’m not talking about Language Log here), the practice of enriching language with meaning through creative historical linguistics is probably indispensable to many sacred paths, and I would be hard-pressed to reject those paths, or the vitally important contributions they’ve made to human thought…(Though certainly I’ve been known to say some unkind things about translations of the Vajracchedika, known as the “Diamond Sutra” throughout much of history, including the present.)

p.s. i didn't want to edit all of that so there's a lot of hyperlinks missing from nick's post. go follow the link already.

29 things

2006-01-11T11:32:00.000-08:00

my birthday is coming up. i will be turning 29 on february 28th. last year was my golden birthday. to gear up, i've decided to compile 29 things about me in the more than 29 days between now and then. it's like 43things or allconsuming, but actually it will be exactly different. i won't put any links in my list. the buck will stop here, once i begin here that is. right now, we're still in the prologue so i can send you there.

content (v.)
1418, from M.Fr. contenter, from content (adj.), c.1400, from L. contentus "contained, satisfied," pp. of continere (see contain). Sense evolved through "contained," "restrained," to "satisfied," as the contented person's desires are bound by what he or she already has.

29 things

1. my sun sign is pisces. i've recently decided to never ever again read my horoscope as it's slowly transformed to something that invokes dread. i'm presently experiencing a deep need to feel as if all things are less pivotal. that said, i think i'm going to be blogging a lot about ocean creatures in the month between now and my birthday.

wordlets

2006-01-08T20:51:00.000-08:00

twice in as many days, i've noticed my mind mashing words. namely:

"still talk" > stalk
"shallow wallow" > swallow

that's about all.

i did go try to look up the etymology of the word shallow. i didn't find anything exciting but i did for some reason hit upon this list of standard english words which have a scandinavian origin [remember to track my ongoing scour of scandinavia]. you can view the full list at http://www.viking.no/e/england/e-viking_words_2.htm, and let me thank scandinavia in general for these:

Abbreviations: E = English. ME = Middle English. SE = Standard English. Ice = Icelandic. Swe = Swedish. O Swe = Old Swedish. Dan = Danish. Nor = Norwegian. Scan = Scandinavian (in general). Fr = French. Du = Dutch. vb = verb. n = noun. adj = adjective. advb = adverb.

balderdash (n) Poor stuff. Scan. Originally meant a poor or weak drink. Dan balder (noise, clatter) dask (to slap, flap). Compare with E slap-dash.

brunt (n) Shock of an onset. Scan => ME brunt (an attack). Ice bruna (to advance with the speed of fire, as in battle) from Ice bruni (burning, heat). To 'bear the brunt of something' is used in contemporary E with the meaning 'to take the main weight (or first shock) of some occurrence or action'.

cock (n) A pile of hay. Dan kok (a heap), Ice kökkr (lump, ball), Swe koka (clod of earth).

dairy (n) Scan => ME deyerye (a room for a deye, i.e., a milk-woman or farm servant). Ice deigja, Swe deja (a maid, dairymaid who was also a bread-maker. The original sense is 'kneader of dough').

freckle (n) A small spot of skin colouring. Ice freknur, Swe fräkne, Dan fregne (a freckle).

froth (n, vb) Foam on liquids. Scan => ME frothe. Ice froða, Dan fraade, Swe fradga.

dastard (n) Scan => ME dastard, where -ard is a Fr suffix. Ice dæstr (exhausted, weary). The original sense of the word is sluggard.

kidney (n) Scan. Corruption of the ME kidnere, kidneer. Ice kviðr (womb), Swe qved (womb) anotomically inappropriately combined with Ice nýra, Dan nyre, Swe njure (a kidney).

muck (n, vb) Filth, dirt. Ice myki (dung), Dan mög (dung). Dialectal in E but has now passed into SE usage. The verb form 'to muck (about)' means to behave irresponsible, to mess with things; the associated adjective is mucky.

pap (n) A teat, a breast. O Swe papp (the breast), changed in modern Swe to patt. Also Swe dialect pappe. Associated with E pap (an infant's soft food).

quandary (n) An evil plight. Ice vandræði (difficulty, trouble), O Swe wandräde (difficulty).

rigmarole (n) Scan and Fr-Latin. A corruption of ragman-roll, originally meaning a deed with many signatures, a long list of names, and hence a long, stupid story. Literally 'a cowards' roll'. Ice ragmenni (a coward) roll (list).

rump (n) Ice rumpr, Swe rumpa, Dan rumpe. Originally meant the bulk of the body without the head but now in SE indicates the buttocks, the 'rear-end' of a person.

thrust (n, vb) Ice þrýsta (to thrust, press, compel). Allied to the SE threat/threaten.

thwart (n, vb) Transverseley, transverse. Ice þvert (adverse), Dan tvær (transverse), Swe tvär (across). As a noun in E it is used mainly of transverse panels across a ship or boat, including seats, with the associated maritime term 'athwart' standing for 'across'. In its original maritime usage it probably indicated a part of a ship's architecture which prevented (thwarted) the ingress of water or the movement of cargo. The SE verb 'to thwart…something' means to prevent something happening or put some obstacle in the way, as in 'they thwarted his plan to become president'.

trist, tryst (n) An appointment to meet. Scan. Properly, a pledge. From traust (see trust).

want (n) Lack, deficiency. Scan => ME want. First used as an adjective signifying 'deficient'. Compare with Yorkshire dialect usage of a verb form in, for instance, 'the grass wants cutting', where 'want' stands for 'needs' or 'requires', whereas the SE would be 'the grass needs (or requires) cutting'.

whim (n) A freak. Ice hvima (to wander with the eyes, as of a silly person), Nor kvima (to whisk about, to trifle). Compare Swe dialect hvimmerkantig (giddy in the head) allied to Nor kvimsa, Swe dialect hvimsa, Dan vimse (To be giddy, to skip about). In modern SE the meaning is a sudden desire or notion to do something without a great deal of thought, as in 'she did it on a whim'.

rock the cock

2006-01-05T14:59:00.000-08:00

did you know i joined a badminton league? i did. it's through cmsa, i am now joining the chicago lesbigay community. HELL YEAH.

time for me to shine. really shine. like a bright star.

thanks, evan, for the totally rad e-card. now show me your bandy tits!

scandalous scandinavia

2005-12-29T14:38:00.000-08:00

i'll admit it, i'm presently obsessed with vikings. subsequently, i've been reading up on scandinavia. yesterday, i was strangely fascinated when i noticed that scandinavia's wiki was under dispute. mini-modern-marauding? i felt i had to share this news, spread a bit of passionate interest in information to the world, and so i told um maybe three people to go look at the page. wouldn't you know it, the very next day they settled the dispute and removed the under-dispute tag on the wiki. i seem to be an agent of peace and accord, but you can review the history of this small war on the talk page.

even more moving than the heated debate on finland, was my complete revelation that scandinavia is unarguably shaped like a penis.

the more we get together

2005-12-28T09:58:00.000-08:00

please stop hurting.

rebus loves me this i know

2005-12-27T09:43:00.000-08:00

i went to sea in search of vikings

King of Chalices ~ The Fey Tarot
"With maturity, emotions do not vanish but become more removed and deeper. Just as waves in the sea are more difficult to see** when the sea is deep, so are the great emotions of the king. They run deep but envelope every fibre in his body."

sans maturity, that seems to be more of the same*. perhaps i should set my sights higher.

mountain men?

http://www.hikeclub.co.uk/

*"Originating in the 1830s, hunting dogs in the United States were often fooled when chasing after small animals like raccoons. The small creatures would climb up one tree, then jump to another...leaving the hound to mislead his master into thinking they were in the right place." it appears that barking up the wrong tree is a truly american slang, only in the united states are our dogs this easily confused?

**"Please slow it down/There’s a secret magic password/That you only notice when you’re looking back at it/And all I wanna do is turn around/I'm going down to sleep on the bottom of the ocean/Cause I couldn’t let go of the water at the setting sun/Cause I couldn’t let go of the passing moment gone." white daisy passing, rocky votolato.

the bees knees

2005-12-03T00:40:00.001-08:00

bees do not have knees. go look up that expression for me, gentle reader. share it with others via a comment.

i am eating hot chocolate so-called because it is supposed to be hot and it is a chocolate bar. it's nothing compared to some chili chocolate i brought home from montreal. i want that chocolate--chocolate so hot i could only take one small bite a sitting, and i needed to drink water. that's the kind of chocolate that burns one into feeling they have a heart still.

i'm listening to my favorite artist, ill lit, right now. i must share my favorite words. now.

and you've got your endurance, make sure that it's working.
stay a little longer, show her you're worth it.
the list of understandings and
arguments is inside.
well, every hip girl i know these days likes
suicide.
i was beat with an elder stick, crooking my neck but i grew it thick.
there's always fog at this height.
with all the ghosts you swear
you need the ones condemning who you'll be. i'll be the one setting them
free but you can't tell them from me.
break yourself, it won't hurt a bit.
even always cold, you're never used to it.
and all the weather's for you to help you adore her.

i miss your understanding.
and all we have is this time.
you told me everything
that i believe will save me tonight.

i can't think of a line ... except maybe that andrew bird one ... that hits me harder than "break yourself, it won't hurt a bit". i am not sure why, it doesn't seem that complicated nor half as pretty as the elder stick lyric, another favourite. but i guess i want more people to break themselves.

the heartlock

2005-11-29T15:14:00.000-08:00

Jonathan: maybe you're looking for the wrong thing from men.
Gwendolyn: i guess.
Jonathan: obviously you need physical contact from people. so first and foremost, take up wrestling.
Gwendolyn: k
Jonathan: secondly, you need people to talk about their feelings, so join a support group for wrestlers and the people who love them.
Jonathan: finally, you need some mental stimulation. so start a scrabble club within the support group for wrestlers and the people who love them.

todd, you're brilliant...

i wouldn't give a fuck but the love here is such a long walk

2005-11-24T14:51:00.000-08:00

preface: this post is not at all educational or entertaining. if you visit bluestockingism for such things (and i really hope you do), please come back soon.

it's thanksgiving and although i am not sitting alone in a cold, dark room all day, i am struggling to remember to be thankful. aww, winnie the cat just made himself more comfortable and stretched a paw over my thigh. this is one reason i think there could be a god--moments of self-pity inevitably interrupted by the smallest of graces.

i'm sad today. i don't have any sense of family much anymore, and it makes me feel very lonely. someday i'll sit down and write my "i'm not all shits and giggles" post about some of the issues in my family, but not today. today it suffices to say holidays where everyone goes off to be with their families make me feel a little empty inside, and i begin to miss not only this family that isn't working out but everyone through the years that felt like family. i'm tired by things that end or fail.

i'm tired of things that fail to meet expectations. i have to say i am thankful that in a few minutes i'll be going out to dinner with my friend Allstar (the one with the bird in her apartment, for you regular readers). i love Allstar. both of us have had lives where people from a very young age have not met even the most basic of expectations, and we learned to take care of ourselves and of others. yet, people can still let us down. sometimes i think it would be wise to switch to being one of those people without expectations and who can't ever be let down, but i haven't figured out how to achieve that without giving up something i feel quite integral to my sense of self -- caring. in the meantime, i try to live up to and exceed the expectations of anyone that bothers to form some real ideas of how i can contribute to their life. Allstar has some good ideas of how i fit in, and i of her. so i have a best friend again, and i appreciate the opportunity to try hard.

so here's to my cat and to Allstar (and to evan for writing, and to everyone of the regular crew who i know had a passing thought of me today, and to the person i'll brave the cold for, and to the stranger who called to make sure i wasn't sitting alone in a cold, dark room): happy thanksgiving.

told you so friday: i am not polish

2005-11-18T09:20:00.000-08:00

people often try to tell me i am polish, they either tell me that my facial features or my last name marks me as polish. my father is named stan, and i have never really met anyone named stan who is not polish. but ever since a very lovely polish girl, who came from poland to chicago, once gave me a facial and told me i wasn't polish-looking i've always scoffed at these attempts to pinpoint my rich and complicated ancestry. it's not my nature, however, to scoff without really knowing. so how rich and how complicated is my ancestry?

it seems natural to begin this quest through a simple process of elimination combined with an examination of what i do know about my family. hmm, i don't really know much about my family since my paternal grandparents died before i was born and my dad doesn't talk about his family or um anything really. my mother says we have a genealogy in the basement somewhere but it's buried amidst the piles of her obsessive-compulsive disorder and she won't let me go digging. she says it says we're prussian. fuck...prussia hasn't existed for a really long time and it was very, very big. so let's go back to poland. wait, where is poland*? for a better answer to that question than i could ever give, might i suggest you check out a copy of "A Polish son in the motherland: an American's journey home" by my colleague Leonard Kniffel from your local library.

let's try this again. my last name is a Variant of eastern German Prillwitz, a habitational name from places so named in Pomerania and Mecklenburg. if you check out that link you'll see how in 1920 my clan was concentrated in ... wisconsin! given that right before the turn of that century 1 out of 3 mecklenburgers emigrated, it would seem likely some of my relatives were part of the mass exodus.

did you see how my ancestors were known as mecklenburgers? we shall now briefly detour back to wisconsin to talk about burgers, because you know i can never go too long without thinking about my belly. read a whopper-sized history of the hamburger here, or just skim the excerpt below:

1885 - Charlie Nagreen of Seymour, Wisconsin, at the age of 15, sold hamburgers from his ox-drawn food stand at the Outagamie County Fair. He went to the Outagamie County Fair and set up a stand selling meatballs. Business wasn't good and he quickly realized that it was because meatballs were too difficult to eat while strolling around the fair. In a flash of innovation, he flattened the meatballs, placed them between two slices of bread and called his new creation a hamburger. He was known to many as "Hamburger Charlie." He returned to sell hamburgers at the fair every year until his death in 1951, and he would entertain people with guitar and mouth organ and his jingle:

Hamburgers, hamburgers, hamburgers hot; onions in the
middle, pickle on top.
Makes your lips go flippity flop.
The town of Seymour, Wisconsin is so certain about this claim that they even have a Hamburger Hall of Fame that they built as a tribute to Charlie Nagreen and the legacy he left behind. The town claims to be "Home of the Hamburger" and holds an annual Burger Festival on the first Saturday of August each year. Events include a ketchup slide, bun toss, and hamburger-eating contest, as well as the "world's largest hamburger parade."

i am proud to have called wisconsin home, i imagine the hamburger is too. and maybe this foolish quest for my roots need go no further, might i be satisfied with my kindred, meaty brethren and ketchup slides?

no. i want to tell you more about mecklenburg. actually i just want you to read that history because it will tell you about the university in 1419, the adoptions of many different official religions, the numerous divisions and reunifications of my motherland, and the land lendings and occupations. but what is the best part about mecklenburg? this!

Mecklenburg was occupied in the sixth century by the Wends, a Slavic people. The Mecklenburg dynasty was established in the 1100s when the Wendish ruling family accepted Christianity and German domination.

i rule!

from now on, please address me as mare vendicus. i own finland too. i wanted to find myself and instead i found an empire.

* i'd intended to skip sharing polish lore, since as you now know, i am not polish. but i was reading about poland and this guy casimir (the last king of a purely polish state and the adopted last name of someone ... pole ... where was i ) and the polish people in general, when i came across this gem: "Their women, when married, do not commit adultery. But a girl, when she falls in love with some man or other, will go to him and quench her lust. If a husband marries a girl and finds her to be a virgin, he says to her, "If there were something good in you, men would have desired you, and you would certainly have found someone to take your virginity". Then he sends her back, and frees himself from her. " ouch, that's a double-edged sword if i ever!

can you hear what my watch is saying?

2005-11-01T16:17:00.000-08:00

well shucks, that did not work. i am having a bad day and i wanted to talk to someone. it seemed briefly like it could be a good time.

guess what! i think i finally have a missed connection that applies to me. i doubt me in particular because i usually ride the bus. but i am wearing the same pants as last night and they are jeans, how sensible is that.

big butt blonde girls - m4w - 30

Reply to: anon-108175459@craigslist.org
Date: 2005-11-01, 3:42PM CST

Each and every delicious one of you.

To hell with the skinny executive wannabe too-perfectly-made-up Clark/Division snobs, the bitchy bovine Depaul girls getting on at Fullerton, the hipster queens at Belmont with their gigantic sunglasses -- no thanks.

No, it's you with the shy eyes and slightly unsteady walk, thick gorgeous thighs longing to be caressed straining against the sensible pants you were wearing last night (you have no idea how hot you made me) blonde hair cute sweet open face begging to be kissed.

You know who you are. Bring that big butt over here and say hello.

this is in or around red line

too close for comfort

2005-10-31T16:46:00.000-08:00

too close for comfort was a television show from 1980-1983. an actress from the warriors (our halloween costume inspiration, see below), who in the warriors had "a mattress strapped to her back", starred in this television series. the series also featured the cosmic cow. check out bob's comment on cows.

later that night, the high hats grow in numbers!

we were the baddest gang in town for one night, but now it's time for something even scarier! this marks the official end of scary disclosure week. it's been great and i think i will definitely be a more reliable blogger henceforth. i feel safe in saying once a week. but to provide a fittingly stunning conclusion to sweepsweek, i've decided to do something a little scary and a little special.

today's special was also a television show during my formative years (1981-1987). it was in fact my favorite childhood show of all time. i will at some point in the future explore my fondness for movies, shows and books about mannequins come to life. for now, my point is served by mentioning that i loved muffy and muffy loved cheese and i love cheese and this is most likely why my leg is not broken (also note sam has a cat named penelope). today's special was canadian, and speaking of broken...

i have a new friend, his name is ed. ed is funny, this is demonstrated by his saying the following: "i was concerned though that you saw my red button....and that it was actually a red wall with a red circle and a line through it." you might not get it, but trust me that it is brilliant. ed has someone that he wants back, and i hope that he gets her and that she treats him better too. in my humble opinion, people do not tell each other often enough they are being idiots when they are walking away from something good. we tell each other this when we are holding onto something bad or someone who doesn't want to be held onto, but who's there on the other side saying "hey don't be a dingbat, look at what you've got!" wendy, that's who. so girl, you should think. ed has some work to do, but i think he's willing to try. people who try are in my good books.

ed is imperfect, as we are all. he had a zine made about him to immortalize his transgressions. it is called "goodbye ed" and the author has a cat named wendy. if you read "goodbye ed" and your name is wendy you might feel very odd when the narrator remarks mid-zine "wendy, whatever should i do?". you might scream out, "holy heck, this zine is talking to me!". you might think it's like that time in the voyage of the dawn treader (your favorite in the series) when the painting comes to life, or like that time when you were reading house of leaves (your favorite novel to date) and you noticed three times that "pieces" was substituted for "pisces" and you felt the author?narrator?house? wanted to tear your piscean self to pieces*, or like that time in south park when cartman pitches the idea for the crab people...alright that last instance isn't relevant, it just allows me to link to metareference and to segue into a discussion of a certain cancer.

"Cancer is a class of diseases characterized by uncontrolled cell division and
the ability of these cells to invade other tissues, either by direct growth into
adjacent tissue (invasion) or by migration of cells to distant sites..."

everyone who is smarter than i might know that cancer is actually the same basic disease whereever it strikes a body and that we call cancers "heart cancer" or "breast cancer" simply on the basis of where the disease is first discovered and diagnosed in the body. i learned this when i researched cancer after precancerous cells appeared simultaneously in my dojo and under my armpit.

i've been obsessed with a cancer for many years, and some new cancers too that strike up the same old disease. it's like the time my sophomore year of college when i kept getting stung by bees. that was the only year of my life i was ever stung by a bee and it happened three times over a couple of months. each time i was stung anew, the site of the old sting would react as well leaving a track of swollen parts. i welcome a medical explanation or refutation of this phenomena.

last night i spoke for forty minutes with a cab driver while sitting outside of my house after a day visiting with ed. i saved $4 on the fare as a result of sharing banter. in my case, i guess talk does come cheap. the conversations of the day and evening left me with a complicated mix of emotions. ed's discussion of his obsession of course encouraged me to think of my own. then i met a cab driver who insisted post-dialogue, that i was "smart, hot, a role model for all the women of chicago." i asked him to share this PSA with the men of chicago, or of the world (dum dum dum). keep in mind this cab driver thinks that hillary clinton is the hottest woman alive. the cab driver was nice and he asked me out. i was not interested. good thing too as he doesn't believe in love or marriage. i do.

the cabbie, a non-native speaker, endeared himself to me completely when he talked about how "putting all his eggs in one basket" really hurt him when "things started to go south" in that relationship. i love idioms you might notice. he said he never wanted to be hurt like that again. it seems i have heard this information from men before. i have also heard from men, quite a few men, that the only woman they've ever really loved was someone who was 1) suicidal/really screwed up/abused/abusing drugs, and 2) sexually unresponsive. interesting. it seems i have so little hope for love on so many counts. i'm not bitter at the moment, i just do wonder sometimes if i am too keen on being happy (note not necessarily happy, but aspiring to it), healthy (in terms of sex at least, i should eat less hotdogs and jump around more), and an equal in economic, intellectual and emotional wealth. rubbish, i am not paying attention to the right sorts i presume.

more important than that, as i can't really help being who i am and i don't think it seems at all smart to try to be more screwy, i don't want to be someone who stops trying because i've been hurt. i have been hurt 4.5 times now. i have little inclination at the moment to get to know more about people because i am scared. someday i need to get over this. in the meantime, i will let other people get to know all about me...because scary disclosure "week" was ONLY THE BEGINNING.

muhahahahahahaha! happy halloween,bonhomies.

*if you read the wiki on house of leaves, you'll notice under "typographical and spelling errors" that the pisces mistake is listed and that it does indeed occur three times. when i wrote my comment above i had not yet searched wikipedia for the novel but recalled the three references from memory. they honestly scared the shit out of me. i also from memory recall the inclusion of the definition of uncanny.

these boots were made for walking, these fingers for talking

2005-10-30T14:59:00.000-08:00

this is my leg. this is my leg on stairs.

one week ago i fell down my back stairs as i was walking, in sensible shoes, down to put my laundry into the dryer. it was raining. my knee also has a large bruise and a scab. this is less remarkable than my shin shiner as my knees are bruised about 70% of the time. i fall down a lot. so much so that a mean friend might say that:

falling down is "pulling a wendy"

did you know that more than 8% of the u.s. population may suffer from restless leg syndrome (an overwhelming urge to move the legs usually caused by uncomfortable or unpleasant sensations in the legs)?! my leg is currently uncomfortable and suffering from unpleasant sensations but it is also apparently unbreakable. yes, i just had to go there.

go where, you ask? maybe you didn't follow that link. my decision to use so many links in these blog postings has been questioned by well-meaning readers. to this i respond

i am a gateway drug

i really don't mind if people navigate away from my blog.

"Admittedly it is an outer husk: its face, in all its featureful perfection of imperfection, is its fortune: it exhibits only the civil or military clothing of whatever passionpallid nudity or plaguepurple nakedness may happen to tuck it self under its flap.

Yet to concentrate solely on the literal sense or even the psychological content of any document to the sore neglect of the enveloping facts themselves circumstantiating it is just as hurtful to sound sense (and let it be added to the truest taste) as were some fellow in the act of perhaps getting an intro from another fellow turning out to be a friend in need of his, say, to a lady of the latter s acquaintance, engaged in performing the elaborative antecistral ceremony of upstheres, straightaway to run off and vision her plump and plain in her natural altogether, preferring to close his blinkhard s eyes to the ethiquethical fact that she was, after all, wearing for the space of the time being some definite articles of evolutionary clothing, inharmonious creations, a captious critic might describe them as, or not strictly necessary or a trifle irritating here and there, but for all that suddenly full of local colour and personal perfume and suggestive, too, of so very much more and capable of being stretched, filled out, if need or wish were, of having their surprisingly like coincidental parts separated don t they now, for better survey by the deft hand of an expert, don t you know?

Who in his heart doubts either that the facts of feminine clothiering are there all the time or that the feminine fiction, stranger than the facts, is there also at the same time, only a little to the rere? Or that one may be separated from the other? Or that both may then be contemplated simultaneously? Or that each may be taken up and considered in turn apart from the other?"

isn't that brilliant, intriguing and perhaps orchidal? it is a re-translation into english of a japanese translation of finnegans wake by james joyce. i really think you should read every last bit of that most recently linked item, hark that siren's call sirs.

in another odyssey, our halloween as the high hats was an amazing adventure. stay tuned for the pictures.

postscript: i could look into ways to list what i'm currently listening to. in case you're curious it is pavement's "stop breathin'" off the record crooked rain. write it on a postcard. did you know that my father is named stan and my sister is named penelope? did you know that the boy i try not to be obsessed with once made posts about love & lust in libraries and going to see a stars concert with a girl named penelope? if you like reading about individuals equally obsessed with fate-based self-identity, might i suggest you check out what my book group recently read.

told you so friday: here you go way too fast

2005-10-28T16:20:00.000-07:00

told you so friday: celebrating my right to be right each and every week

you might have noticed how earlier this week i remarked that the world is moving too fast, i am right. while not everyone may be as sensitive as i am to have recognized this fact, we're all currently moving faster. in the words of Mr. T Experience, don't slow down you're gonna crash.

it's all relative*

around its own axis the earth is spinning on average over 1000 miles per hour, fastest at the equator and slowing to near nothing (linearally) at the poles [we're also rotating around the sun at roughly 18 miles per second all while our entire solar system is moving at a velocity of 155 miles per second around our galaxy]. as long as we're moving at a nearly constant velocity, we feel nothing because our bodies actually sense accelerations or changes in velocity. do you know that we're speeding up? i do.

because our path around the sun is an ellipse, the speed of the earth varies throughout the year. our speed is fastest when we're closest to the sun (the perihelion) and slowest when we're farthest (aphelion). the aphelion occurs in july (no wonder cancers can seem so distant), and currently we're speeding up toward our highest velocity in january. i'd like to write a love poem to my perihelion, but i haven't met him yet. in the meantime, take a look at my analemma, and no this has nothing to do with seepage.

the analemma is the great big figure 8 etched by the sun in the sky. if you read more about it, you'll learn about the equation of time and how the sun drifts around helter skelter, and you'll learn that at certain times of the year there will be an 8 minute difference between your watch and the position of the sun in the sky. which tells you how utterly foolish it is to wear a watch, and may explain why i've been thinking so much about the white rabbit lately. whatever is a girl to do in this topsy-turvy world?

fall back

remember to turn your clocks back on sunday, at least those of you that live in my same temporal reality. when i was wee i trusted daylight savings time quite implicitly, i also thought that summer seemed to move so slow [this is because i was a nerd and eager to return to my studies, and because time is moving slower in summer as we know...so there]. i know now that DST should not hold the faith of a little girl, controlled as it is by old men. it's entirely complicated as to whether we're actually saving energy or saving lives with this tradition, and i wasn't around in 1973-74 to let you know how that attempt at restructuring time really felt. i guess i will find out in 2007. in the meantime, since they've always messed with our daytime by changing our spring forward date, while fall back has consistently occurred this last sunday of october, i would say it's ok to be happy that we have this extra hour of sleep.

please slow down and sleep a little, you're making me tired.

*i like einstein and i feel we are kindred spirits. like me, he was wrong about some things "in some very special circumstances. But he was also very, very, close to being right, and probably always will be." incidentally, einstein is also a pisces.

the sweetest thing

2005-10-27T13:12:00.000-07:00

people might be wondering after yesterday's penetrating post, when i might be talking about lovely lady-parts. well someday i hope to complete the entire section of my website dedicated to my womb, in the meantime it remains a gaping hole. that part of my website. i used to think i was going to do my doctoral thesis on the va- sound (think vagina, vacuum, vacant, vapid, etc.), counterbalancing its negative association with emptiness in western culture by cross-referencing it with eastern theories of sacred sounds all while furthering my feminist agenda. i haven't gotten around to getting a phd in etymology yet, but in the meantime i suggest you read this column on the linguistics of love [dave franzese, i want your job or maybe i just want you].

before laying my hands on it, i must wait until i can give this subject matter the fullest of my attention (and serious academic study). hence in lieu of a discussion of my anatomy, i'm opting to share how i put this baby to use.

i am vanilla

in case you're not from this planet, let me explain that the term vanilla refers to what a society regards as standard sexual behavior. according to that wiki, vanilla sex is "often interpreted as sex that does not involve such elements as BDSM, kink, or fetish". this is indeed how i interpret it. the term derives from the use of vanilla extract as the basic or most popular flavouring for ice cream, and by extension meaning "plain" or "conventional". thus, the term "vanilla" is sometimes used as an insult to describe someone who is overly conventional or unwilling to take risks. a few things:

1. vanilla was made for sex (much like me).
it's really, really sexy so let me ennumerate its charms. vanilla flavors ice cream and ice cream is good, you can also if you so desire spread ice cream over every inch of your body. depending on your mood, you can simply enjoy the pleasurable sensation of its melting, or you can invite a friend to lick you clean. vanilla in its pure form is known as vanillin, derived from orchids in the genus Vanilla. the name came from the Spanish word "vainilla", diminutive form of "vaina" (meaning sheath), which is in turn derived from Latin "vagina". in case you don't know what a vagina looks like, please scroll up, and scroll down for an orchid:

notice the dew. are you hot yet? in old medicinal literature, vanilla is described as an aphrodisiac and a remedy for fevers, but these purported uses are now obsolete. vanilla is not boring, we've just forgotten how to use it.

2. vanilla is complicated and versatile.
raw or pure, what's your preference? natural vanilla is an extremely complicated mixture of several hundred different compounds, versus synthetic vanillin which is derived from phenol and is of high purity. however, it may be difficult to determine the difference between natural and synthetic vanilla flavoring. vanilla flavor in creams, cakes and other foodstuff may be achieved by adding some vanilla essence or by cooking vanilla beans in the liquid preparation. a stronger aroma may be attained if the beans are split in two; in this case, the innards of the beans (the seeds), consisting of flavorful tiny black grains, are mixed into the preparation. good quality vanilla has a strong aromatic flavour, but foodstuffs with small amounts of low quality vanilla or artificial vanilla-like flavorings are far more common, since true vanilla is much more expensive. if you ask me, either way you slice it, vanilla has its merits.

3. vanilla offers a world of possibilities and supports your lifestyle.
did you know that the Coca-Cola Corporation is the world's largest customer of natural vanilla extract? when New Coke was introduced in 1985, the economy of Madagascar crashed, and only recovered after New Coke flopped. the reason was that New Coke uses vanillin, a less expensive synthetic substitute, and purchases of vanilla more than halved during this period. so how did they fix the problem? they went back to coca-cola classic (and created vanilla coke, now with even more vanilla). vanilla can support whole countries, save an industrial giant and please the taste buds!

or in my case, it supports a wide range of pleasing sexual encounters that will afford me a greater range of experiences over a lifetime. think about it this way: if only mint chocolate chip gets you off, you'll never be satisfied with anything else and you'll be eating mint chocolate chip for the rest of your life. dear god, what if later in life they invent a new flavor and you've conditioned your palate so that you can't even give it a chance. what if your local store doesn't supply mint chocolate chip? i mean i rarely just eat my plain old vanilla, on any given night i can add fudge and nuts but i don't need them to enjoy my tasty treat. so if you come along offering me fudge and nuts and more fudge and nuts the next time and more fudge and nuts, i'll soon be feeling like i have an ice cream headache. plus, that fudge and nuts gets expensive. i don't mind if you like your fudge and nuts, dear friends, it just doesn't make my orchid dewy.

go ask phallus

2005-10-26T14:52:00.000-07:00

one pill makes you longer, and one pill makes you small and the ones that mother gives you don't do anything at all...

good morning, boys and girls. today's lesson will feed your head, it will swell your spirit, and it just might blow your mind. so let's skip the foreplay and get right to the meat of it -- i want to talk to you about the penis. penis - it's my antidrug!

you know that there are 47,600 results for a google image search on "penis", in comparison to a mere 13,000 for vagina and but 4,490 for pussy -- a word that can refer to human anatomy, cats and a plant and yet provides only 1/10th the online visual fodder as a wang. but for all of its out-there-edness, how much do we really know about the penis and the ways it shapes our world? screw the writer's addage of show, don't tell ... let me tell you what i think about how the prevalence of the penis in our periphery has messed with our minds.

if men could talk

do you think they might admit en masse that public urination is just bizarre? almost every guy i've dated has at one point or another mentioned how uncomfortable they are about using urinals. the strange thing to me is the sense of disclosure [ding ding ding i said the secret word] that accompanies this "admission", as if they were sharing a secret flaw. i want to go on record right now and say there is nothing wrong with not wanting to piss in public, boys. even this therapist admits he's got urinalphobia and yet he too treats it as a condition --

Irrational fears, or phobias, are commonplace but seldom addressed. The sheer expression of them creates added anxiety. To overcome a phobia, it must first be acknowledged. With this in mind, I'm taking the first step in my quest for mental health. To be exact, it is with dread that I relieve myself in a urinal. I do not think I am alone in this fear, although I have had only one patient in 27 years of counseling present this problem, He was indeed a brave soul. I am hoping that my disclosure will open the floodgates of discourse about urinal phobia. Perhaps a seLf-help group entitled Urinalphobics Anonymous (UA) will emerge.

i'm relieved that there's a growing body of literature on this subject, but find it sad that all but the most scientific of it mainly treats it as a problem of the individual. why do men have to pull their penises out in front of each other, i ask? especially if millions of them are bothered by it. i suppose maybe men don't understand they by and large determine our society since generally it's been set up to pander to their every need and if at all possible avoid making them worry their pretty little heads. but really, if you don't want to pee in front of each other, why don't you start talking about this and maybe drip the first drops to a torrent of change.

if we were back in the glory days of hitching up our skirts and dropping a brick in the middle of the street, it would be different. but we don't have to do our business in the street anymore, supposedly we evolved away from that to live longer. currently, the clear gender discrepancy between our public restrooms makes little to no sense, and while i am deeply suspicious as to why we're set up to hide womens' already shrouded and scary privates (please pronounce that as priv-its) even more, it seems we ladies are much happier with our bathroom excursions. so much so we invite each other along for the good times and the memories. ah i remember that time in paris, what was her name...

what is normal?

revealing your sex organ in public shouldn't necessarily be normalized, nor should be infant mutilation. this really isn't a laughing matter, but i do want to giggle when i ask my boss for time off next genital integrity awareness week. not having my own penis (at least not to speak of lately but i remember that time in paris, ah what was his name...), i didn't think about foreskins until relatively late in life. it was probably right around the time i first saw one up close and personal. shortly thereafter a friend had a baby and discussed his decision not to get the lil boy cut. in case you are ignorant, let me summarize by saying that non-religious circumcision was most likely created to inhibit masturbation and decrease sexual pleasure and that this idea that it's healthier and cleaner to be cut is mostly malarkey. i have found that after washing, the uncircumcised penis responds quite healthily to being masterbated. it also is less taxing on the wrist and leaves one with a pleasant minty aftertaste*.

so hey, leave those kids alone. please! because circumcision is the reason men have no feelings. thanks to NORM - the national organization of restoring men - there's hope they might some day feel again:

I've been restoring for almost two months and it's hard to believe, sex with my wife is getting better. I actually have more feeling. It's great. -35 yr old man, CA

I'm a 17-year-old male who is circumcised. I got to thinking, what am I missing? It makes me sad because I'm not whole as I was intended to be. Circumcision has deprived me of the most sensual receptor on my sexual organ. -B.J., Oregon

I can only describe the restoration process as a METAMORPHOSIS of body, mind, heart and soul. The changes to me as a person have been dramatic - I am not the same person as I was when I began this process. I have been given the opportunity to heal probably the largest wound in my life, a wound that up until a few months ago I never knew existed. The last few months have been a journey of self-discovery like no other. I have begun to access feelings and parts of myself that are new to me - perhaps they were always there, but I believe that the trauma of the circumcision pushed me into a more mental/intellectual realm to deal with this extreme pain. Only now do I have an inkling of the extent of my feelings that are coming through, and the most exciting part is that it is only the beginning!!!

clearly just the tip of the iceberg!!! i hereby recommend that we let men keep their foreskins and that we give them stalls. and then if any of you restored types want to come talk about your feelings with me, perhaps we'll finally have a true meeting of the heads and of the minds.

*alright there's no minty aftertaste, but here's more from those wacky mothers against circumcision: "We do not pull out our teeth to prevent cavities -- we brush them. When your son reaches puberty, he should retract and rinse during daily bathing. Brushing teeth is more difficult than cleaning the intact penis." speaking of cavities: "Smegma lubricates the cavity between the foreskin of the penis and the glans, thus allowing smooth movement between them during intercourse. ...The adult stage follows with its period of maximal sexual activity. Sexual intercourse becomes a regular feature of life and the function of smegma for lubrication assumes its full value. Women also produce smegma, quite a bit more than men actually. Smegma is not dirt. Interestingly, in ancient Greek, smegma means ‘soap.’"

our bodies, ourselves

2005-10-25T13:24:00.000-07:00

in the spirit of scary disclosure a few questions, gentle reader:

1. am i full of shit?

i've swallowed my gum for 25 years ( i can't remember when i first was given chewing gum but i imagine it was around age 3). sometimes i think about how much gum could be lurking along my innermost tracks. i do often feel i'm a twisted and convoluted person, couldn't that gum get lost? could i be backed up? do i need a colonic right this minute?!

much time was spent this week in contemplation of the best course of action. which means i basically sat on my ass while an equally concerned friend researched colonics and asked our doctor and it turns out they can cause infection and tears. not tears like pretty drops from the eyes but holes, holes in your poop-chute people. i am not getting a colonic, and i can keep swallowing my gum.

but should i really sit idly by on my ass, never paying my behind mind again? or is that why i possibly have...hemorrhoids!!! maybe the gum in my colon was a pipe dream but most of you know that i have seepage. yes clear stuff sometimes comes out of my sweet little backdoor to heaven when i eat too many french fries. for the love of god i cannot find any explanation online for this beyond roids and gonorrhea. and why the f*ck are these words so hard to spell? and why do they all have -rrh- in them:

The extra -r- is also found in those words that come from the same source as catarrh, diarrhea, and logorrhea. This source is ultimately the Greek word rhêin 'to flow'; the various prefixes used tell us what is flowing, and how. Catarrh, which is as you say an inflammation of the mucus membranes, is from elements meaning 'to flow down'; diarrhea is 'to flow through', for obvious reasons. Logorrhea, or excessive talkativeness, is a jocular formation from 'flowing words'.

Most of the words from this source are indeed medical terms. Some you might encounter are amenorrhea 'absence of menstrual flow' (a condition often found in female athletes) and dysmenorrhea 'abnormal or painful menstrual flow'; gonorrhea; hemorrhage; and hemorrhoid ('flowing with blood').

i firmly believe it will be found that i only suffer from logorrhea. i've left a message with a nurse and i will once and for all get to the bottom of my anal mucous. stay tuned for what we hope will be the far from lugubrious news next told you so friday.

2. do you like my body?

i love my body, seepage and all. but do you know who doesn't love my body? well, besides the supreme court and target? the chicago chapter of NOW, that's who. if you don't know what NOW is, go look it up now. chicago NOW, we are breaking up. i have given you so many chances and you just keep showing me again and again how little you want to make this relationship work. i need you to learn how to COMMUNICATE. seriously, i am so sick of there never being ANY events posted on their website and i am sick of them not planning anything in conjunction with national advocacy events. and now we're going to celebrate Love Your Body day with an open mic ONE WEEK after the rest of the country, and you still can't manage to post that news on your website. i won't go off on the fact that you're holding the open mic at filter except to say, huh? i'm so disappointed in you right now, c-now. let's all come together now, now and um change NOW:

Chicago NOW Seeks New Board Members for 2006
The Chicago chapter of the National Organization for Women is looking for new board members. This is your chance to have an impact on the lives of women and girls in your community.

Education is the foundation to all empowerment

Raise public awareness of women’s issues

Start a dialogue that promotes equality

Enjoy collaboration with your feminist sisters.

Be a part of it: Don't sit around waiting for good things to happen. Progress for women is more likely with your input and effort. If you are interested in becoming a Chicago NOW General Board Member or if you have any questions, please send an e-mail with your resume and cover letter to cnowweb@yahoo.com.

3. am i in touch with my inner lesbian, or is this my inner gay male?

yesterday, my friend the selfish hedonist said he was my beard. i had no idea what he was talking about. to spare you experiencing the same shocking sensation of ignorance mingled with shame, i suggest you go read this entry on beard and stroke [look for that pesky -rrh- again]it. stroke your beard, if you have one. trying to figure out how the selfish hedonist could be acting as my beard frankly makes my head hurt. so let me just tell you about his beard, and how he's growing it until the sox win the series or there's an indictment in the plame game. there, i told you and now here's a picture:

Bluestockingism

what's the matter with antimatter?

dairying definitions

It's That Time Again

I want back my locket, please.

the ghost of birthdays past

slack - don't talk back

sticks and stones

season of the witch

flavor of the month

first frost

The Sound Of The Trees

dysamoria

aristippus & asbestos

crow's feet

that right is right

hurtz donut

food for thought

adrift

ties

belles lettres

fish out of water

"things vs. people"

suitcases

notes from the midway

When I, you and everyone we knew

pac man fever

blame it on the moon

royal, illinois

one step ahead

glow worm

sea of green

“If it were possible to view the universe as a whole, from afar, it would appear pale green, between aquamarine and turquoise.”*

touching

bringing home the bacon

abecedarian

O is the loneliest letter that there ever was

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1936 goes to Eugene O'Neill

pop goes the world

out like a lion

busy, busy, busy

prairie dogs

the things she carried

differ

sense and sensibility

careful, johan

i felt that

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deluge (n.)

x marks the spot, love

feeling good was good enough for me

in here

out there

drowning in meaning

"semiotic fluid"

woe-illumed rabbit holes

milking (more)

Four Loves, No Loves:The Four Greek Loves in Ulysses

boy, oh boy

What's Happening to Boys?

Young Women These Days Are Driven -- but Guys Lack Direction

thrums

σειρήτια - that's greek

path of least existence

Decoding 'Brokeback'

instant gratification

to gladiate

signs of life?

school of love

they call us dreamers

a little birdie

grasping at fins

patent your brain

Passion and Etymology

29 things

wordlets

rock the cock

Four Loves, No Loves:
The Four Greek Loves in Ulysses