"We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins...The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is. Why, you're ashamed to buy my book, ashamed to read it: the only thing you're not ashamed of is to judge me for it without having read it..." - George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
----
Bloodlines - finally, a game that might actually use some of the potential of White Wolf Publishing's World of Darkness. They've tried it before, but this is the first that hints that it might use every last aspect of the romantically dark urban fantasy they've created.
---
"That's the devilish side of a woman's fascination: she makes you will your own destruction."
Running off a conversation I had with my dad while fishing, I wandered around the OED for a while. Apparently, a great deal of tree names (oak, elm, aspen, &c) come straight from Old English. Names of gems (emerald, ruby, sapphire), on the other hand, all come from French. But color names were all over the board; it was kind of like they were all similar in all sorts of different languages, and thus relative to the other two groups they seemed to have almost no particular origin. And on a random note, according to the OED the word "crayfish" comes in a roundabout way from the word "crevasse" in an odd sort of bastardization, and they don't have the word "fuschia."
not exactly martial arts - but I think it would be cool if someone founded a 'fist of the west side' style
Well, I've got pretty ambivalent feelings on the movie Troy except for two things: the fight between Achilles and Hector, which was glorious, and I'm kind of crushing on the actress who played Briseis. Tangentially, I want one of those blue vest/sarong outfits.
Not sure of the veracity of this, but according to one of the kickboxing instructors the phrase "Say my name!" came from a boxing match that occurred just after Cassius Clay changed his name to Mohammed Ali. Apparently his opponent was giving him crap and kept calling him by his old name, so the natural response was to intersperse said phrase amongst a total beatdown. Awesome.
EarthStation9 - massive resource pool with easy access (via Wyatt)
Sephilopolis - art
Chaos is a pretty good French movie; the back of the case describes it as Run Lola Run meets Thelma and Louise, which I thought was pretty apt. The cinematography was kind of unique, in that it seemed to be shot with hand held cameras, if really high quality. And the editing complemented the 'chaotic' theme of the movie, which makes you pay attention, but was a nice accent.
best lines -
"Allez en enfer!" (go to hell!)
"Ce n'est pas le premier fois de quelque chose." (basically, 'it wouldn't be the first time') (though the subtitles for that were 'I've already been there. Now I'm back.')
***
Romanization Tables from the Library of Congress (very useful, if you're trying to learn, say, Arabic...)
One of the aikido students posited a reason for America's rampant obesity: the parents, who when faced with children complaining of being full and not wanting to eat anymore, feel the need to point out the famine in other countries ("There are starving children in China/Africa/possibly France!") and force the excess food upon their younglings.
Nice take on old Japanese Edo period paintings
Funny take on Western paintings
The best is when you nail them in the face. I'm thinking it could be done with some kevlar and target points.
Samarost - takes patience, but do-able.
Enlightening; bit surprised by the Snapple, though.
"We, the most distant dwellers upon the earth, the last of the free, have been shielded...by our remoteness and by the obscurity which has shrouded our name...Beyond us lies no nation, nothing but waves and rocks" -Calgacus, chieftain of the Picts circa Roman campaigns in Britain
At a dinner for a Hindu anniversary ceremony it was great, not only because of the Southwestern Monsoon Wedding type atmosphere, but also because of the people. There were Indian and white families (my mom the gorgeous Arab in Southwestern style clothes), Jews, Sikhs, Latinos, saris, suits, sparklies and flowers. Good times.
Copper - great comics
Interesting conversation, apparently straight from Iraq
The trouble with the world is that the stupid people are cocksure and the intelligent peoople are full of doubt. - Bertrand Russell
**
from an article on low-functioning autism in SciAm:
"Years ago in India, a doctor told his parents that the boy could not understand what was happening around him."-->"'I understand very well,' said the spirit in the boy."
"Wanting to talk, Tito once stood before a mirror pleading for his mouth to move. 'All his image did was stare back,' he wrote." (he often refers to himself in third person)
"Schizophrenia involves a detachment from reality and a turning in on the self, with an excessive but loosely systemized production of fantasies: it is as though the 'id,' or unconscious desire, has surged up and flooded the conscious mind with its illogicality, riddling associations and affective rather than conceptual links between ideas. Schizophrenic language has in this sense an interesting resemblance to poetry."
Interesting column, via Wyatt
"TeenQueen - How I went from emulating Molly Ringwald to lusting after Lindsay Lohan"
"Although connective tissue is found in every bone, muscle, and organ, it's most concentrated at the joints. In fact, if you don't use your full range of joint flexibility, the connective tissue will slowly shorten to the minimum length needed to accommodate your activities. If you try to flex your knees or arch your back after years of underuse, you'll discover that your joints have been "shrink-wrapped" by shortened connective tissue. " - another interesting thought
+ Collection of recovered texts on Western martial arts, as it were, in ye olden days
+ and just to show that I don't let my opinions of Brazilian jujitsu override my appreciation for it, a nice survey of techniques
"Yin and yang are relative terms, not absolutes; any phenomenon can only be yin or yang by comparison with something else. We can't point to the moon and say, "The moon is yin." Compared to the sun, the moon is yin: It's cooler and less bright. But compared to the Earth (at least from our perspective), the moon is yang: brighter, higher, and more mobile. In addition to being relative, a yin-yang comparison of any two objects depends on the trait being compared. For example, when considering location, the heart is yin compared to the breastbone because the heart is more hidden. But when considering substance, the heart is yang compared to the breastbone because the heart is softer, more mobile, more elastic." - never thought of it that way before...
"whoa" moment: leaning against a window sill at UMC, talking to an old Senora patient, I happened to unfocus from the window and focus on the metal-beaded cord for opening/closing the blinds, and saw something move. When I looked closer, I realized I was reflected on every little bead - when I tilted my head, twenty tiny reflections tilted their heads, all perfectly clear, if minute. Made me think of the old everything-in-a-grain-of-sand thang (minus the egotistical implications of comparing that to a reflection, I would hope)....
Okaaay, E3 equals....
Republic Commando - gods. awesome.
Mercenaries - looks cheesy but fun
Dead or Alive Ultimate - DoA just got weirder and cooler
Halo 2 - boo'ful scenery, and "the ultimate anti-sonuvabitch stick"
X-men Legends - for the people like me who wish they had the money to spare for expensive comic book addictions
Dawn of War - it's hard to say, but this might be better than a Dan Abnett novel - and that's saying a helluva lot for those who've missed out on that
100 Bullets - crazy fun gunplay
Ghost - now they just need a 3d version of Starcraft and they're set
.....and many more I probably missed...
So in watching my roommates play Knights of the Old Republic, I decided that the game is much more interesting and engaging than the Star Wars movies, on this basis: besides the structure of the game allowing for much more character development and (obviously) interaction, the plot of the game is based more upon twists and mystery than the fairytale/myth archetype which the movies had a foundation in.
Point from a CC newsletter - when you train with weights, you tear your body down to rebuild, which is all well and good; but with bodyweight exercises, you don't have to tear anything down, you only build using motions the body naturally wants to do.
Qene - trippy way of talking from Ethiopia, like Japanese doublespeak, but twisted subtly
On Spanish troops
Nice Seattle skyline effect; reminds me of The Wild Shore for some reason
Beat A. Von Weissenfluh
--ageproject - kind of like hotornot, but seemingly more intelligent for some reason
--like Melt Wizard, random, but clever
"The authoritarian tendencies of conservatism must be corrected by myths of freedom, while a conservative sense of order must temper liberalism's tendencies to social irresponsibility." - summarized theorist's point in a lit. theory book
Well, not exactly Cung Le or Shannon Logan, but you take what you can get
So many options for Kerry...
Rockfish - fun indie CG (I want his truck-thing)
"He's not really blind, you know, but he only has eyes for her..."
Not sure how for-real this is, but might be fun to decide the new wonders
Hmm...apparently Kerry, when asked what kind of car he owns, has been saying different things at different places...not particularly significant, but interesting
"Apparently they speak good English."
"They speak English well?"
"No, they speak good English."
So, if Husserl isn't right with his idea of meaning coming before language, or even the qualified version of that with a "private language" unique to each person, here's the place where I'm at right now in understanding the issue. I can speak English to my heart's content, but there are distinct registers that I use in turn with small children, professors, girlfriends, dogs, &c. So in that vein, combined with the posit that language produces meaning rather than the converse, in my head is just a different register of the language I always use, rather than a totally unique language or lack of one.
(aka topics arrived at after spending eight hours talking to someone who is clinically insane)
(no, I wasn't talking to myself, thank you very much)
Hooboy....time waster, right here.
Kind of a less intelligent version of Carolyn's grandmother. (what's also funny is that on the source page there's a really dumb picture of Gene LeBell, for the one or two people who might recognize him)
More news that gods know few people'll ever see...
Facetious, but a bit funny
This is interesting, but I also find interesting that the crazy dictator's train had passed through relatively moments just before that...hmmm...
Labyrinths throught the ages - fun music plays for the solutions
Bracketing off most issues dealing with religion (unless anyone wants to discuss that in some other medium than this blog; I'd be perfectly happy to talk), I thought The Passion of the Christ was very interesting, even if only as a period piece. I think it would be wonderful to see more historical movies in the actual (or some approximation) languages that were spoken at the time. In that vein, I would also love to see movies about Mohammed, Zoroastros, Baha'u'llah, and say, some updated Robin Hood in Middle English (right langue? not sure) or something about the olden dynasties stretching back to Charlemagne. I mean, the upcoming (in the US anyway) Hero with Jet Li is in what is the Mandarin equivalent of Middle English; we just need more!
As an aside, I thought the several demons at the beginning of the movie were very interesting, though I think I missed the biblical connection to that. In any case, I heard them say "shedim" in the Aramaic when there was a demon perfectly appropriate to the myth of that kind, and I thought it was quite interesting how they made Satan androgynous (as that fit the whole angelic side of that as well, in my opinion).
Patient sitting is a funny job for many reasons, but one is that it's kind of isolated in terms of co-workers. Not that one doesn't see innumerable nurses, techs, &c, but one only sees other patient sitters when giving the five minute report at beginning and end of shift, and/or in the ER where it's way too busy to talk.
So it's funny on the rare occasion when there are two sitters in the same room, with two patients who don't really need sitters (ie, not two DT-ers). That is, the unique occasion. Then it's like a grand Meet, in the story-telling sense; for example: "Oh yeah? Well have you ever gotten an entire liter of urine spilled all over you?" or "Gee, when I had that guy he was hitting on everyone and told the black nurse that he thought he must have a huge cock."
Can't beat useful and potentially funny.
Apparently The Breast Cancer Site is having trouble funding its program of free mammograms for women who can't afford it; if you click the button in the middle it helps donate (or, to be absolutely tasteless, I quote, "click to help the titties").
There are a great many things I could say about the relationship between (Japanese) jujitsu and (the more external styles of) aikido, so I'll start with this one. Aikido is the next register up from jujitsu in terms of them being linked and used at a similar range, and in that aikido can be used to augment jujitsu techniques. Conversely, jujitsu is not necessarily a register down from aikido, but is rather on a different register in that it is a fall-back for aikido. To elaborate, aikido principles can be relatively easily integrated into jujitsu techniques, even down to techniques as simple as using a basic Tomiki aikido pivot to take someone down from a clinch or pummel. Jujitsu on the other hand is useful to aikido practicioners in that for one, its gross muscle movements are simpler and easier to perform than aikido's finer and more complex techniques, making jujitsu an easily learned alternative for when fatigue or other variables set in. And in another point, when the opponent is able to jam or go to ground, aikido techniques perform on a limited basis at best, while jujitsu techniques excel.
Some further points which bear more going into later:
-aikido takes a great deal of time to learn to apply, while jujitsu can be picked up very quickly.
-the majority of aikido's techniques are based on techniques while holding a sword - with aikido, sword movements are picked up very quickly, and can be used to augment one's understanding of the empty hand techniques
-interestingly in relation to that, jujitsu was originally for disarming an armored opponent with a weapon such as a sword; while modern Japanese jujitsu is more focused on countering styles akin to Western boxing, the links back to sword techniques are still there to be traced
Couple of really....interesting vids.
Palestinian Arab Folktales
kenken ("sword vs sword") - has a nice wacky ending
best fertility goddess ever
Silvereye, by Guido Argentini
there's bound to be something useful here
Yet again, I need a Japanese translator for these things. (the bottom trailer is short and sweet)
This video's creepy on several levels, methinks.
Trippy flash demos, to alleviate creepyness.
The first one's the best.
After reading Windhaven by George Martin and Lisa Tuttle a while ago, I've still thinking about one aspect of it. It was admittedly more of a background facet of the plot/setting (which was interesting because it was kind of a biography, fable, and commentary all at once but anyway...), but it still played an important part in the narrative. Bracketing off that plot (to avoid unneeded synopsis) the idea is that we often forget about the dynamics of other kinds of matter besides the solid kind, because we can't influence them directly. But what if you stop in the middle of, say, the UA mall with all the palm trees whipping around in the breeze, and look up? In the atmosphere, there are jet streams, updrafts, downdrafts, clouds being sailed in different directions, &c; hell, just look at a bird and try to imagine being able to move and use something you can't even see. Imagine if you could look up and see all those things happening in some way - it would dwarf the mountains, and be moving all at the same time. Same with water, of course. I dunno, I think it's kind of trippy - I mean, figuratively, that is (that, or maybe the new headache medicine is getting to me...)
+ sounds a bit uppity but seems to make sense: "We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution."
+ "The fastest draw is when the sword never leaves the scabbard."
To be honest I thought it was a bit silly, but yeah I can see underwater jj being used to restrain panicking divers.
"I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely mechanical object." - Roland Barthes, "The New Citroen"
+ writers --> "...the specialists of the human soul..."
"Most of the time we breathe in air without being conscious of it: like language, it is the very medium in which we move. But if the air is suddenly thickened or infected we are forced to attend to our breathing with new vigilance, and the effect of this may be a heightened experience of our daily life. We read a scribbled note from a friend without paying much attention to its narrative structure; but if a story breaks off and begins again, switches constantly from one narrative level to another and delays its climax to keep us in suspense, we become freshly conscious of how it is constructed at the same time as our engagement with it may be intensified." -Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory
(via Wyatt) Rocket Man Blog - "Politics is not rocket science, but all the rocket scientists I know are conservatives."
So, if one were to mute any of the morning shows on the big networks, and take a gander at the people moshing in the street behind the anchors, waving their arms around, screaming and caterwauling...anyway, does anyone else get Resident Evil or Dawn of the Dead vibes?
A whole bunch of shecoonery.
There's this little bit of a hill when I'm driving up to my family's house where there is often a 'whoa' moment for me when the Catalinas come into view. This time the cloud shadows were moving at such a rate that I saw them flowing over the mountains even as I was speeding along, so I a paused my car to watch them shift. It was like some kind of liquid made out of different kinds of light, and it made everything seem so big because it accented the clefts and folds what often seems like a flat painting. I like that hill.
It's like a koan, but not.
Apparently, according to the world's first crossword puzzle, a "nard" is an "aromatic plant." (there're also Latin and Arabic for more fun times)
There's this bird that's taken up residence in the neighborhood that sings incessantly at night. For three straight hours so far tonight, for example. It's a pretty song it sings, it's just its omnipresent quality that annoys us. And its volume. Which is why Phil is going to do a quick walkabout at 1.15 AM; to what end? Having just watched Kill Bill Phil's katana comes to mind. But (not to extend dippy melodrama), we could always make another good chicken marsala. Or whatever the hell kind of bird that is marsala.
Okeyday, in lieu of doing a close reading on some of the scenes from Kill Bill, Vol II (which would be fun), I'll just go with this (first impressional) analogy: the first one was the sex, and this was the post-coital cuddle.
+clever commercial. You can't beat Funky Town.
Actually, kind of came across this fun list of recipes after being confused by something in Elf Only Inn
Random artist plug
You can really confuse people in other rooms if you turn your volume up and start clicking around on this
This uses the annoyingness that is Realplayer, but it's kind of fun to hear Old English aloud
What I'm wondering is where they get origami paper like that
Kill Bill Vol. 3, even in theory, makes me do a happy happy dance.
So my fiction writing teacher's main thought on sex scenes was that they probably shouldn't be included unless they serve some specific function in advancing the story, or you can come up with some new way of doing it (no pun intended). Granting the fact that it would difficult to really think of something "new," as it were, I agree with his logic, but am also inclined to think (admittedly without much thought put into it) that if a story had an appropriate tone/atmosphere/ 'tude that a sex scene could be added as a kind of arabesque.
.............yes, that was a pun on my genes. And my jeans. As it were.
Corporate Etymologies - kind of semiotic and kind of not, but funny.
This and this might be a little too into yoga for most people, but the exercises for one's eyes in and of themselves don't hurt anything, and I actually noticed immediate difference after the 'palming' one.
(courtesy of Ms. Robyn)
Melt Wizard
...well, I'll let their tagline say it: "fantasy/emo from Tuscaloosa, AL". On several levels, it's hard to beat that; that, and their CD is only $5. Though, I think their songs might be a weeee bit....esoteric for most folks...
"You and I should never part
We would be a work of art
Like a short story by Sartre
Or an unlit fart."
"I wonder how you never knew
You're the Margaret Weis to my Tracy Hickman
All the worlds we've made
All we've been through
You're the Margaret Weis to my Tracy Hickman"
Ah, the perhaps the Governator just saved the person who will defeat the evil robots in the future....but the real question here, I believe, is how is vacation time for governors really decided? And is it paid vacation? I want to be governor of a sunny state going on vacation to a sunnier state.
time for the periodic conservative plug, I suppose...
---Article on Kerry
---Day by Day: probably the only conservative cartoon I've ever seen, though politics is not always its focus. Plus, there are regular moments where the author points out that conservative views in turn are sometimes ludicrous, which is definite bonus points to the comic's value. And, of course, it's subtle and witty, to boot.
Well, I could say I like Soul Caliber II for a number of reasons, not least of all its usefulness for procrastinating (thank you Scott for making my life much more stressful until I subletted your Xbox to my brother. bastard =). ) But its footwork is its greatest aspect in my opinion. No other fighting game that I know of emphasizes that aspect at all - in Soul Caliber, however, it is the most important thing. Some people make great claims about the game's mostly realistic martial arts techniques, but they usually miss that the most important part of the game - moving one's feet, whether to evade or advance - is also one of the most important things in real martial arts (I think so, anyway, just to keep from making an overarching presumptuous statement).
Oh, and, um, (despite Phil's eagle eye noticing the gun Jennifer Garner was packing changing from an H&K to a Glock midscene) Alias fucking rules.
A tai chi/bagua instructor I met the other day made a really interesting point, ironically about yoga: something like "You go to the point in the pose that you can get to, and don't try to strain for more, but just learn how to relax at that point." One of those obvious-as-a-zebra-on-a-golf-course things that doesn't actually seem so until it's bluntly pointed out, but one would wish more people would hear it before they get turned off to yoga by trying to kill themselves by overstretching everything.
Oh man...I almost feel sorry for these people, except that they're a bunch of hoyty-toyty Continentalists...
I don't actually mean that.
No...yes, yes I do. Damn Frenchies.
But brie cheese is so good...hmm...
Half-remembered posit from essay+story by David Brin:
Are aliens the new fae? If you look at the ubiquitous "Gray" archetype that one generally takes to represent the concept of the extraterrestrial, it certainly has the slender-to-the-point-of-emaciated body, the slight stature, the strange tilted eyes, &c. But to go a little bit deeper, are they the new monster-as-representation-of-unknown? That is, as the rule of thumb of fearing that which one does not understand is applied, and combined with science generally discounting many effects that rule might have, what if those little gray dudes are just the newest thing that is just beyond the firelight? Are they what we just might have seen out in the dark forest beyond the light that our embers of technology and modern society give off, coming to abduct us and cause capricious mischief?
I hope this ends up at Catalina or the Loft or what - on the surface looks like one of those indy movies that's a series of conversations, but it also has Bill Murray, Iggy Pop, the White Stripes, Steve Buscemi, Cate Blanchett...well, I could go on - Coffee and Cigarettes
Bug Portraits
"Still confining ourselves to spoken utterance." - Austin, How to Do Things with Words
A rant on an example of a silly borrowed word:
"While we're at it, could we please fix the word ginkgo, which is not only difficult and irregular, but doesn't reflect any proper Japanese word? The Japanese characters ([i/gin][cho:/nan/kyo:]) can be read two ways: as icho:, they refer to the tree; as ginnan, to the fruit. The second character can be read kyo: in other words, so someone misread the combination as ginkyo:, and someone else mangled this into ginkgo."
Fun Hellboy mini-comic - yes I know it's on Playboy.com, but I knew if I drove to the comic book store to get it for 25c I'd end up spending $50.
(and he says "Oop. Damn." at one point! you can't beat that!)
A liiitle bit esoteric, but I suppose Latinate puns can be funny...no, I refuse to work a pun into this.
Newsmap: I'm not going to pretend I can explain it, but it sure looks interesting.
short history of the letter Q -
"During the Old English period, we didn't use Q in English: we wrote, for example, CWICU for 'quick' and CWEN for 'queen' (Old English, like Latin, preferred C for the /k/-sound instead of K). But then the French-speaking Normans conquered England, interrupting the English literary tradition, and, when English once again began to be written after the Conquest, a number of French spelling conventions were introduced, including the business of always writing Q for the /k/-sound when the next letter was U. And we're still stuck with it."
"I wish I could place a chair for you, sister." - Billy the Kid (shackled and chained to the floor) to a visiting nun
gorgeous
Man, I love these linguistics projects; probably would be useful for placing those accents you can never figure out. Unfortunately, the IPA they use is different from the one I learned, but at least it's still mostly comprehensible (phonetics alphabets = fun because you can take them and use them to learn said accents just by reading).
---
Beyond the reach of human range
A drop of hell, a touch of strange...
-Stephen King, The Gunslinger
---
They clung to each other, balanced on the edge of the moment of parting, trying to say now, with the pressure of their bodies, everything they might ever want to say to each other. Then they pulled away, and looked at each other through tears.
-George Martin + Lisa Tuttle, Windhaven
Demolition Man is silly, yes. Also very funny - lots of great lines. Sandra Bullock is very hot in an idiotic way. There is the single greatest Schwarzenegger reference, ever, which made me jump up and down in a towel. But there ain't no way that Sylvester Stalone would ever beat Wesley Snipes. Ain't happening.
my interpretation (and a shallow close reading) of Event Horizon, arrived at while explaining the movie to Carolyn while she watched it, over the phone:
The main point is that the doctor who originally designed the ship was in-effect playing God, because he was trying to do something that is generally filed under should-not-be-possible. In accomplishing said act, he made the ship go somewhere it shouldn't have --> connected with him 'playing God' = so they saw God/the incomprhensible, as it were (re: the climax of The Gunslinger; literal translation of "Allahu akbar"). In and of such, through a grand extrapolation of 'humans fear that which they do not understand,' not only does the crew (and subsequent characters in the movie) go loco-in-the-braino, but the inanimate ship is also affected, later making a connection with it's designer to create horror movie fun.
Interestingly, there is also the twisty relationship that the audience has with the movie. Because the story is in effect being narrated by the main characters, they are generally thought to be reliable. But the trick is that as the movie progresses each of them becomes more and more unreliable, which either leads the audience to simply accept their perspectives as the reality of the movie, or try to recognize when they have become unreliable and then read between the lines, as it were, of their hallucinations.
All of that stuff about the nature of how the story is being told also plays into the personification-of-incomprehensibility that the ship has become after encountering it, as the longer the characters interact with it the more they take on its aspect, and thus produce the movie's effectiveness at scaring people.
Well, it's nice to know that totally random people like the Penny Arcade guy have interest in this stuff too. Yay...um...linguistic nerd solidarity?
Whoa! The guy who did Akira is doing a new movie, Steampunk style....teeensy bit of a change in style, but looks somewhat interesting.
In the doctor’s office I hear a piano playing,
and I think of you.
We sit across a candlelit table in a deep blue club,
your eyes a cool hand laid upon my cheek -
our smiles entwined.
We dance through the soft lit shadows,
the piano player smiles and our hips sway gently -
your cheek warm and velvet against mine.
The door opens and the white-coat comes in.
He sits on his plastic metal chair, but won’t look at me.
He looks away anyway, and speaks.
I look away too.
Assent is murmured, and the door closes behind him.
I hear a piano playing, and you hold me in your arms.
Our hips sway gently in the soft lit shadows,
Our eyes closed, your forehead cool and gentle
and laid against mine.
"Let's get married."
"WHAT?"
"We'll go to Boston or Frisco or Toronto or...or Belgium, and get married."
"Is this a proposal, or some kind of post-modern intimacy avoidance strategy?"
"Both. Rather clever of me, you have to admit."
-from Dykes to Watch out For
Despite it being random Japanese flash, I think one could look at this as an interesting take on how aural and written components of language can be connected.
If you understand, things are just as they are. If you do not understand, things are just as they are. – Zen saying
+both by Charles de Lint
The best artists know what to leave out. They know how much of the support should show through as the pigment is applied, what details aren’t necessary. They suggest, and let the viewer fill in whatever is needed to make the communication complete. They aren’t afraid to work with a smaller palette, to delete excess verbiage or to place rests on the musical staff, for they know that almost every creative endeavor can be improved with a certain measure of understatement. For isn’t it the silence between notes that often gives music its resonance? What lies between the lines of the poem or story, the dialogue the actor doesn’t speak, the pauses between the dancer’s steps? The spaces can be just as important as what’s distinctly portrayed. – Dream Harder, Dream True
A long time ago a bunch of people reached a general consensus as to what’s real and what’s not and most of us have been going along with it ever since. – Where Desert Spirits Crowd the Night
"Get your traditional Japanese three-stringed guitar-on! Fun for about 30 seconds *(hours if you're stoned)."
“Don’t worry about what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that. Because what the world needs are people who come alive.” Howard Thurman
(paraphrased/summarized from Scientific American, April 04)
Further into the idea that one's language shapes one's perception of reality, there is the subject of colors. The way different languages name cultures is possibly one of the only areas where there seems to be a relative universality to naming. More industrial cultures often have more names for colors than more primitive colors, but they are generally sorted into very similar patterns. Some languages have only two or three terms - one for black/blue/green and "cool" colors, one for red/yellow and "warm" colors, and one for white or "light" colors. If there is a fourth they often split blue/green from the cool colors. English has eleven terms, which are generally similar, if not identical, to most other languages associated with similar technological levels: black, white, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, pink, orange, purple, and gray. These are the most basic: colors like 'blue-green' or colors associtated with specific things like 'emerald' or 'salmon' are not included.
Interestingly this could be interpreted to say that one can assume that humans generally percieve color in the same fashion, if not at least similarly. Thus, what I say is 'red' is probably also percieved by, say, Bob as 'red,' as opposed to Bob seeing what I say is 'red' as 'violet-magenta.'
Also interestingly as a converse tangent are the way different languages deal with space. Some languages do not have words for subjective directions such as 'left' or 'right,' but only absolute directions such as 'north' and 'west.' Speakers of such would thus say something like, "You have something on your cheek....no, your south cheek."
"Just now as I watched the ever-changing beauty, I saw a cloud pass over the earth on long grey [sic] stilts of rain. And then as I looked I saw its shape and knew that over the pueblo moved the Thunder Bird. With wings outspread he slowly passed, broad tail sweeping the thirsty earth. Down from his breast fell feathers of rain and out from his heart the lightning flashed its message to the people that the gods never forget. Thnuder roared from his long black beak and all earth sounds were hushed. He has gone, leaving only his mark on the land, but I still see his broad wings stretched, and the white rain-feathers dropping from his breast. And any fear, lingering from those childhood days when I, unafraid, was made to fear lightning, has gone. Did it not come from his heart? If it should seek me out or find me wandering in its path, would it not take me back with it? I should not mind going so much if I could look down on beauty like earth's today." - Edith Warner, September 1929
"From my window I can see a storm coming down from the mountains. The white mist spills over the arm of the mountain. I can hear the heavy rain beating across the canyon. Thunder rolls in antiphonal effect from peak to peak. The wind surges down from the mountains, spills into the canyons, wells up with an added strength against the house. The green curtans flatten themselves against the window as if they were hunted things. After all this frenzy of preparation at last only a few silly drops spill onto the roof of the garage. Was the storm only a pretense? No, the mist I thought was thinning has gathered again. It is marching nearer like the gray shadow of an army. A swift flame leaps across it and crashes into thunder. Now the rain wrestles with the wind for mastery in the tree tops. It pours down from the clouds like a river. How strange the trees look, like ghosts caught in a gray curtain. The rain is all between and among them. It is a world of the newly dead groping in a purgatory without color. Humans creep now beneath what little shelter they can, and whisper and touch cold hang to hand till the storm is past. They dare not be caught when the rain gods march." - Peggy Church, August 1929
Spain's sudden change might be a good one for the country as an individual nation, but that's still only a 'might' and definitely isn't good for the global community. It's like when Hitler was appeased before WWII. While they may have obtained relief from Al Qaeda, they are just letting the Basque terrorists that are indiginous know that if they kill enough people they can get what they want. Similarly, Al Qaeda has gotten a boost by setting out to do a mission having its goal fully accomplished; I'm sorry that all those people in Spain died, but I'm also sorry about the response to it.
"Sometimes the light makes each range stand out, casting sharp shadows on the ones behind. Occasionally when the air is very clear, there is a strange and breath-taking shining light on the green aspen leaves. At evening the twilight may run quickly from the valley, shrouding almost at once the highest peaks. Or mauve and rose move slowly upward, turning to blood-red on the snow above. One morning they may be purple cardboard mountains sharpcut against the sky. On another they will have withdrawn into themselves. Sometimes I have watched ghost mountains with substance only in their dark outline. It seems then as if the mountains had gone down into their very roots, leaving an empty frame." - Edith Warner quoted in The House at Otowi Bridge
I think this is really interesting, but it's too bad it isn't bigger, as (like the article points out) they'll probably start arguing over whether it's really a planet. Ah well. Hopefully it being on the orbital plane in some kosher way will shake things up, eh?
Also interesting, the CIA Factbook seems fun to browse through or to save when countries pop up in the news - yay for human geography.
Isaac Asimov.......John Woo style.
Hey, it has the guy from Donnie Darko! Now it's ten times as disturbing!
(from harangue by literary theory prof)
If you want to change the world, you have to know the way the world works. One might ask what the purpose of literary theory is, and some large part of it is to 'lay bare the device' - to understand and make clear what makes literature what it is. As intangible as that sounds, many have put their lives on the line for the theory they had created, and died for it. Why were the Soviets afraid of the Russian Formalist's new theories - why were they all disappeared or executed? Because they were not only able to lay bare the device of literature - with their theory and through the literature they could lay bare the device of culture. Literary theory is the essence of revolution in some ways, as it is one of the few ways of advancing society that does not just serve the established hierarchies of class and society, but is instead constantly battling itself in culture wars against those within its own ranks who would hold it back to progress forward. As more people understand that forwardly progressing theory (on whatever level) or are affected by it the paradigm of a country's unconscious can change. And hopefully the forward progression of that theory can be maintained in the face of those in favor of stagnancy.
So if one's language acts as a medium for the way one percieves reality, does that mean that way back when in cultures of pre-history (ie, cultures that only had words of monosyllables or languages without vowels) did they really look at the world differently? I mean, there's culture-being-different, like Egyptians being entirely centered around death, but were they also different from modern society in other ways that aren't so tangible or easily grasped?
I suppose the actual webcomic portion of this is nigh defunct, but the author still threw up a fun little bit (top of this page) about getting acclimated to the USA after a move from Singapore.
Well, not that the novels were amazing or what, but sadly the Aliens vs Predator movie still looks a bit rough around the edges. Here's some crossed fingers for improvement...
-not to sound pretentious, but....oh...heh, yeah, I suppose it's a bit late for that, neh? anyhoo-
"People living at the seashore grow so accustomed to the murmur of the waves that they never hear it. By the same token, we scarcely ever hear the words which we utter...we look at each other, but we do not see each other anymore. Our perception of the world has withered away, what has remained is mere recognition..." - Viktor Sklovskij (Slovsky)
"An image not on canvas is merely an image, a figure of speech; poetic images are metaphors, tropes, inward forms. Psychologists did poetics a great disservice, when they interpreted inward form as primarily a visual image...a visual image hinders poetic perception...to strain oneself toward the visual perception of Puskin's 'monument built not with human hands' (nerukotvornyj) or of his 'flaming word,' indeed, of any image, any symbol, the forms of which are not visual, but fictitious, is to strain oneself toward the misunderstanding and misperception of poetic speech." - Gustav Spet
"Immortel - (le film, beyotch)".....only the French would have put an end-line like this trailer has
While driving home I was listening to a firmly etheral piano piece by Chopin on the radio, and an odd trick happened with my vision. Oftentimes I'll notice a slope in the road that I had forgotten on Broadway or Speedway, or see stars where I hadn't, but this time was a bit different. For a while I was more conscious of depth; it was as if I was wearing 3-d glasses, but with an extra dimension layered upon what my normal vision is. Instead of seeing the fact that a tree was in front of a street lamp, I was conscious of the distance between them. Altered consciousness, good times.
Okay...revised estimate of The Punisher is that it might kick ass, rather than wince-inspiring.
"Unless we develop flexibility of mind, we cannot grasp what is true for each student in each situation--or, for that matter, for ourselves. However, just as flexibility of the body can go too far, resulting in a loss of control or even injury, the mind can also become so flexible and open that it is unable to discern relevant truth or convey it with conviction. We can find ourselves trapped in a world where everything is relative, all options are valid, and decisions are nearly impossible.
Just as we strive to balance flexibility and strength in the body, so must we strive to balance a flexible mind with the strength to discern. As we learn different truths, we must be able to discern between them and clearly discriminate whether an alleged truth is appropriate for our own practice or for our students. This is strength of mind." - Aadil Palkhivala
"Writing, when properly managed, is but a different name for conversation: As no one, who knows what he is about in good company, would venture to talk at all; - so no author, who understands the just boundaries of decorum and good breeding, would presume to think all: The truest respect which you can pay to the reader's understanding, is to halve this matter amicably, and leave him something to imagine, in his turn, as well as yourself." - Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
on Southwest weather:
"There were hardships and glories in the weather - sometimes came storms which seemed as wide as a continent, the airy equivalent of the desert reaches in size; and then the riders took shelter beside their horses. Again, there were storms of light itself, breaking through clouds above mountains, and standing rays of gold air against distant blue, and trailing far veils of rain which often never reached the ground but seemed to become part of the very light itself; and infinity, perhaps eternity, had an image." - Paul Horgan, Lamy of Santa Fe
Problem:solution.
Right before my black belt test, Trey did this beautiful takedown where my arm was locked behind my back in a chicken-wing, and I mashed my shoulder tendons over the joint (just like the throw is designed to do, not-ironically). So ever since then it clicks when I roll it a certain way, sometimes painfully.
~cool.....Shihan Linebarger's wife tried popping my neck back into place to line up my shoulder joint, which works for a while, but is only somewhat doable by myself, not to mention dangerous.
~warm......shoulder-specific exercises like shootfighter pushups or cherry-pickers also work for a while, but sometimes just make it worse
~warmer.....stretching with yoga like behind-back-prayer hands or eagle pose also helps for a while, but then it can tighten back up again
*disco! Old 'Shaolin chi kung' exercises in a book Wyatt bought me. They may or may not actually be chi kung, but basically just holding my arms out in positions that hit every deltoid while doing 10-50 deep breaths and flexing in the appropriate rhythm does it. The way it seems to me, it's like yoga wherein you're stretching and taking deep breaths, thus getting oxygenated blood to the point under strain, but instead of going for relaxing and lengthening, it's like you're massaging the muscles from the inside (because they're being flexed instead of stretched). Next test: does it work for hips?
