Mar 1, 2000

It takes zero politically correct assholes to screw in a light bulb because they are all perpetually in the f*****g dark.

Feb 24, 2000

What part of “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wagn’nagl fhtagn” don’t you understand?

Foucault’s Pendulum

Feb 19, 2000

‘Listen, Jacopo, I thought of a good one: Urban Planning for Gypsies.’ ‘Great,’ Belbo said admiringly. ‘I have one, too: Aztec Equitation.’ ‘Excellent. But would that go with Potio-section or the Anynata?’ ‘We’ll have to see.’ Belbo said. He rummaged in his drawer and took out some sheets of paper. ‘Potio-section…’ He looked at me, saw my bewilderment. ‘Potio-section, as everybody knows, is the art of slicing soup. No, no,’ he said to Diotallevi. ‘It’s not a department, it’s a subject, like Mechanical Avunculogratulation or Pylocatabasis. They all fall under the heading of Tetrapyloctomy.’ ‘What’s tetra…?’ ‘The art of splitting a hair four ways. Mechanical Avunculogratulation, for example, is how to build machines for greeting uncles.’ (74) introduction The above quotation seems an apt microcosm of Foucault’s Pendulum: at once amusing, bewildering, ironic, exceedingly intellectual, and eminently dislikable. Umberto Eco’s novel, is a second expedition into the novel form by the Italian scholar and acclaimed author of Name of the Rose. This adventure is an detective story about a search for the center of an ancient, still-living conspiracy of men who seek not merely power over the earth but over the psychic, ‘telluric’ powers of the earth itself, and who in the end draw their pursuers into a circle (a pentagram?) where discovery of the truth is lethal. The story is inordinately difficult to follow — its encyclopedic richness of historical detail breaks any smooth transparency of prose — but it is not meant to be easy. Neither was The Name of the Rose, which became a bestseller, even if one wonders how many actually read all of it. Eco is an active scholar, and forges links between his academic and popular works. In a 1988 essay ‘Dreaming of the Middle Ages,’ the Italian identified ten types of nostalgic neo-medievalism. Number nine he labelled the Middle Ages of Tradition, ‘an eternal and rather eclectic ramshackle structure swarming with Knights Templar, Rosicrucians, alchemists, and Masonic initiates;’ that passage seems a prophetic formula for Foucault’s Pendulum — itself the celebration of the attempt to rediscover that world. If nothing else the work is undeniably ‘eternal’: the only reason the volume doesn’t reach seven hundred pages is because Eco declines to finish it properly. It isn’t even really a novel in the strict sense of the word, more a sort of formidable gathering of information, delivered playfully by a master manipulating his own invention — a long, erudite (if often dry), joke. plot The novel as narration is put into the mouth of Causaubon, a scholar who writes his doctoral dissertation on the Knights Templar, and establishes himself a business in Milan, styling himself a kind of Sam Spade of information (a ‘regular Joe’ Mycroft Holmes? a lean, married, Nero Wolfe?). For a price, he will track down any fact — even though he seems to know everything already (except that he is named for the scholar of George Eliot’s Middlemarch, who also knew everything though it did him no good). He accepts a job as consultant for the Garamond Press, and joins Jacopo Belbo (a commonsensical Piedmontese companion) and Diotallevi (an ex-foundling Piedmontese, who fancies himself Jewish). These three spend most of their time drunk or bored, creating parodic word-games, and ridiculing anyone who takes himself seriously. Belbo’s favorite sentence he saves for pretentiousness, ‘Ma gavte la nata,’ which means something like ‘take the cork out [of his ass] and let the wind out.’ These three — ‘clowns’ is perhaps the best word for them — in their research for a book entitled The History of Metals, advertise for manuscripts about the diabolical histories of secret societies. If the story so far seems to veer a bit, just wait — it gets better. They decide as a game to feed all the hermetic plots that ever were into their computer. The results go beyond even paranoid fantasy: the unexplained phenomena of history, they find, can be fitted into a single, cosmic plan that embraces opposites, provide better interpretations than orthodox history has of certain past events, and reveals the greatest secret of history. What every major society of Europe, from the thirteenth century onward, has wanted — Templars, Rosicrucians, Masons, Jesuits, even Nazis, we discover — is control of the Earth’s ‘telluric currents,’ the psychic forces which control the land, seas, and skies. The pre-Celts built Stonehenge; the Gothics erected immense cathedral spires; Eiffel contrived his tower. Why? ‘What need did Paris have of this useless monument? It’s the celestial probe, the antenna that collects information from every hermetic valve stuck into the planet’s crust!’ This, the ultimate conspiracy, synthesizes all possible conspiracies — though the list is so comprehensive one wonders precisely who they’re plotting against. No matter. A plot is a structure, a semiotic fabrication. Umberto Eco is a professor of semiotics, a grand master of codes, signs, and hidden meanings. The obsessiveness of the three Italians becomes contagious, and soon no single fact seems innocent. What is truly remarkable is how compelling ‘the Plan’ can seem, though the reader knows it to be false. It cannot be true; we watch, as the word processor groups together facts with its random number generator — any resulting coherence must surely be accidental. And reading the novel, it is possible to watch the three become obsessed and irrational, fabricating unlikely ‘ifs’ in order to fit missing pieces. One feels exhausted when the puzzle’s last pieces are fitted into place. ‘Not bad, not bad at all,’ Diotallevi said. ‘To arrive at the truth through the painstaking reconstruction of a false text.’ (459) the pendulum as analog Eco first heard about the pendulum (which swings in the Conservatoire des Arts et Mètiers in Paris) from a professor of civil engineering and architecture at Cornell University. The instrument, a twenty-eight kilo silver ball with a needle point, hanging by wire from a fixed point on the ceiling sixty-seven meters above, was invented by Jean Bernard Lèon Foucault (1819-68) to demonstrate the rotation of the earth; it swings perpetually, given momentum by the instability of the solid floor beneath it. The mechanism itself seems harmless, the confirmation of a comforting permanence, but turns sinister toward the end. Causaubon becomes irritated early in the novel by the indifference of passersby to the pendulum’s miracle: Above her head was the only stable point in the cosmos, the only refuge from the damnation of the panta rei, and she guessed it was the pendulum’s business, not hers. A moment later the couple went off — he, trained on some textbook that had blunted his capacity for wonder, she, inert and insensitive to the thrill of the infinite, both oblivious of the awesomeness of their encounter — with the One, the Ein-Sof, the Ineffable. How could you fail to kneel before this altar of certitude? (6) The poetry of the pendulum is the poetry of Eco’s novel, and of history itself. One writes a novel as Causaubon, Belbo and Diotallevi write their ‘Plan’ — in order to rewrite history — a history in which they then become a part. The pendulum, privileged, looms over the lunacy, scorn, and fear of the world because its point of attachment, alone in the universe, is fixed — wherever you choose to put it. This ‘centeredness’ so desired by the cabalists’ metaphysics, by Italian scholars’ cynicism, of poetry and history are only possible because of the force which maintains the pendulum. It takes over six hundred pages to get from our first view of the Pendulum to the last. These pages are crammed not with action but with information. I happened to be reading about fifteenth-century Venetian printers and was not surprised to find them there. If you want to know about the Gregorian calendar, or the theory that the Holy Grail is really St. Mary Magdalene, you will find it here. The book clearly needs an index. Perhaps Dr. Eco has already got his semiology students to work on it; as there was a little volume of metafiction to supplement The Name of the Rose, so may we expect something hermeneutic about its successor. But in the meantime, all three of Eco’s heroes discover with alarm that neither their parody nor their new-found Plan can protect them from a universe ruled simultaneously by both and neither. Diotallevi first is diagnosed as having cancer, and moralizes on his deathbed: ‘And what are my cells? For months, like devout rabbis, we uttered different combinations of the letters of the Book. GCC, CGC, GCG, CGG. What our lips said, our cells learned. What did my cells do? They invented a different Plan, and now they are proceeding on their own, creating a history, a unique, private history. My cells have learned that you can blaspheme by anagrammizing the Book, and all the books of the world. And they have learned to do this now with my body. They invert, transpose, alternate, transform themselves into cells unheard of, new cells without meaning, or with meaning contrary to the right meaning. There must be a right meaning and a wrong meaning; otherwise you die. My cells joke, without faith, blindly. Similarly Belbo meets an unpleasant fate, trapped by his own creation, the TRÉS conspiracy come to life and curious about his secret knowledge. In the Paris Conservatoire, at midnight, in the pendulum room, he confronts his fiction-turned-real. ‘Now you will speak,’ Aglie said. ‘You will speak, and you will join the great game. If you remain silent, you are lost. If you speak, you will share in the victory….this night you and I and all of us are in Hod, the Sefirah of splendor, majesty, and glory; Hod, which governs ritual and ceremonial magic; Hod, the moment when the curtain of eternity is parted. I have dreamed of this moment for centuries. You will speak, and you will join the only ones who will be entitled, after your revelation, to declare themselves Masters of the World. Humble yourself, and you will be exalted. You will speak because I order you to speak, and my words efficiunt quod figurant!’ And Belbo, now invincible, said, ‘Ma gavte la nata…’ The proximity of the pendulum’s focus, the center of the universe, ennobles and melodramatizes both. Belbo is killed, magnificently, symbolically, hung by the wire of the pendulum. Causaubon’s final monologue reflects the uncertainty with which he awaits his fate. conclusion But somehow, at the end, one is overcome by the nameless feeling of being in the presence of Bob, Pete, and Jupiter Jones rather than Dupin. The notion of equating a novel’s mechanisms with symbolic or metaphoric machinery was throughly explored in the fifties and sixties by Player Piano and Lost in the Funhouse. While this novel is indeed very rich semiotically, the overall atmosphere is somewhat more amateurish than enthralling.

CUrrnet TORG Char

Jan 31, 2000

ibis (ben siddig) gadget hero cosm/m/s/sp/t: nile empire magic12 social 20 spiritual 17 tech 21 desc.: 35, 6″, 225 lb. shock damaqe: possibilities: 10 wound level: 1-OK stats: dex-10 maneuver str-8 tough-9 per-12 trick mind-9 test charisma-8 taunt spirit-11 intimidate move: skill: reality+2 spi 13 acrobatics+ dex 10 dodge+2 dex 12 fire combat+ dex 10 flight+ dex 10 lock pick+1 dex 11 long jump+ dex 10 melee wep+1 dex 11 running+ dex 10 stealth+ dex 10 unarm cbt+1 dex 11 climb+1 str 9 lift+ str 8 air veh+ per 12 evidence+1 per 13 find+1 per 13 scholar+3 per 15 trick+1 per 13 science+1 min 10 faith+1 spi 12 intimidation+1 spi 12 equipment: .38 revolver val 14 axiom lvl 20 rng s3-10, m25, l50 costume gadget belt (Flight 17) ammo tool kit oscilloscope parts 400 nile royals drama card: 0 0 0

Proposed Law Would Imprison Aroused Men

Jan 25, 2000

JACKSON, Miss. (Reuters) – If you are a man who has difficulty controlling your sexual responses in public, beware. The eyes of Mississippi are upon you. The Southern state, long considered one of the most conservative in the United States, is considering a public-sex-and-nudity law with a provision that would make it illegal for sexually aroused men to appear in public. The bill, introduced by Republican state Sen. Tom King at the request of a constituent concerned about the behavior of patrons at strip clubs, defines nudity to include “the showing of covered male genitals in a discernibly turgid state.” Men who run afoul of the law could face up to a year in prison and a $2,000 fine. “It will set some boundaries on what they (strip club patrons) can or cannot do in a community,” said Forrest County Supervisor Johnny DuPree, who asked for a discussion of the question in the legislature. DuPree, who has opposed the opening of a strip club at a National Guard base at Camp Shelby, outside Hattiesburg, said the law also would help local governments combat indecent acts. Hattiesburg is located about 100 miles south of the state capital, Jackson. The bill, modeled on a similar statute in Indiana, has been sent to Mississippi’s Senate Judiciary Committee for further review.

Crack pipes

Jan 13, 2000

I don’t know why people insist crack is bad. Listen to this: “A Florida man who swallowed 55 small glass pipes used to smoke cocaine was recovering after surgeons removed the paraphernalia from his stomach.” The guy had gone into the hospital complaining of “severe abdominal cramps, heartburn, and indigestion. He apparently swallowed the pipes while high on crack and DID NOT REALIZE what he was doing. The glass tubes ranged up to 4 1/2 inches long.” OH MAN. I admit I’ve swallowed my share of glass pipes, maybe 12 or 13 at the MOST at any one time. But 55! It’s like Dimaggio’s 56 game hitting streak, or Cy Young’s 511 games won… it’s a record that simply can’t be broken. For lunch today… NO GLASS PIPES. I insist.

The Death of Libraries

Jan 3, 2000

I heard something disturbing over the holiday weekend. While riding back from a night out with my friends, one mentioned that she needed to go to Barnes & Nobles, and she wondered if they had a copy machine. When I asked her why she would need a copy machine at a book store, she explained that they had a medical reference book there that she needed some information from (my mom’s a nurse). The book is very expensive, so she can’t afford to buy it, and she only needs the one article anyway. I took this opportunity to point out that there are these big buildings called libraries, and that they’re full of books that people can read and sometimes even take home without paying a dime. “They don’t have it,” she said. “I can only find this book at the bookstore.” I was floored, to say the least. When I was growing up, the library was like a second home to me. I pedaled my little one-speed bike down to the local branch library every week, it seemed, and in high school I actually worked in the city library. But the more I thought about it, I realized I hadn’t really browsed the stacks of a library in years, not since, oh, about 1994. Which, by the way, was the year I discovered the web. I know why I don’t go to libraries any more. Between MemoWare and Peanut Press and downloading everything else via iSiloWeb, I don’t have a shortage of things to read. I have an overabundance, actually, with the equivalent of tens of thousands of pages to read on my computer right now. We’re talking about nearly three times as much as War and Peace (which I can and will once I read enough to free up the room on my shelf it takes up). But what really surprised me is that my mom doesn’t go to libraries either, and why. Big superstore book chains like Borders and Barnes & Noble are replacing the library in America. In virtually all of these places, you have comfortable couches spread throughout, and most of them sell gourmet coffee as well. They practically scream, “Come in, browse, make yourself comfortable.” Rare is it that bookstore patrons are hassled into making a purchase or leaving, and I’ve seen more than few read entire magazines over their coffee, put the magazine back on the rack and leave. How’s a library going to compete with that? What’s more disturbing though, is the title availability. While I’m sure my pal could find the information she’s looking for on the web, she’s not that net savvy, so that leaves print. The library doesn’t carry the book she needs, but several bookstores here do. The decision has been made for her. The library is obsolete, following the buggy whip into cultural obscurity.

Ave Maria… neat memory

Dec 20, 1999

Quoted From friend Mojo – The best version I have ever heard was live in a church in finland. The church is about a thousand years old ( probably less ) and is gigantic. There are Swedish/ Finnish Kings and Queens buried under the floors and in special areas and tombs in the Church. When you walk in the church you can’t even see the Altar. My sister, her family,Steve and I were in the church doing the tourist thing and all of a sudden someone started singing Ave Maria unaccompanied. It was so powerful. He was singing without a mic and it sounded perfect. Finally we found him, the altar it self was almost a separate chapel. And there we saw a little tiny christening ceremony in progress. there were 5 people, the baby, the pastor and the man singing . The power of the moment was so overwhelming. Here in this gigantic historical church where Important historically significant people are buried in the floor and the walls . The sheer size and age of the church is moving much less when the voice of one man singing Ave Maria carries through out . The only people in the church were us and the 7 people and the baby. Yet we were privliged to experience the welcoming of a newborn soul to the kingdom of god. So beautiful And yet so humbling. The moment was so pure and so moving. There were no fancy robes, no fancy gold and jeweled religious paraphenalia, no 50 person chorus, no charismatic preacher, no one asked us for a cent. Just a man singing Ave Maria acapella and a small family celebrating the christening of their new arrival. And we were fortunate to be there to witness the moment. If there has ever been a moment that I would consider to be a religious experience , for me personally, that would have to be it.

$65

5th trip

62 oz

broke 4 lbs, looks long and lean.

Cold Miser Song…

Dec 16, 1999

I’m Mister White Christmas
I’m Mister Snow
I’m Mister Icicle
I’m Mister Ten Below
Friends call me Snow Miser, What ever I touch
Turns to snow in my clutch I’m too much!

He’s Mister White Christmas He’s Mister Snow
That’s right!
He’s Mister Icicle
He’s Mister Ten Below
Friends call me Snow Miser, What ever I touch
Turns to snow in my clutch

I never want to see a day That’s over forty degrees I’d rather have it thirty, Twenty, ten, five and let it freeeeEEEEEEeeze!

He’s Mister White Christmas He’s Mister Snow That’s right! He’s Mister Icicle He’s Mister Ten Below Friends call me Snow Miser, What ever I touch Turns to snow in my clutch … too much.

Heat Miser Song…

Dec 16, 1999

I´m Mister Green Christmas
I´m Mister Sun
I´m Mister Heat Blister
I´m Mister Hundred and One
They call me Heat Miser, What ever I touch
Starts to melt in my clutch I´m too much!

(Chorus) He´s Mister Green Christmas
He´s Mister Sun He´s Mister Heat Blister
He´s Mister Hundred and One

(Heat Miser) They call me Heat Miser, What ever I touch Starts to melt in my clutch
(Chorus) He´s too much!
(Heat Miser) Thank you! I never want to see a day That´s under sixty degrees I´d rather have it eighty, Ninety, one hundred degrees!

(spoken) Oh, some like it hot, but I like it REALLY hot! Hee hee!

(Chorus) He´s Mister Green Christmas He´s Mister Sun
(Heat Miser) Sing it!
(Chorus) He´s Mister Heat Blister He´s Mister Hundred and One
(Heat Miser) They call me Heat Miser, What ever I touch Starts to melt in my clutch I´m too much!
(Everybody) Too Much! “Oh, some like it hot, but I like it REALLY hot! hee hee!”

pleases me tremendously. Any song with hee hee is all right. See? There’s a little touch of the tard in me. I just struggle to fight it.

rambling in general

Dec 14, 1999

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my current friends, where I am in my life, and theirs. It seems to me that most everyone I know that is married has dire and immediate need for council. Fearing for the future happiness of my buddies is currently one of my stronger stresses, now that my Taxi-driving pal’s world is pretty much in a state of decent repair. What can I do to help these guys? All I can offer is a friendly ear to the troubles they have… and for what it’s worth, it’s gotten bent once or twice, and I’ve been allowed to add my personal observations and viewpoints, hopefully to make the life they end up choosing to be as pleasant as possible. This also feeds into a fear of mine regarding where I’m going to be relationship-wise in the coming years. Finally back on track, seeing three circles of friends on a regular basis and even dating regularly. I really don’t want anything to happen to foul it up. I’ve made a number of mistakes in the past, and don’t plan on repeating it. I still compartmentalize my friends, perhaps on a sub-c level to protect them from each other, should one social bubble burst, I still have the other fall-back places. Hippies, Gamers, girlfriend, coworker-pals and best friend all have some sort of invisible wall between them. Newton is the only one that’s crossed all of the lines, and that’s ok… he’s unlikely to let a confidence slip, or misinterpret what is said in moments of unclarity.

Hm. Maybe I should list what’s on my mind, make this mess more legible? Why not?

1. Non-single pals having *REAL* trouble in what should be wedded bliss.

2. The turbulence at work. Will I get a new job, or adapt to this one? Can I get decent hours, now that I have a social life.

3. Money. Never seems to be enough to help those in need and I can’t afford all the Yuletide cheer I wish to distribute this year.

4. Pressures to get a vehicle. Nobody has said anything yet, but don’t want friends to be terribly put out by the fact that they have to pick me up if I’m to hang out with them.

5. Growth. I think it’s time to clean up my act, and start preparing a bit for the future. I could survive a minor trauma, but if anything major happened to me right now, I could easily be homeless, broke and totally out of luck. All for now, I’m getting tired. Talk to you soon, and regularly.