The Voting period is well over, and the votes have been tallied for the corporately decided narrative trajectory of The Runes of Chaos. To read up on what Volition-Piloted Literature is and what literary constraints and concepts are behind The Runes of Chaos, you can read all about the ongoing saga by looking at all posts tagged "Volition-Piloted Literature". If you don't care about the whole story behind the story, and you just want the story, read Chapter 1 here.
First, before I tally the votes, I'd like to formally chastise a few of you for giving me vague votes instead of the non-equivocal votes for which I long. For instance, "follow the index card's instructions", in the present case, definitely communicates very little. There are less idiotic cases though, which also pose a problem in the vote counting process. Take "do option 4 on the way to option 2". Such a vote betrays the personal indecision of the voter more than it communicates a definite proposed route. I am at a loss as how to record such a vote. I much appreciate answers of the following kind: "Option 4 please". This is clear, and even polite. Polite is nice.
Definite Votes:
Option #1: 0
Option #2: 1
Option #3: 0
Option #4: 4
Questionable Votes:
Option #1: 1
Option #2: 2
Option #3: 0
Option #4: 2
Late Votes:
Option #1: 0
Option #2: 0
Option #3: 7
Option #4: 1
Total:
Option #1: 1
Option #2: 3
Option #3: 7
Option #4: 7
Now, I'm not going to count the late votes for "3", both because (1) they're late, and (2) they are all Max.
So 4 wins.
Chapter 2 of The Runes of Chaos will be published by the last day of July, 2008. Chapter 2 of The Runes of Chaos will be 1500 words long. Chapter 2 of The Runes of Chaos will entail a narrative following the trajectory stipulated by Option #4.
Please, do not pee your pants in anticipation.
7.28.2008
A memory: Charlie Brown and aesthetic appreciation.
One time I went to go see a production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown with the man who taught me how to act, Andrew. I had never seen the play before, and afterwards, outside in the parking lot I levied the following critique, as grounds to discount the play:
"It didn't have any plot really," I said.
Andrew asked, "Well, is that really the point?"
I remember being violently stunned and confused. Andrew was suspending plot as a desirable value based on the play's ends! As if plot were something one had the artistic liberty to abandon! Afterwards, I thought about it for a long while, and I realized that the play seemed to do what it wanted to do, and though certain of its adopted ends were cloying to me (the nature of the music, for instance), on the whole I came to esteem the play well enough--I even ended up liking that it didn't have much of a plot. Neither did the comic strip have a long-term plot, and the comic suited me just fine. "I'll like the play in the same way and for the same reasons that I like the comic," I thought. The evolution and the exchange of standards through which I progressed during this extended process of aesthetic judgment opened up new avenues for thought and sentiment that had as of yet been closed off. I had been, in my own fledgling way, a little liberated.
Looking back I see this happy bouleversement in my aesthetic and literary development as one of the first steps towards my present cherished critical position as per art and literature: namely, that art (& literature with it) is something that humans do, and so it can have as many legitimate ends as do people, and can have as many legitimate forms as those who create it. In the same way that I don't like everything that humans decide to do, so may I dislike a work art for its ends, and in the same way that I don't value work that fails in accomplishing what it sets out to do, so may I dislike a work of art that fails at its ends. But art is not here to some one thing, like be beautiful, or engage the viewer/reader, or comment on social issues, or whatever. That would be as naive as to say speech were for one thing.
7.22.2008
Today's Lesson in Logic with a BBQ Deipnosophist.
The nature of most of my blog posts are non-autobiographical (despite being thoroughly self-referential). I never really blog about "my life". From reading this blog you wouldn't have any real idea as to how I occupy my time on a daily basis.
Count this post as going against the so-described grain.
Here's something quirky.
Louis' church is called 'Thryve'. (Don't hold them in contempt--it really is more difficult to spell up here. Something about the thin air.) Now, Louis' church has taken up an interesting summer agenda. Thryve has decided to throw 'Summer BBQs'. Thryve wants to get its congregation to engage in more fellowship, for all members to get to know each other more, to have more impact in each other's lives. Thryve also wants to create an environment in which a newcomer wont feel awkward or pressured. The thought is that non-christian friends might be intimidated by church, but would jump at the chance for free hamburgers.
Here's the twist: since they want everybody from the church to be able to make it to a BBQ, they have one every night from Monday to Thursday at a different leader's house. Every night. Let me be clear: Free. Food. Every. Night.
Have I mentioned I don't have a job?
So, you'll guess how I spend my crepuscular hours for prandial disport....every night.
The only thing that Thryve has more of than BBQs is pregnant women. Pregos everywhere. Many wombed babies. Many tummies. Big ones. I've met more pregnant women at Idaho BBQs than I have met in probably my whole life. I've mentioned this in passing here and there to male members of the church, and each time I get the same response: "It was a long winter".
Having met so many pregnant women, I have stumbled upon what I think a categorical discrepancy to which I have fallen prey (see note). Up until the past few weeks I have failed to rationally assent to the fact that pregnant women are people. I thought of pregnant women as an aloof archetype: a category of persons, an idea; but it hadn't occurred to me that there are living, breathing, human beings capable of conversational awkwardness who were pregnant women.
The mental Venn diagram representative of this categorical discrepancy looked something like this:
Boy, was I wrong.
Here's the same conceptual development expressed with help from tools of Symbolic Logic.
I had been tacitly holding premise 1:
P1. ∀x(Fx → -Gx),
where F = 'is a living, breathing, human being capable of conversational awkwardness' and G = 'is a pregnant women'.
However in time and with BBQ experience I came to accept premise 2:
P2. ∃x(Fx.Gx),
which is inconsistent with P1. Hence, I have come to reject P1.
Let us probe further. You might think that premise 2 would be sufficient to deter me from my nightly cenatory schemes, but after looking over the following logical data, you'll change your tune.
P3. ∀x[Fx.∃y(Hy.Jxy) → ∃z(Kz.Lxz)],
where H = 'is a BBQ', J = 'goes to', K = 'is a particular quantity of hot dogs', and L = 'is worth experiencing if it means getting at'.
Premise 3, then, says in essence: "For every x such that if x is a living, breathing, human being capable of conversational awkwardness, and there exists a y such that y is a BBQ and x goes to y, then there exists a z such that z is a particular quantity of hot dogs and x is worth experiencing if it means getting at z", which is longhand for "For every living, breathing, human being capable of conversational awkwardness who goes to a BBQ, there is a particular quantity of hot dogs that makes experiencing that living, breathing, human being capable of conversational awkwardness worth it, if it means getting at that particular quantity of hot dogs".
By way of summing up summer, I spend all my time going to BBQs and doing logic.
And writing blogs.
Count this post as going against the so-described grain.
Here's something quirky.
Louis' church is called 'Thryve'. (Don't hold them in contempt--it really is more difficult to spell up here. Something about the thin air.) Now, Louis' church has taken up an interesting summer agenda. Thryve has decided to throw 'Summer BBQs'. Thryve wants to get its congregation to engage in more fellowship, for all members to get to know each other more, to have more impact in each other's lives. Thryve also wants to create an environment in which a newcomer wont feel awkward or pressured. The thought is that non-christian friends might be intimidated by church, but would jump at the chance for free hamburgers.
Here's the twist: since they want everybody from the church to be able to make it to a BBQ, they have one every night from Monday to Thursday at a different leader's house. Every night. Let me be clear: Free. Food. Every. Night.
Have I mentioned I don't have a job?
So, you'll guess how I spend my crepuscular hours for prandial disport....every night.
The only thing that Thryve has more of than BBQs is pregnant women. Pregos everywhere. Many wombed babies. Many tummies. Big ones. I've met more pregnant women at Idaho BBQs than I have met in probably my whole life. I've mentioned this in passing here and there to male members of the church, and each time I get the same response: "It was a long winter".
Having met so many pregnant women, I have stumbled upon what I think a categorical discrepancy to which I have fallen prey (see note). Up until the past few weeks I have failed to rationally assent to the fact that pregnant women are people. I thought of pregnant women as an aloof archetype: a category of persons, an idea; but it hadn't occurred to me that there are living, breathing, human beings capable of conversational awkwardness who were pregnant women.
The mental Venn diagram representative of this categorical discrepancy looked something like this:
Boy, was I wrong.
Here's the same conceptual development expressed with help from tools of Symbolic Logic.
I had been tacitly holding premise 1:
P1. ∀x(Fx → -Gx),
where F = 'is a living, breathing, human being capable of conversational awkwardness' and G = 'is a pregnant women'.
However in time and with BBQ experience I came to accept premise 2:
P2. ∃x(Fx.Gx),
which is inconsistent with P1. Hence, I have come to reject P1.
Let us probe further. You might think that premise 2 would be sufficient to deter me from my nightly cenatory schemes, but after looking over the following logical data, you'll change your tune.
P3. ∀x[Fx.∃y(Hy.Jxy) → ∃z(Kz.Lxz)],
where H = 'is a BBQ', J = 'goes to', K = 'is a particular quantity of hot dogs', and L = 'is worth experiencing if it means getting at'.
Premise 3, then, says in essence: "For every x such that if x is a living, breathing, human being capable of conversational awkwardness, and there exists a y such that y is a BBQ and x goes to y, then there exists a z such that z is a particular quantity of hot dogs and x is worth experiencing if it means getting at z", which is longhand for "For every living, breathing, human being capable of conversational awkwardness who goes to a BBQ, there is a particular quantity of hot dogs that makes experiencing that living, breathing, human being capable of conversational awkwardness worth it, if it means getting at that particular quantity of hot dogs".
By way of summing up summer, I spend all my time going to BBQs and doing logic.
And writing blogs.
7.21.2008
Quotation of the Day.
"As the heavy door closed behind him, Willoughby entered into the most exalted frame of mind of which man is capable. That is, he enjoyed the full possession of comedy, both as actor and spectator. This perfect duality is unfortunately forbidden to those who take part in life's little tragedies, in which the unfortunate actors, who begin as blind as Kent and end as mad as Lear, are in no condition to appreciate radiance, harmony, and so forth."--John Collier in Defy the Foul Fiend.
Volition-Piloted Literature. Commentary on 'Runes of Chaos: Chapter 1'.
Commentary on 'Runes of Chaos: Chapter 1'.
There are a few of things to say about this chapter's creation.
1. I talked to Louis for a fair bit before writing this chapter, wanting to cater the Volition-Piloted Literature blog series as much to his taste as possible. After much questioning, Louis expressed that he would prefer for the Volition-Piloted Literature blog series to be a legitimate adventure story with strong streaks of interesting philosophical thought peppered throughout. Humor, he said, would come simply from me being the one to write it; humor was not a primary end.
As such, please take in mind these literary preferences as belonging to the intended audience of this Volition-Piloted Literature blog series. (While writing, I personally held in mind a 15-year old Louis strongly holding these literary preferences as my audience.)
2. You may have realized that I blatantly flout the original due date and the original word limit. I flout the one because of the other, in fact.
Here's the story: in writing chapter 1, I was trying desperately to adhere to the 500 word limit. I finished the document by the due date according to the word limit, but thought it was too fast-paced, too arbitrary--not good enough.
"I need more space," I told Louis.
He took a step back.
"I need more space," I told Louis.
He extended the word limit to 1500 words/chapter.
I went back to writing for a day or two, periodically asking him for input on the nature of the document. This accounts for the delay in posting. The final document as posted is 1500 words exactly, not counting the epigraph or choices at the end.
3. The process of writing this chapter provided me, I think, a spiritual opportunity.
Very rarely do I put effort into a given document and then, when all is said and done, take a posture of distaste or regret towards that document. My M.O. tends more towards the other end of literary self-estimation: I tend more to adopt a loving, motherly devotion to my written work, be they complete, incomplete, academic, fictional, funny, or not.
Yet not so with chapter 1. I unabashedly hold the chapter in contempt and honestly would not have posted it were it not for Louis' hard and fast expectations as specified. I have trouble objectifying my dislikes for this chunk of prose, but they are strong, and they refuse to be quelled.
Given this unfortunate situation, I have decided to accept it as an opportunity for personal growth. I need to learn that the world isn't perfect and that my prose, as a thing in the world, cannot always be perfect either. A hard lesson, indeed. {I have posted these thoughts here from feeling strongly compelled to admit my heterodox aesthetic critique--not as a cry for affirmation. [Note 3 is, rather, a polite request for affirmation. (Nobody cares; I'm so alone; love me, love me, say that you love me.)]}
There are a few of things to say about this chapter's creation.
1. I talked to Louis for a fair bit before writing this chapter, wanting to cater the Volition-Piloted Literature blog series as much to his taste as possible. After much questioning, Louis expressed that he would prefer for the Volition-Piloted Literature blog series to be a legitimate adventure story with strong streaks of interesting philosophical thought peppered throughout. Humor, he said, would come simply from me being the one to write it; humor was not a primary end.
As such, please take in mind these literary preferences as belonging to the intended audience of this Volition-Piloted Literature blog series. (While writing, I personally held in mind a 15-year old Louis strongly holding these literary preferences as my audience.)
2. You may have realized that I blatantly flout the original due date and the original word limit. I flout the one because of the other, in fact.
Here's the story: in writing chapter 1, I was trying desperately to adhere to the 500 word limit. I finished the document by the due date according to the word limit, but thought it was too fast-paced, too arbitrary--not good enough.
"I need more space," I told Louis.
He took a step back.
"I need more space," I told Louis.
He extended the word limit to 1500 words/chapter.
I went back to writing for a day or two, periodically asking him for input on the nature of the document. This accounts for the delay in posting. The final document as posted is 1500 words exactly, not counting the epigraph or choices at the end.
3. The process of writing this chapter provided me, I think, a spiritual opportunity.
Very rarely do I put effort into a given document and then, when all is said and done, take a posture of distaste or regret towards that document. My M.O. tends more towards the other end of literary self-estimation: I tend more to adopt a loving, motherly devotion to my written work, be they complete, incomplete, academic, fictional, funny, or not.
Yet not so with chapter 1. I unabashedly hold the chapter in contempt and honestly would not have posted it were it not for Louis' hard and fast expectations as specified. I have trouble objectifying my dislikes for this chunk of prose, but they are strong, and they refuse to be quelled.
Given this unfortunate situation, I have decided to accept it as an opportunity for personal growth. I need to learn that the world isn't perfect and that my prose, as a thing in the world, cannot always be perfect either. A hard lesson, indeed. {I have posted these thoughts here from feeling strongly compelled to admit my heterodox aesthetic critique--not as a cry for affirmation. [Note 3 is, rather, a polite request for affirmation. (Nobody cares; I'm so alone; love me, love me, say that you love me.)]}
Volition-Piloted Literature. Runes of Chaos: Chapter 1.
The Runes of Chaos.
Chapter 1.
Poising the phone back in its cradle, Professor Blaise Wdowczak smirked the smirk one is left to smirk when faced with a predicament at which it would be unbefitting to smirk the smirk of undaunted insouciance to which one is accustomed—a nuanced smirk, to be sure.
“How hellish,” he said to himself.
“What is?”
Startled, Wdowczak took this interjection as evidence that someone else was present and to be avoided.
“Professor Gondalekar is out of his office—come back later.”
“But—I’m here for office hours with you, Professor Wdowczak. I’m a student of Dr. DiGerlando.”
Wdowczak had no smirk at hand for this contingency. Puzzled, he looked up at the someone-else-to-be-avoided leaning in the doorway.
“This isn’t my office; it’s Professor Gondalekar’s.”
“Oh, I know it isn’t, Professor Wdowczak,” stated the figure of what looked a grad student, “I know that your office happens to be a good distance across campus. I know that you have no business in the hard sciences building and that Professor Gondalekar has no reason to be in the humanities building. I know furthermore that yours and Professor Gondalekar’s office hours are identical, that they are supposed to be right now, and that whenever they crop up, both you and Professor Gondalekar coincidentally occupy the others’ desk.”
The putative grad student now smirked his own smirk: a knowledgeable, predatory smirk.
“You sure are difficult to get hold of, Professor. But I suppose anyone who works to evade students by such vulpine inventions as the ‘office-hours switcheroo’ would be.”
Wdowczak, undauntedly insouciant towards the mildly entertaining antagonist on whom he held his gaze and smirk, let gently fall:
“My time is valuable.”
“I know, so I’ll speak quickly.” The grad student moved into the room with the speed with which he had proposed to speak, closing the door behind him. “A few years back, you published some papers about the metaphysical implausibility of Plato’s account of creation in the Timaeus, and about the ontological impossibility of any genuinely disordered system. Is that right?”
Wdowczak, alas, unbecomingly jolted by this presumptuous and machine-gunned harangue, exploded from his chair:
“Get the hell out my office!”
“This is not,” enunciated the intruder, flicking his switchblade to the ready, “your--office.”
Wdowczak froze.
The other stepped forward.
“Again:” he uttered delicately, “you’re supposed to be the expert on all physical and metaphysical implications of major mythological accounts of primordial matter, right? That’s your academic area of specialty?”
“Y-Yes.”
“And you reject even the physical possibility of true chaos, of an unequivocal absence of order, you deny that chaos can at all obtain as described by Hesiod, Plato, and the rest of the Greco-Roman gang, yes?”
“Yes.” Wdowczak was bewildered. “Why?”
“Because,” said the other with grave resolution, “I am about to prove you wrong.”
He smiled momentarily.
The strange and precarious stranger then nonchalantly snapped the knife closed and tucked it back into the breast of his sportcoat with his right hand, while simultaneously with his left he drew from his coat-pocket a rolled-up rag about the size of a squash ball, placing it on the table. It made a heavy, solid sound. He began to deftly unravel the rag, while with his right hand he placed what looked like four stone rounded Scrabble tiles around the wrapped object, distinct and elaborate doodles inscribed on each tile.
Confused by the sudden, methodical arrangement of this primitive and mysterious apparatus, Wdowczak cast his glance to the centerpiece of the rite. In this glance, he moved from confusion to arrest, his focus absorbed by the strangely dark orb which had been uncovered. All disquiet heretofore supervening on his situation was recast in his system of priorities to a lesser role; the importance of everything, like the tiles on the desk, took for the center of its orbit the small black ball. Its blackness was neither that of obsidian nor of onyx; it reflected no light; it seemed to Wdowczak to be physically extended shadow: darkness made into material substance. It was like nothing he had ever seen.
“Forgive the gore,” said the stranger as he reopened the blade and unceremoniously sliced the back of his own hand, letting the blood drip onto the black stone. Hissing with pain but holding his hand steady, he looked up to his host. “We need to be fast—someone more accustomed to threats and weapons, who happens to possess even fewer social graces than I (if you can believe it) is probably already on his way here—but I need you to see this now. Um...do you have something small and solid you don’t mind to lose?”
Wdowczak, now tacitly committed to and complicit in whatever sorcery of ill portent was to transpire, whether out of fascination or coercion, groped through the desk and found an Eiffel Tower paperweight.
“This is Gondalekar’s…”
“Ah, Gay Pair-ee.” The stranger took the paperweight and leaned it against the black orb, the blood upon which had since seeped into what seemed to be a groove in the stone: another elaborate doodle. The gloss of the blood was the only thing that made the rutted marks at all faintly visible; otherwise, the anonymous artifact maintained its mesmerizing opacity.
“Watch,” said the stranger.
Squinting, Wdowczak could just barely see the air within half an inch above the orb start to thin, as if turning to vapor, wavering from what Wdowczak guessed extreme heat. The wavering soon became more erratic, until the air itself seemed to be pulling apart, rupturing into progressively smaller composites. The effect spread to a two-inch radius of space around the stone, deteriorating further into what looked like the static noise of a television screen. Finally Wdowczak was incapable of distinguishing between any constituent bits of stuff in the mess of matter: it formed together to make a homogenous, swelling brume of darkness—too thick, dark, and inert to be smoke, yet too crude and miasmal to be called solid; more than anything else to Wdowczak’s mind it looked like ink suspended in water, pooped by some gross and bizarre sea-creature.
The darkness grew to consume over half of the Eiffel Tower paperweight when the stranger at last scattered the four tiles away from the stone. The darkness stagnated. It hung mid-air like a cloud.
The stranger grabbed some papers from the desk and fanned the darkness away with indifferent disgust, as if it were nothing more than a particularly tangible fart. The cloud dissipated and left the room a bit dank, but otherwise was gone. More than half of the Eiffel Tower was gone, too.
“Do you believe you saw what you saw?”
Wdowczak looked back at the stranger, disturbed.
“Why did you show me this?”
“Because,” said the stranger, carefully and swiftly wrapping the orb back in the rag, “you’re the only person I’d heard of who both, One: would understand what this is, what it entails, and why it’s so spooky; and Two: isn’t trying to kill me for one reason or another.” The stranger raked the tiles into his pocket.
“There are more of these creepy ‘Magic 8-Balls’. At least two I’m aware of; maybe more. Now, I can’t do this by my—“
The door opened. Violently. There stood one accustomed to threats and weapons, in the possession of few social graces. The stranger turned to the door, leaning against the desk, the ‘8-Ball’ behind his back, Wdowczak behind the desk. The stranger obstructed Wdowczak’s view of the face of the man in the doorway.
“Hi. Sorry,” said the stranger of little etiquette to the more recent stranger of less, “Professor Gondalekar is out of his office—you’ll have to come back later.”
The new stranger was not entertained. (Neither, in fact, was Wdowczak.)
“The ROOOOONSTONE!” intoned the brute.
“You’re never going to get anywhere in life, young man, if you don’t learn to speak in full sentences.” The stranger furtively pulled an index card out of his back pocket, sliding it next to the stone; his other hand was languidly fiddling with the body of his necktie near the inside of his sportcoat.
“Give me the ROOONSTONE!”
“Much better! I applaud your directness; clearly, you’re a man who knows what he wants. But now lets try for a ‘please’.”
The stranger immediately flung his knife at the brute and a gunshot sounded. Both men fell to the ground. Wdowczak instinctively grabbed the ‘8-Ball’, the card, and raced out the door, not waiting to see if either would manage to pull through.
As he ran, he read:
Ere land and sea and the all-covering sky--Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1.1-6
Were made, in the whole world the countenance
Of nature was the same, all one, well named
Chaos, a raw and undivided mass,
Naught but a lifeless bulk, with warring seeds
Of ill-joined elements compressed together.
Chapter 1.
Poising the phone back in its cradle, Professor Blaise Wdowczak smirked the smirk one is left to smirk when faced with a predicament at which it would be unbefitting to smirk the smirk of undaunted insouciance to which one is accustomed—a nuanced smirk, to be sure.
“How hellish,” he said to himself.
“What is?”
Startled, Wdowczak took this interjection as evidence that someone else was present and to be avoided.
“Professor Gondalekar is out of his office—come back later.”
“But—I’m here for office hours with you, Professor Wdowczak. I’m a student of Dr. DiGerlando.”
Wdowczak had no smirk at hand for this contingency. Puzzled, he looked up at the someone-else-to-be-avoided leaning in the doorway.
“This isn’t my office; it’s Professor Gondalekar’s.”
“Oh, I know it isn’t, Professor Wdowczak,” stated the figure of what looked a grad student, “I know that your office happens to be a good distance across campus. I know that you have no business in the hard sciences building and that Professor Gondalekar has no reason to be in the humanities building. I know furthermore that yours and Professor Gondalekar’s office hours are identical, that they are supposed to be right now, and that whenever they crop up, both you and Professor Gondalekar coincidentally occupy the others’ desk.”
The putative grad student now smirked his own smirk: a knowledgeable, predatory smirk.
“You sure are difficult to get hold of, Professor. But I suppose anyone who works to evade students by such vulpine inventions as the ‘office-hours switcheroo’ would be.”
Wdowczak, undauntedly insouciant towards the mildly entertaining antagonist on whom he held his gaze and smirk, let gently fall:
“My time is valuable.”
“I know, so I’ll speak quickly.” The grad student moved into the room with the speed with which he had proposed to speak, closing the door behind him. “A few years back, you published some papers about the metaphysical implausibility of Plato’s account of creation in the Timaeus, and about the ontological impossibility of any genuinely disordered system. Is that right?”
Wdowczak, alas, unbecomingly jolted by this presumptuous and machine-gunned harangue, exploded from his chair:
“Get the hell out my office!”
“This is not,” enunciated the intruder, flicking his switchblade to the ready, “your--office.”
Wdowczak froze.
The other stepped forward.
“Again:” he uttered delicately, “you’re supposed to be the expert on all physical and metaphysical implications of major mythological accounts of primordial matter, right? That’s your academic area of specialty?”
“Y-Yes.”
“And you reject even the physical possibility of true chaos, of an unequivocal absence of order, you deny that chaos can at all obtain as described by Hesiod, Plato, and the rest of the Greco-Roman gang, yes?”
“Yes.” Wdowczak was bewildered. “Why?”
“Because,” said the other with grave resolution, “I am about to prove you wrong.”
He smiled momentarily.
The strange and precarious stranger then nonchalantly snapped the knife closed and tucked it back into the breast of his sportcoat with his right hand, while simultaneously with his left he drew from his coat-pocket a rolled-up rag about the size of a squash ball, placing it on the table. It made a heavy, solid sound. He began to deftly unravel the rag, while with his right hand he placed what looked like four stone rounded Scrabble tiles around the wrapped object, distinct and elaborate doodles inscribed on each tile.
Confused by the sudden, methodical arrangement of this primitive and mysterious apparatus, Wdowczak cast his glance to the centerpiece of the rite. In this glance, he moved from confusion to arrest, his focus absorbed by the strangely dark orb which had been uncovered. All disquiet heretofore supervening on his situation was recast in his system of priorities to a lesser role; the importance of everything, like the tiles on the desk, took for the center of its orbit the small black ball. Its blackness was neither that of obsidian nor of onyx; it reflected no light; it seemed to Wdowczak to be physically extended shadow: darkness made into material substance. It was like nothing he had ever seen.
“Forgive the gore,” said the stranger as he reopened the blade and unceremoniously sliced the back of his own hand, letting the blood drip onto the black stone. Hissing with pain but holding his hand steady, he looked up to his host. “We need to be fast—someone more accustomed to threats and weapons, who happens to possess even fewer social graces than I (if you can believe it) is probably already on his way here—but I need you to see this now. Um...do you have something small and solid you don’t mind to lose?”
Wdowczak, now tacitly committed to and complicit in whatever sorcery of ill portent was to transpire, whether out of fascination or coercion, groped through the desk and found an Eiffel Tower paperweight.
“This is Gondalekar’s…”
“Ah, Gay Pair-ee.” The stranger took the paperweight and leaned it against the black orb, the blood upon which had since seeped into what seemed to be a groove in the stone: another elaborate doodle. The gloss of the blood was the only thing that made the rutted marks at all faintly visible; otherwise, the anonymous artifact maintained its mesmerizing opacity.
“Watch,” said the stranger.
Squinting, Wdowczak could just barely see the air within half an inch above the orb start to thin, as if turning to vapor, wavering from what Wdowczak guessed extreme heat. The wavering soon became more erratic, until the air itself seemed to be pulling apart, rupturing into progressively smaller composites. The effect spread to a two-inch radius of space around the stone, deteriorating further into what looked like the static noise of a television screen. Finally Wdowczak was incapable of distinguishing between any constituent bits of stuff in the mess of matter: it formed together to make a homogenous, swelling brume of darkness—too thick, dark, and inert to be smoke, yet too crude and miasmal to be called solid; more than anything else to Wdowczak’s mind it looked like ink suspended in water, pooped by some gross and bizarre sea-creature.
The darkness grew to consume over half of the Eiffel Tower paperweight when the stranger at last scattered the four tiles away from the stone. The darkness stagnated. It hung mid-air like a cloud.
The stranger grabbed some papers from the desk and fanned the darkness away with indifferent disgust, as if it were nothing more than a particularly tangible fart. The cloud dissipated and left the room a bit dank, but otherwise was gone. More than half of the Eiffel Tower was gone, too.
“Do you believe you saw what you saw?”
Wdowczak looked back at the stranger, disturbed.
“Why did you show me this?”
“Because,” said the stranger, carefully and swiftly wrapping the orb back in the rag, “you’re the only person I’d heard of who both, One: would understand what this is, what it entails, and why it’s so spooky; and Two: isn’t trying to kill me for one reason or another.” The stranger raked the tiles into his pocket.
“There are more of these creepy ‘Magic 8-Balls’. At least two I’m aware of; maybe more. Now, I can’t do this by my—“
The door opened. Violently. There stood one accustomed to threats and weapons, in the possession of few social graces. The stranger turned to the door, leaning against the desk, the ‘8-Ball’ behind his back, Wdowczak behind the desk. The stranger obstructed Wdowczak’s view of the face of the man in the doorway.
“Hi. Sorry,” said the stranger of little etiquette to the more recent stranger of less, “Professor Gondalekar is out of his office—you’ll have to come back later.”
The new stranger was not entertained. (Neither, in fact, was Wdowczak.)
“The ROOOOONSTONE!” intoned the brute.
“You’re never going to get anywhere in life, young man, if you don’t learn to speak in full sentences.” The stranger furtively pulled an index card out of his back pocket, sliding it next to the stone; his other hand was languidly fiddling with the body of his necktie near the inside of his sportcoat.
“Give me the ROOONSTONE!”
“Much better! I applaud your directness; clearly, you’re a man who knows what he wants. But now lets try for a ‘please’.”
The stranger immediately flung his knife at the brute and a gunshot sounded. Both men fell to the ground. Wdowczak instinctively grabbed the ‘8-Ball’, the card, and raced out the door, not waiting to see if either would manage to pull through.
He stopped, out of breath. It was at this point that Wdowczak remembered the phone call from his brother, whom he cordially disliked (he was a priest), yet waiting at the airport.“In case of DEATH, please see Dr. DiGerlando (DO NOT tell him I sent you!).
In case of INJURY, please stop by for confectionery goods!:
4141, Deciduous Drive.
In case of WORSE THAN DEATH [you’ll know it when you see it], please inform my mother:
50A, E Hemlock St.”
****************************************************
Now, which would you prefer?
1. Assuming 'DEATH' and impulsively gratifying the index card’s request, Wdowczak races across campus to find Dr. DiGerlando’s office.
2. Assuming 'INJURY' and impulsively gratifying the index card’s request, Wdowczak hails a cab to take him to 4141 Deciduous Drive, not one to pass up confectionary goods.
3. Assuming familial responsibility, Wdowczak stays his unrest as per the newly introduced overture of Chaos into his life, risks what he considers 'WORSE THAN DEATH', and catches a cab to the airport to pick up his formally resented kin of the cloth.
4. Assuming nothing and ultimately doubting the nature of the object he has so uncritically thrust into his suit pocket, Wdowczak runs back to his own office to offer up this unknown material to the scrutiny of his long-time physicist friend and accomplice in shirking students, Gondalekar.
1. Assuming 'DEATH' and impulsively gratifying the index card’s request, Wdowczak races across campus to find Dr. DiGerlando’s office.
2. Assuming 'INJURY' and impulsively gratifying the index card’s request, Wdowczak hails a cab to take him to 4141 Deciduous Drive, not one to pass up confectionary goods.
3. Assuming familial responsibility, Wdowczak stays his unrest as per the newly introduced overture of Chaos into his life, risks what he considers 'WORSE THAN DEATH', and catches a cab to the airport to pick up his formally resented kin of the cloth.
4. Assuming nothing and ultimately doubting the nature of the object he has so uncritically thrust into his suit pocket, Wdowczak runs back to his own office to offer up this unknown material to the scrutiny of his long-time physicist friend and accomplice in shirking students, Gondalekar.
****************************************************
To Vote:
1. Leave a comment on this blog post, non-equivocally expressing your preference for one of the narrative options.
2. Note, that you may only vote once, and that if your vote is accompanied by anything reminiscent of stupidity, I reserve the right to feign misunderstanding about everything you ever say or type again, including, but not limited to, your preferred narrative option from this chapter, thereby effectively nullifying your vote.
3. Wait patiently, hands in or out of your pockets.
1. Leave a comment on this blog post, non-equivocally expressing your preference for one of the narrative options.
2. Note, that you may only vote once, and that if your vote is accompanied by anything reminiscent of stupidity, I reserve the right to feign misunderstanding about everything you ever say or type again, including, but not limited to, your preferred narrative option from this chapter, thereby effectively nullifying your vote.
3. Wait patiently, hands in or out of your pockets.
Voting ends Friday, July 25th, 2008.
7.18.2008
Dear Mr. Swingrover,
I have two goals to accomplish in this message to you. My first goal (hereby christened "Goal 1") is to correct a factual misconception to which I think you have fallen prey.
(Note: please do not interpret this to be me talking back to my elders in any way; I merely want to help a fellow brother in Christ in the business of garnering truths and sidestepping falsehoods).
My second goal [hereby christened "Goal 3" (Sorry--my '2' key is broken)] is to explain why Ocean's Twelve was ever at all on my favorite movie list. Goal 3 will constitute a formal written defense of the merits of Ocean's Twelve as a comic masterpiece of film and all-around Jonathan-Charles-Wright-sanctioned waste of time.
Goal 1.
Mr. Swingrover--hello. In response to your status as recently broadcasted on f-book, "Tori is incredibly puzzled as to why Ocean's Twelve was ever on Jonathan Wright's favorite movie list in the first place", I'd like to correct what I think to be a factual misconception to which you have fallen prey and which is directly informing your status as recently broadcasted on f-book (see note above). Ocean's Twelve has never been "in the first place" on my favorite movie list. It was, however, recently in the 20th place on my favorite movie list, as posted on f-book. However, having recently met with the movie Les Enfants du Paradis ("The Children of Paradise"), Ocean's Twelve has been bumped off the aforementioned list, and now fails to constitute a member in any posted or published list of favorite movies of mine.
Nevertheless, I yet hold the movie near and dear to my right ventricle--nearer and dearer, in fact, than I hold to my right (or left) ventricle either of its close kin, Ocean's Eleven or Ocean's Thirteen.
Goal 3.
Mr. Swingrover--hello again. Let me firmly declare that my favorite film from the three Ocean's movies is the second, Ocean's Twelve. Let me do this pictorially by posting a couple of the movie's different posters:
Poster 1.
Poster 3. ('2' key still broken.)
Now, Mr. Swingrover, if you aren't convinced of this movie's merit simply by the mathematical daring and novelty of its tagline, "Twelve is the New Eleven", let me briefly make a few points by way of defending the film. I will strive for brevity, because I find that for any given blog post, the less I write, the more others read. I will confine myself to two points, one a distinction, the other an application of the distinction.
Point 1: Distinction.
I am a firm and naive believer that when reading a book, or when watching a movie, the process of evaluation is twofold.
The first level of judgment entails determining the given work's ends, its goals, and then determining whether the work accomplishes these ends; if so, it is to the work's aesthetic credit; if not, it is to the work's aesthetic detriment. The essence of this level of judgment is simply to take whatever goal the work assumes for itself as a criterion from which to announce praise or of criticism. I'll call this evaluating a work's means.
Then, having done this, the process of evaluation moves to a different level of judgment: one must estimate the ends themselves: are they worthy ends? Are they stupid, ugly, or evil ends? Good, True, or Beautiful? Funny?? I'll call this evaluating a work's ends.
I think that it is in with this kind of distinction in mind that Ayn Rand claims, "it is not a contradiction to say: 'This is a great work, but I don't like it'". By this she means that a work can simultaneously execute its ends with excellence, yet have poor or distasteful ends--we might even classify Rand's work in this way.
Point 3: Application of the Distinction.
Now, to Ocean's Twelve.
The reason I think so many people dislike Ocean's Twelve is because they make a misstep in determining the movie's ends (see note above). The average misstepping viewer, going to see a sequel to Ocean's Eleven, tacitly assumes (though not without justification) that they ought to bring the aesthetic ends of that movie to bear on its successor. But I, contrariwise, think that Ocean's Twelve aims at something divergent from the goals of its beloved predecessor, and so ought not to be judged in the same way. By bringing the wrong standards to bear, the average misstepping viewer ends up disliking Ocean's Twelve for failing to deliver, while they ought to be championing its virtue from the Hollywood hilltops. But this seems as wrongheaded to me as holding A Night at the Opera in contempt for failing to deliver as a psychological thriller. We viewers need to bring the appropriate standards to bear in judging any given work.
I think that, whereas Ocean's Eleven wants to be a fun, quick, and clever heist movie with the help of the stereotypical trappings of the comedy genre, Ocean's Twelve wants to be a fun, quick and clever comedy at the expense of the trappings of the heist movie genre. Here their ends diverge, and accordingly do their means. If you go to the first for nonstop unadulterated comedy, you're underwhelmed with a pleasant yet peripheral dose of humor; if you go the second for an ingenious, gripping, sophisticated heist plotline, your expectations are thwarted: not only does Ocean's Twelve not provide this, it highjacks the machinery of the traditional heist movie to accomplish frivolous comic ends, irreverently transfiguring (disfiguring?) the thrilling schemes and plot twists the viewer has come to love in its predecessor into an unabashed burlesque of the same. The second subverts the first; its plot subverts the faith of the audience; the humor employed subverts our expectations of traditional, handy, quickly-got punch lines--instead we are met with excessive subtlety and are excessively demanded of in attention, perception, and thought (see note above). Now, while the previous sentence should spell condemnation--It so happens that my aesthetic and comedic proclivities tend towards subversion.
In fact, I have yet to find a negative review of the movie that I didn't totally agree with--but whereas the reviewer highlights particular properties of the film to declaim them, I do so to cherish them. For instance, take this excerpt from Newsweek's David Ansen in his review titled, Style over Substance: "while it looks like the cast is having a blast and a half, the studied hipness can get so pleased with itself it borders on the smug".
With this I agree; but I covet the smug self-indulgence of hip and witty men, and often truckle substance to style.
Forgive me.
Alright--I realize I failed in my attempt at brevity (thereby losing whatever semblance of a readership to which I might lay claim), but I nevertheless had a lot of fun in writing this message to you, which was my secret Goal 4 all along: "to thoroughly enjoy myself in the writing, the publishing, and (forgive me) the frequent re-reading of this post".
I'd venture that Goal 4 is much like the secret aesthetic goals of Ocean's Twelve in that way.
My second goal [hereby christened "Goal 3" (Sorry--my '2' key is broken)] is to explain why Ocean's Twelve was ever at all on my favorite movie list. Goal 3 will constitute a formal written defense of the merits of Ocean's Twelve as a comic masterpiece of film and all-around Jonathan-Charles-Wright-sanctioned waste of time.
Goal 1.
Mr. Swingrover--hello. In response to your status as recently broadcasted on f-book, "Tori is incredibly puzzled as to why Ocean's Twelve was ever on Jonathan Wright's favorite movie list in the first place", I'd like to correct what I think to be a factual misconception to which you have fallen prey and which is directly informing your status as recently broadcasted on f-book (see note above). Ocean's Twelve has never been "in the first place" on my favorite movie list. It was, however, recently in the 20th place on my favorite movie list, as posted on f-book. However, having recently met with the movie Les Enfants du Paradis ("The Children of Paradise"), Ocean's Twelve has been bumped off the aforementioned list, and now fails to constitute a member in any posted or published list of favorite movies of mine.
Nevertheless, I yet hold the movie near and dear to my right ventricle--nearer and dearer, in fact, than I hold to my right (or left) ventricle either of its close kin, Ocean's Eleven or Ocean's Thirteen.
Goal 3.
Mr. Swingrover--hello again. Let me firmly declare that my favorite film from the three Ocean's movies is the second, Ocean's Twelve. Let me do this pictorially by posting a couple of the movie's different posters:
Poster 1.
Poster 3. ('2' key still broken.)
Now, Mr. Swingrover, if you aren't convinced of this movie's merit simply by the mathematical daring and novelty of its tagline, "Twelve is the New Eleven", let me briefly make a few points by way of defending the film. I will strive for brevity, because I find that for any given blog post, the less I write, the more others read. I will confine myself to two points, one a distinction, the other an application of the distinction.
Point 1: Distinction.
I am a firm and naive believer that when reading a book, or when watching a movie, the process of evaluation is twofold.
The first level of judgment entails determining the given work's ends, its goals, and then determining whether the work accomplishes these ends; if so, it is to the work's aesthetic credit; if not, it is to the work's aesthetic detriment. The essence of this level of judgment is simply to take whatever goal the work assumes for itself as a criterion from which to announce praise or of criticism. I'll call this evaluating a work's means.
Then, having done this, the process of evaluation moves to a different level of judgment: one must estimate the ends themselves: are they worthy ends? Are they stupid, ugly, or evil ends? Good, True, or Beautiful? Funny?? I'll call this evaluating a work's ends.
I think that it is in with this kind of distinction in mind that Ayn Rand claims, "it is not a contradiction to say: 'This is a great work, but I don't like it'". By this she means that a work can simultaneously execute its ends with excellence, yet have poor or distasteful ends--we might even classify Rand's work in this way.
Point 3: Application of the Distinction.
Now, to Ocean's Twelve.
The reason I think so many people dislike Ocean's Twelve is because they make a misstep in determining the movie's ends (see note above). The average misstepping viewer, going to see a sequel to Ocean's Eleven, tacitly assumes (though not without justification) that they ought to bring the aesthetic ends of that movie to bear on its successor. But I, contrariwise, think that Ocean's Twelve aims at something divergent from the goals of its beloved predecessor, and so ought not to be judged in the same way. By bringing the wrong standards to bear, the average misstepping viewer ends up disliking Ocean's Twelve for failing to deliver, while they ought to be championing its virtue from the Hollywood hilltops. But this seems as wrongheaded to me as holding A Night at the Opera in contempt for failing to deliver as a psychological thriller. We viewers need to bring the appropriate standards to bear in judging any given work.
I think that, whereas Ocean's Eleven wants to be a fun, quick, and clever heist movie with the help of the stereotypical trappings of the comedy genre, Ocean's Twelve wants to be a fun, quick and clever comedy at the expense of the trappings of the heist movie genre. Here their ends diverge, and accordingly do their means. If you go to the first for nonstop unadulterated comedy, you're underwhelmed with a pleasant yet peripheral dose of humor; if you go the second for an ingenious, gripping, sophisticated heist plotline, your expectations are thwarted: not only does Ocean's Twelve not provide this, it highjacks the machinery of the traditional heist movie to accomplish frivolous comic ends, irreverently transfiguring (disfiguring?) the thrilling schemes and plot twists the viewer has come to love in its predecessor into an unabashed burlesque of the same. The second subverts the first; its plot subverts the faith of the audience; the humor employed subverts our expectations of traditional, handy, quickly-got punch lines--instead we are met with excessive subtlety and are excessively demanded of in attention, perception, and thought (see note above). Now, while the previous sentence should spell condemnation--It so happens that my aesthetic and comedic proclivities tend towards subversion.
In fact, I have yet to find a negative review of the movie that I didn't totally agree with--but whereas the reviewer highlights particular properties of the film to declaim them, I do so to cherish them. For instance, take this excerpt from Newsweek's David Ansen in his review titled, Style over Substance: "while it looks like the cast is having a blast and a half, the studied hipness can get so pleased with itself it borders on the smug".
With this I agree; but I covet the smug self-indulgence of hip and witty men, and often truckle substance to style.
Forgive me.
Alright--I realize I failed in my attempt at brevity (thereby losing whatever semblance of a readership to which I might lay claim), but I nevertheless had a lot of fun in writing this message to you, which was my secret Goal 4 all along: "to thoroughly enjoy myself in the writing, the publishing, and (forgive me) the frequent re-reading of this post".
I'd venture that Goal 4 is much like the secret aesthetic goals of Ocean's Twelve in that way.
7.16.2008
Photograph & Quotation of the Day.
"When I was a boy I used to dream of going for a walk along the horizon line. Now, I wander along every line of every horizon."--Jacques-Henri Lartigue
Sharing (Jonathan Charles Wright) is Caring [(for?) Jonathan Charles Wright].
You may not know this. But I have a fangroup on f-book. This shouldn't be a surprise.
While talking with Louis I realized that my blog would make for a nice chrestomathy, a pleasant portfolio, a happy medium by which to assemble, codify, and to broadcast everything funny or interesting I do. Well, I consider myself to have done some funny and interesting things on the wall and discussion board of this fangroup, and thought I better preserve it here.
After my fangroup was created, I quickly gathered 19 fans, but for weeks after this I could herd no more. I wrote this note to my fans.
Just thought I'd share with you, since I think friendship is based on the mutual ebbing and flowing distribution of cherished selections of art or literature between individuals. If you have any favorite passages or works by me that you'd like to share with me, I'd be more than happy to read them and bond with you over them.
While talking with Louis I realized that my blog would make for a nice chrestomathy, a pleasant portfolio, a happy medium by which to assemble, codify, and to broadcast everything funny or interesting I do. Well, I consider myself to have done some funny and interesting things on the wall and discussion board of this fangroup, and thought I better preserve it here.
After my fangroup was created, I quickly gathered 19 fans, but for weeks after this I could herd no more. I wrote this note to my fans.
'Okay guys: we need a pep talk. I want to thank you all again for being my fans. But we need to pick up the pace. Our number has stagnated at '19' for too long. '19' is no good; it's a prime number. I think you'd agree that what this group really needs is a number of fans equalling that of a number that has more divisors than itself and one. Preferably, the number of fans in this group should at least be divisible by 2, 3, and 1000--maybe more numbers, even. If you want to evangelize the f-book world for f-book good, we need to get the f-book word out and get more people on f-book board.
(If you were all standing in front of me in a crowd I would here give out a rousing yell of "Are you with me!?", but since you are not, I will ask each of you to imagine and then simulate for yourselves the general enthusiasm this would engender.)
Here endeth the lesson.'
Just thought I'd share with you, since I think friendship is based on the mutual ebbing and flowing distribution of cherished selections of art or literature between individuals. If you have any favorite passages or works by me that you'd like to share with me, I'd be more than happy to read them and bond with you over them.
Volition-Piloted Literature. Title Announcement.
The Voting Session for the Title of the Louis Swingrover-Commissioned Volition-Piloted Literature Serial Blog Project is hereby closed.
The Title of the Louis Swingrover-Commissioned Volition-Piloted Literature Serial Blog Project is hereby declared to be
The Runes of Chaos.
Furthermore, chapter one of The Runes of Chaos is due by the first mesonoxian owl hoot on Saturday, July 18th, 2008.
God help us.
The Title of the Louis Swingrover-Commissioned Volition-Piloted Literature Serial Blog Project is hereby declared to be
The Runes of Chaos.
Furthermore, chapter one of The Runes of Chaos is due by the first mesonoxian owl hoot on Saturday, July 18th, 2008.
God help us.
7.15.2008
Slightly Unrelated Photograph & Quotation of the Day.
"To be really mediaeval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be really Greek one should have no clothes."--Oscar Wilde
(Photograph by Doisneau)
7.13.2008
Volition-Piloted Literature. Title Option #4 Video Documentary.
The following is a rather long, rather silly, documentary made by Louis and myself, recording the selection procedure for Title Option #4 of the Louis J. Swingrover-Commissioned, Volition-Piloted Literature Serial Blog Project. It will probably be entertaining to no more than 6 people, all of whom I could name and (if needed) pick out from a police line-up.
To discover what this project is, thereby providing context for the video you are about to behold, click here.
To see the Title Options under discussion, click here.
To read the Commentary on the Title Options under discussion (this post will be the most contextually informative for the following video), click here.
Having clicked, read, laughed, and loved, please proceed to watch the following video, forgiving its unabashed self-indulgence.
To discover what this project is, thereby providing context for the video you are about to behold, click here.
To see the Title Options under discussion, click here.
To read the Commentary on the Title Options under discussion (this post will be the most contextually informative for the following video), click here.
Having clicked, read, laughed, and loved, please proceed to watch the following video, forgiving its unabashed self-indulgence.
7.12.2008
Volition-Piloted Literature. Title Options.
Title Options.
For an introduction and explanation of this post and the series of which it is a part, go here.
Having done so, please proceed to read the remainder of this blog-post to sate your craving for the blithe and whimsical squandering of my literary talents.
You will remember items 10a-d in Louis' blog specifications.
If not, here they are.
LJS Blog Specifications; Items 10a-d.
10. The first four-option decision left to the reader must be as to which title to adopt for the blog-series. Guidelines governing title options are as follows:
a. Title Option #1 must be five letters long.
b. Title Option #2 must take a famous idiom or quotation, altering one of the words to some rhyming word that changes the meaning AND must be an allegory (loosely defined, but the title's status as allegory must be formally defended) of a traditinal Trinitarian or Christological heresy.
c. Title Option #3 must contain 3 ambiguous words and provide for 6 ambiguous interpretations as a whole (at least).
d. Title Option #4 must fit the form, "The [menacing verb] of the [plural noun]" or "The [pretty ordinary noun] of ("the", if needed) [noun that suddenly renders the whole other-worldy and/or makes the reader wonder what the whole could be in reference to within the plot]" AND must make Louis laugh hard and grab his butt upon apprehension.
So, reader, here are the four title options I leave to you for our quasi-corporately composed stories. Choose wisely.
Title Options.
1. Pysma!
2. Omniety is the Spice of Life.
3. The Quiddity of Grenadier Appelbaum's Original Apology.
4. The Runes of Chaos.
Voter Instructions, & Project Deadlines.
To Vote, follow the following instructions followingly.
1. Before you vote, you may read the commentary on these title options, to better acquaint yourself with how they were chosen and with what sort of document they'll be associated. Be an educated voter.
2. Leave a comment on this blog post, non-equivocally expressing your preference for one of the four title options.
3. Note, that you may only vote once, and that if your vote is accompanied by anything reminiscent of stupidity, I reserve the right to feign misunderstanding about everything you ever say or type again, including, but not limited to, your preference from this post's four featured title options, thereby effectively nullifying your vote.
4. Wait patiently, hands in or out of your pockets.
I will wait 3-4 days--that is, until the first mesonoxian owl-hoot on Tuesday July 15th, 2008--before tallying the votes. I will then scrawl and post the first chapter to the Louis-commissioned, choose-your-own-adventure-like, volition-piloted document, under the elected title, adhering to all necessary blog specifications as articulated by Louis and edited-for-grammatical-errors-and-rewritten-to-be-funny-and-technical-and-interesting/transcribed by me.
The first chapter will be posted on this blog no later than Saturday July 18th 2008.
For an introduction and explanation of this post and the series of which it is a part, go here.
Having done so, please proceed to read the remainder of this blog-post to sate your craving for the blithe and whimsical squandering of my literary talents.
You will remember items 10a-d in Louis' blog specifications.
If not, here they are.
LJS Blog Specifications; Items 10a-d.
10. The first four-option decision left to the reader must be as to which title to adopt for the blog-series. Guidelines governing title options are as follows:
a. Title Option #1 must be five letters long.
b. Title Option #2 must take a famous idiom or quotation, altering one of the words to some rhyming word that changes the meaning AND must be an allegory (loosely defined, but the title's status as allegory must be formally defended) of a traditinal Trinitarian or Christological heresy.
c. Title Option #3 must contain 3 ambiguous words and provide for 6 ambiguous interpretations as a whole (at least).
d. Title Option #4 must fit the form, "The [menacing verb] of the [plural noun]" or "The [pretty ordinary noun] of ("the", if needed) [noun that suddenly renders the whole other-worldy and/or makes the reader wonder what the whole could be in reference to within the plot]" AND must make Louis laugh hard and grab his butt upon apprehension.
So, reader, here are the four title options I leave to you for our quasi-corporately composed stories. Choose wisely.
Title Options.
1. Pysma!
2. Omniety is the Spice of Life.
3. The Quiddity of Grenadier Appelbaum's Original Apology.
4. The Runes of Chaos.
Voter Instructions, & Project Deadlines.
To Vote, follow the following instructions followingly.
1. Before you vote, you may read the commentary on these title options, to better acquaint yourself with how they were chosen and with what sort of document they'll be associated. Be an educated voter.
2. Leave a comment on this blog post, non-equivocally expressing your preference for one of the four title options.
3. Note, that you may only vote once, and that if your vote is accompanied by anything reminiscent of stupidity, I reserve the right to feign misunderstanding about everything you ever say or type again, including, but not limited to, your preference from this post's four featured title options, thereby effectively nullifying your vote.
4. Wait patiently, hands in or out of your pockets.
I will wait 3-4 days--that is, until the first mesonoxian owl-hoot on Tuesday July 15th, 2008--before tallying the votes. I will then scrawl and post the first chapter to the Louis-commissioned, choose-your-own-adventure-like, volition-piloted document, under the elected title, adhering to all necessary blog specifications as articulated by Louis and edited-for-grammatical-errors-and-rewritten-to-be-funny-and-technical-and-interesting/transcribed by me.
The first chapter will be posted on this blog no later than Saturday July 18th 2008.
Volition-Piloted Literature. Title Commentary.
Commentary.
The following is Commentary on the Four Title Options for the Louis-Commissioned, Volition-Piloted Literature Blog Project.
1. "Pysma" is a rhetorical trope for the asking of several questions successively, which together demand a complex reply--a trick for which there are several examples to choose from amongst Groucho Marx's more aggressive moments [e.g., (machine-gunned at his interlocutor) "Tell me, what do you think of the traffic problem? What do you think of the marriage problem? What do you think of at night when you go to bed, you beast?"] Familiar with my proclivities towards Groucho-like rhetoric, you can imagine what sort of document a title like this will have in store.
2. I'm pretty proud of my attempts at this one. "Omniety", says the OED, is "The fact or condition of being all; allness, spec. as an attribute of God." My title, clearly is a mild distortion of the idiomatic phrase, "Variety is the spice of life".
Now, the ancient Christological heresy of Docetism, a variant of Gnosticism, has it that, generally, physical matter is pretty lame and so bodies are too, and thusly Jesus Christ, who was not lame, actually did not have a physical body, as this would limit him in bad ways, (like having to use the bathroom, or at least having to wait in line for the bathroom). The body it looked liked Jesus had was in fact just a Star-Trek-like hologram-thingy, and hence Jesus did not really "die" or "suffer" on the cross; his hologram-thingy did.
This kind of gnostic heretic generally tends to deprecate the body's status and focus on more 'spiritual' and 'eternal', stuff, in attempt to limit themselves less, striving further towards something like 'allness'. You might even say that, figuratively or allegorically, a docetist might say that "omniety is the spice of life."
I chose "Omniety is the Spice of Life" because I thought it would work well as a title for myself, in addition to fulfilling Louis' criteria. There were, however, some contenders for the Title Option #2 criteria that didn't make it, which I will enumerate below. (Remember, the idea is that I have to distort an idiom by changing one word to some rhyming word, and thereby make the idiom correspond "allegorically", which I take as something like "figuratively", to a Traditional Christological or Trinitarian heresy.)
Here are the runners up for title option #2:
A. A Word in the Hand is Worth Two in the Bush. (A play on Apollonarianism. Get it? Like, THE WORD??? According to the heresy of Apollonarianism, the Logos fully replaced/displaced Jesus' human soul.)
C. Factions Speak Louder than Words. (A play on Nestorianism. According to Nestorianism Jesus was actually two persons in one body, or something approximate to that, anyway.)
D. The Blessed of Both Worlds. (A play on Nestorianism again?.)
D. Third Divine's a Charm. (A play on Tritheism. The heresy that the Trinity is actually three distinct gods, not one God with three persons.)
E. Close, But No Vicar. (A play on ???. I can't think of a heresy to go with this one--but it's just so good.)
3. I follow both the letter and the spirit of Title Option #3's criteria; and furthermore, I go beyond the call of duty, generating eight, not six, possible ambiguous readings of the title.
The three (and only three) ambiguous words in this title option are "Quiddity", "Original", and "Apology".
"Quiddity", according to OED, can mean (1) "the inherent nature or essence of a person or thing; what a thing or person is; that which distinguishes a person or thing from others", or (2) "a subtlety or nicety in argument; a quibble". This distinction is almost contronymic, in that in the one case it means the very essence of a thing, whereas in the other it means something almost opposite: peripheral or non-essential, a nuance.
"Original", according to OED, can mean (1) "belonging to the beginning or earliest stage of something; existing at or from the first; earliest, first in time", or (2) "having the quality of that which proceeds directly from oneself; such as has not been done or produced before; novel or fresh in character or style". The basic distinction here of course is between something existing from the beginning of an interval of time, as in "The original draft of this document was much racier; change it back.", and something that is novel or innovative, as in "What an original plotline! Who'd have thought of ALL the students at Oxford killing themselves for the love of one individual woman!?!"
"Apology", according to OED, can mean (1) "an explanation offered to a person affected by one's action that no offence was intended, coupled with the expression of regret for any that may have been given; or, a frank acknowledgement of the offence with expression of regret for it, by way of reparation", or (2) "justification, explanation, or excuse, of an incident or course of action". The first case is the ubiquitous sense. The second is a more formal use (it is in this second sense that Socrates' final speech before the state of Athens is said to be an "apology"; Socrates nowhere in the speech expresses personal shame, regret, or sorrow at any of his actions.)
So, then, for shorthand, lets dub the two meanings of "quiddity" as "essence" and "subtlety in argument"; the two meanings of "original" as "first" and "novel"; and the two meanings of "apology" as "acknowledgment of guilt" and "formal account". This is close enough to the general distinctions between their meanings. Hence, the EIGHT ambiguity-generated meanings of this statement that might crop up in interpretation are approximately as follows:
א. The 'Essence' of Grenadier Appelbaum's 'First' 'Acknowledgment of Guilt'.
ב. The 'Essence' of Grenadier Appelbaum's 'First' 'Formal Account'.
ג. The 'Essence' of Grenadier Appelbaum's Novel' 'Acknowledgment of Guilt'.
ד. The 'Essence' of Grenadier Appelbaum's 'Novel' 'Formal Account'.
ה. The 'Subtlety in Argument' of Grenadier Appelbaum's 'First' Acknowledgment of Guilt'.
ו. The 'Subtlety in Argument' of Grenadier Appelbaum's 'First' Formal Account'.
ז. The 'Subtlety in Argument' of Grenadier Appelbaum's 'Novel' Acknowledgment of Guilt'.
ח. The 'Subtlety in Argument' of Grenadier Appelbaum's 'Novel' 'Formal Account'.
4. This one was the most daunting for me. Either of the conjuncts in the criteria for title option #4 I think I could pull off individually, but they posed a distinctly redoubtable challenge so-conjuncted. But I had a plan of attack, which will be hereto described in exciting detail.
I knew that the generation of linguistic instances that conformed to the first conjunct of the criterion would be simple enough, in the vein of 'Legends of the Hidden Temple', 'Temple of Doom', 'The Temple of Indiana Jones Paraphernalia', etc. What's difficult is getting Louis to laugh hard about this, and to laugh hard enough that he is compelled to grab his buttocks.
Faced with this puzzle, my first thought was of course that I would need to get Louis while he was standing. It's not impossible, yet at least very difficult to get somebody to grab his buttocks while sitting down.
My second thought was the real clever one; it was the tactical linchpin in the whole affair. My second thought was to contextually embed the presentation of my proposed title in such a way that, though under regular circumstances and by itself it might fail to be funny, in context it could not fail but to generate butt-grabbing (both self-butt-grabbing and interpersonal-butt-grabbing). Furthermore, goes my second thought, a readymade way to set up such a humor-guaranteeing context is to read off an entire list of titles adhering to title option #4's criteria, which could comedically interrelate and build off each other: making jokes on each other, progressively becoming funnier and more comedically rich and imbricate. FURTHERMORE, goes my second thought (I never managed a third thought because I'm dumb), this would give me several chances to instigate the requisite butt-grabbing: if I don't get him with title option #4, instance #9, just wait for #10; for #11!
In accordance with my cunning machinations, I read to Louis the following list, hoping against all hope that his hands would hasten to his posterior as laughter would seethe and cackle from his lungs.
α. The Anathematization of the Aoristic Anaphora. (This, I think, is a preferred choice of mine, but I knew from the outset this would not give Louis the slightest cause to squeeze his toosh; accordingly, I made it first on my list.)
β. The Stench of the Loins. (This was tactically put towards the front of the list. I wanted to get Louis in a laughing mood before I sprung my good ones on him, but I didn't want this one to be the butt-grabber, since I would hate to have to write a Volition-Piloted Document titled "The Stench of the Loins".)
Γ. The Blitzkrieg of the Anacoluthon. (From Gamma onwards I failed to stay the tactical course, so to speak, in that I just started writing titles that I liked rather than titles I thought would get Louis to laugh.)
Δ. The Jihad of Family-Restaurant Menu Apocrypha!
ε. The Bombardment of Unavoidable Debutantes.
ζ. The Duel of Dialogismus-Dealing Diologists.
η. The Holocaust of Cryptographic Tailors.
θ. The Melee of Slightly Inebriated Publishing Clerks.
ι. Le Contretemps des Fantômes des Plagiaires.
K. The Sciamachy of the Possible Modal Realists.
Λ. The Teeth-Sinking Brawl of Conversational Combatants.
μ. The Fracas of Swingrover-Mongers.
ν. The Joust of Cabriolets, where a cabriolet is a light, two-wheeled carriage drawn by a single horse, with a folding hood, seating two people facing forward, one of whom is the driver. (Yes, that's the whole title).
ξ. The Epic Agon of the Sycophants of the Pantheon.
O. The Tug of War of Tug of War of Tug of War of Tug or War of Prepositions.
π. The Polemic of the Peremptory Architects.
ρ. The Ruin of the Fast-Paced Flaneurs.
Σ. The Perdition of the Secret Secret Passage Passages.
τ. The Bane of the Psychogeographical Nay-sayers.
Y. The Blight of Jonathan Charles Wrights.
φ. The Catastrophe of Kyriolexies.
χ. The Peripeteia of Unanticipated Vicissitudes.
Ψ. The Slight Disagreement of The FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE.
Ω. The Ineluctability of the 'Please Grab Your Butt Louis, I am out of Titles'. (my last-ditch attempt)
After I read these, explained these, wildly gesticulated to these, he still had yet to touch his bottom. He laughed, sure. But no bottom-touching. So, I had to come up with an entirely new batch. I have to admit that my second batch tended more towards the extreme, the ridiculous...the scatological. Also, I took to reading out what greek letter we were on at any given point, as well as making crass gestures as I read. What can I say--I needed a laugh.
α'. The Arraignment of the Specific, Macabre, Uncannily Describable Doppelganger.
β'. The Demon Mage of the Pretty Rainbow.
Γ'. The Carnality of Cardinality--It's Set Theory Stuff, you wouldn't get it.
Δ'. The Shoddy Evasion of The Definite Article, The 'the'.
ε'. The Malice of the Sphinx and really funny stuff laugh you know it's funny.
ζ'. The Abomination of the Next Title Suggestion.
η'. The Awkward Dance of Death and P.P.
θ'. The Nemesis of Apoplanesis. (My hope for this title, along with the previous one, is that I would get Louis on a technicality. Hopefully he would grab his ass on hearing η', but then I would quickly utter θ', and he would be truthfully described as having laughed and grabbed his butt upon apprehension of θ'. See? Tactics, baby.)
ι'. The Eructation of Falsely Labeled Inspirations (This one was for me. No Laughter Was Expected. You need low points in every comedy routine--they might as well service the aesthetics of the comedian.)
K'. The Venom!
Λ'. The Altercations of Wit and Ennui. (My tactic here mimics that of θ'.)
μ'. The Knavery and Stupidity of You for not laughing at any of these yet.
ν'. The Bedlam of the Cut-throat Graduate Students: (subtitle) Last Man Standing's a Ph.D.
ξ'. The Imbroglios of the Third of Nine Husbands to belong to Zsa Zsa Gabor.
O'. The Imbroglios of Carrying Marmoset in Your Luggage.
π'. The Imbroglios of the Gubernatorial Otter.
ρ'. The Nostrums of the Gubernatorial Otter.
Σ'. The Imbroglios of Poop. (Forgive me.)
τ'. The Crystal of the Secret Apprentice. (I read this one to him as if it were the coolest title ever.)
Y'. The Fortress of Vengeance. (Same here.)
φ'. The Runes of Chaos. (Same here.)
χ'. The Maelstrom of Pandemonia!
Ψ'. The Pandemonium of Maelstroms!
χ''. The Maelstrom of Maelstroms!
Ψ''. The Pandemonium of Pandemonia!
Ω'. The Dread of Having to Generate Twenty-Four More Titles.
After reading all these to him, he had technically laughed and grabbed his butt simultaneously upon apprehending one and only of these: "β'. The Demon Mage of the Pretty Rainbow." Now, neither Louis nor I were pleased about this. So, we exploited a particular lack of specificity in Title Option #4.
Note that the specifications for Title Option #4 simply say that Louis must (1) laugh hard and (2) grab his butt upon apprehension. Now, it does not specify that he has to do these simultaneously, nor does it specify that he has to grab his butt as a causal result of his laughter or of apprehending the title. So, of the titles that Louis laughed hard about, I let him choose one that he liked. He liked "φ'. The Runes of Chaos." So, I read it to him, he apprehended it, he squeezed his toosh.
And that does it, folks. It counts.
Now, GO VOTE.
The following is Commentary on the Four Title Options for the Louis-Commissioned, Volition-Piloted Literature Blog Project.
1. "Pysma" is a rhetorical trope for the asking of several questions successively, which together demand a complex reply--a trick for which there are several examples to choose from amongst Groucho Marx's more aggressive moments [e.g., (machine-gunned at his interlocutor) "Tell me, what do you think of the traffic problem? What do you think of the marriage problem? What do you think of at night when you go to bed, you beast?"] Familiar with my proclivities towards Groucho-like rhetoric, you can imagine what sort of document a title like this will have in store.
2. I'm pretty proud of my attempts at this one. "Omniety", says the OED, is "The fact or condition of being all; allness, spec. as an attribute of God." My title, clearly is a mild distortion of the idiomatic phrase, "Variety is the spice of life".
Now, the ancient Christological heresy of Docetism, a variant of Gnosticism, has it that, generally, physical matter is pretty lame and so bodies are too, and thusly Jesus Christ, who was not lame, actually did not have a physical body, as this would limit him in bad ways, (like having to use the bathroom, or at least having to wait in line for the bathroom). The body it looked liked Jesus had was in fact just a Star-Trek-like hologram-thingy, and hence Jesus did not really "die" or "suffer" on the cross; his hologram-thingy did.
This kind of gnostic heretic generally tends to deprecate the body's status and focus on more 'spiritual' and 'eternal', stuff, in attempt to limit themselves less, striving further towards something like 'allness'. You might even say that, figuratively or allegorically, a docetist might say that "omniety is the spice of life."
I chose "Omniety is the Spice of Life" because I thought it would work well as a title for myself, in addition to fulfilling Louis' criteria. There were, however, some contenders for the Title Option #2 criteria that didn't make it, which I will enumerate below. (Remember, the idea is that I have to distort an idiom by changing one word to some rhyming word, and thereby make the idiom correspond "allegorically", which I take as something like "figuratively", to a Traditional Christological or Trinitarian heresy.)
Here are the runners up for title option #2:
A. A Word in the Hand is Worth Two in the Bush. (A play on Apollonarianism. Get it? Like, THE WORD??? According to the heresy of Apollonarianism, the Logos fully replaced/displaced Jesus' human soul.)
C. Factions Speak Louder than Words. (A play on Nestorianism. According to Nestorianism Jesus was actually two persons in one body, or something approximate to that, anyway.)
D. The Blessed of Both Worlds. (A play on Nestorianism again?.)
D. Third Divine's a Charm. (A play on Tritheism. The heresy that the Trinity is actually three distinct gods, not one God with three persons.)
E. Close, But No Vicar. (A play on ???. I can't think of a heresy to go with this one--but it's just so good.)
3. I follow both the letter and the spirit of Title Option #3's criteria; and furthermore, I go beyond the call of duty, generating eight, not six, possible ambiguous readings of the title.
The three (and only three) ambiguous words in this title option are "Quiddity", "Original", and "Apology".
"Quiddity", according to OED, can mean (1) "the inherent nature or essence of a person or thing; what a thing or person is; that which distinguishes a person or thing from others", or (2) "a subtlety or nicety in argument; a quibble". This distinction is almost contronymic, in that in the one case it means the very essence of a thing, whereas in the other it means something almost opposite: peripheral or non-essential, a nuance.
"Original", according to OED, can mean (1) "belonging to the beginning or earliest stage of something; existing at or from the first; earliest, first in time", or (2) "having the quality of that which proceeds directly from oneself; such as has not been done or produced before; novel or fresh in character or style". The basic distinction here of course is between something existing from the beginning of an interval of time, as in "The original draft of this document was much racier; change it back.", and something that is novel or innovative, as in "What an original plotline! Who'd have thought of ALL the students at Oxford killing themselves for the love of one individual woman!?!"
"Apology", according to OED, can mean (1) "an explanation offered to a person affected by one's action that no offence was intended, coupled with the expression of regret for any that may have been given; or, a frank acknowledgement of the offence with expression of regret for it, by way of reparation", or (2) "justification, explanation, or excuse, of an incident or course of action". The first case is the ubiquitous sense. The second is a more formal use (it is in this second sense that Socrates' final speech before the state of Athens is said to be an "apology"; Socrates nowhere in the speech expresses personal shame, regret, or sorrow at any of his actions.)
So, then, for shorthand, lets dub the two meanings of "quiddity" as "essence" and "subtlety in argument"; the two meanings of "original" as "first" and "novel"; and the two meanings of "apology" as "acknowledgment of guilt" and "formal account". This is close enough to the general distinctions between their meanings. Hence, the EIGHT ambiguity-generated meanings of this statement that might crop up in interpretation are approximately as follows:
א. The 'Essence' of Grenadier Appelbaum's 'First' 'Acknowledgment of Guilt'.
ב. The 'Essence' of Grenadier Appelbaum's 'First' 'Formal Account'.
ג. The 'Essence' of Grenadier Appelbaum's Novel' 'Acknowledgment of Guilt'.
ד. The 'Essence' of Grenadier Appelbaum's 'Novel' 'Formal Account'.
ה. The 'Subtlety in Argument' of Grenadier Appelbaum's 'First' Acknowledgment of Guilt'.
ו. The 'Subtlety in Argument' of Grenadier Appelbaum's 'First' Formal Account'.
ז. The 'Subtlety in Argument' of Grenadier Appelbaum's 'Novel' Acknowledgment of Guilt'.
ח. The 'Subtlety in Argument' of Grenadier Appelbaum's 'Novel' 'Formal Account'.
4. This one was the most daunting for me. Either of the conjuncts in the criteria for title option #4 I think I could pull off individually, but they posed a distinctly redoubtable challenge so-conjuncted. But I had a plan of attack, which will be hereto described in exciting detail.
I knew that the generation of linguistic instances that conformed to the first conjunct of the criterion would be simple enough, in the vein of 'Legends of the Hidden Temple', 'Temple of Doom', 'The Temple of Indiana Jones Paraphernalia', etc. What's difficult is getting Louis to laugh hard about this, and to laugh hard enough that he is compelled to grab his buttocks.
Faced with this puzzle, my first thought was of course that I would need to get Louis while he was standing. It's not impossible, yet at least very difficult to get somebody to grab his buttocks while sitting down.
My second thought was the real clever one; it was the tactical linchpin in the whole affair. My second thought was to contextually embed the presentation of my proposed title in such a way that, though under regular circumstances and by itself it might fail to be funny, in context it could not fail but to generate butt-grabbing (both self-butt-grabbing and interpersonal-butt-grabbing). Furthermore, goes my second thought, a readymade way to set up such a humor-guaranteeing context is to read off an entire list of titles adhering to title option #4's criteria, which could comedically interrelate and build off each other: making jokes on each other, progressively becoming funnier and more comedically rich and imbricate. FURTHERMORE, goes my second thought (I never managed a third thought because I'm dumb), this would give me several chances to instigate the requisite butt-grabbing: if I don't get him with title option #4, instance #9, just wait for #10; for #11!
In accordance with my cunning machinations, I read to Louis the following list, hoping against all hope that his hands would hasten to his posterior as laughter would seethe and cackle from his lungs.
α. The Anathematization of the Aoristic Anaphora. (This, I think, is a preferred choice of mine, but I knew from the outset this would not give Louis the slightest cause to squeeze his toosh; accordingly, I made it first on my list.)
β. The Stench of the Loins. (This was tactically put towards the front of the list. I wanted to get Louis in a laughing mood before I sprung my good ones on him, but I didn't want this one to be the butt-grabber, since I would hate to have to write a Volition-Piloted Document titled "The Stench of the Loins".)
Γ. The Blitzkrieg of the Anacoluthon. (From Gamma onwards I failed to stay the tactical course, so to speak, in that I just started writing titles that I liked rather than titles I thought would get Louis to laugh.)
Δ. The Jihad of Family-Restaurant Menu Apocrypha!
ε. The Bombardment of Unavoidable Debutantes.
ζ. The Duel of Dialogismus-Dealing Diologists.
η. The Holocaust of Cryptographic Tailors.
θ. The Melee of Slightly Inebriated Publishing Clerks.
ι. Le Contretemps des Fantômes des Plagiaires.
K. The Sciamachy of the Possible Modal Realists.
Λ. The Teeth-Sinking Brawl of Conversational Combatants.
μ. The Fracas of Swingrover-Mongers.
ν. The Joust of Cabriolets, where a cabriolet is a light, two-wheeled carriage drawn by a single horse, with a folding hood, seating two people facing forward, one of whom is the driver. (Yes, that's the whole title).
ξ. The Epic Agon of the Sycophants of the Pantheon.
O. The Tug of War of Tug of War of Tug of War of Tug or War of Prepositions.
π. The Polemic of the Peremptory Architects.
ρ. The Ruin of the Fast-Paced Flaneurs.
Σ. The Perdition of the Secret Secret Passage Passages.
τ. The Bane of the Psychogeographical Nay-sayers.
Y. The Blight of Jonathan Charles Wrights.
φ. The Catastrophe of Kyriolexies.
χ. The Peripeteia of Unanticipated Vicissitudes.
Ψ. The Slight Disagreement of The FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE.
Ω. The Ineluctability of the 'Please Grab Your Butt Louis, I am out of Titles'. (my last-ditch attempt)
After I read these, explained these, wildly gesticulated to these, he still had yet to touch his bottom. He laughed, sure. But no bottom-touching. So, I had to come up with an entirely new batch. I have to admit that my second batch tended more towards the extreme, the ridiculous...the scatological. Also, I took to reading out what greek letter we were on at any given point, as well as making crass gestures as I read. What can I say--I needed a laugh.
α'. The Arraignment of the Specific, Macabre, Uncannily Describable Doppelganger.
β'. The Demon Mage of the Pretty Rainbow.
Γ'. The Carnality of Cardinality--It's Set Theory Stuff, you wouldn't get it.
Δ'. The Shoddy Evasion of The Definite Article, The 'the'.
ε'. The Malice of the Sphinx and really funny stuff laugh you know it's funny.
ζ'. The Abomination of the Next Title Suggestion.
η'. The Awkward Dance of Death and P.P.
θ'. The Nemesis of Apoplanesis. (My hope for this title, along with the previous one, is that I would get Louis on a technicality. Hopefully he would grab his ass on hearing η', but then I would quickly utter θ', and he would be truthfully described as having laughed and grabbed his butt upon apprehension of θ'. See? Tactics, baby.)
ι'. The Eructation of Falsely Labeled Inspirations (This one was for me. No Laughter Was Expected. You need low points in every comedy routine--they might as well service the aesthetics of the comedian.)
K'. The Venom!
Λ'. The Altercations of Wit and Ennui. (My tactic here mimics that of θ'.)
μ'. The Knavery and Stupidity of You for not laughing at any of these yet.
ν'. The Bedlam of the Cut-throat Graduate Students: (subtitle) Last Man Standing's a Ph.D.
ξ'. The Imbroglios of the Third of Nine Husbands to belong to Zsa Zsa Gabor.
O'. The Imbroglios of Carrying Marmoset in Your Luggage.
π'. The Imbroglios of the Gubernatorial Otter.
ρ'. The Nostrums of the Gubernatorial Otter.
Σ'. The Imbroglios of Poop. (Forgive me.)
τ'. The Crystal of the Secret Apprentice. (I read this one to him as if it were the coolest title ever.)
Y'. The Fortress of Vengeance. (Same here.)
φ'. The Runes of Chaos. (Same here.)
χ'. The Maelstrom of Pandemonia!
Ψ'. The Pandemonium of Maelstroms!
χ''. The Maelstrom of Maelstroms!
Ψ''. The Pandemonium of Pandemonia!
Ω'. The Dread of Having to Generate Twenty-Four More Titles.
After reading all these to him, he had technically laughed and grabbed his butt simultaneously upon apprehending one and only of these: "β'. The Demon Mage of the Pretty Rainbow." Now, neither Louis nor I were pleased about this. So, we exploited a particular lack of specificity in Title Option #4.
Note that the specifications for Title Option #4 simply say that Louis must (1) laugh hard and (2) grab his butt upon apprehension. Now, it does not specify that he has to do these simultaneously, nor does it specify that he has to grab his butt as a causal result of his laughter or of apprehending the title. So, of the titles that Louis laughed hard about, I let him choose one that he liked. He liked "φ'. The Runes of Chaos." So, I read it to him, he apprehended it, he squeezed his toosh.
And that does it, folks. It counts.
Now, GO VOTE.
7.10.2008
Testimonial.
"Besides Jesus dying for my sins, Salinger writing for my sins, and Louis being made into my brother, your blog is the best thing that has ever happened to me."--message sent to me, Jonathan Charles Wright, by Jenny Swingrover, future co-author of my children and the award-winning novel about our children.
Punch Cartoon and Humorous Conversational Exchange from a Piece of Short Fiction of the Day.
"Is your maid called Florence?"- from Saki's The Secret Sin of Septimus Brope.
"Her name is Florinda."
"What an extraordinary name to give a maid!"
"I did not give it to her; she arrived in my service already christened."
"What I mean is," said Mrs. Riversedge, "that when I get maids with unsuitable names I call them Jane; they soon get used to it."
"An excellent plan," said the aunt of Clovis coldly; "unfortunately I have got used to being called Jane myself. It happens to be my name."
7.09.2008
ahem.
I hereby pronounce that anytime I have ever and/or anytime I will ever use the words, "sissy", "white", and "wine" all together to form the noun phrase, "sissy white wine", I have done so and/or will do so strictly as an act of oblique quotation of Mr. Zachary Weichbrodt.
7.07.2008
Volition-Piloted Literature. Introduction.
Introduction.
The creature of whim that I am, this morning I arbitrarily offered up to my good friend ("best friend", interpolates Louis), Louis Swingrover, control over a precious cross-section of my free will.
"Louis", I said, "It's your lucky day. You may commission me to write a blog post of whatever specifications you desire. You get to determine the post's subject-matter, its stylistic characteristics, along with whatever boundaries may constrain its format. It's a genuine CHOOSE-YOUR-OWN-ADVENTURE JonathanCharlesWright.blogspot.com document."
The words "choose", "your", "own", and "adventure", struck a particular and dangerous chord in Louis' mind. The die was cast. Louis, overstepping his bounds, commissioned eight, not one, blog posts of the following specifications.
Eight Chapter Blog-Series Specifications as Commissioned by Louis Swingrover.
1. The blogs must follow the traditional stipulations for Choose Your Own Adventure novels, being constituted of narrative prose, with key narrative-directing decisions made by characters within the story being periodically left to the reader's preference.
2. Each blog will constitute a 'chapter' of the narrative.
3. At the end of every non-terminus chapter, the reader must have a four-option narrative-directing decision put to them.
4. Each chapter must be450-500 words. 1500 words exactly (edited, 7/21/08).
5. For each non-terminus chapter, comments must be allowed on the blog post for some previously prescribed and broadcasted interval of time (five business-days, say), during which time readers will be able to comment as to which possible outcome they would like to have written. After the prescribed period of time has elapsed, all the choices made must be tallied, and the next written chapter must adhere to whichever option earned the most votes.
6. The date of publication for each chapter in the blog-series must be determined and announced at the end of the previous related post. [e.g., at the end of chapter 2, I must announce the publication date (Month, Day, Year) of chapter 3.]
7. I, Jonathan Charles Wright, may not write any chapters before votes have been tallied and a particular chapter elected. At that time I may write the so-elected chapter and only the so-elected chapter. (In this way, for each decision made, there will be three possible chapters that will never be written.)
9. After the fourth chapter, I must again offer up a four-option narrative-directing decision to the reader; however, instead of tallying votes, I must simply write and publish a chapter for each of the four options. These will constitute the four possible final chapters one could possibly choose. Thus, after all eight blogs have been completed, there should be four distinct five-chapter documents.
10. The first four-option decision left to the reader must be as to which title to adopt for the blog-series. Guidelines governing title options are as follows:
a. Title Option #1 must be five letters long.
b. Title Option #2 must take a famous idiom or quotation, altering one of the words to some rhyming word that changes the meaning AND must be an allegory (loosely defined, but the title's status as allegory must be formally defended) of a traditinal Trinitarian or Christological heresy.
c. Title Option #3 must contain 3 ambiguous words and provide for 6 ambiguous interpretations as a whole (at least).
d. Title Option #4 must fit the form, "The [menacing verb] of the [plural noun]" or "The [pretty ordinary noun] of ("the", if needed) [noun that suddenly renders the whole other-worldy and/or makes the reader wonder what the whole could be in reference to within the plot]" AND must make Louis laugh hard and grab his butt upon apprehension.
Here then is the outline of the blog-project that awaits you, reader. Soon, I will come up with my Title Options and allow you, reader, to vote as to which will stand in a place of overarching thematic governance over my series of 'Choose-Your-Own-Adventure'ly structured blogs. Note, that because Louis is preventing me from both planning blogs in advance and from writing the non-elected chapter options, this provides you with a bona fide 'Choose-Your-Own-Adventure' experience.
It isn't as if there are prepackaged adventures that exist independently of your input--No. The up-and-coming series of blogs so proposed will be directly piloted by your volition. (I may even accept narrative suggestions every now and then, as long as they're surreptitiously snuck in with your votes.)
In the meantime, let me now open up the floor to any cavils my reader may have with Louis' blog-series specifications as they stand--be these cavils analytic, literary, grammatical, structural, legal, or whatever.
The creature of whim that I am, this morning I arbitrarily offered up to my good friend ("best friend", interpolates Louis), Louis Swingrover, control over a precious cross-section of my free will.
"Louis", I said, "It's your lucky day. You may commission me to write a blog post of whatever specifications you desire. You get to determine the post's subject-matter, its stylistic characteristics, along with whatever boundaries may constrain its format. It's a genuine CHOOSE-YOUR-OWN-ADVENTURE JonathanCharlesWright.blogspot.com document."
The words "choose", "your", "own", and "adventure", struck a particular and dangerous chord in Louis' mind. The die was cast. Louis, overstepping his bounds, commissioned eight, not one, blog posts of the following specifications.
Eight Chapter Blog-Series Specifications as Commissioned by Louis Swingrover.
1. The blogs must follow the traditional stipulations for Choose Your Own Adventure novels, being constituted of narrative prose, with key narrative-directing decisions made by characters within the story being periodically left to the reader's preference.
2. Each blog will constitute a 'chapter' of the narrative.
3. At the end of every non-terminus chapter, the reader must have a four-option narrative-directing decision put to them.
4. Each chapter must be
5. For each non-terminus chapter, comments must be allowed on the blog post for some previously prescribed and broadcasted interval of time (five business-days, say), during which time readers will be able to comment as to which possible outcome they would like to have written. After the prescribed period of time has elapsed, all the choices made must be tallied, and the next written chapter must adhere to whichever option earned the most votes.
6. The date of publication for each chapter in the blog-series must be determined and announced at the end of the previous related post. [e.g., at the end of chapter 2, I must announce the publication date (Month, Day, Year) of chapter 3.]
7. I, Jonathan Charles Wright, may not write any chapters before votes have been tallied and a particular chapter elected. At that time I may write the so-elected chapter and only the so-elected chapter. (In this way, for each decision made, there will be three possible chapters that will never be written.)
9. After the fourth chapter, I must again offer up a four-option narrative-directing decision to the reader; however, instead of tallying votes, I must simply write and publish a chapter for each of the four options. These will constitute the four possible final chapters one could possibly choose. Thus, after all eight blogs have been completed, there should be four distinct five-chapter documents.
10. The first four-option decision left to the reader must be as to which title to adopt for the blog-series. Guidelines governing title options are as follows:
a. Title Option #1 must be five letters long.
b. Title Option #2 must take a famous idiom or quotation, altering one of the words to some rhyming word that changes the meaning AND must be an allegory (loosely defined, but the title's status as allegory must be formally defended) of a traditinal Trinitarian or Christological heresy.
c. Title Option #3 must contain 3 ambiguous words and provide for 6 ambiguous interpretations as a whole (at least).
d. Title Option #4 must fit the form, "The [menacing verb] of the [plural noun]" or "The [pretty ordinary noun] of ("the", if needed) [noun that suddenly renders the whole other-worldy and/or makes the reader wonder what the whole could be in reference to within the plot]" AND must make Louis laugh hard and grab his butt upon apprehension.
Here then is the outline of the blog-project that awaits you, reader. Soon, I will come up with my Title Options and allow you, reader, to vote as to which will stand in a place of overarching thematic governance over my series of 'Choose-Your-Own-Adventure'ly structured blogs. Note, that because Louis is preventing me from both planning blogs in advance and from writing the non-elected chapter options, this provides you with a bona fide 'Choose-Your-Own-Adventure' experience.
It isn't as if there are prepackaged adventures that exist independently of your input--No. The up-and-coming series of blogs so proposed will be directly piloted by your volition. (I may even accept narrative suggestions every now and then, as long as they're surreptitiously snuck in with your votes.)
In the meantime, let me now open up the floor to any cavils my reader may have with Louis' blog-series specifications as they stand--be these cavils analytic, literary, grammatical, structural, legal, or whatever.
Photograph & Quotation of the Day
"It's as if by keeping on putting order in my books, collections, paintings, autographs, and photos, I do so inside myself."--Jacques-Henri Lartigue
During Abnormal Business Hours: Not the Quotation of the Day.
"That's right baby! The social nexus of everywhere I go."--Louis Swingrover, referring to himself.
No statement is safe in this household.
Anything you say between these walls is open to quotation and reproduction on somebody or other's blog.
I wonder, and have wondered before, about my friends and our general way of relating to each other--
Is it more fun for us to report about our mutual behavior than to behave it? (See how I made "behave" into a transitive verb? You so wish you were me.)
Is it more meaningful to be able to enter our friends' names into our relational accounts than it is to actually be friends?
Are we more interested in observing ourselves than being ourselves?
Yeah, probably.
Score: Verbal - 800; Math - 800; Bible - ZERO.
When I read the Bible, I just have tons and tons of questions. That's all I get.
Furthermore, the answers to these questions would all be D if they were quantitative GRE Questions.
Answer cannot be determined from the information given.
Furthermore, the answers to these questions would all be D if they were quantitative GRE Questions.
Answer cannot be determined from the information given.
7.06.2008
Photograph & Quotation of the Day.
"Never, whether looking at a painting or rereading my sort of 'journal,' do I find what I wanted to capture."--Jacques-Henri Lartigue
7.05.2008
Excerpta from an Afternoon.
In a coffee shop.
Dan: (responding to my laughter) What?
Jon: I just really like Louis.
Dan: What?
Jon: Oh, Louis is over there ordering tea. He asked what sorts of tea they have, and then he started commenting voluably at length about the different options: 'Yeah, that's interesting , but not good enough for today, or rather, not appropriate for today...' He's just funny.
Dan: I wonder what Louis will be like as an old man.
Jon: Like he is as a young man, but older.
Dan: Do you think there will be some middle period?
Jon: What do you mean?
Dan: Do you think that when he's middle-aged, he'll quiet down a bit? He'll stop being so loud and obnoxious with strangers?
Jon: Nope. He's gonna keep going until he stops.
Dan: You mean until he dies?
Jon: Yeah. But even then, one day he'll be resurrected and get a new glorified body, and then keep going.
[pause]
Dan: I wonder if God will put up with that.
******************
Louis: I love these earthquake cookies.
Dan: Why are they called earthquake cookies?
Jon: Wait until five minutes after you've eaten one.
Dan: (responding to my laughter) What?
Jon: I just really like Louis.
Dan: What?
Jon: Oh, Louis is over there ordering tea. He asked what sorts of tea they have, and then he started commenting voluably at length about the different options: 'Yeah, that's interesting , but not good enough for today, or rather, not appropriate for today...' He's just funny.
Dan: I wonder what Louis will be like as an old man.
Jon: Like he is as a young man, but older.
Dan: Do you think there will be some middle period?
Jon: What do you mean?
Dan: Do you think that when he's middle-aged, he'll quiet down a bit? He'll stop being so loud and obnoxious with strangers?
Jon: Nope. He's gonna keep going until he stops.
Dan: You mean until he dies?
Jon: Yeah. But even then, one day he'll be resurrected and get a new glorified body, and then keep going.
[pause]
Dan: I wonder if God will put up with that.
******************
Louis: I love these earthquake cookies.
Dan: Why are they called earthquake cookies?
Jon: Wait until five minutes after you've eaten one.
Photograph & Quotation of the Day.
"My only wealth is freedom. Therefore I avoid what I don't like."--Jacques-Henri Lartigue
Sentential Puzzle: an Interjected Reaffirmation of Good Faith.
You may think that I forgot my promise.
"What promise?", you ask?
"What; have you forgotten?", I ask?
"Why did the previous sentence end with a question mark?", I ask.
Six or seven blog posts and fifty or sixty days ago, I promised my reader that I had three attempts up my sleeve when it came to my "sentential puzzle".
You remember my sentential puzzle: "I dare you to come up with a way to modify the text of this blog in such a way that this sentence can be legitimately referenced by the definite description, "the previous sentence", without compromising this sentence's status as "the last sentence" of this text."
I have not forgotten. I remember all: not only my promise, not only the basic pith and thrust of each proposed attempt, not only the incidental jokes I intended to make in each attempt's associated blog post, but I remember further where I was standing when I first came up with my three attempts.
I was at work, at the Old Spaghetti Factory. Don't be surprised--but I wasn't happy to be there. Counting the hours that stood between me and my escape from vocational pasta-duties, I tucked myself away at a defunct bar in the recesses of the restaurant which was quaintly corroding from desuetude, and I scrawled some thoughts about sentences, previous sentences, puzzles about the nature of previous sentences, and solutions to puzzles about the nature of previous sentences onto a napkin.
I labeled and enumerated my thoughts:
1. Ouroboros!
2. Description vs. Designation!
3. Type vs. Token!
That is to say...
Yes, there is more to come. Hang in there, kiddos. Hang the fink in there.
"What promise?", you ask?
"What; have you forgotten?", I ask?
"Why did the previous sentence end with a question mark?", I ask.
Six or seven blog posts and fifty or sixty days ago, I promised my reader that I had three attempts up my sleeve when it came to my "sentential puzzle".
You remember my sentential puzzle: "I dare you to come up with a way to modify the text of this blog in such a way that this sentence can be legitimately referenced by the definite description, "the previous sentence", without compromising this sentence's status as "the last sentence" of this text."
I have not forgotten. I remember all: not only my promise, not only the basic pith and thrust of each proposed attempt, not only the incidental jokes I intended to make in each attempt's associated blog post, but I remember further where I was standing when I first came up with my three attempts.
I was at work, at the Old Spaghetti Factory. Don't be surprised--but I wasn't happy to be there. Counting the hours that stood between me and my escape from vocational pasta-duties, I tucked myself away at a defunct bar in the recesses of the restaurant which was quaintly corroding from desuetude, and I scrawled some thoughts about sentences, previous sentences, puzzles about the nature of previous sentences, and solutions to puzzles about the nature of previous sentences onto a napkin.
I labeled and enumerated my thoughts:
1. Ouroboros!
2. Description vs. Designation!
3. Type vs. Token!
That is to say...
Yes, there is more to come. Hang in there, kiddos. Hang the fink in there.
7.04.2008
Photograph & Quotation of the day.
"Every lovely, strange, bizarre or interesting thing gives me such pleasure I'm delirious with joy!"-- Jacques-Henri Lartigue.
To Ben, on Jorge Luis Borges.
The occasion of this blog post, qua blog post, is shamelessly shameful.
I was corresponding with Ben, my former roommate, (along with estimable others) about a number of things all at once--about poetry, about Ben's flouting his moral sense for the sake of poetry, about the precarious state of our friendship given his fiendship, about sissy white wine, and about Borges' poetry as compared with Borges' fiction.
In writing to him, et al, I thought a couple things:
1. This message I'm writing is a bit longwinded given our medium of correspondence.
2. This would make a nice blog post, which I could share with the world (which happens to include Ben).
Then I thought a couple more things:
3. I hope Ben won't feel sold out by my broadcasting what was previously a message meant for him personally.
4. Ben is a reprobate and so his feelings need not be taken into account.
Here follows what was once a precious personal message--
Ben: I have read Borges' Fiction, his Non-Fiction, and his Poetry. In response to the looming accusation that his poetry is too prosaic to be any good, I'd like to assert that I nevertheless like his poetry, despite my thinking that it does tend towards his fictional prose. In fact, I'll go further than that; I'll get off at the depot: I think his fiction tends towards his non-fiction; his non-fiction towards his poetry; poetry towards non-fiction; fiction towards poetry; non-fiction towards fiction. They all seem to me to be the same thing, ultimately of the same genre--they each just have a few distinguishing marks characteristic of their given incarnated forms: meter, say; or whatever slight formal obligations are incumbent upon narrative.
I will here reproduce a poem that I like by Borges: "Ajedrez", a word I have translated in two ways by two different translators: "Chess" and "The Game of Chess".
Now, a warning: Borges writes in Spanish, and I don't speak Spanish. That said, which translation to use is kind of a toss-up. I am left two decision-making procedures: (1), use ignorant, analytic linguistics to compare both translations against the original text, choosing whichever I guess to be truer to the original; or (2), simply pick the translation I think prettiest. You, knowing me, should anticipate my taking both routes in turn: beginning, with the utmost of literary probity, by taking up option (1), but then eventually reverting to option (2) out of inevitable self-indulgence. Luckily for me in this case I think both options (1) and (2) lead me to Harold Moreland's translation, which I here reproduce in full:
* The first clause in the second stanza of Part I seems to fit neither translation well, and for it I actually prefer Alastair Reid's translation to Moreland's. The original goes
Though, my preference is probably based on nothing more than my preference for the concept of forms giving off "magic rules" rather than shapes giving off "magic strength"--a preference probably rooted in nothing more than my deeper preference for rules over strength.
* Here's something almost kooky in Reid's translation. The last line of Part I reads thusly in the original:
How does Reid get the "game of love" out of "el otro"?? He seems to know something we don't, and intends on inserting this arcane interpretive knowledge into his very translation.
For myself, I like the simple "other". It reminds me more of what I know and (perhaps uncharacteristically) like in Borges, in that I don't quite get what he ultimately wants to communicate, if anything.
* In the seventh line of Part II, Moreland and Reid again diverge in an interesting way. For the Spanish word "adamantino" Moreland have "adamant", whereas Reid: "adamantine".
* I cannot get over the line, "on another board / of dead-black nights and white days.". So clever. It actively reorients my perspective. It feels as if the poetic comparison strikes some weird conceptual isomorphism, which then rings out and gives me the mental chills; it highlights a kind of symmetry or congruity between certain thoughts or ideas that ends up tickling and tingling my mind. (To be honest, [and I almost feel guilty for this,] the virtues of the poetic association between white and black squares on a chess board to white days and black nights, along with the peculiar similitudes of thought generated by dwelling on it, reminds me of a certain passage from O.W. Holmes, which I will hunt down and type up later.)
I was corresponding with Ben, my former roommate, (along with estimable others) about a number of things all at once--about poetry, about Ben's flouting his moral sense for the sake of poetry, about the precarious state of our friendship given his fiendship, about sissy white wine, and about Borges' poetry as compared with Borges' fiction.
In writing to him, et al, I thought a couple things:
1. This message I'm writing is a bit longwinded given our medium of correspondence.
2. This would make a nice blog post, which I could share with the world (which happens to include Ben).
Then I thought a couple more things:
3. I hope Ben won't feel sold out by my broadcasting what was previously a message meant for him personally.
4. Ben is a reprobate and so his feelings need not be taken into account.
Here follows what was once a precious personal message--
Ben: I have read Borges' Fiction, his Non-Fiction, and his Poetry. In response to the looming accusation that his poetry is too prosaic to be any good, I'd like to assert that I nevertheless like his poetry, despite my thinking that it does tend towards his fictional prose. In fact, I'll go further than that; I'll get off at the depot: I think his fiction tends towards his non-fiction; his non-fiction towards his poetry; poetry towards non-fiction; fiction towards poetry; non-fiction towards fiction. They all seem to me to be the same thing, ultimately of the same genre--they each just have a few distinguishing marks characteristic of their given incarnated forms: meter, say; or whatever slight formal obligations are incumbent upon narrative.
I will here reproduce a poem that I like by Borges: "Ajedrez", a word I have translated in two ways by two different translators: "Chess" and "The Game of Chess".
Now, a warning: Borges writes in Spanish, and I don't speak Spanish. That said, which translation to use is kind of a toss-up. I am left two decision-making procedures: (1), use ignorant, analytic linguistics to compare both translations against the original text, choosing whichever I guess to be truer to the original; or (2), simply pick the translation I think prettiest. You, knowing me, should anticipate my taking both routes in turn: beginning, with the utmost of literary probity, by taking up option (1), but then eventually reverting to option (2) out of inevitable self-indulgence. Luckily for me in this case I think both options (1) and (2) lead me to Harold Moreland's translation, which I here reproduce in full:
The Game of ChessSome notes & thoughts on the poem:
I
In their grave corner, the players
Deploy the slow pieces. And the chessboard
Detains them until dawn in its severe
Compass in which two colors hate each other.
Within it the shapes give off a magic
Strength: Homeric tower, and nimble
Horse, a fighting queen, a backward king,
A bishop on the bias, and aggressive pawns.
When the players have departed, and
When time has consumed them utterly,
The ritual will not have ended.
That war first flamed out in the East
Whose amphitheatre is now the world.
And like the other, this game is infinite.
II
Slight king, oblique bishop, and a queen
Blood-lusting; upright tower, crafty pawn--
Over the black and the white of their path
They foray and deliver armed battle
They do not know it is the artful hand
Of the player that rules their fate,
They do not know that an adamant rigor
Subdues their free will and their span.
But the player likewise is a prisoner
(The maxim is Omar's) on another board
Of dead-black nights and of white days.
God moves the player and he, the piece.
What god behind God originates the scheme
Of dust and time and dream and agony?
* The first clause in the second stanza of Part I seems to fit neither translation well, and for it I actually prefer Alastair Reid's translation to Moreland's. The original goes
Adentro irradian mágicos rigoreswhich Reid translates
Las formas:
Within the game itself the forms give offas opposed to Moreland's
their magic rules:
Within it the shapes give off a magic
Strength:
Though, my preference is probably based on nothing more than my preference for the concept of forms giving off "magic rules" rather than shapes giving off "magic strength"--a preference probably rooted in nothing more than my deeper preference for rules over strength.
* Here's something almost kooky in Reid's translation. The last line of Part I reads thusly in the original:
Como el otro, este juego es infinito.which Reid translates
Like the game of love, this game goes on forever.
How does Reid get the "game of love" out of "el otro"?? He seems to know something we don't, and intends on inserting this arcane interpretive knowledge into his very translation.
For myself, I like the simple "other". It reminds me more of what I know and (perhaps uncharacteristically) like in Borges, in that I don't quite get what he ultimately wants to communicate, if anything.
* In the seventh line of Part II, Moreland and Reid again diverge in an interesting way. For the Spanish word "adamantino" Moreland have "adamant", whereas Reid: "adamantine".
* I cannot get over the line, "on another board / of dead-black nights and white days.". So clever. It actively reorients my perspective. It feels as if the poetic comparison strikes some weird conceptual isomorphism, which then rings out and gives me the mental chills; it highlights a kind of symmetry or congruity between certain thoughts or ideas that ends up tickling and tingling my mind. (To be honest, [and I almost feel guilty for this,] the virtues of the poetic association between white and black squares on a chess board to white days and black nights, along with the peculiar similitudes of thought generated by dwelling on it, reminds me of a certain passage from O.W. Holmes, which I will hunt down and type up later.)
7.03.2008
Photograph & Quotation of the Day.
"'Like before' is wonderful! I believe that when one relives some 'like before' it produces a dual happiness: the present moment superimposed on that of the memory."-- Jacques-Henri Lartigue.
Lartigue is my favorite photographer. His photographs make everything seem dynamic and clever and carefree. They typify what I want for life--for my life most of all.
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