Out of body, in Bath?

I remember what I was thinking about when this picture was taken of me. I was thinking, "If I were on the other side of this pool looking out through that glass at myself I bet it would look pretty great."

Which reminds me.  

I love that Hofstadter thinks that the defining feature of consciousness is self-reference. He thinks it's the miraculous, lateral jump that accounts for the evolution of intelligent life on earth. 

That we can think and say "we are human" might be the feature that makes it so.

It makes me consider how else we might evolve, which makes me tingle with wonder, curiosity, and joy.

HHHHH

Happy Halloween.
Hubert Horatio Humphrey.

Somebody should write a children's book called "Happy Halloween, Hubert Horatio Humphrey." And by "somebody" I mean Jenny Swingrover.
Jenny, crack open that history book of yours, get the basic idea behind HHH, figure out what are the best, worst, and most interesting things about this political figure, and then channel them into a sincere, non-condescending story about one particular Halloween that changed HHH's life in some revealing and insightful way--for kids. Simple. And by "kids" I mean of the Harriet the Spy, Series of Unfortunate Events aesthetic, sense of life, degree of intellectual sophistication, reading level, etc. Jenny, I commission you. It should be 50,000 to 100,000 words and have a catchy first sentence. I will design the cover if you want. In fact, I will help you to write it if you want--collaborate effort. "w00t." With our powers combined, we could rule the world!!
And by "world", I mean world.

Furthermore, I found this picture on a blog I like to look at. It is with this picture that I intend to pictorially wish my reader a happy halloween:

Maryland Beethoven Torture.

Torture =(df.) Being on hold with the Maryland Secretary of State office for 20+ minutes, listening to a .midi file of the first four bars of Für Elise on an endless endless endless repeat.

Louis' Post: POTUS' Role in a Constitutional Amendment

I AM A SLEUTH!

What follows is a deftly recovered blog post which was published on Louis' blog on October 28, 2008, at 3:21 PM:

It is interesting to note that at no point does the President have a role in the formal amendment process (though he would be free to make his opinion known and incur slander because of it). He cannot veto an amendment proposal, nor a ratification. This point is clear in Article 5, and was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in Hollingsworth v Virginia (3 USC 378 [1798]):

The negative of the President applies only to the ordinary cases of legislation: He has nothing to do with the proposition, or adoption, of amendments to the Constitution.

-http://www.usconstitution.net/constam.html

Spoon's Japanese Cigarette Case. Spoon's Japanese Cigarette Case.

Not only am I repeating this song in my iTunes, but it is repeating itself. I repeat: it is repeating itself.
The lyrics to this song are almost maximally simple, repetitive, and repetitive.

"Bring me my Japanese cigarette case./
Bring a mirror to my face./
Let all my memories be gone."
-- Spoon

The band's name is simplistically monosyllabic, too, when you think about it. (When you don't think about it though....*shivers*)

I am repeating a repeating thing. Repetitious repetition, repeated. Let me repeat: I am repeating repetition. This reminds of when Max once informed that, "Repetition is an effective rhetoric tool. Repetition is an effective rhetorical tool. Repetition is an effective rhetorical tool."

DID YOU KNOW THAT KIERKEGAARD WROTE A BOOK CALLED, "REPETITION"?
DID YOU KNOW THAT KIERKEGAARD WROTE A BOOK CALLED, "REPETITION"?



Man, that joke just doesn't get old, get old, or get old.

Anticipatory Artistic Plagiarism: WANTS FOR SALE.

As I ambled down a street in Coeur d'Alene Idaho with Louis (who suffers from mysteriously disappearing blog posts [weird!]) one day last summer, I came up with a throw-away project idea. Actually, we might have had this conversation on the phone, in which case I may or may not have been strolling down a street in Coeur d'Alene Idaho. Hey. Wouldn't it be great if I moved to CdA ID without telling Louis, and lived there for weeks and weeks, months, etc., without him or his wife finding out? Then one day we'd each be promenading and sauntering down streets in CdA ID while talking on the phone with one another, we'd bump into each other by mistake, and then have ourselves a hearty laugh. Ha! HaHa! haHA! hehehehehe. O! Hardy-har!
Good idea, I know. Anyway. The idea I expressed to Louis whenever I expressed the idea to Louis was to come out with an art show, like canvas-on-wall art, where all the pieces were simply text painted on canvas expressing, in direct or indirect language, how much the given art cost. They would all be written in aesthetically pleasing, cool typographical styles. But they would say things like:

"This painting costs $100."
"The painting to the left of this one costs $5 more than this one."
"This painting costs a number of dollars equal to the sum of the digits in today's date."
"This painting isn't sure how much it costs. Ask somebody."
"This painting costs £50, cash."
"This painting comes with an elaborate contract stipulating that the buyer of this painting must resell the painting within a year of its purchase date for exactly %50 more than its original price, or else will legally forfeit the painting to the original seller. The contract also stipulates that the same conditions apply for every subsequent buyer of this painting. There are loopholes in the contract."
"This painting can be purchased by lay-a-way."
"This painting costs as must as it cost to create."

and so on. (I encourage you to come up with and contribute your own clever self-referential pricing painting ideas by commenting on this post with them.)

You could come up with t-shirts, merchandise, postcards, on and on. Clever, fun to talk about, maybe one day fun to do.

Anyway, I have found online a remarkably similar artistic project, by a clever husband + wife duo. Instead, however, of typographically communicating the painting's price, the paintings represents the objects or activities that the artists commit to spending their profits on.

It's called WANTS FOR SALE. Clearly this counts as anticipatory artistic plagiarism. This clever artistic couple have plagiarized a variant of my artistic idea before I had my artistic idea. How. Dare. They.

Here are some of my favorites from their collection.

iPhone: $432.42


One Month's Rent: $1056.17


$1000 to bet on black: $1000 (if they win the buyer of this painting gets $500 back)


Check it out.

Classic Palindrome.

A MAN, A PLAN, A CANAL: PANAMA!

addenda

In the previous post I have 

1. added a comma that is not a part of the original text.

and

2. substituted the word "lie" for "lay".

Is it the same story?

A Poem in Prose:

THE DISCIPLE

by Oscar Wilde

When Narcissus died, the pool of his pleasure changed from a cup of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears, and the Oreads came weeping through the woodland that they might sing to the pool and give it comfort.
And when they saw that the pool had changed from a cup of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears, they loosened the green tresses of their hair and cried to the pool and said, "We do not wonder that you should mourn in this manner for Narcissus, so beautiful was he."
"But was Narcissus beautiful?" said the pool.
"Who should know that better than you?" answered the Oreads. "Us did he ever pass by, but you he sought for, and would lie on your banks and look down at you, and in the mirror of your waters he would mirror his own beauty."
And the pool answered, "But I loved Narcissus because, as he lie on my banks and looked down at me, in the mirror of his eyes I saw ever my own beauty mirrored."

3-Ring Circus.

This post exists for two purposes.

1. To respond to and restate the basic point of Louis' blog post, which I think is better articulated in the following media item.
2. To enjoy a lovely song in which the United States government is directly compared to a 3-ring circus. Any implications that can be drawn from this comparison are intended to exhaustively express everything I personally have to say about politics in the United States.



You're right! It is kind of like your circus.

VOTE.

None of the above.

Blogs exist for self-indulgent self-proclaimed intelligent people to opine relentlessly about politics, right?

Here's my political blurb:

Here are ALL the things I have to opine regarding politics. This is an exhaustive (and slightly exhausting) list.

* I'm not registered to vote.

* Concerning the presidential race, I am confident that a week from today B.O. will win. I believe this because the broad consensus of professional and recreational gamblers who have money personally riding on the outcome say so. Simple--I run with the numbers. I am neither depressed, excited, outraged, optimistic, irked, nor conciliated. Nor really that interested.

* I agree, basically, with a throw-away sentiment expressed by Ron Paul in his response to the stock market bailout issue: "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the republicans and democrats." I agree with Louis Swingrover's political maxim: "republicans and democrats deserve each other". I agree with Johann E., a top South-African political analyst, when he speaks of the present election as the choice for the "lesser between two evils". I go further than Johann, in fact, in that I apply his platitude to every political election I have encountered in my lifetime.

* I trust in American bureaucracy, American paperwork, American prolixity, American checks and balances. Perhaps the thing I am most afraid of, politically, is a government powerful or efficient enough to do social good.

* I like the movie Brewster's Millions. It's clever and funny. I am reminded of how, in it, Brewster runs for mayor of New York City (in a tactical attempt to waste millions of dollars) and, realizing that he will probably win the election (and, due to strange reasons I will not enumerate here, lose his chance of inheriting millions of dollars) encourages his constituency to write in "None of the above" on their ballots rather than vote directly for him.

* I like it when people can't name major politicians. I don't like it when those people plan to vote. Little speaks better to the relative health of the United States government than that people tacitly resent it but are ultimately apathetic towards it.

* I do not think that the American political system is ideal, and I don't think its leaders are ideal. However, I am not particularly interested in making them that way. America is bad, but not that bad. It is an assumption of mine that politically no country will be good. This is a corollary to my assumption that in essence no person is good. But is anybody rightly surprised by this? America is no Switzerland (or whichever country "has it right" [I like that when a country {relatively} "has it right", they are unheard of]), but neither is it Nero's Rome.

* I'm a little disappointed in myself about posting a blog about politics at all. Yet I take solace in the fact that the Brewster's Millions thing was the main causal prompt behind this post's existence. In the movie he also buys a $1,000,000 stamp and then mails it.

A hypothetical ideal breakfast.

This morning I am having a breakfast that comprises:
+ two cups of vanilla bean-flavored coffee.
+ two microwaved slices of black olive/pepperoni pizza.
+ a song by Spoon called "Japanese Cigarette Case" on repeat.
+ a desire to include further incongruous elements into my breakfast.

This means that my breakfast is composed of, in part, a propositional attitude concerning the nature of my breakfast itself.

What are the conditions for completeness for breakfast? If I wanted a 'complete' breakfast, what would I have to do? What should I include? Toast? Every atom in the universe? Pear slices? An egg? Every other atom in the universe?

I think I could count this breakfast as personally complete on some vague emotional + psychological level if I were having it in a personal living area of my own squarely situated within an elegant urban area, such as a house, apartment, or permanent hotel room, and if there were a window from my eating area in this domicile providing me with a view of the outside urban area, whether the cross-section of urban area on which I enjoyed a personal view were a busy street, a serene street (in which someone were walking their dog), a city park, a brick wall constituting the back or side of another building. As long as faint morning light were entering through the window along with sound waves from running cars, chirping birds, kids playing soccer, or something like that. My living place should be nicely furnished in accordance with simplicity, creativity, and half-decent taste. And I would have my finger in a book from which I had become hopelessly distracted.

I have to go. Perhaps more on the character of this distraction later.

My bag and me.

The black satchel bag I regularly use was given to me from my father just before I was to galavant off to Russia for a few weeks this last summer.  I was in dire need of a quick-n-easy carry-on bag in which to carry my illegal weapons and russian novels, so my dad let me have this black satchel bag.  It is a promotional item for some computer-related company, 'ORACLE'; my dad got it at some convention for his work years ago.  Now I use this bag for all backpack-like functions.  I have it with me here.

CONTENTS OF BLACK SATCHEL BAG:

1. Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter

2. Deck of playing cards.

3. Toothbrush and toothpaste.

4. Loose papers.

5. Socks

6. Unopened glass bottle of Henry Weinhard's Vanilla Cream Gourmet Soda.

COMMENTS ON CONTENTS OF BLACK SATCHEL BAG:

1. This book is a 700+ page volume about systems, structures, machines, minds, etc.  I have a Splenda packet inserted at page 229 as a bookmark, which marks the end of a long section about typographical number theory, which is basically just basic first-order logic about numbers.

2. This deck of playing cards has a different drawing of a major English monarch on each card. The 7 of Hearts has a drawing of Charles II, upon whom the image of Captain Hook is based.

3. Colgate Cavity Protection.

4. These papers have a nice back-story.  I was reading in the library when this great idea for a table I could design struck me.  I was compelled to draw a picture of it, but I had no paper.  So, I began to scour the library for paper I could appropriate for my artistic purposes.  Poking my head into the copier room, I saw a large trash can that had the words "PAPER ONLY" written on the side of it, which I then promptly looted.  (I looted the trash can, not the words "PAPER ONLY".) Here is a quotation from the bit of scrap paper I am currently using as a drawing board: "Most people I meet will see my marital arrangements as an asset to my life or as a favorable comment on my likability, my competence, or my mental health."  My doodles on this piece of paper comprise many failed attempts to design a floorplan for a house after a Fibonacci Spiral.

5. I am not wearing any socks right now, but I have them in my bag just in case!

6. The bottle referenced above is now open.  Its contents are lukewarm and tastes like syrup.

Guess what I'm listening to.

I ♥

Don't Mess.

When I got up from my little library nook to answer my phone call from Louis, I left my computer sitting here, despite my fear of being robbed, burgled, etc.
However, as a criminal deterrent, I placed my copy of Gödel, Escher, Bach on top of my closed laptop, as if to say:

"Thieves of the Biola Library, here ye! Though I know you have no scruples against pilfering my expensive and valuable laptop, I know for certain that your sense of decency cannot bear to nudge my copy of Gödel, Escher, Bach an inch from where I have placed it. Thusly have I outwitted you by exploiting your moral weakness--by violently jabbing your ethical pressure points."

I also left the remains of my blueberry coffee cake.
And my wallet.

MESSAGE:

Louis, my phone died.
Luckily, however, I have a phone charger, and am recharging it (my phone, not my phone charger) presently.
Also, for whatever reason my ichat isn't working.

POW

I crack my elbows. To do this I throw a light punch at the air, which makes my elbow pop. It feels good.

Just recently, while sitting here, not working, I threw one such punch to my side without looking and realized that if a small child had been idling there I would have been done for.

Last Night's Walk: 1

While I was walking last night, I came to the bridge of creaky wooden planks that spans the 20-foot-wide, man-made, concrete ditch that I like so much. The lamp lights were emitting that nice dark yellow light and the wind was warm and tumultuous: not merely blowing hard, but blowing frantically hard, rapidly changing directions. My hair was subject to the wind; I let my locks toss and flick erratically like fire. I was walking slowly in my beat-up dress shoes, the bottoms of which clack as I walk. I saw the curvy path that led to the bridge, the bridge itself, and the curvy path that leads away from the bridge on the other side.

Walking towards this bridge I knew that I would soon be turning along the curvy path that leads to the bridge, I would then walk across the bridge itself, and then I would finally turn around the curvy path that leads away from the bridge on the other side. I tried my hardest to imagine my future selves and how they would look from my present vantage point as they came to the different points along my trajectory. I saw a queue of strolling selves; I saw their flickering hair and their dark cerulean sweaters. While doing this I myself came to turn along the curvy path that led to the bridge. Realizing my progress, I began to both try to think of how I would appear at the different locations in my trajectory to come and try to hold in mind what I did in fact look like at points I had previous occupied. I tried to imagine the different ways my figure in the yellow light would create shadows of different length and direction, and tried to imagine what those would look like from my present vantage point. As I walked across the wooden bridge, the clacks of my shoes meeting the creaks of the wood, I felt as if I were being watched. I was watching myself from back there, just before the curvy path that leads to the bridge. But I felt that I now had a privileged understanding--I had high ground--because I could imagine what I looked like back there, and I could imagine my previous mental states as well. I knew him more than he knew me. But as I was leaving the bridge I realized that my future self walking along the curvy path that leads away from the bridge would hold this leverage over me, and that I should take this into account as I imagined the figure he would cut as he walked along my trajectory. I also thought about all the versions of myself that had gone unaccounted for up until that point, the one's occupying the "in between" places, not quite at the curvy path, not quite to the wooden planks. Those elusive bastards. Now, moving along the curvy path that leads away from the bridge, I was that me who held leverage over the former me who was just leaving the bridge. I found that I did hold a privileged position over him, because I knew that he was thinking that I was thinking that he was thinking about me. But he didn't know that I was thinking about that. I scoffed at his feeble attempt to get the upper hand. I considered stopping so as to give myself time to outthink all the past me's and future me's that might enter into this contest of knowing, but I quickly decided against it--it would have been unsportsmanlike. As I was walking away from the whole scene, I turned back and smirked at all those selves, all those stages of me, poised in an elaborate network of consciousness. I thought of that first me who had initially seen the wooden bridge enter his field of vision, and how he seemed to have a superiority over the rest of us. I smirked at him. I smirked at myself. He must have known all this would happen, and that it would all feel somehow incomplete and incompletable at the end--yet inevitable. I turned my head away to look at the path left for me to walk, ignoring the sensation of my many eyes scanning the back of my head.

A Grammar and Style of Pragmatics.

“Typographical usage dictates that the comma be inside the [quotation] marks, though logically it often seems not to belong there.”
- E. B. White, The Elements of Style

In editing, as I have said, I run into stylistic quandaries now and then. In this blog post I will briefly relate one such problem and the larger personal/psychological problem to which it has led.

In answer to the question "Where do you, Jon, put commas and periods in relation to quotation marks?" the word with which I respond is "depends". Sometimes the sentence (fragment) with which I respond is "Depends."

I place commas and periods within quotation marks when they are part of the quoted object; I leave them nestled outside the quotation marks when they are not part of the quoted object. This is in general accordance with "British Style", but not "Chicago Style". It makes sense to do things this way; it makes simple sense.

White, however, and the divine word of The Chicago Manual of Style say that despite its sensibility, for reasons to do with standard usage and grammatical common law, the periods and commas gotta stay inside. They cannot come out to play.

I have been editing a huge document, abiding by my punctuation preference. A little while ago I double-checked the Chicago Manual to make sure I was in line with it in doing so. I was not. The three words in the previous sentence are "I", "was", and "not". However, I am hired to edit the documents I do in accordance with Chicago Style. As such, I am forced against my will to scan the document over and re-edit my editing, changing everything back to the unintuitive way outlined by Chicago.

Emotionally depressing.
Mentally exhausting.
A hassle.

Let me use this unfortunate development as a figurative springboard for a brief thought. My thought is this: I want to be fastidious in my grammar, not because "them's the rules", but rather because I have taken upon myself a set of guidelines that make sense to me. I want my use of language to facilitate clarity and precision and perspicacity, etc., and I want to follow whatever rules of grammar, usage, style, etc., that will facilitate these facilitations.

That's it. A Grammar and Style of Pragmatics.

While writing this blog post,

[the following was written a week or so ago]

Staring out the screen door into the backyard, I realize that I like staring out the screen door into the backyard. Realizing this, I realize that I have realized this, and that I like staring out the screen door into the backyard. Figuring out why I might like staring out the screen door into the backyard, I figure out that I might like staring out the screen door into the backyard because, as I stare out the screen door into the backyard, the netting of the screen door partitions my visual field into many many little squares, which represent to me cells or pixels or basic units of my visual field. I think to myself, while thinking to myself about how I'd like to manipulate these cells or pixels or basic units of my visual field in a variety of ways, about how I'd like to manipulate these cells or pixels or basic units of my visual field in a variety of ways. I'd like to separate them from each other, throw them into a hat, mix them up, and then have my parents collect the bits and then reconstruct my present visual field as if it were a very detailed jigsaw puzzle, much like those less detailed jigsaw puzzles my parents like to reconstruct on New Years Eve. I'd like to name each of the little bits, the little cells. First I'd name them boring things like A-23, D-2, AAP-435, etc., but then I would rename them more traditional and desirable names like Walter, Arthur, Marvel, Alexander, Quinn, Casper, Dexter, Baxter, Duncan, Rupert, Bertram, Doyle, etc.
Viewing the world through the screen door, I want to believe that there are atomic parts to everything, and the view through the screen door gives me false hope that everything, including my qualia, can be broken down to basic, unbreakable frames. Also a bearer of false hope in this sense, Microsoft Paint is a bearer of false hope in this sense, too.

In memorium, Upright P.S.H. Impersonator.

Starbucks. 9:01PM, Tuesday.

There is a man who is the spitting image of Phillip Seymour Hoffman sitting in here. His profile is that of P.S.H. He is clearly working through a personal Bible study. He may have a concordance. He had a drink that was red and fruity, but it's gone now; he drank it away. Once or twice he has talked to people on his bluetooth device. He looks just like Phillip Seymour Hoffman talking on a bluetooth device.

HE GOT UP AND WALKED AROUND AND HAS THE SAME PHYSICAL DIMENSIONS OF TWEEDLE-DEE OR TWEEDLE-DUM. NOT KIDDING. HE WADDLED AROUND.

Man, that guy is awesome.

In memorium, Senior Starbucks Executive.

It is 7:05 PM on Tuesday at Starbucks in Rancho Cucamonga, California.

Sitting at a big table in the middle of the coffee shop there is an elderly woman: 60 years or older. She has admirably large orange hair and her hands are bedecked with many gold rings.

Set up at her table she has nothing less than a full-blown workstation.
She has a laptop, papers, office supplies, a hug briefcase, a purse, an entire box of Tazo teabags, a day-of-the-week vitamin container, and a printer. A PRINTER.