Thursday, December 6, 2012

Monday, December 3, 2012

In / O u t

can you see the letters on the dreidel?

do you understand the floats and memes?

connect complete control between the letters

on the dreidel, do you understand?

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

“When we first got married, we made a pact. It was this: In our life together, it was decided I would make all of the big decisions and my wife would make all of the little decisions. For fifty years, we have held true to that agreement. I believe that is the reason for the success in our marriage. However, the strange thing is that in fifty years, there hasn’t been one big decision.”

-Albert Einstein

Source: http://xkcd.com/917

Do you wash your hands before or after you buckle your belt? It’s important to remain consistent.

Tongue Twister: British citizenship

You can turn any work of fiction into nonfiction by encasing the text in quotes and adding “someone wrote” at the end.

Analysis Paralysis

RFD: The instrument used to measure one’s shoe size is named the Brannock Device.

A bed sunken into the carpet that rises slowly like a clock’s hand from 9 to 12. By the time you’re standing, it’s time to wake up.

Bohemian Rhapsody is about “The Stranger” by Camus.

It's nice to wake up hungry and eat.

A birthday card is belated, a flight is delayed, a project is running behind schedule, a student is late.

The ampersand was derived by squishing together “e” and “t.”

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

The Fall

Monday, October 1, 2012

Kangaroos

“I drew an octopus cause it has eight legs and they all swim like this – whoosh!” Billy shot out his arms and blew bubbles, his dungarees rose toward his belly button.

“Ahh hahaha,” Joe grinned and giggled. “I drew a penguin.” He picked up his penguin and held it out with both hands. Rosy cheek smile end to end.

“You want a candy?”

Joe’s eyes widened. “Whacha got?”

Billy reached in his pocket and palmed a piece of chocolate, unwrapped and really good-looking.

“Whoa! Where’d ya get that?”

“My mom gave it to me before I got here cause my sister is sick and she wanted candy and my mom went to Super Fresh and got it and gave it to me.”

Joe started giggling, then Billy started too. “Toss it to me,” Joe said, taking a couple steps back.

Billy tossed it - his arc a little too high, the chocolate hit the ground. “Hurry up and grab it!”

Joe scrambled to the ground and tried to grab the chocolate. It slid from his fingers as he tried to scoop the sides.

“Five second rule!”

He tried again, but the chocolate slid away. He grabbed it next try and stood up, outstretching his arm and staring at the chocolate.

Billy shook his head. “I think that was more than five seconds.”

“It’s ten second rule! I got ten seconds to grab it.”

“Isn’t it five second rule?”

“No, it’s ten second rule.” Joe bended his arm in and looked at the chocolate up close. “My sister dropped a pretzel on the ground and then she ate it cause she said it was ten seconds and that was fine because of the ten second rule.”

“Oh, ok.” Billy giggled. “You wanna draw a kangaroo with me?”

“Yeah I love kangaroos.”

“Kangaroos are my favorite animal. So are frogs.”

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Good Posture

I'm the most interesting person I know. I don't mean that in a snobby way, exactly. I just have clearer access to my thoughts than anyone else's. My mind is manifest, all others are separated by various degrees of opacity. I'm sure Eytan has a running mentalese narrative in his head throughout the day, but most of the time I don't know if he's solving the problem or beating up halos. Occasionally he'll say something reflective, but my eyes aren't always in sync with the air waves exuding the meaning in question. And later I'm leaving the most interesting person I know. I have clearer access to my thoughts. The mentalese narrative in my head, I don't know, most of the time. Something reflecting, the most interesting person I know. And later I'm leaving the most interesting person I know. Mentalese, reflecting, leaving. Interesting.

New Orleans, August

What would it be like to be colorblind and have synesthesia?

Tally marks are different in China.

I wish “tl;dr” was more-widely used – like, at the end of at textbook chapter.

A random binary number generator costs exactly one cent.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

New York City, July

“One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.”

Bertrand Russell

“Withdrawing in disgust is not the same thing as apathy.”

Slackers, Richard Linklater

Havre de Grace, June

Maybe the big corporations are anonymously donating large sums of money to charitable causes, but don’t want to receive credit because of their humility.

You don’t need money to make it out of the hood. That is, if you don’t mind being homeless.

Most real numbers are transcendental.

In the U.S., 82% of Catholics think that birth control is morally acceptable.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Reflections (Fade)

My whole life listening to music
And now, the sounds drowned in silence.
I can hear my heart - it's always been there, beating
but I never noticed it til just now.

My whole life is a mirror,
I'm nothing more than me.
Writing poetry by myself, about myself
Listening to music and schoolchildren on friday afternoons.
Thinking,
laughing occasionally,
Remembering to bring my car keys before you close the door.

My whole life will end
like light as it approaches and is swallowed by
a black hole - insipid, uncaring
as a young couple making love,
a door ajar, a baby rests in the crib.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Oh, Inverted World never gets old.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Gasoline Hands: A Meditation

Inhale, exhale.

Twisting patterns of poetry illusively decorated the room, augmenting its form into perpendicular space. Colors unseen, shifting spots with ideas unthought. Unsure of where I stood, or where I was standing, I sat; soon found space beneath the patterns for personal poetry. My words were meshed into sounds of the atmosphere, lexical menagerie to send me away. Living wisps of wonder and the totality of what is. The doorbell rang.

“Hi, sir, how are you doing today?” Short legs, long hair. Her pleated skirt had probably been ironed earlier in the day. What time was it anyway? Her nervous smile met mine.

I thought about her question, really tried to take it in. “Well, I’m a little confused. I had a thought sitting in my head and when you rang the doorbell, it just disappeared.”

“Ooh, that’s a bummer. I’m really sorry about that.”

“No, I mean, it’s not your fault. It’s not like you rang the doorbell just so I would forget what I was –“

Thinking. Thoughts, default value, like the null hypothesis of an experiment. Avant-garde Andy Warhol free word association. The ghost of Jimi Hendrix lives in my shirt pocket. And time drags on slowly as if you waited eight minutes before reading the next paragraph, unaffected by me breaking the fourth wall. What wall? The walls don’t exist, the lines are not really there.

I can’t seem to compose a sensible or linear plot. My attempts at storytelling are futile because of my underlying belief that there are no stories, just things that happen. To craft a story arc is to romanticize reality, to wrap a bow on a pile of paperwork. So I’m left stewing in contradictions; self-reference enslaves me. The result is an unnecessary interruption in an unnecessary story that exists only if you let it.

Instinctive nothing to light and sound. The transformation of duplicity, mental activity molded into personhood. We are what we think we are, to ourselves. I thought. It had been a long day and I was exhausted but not sleepy. It never ends; each day with myself, the only person I know. I thought.

“Thinking?”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“That’s what you were thinking? The word ‘thinking’?”

“No. Well, yes. But that’s not what I forgot I was thinking. Er, that was just a word I forgot to say.”

She looked confused.

“So what brings you here, exactly?”

“Does this dog look familiar to you?” She handed me a picture of a white cocker spaniel with a red collar.

My chest froze. “Yeah, I saw him earlier today, I think. He was lying on the grass in my front yard.”

“Really?” She moved closer; I came outside. “What happened to him?”

If I dropped her eyes, they might have shattered on the cement. “Well,” I swallowed the saliva in my throat, “the dog had a stick in its mouth and ran it over to me. So I picked it up and threw it into the street. The dog ran after it and grabbed it –”

Her stare stifled.

“A car hit your dog. It’s dead.”

Woman in elevator: Good morning.

Man in elevator: My life is slowly falling apart.

Sadlkuhdas;gha diihdl ;nsgio wher th hll is r u srius ths can’t be hap-en-ing alkushgakulha! Baseball, styrofoam, several species of small furry animals: things you might think about to delay ejaculation or mental breakdown.

She lit like fire and exPLODED onto the street as neighbors were staring and mailboxes opened to cries of her body all covered in mucus. “Red, red, red!” “Go, go,go!” Ah-ooooooh. And whoosh went the breeze when her knees got untangled and ran with her curls to the pulse of her heart.

It never ends – this feeling. The guilt that you get in the pit of your chest is the same as the sweat beads that fall from the nape of your neck. Then suddenly I’m back on the toilet, hand poised over a trash can collecting the nail clippings as they fall from my fingers.

“Of course I was nervous; it was the first day of school.”

“So how’d it go?”

“It was awful. My mom told me ‘Just be yourself,’ but what does that mean to a five-year-old? I didn’t know who I was, hell I still don’t. I was on the verge of nervous incapacitation the whole time. My only break was recess when I could hide under the dinosaur slide and carefully ascertain the biological composition of the terrain.”

“And what did you conclude?”

“It was mulch.”

I’m driving – about to enter the highway from an unrecognizable exit. Why am I here? I’m tired, it’s hot, Paul McCartney is singing about fixing a hole. Like the moment after waking up from a dream, I am suspended in time and unaware of where I came from or where I’m going. I have to write this down.

“My grandmother died yesterday.”

I looked up; she was staring at the grass. “How old was she?”

“87.”

“Oh.” I sighed contemplatively. “Is there gonna be a funeral?”

“No, not really. My parents are going to have her cremated and then buried, with just a few people there.” She took a bite of her sandwich.

“The burial kinda defeats the point of the cremation, doesn’t it?”

Inhale, exhale. “Yeah, I guess… I want to be cremated when I die.”

“What difference does it make? It’s not like you’re gonna be there.” I scooped up some apple sauce and ate it. “I guess that way you don’t have to worry about being buried alive. You’d probably die faster in the incinerator than by suffocating in a coffin.”

She giggled.

Houses were paperclips and she fit inside an envelope. Sky stormed compulsively, unyieldingly. Piercing cacophony bent around alleyways into and out of her ear canals. Eventually, everything was engulfed in flames.

I went back inside and locked the door. It was cooler and darker than it had been moments earlier. The air was electric and poetry began to radiate throughout the house, increasing in intensity inside of the kitchen. Bloop, bloop bloop. Bloop, bloop bloop. The faucet was leaking. I pulled a bowl out of the cabinet and put it in the sink. Bop, bop bop. Bop, bop bop. Percussive brass escaped the refrigerator. Booooom, booooom, booooom. Bop, bop bop. Booooom, booooom, booooom. I opened up the oven and pulled out my violin, sizzling as I touched the bow to the strings. Wailing and whooshing in tune with the airwaves, the sound of the fiddle melted the provolone.

Woman: Uh… I’m sorry to hear that.

Man: What are you talking about?

Woman: (confused look)

Beat.

Woman: I’m sorry that your life is falling apart.

Man: Is this some kind of a joke or something?

There’s no need to retrace your steps. Do I have to spell this out for you? There is no story here. Turn around right now and concentrate on what you see. What is happening? That is the only meaning you will find.

And then I remembered – the bowl overflowing, I placed on the floor.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

After Identity

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”

-Unconfirmed

I was always a smooth peanut butter kid. Easy to spread, pleasant to eat. The alternative - chunky peanut butter - was gross. Who would want chunks in their peanut butter? It reminded me of vomit, and that was something I didn't need on a slice of white bread with milk. For two decades, smooth peanut butter was what I ate. Skippy, Jif, whatever. The brand was not so important to me.

Then, a couple months ago, I had an eye-opening revelation at the grocery store. I saw the two types of peanut butter next to each other in the aisle and instinctively went for the smooth. But mid-grab, I realized something: I had never actually tried chunky peanut butter. I had grown up exclusively on smooth, and had neglected to give chunky a chance. My bias against chunky was unfounded. So, being the open-minded egalitarian that I am, I opted for a change. Worst case scenario, I just wasted a few bucks.

The first pb&j I made with chunky confirmed my recent suspicions; chunky is really good. It has a more stimulating texture than smooth, and offers a slightly different taste experience as a result. I am currently eating a slice of bread with chunky and raisins. Ignorant prejudice is an unseen hindrance.

Great Falls

Melville Dewey, creator of the Dewey Decimal System, changed the spelling of his name to Melvil Dui to eliminate redundancy.

Creamsicle yogurt would taste delicious.

I thought of a surefire way to become famous: attach a camera to your head and put a live 24 hour stream online. You don’t even have to do anything extraordinary; just live normally, but allow anyone to access it all the time. This represents the shifting views that society has with privacy as we move into the information age, constantly uploading data onto the internet. Who you are is being defined by the information that represents you online. Your “real” identity is becoming more congruent with your online identity.

I read a lot of books but very few second chapters.

Elevator Algorithms

I saw an eyelash in my drink. At first I was grossed out, but then I reasoned that it was probably my eyelash, so I continued to sip. Then I wondered if my eyelash is really more sanitary than anyone else’s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Getting_to_Philosophy (figure it out)

Why aren’t individual portions of triscuits available in vending machines?

When a sea squirt finds a suitable surface to cling to, it gets rid of its nervous system because it doesn’t need it any more.

Reading: Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson

Listening to: Fun Trick Noisemaker by The Apples In Stereo

Working on: A short story

Eating: (see above)

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Moscow & Chicago

“I wish there was a hipster Facebook... 12 million people like this, I’m not gonna like it. That’s way too many people.”

-Kyle

Consumer Culture

It’s very possible that I’m forgetting something right now. Actually, I’m definitely forgetting a bunch of stuff, always.

Can I just change my signature? Or is there some paperwork I have to fill out first. Like when you want to change your password on a website, you have to type in your old password and then your new one. I’m imagining a form with a space for “old signature” and “new signature.”

I have an idea for a movie: stop being a movie, being a human is way cooler.

The Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever

Olive oil is considered “virgin” if it has not received any chemical treatment.

Scumbag Hume

It is vacuous to say “relatively” without a reference point.

When you’re in traffic and you finally get to your exit and turn out of it, it’s like when you’re a little kid at school and your mom picks you up and you get to leave class.

JFK, CS Lewis, and Aldous Huxley died on the same day.

Discreet vs. Discrete

Get phone sex operators to conduct telephone surveys – they would be good at soliciting respondents.

Reading: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami

Listening to: The King is Dead by The Decemberists

Watching: Louie

Eating: Colby Cheez-its

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Credo Quia Absurdum

“A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”

-Friedrich Nietzsche

Source

“Last morning” isn’t really a phrase.

Have you read the Starr Report?

Presumably clergymen pass beggars on the street and don’t give money to all of them. I wonder how they internally rationalize this.

Existentialism is a humanism only by way of individualism.

There is no record of when people first started wearing hats.

There was a kid that read my mind and knew all my thoughts. I woke up and realized that it was all in my head. Then, I went back to sleep.

How do you clean bar soap when it gets dirty?

There should be a gender-neutral pronoun.

In 1992, a study by Stack and Gundlach found a positive correlation between the amount of radio airtime devoted to country music and the white suicide rate.

The speed of light is exactly 299,792,458 meters per second.

Reading: Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett

Listening to: On Avery Island by Neutral Milk Hotel

Watching: Arrested Development

Eating: Sesame noodles with chicken and broccoli

Friday, June 1, 2012

Tantric Architecture

“Heaven is only three feet above your head.”

-Chinese Proverb

It's His Show

When people tell me that I’m funny, I always become conscious of the fact that they think I’m funny and I feel pressure to remain funny. This usually results in me trying to force funny, which never works.

Every time you forget something, someone else thinks of it.

Has anyone asked you this question before?

Gay Lisp

I couldn’t even give a vague figure as to how often I get déjà vu, but it seems to happen on a consistent basis. Recently I’ve been getting déjà vu in which I’ve gotten déjà vu before. It’s creepy.

Mustaches are bizarre from an evolutionary point of view. Then again, so are picture frames, ferris wheels, and most other things.

I use the word “therefore” way more in academic papers than in everyday speech.

Advertisers don’t lie, they create truth.

When you memorize something, you know it “by heart.” Doesn’t “by head” make more sense?

Sometimes when I’m picking out what underwear I’m going to wear for the day, I’ll change my mind last minute and pretend that this decision will change the rest of my life.

“It’s been real.”

“Nothing’s real. Remember last night?”

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Poems from the Road

Barcelona

Caterpillars ambling and blue waves crashing

The beach is regarded as sun shiny bliss

As Jorge serves caffe my mind is distracted,

Catch wind like the palm trees swaying above

Amsterdam

Sinuous yeah

There is a lot of activity

Concentrate:

to the birds gone away

Acting like myself is who I know

To be like the birds and escape

Croatia

Even space gets lost in the foothills

and language turns to mush, not needed much

like history without flags or a cannon that will not fire,

still admired

because sometimes bok means simply bok

Munich

Impressions swirl colors canvassing the valley

old and new, left and right

Don't cross the street until the light says it's ok.

The spectrum forms into a point,

clarity is kept in the pockets of the people

Prague

She was going down as I was going up

A strudel smile and four eyes on a tray

served to the cold

busy streets remembering when the streetcars were new.

We continued contact,

Unable to let go as we parted

A dog whining upstairs to its teddy bear

as the strudel gets cold on the table

Da Pamphili, io Parto di Roma

I've worn all my clothes

Wait - the stove's in celcius

They didn't fucking do the dishes

Munich and Croatia, what about you?

Language exchange,

Sono studente

pomodoro, allora, ragazzi,

va bene

6 ft high, like the letters on San Pietro

Wait, hold on; I gotta pee

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Word

Sunday, April 8, 2012

The Short Story

“Story-writing isn’t plot-driven, it’s idea-driven. And it often references itself on multiple levels,” says the writer. “’The Short Story’ is a perfect example of this. From the very beginning, the reader is pulled along by the writer’s use of self-reference. He breaks the fourth wall implicitly through the use of direct quotations that address the reader.”

The reader continues reading the story, at first confused by the writer’s unorthodox narration, but then enlightened as to the true nature of the text.

The writer says, “There’s more to this story than you know. But please, continue, because I wrote this story for a reason. I felt uneasy laying my thoughts down on paper, but I decided to do it because if I didn’t, this wouldn’t exist. I wouldn’t exist, you wouldn’t exist. There would be nothing.”

As the reader anxiously treads from word to word, he gets a small urge to scratch an itch.

“The story is enjoyable, though at times obfuscated and tangential,” the writer elaborates. “The writer talks about the infinite regress that occurs when he discusses when the writer talks about infinite regresses. Two mirrors facing each other, an infinity of infinities.”

Curiously, the reader re-reads the last bit about infinite regresses because the writer asks him to, implicitly. Then he re-reads the sentence about re-reading the last bit about infinite regresses, and finally he re-reads the sentence about re-reading that.

The writer continues. “The reader still has autonomy while reading the story. He is able to ignore the writer’s suggestions, and he is aware of this ability. The writer’s goal is to convince the reader that the writer’s world is his own. This can be difficult because acknowledging the reader’s existence can bring him out of the story. However, the writer is not hoping to suck the reader into the world of the writer, but rather to show the reader that the world of the writer already exists in his own world. They are one and the same.”

Although the writer seems relatively coherent, the reader is unsure of what to make of the story. But there’s no way he is going to stop reading now; the reader feels obligated to keep going.

“The reader thinks about the story but also about himself, and about the writer,” says the writer. “Intermittently, the reader thinks about random things that are unrelated to the story, like something that the writer doesn’t describe. But most often, while going through the story, the reader thinks about things that are related to it, or about the story itself.”

The reader stops reading what the writer says, and then starts reading it again.

“The plot in the story is limited,” says the writer, “but it is enough to convey a message and hint at larger themes, many of which are rife with plots of their own. In effect, the plot of the story is limited to the imagination of the writer and the reader, working together to create meaning. The story does not exist in a vacuum, solely to analyze its imagery in relation to its characters.”

The reader will more clearly understand the writer with the use of a familiar example.

“Two mirrors facing each other form a closed circuit on the outside, but contain immeasurable possibility within. The reader and the writer can be interpreted similarly, reflecting each other to the point where they are inseparable – their worlds collide. Eventually, the mirrors become mere containers for creative light, bouncing forever and wherever as the radiation transcends its original dichotomy.”

This text is starting to seem more poetic to the reader, who is more comfortable now (than in the near future) because of his increased grasp of the story.

“He is able to float through sentences with cruise control retinas, somewhat unaware of the aforementioned, currently-involved nuisances, because of his familiarity with the story.” Even the title “The Short Story” now resides in the front of the reader’s concentration, because it was mentioned again.

You are going to die.

Friday, March 16, 2012

I Feel Like An Unmade Bed

This is my 100th SITP blog post. Damn. I created this blog freshman year, sitting in the common room of The Ocho because a few friends made blogs also. I never thought that I would keep this going for 2 1/2 years, but I'm really glad that I did. Looking back at my earlier entries is like opening up a short-term time capsule and discovering a photo of myself when I had long grimy hair. Actually, I still have long grimy hair. But I think I'm gonna cut it tomorrow because I'm about to head to Croatia for spring break, and I heard that the cool Croatians all have short hair.

I just re-read the previous paragraph and am in minor disbelief. If you told me all this when I was 18, I never would have believed it.

I had been planning on doing something special for the 100th post, like throwing a walrus party or something. But in order to do that, I would first have to find out what that means and then I would have to actually set it up. Maybe for the 200th post. I think I'm just gonna chill on the walrus party for now.

Today I went inside the Colosseum and the Forum with Ryan and Travis.

I would really like to write something wholly coherent and meaningful, but my mind itches whenever I try to concentrate and plan out my thoughts. It's easier and more realistic to type the words as they take shape; unfortunately, this results in several quasi-paragraphs of incompletely intersecting ideas and aspirations. And sometimes phrases that don't make sense, like several quasi-paragraphs of incompletely intersecting ideas and aspirations. And repitition. Also, walrus parties.

Naples

Pamphili (Rome)

Florence

Naples

Amsterdam

Sunday, February 26, 2012

But Really it Doesn't Matter

Stale thoughts/Housekeeping

It’s unusual that most truck drivers aren’t multilingual, considering that they have countless hours to listen to language-learning cds.

Do I know stuff more than Socrates did back in the day?

Sunglasses company: Tinted Vision

Is there a law that says don’t break the law? If not, then can’t we break them?

My age group always matters to me the most.

What does it mean to be mature? Is it necessarily a good thing to be mature for your age?

An emergency is something that emerges.

We read Mark Twain in school and the teacher had to explain to us that it was ok to say “nigger” when reading the text in class because it was in the context of the story. There was always one kid who didn’t feel comfortable saying it. He probably became the most racist one in the class.

I see so many people, but so few pregnant women.

RFD: 14.5% of men are at least 6 feet tall; 58% of Fortune 500 CEOs are at least 6 feet tall

It feels good to not be nervous.

If Martians abducted Seinfeld and let him perform stand up, they wouldn’t think he was very funny.

Soundtrack