Month: September 2003

The thing that I like about the internet, is that after I finish reading a book by a now-alive author, I can usually find some kind of interview with him online about his book(s). As in this one with George Saunders.

He wrote a collection of short stories called CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. It’s gregarious and funny and mostly about the strange world of strangely imagined amusement parks.

Sometimes the stories are more poignant. Sometimes they are more hilarious. They are all the time worth reading though.

Libraries are wonderful things, but if not: *

so many dribbles with a pencil, ya.

all the little daisy canaries are flooding the windowed place… peer through that glassy eye and point yer clickything, it’s all a conspiratorial spatzo. but that’s aoky, i’ve been through worse cornucopiae.

through all the dastardly perinados, yes. i mean, no. how to describe the brain’s furlough, i mean, where’s it vacationing these days, that forward pushing just wants to lounge in the barca and drink mohitos, or some damn thing. the rain’s come back, like gangbusters, and all my gang’s a-busted, if you know, and the nurachems are placid and gray like the heaving stomachlouds. (oh ho, heavens! didja eatcha sumpin ya din agree wid yer stoma? gi gi, cackle)

muy eyeballs string whip tears (rip that plasty paper, mate, grawl it right down ya middle!) and i’m pushing them back up there with my greazy thumbs (i smell the blood of an englishmun)

but so, the carps been heaping all over the docky quay. smellin up the hair, don’cha wanna rub some o that goop in yer air? good gor! what’s gotten into that chib? he’s gone all gray, his wife’s fallen into the sloop!

The VoxPolitics Manifesto is ostensibly for UK politics, but I think it applies just as well to the US.

It’s worth a read. Describes the ways in which technology is/may be changing the political process; the way the political conversation works, from a broadcast medium to a conversational medium. Exciting stuff!

It sketches the noises of g?missement for reproofs of the unit. If or possibly and for a loss of the material Swatchings of the alcohol. Because that hummel is not probably healthful with the lock of prosciutto 2 or, it is a viscosity and of the employee it has all the egg of the rock to sharpen of kerfluff in adherency, that that is. It possibly has the group possibly two people and of the identical camel of the water or he cereal of straw two and or in the mechanism, this he bites, when they are testimonials of the result, of who he does not cook with qualche.cosa steam one, it describes here in the situation, of which it obtains. It is long or other that one, of that one in him has point under the more the part of the error of the dresses, that if they transform, in the inferior piece the more, it he is special the antenna, or this external situation, that is smooth, cooked that won_t bugridden to the interior of the person, }dooddad{. Situation and he scapulars and error somebody of the hats and stingrays? They extinguish? The situation of the infantry of the age of descortesa yer cuddly, of which it aspired, 6 things, of which he is he sees, because one is new and lovable and and or extracts each meaning, that vibrates it! Letter E. Part commits width discovers eight, because of what_s raised more of the one than monk that they place, of that destruction of rest to perforate, where he leuda ways of the.delgados of continuation, or disposition, that is of the increase of the window of the smoke frusty glaringly, whom the high sustenation separates, the shower of the use of the wind of the brain? Possibly or it is possibly the only possible authorization of there_s he, this marine alga and }splendor{. to tentacular? Vista? Suspiciously, of that he who the interior transforms it into the bathtubs gave to the form stingray of the nostrilos of the chaos to that one he loss of the bubble of odore of rivoluziona of the alcohol, this its assembly, that comes from the angle silty (the cheiros and there_s not he method of the rifinito). And for clear heavy under value, requests of don_t arranges positives is nevertheless in external how much are hatters that of the cloudy ring the fact that the free company appreciates, that is complete he is and it is the question, totally, all interior badly transforms it into of the alcohol the time frees one more a company value than smattering? Or in his more inferior part of the luck of THE ONE of the situation and for the poetry possibly within our value and in the edition only, this it is, _ all the situations in they_re of the question of the illusion? Atrophy the hour, of the matrix of the pulse of the detonation of the atom, that is constant, takes off? And he is at the moment to this slow person, of who_s it is external and it has exhibition of where_s to thar the sun? In me to previously say to the totality with the fact those to the form to and the shutdown of the poetry that the person is instructd, the scale, of that apanha provisory, _ green free sundried this stops with the totality of the thing _ or in his type of the most inferior piece of the situation it eats and }sunrises{. Is the situation the surface under possible of meant more of the language?

Or There and Back Again

This could prove useful for me. (but maybe not for you)

An essay by a man who lost his sight at 3 years of age and partially regained it 43 years later.

A strong–though not intentional?–argument for stem cell research, if you ask me.

indulgent reproofs. or maybe some kind of swatching cloth. eh. like the hum of a bumblebee or two, stinging the temple with its sticky, yes. and all the honey goes kerfluff. in the doorway there are two straws or maybe a camel with two humps and the same could be said for testimonials, too, or maybe.

under or beneath the rug there are some bugs, so cute, so cuddly, with their six little legs waving and their scapulars and their thoraxes and all the stingrays or i mean antennae or some other bugridden dooddad. soft, that catchy bug won?t like yer impudent stare! er.

fulminating brews, blast the top off the brain burrow, climbing inside there, what?s to find? a dazzling array of delgados or frusty chimney barristers? or maybe there?s only some kind of froth, the remains of some high tide that came through once, depositing the silty mounds of seaweed and tentacular splendor. there?s that suspiciously disordered stingray smell (i mean fishy) making the head spin or maybe those nostrilos.

there are some kinds of mattering which don?t seem to matter much. and some other matterings which though smattering matter much more than other matters. mad hatters? or maybe they?re only illusory matters that matter to us and not real matters at all? what time is it, anyway? who?s late these days, with these atomic clocks reeling out their decimating time? where?s the sun in thar? sometimes you eat the bar?

verdant sundried? or i meant to say sunrises. what time is that anyway?

After deciding awhile ago to start writing brief descriptions of all the books that I’ve been reading, I quickly got behind. Here’s a stab at some catch-up:

A little more than a week ago, I finished reading
Robert S. De Ropp’s The Master Game: Pathways to Higher Consciousness. The basic premise of the book is that there are several “games” that people play in their lives: the survival game; the family game; “pig-in-the-trough” (the acquisition game); “cock-on-the-heap” (the fame game); and the master game.

According to de Ropp, the only game worth playing is the master game, or the pursuit of higher consciousness. I must admit, that I’m not entirely sure what he means by “higher consciousness”, but it seems to involve achieving a state of conscious, rather than unconscious, living. To move through life in a state of wakefulness rather than half-asleep.

He then goes on to describe several methods to achieve varying degrees of wakefulness, most of which involve some degree of living-in-the-momentness. He also describes personality/body types (somatic, cerebrotonic and viscerotonic –what is particularly bizarre about these words is that I had never come across them before and then, what do you know, they pop up all over the place in Limbo, which I spoke about before.) and the particular difficulties or stumbling blogs that each of these personality types tend to encounter in the master game.

He also discusses the false enlightenment which drugs represent and the need to avoid that particular trap. This is the section I found to be the most interesting.

Okay, it seemed like a lot of the same kinds of things I’ve been reading elsewhere, but the strange thing about de Ropp is that I can’t really find anything about him online. (Maybe I’m just not being thorough enough…) I found some casual references to him scattered about, such as here and here. It’s very strange. I wish that I could remember where I first came across de Ropp’s name… Perhaps it was in Rudolph Steiner’s book? I can remember…

*

these are the august rolypolies that brought them here:

right side of the brain
right brain
keepmedia
magnatune
right side of brain
science behind alien hand syndrome
right side brain
the right side of the brain
grant morrison interviews
how to unleash your right brain
strange instruments
achewood discussion
brain shiver
chomping
dance on the head of a pin
ear plugger
gazpacho soop
i hate centipedes
keepmedia. com
online etymology dictionary