Author: shawn

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

preserving in silence what should be preserved in formaldehyde?
no, that’s just a googly-eyed.
the words, it’s true, sputter about the walk just everywhere. and create a vast babble (babel?) that is difficult to ignore. or so it is said.

I just finished reading Limbo by Bernard Wolfe the other day. It is a truly bizarre book. I’m not even really sure how to begin describing this book.

A dystopian science fiction novel that creates and explores an extended metaphor of amputation, lobotomy, castration and cybernetics. It’s the story of a disaffected military doctor who goes AWOL during World War III and returns 18 years later to discover that a world society has been created based on writings that he considered to be a joke. A so-called pacifist society which is led by people who have voluntarily amputated their own limbs and replaced them with much improved cybernetic limbs.

The writing in this book is… feverish and so incredibly pun-heavy. If the book weren’t so grim, I might have enjoyed it more. Also, there is quite a bit of sexual weirdness… I don’t really know what else to say. Wouldn’t really recommend it, but it IS one of the strangest books I have ever had the fortune to read. If extremely weirdly written science fiction is your bag, go for it!

I did, however, find some places where you can read about it, if you so choose:
Ray Davis, he of the Bellona Times website, writes a bit about the sexual weirdness in this book, as well as related science fictional tomes.

I’m not sure who this is, but he (?) seems to like Bernard Wolfe quite a bit. Makes a good point though about out-of-print books and the public domain, though.

Some pretty kickass litcrit by N. Katherine Hayles of UCLA.

Processing.

I dabbled with programming in college (and I do mean dabble!) but I’ve always been fascinated by electronic, whatdoyoucallit, interactive, graphical art. This seems like a useful tool for that kind of thing. I may check it out, once it moves out of its “alpha” stage.

This is an article by Jim Wallis, who is the editor of Sojourners, a Christian magazine.
(Stay with me though.)

Here’s a sample, that may give you an idea of the flavor of this article:

In Christian theology, it is not nations that rid the world of evil?they are too often caught up in complicated webs of political power, economic interests, cultural clashes, and nationalist dreams. The confrontation with evil is a role reserved for God, and for the people of God when they faithfully exercise moral conscience. But God has not given the responsibility for overcoming evil to a nation-state, much less to a superpower with enormous wealth and particular national interests. To confuse the role of God with that of the American nation, as George Bush seems to do, is a serious theological error that some might say borders on idolatry or blasphemy.

To understand where this President is coming from–to transcend over-simplistic whatsits–I think that it’s useful to attempt to interpret (as one would faithfully interpret a text) the language coming out of the White House. It seems to me that Jim Wallis does a pretty good job here.

(I had noticed the “wonder-working” phrase and had understood the reference, but had been pretty confused by its usage in the phrase: “The need is great. Yet there’s power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people.” Rhetorical excess, or dangerously unhinged theology?)

comickal madness!

(beworned: this is a very large muffin for your thin craws to slallow!)

O, take a look at these brilliant color photogs!