Author: shawn

Pretty Boohbah

…stumbled on this little tidpit while doing some platypus research:

The Fantastically Baffling Story of the Greatest Time-Space Traveler That Ever Lived: Rip Tapioca, Marshal of the Time Stream and Leader of the Semi-Intelligent Cat Toys of Arcturus-5, With His Sidekick George of the Gelatin-Brains

other than that, not much new in the world of platypi, sadly enough. i almost went looking for new armadillo things. but that’s an old symbol, wanting dusting and a new coat of paint.

imagine: the www: a giant, badly-catalogued used bookstore with lots of errata and whatsits stuffed between the pages of books that had their pages cut out in order to store pistolas and gin and carrots. better than a web, or a wave, or a munchkin, “”””super(SNEER)highway””””…

it’s a bookstore that has parts of it constantly burning down too. and other parts being renovated at great speed. with lots of poorly chosen color and pattern combinations. art deco meets pastel heaven meets warren beatty on crack, or something.

Well, they can’t plead ignorance of Iraq’s national cultural treasures.
This article describes a memo that the Pentagon’s Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) sent to senior commanders of the Iraqi war two weeks before the fall of Baghdad about the need to secure Iraqi cultural antiquities.

I’ve added links recently of two websites that I feel should get some mention. (I’ve been reading them both off and on for some time now.)

Making Light I mentioned earlier today. Very well researched and thoughtful.

The Raven is one of the legion of salon blogs out there. If I had to describe this in one word, I’d be tempted to say, “pithy”, but I’m not certain that would do it justice.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden of Making Light (or, maybe, Making Light of Teresa Nielsen Hayden?) writes movingly of the profound loss that was the burning of the Iraqi National Library. My great-uncle would be weeping in his beer, I think, were he still alive. He devoted his life to the exploration and preservation of those ancient documents which were most likely housed in that library.

I don’t even have words for the kind of grief that is. I am not even able, quite, to fathom it myself. Let alone put it into words. It’s the kind of thing that I have been waking up in the night thinking about. (And my dreams are full of books…) It troubles me that this news has affected me far more than anything else coming out of Iraq…

Perhaps photography has been around longer than we think, hmm?

“When silver is melted, some small lead-colored particles remain at the bottom of the recipient. If these particles are taken and mixed with animal resin, a thick solution will be obtained which must be poured into a recipient where light does not penetrate.

Then, in absolute darkness, a metallic plate can be impregnated with this solution and is then ready upon exposure to the sun’s rays to record the contours of any object that is placed upon it.**”
**Texts found in 1925 by the Catalan historian Pedro Pl?. They were found in the regional library in Granada amongst manuscripts from Alexandria

…wandering around a bookstore (a loop around a core, as though walking inside of a doughnot) pulling random books from shelves and wandering… found a book by a famed philosopher (greek, roman, chinese?) and read it all. CHOMP. left the leavings on the floor… digested argument… (though can’t remember it now. but recollect that it had something to do with some inherent nature of THINGS) mulled over book just read… found another title. this a satiric rebuttal of the original (in penguin-form) full of heartless glee which also CHOMP consuming… contained both in head simulcast… staggered? or enjoying the fullness of brain? this bookstore was abandoned: they didn’t mind the book-consumption… the only people were found in the urination room. where the dream…

What is the essence of a face? Perhaps this is wishful thinking, but what if the increasing digitalization of the representation of identity (in all its many forms, be it: face, fingerprints, DNA, etc.) enables people to bind that representation more tightly to what makes them THEM.

For example, computerized textual analysis now allows for the identification of anonymous authors simply by the statistical preponderance of word usage and grammatical structure. Is this merely another way to identify someone? Or does it express something a little more wonderful? Doesn’t it rather suggest that writing is a unique way to experience the (temporary?) linguistic patterns in someone else’s brain?

Okay, so that was a tangent.

People, in general, don’t walk down the street wearing masks. Socially, there is value in recognizing and being recognized. Why would this not be true also in the “online’ universe? What would be the impact of individuals being able to take ownership of their own genetic code, for example?

…chronic restriction of sleep to 6 h or less per night produced cognitive performance deficits equivalent to up to 2 nights of total sleep deprivation…

This might explain some things. Such as, the mammoth coffee consumption by yours truly and flocks and scores of people everywhere. Among other things. Just thinking about all of those sleep deprived drivers zooming around makes my neck hair curl. Ponder the miracle there.

Never much liked the spidery things. All their wavery arms and their tendrical legs. Oh, and their mandibulistic and bombastical skittering to and fro. Yeah, there’s a certain amount of nightmare stuff leftover from past days of childish womp.

So, there’s something to be said for misliking bees. Bees being things with stingers. But methinks honey is a glorious nectar from which to drink.

Gnaw Gnaw the honeycomb, i go. Grumble grumble, goes the belly: it’s always eating processed sugar these days and no NONO honey to speak of any old way (except for tuesdays, and maybe mondays and sundays?)

there’s so much webstuff or surging surf to keep the mind occupado. is it just a distraction? or is there a purposeful mindliness to this thing…?