David Mamet’s “Secret Names”

A charming essay by Threepenny: Mamet: “Secret Names”.

“And which of us has not had the experience of the old friend to whom we say, or who says to us: This is one friendship which will never end. And we feel that cold wind, whose premonition is, of course, fulfilled. Not only are there no atheists in foxholes, there are, I believe, no atheists anywhere. We just call our gods by different names. Indeed, psychotherapy may be nothing more than the attempt to find those names, and so challenge their power.”

Completely strange internet thing

Okay, I don’t really know that much about Poppy Z. Brite, except that she writes novels of the horror variety (and I’m broadly generalizing here, because I’ve never read any of them). Apparently, there’s a Livejournal fansite devoted to her, among other things. PBZ attempted to communicate with them and was told that she wasn’t welcome. In other words, she was kicked off her own fansite. The, ahem, beleaguered author tells the tale in great detail here: Dispatches from Tanganyika.

Very, very funny. In that quirky, internettish kind of way, of course.
(found via disinfo

colder than cider and that’s the truth

4’s begun a snapper and no mistake. near to snapped my nose clean off; it sure got red enough. and flurries of flurries all day long, staring out through that pressed glass. only back out in it once the sun’s tossed inside it’s warmer and the crouching shadows loom [outside of everything].

feeling that… or that is to say… there’s just some kind of painful twinge–brainwise, neurochemickular–when contemplating that staccato beat, that blood-thumping maestro, thoughtless, maybe, but not so… i mean, that is to, no faltering yet. and now with all the questions and probings and the rehashings of old records (can they be found)… a painful occlusion of the mind when pondering the coaldark side of things. is this the cowardice that makes
religiousers? if i went that route (sirrah?!) i’d want it to be otherwise, indeed.
feel that old flush of anxieters crouching by, cramping out that phone cord smile.
ulp…

this one wants the long dark to end and the sun to bring back its light…

gaggles and giggles aplent back on the farm, yessir. old frapperies seem to be fraying at last and maybe there’ll be those of us who’ll see some new kind of thing a’brewing. (toil, toil, boil and bubble…) there’s like, maybe?, some kind of transmigration or transmutation of metals going on here… some malkuthian paradox had to transplant that whatzit, or something. or, contrariwise, there’s nothing change, but we’re now looking at it through the curvature of a spoon, bouncing and bending that old light until things like NOSES, say, or FNORDernails seem bulbous and curved, reaching towards the center of it.

The Many Facets: a compelling metaphor for truth

There’s this fellow who writes a blog called Correction. An interesting fellow, who’s gone the long route from atheism to Christianity and is, as far as I can tell, training to be a minister… About which, more here.

He describes Truth as a jewel with many facets; each facet being a “truth”–Islam, Judaism, Scientific Whatzit (what’s the name for it? Scientific Rationality? You’d think that I would know this…) or what you will–through which a person might peer to get at the big bad Truth lurking in the center. “Through a glass darkly”, I think it goes, hmm?