| Xenophiles And Agoraphobes |
[21 Dec 2009|12:42pm] |
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jeery |
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Phantom_Load_-_When the Rain Glows |
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Of further interest... but to who, why, and for what purpose we've yet to uncover
( since no one is on LJ anymore I can do away with LJ-cut )
As dark matter envelops irradiating light with swift indifference galaxies merge and gaseous nebula intermingle producing epicurean eruptions, crash course comet collisions, and astrophysical avalanches of atomic audacity.
Edging themselves together to bridge the greater acausal void of hyperspace with the inconceivably supermassive elemental emptiness awaiting every meager molecule through the paradimensional never where. It is these fundamental particles or sub-microscopic packets of energy, so called quanta, that conform to our expectations of compositional substance.
The fully annotated post-script cliché runs a muck and then pushes itself well beyond the realm of normative behavioral writing exercise by running further than is humanly necessary. Maybe it's the endorphin rush. We don't know. No one ever bothered to ask. And, this is why the question of whether this is worth reporting or not escapes us because here we are reporting away nevertheless. There's simply no one to stop us.
The preceding phraseological clusterfuck from whence we came represents an obvious list-fetish inclination executing a massive core dump of all disposable inspirations, loose straggler memes, and stray thoughts expressed as titles, fragments of dialog, new slang, gags with no punchlines, pranks on literacy, lame comparison puns using doctored pronunciation keys, etc.
As far as list-fetishes, and any and all other textual vanities are concerned, visiting the auto-biographical section of my journal, specifically its interests page, may provide enthralled readers who can not seem to get enough of my circular logic and cultural inanities with a docket full of unnecessary information void of its original context and embellished beyond all sense of rationality.
Underwhelmed by nothingness as all internal systems are overloaded with vast empty pockets of data therewith containing veritable chasms of non-sense, chaos, and complex cellular puddles of consciousness flailing about existence at the cold-blooded primeval edge of a draconian proto-parthenogenesis initiating chain-reactions fringing the frayed limbs of more regulatory electro-chemical nerve activities and higher brain functions.
These enormous gaps in sensory experience cause vertigo, disorientation, loss of equilibrium, impairment of speech, hearing, and depth perception along with an overall blandness in taste and smell receptors. Added commentary, at this point, would be purely cosmetic, and quite frankly, that strain of extreme vanity is rather exhausting.
Population control methods and media-trafficking psychological operations
There is one problem amateur writers run into time and time again: imagining that their personal beliefs and the half dozen opinions shared by their sycophantic fair-weather associates actually stand for something other than a waste of refined paper products, dynamic story-telling abilities, or loosely strung together bandwidth-hogging static electro-fodder. When in stark contrast to one another the quantity of criticisms and insults are dwarfed by the generic quality of compliments borne of generic politeness, rest assured your material sucks.
Coming from experience in the business as a fourth generation pompous ass of the pen's mighty fountain splash I should warn any of you would-be publishers, poets, and half baked pot-headed think-it-alls that the next piece of explicitly poignant writing you'll be filling out is most likely your chapter 11 papers. They're the ones where all your shit is arbitrarily thrown onto the sidewalk and the treasury department sees fit to seize all your assets from your stereo and your beloved PC to your iron clad cookware and your salt-water fish tank.
Luckily no one wants the waterbed you bought eighteen years ago nor can any moving company be bothered to disassemble it so it's yours for good. However presumptuous and rude these words may seem I'm sure they sum up the predicament many of us writer's write credo believers have gotten ourselves into.
In even less simple language we find an obtuse explanation lurking amidst the dreary underworld of autonomous publishing where just about any crackpot who can successfully operate his or her word processor and intently navigate the alphanumeric lily pads of lenient bureaucracy lining the surface of this minuscule pond of Kinko collusion known as the independent publishing industry or some arbitrary analog 'zine scene.
In typical do-it-yourself fashion the eccentric author of the editorial nightmare that follows eventually took it upon himself to put out quarterly pamphlets full of bombastic bozos aptly called Nevermind Nothing Neither which fit neatly into the near-illiterate genepool currently producing the majority of today's low-budget periodicals filled with druggie drivel. The final product of which resembles that of a coupon-less angst-ridden counter-culture circular costing less than the postage required to snail out the few hundred individual copies.
As a synopsis of the findings credited to Auringe we offer a few words in his defense:
"... to this day there remains valid discussion of a menacing 'psychic implant' of sorts that psychometrists themselves admit they are but dimly aware of as their pseudo-clinical body of know how is rather limited to say the least.
They claim that the majority of subjects (I dare not call them 'patients' lest I seek to lay credence to their craft as a legitimate medical practice with procedural guidelines to follow and moral obligations to honor) maintain an independent anchor of their personality (a neutral proxy or non-player character) while under the contrived pretenses (read: kinesthesia or proprioception) of hypnotic trance induction.
Problem is, the inherent psychological complications of this identifiable 'split' in the psyche says nothing positive about the practice of hypnotism if indeed this split is seen as a necessary requisite to hypnosis as a tool or therapy agent. It could be said that the misuse of hypnosis on its own explains a great deal of modern scientistic (sci-fi) folklore dreamed up in the last hundred years or so.
This is especially accurate where the myth-marketing aspects of commercialized Newageism is concerned; as per claims of conspiracy theorists focusing on covert uni-lateral military campaigns, N.D.E.s, and reported cases of close encounters with extra-terrestrials. And to a lesser degree the influence of sleep paralysis visions that often sync with the abduction phenomena even though the affliction's symptoms are millennium old sans the definitive appearance of little Grey men.
Where humans originally got the idea to make money off of such lurid experiences we can only speculate, but suffice to say it's working ..."
written by Mssr. Heyan Auringe
excerpted from What The Fuck Are You Doing With That Type-Writer Now?!
essay courtesy of Daft Cunt! magazine, Trapezoid publishing © 1974
With such fanciful nuances fresh in our minds let us examine further base examples
It is these abysmal voids which frighten the mortal mind from inside itself. And although this subject makes for poor dinner conversation after six or seven shots of single malt Scotch almost anything can writhe its way into the shallow curiosities of well-to-do self-styled entrepreneurs. Thus we have a systemic solution to an individual dilemma: castrate the horse before your wife catches a glimpse of its endowment or you'll be plagued by hay in your bed henceforth.
Imagine shrinking or receding backward into yourself. Getting smaller and smaller the further inward you travel until your insular little grasp on the world becomes an eroded memory tormenting you in nightmares and distorting your reason with hallucinatory panic regressions and paranoid schizo conspiracy scenarios with regards to the C.D.C. carrier virus known to the public only as The Chasm™
What is widely considered an appalling travesty to upper-crust spectator-art museum trust groups like the wesoteric traditionalists and the hermetic party loyalists is conversely hailed as a visionary innovation in use of medium and range of functionality.
I definitely stepped up my game on this one. The central theme signifies do-it-yourself results to the white-collared shit broke working stiff straddling an uncomfortable chair at the office sneaking shots of fentanyl patch liquid between supervisor cross-traffic or the adversely blue-collared shit broke working stiff sledding a thousand pounds of 'crete a hundred and fifty feet in the air because some rich executive asshole wants the roof of his building to have a smart-bomb proof built-in jacuzzi pool.
In plain fact, The Chasm™ embodies the human capacity to over-ride instinctual conflicts and dissolve moral issues with cold reversions of logic and coarse revisions of law (tradition; old truth); the vile pandelirium nuisance lurking from the sewer to caution us of cthonic curb-side destiny.
They are the jolly jolly joy-drainers, and the jokes on you delivery jobs armed only with clever one-liners, neologisms and solecisms, passively-assimilative headworms, hypertrophied delusions of long ships and land war, and neuro-agrarian ambitions of mass infection, random satire or parodies or play on words or anagrams or acronyms or asinine alliteration, shout-outs with aimless promotional agendas, and even the occasional straight forward area of interest or practice or passion or proverb or jab at a particular person or their pet project or even their platitudinous pot-boiling precepts on prosaicism.
The contents of The Chasm™ we're chastising consists of obscure, remotely connected verbiage stylized as per the author with his timely wit which is unmatched in radio, tv, cinema, politics, or online. His caustic superiority which is wholly unfounded, but funny to laugh at nonetheless, and his brash and utter disregard for clarity, tact, brevity, taste, and integrity which has become his landmark signature as an artist and as one of the most protested figures on the Internet to date.
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| homo faber |
[21 Dec 2009|04:22pm] |
Finem hebdomadis tranquillum egi. Vespere die Veneris librum fabellarum Gaskellensium secundum confeci. Die Saturni paginas CCXL libri excudi, quas die Solis impressi insui adglutinavi. Dein vespere schedas atramento fucoque « marmoreas » facere me docuit Mel.
Parva narratio, sed magna operibus beatitudo...
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| remember when the government telling you what to do was scary? |
[21 Dec 2009|01:21am] |
An avatar generator for a virtual environment reflects a physiological characteristic of the user, injecting a degree of reality into the capabilities or appearance. Thereby, many of the incentives of the real world are replicated in a virtual environment. Physiological data that reflect a degree of health of the real person can be linked to rewards of capabilities of a gaming avatar, an amount of time budgeted to play, or a visible indication. Thereby, people are encouraged to exercise. Physiological data that reflect the health and perhaps also mood also improve social interaction in virtual environments. People seeking to meet and become acquainted with particular types of people are not thwarted by the artificiality of avatars. The physiological data can be gleaned from a third party health data collection repository, a healthcare smart card, a real-time physiological sensor (e.g., blood pressure, heart rate, blood glucose, peak flow, pedometer, etc.)
from Patent Application: Avatar Individualized by Physical Characteristic
Yes Microsoft, because no one who's fat has ever been told to work out before. Because no one anywhere has any physical limitation preventing them from working out. Because it's your place to build an application that does this. Because all of us need Daddy Microsoft's approval before we can have any fun. Because online relationships are inherently inferior to real life ones.
Yeah, you know what, Microsoft? Fuck you.
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| It's a fact... |
[20 Dec 2009|04:38am] |
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truthy |
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Fact's ear |
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Americans are all backwards. We think we're normal and the rest of the world is backwards, but the truth is we're the fucked up ones. We speak backwards, think backwards, act backwards, write backwards, and do everything we do bass-fucking-ackwards.
Tell me I'm wrong. Better yet, tell me I'm right.
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| Ripple and Whine |
[20 Dec 2009|03:56am] |
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wired as fuck wide awake |
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music |
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The Shank |
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Groping blind for exit indicators on automated escalators to access the egress
( at first self-esteem does seem like a full-time gig indeed, but once you fake it it becomes second nature )
Whenever inspiration strikes you.. upside the head with a mallet
While every gossiping chamber-maid complains of the prince's limp dick with disdain which leaves them disgusted at men and of men in their own kin.
What is symbolic figurehead royalty to do without authority invested behind it to bind it?
More messianic malarchy of mandatory masochism signatur-ized by an increase in the re-recorded appearance of maladjusted misogynistic latent homo macho mall-rat stalker mongrels and mega-market super-shopper militia mommies and fluffy conservative eco-movement mainstreamers with meddlesome marshal law mentalities mocking the majority of each and every one of us neoteric design-major flashmancers on earth or online with imaginary matriarchal monsters made of man's kind through science, but not of "their" kind.
These organisms are highly advanced and exceedingly unique in form, function, and facility. They're made of synthetic chromosomal material that neither grows in the ground nor plops from between the cunty choronzonic crust cult of a mother's callow crevice. Not the kind derived from within the womb of man, but the kind whose unique organs and bodily structure allow them to reproduce asexually or optionally reproduce with either a human man or woman. The giants who've never left and whose existence governments try to hide and deny in mixed conspiracy nut bags of plantation labor and cotton field coupled coitus.
The castrated cornerstone carves its niche by acting a con...
Continually conjuring culpable confidential keepsakes, coming up with conciliatory conversationalists catch-alls for use when backed into corners and only outright bullshit will cover your corny ass from curosity's stranglehold caught in a web of compromised courtrooms and county coroner coup de grace.
While calculating cheats keep cherished clients contained from compromise, close calls, and casting couch composure. Concave compliments creep away with etiquette counseling cooperative, coerced connectivity. Code enforced uniformity hog-tied by conformity waiting to swing by the neck for arbitrary crimes against decent society. Guns, gas, and ghod makes White Jesus' wire-tappin' Wal-Merica a better place in his mighty kingdom to live, pay taxes, raise a family, and be buried in. Amen.
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| Tune-age and re-tune-age |
[19 Dec 2009|05:25pm] |
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none :( |
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music |
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None :( |
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My puter won't connect to my router so I'm forced to borrow this laptop. Problem is I have no files on this laptop. So, instead of posting something original like yesterday with hardly any props to show for it (Glosso B notwithstanding) I'll list albums I'm about to buy or steal and in return you will suggest albums I should stay in and steal or run out and buy.
Self-promo is encouraged and welcomed...
Black Dahlia Murder - Nocturnal
These Are They - Who Linger
Marked For Death - OST (badass Dancehall and Ragga)
Iwrestledabearonce - It's All Happening
Psyopus - Odd Senses
Despised Icon - Ills Of Modern Man
Soilwork - Sworn To A Great Divide
Nile - Those Whom The Gods Detest
N.W.A. - Niggaz For Life
Burning Human - Resurrection Through Fire
Satyricon - The Age Of Nero
Dying Fetus - Descend Into Depravity
Now give me input, peoples! Input!! Input!!!
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[18 Dec 2009|10:48pm] |
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I am teh sex
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| Resistance Assembled |
[18 Dec 2009|09:33pm] |
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Other |
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Mavado - Gangsta For Life - 22 - Squeeze Breast |
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Unusual classes of writing stimulus subject to further scrutiny by a joint task force
( torture-fetishes, the cravings of its sufferers, and how (if ever) their urges are pacified: next on E.N.O. talk! )
My dentist's secretary's ass is built as solid as brick with some thick fuckin' thighs, curvaceous hips, luscious lips, and a set of tig old bitties.
If there exists but one true God to rule them all, he or she, as the case may be, should, in the most expediently immediate manner divinely possible, arrange the inter-dependant raw elements of probability to affect change in such a way that, in no particular order, I will:
* fuck next month's menstruation outta this receptionist
** then fuck her bitch of a mother into early menopuase
** feed her sister meth, train her mouth, break her hymen, and turn her ass out
** steal her brother's i-pod, phone, cds, dvds, games, computer, and clothes
** steal her father's guns, drugs, money, watches, jewels, porn, and car keys
* come (obviously! no wait, listen, stay focused ..)
* come into (hi-oh!! no stop, seriously, this stuff is important ..)
* come into a seriously sizeable sum of funds for me to fucks with,
* and land myself a brand new home with an imported luxury vehicle behind every door in my 3 car garage
In some areas of research initial results indicate the mysterious electronic pathogen causes horomonal imbalance the likes of which ensures the death of its host replicant. No noticeable advantages are ever really ascertained. The sacrament thrice profaned is our inheritance to the bloodline. Awakened at first light. An unwanted reward of our conception encouraged as a birth right. Left high and dry and irrevocably snobby and shy as though struck blind. Naive of the fine print written on the wall in your hallway and unaware of all the invsible battle lines drawn throughout the city in blood, money, sweat, drugs, and tears forever embedded in the pores of the sidewalk concrete and the potholes patching up the pavement.
Missing lapses in memory from the remnants of an absent mind suffering mass hallucinations from old mold spores of ergot rye. Abducted by nightmares of the intelligence community's aerospace technology on the rise while civilian puppet show shuttles fall and go boom. Boom boom boom, you boob. What the hell does it all matter any way?! Recapitulating all the energy spent playing Marco Polo in near earth orbit instead of probing outer space and chasing after father time with feverish incompetence and unmanned robot spies. All these radical lines reduce to realism in recurrent rationale against reverence to rerun revivalism... arbitrarily defined.
Brokering glamor beneath the triangular table at the root of imbalance as the only prime beyond one divisible by itself but complicated by contracts and design flaws from the foundation to the mother fuckin' floor with all this power broken by our essential divide to conquer, capture, and multiply
eugenically breeding our enemies on to our side
strategic gene therapy turned to sudden self-serving philanthropy
reselling rundown retail tat & fare top secret ribonucleic spaghetti sauce
games with guns guarantee your rackets pay
whose forced fault will flag, fry, and flog the other to 40-zip first?
grievous lies engross my ears and mesmerize my eyes
guilt trips disguised as love play
please just fucking cancel my dreams today
no calls, no texts, reviews, news, or feedback
no board meetings, golf games, or any thing of any kind any more
where's the folk lore to fuck your dreams another day? the focus is mediocre!
book me a vacation as far the fuck away as you manly possible, fuckin' faggot-ass billboard theories yielding the smallest returns possible, improbable --- as I lay dying on the street corner staring up at a hooker's penis swinging toward my facetious...
where's the fuckin' exit door??!!!
It is inconsolably sad to see so many cherished things lost along the way by so many unfortunate people. Things that in some cases can not be replaced, reimbursed, or even remedied by simple substitution with ornamental forgeries or facsimiles.
What device suffers most regrettably of all is, without a doubt, one's talent. Potential becomes just another victim of the value vested in viral vials of versatile vices chased with vehement vigilance up and down the avenues and alleyways by fearless and inventive fiends motivated by dependence as their only vehicle for reward. At the epicenter of this Dante's Inferno-like concentric spiral of serial rock bottoms there is very little in the way of humanity left in the human.
Early on in the game the habit helps put people's priorities in their proper place. Finance fix first, live life later. It has the power to turn people out like pimps push tricks to peddle pussy in their training heels. The tragic turbulence of torture and treachery teaches us to treat ourselves like trash. People reduced to helpless infants forced to hunt down its teet for sustenance each day with tireless cunning while drowning out whatever unfettered conscience remains cognizant of guilt, shame, and ambition.
First-responders should, at least, validate the heroism perpetrated by these ordinary folks living their lives on the street strung-out, starving, and succumb to scavenger level dietary behaviors that would sicken the squares, sober, and the straight-edged. If fighting crime were dope your average junkie would be batman. Like card-carrying members of the Just-ice League international in service to the public vanquishing villains skilled at vanishing vaults with vehement vigor, vile innovation and vehicular inventiveness.
The whiff of familiarity is overwhelming. I feel like I've said, written, or spit this all before. No seriously I think I dreamed it all in a waking nightmare on some long lost mailing list where black beaked ostriches pursued me and surrounded me and lunged at me with threatening enlightenment.
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[18 Dec 2009|01:40pm] |
( map of Poland's 2007 electoral returns, with a map of pre-WWI Germany overlaid )
Of the numerous political maps discussed on the wonderful blog Strange Maps, this one of Poland's 2007 electoral returns shook me to the core. The whole series of maps forces me to reconsider everything I thought I knew about democracy.
Another earlier entry comparing the 2008 electoral results in the south to the distribution of cotton production in 1850 is worthy of note.
We tell ourselves that democracy is the interplay of ideas freely and openly discussed and considered rationally in a free marketplace of ideas. That the party that wins is the one who presented the best ideas. Presented as a more cynical view is the argument that money and campaign slogans have more to do with it. Underlying both views is the notion that every person in the republic is an independently-minded clean slate, of relative likelihood to be influenced by appeals to logic, loyalty, emotion, or fear.
It stands to reason that one's circumstance -- one's economic situation, one's background, one's cultural environment -- would play a role in making the decision. If these maps are any indication, then these factors are the only ones that really matter. IOW, whatever party becomes the one you associate with your cultural identity is the one you're going to support in the election. It should perhaps be cautioned that this may be more true in Europe than in the US, but I think it seems to bear out as fundamentally true in the US as well.
ETA. The troubling corollary to this is that democratic voting results will always fundamentally reflect the underlying racial divisions and hierarchy. The inequalities of imperialism appear to linger for hundreds of years, even long after they have supposedly become "distant history." IOW there will never be a 'free marketplace of ideas' or anything resembling any such thing.
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| ΧΕΙΜΩΝ |
[18 Dec 2009|01:02pm] |
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Ὑπονίφει ἐν τῷ Λονδινίῳ, καὶ πάλιν περιχαρεῖς παῖδες γιγνόμεθα πάντες γέται · ἀλλά γε ἧττον ὀδυρόμεθα ἢ ὁ δῆμος (ὡς οὗτοι ἐν ἐργατηρίῳ). λευκὸν τὸ ἄστυ ! καὶ καλόν. ἐπειδὴ ἐκ τῆς ὑπογείου εἰς Πικκαδιλλι ἤλθον, ἐθεώμην Ἕω τὴν φλογόκομον τῷ ἐν τῇ τοῦ Βατερλοῦ ἀγορᾷ κίωνι προσχωποῦσαν. καὶ νῦν τὰς νιφάδας διὰ θύριδος θαυμάζω.
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| Statistics for Paid Accounts |
[16 Dec 2009|03:01pm] |
Statistics are here!
You can now see the number of people who have visited your journal, your individual entries, a chart of comments, readers of the RSS feed of your journal, and the last 100 logged-in users who have visited your journal directly (if you've enabled My Guests).
Things you should know:
-Stats are completely anonymous (only My Guests is tied to username); only numbers are recorded, not any other information
-The times and dates in the graph are based on server time, which is UTC/GMT
-The light grey number at the top left corner of the graph is the statistical outlier
-While the graph may go back in time to this summer, the stats-gathering server was not on constantly, so previous stats may be missing. Today, and going forward, full stats are collected and displayed.
-If you opt out of My Guests (meaning that your username will not show up on other people's reports and you will not be able to view your My Guests tab), it does not affect your use of the rest of the Stats - if you're a Paid or Permanent user, you'll still be able to see all the rest of the information on this feature
( Page-by-page walkthrough )
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| $10 coupon for your friends! |
[16 Dec 2009|02:59pm] |
If you have a Paid or Permanent account, you can now send 10 of your non-Paid friends a $10 coupon. Your friend will be able to purchase a Paid Account for $9.95 (instead of $19.95) for one year by enrolling in our automatic payment plan or make a manual payment of $15 (instead of $25).
- All Paid and Permanent accounts can send out the coupons by clicking here (it's also under Friends -> Holiday promotion in the site header)
- You can also send to people not on your Friends list by manually entering the username in the field provided
- If your friend declines the invitation, it will be returned to your available invitation pool and you'll be able to send to someone else
- You can send the invitations until January 15th
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| de monstris somnia |
[16 Dec 2009|08:58pm] |
Grex iuvenum infestus circum desertum obsidebat. Filii erant optimatum : operae opulentae. latrones cum parentum pecunia, quam mero meretricibusque consumere solebant. Equos suos duceant aliorum subducebant qui in circum currerent. Nonnumquam curru vehebantur, quos plerumque celeritate aut vi effusa deperderent. Saxa catenis post curricula trahebant ut alios in currus frangeretur. Nemo, aiebant, vereri se ostendet, ne verberibus exuletur.
Etsi adulescentuli improbuli erant profligatique, dux eorum verumtamen erat malignus : saevus iuvenis et violentus et malus. Dicebatur omnino scelus esse pessimum, et dei ipsi eum foeditate designaverant ; quoniam ei corpus virile lacertosumque dederunt, cum facie autem monstri. Vultum sub persona cummis celebat, sed laetissime detegebat ut amicis inimicisque terrorem iniceret. Vere nemo vidit quin horresceret. Cutis ruber et oleosus in ossibus musculisque intendebatur ut caput videretur calvariam cruentum. Nasus vix erat ; parvae carnis rugae cum spiritu vibrabantur. Oculi enormes e medio vultu acerbe nitebant, sine iridibus, duo glaebae pingues. Labra atra vix nigros dentes tegebant, inter quas lingua tumida movebatur sicut bufo putidus cum verba venenata obscaenaque spueret. Atque, inhumanissime, in medio fronte erant ii acies dentium, velut os secunda nascente mortuum est, rictus immundus qui omne bonum fugaret.
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Νυκτὸς ἐν τοῖς σήμασι περιπατοῦντες ἐτύχομεν τάφῳ τινὶ οὗ τὸ μέτωπον δωρικῷ νάῳ ὡμοιεῖτο. ἀκλῃστῶν οὐσῶν τῶν θυρῶν, εἰσήλθομεν · οὐ μὲν ὡς τυμβώρυχοι μᾶλλον δ' ὡς ὁδοιπόροι. ἀναβαθμὸν ἐντὸς λίθινον κατεβάνομεν.
Ὑπονόμους παλαιῶν νεκρῶν πλήρεις διήλθομεν. τέλος δ' εἰς ψάλιδα ἐν τῷ τοῦ λαβυρίνθου μέσῳ. ἐν ψάλιδι ἦν θρόνος, καὶ ἐν θρόνῳ ἦν ὁ βασιλεύς · ἔτι χρύσεον στέφανον ἐφορεῖ καίπερ μόνον τὰ τοῦ σώματος ὀστᾶ μάνοντα. σιωπῇ τὸν βασιλέα ἐθαυμάζομεν.
Λίποντες τὸν τάφον γέτας τρια εἴδομεν, κόρας μόλις ἡμῖν γνωτάς. δυὸ κόμψας ἐφαίνοντο καὶ καριέσσας · μέλαιναι στολαὶ καλαὶ, κόμαι περιέργως ἀνασεσυρμέναι, καὶ ψυμμύθιόν τε καὶ στίμμι ἀκριβῶς κοσμηθέντα. ἀλλ' ἡ αὐτῶν φίλη ἠτακτεῖτο · μεθύουσα στολὴν καὶ ἀρβύλας ἀπεβεβήκειν ὡς διαφανὲς ἐρυθρὸν χιτώνοιν εἶχεν. ἐτετμήκει τὸ ἄνω χεῖλος · πρόσωπον διασπάρακτον μέντοι καλόν.
Αἱ γέται ἐκαλήσασαν ἡμᾶς ἐπὶ συμπόσιον ἐν οἴκῳ ἐγγὺς τῶν σημάτων. τὴν τάλαιναν βαδίζειν ἀδύνατον εἰς τὸ συμπόσιον ἤνεγκον. ἕως αὐτὴν βραδέως ἐφερον, γλυκύθυμως ἐλαλεῖ.
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| LJ.XMLRPC.addcomment |
[15 Dec 2009|10:50am] |
Has anyone successfully used the undocumented addcomment XMLRPC method?
It seems to take journal, ditemid, parenttalkid, poster, body, subject and props.
ditemid is self-explanatory, but I'm not sure what parenttalkid is. Every time I've tried to call the method, I get an error of 'No such entry. at /home/lj/cgi-bin/ljprotocol.pl line 250'. Looking at the code, this is right after the journal specified by the journal argument is pulled from the table. Any ideas?
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[15 Dec 2009|10:31pm] |
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The heavily armed monkeys guarding the servers currently report no site-wide problems. |
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| evo-psych: unintentionally funny |
[15 Dec 2009|11:07am] |
(h/t ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) mzmartipants)
Ah, now I see. Hitchens wasn't saying that women are incapable of being funny, he was saying there was no evolutionary pressure on women to be funny the way there is on men, and so men are funnier.
This might possibly make sense, if most pairings in history happened just the way the modern script goes: man meets woman in bar, man impresses her or makes her laugh, man scores. Therefore having the ability to make her laugh increases the likelihood that his seed will be passed on. There is no reciprocal need for women to make men laugh in order to score.
I started out prepared to write a post here about how he's probably wrong about why it is that making a woman laugh might in some or many circumstances increase the likelihood that a man will score (and I've been using that term very deliberately here, nudge nudge), but really I don't even have to, because the problem with his logic is even more fundamental than that.
This highlights the problem with claiming that evolutionary psychology is actually science: Hitchens sounds like he is assuming his own personal experience, or the experience of him and many of the men he's grown up with, or the cultural narrative of the "experience of the average guy in a bar" is the way it has always been, for every man ever in the history of the world. Having made this assumption -- and this is the flaw with so many evo-psych arguments I've seen -- he develops around it a theory of the evolutionary role of humor and publishes it, couching it all in scientific terms and claiming the argument is scientific.
Now, I've no doubt that evolution has shaped the functioning of the brain and therefore many factors of human behavior. Ever since I read The Naked Ape 20 years ago, I've been impressed by the notion that many of the mysteries of modern culture and behavior can be elucidated with appeals to human evolution. So as it happens, I am inclined to be sympathetic to this line of argument. (I also do not feel that bio-sociological arguments, if they happen to hold any weight, are contradictory to feminism or any other critical theory -- because any natural statistical differences that may or may not exist between men and women, or white people and nonwhite people, etc. etc., cannot justify unequal access to opportunity or protection of equal rights.)
The failing occurs when evo-psych proponents look around them and decide that the present status quo -- an artifact shaped by numerous complex agendas, overt and covert -- must have somehow come about because of evolution. In itself that thought is true: evolution brought us to this point by some means. But between the evo-psych researcher and the genuine status quo is a cultural narrative of what "everyday life" is like.
Here's the problem: ask the researcher what he thinks is an "everyday experience" and he will answer with an abbreviated script which is an amalgam of his life, what friends tell him about their lives, and what he sees on TV about the lives people live. "Oh, you get up in the morning, shower, run out the door, sit in a car in traffic for a while, work your eight hours, come home, and watch TV or maybe read a book before you go to bed. You know. Everyday life."
There is no room in this appraisal for those people whose lives are not like this at all. For what percentage of the population is that script an accurate portrayal of "everyday life"?
And so, going back to Hitchens and his argument about the evolutionary purpose of humor: for what percentage of the population does a man's ability to have sex with the woman of his choice actually depend on his ability to make her laugh? Don't know? Neither do I. Neither does Hitchens. But he thinks he knows.
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| week-end #16 |
[13 Dec 2009|02:54pm] |
comme un conne il y a un petit bout de moi ou il y a encore de l'espoir...
plus que 3 examens avant le congé des fêtes
bref, plus que 3 examens avant le printemps (peut-être)
(lire ici l'ours sortir de sa tanière)
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| homo mensura |
[12 Dec 2009|02:15pm] |
πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἐστὶν ἄνθρωπος, τῶν μὲν ὄντων ὡς ἔστιν, τῶν δὲ οὐκ ὄντων ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν.*
—Πρωταγόρας
Homo, mundi centrum. Sui mundi videlicet homo est centrum ; aliter nequit. Ego sum centrum meum, quod mundum cunctum e memet percipio. Animus mundum extra se videt, immo reliquam mundi partem ; etsi agnosco me minimam partem esse, nihilominus mihimet partem primam videor -- omnia me circum agant.
Perceptionem quidem ! quid ad perceptionem attinet, non ordinem facit. Ego sum centrum meum, tu tuum. Lapis, si sentiat, sese centrum mundi sui quoque putat. Non sum centrum tui, amasia non est centrum meum (blanda verba poetarum hic valde errant) -- si quis putet aliter esse, fallatur. Hoc centrum est res simplex : nec bona, nec mala, simpliciter est. Conspectum dat, sive definit, nihil praeterea. Non beneficium confert, nec eminentiam. Non ordinat nec attolit. Adfinitatis animis mundoque fundamen condit, quo cognitione sensuque omnia spectamus.
In schola magistri mihi dictum hominis mensurae docebant, sed et ita praeciderent : omnium rerum mensura homo. Atque male explicarent ; homo, aiunt, est mundi centrum, primus (scilicet sub Deo) in mundo stat—primus absolutus, nequaquam inter pares. Quid animal possit homini adaequare ? Omnia metitur homo, omnia iudicat. Omnia intellegit complectiturque. Omnia praeest.
Isti doctrinam christianam vel iudaeam et praecepta Aristotelis (cui, obiter, dictum ascribebant) confudebant. Sapientia antiqua abutebantur ut dignitatem hominis optimam maximam putarent. Nosmet nimis laudamus, nobis quidem blandimur. Nolo philosophiam quae amplitudinem hominis dignitatemque sumat haec utrum probanda sint anon.
Recordor verborum Xenophanis :
ἀλλ' εἴτοι χεῖρας γ' εἶχον βόες ἠὲ λέοντες
ἢ γράψαι χείρεσσι καὶ ἔργα τελεῖν ἅπερ ἄνδρες,
ἵπποι μὲν θ' ἵπποισι, βόες δέ τε βουσὶν ὁμοίας
καὶ κε θεῶν ἰδέας ἔγραφον καὶ σώματ' ἐποίουν
τοιαῦθ' οἷόν περ καὐτοὶ δέμας εἶχον ὁμοῖον.**
Atque vero illi equi putent omnium rerum mensuram equum.
-----
* « Omnium rerum mensura est homo, earum quae sunt ut sint, earum quae non sunt ut non sint. »
Ritter & Preller, in Historiae philosophiae graecae libro, μέτρου glossam modulum dant.
** « Si manus haberent boves vel leones / et opera perficerent sicut homines / equi equis, boves bovis similes / et deorum imagines sculperent et corpora facerent / talia enim similia suis »
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| Comments downloading question |
[11 Dec 2009|04:04pm] |
Hello, please, help me to download all comments from community. I use perl-script with clear-authorisation in a LJ-server (XML-RPC). Community is very big and old. And method syncitems get me 500 items. But I iterate this method and get all posts. Next step - is a downloading comment. In this step I got error. And autorisation is Faild. I create request to LJ whith method sessiongenerate and can get SESSID then send this ID to /export_comments.bml?get=comment_meta&startid=$maxid&authas=$SESSID Server response Error-content whith:
<h2>Error<h2>
...
<li>You could not be authentificated as the specified user</li>
...
But if I run this perl-script whith another autentificated-data (another community, no so big) I successfully get my XML from this URL.
Please tell me wrongs.
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| ἰδιώτης ὁ πολυμήχανος |
[11 Dec 2009|09:01am] |
Sine consilio videor conatum novum coepisse. Immo vero non est omnino novum, sed et numquam serio persecutus sum. Attamen subito cognovi me arte quadam egere. Nam libros pressorio factos pro certo amo (typographicamque praecipue antiquam ; Claudium Garamond puto deum), nihilominus non numquam malo omnia meis manibus effici. Itaque coeptis studeo, ut fortasse sententiolam quae nuper in mente informis oritur in mundum aedificem -- nisi alia novitas pellicit.
Haudquaquam mihi inusitatum. Aliquid semper investigo : scientiam amorem insolita vim secreta quaevis. Attamen plerumque finem ignoro ; si invenerim, agnoscam. Investigatio est summum bonum, finem certum appetens annon. Levissimi animi soli graal suum nominarent.
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| And Some Flame Decals |
[10 Dec 2009|10:21pm] |
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http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1555 
Extremely silly comic tonight. Don't worry, we'll find out what happened to Cosette on Monday! I know this, because the comic is already done.
Don't forget! I will be at this sweet event in Austin, TX this weekend! For those of you who have been asking, I will be there both days, from the time the event starts to the time it ends. I'll be doing free sketches and selling limited edition prints too! Hopefully I will see some of you there.
See the rest of you Monday!
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| newb questions for iJournal |
[10 Dec 2009|11:20am] |
Hello! I just installed iJournal and have been fiddling around with it. I really liked having a client when I used a PC, and it looks pretty good so far.
A few questions:
- Is there a way to change my setting so that when I click on the iJournal's "view friends" link I go to a specific filter of friends?
- Is there a way to turn of notices of new friends list updates, but keep notices if new comments on my posts (if that is even a feature)?
Basically I'm trying to avoid somebody on my friends list, but real life contact with this person makes it impossible to defriend them, and the rest of my LJ life is too important to me to get rid of LJ. :-(
Thanks!
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| evolution and the "obesity epidemic" |
[09 Dec 2009|03:00pm] |
I hesitate to even post on this issue, because of how contentious it can be. But I've had a few thoughts about this lately and wanted to express them.
At the center of these thoughts was the insight that, from the standpoint of evolution there has never before been a survival advantage to losing weight. On the other hand, there have always been survival benefits from gaining and maintaining weight. Evolution would not have therefore have encouraged the development of a mechanism whereby weight can be lost; or, put another way, gaining or storing of weight is a switch that only switches one way, like a ratchet. If this is true, then the only way for a person to lose weight is by interrupting the fundamental metabolic processes by which weight is stored.
The traditional model of "a person's weight" is, like many models rooted in the late nineteenth century, based on a steam-engine-era kind of model. We can easily calculate how much wood it takes to keep the furnace burning at a given temperature; if you shovel in less than that, the fire burns lower; if you shovel in more, the fire burns higher.
As doctors have expressed it: a person of any given size requires a daily intake of X calories to maintain their present weight. Ipso facto, if one eats more than X, one gains weight, and if one eats less, one loses weight. The more active one is, the more calories one needs to take in, and the less active one is, the fewer calories one requires.
I hope it will not be a controversial thing to say that in actuality it is not nearly as simple as this. In fact, the doctors' formulation has not borne out as being even generally accurate.
One of Atkinson’s most memorable patients was Janet S., a bright, funny 25-year-old who weighed 348 pounds when she finally made her way to U.C.L.A. in 1975. In exchange for agreeing to be hospitalized for three months so scientists could study them, Janet and the other obese research subjects (30 in all) each received a free intestinal bypass. During the three months of presurgical study, the dietitian on the research team calculated how many calories it should take for a 5-foot-6-inch woman like Janet to maintain a weight of 348. They fed her exactly that many calories — no more, no less. She dutifully ate what she was told, and she gained 12 pounds in two weeks — almost a pound a day.
“I don’t think I’d ever gained that much weight that quickly,” recalled Janet, who asked me not to use her full name because she didn’t want people to know how fat she had once been. The doctors accused her of sneaking snacks into the hospital. “But I told them, ‘I’m gaining weight because you’re feeding me a tremendous amount of food!’”
from Fat Factors
And along comes the prominent journal Nature with an article about how some mice have cultures of gastrointestinal bacteria which are simply more efficient at harvesting nutrients out of food. If these mice eat the same amount of food as their peers, they get fat, while their peers stay slim, because they are getting more out of each morsel.
Do you see where this is going?
My thought is that what's happening is that we have simply gotten better at getting energy from the food we eat -- but some of us are much better at it than others. Humans evolved with bodies that became accustomed over thousands of years to eating a certain amount of food (X) in order to get a certain amount of energy (Y) needed for metabolism. With the advent of modern medicine, refrigeration, antibiotics, food inspection, better cooking, and so on, we now draw a certain higher amount of energy (Y' > Y) from that same amount of food X. But our bodies have not adjusted their hunger instincts to account for the fact that we could now eat some lesser amount of food (X' < X) in order to get Y. Our bodies do with the surplus what bodies learned over geological eons to do when there's a surplus -- they store it. And once one weighs too much, there's no natural mechanism for undoing it. The only way to shed weight is to essentially break the survival mechanism by unnatural means, such as pretending there's a famine ("eating less"), a tactic of less than optimum effectiveness as the metabolic cycle rapidly compensates for it.
What are we to do? The best answer is, I suppose, evolve more rapidly.
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| ULTIMATE BURN |
[08 Dec 2009|09:35pm] |
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http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1553 
Poor Marigold. She's just not built for the verbal sparring like Faye is. Also, is it weird or just a sign of my obsessive compulsive disorder that I've had Marigold's hairstyle change planned out since I first introduced her?
Don't forget, I'm gonna be in Austin, TX for WEBCOMICS RAMPAGE this weekend!
See you tomorrow!
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[09 Dec 2009|01:35am] |
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Our notification system is back online and working properly, although it may take up to 24 hours to clear the backlog created during time it was down. Thank you for your patience and support! |
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| Tiro |
[08 Dec 2009|08:55pm] |
Exercitatione scilicet egeo ; gaudium autem est. Sed fortasse locos Virgilii aut Ciceronis exscribere debeo, ne sinam sententiae vagentur...
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[08 Dec 2009|12:20pm] |
Oh, just frakking swell.
Lawyers for troubled Staten Island homeowners say they are beginning to see examples of clients who go to the bank to take out money and find that their accounts have been frozen or wiped out by other banks or debt collectors -- the entities holding second mortgages on houses already in default on the first and primary mortgage. Some are learning the lender or debt collector has already gone to court and secured a judgment to garnish paychecks.
It's a move more in line with the traditional debt collection industry, which typically targets credit card debt, and it's dragging the house and what little cash reserves people often have into the foreclosure battleground. Experts say it's an end-run by second lien holders around the traditional foreclosure process, which involves only the first mortgage holder and provides important legal protections for the homeowner.
from Homeowners getting hit a second time
I guess this means that any homeowners had better get and keep all their money out of the bank at the first sign of financial trouble.
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