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Showing posts from December, 2011

LISTEN: "All Eternals Deck" (2011) by the Mountain Goats

Three, among new age people, necromancers, heretics and fanatics, is supposed to be a number with power. I don't believe in any of that, but it's fun to pretend that you do ... the thread of it, the shimmer, had this really bitching heavy metal appeal to me. So, there isn't a story or a theme that you can pin down, but I feel like [All Eternals Deck]'s about dark, netherworldly things and what it means to be obsessed with them. - John Darnielle One may well sigh when one realises that it is nevertheless given to a few to draw the most profound insights, without any real effort, from the maelstrom of their own feelings, while we others have to grope our way restlessly to such insights through agonizing insecurity . - Freud There is a whole literary genre, " psychological realism ", for novels which focus on the details of their characters' minds. In them, self-narrative and (usually self-delusion) are more important than plot , truth , denouement : t

weaponized

against nothingness we used bang. against lifelessness we used rna. against stasis we used predation. against blind we used sense. against neanderthals we used braining. against darkness we used each other. against peace we used questions. against angst we used questions. against boredom we used questions. against impotence we used questions. against arrogance we used questions. against questions we used god and fire. against hunger we use life. against women we use themselves. against happiness we use ideals. against death we use soap. against thought we use stuff. against memory we use google.

nor custom stale her infinite variety

I am a glutton for variety. This is cool, since it drives me to like speaking to all kinds of people, and to being able to speak passably to them about almost anything among the things they love. But there is a pressing possibility that my gluttony will rob me of my chances at both lasting happiness and a substantive contribution to Thought. (Via making me inconstant, overfamiliar, procrastinating, and general enslaved to diminishing marginal returns.)

what it is

Was skimming an epistemology book; came to the Epilogue. These two pages suddenly jump the book into space. Author wrestles with a Cartesian demon called Krebs (German for 'cancer') and goes on to give a metaphor for the entire project of all academic philosophy , in the manner of Kafka: " I know that there is no Krebs, but what if I were wrong? I am not, but I could be, but I am not, though I may be. A wall has been built, and it is being built; we think it will continue to be built. No one knows exactly who started the wall, though many have helped. Nor does anyone know how far it reaches: it seems to go on and on forever. We think the builders are our principals. The wall is to protect us from the invasion. Wall soldiers man the wall. Whenever a soldier is overcome by an invader, he must be replaced by a stronger soldier, & we are forever sending replacements. We have even sent soldiers to man the wall in the distant provinces. No one knows how strong the enemy