there  could  be  snakes  in  here

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...

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.)

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...

[cowritten with Paul Crowe for Childreach International] Scene 1. St Machar Power Plant (St Machar Cathedral, Seaton). Night. One figure stands bolt upright atwixt the churchyard gates. Another, hunched and demented, flits between the tombstones, prodding the earth at each grave with a technical device of some sort. He minces over to the crowd and grants them all a trinket, mumbling "Talismans! Talismans!" [incredibly long beat] G: Welcome, friends! Do you believe I have brought you to a place of the past? [beat] - You are then mistaken, friends! You stand in the very heart of modern, postmodern, metamodern, patamodern Aberdeen! A power plant supplying the whole of Aberdeen with carbon-free electricity, all year round! The largest green power facility in Europe - the very soul of modernity! How, you ask? How? Oh, I do so love your questions. A mere nine years ago I would have had to demur a true answer - we were so maligned, so grey market in those days - ...

Further to my utopian blurt : now, say I don't like to self-medicate - what are the other treatment options, Doctor? Materialism - traditional politics. Global growth, Development, Reform. (Yes, but for what ? The eradication of poverty? Good, but not enough. The end of alienated work ? Yes, but not the end of only that.) Materialism - traditional hedonism. (with current drugs and people: cheap, unsustainable; for lucky unreflective folk only.) Asceticism - traditional religion. ( It had its chance .) Asceticism - traditional philosophy. (Has worked badly and for few.) Aestheticism. (life as art if not life for art. See also Absurdism .) Existentialism - as affirmative philosophical anarchism. Mysticism. ( Eh . It takes all kinds . See also Romanticism .) Other-directedness - the ruthless pursuit of Truth. Radical psychoanalysis. (Fuck knows if or how this would work. They don't seem to know, themselves .) Radical politics. ( The odds are not good , but then, neither is...

Said the peasant to the priest: " Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto !" Priest: " Well, you would say that, wouldn't you ?" I come from philosophy. In that house there's an old and warming idea - that it shouldn't matter who raises a point, because good arguing is nil ad hominem - it has "nothing directed to the person" who's arguing, but all instead to what they argue. This is a noble idea. Unfortunately some new ways of thinking raise fairly fatal problems for it. - When we talk about Difference in the new way, ad hominem is important. When an argument is politicised (as indeed even the abstractest arguments are), it can matter who is saying what. Some philosophical topics draw on experiences which are not universal nor easily mentally simulated. For instance: gender. It's not hard to see what's problematic about a man stomping around telling a group of women what feminism should be, no matter how sympathetic and well-in...

" Found out recently that you are leaving - 'For good I hope', I softly tell my ceiling . It's better now to be alive; Sleeping is my 9 to 5; I'm having nightmares all the time... Of running out of words that rhyme." " See also Anguish Anxiety Anger Existentialism Alienation Byronic hero Kafkaesque Weltschmerz Fear of death Virginity Emo " - Wikipedia Emo had its day. The word seems to have disappeared - usage peaking in, what, 2006? This is partly because it has been enthusiastically assimilated into pop. (This is the fate of hypersuccessful memes - to become ordinary. It's one of two standards in yoof visual style, and a go-to in chart pop too.) What little ideological content there was in it - commodified Gothic Romanticism, and also what a charitable cultural theorist might one day see as a kind of genderqueering - is gone and not missed, since it took its chauvinism , hypocritical conformity and soft nihilism with it. Some funny relics of...

" Sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled ." - Santayana I'm not going to say much about Waking Life here - it is what we might call a naked film: you will get philosophical content from it on your own. Nor do I particularly want to mark its visual style - 'rotoscoping' - because that’s not its main innovation. What I will say is that it is pretentious in the best sense and talks total crap in only three or four places. It is in one sense the most philosophical film ever, because it’s overwhelming, has no real plot, and definitely has no coherency: it is a cutup of a couple dozen talking heads with different worldviews. It is a visual and conceptual poem about how inscrutable and irrational life is on the inside; verse lifejackets thrown into oceanic gaps in our understanding. It moves fast enough for its flaws to be minor affronts, though it does feel long , being both heavy and unbearably light. I recommend dunking your head in ...

" a live cow makes a lion salivate, whereas a human just wants to say 'moo' and see if the cow responds .” – Scott Adams I've been building up sacrificing dairy in my head: I've been being meanminded. The main thing to say against it is "It takes some getting used to" - and what a contemptible wisp of an argument. (Could also say that the substitutes a re twice as expensive, and hard to find, but this is Today and Here.) All the supermarkets are stocking some bloody odd alternatives these days, even outlets that aren't indecently big. So, what criteria? Not "closeness to cowjuice". Not "nutrition", though vegists do need to think about that more than most. "Alpro Sweetened" Base: Soya Costs: £1.09/L Tastes: Guchh. Is: High in protein. Apparently 5% of UK are allergic to soy. "Alpro Unsweetened" Base: Soya Costs: £1.09/L Tastes: Insipid but much better. Is: High in protein. (There...

" It appears, then, that one must either accept patriotism in spite of its undesirable features or place oneself in the role of an outsider, whose claims about the national welfare have an uncertain status. The result for many is a chronic form of discomfort and a hope that the subject of patriotism can be kept out of political discussions ". - Stephen Nathanson " [Post]modern national culture is the sum of all the interpretations of history by all the people living in the nation . " - Michael Gardiner " Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation. " - Alasdair Gray My attempt to process Scottish culture in its entirety continues, taking in the canon , old shitey forgotten canons , a giant chunk of political philosophy , and a poke of Heideggerian shite. I'm reading about 200 pages a day, working as if not in the early days of a belting migraine. Carving my head into funny shapes: First lesson: my sheer Scottish ignoranc...

If anyone ever gives me a lecturing job I am well structuring my course reader around these. 1. Supply and Demand - Hives 2. The Day the Dollar Die - Peter Tosh (Appeal to post-scarcity society, but I'll use it for exchange-rate theory) 3. Milkshake - Kelis ( erotic capital , I'm afraid) 4. How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live? - Albert Reed 5. Capitalism - Oingo Boingo (Talking Heads meets Milton Friedman. Well, somebody had to write it.) 6. Taxman - Beatles (Whinge about progressive taxation. Groovy) 7. Can't Lose What You Ain't Never Had - Muddy Waters (Muddy misunderstands the virtual nature of money. Nevertheless, his very attitude drove the 2008 credit crunch: subprime defaults . 8. Career Opportunities - Clash (Unskilled labour's mass alienation) 9. I Want It All - Queen (maximising "rational" consumer - "move out of my way" - to me you have no way) 10. Government Cheese - Rainmakers (neoconservative anthem. Ironically it was Reaga...

I reviewed about a quarter of the shows I saw at the Edinburgh Festival. I would just link to the people I wrote them for , but their subediting crushes and banalises everything, so here we are. The deadlines were strict, so these were all pounded out in about ten mins. I'd recommend the exercise to anyone. ******************************************** Jumping Jesse Jones One very short route to my heart is cheer in the face of adversity. There's a bucket of adversity facing Mr Jones, as he plays here all month: he plays alone, outside, in a big booze-branded box; half the audience face away, chatting; he also quietly competes with Chapel Street's traffic noise. Playing original acoustic blues, he throws in some slap-bass moves and clattery thrash. His voice is a sweet baritone, but undistinguished. Most of his songs work because, if you master a cliché, it will not offend the ear anymore. A Davy Graham reference - in this town - does him credit, as does a...