Christmas with Bukowski

On Christmas  I  had Betty  over. She  baked  a  turkey  and we

drank. Betty  always  liked  huge Christmas  trees.  It must  have

been  7  feet  tall,  and  1/2  as wide,  covered with  lights,  bulbs,

tinsel, various crap. We drank from a couple of fifths of whiskey,

made  love,  ate  our  turkey,  drank  some more. The  nail  in  the

stand was  loose and  the  stand was not big enough  to hold  the

tree.  I  kept  straightening  it.  Betty  stretched  out  on  the  bed,

passed out. I was drinking on the floor with my shorts on. Then

I  stretched  out.  Closed my  eyes.  Something  awakened  me. I

opened my eyes. Just  in time to see the huge  tree covered with

hot lights,  lean slowly  toward me, the pointed star coming down

like a dagger. I didn't quite know what it was. It looked like the

end of  the world. I couldn't move. The arms of  the tree enfolded

me. I was under it. The light bulbs were red hot.

"Oh,  OH  JESUS  CHRIST,  MERCY!  LORD  HELP  ME!

JESUS! JESUS! HELP!"

The bulbs were burning me.  I  rolled  to  the  left, couldn't get

out, then I rolled to the right.

"YAWK!"

I finally rolled out from under. Betty was up, standing there.

"What happened? What is it?"

"CAN'T YOU SEE? THAT GOD DAMNED TREE TRIED

TO MURDER ME!"

"What?"

"YES, LOOK AT ME!"

I had red spots all over my body.

"Oh, poor, baby!"

I walked over and pulled  the plug  from  the wall. The  lights

went out. The thing was dead.

"Oh, my poor tree!"

"Your poor tree?"

"Yes, it was so pretty!"

"I'll stand it up in the morning. I don't trust it now. I'm giving

it the rest of the night off."

She didn't  like  that.  I  could  see  an  argument  coming,  so I

stood the thing up behind a chair and turned the lights back on.

If the thing had burned her tits or ass, she would have thrown it

out the window. I thought I was being very kind.

I was trying to find the right words...

Ernest Hemingway; Hem; Papa; Ernie; dear boy (courtesy of Agnes von Kurowsky) -- call him whatever you like, he still didn't write it.  He wrote the words, but he never constructed A Moveable Feast -- and, after all, isn't that the only thing a novel really is, word construction?

And yet, somehow, a "celebratory" 50 years later, we see his name and likeness ablaze on yet another version of a book that never was, opprobriously daring to call itself "the restored edition."

I adamantly disagree with posthumous publishing, and altering an author's work before doing so is just sacrilege. The ultimate ignominy, however, is playing unsolicited emendator to any Hemingway work, especially a memoir -- and committing the most egregious unforgivable literary sin: ending it.

“it is not to be published the way it is and it has no end.” - what Hem wrote to his publisher in a letter received by Scribner just days after his favorite shotgun saw him off, sparing him from the publication of his letters (against his wishes) and his final works, including the memoir with "no end," which now has two ends.

As Ann Douglas said, "“there can be no final text because there is not one.” Being "a" Hemingway does not make you "the" Hemingway, and so it is this woman's opinion that we strip both Mary and Sean of the name.

A few more perspectives:

Thomas Lipscomb's rather humorous, though scathing, take on Sean's "artistic endeavors."

Author of Papa Hemingway, A.E. Hotchner shows his support for the 1964 rendition.

Some insight into this post's title

One of my particular favorites: Ernest Hemingway's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, 1954

And, of course, Mr. Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast

The Killers: Battle Born

Billboard Review

Stereo IQ's 10 Best Lyrics From TheKillers' Battle Born

The Killers' Unstaged AMEX show -- September 18, 2012

The early consensus is that:  a.) this is not their best album, and b.) Runaways and Miss Atomic Bomb are the obvious standout tracks.  I agree with the first point, however, the self-proclaimed revolutionary in me puts Be Still at the top as well.

(And of course Prize Fighter, a bonus track, does have some of my favorite lyrics. As detailed below.)

She's a pillar by the day, a fire by the night

She's a famous architect, like Frank Lloyd Wright

When it comes to tightrope walkin', she's world renowned

Her elegance and charm are worthy of praise

And I heard she used to throw for the Oakland A's

She works 268 hours a week, I've yet to meet her match

In the not so flesh: I am curiosity.

I promise something more interesting is in store, but seriously, a robot that takes a picture of itself on Mars, does it get any more me than that?  No.  The answer folks, is no, it does not.

In the flesh.

Vive la Revolution! 

Joke Time!

Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar... ...

...and doesn't.

  Schrödinger's cat

Time In Physics

Copenhagen Interpretation   

Wave–particle duality

EPRparadox  

Irving Penn: Obsession de la semaine

Veridical Paradoxes: Playing the Mind Guerrilla

Though I normally attempt to share my ideas, thoughts, and revelations in real time, with real people, I've come to learn that there are some, such as the one you are about to read, which are too obtuse for general conversation, and by this I mean MY general conversation.  Yeah, blows your mind a little doesn't it.  Allow  me to explain:  These said flashes of brilliance (my translation of what Hebb might deem: "increases in synaptic efficacy," or the result thereof) are not without audience, they are merely, if not lamentably, anachronisms -- the passionate conversationalist's l'esprit d'escalier.  Unfortunate casualties of Sir Stephen Hawking's "psychological arrow of time," they fall victim to the human perception of an inexorable passing of time.*  And so, the target audience, whether previously established or otherwise, is very small and proximally (not temporally, one woman's opinion) inaccessible.

However, the lack of an audience could hardly silence me.  So, in the meantime, I shall deposit my comment here.  It goes like this:

I have long since been bothered by many of the philosophical questions posed by Søren Kierkegaard in Either/Or (I'll spare you this tangential minefield, if I ever feel I have the mental energy I'll flesh it out in what is likely to be a three-post series), the front-runner being as follows:

“What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?”

Well, last night I came across The Wall, which I've owned for some time in the Le Mur version but never really read (primarily due to the fact that, although I can go page for page in French with someone reading a book in English, that person would have to be reading a selection from the "my first book" collection at a finger-tracking level).  So I read the eponymous story, which ended, spoiler alert, with this line:

"Everything began to spin and I found myself sitting on the ground: I laughed so hard I cried..."

To put a fine point on this particular amalgamation of thoughts, musings, and pedantries, two things: 

1.) Impress your audience into a state of awe with the precision, detail, and control of technical skill, or shock them into it, with the precision of mischievous skill.  But know that a minor digression spent caviling over semantics, Mr. Kierkegaard, accomplishes neither.

   (full transparency, excerpt below.)    

  "laughter first makes its appearance in the child, it is a nascent

  cry that is excited by pain or a suddenly arrested feeling of pain

  repeated at very short intervals. What if everything in the world

  were a misunderstanding; what if laughter really were tears!"

No Sale. Moving on.

2.) For the more mischievous -- the smirkers; the one-eye-brow lifters; those given to juxtaposition, sarcasm, and irony: There are four (or so) definitions of paradox, but this is the only one that matters: A statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth. (The other three are rendered irrelevant, unless qualified/implied, by the word's own paradoxical definition.)

So I have two words for you: Veridical paradoxes. You're welcome. Now go turn some heads. Shock and awe.


Fun with all things paradox-esque Lewis Carroll on logical paradoxes , Mobius strip, John Barth’s Frame-Tale, Game Theory

*Some fun with the titans of time (Einstein, Godel, Hawking, etc.) in the topics section (See, I care that you had no idea what I was talking about. Mildly. I'd say about a hair above this.)

Full Disclaimer: I found Either/Or an impressionable work and, like I said, maybe someday I'll have the energy to give it the full and thorough critique it (kinda) deserves.

The Grinch...OR The Little Black Heart of the Telephone

I recently expressed to a friend (about an hour ago, if we were to get technical) that I, by the definition Mr. Albert Einstein established, might be insane and should, perhaps, be committed.  To which he replied, "you don't need to be committed, you need to be loved."  Everyone needs to hear such things from time to time (saccharine though they are).  My reply, not dealing well with the saccharine, was a quote from the Grinch (or so I thought): "I think my little heart just grew three sizes." Apparently, however, it reminded him of the following poem.

(Full disclaimer, I am not a fan of poetry - though not quite metrophobic - and my penchant for the written word is less focused on modern writing than say, the days of Mr. Hemingway, or Mr. Eliot even....however, I felt it worthwhile to contribute something that might be of interest to, well, someone else...for a change ;) Enjoy.)

The Little Black Heart of the Telephone

That telephone keeps screaming its little black heart out:

Nobody there? Oh, nobody's there!—and the blank room bleeds

For the poor little black bleeding heart of the telephone.

I, too, have suffered. I know how it feels

When you scream and scream and nobody's there.

I am feeling that way this goddam minute,

If for no particular reason.

Tell the goddam thing to shut up! Only

It's not ringing now at all, but I

Can scrutinize and tell that it's thinking about

Ringing, and just any minute, I know.

So, you demand, the room's not empty, you're there?

Yes, I'm here, but it might start screaming just after

I've gone out the door, in my private silence.

Or if I stayed here I mightn't answer, might pretend

Not to be here at all, or just be part of the blankness

The room is, as the blankness

Bleeds for the little bleeding black heart

Of the telephone. If, in fact, it should scream,

My heart would bleed too, for I know how pain can't find words.

Or sometimes is afraid to find them.

I tell you because I know you will understand.

I know you have screamed: Nobody's there? Oh, nobody's there!

You've looked up at stars lost in blankness that bleeds

Its metaphysical blood, but not for redemption.

Have you ever stopped by the roadside at night, and couldn't

Remember your name, and breath

Came short? Or at night waked up with a telephone screaming,

And covered your head, afraid to answer?

Anyway, in broad daylight, I'm now in the street,

And no telephone anywhere near, or even

Thinking about me. But tonight, back in bed, I may dream

Of a telephone screaming its little black heart out,

In an empty room, toward sunset,

While a year-old newspaper, yellowing, lies on the floor, and velvety

Dust thick over everything, especially

On the black telephone, on which no thumbprint has,

For a long time now, been visible.

In my dream I wonder why, long since, it's not been disconnected.

(from Robert Penn Warren's Now and Then: Poems 1976-1978)

I was meant for the stage...

Not only was I there (Austin City Limits 2007), you can hear me laugh and "woo" at the line:

Mother, please be proud. Father, be forgiving. Even though you told me: "You'll never make a living."

Such is the life of an artiste << wink >>

Day 1 as a published author...

I'll defer to Mr. Hank Rearden on this one:

with the unspoken sentence hanging in the air: “Mr. Rearden, it can't be done” – the meals, interrupted and abandoned at the sudden flash of a new thought, a thought to be pursued at once, to be tried, to be tested, to be worked on for months, and to be discarded as another failure – the moments snatched from conferences, from contracts, from the duties of running the best steel mills in the country, snatched almost guiltily, as for a secret love – the one thought held immovably across a span of ten years, under everything he did and everything he saw, the thought held in his mind when he looked at the buildings of a city, at the track of a railroad, at the light in the windows of a distant farmhouse, at the knife in the hands of a beautiful woman cutting a piece of fruit at a banquet, the thought of a metal alloy that would do more than steel had ever done, a metal that would be to steel what steel had been to iron – the acts of self-racking when he discarded a hope or a sample, not permitting himself to know that he was tired, not giving himself time to feel, driving himself through the wringing torture of: “not good enough…still not good enough…” and going on with no motor save the conviction that it could be done – then the day when it was done

I will, however, add one word to the end: better.  Until then...

Vol 17 Issue 3 signing off.

Hem's reading list

Interestingly enough I just finished a Graham Greene -- The End of the Affair, it had its moments. I should read the book that was originally recommended to me before making a final judgment.  The Quiet American here I come...then I guess, I should see what Hem saw in that particular selection...we shall see.

What she's doin now...

thinking I might have trouble narrowing down my skills and abilities, having already checked the architecture box, which is 4th on the list, out of 2,072.  BUT in my defense: I always bogarted the blocks station in preschool, I have a discerning eye - to a fault - I hate camping (this includes anything not in city limits, of a major city (Austin you do not count)), AND, well, Howard Roark.

Not to mention, if the strength finder book was right my number one strength pretty much guarantees my besting even a fictional genius.  (how low will you go to sell a "book" Mr. Tom Rath, foraging the dictionary for platitudes, pilfering old newspapers from bums for their horoscopes, and no doubt you labored over the copy machine at some community college with a 101 social psych textbook to fill in the rest. You make me sick.  And by the way, my strengths don't top-out at five.)

And bringing it back...

So, if this little program proves anything like that bs strength finder book,  I'll spare myself the 20 minutes and 1850 more finger taps (see, I'm modest)...I think 20 pages of Tom Rath kissing my Competitive, Individualized, Knowledge-oriented, Commanding, Strategic ass will hold me over for a bit.

The comma, colon, em dash sentence is yesterday's triple threat

14 Punctuation Marks That You Never Knew Existed

                                                                    A little teaser for ya:

                                          

Also called the Percontation Point and the Irony Mark, this one's used to indicate that there's another layer of meaning in a sentence. Usually a sarcastic or ironic one. So it is essentially a tool for smart people to use to make stupid people feel even stupider. Which makes it the best punctuation mark of all.

The Mick

One of the few quotes that makes me cringe (admittedly morose for my own future) every time I read it.

"But god-damn, to think you're a .300 hitter and end up at .237 in your last season, then find yourself looking at a lifetime .298 average - it made me want to cry."

One of the few times I'll sell reality for the price of a "shoulda" -- Always a .300 in my eyes.

Bleacher Report takes issue with another Mickey Mantle quoteand it's use in Moneyball

New York, New York

It's time! 

St. Petersburg Paradox: Daniel Bernoulli

Suppose you are offered the chance to play the following game. A fair coin will be tossed until a head appears. If a head occurs for the first time on the n^th toss then you will be paid 2 n dollars. How much would you be willing to pay to play this game?

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-stpetersburg/

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson makes MY head hurt

http://migraine.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/lewis-carroll/

migraine aura phenomenon? Maybe, but if you were that smart your head would hurt too ;)

(Humbly admitted) so much math the Wikipedia page on this poem made my head hurt:

What the Tortoise Said to Achilles

Lewis Carroll 

Achilles had overtaken the Tortoise, and had seated himself comfortably on its back.

"So you've got to the end of our race-course?" said the Tortoise. "Even though it does consist of an infinite series of distances? I thought some wiseacre or other had proved that the thing couldn't be done?"

"It can be done," said Achilles. "It has been done! Solvitur ambulando. You see the distances were constantly diminishing; and so --"

"But if they had been constantly increasing?" the Tortoise interrupted "How then?"

"Then I shouldn't be here," Achilles modestly replied; "and you would have got several times round the world, by this time!"

"You flatter me -- flatten, I mean" said the Tortoise; "for you are a heavy weight, and no mistake! Well now, would you like to hear of a race-course, that most people fancy they can get to the end of in two or three steps, while it really consists of an infinite number of distances, each one longer than the previous one?"

"Very much indeed!" said the Grecian warrior, as he drew from his helmet (few Grecian warriors possessed pockets in those days) an enormous note-book and a pencil. "Proceed! And speak slowly, please! Shorthand isn't invented yet!"

"That beautiful First Proposition of Euclid!" the Tortoise murmured dreamily. "You admire Euclid?"

"Passionately! So far, at least, as one can admire a treatise that won't he published for some centuries to come!"

"Well, now, let's take a little bit of the argument in that First Proposition -- just two steps, and the conclusion drawn from them. Kindly enter them in your notebook. And in order to refer to them conveniently, let's call them A, B, and Z: --

(A) Things that are equal to the same are equal to each other.

(B) The two sides of this Triangle are things that are equal to the same.

(Z) The two sides of this Triangle are equal to each other.

Readers of Euclid will grant, I suppose, that Z follows logically from A and B, so that any one who accepts A and B as true, must accept Z as true?"

"Undoubtedly! The youngest child in a High School -- as soon as High Schools are invented, which will not be till some two thousand years later -- will grant that."

"And if some reader had not yet accepted A and B as true, he might still accept the sequence as a valid one, I suppose?"

"No doubt such a reader might exist. He might say 'I accept as true the Hypothetical Proposition that, if A and B be true, Z must be true; but, I don't accept A and B as true.' Such a reader would do wisely in abandoning Euclid, and taking to football."

"And might there not also he some reader who would say 'I accept A and B as true, but I don't accept the Hypothetical '?"

"Certainly there might. He, also, had better take to football."

"And neither of these readers," the Tortoise continued, "is as yet under any logical necessity to accept Z as true?"

"Quite so," Achilles assented.

"Well, now, I want you to consider me as a reader of the second kind, and to force me, logically, to accept Z as true."

"A tortoise playing football would be -- " Achilles was beginning

"-- an anomaly, of course," the Tortoise hastily interrupted. "Don't wander from the point. Let's have Z first, and football afterwards!"

"I'm to force you to accept Z, am I?" Achilles said musingly. "And your present position is that you accept A and B, but you don't accept the Hypothetical --"

"Let's call it C," said the Tortoise.

"-- but you don't accept

(C) If A and B are true, Z must be true. "

"That is my present position," said the Tortoise.

"Then I must ask you to accept C."

"I'll do so," said the Tortoise, "as soon as you've entered it in that note-book of yours. What else have you got in it?"

"Only a few memoranda," said Achilles, nervously fluttering the leaves: "a few memoranda of -- of the battles in which I have distinguished myself!"

"Plenty of blank leaves, I see!" the Tortoise cheerily remarked. "We shall need them all!" (Achilles shuddered.) "Now write as I dictate: --

(A) Things that arc equal to the same are equal to each other.

(B) The two sides of this Triangle are things that are equal to the same.

(C) If A and B are true, Z must be true.

(Z) The two sides of this Triangle are equal to each other."

"You should call it D, not Z," said Achilles. "It comes next to the other three. If you accept A and B and C, you must accept Z."

"And why must I?"

"Because it follows logically from them. If A and B and C are true, Z must be true. You don't dispute that, I imagine?"

"If A and B and C are true, Z must he true," the Tortoise thoughtfully repeated. "That's another Hypothetical, isn't it? And, if I failed to see its truth, I might accept A and B and C', and still not accept Z. mightn't I?"

"You might," the candid hero admitted; "though such obtuseness would certainly be phenomenal. Still, the event is possible. So I must ask you to grant one more Hypothetical."

"Very good. I'm quite willing to grant it, as soon as you've written it down. We will call it

(D) If A and B and C are true, Z must be true.

"Have you entered that in your notebook?"

"I have!" Achilles joyfully exclaimed, as he ran the pencil into its sheath. "And at last we've got to the end of this ideal race-course! Now that you accept A and B and C and D, of course you accept Z."

"Do I?" said the Tortoise innocently. "Let's make that quite clear. I accept A and B and C and D. Suppose I still refused to accept Z?"

"Then Logic would force you to do it!" Achilles triumphantly replied. "Logic would tell you 'You can't help yourself. Now that you've accepted A and B and C and D, you must accept Z!' So you've no choice, you see."

"Whatever Logic is good enough to tell me is worth writing down," said the Tortoise. "So enter it in your book, please. We will call it

(E) If A and B and C and D are true, Z must be true. Until I've granted that, of course I needn't grant Z. So it's quite a necessary step, you see?"

"I see," said Achilles; and there was a touch of sadness in his tone.

Here narrator, having pressing business at the Bank, was obliged to leave the happy pair, and did not again pass the spot until some months afterwards. When he did so, Achilles was still seated on the back of the much-enduring Tortoise, and was writing in his note-book, which appeared to be nearly full. The Tortoise was saying, "Have you got that last step written down? Unless I've lost count, that makes a thousand and one. There are several millions more to come. And would you mind, as a personal favour, considering what a lot of instruction this colloquy of ours will provide for the Logicians of the Nineteenth Century -- would you mind adopting a pun that my cousin the Mock-Turtle will then make, and allowing yourself to be re-named Taught-Us?"

"As you please!" replied the weary warrior, in the hollow tones of despair, as he buried his face in his hands. "Provided that you, for your part, will adopt a pun the Mock-Turtle never made, and allow yourself to be re-named A Kill-Ease!"

Hannah Arendt: Sighted

A text I sent this evening: "PS the only fabrication I was referring to was 'owning the world' -- I really am going back to over-the-head headphones and I did sign up for fencing lessons...for the record."  (I am a slave to accuracy.) 

After which followed...a new find:

A quote from this evening's internet hopscotching/reading/learning/knowledge-seeking escapades: “Action, as distinguished from fabrication, is never possible in isolation; to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act.” - Hannah Arendt

Bow to your opponent.  ;) << Let the games begin >>

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Somehow landed upon this website in my internet hopscotch of the day: http://www.imrevolting.net/?m=201006&paged=4

Oh yes, in looking up Ivan Albright

Meanwhile, I have found many gems stationed at said location, including: http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/  : Love it. :)

Leo Burnett - "When to take my name off the door"

December 1, 1967.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WUxb8YB88o

"Somewhere along the line, after I’m finally off the premises, you – or your successors – may want to take my name off the premises, too.


You may want to call yourselves " Twain, Rogers, Sawyer and Finn, Inc."….. or "Ajax Advertising" or something.


That will certainly be OK with me – if it’s good for you.


But let me tell you when I might demand that you take my name off the door.


That will be the day when you spend more time trying to make money and less time making advertising – our kind of advertising.


When you forget that the sheer fun of ad making and the lift you get out of it – the creative climate of the place – should be as important as money to the very special breed of writers and artists and business professionals who compose this company of ours – and make it tick.


When you lose that restless feeling that nothing you do is ever quite good enough.


When you lose your itch to the job well for it’s sake – regardless of the client, or money, or the effort it takes.


When you lose your passion for thoroughness…you hatred of loose ends.


When you stop reaching the manner, the overtones, the marriage of words and pictures that produce the fresh, the memorable and the believable effect.


When you stop rededicating yourselves every day to the idea that better advertising is what the Leo Burnett Company is about.


When you are no longer what Thoreau called "a corporation with a conscience" – which means to me, a corporation of conscientious men and women.


When you begin to compromise your integrity – which has always been the heart’s blood – the very guts of this agency.


When you stoop to convenient expediency and rationalize yourselves into acts of opportunism – for the sake of a fast buck.


When you show the slightest sign of crudeness, inappropriateness or smart –aleckness – and you lose that subtle sense of the fitness of things.


When your main interest becomes a matter of size just to be big - rather that good, hard, wonderful work.


When your outlook narrows down to the number of windows – from zero to five – in the walls of your office.


When you lose your humility and become big-short wisenheimers…. a little bit too big for your boots.


When the apples come down to being just apples for eating (or for polishing) – no longer part of our tone or personality.


When you disprove of something, and start tearing the hell out of the man who did it rather than the work itself.


When you stop building on strong and vital ideas, and start a routine production line.


When you start believing that, in the interest of efficiency, a creative spirit and the urge to create can be delegated and administrated, and forget that they can only be nurtured, stimulated, and inspired.


When you start giving lip service to this being a "creative agency" and stop really being one.


Finally, when you lose your respect for the lonely man – the man at his typewriter or his drawing board or behind his camera or just scribbling notes with one of our big pencils – or working all night on a media plan. When you forget that the lonely man – and thank God for him – has made the agency we now have – possible. When you forget he’s the man who, because he is reaching harder, sometimes actually gets hold of for a moment - one of those hot, unreachable stars.


THAT, boys and girls, is when I shall insist you take my name off the door. And by golly, it will be taken off the door. Even if have to materialize long enough some night to rub it out myself - on every one of our floors. And before I DE-materialize again, I will paint out that star-reaching symbol too. And burn all the stationary. Perhaps tear up a few ads in passing.


And throw every god-damned apple down the elevator shafts.


You just won’t know the place, the next morning. You’ll have to find another name."

1.e4

Boxes coming Monday, movers called: New York, get your red carpet ready ;)


PS, for reference's sake: http://bit.ly/zeJ4JL; http://bit.ly/AgWABt