Thursday, November 17, 2005

The Schlorp System

So, you begin with a full bottle of juice. I drink it down to about 10% left. Then, fill back up to the top. You've got yourself a 10% schlorp, a schlorp of 10%. If it's something especially tasty-- this ginger/apple jack they have here in Burlington definitely qualifies-- it might even be worth a double schlorping. Once the schlorp gets down to 10%, fill up to the top again, for a 1% schlorp.

10% might not be where you draw the line. The question is (deep soul searching here): How much of that powerfully satisfying full-juice freshness do you want to sacrifice to the vision of a juice-enhanced water experience? It may be 20%, or it may only be 5%. You'll learn what's right for you.

An advanced technique: Continuous gradient schlorping. Add water as you drink, keeping the level hovering around 100%. Each sip is a little more schlorpy than the last.

<3

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Analysis of "The Libertine" by Aphra Behn

>> 412. The Libertine
>>
>> A THOUSAND martyrs I have made,
>> All sacrificed to my desire,
>> A thousand beauties have betray'd
>> That languish in resistless fire:
>> The untamed heart to hand I brought,
>> And fix'd the wild and wand'ring thought.
>>
>> I never vow'd nor sigh'd in vain,
>> But both, tho' false, were well received; The fair are
>> pleased to give us pain,
>> And what they wish is soon believed:
>> And tho' I talk'd of wounds and smart,
>> Love's pleasures only touch'd my heart.
>>
>> Alone the glory and the spoil
>> I always laughing bore away;
>> The triumphs without pain or toil,
>> Without the hell the heaven of joy;
>> And while I thus at random rove
>> Despise the fools that whine for love.
>>
>
> Do you suppose he's talking about breaking girls hearts, or hunting for
> sadomasochistic love slaves? (You might guess where my mind goes with
> it.)


Well let me see, the truth is I haven't thought it out very clearly yet. It looks like quite a piece of work, so I think it'll be worth the effort.


>> A THOUSAND martyrs I have made,
>> All sacrificed to my desire,


It seems to me, especially connected with the later parts, that the "martyrs" are likely to be lovers. His lovers are sacrificed, used, to satisfy him.


>> A thousand beauties have betray'd
>> That languish in resistless fire:


So he "has made" martyrs, and he "has betray'd" beauties. The martyrs and the beauties are the same people-- his past conquests. The second part I don't get. Resistless fire could be hell? But that doesn't feel like it's right. No I think maybe what he's talking about is lovers whose desire he's inflamed, but that he's moved on from.


>> The untamed heart to hand I brought,
>> And fix'd the wild and wand'ring thought.


I think here he's talking about taming lovers, bringing them around to him. Bringing heart to hand is also a very violent image. Then in the second part "wild" must again mean the heart, the (archetype of a) person he chased. He fixed it, he focused it, he led it very intentionally and deliberately, when it tried to stray to other things.


>> I never vow'd nor sigh'd in vain,
>> But both, tho' false, were well received;


He didn't just falsely vow ("oh i'll be with you forever, won't you marry me,.. oh & incidentally have sex tonight") in vain, he was good at pursuading women to make love to him.


>> The fair are
>> pleased to give us pain,
>> And what they wish is soon believed:


Hmm the first thing that comes to mind is that he's saying women want to give us men, that is give him, the pain & bother of committment. But they're easily tricked into thinking that a committment has been made.


>> And tho' I talk'd of wounds and smart,
>> Love's pleasures only touch'd my heart.


Ah no this makes more sense. What he's talking about is some sort of show he's putting on where he's terribly afflicted by longing. He's pained to be apart from his love; that shows the genuineness of his love. But really he's just patiently playing out the drama, looking forward to the sexual reward.


>> Alone the glory and the spoil
>> I always laughing bore away;
>> The triumphs without pain or toil,
>> Without the hell the heaven of joy;


He got what he wanted, & didn't have to give up his freedom.


>> And while I thus at random rove
>> Despise the fools that whine for love.


Hmm it seems to me like "despise the fools" goes along with "I always laughing bore away," grammatically, so I'm not sure why it's not "despised." Maybe I'm reading it wrong. Oh wait maybe what I'm confusing is "bore." I was thinking it's the past tense of "bear."

No it's a typo in the site I got it from, probably. I googled it and half the results have "Despis'd." But then maybe those were people who reasoned it out the same wrong way that I did. Ha!

I think the sentence works like this: He is bearing away glory & spoil. He also calls those the "triumphs," and he says that he got them without pain or toil. Again, the same image, him bearing away the glories, the spoils, the triumphs, but this time he calls them "the heaven of joy" and compares them to the "hell" of pain and toil. So he was going around doing this, at random, and at the same time he despis'd people who thought that love (as in committment, heaviness) was worthwhile.


The whole tone of the thing makes me feel like he's not quite serious about it, though. It's like he's looking back at the conquests of his youth with a disparaging, yet still sympathetic, remove.

<3

student organizing

[10:23:54 PM] jbatease: zero_0022001 (11/16/2005 1:45:04 PM): cool_chic_luvz_u (11/15/2005 6:47:13 PM): EVERYBODY STAY HOME FROM SCHOOL ON DECEMBER 7TH... NO MATTER WHAT SCHOOL YOU GO TO, WHAT STATE YOU LIVE IN, ALL KIDS IN AMERICA SHOULD HAVE A NATIONAL SKIP DAY, THINK ABOUT IT... TEACHERS SHOW UP AND NOBODY IS IN CLASS... THEN THEY'LL LEAVE... TELL A LOT OF PEOPLE AND LETS SEE IF WE CAN MAKE IT ON NEWS... WHY DECEMBER 7TH? CAUSE ITS A SPECIAL DAY... JUST KEEP REPOSTING AND TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW... DECEMBER 7TH NO SCHOOL...!!!!!!!!

Sunday, November 13, 2005

a method of selling art online without depending upon copyright

Copyright is dead. Next concept:

Imagine for instance an online art gallery. Extremely high-res image files are for sale. Each one is a unique scan, the only one done of a particular physical painting. The images would be priced just as physical art is-- one expensive price for just one buyer. If the buyer wanted they could keep the bits secret-- and be, like a RL art collector, the sole owner-- or if they wanted they could share the resulting file with everyone, and be honored as its Liberator.

Going further with that idea, imagine if the buyer was actually a collective. A piece of art with an asking price of $100 is bought by 2000 people, collectively; they each pay five cents. You could go through the thumbnail galleries, have fun looking at art, and incidentally check off which pictures you'd be willing to pay five cents for. Once things hit their threshholds, they automatically are sold, and all of the buyers' accounts are given access to the file.

This sort of system would enable things to be sold for much smaller stakes, but at the same time it wouldn't preclude making millions of dollars on things. If a popular musician put up their new album for a million dollar ransom, it's quite conceivable that their fans would make it happen. It would however make this a matter of genuine loyalty, and not just anonymous market forces.

<3

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

non note now newly notorious

All of this memetic analysis is fascinating. It's the kind of thing we're able to perceive more fully when we have these more detailed histories. I could even imagine some very clear (perhaps even predictive) conclusions about the transformation of human societies might become obvious as we pull back this veil.

Here's a sort of philosophical question that I've been pondering: Does it add more historical clarity to take systematic samples, or scattershot? For instance, supposing that I take a fixed number of digital photographs per day, would it record a better history if I took them at random times, for various reasons, or if I took them in an organized way (perhaps triggered by particular events)?




I've been thinking about this since I wrote it. I've still been thinking that same thought. But hopefully it's developed a little and I can take it somewhere here.

What I've been trying to do lately is take pictures that encompass as much information as possible-- including especially the information of how I am framing the picture. By taking pictures intentionally in ways that are clearer reflections of my own inner being, I can share information about what's most important to me.

What would really help get those ducks in a row would be sufficient time & location stamping. For instance if this writing (7:20 am nov08-05) were accurately timestamped, that would help with associating it with other events that might have intersected with it. In fact it does intersect with an article I recently read somewhere where they had put ducks in a line "literally" (sleep research), which is what caused the idiom "ducks in a line" to appear earlier in this paragraph.

I've been typing this in a Notes box that I don't actually use, so I'm going to transpose it to blogger. Hi blogger.

<3

(God.))))))

Surprising to many, Ho Chi Minh was, in his early adulthood, a busboy in Boston at the Omni Parker House. (That was a quotation. It's odd how it's so formalized to put quote marks around quotations that it seems like lying not to. (In the future won't we just be able to SEE the quotationness of it? (Like Beethoven didn't put any quotation marks in his music. He and his contemporaries were just so culturally related and aware (or so small?) that they could perceive them. (Or maybe the references were more like in-jokes, or even, at the height of perversity, puzzles. (Bach. (God.))))))

I was surprised.

I grew up in Boston, and nobody ever taught me anything about Ho Chi Minh.

Wait, no, that's not true. I learned from my dad one chant. It goes: Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh! Ho Chi Minh Is Gonna Win!

I'm improperly structuring on purpose. This blog has very little connective or collective potential. Fundamental unspoken rules are being broken. This then is the shape of quietness, stillness, or solitude in these waters. (This is a place where few people come. (A beach.) (A blue sky.) This is the boring bramble, broken branches and ( ! ) thorns.

(
once i saw a place,
with my friends andy & sadiya,
other people were there too
but it's sadiya & andy that i'm thinking of now
they had made shapes out of pinecones & needles & leaves
just like the shapes we had made in other places
but theirs had a sort of romantic tingle to it
unless i'm just imagining that now
and i'm not entirely sure whether they told me
but i know for certain that they made love under that tree, real flesh bodies, and i bet they made noises
or i could be wrong
)

/ The TV's always full of people who are famous. (People become what they see. (Or they die trying. (Or they bring themselves to their point of weakness, trying. (And save themselves.) But lose what they wanted. (What they needed.) (But they're here, and from here they can still see God. (God.))))))

I've had a smidgen of medusa. Goddess. Let this all come right.

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