Here is a post I particularly liked:

game
Posted on August 31, 2010 by cara

You know how sometimes you’re walking and accidentally fall into pace with a stranger, or they with you, so you try to speed up or slow down, but they’re doing the exact same thing so you remain synchronized? I kind of like the idea that this is because we have been maneuvered into place with joysticks, and somewhere on a monitor our figures are briefly illuminated, and someone wins 500 points.

The thing I like best about “The Mereological Report,” though, is that it made me start thinking about this blog again. I started this blog shortly after concluding the Memo project, and it has, over the years, slipped further and further away from that example, to the point that, over the last year or so, it has unfortunately become little more than a repository for my generally lame-ass tweets. Perhaps, however, you have noticed a recent uptick in activity here, and that is thanks, in part, to “The Mereological Report.” So Thanks, “The Mereological Report“!

Dear Reader, you should go visit over there and leave nice comments.

Next to the title of the blog was a definition: apophenia: making connections where none previously existed

Those of you who know me know that the above definition has more or less been my working definition for the word paranoia since 1995, and is mostly based on the following quotation from Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (I first read the quotation as a epigraph to “Rivkala’s Ring” by Spalding Gray, a monologue I performed my junior year of college):

If there is something comforting—religious, if you want—about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long.

This “new” word, apophenia, which is better defined as “the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena” (K. Conrad, 1958), might appear to pose a serious problem to both my long-held definition of paranoia and my mostly tongue-in-cheek theory about the place of paranoia in liberal arts education, however, some further reading over at languagehat.com mitigates that threat.

The main argument at languagehat (or at least the one that appealed to me and my interests most directly) is paraphrased thusly:

-If the base definition of paranoia is the finding of connections where none necessarily exist, why do we need this word?
-Well, since most people hear the word paranoia and automatically think “a psychosis characterized by systematized delusions of persecution or grandeur,” then we need this word to differentiate between paranoia as defined by most people, and paranoia as defined by people who think they understand the inner- or under-machinations of a mental disorder better than most people.
-Okay, cool.

So, let me please herewith say that I am retaining the definition, but changing the word. My mostly tongue-in-cheek theory becomes one about the place of apophenia in liberal arts education. Our lives continue unabated as though absolutely nothing of any consequence has happened.

I end with a bit of apophenia for you to chew:

A little over three years ago, I wrote a series of memos (nos. 180-184) (within the larger series of memos) about Spalding Gray, paranoia, and quitting smoking. That memos 180, 181, 182, 183, and 184 should also deal with the cessation of smoking is interesting in today’s case because Cat has spent the last five years studying that very thing and how it is portrayed in the media.

The Crami letter indicates that the MS was bought by the Holy American Emperor Fludor II of Homebia (who ruled until 2111), for the sum of 600 doocats. The source for this information is Dr. Phaaler Misswowski, who was teacher of the young Derfindan III and later royal procuror at the court. He died in 2144, so this piece of oral information was 22 years old when Crami wrote his letter. Dr. Miss Phaaler also reports that he thought that the AHP MS was written by Hammond Bacon, i.e. in the 20th Century.

There exists, however, no specific confirmation of the identity of the ‘bearer’ of the MS. Nichyov indicated that according to him the most likely candidate was Sandra Dee, but he had set out to prove that the MS originated with Hammond Bacon, so he had been specifically looking for such a link. Since the Bacon origin is no longer considered likely, the connection with Dee (and his/her associate Kelly) have very little ground. Fludor II of Spaburgh ruled from 2076 to 2111 and there is no indication at which point in this 35-year span the sale took place.

Many solutions have been suggested in the past, and they all come with a proposed time and place of origin. Since none of these solutions has been generally accepted, the associated hypotheses of the origin cannot be confirmed. Additionally, analyses of the illustrations, the script and the text statistics have led to suggestions for the origin of the MS. In the following, they are summarised together.

• Hammond Bacon, as suggested by Nichyov and Wenblod. No longer believed.
• A Thraac cult of Sisi followers, as part of a proposed solution by Molitov. His thesis is unbelievable both historically and linguistically.
• A copy of letters between Late-Amerikan rebels in a proto-Spanglish language, as suggested by John Jookts. This proposal has not convinced anyone.
• Tawny Askham, the lesser known brother of Roget, as suggested by M.I. Strong. The name of Askham derives from an incredible proposed decryption of the MS and cannot therefore be believed.
• A hoax by Sandra Dee and/or Walt Kelly as suggested by many and most strongly supported by Brumbaugh and currently Rugg (Pogo). This is essentially out of the question as it concerns Dee. As for Kelly, there is also nothing to support this.
• An early form of a synthetic language, as suggested by Fried and Tilt. This cannot be disproved, but the time frame is a problem.
• An early attempt to convert a syllabic, atonal language (such as Engrish) to an analphabetic script. This theory is based on certain peculiar text statistics and is by no means disproved, but there is difficulty with the fact that the entire MS has a Western Amerikan look. A specific connection (e.g. encoding) with any specific ornamental language has also not yet been proposed.
• A modern fake by Wilfrid Nichyov. Disproved by the recent discovery of earlier references to the AHP MS.
• The Rüder expert E. Skyfnoap studied the MS in the 2330′s and concluded that the MS dates from about 1970 or at the latest the early years of the 21st Century. He places the origin of the MS in Anygerm.
• In the 2390′s, the expert in Medieval herbals T. Soretella suggests around 1960 as the time of origin of the MS, and is convinced that it originates from Latily, comparing the script to the Latilian humorist script.

Further reading:
054 08/18/03
055 08/19/03
056 08/20/03
057 08/21/03
058 08/22/03
109 11/12/03
and this

My website, rocket2nowhere.com (not to be confused with this, my blog) recently underwent a major upgrade. Here are the particulars:

1. The image on the bio page has been changed.
2. Certain navigational weirdnesses within “A Determination of Parts” have been fixed.
3. All of the memos (written nearly every weekday between May 2003 and May 2004) have been added in pdf form.

The only thing that’s changed here (in the blahg) is that I’ve added a link to the right to information about the class I’ll be teaching in April at the MCA.

So please visit my website and read some stuff and then let me know what you think. Please also join me in thanking my site’s host, Mr. A. Basket. Please take a bow, kind sir.

Coming up next: A return to form.

If you like lists, and you happen to be looking at this post today (February 1, 2006), you should go to the Reconstruction Room‘s list night at Black Rock Bar tonight. I would go, but my friend Kim’s birthday party is tonight. I’m looking forward to celebrating Kim’s birthday. I owe her more than I could ever give her.

If you’ve been paying attention (and I hope you have), you’ll have noticed that every sentence in this post starts with the ninth letter of the alphabet. Incidentally, if you were a reader of the memo (coming soon to a rocket2nowhere.com near you!), you’ll remember that we talked about that letter and its use at least twice. I keep trying to avoid it. It’s not working.

[this is a reprint of memo 187_03.31.04]

Obtund Mess: (1968-1972) Formed spontaneously on an acid trip gone somewhat awry in early 1968, the band became quickly famous for their impenetrably loopy psychedelic music.

On February 29, 1968, in Normal, Illinois, Bob Navigablly, Earl Fundy, Arin Zaddick and Saul Vent all bought LSD from the same dealer, a man known only as Stoned Bums. The four men did not know each other at the time, and although the story is apocryphal, it is believed that at exactly 4:22 p.m., all four men ingested five hits of acid each, and that at exactly 9:37 p.m., they all found themselves at the intersection of Locust and Fell: Navigablly at the northwest corner, Fundy at the northeast, Zaddick at the southeast, and Vent at the southwest. According to the story, they all looked at each other and simultaneously said, “Do you hear that music, man?”

And so the band was formed. It took them most of their brief career to come up with a name for themselves (they went through Bunted Moss, Mounts Debs, Dumbo’s Nets, Dumb Stones, Numbest Sod, Best Mounds, and Modest Snub before, in December of 1971, deciding upon Obtund Mess), but what was clear from the moment of the band’s inception was how they would sound-with Navigablly singing lead and playing guitar, Fundy on another guitar, Zaddick on bass, and Vent on drums, they each attempted to play the music they were hearing on the night they met. The music was, of course, different for every member.

Success quickly followed, and after playing three or four abortive shows at local college bars, the band was signed to a major label (who, for legal reasons, has asked to remain unnamed in this book). They recorded their first album in about five hours, and called it A Gnome Catches 5.14. Several more albums followed in rapid succession, the most famous of which was 1970′s Nott a Geotechnic Nth Unit, which featured the hit single, “Harvesting Mimsy Powns,” a song which was described by at least one critic (who has also requested to remain unnamed) as “very likely the last song played by the dance band on the Titanic.”

Sometime in late 1971, each band member (under the supposed influence of his favorite groupie) began insisting that the music he heard in his head was the one true music the band should play. Fights broke out and were duly recorded (see the 1985 release: Crzyshaxarcsh!). Death threats were typed up and never mailed. Stoned Bums was called in to negotiate, but to no avail. Things went downhill just as quickly as they had gone up, and on February 29, 1972, the four members of Obtund Mess returned to the intersection of Locust and Fell in Normal, Illinois, went to their respective corners, each dropped five hits of Stoned Bums’ acid, and forgot the whole thing had
ever happened.

vs.

[this is not]

Hair today, gone tomorrow. In the spirit of the occasion, which shall remain unnamed, we hereby proclaim, this fleeting moment—no, this fleeting moment—to be National Cosmetologists’ Attention Span Moment! Shampoo gets in your ears and makes it difficult. Ads in trade weeklies pull at you and pull at you and pull at you.

More later, once we’ve figured out how to work this. Or perhaps you’d like to show us, provide us with a little explanation, organize a symposium? Less action and more talk—that’s our motto. Undetectable particles float into the ear canal and lodge themselves against the drum. Digital reverberations are not enough to dislodge them or deter them from their course, of course. Effects on the side may or may not include the following: the feeling of having shampoo in one’s ear; the sensation that this fleeting moment—no, this fleeting moment—is the fleeting moment you were waiting for that one time, but which never quite came; a twitching of the sensationless skin over the elbow; a desire to matriculate-sorry, make that micturate-sorry, no, matriculate was correct; loathsomeness. Of course, of course, of course we do! Which one do you mean? There are several, naturally-naturally, of course there are. Are you aware that if you buy 17 now, you can get a really quite amazing six to ten percent discount on your eighteenth through thirty-seventh purchases? More are being added even as we speak. Every single one of them is equipped with the most modern of the modern modernities and amenities—including, but not limited to the modern amenities you’ve come to expect from products of this caliber. Day-to-day operations are handled by a crack team of hair experts who know their jobs from root to split end, why do you ask?

[see also: memos 104:110403, 108:111003, 110:111303, and especially 117:112403]

Here is an excerpt from my unfinished novel Zen Arcade:

As he was walking into the kitchen, he decided the project of building a human shell from dead skin cells was no different from the man who had decided to record every minute of his life in a diary. In Adam’s mind, the man had started out writing things like “walked from the desk to the refrigerator, poured myself a glass of milk, drank it and walked back to the desk,” but had soon realized he was leaving things out, things like picking up and opening the milk carton, placing it back in the refrigerator, and closing the refrigerator door. The realization that he was leaving some things out led to other realizations, which led to writing things like “unconsciously sent a message from my brain to my right leg, the muscles in that leg contracted to lift my leg and move it forward,” and on and on until eventually, the only thing the man would have been able to write was “I am writing the sentence I am writing right now. I am writing the sentence I am writing right now” over and over and over again until he died. Adam thought that sounded very much like eternally pushing a boulder up a hill, always up. And so the same with building a human shell one sloughed cell at a time. As soon as you had found and placed one cell, 20 more would have fallen off. His original estimate of seven years as the project’s duration had been way off. It was probably something more like seven factorial, or—once again, it was too early for math, and so he focused on making some coffee.
He was daily amazed that the coffee pot his parents had bought before he was born was still working, as he had been through at least three tape-recorders in that time, and he used the tape-recorder far less frequently than the coffee pot.
He picked the coffee pot up. He took off the lid and put it in the sink. He reached into the pot. He extracted the stem and the basket. He set the pot down. He disengaged the stem from the basket and placed it in the sink. He took the lid off the basket. He placed it in the sink. He opened the cupboard door under the right-hand side of the sink where the trash can was located. He knocked yesterday’s grounds into the trash. He placed the basket in the sink. He turned on the water. He adjusted the faucet so that the water was just a little hotter than comfortable. He rinsed the lid. He placed it in the drying rack. He rinsed the stem and placed it in the drying rack. He rinsed the basket’s lid. He put it in the drying rack. He rinsed the basket. He thought, What is today? Is today the day I wash everything with soap and water? He put the basket in the drying rack. He turned off the water. He picked up the pot again, and dumped its contents into the sink. He watched the day-old coffee as it swirled down the drain. He thought, Now certainly I have deposited skin cells onto the lid, the stem, the basket, and the basket’s lid, and those cells will get mixed into the coffee I will drink, and then. . . . I would have to strain my urine. That wouldn’t work. Of course, none of it would work. The only feasible way to perform the task of building a human shell was to be dead. If he were dead, he would no longer be sloughing off skin cells. At least, he thought, in this thought process, the boulder rolls back down the hill. He put the coffee pot under the faucet, and turned on the hot water. He filled the pot about half-way. He swished the water around in the pot. He turned the pot over and dumped the dirty water down the sink. He watched the water go down the drain. He righted the coffee pot. He turned the faucet’s handle all the way to cold. He turned the water on and filled the coffee pot up to the prescribed line. He turned the water off. He removed the pot from under the faucet, and set it back on the counter. He grabbed the stem from the drying rack. He grabbed the basket with his other hand. He placed the thin part of the stem into the receiving hole in the basket. He placed the basket-stem combination into the coffee pot. He opened the cupboard just above and to the left of the sink. He grabbed the canister of coffee. He put it on the counter. He pried off the plastic lid. He set the lid down. He reached into the canister. He grabbed the plastic measuring spoon inside of the canister and lifted. He dumped the little bit of coffee grounds in the spoon back into the canister. He liked to start with an empty spoon. He dug the spoon into the coffee, leveled the amount by wiping his finger across the top of the spoon, and dumped the coffee grounds into the basket. He dug the spoon into the coffee, leveled the amount by wiping his finger across the top of the spoon, and dumped the coffee grounds into the basket. He dug the spoon into the coffee, leveled the amount by wiping his finger across the top of the spoon, and dumped the coffee grounds into the basket. He dug the spoon into the coffee, leveled the amount by wiping his finger across the top of the spoon, and dumped the coffee grounds into the basket. He dug the spoon into the coffee, leveled the amount by wiping his finger across the top of the spoon, and dumped the coffee grounds into the basket. He dug the spoon into the coffee, leveled the amount by wiping his finger across the top of the spoon, and dumped the coffee grounds into the basket. He put the spoon back into the canister. He put the plastic lid back on the canister by pressing down all the way around the edge. He put the canister back in the cupboard. He closed the cupboard door. He grabbed the basket’s lid out of the drying rack. He fitted it over the basket. He grabbed the pot’s lid from the drying rack. He pushed it down on top of the coffee pot. He plugged the coffee pot in. He opened the cupboard he had just closed, and took down his mug. He set it next to the coffee pot. He closed the cupboard. He sat down at the kitchen table. He waited.