8-legged lingerie

A Conversation Between Two Girls.

Girl 1:  Can you have medium long hair?
Girl 2:  Of course you can have medium long hair.  You have medium long hair.
Girl 1:  I do?
Girl 2:  Yes.
Girl 1:  … But what about medium hair?
Girl 2:  No such thing as medium hair. Another qualifier is needed.

 

Bored in a concert hall

In the silences held between movements of a great orchestral sonata, audience members catch themselves pondering at length their own personal foibles, partially completed to-do lists, minor work and/or relationship blunders, desire to go home and watch a movie, and impending Lasik eye surgery – they can’t believe they’re actually gonna let some quackjob burn through their eyeballs with a laser. One fellow laughed out loud, remembering that that very afternoon he had momentarily fretted that the book he was reading would run out of battery life.

Politicraticus!

Review of the new, vital, and fake philosophy text, Politicraticus.

*****

In this highly ambitious new work, the author addresses a wide variety of ethical questions, including that of coding your advisor’s data for them, batch drip vs. slow drip coffee, cake-walk “winner statistics” and the suspicious likelihood of the smallest cake-walker always winning the damn cake, what to do when you DIY the exact same quirky towel-skirt as another girl, the occasional necessity of Tyranicide in the 21^st century, and “the media.”

Though occasionally muddled and rambling, Politicraticus contains surprisingly acute insight into topics such as lèse-majesté, staying home fake-sick, and How to Start a Cult in Your Very Own Precinct.

Politicraticus is extremely concise, considering the density of its insight and broadness of its scope.  Sweeping.

Politicraticus provides vital warnings about the horrors of modern art, as well as modern snacks.

Politicraticus:  Dignified.  Fervent.  Dangerous.

One complaint: Politicraticus contains a weird case-study of the author’s two year period of beginner piano lessons despite already knowing how to play the piano at an expert level.  It is not clear what the purpose of this experiment was but the author asserts it “should be a sitcom” (pg. 1012) and is willing to sell the rights for nothing less than $10,000,000 + royalties (pg. 1026).

Speaking of royalty, Politicraticus waxes nostalgic for the good-ole days of kings, knights, pretty pretty princesses, and medieval Christian readings of Virgil and Ovid, those which delicately exemplify sinful sexual behavior and were routinely (and rightfully) copied and translated with subjoining moralizing Christian exegesis.  I am not sure whether this is a complaint or not.

Death?  It’s not really mentioned.

Politicraticus was badly translated into French, German, and Finnish.

Politicraticus is now available in three gorgeous editions:  Apollonian Publishing hard cover, cracked stone tablet, and illegal PDF.

I am probably overreacting

(start of a novel about an egoistic scholar who gets his comeuppance)

I was traveling by train from DC to Boston when my bag went missing. The bag contained the following artifacts:

1. An in-progress piece of scholarship that, when finished, will be of great value to the world.
2. A copy of Anton Webern’s collected songs (no longer in print), which were gifted to me by an admirer.
3. Several journals and notepads containing personal scribblings and musings, clearly of no use to anyone but myself and possibly a future biographer.
4. A stranger’s phone number, acquired at a favorite bookstore in the nation’s capital.
5. My lunch, which I was saving until I could not stand the glorious anticipation one more instant. I shall not divulge what that lunch was, in order to maintain an air of mystery about my day-to-day worldings.

Let it be known that the pain of finding my bag (and lunch) missing was dreadful.

I can only assume a rabid fan of mine has run off with the bag. I have suspicions: a certain young man caught my eye first as I boarded and again, in passing, as I crossed to the café car. I do not know what it is about me that demands an instantaneous idée fixe. Perhaps it is my air of disapprobation, which no doubt stirs childish longing for validation.

Perhaps now he is reading my journals, stealing my ideas, and munching on my meticulously prepared mid-day meal while feeling himself filling with eminence.

Perhaps he’ll even call the stranger, how hilarious that would be! The stranger, expecting me to arrive at their door, finds instead a kleptomaniac with no attention for detail carrying a bouquet of stolen anecdotes. Ha!

I am a well-known philosopher

I was sitting in a café in a small mountain town when I was recognized by a young man – a writer – who asked if I would read part of his manuscript, which he happened to have in his hands. I had the time so I obliged. The manuscript turned out to be something like a diary in which he described, from every angle, his obsession with me. I greatly enjoyed it and think it should be published.

Why he mispronounces words.

There was something about books that had always felt right.  There was no greater ambition, or indeed pleasure, than sitting quietly with endless hours of uninterrupted words arranged meticulously into ideas.  Conversation could only clumsily rehash what had already been said by far wiser philosophers.  Even the popular writers of the present could do little more than rework the masterpieces in entertaining ways.  And what was the point, when a pure version waited patiently in writing?

He had no interest in cultural references, shock-value, or irony.  Such were the tools of amateurs.  He was annoyed by the avant-garde which struck him as a desperate plea for attention.  Even worse were conformists imitating trends.  Or the aloof cult of irony, terrified of admitting passion lest they seem excitable (read:  uncool).  Why could no one make a true and honest statement anymore?

Sometimes in conversation, he’d mispronounce words.  “Behemoth.”  “Isochronous.”  This was because he had only seen the words, never heard them spoken aloud.  This was embarrassing for him and he blamed his embarrassment on others; if people weren’t so foolish he wouldn’t have to do more reading than speaking.  People would never give him what he wanted.  They’d never teach him anything.  And what was the point, when the purest teachers waited patiently in literature?

This Post Contains a Numbered List

1. This post is not about anything except the numbered list format.
2. Numbered lists are fun to read!
3. This is the third item in the list.
4. You can eat your lunch while reading this post.
5. Five items is a good number of items, though it’s likely you’re losing interest now.
6. You’re still reading this list, awesome!
7. I definitely shouldn’t stop at seven, people feel subconsciously weird about it.
8. This is the pre-penultimate item.
9. A sense of accomplishment is building…
10. Welcome to the end of this numbered list!!

The Character and Controversy of Elmer Sorro, Composer

In a wild act of plagiarism, composer Elmer Sorro cut passages from his favorite pieces and made a new piece, a composite piece, with the clips rearranged in a nightmarish mutation of their progenitors. Stitched into their new context, the bits and pieces of other, more famous composers were warped, rotated, and amplified. Only after his death did anyone begin to notice.

They are not the notes of the Great Elmer Sorro!
Did he do this intentionally or was it a mistake?
Is he a genius or an idiot?

The scholars felt personally violated; Sorro had defiled their convictions.
And they rejoiced; there was much to discuss!

The theorists examined the form.
The biographers examined the history.
The pious, the virtue.
The artists, the affect.
The philosophers, the ontology.
The philistines, huh?

Listeners bemoaned the death of their darling;
they listened to it again to mourn it properly;
they listened a third time and savored their fury;
and they listened a fourth time in a Grand Personal Renaissance.

The publishers shook their heads.
The students wrung their hands.
The children barely noticed.
The friends discussed it by candlelight.
The graduate students scrambled to pick the winning side and publish.

Sorro’s editor was thankfully long-past; his protégé more prolific than ever; his lover still rolling his eyes.

And by some truly stray arrangement of time, space, and ether this blatant intellectual piracy was deemed an act of brilliance. Bravissimo!

I am a butterfly collector

She is telling a story:  I got a letter that accuses me of the above, as though this is a bad thing.  I think the letter-writer means that one should not be building some sort of butterfly anthology – gathering and examining and taking measurements – but should invest deeply in one prime specimen.  Still, it seems illogical to focus solely on one when a storm of chaos could blow in at any moment and turn all my butterflies to greyhounds or hub caps or black holes.  Or maybe that’s no excuse.