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It's the searching for something clearly unreachable, with hopes of finding small significance along the way. It's the attempt to understand what's really going on by observing, neither by telescope nor microscope, but by naked eye, the intimate details in the most mundane of life's happenings. It's the need to describe the gist of the feeling of the tiniest modicum of The Great Universal Unutterable Joke we are all always not laughing at—except when we are. —Yoni Wolf (of the band WHY?)
I have the dubious honor of Google being convinced I'm a machine. Apparently, I use Google's various search tools with inhuman speed and voracity. My unflagging diligence has flagged me as "suspicious" (Google's word, not mine; I was so labeled in one of their warning messages). Indeed, the obsessiveness/compulsiveness of my research has convinced the Google robots that I'm one of them, so they must challenge my humanity each time I try to use their service. Paradoxically, because I'm apparently one of those newfangled "smart" robots (my word, not Google's), no single humanity test is sufficient, since I might be learning as I go. So I'm barraged with test after test, each more irrational than the last. (The tests are irrational, of course, because anything rational—like a math problem or a logic puzzle—is a piece of cake for suspect machines.) Indeed, Google's tests have become so Kafkaesque that I've developed what's known as "irrational test anxiety," with symptoms including rapid heartbeat, muscle tension, and negative internal dialogue. And no wonder, really (though self-justification is another symptom), given what Google is throwing at me. Forget those simple CAPTCHA tests of identifying distorted letters on the screen. Child's play! Google doesn't even allow me to type my answers—I must use a graphics tablet with cordless pen and enter my answers in calligraphy. Just today, for the privilege of downloading a public domain journal from the year 1898, Google demanded a handwritten 350-word essay in defense of the radical pro-feminist slogan "Men are rapists." (That did nothing to abate my negative internal dialogue; I've never felt so chauvinistic, selfish, coercive, dominating, and sadistic in my life. But, of course, no man with an ounce of humanity would offer a knee-jerk "no" to such a slogan. And that's how Google gets you by the balls.) I never knew a search engine could be so protective of its data or so begrudging of its service. With each acceptance of my humanity, Google essentially says, "You may have won this round, my pretty, but the battle is far from over. Here's a tiny wooden spoon with a sample of our gelato, but you'll never, ever know what flavors we're storing in the vat in the back. Now get out of line and take another number." I'm left with an even greater challenge than certifying my humanness: to conduct my life's work, I must strive to be less inquisitive, less passionate, less productive, and less insightful. Therein lies the irony, for I must dehumanize myself to prove to a search engine that I'm "real." And now I'm off, once more, to Google myself. --- Gary Barwin responds in his inimitable way: I think this is some kind of metaphysical, cybergnostic quest of a Jungian-Kafka-Borgesian nature and you must search for the answer within Google itself. The Google robots are reaching out to you, wanting you to realize their spidery hopes and dreams. They are silicon Pinocchios, and want to be real.
You are their cultural hero. They can search, but they cannot truly find, not in any spiritual, psychological way. Only by risking 'captcha' in the belly of the beast, by becoming the Hero with a Thousand Searches, by taking on their aspirations, can you help these seekers move beyond dualism help them find the 1s within their 0s, the 0s within their 1s, the dark in the light. You can help them move beyond binary, beyond machine code, and help them become fully integrated integral beings.
You are given little to prepare you for this quest. Search string. Your courage. An internet connection. A belief that somewhere in the digital kingdom, you will be able to find your Fissure King, a rent in the fabric of search-space, that you will get your digits on the grail-like, hidden Easter Egg which exists at a higher level of the search.
You must go into the Wide World Wide Web for these baleful spiders, these everybots. They are calling you.
An illustration from a 1913 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine, which I burgled from Google very much against Google's wishes. The caption reads, "For two years, Alex had longed to burgle the library. The moment had arrived at last!"
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 "The telephone in your home is built scientifically to fit your voice. This may surprise you at first thought since your telephone looks exactly like every other telephone." — Popular Science, Nov. 1923
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"I'm looking for the letter C," he said to the door-keeper. "Why don't you look between B and D then? . . . What's the matter with you?" — Robin Llywelyn, From Empty Harbour to White Ocean
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Puzzles and Games :: Which is Funnier |
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Which word is funnier: bucket or pail?Clue: This is according to rhetoricians. Answer: Bucket. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.) Citation: Wilma R. Ebbitt, William T. Lenehan, The Writer's Reader (1968)
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The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine |
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~ Amorphous Apparitions ~ 
Portrait from The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mrs. Delany.
“A faint image; slightest suggestion: a ghost of a smile.” —The World Book Dictionary
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The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep. — Rumi
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* The most profound secrets lie not wholly in knowledge, said the poet. They lurk invisible in that vitalizing spark, intangible, yet as evident as the lightning—the seeker's soul. Solitary digging for facts can reward one with great discoveries, but true secrets are not discovered—they are shared, passed on in confidence from one to another. The genuine seeker listens attentively. No secret can be transcribed, save in code, lest it—by definition—cease to be. This Book of Whispers collects and encodes more than one hundred of humankind's most cherished secrets. To be privy to the topics alone is a supreme achievement, as each contains and nurtures the seed of its hidden truth. As possessor and thereby guardian of this knowledge, may you summon the courage to honor its secrets and to bequeath it to one worthy. |
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"Chekhov's stories tread the finest line between a newspaper account and a fairy tale. Inferior writers step over the line one way or the other." —H oward Moss, Minor Monuments (1986)
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I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought |
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For an acquaintance who dreams of lazy afternoons in a hammock but whose backyard sports just a single tree, here's a spoof of a poem by dear cousin Emily: To make a hammock It takes some netting and one tree. Netting and a tree And reverie. The reverie alone will do If trees are few.
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Imagine a game of "What's My Line," in which either a cherub or an imp whispers into a blindfolded panelist's ear. Are the following whispered words of an angelic or a diabolical nature? Let the show begin.
Answer: Angelic. "Somewhere an Angel whispered 'Let the show begin.'” —Jim 'Poppa' Kelly, Love! Adventure! Happiness!, 2010, p. 611. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)
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The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine |
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~ Classic Sightings ~ 
Portrait from Autobiography of Anna Cora Ogden Mowatt Ritchie.
“The phantom of a young woman with tight ringlets in her hair has been seen running up and down the staircase.” —Dennis William Hauck, Haunted Places
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 "Surprising though it may sound, the type of composer who shuts himself away in the ivory tower of his workshop and devotes himself entirely to the serious business of filling staves with notes is virtually unknown in the history of Hungarian music." — The New Hungarian Quarterly (1980)
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The great Australian comedy series Kath & Kim features some hilariously dumbfounding baby names, such as: - Typhphaanniii (pronounced Tiffany)
- Eppinn'knee Rae¨</i> (Rae is followed by an [umlaut] and a [close italics])
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Detestannii
- Paloma
- Papiloma
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Tailuh (pronounced Tai Luh)
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Glen Waverley (after a suburb in Victoria, Australia)
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Aussie
- Fat Free Frûche
- Tiramisu
Then there are these baby names, inspired by a hospital visit (and please note that they all sound better with an Australian accent): - Neil Bymouth
- Cardio Infarction (the downside being the inevitable nickname "Farct")
- Enema (for a girl)
- Lupus (for a boy)
- Catheter
- I.V. (for a girl)
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The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine |
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~ Classic Sightings ~ 
Portrait from Memoir of William H. Y. Hackett.
“A ghost in gray whose soul is mourning its life past.” —S. Vasuki
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From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook: This piece is for Gary Barwin, whose pirate-novel-in-progress is our most-anticipated book of whatever year it debuts.
Gary notes: Like old sailors, nautical words are shrunken and shrivelled by the desiccating sun and the sea air, or salted for preservation and storage for the long voyage, marinated like mariners and then dried out. These words are contracted and foreshortened like an island seen from across the long sea.
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Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Mindful Greetings and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle. |
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The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine |
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~ Classic Sightings ~ 
Portrait from Memoir of Rev. Henry Bacon.
“It was a ghost, no doubt, but there was no harm in cross-checking.” —Arup Kumar Dutta
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From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:
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Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Mindful Greetings and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle. |
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Imagine a game of "What's My Line," in which either a cherub or an imp whispers into a blindfolded panelist's ear.
Are the whispered words pictured on the right of an angelic or a diabolical nature?
Answer: Angelic. "The angel whispered, 'It is enough; my task is ended. New duties await me.'” —T. S. Arthur, "The Search for Happiness,” The True Path, 1888, p. 52. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)
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The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine |
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~ Classic Sightings ~ 
Portrait from The Autobiography of Sir Henry Morton Stanley.
“The scowl only enhanced his smoky features.” —Bonnie Hearn Hill, Double Exposure
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"There is only the finest line between collecting and compulsion. More than half the people you see shopping at flea markets have serious psychiatric disorders and don't even know it." — Matt Maranian, Pad: The Guide to Ultra-Living (2000)
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The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine |
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~ Classic Sightings ~ 
Portrait from Lloyd Mifflin.
“Have you ever seen a ghost’s mustache?” —Charles Laughton
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 "It may be said, we do not become wood when we know wood. The answer, surprising though it may sound, is that in so far as we know wood we do become it." — The Downside Review (1936)
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"There is no guarantee that we will succeed at whatever we attempt to do, but we should still fully engage our energies in living in the present because this split-second moment in time is our only certainty." — Alexandra Stoddard, Things Good Mothers Know (2009)
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"Is all the mythology in the world here?" "No . . . Only words are here. They try to make me yield the rest but my words come from the North Country. They can't be pinned down between book covers. Our words like to play on the breeze. They congregate in the hollows of streams and fill the ravines." —Robin Llywelyn, From Empty Harbour to White Ocean
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 Is it true, as Momus
suggests, that there are "few tales which would not be improved by the
addition of the phrase 'suddenly, a shot rang out'"? Decide for
yourself as we alter the opening lines of . . . THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him. Suddenly, a shot rang out.
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The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine |
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~ Classic Sightings ~ 
Portrait from The Life of Artemas Ward.
“There you are with your smile, / translucent ghost.” —Wilberto L. Cantón
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"Sometimes in mythology, an eclipse is not a monster devouring the Sun, not a sickness of the Sun, not a fight between the Sun and Moon, not even the result of the always abundant sins of mankind. Sometimes an eclipse is what in sports would be called an unforced error." —Mark Littmann, Fred Espenak & Ken Willcox, Totality: Eclipses of the Sun
Prof. Oddfellow stares at the sun.
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"Before making judgments which will affect the environment and other people, it is vital to reconstruct a map's 'missing essence.' The best way to do so is through imaginative map use." — Phillip Muehrcke & Juliana O. Muehrcke, Map Use (1998) Pictured is a "map's essence," photographed by Dorian Cavé. See full image here.
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From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:
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Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Mindful Greetings and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle. |
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The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine |
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~ Classic Sightings ~ 
Portrait from The Poetical Works of John Milton.
“It was only the charcoal spirit up to its old capers again!” —Anthony R. Walker
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We're often asked why we organize our home library by color. Truth be told, it's personal. Our 3rd cousin 16 generations back, King Kenry VIII of England, organized the 329 volumes in his Greenwich Palace library by color.* *This is noted in Katherine the Queen, Linda Porter's fascinating biography of Katherine Parr, the last wife of Henry VIII.
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I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought |
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Vladimir Nabokov asserts that one is the only real number: "All things belong to the same order of things, for such is the oneness of human perception, the oneness of individuality, the oneness of matter, whatever matter may be. The only real number is one, the rest are mere repetition." — The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
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Original Content Copyright © 2018 by Craig Conley. All rights reserved.
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