Found 98 posts tagged ‘list’ |
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- juggernaut
- thunderdome
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- mundane
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I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought –
October 17, 2008 |
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Some uncommon wisdom from unlikely sources: • Never go with a hippie to a second location. ( 30 Rock, NBC series) • Never drink with a savage. ( The Western Lands by William Burroughs) • The best way to avoid a confrontation with a stranger: never walk through a strange neighborhood. ( Maharishi Mahesh Yogi) • Nothing is better calculated to antagonize the wealthy than to ask for a small loan. ( The Western Lands by William Burroughs) • There is no cure for injustice other than committing another injustice to correct the first—let the river wash away the bad blood. ( Ancient Evenings by Norman Mailer) If you've heard uncommon wisdom from unlikely sources, please share!
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Images Moving Through Time –
June 19, 2008 |
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The following are examples of general properties: • being square • being self-identical • being identical with something • being next to someone • being next to a square • being a square which is larger than any other square — Gary S. Rosenkrantz, Haecceity: An Ontological Essay, 1993
Anna Halprin , Circle the Earth, Dancing with Life on the Line, 1989 photo courtesy of Musee d'Art Contemporain de Lyon, image by Paul Fusco Via Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
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The Right Word –
February 24, 2008 |
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All mixtapes go to heaven. Source. 
Information Prose :: A Manifesto in 47 Points :: Version 1.0 by Jeremy P. Bushnell, jeremy@invisible-city.com 9. You can learn a lot about a person from a mixtape. 10. When at someone’s house for the first time, you tend to look at their bookshelves. 11. Fiction which builds characters without taking this into account has its head in the sand. 12.
The primary goal of the information prose writer is to document the
contemporary mind and environment in a way that takes the contemporary
importance of media and information seriously. 13. Many
contemporary fiction writers are afraid or otherwise unwilling to do
this. I submit as evidence the large numbers of contemporary novels set
in environments which lack informational richness: rural areas, the
past, " magical realism" worlds. 14. Information prose does not
attempt to depict a simplified version of the world. Information prose
attempts to contain as much of the complexity of the world as possible. 15. "Do you understand how tremendously dense? A minute in a room, together." — Don DeLillo, Valparaiso 16.
A fictional American present in which no one watches TV, listens to the
radio, or checks their e-mail is sentimental and false. 17.
Information prose writers should not aim to write work which is
timeless. The value of documentary work never lies in its timelessness. 18.
When writing about characters who inhabit dense fields of information
(both remembered and newly-experienced), the value of quoting,
sampling, and appropriation rapidly becomes apparent. 19.
Creative work utilizing techniques of appropriation has been produced
with regularity for nearly a hundred years now, in all forms of media.
Information prose writers should no longer need to defend these
techniques against charges of novelty. 20. A partial primer,
organized in a rough chronology: the Comte de Lauteamont’s Maldoror,
Dada collages, Tristan Tzara’s cut-up poems, William S. Burroughs’
cut-up and fold-in novels, Robert Rauschenberg’s media silkscreens,
Bern Porter’s found poems, Situationist detournement projects, the
poetry of John Ashbery, Brian Eno and David Byrne’s My Life In the Bush
of Ghosts, the novels of Kathy Acker, the albums of Public Enemy and
Negativland, and the films of Craig Baldwin. 21. All evidence indicates that much of this work is of lasting merit. 22.
All evidence indicates that these techniques of appropriation are
exactly the ones necessary to create a recognizable picture of the
contemporary present. 23. "As artists, our work involves
displacing and displaying bites of publicly available, publicly
influential material because it peppers our personal environment and
affects our consciousness. In our society, the media which surrounds us
is as available, and as valid a subject for art, as nature itself."
—Negativland’s Tenets of Free Appropriation 24. Information
prose writers should not be afraid to plagiarize. It is not their duty
to write citations. Our memories and experiences do not usually come
attended by complete bibliographies. 25. Information prose
writers should not overlook the technique of the fragment. Our
experience of the textuality of the surrounding world is largely
fragmentary; information prose should strive to reflect that. (to be continued) _____ |
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I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought –
June 25, 2007 |
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Benedictus de Spinoza, the 17th-century rationalist.
A family friend once boldly announced during a conversation that " Spinoza was an idiot." As of this blog posting, no one indexed by Google has ever written that exact phrase. People have said that Spinoza was:
" beside himself with grief and rage"
" dependent on his own work for a livelihood" " little understood in his time" "accused of abominable heresies and monstrous deeds" " uncanny, both personally and philosophically" " an easy man to revile but not necessarily an easy man to dislike" "as close as philosophy could come to sainthood — a life of austerity, rationality, independence, principle, rarefied thought" " loveable"
"offered 1000 florins to keep quiet about his views, but refused" " unique to the point of solitariness" " not at all put out by this" While looking up Spinoza humor online, I discovered that there are no jokes indexed on Google that begin, "Spinoza walks into a bar." The phrase "Did you hear the one about Spinoza" also returns zero results. I guess Spinoza had the last laugh. |
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I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought –
March 21, 2007 |
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Paleontologist Dale Russell and artist Ron Sequin created a model of an intelligent "dinosauroid," evolved from a Troodon. Photo via.
I've been compiling a list of things I excitedly told my kid brother 20 years ago, which he (annoyingly) scoffed at. These were ideas (from any number of sources) that captured my imagination but which irritated my brother's skeptical brain and stimulated his argumentative nature: 1. Had dinosaurs not died out, they would have evolved into human beings. [I had seen a computer model proving this one, with an illustration of what a dino-human would have looked like (scaly skin, lizard-like features, human frame). In fairness to me, this was long, long before the general public had any reason to doubt computer models. So-called evidence aside, I'd say my brother's suspicions about this one were overly exaggerated. Here's a short article about the theoretical " dinosauroid."] 2. The Navy cannot train dolphins to plant underwater bombs, because dolphins are pacifists. [I still like the idea of dolphins being pacifists. I heard this one from my professor of transformational/generative grammar. He didn't have the Navy's unclassified reports on hand. Here's a brief mention of "the dolphin who refused to fight" in the Persian Gulf.] 3. Eskimos have hundreds of words for "snow," proving that different cultures experience different realities. [This is indeed an urban legend. My brother was right, though not necessarily for the right reasons. Here's a Wikipedia article about the origins and significance of the myth.] 4. The only reason dolphins don't paint, sculpt, play instruments, and build buildings is that they don't have hands. [In other words, dolphins don't have a culture due to a physical handicap, not because they're otherwise unevolved. I still like this idea. Here's an article entitled " Dolphins and Man — Equals?"] Well, that's all I can think of right off the bat, though I recall my brother scoffing at me hundreds (if not thousands) of times. Luckily, kid brothers don't carry much clout ... though here I am 20 years later still thinking about what mine scoffed at! |
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I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought –
March 5, 2007 |
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"(Absent) Present" created by Christine Wong Yap. More of her invisible gifts are on display at her website. Don't miss the transparent gift box with transparent ribbons and bows! Thank you, Christine!
(UPDATED)
Attending a Mime's Birthday Party:
The Do's and Don't's
As we all know, mimes deal only with invisible boxes. If you wish to give a mime a birthday present, it must be enclosed in a transparent box or bag. Finding a clear wrapping isn't too much of a challenge. But what can you put in that clear wrapping that won't immediately spoil the surprise? Actually, the sky's the limit! Here are some clear winners:
- a set of shot glasses
- a crystal ball
- a transparent novelty toilet seat
- a clear quartz pendant
- a beveled glass suncatcher
- translucent sandals
- a clear vinyl shower curtain
- a clear rain poncho
- a set of empty CD cases
- bottled water
- a clear glass paperweight
- plastic wrap
- acrylic martini glasses
- a crystal clear iPOD NANO case
- a pressed glass serving platter
- a cut lead crystal flower vase
- a window pane
- a clear plastic comb
- an invisible painting
- a lucite and mirror coffee table
Now for the Don't's. When visiting a mime's house, don't throw stones.
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Oldest Tricks in the Book –
October 12, 2006 |
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I saw an amazing gallery of magic-themed linotypes by Kreg Yingst (thanks, Gordon!). My very favorites are: the Vanishing Audience, who perhaps escaped through the door marked "Exit" the Disappearing Rabbit, which takes the form of a playing card and animates if you can spin in the card in your mind the Floating Finger, which promises the secret (of the optical illusion!) for $9.95. (I find this hilarious!) the Cups & Balls, in which the magician is depicted as a two-faced jester, with the bells on his cap resembling balls that he's juggling the Linking Rings, where the magician's eyeglasses resemble a monocle, which (along with the curl of the mustache) mirror the rings the Floating Sphere, which resembles an eyeball as the ring goes past it And I especially love the ones that seemingly reveal a secret of magic: the entire Card Table hidden in the magician's pocket the comical Finger Trick, reminiscent of a Mad Magazine gag the Coin Trick, revealing the secret slot in the magician's head the Die Box, where the die is shown to dive into the hat the magician's brain palmed in his hand during the Pencil Penetration the trapdoor under the hat where the rabbit hides the Vanishing Elephant who floats up into the stage curtains and the secret of the Mind Reader, which hypnotizes the viewer to buy a print
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I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought –
September 26, 2006 |
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I asked, "Are there any questions?"
And a voice replied:
"What does it mean when you suddenly want to read only books translated into English from Serbo-Croatian?
"What does it mean when you start compiling a dictionary of one-letter words?
"What does it mean when you open a book at random to the first page of
a chapter entitled "Venturing Out"? And what if you then
deliberately throw it aside?
"What does it mean when you watch infomercials at 3 a.m.-- on a regular basis?
"What does it mean when three people in as many days ask if they can touch your hair?
"What does it mean when you decide not to put question marks inside the
quotation marks unless the quotation is a question? And what if
that was already the rule?
"What does it mean when you suck on one 'Sour Hearts' candy after another, all day long?
"What does it mean when all of the above applies to just one person?"
And then I stopped talking. |
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I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought –
May 16, 2006 |
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Husbands and Knives:
Twenty Shocking Parallels in the Lives of
Yukio Mishima and Woody Allen
1. Residents of Westernized islands. 2. Short male persons. 3. Directors shunned by Hollywood. 4. Existentialists. 5. Commited public "suicide." 6. Expressed nostalgic yearning. 7. Avidly absorbed the culture of the East (or the Upper East Side). 8. Withstood vulgar curiosity about biographical anecdotes. 9. Obsessed with social disgrace.
10. Strong feelings about raw fish.
11. Involved with Asian women.
12. Interested in masks and disguises to express facets of their personality.
13. Fascinated by their own celebrity.
14. Recounted traumatic episodes from youth.
15. Attended tea ceremonies (or at least the Russian Tea Room).
16. Brandished phallic symbol representative of their art (sword/clarinet).
17. Forged in the smithy of their souls the uncreated conscience of their race.
18. Resisted fulfilling the role of son, husband, and father, yet desired to preserve ancestral tradition.
19. Wore costumes of period which they believed themselves to personify (Samurai robe/trenchcoat).
20. Died in their thoughts every morning.
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Original Content Copyright © 2025 by Craig Conley. All rights reserved.
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