Ant Eat Ant World

Oct 04

I am not sure I would stand and point at Orin as an example of a classic pathological liar, but you have only to watch him in certain kinds of action to see that there can be such a thing as sincerity with a motive. I have no idea what your relationship with Orin is or what your feelings are — and if Orin wishes it I am afraid I can predict your feelings for him will be strong — so I shall just tell you that for instance at E.T.A. I saw Orin in bars or at post-tournament dances go up to a young lady he would like to pick up and use this fail-safe cross-sectional pick-up strategy that involved an opening like “Tell me what sort of man you prefer, and then I’ll affect the demeanor of that man.” Which in a way of course is being almost pathologically open and sincere about the whole picking-up enterprise, but also has this quality of “Look-At-Me-Being-So-Totally-Open-And-Sincere-I-Rise-Above-The-Whole-Disingenuous-Posing-Process-Of-Attracting-Someone-,-And-I-Transcend-The-Common-Disingenuity-In-A-Bar-Herd-In-A-Particularly-Hip-And-Witty-Self-Aware-Way-,-And-If-You-Will-Let-Me-Pick-You-Up-I-Will-Not-Only-Keep-Being-This-Wittily-,-Transcendentally-Open-,-But-Will-Bring-You-Into-This-World-Of-Social-Falsehood-Transcendence,” which of course he cannot do because the whole openness-demeanor thing is itself a purposive social falsehood; it is a pose of poselessness.

Sep 02

This picture pretty accurately describes my weekend.

Jul 24

Remember back in 2005 before you knew how to torrent and actually thought that using torrents took technical skill? Remember downloading individual songs or shows from Limewire? Remember all the shitty compression artefacts from those halcyon days? Remember having folders full of song files that started with the word ‘INCOMPLETE’ because some fucker closed his Napster before you downloaded it at a mighty 3.2kbps? I have CDs full of incompletes lying around comewhere, that shit was too valuable to delete. Remember pre-broadband internet? It was awful.

Jul 23

[video]

Jul 03

Junkies keep robbing my mailbox of books I’ve ordered from amazon, it’s kind of distressing; I’m considering getting a personal PO Box, else I’ll just get my mail delivered to work in future.

Since Christmas, I have not recieved the following books [I’m optimistic, so I’m going to assume the person that stole them has read them to improve their mind]:

The Art of War - Sun Tzu
    So, I’ve read this a couple times already. Twas super cheap and multiple copies are available from pretty much every library in the land. Sun Tzu was the greatest military strategist of his time and the simple understated advice he offers for budding generals remains relevant today for the type A personality intent on global domination.

    Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence - George Dyson
    This one kind of bugged me because I can’t get it from the library and it’s expensive enough that I don’t want to order another copy. George Dyson is the son of Freeman Dyson. None of these people have anything to do with vacuum cleaners. I recently read ‘Turing’s Cathedral’ which was an interesting historical account of the development of computers in the post war period as well as a philosophical meditation on the future of this technology. ‘Darwin Among the Machines’ is a speculation of what Darwin might have made of the evolution of technology in relation to his ideas about biological evolution. I think most of the concepts discusssed here are probably covered in Kelly’s ‘What Technology Wants’ but reading this would be good transhumanist consolidation.

Immediatism - Hakim Bey
    Was well pissed about this one. It’s pretty rare. I’ve ordered it before and was refunded my money because the vendor didn’t actually have it in stock. It’s kind of a early 90s retelling of the ideals of situationniste internacionalé and influenced a lot of people in the EDM movement around this time. I have digital copies of most of Hakim Bey’s writing, but you can’t beat a good ol’ musty paperback.

The Road Not Taken, and Other Poems - Robert Frost
    Mostly I ordered this to crib [read:steal] ideas for songs. Everything is available online again. Still, I prefer paperbacks.

Celtic Mythology - John Arnott MacCulloch
Celtic and Scandinavian Religions - J.A. Maculloch
    In January I was on this total Nordic/Germanic/Scandinavian mythology kick. It’s interesting how many of the cultural attitudes of these groups have survived into the modern period, but nobody realises the source. The Celtic empire spread from eastern europe to ireland and didn’t have a concept of ethnic identity, scholars today would call this multiculturalism. The Celtic people also had a definite social hierarchy, but it was not defined by bloodlines meaning that even the lowliest drone could aspire to chieftain status. Maybe this is the most egalitarian of the ancient civilizations.

I recently managed to recieve some books on Raja Yoga, Cryptoterrestrials and the philosophy of awkwardness today, so maybe my ongoing love affair with Amazon.com can continue.

Jul 02

Here’s to the rich kids, pretending to be poor kids, pretending to be cool kids, pretending to be smart kids.

Jun 25

Bruce Lee quotes are inspirational

Seriously, if you put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it’ll spread over into the rest of your life. It’ll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level