I don’t understand why this page is showing up unstyled on my work computer (Win2000/IE6). I can’t see any problems with the source code – what am I missing? Something stupid no doubt. Or is it just this machine? Does this page show up unstyled for you now?
…his shit is heavvvvvy. (800k QuickTime clip)
– from Friday Foster. And yes, that’s goddamned Isaac as superpimp Fancy Dexter!
For a long time I’ve been trying to crystallize some vague ideas about a philosophy of flow, and finally it’s coming together.
Basically, we begin with the old-school problem of free will versus predetermination. If you believe in a god, a higher power/organizing principle, or time travel, you are often faced with the idea of a predetermined universe. Much of this has to do with the construct of linear time, and obviously it’s a whole can o’ worms. But the key point here is how predetermination butts heads with free will, which is (to put it lightly) central to western thought, and a difficult belief to shake off.
I’ve always found this opposition awkward. That’s the beauty of My New Belief, Flow™.
Flow is central to the I Ching, a text both simple and complex (and about the only ‘religious’ text I can get behind). Let’s put it like this: there is a predefined pattern to all situations in life. You can go with the flow, which means you have perceived the pattern and you act in concert with it, or you can go against it, in which case bad things tend to happen. Although this may sound like a more or less impotent form of free will, to me it places the onus of agency/personal choice on perception instead of action. Life becomes an act of interpretation, and since in this world view the overall pattern is multifaceted and difficult to perceive, since there is no master plan or authoritative guidebook, going with the flow is in fact incredibly difficult, contrary to the usual meaning.
One could argue that the I Ching is the guidebook. If you take a look at it you’ll find at the base a bunch of deceptively simple math. The rest of it is commentary (i.e. interpretation), and it is presented as such – the Duke of Chou said this or that about a particular hexagram, for example. It’s not: this is the meaning of the hexagram.
Seeing as it comes out of the world’s oldest book, flow is not a new concept. (Although, it’s interesting to think about it in a hiphop context, and in a traffic analysis context (but not in a menstrual context…).) It’s Taoist at heart. Interestingly, that page notes that similar ideas about binary oppositions were coming out of Greece at the time, from Heraclitus, aka the Obscure Presocratic who Baffled Plato, aka the Greek Dude with Clit in his Name. And beautifully, he said “everything flows.” Beautifully, again, hosted friend blogger extraordinaire King mentioned Clit-boy in his first post: “change alone is unchanging.” So with that in mind, I’d like to announce Heraclitus as the new patron philosopher of this site, because of his obscurity, because of his mad freaky flow, and yes, because he’s the thinker with ‘clit’ in the middle.
Thanks For All the Vomit
To Con a Vampire
Pants of a Pirate: the Cap’n McMessy Story
Rear Window 2: Extreme Peeping
Shakeup on Bile Street: The Human Digestive System
And why not even more colons:
The Lion King: The Musical: The Movie
The Lion King: The Musical: The Movie: the Board Game: The Zombie Musical
“tweak.” Adjust, as in, I’ve been tweaking the stylesheets. Also to twist or pinch – I was coming along the boards and Domi checked me, and I just tweaked my knee a little, and now I’m out for the season. Also, fucked: the club was waaaay hot and when the uppers kicked in it tweaked me right up.
Obsolete meanings: trouble, prostitute.
Watch your mouth since you possibly over expressed which would cause others unhappy.. Hello Kitty analyzes your stress levels, on a Sanrio official site. This is an online quiz I can get behind. (Via MeFi)
MetaFilter has enabled the new Movable Type gizmo, TrackBack, which is a means to backlink. I.e., it’s a way to list people who are linking to you and therefore track difficult-to-follow decentered conversations that tend to crop up in the Magical Land of Weblogs™. I’m trying to wrap my mind, and feeble techie skills, around it & get it working on this site.
Exciting adventure game that makes challenger burn with combativeness. (via cardhouse)
Lists for the 100 highest-grossing films at the North American box office, both adjusted for inflation and unadjusted. Remember, the unadjusted one is the one that gets used all the time, and it’s basically gibberish when you think about how much people used to pay to see a film…. arg! suppresses long-winded rant (thanks, kafkaesque)
What do ya know, Coolio’s hottest fan page hasn’t been updated since September 2000. But I wanted to know what Coolio was up to, RIGHT NOW.
The 5k winners will be announced soon. There’s some cool-beans stuff over there, including minigames like Wolfenstein 5k and Pixel Ninja; I also love the scale model of the solar system, the mad animation box and city blossom. All under 5k!
Whoa. Just realized that I totally missed d/blog’s first birthday on the third of this month. Boy, am I sorry, little buddy… there’ll be cake, lots of cake… I’ll make it up to you somehow.
What do you get for the blog who has everything? A celebrity roast, natch. I have calls out to Dino, Rickles, Milton Berle and Barry Goldwater.
This Destroyer shit is dope. Here’s two tracks off the latest album, courtesy misra records:
The Sublimation Hour (2.8 MB), & Virgin With a Memory (1.8 MB). Destroyer is the less-accessible, crypto-Bowie obscure genius side project of New Pornographers dude Daniel Bejar. Here’s an awed interview from pitchfork. Thanks to AM for the loan of the albums (and if you want to weigh in with more about the music, please do, sir).
Also, in a bizarre toungy-cheeky retread of the infamous Spike Jones Buddy Holly video, the latest Weezer video features the Muppets.
I’m hoping to assemble a portal-ish thing, that would mix my favourite news sources with my favourite blogs, and I’m looking for advice and/or resources that may tell me more about RSS, XML and all that jazz. – Anyone know of anything, and I mean for Absolute Fucking RSS Morons? Drop me a line!
Duchamp was the original DJ. The whole readymade thing strikes me as a precursor to the sampling & quoting of music. Interesting also that a) Duchamp signed the fountain with a fictional name, and signed other readymades with “from M. Duchamp” rather than “by”; b) he did not consider the works to be art; that c) there were no “originals”:
Duchamp states that, “another aspect of the “readymade” is its lack of uniqueness… the replica of a “readymade” delivering the same message; in fact nearly everyone of the “readymades” existing today is not an original in the conventional sense.” This statement was made late in Duchamp’s life, showing that he was not upset that his originals had been lost, in fact it is believed that he disposed of many of them himself.
and d) there were no issues at the time related to patent, trademark or copyright. The urinal manufacturer does not seem to have gotten upset. Which is clearly not the case today, or efforts like this or that would not be needed. Free the Mouse!
“I want to be so rich my limo driver has a limo driver.”
– Brooks
“I know a narcoleptic named michelle, but everyone calls her Nappy.”
– Adina
“Out of all the men whove claimed to be my father, I think I like Mitch the second best.”
– fireland
My local professional ice sport franchise has lost their attack-dog goaltender.
