Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Monday, October 29, 2012
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Friday, October 26, 2012
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Dig
I was perusing My Documents the other day, looking specifically for a paper I did a semester ago. As usual, I found a graveyard of half-conceived ideas, stories I'd forgotten about, successful papers, failed papers, mediocre papers, and child pornography. No, wait, scratch that last part. However, while I was skimming through the bullshit, I noticed one file labeled simply "joshdig."
This confused me. What the fuck was this? It sure didn't sound like a paper, and it sure didn't sound like a good name for a half-finished story.
My confusion was increased tenfold when I opened the file and began to read.
I have to explain what I think are the groggy circumstances of this composition. If memory serves (maybe?), I wrote this paper sometime around Christmas last year when I came down with a diabolical case of walking pnemonia. The dubious campus doctors prescribed several things that were supposed to fix it and didn't work, some things I don't think were meant for pnemonia but did work, and then finally something that worked. For example, they prescribed cough syrup with codine at first, and then amped it up to cough syrup with vicoden later.
Fuck if I've ever taken such drugs before. I had heard of them, of course, and had even had friends who mixed them with alcohol and even marijuana, but I wasn't willing to take a trip that might wind up with me losing every possible cavity's virginity I had, depending on how hard the trip was. I guess I'm just not hardcore.
I really don't remember much about how well the drugs worked, because those days are nothing but a mire of suffering and pain to me. Fundamentally, I don't know if they fixed anything, or if they were even prescribed for something.
I vaguely remember starting this paper. I think this was the first time I took the vicoden cough syrup, and I'm basing this on how the thing seems moderately plausible at first, and then degenerates into a stream of consciousness ride of utter madness and lunacy. Apparently I thought the idea of "burying" and "digging" as a hobby was downright hilarious. To be honest, isn't vicoden a sedative, so I should've been asleep by the end, and not a chimp with down syndrome?
Of course, maybe I just went literally insane for a while, and now I'm just blaming it on the drugs. Or maybe I was just plain drunk.
For the record, I wrote this when I was still in LAC, and I didn't get kicked out, I just stopped showing up. I only know Josh as a vague acquaintance, and haven't seen him in close to a year. He probably doesn't remember my name. I think he's an engineer or something, and he wouldn't even have anything to do with LAC, much less volunteer for it. Also, I'm pretty sure his hair isn't blonde, and since when are his forearms "rippling?"
And I did edit the misspelled words, grammar problems, and real names out of the thing. I think it makes it funnier, and also, there were surprisingly few. (!) But, no, his last name is not "Brewster," nor is mine actually "Norman." I should've made it something funny like "buttfuck," though.
I mean his name. Not mine.
Okay, whatever. Read at your own risk.
This confused me. What the fuck was this? It sure didn't sound like a paper, and it sure didn't sound like a good name for a half-finished story.
My confusion was increased tenfold when I opened the file and began to read.
I have to explain what I think are the groggy circumstances of this composition. If memory serves (maybe?), I wrote this paper sometime around Christmas last year when I came down with a diabolical case of walking pnemonia. The dubious campus doctors prescribed several things that were supposed to fix it and didn't work, some things I don't think were meant for pnemonia but did work, and then finally something that worked. For example, they prescribed cough syrup with codine at first, and then amped it up to cough syrup with vicoden later.
Fuck if I've ever taken such drugs before. I had heard of them, of course, and had even had friends who mixed them with alcohol and even marijuana, but I wasn't willing to take a trip that might wind up with me losing every possible cavity's virginity I had, depending on how hard the trip was. I guess I'm just not hardcore.
I really don't remember much about how well the drugs worked, because those days are nothing but a mire of suffering and pain to me. Fundamentally, I don't know if they fixed anything, or if they were even prescribed for something.
I vaguely remember starting this paper. I think this was the first time I took the vicoden cough syrup, and I'm basing this on how the thing seems moderately plausible at first, and then degenerates into a stream of consciousness ride of utter madness and lunacy. Apparently I thought the idea of "burying" and "digging" as a hobby was downright hilarious. To be honest, isn't vicoden a sedative, so I should've been asleep by the end, and not a chimp with down syndrome?
Of course, maybe I just went literally insane for a while, and now I'm just blaming it on the drugs. Or maybe I was just plain drunk.
For the record, I wrote this when I was still in LAC, and I didn't get kicked out, I just stopped showing up. I only know Josh as a vague acquaintance, and haven't seen him in close to a year. He probably doesn't remember my name. I think he's an engineer or something, and he wouldn't even have anything to do with LAC, much less volunteer for it. Also, I'm pretty sure his hair isn't blonde, and since when are his forearms "rippling?"
And I did edit the misspelled words, grammar problems, and real names out of the thing. I think it makes it funnier, and also, there were surprisingly few. (!) But, no, his last name is not "Brewster," nor is mine actually "Norman." I should've made it something funny like "buttfuck," though.
I mean his name. Not mine.
Okay, whatever. Read at your own risk.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Monday, October 22, 2012
The Beard Hater
Anacreon the poet composed many delightful songs; for a luxurious life was allotted to him by the Fates. But Alcaeus and Archilochus of Paros the god did not permit to devote their muse to mirth and pleasure. For constrained as they were to endure toil, now of one sort, now of another, and by abusing those who wronged them they lightened the burdens imposed on them by Heaven. But as for me, the law forbids me to accuse by name those who, though I have done them no wrong, try to show their hostility to me; and on the other hand the fashion of education that now prevails among the well-born deprives me of the use of the music that consists in song. For in these days men think it more degrading to study music than once in the past they thought it to be rich by dishonest means. Nevertheless I will not on that account renounce the aid that it is in my power to win from the Muses. Indeed I have observed that even the barbarians across the Rhine sing savage songs composed in language not unlike the croaking of harsh-voiced birds, and that they delight in such songs. For I think it is always the case that inferior musicians, though they annoy their audiences, give very great pleasure to themselves. And with this in mind I often say to myself, like Ismenias -- for though my talents are not equal to his, I have as I persuade myself a similar independence of soul -- "I sing for the Muses and myself."
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Friday, October 19, 2012
Man Ray and Duchamp
Man Ray chess set
Man Ray designed this chess set in 1920 using found objects from his studio. Most of the pieces are geometric models made for still-life drawing (the king is a pyramid, the queen a cone, the rook a cube, the pawn a sphere). The knight—the finial of a violin—was fashioned from a box of abandoned violin necks. Only a handful were ever produced (the maharajah of Indore commissioned a set made from silver-plated brass).
Duchamp chess set
In 1919, Duchamp took a trip to Buenos Aires where his sister lived. When he returned he devoted himself to raising his level of play to it's highest level. But during the trip to South America, he designed a chess set about which there's been some debate. The commonly accepted idea is that he made the set himself except for the Knight, which he hired a local craftsman to carve by hand. Almost all authoritative books on Duchamp mention this. However, Larry List, who documented the Imagery of Chess Revisited show in 2003, argued quite convincingly that all the pieces but the Knight were obviously turned on a lathe. While Duchamp created machine and kinetic art, he never used machines to create the art. As a matter of fact, Duchamp liked to create with his hands. While in Buenos Aires, he carved a set of stamps for illustrating chess positions in correspondence games. List suggests, even insists, that Duchamp hired a local to turn the pieces on a lathe, while he himself carved the Knight by hand.
Man Ray designed this chess set in 1920 using found objects from his studio. Most of the pieces are geometric models made for still-life drawing (the king is a pyramid, the queen a cone, the rook a cube, the pawn a sphere). The knight—the finial of a violin—was fashioned from a box of abandoned violin necks. Only a handful were ever produced (the maharajah of Indore commissioned a set made from silver-plated brass).
Duchamp chess set
In 1919, Duchamp took a trip to Buenos Aires where his sister lived. When he returned he devoted himself to raising his level of play to it's highest level. But during the trip to South America, he designed a chess set about which there's been some debate. The commonly accepted idea is that he made the set himself except for the Knight, which he hired a local craftsman to carve by hand. Almost all authoritative books on Duchamp mention this. However, Larry List, who documented the Imagery of Chess Revisited show in 2003, argued quite convincingly that all the pieces but the Knight were obviously turned on a lathe. While Duchamp created machine and kinetic art, he never used machines to create the art. As a matter of fact, Duchamp liked to create with his hands. While in Buenos Aires, he carved a set of stamps for illustrating chess positions in correspondence games. List suggests, even insists, that Duchamp hired a local to turn the pieces on a lathe, while he himself carved the Knight by hand.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Monday, October 15, 2012
Friday, October 12, 2012
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Thunderdome 1
The sampan rolled under the weight of the man stepping out
onto the small jetty. Leaning on his cane he pushed up onto the pier leaving
the two men in the small boat hanging on as it rollocked back and forth.
‘Good gods Bertie, how long has it been since we were here
man? Forty years hmm? Fifty? This demned malarial deathtrap hasn’t changed a
bit. Look over there, I’m sure that’s the river bend where that rat Lao Che
tried to ambush us that night we were sneaking up to Sooching. Cunning yellow
bastard caught us like a Covent Garden catamite with our pants down, pizzle in
hand!’
‘Maybe, George,’ said Bertie, grunting as he used his own
cane to climb out of the sampan. He looked out over the turgid brown river,
running through a flat landscape of rice paddies intersected by a labyrinthine
system of canals. ‘It’s a long river and
these rice paddies all look identical.’
‘No, no, I’m sure this is the spot. Gods, I’ll never forget
that night, wild banshees came screaming out of those reeds, took out my batman
with their first shot. What was his name, Tuckman? Buckman? Good man; had
played rugby at Oxford with Wolseley.’
‘I think it was Dignam’
‘What? No, Dignam was in India – got himself invalided home
after the Patar campaign. Buckman it
was, Thomas Buckman I remember, went straight the bottom of the Po over there.
Guns going off everywhere, those cursed scythes these heathens use flashing in
the moonlight. I don’t know how we survived Bertie.’
George stood leaning on his cane on the end of the pier,
staring at the eddying water. Bertie hauled a bag out of the sampan. The sampan owner pushed off the bank with the
long oar, back into the current and drifted away into the heat haze.
George turned back, limping with his cane. ‘Yes yes,
definitely the spot. Know this river like the inside of my pockets. I told the
Colonel that. I said you need an old hand in this part of the world, not some
drafted cockchafer from Luton with his mothers milk fresh on his lip. You know
what he said to me Bertie? ‘I wish I had someone with your wisdom and
experience fighting under the colours still’.
‘The Colonel was being polite George’.
George slammed his cane onto the wooden pier. ‘Damn your
eyes Bertie, I know how brass works, you can’t strip a coolie these days
without say so from the BG. No, this is our place. We’ll shufti the demned
rebels and be back at HQ for tacks.’
Bertie glanced back over the barren fields. A waterbuffalo
stood in a paddy a mile inland. A lone fisherman’s shack sat on the riverbank a
few hundred yards downstream. The rest of the landscape was empty. ‘If there’s
a rebel army here George, then they’re demned good at hiding.’
‘Bah man, this way.’
George shuffled down the jetty on his cane and turned
towards the shack. Sighing, Bertie took up the duffel and slowly made his way
after him.
The shack was barely a lean-to, an afterthought of scrap
wood and brush designed to provide shelter from the merciless sun now high
overhead.
A small cadaverous man was haunched down in the shade,
cleaning a fish with a small filleting knife. He had frozen when the two men
came into view, a rictus grin on his face.
‘Now here we are Bertie, a coolie who can tell us what we
need. You interpret for me’ George turned to the fisherman. ‘Now man, where is
Tsung Ha?’
Bertie sighed again: ‘don’t
be afraid, we are your friends. We are looking for Tsung Ha.
The fisherman’s eyes darted to Bertie and then back to
George.
‘fuck you old man’
‘What did he say?’
‘Uhh, he doesn’t know.’
‘Bullshit Bertie, look, he’s obviously a scout foraging for
the men.’ George stepped forward, raising his cane. The fisherman ducked back,
still grinning. His eyes darting from the cane to the fish to the cane again.
He darted forward, knife extended burying it into George’s mid-riff, grabbed
the fish and sprinted out into the fields.
George pressed his hand to the blood spurting from the
wound. ‘Oh gods Bertie’, and collapsed. Bertie knelt down, lifting George’s
head.
‘I bet that was Lao Che’s grandson, the bastard had the last
laugh after all.’
‘I think he was just a fisherman George.’
‘Doesn’t matter now. Damn this. How does it look?’
The knife had done its work, one quick blow had shredded the
linen shirt and blue ropes bulged from between George’s fingers.
‘You remember Salisbury?’
‘Oh god, that bad.’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh god.’
Blood pooled into the dirt. Against the drone of crickets in
the background a mayfly buzzed though the air.
‘You know Bertie.’
“I know George.’
‘Oh god...’
Herbert leaned forward and gently kissed George on the
mouth.
Like a faint drum beat, a cannon fired in the distance.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Monday, October 8, 2012
Friday, October 5, 2012
Thursday, October 4, 2012
One Sentence Review: The Price of Politics
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Diaries of a Madman
Gogol's Memoirs of a Madman
Lu Xun's A Madman's Diary
In Lu Xun's work, the first entry is remarked upon by Yu Hua as being the first time he realised the subtlety of Lu Xun's work. He quotes
何以看我兩眼呢？
The literal interpretation of the phrase goes "Otherwise why should that dog at the Zhao house have looked at me twice?"
The Lyell translation (1990) states "Otherwise, how do you explain those dirty looks the Zhao family's dog gave me"
Yu Hua translates this as 'otherwise, why would Zhao's dog look at me that way."
Ultimately the Yu Hua translation works best. If the purpose of the line is to establish the mental instability of the madman, who is attributing anthropomorphic intent to a dog, then it is tricky for a translation to ascribe the same intent. As there is really no equivalent in English to the Chinese idiom 'looked at me twice', meaning 'a weird look', a literal interpolation falls short of the meaning of the original. The Lyell translation's attempt to use the adjective 'dirty' is too specific. It is telling not showing. Yu Hua's 'that way' however encapsulates the weirdness and ambiguity of the line.
See the essay on Lu Xun and modernism here
Lu Xun's A Madman's Diary
In Lu Xun's work, the first entry is remarked upon by Yu Hua as being the first time he realised the subtlety of Lu Xun's work. He quotes
何以看我兩眼呢？
The literal interpretation of the phrase goes "Otherwise why should that dog at the Zhao house have looked at me twice?"
The Lyell translation (1990) states "Otherwise, how do you explain those dirty looks the Zhao family's dog gave me"
Yu Hua translates this as 'otherwise, why would Zhao's dog look at me that way."
Ultimately the Yu Hua translation works best. If the purpose of the line is to establish the mental instability of the madman, who is attributing anthropomorphic intent to a dog, then it is tricky for a translation to ascribe the same intent. As there is really no equivalent in English to the Chinese idiom 'looked at me twice', meaning 'a weird look', a literal interpolation falls short of the meaning of the original. The Lyell translation's attempt to use the adjective 'dirty' is too specific. It is telling not showing. Yu Hua's 'that way' however encapsulates the weirdness and ambiguity of the line.
See the essay on Lu Xun and modernism here
