then no sound

B. Michael's new domain

2009-05-22T10:55:00.002-06:00

Use http://bmichael.me for B. Michael's Truly Epic Shit, our new blog.

But really...

2009-04-03T12:05:00.001-06:00

We should start using Then No Sound, more. If only for all the first-person plural.

What Can We Do with This Space?

2009-03-31T14:41:00.003-06:00

Should we re-migrate to Blogger? Or use Tumblr and Blogger in twain? (One of the only dual nouns in English, 'twain' is.) Gah... we don't know.

Some e cards from a silver jew

2008-09-27T08:43:00.002-06:00

Some e cards from a Silver Jew is a great new tumblr log. The premise of the site is contained in its title.

2008-09-23T07:19:00.001-06:00

Glenn Gould - Aria, Goldberg Variations (1955)

This, and the beginning of the Quartet for the End of Time, are the only pieces of music that I can perfectly picture inbetween my ears at any given time. The tone and the stately rise and fall of the keys hit like intermittent rain.

An added bonus (as if it needed a bonus) of listening to the Golberg Variations is that it always makes me remember the Goldbug Variations's strangely luscious-if-intellectualized love between Jan and the Todder.

B. Michael's Notebook Miscellany

2008-08-26T06:19:00.002-06:00

Hey guys and girls,

We see that this site still gets some traffic, so we want to remind you that we're blogging about music, literature, philosophy, and ourself over at B. Michael's Notebook Miscellany, on tumblr. So please click on over there, and take care.

Signed,
Then No Sound

B. Michael's Notebook Miscellany

2008-06-30T09:11:00.002-06:00

If you're interested in reading anything else by me, then I advise you to go here, which is where I'm posting now.

I stopped using Blogger because the links and photos functions were all wonky. (Although, this issue looks fixed now; ironic.)

Continued!

2007-11-17T16:50:00.000-07:00

We've decided to start over again. Since our last blog we've had a handful of jobs, one of which set off a new interest. Like fireworks. So here's the link. OR there's the link. Click on the text.

Hiatus

2007-06-20T09:10:00.001-06:00

["Game paused. Press 'P' to continue."]

Things We Searched while at Work

2007-06-07T13:53:00.000-06:00

A new column! "Things We Searched while at Work" (TWSwaW) is pretty titularly-self-explanatory. And now, the first entry for TWSwaW:

"is it illegal to quit without notice"

NYT = Sucks

2007-06-07T11:43:00.001-06:00

A few weekends ago, we noticed that the NYT Sunday Mag was devoted (not in a really thematic way, but just, like, in a ~~perfect storm~~ confluence of forces (forces = editors' ages, ages rising, gray hair, etc) the mag was devoted to middle age/aging/old people. We hate old people. After last year's Shamu marriage article dominated the most emailed list, we figured something was up. But, like, lots of people are married: our friends (who are young) are married. But the two most emailed stories this morning on our personalized Google page were well you can see above.

That second-most emailed article, like, 1) totally ripped off Slate's "I'm fiftysomething, and I'm joining Facebook" article; 2) seems to make the ethical/pathetic (in the Greek root sort of way) appeal to the reader, but the reader can't help but notice that when the author's daughter says

“wayyy creepy,” it said. “why did you make one!”

she's, like, totally right; the author's daughter is; 3) besides creepy, pathetic.

We didn't even read the fucking menopause one. Jesus Christ. Periods, child birth, menopause. You'd think women want a fucking medal the way they always write/talk/advertise about these things. Men don't talk about nocturnal emissions, dodging baby mamas, and erectile dysfunction all the fucking time. (Well, the last one is out of mens' hands because of, like, spam; and men don't talk about problems getting it up, anyway.)

Even if the news coverage is good, from this point onward we refuse to read the NYT and their middle-aged, creepy, trend-piece-dominated, preoccupied-with-aging, perceived-as-liberal ass.

What a Lazy Sow

2007-06-07T09:52:00.000-06:00

[Morphemically misleading as it may seem, "revolution" fails to imply that the world "revolves around you."]

Heard in the office this morning:

"[Co-worker's Name], would you trade jobs with me?"
"No thanks. Oh, wait. Just for today?"
"Yeah. And then you can answer the nine emails I got this morning."
"Oh." Walks away confused.

Who bitches about having to answer nine emails? Probably the same lazy sow that spends every day all fucking week telling the new hires how to write a 300 word market report. S/he couldn't work his/er way out of a paper/lastic bag/sack.

Well, we get our ideas from everywhere

2007-06-06T09:27:00.000-06:00

[All the {well-educated, taste-making, media-controlling-parents-having, only-people-you-seem-to-hear-about} kids are doin' it.]

We were watching 30 Rock the other day, and there was this episode where Lemon (Tina Fey) totally owned Josh (generic Jewish funnyman) during the latter's contract negotiation. Besides making him do the worm, Lemon makes Josh list off ways that she's better than him. One of them, which made me laugh, was when he yelled out "You read the newspaper!" And she says, "Yeah, it's true." Who reads the newspaper anymore? Masochists we are, we picked up the Saturday NYT the other day to try to fill in correctly one or two pieces of the crossword. Of course, we had a hard time finding the crossword, for a paradoxical reason--the paper was so thin that we thought we lost a section. What did it have, about 15 pages total? That's a goddamn shame. Thinking about it, we decided we'd have been better served giving the dollar to the homeless, or, like, putting it toward a latte at Starbucks.

[Oops. Can't figure out how to insert more pictures]

Add that to the Times Select on-line wall, and you're left with a double-forked plan to kill readership (maybe?). You can't read everything online, but when you actually buy the paper you're inevitably disappointed because it's, like, a ten-minute read. If we wanted ten-minute reads, we'd totally read FP Passport and The Ag. Oh, what's that? Yeah, we do.

[See above.]

FP Passport collects various World News stories together in an intelligent fashion. For instance, we learned yesterday that we share a birthday with the Six-Days War. Interesting! Besides which, we were alerted that the G8 meetings are going to be a shitstorm, and that the next Cold War is on the horizon.

The Ag collects news and presents it in the cutesy Harper's Week in Review and Findings style. This style is awesome. NYT take note: what the people want isn't reliable reporting (over which point print can hardly claim superiority over Internets), they want conceptually interesting presentations or even re-presentations of the news. If the past is doomed to repeat itself, and every presentation is already a re-presentation anyway, etc., etc., then why not hire some of the Harper's editors and have them turn your publication into something interesting-on-the-page-to-look-at. Your both heart-run-dry-from-bleeding-so-profusely liberal rags anyway.

It's FIVE! (Facebook)

2007-06-04T09:52:00.000-06:00

[Facebook v1.0 = LAME!]

Damn a few things: Last.fm's scrobbler: It's not transmitting our tunes; Flixster can't find Woman is a Woman; and Twitter just sucks. But why do we care about these things? What t** fuck are these things? We dunno; but they're all on our Facebook now! You can even share news stories, to make it look like you've been, you know, reading the newspaper. See [poor-quality] image below. Facebook is totally the cooler, Wall Street trader, striped-shirt wearing, non-smoking goes to the gym, Red Bull + Vodka-drinking, Alphabet-City-apartment-complex-buying older brother of MySpace... Wwwwait... this is a good thing?

LeBron James

2007-06-01T13:39:00.000-06:00

[LBJ was the 36th President of the United States (1963–1969).]

We were lucky. We got home from the store and regulation had five minutes left in it: plenty of time. And then five more minutes, overtime one; and five more, overtime two. It was awesome. We ate sushi. Beer, gin. And we don't even like basketball that much. But still.

We're just saying

2007-05-31T13:07:00.000-06:00

The morningnews.org is the best website. We're just saying.

Church signs are weird and funny. You know, we're just saying.

Puns are kind of corny, like religion... just saying.

Putting the Wu all up on the Zion Pentecostal Tabernacle Church is pretty fun. Just saying.

We used, what, the church sign generator, 'natch.

Slate sucks.

Like, whoa

2007-05-30T13:15:00.001-06:00

[riding retro.]

We were all like reading the Chuck Norris rules thing because, well, yeah bored etc etc. And then we were all like whoa.

If you Google search "Chuck Norris getting his ass kicked" you will get zero results. It just doesn't happen.

It turns out that for this to be a fact, it has to be false. Rather, for this to be a proposition, it has to be false. Because once it is written on the Interwebs, it becomes a target for Google. Like Godel's thing or Russell's or whatever. 'Tevs! We'd talk more but this dreary guy just walked up to us and made us start doing work. Totes stoops.

What Should We Do?

2007-05-25T08:50:00.000-06:00

[The Proud Duck bears "Stunning Witness;" also, in the mirror is prefigured the concept for the video for "Take On Me."]

What should we Do:

a.) Write a story;
b.) Do a Drawing;
c.) Take a Photo; or
d.) Make a song?

Kelly Kapur, con't.

2007-05-24T15:31:00.000-06:00

[No door is too spangled for the Door Gym.]

OK Kelly, you're back in my life. You like the Door Gym? One of our friends used the Door Gym to great effect. We absolutely love doing pullups, too. There seems to be a theme of upper-body enthusiasm. Maybe the Times would write a trend piece. But really. Ok; you're not dead to us anymore for your seeming marginalization of 3rd World Workers. (But, you know, your people... offshoring... etc, you know, right?) Unfortunately, after reading your blog all day, we found, like, $1203934323's worth of gifts for our girlfriend, none of which cost less than $3.23, which is how much our bank account has.

Anyway, bringing Kelly Kapur back into our lives isn't the reason for this post. The reason is because of this most excellent review on Door Gym's amazon page. Most excellent. "Well, you don't. It's just a bonus" should be the catch phrase of the year. ("But why do I need to strip naked and roll around in the honey?" "Well, you don't. It's just a bonus.")

This is a pull-up bar. If you want to do pull-ups it is the best solution for your home. Put up and take down in seconds with no tools. Comfy foam padding, sturdy design. Some assembly required.

As a bonus you can also use the thing as a push-up bar. You may ask why you'd need a push-up bar when you have a floor. Well, you don't. It's just a bonus.

Kelly Kapur is no Lebron James, but still!

2007-05-24T14:40:00.000-06:00

Associative Chain:

Office Season 3 Finale; Bittorented Office remaining episodes Season 3; Lost Sucks, not as good as the Office; Boss calls come to Office!; Work; Read The Morning News for years; Read it at Work; Best Websites, yay!; Link to Blog, Office; Work at Office, watch Office, hmm; Office, buy stuff; Look on eBay; blog buy stuff about buy stuff; find stuff on eBay; Wish there were an American Apparel; Also, used music equipment store, box of money; Office work; coffee, too much?; Office, office; work work; work = office sometimes when work doesnt = Office; Office = office, or Office = Office, sometimes, too; "Office" funny word, sounds like "orifice," doesn't it?; crazy...; Lebron supports genocide, hmm; Hope the Cavs win; Time for some pretzels; Programmable distortion pedal; sell power soak for ~$140, like yeah!; maybe buy a new pedal; office... Office; Think about Office; read Office blog; blog; OMG SWEATSHOPS LIEK WTF!!!?>!?!! OMGH STUFU!!!!!

Forever 21 is a total mess always, with kind of vacant, unhelpful teenage girls working there, but there are gems everywhere. It's also disgustingly cheap. Like cheaper than H&M. Like so cheap you kind of wish they charged more cuz you're like "Ew, why is this so cheap, what's wrong with it?". But then you realize it's probably South East Asian laborers making everything and it costs a tenth of a cent to produce and you see how you're cashing in on the best deal in town! (don't think about this stuff too much though, you'll start feeling guilty for the poor people, in like, Macau or wherever sewing together a knit jumper so you can own it for 17 bucks).

Kelly Kapur, you are dead to us. Spicy Curry Award recipient indeed.

Brilliant

2007-05-24T12:21:00.001-06:00

[We think clicking on the image will intimate the link.]

Breakin the Law

2007-05-23T16:16:00.001-06:00

[Ticketed for being too hot, Ms. Beckham.]

Idiocracy

2007-05-22T16:44:00.000-06:00

[This is not funny = This is as funny as Idiocracy.]

We just figured out why we didn't like Idiocracy. It was boring, the jokes were dull, and the only persistent image it carried out was an increasingly pessimistic, ultimately quite cynical disposition. The kind of disposition that leads to movements like the involuntary sterilization of white trash.

[Facebook + Thong - Shirt = Rules]

We love facebook. Clean design aesthetic; stalker-tracker mini-feed; they just opened it up to highschoolers; etc. Facebook us.

Rivers Cuomo = James Joyce?!?

2007-05-21T08:41:00.000-06:00

[Suck My* Art Hole]

So we were making the drive from Albuquerque to Santa Fe this morning, and it occurred to us: What if Weezer (blue) were a concept album? The concept being one day in the life of the protagonis. Like, have you ever read Ulysses, or listened to A Grand Don't Come For Free (Joyce and The Streets, respectively)? Those two pieces follow a character(s) for about a day, and track the rise and fall of a life. Well, we think maybe Weezer does the same thing. We present the Payne Schemata of Weezer (blue).

Chapters

1. My Name Is Jonas
2. No One Else
3. The World Has Turned And Left Me Here
4. Buddy Holly
5. Undone-The Sweater Song
6. Surf Wax America
7. Say It Ain't So
8. In The Garage
9. Holiday
10. Only In Dreams

1. My Name Is Jonas

Time: 8am; Place: An Apartment in Los Angeles, California; Art: Interpretation of Dreams; Symbol: Wheel.

Introduces the protagonist, Jonas. Jonas dreams of a wheel, and his mythical, Biblical namesake. Awakes to a voicemail from his brother, a real estate developer who faces problems with his latest property: the workers are striking. End scene.

2. No One Else

Time: 8am; Place: Betty Ford Center; Art: Narrative (Old); Symbol: Photograph

Jonas' father, Harry, awakens. He's enjoying a stay in rehab for his alcohol addiction. His first thoughts upon rising are of his wife (divorced, named Polly). Polly's incessant affairs with other men led Harry to his heavy drinking; and thus, he feels his addiction can be cured if he meets a nice girl, who "leaves her makeup on the shelf" when he's away.

3. The World Has Turned And Left Me Here

Time: 830 am; Place: Shower; Art: Narrative (Young); Symbol: Photograph/Memory

Jonas, in the shower, thinks of his ex-lover, a girl named Mary whom he met at a surf party. Though it isn't certain from the text, it is implied that he pleasures himself.

4. Buddy Holly

Time: 11am; Place: Arnold's Drive-In; Art: Hallucination; Symbol: Jukebox

After showering and eating some Coco Puffs, Jonas heads off to Arnold's Drive-In, a local hangout and Happy Days-themed bar. This chapter takes course over several hours, during which Jonas drinks heavily, alone. After making several unsuccessful passes at a girl who reminds him of his ex, Jonas falls into drunken delusion and despair. Spurred by the Buddy Holly song "Peggy Sue" playing on the jukebox, Jonas begins to think he's a member of the cast of the popular 70s/80s Happy Days. A fight ensues, in which Jonas basically gets his ass kicked since he's so drunk that he can' punch or kick. His friends come in the nick of time and help him out.

5. Undone-The Sweater Song

Time: 6pm; Place: The El Rey Theater; Art: Knitting; Symbol: Superman Skivvies

Jonas is waiting outside the El Rey with his friends. They are waiting for a show to start; Jonas is still drunk, and he's introduced himself to some people as Ed. A girl, even more drunk, starts hitting on Jonas. Or maybe she's only trying to use him for a ride to a party? No one seems to know. While in line someone's zipper catches on a thread of Jonas' sweater, causing it to unravel a bit. As a joke, his friends--and later everyone--starts pulling on the thread to see if they can destroy his sweater. Someone pantss Jonas, revealing his Superman-themed underwear.

6. Surf Wax America

Time:12am; Place: Manhattan Beach; Art: Epiphany (Drunken); Symbol: Beer Keg

At the aforementioned party. The protagonist found a new pair of pants. He stands by the keg looking out at the ocean. Some people surf. He first compares the sea to a bottle of beer; later, a "thousand pound keg." (C.f., "winedark sea.") Jonas' mind wanders to a No Blood For Oil surf-themed protest he'd went to previously. This chapter introduces us to the idea that Jonas may be an alcoholic, given his persistent alcohol-themed characterizations of the ocean.

7. Say It Ain't So

Time: 130 am; Place: Manhattan Beach, further north; Art: Epiphany (Sober); Symbol: Bottle of Stevens Point Brewery Beer

Jonas is sobering up. He wanders north on the beach. Sitting down to rest, his eyes fall on a bottle of Stevens beer, which causes an epiphany in him: He's becoming an alcoholic like both his father and step father. (His mom, Polly, has poor choice in men?) Time grinds down, and Jonas begins to feel like one of the dead from the Flood. Feeling God has forsaken him, he screams "Say it ain't so!" Writhing around on the ground, he thinks up a pretty sweet guitar solo. He dreams he sees his father on the beach, then his little brother, whom he tries to strangle. He passes out.

8. In The Garage

Time: 2am; Place: Manhattan Beach, still the same spot from last chapter; Art: Garage Rock; Symbol: Twelve-sided die

Jonas dreams of being a rock musician. He dreams of black-framed glasses and Peter Criss. He dreams of dungeons and dragons, and remembers what a dork he really is. But his dream continues. He feels safe. No one cares about his ways. He belongs in the garage. But no one can hear him sing his song.

9. Holiday

Time: 12am; Place: Better Ford Center; Art: Fugue; Symbol: Math Homework

It's lights out at Betty Ford. Harry wishes he could go on holiday. He's almost recovered and he's been reading this awesome book called On The Road. He's been trying to get his GED, and he's sick of the math homework. Harry wishes he was immortal, and that he could hang out with his son and be the "cool dad," but not too cool, coz otherwise he'd been an alcoholic, which is exactly what happened.

10. Only In Dreams

Time: 4am; Place: Manhattan Beach, still; Technique: Guitar Solo; Symbol: Toenails

Jonas wakes up, only to realize that he wishes he were still dreaming. Which realization causes him to reflect on the nature of dreams and reality. In dreams only can his ideal girl be in the air, in between molecules of oxygen and carbon dioxide. In reality, he would totally step on the feet of the girl with whom he's dancing at the high school prom, which he totally did. He takes his frustration out on himself, masturbating for, like, five minutes on his metaphorical guitar. Falls asleep.

*We found this image on google image search. It's not really our drawing. (Too bad!)

Sky Blue Sky; like whoa

2007-05-16T08:45:00.000-06:00

[Dirty kats don't get feeded.]

We haven't bought a new cd since Neon Bible; but don't let that fool you. Because before that we hadn't bought a cd since before we discovered private torrent trackers. Now, naturally we picked up Spank Rock, El-P, Ratatat, Sonic Youth, said Neon Bible (again), Matmos, Battles etc on lp. We just don't usually get them right when they come out, because of the split release dates that usually accompany cd and lp releases. So imagine our surprise--imagine it, really--that's an imperative, not an invitation--last night when we were at the book store and we saw Sky Blue Sky. We were all like whoa. Our bad on the Internet versus print review thing because we just don't know when cds come out anymore. We're like ... well. No. But we live in a fantasy world.

Battles, Mirrored, Pitchfork

2007-05-15T08:58:00.000-06:00

And after yesterday, they have to go and do something like this.

Battles
Mirrored
[Warp; 2007]
Rating: 9.1

We couldn't agree more. Tyondai "Son of Anthony" Braxton's band is tight; fierce; and sounds like militant smurfs. (We can't say more; and that's because we got work to do.)

eBay: 4 Sale Buy Now Fender Pro Junior Tube Amp

2007-05-14T12:10:00.000-06:00

Oh, uh look at this thing here. It's cool, isn't it?

Wilco: Sky Blue Sky, Pitchfork, Stylus, & PopMatters

2007-05-14T08:49:00.000-06:00

[Dude looks like a lady: Aerosmith and Robin Williams were the original sellouts.]

We can't believe the new Wilco album must be coming out tomorrow. Is that right? We've been listening to it for a while now (mad props to Oink!) and we think it's O.K. What's wrong with it? It's pleasant. The sun is sunny right now! What's wrong with pleasant? We were driving around with our girlfriend yesterday, after picking her up from the bookstore. In the store, we saw a book about Merzbau, the Kurt Schwitters' exhibition. Well. Naturally we put on in the car Merzbow. It was unpleasant: ahhh, but that's the point, you say. Well, we agree; but sometimes we just want music to sound nice.

Pitchfork loves Merzbow. (Well, they don't exactly, but all Merzbow albums are rated higher than this new Wilco album.) And they hate the new MOR Wilco. Is new Wilco MOR? Who cares. Giving the album less than five-and-a-half on the Pfork scale, they say

An album of unapologetic straightforwardness, Sky Blue Sky nakedly exposes the dad-rock gene Wilco has always carried but courageously attempted to disguise. Never has the band sounded more passive, from the direct and domestic nature of Tweedy's lyrics, to the soft-rock-plus-solos format (already hinted at on Ghost's "At Least That's What You Said" and "Hell Is Chrome") that most of its songs adhere to.

We really like the first two songs there on A Ghost Is Born. WTF? What's wrong with writing straight-ahead rock/pop songs? "Dad-rock" is just another name for "sounds pleasant," and not all music sounds like Merzbow. We're glad that all music doesn't sound like Merzbow. If "Hell is Chrome" is MOR dad-rock, well then goddamnit, we fucking love dad-rock.

PopMatters' review sounds like a direct, considered rebuttal of the 'Fork's review. The little thingy under the byline (or where the byline would be, which must have a technical name, but which technical name eludes me) says, "If you're prone to confusing honest musical maturity with banality, then you'll surely miss out on the treasures of Sky Blue Sky." Which, is exactly what Pitchfork seems to have done (according to PopMatters). PopMatters ultimately gives the album a 9/10. It argues throughout that the tunefulness of the new album conceals a deeper artistic integrity and musical complexity, which sounds like, say, what the Beatles did with their music. Or something. We're only interested in scores, and PopMatters scored the album almost twice as high.

Stylus (we read this trifecta of online music mags, obvs) gives the album a "B-," and compares Wilco's new effort to what the Grateful Dead recorded in the twilight or falling-action phase of their career. I think. The reviewer made some allusion to a place that seems from context to be related to the Dead, and then he mentions them, sure. But I think Mr. Cohen here knows a bit too much about the Dead to trust his taste. We exclude Stylus from our considerations because it's too much of an MOR review. A B-??? WTF. Pick "awesome" or "shitty." Our short attention span can only parse extremes.

Let's turn again to PopMatters. (We're really done with Pfork's divisive qua a fortiori polarizing reviews; nah, just kidding!) At the beginning of the review, the PopM says,

There is already considerable opinion and criticism in print and on the internet regarding Wilco’s sixth studio album. I’m writing this review approximately one month after the band streamed Sky Blue Sky in its entirety via its website (and the subsequent file-sharing leak of massive proportions) and one month before the album’s official release on aluminum poly-whatever.

[The noodles is boiling over, kid. The fix is in!]

This section gave us pause. Three big music online music magazines review the new Wilco album a month before its release--all on the same day?? This sounds like a conspiracy of Oliver Stone-ian proportions. What gives? Did the Big Three get together in a smoky back room somewhere and decide to review simultaneously the new Wilco album, thereby scooping traditional print media, whose natural restrictions already place them at a temporal/scoop disadvantage, which disadvantage only swells when the Allied Powers carve up Berlin a month in advance? We rather see the editors of the three, Stylus, Pitchfork, and PopMatters videoconferencing with their MacBooks, drinking Shasta and smoking parliaments in run-down but expensive apartments in various cities. Well. Really who cares? Much like ESPN pressured John Kruk to pick the Pirates as division champs, which he apparently admitted on radio, we think the three online mags drew straws: short one rips it, middle one stays lukewarm, and long one loves it. Either way, we can't see a better way at least to generate interest in the album than to conspiratorially ally in order to give the new Wilco album an aura of critical ambivalence.

UPDATE: Tiny Mix Tapes sides with PopMatters on the matter. They also reviewed the album today. Weird.

Les Enfants Terrible

2007-05-11T09:10:00.000-06:00

[Old people are poor at learning new things; the act of aging and being-in-the-world as an old person is a new thing; therefore, all old people should be killed immediately. QED, motherfucker.]

We hate old people here at then no sound. Ian McEwan's Saturday (I.M., whom we love to read) stunk up the joint with all its subtle, well mannered portrayals of an upper-middle-aged person. Any time the graduate students brings up the fucking 60s, the fucking Summer of Love (tm), life fucking experience, their children, their wife, their hemorrhoids , their I-don't-care-fucking-what something to do with being old: Our pens bend under the grip of our overcaffeinated, enraged hands. Particulate matter from our teeth makes inaudible sounds as it drops from our grinding mouth. Etc.

Old people are greedy, ruined the world before we were born, and try to atone for that burden giving us their wisdom, which is shit because if they were so fucking wise they wouldn't have ruined the world before we were born. We like the Beatles qua band; we fucking hate the Beatles, though. We especially hate Paul McCartney. His newest album will be available for download on iTunes, and Starbucks is going to shill it for him, on the iTunes storefront. Good luck asshole, I don't think my mother even knows how to turn on the Internet.

Google Me, Bitch

2007-05-10T08:27:00.000-06:00

[Looks like a Commercial for Conditioner.]

The NY Times said I should search for myself. I used to come up as the first hit when I put in my name, but since I took off my name from this blog, I don't even come up for like at all ever. (We're using the first person singular here because this is a very first person singular-type post.) Yahoo!, though, gave me more love and I found this. It's a pdf of an article I wrote in college. So, I'm either Tom, B. Michael Payne, Stephanie LaCava or Jess. Rock on.

Let's Get Out of This Country

2007-05-09T08:38:00.000-06:00

We would like to declare a moratorium on the use of the term "chamber pop." It doesn't mean anything. Belle and Sebastian/Elliot Smith/The Decemberists don't write chamber music, and their music isn't written in a chamber (despite evocative cover art featuring Kafka).

The closest teleological cousin we can think of to "chamber pop" is Chamber Music, Joyce's (terrible) book of poetry, which title, though, puns on and refers to the tinkling sound of a woman making water in a chamber pot. So when critics (it's always critics, the lice between the sheets of great art) use the phrase "chamber pop," what they're doing is pissing all over your record. So critics: stop using it.

And Amazon? There is no genetic trait linking Evanescance; Sigur Ros; Rufus Wainwright; Goldfrapp; and Brian Wilson. Except overwhelming whiteness. So is that what Amazon thinks chamber pop means, namely whiteness?

Wal*Mart

2007-05-08T13:22:00.000-06:00

Wal*Mart, which we've heard is a already a pretty difficult place from which to take things on a non-payment/no-payment basis (aka shoplift) is awesome.

[I am a Thief I stole your Swag.]

Funny, funny, funny Things

2007-05-08T11:54:00.000-06:00

The Morning News has a funny thing on its site. Much better than both the Bill Simmons article generator (too tedious) and the backlash against trend pieces (itself a trend--hypocritical!). So we present to you,

"Walk Like Katherine Mansfield, Talk Like a Dork."
by R-E-D-A-C-T-E-D

The city was invaded by "Mannies," as they're called over the weekend when a convention landed here, drawing 4.5 billion fans of Katherine Mansfield.

then no sound, otherwise known as R-E-D-A-C-T-E-D, a 23-year-old software engineer, was dressed in full, lacy Bloomsbury regalia as he waited in line to pay the $25,000 fee to carouse, enjoy spotted dick, and discuss literature with others drawn to this, the greatest spectacle in the tri-state region involving Katherine Mansfield.

“This is it. This is the Olympics of Katherine Mansfield,” said Johnny GoPlodding, a 64-year-old video-store clerk whose mother drove him here all the way from Missoula for the event. “Everyone who’s anybody in the world of Katherine Mansfield would give his left over pieces of high modernism-aping writing to be here with his co-equals.

“I spent the last 10 years of my life making sure I had every last sentence, watched all the horrible adaptations for 5.6 million hours this week and spent $ 5.6 million having my mom sew up this costume—all in preparation for this,” he said. “This is the most important thing in the world to me for reasons that will make absolutely no sense to me once I get a girlfriend. Unless, of course, she’s into this, too, in which case I’m going to become really weird.”

The co-founder of the event, Jane Mansfield, a 97-year-old London-themed line dancing-store owner, said the event would also feature London-themed line dancing and a tarot-card reader.

“The rest of the world could really learn a lesson from this,” she said. “I mean, where else can so many different people of different backgrounds get together so peacefully and have a good time like this? Except for the Nazis and Hindus (who use the logo, dontcha know?).”

While taking a break from Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero, then no sound addressed the mainstream criticism of Katherine Mansfield fans as socially inept people who use their obsession with an inconsequential and unconstructive esoterica to escape from reality and avoid dealing with the challenges of improving their own lives or the world around them.

“We’re not geeks or jocks,” he lisped. “We may be shamans in the lifedance of death and life, but we’re also human beings. If you prick us with a dogbone, do we not bleed? We’re not here in this soulless, overpriced and plastic-smelling convention hall just for the amusement of the quote-unquote mainstream with their 40-ounce beers, cheese-flavored Pringles, and quote-unquote normal sports franchises, like the amusement of the quote-unquote mainstream with their 40-ounce beers, cheese-flavored sharks in a bowl or sharks in a cage. We’re here to be with other people like us, other people who are scared of the real world like we are. We’re here to be the mainstream for a brief few hours before we have to go back to a real world that relegates us to the fringes. Here we’re not freaks.”

With that, then no sound lifted up his swag and disappeared into a crowd of crowds.

We got nothing Today

2007-05-08T10:53:00.000-06:00

Feeling like an elegy, but we don't even know what that would mean--we call bullshit!--and it's not even our fault because elegies are things you learn about in 11th grade English class and we were drooling and napping. Not banging on desks. We were going to write a post about the soft, nameless loss that comes with familiarity--that is, the loss that Ford M. Ford describes in the Good Soldier: that the moment you know someone you cease to know him because you know your image of him, not him himself--this loss we feel sometimes in our commerce with other people.

But then we just got thinking about commerce and how we got a promotion, and how these summer days have ended before they began; we won't have time to screw around at work anymore, we'll be busy really doing work, etc. Our chest hurts and we don't feel like eating, smoking, sleeping, or fucking.

Finally, we thought about how we'd like to be back in a place where we can listen to music all day, and this isn't that place; but we'll be making more money here than we have ever in our short recorded and unrecorded history made. And we wanted to try to write like Faulkner, but of course we're writing like Faulkner on a weblog, and so, we're writing like Faulkner on a weblog. Duh.

And past finality, we decided just to post pictures of google images, and to try not to split our infinitives.

(And we're incredibly bowled over by this (we don't know why): that one of our coworkers is so stupid, she is so so stupid that she can't make a pot of coffee without blowing a fuse, fucking up the coffee pot, and ending up with shitty brown water and grounds all over the floor--she is so stupid--and now she's an editor and part-office manager; and she doesn't know how to form proper sentences, or how to read for comprehension, so she has to check with another editor every two-and-a-half minutes to see if her first impulse, which she must suspect is just as stupid as she can't even begin to suspect is is, is right--which it isn't--and then the other editor has to edit verbally through her like a retarded, down syndromed medium, the type of spirit from whom you would not seek to elicit any advice, information, or spiritual guidance because it would tell you to walk through a fucking wall, that the Red Sox would win the world series by 1925, and that the fucking Klingons would have landed by the time in which you ask so don't bother, that stupid woman is also our part-office manager,

who is responsible for buying office supplies like chips, soda, coffee, etc. And we expect with no amount of irony for her to return with rocks, used car parts, topsoil, ANYTHING but food, because she's too dumb even to identify what is and what is not food. A dog could do that. We don't think she could. Every time she asks a stupid question we long for the near silence of keys being pressed and depressed, the fax making barely audible beeps, and phone conversations from a few doors away: the sounds that drive us batshit crazy. Being batshit crazy would be a better mode of being than the mode of being that calls for us to listen to her stupid questions.)

Eh-bay

2007-05-07T08:49:00.000-06:00

[The Children's Crusade rendered in MS Paint.]

We won an auction on ebay, and we don't wanna pay. Is $10 too much, or will the terrorists have already (always already) won?

2007-05-06T10:37:00.000-06:00

[Yeah we just took this photo from the article and put it here. Sue us.]

The NY Times extends its reign as the paper of record. Hard. Hitting. Report.

"But in general it is agreed that people kiss in private mainly because it is nice."

Un Blog Terrible

2007-05-04T09:07:00.000-06:00

This blog sucks. Shame on you.

Mobile Disco Party

2007-05-03T08:17:00.000-06:00

[Come with me if you want to live.]

We got a new mobile phone. We think it's better than our last one, but we miss having a ring volume rocker on the side of the phone. And we hate accidentally pressing the splatter guy, which charges us money. It's the bug-on-windshield-money-suck button. What a bad button for us; what a good button for them

We <3 R Kelly

2007-05-02T10:00:00.000-06:00

[R. Kelly abuses children, makes awesome songs; people make tribute mannequins of him.]

We love R. Kelly over here at then no sound. A post like this just adds redundant data points to a system that logically excludes outliers, facts that could diminish said love. A lot of people already knew this, but we can't spend all our time reading the Internets to track his moves--we're too busy contemplating the greatness that is R. Kelly.

R. Kelly has set aside the Trapped In The Closet hip-hopera (Chapters 13-22 out via DVD this July!) long enough to be touched by, and offer support for, the Virginia Tech tragedy. Kelly's releasing "Rise Up" digitally on May 15th, with Jive contributing 100% of the proceeds to the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund, assisting Va. Tech victims and their families. The AP says that Kelly the ballad after "watching the events unfold on television while he was on tour."

We don't really care that R. is making a benefit track for VTech (heartless!); but we just about flipped our shit when we saw that he's making ten new chapters of In The Closet! We finally get to figure out that midget shit!

Under Milkwood for the Second to Last Time

2007-05-02T09:08:00.000-06:00

[Not a wanksta, he's a P.I.M.P.]

We've always wanted to right a poem that ends with a rhyming couplet, which rhymes "Rilke" and "milky." And thinking about Rilke. Did he steal from Nietzsche the beautifully-named Lou-Andreas Salomé? Rilke's mother: dressing him up as a girl, making him go about in public as a girl--until the age of seven; naming him Rene. Is his imagery heavy-handed or romantic? An addendum to Markson's point about the year 1922: The Waste Land, Ulysses, Reader's Digest, and the Duino Elegies. We think it wholly sound to consider Rilke's work to be the one that doesn't belong, the rounded figure to the others' quadrilateral, if you will. Little irony, no self-awareness (abasement in excess, though), and much God this God that blah blah blah.

Tumescent, abashéd, we find Rilke:
Not unlike our cereal, soft and milky.

No posts Today

2007-05-01T09:35:00.000-06:00

We're at an appointment all day. Bjork's Volta sucks. Camp Lo still is the truth. Sunny, balmy weather ain't the truth, but it approximates closely to it.

Aristotle + Mimesis + Gisele

2007-04-30T12:55:00.001-06:00

[The cracked lookingglass of a servant.]

From a Southern Oregon University English department page:

For Aristotle, mimesis comes from a fundamental "desire to know." Human learning is inherently mimetic. People derive a pleasure of "learning and inference" from mimesis.

Mimesis = Mirror. The connection's too obvious. Etc.

Aristotle + Mimesis + Gisele

2007-04-30T12:55:00.000-06:00

[The cracked lookingglass of a servant.]

From a Southern Oregon University English department page:

For Aristotle, mimesis comes from a fundamental "desire to know." Human learning is inherently mimetic. People derive a pleasure of "learning and inference" from mimesis.

Mimesis = Mirror. The connection's too obvious. Etc.

The Last Novel

2007-04-30T07:18:00.000-06:00

[We judge books by their covers. This one's sexy.]

We love David Markson here. Ever since Wittgenstein's Mistress and title character's crazy thinking about Clytemnestra's vacation plans with Helen, and Cassandra lurking at windows; shooting out galleries and kiteskating with canvases; and asking Heidegger to name her cat (which reply is Argos--LOL!). We've been hooked. So when we were at the bookstore the other day and we saw the pretty new cover to Markson's latest novel, The Last Novel, well, we just had to get it. For our friend, from whom we promptly borrowed it. The style is. Well, the page looks something this,

The sections in The Last Novel are a little longer. Here are some of our faves.

No further martinis after dinner, Conrad Aiken's physician once commanded.
Following which Aiken frequently refused to eat until practically bedtime.

Stephen Dedalus, at Sandymount, in 1904.
Is he aware that Yeats was born there?

A quirky new impulse of Novelist's, at news of several recent deaths--
Dialing the deceased, in the likelihood that no one would have yet disconnected their answering machines--and contemplating their voices on final eerie time.

Novelist does not own a cat, and thus most certainly could not have thrown one out a window.
Nonetheless he would lay odds that more than one hopscotching reviewer will be reading carelessly enough here to never notice these two sentences and announce that he did so.

Only this tardily realizing--that if he had not made use of his middle name, among the better-known twentieth-century American poets would be a William Williams.

Act. Then call upon the gods.
Says another Euripides fragment.

A heart attack while swimming, Theodore Roethke died of.

For no reason whatsoever, Novelist has just flung his cat out one of his four-flights0up front windows.

It may be essential to Harold Bloom that his audience not know quite what he is talking about.
Commenteth Alfred Kazin--pointing out other immortal phrasings altogether.

It was Beckett's wife who took the call informing them that Beckett had won the Nobel Prize. Her first reaction, even as she turned to tell him:
Quel catastrophe!

The writer Bret Easton Ellis, who imparted to a New York Times reporter that he had been reading the Bible--but then seemed uncertain as to whether in the Old Testament or the New.
Were the stories about Moses or Jesus?
Jesus. I think.

Of no significance whatsoever. But the hospital where Dylan Thomas would die, sixty-one years after the fact, was the one after which Edna Millay had been named.

Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke.

Losing her sight in later life, Constance Garnett arranged to have Russian books read aloud--and then dictated her translations.

1922. Ulysses.
1922. The Waste Land.

1922. Reader's Digest.

A seminonfictional semifiction.
And with its interspersed unattributed quotations at roughest count adding up to a hundred or more.

Theodore Dreiser's general preference for the word kike, rather than Jew.

You have but two topics, yourself and me, and I'm sick of both.
Johnson once told Boswell.

Baseball is what we were, football is what we have become.
Said Mary McGrory.

Ian McEwan

2007-04-27T11:21:00.000-06:00

[The Best British Writer of his Generation.]

Read Ian McEwan. You know that we're Foster Wallace people, but still, this McEwan is an infinitely more talented writer qua writer of characters, fear, anxiety, and breaking loss. DFW is moving in this direction (indeed, has been moving in this direction since the last 200 pages of Infinite Jest) but McEwan seems to have been born with the ability to pull those strings we call psychological by mere movement of his pen on paper. That is, he's very very talented and makes us gasp at times, and we just know that he meant to make us gasp right there, and we're really jealous of him for his doing this. This part here is the beginning of The Cement Garden, surely one of the best books written, and it should be read by all children, as soon as possible, so they can learn about sex and self-starting.

I did not kill my father, but I sometimes felt I had helped him on his way. And but for the fact that it coincided with a landmark in my own physical growth, his death seemed insignificant compared to what followed. My sisters and I talked about him the week after he died, and Sue certainly cried when the ambulance men tucked him in a bright red blanket and carried him away. He was a frail, irascible, obsessive man with yellowish hands and face. I am only including the little story of his death to explain how my sisters and I came to have such a large quantity of cement at our disposal.

That has to be the finest last line of an opening paragraph--ever. "I am only including the little story of his death to explain how my sisters and I came to have such a large quantity of cement at our disposal." Ian McEwan is the truth, and that there is the fucking poise and balance of the period itself.

We Drank So Much Caffeine Today That It IS HArd to Contain This Thing

2007-04-26T12:50:00.000-06:00

[The metaphysics of presence make this picture the telos of sexy.]

Been reading freedarko lately. Don't care about basketball, etc. Well, kind of care. But we don't know anything about basketball. But we do know things about awesome pictures, a category to which that there picture above belongs.

Update Re: Dan Stafford

2007-04-26T12:25:00.000-06:00

~~Fuck~~ Praise be Dan Stafford! Just moments ago, which you should realize means just moments after I sent two emails, Mr. Stafford replied,

Payne -

Holy goodness! All praise be to the highest, you sir, have been REMOVED
from the EA list.

Jumpin' Jehoshaphat, your long nightmare of receiving email from me, Dan
Stafford, is finally over. But you made it friend, you got to the other
side, hopefully preventing you from climbing the myriad skyscrapers next
to the ocean in which you would have dumped countless gallons of oil
(which according to my records would be quite a feat, since you live in
Albuquerque). Thankfully, you can forsake Libertarianism, and return to
being a liberal.

Enjoy your half-second of freedom sir, which, by my count adds up to
about a minute of your time I've wasted over the last year, ironically
that minute is significantly less time than it took for you to compose
your email to me, prompting my longer-than-a-minute email back.

Which reminds me - I do need to devote more of my time today to creating
yet another 'miserable excuse for a call to action', so I shall bid you
adieu.

Best,
Stafford

We like this guy! But we have to wonder, why does the environmental action or whatever it's called website lie about its forwarding these emails to people? Mr. Stafford??

Fuck Dan Stafford, whoever he Is

2007-04-26T12:00:00.000-06:00

We sent this email out just now.

Dan,

I've been receiving these emails for a while now, and I've tried to unsubscribe. I get this page,

We could not find that e-mail address in our records. This is probably because you get e-mail at another e-mail address that forwards to this one. Click here to try another e-mail address or reply to the original message you were sent for more help.

I want to unsubscribe. This email is not forwarded to me by another address (I suspect). And even if it is, I want you to remove "Brian M." from your database. I don't care how you do it, but you are making me want to burn down forests, spill oil from skyscrapers into the sea (don't ask about the logistics of that act), and discover a process that transmutes endangered species into harmful CO2 and radon, which I would then pump directly into every environmentalist's home and place of work. I am sick of receiving these emails, which I never read and promptly delete. I shall not stand for receiving these emails. I had been a liberal, but now I'm leaning more and more toward crazy, right wing Libertarianism. If you fail to cease immediately to send me; to place this practice in abeyance; to put a moratorium on my receiving these messages; to grind down wearily in a timewise, aged fashion this abuse of my half second it takes to click the delete button as soon as my eyes see the name "Dan Stafford;" end like apartheid; end this miserable excuse for a call to action (at least a call to my action); etc etc etc etc etc, I will be forced to contact my local authorities, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the NSA, the Secret Service, the Joint Chiefs etc and tell them that a very bad, very liberal-seeming man might be harassing me and endangering the security of the nation by trying to engender (unsuccessfully, may'st I add) within my very soul a dissenting and anti-authoritarian spirit, which calls for the preservation of our environment, which preservation you and I both know is at odds with the government's agenda, which, QED, makes you a terrorist. Please please please remove me from this list.

Signed,
Payne

p.s.,

I've read in a David Markson's latest novel (The Last Novel, which, by the by, is very good) that that is how (viz., surname only) some famous writer thought nobles signed their letters. So have at you, Mister Stafford!

On 4/26/07, Dan Stafford, Environmental Action Organizer wrote:
Hi Brian M.,

As gas prices nuzzle up to the three dollar mark again, Ford Motors made a startling announcement that global warming is real. Of course, for us, that's not really news, and in fact seems more like a company playing catch up.

The problem is that their announcement reeks of cynicism. The reality is that of Ford's 68 different 2007 models, only 2 get better than 30mpg in city driving. In fact, the average fuel economy for Ford vehicles is 18.2mpg in city driving, and 23.6mpg on the highway.

So we're sending Ford a message - if you're going to talk the talk, you need to walk the walk. We're calling on Ford to set a goal for doubling the gas mileage for their entire fleet.

To send Ford the message, click the link below, or paste it into your browser:

http://www.environmental-action.org/enviroaction.asp?id=2270&id4=ES

A couple years ago, Ford CEO Bill Ford Jr. announced a bold new plan to put 250,000 hybrid vehicles on the road annually by 2010. Then, they quietly reneged on their commitment, and have since continued with business as usual.

So while current Ford CEO Alan Mulally announces that global warming exists, their policies do nothing to actually solve the problem. Please take a moment right now, and send Ford a message - ask them to walk the walk.

http://www.environmental-action.org/enviroaction.asp?id=2270&id4=ES

And then please, pass this along to your friends and family - and thanks for your work.

Sincerely,

Dan Stafford
Environmental Action Organizer
DanS@environmental-action.org
http://www.environmental-action.org

P.S. Thanks again for your support. Please feel free to share this e-mail with your family and friends.

----------

This message was sent to R E D A C T E D@GMAIL.COM. If you want to change your e-mail address or are getting e-mail at multiple e-mail addresses then follow this link - http://www.environmental-action.org/enviroaction.asp?id2=32484&id6=change - to a web page where you can change your e-mail address.

If you want us to stop sending you e-mail then follow this link - http://www.environmental-action.org/enviroaction.asp?id2=32484&id6=remove&id9=73 - to a web page where you can remove yourself.

Philosophers are like Butterflies...

2007-04-26T09:55:00.000-06:00

[Peter Paul Rubens, Justus Lipsius, Philip Rubens, and Jan Wowerius, i.e., the Four Philosophers... nah right]

The difference between analytic philosophers and continental philosophers seems to us to be like the difference between auto mechanics (who fix specific problems as they occur) and automobile designers [not engineers] (who try to construct [almost goes without saying, a priori] a problem-less automobile).

Lots of posts today. Tomorrow we're going to make a post concerning our favorite five or ten hip-hop songs, with mp3s or m4as.

OK, Brilliant piece on Iraq Here

2007-04-26T09:47:00.000-06:00

[And... boom goes the dynamite.]

This article sums up perfectly the situation in the Middle East, which situation qua Western media coverage constitutes in our minds daily.

Locals are calling for an investigation into excessive force or outright corruption by military or political officials on one of the 15 sides of the various conflicts, although the implicated party has categorically denied wrongdoing, just like they always do, without fail, every time this happens, which is daily, it seems.
And in Afghanistan, the Taliban.

Argh, Argh, Argh, Argh! More Power!

2007-04-26T09:03:00.000-06:00

This has got to be the most interesting story I've read all week. It's about the youngest brother on Home Improvement, Mark Taylor (né Taran Noah Smith, pictured right) falling in love with a crazy-ass Midwestern-turned-Northwestern artist/born again vegan woman, named Heidi Van Pelt. Which all, in itself, we hardly find unbelievable. But there are pools and layers of scorn accruing and settling, exerting a pressure on the base level that will almost assuredly fail to make diamonds.

The poor woman should have read her Aeschylus and pulled a Clytie on her man. Or something. Because it sounds (from the admiteddly homer-ish Kansas City Pitch's account) like she got fucked sideways with a funnel. Actually, there may be something to all this. We're constantly reminded of Absolom, Absolom!—reminded of it by every story of self-starting, family betrayal, questioned/questionable origins, and viscous, dreamy decline. This piece is very possibly the highest form qua apotheosis of, (the chef d'oeuvre, if you will) stories involving a) child television stars; b) vegan foods; and c) women who have had aspirations of joining the CIA.

It all starts so innocently,

So when Zachary Ty Bryant and Taran Noah Smith — both young stars of the hit sitcom Home Improvement — showed up at her house for a raw-food dinner party in 1998, it was hardly anything to write home about. Smith was just some 14-year-old, meat-eating kid; Van Pelt didn't pay him much attention.

Do the Dishes

2007-04-25T11:20:00.000-06:00

[This is what our house fucking looks like, and, can you tell, it pisses us off some times.]

Sometimes we have parties, or we cook lots of food, or we just don't do the dishes for a while. Some of our roommates don't really cook. (We have no idea how they afford to "eat out" at Whole Foods every night.) And all this means that there are sometimes lots of dishes, and often there's no way to tell who should have washed what, which was used by whom, etc.

And sometimes we get bored at work, and we're just chillin reading the Internets, and looking at back issues of VICE. We like to read VICE, even if they only brag (obliquely, by the mere mention--don't you hate people that brag about doing something by making a nonchalant mentioning or indication of an act done, which, you just know they're making so little a deal about because they think it's cooler (more hip and aloof), but really it shows a way firmer, more insidious grasp on the (apparent) importance of the thing it is they're doing, a way firmer and more insidious grasp, that is, than just being really amped and excited and directly talking about what it is) about doing coke and heroin in the bathroom at work, which is actually just gross.

Well, our frustration with our roommates apparent lack of aptitude for doing dishes (we're the only ones that do the dishes in the house if you couldn't tell) has intersected with our boredom at work and said boredom's catalyzing our reading VICE, in order for us to re-read the following and be really touched by its simplicity and elegance. And we're not saying VICE is good for anything. But this is probably the best advice they've ever given us. (So, in the last analysis, we are saying VICE is good for something.)

DOs & DON'Ts—Dishes
If you live in a house with a bunch of people, you need a nail in the wall by the kitchen sink that has all your names stuck to it. Like, if there's five of you then you write everyone's name on a separate piece of paper, punch a hole in the top and hang the papers on the nail. If your name is on the top, you do whatever dishes are in the sink, then you can move your name to the back. You have to do whatever dishes are in the sink whenever your name is at the front, whether it's one bowl or a whole sinkful. Of course, if you're really tenacious, you will do your turn the second your name makes it to the front. That's not cheating. That's how the rule was designed. If all five of you acted the same way, the sink would always be empty and the roaches would be bummed.

The full VICE Guide to Everything is here.

Green Bay Packers

2007-04-25T10:38:00.000-06:00

The Green Bay Packers are the NFL's only community-owned, not-for-profit franchise. Right? They are a not-for-profit. As in, not for Aaron Rodgers' profit; not for its fans' slowly hardening veins' profit; not for making the playoffs profit; etc. Good for them. The only person they do profit, we think, is Bill Simmons. (This post was a thinly veiled excuse for our posting the picture above--the first cause, if you will.)

Pitchfork: Two Things

2007-04-24T12:14:00.000-06:00

Two things about Pitchfork's Arctic Monkeys review.

The opening sentence

No longer can Arctic Monkeys be considered underdogs; given the notoriously fickle English music scene, perhaps that means they should be.

need something: a "though," "but," or "however" we think. After the semicolon. And, were the Arctic Monkeys ever considered underdogs? Seeing as how the next sentence, the very next sentence, says,

Last year, the Sheffield quartet's Whatever They Say I Am, That's What I'm Not became the fastest-selling debut album in UK music history, spawning two #1 singles and winning the Mercury Prize.

we think not. Call it "created mythology," "straw man," or "unimaginative 'journalistic' tack." No matter.

We think more strange is this ad:

Coors? Not even Coors Light (with the frost blue can liner)?? If marketeers think Coors is going to usurp PBR for cheap hipster beer of choice, then they've got another thing coming. Fool us once shame on you; fool us twice shame on us.

Coors has no cheap-but-funny slogan (c.f., Champagne of Beers); no Dennis Hopper endorsement (Heineken? Fuck that shit! PABST BLUE RIBBON!!); there are no great debates surrounding it (More taste? Less filling?); etc. And that can. The rich, creamy color of the can just serves to illustrate the watery, urea coloring of the beer it conceals. Coors? Fuck that shit!

Katherine Mansfield's Spirit was Awesome

2007-04-23T12:19:00.000-06:00

Thanks to bookslut for pointing out this meme. We just simply positively very strangely but most pleasingly, like as in for instance when you have a very private memory that might be just like a point, a memory-point pure position with no extension about which a feeling lingers and your mind kind of reaches out to this point every now and then, or bumps up against it, and it makes you feel the feeling that lays around it--that's how this picture makes me feel. We printed it out and pinned it to our cubicle.

Katherine Mansfield's spirit was awesome

The picture is from the article (where the blog post-eponymous caption is). You can find her stories here. (I <3 Project Gutenberg.) We believe we've found a zeitgeist, a movement behind which to get. Get behind us or get run over by us.

Cowboy Boots

2007-04-20T13:39:00.000-06:00

Blues hasn't influenced* rock & roll music as much as country & western has:

-Few black rock bands
-Cowboy boots always look badass
-Tight Jeans
-The open C chord
-Telecasters > Gibson 335
-Slide guitar is stupid

*Style, of course, is everything in music.

Let's Make a (New) Deal

2007-04-19T10:20:00.000-06:00

Is it just me, or does Blogger hate IE? I could never get the fucking photo tool to work with IE, and now that I use FireFox it works just fine thanks very much.

-or-

My snot is bright green, with a viscosity similar to Elmer's Glue.

-or-

CocoRosie was overrated, until their newest album got savaged by Stylus, Pfork et alia: now they're just rated. (And served, they got served!)

-or-

You could say the Brits have a more fastidious sense of style and usage; but then again, you could say that that belongs to the Midwest.

-or-

Grammar, what's the big deal anyway?

-or-

We've always enjoyed the thrill of filling up inventively a white page with black lines, like building fabulous Lego castles with a pen.

-or-

Name that film: "Do you still pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?"

Every day I'm going to post one idea. That's the hook. (And as John Popper intoned famously: The hook brings you back, I ain't tellin' you no lie.) I'll level, dig. I've been sick for the last two and a half weeks; like, really, really sick. So now I feel a little better and I figured out something to do and my job has calmed down and everything has settled into a little groove and this is going to be fun for me again to do that is to post one thing per day but only one thing, and it will probably be brief.

Top Ten Secrets To Success In Your Career/Life/Love/Money/Penis Enlargement

2007-03-23T10:55:00.000-06:00

1. Tell that bitch to be cool!

2. Say, bitch be cool!

3. Say, bitch be cool!

4. Tell her it's gonna be okay.

5. Tell her to chill.

6. Tell her we're still cool.

7. Just hang in there, baby, you're doin' great.

8. Go in that bag and find my wallet.

9. Now open it up and take out the cash.

10. Put it in your pocket, it's yours.

(We Suck Young Blood)

2007-03-22T08:53:00.000-06:00

We read our ebay feedback for positive reinforcement.

Thesis On Certainty Part 6

2007-03-22T08:38:00.001-06:00

Part 5 = here. (A predicative, not ontological "=.") So we left a cliffhanger yesterday, ending the post one paragraph before the end of the section. We'd like to think of ourselves as modern-day Dan Browns. (Also, don't forget to check out B. Michael's Notebook Miscellany.)

We got a new iPod, an 80gb one. Having only filled maybe 50gb of it, we find ourselves already sitting in traffic blocking green lights looking for something to which to listen. This, we think, could be the phenomenon described by Arcade Fire's "No Cars Go." And, well, we blame them, too. We can never decided between Neon Bible and Funeral. Thesis after the jump.

[The metaphorical jump.]

It could be objected that Moore seems to be trustworthy regarding the knowledge of his hands. As a respected academician, no one would think he would write outright lies. And isn’t the knowledge of one’s hands precisely the kind of knowledge about which it would be impossible to be mistaken? Moore’s utter certainty that he has two hands, coupled with the fact that people just don’t make mistakes about such things, seems to justify our trust in his knowledge. We simply agree with Moore that he does have two hands. Such a thing could go without saying. This apparent certainty, though, is the interstice in which Moore’s metaphysical presupposition finds purchase. And it is precisely for playing on this sense of certainty that Wittgenstein will criticize Moore. Moore’s utterance, “I know I have two hands,” is nonsense precisely because it expresses something that we would never doubt. And, paradoxically, it’s for this very reason that Moore cannot say he knows that he has two hands. In asserting why Moore can’t say that he knows he has two hands, Wittgenstein will re-characterize knowledge in a fairly radical way.

Moore’s Common Sense View

We said earlier that Moore’s notion of knowledge is something like justified true belief, but that his justification for knowing some things does not entail his being able to say he knows some things. Moore’s criterion of justification seemed to be that he was “quite certain” of something. Moore is quite certain that he has two hands, and it’s impossible that he merely believes such to be true; it isn’t merely highly probable. Therefore, Moore “knows” he has two hands. But to say so is a misuse of “I know…” that seems to reveal a “queer and extremely important mental state.”[i] When Moore says above, “I know I have two hands,” there seems to be at work in his mind a specific faculty, which secures his knowledge and is conditioned by his utter certainty: the indubitable (self) assurance of a wrinkled brow, a semi-articulated force of expression. We’ve said above that Wittgenstein explicitly denies the importance of mental states in evaluating the knowledge claims of one’s interlocutors. The mental state that accompanies one’s certainty is something of a ghost whose insubstantiality Wittgenstein points out throughout his work. The certainty that one feels is of little importance for our purposes: such a feeling indicates a merely subjective certainty. This subjective certainty falls short of what Wittgenstein leads us toward. We want to say that “perfect certainty is only a matter of [one’s] attitude,” which attitude fails to be philosophically interesting if our investigation is for an objective indication of certainty.[ii] To speak about knowledge and certainty with regard to mental states is a circumlocution around the logical crux of the matter, the source of objectivity in a sense.

However, presuppositions concerning mental states corresponding to knowledge and certainty underlie much of the philosophic discourse. Moore describes the symptoms of such mental states in his essay, “A Defence of Common Sense.” In the essay he describes knowing propositions like “I have two hands.” He says,

I think I have nothing better to say than that it seems to me that I do know them, with certainty. It is, indeed, obvious that, in the case of most of them, I do not know them directly: that is to say, I only know them because, in the past, I have known to be true other propositions which were evidence for them. If, for instance, I do know that the earth had existed for many years before I was born, I certainly only know this because I have known other things in the past which were evidence for it. And I certainly do not know exactly what the evidence was. Yet all this seems to me to be no good reason for doubting that I do know it. We are all, I think, in this strange position that we do know many things, with regard to which we know further that we must have had evidence for them, and yet we do not know how we know them, i.e., we do not know what the evidence was.[iii]

Moore calls this queer phenomenon “the Common Sense view of the world.”[iv] His perplexity at how we know certain things arises from trying to connect the feeling of certainty, a mental state, to some sort of outward criteria that would count as a substantiation or explanation for his mental state. Moore cites a paucity of evidence for his perplexity at the phenomenon. Rather than direct evidence for his certainty, he constructs a deductive chain that counts as pseudo-evidence. Moore knows the earth existed for many years before he was born because he knows, for example, that he was born of two parents who must have lived on the earth; and he knows he was born from two parents because of the entire circumstances of his life, but he lacks direct evidence of his birth and parentage. He could trace back this certainty to other certainties, but he couldn’t say how he knows them because he lacks direct evidence. The mental state of knowing seems to be unsubstantiated. But rather, this mental state itself is the unsubstantial “thing,” the unnecessary and unimportant piece of our picture of knowledge.

Moore is right in linking evidence with knowledge. After all, that one knows something can be shown, and this showing counts as evidence. But what of the propositions that fall under the purview of the Common Sense View? It is unreasonable to doubt the existence of the earth long before our birth because then we would have to doubt “all sorts of things that stand fast” for us.[v] That is, we would have to doubt the many branches of the deductive chain that seem solid. For instance, it stands fast for us that all humans come from two human parents who must certainly have lived on the earth. This proposition seems to be grounded on experience and scientific testimony. Moore’s point appears to be twofold: 1) Experience and scientific testimony lack an evidential ground; and thus, how can we know such a thing as the earth has existed long before our birth? 2) Nonetheless, “all this seems to be no good ground for doubting that I do know” that the earth has existed long before my birth. Wittgenstein’s response to this aporia is that we do not know (in Moore’s sense of knowing as justified true belief) that the earth has existed long before our birth. How could we show that this proposition is the case—justify it? We would go through a brief chain of reasoning as above. But this chain of reasoning isn’t a proof. A proof tries to demonstrate the objective correctness of a proposition.

[i] On Certainty, §6.
[ii] On Certainty, §404.
[iii] Moore, “Defence,” 44.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] On Certainty, §234.

Thesis On Certainty Part 5

2007-03-21T10:17:00.000-06:00

We put up Part 4 of our Thesis on On Certainty last week. Part 5 here begins with a new section, The Flaws in Moore's Argument, and it is the beginning of the specifics concerning Wittgenstein's conception of language, proof, and certainty.

The Flaws in Moore’s Argument

Moore’s proof is more robust than Wittgenstein sometimes characterizes it. It is compelling enough that Wittgenstein feels compelled to critique it; and Wittgenstein seems even to appropriate for his philosophy parts of Moore’s thought in the two essays. Moore’s conclusion is that there are things in existence, i.e., two human hands. And as premises, he holds up his two hands, saying, “Here is one hand,” and then, “here is another.”[i] This argument hinges on three things: 1) that the premises are different than the conclusion; 2) that the premises are known by Moore to be the case; and 3) that the conclusion follows from the premises.[ii] Wittgenstein critiques the second condition. Moore is completely certain that he has satisfied the second condition, which he makes obvious by saying,

How absurd it would be to suggest that I did not know it, but only believed it, and that perhaps it was not the case! You might as well suggest that I do not know that I am now standing up and talking—that perhaps after all I’m not, and that it’s not quite certain that I am![iii]

Moore thinks his knowledge here is completely incontestable and self-evident. This sense of certainty is important, and it will figure prominently in Wittgenstein’s notion of knowledge. But here it is important to see why Moore is wrong to say he knows he has two hands. We should not suggest, after all, that Moore does not know he is “standing up and talking,” but we would suggest that it is incorrect for Moore to say, “I am now standing up and talking.”

For Moore, knowledge of a something is constituted by its being the case; by one’s not “only [merely] believing” it to be the case; and by one’s being “quite certain” that it is the case. This notion of knowledge is what one would call justified true belief. Of course, the difficult criterion to satisfy with justified true belief is the criterion of justification. Moore thinks he is justified to know he has two hands because he is “quite certain” that he has two hands. And this seems correct to us. But just because Moore may be justified in knowing that he has two hands does not mean he is justified in saying he has two hands. The epistemological notion of knowing he has two hands has influenced his grammatical use of “I know…”

Wittgenstein begins On Certainty by saying, “If you do know that here is one hand, we’ll grant you all the rest.”[iv] He goes on in that section to say that from any proposition another may follow, but this entailment doesn’t make the proposition from which others are derived any more certain. That is, B may follow from A, but that doesn’t make A more certain. Further, if I say, “I know I have two hands,” it follows that I have two hands; but that Moore has two hands does not follow from his saying “I know I have two hands.”[v] Another person’s assertion that he knows doesn’t secure objectivity. However, there are two important caveats to the preceding remark. On the one hand, “I know…” does not always mean “I cannot be wrong about…” or “I am certain of…”[vi] A fact is not necessarily entailed by the utterance “I know…” Such a use would result in the most absurd solipsism; but philosophers often commit themselves to such a position. After his psychological reduction, Descartes perceives clearly and distinctly that he is a thinking thing; consequently, he knows that he is a thinking thing. His perceiving clearly and distinctly, i.e., knowing, that he is a thinking thing satisfies him that he is a thinking thing. Similarly, when Moore says, “I know I have two hands,” he makes it clear that he cannot be wrong, that he must in fact have two hands. In both cases, a certainty—a certain piece of knowledge—entails a fact. Wittgenstein denies that certainty can entail a fact. Philosophic uses of “I know…” “seem to describe a state of affairs which guarantees what is known, guarantees it as a fact,” but this guarantee ignores the phrase “I thought I knew.”[vii] Obviously—trivially, even—things are contrariwise. That is, we are left with facts; and to these facts knowledge or certainty need not correspond. The desire to talk about knowledge often confuses us about what it is that comprises knowledge.

On the other hand, when someone else says, “I know…” it doesn’t follow that he does know; but this is not to say that he doesn’t know it. Rather, that another person does know “takes some showing.”[viii] Showing that one knows is central to Wittgenstein’s notion of knowledge and objectivity. We often mistake the grammar of a proposition with a guarantee of the proposition’s being the case. A proposition of the form, “I know…” doesn’t automatically denote a state of affairs—it doesn’t secure objectivity or even necessarily give a piece of knowledge. When someone says, “I know…” the utterance is an indication of assurance; but such an assurance only means that he thinks he is not mistaken.[ix] Someone’s knowledge or certainty does not assure a fact. Rather, the fact—the real existence of a state of affairs—is the possibility of assurance. That is, when someone says he knows something, his interlocutor “must be able to imagine how one may know something of the kind.”[x] Reality and experience—life itself—govern this imagining. In this way Wittgenstein’s philosophy seems to echo Kant’s notion of transcendental idealism: a concept without experience is empty. Moreover, given that the fact is the case does not assure that one knows that fact. For someone to sensibly say to another person, “I know…” the other person must be satisfied with this knowledge. This satisfaction is part of Wittgenstein’s notion of knowledge. As we would like to show, Wittgenstein’s notion of knowledge depends heavily on an intersubjective type of agreement, which goes toward justifying another’s belief that his interlocutor (which is to emphasize Wittgenstein’s focus on utterances) actually knows something.

Someone might ask his neighbor on what day the city collects the garbage. If the neighbor says, “I know it gets collected on Wednesday,” he may be satisfied that the neighbor knows this and that it’s true. If the neighbor takes care of his home, seems concerned with its upkeep, and seems trustworthy, then a person would probably be satisfied. If, however, piles of rubbish lie next to the neighbor’s house and if he seems unconcerned with keeping up his home, then a person would probably be unsatisfied. He would think that his neighbor might not know when the garbage is collected. That is, the neighbor has failed to show that he knows when the garbage is collected. We don’t have to try to infer his mental state—whether it is one of knowing, believing, not knowing, etc.—we can see with our own eyes that he does not know. From his saying, “I know it gets collected on Wednesday,” someone wouldn’t necessarily (that is, have to) think that that’s when it does get collected; and in fact, we would think he does not know.

[i] Moore, “Proof,” 146.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Moore, “Proof,” 146-7.
[iv] On Certainty, §1.
[v] On Certainty, §13.
[vi] On Certainty, §8.
[vii] On Certainty, §12.
[viii] On Certainty, §14.
[ix] On Certainty, §15.
[x] On Certainty, §18.

What's Up with that!? Missed Connections Edition

2007-03-19T12:40:00.000-06:00

And now we bring you the first What's Up with that!?, a new then no sound column in which we ask the question, what's up with that!?

What's up with posters posting non-missed connections matters in the missed connections section of craigslist? Case in point:

Thanks for dumping on me - m4w - 40

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reply
to: pers-296320354@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-03-18, 7:12PM
MDT

Thanks for using me for the last 5 years as your alternate fall back to get a man..Well you can't do it anymore now you got pregnant with someone else...and you will have to dump your shit on sombody else from now on.....what you did was cruel and hatefull and vindictve and I'm sure right now and would never have thought of it before this that you are laughing to yourself..especially now that you gave me the news in such a cold and distant manner...I was there for you in your time of real need..and now you shit on the person who stood next to you at that time....so go ahead and laugh..but all you did to me, someone who just brought you love was to hurt for your own selfish reasons..

Location: Earth

Right. Our only comment will be a quotation from the above matter: "Location: Earth."

Gap Year Plans

2007-03-19T09:57:00.000-06:00

To the island, the one where people drown in the rain with their heads tilted up and their wide mouths open.

Thesis On Certainty, Part 4

2007-03-16T09:13:00.000-06:00

C.f., Thesis On Certainty, Part 3, which has links back to Part 2 and the beginning. In this section we enounter Wittgenstein's quite funny description of the madman-philosopher; and we finish our initial exposition of what we call Moore's metaphysical presupposition, which really is just a rehash of Husserl's criticisms of philosophy in the Crisis, and Derrida's criticism of Husserl in La Voix et le Phénomène. Those two heavily influenced this piece, and Derrida seems particularly to have been influenced by Wittgenstein. We wonder if Derrida wrote ever about Wittgenstein?

[The Metaphorical Jump.]

And of course this is put poorly, since it would seem as if Wittgenstein were trying to connect language to a mental state of knowledge or a mental state of certainty: but this connection can hardly be said to exist—and even the mental state, if there is such a thing, is unimportant. Put one way, to think that to knowledge and certainty there exists a corresponding mental state would be to think “that different people had to correspond to the word ‘I’ and the name ‘Ludwig,’ because the concepts are different.”[i] Even though Wittgenstein’s notions of knowledge and belief are (to some extent) discrete, it would fail to be fruitful to try to prescribe to one and the other discrete mental states, since the differences between the two are not given by the words themselves. And this is to get back to our point above. There is not one transcendental meaning—or a state that corresponds to a transcendental meaning—which by itself secures certainty or knowledge. Rather, just as there are contexts that call for the first-person personal pronoun or for one’s name, there are contexts that call for certainty or for knowledge. And this point is even deeper, since suggested by it is the importance of logic or grammar in deciding which is called for in a given context.

Of course, within the context of Moore’s argument his proposition poses no problem. The problem that arises has to do with the aim of philosophy and the intention of Moore. Moore takes “I know I have two hands” to be a proposition about things in the external world; but what the proposition means to us, as we suggested above, is something of a mystery. For Moore, the sense of his proposition is assured—he can simply say he knows something—by his knowing something; but the proposition fails to bear sense for others. (And this is not to suggest that Moore can say something that means something only to himself. And even if this is granted, then it may be inferred that the sense of Moore’s proposition is unclear even to himself.) Such usage occurs in other areas of discourse, but its occurrence in philosophy is frequent. Bluntly put, philosophic usage has a way of expressing something, which is perfectly clear and certain to its author, but what it expresses often fails to make sense to others. The sense of many philosophic propositions—like “I know I have two hands”—is unclear; and this fact goes unnoticed often precisely because they are employed in philosophic discourse. We don’t think this criticism would obtain against other disciplines that employ specialized usage. For example, medical usage seems “translatable” into normal usage, just as mathematical usage can be translated from numerals to words and letters. Philosophic usage is often not translatable simply because what it expresses is quite literally nonsense.

To clarify, later in On Certainty Wittgenstein describes again the asymmetry between a purely philosophic usage of “I know…” and what we’d like to call a “normal usage.” Imagine,

I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again “I know that that’s a tree,” pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: “This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy.”[ii]

This situation makes a striking picture, which surely recurs in an analogous form throughout philosophy classes. Discussing a topic like certain knowledge makes for strange conversation. Again, this isn’t to prescribe a normal usage. But there is a usage that has proven its worth in practice, which we shall call normal. Saying, “I know that that’s a tree,” occurs usefully in life. One may see a tall shrub and say, “I know that that’s a tree,” and he would be wrong. Seeing an obstruction laying across the road, a driver could say to his passenger, “That’s no shadow. I know that that’s a tree.” These specific utterances aren’t implicitly better or more worthy. But their worth is proved by their successful execution. Insanity is something like the constant lack over time of success in one’s utterances. If someone were sitting in the garden looking at a tree while repeating, “I know that that’s a tree,” one would be tempted to count him as insane. Such an utterance violates countless interwoven nuances of our language. These nuances aren’t prescribed by anyone, but they are stronger than any transcendent a priori categories of the understanding. Within the free play of meanings, certain conventions are transmitted and codified by no one, but they restrict the usage of everyone. And for the most part, saying that such an utterance lacks an appropriate context from which it derives its sense sums up the wrongness of it. But this proposition is so strange that it is even difficult to say how it’s wrong. Even if the proposition were true, it would be very hard to think of a situation in which it makes sense to say it. Wittgenstein gives an example of a patient who goes to the doctor, showing him his hand while saying, “This is a hand, not…; I’ve injured it, etc, etc.”[iii] Are we to say that such an utterance makes sense? Even though the proposition that “This is a hand, not…” is true, is it a piece of information? Doubtless, we would say that the utterance is absurd and superfluous. It has no use in this context. It would be like saying “Hello, how are you?” in the middle of a conversation. Moore’s primary mistake is to ignore the role of context in his usage. He has been seduced by philosophy into thinking that a proposition like “I know I have two hands” actually makes sense in the context in which he utters it. Bearing out further the asymmetry between philosophic and normal usage, Wittgenstein says that when we can imagine a situation in which an utterance—the types of utterance which Moore says he knows—might normally be used, by turning an utterance such as “I know I have two hands” into a “move in one of our language-games,” “it loses everything that is philosophically astonishing.”[iv] Philosophy can be seen to make for itself its own work when it uses utterances outside of a meaning-conferring context.

To think that language need not be employed in a normal way—as a “move in one of our language-games,” a move which we will elucidate shortly—as Moore seems to do, would be to allow for utterances to have a transcendent sense of meaning that attaches somehow to the utterance itself. Moore’s proof contains this presupposition, which surely went unnoticed by him. Nevertheless, it seems clear that the meaning of “I know I have two hands” must be assumed as pre-given and predetermined because Moore assumes his utterance is obviously, trivially true and makes sense. Moore has committed himself to the notion that language bears meaning apart from human intercourse and the life of the present. Such a commitment suggests a meaningful substratum that lies further back from lived experience, which sounds prima facie like Platonic formalism.

Wittgenstein’s explicit criticism is that Moore tries to refute the claim that one cannot know things about the world with the claim that he can know them; and the way in which Moore makes this claim is by saying things like “I know I have two hands.”[v] The problem with skepticism—and the realism that Moore attempts to prove in order to refute skepticism—is that the meaning of both the skeptic and the realist seems to hang in mid-air. The problems attendant to this topic seem epistemological, but they are grammatical. The connections between epistemology and grammar have confused our clear understanding of the problems of philosophy. By drawing out these connections, our hope is that we can influence the desires of philosophers. In On Certainty, the primary desire that Wittgenstein can be seen to defeat is the desire for a fully grounded knowledge. This aim seems paradoxical: Wittgenstein tries both to point out the groundlessness of our knowledge, and to point out that our knowledge is objective. Wittgenstein accomplishes at the same time these two counter-running projects by transforming the meaning of objectivity. This meaning-transformation shows as nonsensical the metaphysical notion of objectivity based on an absolute grounding of knowledge.

[i] On Certainty, §42.
[ii] On Certainty, §467.
[iii] On Certainty, §460.
[iv] On Certainty, §622.
[v] On Certainty, §521.

We Wonder If...

2007-03-15T12:28:00.000-06:00

We wonder if Gardetto's would consider retailing a variety of their popular snack mix that consists of only those savory, crisp and brown snack chips or crackers. You know what we mean.

Thesis On Certainty, Part 3

2007-03-15T09:49:00.000-06:00

We offer here two things: a link to Thesis On Certainty, Part 2 (which includes a link to Part 1, so really, it's like two-and-a-half things), and, after the metaphorical jump, Part 3 of Thesis On Certainty.

[The metaphorical jump.]

The Metaphysical Presupposition: A Sleight of Hand(s)

Wittgenstein responds to the challenge posed most strongly by Descartes’ Meditations: having been deceived in the past, how is it that humans can know anything for certain, secure objective knowledge? In order for philosophy and science to proceed assuredly, it seems as if this challenge must be satisfied—Cartesian knowledge must be grounded on something unmoving. Descartes characterizes knowledge itself, the cogito, as in a sense securing for itself objectivity. The Cartesian-rational God is concomitant with the cogito. If there is a God who isn’t a deceiver, then humans can know things with certainty. Descartes’ metaphysical presupposition is that there is a rational God; this God is both grounded by and grounds the very possibility of objective knowledge, and this ground falls before all empirical experience. By supposing the existence of God, humans have certainty, and therefore knowledge. The notion of an undeceiving God grounds the epistemological criterion of seeing a proposition in a clear and distinct light.

But rather than address in On Certainty philosophy’s seduction by metaphysics, Wittgenstein builds upon another philosopher’s response to this question about transcendental certainty. And ironically, he finds a metaphysical presupposition in a most unlikely place, G. E. Moore’s supposedly commonsensical attempt to prove the existence of an external world.[i] In his attempt, Moore conceals a metaphysical presupposition when he says, “I certainly did at the moment know that which I expressed,” by holding up two hands.[ii] His presupposition is that he can say meaningfully, and with certainty, the he knows a proposition of the type “I have two hands.” Wittgenstein’s criticism is not that such knowledge is impossible, but rather that an utterance like “I know I have two hands” is probably nonsense. That is, Moore presupposes that he can merely, meaningfully say, “I know I have two hands.”

When philosophers use “I know…” Wittgenstein says, “I want to reply ‘you don’t know anything!’—and yet I would not say that to anyone who was speaking without philosophical intention.”[iii] The asymmetric response to different utterances of “I know…” gives a demonstration of Wittgenstein’s notion of knowledge and its attendant utterances: the meaning of such an utterance is heavily dependent on a context, and the sense or meaning of the utterance “I know…” depends on the context in which it is used. Moore’s use of “I know I have two hands” lacks an appropriate context. It is not that Moore’s utterance cannot make sense, but he makes an uncalled for assumption that it makes sense and expresses a certainty. It rests therefore on the same type of metaphysical presupposition that Descartes makes in his Meditations. That is, a common understanding between Moore and his audience is presupposed in the same way in which Descartes roughly assumes the existence of an undeceiving God, which is the condition of meaningful intersubjective experiences. For Moore to say meaningfully “I know I have two hands” conceals a presupposition that his utterance makes sense and that that which he expresses calls for a proposition of the form “I know…”

Wittgenstein’s response is that Moore’s utterance lacks a context within which it would make sense; and Moore’s thinking that it does make sense—that it does certainly make sense—presupposes a transcendent sense of meaning that must be “further back” from the beginning. For Moore’s utterance “I know I have two hands” to make sense it must be nested within a situation from which its sense is given. Sense is conferred by context; a system of signs, actions, trainings, customs, and traditions must always already be in place in order for an utterance to make sense. Moore makes this proposition within the context of a piece of philosophy that takes up our certain knowledge of the external world. It is clear what Moore means to say: namely, he knows that there exist things in the world, for example his two hands. But Moore has gone astray. Wittgenstein isn’t prescribing a certain normal usage of the proposition “I know I have two hands.” He merely notes that in order for such a proposition to make sense it must make sense. This point is an indictment of philosophy as a whole, of what we’d call “philosophic usage,” which often fails to make sense. For Wittgenstein would rather “like to reserve the expression ‘I know’ for the cases in which it used in normal linguistic exchange.”[iv] We would like to show, then, what it is that separates “philosophic usage” from “normal usage.” Wittgenstein’s strategic work on knowledge and certainty centers around the ways in which we use propositions that express knowledge and certainty.

[i] G. E. Moore, “Proof of an External World,” in Philosophic Papers (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1959), 127-150; G. E. Moore, “A Defence of Common Sense,” in Philosophic Papers (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1959), 32-59.

[ii] Moore, “Proof,” 146.

[iii] On Certainty, §407.

[iv] On Certainty, §260.

Vanishing Point

2007-03-15T08:28:00.000-06:00

David Wallace on a David Markson novel: pretty much the high point of experimental fiction in this country. The irony of Markson’s writing Vanishing Point.

Iranian government Condemns 300

2007-03-14T12:37:00.000-06:00

Re: our previous post, we have to say that the Iranian government might just be right.

Really Amazing: Craigslist m4f

2007-03-14T11:16:00.000-06:00

Well, a few methodological notes: a) we've decided to ditch the then no sound style sheet, because, well, it doesn't make any sense; b) we've decided also that we're not a very good writer--but oh wells; c) the past perfect (plu-perfect? pluter-perfect???) is a pretty effete voice in which to write. N e wayz...

Speaking of writing we just read another pretty awesome post on Santa Fe craigslist. We never saw craigslist until we came out here, and, well, even though we're sure it's better in a place in which there are tons of crazy people, we think it's A-Ok here. Sometimes. But this post, unlike the last one (from which an effluvia of despair and desperation fled like it was on a burning shortbus full of, like, retarded gas-soaked children), this post is just bitter. And it characterizes one man's experience with the local dating scene. [Edit: unfortunately.] The ~~differential~~ structure of meaning-creation has a way of doing that, no? Let's see what this fellow's life is like by the things he describes he wants, which clearly are things about which he's criticizing former dates, whom we should like to describe. (This is a long post, and we'd use the "after the jump" thing, but we're too lazy to figure it out.)

[The metaphorical jump.]

Well, It's finally time to admit when I've been wrong. After years of trying to find good, honest women with integrity, I realize that I need to change. I mean, who the HELL do I think I am? I'm not that special to expect sooo much out of someone. So, I've decided to change my expectations. I'm turning over a new leaf ladies. Here's the list of NEW traits I'm looking for in my future lady:

Ok, we think that reevaluating one's standards and expectations is a process that should occur fairly regularly, even if one happens to be dating or married to someone. Alcohol, we find, is a good standards-and-expectations reevaluator.

LANGUAGE: For now on, I don't give a shit how you talk. I love it when I hear you say words like dawg, cuz, aiight, yo, dat, holla, crib, props, peeps or any other words that would make an English teacher piss themselves.

We think one standard this fellow needs to raise, though, is his age requirement. You should not be trying to date middle schoolers. Well, unless he's in middle school, we suppose; but then this guy is too young to be posting on craigslist. Double whammy!

SPELLING: GOD, it makes me so hard when I get all those texts(you know those fuckers cost, right?) from you and it looks as if you dropped out of the 4th grade after repeating 3 times. I've been suffering through it for the sake of not talking to your retarded ass, but now if you refer back to the first item on my new list...I don't care anymore. So text your shorthand ass off or call me, either way I can't WAIT to hear from you.

See above. Bro's age requirement = at least 5th grader

HYGIENE: Let me tell you something, this is an area I REALLY need to lighten up on. All this time that I've been trimming, or shaving, or washing, or cleaning my tool(penis for you dumbasses)I've been expecting the same from you. Not anymore! Nope, for now on I will enjoy eating your box for an hour as I waft through the smells wondering if I'm munching day old tuna, or an opened box of sardines left out on the counter by my hefty roommate.

Just to reiterate: "[...] my tool(penis for you dumbasses)I've [...]" parentheses are not em-dashes. 'Nuff said. Well, on second thought, we suppose that the poster, here, should probably just suck it up--pun intended.

NICOTINE: Yep, this has been a biggy for me. I know, I know, I'm an asshole! But this is a new me. A new beginning. I promise I will not discriminate against you anymore because you smoke. Yep, for know on I will learn to love the taste of a fucking ashtray in my mouth as my clothes smell of week old cigarettes and you slowly give me cancer. I would love to die a slow and painful death because of your second hand smoke!

Eh, no comment.

EXERCISE: HOLY SHIT! Are you fucking kidding me? A woman who takes care of herself and takes pride in her body? Not anymore. Fuck that shit!! I want a woman who watches an infomercial for the Ab Machine only because there's 15 minutes left before the informercial for the Deep Fried Twinkie machine comes on. Are you joking me? Hell yes I'll go with you to Taco Bell for 2 Chalupas, 2 Tacos and an order of Pinto beans(with a large Diet Coke...gottawatch those calories) at 1 in the morning after we had whale sex because you can't miss your 4th meal! Who the hell wants a woman who can shop at Victoria Secrets for sexy undies? HAHAHA! NOT ME!!! I want your sexy undies made out of my couch cover!

We have to say, this one really divides us. On the one hand, girls that go to the gym all the time tend to be vain and narcissitic; but on the other hand, like, no fatties. Funny story, we made deep-fried twinkies the other day, and they're pretty fucking good. So, like, don't knock 'em, etc. Also, most medical professionals recommend five evenly-spaced meals per day, so depending on when you go to bed, a taco bell run at 1am might not be a bad idea. Plus, doesn't this brother get hungry after he gets his fuck on? Pluswhich, c.f. picture to the right, garments made from shit you find lying around the house (in this case, a pillow case and some red tape) can be awefully sexy. Just, you know, FYI.

COMMITMENT: Who needs this? The nerve of me. All this time I've been expecting my girlfriends to fuck only ME?!? I have some nerve. Well, ladies now I don't give a shit. If it's 12 at night and you still haven't shown up for our date which was supposed to be at 8:00, I'm no longer gonna care that you went out with your girlfriends to a bar and took some stranger home for a protein swallow. Who needs that kind of stress? If I'm at work and your fucking every guy in the grocery store over at the Dairy section, I DON'T CARE! Shit, whore it up ladies! I'll just be at home WHENEVER you call with my favorite DVD(Junk in the Trunk #12), a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of lube hoping that they are both empty at the end of the night and my room smells like jizz and puke. Well, there you go. I hope this turns out well for me.

Come pick me up,
Take me out,
Fuck me up,
Steal my records,
Screw all my friends,
Behind my back,
With a smile on your face,
And then do it again.

Overall, we rate this fellow a 2.7 / 10.

Comments: Needs to stop trolling for thin, clean, intelligent fifth graders. Guy is probably turned off from the highschool crowd because of said crowd's affinity for picking up smoking. Eh, this is taking too long and we got kind of bored.

Best Line Ever (Of the Year)

2007-03-14T09:21:00.000-06:00

This morning (or maybe yesterday, we don't really keep track of those things) Pop Matters gave us two interesting reviews. One held Explosions in the Sky's new (quite divisive, we have to admit) album All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone to a very high standard, giving it maybe a B-. (C.f., [paraphrase] An almost great album would be excellent from most bands. But Explosions in the Sky isn't most bands.) So, blah blah blah yackity schmackity: we understand. But this was the first EITS album we'd ever heard, and you never forget your first. So we love this one. And we got it in the mail on pretty yellow and green vinyl. And we still got the remix cd in the sleeve. So's, yeah. Two thumbs up.

But the point: we paraphrased the above (stupid, we must admit, we understand, but still, stupid) line in order to quote with more purity this line from a review of some band that apparently makes it its own business to reinterpret classic rock or something. Honestly, the review was pretty boring until the end.

If, on the other hand, you think the Ramones are the apotheosis of cool, do not listen to this record. I repeat: DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS RECORD. It will probably make you sick.

The protasis had something to do with some cheeky references to something or other, but this here apodosis is pretty sweet. The caps really sum up, we're willing to bet, the overall message of the review.

But, like, we have two questions, then. 1) Doesn't everyone think the Ramones are the apotheosis of cool (apo = towards; theos=god: highest form of, viz., in the development of something)? 2) Then why did this shitty not-even-really-the-Mahavishnu-Orchestra-whose-very-credibility-the-review-questions-anyway-knock-off-band's album get a rating of 6, which is only one less than the rating given to EITS' record?

But, arbitrariness is nice, too.

Why Bother: 300

2007-03-13T09:39:00.000-06:00

Welcome back to Why Bother: {Subject Matter Here}, the then no sound column in which we ask the question "Why Bother with [about, even making/doing, seeing/hearing/fucking, etc] such and such a thing?" And today's thing is the film 300. At least I think it was a film, I saw in the upper-right corner little pseudo-cigarette burns every now and then...

[Whoa, whoa. I just linked to "cigarette burns" on wikipedia only to find out that the term is not "canonical." WTF?! How else is the projectionist supposed to know when to change the reel? If the term isn't canonical, OK; but its use certainly is canonical--i.e., every projectionist agrees: gotta change the reel when we see the mark in the upper-right corner. And until recently the mark was made by a cigarette burning the appropriate frames. Q.E.D., motherfuckers.]

If I didn't know any better, I'd say the 300 was shot on vinyl six-pack abs suits and congealed ketchup qua blood. Or that they took some stock footage from the Matrix and, like, photoshopped in spears instead of bullets.

More homoerotic than a commercial for the marines (not that there's anything with that, 'natch) 300 is a two-hour-long (that is to say, extended) ode to the male anatomy. You see abs, sex lines, pectorals with creases on their ridges, which are on top of other creases, etc. And the Spartans, who wear nothing but girl shorts and flaming-crimson capes, have the gall to jibe the Athenians for engaging in pederasty. The nerve! Spartans look like major pervs: like those guys who work out on the beach and oil up each other and try to fuck everything. The film is downright pornographic in its depiction of violence, abs, and those hard, strong spears piercing manflesh left and right.

But the ideological discourse of the film is what really depressed me. The Spartan king, Leonidas, says continually that his country is fighting for freedom when it seems like the least free country depicted. Xerxes' army is composed of 100 nations who form a unilateral coalition to end Spartan brutality. Leonidas' Spartans fucking kill babies if they're small or misshapen--does that sound a little like a Mao-esque practice? And the Spartans kill or maim two different diplomats, the first of which catalyzes the war in the first place. And Leonidas' stupid slut wife (who gets tricked into fucking her arch-rival) says, at one point in which I almost simultaneously pissed my pants and vomited a little in my mouth, that "Freedom isn't free." C.f., Team America: World Police's song, "Freedom isn't free / No, there's a hefty fuckin' fee / And if we don't all chip in, we'll never pay that biiiillllll." Etc. So, everyone, all 300 (give or take) Spartans are forced to die for freedom. Awesome.

There's textbook orientalism governing both the production of (by the filmmakers) and our (viewers') reception of Xerxes' army. It's so very mysterious and exotic. Arabs, negroes, and chinamen. ook at those freaks! And little guys in wizard hats are throwing gunpowder bombs! And, and, they're so cruel and brutal and... maybe a little inscrutable. And look at Xerxes! He has no facial hair and he talks like a transvestite; and he wears eyemakeup suggestive of, well, a transvestite that doesn't know how to put on eyemakeup. And the harem scene. Those people are so exotic. They're probably all smoking opium, but I don't know, they're culture is so strange.

And the Christ-like-ness of Leonidas. He even fucking dies with his arms spread just so, doing is best Jesus-on-the-cross impersonation. He's surrounded by slaughtered men and crimson capes and looks like a pre-Renaissance painting of a bunch of dumbass martyrs.

I fucking hated this movie. Why bother?

Making 300 = Making (lots and lots and lots of) money.
Seeing 300 = Boredom, wasting money

P.S., The Spartans--paragons of virtue and excellence--needed the pederast childfucking Athenians to soften up the Persian army before they could even think of stepping with a ground war.

Molly Bloom? Fucking Weak!

2007-03-12T16:15:00.000-06:00

Three sentences? One chapter? Ulysses? That whoresonsdaughter Molly Bloom has nothing on the auralperambulating ramblings of this craigslist missed connections poster's post.

[...] and from this vantage feel that i can value you more, for what we have now and for what we had before, i cant read the future shawn, maybe it would be neat once in a while to know but i know it cant be done, i can only be sureof how i feel, with the temperature and frequency flowing through changes all the time, you know how it is because its the same with you, and maybe thats why were not together, we were never really quite sure where we stood with each other, or maybe we were too young and insecure with ourselves to begin with, but again all this is past, i came close to breaking my neck the last few years straining to look back, all i want to do is look forward, but i want to take you with me, moving forward on my terms doesnt have anything to do with forgetting you and our memories together, but the opposite in fact, im filled with desire to face you and look you in the eye like i always have, without grief or even a tinge of regret for what did not transpire, for shattered dreams, we're not left with as many years as we once did, we should spend the remainder of our days, yes, reminiscing with a smile, having forgiven the past, preparing for the next great love of our lives, you were it once, as im sure i was yours, no one can tell the future shawn, if you fell out of the sky as i was passing by, clearly i was meant to catch you, i would let you ride on my shoulders, i would parade you around like a queen, let the crowd throw flowers at you, then steal you away into my secret hideaway where you would always be safe, but life isnt a fairytale, and both of us find beauty in the chaos where anything can happen, still i know i can protect you in the midst of one, and you i know would protect me, this is reality, and [...]

Woah. Shawn: call. this. woman. now. Run--don't walk! Eh, then again. Well... Is that really so different from this? Yes? Really, yes? No? No, no no no: yes, it is. If poster above were, say, part Andalusian (chien?) I'd chat her up myself. But that's hardly this. (Yes?)

[...] and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Oops: I forgot to post

2007-03-12T14:06:00.000-06:00

Since I haven't posted regularly on this blog in a while--I forgot to post this morning! I had some wonderful pancakes, though.

Blogger: Sous Rature

Blogger is no longer in beta. But they've acknowledge, in a way, that being out of beta makes sense only over and above the being-in of being in beta. Hence, the logo, which has ~~beta~~ sous rature.

That's all I got! I'll write about Vilem Flusser soon.

Thesis On Certainty, Part 2

2007-03-09T09:54:00.000-07:00

It's Friday and we don't feel like doing anything. In fact, since the boss is out of town, we'll probably leave work three or five hours early and go drive around and run and play and whatnot. (Which reminds us of a time we tried to give a lecture on syllogistic reasoning to some ninth graders, and we used the proposition "If the cat's away, then the mice will play," and, well, we think we're pretty good at explaining things--but they didn't get it at all.) So's... we're going lazily to post another section of our thesis. The epigraph and the first post are here. (If anyone knows how to make that whole "after the jump" thing, email me!)

Second Post of Thesis - On Certainty

That the game of language-learning “proves its worth” is shown by its working in practice, functioning well. This worth is shown by the form of life that we inhabit: our society’s language-learning is characterized by a standard of education in which there is an accepted, working methodology of teaching and learning; our speech acts generally succeed in communicating things; and more significantly, our whole way of life shows “the stability of things as the norm.” Our shared form of life shows the worth of the game.

But, as Wittgenstein says, the worth of the game should not be confused with its ground. Looking at how people hunt and expect certain animal parts always to exist in certain places, he says, “I naturally do not want to say that men should behave like this, but only that they do behave like this.”[i] We are not exactly interested in proving objectivity. We are, however, quite interested in looking at different ways in which an objective type of relation seems to obtain. And whereas metaphysical philosophy converges on the transcendental a priori in order to make sense of objectivity, Wittgenstein contents himself with what’s apparent, what comes after the beginning. Wittgenstein should not be counted as a mere empiricist or a mere psychologist, though. Nor is he interested in the descriptive science of anthropology. We think that doing so would be to accuse him of a philosophical irresponsibility, which is undeserved. Despite his interest in the empirical, a posteriori site of knowledge, Wittgenstein’s critique of classical metaphysics is keen and quite specific. At stake is his convincing us that there is a robust notion of objectivity that doesn’t rely on the a priori. Wittgenstein clarifies the notion of objectivity, but he refuses to understand it by “ratiocination,” metaphysical speculation and over-rationalization. His appeal to “any logic good enough for a primitive means of communication” is an appeal to a non-sublime, non-prescriptive logic. For Wittgenstein, logic is something of a blunt instrument—not the keen razor of the mind, by which it is traditionally understood. Wittgenstein’s unique conception of logic is given by his expositions of language-games. Objectivity fails to obtain in a transcendental sense, but within the area circumscribed by Wittgenstein’s logic—language-games—certain propositions are objectively true. Moreover, it belongs to the logical determination of language-games to set the limit of the intelligibility of our language and actions, which then determines the limit of our thought. Thus, a different sort of objectivity obtains when we look from the outside at language-games: certain propositions fall outside of certain language-games. Our focus on language-games, and their attendant notions, will describe Wittgenstein’s notion of objectivity.

We will first focus on Wittgenstein’s critique of the classical metaphysical worldview, which worldview seeks wrongly to investigate a priori sites that fall “further back” from the beginning. Special attention will be paid to Moore’s concealed metaphysical presupposition in his criticism of the classic metaphysical worldview. We will then examine Wittgenstein’s notion of logic, to which connect his notions of knowledge, belief, certainty, and language-games. Finally, we will look at that with which Wittgenstein replaces the traditional notion of ground: action.

[i] On Certainty, §284.

Craigslist + Ten Thousand Waves

2007-03-08T10:42:00.000-07:00

First things First

We had this whole then no sound style sheet worked out in our head last year, but we'd obviously forgotten it. Then no sound style, we thought, would use headlines. And the first person plural. Well, we'll see.

Ten Thousand Waves is a Creepy, Creepy Place

From craigslist santa fe:

Rubbed your feet and thigh at Thousand Waves - 48

Reply to: pers-266954653@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-01-22, 9:53PM MST

You were in the hot tub with hubby, great face and D cups. You sat next to me and I massaged your thigh, rubbed your butt. You wound up rubbing your tits in your hubbys face and massaged his member under the water. Thought I didn't notice did'nt you. I'd like to have dinner or have you for dinner- your choice.
Contact me!

Location: Santa Fe motel

Uhm... We went to Ten Thousand Waves last year with the girlfriend, who might I add paid for the whole thing, and we opted for the private tub, which was really nice and relaxing, smelling the experience did like cedar and nature and satisfaction. We couldn't imagine being in the public tub. Well, we could. And that there ad above is exactly how we imagine it. This point has been put better and made often, but fat old people and public nudity don't mix. They don't mix! Fat old people and offers of cunnilingus? That's just. Fucking. Disgusting.

"depressing descriptive sounds"

2007-03-08T09:10:00.000-07:00

The title of this post being the key words, from which someone landed on this very page. We're proud to say that, as of right now, we are Google's number seven choice website for "depressing descriptive sounds!"

Thesis On Certainty

2007-03-08T08:32:00.000-07:00

So this is what we would call something of a cop-out post. But, well. (We hate how hyphenated words looks; Joyce was the most stylish writer ever. We were reading out loud "Araby" a few nights ago and the way he puts one word against another word to make a sentence--it's so beautiful. You can learn everything about writing with beauty (not that that would have to be your goal) by reading out loud and typing or writing Joyce's writing: Joyce constructed neologism-type words by omitting hyphens and jamming words together, not that that was the phenomenon about which We were talking directly above, but that is the thought that got usonto this topic about Joyce.)

We're going to paste in here the first part of ourcompleted thesis. We're really happy with how it came out. And, We'll, like, do something else later.

[This here below is the epigraph. Following that is the first page or so of the thesis.]

I submit that tennis is the most beautiful sport there is, and also the most
demanding. It requires body control, hand-eye coordination, quickness,
flat-out speed, endurance, and that strange mix of caution and abandon we call
courage. It also requires smarts. Just one single shot in one
exchange in one point of a high-level match is a nightmare of mechanical
variables. Given that a net that’s three feet high (at the center) and two
players in (unrealistically) a fixed position, the efficacy of one single shot
is determined by its angle, depth, pace, and spin. And each of these
determinants is itself determined by still other variables—for example, a shot’s
depth is determined by the height at which the ball passes over the net combined
with some integrated function of pace and spin, with the ball’s height over the
net itself determined by the player’s body position, grip on the racquet, degree
of backswing, angle of racquet face, and the 3-D coordinates through which the
racquet face moves during that interval in which the ball is actually on the
strings. The tree of variables and determinants branches out, on and on,
and then on even farther when the opponent’s own positions and predilections and
the ballistic features of the ball he’s sent you to hit are factored in.
No CPU yet existent could compute the expansion of variables for even a single
exchange—smoke would come out of the mainframe. The sort of thinking
involved is the sort that can be done only by a living and highly conscious
entity, and then only unconsciously, i.e., by combining talent with repetition
to such an extent that the variables are combined and controlled without
conscious thought. In other words, serious tennis is a kind of
art.
David Foster Wallace[i]
Notes

[i] David Foster Wallace, “Tennis Player
Michael Joyce’s
Profession Artistry As a Paradigm of Certain Stuff About Choice,
Freedom,
Limitation, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness,” in A Supposedly
Fun
Thing I’ll Never Do Again (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1997),
235-36.

About two-thirds of the way through On Certainty,[i] Wittgenstein seemingly encapsulates his entire philosophic
project in one day’s worth of propositions.
471. It is so difficult to find
the beginning. Or, better: it is difficult to begin at the
beginning. And not try to go further back.

472. When a child
learns language it learns at the same time what is to be investigated and what
not. When it learns that there is a cupboard in the room, it isn’t taught
to doubt whether what it sees later on is still a cupboard or only a kind of
stage set.

473. Just as in writing we learn a particular basic form
of letters and then vary it later, so we learn first the stability of things as
the norm, which is then subject to alterations.

474. This game
proves its worth. That may be the cause of its being played, but it is not
the ground.

475. I want to regard man here as an animal; as a
primitive being to which one grants instinct but not ratiocination. As a
creature in a primitive state. Any logic good enough for a primitive means
of communication needs no apology from us. Language did not emerge from
some kind of ratiocination.

Taken in order, we believe (surmise)
that these five propositions position cogently Wittgenstein’s thought about the
limits of thought, and therefore philosophy. The first proposition is the
kernel—the essential seed—of Wittgenstein’s philosophy: his work tries to
exorcise from the reader the urge to “try to go further back.” This urge
spurs on philosophers to raise nonsensical questions, to which they proffer
nonsensical answers; from this urge results what we would call
“metaphysics.” On the one hand, the metaphysical urge catalyzed Platonism
and Aristotelian auto-affective notion of God. Both of these doctrinaire
systems assume that there is an underlying cause that lies further back from the
sensible world. Both Platonic formalism and Aristotle’s conception of the
“unmoved mover” as pure being-at-work suppose an impoverished view of reality;
both try to supply a metaphysical backdrop that secures for reality a more full
meaning.
And we find on the other hand, thousands of years later, Moore
taking up another aspect of going “further back.” His attempt to prove
realism fails for similar reasons, over which we will go later. Attempts
at proving realism and idealism; deriving transcendental categories of the
understanding; and even the search for totally certain knowledge all arise from
the metaphysical presupposition of the existence of a “further back.”
Philosophers rely on this “further back” in order to ground their thought in
apodicticity or transcendence—it is the site of the a
priori.

Where Wittgenstein provisionally situates the “beginning,” then, is the point at
which “a child learns language.” As he says, attendant to learning
language, a child must learn quite a few other things: the stability or
uniformity of the objects expressed by language; belief in the regularity (of
the meaning) of language; the authority of the teacher. These things
simply cannot be the language-learner’s theme of investigation if he is to learn
language. But it would be a mistake to think that these uninvestigated
themes comprise the “ground” of language-learning. The game—in this
instance, language-learning—“proves its worth,” but this worth doesn’t ground
the game. A game’s ground is “further back” from the practice of the game,
and the ground is not itself part of the game: it is a condition of the
possibility for the game. This ground would have to come prior to the
practice of the game, and it is part of Wittgenstein’s task to show—in general
terms—why the transcendental ground—or the urge to find a transcendental
ground—is not a proper theme for philosophy.

[i] Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty (New York: Harper & Row, 1969).

Why Bother: Neon Bible [Special Edition]

2007-03-07T09:42:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Why Bother: {subject matter here}, a new feature of then no sound, which we've named after that one Weezer song that goes, why bother, 'ts gonna hurt me, 'ts gonna kill when you desert me... The title should should explain what it's all about.

Not feeling very capable today, we can't figure out how to make that photo above be at work done here. (That is, we're not feeling very capable, etc--dangling participles be damned.) But d'you see all that stuff up there? That's a box with a moving 3-D hologram-type thing; a sleek, plastic sleeve for the CD; a lyrics book; a matchbook-sized flipbook, which presents the same image that you see on the cover of the aforementioned box; and a larger flipbook that seems to depict a meteorological-eyed view (viz., high above satellite image) that turns into people. Right.

Yesterday, we paid $21.50 (incl. NM sales tax) for the Arcade Fire's Neon Bible [Special Edition], straight cash, yesterday because the LP is mysteriously unavailable, and we got the leak, like, back in January: so we thought we should, you know, support the band; and whatnot.

So it's not about the money or anything. We ask only: why bother making a 3-D holographic box, a matchbook-sized flipbook depicting what's already on the box; and a larger flipbook that depicts some inscrutable subject matter. This is the kind of shit that we only lose, and even if we didn't lose it--what, are we supposed to listen to the music and flip the flipbooks, or gaze at the box? We just don't understand why so much glossy paper, so many staples, and all those 3-D holographic plastic sheets were used to produce what amounts to exterior and interior packaging for a CD that, on its own, is very good and needs only, maybe, the lyric sheet and some candles or, well, fire of some sort, to accompany it. Why couldn't they have spent their time ensuring the LP release coincided with the CD release--rather than designing all that stupid shit?

Happy New Year: 10 Things we've learned so Far

2007-03-06T10:40:00.000-07:00

We last posted on this blog at the end of December 2006. Since then... well. we spent the better part of the Christmas break hanging out with artistic types. Having rang in the New Year at a party to which they invited us, we got to see Zach sing "My Way" on the karaoke mic, and he got us a job (which we lost subsequently). We did get to hear those silly songs from the Pompeii EP, like, way before the suckers on emusic downloaded them.

And, well, we got really into marmite and building overlarge fires in or smallish fireplace. And we started upping our ratio on Oink. And, uh. We smoked a lot of pot and played some Madden. Oh oh oh oh! And it snowed, like, a shitload in Santa Fe, NM. Like, we were shoveling, for, like days on end. But we thought it was really cute to see all las familias walking to the store pulling in tow children on sleds. Never see people walk around here...

Well. The Christmas break didn't teach usvery much. But we think we've learned, like, a lot since then. James Joyce's birthday has come and gone, and we've decided to start blogging again. (Which decision is really based on material circumstances of leisure and means.)

Top Ten things we learned since the New Year

10. Get blisteringly drunk at a Super Bowl party if and only if you want to blot from your soft head the memory of the wretched game. (You will, maybe, also start lots of fights with your co-revelers; but your beer pong skills may be raised to an illogically keen level.)

9. Guitar Hero--at which we've scoffed to myself privately, with a superior bearing one might say, since we fancy ourselves a Guitarist, and as such, above the game--is really fun. But the songs the game has suck.

8. Reading fiction (opposed, of course, to philosophy and maths books) is surprisingly fun. Gaddis' Recognitions deserves all the credit on this one. And really, the two blank intangibles--ethics and aesthetics--are tied together in that the latter depicts situations in which we may imagine the former existing. Or, maybe we're given an aesthetic appreciation of ethical situations. C.f., Blood Meridian.

7. You really can't tell your friend that you slept with his girlfriend: even if you know and he knows that it's not true; and especially if you know that it will piss him off.

6. Paul Celan was a beautiful genius of man. This title he deserves merely for formulating the word "Worthöhlen," "wordcaves."

A music triptych:

5. So-called noise music includes more than Lightning Bolt. And electronic music includes more than Aphex Twin.

4. If all you do is download lots of music; rarely have time to listen to any of it; delete all your newly downloaded music to make room for to download more music; and end up
only listening to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea anyway: buy a record player, get a few LPs, and listen to those closely. We finally get Black Sabbath and Joanna Newsom. Sweet!

3. Wire. I mean, wow. Really? I mean... Wow. Pink Flag? You've heard it...? You didn't go burn down something? I mean, danced around? ... I mean... wow. Wire. Chairs Missing isn't better than anything Joy Division ever did? Really? Wow... (We're still working on 154.)

2. Ostensibly: you're working on your thesis every day for five hours. Really: you're smoking pot and playing Madden every day for five hours. Then: you realize that you may smoke pot no longer. Finally: you work like hell for two weeks and don't sleep and finish your thesis and the product is awesome. Incidentally: you don't smoke pot anymore because it freaks you out and wastes your time.

1. Try not to fuck over people.

Why bother?

2006-12-30T13:02:00.000-07:00

I read in some British list of 100 things you didn't know from 2006 that maybe 9 in 10 airplane crashes have survivors.

WikiHow is pretty ridiculous. Easy to waste time here.

boo ya fuckers.

Wittgenstein + Interpol (band)

2006-11-08T16:06:00.000-07:00

This little bit is probably the worst thing I've written in a while because I had in mind the whole time Derrida's critique of Husserl's so-called "metaphysical presupposition."

Wittgenstein responds to the challenge posed most strongly by Descartes’ Meditations: having been deceived in the past, how is it that humans can know anything for certain, secure objective knowledge? In order for philosophy and science to proceed, it seems as if this challenge must be satisfied—Cartesian knowledge must be grounded on something immovable. Therefore, Descartes situates the source of knowledge in the uniformity of nature and a priori truths, all of which fall under the concept of the Cartesian rational God. If there is a God who isn’t a deceiver, then humans can know things with certainty. Descartes metaphysical presupposition is that there is a rational God; this God is the ground for the possibility of objective knowledge, and this ground falls before all experience. Only by supposing the existence of God can humans have certainty, and therefore knowledge.

Wittgenstein doesn’t take direct aim at Descartes, though. Rather, he finds a similar type of metaphysical presupposition in a most unlikely place, G. E. Moore’s philosophy. In his attempt to prove the existence of an external world, Moore makes a metaphysical presupposition when he says, “I certainly did at the moment know that which I expressed,” by holding up two hands. He presupposes that he can say meaningfully, and with certainty, the he knows a fact of the type “I have two hands.” Wittgenstein’s criticism is not that such knowledge is impossible, but rather that an utterance like “I know I have two hands” is probably nonsense. That is, Moore presupposes that he can merely, unproblematically say, “I know I have two hands.”
When philosophers use “I know…” Wittgenstein says, “I want to reply ‘you don’t know anything!’—and yet I would not say that to anyone who was speaking without philosophical intention.” This asymmetric response to different utterances of “I know…” gives a demonstration of Wittgenstein’s notion of knowledge and its attendant utterances: knowledge is heavily dependent on a context, and the sense or meaning of the utterance “I know…” depends on the context in which it is used. Moore’s use of “I know…” lacks an appropriate context, and it therefore rests on the same type of metaphysical presupposition that Descartes makes in his Meditations. Moore’s utterance lacks a context within which it would make sense; and Moore’s thinking that it does make sense presupposes a transcendent sense of meaning that must be “further back” from the beginning. For Moore, the meaning of “I know I have two hands” is pre-given and predetermined. The role of context is supposed to replace meaning’s reliance on pre-givenness and predetermination.

The major criticism that Wittgenstein levels against Moore is that he tries to refute the claim that one cannot know things about the world with the claim that he can know; and the way in which Moore makes this claim is by saying things like “I know I have two hands.” The problem with skepticism—and the realism that Moore attempts to prove in order to refute skepticism—is that the meaning of both the skeptic and the realist seems to hang in mid-air. But this is not to say that Wittgenstein’s aim is to ground knowledge. The attempt to ground knowledge is precisely what Wittgenstein tries to end. His aim seems paradoxical: he both tries to point out the groundlessness of our knowledge, and to point out the objectivity of our knowledge. Therefore, Wittgenstein’s project in On Certainty is to remove the desire for a ground to objectivity.

However, I forgot how good is Interpol. Man. This is like my second or third favorite video ever maybe.

I think I saw that the director, Italian whats-her-name, directed a film or a music video or something. She's the one that's dancing.

Midterms, duh

2006-11-07T08:50:00.000-07:00

It's midterm election time. Just go out and vote. Of course, I read in Good Magazine last month that your vote doesn't matter.

Midterm elections are so uninteresting that political scientists have been able to write an equation for them:

Y1= B0+B1P1+B2 (âˆ†E1)+u1

Edward Tufte's 1975 Economic Theory of Midterm Elections states that people vote for or against the president's party based solely on his approval ratings and their disposable income. Those lawn signs, local ads, and even the candidates themselves are irrelevant. The equation is more accurate than pre-election Gallup polls. And an easy way to outwonk your dorkiest friends. You want to end an argument with a poli-sci major, just start doing math.

So, uh. Yeah. I'm listening to that Fugazi album, smoking some cloves, editing a book about politics for a local writer, and I've got, like, three TVs strapped to my head to catch all the election day results as soon as they're frickin' available.

I'm not at work work today! (I work as a tutor at some local schools.) Every kid in Santa Fe gets the day off because it's election day. How sweet is that? Growing up in upstate NY, I'd never get such a frivolous day off because administrators knew that we needed our bullshit days to use as snow days. And if we didn't use all our snow days, well, we'd get out of school early.

I swear to god, these kids go to school less and less. That sounds like what my parents used to say. But when I say it it's true. But it's only cause the kids do go to school less and less--they always "ditch." The word "ditch" means to skip school. I don't know why they don't just say "skip," but "ditch" sounds OK. Anyway, they always ditching. Or, as they say, "deetcheeeeeeng."

I don't know why, but I get a lot more hits on my blog now that I don't write very often. Over the summer I would write every day. No one read it. Except for that one time I fucked with Ilm. Good times.

~~Maybe~~ I'll write about Derrida tomorrow. ~~Maybe~~ later today I'll write about Wittgenstein. I will do all that. But only because I have to do all that anyway. You'll see. Watch this Mr. Show clip.

Cause I Like You I Never See You: 5 Things I Like

2006-11-06T11:32:00.000-07:00

Toothpaste for Dinner!

Largehearted Boy linked to this top-33 Canadian musicians list that reminded me that I really like the Diableros. I even learned that the song of theirs that I most like has a video.

The other day I was in Borders, where I like to pick up (literally) books. I like to leaf or flip through them. I picked up this Robert Creeley book b/c I heard he was, like, in tight with Robert Lowell. Yeah, about that. Creeley does something totally diff. from Lowell; but they're both awesome. (I go to school with a writer who used to hang out with Creeley. I have to remember to ask him about the one eye thing.)

Since I picked up (figuratively) the book, I'm only a few pages into it. I noticed that the first volume, The Charm, has a lot to do with being lonely and one's relation to the interior and exterior, and how this is mediated by streets and doors. I really like this 'un.

Return
Quiet as is proper for such places;
The street, subdued, half-snow, half-rain,
Endless, but ending in the darkened doors.
Inside, they who will be there always,
Quiet as is proper for such people--
Enough for now to be here, and
To know my door is one of these.

Notice the similarities to Ben Jonson's succinct, well-punctuated verse. Artifice through good old hard work.

I really like having a car again. This picture, shown somewhere in the vicinity of this point, isn't of my car. But I have a gold-colored stationwagon. It gets something like 20 mpg in the city and 30 mpg on the highway. I don't understand why it gets a 50% boost from being driven straight and constant, but I figure that's a good metaphor for the good life in any case. I got it for a song, and it might last me through the year.

Ghostface is rumored to be working on a new album, More Fish. I really like Ghostface, and I really really like this song that is supposed to be on the new album.

"Ghost is Back" - Ghostface

Gawker's Funny

2006-11-01T12:23:00.000-07:00

Tough Life or Why Hot-shit Young New writers Suck

Oh yeah I wish I could be like this guy. [Gawker]

Brian, a 26-year-old M.F.A. candidate in fiction, earns a modest living from teaching, assisting professors, and writing magazine articles. His parents pay his tuition as well as a $140-a-month gym membership at Equinox. The rent for his half of a West Village two-bedroom is $1,800 a month, most of it covered by his parents. Each month, Brian pays $125 for cable and Internet access,$59.31 on his Verizon cell-phone bill, and $96.67 for a shared desk at Paragraph, a writing space.

I thought that, like, Starbucks was a "writing space." There're about eight things wrong with this character(ization).

I probably constituted this meaning a little askew, though, through a vaseline-smeared lens of schadenfreude. How I wish I were one of the few, the proud: the (rich) parent-supported. I'm sitting here looking at two ppl, a guy and a girl, eating some sandwiches at the counter. They're dressed in fatigues, and the guy has a little nick on the back of his buzzcut head. And a weak chin. The guy just got up to grab a napkin and I saw his name sewn on his uniform. "Fike." I bet MFA Brian has nice features, and his $1,680/annum gym membership probably keeps him in better shape than military training. His heart, I'm sure, is stronger for not having to fear the fall of a mortarshell, shrapnel and rubble flying, and the immanent loss of limb that should follow. I'd give anything not to have to support myself; I'd join the army too if I didn't think it would fuck me up, which would thereby negate or render useless the whole end behind not having to support myself.

Dude

2006-10-23T23:53:00.000-06:00

I never thought I'd blog again. LOL. Who fucking cares. My friend tonight told me he was something like a little put off by life. I advised him to get stoned and work through it all. It's the best advice I could ever offer. Counseling/analysis via individual drug use. CAVIDU.

I discovered this social networking site called MOG. Shit's fucking sweet.

When I chirp shorty chirp back

2006-10-15T09:27:00.000-06:00

[Girl Talk]

I'm just saying, but this Girl Talk is pure synergy. Big Music should buy this dude so that he can make crazy, legal tracks and just destroy. Eh. About T.I., he sez,

T.I.: "What You Know"
This was pretty much the rap anthem of 2006. I really like the synths on it.

which is quite the understatement. (Ironic, coming from the most recent king of overstatement, if such a title could be said to exist.) Buzzsaw synths, faux-choir synths, string section synths--fucking Christ. I've loved this song since I first heard it driving around Albuquerque over the past summer. Even though my car doesn't have a CD player, moments like these make me realize I'm never wanting for music. I'd never have heard this song otherwise.

The Nietzsche Family Circus

2006-10-07T11:50:00.000-06:00

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

This shit is funny.

Bush + Detainee Bill + Responsibility

2006-09-28T10:18:00.000-06:00

This makes me sick to be an American. I hope everyone knows what are this piece of news' ramifications. There's more to life than drinking, listening to music and being young. And there's more than contemplation and philosophy. In the tradition of Aristotle, Spinoza, Moore and Levinas: Ethics = First Philosophy. As human beings we have a responsibility to other human beings. There is no justification for this responsibility; but its existence is manifest in every one of our dealings with other people. You can call that shared culture, reason or whatever the fuck.

Why Hip-Hop Sucks in '06

2006-09-27T08:25:00.000-06:00

On a whim last night I decided ~~to download off bit torrent~~ to go out and buy a bunch of hip-hop (using hip-hop as the general label covering rap, old school, trap music etc.) albums that I'd never heard. I want to really get into hip-hop. My favorite albums as of two days ago were probably not the all-time classics: 1) 36 Chambers; 2) Illmatic; 3) Endtroducing...; 4) the best tracks of the two Kanye albums; 5) A Grand Don't Come For Free.

So I got a shitload of albums last night: The first two Eric B. & Rakim; Low End Theory; Raising Hell; The Chronic; Hard to Earn; By All Means Necessary; Straight Outa Compton; Doe or Die; Let's Get Free; Dr. Octagonecologyst; It Takes a Nation; E 1999 Eternal; A Book of Human Language; The Infamous; Masters of the Universe; and Funcrusher Plus. I loaded up only hip-hop albums on my ipod. I really can't connect w/Tupac; I only have that one song with the jacked Bruce Hornsby piano hook. So fuck all y'all haters: Tupac sucks. Just one man's opinion.

I do things like this project of trying to get really into hip-hop all the time. I don't know why. I still listen to non-hip-hop at home. I got Slint's Spiderland last night, which is fabulous. Will Oldham even took the picture on the front cover! What an awesome album. I'm listening to the Killers' new album, Sam's Town. It's OK so far: This is my first listen. There aren't any immediately horrible-sounding songs (c.f., that song on Hot Fuss with the chorus: "I got soul but I'm not a soldier"). Eh.

I was thinking last night that Aristotle necessarily begs in the Metaphysics the question of Intelligence's being the first cause and first substance. Using something like a primitive hypothetic-deductive form of reasoning, Aristotle simply posits the existence of a surprisingly large number of things, of which he proves a surprisingly little number. I feel I could modus tollens his modus ponens and end the argument with as much ambiguity and doubt as his reasonings (at times). I admit it's deeply unsatisfying for there to be no cause as such; but it should be incumbent on Aristotle to prove such a claim. Kant, I think, does a better job of proving his metaphysics. Well, I'm still working on that. I haven't read nearly enough Aristotle. He's in no way a source of my opprobrium. I'm merely skeptical as to how convincing Aristotle makes his argument.

The Strokes

2006-09-25T10:02:00.000-06:00

Back in aught one, when I was a freshman, I ordered from ebay a special, U.K.-version of the Strokes' Is This It. It cost me $40, I think. I don't know why: But this morning when I was in the shower I was singing along to a song in my head and that song was The Modern Age.

I was in London when the Strokes' second album dropped. I bought it. (Two U.K.-versions, sweet!) Well, not so sweet. But that one song that sounds like the soundtrack to a prom, Under Control, well. That one's pretty much the best song they did. OK. (Side note [one that I think I've made before--but goddamn it's important]: This Ryan Dombal from Pfork wrote a track review of some stupid shit the Strokes did recently and he and I agree, the Strokes are better at these slow, dancy soul-ish songs.)

I was in Santa Fe when the Strokes' last album leaked to the Internets. I got it and I deleted it in the same sitting. Fuck the Strokes, fuck David Cross, fuck expensive music videos--fuck Juicebox.
So when I was taking a shower this morning (got to wrap this up, time to go to an eye exam) I was thinking and singing and I was thinking about why the Strokes suck now.

1) They don't tell stories anymore (c.f., New York City Cops, Soma, Modern Age, Barely Legal [basically all of Is This It].)

2) They don't sound lo-fi anymore. Not that they ever sounded like Bob Pollard, but the albums get more and more clearer and less and less awesome-sounding.

But I still think they were the most important band of the aughts.

White Tea + Pseudoephedrine Hydrochloride

2006-09-24T15:16:00.000-06:00

I bought this morning a box of Walgreen's brand pseudophed. It took about ten minutes: Pseudophed is kept in New Mexico behind the pharmacy counter; it's regulated, which means that as a step towards purchasing any pseudophed had to enter--a) my name; b) my driver's license number; c) my address--she had to enter these into the cash register; and there's a monthly maximum allowance of pseudophed that a person may not exceed. For reals.

I'm drinking this white tea that I got and it's good. All teas that one's likely to buy in a regular-type (i.e., non-Whole Foods) supermarket are made from the same tea leaves (for the most part). The color of the tea--black, green, (red?), white--is determinable by the duration of time in which a tea is roasted. The process is like that in processing coffee. White tea is roasted least.

I got Kaplan's 2007 GRE book, and I've got to say that I feel a lot better about taking the GRE now. I'm not certain that I want anymore to study Wittgenstein. (This path, which takes the form of a, say, Hegelian dialectic, is familiar; something seems awesome, but once I'm sufficiently immersed I realize it's not so awesome.) I'll figure something out.

I'm glad to see Matt Hasselbeck decided to throw the fucking ball. I still started McNabb and that's going pretty well for me. Have to play next week by ear. Well, actually. It seems now like I'm going to some guy's house to watch the Bears play Seattle and the Bears are home; so I think McNabb will be my starter for the time being. My fantasy team was all kind of injured, and I totally forgot I had Clinton Portis. This week was going great until I looked at the Washington box score and then realizations and questions and screaming and all that shit ensued. Why didn't I start Portis>!~>#?! I didn't even know he was still alive, though.

This blog thing isn't so fun anymore. But as things turned out, I had to take off from life this week. I might be more apt to write now that we're resuming our normal viewing schedule.

Married to The Sea

2006-09-13T13:01:00.000-06:00

It's my goal to get everyone to read Married To The Sea.

I'm realizing that it's more difficult than first I thought to write a thesis, study for the GRE, go to school and work a few jobs.

I am not afraid of you and you will read my ass.

2006-09-12T12:26:00.000-06:00

I feel seachangingly better. I feel like Giotto di Bondone--I've finally found me some perspective. Fuck it, I love getting sick because the feeling of feeling better is one of the best feelings in the world. There is morning but there are no dust motes. There's sunshine but no effluvia. Everything is clear, clean and bright. Rather than smelling of sleepbreathe and ozone the bedroom one finds upon waking into wellness smells like nothing. How good is that?

Belief

2006-09-12T10:41:00.000-06:00

Belief’s role is somewhere in between certainty and knowledge. It precedes knowledge and proceeds from certainty. Belief posses two main features from which follows a third main feature. One’s beliefs form a system; one’s beliefs are personal; and from these two we find—as if by supercession—the final feature of belief: There are certain beliefs that one just could not stop believing. The first feature is somewhat unique to belief, and the second distinguishes belief from knowledge. The final feature brings belief very close to what one would call certainty.

When we talk about things like knowledge and belief, we tend to use vertical-spatial metaphors: foundation; base; grounded; at the bottom. Wittgenstein’s spatial metaphors tend to subvert such vertical-spatial images. He’s fond of using the house as a metaphor for these epistemological concerns. Instead of the foundation holding up the rest of the house, he says “these foundation-walls are carried by the whole house” (248). Wittgenstein’s imagery follows from his desire to question continually the human impulse to speaks as if belief and certainty really were grounded, founded upon, based etc. For belief, he gives a stunning image that reorients this desire to ground, saying,

We believe, so to speak, that this great building exists, and then we see, now here, now there, one or another small corner of it. (276)

which is drawn to contrast with the notion that we build up our beliefs from some foundation, and upon these beliefs we pile more and more until we have some sort of certainty-orienting edifice. This image of Wittgenstein’s gives the lie to such a notion, though, in a remarkable way. When we’re fit to question them, our beliefs already exist. That is, there already exists “this great building”, our beliefs. The idea that we consciously build up our system of beliefs one piece at a time, always going by means of logical entailment from one to the other is shown false by a simple thought experiment. If someone asks you if you believe you’ve descended from great-great-great-grandparents; or if someone asks you if you believe you haven’t, say, descended from felines; or some such other strange-sounding—yet obviously true—notion, you would say, “Yes, I believe…”. Just by being human in a human society one’s larder of belief comes well-stocked. Such beliefs (e.g., “I believe I descended from great-great-great-grandparents”) “may never have been expressed; even the thought that it was so, never thought” (159). When the occasion calls for it, we do shine a light in the great building of our belief—and we discover a new nook here or there that corresponds to a belief we’ve always had, which yet we’ve never expressed nor thought.

There is a reason why it seems like we have an infinite supply of beliefs about which we’ve never thought; and this reason also underlies Wittgenstein’s main point that beliefs actually resist vertical-spatial metaphors: We don’t acquire single beliefs—i.e., single propositions—but, rather, we acquire whole systems of beliefs, whole systems of propositions (141). Prefiguring the “great building” metaphor, Wittgenstein says, “Light dawns gradually over the whole” (141). A person cannot believe one belief in isolation, that is, exclusively. Even the simplest sort of belief, such as “I believe I live here” relies on other beliefs: the belief that my language itself makes sense; the belief that I haven’t fallen prey to a deceptive plot; etc. More well-developed beliefs rely on an even wider net of beliefs. The belief that the Cardinals will win the World Series relies on beliefs about the Cardinals’ personnel; beliefs about the game of baseball; beliefs about the efficacy of baseball’s officiating; beliefs about the fairness and uniformity of the game’s rules; and so on.

This picture of belief may seem like it could support a foundational-type notion of belief. But the picture does not if what one means by “foundational-type notion of belief” is that there will be a certain belief upon which all other beliefs rest. But this isn’t to say that there are no such things as well-founded beliefs. For example, when I say, “I believe I’m a human being”, I’m uttering a well-founded belief. Within my whole system of beliefs, this belief is heavily relied upon by many other beliefs. I have no beliefs that seem remotely to contradict this belief. It’s very firmly rooted within my system. As Wittgenstein says, a belief isn’t firmly rooted because it seems a priori true, but, “it is rather held fast by what lies around it” (144). It’s never occurred to me that I believe that I’m human, but as I write this, it’s as if a light shone upon this belief and exposed many other beliefs standing about it that could hardly fail me. Just as I believe I’m human, I also believe my name is Brian Payne; I believe I live in Santa Fe, NM; I believe I attended such and such a high school; and I believe that these are all normal human beliefs. But none of these beliefs ground another of them: They are all mutually dependent upon one another, like threads woven into a wall hanging. Certain threads could even be removed from the wall hanging and the picture would still be intelligible; but if too many were removed, the wall hanging would lose its coherence and it would cease to represent anything. However, no one thread is the most important thread, and no one thread serves as the foundation for the rest of them. Concerning beliefs we find that at the bottom of things there is, as it were, no bottom. That is, there is no foundation for well-founded beliefs (253).

This wall hanging is not a museum piece: It isn’t public. This isn’t to deny the notion of widely held beliefs; i.e., there are beliefs that are shared by many. Comparing “I believe” to “I know” best shows the idea at which I’m getting. If someone were to say, “I know there’s a God” one would have to ask how it is he knows. Does this person who knows there’s a God have a proof? Has he been privileged to divine revelation? Etc. But what could one say to the person who says, “I believe there’s a God”? Wittgenstein retorts, “If his opponents had asserted that one could not believe this and that, then he could have replied: ‘I believe it’” (520). A belief doesn’t pretend to assert a truth about a state of affairs. A belief asserts something about the believer, something about which the believer may be wrong; but the belief is not something that is open to public correction. (An utterance of the form “I know…” is open to public correction.) It seems possible that a people is persecuted for its religious beliefs precisely because of this feature of belief. Unlike something for which one needs to give an account—i.e., an “I know…” utterance—a belief requires no account. If there needs be no evidence for a belief, then there may be no evidence against a belief.

10am automatic

2006-09-11T10:05:00.000-06:00

It's doubtful I'll post much in the next week or two. I have a lot of work. This line, the final one from NYT's profile of Mastodon, caught my eye.

“I don’t know how viable we are for the kids,” he drawled. “We’re more a grown man’s type of music.”

Music

2006-09-07T15:57:00.001-06:00

A few things. I might get bronchitis soon if I don't quit my ways. I need to rest. I'm going to Zozobra, which is a kooky New Mexico tradition in which is publicly burned a huge old man upon whom you're supposed to project all your darkest fears.

I finally get The Knife.

I finally got Joanna Newsom's Ys. (A great story: Pfork leaked the album. Great.)

Indietorrents is awesome.

I apologize for this being such a link-happy post; but I'm really wiped out and I need to save my strength for drinking lots of beer and dodging bullets.

Wittgenstein

2006-09-06T14:17:00.000-06:00

The last few propositions of On Certainty are dated two days before Wittgenstein's death on 29 April 1951.

Keeping in mind Wittgenstein's view of language-game, it seems obvious that he shares something with Hegel, who said, "Philosophy is its own time raised to the level of thought."

For the man who said,

6.4311 Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits.

what signifance could death have? I don't have any more to say.

Philosophy

2006-09-05T09:35:00.000-06:00

There occurred in me last night a spiritual revolution. Only, revolution is the wrong word; for revolution carries with it, connotates, something violent, abrupt and discontinuous. But this was an organic shift, an inevitable shift, towards a new countenance. Moishe's shining face.

An intelligent way of doing philosophy is to divide up the words we use and examine their usage, like a glossary. 'Natch.

Belief is something personal, and it's largely ungrounded. When the "I believe" is uttered, something is expressed, which one hardly wishes to give up. It's possible for the "I believe" to refer to something obviously false. The utterance doesn't open up itself to criticism, rather persuasion.

The "I know" is a public utterance; it raises the "I believe" to the level of community. By uttering the "I know", one opens herself up to criticism--but also praise. In this way does knowledge solidify. What interests me are different ways of transmitting knowledge, and the different circumstances surrounded the "I know". It seems to me that knowledge is acknowledgement. When the "I know" is uttered, it may then be rejected. For it to gain purchase it must be accepted. The "I know" is uttered; and acknowledgment is sought. When another acknowledges your "I know", then something like knowledge is.

Like the Arts, philosophy is practiced and crafted in order that the world--the community--gives its practitioner understanding. The transmission of knowledge (which is something like philosophy) moves in different ways. Just for example, knowledge can be taken; sought; offered; hidden; or forced upon. This last, forced upon, is a method that interests me. I don't think it's the right method, but I've somewhat given up the notion of right methods. But there is something seductive about knowledge, which is forced upon. Prophets, poets and politicians find often that forcing upon, besetting people with language, is the most efficacious means for making themselves understood. I disagree with this view. There is something I would call destructive philosophy, and something I'd call constructive philosophy; and the two would roughly correspond to the appetitive and the rational. Yet I'm tempted to regard Plato's method--dialectic--as destructive.

The inevitable shift with which I started this post has taken for me the form of a denial. To deny while cultivating beauty, God and community. Never to impose, yet never to hold back.

And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note of my dark sobbing.
Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need?
Not angels, not humans, and already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in our interpreted world.
Perhaps there remains for us some tree on a hillside, which every day we can take into our vision;
there remains for us yesterday's street and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease
when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.

Ruth Minnikin

2006-09-01T10:01:00.000-06:00

This morning I answered an email from Ruth Minnikin. She's a singer that sounds kind of like an old lady; or a young girl. I'd say she's kind of like Joanna Newsom in that you can't describe her voice well. Well, that's why God made mp3s. (And Real Player streams.)

Ruth Minnikin - Angel At the Dawn (from Wrestle the Future to the Fucking Ground [itself a good thing.])

Ruth Minnikin Says

To be rerecorded for my new album. The words came from a war poet's poem written in 1917 by James Lyons from Manchester (public domain). I wrote the melody and music after being asked to donate a song for a British compilation (it hasn't been released yet).

Thesis

2006-08-31T12:19:00.000-06:00

My thesis is turning into my garden, alas. Jasmine said I read a lot, but she hasn't seen me in a little while. I've been reading a lot: I've been reading the first fifteen pages of On Certainty over and over again. It's quite rich, though. I finally understand Wittgenstein's remark in the Tractatus about realism and idealism, when carried to their fullest extent, coincide. They coincide in that they try to say something that can only be shown. The way that Wittgenstein changes his conception of logic, now that's a fecund topic. I.e., in OC Wittgenstein says in 59,

What sort of proposition is: "What could a mistake here be like!"? It would have to be a logical proposition. But it is a logic that is not used, because what it tells us is not learned through propositions.--It is a logical proposition; for it does describe the conceptual (linguistic) situation.

A logical proposition describes the conceptual situation? I suppose that makes sense. Again, contra Ramsey, logic isn't a normative science. But that's not to say that it's all willy-nilley. I hate it when you say something controversial, and the interpretation that follows carries what you say to the most wild, stupid conclusion. Just because logic isn't normative, and it's rather descriptive, doesn't mean that logic is meaningless. It's still a strict taskmaster. But there's a difference between a boss that makes you show up on time, and a boss that let's you come in whenever you'd like. Similarly, a boss that demands the impossible. And the impossible can mean different things in different situations.