A Few Questions, Unanswered

1. Why doesn't David Beckham continue to wear an Alice band? Alice bands are sooo cute. And then they wonder where his mojo has gone...

2. Are there reasons to believe in the Monstrous Moonshine Conjecture? Name six.

3. What's wrong with window dressing?

4. Has there ever been a finer poet than Marjorie Fleming? If only she'd had an opus. Or a corpus...

5. J.Edgar Hoover doesn't quite get the ridicule he deserves. I know, that's not a question. But is there anything else we could talk about?

Deer-in-the-headlights Affect

So comfortable with that dazzled look. Mind, not just a look, mind you, not false, for false would be sly, but the daze comprehends him.

To say this is affect would be to speak half-truth - somehow, it is worn entire. Space without a breath. Meanwhile, a consciousness stirs...

Properly estranged from these facts, it smiles, you will be yourself again.

Revised Rankings

1. Riquelme
2. Rosicky
3. Ronaldinho

Really, a couple of glances at Riquelme and it's clear that he's the real deal, a man apart, rare genius. Regretfully, reminiscences of Rivaldo's solipsistic genius will reduce.

Rosicky!

"Playmaker"

Gyorgy Ligeti R.I.P

He was "born in the Transylvanian town of Dicsoszentmarton"; he was fired by ideas drawn from "fractal mathematics, puzzles, chaos theory"; he "was not a happy man". Lewis Carroll, Michel de Ghelderode - a certain charmed circle of artists, you understand? I am enamored of the idea of Ligeti. As for the facts...

(I highly recommend the tribute in the Guardian.)

Politics

If you have come to me for the truth about politics, you have come to the right person, and I must congratulate you. Permit me to offer you my heartiest congratulations. I do not see how to offer them except in the form of words, though things many change at some future point in time, may they not? They usually do, and if they do, then they must certainly have been capable of doing so before so doing, i.e., if I am to put this form of words in a more accessible way, which is only befitting considering that it represents my heartiest congratulations which are no less real from being thus represented in the form of words, though this does of course evade the question of how and why, and possibly even whether, it would be possible to represent them in an entirely different form, this question which we have not now evaded being one that I am unable to give a definite answer to at this moment though I may offer some sign or gesture to the eventual solution by sharing with you the information that I pondered upon it at some length and was unable to obtain an answer or even a guarantee that an algorithm will eventually be found the application of which will lead inexorably to the much-anticipated illumination of the original doubt or vague unease in the mind occasioned by who can say what vague cogitations and resulting after due or undue process in the formulation of the question if not in the resolution of the question which may prove a task of incomparable difficulty though that is only a possibility which possibly cannot be readily accommodated in the mind because of the presence therein of numerous other possibilities which present themselves on curious occasions in an unwitting or unwilling way though "unwilling" may be a solecism considering that it is not commonly accepted that possibilities have intention but rather that they are abstract and insentient speaking of which it is a theory of mine that it is our thoughts that rule us and not conversely though this is of course not relevant directly to the question of the ontological nature of possibility which is possibly more suitably posed to the professional philosopher and not to a mere politician keeping in mind that that may be a slightly misleading form of words given that I have given no indication thus far that I am one of that wretched breed merely that I claim to know something about it however someone well-informed on politics would be well-advised to put his knowledge into practice so as to maximize his chances of making for himself a fulfilling life one's career being commonly acknowledged to be significant component of the same while always cognizant of the limitations in our power to make fulfilling lives for ourselves this being a circumstance in which other circumstances contrive occasionally to conspire these being ones that we may not readily dictate but which may conversely readily dictate to us and going back a little and getting back thankfully and at long last to the main point it is not clear whose advice we are referring to in the first place I mean it may very well be that of a politician may it not and where would we be then for we know that politicians are not to be trusted on the other hand those who are not politicians but merely possessed of considerable expertise or even an enviable store of knowledge concerning the area may be more trustworthy for what reason do they have to lie or merely prevaricate given that they do not even attempt to channel their undoubted native cunning (for why else study politics) into the service of making a quick buck oh yes a quick buck sounds good see how it rustles giddily though the hot air

Shadows

Shadows are our blurred familiar haunt. The world at its truest and brightest would be intolerable. How pleasant the duplicity (multiplicity) of things (half-things, nothings...). Mighty is the light. But it goes from glare to ghosts... We can be human with the light. Be riven, and forgive. The shades grow softer now. Be foolish, and forgiven. How moved by the mere play... Of honest things.

Opinion

Word of the Day: Opinion

There are many truths, and this is one of them.

If you have nothing to say, say nothing.

Aaaargh!

A pox on cable companies! The morons, the wankers! Incompetents. How the fuck am I supposed to live a normal life without upgraded cable, eh? Watching PBS? There is no limit to the indifference and downright callousness of these people. A whole day of my life is wasted, there's nothing on basic cable to fill up more than 2 hours of my time...

I dream of the day when people will realize how noble and important TV is, how central to a life. Idiot box, indeed. It's where the light comes from. But really, why should I care what other people think? What matters is that we two are face to face, the one insouciant, the other entranced.

Insouciant? Entranced? I have no idea what I'm talking about. No ideas at all. Only the rage, the frustration, as I flip through the channels and see nothing there...

Aardvark

The dictionary has always been my favorite genre. I confess I don't own one; what I am enamored of is the idea of it. It is comforting to imagine that all our words come from one undying mouth. That there is nothing original in us, and hence less responsibility for us to bear. As for the variety of our derivations, all of that is contained in the finical rules of grammar. That which is not grammatical is madness merely. Or nonsense, something which doesn't deserve a name...

But we must turn away, away, from those ellipses, signs of nothing. All things in language and in the world are comfortably ensconced within a dictionary. It is most vast, most wise.

Yet being, that guilty riddle, remains outside; wishes to enter also, but it's alive...

Aberration

I was walking my pet turtle to work today, when a breeze came by and knocked the turtle over. There was no change in the situation. When we got to work, we found that the gates were closed, on account of Labor Day. Being pressed for time, I managed to squeeze in. With sorrowful eyes, Napoleon watched me disappear into the onerous distance...

At work, I wandered around in the smog for a while, and then settled into playing tiddlywinks with the clock. Someone had left an abacus around. The sight of the beads brought to me fond memories of my hippie past. Had I forgotten the alphabet?

When I emerged eighteen hours later, it was Finnerday, for the very first time. How queer! A glass of water made everything clear. A plumb line is the same sort of thing as the Plimsoll line. Finland is a paradox, for no very good reason... Lists and amethysts. And so on, etcetera, to be sanest is odd.

Advisory

I think you should be very careful. Even one step in the wrong direction might prejudice them against you irreversibly. And then there is no telling what would happen. Nor would it be any consolation to have the story told. As stories go, surely there is one that is superior. But what stands over you now is the perpetual dilemma. Rest assured of this - whatever choice you make will be the wrong one. It gives me such satisfaction to dispel your doubts. I can do no better. You can, but you won't. You will stay in this spot. When you move, so will the poser... You are framed by the light. It falters a little. And you do not? Do you not see me shake my head? I am anxious for you. That you will get things right at last, in error. And there is no telling what will happen then. You will be by yourself, for sure. All my words dispelled. But that will not be the end, no, not then. The light will arrive, and dazzle the dilemma. The stories will be told, in their own happy words. Steps will be taken, in perfect assurance. A choice will be made, and not by you. No, never by you.

Arras

Rough whispers in the corridors of power. A lash of the stripling's tail. The church is appeased with snowdrops.

Freedom

I'm throwing my simple-mindedness away. It grew to be indistinguishable from vacancy. From absence. And the absence yesterday determined the end. The tides are lapping away, at the world's end, and as the literal loses its rigor, so too must the tides of opinion, turning and lapping, falling and fading, overlapping, causing the mind to break this way and then that, the fall at the cliff's mouth mirrored by the cool green at the failed equinox, as if one viewed these providential happenings clued with a translation that only the spirit of reckless enterprise can fabricate as it comes to possess the vacancy of its false dawn, the spectrum charged with a simulacrum of things, and beings, yes - the clutter changing, the crimp shortening, the hackneyed tongue falling away like words, but rising above the hollowed moans in a ludic and eventful sense-atrium of its own the breath of acrid moss on buttered knives, turning the play of the mind away from spirit pressed with flesh alert to death, arising next in artful ardor lest it let the last blade bleed it best, but above song or duty with their grave emroiderings reigns the memory of artichokes! and thus we pulse away, the moon is let fall, the pang pulverized.

Of vacancy, there are many forms...