2023-03-31 21:59

Utility/Futility of Resurrecting a 20 year old Blog

Questionable how much there is to say on the utility/futility of resurrecting a 20 year old blog. A more particular instance of the great question on the utility/futility of questions generally or having things to say, generally.

Do people actually read blogs?

Human being as a giant eyeball that floats through a giant gallery looking, then liking or not liking, an endless series of spectacles.

I have the sense of the futility of writing, funnily enough, moreso than the futility of reading. Maybe because reading seems to be more inherently futile (because it is self-contained) whereas writing seems to have at least some promise of some potential contribution to Human Knowledge or whatever. But utility and futility are close cousins. Opposites are things that are the same in all respects but one. Like left and right gloves.

I also think about the mechanical nature of reading, which I love. It's such an industrial process. I know it slightly predates industrialization but, oh, maybe it was the first industrial process? It's a little like being a reverse typewriter (if you remember typewriters). Scan, scan, scan, next line. Whirrrr. Next paragraph. There is a book called Kids of the Book-Machine that I'll review, that I did review 15 years ago, if it was 15 years ago. That I'll re-review here soon... as with so many, the title is the most of it!

And the twilight of human culture as we are just about to be subsumed by the artificial or so some of us suppose! Which adds to the sense of futility? It would be nice if writing could be more like reading. Which maybe is the intention of Biblioddity. In some sense.

Anyhow, a few thoughts on a few unusual books at least, and a reason (for me) to read them a little more and to think about them a little more than usual. Title for something: On the Futilty of Utility. Might also like the idea of the utility of futility.

2023-03-21 15:23

Ann Margret Loves You and Other Psychotopological Diversions

Ann Margret Loves You and Other Psychotopological Diversions
by Franz Kamin
Station Hill Press

A collection of pieces that could be called experimental, though is that what they are? Closer to that than many things labeled "experimental" though less of an experiment and more of a didactic (at times) laying-out of various systems. Might say quasi-mathematical explications of dream-logical sort-of nightmare systems. But when I say nightmare, also funny, so light and dark, darkly funny, a little creepy, a little perverse.

Formalized language, personal glossaries...

AUTOSKREELIA (AS_i): writing about what you are writing about as you are writing it; for instance, right now I'm writing about what I'm writing about as I'm writing it (some do nothing else)

Particularly in "A RITUAL EMBEDDING OF THE SPIDER'S RISK into non-HAUSDORF M-SPACE"

2-TOYS: these are the objects of perception, conception intuition and dream... they are usually locally nameable... examples: withrdrawel pains, goat's milk, depots, mathematical formulae, little barely notice clouds of color in the back of the mind, blow jobs, chewing gum, undeads & salvation...

MIASMAS: a well-defined collection of 2-toys is called an 'activity' or 'occurrence' or 'feeling'... if all of the 2-toys are removed from such a situation, the ineffable glue in which they were embedded (see 2-toys) is the miasma... miasmas can neither be spoken nor thought about...

Miasmas as I understand my understanding of Kamin's understanding of them are fundamental to his writing and/or his experience, sometimes in an alcoholic fugue state if I'm not mistaken and/or other issues with his self-location of his self in the world and among the other humans. We see miasmal metaphors in scenes of people and animals lost or trapped in various dream-logic-defined systems.

(Read more...)

Updated: 2023-03-23 13:48