Now with more somnambulism!

Ideas rattling around in my skull…

Hypothesis: Intestinal flora imbalances cultured with refined foods are a basis for systemic failure in the human body (there is already plenty of flim-flam out on the ‘net to this effect)

Project: Intricate wood-burning project involving ouroboros design, ceramic inlay, complicated system of gears which slowly changes the color of the snake’s scales and segments to indicate time (fun!)

Systems: Security profiling suite (rootkit, antivirus, user authentication and process profiling) to append to existing infrastructure, integrate with network hardware for covert channel detection (far too much work but it’d be fun nonetheless)

Recipe: Discovered a combination of black bean soup and canned soup which has the color, consistency, and (for the most part) taste of bacon gravy (MAD SCIENCE SUCCESS!)

Project: Should I be making T-shirts? If I were making T-shirts, what would I be making? Probably some really offensive designs… (yes, it’s always a good time to sell out)

In a candle-lighted chapel, each climbs into one of the austere wooden caskets laid side by side on the floor. Lying face up, their arms crossed over their chests, they close their eyes. And there they rest, for 10 excruciating minutes.

“It’s a way to let go of certain things,” says Jung, a former insurance company lecturer. “Afterward, you feel refreshed. You’re ready to start your life all over again, this time with a clean slate.”

- South Koreans experience what it’s like to die – and live again
by John M. Glionna for the LA Times
2010-01-04

via Dangerous Minds

Perhaps this is what I was talking about… the radio hits a patch of silence and the chatter becomes appreciable; the gears grind to a halt and the stark beauty of chaos on the assembly line momentarily appears; time enough to catch a breath before the mad dash through the forest resumes.

I’ve yet to take a real break from the incessant blogging – whether here and at the new outlet dedicated to “case files” (hopefully there is a noticeable lack of organization there … the goal is to reserve coherent thoughts for this outlet) – there is simply too much new information to overlook.

Well, there’s things that never will be right I know,
And things need changin’ everywhere you go,
But ’til we start to make a move to make a few things right,
You’ll never see me wear a suit of white.

Ah, I’d love to wear a rainbow every day,
And tell the world that everything’s OK,
But I’ll try to carry off a little darkness on my back,
‘Till things are brighter, I’m the man in black

- Man in Black by Johnny Cash

Also, it obscures the dirt, grime, and blood stains.

Warning: Bricolage.

via FuKung.net

“… and, whether it began as an investigation into the bicameral mind or merely a creative outlet, (perhaps an escapist refuge or fugue limbo the individual entered upon encountering stressor which he was not prepared for?) it has clearly devolved into something less cogent. It has become a spectacle so ugly as to suggest that it has taken on a life of its own and will proceed without intervention to its logical conclusion: reality.”

We’ll get there. Hold on just a little longer…

Psychiatric Evidence – Schizophrenia: Auditory hallucinations of a critical nature. A large percentage of patients with schizophrenia experience “command hallucinations.”

Relevance to Bicameral Mind – Patients suffering from schizophrenia experience a partial relapse to the bicameral mind. In the absence of consciousness, bicameral man hallucinated a commanding voice that instructed him in times of stress or decision-making.

- Summary of Evidence
Julian Jaynes Society

No. Too far. Step back slowly.

… It was an unjust mirror, this mirror of his soul that he was looking at. Vanity? Curiosity? Hypocrisy? Had there been nothing more in his renunciation than that? There had been something more. At least he thought so. But who could tell? … No. There had been nothing more… In hypocrisy he had worn the mask of goodness. For curiosity’s sake he had tried the denial of self. He recognized that now.

- The Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde, 1890

The System sent me and I’m here to help.

- “Yes, it really is all about me.” – The Operator
2009-09-16

As he looked back upon man moving through history, he was haunted by a feeling of loss. So much had been surrendered! and to such little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape; Nature, in her wonderful irony, driving out the anchorite to feed with the wild animals of the desert and giving to the hermit the beasts of the field as his companions.

- The Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde, 1890

60 – Hexagram Sixty: Chieh

Self-discipline teetering toward self-destruction.
An empty martyrdom.
Turn back.

Some hours later, still sippin’ on the liquor of those long-dead… some thaumaturgically-awful concoctions thus contrived:

• Green – A mixture of orange juice, San Pellegrino, José Cuervo plata, Creme de Menthe, and Drambuie – absolutely horrible; extremely effective.
• Orange – José Cuervo plata, Fanta – absolutely horrible; marginally effective.
• Rancid Dew – Crème de Cassis, Extra Dry Vermouth, Black Velvet, Mountain Dew – I don’t remember what, exactly, this does.
• Untitled – Forgot what’s in it – Awesome.

The problem of completing the liquor supply remains. I want to say that it’ll all be gone by Monday, but I still need to get out and drink elsewhere for a while.

Dreadful revelations, I-tal deceptions… the entirety of possibilities is a tapestry and the fibers my existence is woven from intermingle with the mundane horrors I dare not speak of. Oscar Wilde holds absolutely no salvation.

Conclusion: Drinking at work on a Friday evening – not a good idea.

Over the course of reading The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde I’ve decided to create a Read-along category for posts wherein I will share passages from texts available at Project Gutenberg.

What’s the point? Final summation? None. Just looking to provide a few tie-ins with whatever mind I have left (as I exsanguinate a dead man’s stash of aqua vitae) and classic literature… consider it a backlash to the problem of “unwrapping the author’s meaning” which (no offense, past English literature professors) is naught but a paramasturbatory exercise in circumlocution.

Interpretative criticism is the pass-time of the hack and the bane of creativity itself – it’s a paint-by-numbers way of digesting literature and, for all the evils of the Five Paragraph Essay, this critical bent’s just another way of diluting the author’s meaning without registering or creating any meaning of one’s own… and if one should manage to really express what some author’s work means to oneself, who cares?

Parasitism is all well and good, but I’ve got to draw the line when to comes to fan fiction.

I hope to have the motivation left to provide a summary analysis which draws on the pragmatic / empirical / utilitarian lessons of a given novel / story at its conclusion (arguably more useful than some tripe about the symbolism of the color red – seriously, we all have better things to do).

FUCK ART. LET’S KILL!

Campaign: Corporate PR programme to rebuild the reputation and communicate key messages about Scotland’s iconic drinks brand

Result: Major articles were placed in influential business media communicating the strategic change in direction and profiling new management. Public perception of the company changed from one of secrecy and lack of understanding, to support for the new strategy.

- The Client: Drambuie

Drinking a mixture of citrus juice and Drambuie from a bottle likely older than myself, I can’t say that the cost of my last meal was excessive; granted, the store down the street charges $7.00 or more for microwave dinners, but at the very least I’m not going hungry.

Fortunately, the best things in life are free… (which is to say “At least I’m not paying for the alcohol.”)

Excess is Subjective.