Just purchased some mp3s of French synth disco of T's childhood for her, the holiday shopping season begins, I guess. Listening to them now, why not enjoy a video:



Tried my best to leave work early & not work any more, but stuff kept coming up, hopefully nothing else will come up.

There's a rhetorical strategy that Nietzsche uses quite a lot that I've given quite a bit of thought for a long time. Basically it works by him either stating or implying that his writings have both an exoteric and esoteric reading. A pretty cheap gambit using basic social psychology to try to force an interpretive strategy on one's readers, 'I'm in with the in crowd and I know what the in crowd knows' & all that, still the imagery of esotericism is pretty fascinating and provides for some nice effects- secret societies, secret signs, secret correspondences, the rose & the rending of the veil. Maybe I should pick up that Pynchon book after all or maybe just watch this video over and over again.



Aby Warburg über alles. The Roman Empire never died.

It's funny all the emphasis these days on self-promotion, why would anyone want everyone to notice them? Why are there no guides on how to stay invisible to everyone but the pure of heart? It's something I try to approximate anyway, you should try it too, the others don't really see you anyway, wouldn't it be nice if they didn't at all?

Ensconcing myself in various fortresses of solitude, baroque castles full of machines, is getting a bit old as a method, trying to think of different sorts of places to ensconce myself. A budding grove, perhaps.

Thinking about Bruno Latour, haven't read this one yet, thinking about picking it up. Managed to resist getting the new Pynchon book the other day, other things on my mind, want to keep them there for the moment.

Up early again, voluntarily this time, lots of little muscle aches, eyes not quite focusing, ready to do some enterprise computing.

Peretz has been following me everywhere the past few days, think it made him really unhappy when I rushed out the door as soon as the power went out last night, was pretty flipped out by the time I got back anyway. Anyway, loud alarums of yesterday seem to have cleared my head nicely, things seem altered, feel a little unreal, but in a different way than earlier in the week, did I mention I was feeling unreal?

Drinking some leftover coffee, need to move to get fresh, hmmm.

Got called into work at five in the morning, couldn't get back to sleep, went back in a little early, left early, got called back in at five thirty due to power outage, just got home a little while ago, had a refreshing glass of water. I'm kind of tired, feeling very affectionately toward all and sundry, hope you're feeling happy.

Don't think I mentioned that Bloglines now thinks this blog is related not only to people's struggles with infertility but also to tales of life in Hong Kong, particularly those with an emphasis on architecture. Trying not to view Bloglines's related feed feature as a cryptic oracle, it's getting harder & harder.

Have taken to reading 'Dhalgren' in tiny snatches in the bathroom, it's no 'V.', but it serves the purpose pretty well. Was thinking about 'V.', sitting alone on a toilet at my parents' house while watching 'V for Vendetta' yesterday, also 'V: The Miniseries'.

V        V
 V     V
  V  V
    V


In a funny mental space, cramped and claustrophobic, opening onto terrifying panoramas, seem lovely & idyllic, what's rustling behind that bush?

Children being taught only the chorus of 'You are my Sunshine' is emblematic I think of some very important things about our culture and reality generally. Like using an expurgated version of 'Lust for Life' in a cruise commercial, it reveals genuinely horrible truths through concealment. People often seem to think of it as a happy song, it may be the saddest song I know.

Woke up early this morning from comforting dreams, hung my head and cried.

Just back from a long walk with Peretz on which we discussed the film 'Duck Soup' & applied comic poetics in the present epoch, degenerated into P saying 'Help is on the way!' a lot in a variety of funny voices, he also tried to eat a lot of things buried in leaves.

Still feeling like somebody slipped me a very bad drug, not funny, folks, really, I mean it.

Anyway, the project for today is the systematic delegitimization of authoritarian modes of interaction in any & all aspects of life, so, hop to it, my pretties- high comedy may not be sufficient, bring pies.

Got some pizza, T brought home 'V for Vendetta' & we are watching it, looks to be a big night for roughly triangular entities, what's next? Pizza was very tasty, movie seems lively & kind of stupid, good times, wish I would stop feeling crazy & ill, then things would be great. Work seemed to drag on for days, nothing unpleasant there except me, back under my rock now, cozy.

Toying with the idea of believing in a modified Gnosticism, in which the material world is seen as pure evil & there is no other world. Little trails of mental destruction radiating from all over my body, a thunder cloud, dark & nebulous. Attachment to the things of this world is a short path to extreme hatred, therefore trying to make myself feel more attached, get myself motivated to fuck things up. Feeling such a lot like Robespierre.

I don't think there's much room for doubt that the Enlightenment as project has been a bit of a wash, sinister figures straight from ancient mystery texts stalk the cities & countryside, it's no wonder people believe in them more & more, bring me my arrows of desire!

I love you all very much, but you are the playthings of things unknown to you that want you & everyone else to suffer, any resistance is just part of their plan. Cogs & gears suggest themselves but are a misleading image, a glittering field of forces, quite beautiful really, going to contemplate it for a while.

Didn't sleep very well, feeling kind of funny, would very much like to be as asocial as possible, but work beckons. Peretz can apparently tell when I'm feeling odd, spent the whole night with me, kind of got on my nerves, sadly, maybe he just stayed with me because he was cold. Had a dream about encountering a skunk on a walk with him, the skunk really wanted to play, confusing, was making low barking noises, play postures, made me nervous, Peretz bemused. Not really feeling like myself.

Drinking the first bit of coffee discharged by machine, too strong, really needed some coffee.

Did end up going to that art opening, nice elaborate cartoons mostly, talking to people was interesting.

Trying to decide whether to go to art opening later, might be pleasant, might drive me over edge, might be a waste of time, maybe all three. Soup came out nice- tasty, filling, nutritious- somebody else want to come eat it? Also made cornbread. Out of things to do, energy to do them, slowly sinking into couch.

T is watching suspense thriller starring Willem Dafoe, Helen Mirren, Robert Redford, can't deal with Robert Redford except in 'Three Days of the Condor', keep thinking he's Ted Turner.

Time is acting funny, hostile, contemplating its murder, need trustworthy confederates, arcane weapons of extreme potency, a safe house, don't have any of these things, bummer.

Working on white bean soup, quick soaking beans, cleaning vegetables, kind of tired, trying to keep busy, not busy = abyss. Watching English language Muzzy instructional video, eating penuchi fudge, not as good as the penuchi fudge from Bashista Orchard, still pretty OK. Been getting a lot done today, the abyss is a fine motivator.

Very foggy this morning.

Slept for an extremely long time, 12 hours or so, listening to psychedelic music all the while, had dreams of extreme beauty, not frightening, nice. Feel pretty well rested for once.

Doing some laundry, going to go do some work at work in a while, maybe attempt some tidying around the house after, make some soup.

Went to the shore yesterday, should go to the shore more often, maybe move to the shore altogether. Peretz had a lot of fun on the beach.

Went & tried new Vietnamese place in Amherst, the soup is very nice, complex but distinct flavors, they seem to be hurting for business, stuck behind mysterious construction, maybe you should go check them out. Got some non-flavored coffee, thinking about making a pot and doing projects or maybe just falling asleep.

Feel too funny to really appreciate beautiful day, feel like I should go out with P into it, feels nice to be resting though.

Had a lot of fun cooking, got really tired, sad around 4, tried to take a nap, didn't work out so well, people kept calling on the phone, up again, feel like it's the middle of the night, making cocoa.

Oh & here's that photo of T's mom I scanned yesterday:



Pretty nice.

Brisk morning, just took a brisk walk with P, going to go briskly do some necessary holiday tasks at work in a bit. I've allowed myself to run out of coffee on a holiday, my problem, lack of discipline. Drinking the last of my coffee now, sad. Considering experimental approaches to the preparation of butternut squash.

Wow, my hands are really cold. Wonder when we'll get snow. Peretz is wondering the same thing, standing on the couch, looking out the window.

Been doing a lot of snacking, listening to Can, just scanned a photo of T's mom for T to put on her blog or something, guess it's supposed to start raining shortly. Found a tick on P earlier, wonder where it came from, it's been pretty damn cold out, odd. Feel like I've had a sedative, a nice change.

Pretty relaxing day off so far, kind of sleepy anyway, got some very nice blueberry pie, go Bashista Orchards! Got some stuff to cook for tomorrow, no turkey, no stuffing. Just saw some lovely heavy elongated gray clouds with pink illumined bottoms on walk with P, getting pretty chilly, last night there was frost by 9.

Need a nap.

Slowly recovering from day at work, have tomorrow off, pretty happy about that. Just out for a walk in the cold with P, not used to it yet, he seems to like it, makes him frisky. T is watching some movie with gruesome murders & Mira Sorvino, can't get into it, mind elsewhere.

Still no real Thanksgiving plans, bought some cranberries, maybe now Thanksgiving Claus won't massacre my entire household when he passes over late Wednesday night at least, may inscribe a chai in turkey blood on the door later if I get a chance, can't be too careful.

2 National Grid trucks parked at the end of my driveway, messing with the power lines, freaking me out. Need to start generating my own power, figuring out highly redundant, low latency networking methods not dependent on the local grid. Funny thinking about infrastructure, there's an awful lot of it, remember R. Crumb talking in that documentary about him about how people tend to omit power lines from drawings, paintings, etc. Also something I read once by Denis Wood about how a photograph of the entire surface of the Earth, published in National Geographic, was produced. Poor Denis Wood.

Great potential for entertaining and/or humorous confusion of terms along the axis K-CH-S. Time, devourer of children. Sweet Persik, spicy Perchik.

Finally feeling somewhat rested, Peretz is wrapped in blankets, peering out. Thinking about predictability of human behavior & what a fragile thing it is. Reading about the possible identity of Moloch with Saturn/Kronos, let's see what he has to say for himself:

My sentence is for open Warr: Of Wiles,
More unexpert, I boast not: them let those
Contrive who need, or when they need, not now.
For while they sit contriving, shall the rest,
Millions that stand in Arms, and longing wait
The Signal to ascend, sit lingring here
Heav'ns fugitives, and for thir dwelling place
Accept this dark opprobrious Den of shame,
The Prison of his Tyranny who Reigns
By our delay? no, let us rather choose
Arm'd with Hell flames and fury all at once
O're Heav'ns high Towrs to force resistless way,
Turning our Tortures into horrid Arms
Against the Torturer; when to meet the noise
Of his Almighty Engin he shall hear
Infernal Thunder, and for Lightning see
Black fire and horror shot with equal rage
Among his Angels; and his Throne it self
Mixt with TARTAREAN Sulphur, and strange fire,
His own invented Torments. But perhaps
The way seems difficult and steep to scale
With upright wing against a higher foe.
Let such bethink them, if the sleepy drench
Of that forgetful Lake benumme not still,
That in our proper motion we ascend
Up to our native seat: descent and fall
To us is adverse. Who but felt of late
When the fierce Foe hung on our brok'n Rear
Insulting, and pursu'd us through the Deep,
With what compulsion and laborious flight
We sunk thus low? Th' ascent is easie then;
Th' event is fear'd; should we again provoke
Our stronger, some worse way his wrath may find
To our destruction: if there be in Hell
Fear to be worse destroy'd: what can be worse
Then to dwell here, driv'n out from bliss, condemn'd
In this abhorred deep to utter woe;
Where pain of unextinguishable fire
Must exercise us without hope of end
The Vassals of his anger, when the Scourge
Inexorably, and the torturing houre
Calls us to Penance? More destroy'd then thus
We should be quite abolisht and expire.
What fear we then? what doubt we to incense
His utmost ire? which to the highth enrag'd,
Will either quite consume us, and reduce
To nothing this essential, happier farr
Then miserable to have eternal being:
Or if our substance be indeed Divine,
And cannot cease to be, we are at worst
On this side nothing; and by proof we feel
Our power sufficient to disturb his Heav'n,
And with perpetual inrodes to Allarme,
Though inaccessible, his fatal Throne:
Which if not Victory is yet Revenge.

Sounds like a plan, doesn't it?

So show was pretty OK despite intense feelings of claustrophobia, weird pressure inside head, nice to talk to & see people, music was very pleasant. Think I've cracked up pretty badly, still seem to be functioning more or less OK, fueled by pure evil, no doubt. Odd floaty feeling, think it's going to be difficult to fall asleep, maybe I'll listen to more music instead.

Ambient clouds of misery zapping me with little bolts of darkest hatred, luckily I'm the tallest thing in the room, wouldn't want anybody taking the fall for me. A little afraid I'm enjoying the self-loathing too much, may need to tone it down a bit to keep it pure.

Work was very tiring, went & got some take out pasta, beginning to feel more human, going to go see some music I think, don't know where that will push the human/inhuman balance, we'll see I guess, maybe lock up the women & children till I say otherwise.

Shocking cold has intensified seemingly month-long headache, took some tablets, drank some water, a little coffee maybe?

Shockingly cold outside, not shocking enough, still want to be sleeping. Workweek ahead a nebulous blob in my head, no idea about Thanksgiving plans, no idea about much of anything. Typing skills have degenerated seriously, ick.

Need to get my oil changed some time, seems overwhelming.

Thinking about predicate logic, multilingual puns while walking around with P, also met with cute miniature dachshund, on the prowl for Stinkdachse, compared notes with P on his own quest for Stinktier, had a bit of an argument about proper classification, ended up agreeing there was a need for further study, when will they learn?

Constant low level headache's been keeping me away from my Jean Paul book, frustrating.

Morning's going by in slow motion, would like to be sleeping, had lovely dreams. Have lost track of much of what's going on around me, trying to resync, would like to be sleeping. Last thing I remember it was September, my own records since then seem a bit cryptic, anybody want to give a quick refresher?

Having some tea with honey.

There will never be an end to stupid, vicious people- they're too easy to manufacture, sick of it. No way around it, living in a hostile environment, tiring, dull. Think I need to shelter myself somehow so I can stop thinking about them, waste of time, want to help, no way to help, round & round.

Oh, hell, pretty damn sad.

Trying to make myself some rooibos, put water in kettle, wandered off, forgot to turn the stove on, noticed after a while, turned it on, pathetic.

OK, finally managed to boil water, beverage is steeping. Despairing of ever feeling back to normal, tedious, it's tedious, I'm tedious.

Improvement in P's mood really remarkable, amazing the subtle differences in expression he can manage while passed out on couch.

Had a sip of beverage, still too hot to drink, first impression is it may make my head feel a bit better, hurrah.

Post nasal drip continues, wrapped in blanket with P, watching bad movie on TV. Holiday season is upon us, fuck. Got an apple pie earlier to get myself into the spirit, ho ho ho.

Deciduous conifer quest went better than expected, even more of them than I was led to believe, P got to commune with donkey, goats, chickens.

Should probably make myself some tea or something, don't feel like getting up, ever again, really.

Still with the residual cold symptoms, forced myself to eat some breakfast, made me feel sleepy. Peretz is looking extra mournful this morning, no longer seems ill. Going to take him on a tour of local deciduous conifers in a bit.

Having fun thinking about information, there's lots.

Sitting around feeling cold & nervous, made T some Chinese dumplings with fermented cabbage from a jar, everything's irritating me, thinking about lying down & listening to some music. Peretz still seems to feel a little unwell, T's talking very loudly on cell in Russian, now off talking loudly to me in English about whether to go to New York or not.

Peretz is beside me in a limp ball, hope he gets to feeling better soon.

Watching 'Genesis of the Daleks', T brought the DVD home from the library, kids' show with genocide as dominant theme, pretty OK.

Itching to get weekend work tasks out of the way, not sure if it's possible, may go look into it shortly.

Was kind of excited about the Leonids, looks as though it's going to be totally overcast tonight, in any case, looking forward to P getting bored with telling me they're named for Brezhnev.

Opened del.icio.us account due to peer pressure, what else can you get me to do?- smoke behind the schoolhouse, maybe.

Got lots of sleep, still sleepy, P's got another digestive disturbance, just fed him a very burnt half of an english muffin, hope it helps.

We can produce beauty or nothing, nothing is harder but we make more and more of it, a vast emptiness inside and out, Totenraum, full of not quite things, moving- we do these things, are these things, it's funny. Anyway, fog of war settling over my brain, should have some delightful nightmares, maybe write you a poem about them. To be an animal is to suffer.

Sleepy, in kind of a bad mood, trying to imagine what it must be like to imagine one has a good enough idea of what's happening to decide on the deaths of thousands, millions- it's fucked up, don't really understand it.

Tour of local garden variety American pizza continues with Fiorentina Pizza of Florence, pretty much everything I was looking for in a garden variety American pizza, slightly chewier crust would be nice, certainly not required. Spacing out watching science fictional TV, P wants more, chewier crust.

Air outside is becoming pleasantly cool, welcome the return of the Fall, snow soon maybe.

Done with work for the time being, just had some Peanut Butter Crunch, things are looking up. Planning lengthy excursion with P in sunshine, doing dishes, maybe cooking something. Special peanut butter energies now coursing through veins, no obstacle is too great, no motivation too small, let's go total destruction.

Have read far too much spam today, also feel like I might throw up, think that's all the mucus I've been swallowing while asleep though, not the spam.

Need some new things to think about.

Been sleeping kind of a lot, having a challenging time being awake, concentration not really what it should be or what I'm used to. Looking forward to an end to the unseasonable warmth, contributing to tiredness, I think. Constantly hungry.

Getting annoyed with lingering cold symptoms, making me kind of irritable.

Trying to come up with little projects to distract me from runny nose, stressful life, lots to do, none of it seems like much fun, household tasks, web site maintenance, etc.

Weather today making me feel like I'm drifting through syrup, nice & cold in server room, a/c has maybe been repaired? Soles of both feet hurt fairly drastically, mysterious. Heavy rains predicted for tonight, exciting.

Peretz was just telling me about being worshiped by long-eared Egyptian cats, scarab beetles in previous existence, apparently they collaborated to present him with gifts of some unspecified nature. Also listened to 'Bloody Hammer' while at lunch, very refreshing.

At work, slowly falling asleep, mostly caught up on things, not feeling particularly ill any more, still tire easily. Making decisions about things to do with servers doesn't seem very wise at the moment, trying to figure out something else to do, not awake enough to have clever ideas, probably if I had an idea that seemed clever it would be a mistake to pay it any mind, sigh. Past the point of caffeine doing anything useful, at least my knee seems to be hurting a bit less, keep forgetting what day it is.

Cold seems to have mostly cleared out, still pretty low energy, working on that with caffeine, the popular choice.

Peretz is curled up in a tight ball beside me on the couch. Last night, he came to T & I on alternate hours wanting to go out, think he may be playing us against each other. Strangely warm weather is very disorienting.

Went to show, went pretty much as projected, left a little less early than expected due to having pleasant interactions with others, popcorn. Listening to Roky on drive home, don't shake me Lucifer, you are all I receive.

Feeling a bit like I've taken a large quantity of some bronchodilator, didn't, maybe it's sign of end times for cold? Will likely have a hard time falling asleep in any case, vibrating, feel odd.

Managed to get some rest despite deciding that I really needed food, that canned soup was inadequate & making fairly complex fried rice with kale. Not following doctor's orders, noncompliant, a hard case.

Think I may go see some music also, resting quietly is making me feel unduly sad. Will, I imagine, make an effort to enjoy music from restful position on a couch while drinking fluids, give up & return home early. Try not to judge me too harshly.

Somehow managed to oversleep, managed to spend some time at work catching up on things, started to feel like I might vomit, came home again. P wants out, trying to recuperate enough to manage it, looking at me with sad eyes as I sadly sip ginger ale.

Intense self-loathing episode of yesterday seems to have resolved itself with sleep, I'm a peach, a lovable teddy bear as represented by hoodie pin, wouldn't hurt a fly, honest. Still wishing I was less capable of moral certainty, I know I'm putting myself on about it, can't deal with confusion preventing action, weak, despicable, etc.

So mostly resolved, pretty tired again, I guess, at least when I write 'despicable' I hear it in my head in a Daffy Duck voice.

I guess I've always, or for a very long time anyway, thought of myself as a fairly dark person. Some of the things I've been doing and thinking lately have left me with the impression that I'm a lot darker than that, that one could peel back layers, each darker than the next and finally be left with a glowing black point, vibrating slightly. The seemingly endless repetition of pain & slaughter everywhere, as a not-too-noteworthy side effect, makes sweet, sensitive little boys into monsters- empty of everything but hate, vicious.

Having some tea with honey, attempting to return to human form, it hurts. Peretz is curled up in a ball nearby.

Extreme exhaustion leading to intensely melancholic state, wish I could fall asleep, tried to take a nap a while ago & failed. Read some Jean Paul, still too sick to pay attention to reading for all that long, drag.

Joints hurt, teeth hurt, sad old man, could somebody stake me out on a mountaintop?

Going to record 'Prime Suspect' for T now.

Wet day, lingering cough, blech.

Got to go get T from the NYC->Springfield train late, a little adventure.

Still haven't had much chance to get back to my Jean Paul Richter, maybe after another rainy walk with P?

Very tired.

All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors.
1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul.
2. That Energy, call'd Evil, is alone from the Body, & that Reason, call'd Good, is alone from the Soul.
3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.

But the following Contraries to these are True

1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that call'd Body is a portion of Soul discern'd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age
2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
3 Energy is Eternal Delight

Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling.
And being restrain'd it by degrees becomes passive till it is only the shadow of desire.
The history of this is written in Paradise Lost, & the Governor or Reason is call'd Messiah.
And the original Archangel or possessor of the command of the heavenly host, is call'd the Devil or Satan and his children are call'd Sin & Death.
But in the Book of Job Miltons Messiah is call'd Satan.
For this history has been adopted by both parties.
It indeed appear'd to Reason as if Desire was cast out, but the Devil's account is, that the Messiah fell, & formed a heaven of what he stole from the Abyss.

This is shewn in the Gospel, where he prays to the Father to send the comforter or Desire that Reason may have Ideas to build on, the Jehovah of the Bible being no other than he who dwells in flaming fire.
Know that after Christs death, he became Jehovah.
But in Milton; the Father is Destiny, the Son, a Ratio of the five senses, & the Holy-ghost, Vacuum!
Note: The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it.

Went for a walk to town, very crowded, kept thinking about zombie movies, trapped in a shopping mall. Was given flyers for movies at the independent film festival by a young independent filmmaker trying very hard to look like a young independent filmmaker. He seemed kind of sweet, his short looks from the stills and description to share his generic quality, transparent attempt to break into the movie biz, sad. Overheard while sitting on a bench drinking coffee: "I'm so in favor of global warming- no, I mean it!" Got some raisin walnut bread, came home again.

Back from walk with P, a holiday cartoon for you, enjoy:

Feeling a pretty urgent to need to get to work on an extended bit of humorous writing, think I've come to terms with being incapable of light comedy in the manner of Wodehouse or Jerome K. Jerome, melancholic & harsh it will need to be, I think.

Anyway, went for a short walk, going to go for a longer one with the dog, then maybe another longer one by myself. It's a magic day, a day for dreaming, dreaming of things to come- maybe the rotting corpses in my brain will give off enough gas to launch a pretty balloon or three.

There was an Old Man of Cape Horn,
Who wished he had never been born;
So he sat on a chair,
Till he died of despair,
That dolorous Man of Cape Horn.

Going to go out for a walk.

Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?

While listening to 'Rehearsals for Retirement', started reading a bit about Phil Ochs, came across stuff about his friend Victor Jara who was tortured & murdered during the coup against Allende. Got me thinking about my mom's high school boyfriend Judd Kessler, who was Resident Regional Legal Adviser for the Agency for International Development in South America while that was happening. Apparently my grandma wished she had married the guy, my uncle apparently advised against it. Good on my uncle. Here, read his delightful letter on the topic of the 5th Anniversary of the September 11th attacks & be horrified. On second thought, you might be better off reading this instead.

Having some leftover Chinese, obsessive thinking about killing fields has led me back to the effete folk music, listening to 'I Kill Therefore I Am' right now. Peretz is quoting favorite bits from this album, one he feels is apropos at present apparently, as he keeps saying it- 'The dogs are chasing chicken bones across the lawn, if that was an election, I'm a Viet Cong.' Pray for the aged, it's the dawn of another age.

Talking more about deflationary theories of truth on walk with Peretz. Think that Peretz tends to take "'p' is true iff p" as indicating that truth isn't significantly predicable of things because of historical accidents like our logics tending to take assertions as primitives (with semantics generally following suit), I'm more prone to take it as indicating something informative about the pragmatics of assertions, that is, when someone asserts something, they are additionally implying that it is true. The other thing that Peretz seems to lose sight of here is that truth is equally predicable of things which aren't tokens of assertions, take "My aim is true" as an example, even if one wants to see 'true' as being used metaphorically or some such way here, the question is then "What is the basis of the metaphor?" I suppose Peretz could claim 'true' was being used merely homophonously, I guess I just don't find this persuasive. In any case, I don't think anything about any of this implies anything about the existence or nonexistence of a property 'truth', however desirable it might be to do so. Anyway, it's not like it was a bad fight or anything, we're sitting together on the couch now, resting.

Coffee isn't even ready yet and bodies are already piling up in my head, shit. Thinking about coal mine disasters, sort of odd, it's all one thing, of course. At least nobody thinks they demonstrate our patriotic duty to mine more coal, at least not that I know of.

Remember playing with tape loops of Johnny Cash singing 'Dark as a Dungeon' with my brother in San Francisco years ago, more than ten years anyway, can't remember when it was exactly.

11/11, make a wish. Not one of my favorite holidays. Interesting.

Did some cleaning, cooking, further tarrying with one of the bright lights of German Romanticism was trumped by phone call from my mother, moving on to escapist science fiction tv now, will get back to the other in the AM.

Now that I'm not directly engaged in doing anything, feeling kind of sick again, also edgy, Peretz is demanding attentions, he got very aroused by the cooking, pretty exhausted, hoping he'll settle down soon.

Just back from an extended walk with Peretz on which he spoke to me at length on many topics of interest, including what he calls his "disquotational theory of emphatic truth", which he expressed as follows:

"The morning star is the evening star." is emphatically true iff The morning star is the evening star.

He's expecting laurels and plaudits if the neighbors in front don't swipe them when they arrive.

Feeling a lot better, nose hurts, get tired if I move around too much, making elaborate cookery plans despite lack of anyone to feed apart from myself and perhaps Peretz, reading some translations of Jean Paul Richter by Carlyle, listening to Mission of Burma. T's split for all night New York City Russian dance parties, could go see some exciting rock music myself, feeling a bit of a homebody. Evening seems likely to involve further investigations of out of the way corners of Romanticism, loud music on stereo, cleaning preparatory to unnecessary cookery, perhaps the cookery itself, escapist science fiction entertainment, severe anxiety, dog walks, hopefully not to be urgently required.

Still feeling pretty sick, slowly getting better anyway.

Thinking a lot about stylistic influence across languages, particularly about the series Sterne -> Jean Paul -> Carlyle -> Ruskin -> Proust. Would also be interested in knowing more about the impact of Empiricism in mainland Europe, the reception of Hume in Russia seems like it must've been odd, for example, never been all that interested in it as philosophy, seems prone to being highly culturally effective. Wonder how much work has been done on the cross cultural effect of Walter Scott, can't stand reading him well enough to get a good sense of it myself. Feeling like I should be busying myself learning languages, German especially, but there are so many that I'd like to be able to at least read passably well, so much to do. Also wishing I knew a lot more than I do about the history of comedy. It's kind of overwhelming, will probably end up doing nothing, or refreshing myself on Perl or some such.

Peretz seems to be feeling a lot better this morning.

In warm afterglow of soup, thinking about our various mystified ways of thinking about our relationship to the natural world, how an excessive commitment to deontic ethics can feed narcissism, lots of other stuff you don't care about. It is very tempting to fall back on strict rules for oneself given how inconsequential actions tend to be in the face of the surrounding catastrophe, it's just another way of giving up, has the dubious advantage of promoting self-satisfaction. Hard to be too critical, once a more or less realistic appraisal has been made of what's happening, seems to me it's mostly a matter of choosing how best to give up. OK, shower, then work.

Decided I wouldn't make it through shower without having chicken soup & toast first, doing that now. Thinking back on quantities of Campell's chicken soup products and toast I went through as a child, was sick a lot, a lot more than now, often stayed up all night reading science fiction, feeling like crap, got up around noon, made myself chicken soup & toast, would purposely make the soup far too hot to eat, dip large quantites of toast in it while waiting for it to cool. Maybe I should go pick up some science fiction.

Still sick, got up about an hour ago to make an effort at tending to Peretz who's been suffering from a bit of a digestive disturbance for the past few days, trying to see that everyone is more or less OK has been something of a balancing act the last little while, many long walks out in the rain yesterday. Just took him for a longish walk, newly warm weather brought on heavy perspiration, feel like I might pass out, just took some cold medicine, drinking some coffee, going to take a hot shower shortly, make myself some Chicken & Stars and toast, try to drink more liquids, try to get some work done.

I guess it's lucky I never remember how much I hate having colds, always a surprise. Sometimes it seems like one would be a nice excuse to take a break, never are. Can't remember the last time I felt so weak & tossed about by things.

Cold which had been dancing around the margins for a couple of weeks finally took center stage night before last, spent most of the past 36 hours either asleep or semi-asleep, feel a lot better for it, still feel pretty awful, sweating profusely, light headed, going to try to get some work done, spend some time at least partially upright, maybe get some Chinese soup & stuff later.

Peretz seems to have handled my neglecting him horribly fairly well, imagine T must've taken up the slack, should probably try to eat something, drink a lot of fluids.

On the way back from Amherst where I checked on a malfunctioning printer as the last task of a truncated workday, ran an errand of mercy, picked up baked goods, 'Archangels Thunderbird' came on and I had a lovely extended moment of moral clarity under its influence, after that I stopped and picked up some coffee and dairy products. Going to try to take a brief nap now, thumb still really hurts.

Spent some time playing with demons, all part of the job description, dark, power, fun, fun, fun.

Reduced to making complimentary hazelnut coffee from work as forgot to buy actual coffee, ignore the pasty skin tone, look of despair. Managed to hurt my thumb, hurts to move it much, doesn't much interfere with typing, don't much care.

Anyway, made some of those changes, not the ones I was thinking of, feel lots better anyway.

Last night some things happened that made me feel very bad. I tried to go see some music to try to feel more normal. I almost immediately got called away from that because the power went out at work. I was dealing with that for quite a long time, was left feeling very strange. Had nightmares of a new and unusual variety throughout the night, glad to be awake now, sort of.

I need to make some changes to my life to avoid any sort of repetition of that experience, or anything that remotely resembles it, not entirely sure what those changes need to be, but I think I should figure it out quickly.

Coming to the close of a lunar cycle, with things pretty much the same as at the beginning. Intense mystical experience appears to have made its effects felt & gone away again. Anyway, plaything of cosmic forces? Check. Forces alien & hostile? Double check.

An indication of my state of mind: while showering managed to persuade myself briefly that 'symmetry' is somewhat palindromic, a little bit due to the sound pattern, but I think it was mostly just the double m, I'll be thinking 'palindrome' is an onomatopoeia next.

Feeling more like myself, morbidly Jewish Santa zipping around cleaning up after the dead god, great rotting gobs of his infinite presence dropping from the heavens, splashing all over everything, a lot of work ahead of me, good to keep busy.

Just out walking the dog, thinking about how desperately we need social structures that make better use of human intelligence, such as it is. Not that I have any particularly great ideas about what those should be, maybe our robotic overlords will be able to come up with something when they arrive, maybe I should be working to hasten their arrival, I don't know.

Thinking that the major failing of the Soviet system was the systematic misuse it made of human intelligence, I think people often tend to see the problem with it as the intrinsically self-interested nature of elites, but really, at least in early days, the Soviet elite was about as non-self-interested as is easily imaginable, so committed and disciplined that it was very easy for a total lunatic to seize the reins of command and do whatever he liked, in fact. Acting in people's interest by proxy just doesn't really work, we need to find more indirect methods to assist people in defining and acting on their own interests, maybe. A major problem with people defining their own interests is that they have actually contradictory ones, of course, tempting to try to tell them which are their real interests, which ones are 'mere ideology', but this is, of course, a lot of nonsense, they're all perfectly real interests. People being made aware of these contradictions might make them work on resolving them or it might make them prone to do most anything. Tempting to just try to convey a richer and more complex sense of the world and hope for the best, it's a pretty minimal sort of hope, though.

Robotic overlords, it is, then, I think.

Should've had that nap, instead spent last evening getting more & more tired & irritable, also could've gone to sleep around eight, I suppose, that probably would've been OK also. Sick of having physical limitations, where's my robot body?

Having trouble waking up, everything's kind of hazy, feel like I ate poison of some kind, having trouble drinking coffee.

Had a mix of dreams, some very scary, some very not, they're fading fast in any case, need to face the day wrapped in something else, cold outside.

T's feeling ill, talks really quietly, pitifully to me, really loudly on phone. P has repulsive gas, asleep under my legs.

Might say the hell with it to show, fall asleep, a few less hours to kill, I don't know. Wishing something I could actually do seemed like fun, maybe I'll have another cider donut.

On return from running errands, immediately called into work to repair printer, don't want to talk about it.

Eating cold dinner now, Peretz wants a piece of the action.

No longer feeling sleepy anyway, will maybe go see music later.

Dead body report, destroy before reading, daily bankruptcy review.

Kind of wish I were taking a nap, have some stuff to do, errands to run, too tired to get started, could be I'd be better off taking a nap. Thinking about large number of analogies between organized religion & TV, making me feel like maybe I should take it easier on organized religion or be harder on TV, maybe some of both.

Sleepiness is actually kind of pleasurable with nothing much to do, making it hard to go outside as it seems colder than it is.

Been told all my adolescent philosophical rambling is driving my ratings down, have told the producers where they can put their ratings, I'm an artist.

Strange not to be going to work, very tempted to go in remotely, check mail, look at logs, not going to happen.

Looks to be shaping up into a lovely day, quality time with Peretz, more coffee, laundry, etc.

Ick, all serious minded & reasonable, somebody drug me.

Wanting to be more of a careless idiot very, very badly, crap.

Panic episode seems to have resolved itself anyway, can't be all serious minded & reasonable while having a panic episode, so of course it shuffled off stage, shamefaced.

Having some very beautiful experiences of pure form, something else to feel guilty about.

Fairly sure I predicted this result several years ago to a large number of people, when are you going to start taking me seriously?

Please don't go around criticizing my vagal tone, can't help it.

Had nice Chinese for lunch, chao fun, scallion pancake. Stomach nonetheless in awful knot that feels like it's going to leave my body, possibly through the top of my head, and look for better accommodation.

Workweek nearly over, would be nice to relax, sad.

'Why is there something rather than nothing?' is a trick question, turns out there's also nothing.

Have a deeply offensive joke stuck in my head, another one floating around outside it, usual business.

Peretz is splayed on the adjacent couch, lovingly licking his genitals, good dog.

Turned out to be happy dreams, brought back to harsh reality by 6 AM return of yesterday's 4 PM call to building manager regarding work situation- left your cellphone in your truck, did you? power's back on is it? thanks. Sounds like the trick is having a truck. Shortly after that, Peretz came to visit, so it's not all harsh.

Raining & cold, dismal day, looking forward to some wining, dining, biding my time. Feel too shaken by lack of sleep to tell if I still feel ill, must be neat to be able to fall back asleep once woken, something to work on. For now, coffee's brewing.

Finally done with work for day, I hope. Work issue also caused explosion of transformer in nursing home, so I guess it could be worse. Heart still racing, still feel like shit. Also rather glum. Wishing a big friendly animal would come ambling along & rip me to bits.

Feel like shit, rip me to bits. Feel like shit, rip me to bits.

Not so bad really, will it be happy dreams or nightmares?

Feeling ill continues, stressful work situation has arisen, can't get good information about it, driving me nuts. Elevated heart rate + feeling sick = life sucks. Had plans involving cooking dinner, don't know when I can really do that as may be called to duty at any time, hopefully that will be soon & I can get it over with, cook & eat dinner. Meantime, going over logs.

Working from home again this afternoon due to strong desire to not fall over or throw up onto servers. Got lots done in an attempt to avoid thinking about philosophy. Back at it, sadly.

Think position I was outlining earlier is a funnily inverted form of Kantianism, that is to say, things are transcendentally real, empirically ideal, real relative to our actually operative concepts, but we are aware from experience that these concepts are subject to change.

Also thinking, on related lines, that the main difference between moral assertions and empirical or scientific or whatever you care to call them ones is the degree of consensus on how to determine whether they are true or false. This could obviously be traced historically to some extent. One would similarly expect to find more vigorous attacks on and defenses of a realist interpretation of the objects of religious thought in cases of schism or heresy, suggests a way of looking at Anselm as not even trying to produce a persuasive argument but rather one designed to increase coherence within a shared belief system.

OK, going to do more work now.

While the concept of truth we appear to be working with does seem to have characteristics that require a realist understanding of things (for example, it seems to be that we have to be right at least some of the time for the concept to have any applicability) nothing actually guarantees the applicability of the concept. Arguments from evolutionary adaptation smack strongly of arguments from design, comforting, appealing and specious. Even aside from the all too present to mind possibilities of other sorts of intelligence or changes to the nature of our own intelligence, our concepts can simply change. It does help clarify the nature of a nonrealist metaphysics as project, I think- one would involve the wholesale replacement or elimination of the concept of truth. Similarly, it would appear that it's not possible to seriously assert the nonexistence of beliefs as serious assertion implies belief among other things, but it's not clear that we actually can seriously assert anything, for an example of this being handled badly, one can always read Paul Churchland.

In any case, a descriptive account of our operative concepts continues to seem to me the proper concern of first philosophy, hence the continuing appeal of Austin. Other examples that come to mind, with regard to, say, esthetics, are Deleuze's cinema books or Pierre Bourdieu's 'Distinction', while this last is pretty nonphilsophical in its focus on differentiation of concepts rather than shared ones, it still has exactly the characteristics I find most interesting. Also interesting in this regard are Cavell's books on movies, though maybe they're less sophisticated in some ways, maybe that's a good thing. It's strange how many preoccupations I share with that guy, sometimes makes me feel sort of unsympathetic and hostile to him.

Been thinking a lot about the various efforts at formalizing metaphysics and how misguided it all seems, we go around using a lot of highly abstract concepts which don't really stand up to close scrutiny, but trying to replace them with better defined ones that lead to immediately obvious contradictions just seems like a mistake, driven by esthetic preference, no doubt. Some of these concepts are very interesting and get a lot of use, say, meaning, belief, action, others less so, event, property, relation, but it's not clear they cause much in the way of practical problems and to the extent they do it doesn't seem like replacing them with clearly delimited but obviously broken versions of themselves is really the way to go, just seems like bad engineering. The more I think about it, the more I wish Austin hadn't died so young.

Keep waking up terrified, at least I didn't wake up with a cold, shaking a bit, partially from feeling cold, coffee's brewing. Had some dreams of surpassing loveliness in the course of my too short sleep, trying to cling to them a bit, make the world reform in less menacing shape. Peretz heard me tossing about when my terrified wakening started, rushed to my side, started barking, he's a sweet dog.

Feeling like I may be in a fit state to start working on some more structured art, think I could use mistreating myself in a more refined manner for a while. Any requests?