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Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit — all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.

Brian Eno

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hey are we still #postingLs?

L L L L L L L L L L L L L

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It's weird finding out you and your chiropractor both love the same mezcal wizardess running a little shop in a Mexican seaside town (that's a fun sentence, innit)

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“The weird thing is, it doesn't really feel haunted, it just seems like it should be (considering all that's happened)”

I'm in the PNW and yesterday someone said this about a swimmin' hole in an old quarry, which I'm now considering as a review of the entire region

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The Gardens of the Merking's palace', 1927, J.R.R. Tolkien

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I remembered what I wanted to say to her, when she was younger.

"you're worried about choosing who you are. but you are choosing who you are. you never need to stop choosing. so choose."

It really felt simple somehow.

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If, of all words of tongue and pen,

The saddest are, “It might have been,”

More sad are these we daily see:

“It is, but hadn’t ought to be.”

–Bret Harte, Mrs. Judge Jenkins

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Hey what was the name of that acid jazz beatboxer that you like? Bicketyboo LaFleur? Ballyhoo Lavalamp? Bungeejump Lafontaine? Bojangles Leftfoot? Bubblewrap Leafblower? Bandicoot Fleur-de-Lis? Beelzebub LePew? Bumblesnoot LeDoup?

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As for the song, I think it's pretty neat. There's a quote by Green Day (kind of ironic considering how people see them as such posers now) that said something along the lines of "This kid came up to me once and asked 'What's punk?' So I kicked over a trash can and said 'That's punk.' So he kicked over another trash can and asked 'That's punk?' And I said 'No, that's conformist.'" There is no such thing as a truly individual style. We are all fabricated clones of other fabricated clones of other fabricated clones and the sooner you realize that your way is not the only way, the better we'll all be. When you can admit to being just as self-absorbed, arrogant and fake as everyone else around you, then you're a punk. When you realize that there is no such thing as being a punk, that's when you're a punk.

General comment on SongMeanings.com Say Anything - Admit It!!!

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Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth

Oscar Wilde

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In the beginning were the waters of chaos ... Darkness covered the waters until ... the Primeval Water Lily rose from the abyss. Slowly the blue water lily opened its petals to reveal a young god sitting in its golden heart. A sweet perfume drifted across the waters and light streamed from the body of this Divine Child to banish universal darkness. This child was the Creator, the Sun God, the source of all life. So the Primeval Water Lily closed its petals at the end of each day... Chaos reigned through the night until the god within the water lily returned.... the Creator ... knew that he was alone. This solitude became unbearable and he longed for other beings to share the new world with him. The thoughts of the Creator became the gods and everything else which exists. When his thoughts had shaped them, his tongue gave them life by naming them. Thoughts and words were the power behind creation.

The Waters of Chaos, Ancient Society

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A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I enjoy with my whole heart. I am alone, and feel the charm of existence in this spot, which was created for the bliss of souls like mine. I am so happy, my dear friend, so absorbed in the exquisite sense of mere tranquil existence, that I neglect my talents. I should be incapable of drawing a single stroke at the present moment; and yet I feel that I never was a greater artist than now. When, while the lovely valley teems with vapour around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream; and, as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants are noticed by me: when I hear the buzz of the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I feel the presence of the Almighty, who formed us in his own image, and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the form of a beloved mistress, then I often think with longing, Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me, that it might be the mirror of my soul, as my soul is the mirror of the infinite God! O my friend — but it is too much for my strength — I sink under the weight of the splendour of these visions!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

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One of the few rules the Culture adheres to with any exactitude at all is that a person's access to power should be in inverse proportion to their desire for it.

Welcome to the Culture, the Galactic Civilization That Iain M. Banks Built

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A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

Robert A. Heinlein

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ülm hğud whğund ende

هزار فرقه به همت مردم و hinzan zud juz Enginued fund as tuzunded forenizungud Enizzgud if Bernie doesn't win it'll be for the same reason that every time a child says "I don't believe in fairies" there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead finzercind jony P. & AD Ju W zu 32 bit B deilgu 3 fmüin njengu fuz موسسه ولی همه و ww bearbeitud CD L

3. Cui

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Once there were three tribes. The Optimists, whose patron saints were Drake and Sagan, believed in a universe crawling with gentle intelligence. Surely, said the Optimists, space travel implies enlightenment, for it requires the control of great destructive energies. Any race that can't rise above its own brutal instincts will wipe itself out long before it learns to bridge the interstellar gulf. Across from the Optimists sat the Pessimists, who genuflected before graven images of St. Fermi and a host of lesser lightweights. The Pessimists envisioned a lonely universe full of dead rocks and prokaryotic slime. The odds are just too low, they insisted. Too many rogues, too much radiation, too much eccentricity in too many orbits. If the galaxy were alive with intelligence, wouldn't it be here by now? Equidistant from the two tribes sat the Historians. They didn't have many thoughts on the probable prevalence of intelligent, spacefaring extraterrestrials. But if there are any, they said, they're not just going to be smart. They're going to be mean. The reason wasn't merely Human history, the ongoing succession of greater technologies grinding lesser ones beneath their boots. No, the real issue was what tools are for. To the Historians, tools existed for only one reason: to force the universe into unnatural shapes. They treated nature as an enemy, they were by definition a rebellion against the way things were. Technology is a stunted thing in benign environments, it never thrived in any culture gripped by belief in natural harmony. Why invent fusion reactors if your climate is comfortable, if your food is abundant? Why build fortresses if you have no enemies? Why force change upon a world that poses no threat? Human civilization had a lot of branches, not so long ago. Even into the twenty-first century, a few isolated branches had barely developed stone tools. Some settled down with agriculture. Others weren't content until they had ended nature itself. Still others had built cities in space. We all rested eventually, though. Each new technology trampled lesser ones, climbed to some complacent asymptote, and stopped. But history never said that everyone had to stop where we did. There could be other, more hellish worlds where the best Human technology would crumble, where the environment was still the enemy. The threats contained in those environments would not be simple ones. Harsh weather and natural disasters either kill you or they don't, and once conquered — or adapted to — they lose their relevance. No, the only environmental factors that continued to matter were those that fought back, that countered strategies with newer ones, that forced their enemies to scale ever-greater heights just to stay alive. Ultimately, the only enemy that mattered was an intelligent one. And if the best toys do end up in the hands of those who've never forgotten that life itself is an act of war against intelligent opponents, what does that say about a race whose machines travel between the stars?

from Blindsight, by Peter Watts

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10 #fantasy #bookcover #characters whose emotional life is clearly a little much (at San Jose Convention Center)