5/13/2002 7:42 PM
De gustibus non disputandum est?
Chaque a son gout?
I have been cleaning the basement. The basement is where I live, cohabiting the space with about ten thousand books, that tumble in waves over the shelves that I have built like water overfills a trough and falls to the land below. In this particular case, the cracked concrete floor.
I have heard various people give various opinions about the number of books that I have collected over the years, keep in mind that this is by no means my first collection, I have changed city and residence several times. With each move I turned over (sold, packed in boxes and given to Goodwill) mountains of poetry, instruction, popular genre, music, language, philosophy, science, philosophy of science, science of philosophy, Freudian, Jungian, Adlerian, even the occasional Skinnerian, from pre Soaks to Sri Folks. I probably don’t have an original volume from an original collection anywhere.
The various opinions are often attacks. I don’t understand it! Did you read all those books, they say? Course not. Look, do the math. If I have say 10,000 books, entirely in the realm of possibility, lining the shelves, stacked on the floor, climbing up the steps, sneaking out the door, how long would it take to read them. Okay, if I read a book a day, which I do not, although I have on occasion read, two or three books in a day (and some grand days those were) I would read 365 books a year, right. So in three years, I would read, and let’s just round off for easy math (I could run this through Excel or MathCad and come up with 365 times 3 = 1,095 and 10,000 divided by 1,095 = 9.132420091 but that .133430091 (roughly 48 days in a normal year) of a year would just depress me, especially considering that I haven’t taken the two years that would encompass the leap of February 29) one thousand books. In a further effort to keep easy math, in three years I would read one thousand books, gives me some time to eat, sleep and watch a movie, have a conversation. Hence it would take me 30 years to read 10,000 books if I read about a book a day. I ask you? Have I read all these books?
So, I either answer, yes, every word or Do I look like the kind of person who would keep around books that I have already read? Or (somewhat more flawed and cryptically) Do you keep all the bottles of beer that you drink? Often my dumb yet blank stare answers a whole world of query.
I have been told that books: are my security blanket, that I love books more than I love people, or just plain that I am an idiot, this mostly from people who buy George Carlin’s tirade about all the stuff we accumulate, or would be Guru Gautamas that believe in a simple, bare, Shaker kind of meaningful existence. (There are, I think, only two or three Shakers left because their rigorous belief in celibacy has willed them out of existence, conversion, in this case, did not bring about a long line of being.)
It’s really a little more complex and a little more simple than all that. Books are my passion. I do thrill at them as objects, they can be pretty or gross or weighty or flighty. I do believe that you can judge a book by its cover. What the hell else do you have to judge it by? Contents? I only have 10,000 books in my house, how many are in the book stores, where we sip coffee and lounge in comfortable stuffed chairs or at the top of the concrete steps of the local library? How can you choose what to read? How can you judge what will move you or enlighten you?
Personally I have always preferred heft and smell to cover art, but it is all one and the same. I don’t want to go all mystical and goo goo eyed on you, but I do believe that some synchronistic relationship in the universe, that works with my five sense in synesthesia brings me to my choices in reading. Something integral works here for me. Like a hunter in touch with the forest around and abound, alive to all the sub and super sensual, who finds, with no direct knowledge the correct path.
I can also find missing things. It is easy really. You must look where they are. I can’t really say it any better than that although I admit it is an inelegant tautology. There you have it. What I need to read, the way in which I must amplify my intelligence, is placed in front of me, when I care to look, as surely as a bulls eye can draw an arrow to its center.
Now, let me see, if an average book has three hundred and fifty pages and each page has four hundred and thirty five words comprised of five letters then…Okay. The book that I will produce, that I have been working on for at least a millennium is the Book of Answers. It’s format will be like this:
Chapter 1 (pg 5-15)
Ex. 1 (a) Botulism
(c) Carborundum
(e) Haile Sellassie
Ex. 3 Abba dabba dabba said the Chippie to the Monk
And so on until all the answers are given.
Monday, May 13, 2002
Monday, May 06, 2002
Monday, May 06, 2002 6:25 PM
The Great Frozen Food Chain of Being.
I had every intention of writing my CyberLogicus Philosphicum Part II here, but managed to screw myself into the ground so well, that I decided it was better to move on to other things until I could at least unstuff some of the fuzzy cotton that inhabits my thought and blocks my snapping neurons.
We had our usual Friday night Lackzoom meeting mayhem. Dean couldn’t get his phone to connect on accounta he never switched from Pulse to Tone on his phone service. His operating system and modem were having none of his Luddite backstabbing. So we never posted anything at all to the web site, our objective set back a week, hopefully less. We talked and planned. The more I tried to think about the fine psychological underpinnings of what we were doing, the more my mind began to resemble a neglected garage at a rummage sale. Yins are jist gonna hafta wait until I at least sweep the floor and pack some boxes before I open the doors again for business.
This left me high dry and without topic for this evenings turn at the Blog. Uninspired I went to the local supermarket to buy a Chicken Caesar Salad, (Yea! a Cowardly Caerar Romaine.I don’t think an anchovy passed within twelve miles of the dressing) and some fruit cut and encased in a plastic bowl, for lunch. I approached the final stages of check out. “Sir, do you have an Advantage Card?” (Dollar off the fruit it turns out) “Uh, yeah, just hold on a second.” It was buried deep behind a torn flap of the tanned cow skin that makes up my wallet. “Debit or Credit”, she asks, which plain confuses me because I have just told the damn machine, swipe, Pick ATM, Enter your secret code, I do. Why is she asking Debit or Credit? There are bad communications skills between the human check out clerk and the electronic check out device. “Debit.” I croak like a frog, even though I have assuredly chosen the ATM option. I am complex enough in this new cyber world to know that ATM is something that is at least akin to Debit. What, my brain scans, happens at the bank, between debit and credit. Am I making a terrible mistake? “Cash back?” she asks, even though I have already answered the blinking text question on the machine. No Cash Back. “Nope!” I say and feel for the twenty bucks in my pocket and wonder why I hadn’t just paid with it. Would she ask, “Silver Certificate or just paper not really backed at Fort Knox?”
As all this complex of finance was happening a guy sneaks up behind me in the line and I cannot help but look at what he is buying. The guy in front of me bought three small jugs of lime juice, plastic, green, the shape and size of a lime. I smile and think of the very clever people who have to sit at desks and come up with ideas for packaging. Lime juice, says one of them, why not make it look like a lime. Brilliant says another and off it goes to the plastic extruding machine.
So the guy behind me puts a cold rectangular box on the black check out belt. It says, and I do not make this up. Frozen Paws. Is this, I think, a delicacy from the Orient? Have Chinese or Vietnamese or Korean peasants taken over the frozen food plants, cut up dogs and cats, cooked and flash frozen their parts? Are Paws eaten in sports bars all over the far east in lieu of Buffalo Wings? In a strange way I can accept this. Alas it is not the case. What it says on the rest of the box is even more strange and horrifying to me. Frozen Doggie Treats!
My mind immediately denies the equation. I cannot even entertain what a Frozen Dog Treat would be. I ask people at work and they seem at ease with the concept. After all says Mary, I feed my dog ice cubes; they’re cheaper and less fattening than bones. I look at her with a look that says, you’re worried about the fat intake of your dog? But she is as oblivious to me as the Check out counter clerk was to the Check out counter machine. Sure, says Roger, at the place where I shop, they have a whole frozen food section devoted to pets. I begin to realize that I have become the alien.
I am cautious. Still no one seems incredulous. No one even seems slightly disturbed. If this is all a cruel joke on Joe, why is no one laughing. When, I wonder, did I miss this section of the world order? I begin to question if it really was lime juice in the green plastic lime-like containers. I’m scared to wander in the aisles of the supermarket. Will I end up in the Frozen Long Pig section? What next, I think; frozen chum treats for deep sea fish. Hold on Charlie, we really do want fish with good taste!
The Great Frozen Food Chain of Being.
I had every intention of writing my CyberLogicus Philosphicum Part II here, but managed to screw myself into the ground so well, that I decided it was better to move on to other things until I could at least unstuff some of the fuzzy cotton that inhabits my thought and blocks my snapping neurons.
We had our usual Friday night Lackzoom meeting mayhem. Dean couldn’t get his phone to connect on accounta he never switched from Pulse to Tone on his phone service. His operating system and modem were having none of his Luddite backstabbing. So we never posted anything at all to the web site, our objective set back a week, hopefully less. We talked and planned. The more I tried to think about the fine psychological underpinnings of what we were doing, the more my mind began to resemble a neglected garage at a rummage sale. Yins are jist gonna hafta wait until I at least sweep the floor and pack some boxes before I open the doors again for business.
This left me high dry and without topic for this evenings turn at the Blog. Uninspired I went to the local supermarket to buy a Chicken Caesar Salad, (Yea! a Cowardly Caerar Romaine.I don’t think an anchovy passed within twelve miles of the dressing) and some fruit cut and encased in a plastic bowl, for lunch. I approached the final stages of check out. “Sir, do you have an Advantage Card?” (Dollar off the fruit it turns out) “Uh, yeah, just hold on a second.” It was buried deep behind a torn flap of the tanned cow skin that makes up my wallet. “Debit or Credit”, she asks, which plain confuses me because I have just told the damn machine, swipe, Pick ATM, Enter your secret code, I do. Why is she asking Debit or Credit? There are bad communications skills between the human check out clerk and the electronic check out device. “Debit.” I croak like a frog, even though I have assuredly chosen the ATM option. I am complex enough in this new cyber world to know that ATM is something that is at least akin to Debit. What, my brain scans, happens at the bank, between debit and credit. Am I making a terrible mistake? “Cash back?” she asks, even though I have already answered the blinking text question on the machine. No Cash Back. “Nope!” I say and feel for the twenty bucks in my pocket and wonder why I hadn’t just paid with it. Would she ask, “Silver Certificate or just paper not really backed at Fort Knox?”
As all this complex of finance was happening a guy sneaks up behind me in the line and I cannot help but look at what he is buying. The guy in front of me bought three small jugs of lime juice, plastic, green, the shape and size of a lime. I smile and think of the very clever people who have to sit at desks and come up with ideas for packaging. Lime juice, says one of them, why not make it look like a lime. Brilliant says another and off it goes to the plastic extruding machine.
So the guy behind me puts a cold rectangular box on the black check out belt. It says, and I do not make this up. Frozen Paws. Is this, I think, a delicacy from the Orient? Have Chinese or Vietnamese or Korean peasants taken over the frozen food plants, cut up dogs and cats, cooked and flash frozen their parts? Are Paws eaten in sports bars all over the far east in lieu of Buffalo Wings? In a strange way I can accept this. Alas it is not the case. What it says on the rest of the box is even more strange and horrifying to me. Frozen Doggie Treats!
My mind immediately denies the equation. I cannot even entertain what a Frozen Dog Treat would be. I ask people at work and they seem at ease with the concept. After all says Mary, I feed my dog ice cubes; they’re cheaper and less fattening than bones. I look at her with a look that says, you’re worried about the fat intake of your dog? But she is as oblivious to me as the Check out counter clerk was to the Check out counter machine. Sure, says Roger, at the place where I shop, they have a whole frozen food section devoted to pets. I begin to realize that I have become the alien.
I am cautious. Still no one seems incredulous. No one even seems slightly disturbed. If this is all a cruel joke on Joe, why is no one laughing. When, I wonder, did I miss this section of the world order? I begin to question if it really was lime juice in the green plastic lime-like containers. I’m scared to wander in the aisles of the supermarket. Will I end up in the Frozen Long Pig section? What next, I think; frozen chum treats for deep sea fish. Hold on Charlie, we really do want fish with good taste!