Real Women Date Penguins

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 20:46:12 GMT

The places we have known do not belong only to the world of space on which we map them for our own convenience. They were only a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time; the memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years.

--Marcel Proust

Sat, 23 Sep 2006 19:40:35 GMT

O for a muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 14:58:52 GMT

the the middle of the night i woke up and realized i was declining the first declension feminine definite article under my breath while i slept.

Today is a day of first days

Sat, 26 Aug 2006 22:01:07 GMT

Faces familiar and otherwise are falling together. A child peers at me through the glass window of the computer lab. He smiles when I smile.
It's here it's here it's here it's here. Make screams at it. It won't go away.
This is the fruition of our maturation. We have come this far and we must face that fact.
They said wear a Bethany t-shirt or sweatshirt, but I don't have one. Can I still get my picture taken and sent out to all those perspectives, those who will start their first days in later years?
Greek will handle itself, just as the Greeks were the Greeks. When in Greece. Walk like an Egyptian.
The lab is open all day. Hey look at these signs.
One by one, we filter back into existence. We become what is expected, yet again. We learn we are not alone.

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 03:46:42 GMT

everything is the most amazing thing ever

Oh, My Bandit Queen

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 13:56:43 GMT

Many times I start this but end up not finishing. It's that little "x" in the corner, up there. It's too tempting.

Happy Birthday

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 15:52:08 GMT

Autobiographia Literaria
by: Frank O'Hara

When I was a child
I played by myself in a
corner of the schoolyard
all alone.

I hated dolls and I
hated games, animals were
not friendly and birds
flew away.

If anyone was looking
for me I hid behind a
tree and cried out "I am
an orphan."

And here I am, the
center of all beauty!
writing these poems!
Imagine!

The Contemplation of All Things Rational and Good: Towards a More Communicative LiveJournal

Thu, 15 Jun 2006 21:03:19 GMT

Most of my recent posts have been the livejournal equivalent of a monosyllabic grunt when asked how one's day is going; they say something but don't really say anything. That is to say, they are a form of expression, but they lack any actual communication. I started contemplating this while at work today, and I realized that in this light, my posts have been no different than the "true blogging" of emo kids and churlish adolescents. In principle, both types of posting are frighteningly similar. So I thought I might try to change that.
And, since communication is one of the basic human drives (the others: respiration, consumption, copulation; although all three of these usually involve some form of communication, even at its most basic and primitive levels), I decided to actually try and change that instead of just thinking about trying to change that.
I hope, so far, it has worked.
In the contemplation of all things rational and good in relation to a more communicative livejournal, it struck me that perhaps there was a question of modality at work here. Exactly how "real" can one expect things to get in livejournal, or in any blog for that matter? And, furthermore, without knowing how "real" the information is, how can we hope to recieve anything rational and good from the fruit of its vines? Let us take on this temporary definition of a livejournal "reality" until a better one poses itself: the "real" is whatever is felt by the user. Therefore, reality would be the factual and proper documentation of the user's feelings into the electronic livejournal environment. But this doesn't really solve anything; every single post that properly expresses the user's oftentimes complex emotional state of being would be considered real. No, there are higher forces at work than simply the user. Since livejournal is a public or semi-public service, we must also consider how that information is communicated to all other users, which brings us back to the beginning.
Livejournal is a journal, true; but the fact that the user's entries can be read by most anybody, even complete strangers, points toward a necessity for broader and more exoteric means of communication. This is, of course, accepting the assumption that one is using livejournal at least partly as a means of communication.
However, there is a slight problem of a socio-cultural basis that comes with the onset of the Information Age. What the parents would write privately in their actual journal, the kids are now writing in a more public setting. This is the foundation of one of the media-popular myspace problems that teeagers are experiencing; many teens are placing their personal information into an open setting, where it can be easily recieved by extremely dangerous, evil, and otherwise malvolent predators and molestors. Of course, the media itself may be partly to blame for the problems of information overexposure.
I digress.
What was once private is now being shown publicly, wittingly or otherwise. What was once written by one person and meant for the eyes, mind, and understanding of that same person is now being transmitted around the world instantaneously. But it is still the same type of private information, something that only certain persons would have the inside knowledge to fully understand.
Quite often, the teenage problem is the opposite: nobody, cries the user in many different ways, nobody, not even my closest friends, nobody understands me. Let me propose that this is a bigger problem in the mind of the user than it should be. If nobody understands the user, perhaps it is the user's own lack of the communication skills necessary to express themselves. If nobody understands the user, perhaps the user should employ his or her words towards fixing the rift in communication, instead of escrying how impossible the rift in communication is to overcome. It is the equivalent of a man being stuck in a ten-foot hole with fifty planks of wood, a hammer, and nails. Instead of building a ladder to climb out, he fastens a few planks of wood into a sign, on which he writes (to any passing stranger), "Help, I'm stuck in this hole."
I believe that it all boils down to whether or not we wish for livejournal to actually be a form of expression and communication. There are many journals which do, and they perform the task very well. There are others (myself included) which proffer the idea that they do, but then don't quite proffer the proper communication that they desire. And there are others dedicated simply to the art of journaling; if anyone stumbles across it, then so be it.
It is my belief that journaling is something that should be practiced (initially, at least) with oneself. It is an open dialogue between what is in one's mind and what one can express in words. As Flannery O'Connor writes, "Free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man." Journaling aids in contemplating and understanding all of the various conflicting wills. As such, it would be nearly inconcievable to let any outside influence in upon these wills until they have reached some form of resolution. To do so would allow the many wills of another to cloud and flaw your own wills, and then they would no longer be strictly your wills, but another's wills as well.
Don't get me wrong. There are times when it is necessary to ask another's opinion or guidance before a resolution of wills has occurred. But to do so without one first having done his or her own thinking would be dangerous. We are, after all, individuals by nature. It is our own decision (conscious or not) that meshes us together.
Back to modality. How can we extract a universal "real" from the communication of one's private thoughts and feelings? Even when we write to ourselves, we oftentimes look back on it and wonder what in the world we could have meant. As Robert Browning once aptly said, "When I wrote that poem, only God and I knew what it meant. Now only God does." So what is "real" (henceforth what is therefore a priori "rational" and "good") must apply to a larger world outside of the user, and it also must be able to be understood at least somewhat outside of the context of the time of its expression. Therefore, the shorthand note I wrote to myself four months ago, and recently discovered last month ("tl f.b. / aws stay") would not be a rational or good livejournal communique. When I myself cannot understand how I expressed myself, how can I expect anyone else to interpret the information properly?
Let us now undertake a proper examination of the various levels of modality at play in an average livejournal post. The ultimate modality, or the "real," is the user experiencing certain qualia in their conscious living. The actual experience represents an extremely high modality. From there, we take steps removing the user and the experience itself from the original high modality:

*User experiences certain qualia. (high modality)
*User interprets qualia in a specific way, influenced by belif systems, past experience, mood, etc.
*User communicates those interpretations to him/herself through the process of thinking and reacting.
*User communicates those interpretations into a computer.
--further steps of removal from modality depending upon the quality of thought transfer; typos, grammatical errors, not being able to find the right word, confusion of actual experience and biased memory of experience, etc.
*Information is read by another user.
*Other user interprets information in a specific way, influenced by belief systems, past experience, mood, etc.

This reveals at least five steps of removal from the high modality of the "real," if there are no typos or other errors in communication, and if the user is able to communicate what he or she wishes perfectly. The size of the steps of removal depend mainly on the posting user, but also slightly on the receiving user. If the posting user wishes to communicate effectively, he or she should see to it that the size of the steps of removal is made as little as possible. Obviously, no form of communication can be strictly 100% "real." Communication involves interpretation and effort on both ends, and interpretation is based upon many factors; quite the same factors that influence one's opinion of a natural proof of a God existing: some say we can understand through nature that a God does exist, and for quite the same reasons others can say we can understand through nature that a God cannot exist. Using our own interpretations of nature, who is to say which is truly correct?
The standard recipe for communication has usually been viewed as such:

Writer ----> TEXT <---- Reader

But Frank Conroy has posited a more appropriate model, which I adhere to and will print here:

Writer ----------->
**TEXT**
<----------- Reader

The spaces marked with asterisks are what Conroy calls, "the zone;" or, where the efforts of the one communicating and the one being communicated to meet. The writer puts effort into the creating the text, and the reader should put effort into reading it. The reader should not simply swallow the words, but digest them as well. All of this action centers around the text, thereby revealing its utmost importance in the communicative process.
At the same time, I propose that the majority of the burden of proper communication is placed upon the writer. We all must shoulder that burden, if we wish to communicate properly.
As for the reader, many people say that communicating is also listening. Most of those people, however, only wish this to be true because they are speaking.
I believe that I have once again digressed. What I truly meant to express today was the concept that I myself should post more communicative entries.
Whether or not I have succeeded is up to you to prove.

Out of my mind

Thu, 08 Jun 2006 18:49:27 GMT

today i held in my hands a book that is older than shakespeare

Tue, 23 May 2006 21:53:35 GMT

there is far much more pain caused from those struggling desperately to love than those struggling deperately to hate

Are we not men?

Mon, 08 May 2006 18:40:13 GMT

We must teach ourselves to read and write properly, because no one else can do it for us.

Books Read 2005-2006

Thu, 04 May 2006 17:04:48 GMT

The book year ends in April and begins in May. Because I say so, that's why.

1. May: The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
2. May: A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
3. May: Stranger Than Fiction – Chuck Palahniuk
4. May: Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
5. May: Tumble Home – Amy Hempel
6. June: Survivor – Chuck Palahniuk
7. June: The Man Who Turned Into Himself – David Ambrose
8. June: Chronicles Volume One – Bob Dylan
9. June: Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
10. June: The Dog of the Marriage – Amy Hempel
11. June: The War of the Worlds – H. G. Wells
12. June: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Jonathan Safran Foer
13. June: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – C. S. Lewis
14. July: Complete Poems – Stephen Crane
15. July: On Bullshit – Harry G. Frankfurt
16. July: Ulysses – James Joyce
17. July: Haunted – Chuck Palahniuk
18. July: The Dhammapada: Verses on the Way – The Buddha, trans. Glenn Wallis
19. July: Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way – Bruce Campbell
20. August: Glengarry Glen Ross – David Mamet
21. August: Sonnets From the Portuguese – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
22. August: The Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
23. August: The Crazed – Ha Jin
24. August: The Tenth Man – Graham Greene
25. August: Collected Poems – Philip Larkin
26. September: The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
27. September: The Body Artist – Don DeLillo
28. September: The Cryptogram – David Mamet
29. September: Spoon River Anthology – Edgar Less Masters
30. September: Poetics – Aristotle
31. September: Oedipus Rex – Sophocles
32. September: The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
33. September: Toothpaste for Dinner – Drew
34. September: The Miracle Worker – William Gibson
35. October: Stop-Time – Frank Conroy
36. October: The Last American Man – Elizabeth Gilbert
37. November: The Spice Box of Earth – Leonard Cohen
38. November: Not so Deep as a Well – Dorothy Parker
39. November: Barabbas – Par Lagerkvist
40. November: New and Selected Poems – Samuel Menashe
41. December: Population: 485 – Michael Perry
42. December: Chuck Dugan is AWOL – Eric Chase Anderson
43. December: Kiss Me Like a Stranger – Gene Wilder
44. December: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers
45. January: The Man Who Was Thursday – G. K. Chesterton
46. January: Everyman – Anonymous
47. January: A Scanner Darkly – Philip K. Dick
48. January: Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel
49. February: Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
50. February: Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said – Philip K. Dick
51. February: The Work of Hans Holbein – Hans Holbein
52. February: Time Out of Joint – Philip K. Dick
53. February: A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
54. February: Western Attitudes Toward Death – Philippe Aries
55. February: The Dance of Death – Hans Holbein
56. February: This is Not a Pipe – Michel Foucault
57. March: Death, Grief, and Mourning – Geoffrey Gorer
58. March: In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
59. March: Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
60. March: Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
61. March: The Zoo Story – Edward Albee
62. March: House of Life – Dante Gabriel Rossetti
63. March: Other Voices, Other Rooms – Truman Capote
64. April: Six Characters in Search of an Author – Luigi Pirandello
65. April: The Warden – Anthony Trollope
66. April: The Scarlet Pimpernel – Baroness Orczy
67. April: The Situation is Hopeless, but Not Serious – Paul Watzlawick
68. April: To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
69. April: The Good Woman of Setzuan – Bertolt Brecht
70. April: The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
71. April: Stiff – Mary Roach

Not quite as many as last year.

The Buried Life: A public reading of selections Jacob Kempfert's latest book

Mon, 01 May 2006 05:07:23 GMT

Monday, May 8th at 7:30pm, in the Lab Coffee Shop on the beautiful campus of Bethany Lutheran College.
Following the reading will be the PUBLIC PREMIERE of Jacob Kempfert's latest ten-minute play, "Commstock!" The private invite-only performance at the HoJo 120 Performing Arts Center in Fargo, ND recieved RAVE REVIEWS!

There will also be snacks.

Be there, or be a real jerk.

The Human Wreckage

Sun, 16 Apr 2006 17:55:18 GMT

For unlike a wing or a piece of fuselage, a corpse will float to the water's surface.

A Bag of Pinot with a Glass of Lunch

Fri, 07 Apr 2006 20:14:30 GMT

This afternoon I recieved a transmission of the corporeal nature: no more relying on vacuous ethereal non-entities as carriers of communication. We shall be vindicated! Let us liberate ourselves from the ties that bind, the elecrodoublespeak of nonliteral vagrancies! Let us no longer trust ourselves to a series of ones and zeros,
THESE ARE OUR SOULS, AFTER ALL
and nobody is going to stop you.
In other words, the propagation of snail mail will do more to heal the sick and brighten a day than will a thousand computer programmers hacking away at keyboards in darkened room, just like the monkeys that will one day
WRITE HAMLET.

My sincerest thanks are due to
BECKY
for freeing all of us from our prisons

Everything's good.
Everything?
Everything. Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy. It's only that. That's all, that's all! If anyone finds out he'll become happy at once, that minute.

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 17:28:53 GMT

O carrion, who art no longer man,
Who will hence keep thee company?
Whatever issues from thy liquors,
Worms engendered by the stench
Of thy vile carrion flesh.

(AND)

the worms which devour cadavers do not come from the earth but from within the body

(AND)

i think, i think, i think o god is this what is happening to me?

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 16:46:54 GMT

The monitors make noise like international morse code. From somewhere deep within the structure all I hear is dash dot dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dash dot dash dot dot dot dot dot dash dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot dash dot dot dash dot dot dot dash dash
and i'm not exactly sure what it's supposed to mean because i do not speak morse code, silly.
every night i go on stage, i die at least once. sometimes it takes your breath away, when you think about it. but i can no longer prevent my death any more than i can prevent my heart from beating; beleive me, i've tried.
stop, heart.
HEART: dot dash dot dash dot dash dot dash dot dot dot dot dot dash
and if my sources at wikipedia are correct, this translates roughly to--
HEART: AAAAHA
So when your heart beats normally, as it should (dot dash) it is screaming at you (AAAAAAAAA)
and when your heart flutters and threatens to stop (dot dot dot dot dot dash) it is doing nothing more than laughing at you (HA)

it is time to take back our lives from those who would spirit them away from us. it is time to take back our lives from ourselves.

This show used to be funny

Mon, 27 Mar 2006 04:36:36 GMT

but now it's kind of pathetic.

God bless America.

Wed, 22 Mar 2006 20:35:00 GMT

happy birthday to the man i almost met once when i stood in his office in new york city

Finally, an undertaker calls me back

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 22:35:16 GMT

OKAY SO SHE IS SITTING ON THE FLOOR OF THE HOTEL ROOM AND SHE IS TRYING TO FIGURE OUT THE COMBINATION TO OPEN HER BROTHER'S SUITCASE BECAUSE SHE THINKS HE STOLE SOMETHING IMPORTANT AND IS KEEPING IT THERE, BUT WHAT IS SHE THINKING ABOUT AS SHE DOES THIS?

Sun, 19 Mar 2006 01:21:51 GMT

THE RULES
1. Post five weird/random facts about yourself.
2. At the end of the list, tag five people you want to do this too.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. I have spent the entire week trying to figure out how to kill a character in my novel. It can not involve mutilation, suicide, or an autopsy. He's 18.

2. Yesterday was Kafkaesque: donating plasma for the first time, talking to both Andy and Tierney for the first time in ages (and Tierney being drunk at the time), and a a deja vu within a deja vu.

3. I hate Americans. Not all of them. But most.

4. Some people say they are afraid of being alone. I think I am afraid of not being alone.

5. My first waking memory from my time on this mortal coil is the Christmas tree falling on me when I was 2.

Um. Okay. I don't think I have even five friends on livejournal, and one of them has already done this. Therefore I am waiving my rights to a preliminary trial, and I am asking that the waiver be effectuated.

Caesar!

Wed, 15 Mar 2006 15:51:26 GMT

(beware the ides of March!)

Ferdinand de Saussure's Abstraction of Language, continued

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 21:47:21 GMT

It is always the physical aspect that people are expecting and wish to know. The same goes for people and for words. With a word, the word is the symbol of the thing itself, a cultural representation; the letters combined are a vehicle for something that cannot otherwise be easily expressed or understood; for example, the word "love" and love itself. The same with the human body: it is a vehicle, a means of conveying the deep surging feelings, ideas, and concepts within. But all too often this is completely ignored; just as when we read we don't think about the words being abstract representations, but instead we form images of the real in our minds, so we do with fellow humans and ourselves. We give more importance to the signifier than the signified.
It is all a search for meaning at the easiest possible convenience.
Let us take the word "table," as well as the real table that is sitting in front of me.
The word is a signifier for an actual table of specific (or nonspecific) variety, kind, make, or model, depending upon whatever further signifiers are applied to it (or are made absent). In our minds, we automatically take the printed word "table" to mean a real table of actual substance, without even realizing it.
And what of that real, actual table I am sitting at? Could that not as well stand for something else? Could not this table I am currently writing on be a vehicle for some higher meaning or concept? Do we ever really look deep enough to validate or negate that thought? Or, as a reader deep within the confines of a book, lost within its words, do we just take for granted whatever is before us and not question what is put in front of us? But in order to find a deeper meaning from the real table in front of me, I must take that table in context, just as the true meaning of the word "table" is made truer by any adjectives tacked on to it, any situation in which it is used.
So what is the context behind this real table that I hunch over? Its location in the room, color, height, dimensions, the events that brought me to sit and write on this particular table at this particular time (in fact, all aspects of the table's position in space and time must be taken into account), all other past events or relations connected to this table, all other items related to the table in context and connotation currently, in the past, and proposed in the future (chairs, this napkin basket, salt and pepper shakers, books, food items, etc.), and a myriad of anything else related to this table and my personal understanding of what this table IS.
And now we see this table does have a deeper meaning and significance, albeit one that I have applied to it in trying to find its deeper meaning and significance.
But isn't that the same level of modality and meaning that a word has? It only has as much meaning as is given it and applied to it by cultural and social endowment. As Twain writes, "To the uneducated, an "A" is just three sticks."
And thus it is, as well, with humanity, and each specific person within that great vernacular. Meaning has been given to us by a higher calling, a higher power, a higher purpose. Does the word "table" recognize its point and purpose? No, not any more than an actual table does. And here is the difference: humanity is a collection of thinking, feeling, sentient beings capable of rationalization and self-realization. But that realization has meaning only when we realize what meaning it has been given to us.

O Death! Thou comest when I had thee least in mind!

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 17:17:05 GMT

In the nineteenth century death appeared omnipresent: funeral processions, mourning clothes, the spread of cemeteries and of their surface area, visits and pilgrimages to tombs, the cult of memory. But did this pomp not hide the weakening of old familiarities, which alone were really deeply rooted? In any case, this eloquent decor of death toppled in our day, and death has become unnamable. Everything henceforth goes on as if neither I nor those who are dear to me are any longer mortal. Technically, we admit that we might die; we take out insurance on our lives to protect our families from poverty. But really, at heart we feel we are non-mortals. And surprise! Our life is not as a result gladdened!

--Philippe Aries, "Western Attitudes Toward Death"

alas, babylon

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 16:57:40 GMT

biggest disappointment of yesterday: my book didn't come.
second biggest disappointment of yesterday: those pictures didn't show up on my livejournal post. (James Joyce and "Ulysses," respectively)

all in all, a pretty good day.