In the past, I’ve mentioned the writings of neuroscientist Antonio Damasio. I’ve always enjoyed his work and I just starting reading his third book, “Looking for Spinoza,” which intermingles reflections on the biology of emotion with ruminations on the life of the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza. At one point the book discusses the assassinations of a contemporary of Spinoza, Dutch political figure Jan De Witt, and his brother. When they were killed, and violently so (for presumed disloyalty to the nation), Spinoza’s faith in man’s ability to rise above his savagery was shattered. Here’s the passage describing the De Witt’s death.
Assailants clubbed and knifed both De Witts as they dragged them on the way to the gallows, and by the time they arrived there was no need to hang them anymore. They proceeded to undress the corpses, suspend them upside down, butcher-shop style, and quarter them. The fragments were sold as souvenirs, eaten raw, or even cooked, amid the most sickening merriment.
To be fair, if you’re going to eat somebody, you should cook them. It’s just good form.
There’s a new review of my album in the print mag, The Sioux City Weekender. Author Earl Horlyk links the album to the era captured in the Mad Men tv show and states,
“Forbis’ tribute to a jazzier time is more lounge than it is supper club and more a dank, after hours juke joint than the Copa.”
Stuart Gordon turned his 1985 cult classic film “Re-Animator” into a musical horror comedy with the help of producer Dean Schramm and witty composer/lyricist Mark Nutter. Based on an H.P Lovecraft tale, the film and play both involve a gifted but mad student who has found a way to bring the dead back to life. Only problem is that when they re-animate, they are pretty pissed off and braindead.
Just recently the play took home an armload of awards (six L.A. Weekly Theater Awards, an Ovation Award and L.A. Drama Critics Circle Awards for everything from Best Musical to Best Blood Effects) and deservedly so. The play does everything bloody right.
Just yesterday I was walking along and noticed this woman with really large breasts. She had some kind of writing on her t-shirt, so I figured I could disguise gawking at her breasts as the act of trying to read her shirt. I got up close enough and was surprised to find the shirt had some sort of biblical quotation on it.
It struck me that this could be a great way for churches to spread their message. They simply adorn a gospel verse on the chests of their large breasted members and they can be assured it will be observed and observed closely. People like me would be walking along thinking, “Look at the gazumbas on that whore! I’d like to stick it right in… Hey, it says Jesus died for my sins. I should look into that.”
Bollywood actress Meenakshi Thapar was kidnapped by two fellow actors, who then beheaded her after extorting money from her family, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Thapar, 26, appeared in an Indian horror film in 2011, where she met her alleged killers, actors Amit Jaiswal and Preeti Surin, the report says.
The two lured her on a trip, abducted her, and then demanded almost $50,000 from her family while threatening to make Thapar star in pornography, the report says.
Okey-dokey…
I’d actually really like to see an Indian horror film.
Here’s a new piece I’ve written called “The Dark House.” As you listen, you can imagine yourself exploring a decrepit old mansion. Wisps of fog filter through the air. Blasts of unexplained cold tickle your spine. Out of the corner of your eye you see fleeting glimpses of a young girl with snowy flesh. Are those human or animal moans you hear coming from… SUDDENLY AN ENRAGED INBRED HILLBILLY LEAPS OUT OF THE DARK WAVING A BLARING CHAINSAW THAT SAWS OFF YOUR ARM!!! HE SCREAMS, “RAAARHHHHGH!!!” YOU SHRIEK LIKE A LITTLE GIRL AS THE MECHANICAL BLADE COMES DOWN ON YOUR FACE AND EVERYTHING GOES BLACK!!!
One thing I’ve noticed in my language studies is that there are a lot of words in various languages that almost duplicate each other. For example, in english you can “eat” dinner, or you can “dine” on dinner, or you can “feast” on dinner. There are slightly different connotations to all three options, but in general they speak of they same thing.
I strikes me it would be worthwhile to create a basic language that has about 200 hundred words – enough to get a point across – and then teach that to everyone in the world. As such, people everywhere would be able to communicate on a very basic level. This is a language that would not have separate words for “eat”, for example. All tigers, house cats and lions would be referred to as “cat.” (Maybe you could apply an adjective like “big” to tell them apart.)
What kinds of words would be needed to communicate just the essentials? Here’s a small, partial list.
I
You
We
Eat
Go
Blowjob
Animal
Food
Light
Dark
Anus
Big
Small
Car
Happy
Sad
Inflatable sex doll
I’ve been admittedly lax in my german language studies as of late. Just yesterday I was musing that I’d like to find a way to make incremental progress in the language every day, even it was just five minutes worth of effort. I wondered whether there was some service that would send you a german word by email every day. And, of course, there is.
This business model, where people sign up for a daily email of information (plus an ad), has always interested me as a potential revenue stream. I like it because once you do the set up work – assemble the data and configure the email system – you just have to sit back and let the money role in. But this model only works with a particular kind of data – easily digestible, standalone data “nuggets.” A word a day is perfect because it takes little effort to “absorb” a word. Famous quotations – perhaps targeted to a particular religious of philosophical theme – are also good. So is “a joke a day.”.
I’ve been wondering if there’s some area I have knowledge in that I could convert into data nuggets delivered through email. Music theory? Not really… music knowledge doesn’t really break down to small chunks – to understand even basic ideas requires listening to examples, playing the ideas on an instrument etc, plus a bedrock of existing knowledge. Quotations? I don’t know many and it probably involves buying a database of some sort. Jokes? Perhaps I could do a “Dead Baby Joke” of the day? (My favorite: What’s the difference between a truck full of bowling balls and a truck full of dead babies? You can’t unload a truck full of bowling balls with a pitchfork.)
The L.A. Times has an interesting op/ed piece on the sex life of ants. (The Times is always taking an unflinching look at controversial issues no other paper would touch.) The events, post coitus, for male ants leave something to be desired.
If two ants do manage to connect, the much-smaller male attaches himself to the female and inseminates her, whereupon his genitalia explode and he falls to the ground, lifeless.
A while back I mused on the possibility of computers generating non-fiction content. I now learn from Wired magazine that there are already several companies engineering software that produces news articles. The article profiles a company called Narrative Science.
Narrative Science’s writing engine requires several steps. First, it must amass high-quality data. That’s why finance and sports are such natural subjects: Both involve the fluctuations of numbers—earnings per share, stock swings, ERAs, RBI….But how to turn that analysis into prose? The company has hired a team of “meta-writers,” trained journalists who have built a set of templates. They work with the engineers to coach the computers to identify various “angles” from the data. Who won the game? Was it a come-from-behind victory or a blowout? Did one player have a fantastic day at the plate? The algorithm considers context and information from other databases as well: Did a losing streak end?
Then comes the structure. Most news stories, particularly about subjects like sports or finance, hew to a pretty predictable formula, and so it’s a relatively simple matter for the meta-writers to create a framework for the articles. To construct sentences, the algorithms use vocabulary compiled by the meta-writers. (For baseball, the meta-writers seem to have relied heavily on famed early-20th-century sports columnist Ring Lardner. People are always whacking home runs, swiping bags, tallying runs, and stepping up to the dish.) The company calls its finished product “the narrative.”
This maps closely to my presumption of how such an idea would work. Take raw data, massage it into human readable text and you’ve got something fairly digestible. I could also foresee a process where a computer generates the basic text and a human finishes it, adding some literary flourish.
Old science fiction is filled with the trope about robots taking everyone’s jobs. I think people in the artistic fields have longed presumed they would be immune. I doubt it. They will fall, bloodied and fatigued on the battlefield, and the robots will have their way with their women. It is the future.
