I love walking. It is, hands down, the best possible means of getting from point A (here defined as the place where you currently find yourself) to point B (here defined as that place where you wish to be); provided of course you don’t have to keep perambulating for more than thirty minutes, and that you don’t have too much stuff to carry.

If you’ll recall, I decided to try and see if Finnegans Wake could help ease the process of learning a foreign language. The plan was relatively simple, and at least to me, basically elegant; read Finnegans Wake until the mind enters a state of shock and hope that enables an easier acceptance of French. Lacking the funding to retain a proper sample group, I’d simply study French everyday, and alternate between days with and without mind jarrings.

What is it about Thomas Pynchon? I think a good place to start would be the confession of more than a simple smattering of envy, the man writes sentences that simply explode across the page, dipping, turning, weaving and bobbing; tackling so many myriad tangents that it sometimes amazes me that you can even follow it, and truthfully I have talked to a few people who claim that you can’t.

Avant-guard, quasi-political, art movement to join.

I am of course looking for one of the really good ones which cuddle in close to your current thinking and simply grant a new vocabulary with which to confront the ultimate mystery that has always been there, taunting you. I’ve done my research into the good ones of the past, read of their ideals and attempts at bringing them to fruition with a tender, and almost painful nostalgia.

even before i knew that it needed saving
i have wanted to save the world
or at least felt as though i could

these megalomaniac impulses just come sometimes
and i’m never sure which to follow
or which to trust

everything and nothing,
the great dichotomy
guess i’ll stick with that and listen to everything i can

the question that i have now
after years of thought
and after coming up with the answer

Yes, it was another evening where the cognoscenti gathered, and I was left to keep track of the fundamental imagery discussed. Gentle reader, understand that I will do my level best to attempt a synthesis of the ideals which bounced between the finite jester and the talking plant, but ultimately that becomes an impossibility.

Tired of this persistently bothersome life? Tired of getting your nerves frazzled every time you viddy the news? Well then take a deep refreshing breath and prepare to celebrate, because it’s been found.

The grand connection. If there is one.

Follow a yellow brick road of wandering on the ole’ Internet and you can end up in all manner of places. For that is what we are talking about here, that seemingly short search for some tidbit of information that will lead you to the strangest of places.

The more I read of Tim O’Brien, the more I respect his gift for the craft of writing. Not merely the way he can create an aura of tension which explodes in a simple phrase, or his knack for finding the right words for description; In the Lake of the Woods features a description of a character “building” a vodka tonic, which is perfectly suited to the tone of the moment. These things alone would be nearly enough for me to climb onto this soap-box and claim O’Brien as genius, but it the way that he draws attention to things like memory, the art of storytelling and all the little sins we cannot help but commit as humans that force me to rank him as one of the best authors currently at work.

Well, I’ve done it again. I (in my omnipresent, and sometimes damning, capacity as jester) have managed to take what should be a fairly simple task, a short (2-3 page) paper about a short story, and pushed it into the realm of the private metaphysics I am apparently compelled to write.

“ok, this just kind of flowed out of me this morning and I can’t quite decide what exactly to make of it, those of you who know the back-story on this will probably think it is even stranger than those of you who don’t, but why on earth I put the title in the middle of the poem I have no idea, at any rate… enjoy” -jester

The best short stories have something about them, a tightness, a sparse sense of prose that still allows for moments of lyricism. Dan Chaon has got the art right, Among the Missing is composed of an even dozen stories and there were only two of them that felt less than wonderfully fulfilled.

All the stories live firmly in the real world and yet manage to venture off towards all manner of strange possibilities without once stretching your sense of believability, although you do occasionally wonder how much you can trust what the characters tell you.

The Wisdom of Parasites. The Loom: A blog about life, past and future

As an adult, Ampulex compressa seems like your normal wasp, buzzing about and mating. But things get weird when it’s time for a female to lay an egg. She finds a cockroach to make her egg’s host, and proceeds to deliver two precise stings. The first she delivers to the roach’s mid-section, causing its front legs buckle. The brief paralysis caused by the first sting gives the wasp the luxury of time to deliver a more precise sting to the head.

The End of the Internet?

The nation’s largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online.

I want-

I want to know where to begin categorizing the things that I desire. I’d really like to be able to clearly enunciate the various objects and states of reality which constitute the hunger in my heart.

I want to find those who hunger as I do. I want to find the folks who get my jokes and find irresponsible pleasure in the fact they are funny despite, or perhaps because of, the thematic framework in which they work.

Maybe if I say that I’m only joking, and that this is really an in-depth review of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life; THE DVD! instead of more of the usual nonsense, you’ll stop in and read this. Maybe not, but I figured it was worth a shot, even if this is turning into something strange… ok… I’d like to call this intro- “homage! to the sort of state engendered after viewing Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life; THE DVD!” And now, more of the usual nonsense.