8.15.2008
Afterthought.
A few posts ago I wrote about having "to nimbly negotiate a panoply of Skyllas and Charybdises", and now realize that I could have instead invoked a Star Wars reference, bringing up having "to maneuver like Han Solo in the Millennium Falcon through an asteroid field, with a chortling wookie and psychologically-fraught, golden robot in tow". This would have been, I think, just as effective, and am almost sad to have pretermitted it.
8.14.2008
Odelaly, Golly What a Day: Strange Sleep and St. Maximillian
My day started at 3am.
No pity, please; that's not why I'm telling you. And anyway, it's not that bad given the circumstances surrounding my day's start.
Those circumstances were as follows:
I went to bed around 3pm yesterday and slept until 1:45am, at which point I finally took my contacts out (Pity me, do; please), then tried to sleep more, sloth that I am. After an hour and 15 minutes of listening and quietly snickering to myself at Daniel's elaborate and monstrous snoring patterns, I gave up. Hence the fantastically early starting time of my day.
At this point, I started goofing around on the internet, writing blog posts that did not need to exist in this universe, and almost became disgusted with my own writing voice, a dangerous state to be in for one who likes to write.
Then, after I did violence to my shins on my morning run, I was in the process of stretching in the ante-chamber to Bilbo's library (the room outside my room) and fell asleep mid-stretch. It's strange to fall asleep smack dab in the middle of something in which one is actively and consciously involved.
The one other time I remember that happening to me is when I was tidying up my senior thesis the night before it was due. I woke up the next morning livid and laughing: I'd been had by the universe. Ah! It makes me laugh even now. I remember spending most of the day elatedly running around campus, meeting my parents, making cursory jokes, attending to senior presentations, frantically working on my own presentation, all with a loose tie around my neck. Ah, life.
Anyway, this morning, the morning that started at 3am, the morning I fell asleep mid-stretch, I woke up just in time to drape myself quickly and wildly in a dress-shirt (one of two clean shirts in my war-torn room) and book it over to Mass, incidentally wearing no socks.
Here's the part I wanted to record here in my blog post: the part of my day that all this has been leading up to.
Walking up the steps to the church in dishabille despite my nice clothes, standing in perfect symmetry with the building, looking down the center aisle at the priest at the front of the church who was leading the service to which I was 3 minutes late, while yet outside, I said to myself, surprised, "Homeboy's wearing red."
The priest's vestments, which are usually green, were red today. Quelle surprise!
I later found out why.
Apparently, of the four vestment colors: green, red, white, and purple, priests wear red whenever the feast day is in honor of a saint who was martyred. Today's saint is St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe, who was a 19th/20th-century Polish martyr. I encourage you to read the blurb they have about him here.
No pity, please; that's not why I'm telling you. And anyway, it's not that bad given the circumstances surrounding my day's start.
Those circumstances were as follows:
I went to bed around 3pm yesterday and slept until 1:45am, at which point I finally took my contacts out (Pity me, do; please), then tried to sleep more, sloth that I am. After an hour and 15 minutes of listening and quietly snickering to myself at Daniel's elaborate and monstrous snoring patterns, I gave up. Hence the fantastically early starting time of my day.
At this point, I started goofing around on the internet, writing blog posts that did not need to exist in this universe, and almost became disgusted with my own writing voice, a dangerous state to be in for one who likes to write.
Then, after I did violence to my shins on my morning run, I was in the process of stretching in the ante-chamber to Bilbo's library (the room outside my room) and fell asleep mid-stretch. It's strange to fall asleep smack dab in the middle of something in which one is actively and consciously involved.
The one other time I remember that happening to me is when I was tidying up my senior thesis the night before it was due. I woke up the next morning livid and laughing: I'd been had by the universe. Ah! It makes me laugh even now. I remember spending most of the day elatedly running around campus, meeting my parents, making cursory jokes, attending to senior presentations, frantically working on my own presentation, all with a loose tie around my neck. Ah, life.
Anyway, this morning, the morning that started at 3am, the morning I fell asleep mid-stretch, I woke up just in time to drape myself quickly and wildly in a dress-shirt (one of two clean shirts in my war-torn room) and book it over to Mass, incidentally wearing no socks.
Here's the part I wanted to record here in my blog post: the part of my day that all this has been leading up to.
Walking up the steps to the church in dishabille despite my nice clothes, standing in perfect symmetry with the building, looking down the center aisle at the priest at the front of the church who was leading the service to which I was 3 minutes late, while yet outside, I said to myself, surprised, "Homeboy's wearing red."
The priest's vestments, which are usually green, were red today. Quelle surprise!
I later found out why.
Apparently, of the four vestment colors: green, red, white, and purple, priests wear red whenever the feast day is in honor of a saint who was martyred. Today's saint is St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe, who was a 19th/20th-century Polish martyr. I encourage you to read the blurb they have about him here.
Oh dear.
After looking over the previous post, I genuinely, non-jokingly think I may have a personal/psychological problem.
Volition-Piloted Literature. Chapter 2 Voting Results Tie-Breaker Solution Voting Results.
Well, you're a refractory bunch.
The only definite vote I can count for one of the proposed options is Amy's vote for #2.
The rest of you either proposed your own options, voted for more than one, or were downright vague.
No, no, I'm not upset. I enjoy the challenge.
If I count all of these heterodox votes, and do so liberally, the score is something like this:
Solution #1a: 2 (I take Derek's "casting lots" suggestion as tacitly voting for this solution.)
Solution #1b: 1
Solution #1c: 1
Solution #2: 1 (Thank you, Amy.)
Solution #3a: 1.5 (The .5 here is an approximation of Portia's hesitancy in writing "but...". Also, I can glean only clever derision from Leisy concerning the 3s, and so have not counted her as voting for them.)
Solution #3b: 1.5
Solution #4 (proposed by Portia): 2
Solution #5 (proposed by Jenny): 1
This, as you can see, is hairy. But, of course, that's the fun.
I am torn. Part of me wants to go with the spirit of your commentary and then quickly choose which course seems best given that. But this is not spoken to or provided for by our project's specifications. If we discard voting procedure whenever it strikes us as expedient or even as wise, then we undermine the very virtues of adopting an unbiased and formally structured voting procedure.
It reminds one of the agony Thomas Jefferson experienced in shaking proverbial hands with Napoleon Bonaparte as per the Louisiana Purchase: he said of the purchase that "perhaps nothing since the revolutionary war has produced more uneasy sensations through the body of the nation." Uneasy sensations were in him too. His personal qualms, he said, were due to the fact that the constitution did not provide for any such purchase, however wise it may have been. Strict constructionist that he was, this posed a serious problem.
So to for me does how to resolve our tie pose a spiritual dilemma. The stakes in the present case are not so high as they were for Jefferson, but they are there.
Where Jefferson risked the freedom of his nation for its good, I risk the fun of my project for its.
Half of the fun for me of Volition-Piloted Literature; nay, of Jonathan Charles Wright's Blog, is the technical prolixity it generates and the difficulties met by faithfully adhering thereto. To move according to rigidly defined rules, yet managing to nimbly negotiate a panoply of Skyllas and Charybdises, themselves perhaps constituted by the rigidly defined rules by which I operate: this, this is fun.
I feel myself lapsing into my Roast Rebuttal Speech from about 6 months ago. Allow me to quote myself:
May Plato's beard grow long, so that once we take Ockham's razor to it, it will provide for a more difficult and an ultimately more satisfying shave!
But I digress.
It looks as if, technically, I am committed to going with Solution #2, since it was the only one to get a single, definite vote.
However, looks can be deceiving.
If I am ultimately concerned with adhering to the stated specifications and rules governing Volition-Piloted Literature, then little problem actually exists, since there are no stated specifications or rules governing what counts as a vote or what course to adopt in resolving ties. The whole tie-breaking process was just an entertaining run-around for the sake of the fun of formality.
As such, I can technically do whatever the hell I want in the present case.
Now, I would hate to nullify all your comments and votes just by doing something arbitrary, so I'll do whatever the hell I want within the spirit of your expressed interests and desires {and luckily for me, following the spirit of the law does not here entail flouting the letter, as it may have for Jefferson [unless we adopt a strict constructionist position concerning Volition-Piloted Literature's specifications and rules, since then whether the specifications and rules fail to speak to a given topic avails executives of those specifications and rules little (however, the specifications and rules in question are so meager, that I do not think a strict constructionist position is in any way plausible for us; how much have we done in the name of our Volition-Piloted Literature project that has not been provided for us by our specifications and rules!?)]}
If we consolidate our loosey-goosey votes for tie-breaker solution by number (disregarding the subcategories represented by letters) we have:
Solution #1: 4
Solution #2: 1
Solution #3: 3
Solution #4: 2
Solution #5: 1
Now, consolidating these into two larger categories of "Writing one Chapter 3" and "Writing two Chapter 3s", which seems to me the crux of the issue, (and ruling out #5, since it would entail breaking laws and/or bones,) we have:
Write one Chapter 3s: 5
Write two Chapter 3s: 5
Oh, now you've done it.
I foresaw this problem.
The problem in voting on how to resolve a tie is, you might end up with another, bigger, more annoying tie.
Because, (A) I am almost actually sick of this blog post (fun, remember, is the thing tying me to adhering to technical prolixity) and (B) we're already being loosey-goosey, I am adopting the following rough-and-ready method for solving this meta-tie:
I am counting Derek's disparaging comments against 1b as being a negative vote (-1) and I am glossing over Portia's hesitancy in saying 3 is "fun, but...", which makes it 4 to 6 (or so), and thus I am going to write two Chapter 3s, the writing of which, in my prescience, I see entailing a host of problems itself.
But again, that's the fun.
At least one Chapter 3 will be posted by Monday; both by next Wednesday.
The only definite vote I can count for one of the proposed options is Amy's vote for #2.
The rest of you either proposed your own options, voted for more than one, or were downright vague.
No, no, I'm not upset. I enjoy the challenge.
If I count all of these heterodox votes, and do so liberally, the score is something like this:
Solution #1a: 2 (I take Derek's "casting lots" suggestion as tacitly voting for this solution.)
Solution #1b: 1
Solution #1c: 1
Solution #2: 1 (Thank you, Amy.)
Solution #3a: 1.5 (The .5 here is an approximation of Portia's hesitancy in writing "but...". Also, I can glean only clever derision from Leisy concerning the 3s, and so have not counted her as voting for them.)
Solution #3b: 1.5
Solution #4 (proposed by Portia): 2
Solution #5 (proposed by Jenny): 1
This, as you can see, is hairy. But, of course, that's the fun.
I am torn. Part of me wants to go with the spirit of your commentary and then quickly choose which course seems best given that. But this is not spoken to or provided for by our project's specifications. If we discard voting procedure whenever it strikes us as expedient or even as wise, then we undermine the very virtues of adopting an unbiased and formally structured voting procedure.
It reminds one of the agony Thomas Jefferson experienced in shaking proverbial hands with Napoleon Bonaparte as per the Louisiana Purchase: he said of the purchase that "perhaps nothing since the revolutionary war has produced more uneasy sensations through the body of the nation." Uneasy sensations were in him too. His personal qualms, he said, were due to the fact that the constitution did not provide for any such purchase, however wise it may have been. Strict constructionist that he was, this posed a serious problem.
So to for me does how to resolve our tie pose a spiritual dilemma. The stakes in the present case are not so high as they were for Jefferson, but they are there.
Where Jefferson risked the freedom of his nation for its good, I risk the fun of my project for its.
Half of the fun for me of Volition-Piloted Literature; nay, of Jonathan Charles Wright's Blog, is the technical prolixity it generates and the difficulties met by faithfully adhering thereto. To move according to rigidly defined rules, yet managing to nimbly negotiate a panoply of Skyllas and Charybdises, themselves perhaps constituted by the rigidly defined rules by which I operate: this, this is fun.
I feel myself lapsing into my Roast Rebuttal Speech from about 6 months ago. Allow me to quote myself:
"Faced with a given problem, I oft intentionally leave its terms undefined; I allow ill-made presuppositions to lie dormant; I go out of my way to accept patently faulty interpretations for the mere sake of applying my categorical proficiency, to make the specification of abstract parameters along with the act of conceiving and deciding the nature and significance of a given theoretical issue all the more entertaining and glorious. I am a rat who constructs the maze from which I intend to escape; I am the ninja who refuses to wear a gun when faced with Robert E. Lee and his tightly regimented yet belligerent Confederate army (I pass over why a ninja is fighting the Confederates in this instance); I am the ballerina who gets wildly drunk 30 minutes before opening night; I bomb the hell out of foreign nations simply to coordinate sending them aid with swift dictatorial rigor!"And so on. Suffice it to say, complexity is fun.
May Plato's beard grow long, so that once we take Ockham's razor to it, it will provide for a more difficult and an ultimately more satisfying shave!
But I digress.
It looks as if, technically, I am committed to going with Solution #2, since it was the only one to get a single, definite vote.
However, looks can be deceiving.
If I am ultimately concerned with adhering to the stated specifications and rules governing Volition-Piloted Literature, then little problem actually exists, since there are no stated specifications or rules governing what counts as a vote or what course to adopt in resolving ties. The whole tie-breaking process was just an entertaining run-around for the sake of the fun of formality.
As such, I can technically do whatever the hell I want in the present case.
Now, I would hate to nullify all your comments and votes just by doing something arbitrary, so I'll do whatever the hell I want within the spirit of your expressed interests and desires {and luckily for me, following the spirit of the law does not here entail flouting the letter, as it may have for Jefferson [unless we adopt a strict constructionist position concerning Volition-Piloted Literature's specifications and rules, since then whether the specifications and rules fail to speak to a given topic avails executives of those specifications and rules little (however, the specifications and rules in question are so meager, that I do not think a strict constructionist position is in any way plausible for us; how much have we done in the name of our Volition-Piloted Literature project that has not been provided for us by our specifications and rules!?)]}
If we consolidate our loosey-goosey votes for tie-breaker solution by number (disregarding the subcategories represented by letters) we have:
Solution #1: 4
Solution #2: 1
Solution #3: 3
Solution #4: 2
Solution #5: 1
Now, consolidating these into two larger categories of "Writing one Chapter 3" and "Writing two Chapter 3s", which seems to me the crux of the issue, (and ruling out #5, since it would entail breaking laws and/or bones,) we have:
Write one Chapter 3s: 5
Write two Chapter 3s: 5
Oh, now you've done it.
I foresaw this problem.
The problem in voting on how to resolve a tie is, you might end up with another, bigger, more annoying tie.
Because, (A) I am almost actually sick of this blog post (fun, remember, is the thing tying me to adhering to technical prolixity) and (B) we're already being loosey-goosey, I am adopting the following rough-and-ready method for solving this meta-tie:
I am counting Derek's disparaging comments against 1b as being a negative vote (-1) and I am glossing over Portia's hesitancy in saying 3 is "fun, but...", which makes it 4 to 6 (or so), and thus I am going to write two Chapter 3s, the writing of which, in my prescience, I see entailing a host of problems itself.
But again, that's the fun.
At least one Chapter 3 will be posted by Monday; both by next Wednesday.
8.12.2008
Enumerated Things.
0. If you are looking for the Volition-Piloted Literature Chapter 2 Voting Results, look here. If not, read on.
A strange combination of 2 trivial and subtle, yet striking happenings made this morning's Mass a little distracting.
Luckily, the liturgy is not about and does not depend on me or my focus.
1. The Priest, immediately after holding up the cup, and saying "The blood of Christ", gave way to the heftiest hiccup I may have ever heard.
2. There was a single, distracting, unexplained Cheerio on the pew in front of me. ???
In other news, I have more enumeratable things:
3a. Today's saint, according to the Catholic Calendar, is St. Louis of Toulouse, who died at the age of 23, by which time he was already a bishop. I, incidentally, am 22 (I had to ask Louis and Brianna what age I was, because I had forgotten. I write it here in part to contrast St. Louis of Toulouse's age with mine, and in part to remind myself).
3b. Donatello, the Italian artist, not the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, sculpted St. Louis of Toulouse. It looks like this:
3c. There is a statue of Donatello outside the Uffizi gallery in Florence. It looks like this:
not like this:
4. I am not a Catholic; don't read too much into my morning routine.
5a. St. Louis of Toulouse is not related in any relevant sense of which I am aware to Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, the putatively decadent, decidedly dwarfed, 18th/19th century painter.
5b. Henri Toulouse-Lautrec's full name is Comte Henri Mary Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa.
5c. Homeboy painted a self-portrait. It looks like this:
6. I had thought to enumerate more things in this blog post than I have.
A strange combination of 2 trivial and subtle, yet striking happenings made this morning's Mass a little distracting.
Luckily, the liturgy is not about and does not depend on me or my focus.
1. The Priest, immediately after holding up the cup, and saying "The blood of Christ", gave way to the heftiest hiccup I may have ever heard.
2. There was a single, distracting, unexplained Cheerio on the pew in front of me. ???
In other news, I have more enumeratable things:
3a. Today's saint, according to the Catholic Calendar, is St. Louis of Toulouse, who died at the age of 23, by which time he was already a bishop. I, incidentally, am 22 (I had to ask Louis and Brianna what age I was, because I had forgotten. I write it here in part to contrast St. Louis of Toulouse's age with mine, and in part to remind myself).
3b. Donatello, the Italian artist, not the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, sculpted St. Louis of Toulouse. It looks like this:
3c. There is a statue of Donatello outside the Uffizi gallery in Florence. It looks like this:
not like this:
4. I am not a Catholic; don't read too much into my morning routine.
5a. St. Louis of Toulouse is not related in any relevant sense of which I am aware to Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, the putatively decadent, decidedly dwarfed, 18th/19th century painter.
5b. Henri Toulouse-Lautrec's full name is Comte Henri Mary Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa.
5c. Homeboy painted a self-portrait. It looks like this:
6. I had thought to enumerate more things in this blog post than I have.
Volition-Piloted Literature. Chapter 2 Voting Results.
The votes for Chapter 2 of The Runes of Chaos have been tallied.
And, in tallying the votes, I have found again that we are beset with problems in deciding what course to adopt.
Take a look for yourself:
Votes:
Option #1: 5
Option #2: 0
Option #3: 5
Option #4: 0
We have a tie.
Two ties, in fact: one for first place and one for last place. But I think we all know with which tie our concerns lie.
But before we begin to manufacture some solvent to our quagmire, let me ask you all a question:
Why do you all hate even numbers?
No, but seriously, I am genuinely curious about what you think the deficiencies in #2 and #4 are. Louis has commented to me that they are both too trusting; one of the mysterious caller, the other of the mysterious scientists. Since my readership is solely composed of cynics, pessimists, and skeptics, this argument makes sense to me, but it does make me think, makes me question, makes me wonder:
What are the tacitly held, recondite standards by which you're piloting this frivolous narrative?
What are the guiding critical principles that are darkly bubbling in your conscious or subconscious minds?
Into what cryptic literary hands have I placed my document?
Whose volition is really behind The Runes of Chaos?
So, please feel free to comment on this blog post, articulating
1. What you think of options #2 and #4, letting me know in which ways you think they suck,
and
2. Voice the criteria against which you weigh the narrative-options. [For instance, are you acting in accordance with a desire to engender the most entertaining story possible? If so, what counts as entertaining for you? Are you acting in accordance with a desire to see our protagonist (antagonist, whatever) act reasonably/believably? Or what?]
However, if you don't want to divulge your literary penchants, because part of the fun is concealing your intentions and standards, feel free to comment with a "no comment".
************************************************************************
Okay, now that that's behind us, we must turn to the problem before us.
There exist, I think, at least 3 multi-pronged solutions we may adopt to solve this problem, cut this knot, untie this tie.
Solution 1: Devise a tie-breaker.
There are at least 3 different kinds of tie-breaker we could employ.
1a. One way to devise a tie-breaker would be to pick some arbitrary, chancy, (dare I say it, "chaotic"?) means to resolve the tie. Flipping a coin, for instance, or 'eeny, meeny, miny, moe'.
1b. A second means to break the tie is for me to simply pick which option I prefer more, letting my volition come into play.
1c. Another tie-breaker solution available to us is come up with a principled means of resolving the conflict. This could include letting you, the readers, duke it out argumentatively in the comment-section of Chapter 2, until people change their votes in favor #1 or #3, (similar to the concept of overtime or extra innings) (we could, of course, decide amongst ourselves whether or not to allow new voters to vote as well).
Solution 2: Try to 'escape between the horns', writing Chapter 3 in accordance to both #1 and #3, despite their evidently being mutually exclusive. A potentially perilous means of escape, indeed.
Solution 3: Write two Chapter 3s, one for each option, thereby propelling the scope of this narrative-project far beyond that originally intended and specified. Instead of an ultimate 8 chapters (Chapter 1-4 and 4 distinct Chapter 5s) we would end up with an ultimate 14 chapters (Chapter 1-2, 2 distinct Chapter 3s, 2 distinct Chapter 4s, and 8 distinct Chapter 5s).
We could do this at least 2 different ways.
3a. Go back and revise the original specifications, with Louis' permission, to allow explicitly for the writing of two instances of a given chapter. As of yet, the specifications don't speak to ties. Specification 7 says that "I, Jonathan Charles Wright, may not write any chapters before votes have been tallied and a particular chapter elected. At that time I may write the so-elected chapter and only the so-elected chapter." Depending on how we hash out our definition of "elected", #1 and #3 might both qualify. The specifications have been previously edited (Specification 4, on 7/21/08), so we shouldn't feel too ashamed at simply clarifying them for our present predicament.
3b. Act without Louis' permission, and simply relegate one of our two Chapter 3s to renegade status. So, there would be an orthodox, canonical The Runes of Chaos document as per the original Volition-Piloted Literature specifications, which would adhere to one of the tied options, AND there would be another, apocryphal series of documents outside the stipulated bounds of the Volition-Piloted Literature project. We needn't break any technical rules or stipulations; we just won't count the renegade chapters as being part of the Volition-Piloted Literature project, which gets us off the hook; the renegade chapters will just be some aggregates of words I happened to compose and post, which happen to be strikingly similar to the Volition-Piloted Literature project in kind, but in fact are not connected to it. Louis need never know. (A problem facing this solution: how to decide which string of narrative is to earn legitimacy and the other apostasy? How are we to determine which ought to be considered the orthodox text, and the other apocryphal? Perhaps we could employ the means proposed by Solution 1 to this end?)
Okay, so, which do you prefer?
In keeping with the Volition-Piloted Literature M.O., lets put it to a vote. To give you all plenty of time, I'll say that the 'Tie-breaker Solution' voting-period will end tomorrow night at midnight; that's Wednesday, August 13, 2008.
For the sakes of formality and fun, let me prescribe a comment format. Your comments to this post should have two parts, and A part and B part.
The A section will entail your thoughts/critiques of Options #2 and #4 from Chapter 2, and/or whatever literary standards you would like to share with me concerning Volition-Piloted Literature, as per my line of questioning in the first half of this post;
The B section will entail your vote for the Tie-Breaker Solution, along with any commentary/arguments concerning your vote, as per usual. Your comments, accordingly, should look like this:
And, in tallying the votes, I have found again that we are beset with problems in deciding what course to adopt.
Take a look for yourself:
Votes:
Option #1: 5
Option #2: 0
Option #3: 5
Option #4: 0
We have a tie.
Two ties, in fact: one for first place and one for last place. But I think we all know with which tie our concerns lie.
But before we begin to manufacture some solvent to our quagmire, let me ask you all a question:
Why do you all hate even numbers?
No, but seriously, I am genuinely curious about what you think the deficiencies in #2 and #4 are. Louis has commented to me that they are both too trusting; one of the mysterious caller, the other of the mysterious scientists. Since my readership is solely composed of cynics, pessimists, and skeptics, this argument makes sense to me, but it does make me think, makes me question, makes me wonder:
What are the tacitly held, recondite standards by which you're piloting this frivolous narrative?
What are the guiding critical principles that are darkly bubbling in your conscious or subconscious minds?
Into what cryptic literary hands have I placed my document?
Whose volition is really behind The Runes of Chaos?
So, please feel free to comment on this blog post, articulating
1. What you think of options #2 and #4, letting me know in which ways you think they suck,
and
2. Voice the criteria against which you weigh the narrative-options. [For instance, are you acting in accordance with a desire to engender the most entertaining story possible? If so, what counts as entertaining for you? Are you acting in accordance with a desire to see our protagonist (antagonist, whatever) act reasonably/believably? Or what?]
However, if you don't want to divulge your literary penchants, because part of the fun is concealing your intentions and standards, feel free to comment with a "no comment".
************************************************************************
Okay, now that that's behind us, we must turn to the problem before us.
There exist, I think, at least 3 multi-pronged solutions we may adopt to solve this problem, cut this knot, untie this tie.
Solution 1: Devise a tie-breaker.
There are at least 3 different kinds of tie-breaker we could employ.
1a. One way to devise a tie-breaker would be to pick some arbitrary, chancy, (dare I say it, "chaotic"?) means to resolve the tie. Flipping a coin, for instance, or 'eeny, meeny, miny, moe'.
1b. A second means to break the tie is for me to simply pick which option I prefer more, letting my volition come into play.
1c. Another tie-breaker solution available to us is come up with a principled means of resolving the conflict. This could include letting you, the readers, duke it out argumentatively in the comment-section of Chapter 2, until people change their votes in favor #1 or #3, (similar to the concept of overtime or extra innings) (we could, of course, decide amongst ourselves whether or not to allow new voters to vote as well).
Solution 2: Try to 'escape between the horns', writing Chapter 3 in accordance to both #1 and #3, despite their evidently being mutually exclusive. A potentially perilous means of escape, indeed.
Solution 3: Write two Chapter 3s, one for each option, thereby propelling the scope of this narrative-project far beyond that originally intended and specified. Instead of an ultimate 8 chapters (Chapter 1-4 and 4 distinct Chapter 5s) we would end up with an ultimate 14 chapters (Chapter 1-2, 2 distinct Chapter 3s, 2 distinct Chapter 4s, and 8 distinct Chapter 5s).
We could do this at least 2 different ways.
3a. Go back and revise the original specifications, with Louis' permission, to allow explicitly for the writing of two instances of a given chapter. As of yet, the specifications don't speak to ties. Specification 7 says that "I, Jonathan Charles Wright, may not write any chapters before votes have been tallied and a particular chapter elected. At that time I may write the so-elected chapter and only the so-elected chapter." Depending on how we hash out our definition of "elected", #1 and #3 might both qualify. The specifications have been previously edited (Specification 4, on 7/21/08), so we shouldn't feel too ashamed at simply clarifying them for our present predicament.
3b. Act without Louis' permission, and simply relegate one of our two Chapter 3s to renegade status. So, there would be an orthodox, canonical The Runes of Chaos document as per the original Volition-Piloted Literature specifications, which would adhere to one of the tied options, AND there would be another, apocryphal series of documents outside the stipulated bounds of the Volition-Piloted Literature project. We needn't break any technical rules or stipulations; we just won't count the renegade chapters as being part of the Volition-Piloted Literature project, which gets us off the hook; the renegade chapters will just be some aggregates of words I happened to compose and post, which happen to be strikingly similar to the Volition-Piloted Literature project in kind, but in fact are not connected to it. Louis need never know. (A problem facing this solution: how to decide which string of narrative is to earn legitimacy and the other apostasy? How are we to determine which ought to be considered the orthodox text, and the other apocryphal? Perhaps we could employ the means proposed by Solution 1 to this end?)
Okay, so, which do you prefer?
In keeping with the Volition-Piloted Literature M.O., lets put it to a vote. To give you all plenty of time, I'll say that the 'Tie-breaker Solution' voting-period will end tomorrow night at midnight; that's Wednesday, August 13, 2008.
For the sakes of formality and fun, let me prescribe a comment format. Your comments to this post should have two parts, and A part and B part.
The A section will entail your thoughts/critiques of Options #2 and #4 from Chapter 2, and/or whatever literary standards you would like to share with me concerning Volition-Piloted Literature, as per my line of questioning in the first half of this post;
The B section will entail your vote for the Tie-Breaker Solution, along with any commentary/arguments concerning your vote, as per usual. Your comments, accordingly, should look like this:
A. "I think 'blah blah blah.'" or "No comment."Then, having voted and blathered, please wait patiently, hands in or out of your pockets.
B. "Solution #, please. 'blah blah blah'."
8.08.2008
Idahepisodes: Part I
If you're looking for the Runes of Chaos, Chapter 2, go here. If not, read on.
**********************************************************************************
1. Coffee Cleansing; Coffee Consolations.
When I first got up here to Idaho, I thought I might get a job to support my extravagant lifestyle as a reclusive bookworm. I applied to many places, and I landed two interviews for two different Starbucks stores. At the first, I felt a strange sense of safety, being asked personal questions by an impersonal representative of an impersonal organization—I embraced the scene as an avenue for catharsis: I bared my soul, and I was cleansed. At the second, I duplicated my answers from the previous, down to the slightest word and intonation. No job; two free coffees: success.
2. Gooey’s with Louis, Gooey’s with Louis, and Gooey’s with Louis.
I have thrice gone with Louis to the dessert place at ‘The Resort’.
The first time we went, our server was beautiful and friendly; she snuck us free soda with bubbly affability. Louis’ plans for her and my wedding ultimately fell through.
The second time, accustomed to free drink, Louis tried weaseling free coffee from another server, beautiful and unfriendly—so doing, Louis came off artlessly flirtatious and we suffered awkwardness the duration of the evening.
The third time, we got the best server ever, beautiful and clever, who discussed with us at length the typographical errors present in our menus.
3. One should either be a work of art, or spill a work of art.
A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend got me a one-time job serving wine for three hours at a fancy art gallery auction. I encountered lots of rich people, a female jazz singer (singing jazz, of all things), non-struggling artists, and ‘freelance servers’. I was smirking the entire evening, thinking that a smirking wine-server in the background was just the aesthetic colophon needed to perfect the event as an artwork itself. My smirking was briefly suspended however, when a tipsy dilettante backed into me, hurtling my tray of wine glasses to the floor—I then uncontrollably beamed.
4. "Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things".
Max and I were intent on cooking and devouring duck or rabbit. This brought us to a ‘rare meats’ store. Having found a suitable duck, which we would later imbrue in salt and brandy before ingurgitating with ligonberry jus and ‘haricot verts’ (snob for ‘green beans’), Max casually asked if this Idahoan abattoir ever had alligator-meat. An older butcher with thick glasses responded, “You wanna see an alligator?” We paraded past elaborate hacking machines and gory carcasses into a freezer, where we beheld a 10-foot-long reptile with a gaping wound the size of a silver dollar on its forehead.
5. "The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo".
Max and I have taken to reading Shakespeare plays aloud together. We get theatrical. Legendary names from English literature have been tinged in my mind, perhaps forever, with our portrayals. Here follow standout names we incarnated.
Max: Julius Caesar, Antony (an emotional peformance), Proteus, Don Adriano de Armado, Henry Bolingbroke.
Jon: Cleopatra, Brutus, Berowne (be sad that you missed flirtatious repartee between my Berowne and Max’s Rosaline), Launce.
Guest appearances:
Louis: Richard II (an angry performance);
Daniel: Princess of France (lines delivered in a deep baritone), Moth (lines delivered in a piercing falsetto);
Colby: Crab, the dog (a refractory performance).
6. "Lastly, you come upon a body of water...".
Max, Daniel, and I drove an hour north to see Aria at an immense and beautiful lake, upon which we wakeboarded and rode Sea Doos. Daniel and I both managed to stand on the wakeboard; Max did not. In retaliation to our success, Max took it upon himself to launch us from the Sea Doo at high speeds whenever the opportunity availed itself to him.
3. One should either be a work of art, or spill a work of art.
A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend got me a one-time job serving wine for three hours at a fancy art gallery auction. I encountered lots of rich people, a female jazz singer (singing jazz, of all things), non-struggling artists, and ‘freelance servers’. I was smirking the entire evening, thinking that a smirking wine-server in the background was just the aesthetic colophon needed to perfect the event as an artwork itself. My smirking was briefly suspended however, when a tipsy dilettante backed into me, hurtling my tray of wine glasses to the floor—I then uncontrollably beamed.
4. "Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things".
Max and I were intent on cooking and devouring duck or rabbit. This brought us to a ‘rare meats’ store. Having found a suitable duck, which we would later imbrue in salt and brandy before ingurgitating with ligonberry jus and ‘haricot verts’ (snob for ‘green beans’), Max casually asked if this Idahoan abattoir ever had alligator-meat. An older butcher with thick glasses responded, “You wanna see an alligator?” We paraded past elaborate hacking machines and gory carcasses into a freezer, where we beheld a 10-foot-long reptile with a gaping wound the size of a silver dollar on its forehead.
5. "The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo".
Max and I have taken to reading Shakespeare plays aloud together. We get theatrical. Legendary names from English literature have been tinged in my mind, perhaps forever, with our portrayals. Here follow standout names we incarnated.
Max: Julius Caesar, Antony (an emotional peformance), Proteus, Don Adriano de Armado, Henry Bolingbroke.
Jon: Cleopatra, Brutus, Berowne (be sad that you missed flirtatious repartee between my Berowne and Max’s Rosaline), Launce.
Guest appearances:
Louis: Richard II (an angry performance);
Daniel: Princess of France (lines delivered in a deep baritone), Moth (lines delivered in a piercing falsetto);
Colby: Crab, the dog (a refractory performance).
6. "Lastly, you come upon a body of water...".
Max, Daniel, and I drove an hour north to see Aria at an immense and beautiful lake, upon which we wakeboarded and rode Sea Doos. Daniel and I both managed to stand on the wakeboard; Max did not. In retaliation to our success, Max took it upon himself to launch us from the Sea Doo at high speeds whenever the opportunity availed itself to him.
We three also played cards with Aria, during which time she deigned to play our frivolous conversational games. It may have been the first time I have net more enjoyment than awkwardness during a nunner-encounter.
7. A Congruent Coffee Couple.
There is a coffee shop in town that Louis religiously frequents, called ‘Java on Sherman’. I’ve been with him there numerous times, and am familiar with the baristas by sight. I thought one particularly attractive: she had cymotrichous brown hair, large eyes, olive skin; a soothing Mediterranean look. After a five-minute crush, I resolved that it would never work, but that I wished her the best.
7. A Congruent Coffee Couple.
There is a coffee shop in town that Louis religiously frequents, called ‘Java on Sherman’. I’ve been with him there numerous times, and am familiar with the baristas by sight. I thought one particularly attractive: she had cymotrichous brown hair, large eyes, olive skin; a soothing Mediterranean look. After a five-minute crush, I resolved that it would never work, but that I wished her the best.
I realized after a while she was dating a co-worker, who himself had cymotrichous brown hair, large eyes, olive skin; a soothing Mediterranean look. With elation, I secretly wished for their lifelong happiness together.
8. 卡车零件.
Vocational exiguity, for all its delight, nevertheless begets financial exiguity—a fact of life, brought home to me by Idaho. The gripping bite of indigence upon me, I took upon myself a job doing copywriting work for the most cheerful website-guru I’ve ever met. The nature of this work, however, is nothing less than writing keyword-rich product descriptions about diesel truck paraphernalia.
8. 卡车零件.
Vocational exiguity, for all its delight, nevertheless begets financial exiguity—a fact of life, brought home to me by Idaho. The gripping bite of indigence upon me, I took upon myself a job doing copywriting work for the most cheerful website-guru I’ve ever met. The nature of this work, however, is nothing less than writing keyword-rich product descriptions about diesel truck paraphernalia.
The comedy in this has not been overlooked by my housemates.
Louis has noted that my writing persuasive and detailed descriptions about Bully Dog Truck Modules is actually a real-world application of the Chinese Room thought experiment.
9. The straw that broke the tire's tread.
We four guys met at COSTCO for cheap and greasy hot dogs and pizza—an occasion for fellowship if any. Afterwards, we were driving away as an irregular thumping sound following the car led me to believe that either my vehicle had been adorned with cans and a “JUST MARRIED” sign, or that I had a flat tire.
9. The straw that broke the tire's tread.
We four guys met at COSTCO for cheap and greasy hot dogs and pizza—an occasion for fellowship if any. Afterwards, we were driving away as an irregular thumping sound following the car led me to believe that either my vehicle had been adorned with cans and a “JUST MARRIED” sign, or that I had a flat tire.
Sadly, this day I was not to enjoy conjugal bliss.
A fantastically obliging COSTCO automotive employee with Civil-War-Era facial hair referred me to the cheapest tire place ever, where I purchased the cheapest tire ever. This purchase, incidentally, would overdraw my checking account.
10. Iron Men on a Fragile Night.
Roughly an hour before midnight, after steadfastly losing against Lindsey and Louis in spades, Max and I decided to go downtown to watch the final IronMan Triathlon racers come in. We skipped through the streets as we went; the moon was full and bright, the streets empty and dark. As I gamboled, an independent, trivial young man, my sensations felt more potent, more acute. Skipping to the races in the dark, I felt overwhelmed by the world.
After we sang rock songs with other spectators on the bleachers and watched the last Iron stragglers finish their race, we strolled home.
10. Iron Men on a Fragile Night.
Roughly an hour before midnight, after steadfastly losing against Lindsey and Louis in spades, Max and I decided to go downtown to watch the final IronMan Triathlon racers come in. We skipped through the streets as we went; the moon was full and bright, the streets empty and dark. As I gamboled, an independent, trivial young man, my sensations felt more potent, more acute. Skipping to the races in the dark, I felt overwhelmed by the world.
After we sang rock songs with other spectators on the bleachers and watched the last Iron stragglers finish their race, we strolled home.
8.07.2008
Volition-Piloted Literature. Runes of Chaos: Chapter 2.
To read Chapter 1 first, (as you should) go here.
Chapter 2.
After hieing back to Gondalekar’s office with all the celerity their middle-aged, academic bodies could muster, our professors spent their gasps more on the accruement of oxygen and less on the expression of shock at the paucity of corpses on the floor. There were no bodies to be found—the office carpet was, however, immaculately clean. Gondalekar noted as much:
“Well, I would have liked to see a murder victim, but I must say that my carpet is immaculately clean.”
“I’m telling you, Gabriel, two men hit the floor after one threw a knife and the other fired a gun. I could have been killed! I’m calling campus safety.”
Gondelakar laughed.
“Campus safety!? And how will Joe-undergrad-Physical-Education-major help?”
“Then I’ll call the police!” snapped Wdowczak, nearly hectic.
“And tell them what!? That my office smells like shampoo? Look, I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but I do think you need to cool your jets a second. At least before you do anything, show me this supernatural ore you’re babbling about. We can go from there.”
Wdowczak breathed; he thought to himself: I don’t know with whom or what I’m dealing, and there’s no obvious reason to involve the police immediately.
“Okay.” Carefully, he pulled the stone out of his pocket, set it on the desk, and unraveled the thick cloth.
Gondalekar began to watch with ignorant interest. And then he saw the orb. He kneeled and squinted at it. His jaw was slightly slack from something more than ignorant interest. He looked up at Wdowczak.
“Describe what happened.”
“This guy arranged some tiles around the stone—four of them. Then he spilt his blood over the stone. Then, a thick black vapor started steaming from the stone. It looked like…like—”
“—like space was decomposing?”
Wdowczak’s focus locked upon Gondalekar.
Gondalekar stood up slowly. His countenance changed from wary awe to wary excitement, his eyes more open than usual, his pupils infinitesimally darting in thought.
“I’ve heard of this.”
He immediately wrapped the orb up again and handed it to Wdowczak.
“Blaise, follow me.”
Gondalekar walked as briskly as he talked, at a canter. “There’s this research group in theoretical physics, to which I’ve been trying to gain admittance for the past three years,” huff huff huff. “They’re looking for ways to break down matter to its small constituents,” huff huff, “the smallest discovered,” huff, “down to mathematically projected strings below the subatomic level!”
Gondalekar spoke further and faster about this unprecedented research as they walked farther and faster across campus. He told Wdowczak at length about the discovery of a rare substance that could dissolve the smallest heretofore-conceivable atomic composites; about how these scientists were desperately searching for it; about how this object might be that substance; about how if they brought it to these scientists, Gondelakar might have the opportunity to contribute to their study; about how he shouldn’t even know about their research—that it was technically illegal.
“Gabriel, I’m not sure—”
“—Blaise,” burst Gondalekar, “This is important. This research promises serious significant breakthroughs, and this stone could be the linchpin of it all. Its importance stands to outstrip Archimedes, Galileo, Kepler, Einstein—this beats the wheel. Please, let me at least show them this stone.”
They came to the research lab secretary.
“Hello,” said Gondalekar. “We’d like to see Dr. Odegaard.”
“Neither Dr. Odegaard is presently at the lab—you’ll have to come ba—“
“Tell them we have a mineral in our pocket that generates particle-warping electro-gravitational disturbances.” He smiled politely.
Less than two minutes later, two Dr. Odegaards, husband and wife particle physicists, were congenially introducing themselves. Gondalekar had heard of them, had worked in the same department and university as them, yet hadn’t seen them until now.
The couple was clearly Scandinavian: svelte, blonde, clean, hairless bodies. Their voices were reminiscent of thick gurgling.
Linus Odegaard was tactically complimenting Gondalekar with a beaming countenance. “Oh yes, we know your work, Dr. Gondalekar; we have often considered offering you a fellowship in Ragnarök; though, we’ve had reservations that you were perhaps too clever for us.” Cordial laughter.
“Ragnarök?” asked Wdowczak?
“Oh: our research institute.”
“‘Ragnarök’,” Yvla Odegaard interpolated, “in Norse mythology, is a prophesied recreation of the world.”
“I will be frank,” continued Linus, “time is precious to us, and we are interested in this mineral you’ve brought; but before we allow you into our laboratory, you’ll have to sign these.” He pulled two mounds of paper out of his desk. “You needn’t read them: I can tell you simply that they commit you to never revealing anything you see or hear in our laboratory to anyone ever. It’s complicated, because as you’re probably aware, the applications of our research in engineering are illegal in the United States—this document accordingly then, in a sense, commits you to concealing criminal activity. The reason it is nevertheless legally binding is because it's written according to Japanese law. All of our equipment, workspace, so on, belongs to the University of Tokyo—Japanese law is friendlier to our projects. While you could not be tried in the U.S. for breaking the terms of this document, you would have a substantial fee levied against you by Japanese courts, which, due to the exploitation of various complexities of international law, would be enforceable in the U.S.”
“What about your institute is illegal, exactly?”
“Oh, Dr. Gondalekar must not have told you,” casually grinned Linus. “We are nearing the completion of the construction of a particle accelerator whose circumference is roughly quadruple that of the Earth. We are acting without permission.”
This constituted for Wdowczak one of those statements the meaning of which induces unpleasant conceptual vertigo when understood, and so are expediently dismissed as meaningless.
“However it’s not only for protection against the government that we bind colleagues to secrecy,” Yvla interpolated again, “we have also met opposition from a fanatic religious terrorist group, a cult, that could prove a serious liability to our progress should they gain information about our research.”
“But how would this stone help your—“
A secretary interrupted Wdowczak:
“There is a phone call for Professor Wdowczak.’
“Oh. It must be the humanities secretary,” Wdowczak lied by way of explanation, “I told her to forward important calls for me to this office.”
On his way to the lab office’s phone, he conjectured to himself about his grounds for this fabricated explanation. Did he distrust these Scandinavian-Japanese criminal physicists? No, surprisingly, he thought. Something about the combination of candidly explained illicit astro-architecture, Gondalekar’s earnest and exaggerative plaudits, and the visual impression of white lab coats, inspired confidence in the connubial physicists from this peculiar institute.
“Hello?” he said into the phone.
“Hello. You speak Greek?” replied a female voice in Greek.
“What?” replied our Professor of Ancient Philosophy, as if to say, “What the hell?”
“Speak in Greek please—they are listening from another phone.”
“What do you want?” demanded Wdowczak in English.
“Listen. I work for the government and need your help. Those scientists not only are breaking federal and international law, but their project will endanger millions of innocent lives. I need you to learn all you can about their operation—the instant you discover anything that implicates them of prosecutable crimes, inform us immediately by calling 1-562-325-2541.”
A slight, nonplussed pause.
“Why should I believe you?” managed Wdowczak’s poor Greek.
“You have very little reason to,” said the voice, almost with delight, “But you must. If I’m speaking truly, what I’m saying is more important than anything you have to lose should I prove dishonest.” (This brought to Wdowczak’s mind similar feckless philosophical arguments; see Pascal’s Wager.)
“Tell you what,” continued the Greek voice, “when we meet, I’ll let you hold my government-issued sidearm as proof. Remember: learn all you can, contact me soon.” Click.
Muddled, Wdowczak muddled his way back through the lab, unsure of what to think or where to go. He thought to himself as he distractedly walked though the corridors to find his physicist associates:
My problem isn’t that I suspect everyone, but that I trust everyone. I believe the Greek spy lady--that these Scandinavians are up to no good; I trust Gabriel—that these Scandinavians mean to and will make scientific breakthroughs for the good of humanity—I really do.
The Runes of Chaos.
“Nothing shocks me. I’m a scientist.”-- Indiana Jones
Chapter 2.
After hieing back to Gondalekar’s office with all the celerity their middle-aged, academic bodies could muster, our professors spent their gasps more on the accruement of oxygen and less on the expression of shock at the paucity of corpses on the floor. There were no bodies to be found—the office carpet was, however, immaculately clean. Gondalekar noted as much:
“Well, I would have liked to see a murder victim, but I must say that my carpet is immaculately clean.”
“I’m telling you, Gabriel, two men hit the floor after one threw a knife and the other fired a gun. I could have been killed! I’m calling campus safety.”
Gondelakar laughed.
“Campus safety!? And how will Joe-undergrad-Physical-Education-major help?”
“Then I’ll call the police!” snapped Wdowczak, nearly hectic.
“And tell them what!? That my office smells like shampoo? Look, I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but I do think you need to cool your jets a second. At least before you do anything, show me this supernatural ore you’re babbling about. We can go from there.”
Wdowczak breathed; he thought to himself: I don’t know with whom or what I’m dealing, and there’s no obvious reason to involve the police immediately.
“Okay.” Carefully, he pulled the stone out of his pocket, set it on the desk, and unraveled the thick cloth.
Gondalekar began to watch with ignorant interest. And then he saw the orb. He kneeled and squinted at it. His jaw was slightly slack from something more than ignorant interest. He looked up at Wdowczak.
“Describe what happened.”
“This guy arranged some tiles around the stone—four of them. Then he spilt his blood over the stone. Then, a thick black vapor started steaming from the stone. It looked like…like—”
“—like space was decomposing?”
Wdowczak’s focus locked upon Gondalekar.
Gondalekar stood up slowly. His countenance changed from wary awe to wary excitement, his eyes more open than usual, his pupils infinitesimally darting in thought.
“I’ve heard of this.”
He immediately wrapped the orb up again and handed it to Wdowczak.
“Blaise, follow me.”
Gondalekar walked as briskly as he talked, at a canter. “There’s this research group in theoretical physics, to which I’ve been trying to gain admittance for the past three years,” huff huff huff. “They’re looking for ways to break down matter to its small constituents,” huff huff, “the smallest discovered,” huff, “down to mathematically projected strings below the subatomic level!”
Gondalekar spoke further and faster about this unprecedented research as they walked farther and faster across campus. He told Wdowczak at length about the discovery of a rare substance that could dissolve the smallest heretofore-conceivable atomic composites; about how these scientists were desperately searching for it; about how this object might be that substance; about how if they brought it to these scientists, Gondelakar might have the opportunity to contribute to their study; about how he shouldn’t even know about their research—that it was technically illegal.
“Gabriel, I’m not sure—”
“—Blaise,” burst Gondalekar, “This is important. This research promises serious significant breakthroughs, and this stone could be the linchpin of it all. Its importance stands to outstrip Archimedes, Galileo, Kepler, Einstein—this beats the wheel. Please, let me at least show them this stone.”
They came to the research lab secretary.
“Hello,” said Gondalekar. “We’d like to see Dr. Odegaard.”
“Neither Dr. Odegaard is presently at the lab—you’ll have to come ba—“
“Tell them we have a mineral in our pocket that generates particle-warping electro-gravitational disturbances.” He smiled politely.
Less than two minutes later, two Dr. Odegaards, husband and wife particle physicists, were congenially introducing themselves. Gondalekar had heard of them, had worked in the same department and university as them, yet hadn’t seen them until now.
The couple was clearly Scandinavian: svelte, blonde, clean, hairless bodies. Their voices were reminiscent of thick gurgling.
Linus Odegaard was tactically complimenting Gondalekar with a beaming countenance. “Oh yes, we know your work, Dr. Gondalekar; we have often considered offering you a fellowship in Ragnarök; though, we’ve had reservations that you were perhaps too clever for us.” Cordial laughter.
“Ragnarök?” asked Wdowczak?
“Oh: our research institute.”
“‘Ragnarök’,” Yvla Odegaard interpolated, “in Norse mythology, is a prophesied recreation of the world.”
“I will be frank,” continued Linus, “time is precious to us, and we are interested in this mineral you’ve brought; but before we allow you into our laboratory, you’ll have to sign these.” He pulled two mounds of paper out of his desk. “You needn’t read them: I can tell you simply that they commit you to never revealing anything you see or hear in our laboratory to anyone ever. It’s complicated, because as you’re probably aware, the applications of our research in engineering are illegal in the United States—this document accordingly then, in a sense, commits you to concealing criminal activity. The reason it is nevertheless legally binding is because it's written according to Japanese law. All of our equipment, workspace, so on, belongs to the University of Tokyo—Japanese law is friendlier to our projects. While you could not be tried in the U.S. for breaking the terms of this document, you would have a substantial fee levied against you by Japanese courts, which, due to the exploitation of various complexities of international law, would be enforceable in the U.S.”
“What about your institute is illegal, exactly?”
“Oh, Dr. Gondalekar must not have told you,” casually grinned Linus. “We are nearing the completion of the construction of a particle accelerator whose circumference is roughly quadruple that of the Earth. We are acting without permission.”
This constituted for Wdowczak one of those statements the meaning of which induces unpleasant conceptual vertigo when understood, and so are expediently dismissed as meaningless.
“However it’s not only for protection against the government that we bind colleagues to secrecy,” Yvla interpolated again, “we have also met opposition from a fanatic religious terrorist group, a cult, that could prove a serious liability to our progress should they gain information about our research.”
“But how would this stone help your—“
A secretary interrupted Wdowczak:
“There is a phone call for Professor Wdowczak.’
“Oh. It must be the humanities secretary,” Wdowczak lied by way of explanation, “I told her to forward important calls for me to this office.”
On his way to the lab office’s phone, he conjectured to himself about his grounds for this fabricated explanation. Did he distrust these Scandinavian-Japanese criminal physicists? No, surprisingly, he thought. Something about the combination of candidly explained illicit astro-architecture, Gondalekar’s earnest and exaggerative plaudits, and the visual impression of white lab coats, inspired confidence in the connubial physicists from this peculiar institute.
But then, why lie?
I have subconsciously been put on guard—that’s all. Too much has happened too quickly for me not to incline towards holding my cards close to my chest.
I have subconsciously been put on guard—that’s all. Too much has happened too quickly for me not to incline towards holding my cards close to my chest.
“Hello?” he said into the phone.
“Hello. You speak Greek?” replied a female voice in Greek.
“What?” replied our Professor of Ancient Philosophy, as if to say, “What the hell?”
“Speak in Greek please—they are listening from another phone.”
“What do you want?” demanded Wdowczak in English.
“Listen. I work for the government and need your help. Those scientists not only are breaking federal and international law, but their project will endanger millions of innocent lives. I need you to learn all you can about their operation—the instant you discover anything that implicates them of prosecutable crimes, inform us immediately by calling 1-562-325-2541.”
A slight, nonplussed pause.
“Why should I believe you?” managed Wdowczak’s poor Greek.
“You have very little reason to,” said the voice, almost with delight, “But you must. If I’m speaking truly, what I’m saying is more important than anything you have to lose should I prove dishonest.” (This brought to Wdowczak’s mind similar feckless philosophical arguments; see Pascal’s Wager.)
“Tell you what,” continued the Greek voice, “when we meet, I’ll let you hold my government-issued sidearm as proof. Remember: learn all you can, contact me soon.” Click.
Muddled, Wdowczak muddled his way back through the lab, unsure of what to think or where to go. He thought to himself as he distractedly walked though the corridors to find his physicist associates:
My problem isn’t that I suspect everyone, but that I trust everyone. I believe the Greek spy lady--that these Scandinavians are up to no good; I trust Gabriel—that these Scandinavians mean to and will make scientific breakthroughs for the good of humanity—I really do.
Hell, I even have faith in that stranger with the knife who introduced this worrisome rock in the first place.
This mental homily from our fidimplicitary hero on the first of the three Christian virtues here was cut short and subverted, as he absentmindedly passed through a door to see a pale body lying on what looked like an operating table. It happened to be “that stranger with the knife who introduced this worrisome rock in the first place”.
He heard a door open behind him at the corridor's end.
This mental homily from our fidimplicitary hero on the first of the three Christian virtues here was cut short and subverted, as he absentmindedly passed through a door to see a pale body lying on what looked like an operating table. It happened to be “that stranger with the knife who introduced this worrisome rock in the first place”.
He heard a door open behind him at the corridor's end.
“Professor Wdowczak,” said a female voice reminiscent of thick gurgling, “you should come with me.”
*****************************************************
Now, which would you prefer?
1. The word 'DEATH' flashes across Wdowczak's mind. Aghast at the body and fearful for his life (these scientists, after all, have no qualms defying international law, are in possession of the body he saw shot to the floor, and are actively interested in the stone in his pocket, for what must be a gadzillion-dollar inter-stellar project), he does whatever he can to get out of the lab and to see the Dr. DiGerlando referenced by the index card. Due to the stranger-turned-corpse's recent promotion to victim-status, Wdowczak now realizes how genuine and likeable he had seemed before--perhaps fulfilling his dying wish in seeing this DiGerlando will somehow help to discover what this is really all about.
2. Wdowczak, wary that more lives may ultimately be at stake, runs, not without fear or exigency, to someplace wherefrom he can contact "the Greek spy lady". Possession of a dead body, the likes of which he previously beheld gunned down in Gondalekar's office, seems to Wdowczak sufficient evidence to implicate the criminal-scientists of a prosecutable offense, and that Greek voice had sounded legitimately urgent.
3. Thinking that perhaps what the government actually needs is more substantial information about the research at hand, and being genuinely curious himself, Wdowczak decides to stay to discover the true nature and the concrete details of the Ragnarök project. He will pretend to have seen nothing out of the ordinary, return to the Odegaards, and do his best to the get the bottom of things. That dead body isn't getting any deader, and this information will give him leverage with "the Greek spy lady", should he need to use it.
4. Wdowczak, thinking Ylva saw him see the body, decides to broach the subject and ask her outright about it, letting her explain. After all, he thinks, I have more good reasons to believe these university scientists than an anonymous voice over a phone--just because a voice cavalierly admits I have no reason to trust it does not somehow provide me a reason to do so. What's more, there are plausible explanations about why they would have this body, if they're dealing with terrorist cults and have to keep out of the government's eye. Thus he decides to give the scientists the benefit of the doubt, and to confer with Gondalekar before making any radical decisions.
*****************************************************
To Vote:
1. Leave a comment on this blog post, non-equivocally expressing your preference for one of the narrative options.
2. Note, that you may only vote once, and that if your vote is accompanied by anything reminiscent of stupidity, I reserve the right to feign misunderstanding about everything you ever say or type again, including, but not limited to, your preferred narrative option from this chapter, thereby effectively nullifying your vote.
3. Wait patiently, hands in or out of your pockets.
1. Leave a comment on this blog post, non-equivocally expressing your preference for one of the narrative options.
2. Note, that you may only vote once, and that if your vote is accompanied by anything reminiscent of stupidity, I reserve the right to feign misunderstanding about everything you ever say or type again, including, but not limited to, your preferred narrative option from this chapter, thereby effectively nullifying your vote.
3. Wait patiently, hands in or out of your pockets.
Voting ends Monday, August 11, 2007.
7.28.2008
Volition-Piloted Literature. Chapter 1 Voting Results.
The Voting period is well over, and the votes have been tallied for the corporately decided narrative trajectory of The Runes of Chaos. To read up on what Volition-Piloted Literature is and what literary constraints and concepts are behind The Runes of Chaos, you can read all about the ongoing saga by looking at all posts tagged "Volition-Piloted Literature". If you don't care about the whole story behind the story, and you just want the story, read Chapter 1 here.
First, before I tally the votes, I'd like to formally chastise a few of you for giving me vague votes instead of the non-equivocal votes for which I long. For instance, "follow the index card's instructions", in the present case, definitely communicates very little. There are less idiotic cases though, which also pose a problem in the vote counting process. Take "do option 4 on the way to option 2". Such a vote betrays the personal indecision of the voter more than it communicates a definite proposed route. I am at a loss as how to record such a vote. I much appreciate answers of the following kind: "Option 4 please". This is clear, and even polite. Polite is nice.
Definite Votes:
Option #1: 0
Option #2: 1
Option #3: 0
Option #4: 4
Questionable Votes:
Option #1: 1
Option #2: 2
Option #3: 0
Option #4: 2
Late Votes:
Option #1: 0
Option #2: 0
Option #3: 7
Option #4: 1
Total:
Option #1: 1
Option #2: 3
Option #3: 7
Option #4: 7
Now, I'm not going to count the late votes for "3", both because (1) they're late, and (2) they are all Max.
So 4 wins.
Chapter 2 of The Runes of Chaos will be published by the last day of July, 2008. Chapter 2 of The Runes of Chaos will be 1500 words long. Chapter 2 of The Runes of Chaos will entail a narrative following the trajectory stipulated by Option #4.
Please, do not pee your pants in anticipation.
First, before I tally the votes, I'd like to formally chastise a few of you for giving me vague votes instead of the non-equivocal votes for which I long. For instance, "follow the index card's instructions", in the present case, definitely communicates very little. There are less idiotic cases though, which also pose a problem in the vote counting process. Take "do option 4 on the way to option 2". Such a vote betrays the personal indecision of the voter more than it communicates a definite proposed route. I am at a loss as how to record such a vote. I much appreciate answers of the following kind: "Option 4 please". This is clear, and even polite. Polite is nice.
Definite Votes:
Option #1: 0
Option #2: 1
Option #3: 0
Option #4: 4
Questionable Votes:
Option #1: 1
Option #2: 2
Option #3: 0
Option #4: 2
Late Votes:
Option #1: 0
Option #2: 0
Option #3: 7
Option #4: 1
Total:
Option #1: 1
Option #2: 3
Option #3: 7
Option #4: 7
Now, I'm not going to count the late votes for "3", both because (1) they're late, and (2) they are all Max.
So 4 wins.
Chapter 2 of The Runes of Chaos will be published by the last day of July, 2008. Chapter 2 of The Runes of Chaos will be 1500 words long. Chapter 2 of The Runes of Chaos will entail a narrative following the trajectory stipulated by Option #4.
Please, do not pee your pants in anticipation.
A memory: Charlie Brown and aesthetic appreciation.
One time I went to go see a production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown with the man who taught me how to act, Andrew. I had never seen the play before, and afterwards, outside in the parking lot I levied the following critique, as grounds to discount the play:
"It didn't have any plot really," I said.
Andrew asked, "Well, is that really the point?"
I remember being violently stunned and confused. Andrew was suspending plot as a desirable value based on the play's ends! As if plot were something one had the artistic liberty to abandon! Afterwards, I thought about it for a long while, and I realized that the play seemed to do what it wanted to do, and though certain of its adopted ends were cloying to me (the nature of the music, for instance), on the whole I came to esteem the play well enough--I even ended up liking that it didn't have much of a plot. Neither did the comic strip have a long-term plot, and the comic suited me just fine. "I'll like the play in the same way and for the same reasons that I like the comic," I thought. The evolution and the exchange of standards through which I progressed during this extended process of aesthetic judgment opened up new avenues for thought and sentiment that had as of yet been closed off. I had been, in my own fledgling way, a little liberated.
Looking back I see this happy bouleversement in my aesthetic and literary development as one of the first steps towards my present cherished critical position as per art and literature: namely, that art (& literature with it) is something that humans do, and so it can have as many legitimate ends as do people, and can have as many legitimate forms as those who create it. In the same way that I don't like everything that humans decide to do, so may I dislike a work art for its ends, and in the same way that I don't value work that fails in accomplishing what it sets out to do, so may I dislike a work of art that fails at its ends. But art is not here to some one thing, like be beautiful, or engage the viewer/reader, or comment on social issues, or whatever. That would be as naive as to say speech were for one thing.
7.22.2008
Today's Lesson in Logic with a BBQ Deipnosophist.
The nature of most of my blog posts are non-autobiographical (despite being thoroughly self-referential). I never really blog about "my life". From reading this blog you wouldn't have any real idea as to how I occupy my time on a daily basis.
Count this post as going against the so-described grain.
Here's something quirky.
Louis' church is called 'Thryve'. (Don't hold them in contempt--it really is more difficult to spell up here. Something about the thin air.) Now, Louis' church has taken up an interesting summer agenda. Thryve has decided to throw 'Summer BBQs'. Thryve wants to get its congregation to engage in more fellowship, for all members to get to know each other more, to have more impact in each other's lives. Thryve also wants to create an environment in which a newcomer wont feel awkward or pressured. The thought is that non-christian friends might be intimidated by church, but would jump at the chance for free hamburgers.
Here's the twist: since they want everybody from the church to be able to make it to a BBQ, they have one every night from Monday to Thursday at a different leader's house. Every night. Let me be clear: Free. Food. Every. Night.
Have I mentioned I don't have a job?
So, you'll guess how I spend my crepuscular hours for prandial disport....every night.
The only thing that Thryve has more of than BBQs is pregnant women. Pregos everywhere. Many wombed babies. Many tummies. Big ones. I've met more pregnant women at Idaho BBQs than I have met in probably my whole life. I've mentioned this in passing here and there to male members of the church, and each time I get the same response: "It was a long winter".
Having met so many pregnant women, I have stumbled upon what I think a categorical discrepancy to which I have fallen prey (see note). Up until the past few weeks I have failed to rationally assent to the fact that pregnant women are people. I thought of pregnant women as an aloof archetype: a category of persons, an idea; but it hadn't occurred to me that there are living, breathing, human beings capable of conversational awkwardness who were pregnant women.
The mental Venn diagram representative of this categorical discrepancy looked something like this:
Boy, was I wrong.
Here's the same conceptual development expressed with help from tools of Symbolic Logic.
I had been tacitly holding premise 1:
P1. ∀x(Fx → -Gx),
where F = 'is a living, breathing, human being capable of conversational awkwardness' and G = 'is a pregnant women'.
However in time and with BBQ experience I came to accept premise 2:
P2. ∃x(Fx.Gx),
which is inconsistent with P1. Hence, I have come to reject P1.
Let us probe further. You might think that premise 2 would be sufficient to deter me from my nightly cenatory schemes, but after looking over the following logical data, you'll change your tune.
P3. ∀x[Fx.∃y(Hy.Jxy) → ∃z(Kz.Lxz)],
where H = 'is a BBQ', J = 'goes to', K = 'is a particular quantity of hot dogs', and L = 'is worth experiencing if it means getting at'.
Premise 3, then, says in essence: "For every x such that if x is a living, breathing, human being capable of conversational awkwardness, and there exists a y such that y is a BBQ and x goes to y, then there exists a z such that z is a particular quantity of hot dogs and x is worth experiencing if it means getting at z", which is longhand for "For every living, breathing, human being capable of conversational awkwardness who goes to a BBQ, there is a particular quantity of hot dogs that makes experiencing that living, breathing, human being capable of conversational awkwardness worth it, if it means getting at that particular quantity of hot dogs".
By way of summing up summer, I spend all my time going to BBQs and doing logic.
And writing blogs.
Count this post as going against the so-described grain.
Here's something quirky.
Louis' church is called 'Thryve'. (Don't hold them in contempt--it really is more difficult to spell up here. Something about the thin air.) Now, Louis' church has taken up an interesting summer agenda. Thryve has decided to throw 'Summer BBQs'. Thryve wants to get its congregation to engage in more fellowship, for all members to get to know each other more, to have more impact in each other's lives. Thryve also wants to create an environment in which a newcomer wont feel awkward or pressured. The thought is that non-christian friends might be intimidated by church, but would jump at the chance for free hamburgers.
Here's the twist: since they want everybody from the church to be able to make it to a BBQ, they have one every night from Monday to Thursday at a different leader's house. Every night. Let me be clear: Free. Food. Every. Night.
Have I mentioned I don't have a job?
So, you'll guess how I spend my crepuscular hours for prandial disport....every night.
The only thing that Thryve has more of than BBQs is pregnant women. Pregos everywhere. Many wombed babies. Many tummies. Big ones. I've met more pregnant women at Idaho BBQs than I have met in probably my whole life. I've mentioned this in passing here and there to male members of the church, and each time I get the same response: "It was a long winter".
Having met so many pregnant women, I have stumbled upon what I think a categorical discrepancy to which I have fallen prey (see note). Up until the past few weeks I have failed to rationally assent to the fact that pregnant women are people. I thought of pregnant women as an aloof archetype: a category of persons, an idea; but it hadn't occurred to me that there are living, breathing, human beings capable of conversational awkwardness who were pregnant women.
The mental Venn diagram representative of this categorical discrepancy looked something like this:
Boy, was I wrong.
Here's the same conceptual development expressed with help from tools of Symbolic Logic.
I had been tacitly holding premise 1:
P1. ∀x(Fx → -Gx),
where F = 'is a living, breathing, human being capable of conversational awkwardness' and G = 'is a pregnant women'.
However in time and with BBQ experience I came to accept premise 2:
P2. ∃x(Fx.Gx),
which is inconsistent with P1. Hence, I have come to reject P1.
Let us probe further. You might think that premise 2 would be sufficient to deter me from my nightly cenatory schemes, but after looking over the following logical data, you'll change your tune.
P3. ∀x[Fx.∃y(Hy.Jxy) → ∃z(Kz.Lxz)],
where H = 'is a BBQ', J = 'goes to', K = 'is a particular quantity of hot dogs', and L = 'is worth experiencing if it means getting at'.
Premise 3, then, says in essence: "For every x such that if x is a living, breathing, human being capable of conversational awkwardness, and there exists a y such that y is a BBQ and x goes to y, then there exists a z such that z is a particular quantity of hot dogs and x is worth experiencing if it means getting at z", which is longhand for "For every living, breathing, human being capable of conversational awkwardness who goes to a BBQ, there is a particular quantity of hot dogs that makes experiencing that living, breathing, human being capable of conversational awkwardness worth it, if it means getting at that particular quantity of hot dogs".
By way of summing up summer, I spend all my time going to BBQs and doing logic.
And writing blogs.
7.21.2008
Quotation of the Day.
"As the heavy door closed behind him, Willoughby entered into the most exalted frame of mind of which man is capable. That is, he enjoyed the full possession of comedy, both as actor and spectator. This perfect duality is unfortunately forbidden to those who take part in life's little tragedies, in which the unfortunate actors, who begin as blind as Kent and end as mad as Lear, are in no condition to appreciate radiance, harmony, and so forth."--John Collier in Defy the Foul Fiend.
Volition-Piloted Literature. Commentary on 'Runes of Chaos: Chapter 1'.
Commentary on 'Runes of Chaos: Chapter 1'.
There are a few of things to say about this chapter's creation.
1. I talked to Louis for a fair bit before writing this chapter, wanting to cater the Volition-Piloted Literature blog series as much to his taste as possible. After much questioning, Louis expressed that he would prefer for the Volition-Piloted Literature blog series to be a legitimate adventure story with strong streaks of interesting philosophical thought peppered throughout. Humor, he said, would come simply from me being the one to write it; humor was not a primary end.
As such, please take in mind these literary preferences as belonging to the intended audience of this Volition-Piloted Literature blog series. (While writing, I personally held in mind a 15-year old Louis strongly holding these literary preferences as my audience.)
2. You may have realized that I blatantly flout the original due date and the original word limit. I flout the one because of the other, in fact.
Here's the story: in writing chapter 1, I was trying desperately to adhere to the 500 word limit. I finished the document by the due date according to the word limit, but thought it was too fast-paced, too arbitrary--not good enough.
"I need more space," I told Louis.
He took a step back.
"I need more space," I told Louis.
He extended the word limit to 1500 words/chapter.
I went back to writing for a day or two, periodically asking him for input on the nature of the document. This accounts for the delay in posting. The final document as posted is 1500 words exactly, not counting the epigraph or choices at the end.
3. The process of writing this chapter provided me, I think, a spiritual opportunity.
Very rarely do I put effort into a given document and then, when all is said and done, take a posture of distaste or regret towards that document. My M.O. tends more towards the other end of literary self-estimation: I tend more to adopt a loving, motherly devotion to my written work, be they complete, incomplete, academic, fictional, funny, or not.
Yet not so with chapter 1. I unabashedly hold the chapter in contempt and honestly would not have posted it were it not for Louis' hard and fast expectations as specified. I have trouble objectifying my dislikes for this chunk of prose, but they are strong, and they refuse to be quelled.
Given this unfortunate situation, I have decided to accept it as an opportunity for personal growth. I need to learn that the world isn't perfect and that my prose, as a thing in the world, cannot always be perfect either. A hard lesson, indeed. {I have posted these thoughts here from feeling strongly compelled to admit my heterodox aesthetic critique--not as a cry for affirmation. [Note 3 is, rather, a polite request for affirmation. (Nobody cares; I'm so alone; love me, love me, say that you love me.)]}
There are a few of things to say about this chapter's creation.
1. I talked to Louis for a fair bit before writing this chapter, wanting to cater the Volition-Piloted Literature blog series as much to his taste as possible. After much questioning, Louis expressed that he would prefer for the Volition-Piloted Literature blog series to be a legitimate adventure story with strong streaks of interesting philosophical thought peppered throughout. Humor, he said, would come simply from me being the one to write it; humor was not a primary end.
As such, please take in mind these literary preferences as belonging to the intended audience of this Volition-Piloted Literature blog series. (While writing, I personally held in mind a 15-year old Louis strongly holding these literary preferences as my audience.)
2. You may have realized that I blatantly flout the original due date and the original word limit. I flout the one because of the other, in fact.
Here's the story: in writing chapter 1, I was trying desperately to adhere to the 500 word limit. I finished the document by the due date according to the word limit, but thought it was too fast-paced, too arbitrary--not good enough.
"I need more space," I told Louis.
He took a step back.
"I need more space," I told Louis.
He extended the word limit to 1500 words/chapter.
I went back to writing for a day or two, periodically asking him for input on the nature of the document. This accounts for the delay in posting. The final document as posted is 1500 words exactly, not counting the epigraph or choices at the end.
3. The process of writing this chapter provided me, I think, a spiritual opportunity.
Very rarely do I put effort into a given document and then, when all is said and done, take a posture of distaste or regret towards that document. My M.O. tends more towards the other end of literary self-estimation: I tend more to adopt a loving, motherly devotion to my written work, be they complete, incomplete, academic, fictional, funny, or not.
Yet not so with chapter 1. I unabashedly hold the chapter in contempt and honestly would not have posted it were it not for Louis' hard and fast expectations as specified. I have trouble objectifying my dislikes for this chunk of prose, but they are strong, and they refuse to be quelled.
Given this unfortunate situation, I have decided to accept it as an opportunity for personal growth. I need to learn that the world isn't perfect and that my prose, as a thing in the world, cannot always be perfect either. A hard lesson, indeed. {I have posted these thoughts here from feeling strongly compelled to admit my heterodox aesthetic critique--not as a cry for affirmation. [Note 3 is, rather, a polite request for affirmation. (Nobody cares; I'm so alone; love me, love me, say that you love me.)]}
Volition-Piloted Literature. Runes of Chaos: Chapter 1.
The Runes of Chaos.
Chapter 1.
Poising the phone back in its cradle, Professor Blaise Wdowczak smirked the smirk one is left to smirk when faced with a predicament at which it would be unbefitting to smirk the smirk of undaunted insouciance to which one is accustomed—a nuanced smirk, to be sure.
“How hellish,” he said to himself.
“What is?”
Startled, Wdowczak took this interjection as evidence that someone else was present and to be avoided.
“Professor Gondalekar is out of his office—come back later.”
“But—I’m here for office hours with you, Professor Wdowczak. I’m a student of Dr. DiGerlando.”
Wdowczak had no smirk at hand for this contingency. Puzzled, he looked up at the someone-else-to-be-avoided leaning in the doorway.
“This isn’t my office; it’s Professor Gondalekar’s.”
“Oh, I know it isn’t, Professor Wdowczak,” stated the figure of what looked a grad student, “I know that your office happens to be a good distance across campus. I know that you have no business in the hard sciences building and that Professor Gondalekar has no reason to be in the humanities building. I know furthermore that yours and Professor Gondalekar’s office hours are identical, that they are supposed to be right now, and that whenever they crop up, both you and Professor Gondalekar coincidentally occupy the others’ desk.”
The putative grad student now smirked his own smirk: a knowledgeable, predatory smirk.
“You sure are difficult to get hold of, Professor. But I suppose anyone who works to evade students by such vulpine inventions as the ‘office-hours switcheroo’ would be.”
Wdowczak, undauntedly insouciant towards the mildly entertaining antagonist on whom he held his gaze and smirk, let gently fall:
“My time is valuable.”
“I know, so I’ll speak quickly.” The grad student moved into the room with the speed with which he had proposed to speak, closing the door behind him. “A few years back, you published some papers about the metaphysical implausibility of Plato’s account of creation in the Timaeus, and about the ontological impossibility of any genuinely disordered system. Is that right?”
Wdowczak, alas, unbecomingly jolted by this presumptuous and machine-gunned harangue, exploded from his chair:
“Get the hell out my office!”
“This is not,” enunciated the intruder, flicking his switchblade to the ready, “your--office.”
Wdowczak froze.
The other stepped forward.
“Again:” he uttered delicately, “you’re supposed to be the expert on all physical and metaphysical implications of major mythological accounts of primordial matter, right? That’s your academic area of specialty?”
“Y-Yes.”
“And you reject even the physical possibility of true chaos, of an unequivocal absence of order, you deny that chaos can at all obtain as described by Hesiod, Plato, and the rest of the Greco-Roman gang, yes?”
“Yes.” Wdowczak was bewildered. “Why?”
“Because,” said the other with grave resolution, “I am about to prove you wrong.”
He smiled momentarily.
The strange and precarious stranger then nonchalantly snapped the knife closed and tucked it back into the breast of his sportcoat with his right hand, while simultaneously with his left he drew from his coat-pocket a rolled-up rag about the size of a squash ball, placing it on the table. It made a heavy, solid sound. He began to deftly unravel the rag, while with his right hand he placed what looked like four stone rounded Scrabble tiles around the wrapped object, distinct and elaborate doodles inscribed on each tile.
Confused by the sudden, methodical arrangement of this primitive and mysterious apparatus, Wdowczak cast his glance to the centerpiece of the rite. In this glance, he moved from confusion to arrest, his focus absorbed by the strangely dark orb which had been uncovered. All disquiet heretofore supervening on his situation was recast in his system of priorities to a lesser role; the importance of everything, like the tiles on the desk, took for the center of its orbit the small black ball. Its blackness was neither that of obsidian nor of onyx; it reflected no light; it seemed to Wdowczak to be physically extended shadow: darkness made into material substance. It was like nothing he had ever seen.
“Forgive the gore,” said the stranger as he reopened the blade and unceremoniously sliced the back of his own hand, letting the blood drip onto the black stone. Hissing with pain but holding his hand steady, he looked up to his host. “We need to be fast—someone more accustomed to threats and weapons, who happens to possess even fewer social graces than I (if you can believe it) is probably already on his way here—but I need you to see this now. Um...do you have something small and solid you don’t mind to lose?”
Wdowczak, now tacitly committed to and complicit in whatever sorcery of ill portent was to transpire, whether out of fascination or coercion, groped through the desk and found an Eiffel Tower paperweight.
“This is Gondalekar’s…”
“Ah, Gay Pair-ee.” The stranger took the paperweight and leaned it against the black orb, the blood upon which had since seeped into what seemed to be a groove in the stone: another elaborate doodle. The gloss of the blood was the only thing that made the rutted marks at all faintly visible; otherwise, the anonymous artifact maintained its mesmerizing opacity.
“Watch,” said the stranger.
Squinting, Wdowczak could just barely see the air within half an inch above the orb start to thin, as if turning to vapor, wavering from what Wdowczak guessed extreme heat. The wavering soon became more erratic, until the air itself seemed to be pulling apart, rupturing into progressively smaller composites. The effect spread to a two-inch radius of space around the stone, deteriorating further into what looked like the static noise of a television screen. Finally Wdowczak was incapable of distinguishing between any constituent bits of stuff in the mess of matter: it formed together to make a homogenous, swelling brume of darkness—too thick, dark, and inert to be smoke, yet too crude and miasmal to be called solid; more than anything else to Wdowczak’s mind it looked like ink suspended in water, pooped by some gross and bizarre sea-creature.
The darkness grew to consume over half of the Eiffel Tower paperweight when the stranger at last scattered the four tiles away from the stone. The darkness stagnated. It hung mid-air like a cloud.
The stranger grabbed some papers from the desk and fanned the darkness away with indifferent disgust, as if it were nothing more than a particularly tangible fart. The cloud dissipated and left the room a bit dank, but otherwise was gone. More than half of the Eiffel Tower was gone, too.
“Do you believe you saw what you saw?”
Wdowczak looked back at the stranger, disturbed.
“Why did you show me this?”
“Because,” said the stranger, carefully and swiftly wrapping the orb back in the rag, “you’re the only person I’d heard of who both, One: would understand what this is, what it entails, and why it’s so spooky; and Two: isn’t trying to kill me for one reason or another.” The stranger raked the tiles into his pocket.
“There are more of these creepy ‘Magic 8-Balls’. At least two I’m aware of; maybe more. Now, I can’t do this by my—“
The door opened. Violently. There stood one accustomed to threats and weapons, in the possession of few social graces. The stranger turned to the door, leaning against the desk, the ‘8-Ball’ behind his back, Wdowczak behind the desk. The stranger obstructed Wdowczak’s view of the face of the man in the doorway.
“Hi. Sorry,” said the stranger of little etiquette to the more recent stranger of less, “Professor Gondalekar is out of his office—you’ll have to come back later.”
The new stranger was not entertained. (Neither, in fact, was Wdowczak.)
“The ROOOOONSTONE!” intoned the brute.
“You’re never going to get anywhere in life, young man, if you don’t learn to speak in full sentences.” The stranger furtively pulled an index card out of his back pocket, sliding it next to the stone; his other hand was languidly fiddling with the body of his necktie near the inside of his sportcoat.
“Give me the ROOONSTONE!”
“Much better! I applaud your directness; clearly, you’re a man who knows what he wants. But now lets try for a ‘please’.”
The stranger immediately flung his knife at the brute and a gunshot sounded. Both men fell to the ground. Wdowczak instinctively grabbed the ‘8-Ball’, the card, and raced out the door, not waiting to see if either would manage to pull through.
As he ran, he read:
Ere land and sea and the all-covering sky--Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1.1-6
Were made, in the whole world the countenance
Of nature was the same, all one, well named
Chaos, a raw and undivided mass,
Naught but a lifeless bulk, with warring seeds
Of ill-joined elements compressed together.
Chapter 1.
Poising the phone back in its cradle, Professor Blaise Wdowczak smirked the smirk one is left to smirk when faced with a predicament at which it would be unbefitting to smirk the smirk of undaunted insouciance to which one is accustomed—a nuanced smirk, to be sure.
“How hellish,” he said to himself.
“What is?”
Startled, Wdowczak took this interjection as evidence that someone else was present and to be avoided.
“Professor Gondalekar is out of his office—come back later.”
“But—I’m here for office hours with you, Professor Wdowczak. I’m a student of Dr. DiGerlando.”
Wdowczak had no smirk at hand for this contingency. Puzzled, he looked up at the someone-else-to-be-avoided leaning in the doorway.
“This isn’t my office; it’s Professor Gondalekar’s.”
“Oh, I know it isn’t, Professor Wdowczak,” stated the figure of what looked a grad student, “I know that your office happens to be a good distance across campus. I know that you have no business in the hard sciences building and that Professor Gondalekar has no reason to be in the humanities building. I know furthermore that yours and Professor Gondalekar’s office hours are identical, that they are supposed to be right now, and that whenever they crop up, both you and Professor Gondalekar coincidentally occupy the others’ desk.”
The putative grad student now smirked his own smirk: a knowledgeable, predatory smirk.
“You sure are difficult to get hold of, Professor. But I suppose anyone who works to evade students by such vulpine inventions as the ‘office-hours switcheroo’ would be.”
Wdowczak, undauntedly insouciant towards the mildly entertaining antagonist on whom he held his gaze and smirk, let gently fall:
“My time is valuable.”
“I know, so I’ll speak quickly.” The grad student moved into the room with the speed with which he had proposed to speak, closing the door behind him. “A few years back, you published some papers about the metaphysical implausibility of Plato’s account of creation in the Timaeus, and about the ontological impossibility of any genuinely disordered system. Is that right?”
Wdowczak, alas, unbecomingly jolted by this presumptuous and machine-gunned harangue, exploded from his chair:
“Get the hell out my office!”
“This is not,” enunciated the intruder, flicking his switchblade to the ready, “your--office.”
Wdowczak froze.
The other stepped forward.
“Again:” he uttered delicately, “you’re supposed to be the expert on all physical and metaphysical implications of major mythological accounts of primordial matter, right? That’s your academic area of specialty?”
“Y-Yes.”
“And you reject even the physical possibility of true chaos, of an unequivocal absence of order, you deny that chaos can at all obtain as described by Hesiod, Plato, and the rest of the Greco-Roman gang, yes?”
“Yes.” Wdowczak was bewildered. “Why?”
“Because,” said the other with grave resolution, “I am about to prove you wrong.”
He smiled momentarily.
The strange and precarious stranger then nonchalantly snapped the knife closed and tucked it back into the breast of his sportcoat with his right hand, while simultaneously with his left he drew from his coat-pocket a rolled-up rag about the size of a squash ball, placing it on the table. It made a heavy, solid sound. He began to deftly unravel the rag, while with his right hand he placed what looked like four stone rounded Scrabble tiles around the wrapped object, distinct and elaborate doodles inscribed on each tile.
Confused by the sudden, methodical arrangement of this primitive and mysterious apparatus, Wdowczak cast his glance to the centerpiece of the rite. In this glance, he moved from confusion to arrest, his focus absorbed by the strangely dark orb which had been uncovered. All disquiet heretofore supervening on his situation was recast in his system of priorities to a lesser role; the importance of everything, like the tiles on the desk, took for the center of its orbit the small black ball. Its blackness was neither that of obsidian nor of onyx; it reflected no light; it seemed to Wdowczak to be physically extended shadow: darkness made into material substance. It was like nothing he had ever seen.
“Forgive the gore,” said the stranger as he reopened the blade and unceremoniously sliced the back of his own hand, letting the blood drip onto the black stone. Hissing with pain but holding his hand steady, he looked up to his host. “We need to be fast—someone more accustomed to threats and weapons, who happens to possess even fewer social graces than I (if you can believe it) is probably already on his way here—but I need you to see this now. Um...do you have something small and solid you don’t mind to lose?”
Wdowczak, now tacitly committed to and complicit in whatever sorcery of ill portent was to transpire, whether out of fascination or coercion, groped through the desk and found an Eiffel Tower paperweight.
“This is Gondalekar’s…”
“Ah, Gay Pair-ee.” The stranger took the paperweight and leaned it against the black orb, the blood upon which had since seeped into what seemed to be a groove in the stone: another elaborate doodle. The gloss of the blood was the only thing that made the rutted marks at all faintly visible; otherwise, the anonymous artifact maintained its mesmerizing opacity.
“Watch,” said the stranger.
Squinting, Wdowczak could just barely see the air within half an inch above the orb start to thin, as if turning to vapor, wavering from what Wdowczak guessed extreme heat. The wavering soon became more erratic, until the air itself seemed to be pulling apart, rupturing into progressively smaller composites. The effect spread to a two-inch radius of space around the stone, deteriorating further into what looked like the static noise of a television screen. Finally Wdowczak was incapable of distinguishing between any constituent bits of stuff in the mess of matter: it formed together to make a homogenous, swelling brume of darkness—too thick, dark, and inert to be smoke, yet too crude and miasmal to be called solid; more than anything else to Wdowczak’s mind it looked like ink suspended in water, pooped by some gross and bizarre sea-creature.
The darkness grew to consume over half of the Eiffel Tower paperweight when the stranger at last scattered the four tiles away from the stone. The darkness stagnated. It hung mid-air like a cloud.
The stranger grabbed some papers from the desk and fanned the darkness away with indifferent disgust, as if it were nothing more than a particularly tangible fart. The cloud dissipated and left the room a bit dank, but otherwise was gone. More than half of the Eiffel Tower was gone, too.
“Do you believe you saw what you saw?”
Wdowczak looked back at the stranger, disturbed.
“Why did you show me this?”
“Because,” said the stranger, carefully and swiftly wrapping the orb back in the rag, “you’re the only person I’d heard of who both, One: would understand what this is, what it entails, and why it’s so spooky; and Two: isn’t trying to kill me for one reason or another.” The stranger raked the tiles into his pocket.
“There are more of these creepy ‘Magic 8-Balls’. At least two I’m aware of; maybe more. Now, I can’t do this by my—“
The door opened. Violently. There stood one accustomed to threats and weapons, in the possession of few social graces. The stranger turned to the door, leaning against the desk, the ‘8-Ball’ behind his back, Wdowczak behind the desk. The stranger obstructed Wdowczak’s view of the face of the man in the doorway.
“Hi. Sorry,” said the stranger of little etiquette to the more recent stranger of less, “Professor Gondalekar is out of his office—you’ll have to come back later.”
The new stranger was not entertained. (Neither, in fact, was Wdowczak.)
“The ROOOOONSTONE!” intoned the brute.
“You’re never going to get anywhere in life, young man, if you don’t learn to speak in full sentences.” The stranger furtively pulled an index card out of his back pocket, sliding it next to the stone; his other hand was languidly fiddling with the body of his necktie near the inside of his sportcoat.
“Give me the ROOONSTONE!”
“Much better! I applaud your directness; clearly, you’re a man who knows what he wants. But now lets try for a ‘please’.”
The stranger immediately flung his knife at the brute and a gunshot sounded. Both men fell to the ground. Wdowczak instinctively grabbed the ‘8-Ball’, the card, and raced out the door, not waiting to see if either would manage to pull through.
He stopped, out of breath. It was at this point that Wdowczak remembered the phone call from his brother, whom he cordially disliked (he was a priest), yet waiting at the airport.“In case of DEATH, please see Dr. DiGerlando (DO NOT tell him I sent you!).
In case of INJURY, please stop by for confectionery goods!:
4141, Deciduous Drive.
In case of WORSE THAN DEATH [you’ll know it when you see it], please inform my mother:
50A, E Hemlock St.”
****************************************************
Now, which would you prefer?
1. Assuming 'DEATH' and impulsively gratifying the index card’s request, Wdowczak races across campus to find Dr. DiGerlando’s office.
2. Assuming 'INJURY' and impulsively gratifying the index card’s request, Wdowczak hails a cab to take him to 4141 Deciduous Drive, not one to pass up confectionary goods.
3. Assuming familial responsibility, Wdowczak stays his unrest as per the newly introduced overture of Chaos into his life, risks what he considers 'WORSE THAN DEATH', and catches a cab to the airport to pick up his formally resented kin of the cloth.
4. Assuming nothing and ultimately doubting the nature of the object he has so uncritically thrust into his suit pocket, Wdowczak runs back to his own office to offer up this unknown material to the scrutiny of his long-time physicist friend and accomplice in shirking students, Gondalekar.
1. Assuming 'DEATH' and impulsively gratifying the index card’s request, Wdowczak races across campus to find Dr. DiGerlando’s office.
2. Assuming 'INJURY' and impulsively gratifying the index card’s request, Wdowczak hails a cab to take him to 4141 Deciduous Drive, not one to pass up confectionary goods.
3. Assuming familial responsibility, Wdowczak stays his unrest as per the newly introduced overture of Chaos into his life, risks what he considers 'WORSE THAN DEATH', and catches a cab to the airport to pick up his formally resented kin of the cloth.
4. Assuming nothing and ultimately doubting the nature of the object he has so uncritically thrust into his suit pocket, Wdowczak runs back to his own office to offer up this unknown material to the scrutiny of his long-time physicist friend and accomplice in shirking students, Gondalekar.
****************************************************
To Vote:
1. Leave a comment on this blog post, non-equivocally expressing your preference for one of the narrative options.
2. Note, that you may only vote once, and that if your vote is accompanied by anything reminiscent of stupidity, I reserve the right to feign misunderstanding about everything you ever say or type again, including, but not limited to, your preferred narrative option from this chapter, thereby effectively nullifying your vote.
3. Wait patiently, hands in or out of your pockets.
1. Leave a comment on this blog post, non-equivocally expressing your preference for one of the narrative options.
2. Note, that you may only vote once, and that if your vote is accompanied by anything reminiscent of stupidity, I reserve the right to feign misunderstanding about everything you ever say or type again, including, but not limited to, your preferred narrative option from this chapter, thereby effectively nullifying your vote.
3. Wait patiently, hands in or out of your pockets.
Voting ends Friday, July 25th, 2008.
7.18.2008
Dear Mr. Swingrover,
I have two goals to accomplish in this message to you. My first goal (hereby christened "Goal 1") is to correct a factual misconception to which I think you have fallen prey.
(Note: please do not interpret this to be me talking back to my elders in any way; I merely want to help a fellow brother in Christ in the business of garnering truths and sidestepping falsehoods).
My second goal [hereby christened "Goal 3" (Sorry--my '2' key is broken)] is to explain why Ocean's Twelve was ever at all on my favorite movie list. Goal 3 will constitute a formal written defense of the merits of Ocean's Twelve as a comic masterpiece of film and all-around Jonathan-Charles-Wright-sanctioned waste of time.
Goal 1.
Mr. Swingrover--hello. In response to your status as recently broadcasted on f-book, "Tori is incredibly puzzled as to why Ocean's Twelve was ever on Jonathan Wright's favorite movie list in the first place", I'd like to correct what I think to be a factual misconception to which you have fallen prey and which is directly informing your status as recently broadcasted on f-book (see note above). Ocean's Twelve has never been "in the first place" on my favorite movie list. It was, however, recently in the 20th place on my favorite movie list, as posted on f-book. However, having recently met with the movie Les Enfants du Paradis ("The Children of Paradise"), Ocean's Twelve has been bumped off the aforementioned list, and now fails to constitute a member in any posted or published list of favorite movies of mine.
Nevertheless, I yet hold the movie near and dear to my right ventricle--nearer and dearer, in fact, than I hold to my right (or left) ventricle either of its close kin, Ocean's Eleven or Ocean's Thirteen.
Goal 3.
Mr. Swingrover--hello again. Let me firmly declare that my favorite film from the three Ocean's movies is the second, Ocean's Twelve. Let me do this pictorially by posting a couple of the movie's different posters:
Poster 1.
Poster 3. ('2' key still broken.)
Now, Mr. Swingrover, if you aren't convinced of this movie's merit simply by the mathematical daring and novelty of its tagline, "Twelve is the New Eleven", let me briefly make a few points by way of defending the film. I will strive for brevity, because I find that for any given blog post, the less I write, the more others read. I will confine myself to two points, one a distinction, the other an application of the distinction.
Point 1: Distinction.
I am a firm and naive believer that when reading a book, or when watching a movie, the process of evaluation is twofold.
The first level of judgment entails determining the given work's ends, its goals, and then determining whether the work accomplishes these ends; if so, it is to the work's aesthetic credit; if not, it is to the work's aesthetic detriment. The essence of this level of judgment is simply to take whatever goal the work assumes for itself as a criterion from which to announce praise or of criticism. I'll call this evaluating a work's means.
Then, having done this, the process of evaluation moves to a different level of judgment: one must estimate the ends themselves: are they worthy ends? Are they stupid, ugly, or evil ends? Good, True, or Beautiful? Funny?? I'll call this evaluating a work's ends.
I think that it is in with this kind of distinction in mind that Ayn Rand claims, "it is not a contradiction to say: 'This is a great work, but I don't like it'". By this she means that a work can simultaneously execute its ends with excellence, yet have poor or distasteful ends--we might even classify Rand's work in this way.
Point 3: Application of the Distinction.
Now, to Ocean's Twelve.
The reason I think so many people dislike Ocean's Twelve is because they make a misstep in determining the movie's ends (see note above). The average misstepping viewer, going to see a sequel to Ocean's Eleven, tacitly assumes (though not without justification) that they ought to bring the aesthetic ends of that movie to bear on its successor. But I, contrariwise, think that Ocean's Twelve aims at something divergent from the goals of its beloved predecessor, and so ought not to be judged in the same way. By bringing the wrong standards to bear, the average misstepping viewer ends up disliking Ocean's Twelve for failing to deliver, while they ought to be championing its virtue from the Hollywood hilltops. But this seems as wrongheaded to me as holding A Night at the Opera in contempt for failing to deliver as a psychological thriller. We viewers need to bring the appropriate standards to bear in judging any given work.
I think that, whereas Ocean's Eleven wants to be a fun, quick, and clever heist movie with the help of the stereotypical trappings of the comedy genre, Ocean's Twelve wants to be a fun, quick and clever comedy at the expense of the trappings of the heist movie genre. Here their ends diverge, and accordingly do their means. If you go to the first for nonstop unadulterated comedy, you're underwhelmed with a pleasant yet peripheral dose of humor; if you go the second for an ingenious, gripping, sophisticated heist plotline, your expectations are thwarted: not only does Ocean's Twelve not provide this, it highjacks the machinery of the traditional heist movie to accomplish frivolous comic ends, irreverently transfiguring (disfiguring?) the thrilling schemes and plot twists the viewer has come to love in its predecessor into an unabashed burlesque of the same. The second subverts the first; its plot subverts the faith of the audience; the humor employed subverts our expectations of traditional, handy, quickly-got punch lines--instead we are met with excessive subtlety and are excessively demanded of in attention, perception, and thought (see note above). Now, while the previous sentence should spell condemnation--It so happens that my aesthetic and comedic proclivities tend towards subversion.
In fact, I have yet to find a negative review of the movie that I didn't totally agree with--but whereas the reviewer highlights particular properties of the film to declaim them, I do so to cherish them. For instance, take this excerpt from Newsweek's David Ansen in his review titled, Style over Substance: "while it looks like the cast is having a blast and a half, the studied hipness can get so pleased with itself it borders on the smug".
With this I agree; but I covet the smug self-indulgence of hip and witty men, and often truckle substance to style.
Forgive me.
Alright--I realize I failed in my attempt at brevity (thereby losing whatever semblance of a readership to which I might lay claim), but I nevertheless had a lot of fun in writing this message to you, which was my secret Goal 4 all along: "to thoroughly enjoy myself in the writing, the publishing, and (forgive me) the frequent re-reading of this post".
I'd venture that Goal 4 is much like the secret aesthetic goals of Ocean's Twelve in that way.
My second goal [hereby christened "Goal 3" (Sorry--my '2' key is broken)] is to explain why Ocean's Twelve was ever at all on my favorite movie list. Goal 3 will constitute a formal written defense of the merits of Ocean's Twelve as a comic masterpiece of film and all-around Jonathan-Charles-Wright-sanctioned waste of time.
Goal 1.
Mr. Swingrover--hello. In response to your status as recently broadcasted on f-book, "Tori is incredibly puzzled as to why Ocean's Twelve was ever on Jonathan Wright's favorite movie list in the first place", I'd like to correct what I think to be a factual misconception to which you have fallen prey and which is directly informing your status as recently broadcasted on f-book (see note above). Ocean's Twelve has never been "in the first place" on my favorite movie list. It was, however, recently in the 20th place on my favorite movie list, as posted on f-book. However, having recently met with the movie Les Enfants du Paradis ("The Children of Paradise"), Ocean's Twelve has been bumped off the aforementioned list, and now fails to constitute a member in any posted or published list of favorite movies of mine.
Nevertheless, I yet hold the movie near and dear to my right ventricle--nearer and dearer, in fact, than I hold to my right (or left) ventricle either of its close kin, Ocean's Eleven or Ocean's Thirteen.
Goal 3.
Mr. Swingrover--hello again. Let me firmly declare that my favorite film from the three Ocean's movies is the second, Ocean's Twelve. Let me do this pictorially by posting a couple of the movie's different posters:
Poster 1.
Poster 3. ('2' key still broken.)
Now, Mr. Swingrover, if you aren't convinced of this movie's merit simply by the mathematical daring and novelty of its tagline, "Twelve is the New Eleven", let me briefly make a few points by way of defending the film. I will strive for brevity, because I find that for any given blog post, the less I write, the more others read. I will confine myself to two points, one a distinction, the other an application of the distinction.
Point 1: Distinction.
I am a firm and naive believer that when reading a book, or when watching a movie, the process of evaluation is twofold.
The first level of judgment entails determining the given work's ends, its goals, and then determining whether the work accomplishes these ends; if so, it is to the work's aesthetic credit; if not, it is to the work's aesthetic detriment. The essence of this level of judgment is simply to take whatever goal the work assumes for itself as a criterion from which to announce praise or of criticism. I'll call this evaluating a work's means.
Then, having done this, the process of evaluation moves to a different level of judgment: one must estimate the ends themselves: are they worthy ends? Are they stupid, ugly, or evil ends? Good, True, or Beautiful? Funny?? I'll call this evaluating a work's ends.
I think that it is in with this kind of distinction in mind that Ayn Rand claims, "it is not a contradiction to say: 'This is a great work, but I don't like it'". By this she means that a work can simultaneously execute its ends with excellence, yet have poor or distasteful ends--we might even classify Rand's work in this way.
Point 3: Application of the Distinction.
Now, to Ocean's Twelve.
The reason I think so many people dislike Ocean's Twelve is because they make a misstep in determining the movie's ends (see note above). The average misstepping viewer, going to see a sequel to Ocean's Eleven, tacitly assumes (though not without justification) that they ought to bring the aesthetic ends of that movie to bear on its successor. But I, contrariwise, think that Ocean's Twelve aims at something divergent from the goals of its beloved predecessor, and so ought not to be judged in the same way. By bringing the wrong standards to bear, the average misstepping viewer ends up disliking Ocean's Twelve for failing to deliver, while they ought to be championing its virtue from the Hollywood hilltops. But this seems as wrongheaded to me as holding A Night at the Opera in contempt for failing to deliver as a psychological thriller. We viewers need to bring the appropriate standards to bear in judging any given work.
I think that, whereas Ocean's Eleven wants to be a fun, quick, and clever heist movie with the help of the stereotypical trappings of the comedy genre, Ocean's Twelve wants to be a fun, quick and clever comedy at the expense of the trappings of the heist movie genre. Here their ends diverge, and accordingly do their means. If you go to the first for nonstop unadulterated comedy, you're underwhelmed with a pleasant yet peripheral dose of humor; if you go the second for an ingenious, gripping, sophisticated heist plotline, your expectations are thwarted: not only does Ocean's Twelve not provide this, it highjacks the machinery of the traditional heist movie to accomplish frivolous comic ends, irreverently transfiguring (disfiguring?) the thrilling schemes and plot twists the viewer has come to love in its predecessor into an unabashed burlesque of the same. The second subverts the first; its plot subverts the faith of the audience; the humor employed subverts our expectations of traditional, handy, quickly-got punch lines--instead we are met with excessive subtlety and are excessively demanded of in attention, perception, and thought (see note above). Now, while the previous sentence should spell condemnation--It so happens that my aesthetic and comedic proclivities tend towards subversion.
In fact, I have yet to find a negative review of the movie that I didn't totally agree with--but whereas the reviewer highlights particular properties of the film to declaim them, I do so to cherish them. For instance, take this excerpt from Newsweek's David Ansen in his review titled, Style over Substance: "while it looks like the cast is having a blast and a half, the studied hipness can get so pleased with itself it borders on the smug".
With this I agree; but I covet the smug self-indulgence of hip and witty men, and often truckle substance to style.
Forgive me.
Alright--I realize I failed in my attempt at brevity (thereby losing whatever semblance of a readership to which I might lay claim), but I nevertheless had a lot of fun in writing this message to you, which was my secret Goal 4 all along: "to thoroughly enjoy myself in the writing, the publishing, and (forgive me) the frequent re-reading of this post".
I'd venture that Goal 4 is much like the secret aesthetic goals of Ocean's Twelve in that way.
7.16.2008
Photograph & Quotation of the Day.
"When I was a boy I used to dream of going for a walk along the horizon line. Now, I wander along every line of every horizon."--Jacques-Henri Lartigue