As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

"How's that working out for you?"

"What?"

"Being clever."

"Great."

"Keep it up then."

Will robots inherit the earth?

Yes, but they will be our children.

sidenote: mexico was the lone country to protest nazi germany's annexation of austria (the infamous "anschluss"), which is why this curiosity exists in the main park of vienna.

At no time, therefore, hadst Thou not made anything, because Thou hadst made time itself. And no times are co-eternal with Thee, because Thou remainest for ever; but should these continue, they would not be times. For what is time? Who can easily and briefly explain it? Who even in thought can comprehend it, even to the pronouncing of a word concerning it? But what in speaking do we refer to more familiarly and knowingly than time? And certainly we understand when we speak of it; we understand also when we hear it spoken of by another.

What, then, is time? If no one ask of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not.

i would like to to write more on the concept of time as it relates to physics and thermodynamics. but i don't know where to begin writing.

for now, a reflection on the subject to mull...with a little catholic metaphysics on what-begets-god for ya to also chomp on.

Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me.

Dear Mr. Burgess,

Herr Wenner has forwarded your useless letter from Rome to the National Affairs Desk for my examination and/or reply.

Unfortunately, we have no International Gibberish Desk, or it would have ended up there.

What kind of lame, half-mad bullshit are you trying to sneak over on us? When Rolling Stone asks for “a thinkpiece", goddamnit, we want a fucking Thinkpiece... and don’t try to weasel out with any of your limey bullshit about a “50,000 word novella about the condition humaine, etc...”

Do you take us for a gang of brainless lizards? Rich hoodlums? Dilettante thugs?

You lazy cocksucker. I want that Thinkpiece on my desk by Labor Day. And I want it ready for press. The time has come & gone when cheapjack scum like you can get away with the kind of scams you got rich from in the past.

Get your worthless ass out of the piazza and back to the typewriter. Your type is a dime a dozen around here, Burgess, and I’m fucked if I’m going to stand for it any longer.

Sincerely,
Hunter S Thompson

the "dime a dozen" recipient of this letter, anthony burgess, is the author of "A Clockwork Orange."

He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?

And when you crochet
I feel mesmerized and proud

I am quite illiterate, but I read a lot.

Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.

see: red queen theory.

Nowadays what isn't worth saying is sung.

he may have a point...

My lifestyle's wild I was living like a wild child
Trapped on a short leash paroled the police files
So yo, what' s happening now?

then again sometimes something stupid can bring happy memories.
whose to say?

The Golden Bough begins like a good mystery. It offers a riddle, some tantalizing clues, and a striking description of long-forgotten scenes and events. Frazer explains that along the Appian Way, the ancient road that runs from Rome to the villages of central Italy, there is a small town named Aricia; near it, in a wooded grove by the lake called Nemi, stands the ruin of a temple dedicated by the Romans to Diana, goddess of the hunt, as well as of both fertility and childbirth. In the happy days of the empire, this lakeside shrine with its woodland was both a country resort and a place of pilgrimage. Citizens of Rome traveled often to the site, especially in the midsummer, to celebrate a yearly festival of fire. It was too all appearances a restful, civilized, and lovely place. But the woods at the lakeshore also held a secret.

The Roman poets told of a second god, Virbius, who was also worshipped at the temple. He was sometimes identified with the young Greek hero Hippolytus, who, according to other myths, had been murdered by one of the gods in a fit of anger, only to be restored to life by Diana, who then chose to hide him here at her temple. Virbius was represented by a very mysterious figure, a man who was understood actually to live in the woods and was said to be both a priest and a king. He took it as his duty to keep constant watch not only over Diana’s temple but also over a sacred tree that grew in the forest—an oak with a distinctive yellow branch, or “golden bough.” The man bore the title Rex Nemorenis, Lake Nemi’s “King of the Wood.” Though obviously a human being, this king was thought also to be a god; he was at once both the divine lover of the goddess Diana and the animating spirit of the sacred oak tree around which he stood guard.

Strange as this King of the Wood himself may seem, the way in which he acquired his position was still stranger. It came by way of a murder.

Legend held that this priest-king had taken over the wood by putting to death the previous one, and that he too would keep his power only as long as he remains vigilant and strong, ready in a moment to defend his very life against other would-be kings who might try to seize his place and power. To keep his life and rule, the king had constantly to walk the temple woods, sword in hand, waiting for the approach of any would be a assailant. should his guard fail or his strength weekend, and intruder might at any moment breakthrough, duel the king to his death, and tear away the golden bough, which then entitled the victor to both the sexual favors of the goddess Diana and the priestly rule of the Woodland. On the victor also, however, feel the same weiring burden of self-defense-- the need to guard the oak without rest and to search the forest for the threatening form of any new rival who might approach, ready to kill, and eager himself to become the next King of the Wood.

...[Frazer's] purpose was rather to set the stage for his study by unfolding a single, sharp contrast—one that discloses the outline of an earlier, more brutal state of humanity lying just below the surface of the cultures we like to think of as civilized.

How, he asks, could there be a place as beautiful as the grove at Nemi, a temple and grounds so loved by visitors for its peace and healing renewal, yet at the same time so steeped in a heritage of savage brutality? How is it that a center given over to the comforts of religion could be the stage for a ritual murder? That is a riddle we should very much like to see explained.

In searching for solutions, however, Frazer tells us that we will get nowhere if we keep only to the evidence available from the days of classical Greek and Roman civilization. The pastimes of cultivated Romans who visited Diana’s temple offer no clues to explain the shadowy, foreboding personage of the King of the Wood. To account for such a figure, we must look elsewhere—into the deeper prehistoric past, when savage ancestors of the Romans walked the very same woods and shores centuries before Diana’s temple was ever built. If it should be that among these much earlier peoples we can find an obscure custom or belief that continued down to Roman times, if we should discover one of Tylor’s “survivals,” then we might very well have a way to identify the King of the Wood and solve his deadly mystery.

apologies, usually i try to keep the posts as pithy as possible; this is as concise i could.

double apologies, but you will have to seek out the answer to the intriguing legend of the king of the wood and the golden bough all on your own.

hint: the north remembers.

Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read.

...
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
...

Si el hombre es polvo
Esos que andan por el llano
Son hombres. 

Now what...?

"Fourth of July", sufjan stevens (2015)

the sound is sucked out of the room. all great crests herald terrible valleys and here the paragon of american maximilism is left shellshocked at his estranged mother's death. with integrity and impeccable narrative prowess we move through a dialogue stitched seemingly together from memories. but the truth is that neither the forgiving child nor consoling mother exist in the moment-- these are not flashbacks. this is a moment between ghosts. and ghosts have nothing to fear and nothing to hide.

"Stop Suffering", tropic of cancer (2015)

the machine beat drips slowly, the steady drip of chemo poison unravels in the blood. a haunting voice. lingering synths. reverb's echo. all these elements merge and give rise to catharsis amidst resignation, and perhaps, even more, a sense of dignity to it all.

"Thinking, Fast and Slow", daniel kahneman (2011)

there is a reason this psychologist won the nobel prize for economics. this engaging book presents a compelling case for the rational, somber mind as anything but. scores of examples reveal how our ability to judge, scale, and forecast are all biased disastrously in predictably irrational ways. at the surface it is a trove of curious insights, but upon reflection we are left with questions about the troubling implications, and worse yet, a newfound understanding that our mind is an uncalibrated instrument incapable of answering them.

"Pedro Páramo", juan rulfo (1955)

as a child of a border town, i reflect often on the idea of culture and nationalism. if i had to begin a conversation on latin american culture with one word it would be "baroque", a culture in-stasis by a partial birth, marooned from history for centuries, the last vestiges of a by-gone century. latin culture, language, architecture, religion, art, and even familial relationships all share in this common thread of pageantry and excess. everything is colorful. everything is elaborate. everything is life. even death.

but in the mid 20th century that began to change and this book sits at the inflection. juan rulfo's novella of a man who returns to his mother's literal ghost town is a beautiful work that is uniquely latin. the product of a culture simmering and ready to breathe. the themes, the people, the very motivations are familiar of romantic baroque heroes-- but the mechanics, the nagging doubts and hopes of its characters all pull elsewhere, tearing from within into a new style, birthing a new era of latin american identity. you can feel the warmth of a new dawn rise from this ghost story. compare with edgar lee master's approach to "spoon river anthology" and there alone you have a raison d'etre. the cold puritan steel vs the white hot hispanic forge.

for me, "cien años de soledad" is the titan of spanish literature that will be remembered for lifetimes to come. here we witness the fever dream that inspired it.

thank you for reading.
until 2016.

"Birdie."

"Say what you always say."

"Everything's gonna be okay."

The statistician George Box once remarked: ‘All models are wrong, but some models are useful’. It is a common, albeit understandable, mistake by empiricists to think that a model is flawed if it does not incorporate all the features known to influence an evolutionary or ecological process. When such an argument is taken to the extreme, it is easy to see why it becomes untenable.

My own favourite example is a map of a countryside. Maps are models that are designed to help us grasp certain features of the landscape. For example, a map might consist of contour lines which help us predict which way a river will flow once we stumble across it. But a map would become completely useless if it had every tuft of grass marked on it...

In other words, staring at a too detailed model teaches us nothing more than staring at the original ecosystem, with its complete mess of evolutionary and ecological detail.