Nowhere Gazette

Thoughts Wander -- No direction, no destination

[nowheregazette]

...Said the man with the inhaled laugh...

[nowheregazette]

When my mother uses the telephone, she speaks so loudly that I'm confident for most local calls the phone itself is redundant.

With cell phones it's even more the case.

And I've deduced from the rare occasions when I've seen her use it to speak to family abroad (e.g. for Christmas or birthdays) that she believes Skype functions using something akin to wormholes.

[nowheregazette]

I think I can safely say that was the most short-lived romance I have ever known. Having ended because apparently she 'liked me too much' after one date, it might also be the most absurd romance I have ever known.

(Full story to come.)

[nowheregazette]

In France, for the first two weeks following the new year, upturned Christmas trees are strewn across the pavements of every street. Every year ill-equipped garbage collectors ponderously scratch their chins as they try to remember how they dealt with the problem the year before. Desolate and almost ceremonious the dead trees remind of feasts and gifts now gone. They bring wonder to the minds of mischievous young boys who imagine nighttime crusades with jerrycans, in which they could finally turn their dull suburbia into a present day Gomorrah. The pandemonium is quite enjoyable to watch from one's window. But it makes it awfully complicated to get down the street.

[viperslang]

I don’t necessarily agree with everything that I say.

Marshall McLuhan

[nowheregazette]

In an ideal world (to be continued)

In an ideal world:

-Parisian street vendors make a good living selling T-Shirts which say 'Fuck Tourists'.

-People don't leave a space between the last word of a sentence and the final punctuation mark.

But apparently this is not an ideal world !

(Fuck it drives me crazy just illustrating the point).

[jihelle-deactivated20190205]

[nowheregazette]

Henri Matisse, Homme endormi

[nowheregazette]

My dentist has warned me against getting a dog on account of the trismus (involuntary contraction of masticatory muscles, i.e. Lock-jaw) I get whenever I pet them. Apparently it's a common syndrome, other symptoms include an irrepressible desire to squeeze small creatures. (It's called the Bapstein-Lennie Syndrome after Dr. Bapstein who first diagnosed it and the character Lennie in Steinbecks's 'Of Mice and Men' who is the first recorded afflicted by the ailment.)

[nowheregazette]

Physics Anti-Joke

A physicist gets into an argument with another physicist.

One says to the other: "How many times do I have to ask you to stop touching my benson burner?"

The other responds: "Well what about you constantly ferreting about me when I'm trying to focus."

The first one retorts: "You're not even a real physicist, you don't create, you just work your experiments using models which theoretical physicists like me invent for the purpose!"

Finally, the other angrily exclames: "Well you don't even matter!"

[nowheregazette]

Wondering why almost all example-demonstrations of the theory of relativity start with: "Let us suppose you are on a train..." and end with: "so in fact the events were not simultaneous absolutely, but only relatively to the man standing in the middle of the train..."

(and then stop there, leaving you wondering what earth-shattering aspect of the situation you missed) 

(prompting you to read the section again, until you're so fed up of hearing about reference-bodies that you begin to wonder whether relativity isn't some kind of scientized version of Berkeley's idealism)

(by which point you decide to press on, reading for another ten pages about measurement of rigid bodies before another train example crops up)

(etc...)

[nowheregazette]

In Ancient Greece, when a spartan warrior failed in his duties, he would often be condemned to death. But once, a warrior known to abhor all festivals and coordinated happiness wasn't condemned to death, but was forced to walk around a supermarket on December 24th for all eternity.

[nowheregazette]

Brief Interlude On the Usage of Ghosts as MacGuffins

Ghosts and their problematic ghostliness when relating to real world characters are not acceptable excuses for a story. Their unreality is not a suitable obstacle for a hero, who would be ignoring the ghost altogether if he had any heroism about him. The temptation for writers to use ghosts may stem from the greater freedom it seems to allow in the evolution of the plot. This is also why dream sequences in film and literature are the luxury of the writer, and often the chore of the spectator or reader.

[...]

Ghostliness may seem like a fun initial premise, but when it comes to resolution it is a major pain in the ass.

[nowheregazette]

Without common laws, there would be no way to tell my dreams from your dreams. There would be no shared reality. Everything would be dreams, and so everyone would dream alone. And so like science, art is a way of connecting the dreams of one person with the dreams of another.

[nowheregazette]

Remind me tomorrow

MacBook Software Update alerts, clicked on daily.

[nowheregazette]

The tumblr format implicitly suggests one write in short, aphoristic posts. It's part of the catch-phrasification of communication and maybe even literature. It's part of a cycle which culminates in no one giving each other the time of day (which is currently 2:13 AM CET)

[nowheregazette]

So For Now Don't Ask Me About The Economy or 'What Does it Mean to Have a Stance?'

I often find myself in conversations of which the fundamental parameters escape me. People will ask me what I think of this candidate, or gay marriage, or a riot somewhere. And it's not that I disdain people for concerning themselves with these issues, it's just that I have no idea where to begin. How is one supposed to formulate a stance on something? How can you make the decision to vote for one person and not another? What is it that tells you this candidate will be the best decision-maker when it comes to solving a variety of problems which no one person thoroughly grasps? And how am I supposed to decide how other people live their lives? Who am I to be for or against gay marriage? And don't think I'm saying that I think that there should be no laws, that everyone should be completely free. Because that would already take a lot of audacity on my part. I don't even go that far. I don't even ask the questions, and though I can see how other people answer the questions, I don't understand the meaning of what they believe, their mode of response completely eludes me. What does it mean to have a stance?

I don't even have a stance on my own life, let alone the lives of others. I'm not saying this should be everyone's case, I'm saying it is mine. When I wake up there are so many things to think about, how does one get round to answering questions about the 'financial crisis'? If I hadn't been told in the news, I don't think I'd know there was a 'crisis' going on. Other people, they see a depth in things, they see a beggar on the street and it is a sign that times are hard, but if the news said things are getting better, then his absence on the street serves as a confirmation. They hear that a couple is separating and then see the world through the prism of "people just don't fall in love anymore..." And people actually say these things, and seem to have no qualms about confirming things they hear in the news with contingencies they encounter throughout the day. This process of rendering a thoroughly contingent fact (e.g. the presence or absence of a beggar) necessary by relating it to something heard on the news always impresses me, by the way functions devoid of self-doubt; other possibilities are completely repressed to serve the purposes of an argument, which will subsequently be remade and repeated by others, become the 'talk of the town' and then be completely forgotten.

I've thought maybe if I recognised myself more in the people around me, I would see my problems as their problems, and their problems as my problems. The Economy with a capital 'E' would become a personal concern of mine, affecting my mood regardless of whether I had any invested capital. My heartbreak would be the heartbreak of a society that no longer knows how to fall in love; my lack of focus would be the fault of mass-media, my lack of work due to the high unemployment rates. And conversely, my country's military victory would also be my victory, symbolic of my superior strength of character, my superior morality and also of my ability to give someone a good 'kick in the ass' when they need it.

But for now I've got a lot of other things to think about, problems which really feel very personal and every day I recognise myself less in other's concerns and conversation. Hopefully someday this will change, because it looks like the grass is greener on the other side. It looks great, because you can blame everyone for your misfortune, and gratify yourself in their success.

But for now don't ask me about the economy, because the truth is I don't know, and also I'm a little worried because of the way my dog keeps shitting when I go out and I'm not sure if he's trying to punish me for leaving him or something but it's definitely something, and then I have some serious reminiscing about possible lost love to do, before I pretend to look for a job by making a few phone calls and then console myself with bad films and chocolate milk and try to believe I'm a kid again.

Someday maybe I'll learn how to say things about the economy and the degeneration of society and use expressions like 'derelict youth' and be able to analyse the reasons for rioting. But for now I just have no idea. It doesn't look like stuff changes, people flare up, people flare down, I just can't discern an evolution either way.

When people talk this way about 'current affairs' I'm always at a loss for words, and I think this is why a lot of people must find me quite boring to be around... Because I've always found that things change very slowly, pretty much imperceptibly so; and if I ever do find something different in my life, a change of any meaningful scale between yesterday and today, it's impossible to say whether it's a good change or a bad one. So when it comes to commenting on the News and Society, I'm useless. 

[nowheregazette]

Bad acting, bad script, ridiculous action sequences. What more can one ask for in a movie?