Paprika image-blog

While I really enjoyed the general storyline and themes of Paprika, I couldn't help but pick out several of what I saw as references to other styles, directors and even specific examples of animation within the film. (this being from the same writer/director of Millennium Actress, which I saw as an animated mash-up of various film styles/genres) With that being said I thought I'd make this final blog primarily an image blog in order to try and point out the similarities I saw, and also just to try something I haven't really done. I wasn't always able to find ideal images to use, but I think they work alright

here goes 

    

I saw an eerie resemblance between the chairman from Paprika and Kim from Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. Both characters creeped me out. 

   

 The Chairman's "nightmare form" also reminded me of the Night Walker from Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke

  

In fact, most of Kon's "spirits" (if you will) just kind of generally reminded me of Miyazaki's 

(a lot of the early parade-dream sequences are silly and nonsensical, possibly a reference to the goof-ball Saturday morning cartoons of many a child-hood) 

  

In a less specific context, Tokita's robot transformation may very well be a reference to the mecha sub-genre of anime 

Disney. 

Your guess is as good as mine on this one. why butterflies? 

There are probably more that I missed. 

I see this as, among other things, the film equivalent to literature's mash-up. I think it's pretty interesting to see what new ideas emerge from combing things in new ways; although in regards to this also being a commentary on how different styles interact I am admittedly a bit lost.

also, what do we make of the concept of the "alter-ego" presented in this film. are we really that separate in our dreams?  

ghost in the shell blog for 313

I’m in trouble now –after reading part (I’m working on it) of the manga for Akira, and realizing how much insight I gained from it, and then to not have that with Ghost in the Shell definitely makes me want to read the manga versions of all of these films.


I do not have time.


Anyway, it probably goes without saying that I have several questions left over after watching the film, here goes.


Something called a “ghost” is mentioned multiple times throughout the film (a major theme really) but I am unclear as to what one is. My best guess is that it is one’s persona within the net, an avatar of sorts. This concept is muddled, however, by adding the idea of a soul, something that is also mentioned and quantifiable apparently. (characters discuss whether a cyborg has a soul in a way that seems to be decidable by logical procession… although they do not seem to reach a conclusion.) Is this the same thing as a ghost –something that all cyber-constructs seem to possess-- and is the net also an afterlife of sorts? Or is there a distinction between a soul and a ghost. I feel like it is worth noting that it is not debated whether or not non-augmented humans have a soul, although it seems implied that they do not have ghosts.


Next, don’ t cyborgs know their own strength?

Great time to try and be a human Motoko, that's going to leave a mark.

And finally, as an open question, any thoughts on the puppet master’s arguments for machines as life forms? I personally don’t even know where to start with this one, but I think it might be worth coming back to for the paper. His (its) arguments about DNA being a memory-machine seem pretty sound to me.


Anyway, a few other thoughts,


Motoko seemed incredibly similar to the character of Molly from W. Gibson’s Neuromancer and Napier also definitely hints at this. Her unblinking eyes are basically an equivalent to Molly’s surgically attached lenses that cover her eyes. It seems to me that when creating any kick-ass female assassin characters in cyberpunk settings, Gibson definitely deserves a nod. Pair that up with P.K. Dicks “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” and I think you’ve got the better part of the inspiration for this film nailed down. (Pris’ s existential crisis + Molly’s deadliness – sex = Motoko, imo).

Sorry cowboy, looks like the future belongs to the girls.

Something that really stood out to me in this film was the scene showing cuts of the city from the perspective of the canals.

somewhere around here...

I was stuck by the bobbing of the boats on the water, creating the illusion of breathing bodies, alongside the images of the mannequins in the storefronts. I feel like there’s a huge message here, especially if we think of ships in their rather classical metaphorical status, as vessels made to contain and protect souls. There are places we just cannot go without ships. In a sense, the vessels (the shell) is the true life form in such a harsh technological time, and the human within it is merely a puppet to be posed or disposed of.

untitled.

The first assignment for 351. one of the first times I've written (obviously a very short piece) a main female character. on the whole, it's pretty cliche.

She hadn’t been afraid her whole life, but at the same time, her fear had no distinguishable point of origin. In a sense, she had been afraid for as long as she could remember. This fear was certainly intangible; although even to call it irrational would seem to be an overstatement. There was no reason for her fear to exist, so in way, there was no reason for it to cease to exist either. Whenever she was alone in the house at night she found herself routinely opening every door, turning on every light, and then methodically locking down the whole house room by room to be sure it was empty. She never really knew what she was looking for, but looking for it was the only thing that could even partially quell the entirety of the fear, that of it finding her first. What made it infinitely worse was that she could never ask anyone for help. The great wisdom of human logic: “it isn’t real” was of no use to her. It was incredibly real in the way only fear can become real; completely confined to the limits of an individual. For hours at a time it would consume her waking mind; fighting herself, fighting it, and never being able to tell the difference. In the end, her war died with a breeze through her window in the middle of the night. She woke up and knew that it was as close as it had ever been, but she also knew that it was as close as it could get. She hadn’t defeated or destroyed her fear but had instead harnessed it. A strange energy to be put to whatever use she saw fit.

an early take on augmented realities.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6yantixZ5c&ob=av3e

Apparently I cannot embed this video, but watch it anyway. I could say that any video in itself is an augmented reality, but Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett have, I feel, taken this idea to a different level. The organization of the visual aspect of their music calls up an interesting question; how do you work a musical group based on cartoon characters, but then make that group rely heavily on the contributions of guest (real) musicians? This is not the first time that the Gorrilaz have tackled this problem, but what is interesting about this particular video as an augmented reality is the interaction between creation and creator. In this case Shaun Ryder, who collaborated on the song with Albarn and Hewlett, has been given the role of "soundsystem" to the Gorillaz. The metaphor is not incredibly complicated; the relationship of artist and art is not one of a god lording over his subjects, but more of a dynamic of push and pull. True, without Albarn and Hewlett the Gorrilaz would not exist, but without the Gorillaz, who would Albarn and Hewlett be? Speculation is pointless, what I am trying to get at is that this relationship has evolved to become something that neither party can easily be separated from, if at all. But there is also a third part of this dynamic, the audience. What is transferred to us from this interaction? A message maybe, or perhaps stimulation on some level, certainly not code-able to words, but necessary none the less. We get a unique opportunity to shape, on some level, where the creative flow will take the artist and her art, but we ourselves cannot render what she can. Still; it is not the artist that gives us what we need, she only gives her creation what it initially needs, then the transfer takes place.

This relationship is all very parasitic of course. It took me a long time to get a handle on what Serres refers to as "noise", "static" or "interruption". Now I think I will simply call these things the audience.

Paragraphs

To write. If we write about the form and function of our own writing we are writing about writing in entirety. Which word? Which sentence? Which paragraph? Any and all. Communication can and does take place without writing, and even within writing grammatical rules are not by any means requirements for effective communication. We started with words; simple vocal mechanisms used to attempt to convey single thoughts or ideas. From there they got more complex, definitions built on definitions. Now maybe we need sentences to allow words to work in combinations to reveal specific meanings. Sentences became cliché, metaphors grew and expanded. Is the point of an entire paragraph just to try and communicate a few key words whose simplicity somehow got lost to time? Or are word perhaps complex by nature, and the development of grammar is nothing less than brilliant technological innovation that allows us to expand our use of words? What, to try and be as specific as possible, is a paragraph?

A paragraph can be a single sentence.

But a paragraph can also be an unlimited number of sentences. A paragraph is meant to show a greater division in thought than a sentence can show. The question that arises, however, is how great that thought division needs to be?

Say I start another paragraph right here. Is that warranted? It seems to be mostly a stylistic decision in this sense. But a paragraph is more than just style, most of the time a significant amount of thought goes into a paragraph, even with this choppy architecture, I am trying to prove a point.

The origin of the word “paragraph” is Greek, and means “written beside”, but the etymology, as fun as it is, isn’t terribly useful. The origin of “paragraph” simply describes “paragraph”, which is no more than an abstract way to refer to paragraphs, those strange chunks of writing that can include as many sentences as the author sees fit. Besides, “written beside” what, other paragraphs? But maybe this is something that we can’t examine abstractly, or at least not effectively; but luckily it is not too difficult to find where paragraphs have been used in non abstract way

A parable (whose etymology is very close to that or “paragraph”, conveniently enough) is supposed to be a story that leads us to single lesson at the end; a moral of a few words or maybe just a single word. In a similar way, I feel, to how a paragraph can lead us to a certain idea or ideas contained within. Does the moral help make sense of the parable, or does the parable help make sense of the moral? Kafka admits to two and one examination, in The Complete Stories and Borges also seems to have two in his Collected Fictions. I also admit to two in my personal writing, but, this being where admitting comes in, I wrote a few other parables that I didn’t admit to being parables. Are they still parables? Do they still have morals? Of the two I admit to, I don’t really consider one of them a real parable, and I could not tell you a moral if you asked. With this in mind, I must wonder if Borges and Kafka meant all their parables to be parables, and also whether or not any other parables and morals are hidden throughout their texts. Granted, we could say anything is a parable if we simply attach a moral to it, so maybe I am asking the wrong questions here. If anything could have a moral, in the eyes of the reader, why designate something as a parable? I might be able to squeeze an answer or two from the last piece of Kafka’s anthology titled “On Parables”. In the first paragraph, Kafka seems to be suggesting that parables are useless because any wisdom offered in them is not translatable to everyday life, but then a dialogue begins over this matter.

“Concerning this a man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid yourself of all your daily cares.

Another said: I bet that is also a parable.

The first said: You have won.

The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.

The first said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost.”

I have taken the liberty of leaving the quote in its original formatting, five separate paragraphs, as good grammar dictates that we make each line of a different speaker in a dialogue into its own paragraph. Then again, Kafka is not using quotations, and if I am not mistaken they are the indicator for dialogue-paragraph separation. Still, I am certain the Kafka was trying to send some sort of message with this decision. The parable itself is as incomprehensible as any story, and even the moral is not useful in its raw form, but if it can be translated to have some personal value, than the parable, and therefore its moral, will be useful in everyday life. This seems to be a double edged sword though; because once the moral is converted to functional use the parable will be ruined in a way. It will lose its magic, its godliness.

So what does this mean for us as the authors of parables? Does our work have a maximum level of interpretation that, after attained, will cause our writing to eventually be left by the curbside? Or to look at it another way, if we think we have fully understood a piece of writing, what need do we have to ever come back to it? Its immortality is destroyed. Although I do not personally believe that anything I have ever written could be so inexhaustible; in the case of Kafka and Borges how could any of their works not be? Still, they have both written parables, those little stories that people will try to cut up and extract one single lesson from, once that is done, that’s it. Then again, maybe none of this concerns us. We (I will put myself alongside the masters in this case, though I don’t know their minds) don’t write a parable or anything else for that matter in the hopes that it will be forever thought of as non comprehendible piece of eternal literature. As I said in my previous assignment on the sentence, I personally write in the hopes that just maybe one person will be able to take one useful thing from what I have created. I am not entirely concerned with what that thing is, that will be mostly out of my control. So maybe the desire to write parables stems not from an intention of any specific message, but only to alter the process in which that message is discovered.

I feel like I need to go back to a section of the quote in order proceed with where these ideas seem to be taking me. “Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables…” How exactly does one follow a parable? Are to follow the moral? This is problematic because so often the moral is hidden, and even when we do find it, it does not immediately become clear what to do with it. I think that Kafka has left something out here, something key. This translation, this leap, is one that we must make for ourselves. How does one go about becoming anything? Let’s say, for the sake of example, a baseball player. You cannot just watch baseball to become a baseball player, sure, watching can be valuable to an extent, but you also need to practice. I believe that parables, paragraphs; that writing in general is the same. The piece in question is called “On Parables” after all so although it may be a parable, it is also a hint at how to write them and therefore how to become them. Borges also seems to know what I am talking about, “Defeated by reality, by Spain, don Quixote died in 1614 in the town of his birth. He was survived only a short time by Miguel de Cervantes.” In this piece, also a parable, Borges suggests that a writer lends part, or all of, himself into what he creates. This is what I believe to be the key to unlocking vastly greater sources of written knowledge, by writing them yourself.

“No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.” (Kafka, 4) I would like to suggest the possibility that because of the subjective nature of interpretation, many of these insights may only be useful to myself. Then I would like to move on to the final bit of wisdom that I feel I can at least try and impart.

Where do these ideas lead us? The parable and the paragraph are open forms. We are free to make what we will of them; both as authors and readers. That is one thing I have noticed as we have scaled out from words to sentences to paragraphs, the more you zoom out the less strict the rules are. The more openly we allow ourselves to write, the more useful our words become. Words, sentences, paragraphs, parables –all are tools of language that are at our disposal. I do not believe that it should be our goal to completely unravel the threads of language and take control of it, but rather to dig in and get as much out of it as we possibly can, and that is what these tools allow us to better accomplish.

an obvious parable.

This is a parable, and sure as the sea is blue it will contain, at some well planned point, a moral. You, gifted reader, may also have already guessed that this parable will also include an intriguing main character whose actions will be central to the revelation of the moral. If I could even be so bold, in my own writing, I would like to name that character as you, gifted reader; now you are the intriguing and gifted main character of your own parable. Congratulations. Although it is true, and let it be known to all that you are highly gifted, you may yet have a thing or two to learn. You might even be aware of this, since you are after all, gifted and intriguing. The lesson that you learn over the course of your journey will be immensely and eternally valuable in its own right, I assure you, but the journey itself will also be quite significant. I must warn you, there may be some danger along the way, the nature of which I cannot entirely predict, but fear not, you will reach the safety of the clearing quite together. Think to yourself for a few moments what you will take with you on this journey, but I will urge you to travel light, for material goods will not hold up well where you're going. If you could pack it all down to but a handful of ideas and concepts, decide what they would be; a few memories of past lessons and journeys may not be a bad idea to take along as well. Arm yourself with your sharpest wit, and guard yourself well with your best problem solving techniques. You will need both. Take nothing at its face value, oh most gifted and intriguing protagonist. Again I assure you that you will survive these trials for the better in the end, but it seems that I have run out of time to talk to you. This is the end of the parable. Did you catch the Moral?

the sentence

If a word can represent a notion, a mere infant in metaphoric form, then a sentence could be considered yet a child in the metaphoric world; somewhat coherent, more individual, but still able to fluctuate as it moves, sometimes clumsily, through context. Of course there are multiple ways of looking at this; a sentence can be a conglomeration of words, ideas beginning to form a more evolved and specialized organism, or sentences can be single notions and ideas in themselves. Like a cell made up of different parts and characteristics which all work towards a single function; or at least singular at any given instant, though this function can also change instantly and without warning. That being said we have to take into consideration the large variety of functions that a single sentence can have, and how to at least attempt to differentiate these functions from each other. Difficultly does arise, admittedly, in different reader interpretations, but for the purposes of this paper I will define “function” as usage, and “meaning” as personal interpretation reflection and/or meditation on the sentence in question. You might, for instance, buy a Dr. Seuss book for your child because they are a commonly accepted for early readers, even you yourself might suspect it is secretly a political doctrine of some kind. Although, I think it can generally be said be that most people will not read Dr. Seuss the same way they read, say, the politically defining “Declaration of Independence”, or that we do not read the metaphoric and poetic works of Shakespeare the same way we read the somewhat eccentric, though still very metaphoric and poetic in his own way, Burroughs. Although truly, these two authors, and so, so many more, write sentences so well that even my rather simple definition of function becomes useless and not helpful in the least. The sentences defy me.
The ever useful Oxford English Dictionary turns up, out of many others, this for the definition of a sentence, “A series of words in connected speech or writing, forming the grammatically complete expression of a single thought; in popular use often, such a portion of a composition or utterance as extends from one full stop to another. In Grammar, the verbal expression of a proposition, question, command, or request, containing normally a subject and a predicate.” Now that is a sentence, but what of it? For one thing, I definitely do not agree with the idea that a sentence can only be a single thought. I would even go so far as to say that the quote contradicts itself; the first sentence gives us at least two ideas. One idea is what the sentence will contain (that is, thought) and the other describes the how the sentence is built grammatically. This idea is reconciled, although not expressly, in the subtext of the entry: “English grammarians usually recognize three classes: simple sentences, complex sentences (which contain one or more subordinate clauses), and compound sentences (which have more than one subject or predicate).” So at the very least, a sentence will at least have some sort of grammatical structure which will hopefully allow us to recognize a sentence as a sentence. Beyond this though, not much is certain, if we look at the interpreted meaning of any given sentence we would almost certainly find that everyone will come up with at least a slightly different idea of what thought or thoughts the sentence is trying to communicate. And while the interpretations of our peers will probable seem more valid and useful to us, we can’t just write off some one’s ideas. In this sense, any sentence could present an infinite number of ideas across the world. Some of this might seem problematic or even paradoxical at first. With so much room for interpretation, how does a sentence manage to communicate anything mutually accepted enough to be useful? Even to have an argument or to disagree about the meaning of the sentence, you have to at least believe that the opposing side’s ideas are plausible interpretations. This is where context becomes important; where a sentence is created and where it is received have huge impacts on how they are read and understood. I know from experience, for instance, that Shakespeare is not read the same when blocking lines on a stage as it is in an English class. Context, also, is incredibly vast, multilayered, and in constant motion. It would be impossible to list all the contexts that we are part of in this university setting, but luckily they seem to merge together well enough that some form of communication takes place, is encouraged even, within them.
Still, there is so much more to the sentence than any of this. I want to turn it inside out and twist it, to show a few more, but not all, of its forms and dimensions. Most people probably know off hand, for instance that a sentence can also be a judgment. So to be sentenced to fifteen years in prison for example, is a sentence in sentence form. More than that, a person cannot, or at least isn’t supposed to, be detained in the United States without a proper trial; most of which contain many of these sentence-actions. J.L. Austin gets the credit, not for inventing them, but for pointing them out to us, and giving them a name; the performative. From his lecture “How to do things with Words” Austin gives us this as a description of performatives, “The uttering of the sentence is, or is a part of, the doing of an action, which again would not normally be described as, or as ‘just’, saying something.” The examples that he gives us of performatives are things like bets; you can’t make a bet without opening with: “I bet you…”. So in this sense the sentence is the action, and moreover, it is distinct from a simple statement. Austin’s views may be yet too narrow however; since no statement could exist without the words attached to it. By this logic a statement is a performative, and the same goes for descriptions, questions, and orders. Maybe I am stretching Austin’s ideas farther than I ought to, but language, and therefore sentences, were created with the intention that they do things. “How to do things with Words” may be a misleading title. If I could impart one thing to the audience of this paper, I think it would be that words, sentences, paragraphs –communication techniques and methods are always doing things if they are being used. Is it even possible to utter something just for the sake of utterance?
What I feel that we cannot over look in an exploration like this one are our peers; since in reality, everyone around us has enough common experience with sentences to be useful in this endeavor. I asked one person one question, and the amount of insight I derived from his answer set me thinking for days. You could ask Jesse Hutchings if he considers himself an expert on sentence use. He would probably say no, but I feel like it would be perfectly valid for him to answer yes. I asked him what he feels he is trying to do by using sentences; his answer was, “When I use a sentence I consider it one part of a bigger picture; implying that there is yet more to come. I try to create a functional machine.” I thoroughly enjoyed Jesse’s opinions on the matter of sentences. I feel that there is certainly a need to be able to look at sentences as single structures, or machines, but to also consider the bigger machine –the book, the day, the paragraph, the film, among others. But I feel that the last part of the quote is the most profound; that perhaps all our task is as writers is to make our sentences functional machines. The usage of these machines is completely up to the reader. Functionality, somewhat contrarily to my earlier proposition, does not need to be commonly agreed on, nor does a specific function need to be set by an author. Overarching functionality over specific function; I know, and care not what you take from my writing, only that you do take something.

parable of symmetry

Somewhere, in a realm and time that would seem quite unfamiliar to any of you, lives an entire race of creatures that you, quite ignorantly, might call half people. They hop about on a single leg and operate countless machines and devices with their single hands. It all would look quite bizarre to the casual symmetric observer, but to the Singularians, as they like to call themselves; everything runs quite smoothly. Although it would be quite difficult for you to draw any sort of comparison between you and them, if you could, you would probably find that their technology and cultural advancements are on par with your own; and in all honesty, the Singularians were not incomplete or lacking in any way. I am not going to go into great details describing them, but instead I would like to relate a curious, but not uncommon, meeting which should help to illuminate their differences from you. At least know this, before I begin, the Singularians quite detest symmetry, or at least, they have had no reason to ever like it, for it has never been prominent in their world. Now then, in the world of the Singularians once upon a time a horrible freak of nature was born to a very ashamed Singularian parent (if you thought there were separate sexes among the Singularians, guess again). The freak, as it were, could have probably been your cousin. He was unlucky enough to be born with two of everything, with a nice, straight set of teeth to boot. Despite what talents and skills he maybe could have possessed in your world, in the realm of the Singularians, the symmetric one, as they called him, was doomed to be an utter failure at all things. Singularian infrastructure simply had no place for the symmetric one, and it simply didn’t make sense economically to design new systems to cater to him because he was the only known historical case of such peculiar defections. Many warm hearted Singularians had worked tirelessly for great deals of time to find a place for him, but in the end, no one could figure out how it could be done. The symmetric one would end up living the majority of his life as a beggar on street corners. So it happened one day, despite all the attempts to keep such a cross from occurring, that a sharp young Singularian gallivanted up to the symmetric one in a fashion later considered quite graceful by other Singularians.
“There is, on the next corner over,” rattled the Singularain, “a fellow who like you has been quite unsuccessful, he now spends his days begging for change, just as you do.”
“I see.” Replied the symmetric one, already wary of the direction this conversation was taking.
“Do you know why he must beg?”
“No, why must he?”
“I’m afraid, you see, that he has fallen on the most difficult of times. He has been quite unfortunate with work all his life and is now deeply depressed over it, but there is more to it than that, you see he has no living family now, and as his depression grew over time he lost contact with all of his friends. Now he has no one who would help him, and since his affliction is so vague and circumstantial in nature it seems that he has fallen through the cracks of society, beyond the reach of any organization that might be otherwise be able to help him.”
“I see.”
“But do you know why you must beg on this corner?”
“Because I am different.” Said the symmetric one, and although he knew this was the proper answer, it was evident that he regretted knowing it. In truth, he had come to this conclusion years ago on his own. If the symmetric one had gotten out of reach of societies help, it was because he had been deliberately put there.
“I see, someone must have already explained it to you.”
“No, I think rather that I have figured it out for myself over my many years of begging and being so unsuccessful.”
“Oh?”
“As far as I can tell it is because of my defects of excess. I was born with too much of everything it seems. I require twice as many resources to survive as any one like you does, yet I have only ever been able to be as productive as any single individual. No menial labor position can properly sustain me, and similarly, no higher paying position will ever be available to me because of my grotesque appearance. In all honesty, it is somewhat a miracle that I have survived to this day, but the people of this city are incredibly generous; still let me assure you that not a day goes by in which I don’t wish that I was a functional member of society.” Explained the symmetric one.
“And yet you are not unintelligent,” commented the Singularian, “it truly is a pity that you were born into such circumstances. When I first saw you, I had planned to ridicule you, but now I am touched. Please take this money.” So left the Singularian, quite somber, and truly changed for life. The Symmetric one only laughed quietly to himself. If I told you just how rich he had become of the pity of the Singularians, you would almost certainly try to find a way to their realm yourself, and that would be incredibly foolish of you.

the potential

Is a blog especially narcissistic in some way? I feel like it is.

good advice.

The best advice I think I have ever received, which I am not passing to you as advice, but rather as a story; was this: never take advice from anyone who gives it to you without being asked first, in fact, generally avoid people who are prone to that kind of behavior. People like that have something they are trying to prove; not to you, but only to themselves. This was also not offered to me as advice, but only as the story that I am now relaying to you. I am only left to wonder how far in the past it was that one clever being asked another, "What should I do if I am offered advice?"

the good king.

this piece is undergoing revision for Jeopardy.

the word "will"

If the reader is willing to put up with a bit of nonsense and narcissism, then I, William Beyer, shall write an essay that I hope you shall find at least somewhat interesting. Where to begin? Perhaps with a nickname since to a few, I am known as Will. As a derivative of my actual name, it’s about as simple as it gets, still, I cannot imagine any other nicknames share spelling with such a complex word. The Oxford English Dictionary turns it up as a noun verb and adverb in its simplest form, but also turns up as an adjective in the form of willed, as in, ill-willed. By far its most common form is as an auxiliary verb to describe an action that is going to take place in the future. Where is it in the text? Where isn’t it in any text? The word will appears four times on page 190 (chosen at random) of Kafka’s short stories. It’s the kind of word you use a hundred times a day, and by this repetition it is often taken for granted. In this form, will is also completely interchangeable with shall. These uses of the word are indeed function over form, serving their purposes admirably, but doing little else to add to the collective that they must be a part of.
Will is also a thing that one possesses, yet it is an odd force, difficult to define. Will can be described in one sense as what one wants. It can also be something that tells who gets what when you die, as in “last will and testament”, your final wishes. The willingness to do something relates not to ability, but to desirability. I could go on, but I’m not willing to do so. Perhaps most intriguing of all however, is the concept of willpower. I’ve never been quite sure what it is. On one hand, it seems to be the ability to resist or persist at something for an amount of time; a stubbornness quotient. Willpower also often appears as a stat in many of my favorite role playing games, usually related in some way to spell power. What is it then? How does one gain strength of will, even in the real world? Willpower can almost be made out to be a spiritual thing, how long and how far you’ll go to stand up in what you believe in might be a measure of willpower. Children deliberately disobey their parents to show willpower, perhaps even to explore its depths. Willpower is admitting when you are wrong, and holding out when you are right.
Now, if I may, I’d like to take a look at will in Kafka’s short story “In the Penal Colony” where the explorer is trying to remove the officer’s body from the apparatus. “And here, almost against his will, he had to look at the face of the corpse.” I find the notion of “almost against his will” very interesting; what does that mean? It is something that he needs to do, but doing so is not entirely against his will. Would he have looked even if he didn’t need to? I would say that it is true that our wants, our will, often get the better of us. This man is an explorer; his desires are to see the world and to see what few others have seen. It is entirely possible that he knows quite well the depths of his own willpower. How the rest of us come to know our own limits, is a bit of a mystery.
Semantic satiation is the notion that repeating a word over and over again causes it to lose all meaning and I think this notion has made this paper difficult. Is my will weakened or strengthened by continual use? I feel that here is a certain risk involved in an essay like this; that I might, to my detriment, avoid using the word in the next few days. I feel that have at least partially exhausted it, and so exhausted my will to write, hopefully that was the in some part the goal of the assignment.

A bit of nothing, an interruption for your consideration.

If you would be so kind, consider this: "novels make readers lazy, stupid, dissolute, insane, insubordinate: exactly like films two centuries later" Franco Moretti on the triumph of the novel in Graphs, Maps, Trees. I like the idea that genres are architectural styles for buildings of literature. Styles that fall in and out of favor in the public eye, some are modest and practical, and others are elaborate and flashy. Of course, the kind you like best will mostly depend on your own personal taste. Styles that will be imitated recreated and improved on in the future by any aficionado with the means and desire to do so.

Hey kids, want to learn how to do things with words? Guess what, you just did. You are doing things with words right now every time you use them. So I guess that’s pretty cool, good thing to take home to mom and dad and put up on the fridge. Are children taught how much of an impact what they say can be? How does one learn to be sensitive with words when need be, and then to be completely free with them whenever you can be? I don’t really know. I have always thought that the performative was a little hokey; we are after all living in a time when so much of what we do is accompanied by words. Our words and our actions have become so tangled is there really anything that we can do only accomplish with words? Or only with actions? Even the most mundane conversation will have gestures associated with it.

I think I am going to describe a reoccurring dream. I understand that this is what mundane people do to make their lives seem more interesting. As if to say “Hey, I know that interesting things don’t happen to me, nor do I cause them, but at least I can make them up in my head.” Whatever. If you don’t care about the dream, skip the next paragraph, if you don’t care about the dream or what I think it means skip the next two paragraphs. Thanks.

A reoccurring dream: I am in high school again, in a transition between classes. After leaving whatever class I am now finished with, I realize that I do not know where my next class is. Not only am I unaware of its location, but I also quickly realize I have not yet even narrowed down the possibilities of which room the class might be in. Apparently, I have no references at my disposal either. Faces in the hall way are unrecognizable, and I seem to be on my own. In short order however, I am able to narrow it down to two possibilities. I begin to go in the general direction that I believe is most likely. My first guess is always wrong. Now not only have I wasted time, but I have also managed to lead myself in completely the wrong direction from where I now know the class must be. This leg of the journey is always inexplicably difficult. My simple, rather small high school has somehow become a nasty labyrinth with twisting folding paths in some places, or great masses of slow moving people in other places. Finally after what feels like miles, I most recently found myself in a cluttered storage room in the school’s basement. The door to the class is on the other side of the room, but is set a good ten feet above the ground. At this point it usually occurs to me that something does not want me to get to class. Why? I can’t explain it. Just as I reach the door, it is thrown open, and water and screams come pouring out. I am drowning. This is when I wake up. The water was a new feature, but the dream always ends in a similar fashion. I am never successful.

What does any of it mean? I don’t know but I am, time and again, incredibly frustrated by this dream. Two reasons: one my first guess is ALWAYS wrong. It’s as if I am not learning anything, and still making the same damn mistakes; showing up to the wrong place at the wrong time. The other reason is that this dream makes my current life feel temporary. As if I’m going to wake up back in Spokane (which is always where I feel like I am momentarily after waking up from this dream) and have to go back to fucking high school. I honestly think that I would be a lot more comfortable with this dream if it would just switch its backdrop to Western. Not that high school was that bad, but I am certainly all for putting it all behind me.

I thought I had something (else?) to say with this piece but now I’ve lost it. Right now, I’m just waiting for the karma needle to dip negative. The straight upward trend makes me nervous somehow. Although the idea of it being better by having a sort of up and down trend also seems completely ridiculous. The part of me that is writing this is waiting for a different part of me to change, to change all of me. It’s kind of an odd feeling.

TE 3

“Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a distinction. The transition is called the transformation of material things.”
- Zhuangzi
“What's in a name?”
- Romeo
In My relatively short life, I do not think anyone has asked that question better then Romeo. Of course, did he ask it, or did Shakespeare? Did Shakespeare steal it from someone else? The question of a name is a question of originality; it is an attempt to figure out what level of narration you are in.
For my part, I have gone by several names over the past two years of my college experience: Billy, William, Will, Bill and Williamnot. Then there are nicknames (other less common derivatives of William) as well as people I have been mistaken for. (Wriver). At the beginning of the year I decided to begin formally practicing something that I had been doing informally for quite a while; to let people decide what name to call me by on their own. So far my success has been pretty limited. The name that I introduce myself as tends to stick. Those that I have told my ideas to tend to be skeptical, usually choosing to use the name they most commonly hear, or else demanding that I specify a preference. This disappoints me somewhat since I personally view my project as a way to inject creativity and significance into an otherwise mundane activity. Eventually I came to realize a common viewpoint of our age: that which is not named ought to be named, and that which is named ought not to be renamed. The performative, it seems, is touchy. People assume that I must have a preference and that because it’s my name, that my choice must be best.
While introductions may be insignificant to our everyday lives, I do understand that names tend to be considered as significant things. I am a pretty firm believer in this. Giving something a name can be a difficult thing. Giving someone a name tends to be even more difficult. I guess I can understand why people tend to have trouble with my experiment. If anything this has been the live part of my thought experiment. To explore names.
The next part involves poking around in the story that I wrote for the last thought experiment. His name is Clayton Miller. It took me forever to come up with that name. So I guess it has meaning. And I was kind of sad when he turns up dead. I was sad that I didn’t get to know him better, sad that things didn’t turn out better for him. Is this really what I think happens to high school dropouts? Does that have meaning too? I am pretty proud of the concept of the story, but it isn’t really long enough to get its message across very well. I thought it might be interesting to write a story about trying to cope with understanding and misunderstanding. At some point in the writing process I realized that I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about, thus, Clayton must die at the end. “He found nothing, because there was nothing. He falls. He couldn’t cope. He dies in much the same position he was in that night at the train tracks.” So it ends the same way it began. I didn’t really learn much from the experience, despite that I enjoyed it, and that I am proud of the writing. Maybe coping is just being able to accept misunderstanding. By the time we die, it may be too late to realize this but Clayton can teach me something.
Clayton isn’t the only character though. The narrator, maybe even the main character, is the parasite. The parasite saves Clayton’s live. (or does it?) It wants what is best for him. I tried to make it into a socially desirable parasite. I wrote a blog about them once. A mild summation of my ideas might be, “What we are getting into here, I feel, is the idea of hiding in plain sight. This is how the socially desirable parasite must operate. There is an important distinction between invisible, that of the un-desirable parasite, and unrecognizable, that of the desirable parasite.” Within myself, I am arguing whether Clayton’s parasite is unrecognizable or not. It does admit to being a parasite, but is its presence beneficial enough to allow it to remain within a host for as long as it wants? Is it more of a parasite, a negative, harsh thing in modern society, or is it more of a symbiotic partner? In the end, Clayton decides that it isn’t worth it, and goes after the parasite, but since it doesn’t actually occupy a physical space, does that make it unrecognizable enough to survive? This scene is a culmination of my ideas from the first thought experiment that without the host, the parasite does not exist. “Without the host, the parasite dies off, or rather, whatever is acting as a parasite can then no longer parasite. Without nearness, neither the host, nor the parasite exists.” So I guess since one can’t exist without the other they both die. Can anyone cope with their own death?
Where am I going with this? Inspiration, the greatest inspiration for my first thought experiment was Serres, and for the second was Welsh. Two narrations, one is the biography of the parasite, the other is its autobiography. Do I recreate that notion in my works? In reality, I’m not sure where I am headed with this. I’m not sure where my life is headed either. Nanotext died and then I wrote a short story where the characters die at the end. I am wondering what the life span of a fictional character is. How can we escape a level of narration without killing them off, or does that even do it? More than their deaths though, I was wondering about their life spans; Nanotext was killed. Was he killed before he was ready to die? Was Clayton ready to die?
“What we fail to realize is that it is not some external entity that has made this technology.” Too true, we hardly ever think about these things dying off at all and even less so why it happens. The facets of a human are just as fragile as the human in its entirety. But how are to interact with these changes? With deaths and births? While the style in which nanotext was mourned was not a classic mourning in any sense, it seems fitting that there was such an outcry. The underlying question seems to be: was it necessary? I feel that it was, in the sense that the old must make way for the new. But maybe that isn’t even the proper question to be asking. We have power over these aspects. To fully realize that power allows us to use them in new ways. Serres might have called it “abuse value” but I’m not entirely sure.
In the style of Murr, I tried to give my parasite a contemplation of its own existence, but in the Style of Filth, I tried to do it in relation to the host. “This is the human condition as I understand it: always fighting everything to maintain their own ideals of normalcy, but never succeeding.” And, “‘I don’t know how to handle this… this is all so strange… why me?’
Ah the other classic trademark of the human condition.
‘There is no why Clayton. You were dying, I found you, now we both live.’”
By describing his take on the human condition, the parasite also describes itself. He also makes attempts to inform Clayton that this lifestyle is ultimately unsustainable. Since the parasite is ultimately inseparable from Clayton, it follows that neither of them can survive the other. It maybe that I need to amend my earlier ideas, though I still believe the parasite cannot exist without the host; I also believe that they do need to be distinguishable from each other. Did Clayton pull that bullet out of his own stomach? I guess you could say that. To live is to be normal, but to have a talking parasite living inside you is not. In the end, Clayton’s quest for normalcy fails.
Story has two changes in narration; the shift into the parasite at the beginning, and the shift out of the parasite at the end. I had intended for the shift to be a subtle one, so that it would be difficult to tell when he comes and when he goes. The movements of the socially desirable parasite must be slight and quiet. I was hoping to catch people off guard by doing this. It may not have been completely successful since Reading Murr, but I felt I had to reflect on the way this class has challenged our assumptions of narration. Primarily, that Narration does not have an end, you cannot get outside of it. Personally, I don’t see much of a point in considering it a hierarchy either. Are we at the top? As long as there is no god, but who made god? Who made us? Actually, forget the maker, is evolution our narrator? What happens when you write a biography? Some people seem to want to hold on to what they have created, to claim ownership to those things. This is only natural, but what I am interested in are the ways that thinking like this can be restrictive. What do your characters become if you only let them behave a certain way? In this sense, society has become our narrator, telling us what we should do and what we shouldn’t do. But I think I need to make a distinction here, the narrator isn’t always the creator, and the creator isn’t always the narrator. Sometimes they are crossed however, as I feel is the case for humanity. We create ourselves (at least partially) and then we present ourselves as creations. In the end, I don’t really know what happens to the parasite in my story, nor do I know who the narrator is when the parasite isn’t around. In fact, I don’t really know what say at all about my story. I had planned to write most, if not all of my final thought experiment analyzing it, but now I am sick of Clayton and his imaginary parasite.
I am sick of being my own narrator too. Maybe that’s why I want people to come up with names for me. I’m tired of carrying myself so I’m trying to shift weight to others. What do you want to call me? Who am I to you? What do you think I should do? I’m I not taking enough responsibility, or does everyone else take too much? Of course, if everyone were more like me, everything would balance back out. So I parasite you with my whining and wishing and then there has to be a host for me to parasite off of. I need somebody to read this paper after all, and yet, no one really needs me to write it. Maybe myself, but maybe not, I could survive without it. Everybody wants to carry their own weight. No! They want to get stronger and carry more weight, gain weight and carry more weight. Is it strange that I want to be more like Lester Burnham? Maybe it’s just the attitude of a college kid. I’ll be dammed, but I don’t have the answer.
I’ve enjoyed the class. I figured that I would. I’m going to stick around next quarter for 202 and then 335 next year. Even if I don’t know who I am (did I mention that?) at least I feel like I’ll have somewhere to fit in. in the first blog that I wrote for the class, I said that I was hoping to get to be a stronger writer so that I could spend more time doing it. I think I’m getting there. I still play video games quite a bit, and I still think of it all as traveling to new places, every time. The social commentary in this experiment on the experiment itself isn’t something I’ve ever done on at this magnitude. I guess it’s another part of the experiment, because narration is involved in these things just as much as it is in any story I write.
What’s left? The quote at the beginning of the paper, why is it there? Well I love that quote, is that enough of a reason? No, no, I can wrap it in. I love the quote, but I disagree with the last line Butterfly to man, and man to butterfly is more than the transformation of material things; it is the transformation of all things. It is a change in the level of narration, a change of names, an acceptance of misunderstanding, and role reversal all in one. Without our dreams we wouldn’t be free whatsoever. Why choose butterfly or man? Why can’t we be both? Why not both at the same time? Parasite then host then parasite then butterfly then whatever. Even if our freedom is an illusion, at least we can learn to live to the fullest extent of that illusion.

Thought Experiment 2

At some point in our short lives we are all forced learn to cope with difficult things. Exposure like this is almost always an uncomfortable experience, but for Clayton Miller things seemed to have hit stone cold bottom. In some unnamed industrial yard in some unnamed city, Clayton was laying sideways in fresh mud beside rusty tracks. Clayton was now learning to cope with one of the most difficult things imaginable: Pain, but Clayton was lucky to know exactly what kind of pain he had to cope with. The pain of a thirty eight caliber bullet shot out of a revolver from about fifteen feet into the left side of Clayton’s belly. At this exact moment Clayton was also learning how to cope with the most difficult thing imaginable: the inevitability of a quickly approaching death. One angry bullet and one sour drug deal.
I came to him from a horse, a horse inside a horse. I had grown tired of the horse. It was fed the same thing every day. How do you expect it to taste? Humans have, by far, the farthest ranging appetites, although not quite as far reaching as my own. It was in this state of mind, having abandoned the horse, that I happened upon Clayton. I watched him get shot, and watched his friends drive off without him. “Poor man,” I thought, “you do not need to die like this, you and I could share so much.” I decided to establish communication as quickly as possible.
No sooner had I begun this endeavor, without even breaking to take in a snack, Clayton managed to get to his feet. Of course, no single direction was any worse than the others, so Clayton started stumbling along the tracks, but he wasn’t really going anywhere. I spoke up, “Where are you going Clayton? You’re dying.” Clayton spun around.
“Hey! Help me! I’ve been shot. Where…?”
“Look down, you’re dying, I can help.”
“What? Oh goddamned little blood-sucker leave me alone, I need this stuff right now!”
“Well that’s mildly insulting, but don’t even try it. I’m pumping numbing agents and antiseptics into your blood as we speak”
“I’m hallucinating now? Have I lost that much blood?”
“No , but you’ve lost a lot. There’s something dead inside you, something that was never really alive. Dead things like that are only good at one thing, making living things dead too.”
Clayton fell over at this point. Am I that difficult to talk to? I suppose I am.
“Look my friend, if you’re hallucinating you will die anyway; I can get it out of you and give you chance to get out of here.”
“What’s the catch?”
“You let me live inside you, obviously. You won’t even know I’m there.”
“Fuck it, I am dying. Why not?”
Clayton screamed in disgust as I followed the bullet hole into his belly, and then screamed in pain as I pushed it out. He had already passed out when I started to clot up the blood in the opening. I took what I needed, but not more than was necessary. When he woke up six hours later as the sun was coming up, he went through the usual process of denial: wondering why he was there, if he dreamt it. He got pretty shook up when he found the bullet on the ground. Eventually I had to speak up.
“Might want to head home Clayton. You could still die out here.”
He looked down at his gut in surprise.
“I’m crazy aren’t I? I imagined some parasite crawl into my belly and pull this bullet out me and now I’m hearing voices and now I’m not talking to anyone!”
After saying this he just got up and started walking. I asserted my presence several times but he did not react. He walked for a couple hours, found a highway, and hitchhiked back into the city. He rode in the back of a pickup.
We didn’t speak again until he got home. This treatment isn’t really new to me.
“I’m not going to go away just because you’re ignoring me Clayton. I’m here to stay, and as you very well know I’ve also established communication. I don’t intend on being silent even if you do. You’re not even crazy you know, you made a life saving decision by letting me help you. Now you can go on living. Am I really that much of a burden?”
“You’re in my head, you speak directly to my brain… how can you be real? Leeches can’t talk.”
“It’s the only way I can talk to you Clayton; just think of the fact that you can’t ignore me as good manners. I’m not incredibly chatty, but it’s impossible not to communicate once you learn how.”
“None of this proves you’re real. Why is this happening to me? I only sold the drugs; I never used them, as if getting shot wasn’t bad enough.”
“You want proof fine.”
I wiggled just a bit in my lodging, not enough to hurt Clayton, but enough to make him uncomfortable. He yelped.
“What are you?! Some kind of alien? A government project gone wrong? What do you want from me?”
“I just want to live, Clayton, that’s all. I will have no noticeable effect on your physicality. I evolved on this planet just as your species did. I’m not surprised you’ve never heard of the parasite that talks to its host, that sort of thing is quite frightening to your kind.”
“I… but… you’re in my head that’s not fair. I can’t handle this. I’m going to the hospital. They’re going to kill you.”
The nerve and dishonesty of some humans! I could have left him for dead by those horses, but instead I saved him. Now he was running down the stairs of his apartment building to try and get someone to kill me.
“I saved your life Clayton, we made a deal. If you did not understand the terms then it is your fault. I understand that this situation is not uncommon among your kind.”
Clayton hailed a cab and got in.
“Take me to the nearest hospital… hurry.”
“I see you aren’t bluffing Clayton, well nor am I, I have power over you. I will kill you before you reach your destination. I’m releasing a powerful toxin into your blood right now, soon you will start to feel sick, stop this or I will increase the amount to lethal levels.”
It wasn’t but a few seconds until Clayton was puking in the back of the cab. He ordered the driver to go faster so I released a bit more of the toxin into his blood stream. Soon he was on his side in pain, retching, but still he ordered the cab on. I was now getting close to lethal levels. I didn’t want to kill this man, but I was not ready at all to die. Why did he have to drag this on? This is the human condition as I understand it: always fighting everything to maintain their own ideals of normalcy, but never succeeding. I won out with Clayton, of course. I was just about to give up on mercy when he told the cap driver to pull over and stop. He fell out of the cab and onto the street and cried out.
“I give up! You win; get it out, make it stop.”
I complied at once, as I had no real desire to make the man suffer.
“I am releasing a neutralizing agent, Clayton; you will begin to feel better soon. I apologize for bringing such pain and discomfort to you. I wish to live peacefully, but I must defend myself when necessary. I hope never to have to use this power again.”
When Clayton was feeling better he got up and had the cab take him back to his apartment. He spoke up when we got there.
“I don’t know how to handle this… this is all so strange… why me?”
Ah the other classic trademark of the human condition.
“There is no why Clayton. You were dying, I found you, now we both live.”
“I don’t know… I need to call my boss…”
Clayton called the drug boss after a few minutes of silence. As it turns out, the drug deal he was involved in went very poorly, apparently the buyers had made off with all the money and all the drugs. The boss was so upset over this that he killed the other two who ditched Clayton after he got shot. Then the boss told Clayton that he should be dead, but since he had got out of there alive that Clayton didn’t deserve to die again. His debt to the group had been paid, but the boss also said that Clayton no longer had work with them. A good survivor but a bad pack horse. I thought this was a compliment. Clayton just seemed depressed. He went to sleep. And then that’s all he did for a few days. He hardly ate or did anything but sleep. I tried hard to be understanding; he had been through what humans commonly refer to as “a lot”, but they taste so bad when they sleep all the time, when they don’t eat and when they do eat, they eat the same thing over and over. I had to help him out. I wanted to push him in a direction that would be better for both of us.
“This lifestyle is not sustainable for either of us Clayton. Why don’t you try to find work or better food or friends?”
“You don’t pay rent, you little shit. Why should I listen to you? Are you going to poison me again? I’d be dead without you or I’m dead with you. What’s the difference?”
“I don’t want to hurt you Clayton, I just want us to live, and I want a chance for us to grow.”
“There is nothing for me here. I’ve been running drugs since I was thirteen and now I have nothing. I will run out of money soon and then what? I never even graduated from high school and I’ve been declared dead to my only friends. Cut off. All I have is you. Do you know what it’s like to be cut off? I bet you don’t. You’ll just use me until you can’t anymore and then once again I’ll be left for dead; well… let’s get something to eat.”
Clayton walked into his kitchen
“I’m glad Clayton, you’ll see, everything will work out.”
But instead of getting food, Clayton got a knife out of a drawer. He looked at it for a minute and then looked at his guts. He paused for a minute. He tried to cope. He tried to comprehend that for perhaps the first time in his life he was about to do something that was noticeable to the naked eye. He looked at the knife again. He looked at himself looking at himself. The knife was clean. The pause passed quickly, seeming to take exactly as much time as it actually did. Seven seconds. The knife was in the left side of his belly where the scar was and then he pulled it to the right. Clayton fell to his knees. Odd at this of all times he was totally silent. So was the parasite, even odder. He watched his guts spill to the floor. He even put his clammy hands down into them felt them like on the floor like moldy fruit. He found nothing, because there was nothing. He falls. He couldn’t cope. He dies in much the same position he was in that night at the train tracks.
Life. Pain. Death.

double up.

Listen to this song when you read this blog. I listened to it while I was writing it. It asks the question that I want to ask. It doubles back on itself as I will double back on myself before your eyes right now. The song itself is a classic love story. Guy likes girl, but can't find the words to tell her. how can he say what countless others have already better stated? In the background of the song, we also have this great, echoing "yada yada yada."
“Why should I say
what’s already been said
better a hundred times before?”
“ya-daaaaa”

Somebody once said:
“Fuck this noise”
Well I say, fuck that. The only people that get to complain about things are the people who can do something, but have to question whether or not it’s morally correct. And I honestly do not think that’s the case here. If you can do something about it, and it’s morally correct, then go do it. If you can’t do anything, complaining won’t help. Shut up. Soldiers get to complain, so do murders and prostitutes. College students? rarely. Unless of course we just want to express disgust towards something, but leave it alone so that we’ll always have something to be disgusted with. Do we need that? Maybe, but do we really have to leave old things alone to mix and fester with the new?
Q: “Does he not see the hypocrisy?”
A: I see the hypocrisy that you see, that you so kindly took a photograph of, but when I look for it; it runs, hides, and shits itself. Really.

Some set of people I vaguely know joined a face book group the other day called something along the lines of “I’m only friends with the weird kid so he spares me when he snaps.” The first thing I thought was, “well if he sees this, your brilliant plan is foiled!”

But then I thought, I can’t complain about this.

You say:
“I'm not asked to coffee
I'm not challenged by you
I'm not asked to coffee
I'm not asked to coffee”

Well then I say:
I’m not challenged by you
I’m not challenged by you
I’m not asked to coffee
I’m not challenged by you.

By mirroring the quote, I try to balance it, to give a clearer picture of how we can interact with other ideas. In a simple sense, we can either fight them or work with them. To "ask to coffee" (as often as it's used) is the offer to collaborate. To challenge is the honorable way to begin a battle. I think we need a bit of both if we want to get the most out of ourselves.
But as luck would have it, I am challenged by Joe, somewhat at least. He doesn’t ask me to coffee, but that’s fine. And then I do find myself wondering at the placement and repetition of those two phrases. Then I decide how it looks when I take off my glasses and that’s what I come up with.

“damn! that is some stuff” And then I laugh to myself at how people can say something without actually saying anything. And then I laugh again because it happens all the time. Then I double over on myself and start to cry because I am, of course, laughing at myself. We just want to be careful that we don’t become the eight-ball, and if we become the eight-ball, we better really fucking pray that “ask again later” doesn’t come up too often.

So then I have to try and challenge you back right? You challenge me sir and must answer.

“If you can bring them up--and there are more--in the conversation, you get bonus points. That is-- you get intellectual recognition. You're listened to, you're perceived, you're on-it. Which is kind of laughable. A person can hide behind big words and small parasites”

I would tend to agree with you but I hope you don’t think that this is the case for the class you are writing this for, for the class that you give examples for. If you don’t give us any credit of having any real intelligence, at least give some to Tony. Also, aren’t there usually reasons that these “buzzwords” are around? Aren’t they more relevant then say, describing your standards to make-out with someone at a party? Again, I fold in one myself, but a little bit less than the last time.

There most likely is a selfish reason for everything we do, but still we aspire to something more. Just, try not to write this off right away ok?
So why should we say what's already been said? Because old words can get new meaning. Now go out and get the girl.

If you wonder about all this, listen to the song again. I’m not kidding.

still pushing them parasites...

I made it to the Olympics last weekend. It was something else, and now I feel the need to describe it. Originally a buddy from high school and I were planning on seeing three events: the luge, the ski jump, and the biathlon. For some reason, that turned into alpine skiing and the luge. Alpine skiing was postponed. All we saw was the luge. Three events down to one, so I was a little disappointing right off the bat. The Olympics were heavy. I don’t know how else to describe them; actually, that’s not true. The Olympics were messy, The Olympics were getting places too early, The Olympics were exhaustion, the Olympics were unbelievable amounts of people, the Olympics were consumption, and last, and definitely least, the Olympics were athletics. All in all it was a hell of an experience, and it’s not one I’ll be able to repeat anytime soon, even if I really wanted to.
The implications of the Olympics being a parasite are obvious –we already heard in class about one of the programs being cut to fund it. But every city wants to host the Olympics. It must be one of those socially desirable parasites. A parasite queen that summons hordes of innocents, only to send them on their way with souvenirs and autographs, “hey, I wish the Olympics would come to our town.” Whatever, it’s still not a big deal. Cash flows in, cash flows out; the parasite spends our money (or is it its money?) and then makes us/it some money.
Does age and repetition disguise the parasite? Master Serres (my go to expert on all things parasite, aside from Tony) us that noise must not be continuous to continue to be a parasite, but what about rhythms? What about the regular that is also irregular? I’m thinking of things like traffic, alarms, speech, echoes. It would be pretty tough to completely oust the Olympics, but they’re only around once every four years per variety. Traffic (mostly) goes away at night, or when you get out of town. Alarms get turned off. A parasite that hides in crowds, that blends in? Again, Serres is my guide.
“He becomes invisible by making, on the contrary, a lot of noise. One can hide by being too visible or too perceptible. The parasite hides behind the noise and to-do of the devout.”
What we are getting into here, I feel, is the idea of hiding in plain sight. This is how the socially desirable parasite must operate. There is an important distinction between invisible, that of the un-desirable parasite, and unrecognizable, that of the desirable parasite. The socially desirable parasite must be uncanny, and the uncanny must be, will be, visible. It cannot be invisible, lest the observations of its uncanniness become impossible to make. Furthermore, when the undesirable parasite becomes visible, it will cease to be a parasite. The socially desirable parasite can remain a parasite visible, but would fail if it became invisible (no longer socially desirable)
Then there’s the fever, the parasite is not the fever itself, but that which causes the fever. Here we find another difference between the interaction of different parasites and their hosts. The undesirable parasite will try to get its eating done without making a sound –without causing a fever. If this occurs, the parasite must flee, to remain invisible, or it will fail. A socially desirable parasite also causes the parasite, but then it disguises itself as the cure. “Fever” or “frenzy” are both words used to describe something that is inexplicably desirable. “I’ve caught the iPad fever” “tourists are in a frenzy to get to Vancouver”. We know that the fever is a defense mechanism of the host, but the parasite, as it has before, and will continue to do in the future, has invented, and reinvented itself, in order to make use of this as well

ugly rat stopped dead in its tracks.

“Imagine if you will a world where women, rats, men, and children live in peace and harmony.”
Could such a place ever exist? Serres doesn’t seem to think so.
“The parasite invents something new. He obtains energy and pays for it with information. He obtains roast and pays for it with stories.”
How does the rat survive? He does not produce; he cannot properly steal or threaten (intentionally). So he picks up what we leave behind. But what we leave behind, is usually what we do not intend to leave behind; we don’t what rats in our homes or in our trash. A parasite is born. And yet, the rat still lives in the margins of society. Humans will hate him where ever he dwells. (Didn’t anyone tell them that in order to see eye to eye with humans that humans would first need to see eye to eye with each other?)
We blame the rat, the rat blames the flea, the flea, I am sure, would blame the Black Death. I’m sure the Black Death would blame something else as well, maybe the infected, for not being touch enough to survive it. Maybe not, maybe something else. The trail goes down the line and then back up, the parabola.
Of course, now things aren’t so simple. If the producer gets tired of his parasite, and gets his hands on some information, his only choice is to become a parasite himself. He has to chase off the rats, or poison them, set traps. He has to get inside the mind of the parasite. He must also invent a new interruption.
Serres also tells us why the producer will not be able to remain a parasite in definitely:

“The balance of exchange is always weighted and measured, calculated, taking into account a relation without exchange, an abusive relation. The term abusive is a term of usage. Abuse doesn’t prevent use. Abuse doesn’t prevent use. The abuse value, complete, irrevocable, consummation, precedes use- and exchange-value. Quite simply, it is the arrow with only one direction.

Abuse value, it seems, is how far up one side of the parabola you can get before you fall
back down and start going up the other side.

Serres loses me here though. The parasite invents, and yet the producer is the only alternative to the parasite. Can you produce and yet not invent? Serres also claims that to reproduce is to not true production. He has a nasty way of building and building on ideas as he writes. I may have missed part of the architecture, or just not seen enough of it yet.

thought experiment 1. the place of the parasite.

To what lengths do people go to remove parasites from their bodies and from society in general? How do we determine if these parasites are threatening or not? How did these parasites get to be where they are? All these questions have a common thread, and that is: what place does the parasite occupy, both physically and imaginatively? My roommate and I just watched Schindler’s List; this of course got me thinking about World War Two and the Holocaust. We can say that Hitler did what he did, in part at least, because he thought that he was removing a harmful parasite from the planet. The common argument would be to say that his error was thinking of a cultural group as a parasite, and not as people. I would like to shift this somewhat by suggesting that his error was not in mistaking a group as a parasite, but rather, in thinking that he was justified in attempting to kill off a parasite group. At first glance it might seems offensive to refer to Jews as parasites, but if we take a look at the bigger picture we find out that this really is not significantly harsh view of humanity. The Nazi’s were also a parasite, both to the German population, and to Europe as a whole. The allied forces also, all parasites to their respective countries.
Anyone who has ever poked around into parasitism will probably be quick to tell you that parasite comes from the Greek “Parasitos” meaning “near food”. I could stop there and say that anyone or anything that is not starving is a parasite. This method of deriving definitions is a poor one, in my opinion; it’s outdated, vague and lazy. I am going to try to expand the context a bit, one of the definitions turned up by the The Oxford English Dictionary, is: “A person who lives at the expense of another, or of society in general; esp. a person who obtains the hospitality or patronage of the wealthy or powerful by obsequiousness and flattery; a person whose behavior resembles that of a plant or animal parasite; a sponger. Chiefly derogatory.” Now instead of “anything that is not starving is a parasite”, a parasite can be just about anything. With this multitude of available interpretations, “parasite” becomes much more significant as an action rather than as a thing; keeping in mind of course that humanity comes up on the roster before any other, seemingly more conventional parasites, such as a tape worm.
Not only do the above definitions give us an idea of the vastness of potential parasite has as a verb, but they also hint at where the parasite will always be found. The parasite is chiefly concerned with sustenance, often food, but not always; and since it does not produce its own it must remain near to the host. Without the host, the parasite dies off, or rather, whatever is acting as a parasite can then no longer parasite. Without nearness, neither the host, nor the parasite exists. The imagined threat of a parasite is also greatly mitigated over distance, as we see in The life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, Lothario is only threatened by, and only poses a threat to, Murr when in close proximity. Here the parasite-host relationship does not hold well, instead we have a battle over who will be the dominant parasite. “The brute will become a lecturer, receive a doctorate, will end up as a professor of aesthetics lecturing to students on Aeschylus! ... -- Oh I am quite beside myself! – that cat will root about in my own entrails…” (111) In this section we find a Lothario worried that Murr will rise up and claim his job. Each thinks the other to be the inferior parasite, but neither is a threat to the other when separated. Parasites, it seems, have a competitive nature over hosts.
Similarly, hosts also would appear to compete over parasites. This is derived from the intimate relationship that a parasite and a host share. I am by no means the first to realize this, no here is where the flea gets its truest poetic justice:
“Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.”
Donne, with poetic panache, cuts right to the heart of it. The flea, as a parasite, is intimate enough to represent sex without the loss of virtue on the part of any one of them. Not only does the flea get to take in part the act of Donne’s desire, but it is also pampered by this act, the parasite, it seems, is allowed enjoyment. The flea is also protected, partially at least, by being a vessel for a sacred mixture of blood. In “Puce” Barry Sanders gives us some history to Donne’s metaphor, “The events in question unfolded in the most innocent way. One particular evening in the summer of 1579, Monsieur Étienne Pasquier, a lawyer and distinguished man of letters, made a call on Madame Madeleine Des-Roches at Poitiers, and, to his surprise, noticed a flea on the bosom of her daughter,” The men at this get together, we are to understand, did not know what to make of this. The flea has had centuries of negative connotations attached to it, but at the same time, how could they kill the well positioned fellow without embarrassing both themselves and the young mademoiselle? Instead of taking action, the men did a rather French-y thing, and all wrote poetry about it. Donne’s sexually charged flea was born. These Frenchmen did more than just create a witty metaphor however; they were perhaps the first to discover a parasite that is socially desirable. Now we have iPods and iPads, and we shell out big money for these things, and then even more money for applications and songs to fill them.
If anything is to be gained from this thought experiment thus far, I hope it is that parasites are everywhere, and that quite a few of them are not too bad to have around, or are at least tolerable. This, however, is all still built into a society that usually has an aversion to parasites, or as OED puts it, their use is “Chiefly derogatory” we have also know that people will go to great lengths to remove what they perceive to be a parasite from themselves and from society. As I have hinted at earlier, this is not so much derived from any notions of superiority, but rather from competiveness stemming from instinctual systems. To become a parasite contains a set of desires, the want for more, for improvement. For the last piece of this puzzle, I want to take a look at Shivers as the ultimate representation of where lies the parasite. The parasite’s relationship to the host ends up being so intimate, that competition is ruled out almost entirely amongst the infected population; it seems likely that the parasite only wishes to spread to increase the population, not to become more powerful than any other individual parasite. Within the Starliner itself, the parasite’s transmission is always evident, but aside from the transmission, its origin and destination are much vaguer. Take Dr. Hobbes for instance, we are led to believe that he first engineered the parasite at first to replace livers, but then we are told that he made them into a combination of a powerful aphrodisiac and a venereal disease in order to let humans go back to their animal instincts, to live lives less burdened by social constraints. Finally, although at the beginning of the film, we see him kill off his test subject in an attempt to also kill the trial parasite. This seems to confirm my ideas that a parasite without a host is a vague notion at best, and also that you cannot really know what sort of relationship the two will have until the point of actual exposure. Also raised is the question of what will the parasites ultimate victory look like. Suppose it takes over every human, will the parasite still be considered a parasite, or will the world’s population just gain a characteristic. In order for a parasite to exist, do we not need a norm with which to compare the host-parasite relationship?
My discoveries are thus: the parasite cannot exist without the host, and by that rule, nothing is a host without a parasite. If the parasite leaves the host, or the host removes the parasite, the relationship is also void. The parasite only sometimes seeks the host. The host sometimes seeks the parasite. By these rules, parasites often compete for hosts, hosts often compete for parasites. More intimate parasite-host relationships can sometimes negate this competition. The place of the parasite is the host; the place of the host is the parasite.

the biography gag.

What is the context set of a biography? When are they written? What accomplishments warrant them? How accurately can someone else capture all the different facets of a human personality over an entire lifetime? How accurately can an individual capture all the different facets of his or her personality over an entire lifetime? What inspires an individual to write an autobiography? What context set has that person’s life consisted of? How does one edit an autobiography or biography? What events of a life can be thrown out in the drawing room? How do these edits affect the overall biography? What, if it exists, is the archetype of the modern biography?
My best attempts to answer that last question lead to one place: the gospels, at least for western society anyway. And why not? Fact or fiction Jesus has had a lot of people write a lot about him. Hoffman’s combo of Murr and Kreisler mirror them in several ways, be this purposeful or not. At the beginning of John’s gospel we have a take on existence just as we do in the beginning of Murr’s autobiography. As an opening, the contemplation of existence seems almost overwhelming as it roped backed into the context of a single life, but we soon realize that we are not just dealing with anyone, but with a messiah. We also know that Murr dies young. I find myself asking, has he passed before his work his completed? Curiously, Hoffman himself will die before finishing his masterpiece to its entirety. It is understood that Murr was not betrayed by any followers (he lacks them for the most part) but we do witness people who want to kill him even though he poses no direct threat to them, besides the threat of potential of change. It also seems like a running joke that Murr, as both messiah and scholar, writes his own biography. This is probably because Murr would of course feel that no one else would be talented enough to write it, not that no one would want to.
Where he may be a parody to a messiah; Murr is a highly satirical character as an enlightened scholar. He is naïve and narcissistic, under the impression that his every action is improving the life of every creature he comes into contact with. He also does not have much of a theory of mind, other than that he must be recognized as a hero. Hoffman claims that Murr is only being honest, but even this is a poke at writers and enlightenment in general. Murr also cannot keep up a relationship, nor does he seem very good at make friends. It seems that the only place Murr can thrive is when he entirely immersed in his scholarly work.
Overwhelming as he can be at times, Murr is not the only satire and Parody we encounter in the book. Kreisler’s interruptions mirror Murr’s quite well, only from the context of a biography instead of an autobiography. An early take on this is gained when Kreisler describes his childhood

“On the day of St. John Chrysostom, that is, on the twenty-fourth of January in the year one thousand seven hundred and some years more, around midday, a boy was born with a face, and hands, and feet. His father was eating pea soup at the time, and in his delight spilled a whole spoonful over his beard, at which the newly delivered mother laughed so hard, although she hadn’t seen it, that the tremor broke every string of the instrument in the hands of the lutenist playing the baby his latest murky,”

This quote sets the tone for any other descriptions that we will get about Kreisler’s childhood, that is, one big joke. An unknown child hood, or a joke of one, is a trademark of many biographies, including the one featuring god’s own son. His mother’s laughter that breaks the lute is apparently supposed to make him an “ignoramus in musical matters” so naturally Kreisler grows up to become an accomplished composer. In a way, this is the Kreisler version of Murr’s musings on existence; the romantic joke against the enlightened quest for trust. The description of a human birth becomes ironic when we consider that the other primary character in the book is a cat.
Perhaps the greatest gag of all though, is that Kreisler isn’t even present in all the sections of his book, sometimes we just have Julia and Hedwigga, other times the editor apologizes for a lack of information on Kreisler. This brings us back to a few of my yet unanswered questions. Specifically: how accurately can someone else capture all the different facets of a human personality over an entire lifetime? And: how does one edit an autobiography or biography? The answer to both of these questions becomes quite clear in Kreisler’s case, the answer seems to be: not well. Murr’s case is a bit more difficult, as the autobiographer, he gets to choose which sides of himself to show us, and I feel that Murr has probably given this a great deal of thought.