Archive for the ‘Nothing Much’ Category
Entry 1690 — A Short Nullentry
Monday, January 12th, 2015
That’s NUHL ehn tree. Or should I call it an “emtry?” I think I did once before. In any case, this entry will not have much in it because it’s a day I have a two-hour errand in the morning and a two-hour errand in the afternoon breaking it up. That I’m always lazy keeps me from working around it. Oh, well, I did get workdone yesterday: 4 reviews for Small Press Review.
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I liike the internck because so many pipulls making wordz on it iz way stupidoor then me. that Makes me wonder why smart in the head pippls don’t never post? Iz they consealing off ther akshul stoopiness?
I like my way bedder: preetening to be stoot in the head no madder how stewpit I says ideas pippls will think I’m kiddung.
ime Nough gonna bekum famis beyon count by writing novel the second word of every sentence is capitalized instedda the first. i Wunner if anyone dun that afore.
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KNOWLECULAR TERMINOLOGY UPDATE: I’m keeping “consciation” as my word for “content of consciousness,” but dropping all related words and using adjectives indicating awarenesses with “consciation” to indicate the different kinds of consciation there are, for instance, “matheceptual consciation” for what I temporarily was calling, “mathsciation,” or something like that, and now it’s “scienceptuality-free consciation” for “superstisciation.”
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Entry 1249 — Another Rough Day
Friday, October 25th, 2013
My luck, especially concerning my house, continues t be bad. This morning I couldn’t get on the Internet. It turned out it was because one of my house’s electrical circuits had burned out, or something, the one the DSL cable box (or whatever it is) was plugged int o. Then for a while I thought my electricity was completely gone. That’s because in fooling with my circuit breakers, I’d flipped off the main one and forgot to flip it back on. Hours ago I called an electrician but haven’t yet heard back from him. Meanwhile, I’ve switched all the plugs that were in what seems to be the one bad circuit to working ones so am back to normal, but frazzled, and with something wrong with my electricity. Just a bad wall socket (or whatever it is)?
I’m also worried about my Scientific American blog. I emailed the guy who will now be posting it Wednesday but not heard back. I don’t want to pester him so will wait another few days before trying again to get hold of him. I just want to be sure my blog hasn’t been dropped. I continually fear it will be. I don’t think anyone who wasn’t a friend or at least an acquaintance has yet praised it.
In other words, I’ve been knocked again into my null zone. Hence, another nothing blog entry.
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Entry 1214 — A Passing Political Thought
Sunday, September 15th, 2013
I wonder when I’ll remember to save everything I type at this wretched blog before typing more than fifty words. I just finished typing a hundred or so–they were not important, but a struggle to get down, and the entry was almost done, when I hit a wrong key an deleted everything except part of a word. This happens to me two or three times a month. I have no idea what causes it. TIME TO SAVE!!
My passing political thought, which was an old, unoriginal one I was posting only because I had nothing else to post, was an observation about Americans’ attitude toward slavery. I guessed that 90% of them believed the government should run every aspect of every American’s life–except theirs. I opined that most Americans didn’t think of themselves as enslaved to the degree that they are because almost all of the things they are forced to do they would do without being forced, and almost none of the things they are prevented from doing, they would never have any inclination of doing.
By the time I’d written my thought, I’d come up with a few other very minor things to increase my word-count with. One was that Seth Abramson never took me up on my invitation to participate in a dialogue with him, or even have the politeness to let me know he wouldn’t. So I will never learn he means by his term, “metamodernist poetry.” I suspect he realized how emptily bogus–and definable–it was. My real regret, though, is that I won’t make his list of One Thousand Important Poetry People on the Internet or whatever his next inane list is, when it comes out.
Okay, three paragraphs, three saves.
I also said something about things on the homefront: that I’ve been feeling more and more to be a non-participant in the world, or–at any rate–the cultural world, but am close to finishing my latest guest blog for Scientific American. Somehow I’ve managed to get one done every four weeks for fifteen months. I feel I’ve made a number of near-approaches to Important Understandings along the way, too. Not that it’s helped me any in the Big World that I know of. . . .
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Enter 1185 — Not Deep in the Null Zone, But in It
Saturday, August 17th, 2013
I was going to begin a possibly worthwhile discussion with Seth Abramson here today but haven’t the zip to start it, only enough to announce my latest coinage, “propremacism.” it’s pronounced prah PREH muh SIHZ um. Definition: the belief that personal property rights should be considered above all other political rights. By “property,” I mean all of a person’s material possessions, which would include his body. A person’s private property should be inviolable–except when he has used it against some other innocent person or persons’ private property, or threatens seriously to do so. Simplistic ? Unoriginal? Who cares?
Gee, I have a bit of zip left over–enough to re-announce a very old belief of mine (but perhaps expressing it in a new, possibly not totally boring way): there are three kinds of people where political will is concerned: those who have what could be called political free will because their political acts and ideas are based on their constantly evolving understanding of the world; those who lack political free will because their political acts and beliefs are socially determined; and those who lack political free will because their political acts and beliefs are determined by the conditioning they received growing up. Free-wenders, Milyoops and Rigidniks, according to my psychology. Those who are autonomous, other-directed and inner-directed according to David Riesman.
Yes, human beings are varied, each of us a mixture of the three temperament-types above, and the majority a ridiculously complex clutter of competing wills. Still, each of us is usually a good deal more one temperament than the other two.
Last thought of the day: the sad fact that almost all political pundits have an ideal political state in mind that they think (usual benignly) everyone should live in. Do we ever hear one suggest, for instance, that maybe it’d be good to let Texas be significantly the opposite of Massachusetts? Note, Gore Vidal is no hero of mine, but he had this idea before I did, I’m pretty sure. I don’t believe I got it from him–but don’t mind if I did. Being self-determined is not being superior to the influence of others but in being able to choose one’s influences.
My zip may be growing (as even the dimmest psychologists know, nothing is better at getting one out of a low than simple activity), but I’ll spare you more of my thoughts . . . for now.
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Entry 1098 — Offs & Ons Still
Monday, May 20th, 2013
Tough day. Got knocked off the Internet again early last evening. Got no help at Staples, where I’d bought it, when I took my laptop to their service people. The usual problem: it’s dial-up, so basically obsolete. I played around with my other computer, though, and finally, somehow, got it working. I think what made my Windows Live Mail allow me to get and send e.mail again was that I made my Windows Explored my defaulte Internet browser!
I got some work done on my next Scientific American blog entry that seemed pretty good to me. I had more fun with footnotes. There’s a slight chance that tomorrow I’ll manage my first more than C- blog entry. I’ll be happy if I’m merely able to post some entry.
Oh, one other bit of news: I filled out a questionnaire for book reviews the National Book Critics’ Circle, of which I’m a member, sent me. It was concerned with reviewing ethics. I said concern with reviewing ethics is moronic: it’s up to the reader to be able to tell the difference between unsupported assertions whether favorable or unfavorable from words worth attending. I also said review editors should not refuse to assign reviews of self-published books and the like. I then commented that they should refuse to assign reviews of commercially or academically published books. Or books that had won NBCC awards! I lied, then, though, for I added that I was just kidding–but to completely. I think I may be the only otherstream critic in the organization. Richard Kostelanetz got me in over twenty years ago. They’re good people, just not in the same world I’m in.
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Latest Report
Friday, May 17th, 2013
My connection to the Internet has stayed good for more than 2 days now. I’ve been getting and sending e.mail all right, too. So things may be okay.
I’m finally getting a little writing done, but so far not for my blog. I’m not sure when I’ll get back to it. (This ain’t back to it.) Just don’t have no blog thawts . . .
I expect they’ll start coming again. I hope so.
Best to all, Bob
Entry 1090 — MayDay
Wednesday, May 1st, 2013
Pun intended, I’m going down fast, and there’s not much hope. My e.mail problems are killing me, and I’m having Internet troubles, too. The only good news I have to report is that I sent my Scientific American editor my latest guest blog entry, and it’s a pretty good one, I think–except that I have too many boring instructional asides in it–about how to compose poems. Anyway, even with pain-pill opium in me, I’m feeling too low to manage anything but what I’ve so far written for this entry. Maybe tomorrow will be better but I wouldn’t bet on it.
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Entry 1089 — A Trivial Little IQ Test
Tuesday, April 30th, 2013
I just have the following question for you today: what do the following pairs of words have in common:
ZONE/NONE
dare/bare
WILL/MILL
you/yon
It is not that each of the two words in a pair share three letters.
Yeah, once again I have too much to do (that I’m probably too lazy to do) to post much of an entry. Sorry.
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Entry 1041 — Pretty Calligraphy & Moping
Wednesday, March 13th, 2013
First, to keep this entry from being entirely worthless, two specimens of 17th Century German calligraphy from The Public Domain Review:
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And now some of my boilerplate moping. It will be short. My brainsludge is too deep for anything extensive. Subject: too many people in the world. Observation: we now visit whole civilizations the size of one of our present cities because they stood out from the few other civilizations at the time and of all the years before them, and we visit Shakespeare’s birthplace because he stood out from the other men at the time and of all the years before. How can any of us stand out from the billions surrounding us. And why should one not want to make an impression on existence–wherever it’s going?
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Entry 867 — Another Throw-Away Entry
Thursday, September 20th, 2012
Someone at New-Poetry started a discussion about what poet one has not read that one would like to read (and–I inferred–feels guilty about not yet having done so). My answer, “I’m not too concerned about poets I haven’t gotten as involved in as I should have (and there are more than a few), but schools of poetry I haven’t, such as the language poets.” Needless to say, I was the only one not simply naming some conventional poet or other. The problem with a lot of poets–as my main chunk of boilerplate has it–that they feel they know the entire poetic terrain, just not all its inhabitants, when they know maybe thirteen percent of it (although that’s where most contemporary poets are).