“I am not interested in erecting a building, but in […] presenting to myself the foundations of all possible buildings.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (via philphys)
July 2010
27 posts
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“…In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire Province. In the course of Time, these Extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point. Less attentive to the Study of Cartography, succeeding Generations came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome, and, not without Irreverence, they abandoned it to the Rigours of sun and Rain. In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar; in the whole Nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Geography.”
—On Exactitude in Science - J.L. Borges
“No see there *weren’t* any real cartridges or piece of Found Drama. This was the joke. All it was was you and a couple cronies… got out a metro Boston phone book and tore a white pages page out at random and thumbtacked it to the wall and the The Stork would throw a dart at it from across the room. At the page. And the name it hit became the the subject of the Found Drama. And whatever happened to the protagonist with the name you hit with the dart for like the next hour and a half is the Drama. And when the hour and a half is up, you go out and have drinks with the critics who like chortlingly congratulate you on the ultimate in Neorealism… The joke’s theory was there’s no audience and no director and no stage or set because in Reality there are none of these things. and the protagonist doesn’t know he’s the protagonist in a Found Drama because in Reality nobody thinks they’re in any sort of Drama.”
—DFW
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Love's Theme
Barry White
mmmm Love’s Theme
“Why would a reviewer make the point of saying someone’s not a genius? Do you especially think I’m not a genius? [Pause] You didn’t even have to think about it, did you?”
—Eli Cash
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- Mr. Burns: I don't know what's happening, it seems our profits have dropped 37%.
- Smithers: I'm afraid we have a bad image, sir. Market research shows that people see you as something of an ogre.
- Mr. Burns: I ought to club them and eat their bones!
“The true opponent, the enfolding boundary, is the player himself. Always and only the self out there, on court, to be met, fought, brought to the table to hammer out terms. The competing boy on the net’s other side: he is not the foe: he is more the partner in the dance. He is the what is the word excuse or occasion for meeting the self. As you are his occasion. Tennis’s beauty’s infinite roots are self-competitive. You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution. Disappear inside the game: break through limits: transcend: improve: win. Which is why tennis is an essentially tragic enterprise… You seek to vanquish and transcend the limited self whose limits make the game possible in the first place. It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same, as citizens of the human State: the animating limits are within, to be killed and mourned, over and over again.”
—DFW. so good. can’t sleep.
