nova delphini 2013!

"I'll tell you a little later on . . . how Delphinus for yourselves if you're under clear skies," he said!



Discovered (by Koichi Itagaki) yesterday; from the SLOOH Telescopes in the Canary Islands. (via Ma -- thanks, Ma!)

It is early yet here near the nation's capital, and the nova is just approaching naked eye visibility, but I cannot see anything in the appropriate area of the sky (determined via StarWalk) except the slightest glimmer of what must be Altair, off to the side, through the haze.

Bob Berman, the narrator of the above video (who also touts an app), says tomorrow the show will feature the immanent flipping of the magnetic poles of the Sun, somewhat out of the its appropriate chronology: "the Sun has been weird, lately." I think he also mentioned some distant supernova also currently being observed.

Exciting times, indeed, in the ol' Hubble Volume!

on background

so: there's this chair, an unexceptional, inexpensive, somewhat old, simple rolling desk chair, in my bedroom, which had rested, out of the way, by the front window. recently, i moved it into the narrow walk between the bed and the dresser, where the comforter sloughs off the foot -- the better to work on a laptop running next to the alarm clock on that dresser -- where it has been for several days, although i move it a bit to get to drawers or squeeze by to operate the windows. it is light and rolls easily, if never straight.

i am accustomed enough to knowing what's where that i often leave the lights off.

just now, on the way to turn off the attic fan, i walked into the room, turned the light on, looked around, and, turning the light off, left again, unsure why i had so purposefully crossed that threshold. the sound of the fan immediately reminded me, so, without turning the light on again, i walked in, skirting the area where laundry might lie, and made my way toward the switch for the fan when my foot fell onto one of the arms of the chair's wheel array.

that's lucky, i thought, as, to trip over this chair in the dark could be dangerous. i imagined a number of ways the molded plastic might maim me in an uncontrolled fall and carefully moved it aside.

i switched off the fan meaning to open the windows; i headed that way until i bumped into the chair.

i can't believe it, i thought, how could i do that twice in such close succession? i found the chair's swiveling back with both hands, moving it to the side, and made my way around the foot of the bed.

having opened both windows i strode, between the bed and dresser, once more, right into that chair.

jackass, i thought, bitterly surprised: i hadn't even walked carefully, like one might, knowing a rolling-office-chair-of-potential-concussion-or-worse lurks, somewhere, there, in the darkness.

anyway, i told you that story so that i could tell you . . .

something.

i don't recall.

circumspectly (vorsichtig?)

in light of recent sensational reports of a decision by a german regional court,
i thought it timely to link a couple earlier works pertaining to the subject matter:

Recipe for Imprinting the Neonate and matthew 5.29

wanting also to post a link to adam wagner's sober assessment of the issues and their implications, admittedly in europe and the united kingdom, over at uk human rights blog, i was a-foraging for the link in yet another animated discussion of circumcision over at metafilter, when this google-ad/headline juxtaposition shook my cognitive equilibrium:



now, if you'll excuse me, i'm'a go see about some mail-order brides. . .

PgDning the cine

i have previously alluded to my reading habits, dear reader, with respect to both corporeal books, and virtual books -- generally in .pdf format -- read on my computer as well as the handheld device. i also may have indicated a somewhat ambivalent attitude toward notions of intellectual property, if not to the more general concept of property itself. i may not have previously mentioned my occasional practice of watching movies, some of perhaps questionable provenance, on my computer.

sometimes a movie of such questionable provenance has subtitles hard-coded into the video, or the option of displaying subtitles from a separate file.

lately, i've been on a bit of a lars von trier kick, because "melancholia" was so beautiful, as well as enjoying some tarkovsky works; a friend also recommended fassbinder. i mention von trier and fassbinder particularly  because it was while watching subtitles coded into their films that i noticed a strange, new behavioral tic.

Gaysploitation (and GOSHS) film w/ Slaughter & Serrano!

Not long ago, after I updated an old friend on my activities of recent years he wrote back to tell me that my reports of pseudonymous work were interesting because he, too, has been doing creative work under an assumed soubriquet.

[10/19/14: tracked down missing videos; failed to restore missing image. -ed]

the ides of april

Very warm annual wishes to two special persons this week: you, Dear Reader, yesterday, and you, Dear Reader, tomorrow! (and while we're at it, why not anyone else sharing either of those target dates?)

overheard in boy talk hell

i don't do too much overheard in boy talk hell. no doubt, as a result of millennia of patriarchal tradition, boy talk hell is kind of just normative generalized small talk, though it may still veer into decidedly men-are-gearhead-nerds-from-mars realms, as with the popular notions of fishing, the barbecue, power tools and spectator sports.

but today in boy talk hell, one party said to another party, "everybody objects to paying their taxes," and, with a pointed pause pregnant with contempt, "except you." (one of the many "everybody . . . but you" statements used by said party to said other in today's boy talk hell), and i had to look (once more) at my little prototype "do not cast your pearls before swine"-sign as i turned to engage...

a koan? c'mon

If you could have the mind of someone from history and remain in your own body, who would you choose?

I am not sure that I understand your question:

• I would have the mind of some historical character here in this body in this apartment in the city?
• Would it coexist or be controlled by what until now had been assumed to be my mind, like a memorized biography or an available heretofore unknown mode of rumination?
  
• Would the mind and my mind drift together, merge in a composite, or be superimposed somehow?
• Or would I, now, remember having been that person and how that person thought?
• Would my mind simply wink out the moment that historical mind arrived, or switch places Freaky Friday-style?
  
• Do the characteristics of my body preclude my choosing the mind of a woman?

how about something like

[invited to read a friend's wedding...]
research barely begun, but, while reading BenXVI's
papal encyclical on Love, it occurred to me that
my favorite naturalist writer likely has
something appropriate to say on the topic.
This is the first item I found.
if the whole poem is not quite perfect, certainly some of
its stanzas or lines are wonderful. and maybe an assortment of such
wonderful stanzas and lines from various sources would not be amiss.

The Country of Marriage, Wendell Berry

I.

I dream of you walking at night along the streams
of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs
of birds opening around you as you walk.
You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep.

II.

This comes after silence. Was it something I said
that bound me to you, some mere promise
or, worse, the fear of loneliness and death?
A man lost in the woods in the dark, I stood
still and said nothing. And then there rose in me,
like the earth's empowering brew rising
in root and branch, the words of a dream of you
I did not know I had dreamed. I was a wanderer
who feels the solace of his native land
under his feet again and moving in his blood.
I went on, blind and faithful. Where I stepped
my track was there to steady me. It was no abyss
that lay before me, but only the level ground.

wait, who's driving?

I was troubled, after reading several erudite law review articles
dismissing the "green card" as clumsy outmoded language for one of a set
of documents indicating immigration status, to see the green card
discussed in a June 25, 2007 Senate Republican Policy Committee
Legislative Notice comparing S.s 1639 and 1348.

no-rae bang'd?

No entry yesterday: a restful yet busy day.

I came in to work at ten and started teaching Mr. Kim's class. It was going well -- I do have fun teaching. Anyway, half way through, he came in and took over. And he taught the second class. At noon, I was writing down my hours. He saw them and said they were too long, so I would get off at 5:00. Good. A little later Mr. Kwon came in and told me that they (probably that should be the capitalized They of the management of Olympiad) had heard that no inspectors were coming. That explained Mr. Kim's presence. Anyway, at five Mr. Kim and I left (he wanted to go see Mr. Im) and walked home via a stationery store, and Hi-Mang Dep't Store (where he bought us a box of Ramen, some grapes and some cookies). He visited a while with Duke and me, then he split and went upstairs. Free time. I tried to meditate with marginal (read, no) success. Duke told me that Mr. Khan (with whom he works) was going to come over in the evening to go to a [no-rai bang].

This was not the same as the one that Hyun-ah and Heon-Seong took us to. We arrived and were shown to a private room. A man took our orders, then we were joined by two women. Mr. Khan said that they were our companions, actually "partners," and that he didn't get one because he is married. One sat next to me, the other next to Duke. Mr. Khan told us that we could touch them, but did not explain any farther than that. So neither of us did anything untoward. We all sang and drank. Duke and I were quite uncomfortable due to the apparent fact that we had been brought women (and not particularly attractive ones at that) who may have been somewhere between prostitutes and consorts. It was an interesting evening. Fun even at moments. Today, Duke is going to try to find out what that was all about. More later.

meditation in a box

Some rituals require that you make a gesture seven times - for example, shuffle the Tarot seven times - but I think this "seven" is not a specific count of occurrences, rather a symbol, denoting

until you get bored with counting and start to count ahead in your head and then realize that you're counting ahead and subtracting 2 or 3 counts in hopes of coming close to the actual number signifying the incidents of the act, thereby realizing that you have no idea of either the number you have counted or how many times you have iterated the act.

Once you know what it feels like it is easier than understanding this.