Image of the Day and eBay Feedback

To those waiting for an image of a dog wearing trousers, turned inside out, (the image, not the trousers): here it is.
In passing, who was it - I used to think Churchill but no - who said "If my dog had a face like that I'd shave its arse and teach it to walk backwards..."?

By the way, you will not want to miss the fabulous eBay Feedback generator here.
Still less would you wish to avoid the infinitely long personality test here.

And if you have been, thanks for looking.

Disordered Universe of Discourse

Clearly, we travel along life's blah blah journey as if it were nice and orderly; clearly it's not. Most art is made as if it were, though, even film. Erudite readers will know that the College de 'Pataphysique, founded upon certain ideas and principles emanating from the estimable Alfred Jarry, interested as it is with the science of exceptions, and housing all the OuXPos, such as OuLiPo and OuPeinPo - the potential literature workshop and ditto painting, but also other bodies where the X can be comic strips, cooking, police thrillers, music, history and so on - would most certainly NOT take things in a given order.
How then to explore the world, through art and science and philosophy, as if sequence and causality were not of the essence?
In literature, usually, a book is a book, and short of attacking it with a razor blade (pace William Burroughs) there is little we can do. However, there exist books to be read in no particular order. B S Johnson's "The Unfortunates" is a well-known example, a series of unbound chapters in a box, famously hard to find in its first edition.















There is also a most excellent website dealing with this form of spinelessness, and the purpose of this blog entry is to direct you to it.

As a thought experiment, or more: how would it be to destroy sequentiality in all sorts of other areas - of course this has been done if we look hard enough - such as music, cooking recipes, automobile construction, sex, and so on, and so on?

And if you have been: thanks for looking.

Oddity of the Day

To avoid addressing more serious matters (viz., art) I tried to search for unutterably unlikely combinations of words in Google. For example, the serial cable, or rather the port, little used now, that used to connect Macs and other proper computers to printers etc. was called an RS232. I tried a search for Pataphysics and RS232. There were three hits here. Amazing, no? New Scientist, I believe, once ran a competition for singularities - a combination of words etc. that yielded only 1 hit on Google. Of course as soon as the results were published online, the entries became invalid.
'Pataphysics, as you will know by now, is the science of exceptions.
I am tempted to do the same for images - is there, in a Google image search, a singular pictorial hit? Yes! "Intelligent penis" yields only one image. It is utterly banal but it IS a singular image. You are invited to propose others....
And if you have been... thanks for looking.

From the Mechanical Contrivium, via the excellent Museum of Dust:

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Zombies!

1. The fingerprints of zombies are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene.
2. Zombies are the sacred animal of Thailand.
3. Devoid of their cells and proteins, zombies have the same chemical makeup as sea water.
4. Zombies are physically incapable of sticking their tongue out!
5. Ancient Greeks believed earthquakes were caused by zombies fighting underground.
6. Lightning strikes zombies over seven times every hour.
7. Never store zombies at room temperature.
8. More than one million stray dogs and half a million stray cats live in zombies.
9. The patron saint of zombies is Saint Eugenie.
10. Four-fifths of the surface of zombies is covered in water.

I am interested in - do tell me aboutherhimitthem

Frog Crumble and Consciousness

As usual, there is (can be) no distinction for the Zombie between the value of the following two items of interest. As Monty Python sang: "Everything goes in / Everything goes out..."

Sigh... there IS only void, you know. All the rest's just... just... (shrugs). Doesn't mean we shouldn't stop arseholes in the constructed fairyland doing their thing, because we should. It's just that it's not a moral imperative.

The first: In the French town of Bourges, I recently saw as the first item on the menu of the Bistrot Gourmand, "Crumble de Grenouille", or Frog Crumble.

The second: A new book by Nick Humphrey, reviewed in New Scientist, hypothesises that consciousness is "just" an acquired evolutionary trait, successful because self-awareness makes us feel special and mysterious and makes us want to put extra effort into our survival. But, in the jargon, consciousness is "epiphenomenal" - it does nothing, and doesn't really matter.

In lieu of an image of the frog crumble, here is a picture of red.


There is a heap of evidence to show that it is as though we have an inner Zombie inside us, who takes all the decisions, has the real perceptions. Then we just "pretend" to ourselves that that's exactly what we wanted to do, think etc., all along...! And, yes, this does imply that there is no free will, only the illusion of it, thereby putting into question notions of guilt, responsibility and punishment.

Of course, your inner Zombie is by no means the same as mine, no one's saying that. But I am one of the few people to recognise and even celebrate that they ARE no more, really, than this Zombie. Try it for a minute... there, that didn't hurt did it?

And, if you have been, thanks for looking.

A Whole New Blog

There exist, of course, text-manglers that either by using substitution from look-up tables or Markov Chain style text manipulation, will change a text into a travesty of itself. There is one site that enables you to do this to an entire website, and I thought of replacing my entire blog with its version; pride intervened though, and instead if you copy the url (with the www or it won't work) of my site into this site, you can see one of a number of not all that amusing versions. However it is the recursivness that becomes of some passing interest.

For example, here is the text up to now so treated, using the "Hacker" dialect.

zoMb3i pa4physics

an excursion int0 acrt4iun raz f rat, co/\/\pUters, philosophy, text, zomb3is, alchemy,m etallurgy, music, f0od, creati\/ity, paatphsIcs, politicz ,france whAre imj a cutur4l civilservanT (yes, i do knpw that this si appalling), berlinm whete i live and wrok for m3, e|\|gl4nD where i come from, 4nd so on OLOLOLOLLOLOLO~~~ th1s /\/\ay chnage ololololololoolo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11~~ i owN j00~~~~ COMWE 2 MY fTP

SUNDAY, JULY 02, 20O6

A WH0LE |\|EWW BLOG

THERE EXIST, OF COURSE, TEXT-MANGLARZ THAT IETHER BY US1NG SUBSTITUTI0N FRMO LOOKU-p TABLDS RO MARKOV CH4IN STY;LE TEXT MANIPUL4TION, WIL7 CH4NGE A TEXT iNTO SA TRAVESYTY 0F ITSeLF!!!!!!!!!!!~~~~ I wilkl HACK YUOUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!~ tehre is one site that enables u to do rhis t0 an enTiore website, and i thoguht of rweplAcnig my enttire blog With its version; pridE inetrvened though, amnd iNstread 1f ou copy teh urkl of My ite into tthis s1t3, you canm se3 one 0gf a nunmber of not a7lhtAta musing barsIonz HAXOR YOUUIUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1~~ HACK YUOUUUuYUU HOWEVER IT IS TJE RECURISVN3SS HTAT BECOMEZ OIF S0ME PASISNG INTEREST

froe xa/\/\p7e, hare is the textu p to now so treatt3d!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11~~~~~~