tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3020960402708303830.post5132085640674675302..comments2024-03-28T10:05:08.122-04:00Comments on BLCKDGRD: We Don't Have to Worry About Questions of Real or Unreal. They Only Talk Out of Expediency. It's the *System* That Matters, or: 80 TodayUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3020960402708303830.post-24912356285511116972017-05-09T07:01:52.302-04:002017-05-09T07:01:52.302-04:00reverend cherrycoke, in his undelivered sermon, sp...reverend cherrycoke, in his undelivered sermon, spoke of thomas the apostle<br /><br />in this very comments column, mere days ago, i recommended leloup's translation/commentary of thomas's gospel<br /><br />one might also find interesting<br /><br />http://www.gnosis.org/thomasbook/thomas.htm<br /><br /><br />as one of the sayings in the gospel of thomas puts it, "let one who seeks keeps seeking until they find"<br /><br />http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/thomas/gospelthomas2.html<br /><br /><br />mistah charley, ph.d.https://www.blogger.com/profile/06303695341246058680noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3020960402708303830.post-74645791012724035052017-05-08T14:00:51.653-04:002017-05-08T14:00:51.653-04:00-- Was gonna say. Waves good too, also.-- Was gonna say. Waves good too, also.Mongo, At The Momenthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00973606827337262084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3020960402708303830.post-66266247646563202022017-05-08T13:40:06.288-04:002017-05-08T13:40:06.288-04:00Thanks for The Minutemen!! It hit the spot. Fine M...Thanks for The Minutemen!! It hit the spot. Fine Metaphors Abound, of course . . . . Hamster Hametnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3020960402708303830.post-69363893810978233002017-05-08T12:15:58.447-04:002017-05-08T12:15:58.447-04:001)speaking of a glass jar with colorful filled can...1)speaking of a glass jar with colorful filled candies inside, 1950s - <br /><br />my first piano teacher had one of these - all the candies were raspberry-flavored, though - you got one after your lesson - i enjoyed them very much<br /><br />2) speaking of/in aphorisms, as PROVERBS FOR PARANOIDS! does, reminds me of Gurdjieff’s Aphorisms, which were inscribed in a special script above the walls of the Study House at the Prieuré in the 1920s - for example, <br /><br /><b>Like what “it” does not like.<br /><br />Do not love art with your feelings.<br /><br />A true sign of a good man is if he loves his father and mother.<br /><br />Judge others by yourself and you will rarely be mistaken.<br /><br />Don't judge a man by the tales of others.<br /><br />Consider what people think of you—not what they say.<br /><br />Only he who can take care of what belongs to others may have his own.<br /><br />Practice love first on animals, they are more sensitive.<br /><br />One of the best means for arousing the wish to work on yourself is to realize that you may die at any moment. But first you must learn how to keep it in mind.</b><br /><br />3)and speaking of the Ascent to Christ, or not, as reverend cherrycoke didn't in his undeliver'd sermons, the following by jacob needleman is tangentially relevant:<br /><br />As human life in our era spirals downward toward dissolution in violence and illusion, one central question rises up before us in the shadow of which all teachings . . . must now be measured: How can humanity reverse the process leading to its seemingly inevitable self-destruction?<br /><br />In the face of this question, the heart is restless, but the mind soon falls silent. It is as though the unprecedented crisis of our modern world confounds and all but refutes thousands of years of religious doctrine and centuries of scientific progress. Who now dreams of turning to religion for the answer when it is religion itself that lies so close to the root of war and barbarism? Who dares turn to science for the answer when it is advancing technology, the very fruit of scientific progress, that has so amplified the destructive powers of human egoism? And who imagines that new theories of society, new social programs, new ideologies can do anything more than wrap the falling earth in dreams of flying?<br /><br />The mind falls silent.<br /><br />But in that silence something within can awaken. In that moment an entirely new kind of hope can appear.<br /><br />[end of quote from http://tinyurl.com/22qpcom]mistah charley, ph.d.https://www.blogger.com/profile/06303695341246058680noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3020960402708303830.post-46142681063081565692017-05-08T10:27:43.626-04:002017-05-08T10:27:43.626-04:00Among all the things which stand out in Memory abo...Among all the things which stand out in Memory about <i>Gravity's Rainbow</i>, Slothrop's Victorian Candy Calvary with Mrs. Quoad is near the top of the list. Pynchon plays on a factoid about candy: humorous exaggeration aside, there once was such a multiplicity of colored sugar treats, and with all manner of fillings. I had an experience similar to Slothrop's with a great-aunt in the Fifties, right down to the giant, pressed-glass jar wherein the Candies were kept; swear to god (well, somebody's god, anyway), some of them had been stuck together in there since the Twenties. They were Carmine-colored, Lime Green, vaguely Yellow, even Blue -- faded but still jewel-like, different shapes and sizes. They were the wiggling, phosphorescent lure of a Grouper as old as time, wattled, dusted with powders and soaked in blue hair-rinse: Great-Aunt Tessa.<br /><br />Great-Aunt Tessa was my mother's last living relative, lived in a Victorian house near San Francisco with the shades perpetually drawn, filled with enough china to serve a regiment; stuffed animals (her deceased husband Toby's hobby); furniture heavy enough to survive a nuclear detonation in the Megaton range and draped in antimacassars like antisubmarine netting. When The Jar was offered, you took -- and sucked on hardened candy carapaces that reminded me of sucking on Band-aids, made before Silent Cal ever said, "You lose". The fillings had once dreamed of being fruits, but by then tasted like anchovy mint toothpaste, or syrup so heavily mentholated it qualified as a nerve agent banned by the Geneva Convention, and used beach towels.<br /><br />Reading Pynchon is like regarding a Rothko, or listening to Paul Desmond. And we're not even getting into <i>Snap To, Slothrop</i>, Gimmie That Acne Al La Mode, "Schitt Ja, Herr Bummer!" or Shit and Shinola. And that's just the one book. Mongo, At The Momenthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00973606827337262084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3020960402708303830.post-42211529327335073712017-05-08T09:25:21.364-04:002017-05-08T09:25:21.364-04:00there was a guy i knew in college who was a big py...there was a guy i knew in college who was a big pynchon fan<br /><br />we were roommates for 2 years, but drifted apart and haven't communicated in decades<br /><br />he went on to be a professor at an ivy league university <br /><br />after seeing your post today i went to look him up and found he had written, more than once, about the philosophical concept of the "zombie"<br /><br />among philosophers, i have just discovered this morning (and so i indicate my naivete about what philosophers write about) the "zombie" concept is not about being "undead", or eating brains - rather, according to our friends at wikipedia - <br /><br /><b>A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.</b><br /><br />for more info you could go to the wikipedia article i have justed quoted, or even see<br /><br />"Artificial intelligence and consciousness", as published in the Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness,2007<br /><br />http://www.academia.edu/download/39440720/conscioushb.pdf<br /><br /><br /><br />as robert lewis stevenson might have said, "the world affords us an opportunity for a wide variety of qualia, the experiencing of which may provide satisfaction to those beings able to have internal experiences" <br /><br />- for original, see https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/stevenson/happy_thought.html<br /><br />mistah charley, ph.d.https://www.blogger.com/profile/06303695341246058680noreply@blogger.com