Miscellaneous BS

The art world is accustomed to and familiar with “movements,” so an art movement, no matter is content of philosophy, is usually, if not always, accepted. Art critics are another matter. They tend to accept what they already know, especially if they have written about the art form or movement for high-end magazines. Since the art world is comprised of 75% art critics (that number includes artists themselves); unless an ultrafamous figurehead is supporting or talking about the art, they usually have their noses in the air. Transhumanist Art was fortunate in this regard. Since the pioneers of transhumanism are famed technologists, scientists and authors, it brings with it a lot of clout. At the beginning of the transhumanist movement in the mid to late 1980s, EZTV was a well-regarded alternative venue for independent filmmakers and videogographers, as well as multi-media artists. I had the support of John Dore, its founder, and Michael Masucci its director.
— Natasha Vita

The instrument penetrated the bone. A very hard, clean sliver of wood had been treated by fire and herbs and was slid down so that it just entered the hole in my head. I felt a stinging, tickling sensation apparently in the bridge of my nose. It subsided and I became aware of subtle scents which I could not identify. Suddenly there was a blinding flash. For a moment the pain was intense. It diminished, died and was replaced by spirals of colour. As the projecting sliver was being bound into place so that it could not move, the Lama Mingyar Dondup turned to me and said:” You are now one of us, Lobsang. For the rest of your life you will see people as they are and not as they pretend to be.”

I don’t know why German has a word for “a person who leaves without paying the bill” (Zechpreller) or why Albanians have 27 different words for mustache. In De Boinod’s book, we find many words with no equivalent in the English language — for example, tsuji-giri, a Japanese word from samurai days meaning “to try out a new sword on a passerby,” or Torschlusspanik, a German word meaning “the fear of diminishing opportunities as one gets older,” or the Persian word nakhur, which means “a camel that won’t give milk until her nostrils have been tickled.”
— Pickover

My favorite piece of cockroach literature is a William Gass story called “Order of Insects.” The narrator is a housewife whose fear of water bugs — Periplaneta orientalis — turns into a fascination with their construction; “I…observed the movement of the jaws, the stalks of the antennae, the skull-shaped skull, the lines banding the abdomen, and found an intensity in the posture of the shell, even when tipped, like that in the gaze of Gauguin’s natives’ eyes.

During a CAT scan of his head in 1992, a piece of metal 3/8 of an inch long was discovered in the occipital lobe of his brain, near the pineal gland. Local Mutual UFO Network investigators declared it to be “an alien nanotechnological laboratory.” Laffoley has come to believe that the “implant” is extraterrestrial in origin and is the main motivation behind his ideas and theories.

Is the burqa at all similar to online anonymity, or is it more like a belted trench coat and scarf worn by an otherwise nude young woman on her way to surprise and delight her lover?

But enough of this, the nectaroscordum siculum bulgaricum bulbs beckon…

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