Ron's Info-Closet Annex
The online extension of Ron's Info-Closet.
Book links are usually to my Powell's affiliate program; game links are usually to Funagain Games, and benefit the Games to the Rescue Project.
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Ron Hale-Evans
rwhe@ludism.org
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My friend Jay O'Connell has a podcast called "Jay's Tinfoil Hat". He's done about a dozen 10-minute episodes so far, on topics ranging from his young son Milo's gender variance (Milo wants to be a girl), to watching the first gay marriages take place in Cambridge, to adolescent partying, his first apartment, transhumanism, immortality, and cryonics. He has an engaging narrative voice, which is unique yet reminds me of Spalding Gray or This American Life. He also illustrates each podcast with beautiful original photographs and illustrations.
This episode is my favourite, about a junkyard that Jay used to play in as a kid. It has a surprise ending that epitomises my friend -- and curiously enough is reminiscent of Narnia, but don't let that stop you from listening.
Entered 15:16 [/culture] permalink
All a long the riverrun, Howth Castle kept the view
Last night, around this time (dark and a half in the morning), I finished Finnegans Wake. Actually, you can't finish the book, so I lapped it. LAP = ALP = Anna Livia Plurabella = Great Mother Goddess = River Liffey (Livia), the riverrun in the famous circular sentence that begins on the last page of the Wake and ends on the first:
A way a lone a last a loved a long the
riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
I've been reading Finnegans Wake on and off since about 1985, more on than off. I stopped years ago about 2/3 through, but this time dug up my old copy, and my trusty Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, and plowed to the end and back again. Bigod (Shem and Shaun), this is forking nectarnal stuff. Don't let anyone tell you it's nonsense; those are their own limitations speaking. There is more meaning packed into some sentences of the Wake than in whole pages of other books, and I intend to prove it. But more about that later.
So whence the impetus to lap the Wake, and whence the impetus to blog, since the last time I did so (it says here) was 25 April? Well, dear friends, I have been writing a book since then, and I'm just about done, so I have some spare time. The book is called Mind Performance Hacks: Tips and Tricks for Becoming a Better Thinker, and it's a more "practical" sequel to the popular Mind Hacks published by geek favourite O'Reilly. I got the gig when the Mentat Wiki suddenly started getting lots of hits due to a mention in 43 Folders. If you like the Mentat Wiki, you will heart Mind Performance Hacks.
One of the hacks in my books has to do with learning to communicate via portmanteaux and neologisms as Joyce did in Finnegans Wake, so that stimulated me to peruse it again, and then, as I said, this sudden free time sealed the meal.
I believe it was yesterday also that I accidentally learned my book already has an ISBN number and is listed in the catalogues of some online booksellers. The ISBN is 0596101538, and it's listed for publication in December 2005. (Unfortunately, it will really be published a little later than that.) Check out my placeholder pages below! If you're reading this after the book is published, you can go to Amazon and browse it online. O'Reilly will also have a page for the book containing PDFs of a few complete sample hacks, but it's not up yet.
Whoops, B&N has it as Mental Performance Hacks. That's the old title.
Anyway, hard to believe my book is coming together. At times it seemed incompletable, but now there are mutterings of a sequel if the book does well. Just gotta make a few last editorial changes, negotiate illustrations and layout with Production, and coax a few final efforts from the friends and strangers I shanghaied into contributing a non-Ron hack here and there. (You know who you are, and I have your phone numbers.)
And oh yeah, I'm starting a Finnegans Wake reading group in the Seattle area, tentatively called Allforabit Funferall, so if you're interested in that, or in getting your copy of Mind Performance Hacks signed or something, drop me a line at rwhe@ludism.org.
Golly, I'm almost a real writer now like my hero James Joyce, except he's... better. Two wriders were approaching, and thunder began to bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronn- tuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk...
Entered 00:00 [/books] permalink
While writing the latest article in my Game Systems series, I had occasion to research the origin of the phrase "shooting the moon" in the card game Hearts.
At the turn of the last century, "shooting the moon" was apparently used to mean something like "aiming high as a desperate gambit", and particularly to mean absconding in the middle of the night without paying the rent. Examples:
For a day and a half I had nothing to eat or smoke, and then, too hungry to put it off any longer, I packed my remaining clothes into my suitcase and took them to the pawnshop. This put an end to all pretence of being in funds, for I could not take my clothes out of the hotel without asking Madame F.'s leave. I remember, however, how surprised she was at my asking her instead of removing the clothes on the sly, shooting the moon being a common trick in our quarter.
--George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
What concentrated irony and imagination there is for instance, in the metaphor which describes a man doing a midnight flitting as "shooting the moon"? It expresses everything about the run away: his eccentric occupation, his improbable explanations, his furtive air as of a hunter, his constant glances at the blank clock in the sky.
--G.K. Chesterton, "The Red Town", Alarms and Discursions
How well the last passage describe the nervous attitude of someone trying to shoot the moon in Hearts.
In the Hearts variant I am designing, I considered replacing the phrase "shoot the moon" with "fly by night" as a contemporary phrase for a similar situation, but the old phrase stuck, so "shooting the moon" it remains.
Entered 12:07 [/games/game_systems] permalink
Q: "Do you belong to any religion?"
A: "I'm a Cafeterian."
("Heretic" means "one who exercises choice".)
Entered 21:32 [/sophia] permalink
ShorDurPerSav: "Weird Al" Yankovic
I'm having a bad week. It's not a bad work week per se, but I have all day to myself at work to stew. Fortunately, I've had the music of "Weird Al" Yankovic to succour me in my desolation. How can I listen to "One Of Those Days" from 1991's Polka Party! ("and a big steamroller ran over my mom, and I cut myself shaving, and they're dropping the bomb") without feeling better?
In fact, Albert Ellis, the founder of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy, wrote a paper (cache) on the use of self-satirical songs in psychotherapy. His songs have titles like "I Am Just A Fucking Baby!" and "Glory, Glory Hallelujah, People Love Ya Till They Screw Ya". They're not as funny as Weird Al's, but Ellis offers some good how-tos. I need to poke more fun at me; I'll be doing this soon.
And then there's Katie Lee with her Songs of Couch and Consultation, mentioned elsewhere on this blog. My favourite of hers is "The Will To Fail", which is also available in one of the Incredibly Strange Music collections.
But Weird Al's music right now is like finding a two-litre bottle of cold, sweet water in the middle of an asphalt parking lot that stretches for miles around. He is the W.A.Y., the truth, and the life at this farpotchket moment in my life.
Entered 22:54 [/personal/shordurpersavs] permalink
They say meditation feels like coming home, but sometimes the place is a pigsty.
Entered 22:18 [/sophia] permalink
Three ways to obtain sensory superpowers for almost no money down!
*Offer good only if your origin story includes being born with this mutation.
The magnetic-sense link is piercing-related, but worksafe.
I've been asked how the magnetic sense of "Cap'n Magneto", as I like to call him, is different from ordinary touch. Nu, since the magnet is embedded in his flesh, as opposed to glued to his skin, he probably feels his finger muscles pushed around internally when he is near a magnetic field, and this probably feels different from "touch".
The brain is a weird thing. When two senses are stimulated at the same time, one can bleed over to the other. (I noticed this myself long ago, but it's also one of the 100 "hacks" in the recent book Mind Hacks -- highly recommended.) Then there are "synaesthetes", people who can "see" music and "hear" colours. And so on. In short, sensory processing in the brain is wonderful, and I wouldn't be surprised if the brain learned to recognise the movement of this guy's embedded magnet as special, and treat it as a whole new sensory modality.
Entered 21:06 [/future/transhuman] permalink
An expedition to the East and West Poles
Bipolarity can be conducive to creative work: braindump when high, edit when low.
The editing phase is crucial. Unfortunately, when low, one may not even have the energy to publish (for example, post a blog entry), much less edit, one's manic ejaculations.
So how've you been lately? I've had my ups and downs.
Entered 23:39 [/personal] permalink
I'm fed up with deloxom clutter. I bet you are too, if you read this blog. I've deleted all the old del.icio.us entries. I now use the syndicated plugin for Blosxom to create a linkblog in my sidebar from an RSS feed of del.icio.us/rwhe. Much tidier.
Happy now?
LocalNames documentation for Blosxom coming RSN.
Entered 06:03 [/news] permalink
This blog is one of the very first to use Lion Kimbro's [[LocalNames]], a quick and easy way to add automatic [[SC][WikiName]]-style linking to everywhere from everything -- wikis, web, blogs, email...
Since there is now an easy way to add [[LocalNames]] to [[Blosxom]], I'll soon be documenting how Lion and I set it up on this site, as well as on the [[CLS]] wikis, so you can do it too.
In other news, the Info-Closet Annex now has a multicolumn screen layout. I can't believe I put off learning how to do it so long, considering how simple it was.
Entered 12:44 [/news] permalink
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