The
title of this site comes from the following passage, as it
struck me as an interesting concept as well as a colourful
phrase when I came across it.
"The
techniques of autostimulation are extremely various.
Just as one can notice that stroking oneself in a certain way
can produce certain only partially and indirectly controllable
but definitely desirable effects (and one can then devote some
time and ingenuity to developing and exploring the techniques
for producing those desirable effects in oneself), so one can
also come to recognize that talking to oneself, making
pictures for oneself, singing to oneself, and so forth, are
practices that often have desirable effects. Some people
are better at these activities than others. Cognitive
autostimulation is an acquired and intimately personal
technique, with many different styles."
--Daniel
C. Dennett, Elbow Room
This
site doesn't have many visitors at the moment, but that will
hardly affect the content or frequency of posts herein.
I hope that doesn't bother you ... like it matters.
You may follow this link to add your own comment, but this is
what another "visitor" had to say
I
have been webmastering my own sites for several years now. (You
could say I've been the master of my own domain.) My
original home site entitled The
World Bri'ed Web is now in its seventh incarnation or
so. I write and record music, and use the site incessantly to
pitch the albums to all few of my visitors. I now invite you
to read my thoughts, rants, tidbits, musings, and brain-rains.*
May your stay be full of fruit.
*Brain-rain:
(n) Not as severe as a brain-storm, and hardly as vulgar as a
brain-fart, but somewhere safely in between.
October 26, 2004 ONE YEAR LATER
"Everything's gone but the echo of the burst of a shell and a melody, both things droning on, demons from a heavenly hell."
Earlier this week the final recordings of Elliott Smith were released on his posthumous album From A Basement On The Hill. I believe the project was to be a double album, however this gem became a fine fifteen-track record highly reminiscent of his earlier lo-fi, 4-track brilliance; which showcases his songwriting stylings in the simple manner he could pull off so well. The album commemorates what he likely would have wanted to leave behind, the memory of a fine singer/songwriter who made records for no other reason than the fun of the music itself, as broodingly melancholy as it could get.
2:24 AM October 22, 2004 IT'S NOT JUST PHILOSOPHY, IT'S SARTRE!
"We can easily conceive that a man, although totally conditioned by his situation, can be a center of irreducible indeterminacy. The window of unpredictability that stands out within the social domain is what we call freedom, and a person is nothing other than his freedom. This freedom ought not to be envisaged as a metaphysical endowment of human 'nature.' Neither is it a license to do whatever one wants, or some unspecified internal refuge that would remain to us even in our chains. One does not do whatever one wants, and yet one is responsible for what one is: such are the facts. Man, who may be explained simultaneously by so many causes, is nevertheless alone in bearing the burden of himself. In this sense, freedom might appear to be a curse; it is a curse. But it is also the sole source of human greatness." -- Jean-Paul Sartre (trans. by J. Mehlman)
I came across (among several others) this passage in Sartre's What Is Literature? essays and found it worth a ponder. In my quest through the swampy marshes of rigid determinism, I happen to agree with his comments about human greatness, and its derivitive aspects from responsibility. However, (and not to confuse you, though it may) these sentiments do not directly conflict with my views on physiological causality, more well-known as determinism. For it seems I both believe in determinism and indeterminism. (That sentence reads much better than it sounds, though no less jarring in its content.)
It is for this reason that I've decided to go to bed now rather than talk more about it. Don't you just love me?
By the way, my aging and currently dust-collecting copy of L'Etre et le Neant is going to be cracked open very shortly, and I'm thoroughly looking forward to reading it. (Once again, I must point out Blogger's inability to display characters with accent marks; for it is not an oversight on my part that my pedantic use of the original Being And Nothingness title, in French, fails to include the proper accent aigu. [Alt-0233] So there. If your local community college doesn't offer ASCII 101 in this semester's catalog, bring it up with your advisor, teacher, local law-enforcement officer, priest, or other trusted adult; and remember, it's not your fault! We're here to help. If you're unsure of the source of the candy, don't eat it! This program has been made possible by a grant from the Hugh Grant Foundation, and by Viewers Like Hugh. Only you can prevent forest fires.)
I thought I said I was going to bed.
3:30 AM October 14, 2004 I ENJOY SURFING, BACKGAMMON, AND MEN WHO AREN'T AFRAID TO CRY
I've been a member of Yahoo! Personals for a while now. No jokes, please. Okay, one. There, you happy? Much better.
The experience has been sans des fruits to say the least (and you know I could say more!) so I recently changed my profile text and changed some pictures around. I invite you, all of you, especially my lady-friend visitors (are there any of you?) to visit MY PROFILE and see if there's anything that is so horribly wrong with it that it's no wonder why I'm as lonely as I am.
I suppose this is, in its own way, a form of cheating, since one must be a paying member of Yahoo! Personals to be able to send me a message or, basically, have ANY way of getting a hold of me. But, this backwards way of achieving it may have its advantages. After all, you CAN contact me easily once you're here on this site or the Mothersite.
1:35 AM October 12, 2004 I MADE MYSELF SAY "UNDERWEAR"
Okay, I'm just going to say one more thing before I go to bed. Unfortunately for you reading this here, you have no way of knowing what I've been saying up until this point, such that this is the "one more" part. Well, it doesn't matter anyway. I've been all over the internet, updating pages, and in general leaving a trace of the fact that I've finished my sixth album, which is available, so that my presence and contribution to the world may be noted, in some small way.
In this last week, I bought Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a movie I didn't get to see in the theatres. I bought it without having seen it because of the fact that I loved Charlie Kaufman's other scripts (he wrote Adaptation and Being John Malkovich) and because of the entire cast.
Other than falling in love with Kate Winslet for myself (as if the Titanic fiasco weren't enough, and even despite the blue hair ... although the orange hair looked damned fine!), I just simply adored this movie as a whole. You've got a plot that you've got to pay attention to, an incredible sense of direction and production design, a great script, touching performances, and (above all) a stoned Kirsten Dunst jumping up and down on a bed in her underwear.
I just eat this stuff up; these intellectual trysts into original filmmaking. I had the same sense from this movie that I had after I saw The Truman Show, and not necessarily because it was an atypical Jim Carrey role. It was just a "wow, that was really, really good" feeling, even though that's the most bland and unlike-me way of saying it.
I could (and in most other cases, would) spend a whole paragraph trying to figure out a better way of saying that, and taking you through every single boring step, but it's a little late for me right now. Okay, not that that's ever stopped me; in fact, usually it's because I'm tired that I'll spend a whole paragraph leading you through an unnecessary aspect of the discourse. But the truth is, I'm just not feeling quite up to it tonight. Or, if you want to look at it this way ... the paragraph you are reading is a perfectly appropriate example of what it itself is saying I'm not in the mood to do. Go figure. Or don't. I'm tired.
Would it be easier if I posted a big, red label across the top which announces "Read At Own Risk"? Well, it would be more effective than it would be, hidden in a post scriptum closing just another entry.
I
have been webmastering my own sites for several years now. (You
could say I've been the master of my own domain.) My
original home site entitled 
October 26, 2004