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

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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.

August 17, 2005
AN ALLEGORY: Once upon a time ...

There was a little boy named Theodore Irving. His mommy was REGina and she liked to tell little Theodore what to do all the time, because after all he belonged to her.

Theodore was a good artist and drew all his pictures with Crayola crayons. REGina was very proud of Theodore Irving because he drew more pictures and made her more money than all the other Theodores in the neighborhood. And those who were moved by Theodore's drawings sometimes noticed that he drew with Crayola. "Ooh, Crayola must be a good brand," the people said.

One day, REGina got mad at the Crayola company because they were negotiating advertising their crayons with third parties and art studios, and they never told REGina about it, completely bypassing her little understanding with them, or so REGina made it seem.

"Well, I won't be having with that," said REGina in a huff. And so she told little Theodore Irvine not to wear his Crayola shirt anymore, and to take all the labels off all his crayons so that if anybody sees him making pictures they won't know it's Crayola. Theodore was confused, since he still had to draw his pictures with the Crayola crayons. But he couldn't do anything, since he belonged to REGina and had to do everything she told him.

The End.

What's the moral of this story? There isn't one. Perhaps this is merely meant to illustrate that spite for its own sake isn't going to be very productive and that, technically, a proper statement would have been for REGina to buy all the Theodores new boxes of crayons, by other manufacturers, if expressing her disapproval at Crayola was actually supposed to mean anything. Or she could realize that it would be far more sensible not to care so much, and just let Theatre Irvine ... er, uh, Theodore Irving go ahead and draw pictures, since that's how REG makes her money anyway.

Here endeth the allegorical rant. The part of Crayola was played by Dolby.


9:42 PM