A test designed to provoke an emotional response. It's a mindless waste of time for me to remember the question asked in the test. It was so long ago. Anyway, I just remember the answer because I was requested to write the answer to the question on a piece of paper. I just found the scrap of paper floating on my desk. One should use their time wisely, judging somebody by their bookshelf is not a good idea. In fact, looking at my own, it needs more pruning.
I don't buy books anymore. The library has many books to chose from and I find our library can get most books in print through its large network. My summer reading is over. Following are some of the highlights: .. I just finished reading "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes. There is enough information in this tome to make anyone evaluate their 'categorical imperative'. I was thinking it was August 6th, the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, and I was looking for a way to express my profound feelings on how broadcasting gamma radiation and the odorless noxious gases from exploding collective egos have been rendered into countless social networks. Even if I hunkered in an underground bunker, the question remained: Is contamination avoidable?
I could reflect on Fikret, one of the many characters in Louis de Bernieres, "Birds Without Wings" and easily utter endlessly his phrase, '' I am from Pera and I don’t give a shit." Now when I think of it, the Arabic proverb - ‘He who slaps his own face should not cry out.’ or yes, it's possible to believe that a ‘Man is a bird without wings, and a bird is a man without sorrows.’ , as written and sung by Eftichia Papagianopoulos.
And to conclude with Gil Elliot's, "Twentieth Century Book of the Dead". Much like the Tibetan or Egyptian Book of the Dead. It's safer to just present the following excerpt from the section ANALYSES: PARTS OF THE MACHINE, THE DEATH PROCESS ..
.. " It can also happen that the reaction or protest movement against a former establishment can itself become arrogant enough to pre-empt spiritual reality. So we get ideas like `the death of God'. And we are always hearing about the death of poetry, the death of the theatre, the death of the printed word —all aspects of the death of the mind. It's amazing with what frequency those wishing to promote a new fashion begin by announcing the death of something or other. It is true that some things do prove themselves to have been ephemeral and disappear into the maw of time. But when we are told yet again that because of some new cultural phenomenon — photocopying, television, Rotiss-o-mat chicken-frying — a vigorous human tradition is 'dead', then a good first reaction is to ask oneself: does the mind die, is it something that curls up into a terrified ball at the first sight of a mechanical process, and dies? "
" A ready-made deathtrap for the mind is the idea of people as a mass or `the masses '. Fear of crowds has always been a common emotion amongst the upper classes. Both of these attitudes involve a projection of the self on to an external reality — 'the people'. We might say that the latter attitude is an emotion rooted in the fantasy of an individual temperament or small elite class : that is a qualitative fantasy since it takes its colouring from the individual emotion. The conceptual fantasy of `the masses' on the other hand, since it purports to take its shape from a measurement of the external object, might be called a quantitative fantasy. The qualitative fantasy projects the self on to the crowd in the form of fear; so that, although dangerous, its elements are at any rate identifiable. But when the quantitative fantasy projects the concept `masses' on to people, we must ask, what happens to the self in which that concept is rooted? "
" Now, a famous ecologist claims that he can sustain any conversation on pollution by simply repeating the phrase, Where does it go? The chemical waste is dumped by the manufacturer — Where does it go? Into the river — Where does it go? The river takes it to sea —Where does it go? and so on. The polluting material never actually disappears. So, where does the self go? The self never disappears, and if its whereabouts are not evident we are entitled to ask what it is polluting. With the quantitative fantasy of conceptual thinking, the originating individual may declare how the concept is modified by self in his own case. But the more successful the concept, the more likely it is to be adopted by the academies and become an institutional fantasy. Where does the self go? And the more the academics influence the powers-thatbe, the more likely the concept is to be adopted by government and become an official fantasy. Where does the self go? "
" Whilst qualitative fantasy, short of sheer bigotry, often expresses a lively sense of its own limitations, quantitative fantasy, it seems, brings with it the delusion of knowledge, and in its certainty chokes off the sympathies and will not allow them to travel to the object. We do need to project our selves mechanically, through measurement as through the telephone, the cable, the airline. But the purpose of mechanical projection is the first stage in making the human connection, the final stage of which is hopefully the flow of sympathy and understanding — the expansion of the world! Where projection stops at the mechanical stage it is not only useless but self-frustrating - it shrinks the world ! "
" I may illustrate the modern nature of this particular death-of-the-mind syndrome by reference to my own etymological researches. After laboriously conceiving the term metromaniac (used above) as a description of someone obsessed with measurement, I rushed to the dictionary to find out whether anyone had thought of it before. They had. It was coined in the eighteenth century to describe young men with a passion for writing verses. If I was disappointed with the precedent, I was delighted with the analogy. For I had clearly gone through the same process as some eighteenth-century writer in seeking a term to describe a passionate but arid intellectual activity of the young. In those days it was a binding of feeble fancies in the fetters of poesy —perhaps as good a place as any. In our day, by an
unfortunate involvement, the conceptual fantasies of the young are enticed into the dead landscapes of institutional fantasy and even official fantasy. Where does the self go? " ..--- Now that's enough of death and dying. Summer is over, fall is in the air, and I am going to embark on reading books in Spanish. I'm starting with " Balzac y La Joven Costurera China" by Dai Sijie . Now there's a reason why I would read a book written from a guy from China, who writes in French, and then has his book translated into Spanish by one of the world's renowned translators. I just need to slow down a little. No sense careening through any more English literature. I need to savor the words.
I'll defer my balderdash to murmuring a chant or two followed by a hymn:
" .. pulled closer to gods .. each breath divine .. natural progression .. electrons from within the bell .. the creator happening ..
someone closer than mere friend .. " - Will Constantine Jr.
or
" ..let them go to heaven, and let them go to hell, when i die i wanna go to jazz ... " - Ishmael Reed
Bells4Jim_Go2Jazz
well it's just balderdash .. or is it amphigory, bushwa, or flummery, ... or hocus-pocus, hot air, narrishkeit, niaiserie with skimble-skamble ..
Balderdash Bal"der*dash, n. [Of uncertain origin: cf. Dan. balder noise, clatter, and E. dash; hence, perhaps, unmeaning noise, then hodgepodge, mixture; or W. baldorduss a prattling, baldordd, baldorddi, to prattle.]
1. A worthless mixture, especially of liquors.
[1913 Webster]
" I must note I've had some delicious balderdash and was fortunate to taste some of the rare and delicious elixir. It was indeed beer, or lager, and hath lost both name and nature, and is called Snotfoote Premium Sparkling Lager."
-- Armando Tortuga (Drink and Welcome).
[1846 extracted from s0cean's words of knowledge]
2. Senseless jargon; ribaldry; nonsense; trash. The wine merchants of Nice brew and balderdash, and even mix it with pigeon's dung and quicklime. --Smollett.
[1913 Webster]
-- From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
words for "balderdash":
absurdity, amphigory, babble, babblement, bibble-babble, bilge, blabber, blather, bombast, bombastry, bosh, bushwa, claptrap, double-talk, drivel, drool, eyewash, fiddle-faddle, fiddledeedee, flummery, folderol, fudge, fustian, gabble, galimatias, gammon, gibber, gibberish, gibble-gabble, gobbledygook, highfalutin,
hocus-pocus, hot air, humbug, jabber, jargon, malarkey, mumbo jumbo, narrishkeit, niaiserie, nonsense, pack of nonsense, palaver, prate, prattle, rant, rigamarole, rigmarole, rodomontade, rot, rubbish, skimble-skamble, stuff and nonsense, stultiloquence, trash, trumpery, twaddle, twattle, twiddle-twaddle, vaporing,
waffling
-- From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
I've learned quite a lot about garbage patches and how they mysteriously float around the world.
