Showing posts with label for. Show all posts
Showing posts with label for. Show all posts
11 February 2019
21 October 2016
on bicycling logic
Since finishing the stunning graphic novel ‘Logicomix’ by Doxiadis and Papadimitriou, et al., I have begun to delve into - so as to better understand - the types of logic I apply in my daily life. This has ranged from examining the logic of human encounters to the logic of bicycling. As the first installment of a series of articles laying out the various types of logical parameters within which I (am many others, I suppose) tend to operate, I shall provide the latter, below.
A) The bicycle is a mechanical contraption used to move one or more persons through the physical realm by means of (primarily) human muscle power.
B) The bicycle consists of these basic elements: saddle, wheels, frame, propulsion system (gears), pedals, handlebars, and brakes.
C) To use a bicycle, sit down on the seat, grab the handlebars with the hands, and start pedaling with the feet, shifting the hips side-to-side (maintaining balanced) so as to not fall over.
[Immediately upon starting to write this I began to realize the difficulties involved in trying to define the logic of even basic human endeavors.]
D) Whilst bicycling, take care not to run into things, go faster than is safe, or do something (texting, talking, taking pictures) other than paying attention to and trying to avoid obstacles that may lie ahead.
E) Persons operating motor vehicles tend to give exactly zero fucks about persons operating bicycles; in order to live a relatively long life free of major injury, avoid busy roads and high-traffic areas (also, please wear a helmet and some form of protective for the eyes).
F) Keeping one’s bicycle in proper working order is essential to having fun whilst bicycling as well as getting from point A to point B quickly and without unforeseen and frustrating repair-related delays.
G) Sitting up straight whilst bicycling, with a straight back and the head resting comfortably atop the spine, opens the chest for easy breathing and allows the head to pivot easily from left to right (hence the phrase ‘keep your head on a swivel’) so that the cyclist (this is what someone who rides a bicycle is called) can quickly gather scraps information about what is behind himself using peripheral vision (i.e. without turning his head completely around and taking his eyes off of the road ahead).
H) Wherever the eyes looks or the head turns, that is where the bicycle will go. Keep the eyes and head pointed forward in order to ride in as straight a line as possible.
I) If forced to ride upon a street also frequented by motor vehicles, stay close to the curb unless circumstances (parked cars, open manholes, or similar obstacles) force you away from the curb, in which case it is 100% acceptable to take up the entire lane and cause a brief traffic-jam.
J) Persons operating motor vehicles will scream obscenities, yell curses, shake their fists, and even try to physically injure or kill a cyclist whom they feel caused them even the slightest delay upon their route. As with most such situations, the best response to anger is joyful compassion, since at the root of all anger lies a deep, inner sadness.
The above are but a few of the most important logical parameters related to bicycle riding. Please stay tuned for more articles concerned with the logical parameters related to activities such as dating, polite conversation, child rearing, &c.
© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥
A) The bicycle is a mechanical contraption used to move one or more persons through the physical realm by means of (primarily) human muscle power.
B) The bicycle consists of these basic elements: saddle, wheels, frame, propulsion system (gears), pedals, handlebars, and brakes.
C) To use a bicycle, sit down on the seat, grab the handlebars with the hands, and start pedaling with the feet, shifting the hips side-to-side (maintaining balanced) so as to not fall over.
[Immediately upon starting to write this I began to realize the difficulties involved in trying to define the logic of even basic human endeavors.]
D) Whilst bicycling, take care not to run into things, go faster than is safe, or do something (texting, talking, taking pictures) other than paying attention to and trying to avoid obstacles that may lie ahead.
E) Persons operating motor vehicles tend to give exactly zero fucks about persons operating bicycles; in order to live a relatively long life free of major injury, avoid busy roads and high-traffic areas (also, please wear a helmet and some form of protective for the eyes).
F) Keeping one’s bicycle in proper working order is essential to having fun whilst bicycling as well as getting from point A to point B quickly and without unforeseen and frustrating repair-related delays.
G) Sitting up straight whilst bicycling, with a straight back and the head resting comfortably atop the spine, opens the chest for easy breathing and allows the head to pivot easily from left to right (hence the phrase ‘keep your head on a swivel’) so that the cyclist (this is what someone who rides a bicycle is called) can quickly gather scraps information about what is behind himself using peripheral vision (i.e. without turning his head completely around and taking his eyes off of the road ahead).
H) Wherever the eyes looks or the head turns, that is where the bicycle will go. Keep the eyes and head pointed forward in order to ride in as straight a line as possible.
I) If forced to ride upon a street also frequented by motor vehicles, stay close to the curb unless circumstances (parked cars, open manholes, or similar obstacles) force you away from the curb, in which case it is 100% acceptable to take up the entire lane and cause a brief traffic-jam.
J) Persons operating motor vehicles will scream obscenities, yell curses, shake their fists, and even try to physically injure or kill a cyclist whom they feel caused them even the slightest delay upon their route. As with most such situations, the best response to anger is joyful compassion, since at the root of all anger lies a deep, inner sadness.
The above are but a few of the most important logical parameters related to bicycle riding. Please stay tuned for more articles concerned with the logical parameters related to activities such as dating, polite conversation, child rearing, &c.
© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥
25 January 2013
on seeking trouble
During the course of one's life, one is likely to be looked at by other people. We look at each other for different reasons, among them to appraise or mock each other's clothing; to justify and reinforce prejudice and racial misconception; to see who is checking out our daring new hairstyle; and, sometimes, simply because we tire of looking at the same spot all the time. It is the author's experience that young men as well as insecure individuals of all sexes are prone to look about in order to find trouble, and that young males in particular will justify aggressive and violent behavior by claiming that their victim had been looking at them in what they found to be an unpleasant or disagreeable manner. An insecure person will tend to internalize even passing or accidental gazes and use them to reinforce a poor self-image and feelings of negative self-worth.
The only method by which one can determine if someone else is looking is by making eye contact with that person. Concurrently, the easiest way to avoid confrontation, heartbreak, self-torment, and sadness is to make eye contact only when absolutely necessary, such as when conversing with waiters, siblings, doctors, or friends. In the course of his observations, the author has discovered that looking at people out of the corner of his eye and thereby avoiding mutual eye contact obviates the need for uncomfortable situations in which someone tries to figure out (by means of examining his immediate surroundings or perhaps checking his teeth for food particles) why someone else was looking in his direction. The author has found that people appreciate being looked at, initially; after a first, cursory glance, however, they tend to become agitated and annoyed if stared or looked at for too often. (This is the primary cause of one worthless whorphan's ongoing, self-imposed sexual drought – his propensity to make eye contact with attractive young females but then failing utterly at all subsequent stages of the relationship.) At this point, the reader is likely thinking, 'By using a mirrored surface to see if someone is trying to make eye contact, I could avoid making eye contact, if I wanted to. Why hasn't the author mentioned that? What an idiot.' The author admits that he has indeed thought of and experimented with mirrors. In his opinion, though, trying to find and use a reflective surface in the crowded environment of, say, a subway car, poses its own unique challenges, challenges that can be avoided by simply not looking anyone in the face and choosing rather to lead a life of quietly miserable solitude. (Furthermore, the human mind recognizes the eye better than it does most other shapes; if it finds that it is being looked at, it will alert its host to danger and not rest until it has discovered the cause of its distress.)
The author reminds the reader of the importance of keeping track of where people are, what they have in their hands, and what they are looking at; he urges the reader to do this sneakily, out of the corners of the eye; he repeats the age-old mantra: “True friends stab in the front” (Oscar Wilde). Experience has shown that if someone is looked at one time but not a second, that person will mind his or her own business as if first contact had never occurred, demanding neither satisfaction nor a second date. Making eye contact with the wrong person can lead to other kinds of contact, including those of the verbal and the fist-based variety, so please remember to do your own time content in knowledge that each one of us lives and dies alone. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
The only method by which one can determine if someone else is looking is by making eye contact with that person. Concurrently, the easiest way to avoid confrontation, heartbreak, self-torment, and sadness is to make eye contact only when absolutely necessary, such as when conversing with waiters, siblings, doctors, or friends. In the course of his observations, the author has discovered that looking at people out of the corner of his eye and thereby avoiding mutual eye contact obviates the need for uncomfortable situations in which someone tries to figure out (by means of examining his immediate surroundings or perhaps checking his teeth for food particles) why someone else was looking in his direction. The author has found that people appreciate being looked at, initially; after a first, cursory glance, however, they tend to become agitated and annoyed if stared or looked at for too often. (This is the primary cause of one worthless whorphan's ongoing, self-imposed sexual drought – his propensity to make eye contact with attractive young females but then failing utterly at all subsequent stages of the relationship.) At this point, the reader is likely thinking, 'By using a mirrored surface to see if someone is trying to make eye contact, I could avoid making eye contact, if I wanted to. Why hasn't the author mentioned that? What an idiot.' The author admits that he has indeed thought of and experimented with mirrors. In his opinion, though, trying to find and use a reflective surface in the crowded environment of, say, a subway car, poses its own unique challenges, challenges that can be avoided by simply not looking anyone in the face and choosing rather to lead a life of quietly miserable solitude. (Furthermore, the human mind recognizes the eye better than it does most other shapes; if it finds that it is being looked at, it will alert its host to danger and not rest until it has discovered the cause of its distress.)
The author reminds the reader of the importance of keeping track of where people are, what they have in their hands, and what they are looking at; he urges the reader to do this sneakily, out of the corners of the eye; he repeats the age-old mantra: “True friends stab in the front” (Oscar Wilde). Experience has shown that if someone is looked at one time but not a second, that person will mind his or her own business as if first contact had never occurred, demanding neither satisfaction nor a second date. Making eye contact with the wrong person can lead to other kinds of contact, including those of the verbal and the fist-based variety, so please remember to do your own time content in knowledge that each one of us lives and dies alone. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
08 August 2012
painted whores, praying
On Sundays, because the public library shuts its doors and turns off its wireless router, I buy a hot tea and blog from a chain eatery that provides Internet access at no additional cost. This week, while re-posting the shit out of tumblr and tweeting POTUS beseechingly, I got a real treat when a skinny girl with an attractively-muscled upper back and shapely legs who was wearing a low-cut halter top and skin-tight shortshorts sauntered past me on laced-up high heels to sit at a booth a few down from my own. While I frequent this eatery primarily to feast my eyes upon the tight bodies of such dolled-up professional women and attention-hungry milfs who regularly grace its nonslip tiled floors, this girl and her twenty-something companion seemed worthy of more than just a few perverted and sidelong glances. An equally skinny girl wearing a similarly revealing upper and shortshorts that left little to the imagination, the companion's eyes were made up a bright aquamarine blue to offset the relatively subdued paint-job on the rest of her face, with a clunky necklace and a pair of reflective metal discs shoved into her perforated lobes rounding out her ensemble.
Having observed whores at work in Berlin, Bangkok, and Tijuana, I have scrutinized done-up street walkers and down-and-out alley rats alike, and upon seeing these two young ladies, my first thoughts were, “Oh brother, these ladies-of-the-night are out during the day and not even trying to hide the nature of their business.' Regardless of my tendency to avoid buying sexual favors, I was mulling over the prospect of getting a Billy Joel in one of the bathroom's stalls, or paying for a Howard Johnson in the back of the one girl's car, when the girl facing me – the one with the painfully-bright, aquamarine-tinted eyelids – set a tray of food onto the table, distributed the various dishes, bowed her head, crossed her hands, and prayed for a good thirty seconds before digging in.
This is a religiously-conservative area, one in which the local Catholics stand out on the square in the center of town for five weeks at a time protesting abortion and birth-control and generally trying to revoke a woman's right to her own body. Therefore, I was not expecting – early on a Sunday afternoon at just about the time when churches here let out – to see two girls dressed in the manner of prostitutes praying over some hastily-constructed panini sandwiches and meager cups of chicken tortilla soup. I even feared for their safety, since the Old Testament of the Christian bible instructs true believers to kill or at the very least banish and persecute persons painted in the manner of whores (Psalm 51:4). I have seen Thai girls stop to pray at alters to their god, asking Buddha to send them a man who will support them financially; I have no problem with prostitution, even supporting its legalization here in America; I wonder, though, if those girls had dressed up in the manner of cheap sluts in order to make a statement, as a reflection of the latest trends in mainstream fashion, or out of a misguided effort to make themselves look pretty. However things shook out for them that day, though, at least they supplicated to their god in a socially acceptable way, praying quietly and otherwise keeping their opinions to themselves, unlike the anti-abortionists and their nuns and priests, who make a terrible stink any time anybody even looks like they might be going into Planned Parenthood.
Having observed whores at work in Berlin, Bangkok, and Tijuana, I have scrutinized done-up street walkers and down-and-out alley rats alike, and upon seeing these two young ladies, my first thoughts were, “Oh brother, these ladies-of-the-night are out during the day and not even trying to hide the nature of their business.' Regardless of my tendency to avoid buying sexual favors, I was mulling over the prospect of getting a Billy Joel in one of the bathroom's stalls, or paying for a Howard Johnson in the back of the one girl's car, when the girl facing me – the one with the painfully-bright, aquamarine-tinted eyelids – set a tray of food onto the table, distributed the various dishes, bowed her head, crossed her hands, and prayed for a good thirty seconds before digging in.
This is a religiously-conservative area, one in which the local Catholics stand out on the square in the center of town for five weeks at a time protesting abortion and birth-control and generally trying to revoke a woman's right to her own body. Therefore, I was not expecting – early on a Sunday afternoon at just about the time when churches here let out – to see two girls dressed in the manner of prostitutes praying over some hastily-constructed panini sandwiches and meager cups of chicken tortilla soup. I even feared for their safety, since the Old Testament of the Christian bible instructs true believers to kill or at the very least banish and persecute persons painted in the manner of whores (Psalm 51:4). I have seen Thai girls stop to pray at alters to their god, asking Buddha to send them a man who will support them financially; I have no problem with prostitution, even supporting its legalization here in America; I wonder, though, if those girls had dressed up in the manner of cheap sluts in order to make a statement, as a reflection of the latest trends in mainstream fashion, or out of a misguided effort to make themselves look pretty. However things shook out for them that day, though, at least they supplicated to their god in a socially acceptable way, praying quietly and otherwise keeping their opinions to themselves, unlike the anti-abortionists and their nuns and priests, who make a terrible stink any time anybody even looks like they might be going into Planned Parenthood.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
27 July 2012
on public worship
Why do people go to churches in order to pray to their god? Why has congregating with one another in groups become the baseline method, the normal state of affairs for Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, Mormons, animists, and wiccans? I am merely a lay person, and an ignorant, worthless whorphan at that; therefore, I can only present here my own poorly-conceived thoughts, offering them up freely upon this, the altar of public opinion.
I believe that churches are a stubborn hold-over from earlier times during which the great majority of people could not read. During, say, the European Middle Ages, the individual had to physically enter a church in order to hear such words as he thought were his god's teachings, words which his under-educated and stunted mind accepted, without question, as Fact. Since our governments have forced their citizens to become educated to a certain standard, and since the literacy rate in most western industrialized nations (WINs) sits at nearly 100%, we should no longer need these bastions of foul old organized religion, as we can now all read our Bibles and our Korans and our Bhagavad-Gitas by ourselves, and in the privacy of our own homes.
Among the primary factors contributing to the survival of churches and other places of worship is the fact that these communities act as meeting-places at which different people can share resources with one another without going through the hassle of trawling for useful acquaintances among the general population; it is assumed that anyone who manages to stay within the church without pissing off too many people and who is witnessed to perform the community's shared rites and rituals is a trustworthy and generally good chap upon whom one can rely to accompany the kids alive on the biannual canoing trip. Another reason is that these communities are self-perpetuating, with new parents retreating to the bosom of Mother Church as soon as they hear their child's first screams, just as their parents did when they were born; having suddenly tiny people around – the sanctity of whose souls are, for some reason, in doubt – seems to drive both man and woman back into the clutches of organized religion, where they and their children become ensnared, so that when the children become adults and have kids of their own, they return to tug on the apron-strings of corpulent, silken-shirted charlatans who profess to know more about freely-accessible books than other people do.
I believe that churches are a stubborn hold-over from earlier times during which the great majority of people could not read. During, say, the European Middle Ages, the individual had to physically enter a church in order to hear such words as he thought were his god's teachings, words which his under-educated and stunted mind accepted, without question, as Fact. Since our governments have forced their citizens to become educated to a certain standard, and since the literacy rate in most western industrialized nations (WINs) sits at nearly 100%, we should no longer need these bastions of foul old organized religion, as we can now all read our Bibles and our Korans and our Bhagavad-Gitas by ourselves, and in the privacy of our own homes.
Among the primary factors contributing to the survival of churches and other places of worship is the fact that these communities act as meeting-places at which different people can share resources with one another without going through the hassle of trawling for useful acquaintances among the general population; it is assumed that anyone who manages to stay within the church without pissing off too many people and who is witnessed to perform the community's shared rites and rituals is a trustworthy and generally good chap upon whom one can rely to accompany the kids alive on the biannual canoing trip. Another reason is that these communities are self-perpetuating, with new parents retreating to the bosom of Mother Church as soon as they hear their child's first screams, just as their parents did when they were born; having suddenly tiny people around – the sanctity of whose souls are, for some reason, in doubt – seems to drive both man and woman back into the clutches of organized religion, where they and their children become ensnared, so that when the children become adults and have kids of their own, they return to tug on the apron-strings of corpulent, silken-shirted charlatans who profess to know more about freely-accessible books than other people do.
I find it curious that people feel the need to worship in public, where they will be spoken to by the holy man and quietly shunned by their fellow parishioners if they do not perform their group's rites and rituals according to its rigid standards. It seems to me to be a very petty thing indeed, putting on expensive clothes in order to perambulate in the midst of other well-dressed people, everyone bowing and scraping and singing and tapping themselves on the head and torso in rigid adherence to a highly-ritualized ceremony meant to bring people, in some mysterious fashion, closer to the god that they think created them. If there were a god such as YHWH, the Christians' foul deity, an omnipotent, omniscient being that felt spited if it were not prayed to enough times or in the correct fashion, I think that that god would be able to discern whether its supplicants were performing correct rites in the correct way without them having to all get together and sing and wail and moan at each other in fancy, multi-million-dollar places of worship. In my opinion, it is by far preferable to pray in the privacy of one's own home, so that any mistakes one makes will not be seen as failures-to- adhere-to-policy, but, rather, as the steps that any fallible and self-aware creature must take on the path towards its own betterment and enlightenment.
In America, churches are built and refurbished and re-roofed regularly, financed by supposedly good people whose cash donations should instead be used to improve the lives of chronically poverty-stricken, perpetually hungry persons livingin the Third World; then again, however, I am little more than a spoiled, worthless whorphan – what the deuce do I know?
場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit
In America, churches are built and refurbished and re-roofed regularly, financed by supposedly good people whose cash donations should instead be used to improve the lives of chronically poverty-stricken, perpetually hungry persons livingin the Third World; then again, however, I am little more than a spoiled, worthless whorphan – what the deuce do I know?
場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit
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