Hitchhiker

One man's vandalism is another man's art. At least, that seems to sum up the situation in Raleigh, N.C., where college student Joseph Carnevale created a 10-foot roadside monster out of stolen orange-and-white safety barrels.

[...]

1. He Created A (Barrel) Monster ... And May Go To Jail

"..." 30

The majority of men are subjective towards themselves and objective towards all others, terribly objective sometimes—but the real task is in fact to be objective towards oneself and subjective towards all others.

—Kierkegaard, Papier VIII, p. A308

12/30 update:

My interpretation:

When people view themselves they often do so without judgment, accepting as they do that they are fluid individuals who cannot be defined or essentialized by any single moment. The self is always in progress, never fully formed, and the path it follows is only made as it goes.

Meanwhile, people often view others as finished products. Coldly, objectively—by facts rather than possibilities.

The advice, then, is this:

Be harsh on yourself; judge yourself by facts and by your actions. But, all the while, acknowledge your own perspective when you consider others, and don't judge them.

This may not have been exactly what Kierkegaard meant, but it works just as well for me.

Poem 28

An art historian
approaches a
shipping pallet
full with shit
and snapped pencil
ends,

                    thinking:

          Post-gestural
scatological
post-minimalism with
valences of
positivist sociological
            optimism...?

Indeed.

"..." 29

For me, this is probably the most concise statement that I have found which sums up the relationship between philosophy and language. It is quoted from an interview by Robert Harrison in 2005, which happens to be available on iTunesU:

There are stories—historical narratives—to be told about the emergence of various discourses. My view is that when you’ve told the story about how the discourse emerged you’ve told everything—you’ve found out everything there is to know about the nature of mind, the nature of matter, the nature of God, stuff like that. There isn’t a further question about “Yeah, but what are they really?” All that there is to know is the story of how the words are used.

—Richard Rorty

"The Dung Beetle"1

The Dung Beetle
Makes
Beautiful, perfect
Symmetrical
Balls

Out of shit

1: By William J. Harris

This blog redux

After having a blogspot blog for years, I tried starting anew with a blog at wordpress.com. And it sucked. It looked pretty, but it sucked. CSS can't be edited without paying so-and-so dollars a month, tags didn't really work: not good times. So, after a hiatus, I'm migrating my old blogspot content to this new blog. I've crossed out a lot of my terrible writing from over the years, but by and large everything is back.

I will probably transfer the stuff from my wordpress blog over when I get the time.