Present Day Conks

Theme from...Mystery!

I watched this compulsively on PBS as a small child for the Gorey credits.

The Tuning Fork by Edward Gorey

Brazilian Girls - Rules Of The Game

The lead singer, Sabina, reminds me so much of Martha (la française)...


Rules Of The Game

What are you to me tonight
Other than
Something we know from the past
Is that a laugh we had

Why are we here tonight
Are you sure
Before the night is over
I'll be yours

It's the rules of the game
The rules of the game
What can I do
There's nothing as a lie
Nothing as a lie
More as the truth

Do you think it's right
Just to stare
Straight into a picture
Old zero and one (?)

Who am I to you tonight
Look at me
"Don't talk", he says:
"Hmm let it be"

It's the rules of the game
The rules of the game
What can I do
There's nothing as a lie
Nothing as a lie
More as the truth

It's the rules of the game
The rules of the game
Don't ask me why
Noone knows how to win
Or knows what is fair
We just get by

It's the rules of the game
It's the rules of the game

...Nor do I.

As I have grown older I have grown more aware of the subtle, sordid private lives of adults. With wastes of broad tracts of memory our loves slowly collapse into the whole that we are--enumerations of relationships. There always remains that inward care for the unblemished acts of lovers, whose confidences can only be kept and cleared away by glances. Reading myself there, without your love, all of the details of your life are trivial, pathetic. How is it that the uninterrupted searching for meaning cleaves us, searching. This time, I will put the fuming resentment down, and like some cities, rebuild my foundations on the extinct volcano.

Tonight, I will return to the road, which is all I can to do to keep from falling over. All I can do is run, that is, falling forward. The body regains its edge by straining and sucking in the cold air. The teeming pause before--this emotional life--is reckoned in the body...becoming flaccid. Now this, is the best mental hygiene.

Ah, so it is a new moon in Scorpio with Sun/Moon conjunct.

I will soon post my running from the camera challenge ...

Brian Eno, Harold Budd The Plateaux of Mirror

All Your Immunological Effects

Celine commenced his interview for The Paris Review: Savy, the biologist, said something appropriate: [i] n the beginning there was emotion, and the verb wasn't there at all[.]"

The B lymphocyte is the agent of the humoral immune response: surface immunoglobulins and secreted antibodies do not kill pathogens, but flag their surface antigens for immobilization, eventual destruction in the peripheral blood.

The hypervariable region of the antibody, the region that binds antigen, also "fits" the unique molecular structure of the antigen (the epitope) with a high degree of specificity from induced fit interactions.

Antibodies throughout the course of an immune reponse or repeated exposures to the same antigen, will acquire an increasing affinity for binding antigen in a process called affinity maturation.

Somatic hypermutation is exactly that: the antigen-binding coding sequence of immunoglobulin genes undergoes significant single base substitutions to match the ever-changing nature of foreign cell surface proteins, yet

these mutations are not transmitted in the gametes. Programmed mutations are likely to occur during crossing over in meiosis for the variation of generations, but the immunoglobulin superfamily is singular among body cell lines with gene rearrangement mechanisms in place to do this.

The second of the two interrelated processes of affinity maturation is clonal selection, whereby the overabundance of B lymphocytes, newly developed from hematopoietic stem cells in the bone marrow, undergo genetic rearrangement of their receptors while remaining unexposed to antigen to amp up and diversify the repetoire.

B cells maturing with the requisite cell surface receptors gain specificity after exposure to antigen, where they are stimulated to divide and divide cells of themselves with that antigen-specific receptor. B cells that do not bind the antigen remain in circulation, and are not proliferated.

On one hand, the emotions effectively scrabble or scatter the mosiac of our immune reponse. On the other hand, theories of the immune system are probabilities that are incredibly hard to describe. An elusive,everpresent force.
Given the statement "I feel like I am dying"...Yes, but how so by the degrees you are from the somatic level, the psychological level, the cognitive level?

J posts an unfinished undertaking she began in preparation for her exam (completed Thursday morning) on the subject. The class, like anything else, is contest of egos but the few bits she has parceled away in her long-term memory will serve some purpose, if only to perplex others.

J has a clear favorite among Picasso's women and "their" respective works.

J knows the right and left eyes of Horus represent dualities of the mind, the senses, etc...but she did not know they served as measures.

These few days...

She steeps in epsom salts because they are desiccating and chalky, and she waits to see how much the sieve of her skin can swallow up the groundwater. When she gets out, her head in the evaporating steam attached to her overdried body is purified like some atmospheric dust from space. Here is the way she dresses for no one, evacuated inside her home: running shoes and a towel. Running shoes without socks accompany the mid-morning ritual of crouching on a barstool before a newspaper with their moulded high arches tucked beneath her dripping wet hair. Stages of her morning proceed with this stratagem of nimble footwork and towel-dropping until she changes for the benefit of the sun's saleman approach through the shades.

Henry Lee

Color, Rinse and Repeat

Free personality analysis of Your Friend.Generated on Sun Oct 19 07:23:00 2008.

Your Friend's Existing Situation

Attracted by anything new, modern, or intriguing. Liable to the bored by the humdrum, the ordinary, or the traditional.

Your Friend's Stress Sources

The situation is regarded as threatening or dangerous. Outraged by the thought that she will be unable to achieve her goals and distressed at the feeling of helplessness to remedy this. Over-extended and feels beset, possibly to the point of nervous prostration.

Your Friend's Restrained Characteristics

Emotionally inhibited. Feels forced to compromise, making it difficult for her to form a stable emotional attachment.
Feels that she cannot do much about her existing problems and difficulties and that she must make the best of things as they are. Able to achieve satisfaction through sexual activity.

Your Friend's Desired Objective

Fascinated by the idea of an idealized association of tenderness and mutual enchantment. Embarrassed by the thought of allowing this to appear openly, and so employs cautious exploratory tactics in the pursuit of this objective, making sure that she is neither irrevocably committed nor found out.

Your Friend's Actual Problem

Depleted vitality has created an intolerance for any further stimulation, or demands on her resources. A feeling of powerlessness subjects her to agitation, irritation, and acute distress from which she tries to escape by refusing further direct participation. She confines herself to a cautious approach and a concealed determination to get her own way in the end.

Windfall...with the luggage strewn, the least of which is...The Neurotic's Handbook.

Charles A Monagan's "Inside Anxiety: The Private [Lies] of Neurotics"

Bizarre Influences

There is something in the nature of the neurotic that loves things such as horoscopes and palm readings and the like.
Part of this fascination has to do with the neurotic's self-absorption, to be sure, but part also is due to the convenient idea that our fates may not be entirely under own own control. We are perfectly willing to accept any good fortune that comes along as a product of our own design, but it is handy to be able to blame bad luck on some grand and sinister force.
The thing is, it's hard to tell which astrologer or which palm reader to believe. You pick up three daily papers and you get three different horoscopes, each one vaguer than the last. You wonder where the "unexpected journey" will take you and which "co-worker" will need your "advice." Similarly, when someone who is trying to pick you up in a bar reads your palm you don't know whether to laugh or cry or call a cab.

What follows should clear up your doubts once and for all.

Your Horoscope For The Rest Of Your Life [Abridged Version]

Aries (March 21-April 19) : Your worst suspicions will always be confirmed.

Taurus (April 20-May 20) : You will continue to forget where you hid things.

Gemini (May 21-June 21) : The spiritual meanderings never really do stop.

Cancer (June 22-July 22) : A life of gathering useless information.

Leo (July 23-August 22) : No end in sight for the restless self-appraisal.

Virgo (August 23-September 22) : A life of impossible choices.

Libra (September 23-October 23) : Continued specious self-improvement.

Scorpio (October 24-November 21) : A life of undefined desires.

Sagittarius (November 22-December 21) : A career of seemingly linked but ultimately disparate ideas.

Capricorn (December 22-January 19) : You never run out of good last-second solutions.

Aquarius (January 20-February 18) : A lifetime of unsatisfactory afternoon naps.

Pisces (February 19-March 20): The imagined slights continue to cause problems.

The Puzzled Expression

By 1927 a wide-spread neurosis began to be evident, faintly signalled, like a nervous beating of the feet, by the popularity of crossword puzzles.
--F. Scott Fitzgerald

And so crossword puzzles remain popular as the neurosis continues to spread and deepen. The puzzles have a salubrious effect on the troubled mind. For a brief time they take the neurotic away from the cares of the real world (i.e., the rest of the newspaper) and into a sanctuary of strict order, clear laws, and well-defined borders. Certain among us, of course, turn the puzzles into yet another anxiety-ridden exercise by racing against the clock, using ink only, or sneeringly rejecting any offers of assistance. These approaches ultimately can lead to the most profound sort of misery.
...
Crossword puzzles also provide us with a curious aggregation of celebrities. Each of these people has made his or her mark in some other, usually worthy pursuit only to be awarded a second claim to immortality by virtue of possessing a strange, vowel-heavy name. The same undying fame has been conferred upon a handful of cities, animals, and natural watercourses as well.

Memeographed: Untitled: (Penny Arcade Portrait of Lauren Bacall), ca. 1945–46

Book Meme

What was the last book you bought?
Sue Hubbell's A Book of Bees.
Name a book you have read MORE than once
Irene Gonzalez-Frei's Your Name Written on Water.
Has a book ever fundamentally changed the way you see life? If yes, what was it?
Yes...John Ashbery's April Galleons.

How do you choose a book? eg. by cover design and summary, recommendations or reviews
I usually make an impulsive, yet as it turns out, astute, selection by the cover...like Robert Olen Butler's Severance. Otherwise, I hear about the author through various media sources.

Do you prefer Fiction or Non-Fiction?
Fiction, because we live it.

                                   
                                                                                             
What’s more important in a novel - beautiful writing or a gripping plot?
Beautiful writing. That being said, the first presents the latter in the form of images, word associations, probable coincidences.

Most loved/memorable character (character/book)
When I survey my deformation by degrees I think of Heathcliff from Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. Maybe it is the petulant child, rather than being dealt the blows, dealing them. What can I say? A very violent book.

Which book or books can be found on your nightstand at the moment?
Among them: Kardong's Vertebrates: Comparative Anatomy, Function, Evolution 3rd ed. I live for the distraction that is feather growth or air-breathing fishes and I fantasize in The Lonely Planet: Morocco (2006).

What was the last book you’ve read, and when was it?
Haruki Murakami's After Dark, cover to cover in one night, one week ago. I am in the middle of John Fowles's The Magus.

Have you ever given up on a book half way in?
Yes, I cannot appreciate Chuck Palahniuk, although I have experienced this before. Some books are waiting for a new phase of my life to open before revealing themselves to me.

The Nest

Its best moments are when it forgets what it is called...Jean Dubuffet

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of October 9, 2008 by Rob Brezsny

A certain connection you've been wishing for and fantasizing about will soon become available -- if, that is, you shed your expectations about how it will come about, and if you shed your ideas about what will happen after the two of you get together, and if you shed all hope of controlling that person's feelings about you. In other words, Sagittarius, you can finally have the alliance you want, but only if you no longer want it in the way you've wanted it.

On Introductions

I take little initiative with introductions or, like someone considering herself elite, I deposit a perfunctory answer. I later regret that, but there is never the guarantee for anyone that an impression will be faithfully transmitted and received. I console myself with the possibility that each encounter is an re-introduction just as a photographic study of a landscape or an object at various times of the day all together make a series. Am I ready for my close-up? What this usually amounts to is referent items--the handbag, the seductive bookcover, the sequin-studded mobile phone case.

Instead, I focus on being the first to respond with "I am well" in order to avoid that defensive position of "being good." I am expert at sensing someone's lack of underwear or lack of respectable underwear. Certainly there is that air of confidence surrounding someone who has made a conscious decision about what to wear under one's clothes should they be granted visibility, as if suddenly they are the choice items of a storefront vitrine. The feeling is, "here, this is really what you get beyond my proprieties."

It is entirely possible that I will never move beyond introductions. Neither correspondent deems it that way. Any relation is an inexplicable departure on my way as I swerve in traffic, a body in noise-driven absorption by "Broken English." What could be more mundane than a woman with broad-ranging interests, the majority of which she pursues in solitude? I cannot think of any other intentioned act towards ultimate irrelevance. To be eligible to sit alone with only one's company requires that you fold away your attitude of unimportance, since it is a creased letter in an un-post-marked-envelope to be aired out on occasions such as these.

Blepharospasm

Questioning, is a lightning color compounded for each face, so much so

I would like to tell you how it is like in the effects of tracing the emphatic

eye. Where a lighthearted mouth (red-veined from parting) when put to the
question or, alternately, a visit of the plague, the eye refrains from another burst of

eccentricity. Rather, from the mouth who speaks vapors the sodium lamp
goes out.

Sonnet - The Verve