Old's Cool

The most recent issue of MQ comes out for the solstice - and if you enjoy calendars you could also describe it as:

Gregorian: Wednesday, 21 December 2005
Mayan: Long count = 12.19.12.16.3; tzolkin = 8 Akbal; haab = 1 Kankin
French: 1 Nivôse an 214 de la Révolution
Islamic: 20 Dhu al-Qada 1426
Hebrew: 20 Kislev 5766
Julian: 8 December 2005
ISO: Day 3 of week 51 of 2005
Persian: 30 Azar 1384
Ethiopic: 12 Takhsas 1998
Coptic: 12 Kiyahk 1722
Chinese: Cycle 78, year 22 (Yi-You), month 11 (Wu-Zi), day 21 (Ji-Mao)
Julian day: 2453726
Day of year: Day 355 of 2005; 10 days remaining in the year
Discordian: Setting Orange, The Aftermath 63, Year of Our Lady of Discord 3171
'Pataphysical: 21 Sable 132 de l'Ere Pataphysique . [St. Tape, pompette]
Frank Zappa's Birthday 1940 CE

Bob wrote a piece to explain the benefits of using multiple calendars, back when people had got obsessed by a Gregorian millenium. You can find it here.

You can get the "Old's Cool" T-Shirt (and other great stuff) at Any Old Icon
Yes, I know they didn't write it in E-Prime.

Thanks to the master who makes the grass green

(Zen Clue: I don't mean Bob! - although Example 9 in Bob's "E and E-Prime" essay might prove enlightening)



I'd like to take a moment to thank all my fellow participants on Bob's 12+1 week online course, The Tale of The Tribe.
I don't intend to stop and review or sum up what we learned right now, but I know as sure as I know anything that we all feel grateful to Bob for taking the time to comment on our wayward speculations, and I hope he learned a thing or two, too. heh. He stuck with us, even when going in and out of hospital.

Thanks Bob. amor et hilaritas

I used to be

spiraled so far from the core
past the end
alien

only now awakening
communicating with the common species

lifetimes etched into this shell

the door no longer opens to the same room
it does not exist...Yes it does

An Open and Shut Case

Consider the door that Marcel Duchamp built at 11, Rue Larrey. It’s set on a hinge with two doorways at right angles to it. Such that whenever it is closed, it is also open. Duchamp’s door is a good place to start, when thinking in new ways about apertures. It can only grant selective privacy and it plays with the idea of what a door is supposed to do. It makes you conscious of the fact that shutting a door is not a neutral action.

Door: II, rue Larrey, 1927

Somehow (time zones or parallel universes) I seem to have posted a response to ptf's poem BEFORE his post. Bizarre, but somehow appropriate...

Only Passing Through - Ship of Fools

Most of this blog remains stable, so as to accumulate and accrete as a portrait of the activities of sombunall (some, but not all - a neologism from Bob) of the members of the Maybe Logic Academy.

Contributors can do what they like with their own material, though, and pft continues to appear and disappear (to my despair, as my Fool embarked upon an Incomplete Imperfect Index). Just accept the fact of pft's visuals, poems and music as an endlessly shifting and ephemeral reality. If nothing else this may draw you back here more often! His Halloween greeting disappeared as soon as I indexed it under Calendars/Festivals.

My own Work-in-Progress items (when not hidden in Draft form) also mutate, but only in small ways at the moment, as both (I hope) may turn into full-blown, freestanding pieces - which may then get published in fixed form in the Maybe Quarterly, where I cannot tinker with them any more (I can't even get rid of the typos in my last Time Piece!)

As the forums seem a little unstable right now (server problems) this could function as a secondary meeting point. I hope that we may soon see Mindeterminate's input on the Tarot that sombunall of us have started working on (with a fine mixture of seriousness and frivolity). I also noticed that another MLA contributor - codename Platypus - has a free forum running on his extraordinary website full of RAW material, which you really ought to visit (at least) if you have any interest in Robert Anton Wilson and his work...just the book covers of his fiction alone sets me to thinking.