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Literate Chaotic / Re: Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

« on: February 01, 2012, 09:51:37 pm »

Quote from: Cramulus on February 01, 2012, 09:42:25 pm

that sounds really interesting.

So tell us - did the Greeks believe their myths?

Don't want to spoil it--has a surprise ending.

Just kidding. The average Greek would profess belief but be completely weirded out if you told them Athena had just gotten married, because it was implicit to the myths and unconsciously understood by the Greeks that mythic time was different from ordinary time. Typically historians didn't believe in the gods, but they had this notion that utter crap cannot erupt out of nowhere, so if a myth was too fantastic to believe, they would attempt to discern the kernel of truth it was based on. Interestingly, they often still doubted the stories they collected but felt a duty as historiographers to report the tales as they found them. This "objectivity" lent them a peculiar authority.

By the way, happy birthday.

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Literate Chaotic / Re: Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

« on: February 01, 2012, 09:39:46 pm »

lol

well said, lmno

Aaaaaaanyway, almost finished with Paul Veyne's Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? which tackles its titular question as well as the more general question of what it means to believe in contradictory "programs of truth" simultaneously. Really cool book, do recommend.

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Or Kill Me / sense beyond senses

« on: February 01, 2012, 05:43:29 am »

I often wonder what it would be like to have a dormant sense outside the usual five (and proprioception), and like to think it could be awakened with careful effort. You can't know what it will be like. You need to go about creating the necessary mental categories and relaxing the habits of your perception and thought to let it take on a reality as sharp as sight or hearing. I tie my mind in knots trying to figure out what it would be like, and then I remember that every skill ever acquired is essentially that, a new sense. A nonmusician cannot hear what a musician can, and a fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. There are countless examples and I won't bore you with the details, but I was looking for some kind of transcendence because life is too fucking good to end.

But the meatbox will break down and the filthy, stinking television show called your life will be cancelled. We retreat into tales of pearly gates and life eternal but what's the point of heaven without a fucking body? There is nowhere to run but in this life, and the pain and the pleasure are ours alone. The dead cannot live in stories.

At least the Road Runner could escape into Wile E. Coyote's paintings. We hide in the fetid castrated nether regions of the afterlife when we are up to our necks in shit, but the shit never goes away. It's what we're really made of, after all.

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Apple Zone / Re: Youtube Doubler

« on: October 01, 2011, 03:24:27 am »

ALIVE!!!!!!!!!

I give you the Apocalypse

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Literate Chaotic / Re: Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

« on: July 02, 2011, 06:20:37 pm »

Rereading Northrop Frye's Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake, and if I can get my Kindle working again I'll be able to finish Artaud's The Theatre and Its Double

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RPG Ghetto / Re: Minecraft?

« on: July 02, 2011, 06:17:33 pm »

Hey Req, did you get that server up and running? If it's still going, I'd love to drop in.

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Bring and Brag / Re: Tao Now Brown Chao

« on: February 10, 2011, 04:32:03 am »

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Apple Zone / Bath Salts

« on: January 23, 2011, 06:36:49 am »

...are apparently far more addictive than previously thought

hxxp://www.wmctv.com/Global/story.asp?S=13855613

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Apple Zone / Re: Diaspora

« on: January 23, 2011, 06:33:53 am »

I'd like to give it a go.

update: thanks, hov

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Apple Zone / Re: Cram's Game Corner

« on: January 23, 2011, 06:04:48 am »

This game is AWESOME! One of the best side-scrollers I've ever played.
The infographic covers it pretty well. http://www.braid-game.com

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Bring and Brag / Shafted! chapter 1 - My Feet on Dry Land

« on: January 16, 2011, 01:40:55 pm »

Visit this url for the first installment of a radio play by my good friend DCBSupafly. Hope you like it! Feedback appreciated.

http://dcbsupafly.com/Shafted/

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