Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 15:49:37 -0700
From: Seth David Schoen <schoen@loyalty.org>
To: CTY-L@cornell.edu
Subject: Re: Cruel and Unusual writing assignments
[I made a slight change or two here when I put this up on the web.]
Chiu, Tien writes:
> > Tien, it shouldn't be so hard to express "insane asylum" in
> > words of one
> > syllable; how about "home for the mad"?
>
> That was indeed what I came up with (actually "house for the mad"), after
> briefly considering "snake pit". But that was at the end of four pages of
> similar contortions.
>
> Scarred for life, I tell you, scarred for life. :-)
>
> now for the hard part: how do you say "words of one syllable" in words of
> one syllable or less?
They are words which you can say with just one "a", "e", "i", "o", "u" sound
(or blend of these, like "oo" or "ee" or "ou" and so on) out loud, not those
which have two or more such sounds in a word. (If you can not hear it, it
does not count as a "sound" -- like the "e" at the end of "these" or "one" or
"like".) What I wrote here just now is formed from words which are like this:
each of them may have a few of the signs "a", "e", "i", "o", or "u" when you
write it, but still, if you say it out loud, has no more than one of the kinds
of sounds those make.
You may have to add "y" some of the thyme, if you want to be sure that
this rule will work.
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 19:35:23 -0700 (PDT)
From: Alison Bazeley <abazeley@yahoo.com>
To: CTY-L@cornell.edu
Subject: Re: Cruel and Unusual writing assignments
--- Seth David Schoen <schoen@loyalty.org> wrote:
> [...]
> You may have to add "y" some of the tyme, if you
> want to be sure that
> this rule will work.
You are one sick pup... err, dog.
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 20:19:02 -0700
From: Seth David Schoen <schoen@loyalty.org>
To: CTY-L@cornell.edu
Subject: Re: Cruel and Unusual writing assignments
Alison said I was
> one sick pup... err, dog.
for writing that monosyllabic account of what a monosyllabic word is.
Thanks, but it's not as hard as writing lipograms which show profound
admiration for what Mr. Wright did with his book Gadsby, or what an
author whom I forgot long ago also did in his similar La Disparition.
Lipography is a difficult art, an art at which I am not particularly
good, but still I say that it is virtuous to honor Wright and his
cohorts. And I'm glad to do that, if I can.
If your habit is to hang out with CTY folks, you'll no doubt run
across many constraints which you could try to put on your writing.
Always, in that kind of group, among that ilk, an impishly-grinning man
or woman, boy or girl, will show up, daring you to "Try this!
Lipography, or writing only in monosyllabic words, or only using words
that start with 'j', or only words which can function as nouns... You
can do it, I know you can!" You will think that this task is far too
hard, and still you will, with a bit of a strain (to find that
linguistic ability CTY has said your mind plainly contains), do it.
(Abolish your doubts, I say, by trying it.)
And I say that constraints that such folks hand you call for an
originality not as thoroughgoing as that of many famous artists, but
still giving skills which I call, in a way, important.
[Also, my .sig was not my usual .sig with its usual quotation. It had this
translation of that quotation:
"And do not say, I will study if I can;
for possibly you will not find
an opportunity. -- Avot 2:5"]
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2001 11:32:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: Bram Boroson <bboroson@shell.valkyrie.net>
To: CTY-L@cornell.edu
Subject: writing with constraints
The master of this is Georges Perec, whose novel in French missing the
letter e was translated into English (still missing the letter e) a "A
Void."
Bram
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2001 12:37:49 -0700
From: Seth David Schoen <schoen@loyalty.org>
To: CTY-L@cornell.edu
Subject: Re: writing with constraints
Bram Boroson said:
> The master of this is Georges Perec, whose novel in French missing the
> letter e was translated into English (still missing the letter e) a "A
> Void."
Although I forgot La Disparition's author as I was writing my own
lipogram, it's plain that actually saying what folks call him is not
so handy for accounts which try to follow that author's own habits!
Possibly this fact was known to him and it was an additional
constraint to stop actors in a play from naming its playwright, mutatis
mutandis. Thus fourth walls of narration of all sorts can stay
intact -- it's contrary to natural law in that world to proclaim in
full "G---- P---- is my author!" (as in old Judaism it was thought bad
to say out loud a particular holy word, God's actual way of saying
"God"; this strict policy could stop many ways in which folks might say
things about God).
A grand tradition of all antiquity holds as magical what you or I
should truly call a thing, or a man, or a god: if you know this, you
obtain a status as magically knowing it or him. So you may thus also
obtain mystical information or magically command his or its actions or
by charms do various things (alas, such as injuring a man with magic
this way!). (Naming-charms and naming-mysticism still last today in
ways which I find amazing. Cf. ISBN 0-631-20510-1 and any work by its
author.)
So lipography shows us a world in which a law forbids naming rightly
any of a list of things (naturally, giving that list in full is also
against this law) -- and on that list is found (though not from within
this world, not by any man or woman thinking about it within this
story), possibly, our story's own author. Is this not our situation
as actors in traditional plays or similar dramatic and fictional works?
Why do actors traditionally not know about fourth walls, or an actor
about laws which bind him, holding him back from such a wall? But in
lipography our way of forming words has profound flaws which imply
that authors of lipograms, and actors in lipographical fictions, could
not approach particular topics at all! Laws say that such actors must
lack words, which finally an actor might still not actually miss.
It's amazing! A fourth wall stays wholly apart from vision, but I watch
a traditional play and actors don't pass through it. Why?
Confabulation?
Cf. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.372, and 6.43. At 6.4311: "Our
span of living lacks a boundary, just as our vision lacks a boundary
obvious to us." This hardly says that a man is not mortal: and as a
famous song asks, do you actually want immortality?
I was dumb to call that last part "Re: writing with constraints" originally,
not "Pri: writing with constraints" (la i-a lingvo's word
for "about").
About plays and such: I saw a film in which a woman wants to find who owns
a particular IP no., so that woman runs "whois" and stuff. But this thing
our protagonist is trying to track down is "172.16.a.b", it's from
RFC 1918, nobody could actually do things, obviously not "hacking/cracking",
with such an origin! It's just as silly as "555-" in films: "Call him up
at 555-2923!" and so on. It adds a touch of falsity, in that an actual IP
wizard would know, or ought to know, offhand that "172.16..." is
imaginary. This woman saw it in that film and (as far as I know) didn't think
anything was odd about it, didn't say "Imaginary blocks from RFC 1918! I am
plainly not working on this in our world, I am in a film, no doubt". No, a
film account of an IP wizard
may omit any tidings of RFC 1918; a protagonist who works on this for a living
is still ignorant of significant facts about how it works in our world.
Similarly, in traditional films, nobody will shout "My God, that's Uma Thurman!"
or "Look, look, it's Tom Hanks!" or "Say, it's Ms. Fonda!" or "Gosh, that's
a man who's 0 hops from Bacon", or any such
thing. Protagonists probably
could turn out as film buffs, and still would not know about any
famous actors, if such famous actors co-star in that particular film.
(Actors who don't co-star still show up; if Fonda isn't acting in a film, you
could allow an actor in that film to point out Fonda on TV or in print.)
Odd, that -- for what actual film fan would not know Uma Thurman if said Uma
wound up as having him as a husband?
I do think I saw a film in which a man said "Ah, I was told to call you at
555-8291, and that man said 555- and so on too, and all of what
I can say, or you can say, I think, starts with 555. Look, I think I am in a
film!" and that man was right in thinking this, for in fact that man
was in a film. And a film, Truman Show,
which talks a lot about fourth-wall topics, is said to show a bunch of
similar things: "Look, you can't say this, and I can't say this, and look,
all of this is just what you would find in a TV studio, all this has a
quality of TV props... aha, so possibly I am in a TV show, or in a play."
I should add ISBN 0-671-65363-6 to my discussion about naming magic.
You can find that book's most famous story
at this
location, and without paying for it.
Copyright violations abound; this book, though, was out of print for many,
many, many months, and is still out of print -- so think about what I said not
long ago about copyright and works going out of
print, so that you can't obtain a work at all.
Accompanying that story is
Marvin
Minsky's discussion which also talks about UI a lot, and which was not
what I thought that story was about.
(I admit that Minsky has a good, important tip for your mythical
running-into-djinn
situations: to ask simply, as a first wish, to know "what is it that I want
[...] most".)
But any writing allows many ways of
discussing it, many ways of noticing what it is about or what it
contains, and many things within it or facts about it you could point out.
I slept pretty late.
I might go to DEF CON 9 in Las Vegas
later this month with Andrew. I went to DEF CON just before I started my
new job two years ago; perhaps I'll have a new job to start right after
this upcoming conference.
I worked on the BBC quite a bit. So much
to do, so little time!
My arms felt fine in the morning but hurt again by evening.
The .signature of Werner Koch,
maintainer of GPG, says
Omnis enim res, quae dando non deficit, dum habetur
et non datur, nondum habetur, quomodo habenda est.
-- Augustinus
I think this means "So everything which is not lessened by being given away,
is, as long as it is possessed and is not given away, not yet possessed in
the way it ought to be possessed".
Indeed, here it
is in the license for MIT Photonic
Bands. I followed the link to De Doctrina Christiana
there and happened on the very interesting claim
But neither does any man hate his own
body. For the apostle says truly, "No man ever yet hated his own
flesh." And when some people say that they would rather be without
a body altogether, they entirely deceive themselves. For it is not
their body, but its corruptions and its heaviness, that they hate.
And so it is not no body, but an uncorrupted and very light body,
that they want.
Here's Koch's
own explanation of the quotation he uses.
