Monday, June 30, 2008

Attention Deficit Disorder, Thomas E. Brown, Ph.D., page 312, paragraph 2

Indeed, many believe that all cognitive processes can be brought under conscious control, that any individual can make changes in how he thinks, what he feels, and how he acts, if only his determination is strong enough. This is the view than Daniel Wegner (2002) has challenged as "the illusion of free will." Although he acknowledges that this illusion has adaptive functions, Wegner quotes approvingly Bernard Schlink's (1997) words,

I don't mean to say that the thinking and reaching decisions have no influence on behavior. But behavior does not merely enact what has already been thought through and decided. It has is own sources. (p. 342)


Yale University Press, 2005, New Haven, 0-300-10641-6

Sunday, June 29, 2008

A Illustrated Guide to Arizona Weeds, Kittie F. Parker, page 126, paragraph 1

RED SPIDERLING
FOUR O'CLOCK FAMILY - nyctaginaceae
Red Spiderling - Boerhaavia coccinea Mill.
DESCRIPTION - A stout perennial with tough, prostrate stems radiating outward from a thick woody root and ascending at the ends, 1 to 6 feet long. The stems, often with sticky yellow bands above, are usually noticeably hairy, especially near the base. The leaves are similar to those of coulter spiderling, and are densely hairy to hairless. Some plants, however, are almost hairless.


The University of Arizona Press, 1972, Tucson, 0-8165-0288-9

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Haiku, Vol IV, Autumn-Winter, R. H. Blyth, page 159, paragraph 3

小便所ここと馬よぶ夜寒かな

Shôbenjo koko to uma yobu yosamu kana


“The latrine is over here,”

Says the horse;

Cold at night.


Hokuseido, 1952, Japan


Friday, June 27, 2008

Little Blues Book, Brian Robertson, page 43, paragraph 1

Johnson's death is attributed to poisoning. The reason for the killing? Johnson's habit of picking out a woman in the audience—single or married—and bit by bit directing each song in her direction, working his slow seduction. It’s said that on one particular night, Jonson’s magic worked so well that a woman’s husband—the bartender—retaliated by giving the bluesman a bottle of whiskey laced with poison.

Algonquin, 1996, Chapel Hill, 1-56512-137-6

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Raiders and Rebels, The Golden Age of Piracy, Frank Sherry, page 241, paragraph 4

Along with the demand for medicine, Blackbeard's emissaries delivered a gruesome threat: If the governor did not pay the ransom within two days, Blackbeard would murder his captives, including the four-year-old boy, and deliver their heads to the town. He and his men would also destroy the port and burn the ships that lay in the harbor.


Quill, 1986, New York, 0-688-07515-0

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Japanese Homes And Their Surroundings, Edward S. Morse, page 227, paragraph 2

A household shrine to which the children pay voluntary and natural devotion are the birds' nests build within the house. It is a common thing, not only in the country but in large cities like Tokio, for a species of swallow, hardly to be distinguished from the European species, to build its nest in the house, – not in an out of the way place, but in the room where the family may be most actively engaged, or in the shop fronting the street, with all its busy traffic going on. The very common occurrence of these birds' nests in houses is another of the many evidences of the gentle ways of this people, and of the kindness shown by them to animals.


Tuttle, 1972, Rutland, 0-8048-0998-4
Originally published in 1886

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

The Philsophy of Money, Georg Simmel, page 272, paragraph 2

The material and cultural relation of form and amount

Perhaps we can also express this in the following way. As a purely arithmetical addition of value units, money can be characterized as absolutely formless. Formlessness and a purely quantitative character are one and the same. To the extent that things are considered only in terms of their quantity, their form is disregarded. This is most evident if they are weighed. Therefore, money as such is the most terrible destroyer of form. No matter what the reason is that the specific forms of things a, b and c cost the same price of m, their differentiation the specific form of each of them does not affect their fixed value at all but is submerged in the m which equally represents a, b and c. Form is not a determining factor within economic valuation. As soon as our interest is reduced to the money value of objects, their form, even though it may have brought about their value becomes irrelevant just as it is irrelevant to their weight. This may also explain the materialism of modern times which, in its theoretical significance, necessarily has a common root in the money economy. Matter as such is simply formless, the counterpart of all form, and if it is accepted as the only principle of reality, reality is submitted to broadly the same process that the reduction money value exercises on the objects of our practical interest. I shall come back to the problem of how money in extraordinarily great quantities and fundamentally in connection with the threshold importance of money quantities attains a particular and, at the same time, more individual form, thereby removing it from its empty quantitative nature. The formlessness of money declines relatively and even outwardly the more its quantity increases: the small coins of the earliest Italian copper currency remained shapeless or had only a crude round or cubical form; the biggest pieces, however, were usually cast in a four-sided ingot form and provided with a mark on both sides. But the universal formlessness of money as money is certainly the root of the antagonism between an aesthetic tendency and money interests. Aesthetic interest are so much focused on pure form that, for instance, design was considered to be the primary aesthetic value of all fine arts, because as pure form it can be realized unchanged in any amount of material. This is now known to be an error; indeed, we must go further and admit that the absolute size of a form of art considerably influences its aesthetic significance, and that this significance is readily modified by the very smallest change of dimensions even if the form remains the same. Nevertheless, the aesthetic value of things remains attached to their form, for example to the relations between its elements, although we now know that the character and the effect of the form is essentially co-determined by the amount of its realization. Perhaps it is no coincidence that a great many proverbs, but only a few of the innumerable folk songs, appear to deal with money despite its predominant importance. Thus, when a rebellion broke out owing to a change in coinage, the folk songs generated by the people on this occasion by and large disregarded the coinage problem. The irreconcilable and, for all aesthetic interests, decisive antagonism always remains in th emphasis placed on whether we value things according to their form or ask for the amount of their value. This value is a merely quantitative one which replaces all quality by a mere sum of equal units.


Routledge, 1990, New York, 0-415-04641-6

Monday, June 23, 2008

The World in Miniature, Container Gardens and Dwellings in Far Eastern Religious Thought, Rolf A. Stein, page 58, paragraph 2


The World, a Gourd-Shaped Vessel

The caves that make up a separate paradise are difficult to enter; entrance is by a narrow door. They are closed vessels, with a narrow throat, shaped like a gourd: "One enters by a doorway in the rock, but one cannot enter except by bending down. [Once the narrow passage is passed,] one finds a flat space of more than thirty feet. It is like a heaven [read: perfect world] within a gourd. This is why it is called gourd-heaven [hu-t'ien]" (see Fig. 27).109 The entryway into the cave-heaven (tung-t'ien) of Chin-hua (or Tung-yüan) resembles that of an iron jar; through a narrow neck one enters a cave that then enlarges considerably.110 A separate world and a gourde shaped vessel are two inseparable ideas, even when one of the terms is not expressed (see noe 101 to this part). To the question "May one ask where you live?" one could reply "In a gourd-shaped vessel there is another world" [75].111 These words refer to retreat (chai) in a garden (see Fig. 28). We may recall that the Ch'ang-wu-chih requires that every retreat in the mountain (shan-chai) must have a bowl garden in its courtyard (see note 94 to this part). In the miniature garden sung about by Tin Ho-nien, "sun and moon share their light in this Heaven in [the form of] a hu1 vase.” In the same way, in a description of a bowl garden (bonseki), a Japanese author speaks thus: “If one thinks about this, one finds in it traces [of the site] of the Peach Flower Spring [t’ao-yüan; a heavenly site]….Forgetting the [ordinary] world [shih], the sun shines calmly in the gourd in the heart has this same hiding place.” 112 We should note the relationship expressed between the world in the form of a gourd and the Peach Flower Spring. The heavenly nature of the other world is emphasized by alluding to the celebrated retreat site.


Stanford University Press, 1990, Stanford, 0-8047-1674-9


Sunday, June 22, 2008

The Americans, Photographs By Robert Frank, page 104


St. Francis, gas station, and City Hall - Los Angeles


Pantheon, 1986, New York, 0-394-74256-7
Originally: Grove Press, 1959

Saturday, June 21, 2008

What's What in Japanese Restaurants, Robb Satterwhite, page 143, paragraph 12

くずきり kuzukiri

Cold Kansai-style pudding
made from kudzu starch
and served with dark syrup


Kodansha, 1988, Japan, 4-7700-2086-4

Friday, June 20, 2008

Auctions, The Social Construction of Value, Charles W. Smith, page 109, paragraph 3

An Auction is seldom simply held; rather, it is staged. Place, setting, and props are arranged to reinforce the ambience and sense of community appropriate to the particular auction. These factors convey, among other things, different degrees of affluence, seriousness, glamour, order, separation, formality, tradition, and risk. They also put constraints on who can participate. To understand how, it is necessary to be aware of the specific ways in which different auctions are staged and the various factors that favor one form over another.

University of California Press, 1990, Berkeley, 0-520-07201-4

Thursday, June 19, 2008

The Return of the Cadavre Exquis, The Drawing Center, page 47, paragraph 2

Whereas Breton's surrealism distills itself into objects—a bowler hat, a biscuit, a woman's glove—Bataille envisions it as an image of diffusion, an excess of energy that obscures containment. He called this the "informe," and ascribed it with the "job" of rendering the formed object, idea, emotion, or sign into a state of formlessness.


Formless is thus not merely an adjective with such and such a meaning but a term for lowering status with its implied requirements that everything have form. Whatever it (formless) designates lacks entitlement in every sense and is crushed on the spot, like a spider or an earthworm.

8. Georges Bataille, quoted in Denis Hollier, Against Architecture, The writings of Georges Bataille, Betsy Wing, trans. (Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1989), p. 30


The Drawing Center, 1993, New York, 0-942324-06-4

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Hopi Dictionary, Hopìikwa Lavàytutuveni, The Hopi Dictionary Project, Emory Sekaquaptewa, page 301, paragraph 18

nàngwpukna (~ya) vr.p. jerk oneself, jump from being startled, suffer a spasmodic motion, as in sleep. ~t pu' suqtuptu. After a spastic motion, she got up quickly. Pas nu' ~. I really startled myself (I thought I saw someone behind me). Pay yaw pam tsawnaqe pam yaw oovi ~kyangw pay yaw pam naatatayna. She became frightened and as she jerked herself, she woke up. ngwpu-k-na [REFL-startle-SGL-CAUS] Var. nàngpukna. Cf. wùupukna, startle, frighten.

The University of Arizona Press, 1997, Arizona, 0-8165-1789-4

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

The Folk Arts of Japan, Hugo Munsterberg, Page 128, paragraph 2



More closely related to the Buddhist art of the capital are the popular carvings found in the graveyards and temple compounds of local sanctuaries. The fines of the se are in Nara Prefecture, but similar ones are seen in many parts of Japan. They too are representations of Buddhist gods, but instead of showing obscure deities of folk religion, they are more likely to portray the regular Buddhas and Bodhisattvas (Bosatsu, in Japanese). Characteristic of this type of sculpture are the carving of the Amida Buddha (Plate 84) and the Bodhisatva images found outside of Nara City (Plate 85). The style and iconography obviously reflect that of the sculpture of the great temples of Nara, but the use of stone and the simple strength of the carving is characteristic of this type of folk art. The serene majesty of Amida and the gentle, mysterious expression of the many-armed Bosatsu are well rendered and show the truly religious feeling of many of these works.

Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc., 1982, Rutland, 0-8048-0190-3

Monday, June 16, 2008

Food Plants of the Sonoran Desert, Wendy C. Hodgson, page 229, paragraph 3



The rather odd-looking fruits of the R. echinocarpa (figs. 140, 141b) also supplied food. The Guarijío, Tarahumara, Ónavas Pima, and Tepehuan gathered the green fruits as they began to ripen in the fall (Gentry 1942; Pennington 1963, 1969, 1980; Altschul 1973; pers. obs.). If the fruits were left on the plants to ripen, "strong-billed birds" and mammals were sure to consume them (Gentry 1942, Martin et al. 1998:431). The black, puddinglike mass has a bittersweet flavor and is full of seeds. Babies were especially fond of the pulp. These groups ate the pulp in large amounts with the seeds, which often caused constipation (H. S. Gentry, pers. comm.). Howard Gentry once ate the fruits for lunch, while in the wilds of Rio Mayo country, having nothing else to eat (Martin et al. 1998). He enjoyed the first fruit, but could not finish the second because the fruits were very filling. Randia echinocarpa (and other members of the genus) fruits are important medicinally, being used to aid digestion and diabetes.

The University of Arizona Press, 2001, Tucson, 0-8165-2060-7

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Guilty of Everything, Herbert Hunke, page 30, paragraphy 1

It cost another quarter to get in the gate to supposedly see the real thing when she stripped down. But what she did inside I have no idea. She had had some sort of operation just above the penis. The penis itself was extremely small for anyone as large as this poor creature was. When I'd stop by to see her I'd act as a shill. I'd buy one of the first pamphlets to get the ball rolling, and if Johnny was with me, he'd buy one, too. The first thing you'd know they'd collected ten of fifteen bucks. These poor suckers would go inside and stay for five minutes, maybe ten at the most. "Of course, everyone must understand that they're not allowed to expose themselves completely, but if you'll all move up a little closer you'll see..." and she'd quickly pull some little gadget that she had, and I don't know what they thought they were seeing.

Hanuman Books, 1987, New York, 0-937815-08-x

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Beyond Reason, Art and Psychosis, Brand-Clausen Jádi & Douglas, page 36, paragraph 6


For Pinal and Tuke, the interest of patient art lay in the act of creation, rather than in the final product, and neither saw fit to reproduce their patients' drawings to accompany their own texts. John Haslam, however, apothecary at the notorious Bethlem hospital in London, may have been the first to reproduce patiend drawings, in his Illustrations of Madness, in 1810. For Haslam the drawings were of diagnostic interest, their reproduction designed to illustrate the insanity of his patient, one James Tilly Matthews. Matthews suffered apparently from the common schizophrenic delusion of persecution and believed that he was being conspired against, and acted against, by a version of the 'influencing machine'. His drawings of the machine, which he termed an 'air-loom' (fig. 1), derive clearly from the mechanical aesthetics of the early industrial age.

University of California Press, 1996, Berkeley, 0-520-21740-3

Friday, June 13, 2008

Power Pricing, Robert J. Dolan, Hermann Simon, page 52, paragraph 1

A questioning survey that directly impacted senior management's planning of a product introduction was Kodak's analysis of the instant camera market. Respondents were provided a description of a new generation of instant cameras and then asked several questions to stimulate consideration of the pros and cons of these cameras in order to simulate an actual purchase situation.

The Free Press, 1996, New York, 0-684-83443-x

Thursday, June 12, 2008

The Hundred Headless Woman (La Femme 100 têtes), Max Ernst, page 163, image 1


Living alone on her phantom globe, beautiful and dressed in her dreams:
Perturbation, my sister, the hundred headless woman.



George Braziller, 1981, New York, 0-8076-1024-0

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

The Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles, Jan Heine, Jean-Pierre Pradères, page 60, paragraph 1

In the 1930's, Alex Singer had been a racer. Like many racers, he liked to ride a fixed gear during the winter months, so he built this bike as a fixed gear training bike. Later he modified it into a "porteur", a bicycle to carry parcels to and from the post office. But it also was a machine he could use on the rides of the newspaper carriers - the "porteurs" - many of whom raced on weekends and used their paper delivery routes as training (see p. 92).

Vintage Bicycle Press, 2005, Seattle, 097654600-0

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Sing, Little Mouse, Aileen Fisher, Symeon Shimin, page 22, paragraph 1

He must have crawled
in my bag, in under,
when clouds came up
and it looked like thunder.

Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1969, New York

Monday, June 9, 2008

The Tale of Genji, Lady Murasaki, page 197, paragraph 2

The missing sleeve soon arrived from Chujo's apartments with the message: 'Had you not better have this sewn on before you wear your cloak?' How had he managed to get hold of it? Such tricks were very tiresome and silly. But he supposed he mus now give back the belt, and wrapping it in paper of the same colour he sent it with a riddling poem in which he said that he would not keep it lest he should make trouble between Chujo and the lady. 'You have dragged her away from me as in the scuffle you snatched from me this belt,' said Chujo in his answering poem, and added 'Have I not good reason to be angry with you?'

Anchor Books, 1955, Garden City, 0-385-09275-X

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Ways of Seeing, John Berger, page 84, paragraph 2

The term oil painting refers to more than a technique. It defines an art form. The technique of mixing pigments with oil had existed since the ancient world. But the oil painting as an art form was not born until there was a need to develop and perfect this technique (which soon involved using canvas instead of wooden panels) in order to express a particular view of life for which the techniques of tempera or fresco were inadequate. When oil paint was first used - at the beginning of the fifteenth century in Northern Europe - for painting pictures of a new character, this character was somewhat inhibited by the survival of various medieval artistic conventions. The oil painting did not fully establish its own norms, its own way of seeing, until the sixteenth century.

Penguin Books, 1977, New York, 0-14-021631-6

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Factotum, Charles Bukowski, page 144, paragraph 2

I lay back on the bed. Jan was snoring. She didn't snore loudly but her snoring was persistent. It was something like I'd imagine a small hog would snore. Almost snorts. I looked at her wondering who I had been living with. She had a small pug nose and her blonde hair was turning "mousey" as she described it, as it went gray. Her face was sagging, she was getting jowls, she was ten years older than I. It was only when she ws made up and was dressed in a tight skirt and wearing high heels that she looked good. Her ass was still shapely as were her legs and she had a seductive wiggle when she walked. Now as I looked at her she didn't look so wonderful. She was sleeping partly on one side and her pot belly was hanging out. She was a marvelous fuck, though. I had never had a better fuck. It was the way she took it. She really digested a fuck. Her hands would grip me and her pussy clutched just as hard. Most fucks are really nothing, they are mostly labor, like trying to climb a very steep, muddy hill. But not Jan.

Black Sparrow Press, 1975, Santa Barbara, 0-87685-264-9

Friday, June 6, 2008

No One May Ever Have the Same Knowledge Again, Sarah Simons (Ed.), W. Chas. Lamb (Author), page 77, paragraph 2

Dear Sir: - Just another minute of your time - please read the enclosed - news - "Strange Discoveries in the Tombs of Ancient Ur." where I have penned #'s 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 showing what scientists are finding out about the Chaldeian conception of God and their mode of worship no higher than Moon God. Their symbolism pointed to the Bull, as representative of strength - but the Lion hadn't yet pointed to "The Lion of the Tribe of Judea God incarnated in the flesh - couldn't see how it could be done!

The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Information @ The Museum of Jurassic Technology, 1993, Los Angeles, 0-9647215-0-3

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Tales from the Thousand and One Nights, page 345, paragraph 3

'Know,' said the Moor, 'that as soon as I have cast the incense and begun my charm, the water of the river will dry up and on the sloping bank there will appear a door of gold, as high as the city gate, with a pair of metal rings. Go down to that door, knock lightly on it, and wait a little. Then knock louder and wait again. After that knock three times in succession, and you will hear a voice say from within: "Who knocks at the door of the treasure-house and yet cannot solve the Riddle?" You will reply: "I am the son of Omar, Judar the fisherman." The door will open and reveal a man bearing a sword in his hand, who sill say: "If you are that man stretch out your neck, that I may strike off your head." Stretch out your neck to him and have no fear; for no sooner will he raise his sword and smite you than he will fall on the ground, a body without a soul. You will feel no pain from the blow, nor will any harm befall you. But if you defy him he will kill you.

Penguin Books, 1973, New York, 0-14-044289-8

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

I Was a White Slave in Harlem, Margo Howard-Howard, page 75, paragraph 2

She used to say, "I don't need make-up, I'm natural." She got a lot of tricks that way. Although she had been married and had three daughters, she had a black lesbian lover named Grumpy. They had met when Gloria was an attendant at the Central Islip State Hospital. Grumpy's brother, Percy, had landed her in there when she tried to stab him. Gloria and Grumpy fell in love and became roommate lesbian lovers and bred toy poodles. One was named Pavala, or Pavvy. Grumpy, who used to curl my hair over a hot stove with a curling iron, was always high on terpin hydrate, a 35 percent codeine cough syrup which was so strong that she had to sign for it at the pharmacy.

Four Walls Eight Windows, 1988, New York, 0-941423-14-x

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Summerhill, A Radical Approach to Child Rearing, A. S. Neill

Frankly, younger children are only mildly interested in government. Left to themselves, I question whether younger children would ever form a government. Their values are not our values, and their manners are not our manners.

Hart Publishing Co., 1964, New York

Monday, June 2, 2008

The Social Life of Things, Varna and the emergence of wealth in prehistoric Europe, Arjun Appadurai (Ed.), Colin Renfrew, Author, page 143

Now the notion of value is not an easy one to analyze, even in a society where rates of exchange can be directly observed. I should at once add here that I see some force in the arguments of Binford (1969, 163) that "psychological preferences" in archeology, using explanations based upon assumed states of mind of prehistoric people for which there is no direct evidence, are best avoided. Binford, I rather think, regards a concept like value as belonging to what Pike (as quoted by Harris 1968, 571) would term an "emic" category: something existing primarily in the thoughts and minds of individual members of a given community. But value can also be an "etic" category: something that acts upon the material world in a manner that can be observed and evaluated cross-culturally, for which the modern observer can therefore gather relevant material evidence1,

Cambridge University Press, 1986, Great Briton, 0-521-35726-8

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Walking Through Clear Water In a Pool Painted Black, Cookie Mueller, page 86, paragraph 3

I untied him and held him on my hip and we all looked at the house totally engulfed by flames. As I looked through the livingroom window, I saw Max's boots hanging on a nail on the mantelpiece. I'd put them there to dry before we'd had dinner, because he ran into the river earlier that day. My boots were there too. They got soaked when I ran after him. I looked at Max's feet. He was totally barefoot; so was I but I just hadn't noticed during the panic. It wouldn't do at all to be barefoot in November in the Canadian Rockies.

Semiotext(e), 1990, New York, 0-936756-61-6