Experiment(al) Writing

Random Thought

2011-12-11T04:42:00.000-08:00

There's this series of online videos in CollegeHumor called Full Benefits, about having a relationship in an office environment [citation needed]. Short story shorter, they have a secret relationship, a non-secret one, a secret 'non-break-up', a real break up, <insert other permutations here>. While secretly partially broken up, thereby blurring the boundaries of the friendzone, a rumor spreads that Sarah went on a date, and the guy's not David.

Original data: Sarah went on a date.

The official report: David put on a hat and a fake mustache, or alternatively a fur nacho, to follow Sarah around, then staked out at the restaurant they were having dinner in, and when he confronted them inside the restaurant, the host and three guests needed to physically drag him out while he was sobbing his eyes out in front of everybody, the ensuing depression drove David to suicide, but instead fell asleep from taking four aspirin pills.

Of course, Lewis Caroll couldn't have bended reality harder, and he wrote fiction made famous in the fact it didn't make much sense, but the bottom line here is, every time information is messed with, via transmission, maybe, there is always a chance of error. And like genes or memes, they accumulate, the errors never leave and actually compound themselves over time, until the final product is so far from the original material that it is hard to believe they were related at all (I'm looking at you, incredulous Creationists).

Unlike in the realm of genetics and memetics, wherein survival of the most virulent gene or idea is what matters, error in measurement is much abhorred. It's harder to come up with an objective defense of a measured deviation, than a mutation of a fish's fins, but when it comes right down to it, errors are unavoidable. If we lost our modern standard on dealing with errors, then we could have in our esteemed body of knowledge, embedded in the Michaelson-Morley experiments, maybe, of an equivalent of 'Sarah went on a date' transformed into 'David had a mental breakdown', 'Constructive interference pattern' into 'Ether exists!' Could you imagine?

(Sir, promise, aayusin ko yung scenes sa Christmas @-) :)) )

[2.1] (draft)

2011-12-11T04:06:00.000-08:00

Enter Aloysius and Garemont
Aloysius
   Do you think there exists an objective
     sharpest knife, or is it just mere fancy?
Garemont
   I fear more that the question suffers more from
     the lack of intellectual pursuit than it is to find
     an answer. Maybe, sir, if we define what it means
     to be the sharpest knife, the answer would logically
     present itself from the premise.
Aloysuis
   Let us imagine a great standard then,
   a block of barley seed a foot in all
   dimensions. Let it be soft as the air,
   so that only the blade's sharpness matters.
   It shall be said that the sharpest knife could
   cut the block of seeds in most partitions.
Garemont
   Well, then

[1.2] (draft)

2011-11-26T07:15:00.000-08:00

Enter Josephus and Sena.
Sena
    Before you sing, would you mind a question?
      What is your humor?
Josephus
                      'Tis does not bode well
   That you should ask and in so have implied,
   And damaged, your expertise, in wanting.
     Does the chemist confide with hydrogen?
     Does gravity hold court with physicists?
     Those are the objects of their profession;
     Is it I or you that doesn't meet standards?
Sena
   So, cold and dry, like the earth and black bile?
   'Twere brave to have tested your deliver'r,
   I understand your frank incredulity,
     But, slow, I may be your execution'r.
   What talent would thou of your repertoire?
Josephus
   'Tis fake news; a genuinely true story,
     Written by that wanton Decemberist.
     Of love and murder, shall I sing with heart,
     As if I have grown none for the former,
     And killed by the latter.
Sena
   Then let me hear.
Josephus
   I had entered into a marriage,
   in the summer of my twenty first year
   and the bells rang for our wedding
     Only now do I remember it clear.

   No more a rake and no more a bachelor
   I was wedded and it whetted my thirst
   Until her womb started spilling out babies
     Only then did I reckon my curse.

     First came Isaiah and his crooked little fingers
   Then came Charlotte and that wretched girl dawn
     Ugly Myfawnwy died on delivery
   Mercifully taking her mother along.

     What can one do when one is a widower,
   Shamefully saddled with three little pests
   All that I wanted was the freedom of a new life
   So, my burden I began to divest.

     Charlotte I buried after feeding her foxglove
   Dawn was easy, she was drowned in the bath
     Isaiah fought but was easily bested
   Burned his body for incurring my wrath.

     So that's how I came, your humble narrator
   To be living so easy and free
     Expect that you think that I should be haunted
   But it never really bothers me.
Sena
   Such a horrible story to breath life
     With the muse of music; we may meet 'gain.
Exeunt Sena. Enter Calliope and Urania, aloft.
Urania
   Is this not source of that musical drawl
     Like beleaguered Trojans on the Scaean wall?

It's time for: What Would Happen Next?

Urania and Calliope, upon hearing Josephus sing, come down and talk to him. They ask him of his aims. Josephus does not want to become famous, he just wants to discover what makes certain music pop and others don't. He is frustrated by how the music industry ultimately uses premonition and guess-work and little empirical study to determine the value of certain artists, and compares them to Aristotle and Plato, as if their judgment were beyond reproach. He, in the end, wants to determine what makes some artists who pass their tests fail in application (like Kenna), crap artists who fail the tests pass in application, and, ultimately, how good artists both pull through the tests and application, and do so in measurement.
     Urania and Calliope invite him to the slope of Parnassus.

[1.1]

2011-11-19T08:28:00.000-08:00

[Flourish.] Enter Urania, Calliope, and their train.
Calliope
     Oh! From what sea does this idle foam come
     that washes 'pon our feet like Archean scum!
   Had the tide grown melancholy and tired
   That the waves offers us the uninspired?
     The winter solstice, I fear, has come 'gain.
     Hark, do you see in the anthroblian glen
     The nest of the halcyon from the fall'n Rome?
     Fie! Such vile creatures to let freely roam!
Urania
   The stars do not shine where the bird doth nest
     And the glen too bright that I must divest.
Calliope
     What age is it, that it is dark and light?
Urania
     Tis the entertainment age, a gaudy blight
     o' the mind.
Calliope
                         Then shall we to what gives offense,
     And drive the kingfisher, or shall we hence?
     Consider that our service not wanted.
Urania
     Then we belike Alonso Quijano.
Calliope
     And what then if our help was still needed?
Urania
     Then on the mirror shall we decept'n sow
   And don the mask of Quixote. It is
     a symptom of power to see amiss
     And crave to repair it. We're not cobblers
     To render broken soles.
Calliope
                                      Fortune-teller,
     then read one last thing. Consider want.
Urania
     Desire amplifies effort with talent,
     But never does it ability grant.
     Without it, will is likely impotent.
Calliope
     Consider a brooding savant in judgment.
Urania
     Then I judge revolution as answer,
     And drive hence the halcyon with a storm.
Calliope
     And how shall we will his metric measure?
Urania
     Sirrah! Bring here my divining platform.

[Enter servant holding a globe]
Urania
     Bring him to Delphi to meet with his guide
     At Apollo's temple. He shall be tried
     By climbing the slope of high Parnassus,
   And if he succeeds, we become his Muse.
     From its peak, shall we watch this merry plot.
Calliope
     Then I'll bring one who would, could, but act not.
[Exeunt.]