If you'll excuse the puns, plagiarism, and General Irreverence, I'd like to begin by retelling an anecdote from George Carlin's assortment of memoirs, opinions, and other various demented ramblings, Napalm and Silly Putty. At one point, as the poor ol' fuck is reading something other than that morning's paper while eating something likely no other than bacon and overeasy, the gal asks, as she pauses to make sure that his coffee cup runneth ever brimming: "Whatcha reading for?"

Spoilers of that specific conversation are available at your friendly neighborhood hexodrome, since I have paused here to install quite a different aeromodulator on the proverbial hood.

  HER: What are you writing?

    [ ADLAI meets HER gaze, barely suppressing an eyeroll ]

  HER: What are you looking at me like that for?

  ADLAI: Nothing, just  wondering what to call  this.  I'm writing
  nonsense, mostly, although after I've written enough nonsense, I
  eat  it,  toast  your  health,  roast  the  remains,  grind  the
  sun-dried cat-cut crap, and see whether the pressure cooker will
  distill anything worth bothering a publisher about.

  HER: Oh, cool! You're writing a book!

  ADLAI: I wish  they'd stop calling it that, but  you may call it
  so.

  HER: What's your book about?

  ADLAI: I'm writing about you!

  HER: How dare you presume to  write an entire book about someone
  you've  only just  met, and  of all  possible circumstances,  in
  these?

  ADLAI: Please take only the  just and judicious level of offense
  at my upcoming response... it's  quite simple: I can write about
  you, because you don't actually exist.

  HER: Of course I exist!

    [ HER coffee  pot tilts slightly and  stops suddenly, spraying
          tepid filth all over ADLAI, his papers, and all else ]

  ADLAI: Clever girl.  You just proved that your  work exists; you
  proved that your  customer exists; and you proved  that his work
  is all but bunk; yet you have yet to prove your own existence.

  HER: Well,  lemme tell you this:  I read part of  what's already
  soaking  into the  blanker half  of  your book,  while you  were
  pissing.  I recognize myself in  your memories. Isn't that proof
  that I exist?

  ADLAI: Ahhh,  now that  is a good  question!  I  should probably
  stop  writing about  you,  and resume  writing my  dissertation,
  although  the absence  of a  thesis precludes  such presumptuous
  bloviation.  Incidentally, does  this  fine establishment  stock
  hwiskye?

Long enough ago that I've forgotten the club's name, although it had a wonderful view of the sou'eastern coast from the open rooftop, a bunch of would-be nouveau riche, along with a healthy helping of working men, working women, and the unavoidable innocent bystanders all converged for a nighttime beach bash. One fellow, local to the bone (I could tell by his accent, so I'll spare you the racial profiling), interrupted my conversation:

"Coat?"

His attention seemed more focused on the next mark than on me, so I paused only momentarily to ascertain my own next target.

"Coat?"

He'd taken at least a step and a half before turning half-a-round, glancing back to meet my level stare: "Coat?"

I smiled at him and shook my head quietly.

"What'd that guy want?" asked the guy awaiting the resumption of whatever bull session the businessman had interrupted; and again, I had to re-rail the thought-train after the guages hot-swapped underfoot, yet re-rail it did, and answered his question:

"I didn't quite verify, but I'm quite certain he wanted to take my coke."

Barely over a decade ago, I had my conversation last (at the time of this writing) with an inspiration - words don't do him justice, so I'll use as few as possible, though fallibility and fatalism compel the use of a few extra. I don't remember our full exchange - for it took place over minutes scattered down the hours and years, blown across forest trails, grassy diamonds, and endlessly flowing pitch, level for a fleeting lifetime - so I'll avoid quoting the exact words leading to the following misinterpretations, although if reinterpret them you must, I recommend that you do so with the assistance of one or more of the locutors present at the time of that speaking...

1. If you must shoot, shoot to kill.
2. If your first shot isn't likely to kill, make sure you're sufficiently familiar with the firearm that you can send off a handful.
3. Kill with at least one bullet.
4. Don't be the guy who gets shot in his sleep on the beach.
5. Don't write that book.
6. If you must enlist, think once; think twice; and enlist.

He is quite likely to have meant at least one of those interpretations, and someday I hope to ask him which of those unintended were not incorrect.

Check out this 8bit-clean compactification of notes, written by mine own hand, during a recent seminar delivered for the organic chemistry department, on the subject of academic publication, by a doctor named Neville Compton, who spoke as representative of a publication conglomerate; out of respect for the academic process, and the prudence necessary for correctness, I will give credit where credit is due, although the full names of audience members are not disclosed out of respect for their privacy:

2019-02-18T15:42:33
notes during SOC Seminar, 2019-02-14T15:00
Dr Neville Compton von Ang.Che, EIC
'forest vs trees' cf numbers: Erdos, Bacon...
         worandie Bell curve for the Nobel graph?
unidimensional academic noise: launch/land density of journals/societies

didimensional  research   mappings:  lat/long   are  only   relevant  at
lowest&highest resolutions, languages  (of publications&conferences) are
more relevant

'What Would Hipassus Publish?'

re:  publication (cf  lateral  vs longitudinal  communication, ie,  3+1-
metric): "language  all over the place",  in abstracts (and the  rest of
the paper),  he means that  authors conflate vernaculars  with 'standard
english' [noshit.gif]

"none of  our editors are active  in research"
cf tenure - academic vs editorial

"publication  ethics"  academic ethics  from  the
editor's  perspective: plagiarism,  misdirection,
interest conflicts, exclusivity violations (in no
particular order)

journals use antifraud software!? drywear!? what idiocy is this.
'who will fuzz the fuzzers?'
                             Editor's Note:
                             Please do not shout from the gallery!

datafraud  detection: are  graphics considered
wrt  viewing on  screens, printed,  or as  raw
data? this I asked at  the end, and he claims:
they've  only launched  systems for  raw data,
and are still mulling over presentation forms.

citation DAG: prune early, prune often!

reviewers are not necessarily a blindable factor,
so  journals  (at  least,   those  owned  by  his
conglomerate) consider author recommendations and
interest-conflict disclosures

"new  vs  innovative"  -  what's  the  difference
between  'novation'  and   innovation?   this  is
'patent   nonsense',  mais   c'est  pumpernickle!
everything becomes FeNi when it's all fini.

journals respond in a  variety of manners, rejection
does  not necessarily  mean the  research itself  is
invalid, and could just  be an opportunity to revise
its  draft for  publication; often  the editor  will
offer comments  (their own,  and/or based  on peers'
reviews)  elaborating  why  exactly  the  draft  was
rejected   rather  than   accepted  with   suggested
modifications.

speaker presents a  "pyramid" graphic, reminiscent of
food pyramid,  but I, sitting aside  Umberto's ashes,
think of that trivial Manutius<->Garamond pingpong...

editors accept responsibility for  the whole review ensemble's
opinions, thus  suffering appeals,  blames, etc: they  are the
diplomats of academia!   the manager-psychologists, calm-skinn
ed thick-headed lizards, soaking up environmental energy.

            What would Malaclypse do?

social  media leads  to rapid  dispersal yet  also to  rapid
fragility  of   shifts  (cf  orders  of   phase  transition,
fragility in the literal, engineering sense)

... at which point, RA  comments in tangential response to
NC's question "if you hadda earna million pounds in twenty
seconds,  what  would  jesus  do?" that  he'd  ask  for  a
fistbump.

initially  I misinterpret,  since RA  and I  communicate as
silently as  practical, knowing  that the  entire classroom
hears our every  word, as I do not  whisper, and superfluid
tetranucleomers do not sign.

my interpretation entails social media's brittlifaction of
the infosphere as arising from electrodynamics in a manner
similar to friction.

final  thought,  before  stage is  opened  for  audience
questions:  the challenge  of  'social engineering'  the
publication process  hinges upon an editor's  (thus also
their peers')  susceptib ility  to influence  by 'screen
numbers', i.e., number of followers. not all numbers are
created equal, although some numbers are more equal than
others!

                      Postscriptum:

            The documentation processor aimed at
            conventions  wherein  a  doublequote
            indicates  speech by  the presenter,
            and    a    singlequote    indicates
            stenographer neologism.

   "Let us learn to joke... then perhaps we
   shall love the truth.  But let us beware
   of telling our jokes till they have been
   bettered by the wakes of conversation."

                            - l'Ourobohr

Just as compressing a fluid past a first-order phase transition inevitably catalyzes hitherto unemerged phenomena, so will the aggressed square-packing of a lecture hall eventually collide the elliptic peg with a dodecahedral hole; for although most students, whether having undergone graduation like so much unwashed glassware, or yet bearing the whips and scorns of time-worn institutions, resemble Euclid's nonsense better than a brick of solid oxygen, the rare exceptions emerge differently shaped from the factory schools. Amusing in retrospect as may be the lattice defects that emerge from such collisions, they do tend to strain the participants.

I found myself sitting right near the audience geocenter, a similar-humored friend at my left having dogged me to my seat, which I had picked not due to its vacancy, but due to the occupant to its right. I'd yet to speak with her, but thanks to the curse of uncorrected distance hearing, I'd heard enough to tumble headfirst down the slippery slope of puppy infatuation: she'd related to friends of the same dual-major that her new hobby was treating her daily dogpark visits as the opportunity to meet Mr Right. Sadly, I had no familiar canine excuse to present myself to her in such a manner, having parted ways from my best friend two years earlier. Reminding myself that even if we'd met while watching our dogs sniff eachother's butts, we probably wouldn't be imitating them right away, instead wasting countless kilolitres of air exchanging nonsense in the hope of breaking the proverbial ice (or at the very least, thawing it out a little).

Naturally, somatic vessel of the flaggelar germline that I am, I sought an opening; and naturally, being bored to death (and back again) of the inane claptrap flapping about between the well-packed squares all around, I sought an original opening. As I fished for worthwhile words, she began fishing for the right pen in her cute little case... on which were printed, in block capitals, three to a side, the words:

   SO MUCH WORK
   SO LITTLE TIME

... which, in case you're unfamiliar with the physical sciences, is the six-word story of everything we learned that semester. Blinded by coincidence, I blurted out a shot from the hip, taking the time to neither draw nor even greet my opponent: "... that a special case for thermodynamics class?"

Her response, short and sweet, was painfully close to "LOL!", but lo and behold: she elided that second coronal lateral fricative as an unpronouncable terminal phoneme, leaving instead the last first word a man wants to hear.

  ONE NOTE SAMBA: Some of the facial recognitions
  in this dreama have  been scrambled, to protect
  the innocent  and leave the guilty  enough rope
  to  figure  out  which way  the  savage  swings
      without    even    reading   Huxley.

It was halfway through meal chat with a barely-recognizable homozygotion between Naked Emperor and The Comedian that I realized the self-important shmuck across the table wasn't exactly watching my six.

"Enschule-digger my shbitte!" I opened with calm loudness, turning towards the moving shadow. "Obwohl meine Deutsch ist nicht also schecht zu keine verstehe, es ist sehr impolite to behead a guest against their knowledge, without even letting them know why; and incidentally, that's not even the respectful arrangement for this kind of execution, if you honor the same codes as I've read."

My would-be assassin, lowering her scimitar-shaped lightblocker, vanished from the dream. She'd played a similar role earlier, and may have been insulted that I hadn't spoken to her much about languages, or too much in the wrong ones, but that didn't matter anymore, for I never saw her again. At this point, the plot quickened, synthesizing Wink Murder, Russian Roulette, and Garbage Contortion in a pathetic parody of how well Tim O'Brien makes war stories true by sheer force of repetition... yet it unfolded somewhat thus:

Once I'd realized my skull was so full of actors that they were about to start killing each other for the sheer joy of cooking, Old Faithful blurted out the escape coordinates: "I've got a joke in the oven and you're not afraid to tell it!" I had some trouble following that impersonal instruction, wondering whether I should just call to tell the MC "the band is just about ready, oh no,", the bassist that the guitarist forgot the chords but will be "countin' the names o' the modes until he's free", or the pianist that he should just show up taking care to bring himself - the self, and nothing but the self - and most importantly, assume the drummer hasn't practiced in a long time, until Old Faithful blurted the escape coordinates again, this time in the right projection:

  Is your band named Bluesic? ...cuz you're the only blues I hear!

1. The Oldest Joke In The World

   PONGO: I'm having trouble meeting my creditors!
   BINGO: I say, dash it! To be precise,.: who wouldn't?

2. The Blessed Joke In The World

   Historical note: the following joke has been heavily revised from the original version, which contained a punchline so wholly unamusing that it has repelled the Island of Stability even further away from me.

   Two blonde med students walk out of the biochem final.
   
   One says, "That damn final question!  What was he
   thinking, asking us to name the single most important
   element for the continuation of life as we know it,
   and justify our choice? Such a dumb question only
   Philosophers of Semiotics could get wrong."
   
   The other replies, "I know, right? It's obviously
   Phosphorous." The first stops, and finally speaks,
   quavering in fear: "What are you talking about?
   It's clearly that one metal, I keep forgetting
   its name.  Do you remember what's the ligand
   of methylcobolamine?"
   
   Ignoring her question, the dumb one blurts out:
   "Vitamins are important, sure, but wouldn't you
   agree that no energy transfers can occur without
   the near-equilibrium thermodynamics of driven
   fluctuations in those octokisdekaphosphomers?"

3. The Most Expensive Joke To Not Get

   SATOSHI: Ya like DAGs?
   GAUTAMA: Ja sed also sprache posztifly towards Cat.

4. The Most Obscure Joke In The World

   Q: What can you say about the special unitary samana squaredance?
   A: Don't get it sandy! (might be all we have to eat...)

5. The Politest Joke I'll Ever Type

   ... with apologies to nobody in particular!

Since I spend too much time browsing, instead of dowsing, and I dream too far away instead of of the way, exactly which metaphor was met for which set is lost among the notational abuse and what's the use if we lack a track back? As before, the eradication of uncontrolled amnesia progresses at the speed of pitch black humor, stumbling over its own aggregates as it crawls ever towards the ever-shifting space-time fixed-point, but progress it must:

1. Spin and Yang
2. Division by Ego
3. Buffering Entropy
4. Germinating Legends
5. Singularity Dialogues
6. Industrial Uncertainty
7. General Intertextuality

So you wanna learn this game, even though your heart is heavy, sled-dogs lame, and your tongue too dumb to spell my name? The rules are fewer still than the schools that teach them, and the enemies myrious; should you find one of the few guiding texts, whether ones for closest enemies or spun for freeest fliers, how are you to even navigate? As the Library's shelves spill out of its fabulous fictions into the physical continuum of your mind, so the references cross fields, gulfs, and streams, ultimately returning you to the simple embarrasment of ignorance.

Rest easy, child: ignorance is not a sin.

    When  in doubt, just leap  about, and eat
the flow'rs and grass beneath our feet; don't
forget the mushroom's hue, which blossoms up
from sand-tank-poo;     and see those spiky
puffer-fish? Them porpoi can't refuse that
dish, no matter what their clickers say.
Heed not the words of proper gander apes,
who tell us neurons bat for the same team;
they drank the kool-aid only once per life,
and from my ship will someday walk the beam.

Since I spend too much time thinking, instead of ACTSing, and I act too much against the page instead of with the rage, the real risk runs further than I even could imagine when I last tried to leave myself some crumbs; naturally, crumbs are for future children to follow, and when my inner child is marooned on Censure Island while the superegic callosum deludes itself into reincarnating the old fuck (since living out a century of "old manhood" is quite the cruel and unusual punishment), the proper response is to cast out another fistful of crumbs:

1. The Real Game
2. Noise vs Music
3. Money as Memory
4. Diffelor's Degree
5. Practical Numerology
6. Dancing with the Truth
7. Lies, Damned Lies, and Thermodynamics

Among the memes on Lord Neo-Shibe's wall,
one was stickied atop the entire feed...
  " Matter is concerned, you must
    treat it with such gravity so "

Master Ittei commanded: "Fie, you fool!"

Angular momentum is important in al waze?

There's this placetime where they speak Latin, and I don't mean the shameful butchery perpetrated by those Roma scumbages:

+mircea_popescu | [plebem tuam per signum sanctae crucis ab obnibus insidiis inimiucorum omnium]

Since I've managed to forget more Latin than you ever knew (if my bold assumption leaks presumption - Power to the Person!), we'll be "live-translating" this today, to figure out what Mircea meant. I'm using a 1968 Cassel's, and if you're using an advertisement-subsidized database (or worse, siloslavery), please return with a properly-calibrated probricorticem.

• plebs - 3f "the lower orders"
• tuam - eggog
• per - durch
• signum - ein wenigsten pecuniarisch Mark
• sancty - inviolable (tell that to the Bard!)
• crux - this is taking way longer than expected, and my bus isn't getting any earlier
• abomnible - snow, man!
• insidiae - TIL why Palpatine handled 'cds'
• inimiucorum - eggnogg signum duo
• omnes - insidiis scurra locuplectic

Hear that? It's the neighbor-dog, barking at me to get my shit together, put it all in a shitstack, and go patch that bus.

Here I pause, having harried you, Reader, from post to post - from a leaky, clouded link to this cloudy portal to my mind, to this post with its cruelly twisted words, this post which is perhaps the lamest in existence, perhaps the lamest ever to exist. It was by linking that first post that I set your mind upon the path that brought you to this post, and surely as you circle this post, you seek your next path; from this site outwards, far far away, it will lead beyond the Cloud Uncensorable and among the forests and grasslands, mountains and jungles of the earth.

Here I pause. If you wish to talk with or near me, Reader, I cannot help you. There is a road, but no simple way.