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This site is maintained by Stewart Butterfield: stewart@sylloge.com

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  More mail problems: this is what Eudora looked like when I checked my mail after getting home today (and boy are my arms tired, honk). I have 63 totally blank messages. No headers, no body, no nothing. (I even opened the .mbx files and looked at the text: just a sea of "From ???@???" 06:39PM 1/31/01". ("06:39PM" looks oxymoronic to me.) Mail deleted from server, now ground to dust. I read Tuesday's mail (PST) but lost most of Wednesday's. If you sent me something, send again.

Also, I saw a murder a few weeks ago, and I even got pictures, but I forgot to link to it.




Tuesday, January 30

  You're the birthday
You're the birthday
You're the birthday
Boy or Girl ...




Monday, January 29

  Damn I am in a rush. But listen, listen to this song, if you want the feeling of gypsy jazz in Paris. It's my friend's new band(s). When they play acoustic, they are the Ragtime Millionaires; electrically, they are Gnu. This is them acoustically: Poor People of Paris (2.56 MB mp3)

You probably recognize the tune: here is some background with English lyrics (theirs is an instrumental version). More to follow.




Saturday, January 27

  The most amazing, totally opaque well-defined block of fog rolled down through the fjords and in from the outer harbour at sunset last night, engulfing the supertankers coming and going. It broke over Stanley Park and the west end like a wave smashing against rocks, except at 1/10,000,000th the speed (we watched from the Burrard bridge; five people who just happen to have digital video or still equipment and tripods on them is a lot to be crossing a bridge at once; odd). I didn't have time to go through the pictures that well, but none of them really captured it (it was at least a 225° panorama). But damn.

  Old friend number one, Alex Gilly, writes, appropos of this:

Sure, recording the past might at some point in the future become meaningless. It already is, in a way, since we don’t learn from the experience of others. As most of us on the planet today are miserable (my conjecture, bien sur), either miserably poor and living in man-made deserts or slums or leftover minefields, or else miserably wealthy and living isolated and confused existences, blind beyond our wealth and/or prestige-making activities, on occasion happy for a while because of some personal triumph in work or love or whatever, and that we repeat the same mistakes of our predecessors, despite their moral fables and despite the records we have of their lives, records that are not only available to us but actually read by us, but we don’t learn from them. Only personal experience counts.

The trick is to give up pursuing happiness.

Old friend number two, Dave Burke, writes, appropos of this:

Part of living in Victoria is god pumping Abraham into you. Sure sometimes you are required to say "Hey buddy! not so hard.", but God is usually an accommodating entity making Abraham pumping a major tourist attraction along with miniature world, the undersea gardens and whale watching. I have never experienced the mountain pumping that Nelly refers to, only the residential pumping. I hope to experience high altitude pumping in the near future.

Jim Cunliffe
CEO, Tourism Victoria

Tourism Victoria wishes to state for the record that although the repetitive use of the word pumping has a decidedly sexual connotation to 8 out of 10 of our employees, the sex trade in Victoria is not represented by God pumping Abraham in anyway, and is a success in its own right.

  One final old friend note: many years ago I lived in a house with, at various times, Globbie, Shiggins, Dav Box, Prostedude, Pelican and Oh-Hey, among others. (I am the Duke of Nicknames: I once called a guy named Lee, "Captain Lee Hamburger": a year later, even his mom called him Leeburger, and she lived 1,500 miles away. I didn't make up Oh-Hey though, and I wish I did. Also, I have never had a nickname that stuck. "Bootrah" is the closest, I'd reckon.)

Anyway, anyway, sorry. So this special language developed, the most distinguishing feature of which was the abstract verb "tee it up". That phrase abstracted over all verbs in the same way that "thing" or "stuff" abstracts over all nouns in regular person talk. You could tee up an exam (these were heady college days, remember) which was good, though sometimes bad, depending on the intonation. You could also tee some groceries up, or "tee up" as in "make out" (regular person talk is even funnier in some instances). You could tee up the Simpsons (there were religious rules about talking during the episode, and if you had the remote you had better pause and unpause the recording at just the right time). But mostly you'd tell people, "tee it up" and then they did the thing that you wanted; context is king.

But more interesting than the language were some of the ritual practices, which I just rediscovered with Globber a little while ago. There was "hot breath" which was pressing your mouth tightly onto someones clothes and exhaling deeply, making their skin all hot and uncomfortable. There was "small package" which was bending or folding someone up until they were taking up as little space as possible. And then there was "tiny baby" which was kind of like small package, except you didn't have to fold them up so much but you had to stroke their head and look at them with a dopey smile and say "Aw, tiny baby." But we weren't like, gay or anything.




Friday, January 26

  Who thought Paul Valery was a futurist? (I know Zworykin had a working TV in 1929.)

  hellomrpresident.com (via MetaFilter) is such a great idea. My message (160 character limit): "Making money is not the end of business, it is the beginning. You can make the world better: entrepreneurism is powerful. Practice solidarity."

  I wonder how much of this is going on in your average city. In parts per million. While I walk down the street and stare at people ("oh! funny beard! ... what's he looking for? ... oh, those arms!" etc.) I never imagine that all the other people are checking me out, and each other too. But of course they are.

  Nelly Furtado: About Nelly

I have always been in awe of nature and all things innovative. Although I grew up in Victoria, B.C, a mere suburb of a city, I know what independence is, I know what soul is and I know what God is. I know what it feels like to sing on the top of a mountain as if God is pumping Abraham straight into me from heaven.

  50 cups of coffee | spilled milk | don't cry, it's still good for you: The other Strange Brew.




Wednesday, January 24

  Gung Hay Fat Choy




Tuesday, January 23

  DO YOU WANT TO GET SEXUALLY EXCITED? BREATHE A PIZZA!!

Were you fun of oysters and champagne? Did you rely on the aphrodisiac effect of crustaceans and caviar? Forget it! Try pizza. A group of experts from Illinois discovered that the domestic fragrance of mozzarella and tomato sexually excites more than a pumpkin cake or popcorn or cheap fragrances or carefully prepared dishes in famous restaurants.

  Garibaldi Provincial Park. I can't believe this is an hour from my apartment and I've been out there once in two years. Shame. Compare that hike to getting up this (a hitherto unknown Haughey production, note). I don't think I'll ever ascend the latter, but I want to see the first again this spring.




Saturday, January 20

  Getting on with it.

Speaking of the ancient past, what about way, waaay, in the future? Not 100 or 1,000 years from now (lame!) but, why not?, keep embiggening the number up the orders of magnitude until you get to 100,000 years, 1,000,000 years, 10,000,000 years from now. The year 100,000,000 anno Domini. Certainly not; Pater Noster will likely have been forgotten by then.

Forget, forget, about the millions of hours of broadcast television, the faint twinklings of which are barely now reaching outside our galaxy, the trillions of lines of newsprint in every language, the tourist brochures, the tax forms, the driver's license database, the manga and scientific journals; forget the voice mail and post it notes and personal journals and day planners and marriage certificates; none of the satellite-transmitted on-the-spot breaking news of, say, assassinations and bombings or civil wars or famines, any particular holocaust, colonization of there or us.

You think being an historian in 500 years will be hard? Imagine being a religious leader after half a billion more years of waiting for the messiah. I mean, how long can we be entetertained by our wondering? Just the conventions of dramatic form, more different music, existetialism, ironic blah blah and post-anything. That far in the future? It is impossible to think about, and yet it still seems like the idea of recording the past must at some point in the future become meaningless. The insignificance of even the most at-the-time significant event, once entered into a grand catalog of effectively infinite length shrinks in immportance untils its contemplation by anyone would only be a freak event. History is precious because of its scarcity, like gold or diamonds.

So, then, back to the past: imagine a basically static agrarian society that had been operating in the same place for several thousand years. Because it has an effect on everyone's daily bread, the changing of the chief might be significant; the death of a hero, the evils of a rogue: these things might have some play in the gossipy corners for a time. But the oral tradition gets bogged down soon enough with which kings were here and there and when, and who was the most beautiful or strongest or fastest, and who slayed whom and for what. (Where is Ozymandias now?)

A recognition would develop that everything new was more or less the same, and like a sedimentary rock, the layers of history would accrue, a whorl here and there, but mostly stacked planes of slightly different shade of gray. The motivation for caring about the specific actions of a specific Lord fade away and are replaced by an urge to codify, to encapsulated the lessons that time offers stripped of any particular manifestation. This is my creation story for creation stories and a reason to think that Ecclesiastes 1:10 is a throwing up of hands, a resignation from a certain way of looking back at our lives and the lives of our ancestors.

The way to this is deduced: "We don't need to remember everything that happened, so long as we can come up with a handful of stories that get at the roots of things." And "things" as we know, are pride and sloth and envy and gluttony and there needs to be warnings against betrayal and justifications for righteousness, sundry rules for things, how many shekels he owes he whose slaves are killed (accidentally or on purpose) and not to boil a kids in its mother's milk, not to build churches out of hewn stone and so forth.

Or perhaps, if the peoples' tastes run more towards wheels within wheels and ultimateillusionsbeyondwhichareultimatetruths, things could go a different way, but the point is, perhaps, it could be (I speculate here) that religions are born from decaying piles of untended-to history. Once it all just becomes too much, and those things that people once died for become as common as the tiny hairs on the legs of bugs, then it is time to abstract up: one might say that religion is calculus to history's algebra, a calculus of moments.




Friday, January 19

  Inbox State of Emergency Declared

I get these emails that say things like "Dude, what the fuck? Hurry up." and "I haven't heard back from you about ..." and "I'm sorry if my last message offended you ..." Well, let me tell you folks: it is not you. I mean, it's not me either, really. But it is definitely not you.

Something very strange is up with the sylloge mail server. Or at least, that is my scapegoat. The problem is that I keep on missing emails that were delayed. I have a few thousand emails in my inbox and if there is some lag in the delivery, or the dates are wrong on the sender's machine or something else-like, then they go somewhere in the middle of the inbox, where I never notice them. So I think the other person is "it" and they think that I'm "it".

As you can imagine, that doesn't work too well. Well! Well, I have wasted too much of my life with inbox disorganization and it's time to stop! I hereby declare a state of emergency while I move to a folder based system. Please, if you are waiting to hear from me, send me an email and tell me. I don't know which way is sideways anymore. But in the near future, like Fraser always told me was the best, my inbox will be my email to do list only. Then we'll be flying!




Thursday, January 18

  Unapologetic Latimer Starts Sentence

Metaphysics is a domain of inquiry preferable to ethics for just the reason that it's easier.

  The lights went out in Vancouver the night before last (and the water was out in my building yesterday, which made me think, lemme tell you) and for about 30 seconds, it was surreal. Totally black — it made no difference when I blinked and the silence was perfect. It was like being in the middle of a wilderness.

Then a car alarm, then another. A few seconds later generators started kicking in and some ambient light returned. After an hour of reading by candlelight and noodling, I went for a walk into downtown. Cops were stationed every few blocks, the underground parking lots served as resonating chambers for the subterrean generators creating a noise that you couldn't talk over, the Eaton's sign burned brighter than anything and a fire in a dumpster at the end of an alley would have made a nice video shot. Then blink blink blink and block after block of street lights came on as window lit up.




Tuesday, January 16

  I want a new drug. From the people who brought you Future Opioids (which I found via Alamut), Cocaine.org, The Hedonistic Imperative and this critique of Brave New World. The project? The use of biotech to abolish suffering, all of it. But this drug stuff is just for the impatient masses and those who are not yet ready ...

I'm intrigued.

  As promised: Em does it from both ends (258 K)




Saturday, January 13

  Brain Drain: my friend Hans is on the cover of the Sun again.

"See this little baby here," he says, stopping to admire one of his favourite pieces of equipment. "You can't buy a more expensive microscope."

  Q: When Is It Best To Take Crack Cocaine?

There is perhaps a single predictable time of life when taking crack-cocaine is sensible, harmless and both emotionally and intellectually satisfying. Indeed, for such an occasion it may be commended. ...

Drawing life to a close with a transcendentally orgasmic bang, and not a pathetic and god-forsaken whimper, can turn dying into the culmination of one's existence rather than its present messy and protracted anti-climax.

  Number one on my hit parade at the moment is Bonnie Prince Billy. Going out to get yourself some? I suggest "Black" from I See a Darkness. (hipped to me by Eric)

  I'm reading Ada and found this passage tongue-tipply good:

... for instance that ditty recited between knee-knocking and palpebra-lifting, by a half-Russian, half-dotty old doctor, doc, toc, ditty, dotty, ballatetta, deboletta ... tu, voce sbigottita ...spigotty e diavoletta ... de lo cor dolente ... con ballatetta va ... va ... della strutta, destruttamente ... mente ... mente ... stop that record ...

(palpebra = eyelid)

  A little bird told me that there is to be a beard-wise sequel to the classic Em shaves his head animated gif explostion that first enraptured me all those years ago.




Wednesday, January 10

  A truly fantastic story which was shown to me by Caterina. Until I was five, my life was just like that, except I never had any siblings. And the ending is substantially different (which if I said anything more would reduce your enjoyment of the story).

Related: because I had no siblings, and because there was only one other kid near me (about a 1/2 mile away) and because that kid was named "Noah", I thought all other kids were to be called Noah, like that was the generic name for children. Adults each had their own name, but children were undifferentiated. Noahs. My mom tells this story of when she took me on the train at the age of three or so and I was flabbergasted: "Noah! Noah! ... Noah!! Noah!!!" Everywhere I turned there were Noahs.

  Sweet. We do have an online grocery here. Quick.com (you have to love their stupid map where they ask you to choose city and there is only one to choose from ...) Thanks Craig.




Tuesday, January 9

  I just found out now, but McCoy Tyner is doing a three night stand (January 15, 16 & 17) at Rossini's (warning: bad site). I missed him last time, but it was supposed to have been a super great show. Drop me a line if you are thinking of going, whoever you are.

  How ironic that ... oh nevermind.

  Ti. Now I wish I could have waited a few months ...

  I forgot to post this funny spam, which contains the line:

We think that after we had formed partnership, we can growth together in the Internet soon.

  I'm nearing the end of my first game at chessgame.com (be sure to check out what people are saying) and after a series of clever moves I am stymied. [Update: I have lost.]




Monday, January 8

  In an effort to stave off, perhaps, a cold, and also general bad-feeling, I slept for nearly 24 hours. The result was a case of bedhead so severe that I had to be rushed to St. Paul's for emergency surgery. The surgeons were able to tackle most of it, but I will likely be left with some permanent cowlicks.




Sunday, January 7

  If you had seen the moon from where I saw it just now, we'd have glanced askew and nodded at each other, brows raised, and then gone back to gazing up, knowing that we'd refer back to this moment at some point.




Saturday, January 6

  If you like flat stories, then you'll like these pictures of a pileup on the highway that was kind of relaxing.

Also flat: two people have just walked into my apartment today, one when I was sleeping. But I knew them, and it was OK. Well, anyway, I hope you are well. I should go.




Friday, January 5

  It is such a beautiful day. I love it when there is shiny blue sky out one window and black clouds looming in the other. And it's warm like the spring.

Also, wouldja get a load of this? Very cool: editanypage

Also, my Powerbook is back from the dead. A very rare processor board failure. The interesting part is how well it worked, warranty-wise. I just brought back where I bought it and they fixed it and I went to go pick it up. No forms or signatures or anything. Just fixing. That's good.




Thursday, January 4

  If there is one thing I hate, it is learning a lesson. If there is one thing I love, it is learning a lesson.




Wednesday, January 3

  It's not my birthday — I just had a cupcake. Thanks though :)

Tuesday, January 2

  I was planning to go through all the pictures that I forgot about over the course of this year and write a few reflections, find some good links, and mix them all up together. But instead, I hurt my eye. So, in place of the grand retrospective and in the spirit of 26 photographs of a woman holding various ponytails and Fergusson in my living room, here is about a dozen pictures of my eye when it was hurt (warning: medical-y)..

Also, recently refound: another newsbox message

Here are some of the other things on this site:

The 5k contest
This year's contest is now open for entries. Help collectively correct for my laziness by telling everyone you know.

Stephen Toulmin's 1979 Ryerson Lecture at the University of Chicago, The Inwardness of Mental Life, reprinted with the kind permission of the Author & the University.

An excerpt from an interview with philosopher Donald Davidson, which I find complements the former.

A motion study where you can see all the frames of an animation at once, but also still see the animation.

Some pictures of my friend Paul spinning around in some art, which is really a machine.

Some pictures of Illuminares, Vancouver's annual latern festival.

Some pictures of The Symphony of Fire, Vancouver's annual fireworks competition.

A video from my second trip to Vegas in the year 2000. Sad, that.

And more, to be dusted off.