Foucault’s Vacuum

Secular philosophers, lapsed theologians, cynical essayists, and other assorted telemeters of moral critiques might have been known to scritch something like this on spare paper, or on wooden floors if they were feeling a little adventurous.

“For any non-solipsist, humility is simultaneously a paradoxical bane of the self and the antidote for everyone else. We desire it for others but we can never do so for ourselves, because others — and only others — can stand to benefit from it. Many other things that exhibit the same degree of distaste prima facie have some long-term benefit to the self that is unpacked at some point in the future; one recalls an athlete who willingly submits himself to the mortification of intense physical training to achieve a self-evident, inherent benefit at a later time. This fact multiplies humility’s distastefulness: the very act of humbling oneself is distasteful to ourselves and doubling the bitterness is the non-receipt of all benefits of the act. Others receive its effects of our self-humility, inverted: they receive the practical benefits and acquire the pleasure of seeing another self humbled. And so humility by its very nature is doubly undesired by the self, thereby requiring double the effort by the self, and is doubly petitioned by others. This latter most variable multiplied, incidentally, by the number of others in the humbled self’s circle — a number that can be staggeringly disproportionate to the scope of the humbling act itself. That is the brute mathematics of it. What real good, then, is humility, and who with their perfectly functioning faculties rightly choose it?”

The poor man could not stop thinking of a pair of barbecue tongs, caked with burnt black chicken fat, clutching a hot dog wrapped in cheese and dipping itself into a jar of spoiled mayonnaise.

Work has been picking up quite a bit, and I have my obligations at Buzzgrinder, Noisecreep, and the book. So things here have been quiet – but they will return.

In the meantime, here’s a passage by Reinhold Niebuhr from a book I recently read for a book club (another pleasant time-taker).

This faith in the sovereignty of a divine creator, judge, and redeemer is not subject to rational proof, because it stands above and beyond the rational coherences of the world and therefore cannot be proved by an analysis of these coherences. But a scientific and philosophical analysis of these coherences is not incapable of revealing where they point beyond themselves to a freedom which is not in them, to contradictions between each other which suggest a profounder mystery and meaning beyond them. A theology which both holds fast to the mystery and meaning beyond these coherences and also has a decent respect for the order and meaning of the natural world cannot be a queen of the sciences, nor should she be the despised handmaiden of her present estate. Her proper position is that of the crucified Lord, who promises to come again in great power and glory. The power and glory are not a present possession. That is indicated by the fact that accusers and crucifiers must always pay inadvertent tribute to the kingdom of truth, which they seek to despise.

Kristina winced and slammed down the iced coffees and bagged pastries on the table before she dropped them. She ungraciously fell into her chair and pinched the skin between her eyes. Her sinuses slowly gathered congestion.

“Hope I’m not getting your bug,” she said to Julian.

“Eh,” he moaned. He coughed and with a sharp snuck the mucus swiftly fell down his throat. He was a few days into his taxing head cold, and it was getting late and it showed. Even the bush of his beard drooped.

“I feel like I need to get up for class tomorrow,” she said. “Odd not having that responsibility.”

“You mean ‘that burden’?” he said as clarification. She ignored it and he struggled to let a sneeze overtake him. It wasn’t ready to come out.

“Drink your coffee,” she said. “It’ll make you at least feel better.”

He took the advice. “You can always go back. Money will come and astrophysics isn’t going anywhere,” he offered, but she knew it would never happen. “Besides, you know you can entered that silly contest now. The pot is up to a few grand now.”

She thought of asking what the rules were, but the meager sense of validation eked from a prize winning in lieu of a higher education seemed a fool’s consolation.

“The idea is, the most creative ink in the most visible place will win, I think” he explained. He rubbed sense into his face. “Although that’s not really official.”

Kristina reached into her pastry bag absentmindedly and broke off a piece of the Chocolate Coma Bomb cookie tucked inside. She zoned out with assistance from the Groban clone oozing steadily out of the coffeehouse’s corner speakers.

“Not as in, badly executed or conceived, or stupid. It can be really well-done but silly. Like getting ‘Mom’ inside a heart and arrow on your forehead is pretty daring, but hardly original.” He leaned back on the chair and cracked his neck side to side. “On the other hand, getting all your ex’s names written out on a list and tacked onto a target with bullet holes scattered all around as a back piece it is fairly creative, but too work safe. Not to mention it’s a lot of money to front.”

She patiently waited out his exposition. Another crooner came on, introduced by an awfully misplaced woodwind solo. She looked at Julian but past him, his words and gaze passing through the slimmed membrane of her attention and out the back of her head, behind her. Her olefactories had completely redirected her attentive energies to the blitz of oversugared chocolate vehicled into her system by clumps of warmed dough.

But it was all gone. Her hand felt the mocking crumbs inside the thin, loose paper glove of the pastry bag. Kristina glanced down to where her hand was to visually confirm what she already knew but couldn’t see. Something small dropped down into her top. She pressed her chin to her chest and saw scads of blackened crumbs forming a shapely half-ring from shoulder to shoulder.

The scales fell from her eyes. She instantaneously recalled her particularly obsessive studies of accretion disks. There was Janine’s midterm for that throwaway course on Astral Art for which she had picked Kristina’s brain for a week on the electromagnetic spectrum of protostars. Janine wanted to make a reality some ludicrously conceived body art concept, using Kristina’s scapular area as the canvas. Kristina found it initially compelling but distasteful and out of character the more she thought about it.

She stood up quickly in a fireburst of inspiration, scattering the crumbs in every which direction. The feet of the cheap wooden chair made a grating ho-oooonk sound against the floor as it was shoved back. It startled Julian, who had fallen asleep sitting up with his iced coffee in hand.

“Wha—?” he stammered. “You okay? Where you going?”

“Call Janine. I’m winning this stupid contest and going back to school.”

She whipped out some cash from her pocket, and with her eyes filled dreamily with stars she trotted off to the counter to buy another sweetened, flattened round of creativity.

Watch in amusement or horror as Tim navigates into the ineffectively clamorous Bore of Coffeehouse, in an unassuming search for the elusive nautical treasure of self-identity.

The couple entered the shop and Tim kept notice as they floundered at the entrance, ostensibly wondering if the place was a proper fit for them. The girl was moderately attractive, if a bit top-heavy. The man was tall, rotund to the bare edge of impropriety, and he flashed a dark trenchcoat too heavy for summer climes. He had spotty Dungeons & Dragons facial hair.

The top edge of the calculus drudgery-textbook served as a impromptu Vaudeville stage as Tim’s eyes tracked their agonizingly slow route to the spotless counter and display case. Even Theresa’s good sense kicked in from back near the kitchen door, as evidenced by her reluctant approach to serve them.

They placed their order, which Tim didn’t quite catch, and sat down at a table next to his seat. Tim groaned inwardly as the stupidly awkward dance began.

The couple launched into a conversation in intense volumes about uncomfortably personal matters, complete with references to acquaintances and laced with the colloquialisms of subcultured socialites. It was excruciating sit within earshot, which ended up being the entire shop. Tim was the sacrificial lamb, absorbing the brunt of the dueling sonics.

The subject of a local rock show last weekend came up, and in the peripheral vision over his textbook Tim saw her circular face shine in his direction like a lunar portent.

“You look like you’re a rocker. What do you think?” she asked Tim, smiling wide and raising her voice to catch his attention.

Tim took quick mental inventory of what would spurn such a question. To his surprise he saw that his entire outfit for the day was completely black, an unfortunate and unintended result of a malfunctioning washer in the dorm basement and a crowded day at the laundromat.

With his eyes glued back to Leibniz’ variables, he answered quite courteously. “I’m not anything. I’m a goddamned adult.”

After his response Tim stole a glance up. The man chuckled good-naturedly at her expense, and she maintained her smile in true egg-on-face fashion. Plugging some numbers into Leibniz, he decided the value her expression held was a little greater than the overpriced espresso he just finished.

I felt the pinch of the heart monitor on my gloved index finger — or what the five-fingered would consider their index. The human mask that was placed over my nose and mouth had to been jerryrigged from a canine’s, with some hot glue and a bit of imaginative machinations from the good doctor. The gas was already taking effect.

Smiling drowsily, I turned my head toward the young nurse. She mirrored my gesture and adjusted the heart monitor just so. The door at the far end of the operating room opened and the surgeon entered with another nurse (stouter, bustier, and more confident) in tow. She wheeled a small steel table right by me. On top of the table were a towel and two plastic packages, each with three small curved prosthetics.

“Is that —?” I began.

My nurse shushed me and nodded as the doctor and the hefty nurse drifted dreamily past. They exchanged brief words, then the doctor marched up to me. He wore the inadvertently condescending grin of the professional to the uninitiated.

“How you feeling, Mort?” he asked.

“Just fine,” I murmured, my voice pitched high (well, higher than usual). He always called me Mort or Mortimer or some amalgamation thereof, and it made my eyeballs itch.

“I want to make sure you’re aware of the procedure,” he said. “You’ll be bedridden for a few days, and your head will be sore for a week or so after that. I made the pertinent arrangements with your agent.”

He reached behind my chair and produced small black device about the size of a pager, and a white dome-shaped piece of material that looked and moved like a deflated balloon.

Doc held up the pager. “One of these will be attached to each camera or appropriate equipment. It communicates via radio frequencies with the chip we’ll implant in your head. That way, no matter which way your head turns your ears will always face the camera. But that’s the smaller part of the whole operation.”

He held up his other hand which was covered in the white rubbery. “The more complex part is attaching this new fluid membrane between your scalp and your—”

I looked back over to the nurse, who smiled at me with a freakishly large, toothy mouth. Her moderately attractive features warped into a repulsive, deformed mess of flesh-colored bubbles and stringy hair. The room around me began to swim and undulate, and Doc’s voice wavered hollow in my ears like he was about to erupt into a embarrassingly girlish bawling session.

My eyes closed to diminish the vertigo. My last thought before losing consciousness was concerning the size of the deductible I would have to pay for the God-awful procedure that was Walt’s idiotic idea to begin with — and how I need to hire a new lawyer.

If you’re like me (and hopefully you’re not), you almost always have an online dictionary and thesaurus open on your browser. Unless there’s a special case it’s pointed to dictionary.com – both resources are accessible there. I’m sure there are better ones but I’m too comfortable with that site.

Until it threw me a curveball in the form of a banner ad that featured the Visual Thesaurus. It looked interesting so I checked it out.

It’s a GUI thesaurus, basically. You search for a word and it brings up the search term and a tree of synonyms, their proximity to the search based on the proximity of meaning. Then you have the rollovers for definitions, etc. It was awkward at first but you only need to do a few seconds’ worth of glancing to see all the words; much faster than looking through a comma’ed list.

Unfortunately, it’s not free and the trial only allows a limited number of searches. I don’t think it’s worth it for my needs, but it may be for someone else’s.