Food failure

I HATE baking...

No law

No law should ever be enacted to achieve an effect that the majority desires if it is not also necessary to ensure equality of opportunity or consequence. Society can, and will, establish a de facto preference based on consensus, but it should never attempt to impose this preference over its lawful alternatives upon free individuals who choose contrary to the majority.

A pretty good roadmap

The prohibitions of historical powers—or current ones, for that matter—make a pretty good roadmap to freedom.

Rule of Law

The problem with the rule of law, of course, is that truth supercedes the rulemakers.

Of words & music

Words are acute; music is chronic.

Pork chops & chickpea side

Tonight I made fennel-crusted pork chops with charred lemons and a chickpea-and-garden-cabbage (purple and green) side dish.

Talk too much (Lieberman)

Poets talk too much about poetry. And about themselves.

Laurence Lieberman

Limitations

The limitations of humans are legion; the limitations of humanity have yet to be established.

Halibut meunière

Halibut meunière I made last night:

The authentic! (Levertov)

The authentic! Shadows of it
sweep past in dreams...

Denise Levertov, from Matins

Of ruins

We relate to the revelation of ruins.

Like bottles (Leary)

There is a desert island of the heart
towards which no clipper ever points her prow.
I am the castaway, I live there now
and then, sending poems out like bottles
stuffed with messages.

Paris Leary, from "What Five Books Would You Pick To Be Marooned With on a Desert Island?"

Cookies

Made hot chocolate chip cookies (with chile powder) yesterday. I'd give them a C.

It's a problem

It's a problem for ambitious (but not sufficiently ambitious) artists that clichés are comforting and the trite is often true.

What one wants

What one wants always follows directly from one's deepest sense of how things are meant to be.

"Sophomoric"

There is nothing more sophomoric than the epithet "sophomoric."

Coconut macaroons

Made coconut macaroons for dessert tonight. They don't look anything like the picture where I found the recipe, but they tasted pretty good.

Life as a password

All passwords are insecure, either easily guessed, hacked, stolen, coerced, or acquired through social engineering. Biometrics are copied, forged, or appropriated with simple techniques. If one tries to imagine the ultimate, most secure authorization protocol possible, one is forced to conclude that it would consist of the sum total of one's experience—i.e., one's entire life.

From this realization, it is a small step to imagining that rather than living the life that we believe we are, we are actually processing it to satisfy an access-granting algorithm in order to log on to some future system of great complexity and sophistication. Thus the legends of heaven awaiting us at the end of our run!

Life | Art

Life may imitate art, but not proactively.

Creation

Creation is coercion.

Monotheism

Monotheism is egotism externalized.

Other people

To be successful, utilize, but don't rely on, other people.

Arroz con pollo

Tonight I made arroz con pollo (and a cranberry vinaigrette for the salad).

Is

Is is not intent. Is is not interpretation. Is is is.

Pasta dish

Last night I made a pasta-and-beef casserole. Couldn't get a decent pic of it, though.

Learning

Learning happens early; afterwards, the goal of nearly all perception is merely recognition.

Misfits

Misfits are genetic insurance.

Motives

There is nothing more difficult to deduce than the motives of the irrational.

Intimacy

It's an odd thing about intimacy, how often an inch can seem more remote than a yard.

Taz

People strive to be like Bugs Bunny, but most of us, most of the time, are more like the Tasmanian Devil.

Immortality

What humans want is offsite backup.