mixed blessings
mixed blessings. if i could sum up this weekend in one phrase, it would be "mixed blessings."
my parents came to town and then one of them decided that speaking to anyone during thier stay would probably be a bad idea. great. fine. thanks for coming up.
why would anyone drive eight hours to get to this god forsaken bland and then decide to impose an oath of silence and general bitchiness/babiness upon themselves? anyone?
some good things happened. i met an incredibly cool, incredibly bright woman who doesn't seem to mind the fact that i'm a t-shirt wearing centaur. odd. She's got a philosophy m.a. from the school across town (the good one) and likes frege. frege, eh? i've dabbled but i'm not a big fan. however, despite the fact that we've only exchanged emails, i've already resigned myself to the fact that it will never work - i'm a 601 (boo) year old, 1,000 lb, investment banking, t-shirt wearing centaur for god's sake! sure, we'll talk deleuze then i'll have to ask her to scrape crud out of my hind hooves - nothing starts a party like crud scrapping.
i also discovered that my short comings are not my fault; they're no one's fault. sure, i've finally realized how badly my parents fucked me up, but whose parents haven't fucked up their kids? that's right! all parents have fucked up their kids - to varying degrees of course, but the point remains - which means that i can't blame my parents for fucking me up because their parents fucked them up, and their parents before them, and so on ad infinitum. sure, my psychological stability is on par with that of nick nolte's if he were trapped in the middle of meth tornado, but at least i've got four stable legs, two human arms, and a face that only frightens school children, the infirm, the sighted, the blind with an acute sense of smell, and the recently deceased. i mean what more can i ask for?
sure, sure, i could have money, an incredibly high iq, a promising career, or skills of some sort, but then i'd be lame by virtue of how content and ordinary i'd be. i'd much rather be maladjusted, socially awkward, and so afraid of interpersonal communication that i don't answer my phone, don't answer email, and all and any writing i do gives me the nervous sweats. who could want a better life? not this ole nag! besides, if everyone were fully functional members of society, who'd we watch on reality tv?
posted by Daimon Legein @ 8:38 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
Not a fan of Frege for serious? Did you read something mysteriously crappy of his that I missed?? (Or are you enough of a logic type that he's become dull?)
Maybe I am just charmed by the way he writes what with the em dash interjections that end in exclamation marks, and how since Wittgenstein liked Frege and I worship the ground that the former trod upon then the latter too becomes cool by default, or something. I don't know.
"Sense & Reference" changed what I thought philosophy was about or could be, at any rate.
to be fair, i like 'sense and reference' but my first year phil of language class pretty much worked the whole proper names angle into the ground. it starts with frege, moves into russell, and the next thing you know you're finding out that kripke was a peeping tom and wondering whether donnellan was just splitting hairs or if you just don't give a fuck anymore. to tell you the truth, i was having definite description nightmares.
i couldn't tell you why, but i'm more of a quine fan. i loved "the two dogmas of empiricims" and despite it's shortcomings (or mine) i'm enamoured with "word and object."
As far as wittgenstein's concerned, no one on facutly wanted to touch him - yet virtually ever prof i've ever had, has uttered "family resemblance" on at least on occasion. i've always wanted to read him, but, well, laziness reigns supreme.
i really should read wittgenstein, especially since i'm into thinkers that, in my mind, are analytic philosophers swimming in the continental pool(maybe not the best metaphor). i think that's why i like quine's epistemological holism. i like thinking of him as the philosophical love child of a kant, kuhn, foucault threeway.
now i feel bad. my cavalier dismissal of frege could, and probably is, a failure on my part to recognize sinn und b-duo-tang’s philosophical import (calling it 'sinn und b-duotang' made me laugh every time i said it. i'm a simple, simple man).
i tell you what, i'm going to go home and re-read that badboy in an attempt to appreciate a great philosopher/logician or, failing that, to punish myself for disrespecting the guy that wet-nursed predicate logic.
ps. is there a way to edit comments? i'll whip out a comment, then i'll notice the eight trillion errors pervading it.
pps "pervading it"? is that kosher? it sounds funny to me.
no you cant edit comments and pervading sounds weird.
argghh. i thought it sounded forced or something. i can't believe there's no edit function. oh well, this service is free. however, i refuse to think either my comments of my posts through ! it's all about speed and spontaneity.
Don't feel bad, I'm mostly full of hot air. :D
Though I'd be ecstatic if you read Wittgenstein and liked him (and who could NOT?). Share the joy!
Phil. Investigations is key, same with Culture & Value, which is random marginalia the bits of which are sometimes thematically linked (viz. a crusade against Mendelssohn and indeed any music post-Brahms...) and sometimes not (viz. a couple of fragments that sound like pieces of erotica in potentia). I am totally a neophyte at anything analytic (my school is mostly all about the most gratuitously weird continental stuff), but I like yr description of W. (who would undoubtedly also want in on that Kant/Kuhn/Foucault threeway).
what is that sound? uh oh, it's the sound of a t-shirted centaur's interest in philosophy rising to pre-fuckphilosophy levels. i'm both excited and scared! it's a feeling akin to when i visit my vet; she's hot but she sticks a huge needle in my ass.
i'm definitely going to pick up philosophical investigations. i tried the tractatus once but i don't think i was ready for it at the time.
i was kind of bummed this morning (i guess yesterday morning) when i got home i couldn't find the text with 'sinn und b-duotang' in it! i probably lent it out to someone and now i'm gonna spend the next couple of days trying to figure out which douchebag forgot to give me the book that i forgot to ask for back! on the plus side, school starts today and you know what that means: J-stohr privileges!
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