Tag Archives: William Burroughs

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The 23rd

When 2 + 3 Is Not 5,
Some Call it an Enigma

Numbers and the Internet. Man-made to gauge and track the world, they’re both endless and will go on long after we’re gone. As matter can always be reduced to its numeric essence, so all manner of human expression may one day reside in the digital realm.
Take 23, for instance, the number assigned by fate to my first breath. Like with other numerals, there are hundreds of Websites about it, from math and numerology to cults and strange coincidences, with everything in between, besides, of course, celebrity birthdays.
Age-wise, few are like 23, and most of anyone would consider it among life’s best years. Perhaps. We hardly appreciate it then or even notice it. But as it recedes, it locks in the imprint of an age when choices are wide open, if not nearly wise, and self-fulfillment is mandatory.
A mind-boggling assortment of arcana is related to 23 as a prime number, but even as its complexities keep planets spinning, and the ISS aloft, few are wise to them. We all have 23 pairs of chromosomes, though, even if they no longer dictate one’s gender.
A curious statistical theory, the Birthday Paradox, says that within a group of 23 people, chances are, two share the same day of birth. That’s the least amount of people to whom such a likelihood is higher than 50 percent. But please, don’t go asking strangers for their DOB.

THE CHAOS & MYSTERY OF NOT MUCH
Yes, there are at least two weird groups that attribute 23 a special meaning. Discordianism associates it with chaos, with some mumbo-jumbo about inverting the pyramids (you read it right), and the goddess Eris. By the way, the Great Pyramid of Giza was built with 2.300 stones, so there you have it.
As for 23rdians, they see the number as an enigma permeating all spheres of existence, claiming author Robert Anton Wilson as a spiritual mentor of sorts. Wilson, in turn, may have caught the 23 fever from William Burroughs, who once told him about his own obsession with it. And let’s not even start with the bible.
Add to these, well, peculiar people, such Nobel Prize winner John Forbes Nash. Despite his work on economics, he is almost better known for having a strange, and tragic, fixation on the number (and Pope John XXIII, but if you have to ask, don’t). And of course, (more)
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Read Also:
* On This Day
* You Say It’s Your Birthday

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O 23

Quando 2 + 3 Não É 5,
Alguns Vêem Um Enigma

Números e a Internet. Criados para avaliar e rastrear o mundo, são agora infinitos e vão seguir existindo muito depois de desaparecermos. Como a matéria pode se reduzir à sua representação numérica, toda expressão humana um dia vai residir apenas no reino digital.
Por exemplo, o número 23, que o destino me deu com meu primeiro sopro de ar. Como outros, existem centenas de Websites sobre ele, de matemática ou numerologia, cultos e estranhas coincidências, com tudo o mais no meio, incluindo é claro, o aniversário de celebridades.
Do ponto de vista da idade, muito poucas são como os 23 anos, and quase todo mundo os considera entre os melhores de suas vidas. Pode ser. Temos a tendência de apreciar este tipo de coisa quando ou se está aproximando, ou se distanciando rapidamente daquela idade. Mas é um tempo quando as escolhas ainda estão em aberto e a busca de realização ainda é uma prioridade.
Existe uma vastidão arcana online, relacionada com o 23 como número primo, mas mesmo que suas complexidades estejam por trás do movimento dos astros e mantenham a Estação Espacial flutuando, poucos têm intimidade com ele. O que se sabe é que todos temos 23 pares de cromossomos, mas isto não mais determina o gênero sexual de cada pessoa.Uma curiosa teoria estatística, o Paradoxo do Aniversário, reza que dentro de um grupo de 23 pessoas, há grande possibilidade de que duas delas nasceram no mesmo dia. Esta é a quantidade mínima de pessoas para a qual existe uma probabilidade estatística maior do que 50 por cento. Mas por favor, não começa a perguntar a estranhos sua data de nascimento.

O CAOS & MISTÉRIO DE QUASE NADA
Sim, existem pelo menos dois grupos esquisitos que atribuem ao 23 um significado especial. Discordianismo o associa com o caos, usando uma patavina qualquer sobre pirâmides invertidas (isto mesmo), e a deusa Eris. Falando nisto, a Grande Pirâmide de Gizé foi construída com 2.300 pedras, para quem perguntar.
Já os 23ianos (fazer o quê?) consideram o número como um enigma que permea todas as esferas de existência, e consideram o escritor Robert Anton Wilson como uma espécie de mentor espiritual. Wilson, por sua vez, talvez tenha sido contagiado com a ‘febre dos 23,’ através de William Burroughs, que uma vez lhe comentou sobre sua obsessão particular com o número.
Some a estas, digamos, pessoas peculiares, o ganhador do Nobel John Forbes Nash. A despeito de seu trabalho em Economia, ele era quase mais famoso por ter tido uma relação estranha, e trágica, com o número (e também o Papa João XXIII, mas se você tiver que perguntar, não pergunte). E é claro, o filme Uma Mente Brilhante, sua biografia vivida por Russell Crowe. Há também um outro filme, alemão, (mais)
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Leia Também:
* On This Day
* You Say It’s Your Birthday

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The Second Half

How to Skip Your Own
Birthday Celebration

The second half of life is a third. It arrives already shattered and goes by like a spell. Compared to the eternity that teen years seem to feel, or the accelerated learning curve lived up to the 30s, the last quadrant is mute and serene, like a trip to another galaxy.
Everything reflects the light of long ago, but there’s no sound in the outer space of advanced age; even the most cheering applause is silenced. The traveler reaches the void looking back; a last minute sorting through spinning memories, before darkness falls.
All that one needs to know is learned early in life. And readily forgotten for the next few decades. So growing old is revisiting childhood, as some put it, making a bit more sense of what’s going on inside, but like then, just as clueless about everything else.
Some of us perceive ourselves as children till we catch a mirror staring back. That smooth layer has been ravaged, the mouth, twisted down in the corners, and the eye twinkle is long gone. But apart from such shocking self-checking, we’re still here.
On the edge of maturity, it counts to have mastered a few things. But accomplishing anything comes clouded by wrong turns and missed

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Read Also:
* The 23rd
* Sendoffs
* You Say It’s Your Birthday

opportunities. All is clear now, understood, and absolutely irrelevant. Still there’s pride in learning a new way to tie shoelaces. Perfect, if it wasn’t for the back pain bending to actually tie them.
As I approach the other margin still gasping for air, I’m still puzzled about how little I know. Was it a choice I’ve made, not to veer towards the upper echelon? Or have I fussed and fought only to come up short of whatever was that I was searching for?
The third slice of a life, staled and musty, is reserved for those who lasted and endured, not those who crafted a legend out of their days. Like a bitter brew, it soothes the gut and vanquishes the last sweet taste, left by cakes and pastries baked in youth.
Some go like shooting stars, but the majority succumbs in quiet desperation. Some go before they even come; others overstay their welcome. We live our ways unaware of our moment of departure. Here’s to when it comes, it won’t make me beg too much to stay.

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The Turkey Brief

Five Easy Sides
for Thanksgiving

How come America’s most beloved holiday became such a minefield of discord and intra-family carnage? No idea. But there’re still ways to prevent that carved bird from becoming airborne, thrown across the dinner table by a disaffected relative.
Thanksgiving did become synonym to a hard time to be had by all. It now even includes its own set of preppy tips, so to avoid confrontations and visits to the E.R. They vary but have one topic in common: do not talk about politics. Or religion. Or sex. Or Turkey.
Or something else, for often it’s the way the conversation is conducted, never mind its content, what may lead to the breakup of many a relationship. Of course, foul language and inappropriate use of utensils can also be accountable for spilled blood.
Whether on the account of a heated exchange over a swampy-orange stink bomb set off in DC two years ago, particularly pungent today, or for smearing our culinary and/or dietary whims on everybody’s faces, things have a way to heat up like ovens on Thursdays like these.
Tales of communal pilgrims are no longer the adult option; we’ve already ruined this holiday. But fact is, Thanksgiving‘s the utmost family holiday in the U.S., screams and sugar rushes et al. Taken as such, it’s not that we’re navigating unfamiliar territory here. Have a Roving One.

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Read Also:
* No, Thanks
* A Nation of Thanks
* Cold Turkey

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No, Thanks


Uh-Oh. I Think I’ve Burned
the Thanksgiving Pumpkin Pie

Too late to start a new one now. I thought I’d followed the directions of the recipe. Taste is what matters, right? Not really. It looks good in the picture but the real thing is considerably darker. What a fiasco. I should’ve known better but not even a Beatles song will help me now.
I’ll tell them it fell on the floor. No, gas power was shut off on my block. Maybe I’ll Trump them: ‘I never said I was bringing a pie.’ I could pick one up at the corner deli but what if they’re all gone? No, I’ll say I gave it away to a Soup Kitchen. That’ll make me look real good.
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Read Also:
* A Nation of Thanks
* Cold Turkey
* Meatless Time

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A Nation of Thanks


When William Burroughs
Snarled Thanksgiving Grace

He was in fine form on that purposely grainy video, giving thanks for the Klu Klux Klan and ‘a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business.’ Bill Burroughs would live another decade before leaving us, but no one said grace in quite the same way.
3o years later, we’re bitter as ever, and he’d surely give us no thanks for the radical rightward turn we’ve allowed our political winds to take. We miss his snarl but he’s the one who would’ve been hurt by the cruel world we’ve been tending to since he’s left.
Today, as we digest millions of murdered birds, down our ‘wholesome American guts,’ and some heil a new white chief of the nation, we’ll borrow Burroughs‘ growl, while sewers burst open, and out come pouring ravenous rats. The many heroes who signed off this year make us moan and grieve.
Few will sharpen knives, check their ammo, thank their good fortune. Hunting season will start earlier this time. But most will avert their kids’ gaze, and try a thousand ways of telling them again that life’s unfairness shouldn’t be the point. But now they know there’s no Santa.
Yet, thanks to those with the steady gait and the flexed calfs, who bend but not break. The ‘indians, who provide a modicum of challenge and danger,’ fighting for water on behalf of all Americans who forgot them, at the Dakota Access Pipeline standoff. They’re are our natural gifts.
Yes, thanks for the grandmothers, the multi-linguals, the mixed races, the black lives that’ll still matter once this all pass, because it must and will. Thanks for the gender fluid, and for the targeted whistleblowers; they’ll deliver our message to the future.
Surely, Bill, ‘thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of the human dreams.’ But also for the little bloodletting with which we clean our wounds, and all the joy of playing Job when it comes our turn. Light comes only from pitch black.
Thanks for the thanks I’ll be forever indebted to give, to those I have yet to meet. And thanks for partying like it’s 1927, when the first balloon to fly at Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was Felix the Cat. Two years later, many sharks finally had their day of reckoning.
We’ll fall into a turkey stupor for now but we’ll come back as we always do. By the way, something in the pumpkin pie didn’t agree with my stomach. Happy Thanks & Giving Day.
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Read Also:
* Thanksgivukkah
* Meatless Time
* Cold Turkey 

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Cold Turkey

A Bird With Multiple Names, Two
Countries & Some Holiday Mash

This was supposed to be the definitive post on why turkeys are called turkeys, what they have to do with Turkey and Peru, and why would anyone care about it.
Instead, it turned out to be just another holiday stupor, a tipsy search on the Internet and a million half-funny comments on why no one seems to have a clear idea.
So, risking making the article almost shorter than its headline, let’s just cover the highlights, while we check the oven and get properly loaded before the guests have parked at the curb.
Americans (including William Burroughs) have held Thanksgiving very dear to their hearts because the holiday is based on a historical folktale and, to this day, it’s still a family gathering by excellence in ways religious dates could never be.
Granted, at this point in time, it’s no longer all about the turkey. Aunts have various dietary needs. Some care only for the sweet potatoes and cranberry jam. And children became vegan and will have their own Tofurkey.
The cooking frenzy that used to animate families of yore have since lost much of its luster with the advent of live football and the Macy’s Parade on TV.
Besides, arguments usually ensue even before all relatives have arrived (more)
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Read Also:
* Meatless Time
* It’s Your Bird’s Day

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Inspecting Gadgets

A Speech Gun, a Phone Tattoo,
the Book Machine & a Laser Ray

Ever want to mute the lout screaming on his cellphone in a crowded train? We can help you. Want to be on call, hate BlueTooth and need your free hands? Let us get back to you. Got fed up with publishers’ rejection to your great American novel? Do we have a machine for you. And if all else fails, and something needs to be done about those killer drones, meet the drone-slaying laser ray.
And you thought that it’d take at least a few years for this kind of news to be reported. But as that sage used to say, the future ain’t what it used to be. These gadgets are hardly breakthroughs and, in a few years, what’s most likely to happen is that you’ll be reading this as if it’d been written circa 1980s, which is when the technology that made them possible was developed.
There’s no way of knowing which of these will find its way into widespread use within a few years, or even whether any of them will even resemble, in appearance and purpose, to what they are now. Inventions have a way to evolve into many different things before (more)
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Read Also:
* Alt-Pace Makers
* Secret, Agent, Mad
* Made Up

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It’s Your Bird’s Day


Thank Goodness, We
Could Use the Excuse

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‘Cause It’s Caturday


Fur B&W Friends
For Five Cool Cats