I don't fear nothing but god and weddings: 1/20/08

25 January 2008

The Streets Is

The Streets Is, originally uploaded by bmichaelpayne.

I'm a pretty bookish person: I hve an m.a. from a socallwd great books program, love pens and notebooks and whatnot, and I even read a lot kinda. More thAn zero-to-one per year. Buuuuut. I mean I love joyce; know how to use a semicolon; and I'm applying to philosophy phds. Bit damn dog. Im holding the future in my hands

I love me some music. And the Internet. And I'm usually late ony phone bill. So you see where I'm going this? The fucking iPod touch straight owns! Like no shit. I fail to see why I'd ever need to open a book again. I can listen music, look at shit on the internet, blog bay blah bah. This experience is way I'd fuck more entertaining than reading is. Its me fun than it was meant to be.

Good thing I like reading and books and whatnot. But I'd be willing to wager that a lot most even people don't share my interest in reading. And so this development I'd even more pernicious be because even though I can resist the siren song of the umpc (ultra mobile p c) I dont see such resistance gaining intersubjective validity. Gbye books hello frivolity.

I for one blame frivolous books: comedy central authors, bad mysteries, reading the romance. Waste makes waste.

20 January 2008

Steel Stallion Rides Sister Rides

Steel Stallion Rides Sister Rides, originally uploaded by bmichaelpayne.

"I was disappointed," Farve said, "that the last pass I threw was intercepted." LOLZ

Trees One

Trees One, originally uploaded by bmichaelpayne.

This shit is what the shit I am talking about when I talk about the New Mexico light. The "Fabled New Mexico Light (tm)" is what makes the trees look like they're on a goddamn movie set. Maybe that's why companies come to this state to film: Because it looks like we goddamn for fuck's sake invented lighting.

On the Certainty of the Body

I submit that tennis is the most beautiful sport there is, and also the most demanding. It requires body control, hand-eye coordination, quickness, flat-out speed, endurance, and that strange mix of caution and abandon we call courage. It also requires smarts. Just one single shot in one exchange in one point of a high-level match is a nightmare of mechanical variables. Given that a net that’s three feet high (at the center) and two players in (unrealistically) a fixed position, the efficacy of one single shot is determined by its angle, depth, pace, and spin. And each of these determinants is itself determined by still other variables—for example, a shot’s depth is determined by the height at which the ball passes over the net combined with some integrated function of pace and spin, with the ball’s height over the net itself determined by the player’s body position, grip on the racquet, degree of backswing, angle of racquet face, and the 3-D coordinates through which the racquet face moves during that interval in which the ball is actually on the strings. The tree of variables and determinants branches out, on and on, and then on even farther when the opponent’s own positions and predilections and the ballistic features of the ball he’s sent you to hit are factored in. No CPU yet existent could compute the expansion of variables for even a single exchange—smoke would come out of the mainframe. The sort of thinking involved is the sort that can be done only by a living and highly conscious entity, and then only unconsciously, i.e., by combining talent with repetition to such an extent that the variables are combined and controlled without conscious thought. In other words, serious tennis is a kind of art.*

*

I don't fear nothing but god and weddings

25 January 2008

The Streets Is

20 January 2008

Steel Stallion Rides Sister Rides

Trees One

B. Michael's Notebook Miscellany

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