Meta and Meta

Meta is Transmigratin'

Since I no longer have need for anonymity, I am closing shop here at Meta and renewing my blog Strange Doctrines. Blogging will continue there, mostly as usual.

Of course, be sure to update your bookmarks, blog rolls, aggregators, etc., etc.

See you real soon over at

Strange Doctrines...

You Don't Run Your Uncle Junior

If you happen to be in the Los Angeles, CA area tonight, I'll be playing with my new trio Uncle Junior at Genghis Cohen in Beverly Hills. We start at 8p, about a 45-minute acoustic set. Cover is $7 at the door.

See you there if I see you there...

Blogging Theory

Apropos of my NMR for March, I have decided to limit blogging to areas in which I want to develop expertise, viz., selected topics in philosophy (ethics, science, mind, Nietzsche), music, perhaps law.

While the odd impulse post might fall outside of those bounds, I hereby incorporate Daniel Davies's wisdom in "closing the books" on the following topics:

• God, Atheism, Religion
  
• Other "battleground" issues in the Culture Wars
• Media dysfunction

If it is any consolation,** my silence on these will probably not constitute any great loss.*

Travel Notes

Driving up into Kentucky near the exit for Kentucky Bourbon Trail, big sign reads: “HELL IS REAL.”

Across the street, another big sign: “ADULT BOOKS & VIDEO.” Which is also real, and probably has more customers besides.

[Pic by The Enchantress.]

Whither Meta?

The recent dearth of blogging in this space is less the result of a conscious decision to blog less than it is an epiphenomenon of my New Year's Resolution to keep a rigorous calendar. Part of this regime is a daily module for scheduling each subsequent day's agenda. And, turns out, when you deliberately schedule the modules of activity for each day, it's difficult to justify a general "blogging" module. (Try it, you'll see.)

From My List Of Things That Make You Feel Old Grown-Up

Number 13: When you find out your old primary school (in my case, Smale Preparatory School in Barbados, West Indies) has become a bona fide ruin:

Blink

Crossing the moraine,
Forcing cold from my path:
Every saccade gives rise to a new I (a new eye)
And annihilates an old one.

New Song

I put a new song ("Memories of You") up on my MySpace page a couple of weeks back, but forgot to mention it here. You've been served.

Dictionary Use Gone to Pot

My dad yesterday recounted a story involving a friend (of my dad's generation) who professed both unfamiliarity with the word 'cannabis' and an inability to find that word in a dictionary -- two odd bits of cognitive incapacitation that rather ironically suggest a robust familiarity with the substance in issue, if not its designation.

Anyway, this got me thinking about basic dictionary-using competence. Seems like if you weren't good at using a dictionary, you'd have a need for a reference work, say, "Dictionaries for Dummies." But then given the very incapacity in issue, you'd need another reference work for that, ostensibly "'Dictionaries for Dummies' for Dummies." And so on. This obviously leads to a pedagogically vicious regress. Turns out, then, dictionary illiteracy is irremediable.

As a corollary, it is impossible that you are comprehending this post at all.

Places New, and Ladies Too

The Enchantress and I got to talking about television shows we liked as kids. The pickin's in Barbados were slim, but one show I used to watch was "B.J. and the Bear."

It was only as I explained to TE why I used to want to be B.J. McKay (which character was played by Greg Evigan) that I realized how exquisitely preposterous the show concept was:

Well, honey, B.J. McKay was a really cool, handsome itinerant trucker who always got hot chicks and wound up involved in dramatic adventures. And he owned a chimp named "Bear."

Right...

And of course it turns out that several people have youtubed the show's intro theme and montage. ("And best of all I don't pay property tax!") It doesn't get much better than that.