Chelifer's QoD

Word of the Day: Perfidious

2012-01-31T20:20:00.000-06:00

-adjective

Deliberately faithless; treacherous; deceitful

2012-01-11T05:48:00.002-06:00

The illusion that life is but a dream has occurred to quite a few people, and I feel the same way about it. When I see the limitations imposed on man's powers of action and inquiry and observe how all his efficiency is aimed at nothing but the satisfaction of his needs, which in turn has one purpose--to prolong his miserable existence--and when I see how all his reassurance on certain aspects of his inquiries is little more than a dreamy resignation, in that he chooses bedaub the walls of his prison with motley and bright prospects--all this, william, makes me mute. I turn in upon myself and find a world there, again more in a spirit of presentiment and dour longing than dramatically or with vitality. Then everything grows hazy in my mind and I go on smiling dreamily at the world.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(excerpt from The Sorrows [& Joys] Of Young Werther)

2012-01-01T21:00:00.001-06:00

Sui Generis

Sui generis is a Latin expression, literally meaning of its own kind/genus or unique in its characteristics.

An idea is so unique, that it cannot really be part of a broader concept.

Word of the Day: Quixiotic

2011-12-30T22:30:00.001-06:00

quixotic

[kwik-sot-ik]

adj.

1. extravagantly chivalrous or romantic; visionary, impracticable.

2. impulsive and often rashly unpredictable.

3. Exceedingly idealistic; unrealistic and impractical: "a vast and quixotic project".

A Special

2011-10-22T16:06:00.000-05:00

To himself John Isidore thought acidly, And it’s gone away for me, too, without my having to emigrate. He had been a special now for over a year, and not merely in regard to the distorted genes which he carried. Worse still, he had failed to pass the minimum mental faculties test, which made him in popular parlance a chickenhead. Upon him the contempt of three planets descended. However, despite this, he survived. He had his job, driving a pickup and delivery truck for a false-animal repair film; the van Ness Pet Hospital and his gloomy, gothic boss Hannibal Sloat accepted him as human and this he appreciated. Mors certa, vita incerta, as Mr. Sloat occasionally declared. Isidore, although he had heard the expression a number of times, retained only a dim notion as to its meaning. After all, if a chickenhead could fathom Latin he would cease to be a chickenhead. Mr. Sloat, when this was pointed out to him, acknowledged its truth. And there existed chickenhead’s infinitely stupider than Isidore, who could hold no jobs at all, who remained in custodial institutions quaintly called “Institute of Special Trade Skills of America,” the word “special” having to get in there somehow, as always.

- an excerpt from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick (1928-1982)

Word of the Day: Anomalous

2011-10-10T10:58:00.001-05:00

adjective

deviating from or inconsistent with the common order,form, or rule; irregular; abnormal: Advanced forms of life may be anomalous in the universe.

not fitting into a common or familiar type, classification, or pattern; unusual: He held an anomalous position in the art world.

incongruous or inconsistent.

Grammar. irregular.

Word of the Day: Contiguous

2011-10-09T09:26:00.000-05:00

adjective

touching; in contact.

in close proximity without actually touching; near.

adjacent in time: contiguous events.

She Said

2011-10-04T20:52:00.000-05:00

One of the functions of intelligence is to take account of the dangers that come from trusting solely to the intelligence.

- Lewis Mumford (1895-1990)

not everyone can relate to what you and I appreciate

2011-09-03T17:45:00.001-05:00

The aspects of these bands that you find "boring and generic" are actually what the majority of music listeners (who spend money on it) identify with it. That's ego-identification; the same thing that makes you mad when your favorite team loses, that makes people feel "patriotic," or whatever. Everyone thinks their own taste is the best taste. Given that fact, and given the sorts of symbols and meanings that most music-buyers identify with, is the reason. The question lying under that is, why do most people with the economic means to invest in musicians seem to favor these symbols and meanings over others (the ones that you and I identify with). Individuals in positions of power or comfort, and any individuals aligned with them, are not interested in aesthetics that challenge the existing social order.

- Dylan Thomas Walter

morbid and sinister

2011-08-31T00:13:00.001-05:00

In French, 'mal d'archive' contains the concept of both illness and evil. For Derrida, there is something morbid and sinister at the core of the archival impulse. 'It is to have a compulsive, repetitive, and nostalgic desire. . . to return to the origin . . . the most archaic place of absolute commencement.' Derrida relates this compulsion to the Freudian death drive. Frued argued that 'the task' of the death drive was 'to lead organic life back into the inanimate state'. One if its manifestations in human behaviour (and by extension, culture) is 'a compulsion to repeat'. Freud saw this regressive impulse as 'more primitive, more elementary' than the pleasure principle, which is why Thanatos can often 'over-ride' Eros.

'En mal d'archive' also means to be 'in need of archives', a desperate hunger comparable to addiction. As Derrida writes, 'It is to burn with a passion. It is never to rest, interminably, from searching for the archive right where it slips away. It is to run after the archive, even if there's too much of it. . .' Impelled by a mixture of hubris and mania, the drive to accumulate and store knowledge escalates out of control, threatening to collapse the entire edifice of the archive.

- Simon Reynolds

2011-08-28T22:54:00.001-05:00

The artist does not bring the divine on to the earth by letting it flow into the world;

he raises the world into the sphere of the divine.

- RUDOLF STEINER (1861-1925)

datascape and dearth

2011-08-28T04:40:00.001-05:00

dearth

[durth]

noun

an inadequate supply; scarcity; lack: There is a dearth of good engineers.

scarcity and dearness of food; famine.

2011-08-27T00:54:00.000-05:00

'Good art always, at some level, fails.'

- Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard

They Never Learn

2011-08-23T12:38:00.002-05:00

Since the majority of me

Rejects the majority of you,

Debating ends forthwith, and we

Divide. And sure of what to do

We disinfect new blocks of days

For our majorities to rent

With unshared friends and unwalked ways,

But silence too is eloquent:

A silence of minorities

That, unopposed at last, return

Each night with canceled promises

They want renewed. They never learn.

- Phillip Larkin (1922-1985)

Word of the Day: Abscond

2011-08-22T15:52:00.001-05:00

verb (used without object)
1. to depart in a sudden and secret manner, especially to avoid capture and legal prosecution: The cashier absconded with the money.

2011-08-20T15:59:00.000-05:00

The Mute Phenomena

Your great mistake is to disregard the satire
Bandied among the mute phenomena.
Be strong if you must, your brisk hegemony
Means fuck-all to the somnolent sunflower
Or the extinct volcano. What do you know
Of the revolutionary theories advanced
By turnips, or the sex-life of cutlery?
Everything's susceptible, Pythagoras said so.

An ordinary common-or-garden brick wall, the kind
For talking to or banging your head on,
Resents your politics and bad draftsmanship.
God is alive and lives under a stone;
Already in a lost hub-cap is conceived
The ideal society which will replace our own.

- Derek Mahon

Word of the Day: Redolent

2011-08-20T14:38:00.001-05:00

adjective

having a pleasant odor; fragrant.

odorous or smelling (usually followed by of ): redolent of garlic.

suggestive; reminiscent (usually followed by of ): verse redolent of Shakespeare.

Rubbish

2011-08-20T02:36:00.002-05:00

Britons now drop litter as cows defecate in fields or snails leave a trail of slime. That is to say, they do it naturally, without conscious reflection.

- Theodore Dalrymple

Word of the Day: Ersatz

2011-08-18T15:09:00.003-05:00

adjective

serving as a substitute; synthetic; artificial: an ersatz coffee made from grain.

Word of the Day: Insouciance

2011-08-16T15:52:00.004-05:00

in·sou·ci·ance/inˈso͞osēəns/

Noun: Casual lack of concern; indifference.

Word of the Day: Larceny

2011-08-13T15:39:00.004-05:00

noun, plural -nies. Law .

The wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods of another from his or her possession with intent to convert them to the taker's own use.

Word of the Day: Mollycoddle

2011-08-12T12:04:00.002-05:00

mollycoddle (ˈmɒlɪˌkɒd ^əl)

— vb
1.	( tr ) to treat with indulgent care; pamper

— n
2.	a pampered person

Word of the Day: Urbane

2011-08-09T01:38:00.001-05:00

adjective

having the polish and suavity regarded as characteristic of sophisticated social life in major cities: an urbane manner.

reflecting elegance, sophistication, etc., especially in expression: He maintained an urbane tone in his letters.

Health can be sickening

2011-08-09T00:59:00.002-05:00

All of the energy that once went into the pursuit of the ideal is now dormant, for almost no one can believe in ideals anymore. A quest for artistic perfection? Absurd. A search for true and absolute knowledge? A joke. A life's dedication to compassion and loving kindness? You must be kidding. So what is to be done with the power of human will that might once have sought after these things? It is redirected to more quotidian business. People now pursue a means—staying alive—as though it were an end in itself. Epic measures of energy invest a rank banality, for in truth there is no sustaining meaning to be had, no triumph to be achieved, simply in the maintenance of biological life...In the absence of true human purpose one can only say this: Health—health can be sickening.

- Mark Edmundson

TV Orwell

2011-08-04T14:24:00.001-05:00

"Why is British television left-wing? What is it about the small screen that makes innately socialist? Film manages to be politically neutral, or capitalist with libertarian leanings. And its not only the BBC, although it does seem to have a more pronounced Orwellian bias tan the commercial channels. One possible reason its that creativity is a left-leaning occupation. It’s about change and improvement. Conservatism mistrusts change and rarely thinks that improvement improves. Conservatives conserve."

- AA Gill

Snobbery

2011-08-03T10:30:00.004-05:00

We will drink a little

and philosophize a little

and perhaps we both

who are made of blood and illusion

will finally free ourselves

from the oppressive levity of appearance.

-Zbigniew Herbert, “A Parable of King Midas”

Word of the Day: Fain

2011-08-02T11:59:00.000-05:00

–adverb

gladly; willingly: He fain would accept.

The Beautiful People

2011-08-01T14:44:00.003-05:00

What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.

- Eric Hoffer

(1902-1983)

Word of the Day: Bucolic

2011-07-28T04:24:00.002-05:00

–adjective Also, bu·col·i·cal.

of or pertaining to shepherds; pastoral.

of, pertaining to, or suggesting an idyllic rural life.

Swine and Truffles

2011-07-26T15:30:00.002-05:00

You gotta have a swine to show you where the truffles are.

- Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1961)

Word of the Day: Scrofulous

2011-07-21T14:58:00.002-05:00

–adjective

morally tainted.

Sad-ist

2011-07-21T01:05:00.001-05:00

Word of the Day: Nebulous

2011-07-19T19:43:00.004-05:00

–adjective

hazy, vague, indistinct, or confused: a nebulous recollection of the meeting; a nebulous distinction between pride and conceit.

cloudy or cloud like.

Word of the Day: Licentious

2011-07-18T12:26:00.003-05:00

–adjective

sexually unrestrained; lascivious; libertine; lewd.

unrestrained by law or general morality; lawless; immoral.

going beyond customary or proper bounds or limits;disregarding rules.

Word of the Day: Syzygy

2011-07-17T11:14:00.002-05:00

–noun, plural -gies.

Astronomy . an alignment of three celestial objects, as the sun, the earth, and either the moon or a planet: Syzygy in the sun-earth-moon system occurs at the time of full moon and new moon.

Classical Prosody. a group or combination of two feet, sometimes restricted to a combination of two feet ofdifferent kinds.

any two related things, either alike or opposite.

Word of the Day: Somnolence

2011-07-16T12:42:00.007-05:00

somnolence som·no·lence (sŏm'nə-ləns)

A state of drowsiness; sleepiness.
A condition of semiconsciousness approaching coma.

Word of the Day: Felicitous

2011-07-15T02:34:00.003-05:00

–adjective

well-suited for the occasion, as an action, manner, or expression; apt; appropriate: The chairman's felicitous anecdote set everyone at ease.

having a special ability for suitable manner or expression, as a person.

Word of the Day: Sibylline

2011-07-14T19:14:00.005-05:00

sib·yl·line

–adjective

of, resembling, or characteristic of a sibyl; prophetic; oracular.

mysterious; cryptic.

— n
1.	(in ancient Greece and Rome) any of a number of women believed to be oracles or prophetesses, one of the most famou sbeing the sibyl of Cumae, who guided Aeneas through the underworld.
2.	a witch, fortune-teller, or sorceress

Chelifer's QoD

Word of the Day: Perfidious

Word of the Day: Quixiotic

quixotic

A Special

Word of the Day: Anomalous

a·nom·a·lous

Word of the Day: Contiguous

con·tig·u·ous

She Said

not everyone can relate to what you and I appreciate

morbid and sinister

datascape and dearth

dearth

They Never Learn

Word of the Day: Abscond

ab·scond

Word of the Day: Redolent

red·o·lent

Rubbish

Word of the Day: Ersatz

er·satz

Word of the Day: Insouciance

Word of the Day: Larceny

lar·ce·ny

Word of the Day: Mollycoddle

Word of the Day: Urbane

ur·bane

Health can be sickening

TV Orwell

Snobbery

Word of the Day: Fain

fain

The Beautiful People

Word of the Day: Bucolic

bu·col·ic

Swine and Truffles

Word of the Day: Scrofulous

scrof·u·lous

Sad-ist

Word of the Day: Nebulous

neb·u·lous

Word of the Day: Licentious

li·cen·tious

Word of the Day: Syzygy

syz·y·gy

Word of the Day: Somnolence

Word of the Day: Felicitous

fe·lic·i·tous

Word of the Day: Sibylline

sib·yl·line