The Metaphorager.

Automatic Enlightenment

2011.04.14

SET YOUR THOUGHT ON THIS: “I am not this thought.”

Full disclosure: I awoke from a thundering dream last night which seemed to involve everyone I ever met and everywhere I’ve ever been, but set mostly between the Renaissance Pleasure Faire and some sort of concert promotion in a house I was unsuccessfully vacating. (“Thank God,” I said when the alarm went off.) Anyway, I went back to sleep for a few minutes and awoke, thinking “I am not this thought.” It seemed profound, somehow, and important to share, so I packaged it up in a blog post at about 5 a.m. Imagine my surprise when Google disclosed 242,000 instances of the phrase, “I am not this thought.”

I guess it is important.

Etc

Yuri’s Night Out

2011.04.06

A REMEMBRANCE OF FEATS PAST is a great excuse for a party — that’s the idea behind “Yuri’s Night,” which celebrates the cracking of the final frontier.

“Human Spaceflight became a reality 50 years ago with the launch of a bell-shaped capsule called “Vostok 1” on April 12th, 1961,” reads http://yurisnight.net, which is coordinating the “World Space Party” next Tuesday. “The capsule was carrying Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who took his place in history as the first human to leave the bounds of Earth and enter outer space.”

“Yuri’s Night” (the website) features contests, party and event locations, space history and more. (The partners page alone makes fascinating reading: I consider myself a space geek but had never heard of most of these: “Orphans of Apollo?” “We Want Our Future?” “Vostok Space Beer?” Goshwowboyoboy!)

Some say (me among them) that spaceflight is less a technical achievement than an inevitable stage in the evolution of life. Whether or not you agree, I hope you’ll join me in raising a toast April 12 — or better yet, raising your eyes to the stars.

Fig. 1. Created by http://yurisnight.net/.

Etc

Cohen’s Koan

2011.04.04

“WHO IS SMARTER — THE TEACHER or the student?”

(Answer correctly and win a free year’s subscription to Metaphorager.Net!)

Living

The 49-Year-Old Punk Is Weeping

2011.04.03

A FRIEND OF MINE FROM long-ago “nights we tried to die” (in Jim Morrison’s eternal phrase) opines, via Facebook, that he is now “too fat to wear … (his) “Too Drunk To F*ck” T-shirt.

I want a T-shirt of that.

Living