Things that are tagged esoteric stuff

On A Black Hole

Posted on July 29, 2002 by Porter Mason

A singularity. One point in space in time through which all matter and energy is drawn to. A rip in the space-time continuum. A black hole. The beginning and end of an entire Universe.

I just bought one at a street fair.

I wasn’t gonna get anything, you know, but I was lingering at the Used CD table, looking for a copy of the first Weezer album (you know, the blue one) for my friend, Shannon, and I happened to notice the sign on the booth next to me:

4 TSHIRTS FOR $10
SWEET CORN $2
BLACK HOLES $20

I just had to get one. I’ve always read about them, you know, and I figure, if I’m ever gonna get one, now would be the time because they’re really hard to find. I mean, astronomers have never even really successfully captured a visible spectrum image of one.

And $20, I thought, “That’s not too bad.” I mean, when you see them in retail stores, or in storage at top secret government labs, it’s usually more like $2.3 billion. That’s why you don’t shop retail. I was even able to talk the guy down a little. I still paid $20, but he threw in a teaspoon size scoop of a neutron star and a free cob of corn!

I ended up having a nice conversation with the guy, too. He was telling me how he’s able to get them wholesale for really cheap. And that the one I bought is really good quality, not like the cheap knock-off black holes they sell in Chinatown.

The best thing about it is that it has no volume, so it wasn’t like, you know, a bother to carry it home. I found a great deal on a red giant star once at a furniture outlet on Long Island, but it was a whole hassle because it had a diameter 50 thousand times the size of the Earth. So I would’ve had get it delivered, and that was gonna be like an extra $25, so I was just like, “For-get it!” You know?

The black hole fits right in a little box, the size you’d see for a ring or a broach or a box containing 0.001 moles of an ideal gas at standard temperature and pressure.

Of course, I can’t ever open the box. Which is sort of a bummer, especially when friends are like, “Hey! Let’s see the black hole, Porter!” And I gotta be like, “Sorry, man, no can do. If I opened the box, the area immediately us for about 0.25 light years would collapse in on itself.” People act like they understand, but I can tell they’re sort of disappointed.

Anyhow, I decided to catch a cab home because that corn really filled me up, and I was tired. And the spoonful of neutron star weighed more than 2 million times the weight of the Earth’s Sun.

Overall: successful street fair for Porter.

Oh, except I can’t seem to find that Weezer CD I bought for Shannon. I’m pretty sure I bought it. But maybe I just thought I did, but then I really didn’t. Or maybe I left it at the table.

Or maybe it slipped past the event horizon of the black hole, stretched itself until it’s atomic structure broke down and it passed, quark by quark, into an alternate dimension.

Either way: Shannon’s gonna be pissed.

Porter

On Long Lost Division

Posted on April 13, 2003 by Porter Mason

Four hundred seventy two divided by seven.

OK, well first, “How many times does the divider number go into the divided number?” And you start with the first digit, the biggest digit, of the divided number (which has a name… divisor, maybe? not really important). OK, so, “How many times does five go into four?” Well, none. So, “Well, how could I change four so that five could go into it?” Well, you could make it forty, by adding a zero to it, right? So do that, but, so, you have to… subtract ten or–

Wait.

No, I’m thinking of multiplication or something somehow. Wait.

OK, so go back to the beginning. “How many times does seven go into four hundred seventy three?” So, you do your multiplication tables for seven, and go until you get close. Heh, I remember learning those.

Elementary school. Heh. Emily Funk! Stephen Shepherd! Courtney Shoup. Ooo! And Laura… what was Laura’s last name? It was alliterative. Lavin? Laderberg? Man, I forget.

So multiplication tables for seven! Right. Or, well, that would actually take a while, “If I do multiplication tables, but then times them by ten…” So you go, like, seventy, one hundred forty, two hundred twenty, two hundred eighty, (Dividor? No.) three hundred ten, three hundred eighty, four hundred fifty, five hundred eighty, six hundred ten, seven hundred thirty, eight hundred fifty, and so on. And you look at those, and think, “Which is closest to, but less than four hundred seventy two?”

Wait.

Seven hundred should’ve been in there somewhere. So, wait. Let’s do that again, without tens. Seven, fourteen, twenty one, twenty eight, thirty five, forty two, forty nine. OK, forty two. So times ten, forty two, or four hundred twenty. And that’s seven times… one, two, three, four, five, six. Six. So seven times sixty. And it was Marcy Laderberg. And she was in high school. And it was Laura Linney! Ha! (Dividant? No.)

OK!

So, we have sixty. But that’s not exact. So we think, “Well, what’s four hundred seventy two minus sixty?” Well, that’s easy, four hundred twelve. So. Then.

Wait, no.

We don’t think that. What we DO think is….

…

What do we think, what do we think…. four hundred seventy two, six, sixty, seven times six, forty two, forty two, four twenty–

Right! We think, “What is four hundred seventy two minus four hundred twenty?” Right, right. Ha! OK. Well, that’s not too hard either, four hundred seventy two minus four hundred twenty is… fours cancel, zero, two minus zero is two, seven minus two, five, zero five two, fifty two. Four hundred seventy two minus four hundred twenty is fifty two. Laura Linney was really pretty as I remember. Pretty and blonde.

OK.

So. We have to remember that sixty for later. But now… we have to then redivide this sixty, no, I mean, fifty two, by seven, too. Seventy two. Seven, no, wait. (Divisor! It’s called the divisor. One of them is. The bigger one. Or, that doesn’t matter actually, but the…. Well. One of them. What’s the other one? Do I have Laura’s number?) So, OK, now, fifty two, seven, fifty six, forty nine, seven. Seven times seven is closest, at forty nine. So, seven. But then we have three left over. So, we… add… three… to… no! No, we add seven to sixty. Sixty seven. And we save that. But then… that three. Hmm. You could do the adding a zero thing. Seven into thirty, twenty one, twenty eight, thirty five, twenty eight, is four. Four. (Divanti…dor? No.) Twenty eight from… thirty. Two. Four gets added, or… no. And now, this two is… we could add… make it twenty, or, but what happens to the four? Lonnergan. Laura Lonnergan? Kenneth Lonnergan. “You Can Count On Me”. God damn it, Laura Linney was in “You Can Count on Me”. Laura Linney is an famous actress. And so is Linda Lavin.

I didn’t know Laura Linney in elementary school. And she is pretty and blonde.

(sigh)

Oh! Hey, I remember sometimes you could just say, “A remainder of three.” Like that. Let’s say now is one of those times. And three’s not so much to have left over. So I guess we have a remainder of three.

And four.

And then two.

That’s just stupid.

We’ll just say, sixty (what was it? four twenty, fifty two, forty nine, seven) seven. Point three. Point three four two. (Dividend. The other one is the dividend. The divisor and the dividend. Right.) Point three four two. Eh… but I don’t know that those– Oh! How about: sixty seven… dot dot dot.

Sixty seven dot dot dot.

472 / 7 = 67…

Laroche.

Pretty, blonde Laura Laroche. (sigh) Maybe she’s doing her taxes today, too.

Porter

On Expectations, Conventions, and Brilliant Art

Posted on January 19, 2004 by Porter Mason

This piece of art you’re reading is really good. If you don’t like it, you just don’t understand it. It’s quite brilliant, in fact, and all your smart friends like it, so if you don’t, you clearly just don’t have the cognitive capacity to see its awesome brilliance.

A lot of people think this essay is not brilliant. But that just goes to show how brilliant it really is. See, when I wrote it, I anticipated a lot of dumb people thinking it was unbrilliant, and since I anticipated their reactions, I must be brilliant. That’s how art works. It’s not about talent or inspiring people or changing someone’s perceptions, it’s all just about staying one step ahead of what people currently think.

Art is just about doing unexpected things. I, as an artist, don’t have time to worry about whether I’m doing these unexpected things well. That they’re unexpected is enough to make me and my art brilliant. When you’re on the vanguard of your field, you can’t stop to make sure your methods are traditionally good. It’s a waste of time.

Shmoopyville. No one could’ve predicted that, and therefore it’s brilliant. “Shmoopyville” is the height of brilliance, in fact. Unless it’s ever done again in any form ever. Then it is lame.

All art that follows any sort of convention is really terrible. You have to think so. If you don’t, you are being a fool. And if you keep saying stupid stuff like that all your smart friends will hate you. And without smart friends who think you are smart, then you aren’t really smart.

A great comment to make, after watching a movie or hearing a band or reading a book or seeing a play, is to say, “Well, of course, it’s terrible because it’s just like _blank_.” You see, if any work of art is remotely similar to any other work of art that has ever existed, the newer work of art is “derivative” and lame. In fact, there have only really ever been three interesting paintings, three interesting songs, and three interesting plays in all of recorded history. (There are no interesting movies because they are all based on plays or books.)

A stupid comment to make is, “Yes, I understand this piece of art isn’t breaking new ground in the sense of its form, but it’s an extremely good and moving piece of art and uses its form’s conventions to their full extent.”

What a dumbass comment. If you ever hear someone say something like that, you should just pick up your dog-eared McSweeney’s book and move to another table in the coffeeshop/used record store.

I like all my art to be constantly new, and I don’t really care how well it is executed. I like my rock songs to have no melody or repeated verses or choruses. I like rock songs with long slow incoherent guitar noodling and nonsensical lyrics. In other words, I like anything by Radiohead that most people don’t like. I like my paintings to have no sense of composition or color or any adherence to the basic “rules” of art. I like paintings that aren’t even paintings. This essay, in fact, is a great painting. It’s a terrible essay though because it uses words and paragraphs and that is so done.

You might think I would’ve ended the essay right at the end of that last paragraph, but no way. This essay has no traditional “punchy ending”. But that just makes it even better. And the fact that I am self-aware enough to talk about the fact that it has no end makes the non-ending even more brilliant. Self-awarneness in art can’t be used too liberally and is basically a “Get Out of Jail Free” card. It’s a great way to use conventions but then backtrack and make clear that you hate all conventions. You’ll notice this painting has tons of the stuff.

So go ahead. Forward this to all your smart friends. They’ll love it. If they don’t, they are not smart. Unless they are purposely being not smart, in which case they are brilliant. But they aren’t brilliant friends, they are brilliant songs. They are terrible friends and brilliant songs, but they are not at all Shmoopyville.

That was a terrible callback. But I knew it was terrible, so it was brilliant.

Anyway, here comes the ending of the “essay” (which isn’t an essay but rather a painting). If you didn’t like it, you’re wrong, and I don’t really care what you think anyway because screw the audience, this is art.

Brilliant art.

Porter