Shakespeare’s Mark Antony
“Friends am I with you all, and love you all,”
— Mark Antony
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
(Act 3, Scene 1)
Shakespeare’s Mark Antony
Shakespeare’s Mark Antony
cf., ipse dixit
#Shakespeare
Portable Data
This started as a daily web-based diary. Over time, it grew into a web-journal, a web log, a weblog, and then a blog. Half dozen addresses at least, but the basic location was something like astrofish.net/xenon. Been at a three or four URLs since then, and gradually, I rolled it all back in-house to just astrofish.net.
But pouring through the older entries, there’s one like this one, Testing material that starts out to address what this is about.
The old definition of a blog was a series of chronological entries. The challenge, over the years, mine has grown, shrunk, grown, and the various destinations have changed. Purpose. Purposes. Goals, destinations, notations, and more. Or less.
Some fiction. Some prose. Few, if any, real attempts at poetry. But daily observations, astrological notes, vignettes from life?
There is an image I’ve been reluctant to use, the backsplash for the namesake for the weblog, Xenon. Early 80’s artwork, the first series of pinball machines with a computer (noise) chip, plus the artwork’s lurid design. As much as I would like to steal some of the imagery, and I have, I’m also cognizant of copyright, fair-use, and proper attribution, so even if I could? I haven’t, at least not recently. My actual machine ownership predates me having any kind of access to digital imagery. No pictures from back then.
While my original machine now rests with a collector, the imagery in my mind lives on, and that spun off a name for the web (based) journal, that became a blog, that now defies any taxonomy at all. Therein is the problem, and the solution.
Defies taxonomy.
Off and on, for years, I included the tag line, “Experimental and Experiential.”
Paging through the old entries, decades past?
Portable Data
When I first broached the topic of living in (near) downtown San Antonio? There was a singular highway sign, then two, a pair, one at the north end of of I-35 and one at the southernmost point along I-37, Austin and Corpus Christi, as it were.
“Bexar County Line.”
It became a thing, with me. As a joke, under a special astrological array, I bought (rented) a domain name, eventually, that project became a collection of images, mostly culled from a downtown in transition, and documenting, for me, the intersection of cultures, all thrown together there. Here.
But bandwidth and data grows exponentially, the interest in my own project, a simple excursion for myself, that gradually fell away. Rolled most of it back into the blog. The “Bexar County Line” site got subsumed by the daily blog.
Portable Data
There’s a couple of arbitrary internal markers, categories and subcategories, used by the current blog software. Pointers, really. One is “blog posting/article,” as in, pick one. I’ve tried, don’t know how successful it is with portable data, but as my own semi-random taxonomy, over 500 words tends to be classified as an “article,” whereas the more common 100 to 400 word pieces I tend to mark as “blog,” but that’s my own guideline. More blog-style, less journalism.
Portable Data
What’s portable data? Some amazon links, the affiliate link, started when I would recommend a book, but now includes some products. Many of the old links still work.
What doesn’t work? What doesn’t work and I find annoying? The same amazon links that were framed as an (iframe) placeholder, usually the cover of a book or a DVD cover of a Shakespeare play. But those didn’t make it. Gradually have to be trimmed.
In the same vein? Stupid YouTube links don’t stand up well over time. Nor do any local newspapers. However, in an odd note, British tabloids still stick to the older format links.
In one example, I had. A post with six links to six different outlets with a single line of commentary and the link, and years later, none of the links worked.
Portable Data
Unrelated:
Prescient Port Royal (trip preparations) notation.
“When a grown man lives at home with his mom? Pathetic. When a grown man lives at home with his dead mom? Classic.” (Link love.)
Philippa Flynn’s Year of Panic and Piracy
It was a pre-release reading copy on Amazon, Coming Soon section, found the title, added it to the “read soon” stack, and I promptly forgot about it until, late one night, after I finished one novel, I looked for something else to read, preferably lightweight — a palate cleanser.
“A woman having more impressive accomplishments than her date pretty much guarantees a “no spark” text.” Page 58.
No, cf., It’s really him, “A man’s grasp must exceed…”
“I know they try, but they don’t understand a lifestyle that doesn’t prioritize achieving the standard benchmarks of success.” Page 136.
The life of a writer, or, in the story, an academic. A lifestyle that doesn’t prioritize a certain benchmark for success.
Philippa Flynn’s Year of Panic and Piracy
In part, there’s a bit of grief, and dredges up my own questions of mortality, and what we leave behind. Then, too, I know a thing or two about being the black sheep in a family. All plays into the story, which, loosely, should be styled as a romance.
But grief is palpable, and the story in a story is fun.
Tightly plotted, breezy novel style, a romance wrapped in a romance. I mean, I knew what was going to happen, with bodice-ripper backdrop laid over an academic setting. Sure.
As something different, I enjoyed it, a perfect escape.
Philippa Flynn’s Year of Panic and Piracy
Reintroduce a Term
Ipse Dixit — from my archives as I gradually shift everything around, and get it all in a semi-coherent format.
Reintroduce a Term
Ipse dixit means “A dogmatic and unproven statement.”
Seems like a number of politicians are guilty of that.
Reintroduce a Term
Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.
Best Sunset
This is random.
Over coffee, the other morning, couple of fishing buddies?
“What’s the best sunset you’ve seen?”
My fishing buddies waxed poetic about Hawaii.
Three or four places I’ve lived and visited? Sure, at school in Arizona, the desert in the evening, New Mexico, again, pretty and predictable. Austin, San Antonio, and even El Paso, all qualifiers, sure.
Northern New Mexico, especially, is rich in color, more an ochre rather than the deep red sandstones of Arizona canyon lands.
But over the span of my own lifetime, so far, the best sunsets I ever experienced? I was walking, happened frequently on infrequent occasions, but I would be walking north on South Austin’s First Street, headed down the hill toward the lake and Riverside, spring, summer, fall, around sunset.
Sandy’s Burgers, the special was burger, fries, medium drink, for $2.59, Tuesday and Saturday? Thursday? Don’t recall. But the special, and the old neon sign, bright against the backdrop of a fabulous sunset, the colors of the sky etched in majestic shades, with highlights and hints, streaks of orange, purple, sometimes? Austin’s Violet Crown visible in the burgeoning dusk; bats skittering in the twilight.
I lived in a space the size of a marginally large tackle-box, on the edge of the river, no car, no TV, very few problems, just scholarly pursuits, and chasing the fish in Town Lake.
More than two-dozen years back. I recall one conversation, as I described this image, “Couldn’t you just take a picture in the daytime, then Photoshop in some sunset?”
It isn’t the same.
I stopped by before seeing that Shakespeare Scottish Play last spring. Images are now separated by more than two decades.
Best Sunset
For me? Best sunset was in old Austin, Sandy’s at sundown. Headed homeward, and maybe, to fish in a summer’s eve. The funny piece of this puzzle and my answer? I never got that really good picture of the sunset.
Research
Make three mistakes in a row.
Call it research.
Research
Buried deep in this one, about complaints?
Uranus is now in Taurus. We can expect to see an abrupt and possibly untimely end to certain civilities.
Nailed that one.
DIY Themes
Revenge Reminder
Single pointer, used over and over, but I like the twin translation, one elder, one younger.
Revenge From Marcus Aurelius
“6. The best way of avenging thyself is not to do likewise.”
Excerpt From: Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius. “Meditations.”
“The best revenge is to not be like that.”
Book #VI.6
(Sources)
Revenge From Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
A free copy of Marcus Aurelius Meditations is available here & here.