Draw your own zodiac

Lets face it: star constellations – and hence zodiacs – are an entirely arbitrary human choice. There are neither 12, nor 13 zodiacs, there is an almost infinite number of visible stars in the sky, from which a literally infinite number of “constellations” can be generated by connecting stars with lines. Not the sky, your phantasy is the limit. You can also divide the year in arbitrarily small intervals (say: picoseconds) and define your own zodiac depending on where planet Earth happens to be on its orbit with respect to the stars at that picosecond.
Lets take a look at Taurus (which they tell me I “am”):

Taurus as depicted in Urania’s Mirror, a set of constellation cards published in London c.1825 (image source: Wikipedia).

Or in a more sober representation:

And here is what the night sky around there actually looks like:

Section of sky around “Taurus” (image source). The brightest star is called Aldebaran. Not Alderaan. 🙂

Oooooh WOW! I can totally see a bull here! If I consume a lot of fungus. So now lets forget about all the zodiastic taurusshit and reveal my REAL zodiac (25th of April 1977, 6am, 320e+12 picoseconds):

Surprise: my zodiac is Unicorn! As can be clearly seen, Elnath defines the tip of the horn, while Aldebaran makes for the shiny ass. The anomalistic year (time between perihelion passages of the Earth) has an average duration of 365.259636 days, which amounts to 3.15584325504e+19 picoseconds (=number of distinct zodiacs in our system). We therefor randomly assign number 2.504197706e+12 to this zodiac. I think it’s a good zodiac. Character traits associated with “Unicorn” are: sexy, a bit vain but kind, icecream. The picosecond division of the year also means: not many people have it!

What is your zodiac?

June 13, 2020 2 Comments

Brains, Life, the universe & everything

Das Hörrohr

“Reading The Hearing Trumpet liberates us from the miserable reality of our days”, said Luis Buñuel. And not just during a pandemic I would like to add to that. In the end, “people under seventy and over seven are very unreliable if they are not cats”, and those are the majority. And: Leonora reveals the true origin of the Holy Grail, which after all we’re also searching for here, and which reminds me that the front tyre of my bike is in desperate need of pneuma. 🙂 Whoever does not acquire a copy of this book at their local book merchant of trust after this immediately, cannot be helped.

First published 1974 (though written in the early 60s) in French translation as “Le cornet acoustique”

Here she is:

A book for all senses, but clearly: category “ears”.

May 17, 2020 Leave a comment

Ears, Life, the universe & everything

Nothing doesn’t mean nothing at all

I recently came across this fabulous solar powered “do-nothing machine”, designed in 1957 by American design duo Ray and Charles Eames (yet again via aeon.co):

Here you can find a few more photos of this phantastic machine. I very much like the idea that what on first sight appears like a “toy” that “does nothing” represents the very essence of creativity and innovation. In other words, it is ONLY by providing space and time for play or for “nothingness”, that the possibility for SOMEthing new is actually created. Think about it when you come across one of those articles that insist how bad mind-wandering is for children.

Here’s a “Nightcap” from Elmer Bernstein (who might have written the jazzy piece featured in the short movie):

May 2, 2020 2 Comments

Brains, Ears, Eyes

Nature morte – Nature vivante

Still live (Stillleben) ist maybe the better synopsis for our present days than “dead nature”. But lets listen to the fabulous Dorothy Ashby while we think:

What is life, what is nature? Certainly not something “orderly” or “ordered”. More like a heap of stuff some greek goddess on speed has arranged on her dining table in her delirium after coming home from a much too long olympian party-weekend. Voilà:

So lets see what we have here … makes little sense, does it? Although it’s always good to have a pomegranate. I like to say pomegranate. The accent is on the “o” as I was once politely reminded by a native speaker. All these objects that our divine party-girl – lets call her Tachophilia 😉 – has spewn out of her cornucopia carry their story, some more meaningful than others. More will be added, some will be lost – it matters not. What’s more crazy than the cacophonic bonkersness of the heap for me is: disturb the heap, and everyone will go “woooooooaaaa, can’t touch the heap, give us back our normal heap, we don’t want the heap to change!”.

– Okidoki, Tachophilia, please give them back their usual heap.

Tachophilia: “But it was a fucked-up heap of junk, including a socio-economic system in which the rich get ever richer and the poor get ever poorer and which is built on a dogma of “always more” and limit-less growth and production, which is obviously ka-waaaazy for a world with limits, you realize that even when you’re on all the alphabet! That’s what they want back?”

– Yep, that’s what they want. They got used to unfair. Can’t touch the heap. Scared of all non-heap business. Want it back.

Tachophilia: “Ok.” (*boinc*)

Boinc is the sound when Tachophilia makes “evil” jump back into Pandora’s beauty-case and transforms humankind back into it’s state of denial, worshiping it’s own destructive powers.
At this point I could say “Good night, and good luck”, but friends of old, you should know me, I’m not as malicious as to send you to bed with such bitter thoughts, am I?
Instead, I give you two things: 1) a recipe for a nice Quarantini, and 2) more Dorothy to listen to while you sip your Martinez. Enjoy. Qui vit sans folie, n’est pas si sage qu’il croit.