rattus rattus’ blog

Who are you?
Who is me?
The trying is me.
The trying not to is me.
Even the changing is me.
I am.
Different in a moment.

[X]

Stop Making Sense, one of my favorite self-contradictory principles, is also the title of a wonderful video of Talking Heads‘ Stop Making Sense tour in 1983.

Since Ratta reminded us of who we are to do what we do as long as we do (make sense) I’d like to remind myself of the fact that I intended to confront my blog with some more posts about facts (as if this were possible). So, introductory, here is a list of facts about facts taken from lyrics of the video Stop Making Sense:

• Facts are never what they seem to be.
• Facts cut a hole in us.
• Facts are useless in emergencies.

• Facts are simple and facts are straight.
• Facts are lazy and facts are late.
• Facts all come with points of view.
• Facts don’t do what I want them to.
• Facts just twist the truth around.
• Facts are living turned inside out.
• Facts are getting the best of it.

• Facts are nothing on the face of things.
• Facts continue to change their shape.
• Facts don’t stain the furniture.
• Facts go out and slam the door.
• Facts are written all over your face.

If you have ever doubted the usability of a liar’s typical statement “everything you know is wrong” apparently suits well as catchline for a book about disinformation. And You are being lied to is of course the truth of another book, isn’t it?

Even when the title becomes more specific like in Everything you know about sex is wrong it’s no less of a truth as any self-contradictory statement.

Don’t forget:
Everything you know about blogging and me is wrong. This in particular.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it,
does it make a sound?
— George Berkeley (1561-1626)

Enough people, it might seem, wrote about the term attention whore. The Urban Dictionary expressively explains attention whore. The Uncyclopedia shows some imagery. Wonderful writer Cairo Otaibi pretended to out herself in a comment to No comment is a comment. Google lists a gazillion of results, and even more so, quite a number of people say: We are all attention whores.

I agree!
For it is such a nice example of a lying liar. And of course, we are all attention whores. Assuming some aren’t we wouldn’t know about them, would we?

Attention! A digression: If we are all attention whores, and if we cannot know about those who aren’t, might this prove that we are all liars because we wouldn’t know of people who tell the truth?

Attention again! An answer: Truth is that those telling the truth are the actual liars. — I wonder who could read this out of George Berkeley’s writings.

Thinking of perception, like in how we perceive a tree, does the tree create a mental notion, or does our mind create the tree? Is attention an attention whore’s service, or is she paid by it?

Ouroboros, you are her mother.

Hoax websites are the WWW’s optical illusions. As of today, Wikipedia’s entry on Hoax begins:

A hoax is an attempt to trick an audience into believing that something false is real.

Imagine a liar’s website about a hoax. How do you tell right from wrong? Is this blog a hoax? Yes, in some way it probably is. As there is more to it than its trueness.

We have been featuring the World Jump Day, recently. Here are some more hoaxes:

• Clones-R-Us by Dream Technologies International, the world’s “largest reproductive cloning provider”: Buy your clone child on-line.
• Bonsai Kitten: preserving the long lost art of body modification in housepets (Wikipedia’s entry, Web.archive version)
• Dihydrogen Monoxide Info about controversies surrounding DHMO. “Yes, you [really] should be concerned about DHMO!”
• GenoChoice: “Create your own genetically healthy child online!”
• PetsOrFood: “The best place for pet and food products on the Web!”

The Museum of Hoaxes maintains a weblog about hoax websites.

WORLD JUMP DAY 20 JULY 2006 11:39:13 GMT
This is 20 July 2006 13:39:13 CEST in e.g. Vienna.

Join us in the attempt to drive planet Earth into a new orbit, by letting millions of people jump!

Let’s jump!

Let us trust in the power of the human community.

[R]

Words ought not to be trusted – you can never be sure if they mean what they say.
— Ashleigh Brilliant

Let’s assume that when people say something they generally mean something different. Then, the question “What do you mean?” generally makes no sense at all.

If you think that some people at least sometimes do say what they mean, well, I anyway do understand something different from what they say let alone what they mean.

So, what does it mean when someone says that she or he makes a lot of use of dictionaries and thesauruses searching for word origins? Like Dave Pollard just wrote? Or like half of my own blog?

What does it mean if someone is especially picky about words, if we try to be precise, if we try to avoid obfuscation and ambiguity, and if we moreover foster meaning with references?

Experts of wording driving away from their audience, burying augury of knowledge in wisdom, the paradox of communication, blatant honesty about lying.

Of course, this makes sense to us, anyway.

At the beginning of the film “United 93” it says

It’s time.

It’s time. This is what the crusaders of ecology and sustainability keep telling us, too.

It’s time that we ask what is time.
Never forget.

[G]