Log24

"He gazed out of the window hoping that somehow everything could make sense to him."

— "Passing in Silence," by Oliver Humpage

"You gotta be true to your code." —Sinatra

Exercise: Trace a path from the June 27 NY Lottery numbers
to the above two quotations.  Hint: See Cuernavaca and
Pilgrim's Progress  in TIME Magazine, May 3, 1948.

For some further background, click on the CBS quote above.
I still prefer, as I did in 1948, less  up-to-the-minute developments.

* The title refers to the phrase "the artist's signature."

Trickster

This evening's NY Lottery numbers were 531 and 8372.

Hermeneutics—

From a Google search for "531 Log24"—

The "531" linked to in the Sept. 21, 2008, post above is a mini-drama ending at midnight on 5/31, 2008— the conclusion of Mental Health Month.

And the above 4-digit evening number suggests a search for births on 8/3/72 that yields—

Erika Marozsán, Hungarian actress, 38.

Marozsán starred in "Gloomy Sunday—A Song of Love and Death" (A German/Hungarian film from 1999).

Wikipedia informs us that this "is inaccurately claimed to be the world's longest running film."

Whether Marozsán is a Quaternionist, I do not know.

For love, death, and quaternions, see the post Metaphor from Feb. 22 linked to in this afternoon's Sunday Dinner.

This evening's New York Lottery number was 776.
From this journal's post number 776—

ART WARS:

Lindsay Lohan was back in court today.

"The judge… ordered Lindsay may have no more than one friend
over at a time for the remainder of her house arrest" —Star Magazine

"Winter, spring, summer or fall
All you have to do is call"

— Eustace Tilley

In a Jewish Cathedral

From The New York Times Magazine  of Sunday, April 6, 1986—

"David Rayfiel's Script Magic" by Alex Ward

WHEN THE CALL came last year to revise ''The Morning After,'' Rayfiel was working on a screenplay about the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire for Barbra Streisand and Jane Fonda. He has now resumed work— as the principal writer, not the reviser— on that script. But chances are good that he will have further interruptions. Pollack will probably call and say, as he usually does, ''David, I need access to your brain.'' And Rayfiel will probably say, as he usually does, ''That's O.K., I'm not using it.'' He will revise another script, and be reluctant about taking credit for it.

''I guess it's like the medieval stonecutters who worked on the cathedrals,'' he says. ''There's all that elaborate work. The saints were carved by one guy, the cherubs by someone else. They didn't care about getting credit, they knew what they'd done. I'm like that. I'm the guy who does the cherubs.''

Related material:

Proginoskes in this journal and Abracadabra from the midnight of June 18-19.

See also Rayfiel's obituary in today"s Times .

For some quite different work, also  from April 1986, see—

Oslo: Points and Hyperplanes.

Thomas N. Armstrong III, a former director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, died at 78 on Monday in Manhattan.

William Grimes in this morning's New York Times—

"… Mr. Armstrong set about strengthening the museum’s permanent collection, buying Frank Stella’s 1959 black painting “Die Fahne Hoch!” for $75,000 in 1977…."

See also "Fahne Hoch" in this journal and the following from the date of Armstrong's death—

"Sunrise — Hast thou a Flag for me?" — Emily Dickinson

Related material: Piracy Project and, from Flag Day,
"Dawn's Early Light" and "Expressionistic Depth."

This post was suggested by a book advertised
above A. Whitney Ellsworth's obituary in tonight's 
online New York Times .

See also the following illustrations—

From this journal on June 1, 2008:

Click for background

From artist Steve Richards on January 14, 2010:

Click to enlarge

In memory of A. Whitney Ellsworth, first publisher of
The New York Review of Books , who died at 75
on Saturday—

The Review  has sometimes been cited in this journal.

See also posts from the date of Ellsworth's death—

• Tracking Shot
  
• Plato's Pheedo
  
• Gate of Ivory
  
• Here Be Dragons, and
• Ad Meld
  

Step One

Step Two

Step Three

For further details, click on step two.

"… such a long, long time ago" — Harry Chapin

"Oh, I've got something inside me
To drive a princess blind.
There's a wild man, wizard, he's hiding in me
Illuminating my mind."

-- Harry Chapin

And she said, "How are you, Harry?"

(Continued from June 14)

From tonight's midnight post—

“Stranger, dreams verily are baffling and unclear of meaning,
and in no wise do they find fulfillment in all things for men.

For two are the gates of shadowy dreams,
and one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory.
Those dreams that pass through the gate of sawn ivory
deceive men, bringing words that find no fulfillment.
But those that come forth through the gate of polished horn
bring true issues to pass, when any mortal sees them."

Homer, Odyssey , Book 19

Tracking Shot

Related material—

See also this journal's September 2009 posts.

This  post was suggested by today's previous post and by today's NY Lottery.
For some background to the ioncinema.com post numbered 4210 above,
see, in conjunction with the page headed "Azazel" linked to here earlier today,
the ioncinema.com post numbered 5601.

From the post numbered 460 in this  journal—

At the still point… from the film "Absolute Power" :

Photo credit – Graham Kuhn

I’ve heard of affairs that are strictly plutonic,
But diamonds are a girl’s best friend!

— Marilyn Monroe, modeling a Freudian slip

"Philosophy seeks not absolute first principles,
nor yet purely immediate insights,
but the self-mediation of the system of truth,
and an insight into this self-mediation."

— Josiah Royce in his article "Axiom" in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics ,
edited by James Hastings (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1910),
Vol. II, pp. 279-282, on page 282.

Related material: Time and Chance (Dec. 17, 2010).

This morning's exercise in lottery hermeneutics is unusually difficult.

Yesterday was Bloomsday (the date described in
James Joyce's Ulysses ) and the New York Lottery numbers were…

Midday  numbers:  3-digit 181, 4-digit 9219.

Evening numbers: 3-digit 478, 4-digit 6449.

For 181 and 9219, see the following—

"With respect to every event, we must ask
 which element has been subjected directly to change."
— Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics
   (New York, The Philosophical Library, Inc., 1959), page 181

That Saussure page number was referenced in the following thesis
on James Joyce's other major novel, Finnegans Wake—

The thesis is from the University of Vienna (Universität Wien ).

The word Wien , in the derived form denoting an inhabitant of that city,
figured prominently in yesterday's news.

As for the evening numbers—

478 perhaps signifies the year 478 BC,
cited in Lawrence Durrell's Sicilian Carousel  as the year
the ruler Gelon died.

For the evening 6449, note that the poem by Wallace Stevens quoted
here on June 15 in A for Anastasios deals with "the river of rivers"…
perhaps signifying time.

Interpreting 6449 chronologically yields 6/4/49.

The film artist  John Huston, discussed in an essay from that date,
might appreciate the representation of the ancient Sicilian
river god Gelas as a man-headed bull on a coin from
around the year 478 BC.

For some perceptive remarks about Durrell, see the
article by Nigel Dennis in LIFE magazine's Nov. 21, 1960
issue (with cover noting Kennedy's victory in that year's
presidential election).

All of the above may be viewed as an approach to the aesthetic
problem posed by Dennis in yesterday's Bloomsday post—

"The problem that arises with this sort of writing is
one of form, i.e. , how to make one strong parcel
out of so many differently shaped commodities,
how to impose method on what would otherwise
be madness."

"The world has gone mad today…." — Cole Porter

For some related remarks, see page 161 of
Joyce's Catholic Comedy of Language *
by Beryl Schlossman (U. of Wisconsin Press, 1985)
and James Joyce in the final pages of The Left Hand of God
by Adolf Holl.

* Update of July 6, 2011—
This title is a correction from the previous title
given here, Moral Language  by Mary Gore Forrester.
Google Books had Schlossman's content previewed
under Forrester's title.

(A note for Bloomsday)

The New York Times  today on a new show by tightrope artist Philippe Petit—

“He comes out of that really wonderful European tradition of street performance— it blends a boundary of what’s art and what’s life,” said Jay Wegman, the director of the Abrons Arts Center, who offered Mr. Petit the three-night run. “He’s also kind of mischievous, not in a threatening or evil way, but in a child’s way of teasing and having fun.”

For a much darker approach to street performance that also involves mischief and blended boundaries, see "Tightrope" (1984)—

Background: Men in Feminism , edited by Alice Jardine and
published by Taylor & Francis in 1987, "Walking the Tightrope
of Feminism and Male Desire," by Judith Mayne, page 64

See also yesterday's Another Opening and Football in this journal.

"Turn your head and cough."

Note that the structure of the central flag above is not unlike that of the skull and crossbones flag.

O say can you see…?

But seriously—
Degreeless Noon—

Click to enlarge.
“My card.”

Related material:

"Start the new year off with a new job at Pheedo."

See January 1, 2, 3 of 2010.

Click to enlarge

Related material: Oscar Day 2007

Yesterday was the anniversary of "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

"And thirty years,
   in the galaxies of birth,

Are time for counting
   and remembering…."

— Wallace Stevens,
   "Of Ideal Time and Choice"

Thirty years and a day after "Raiders" opened…
 a more tranquil religious meditation.

Click images for further details.

See also Job: A Comedy of Justice  and
the death of Wolf Birger, reportedly on D-Day.

Ben Brantley in The New York Times  on May 26—

While you theatergoing butterflies out there keep nattering on about the Tonys— who will win, who should win, and so on— I have been focused on an issue of far greater momentousness and urgency. That’s the shameful squandering on Broadway of what our country would seem to believe is our most valued (and infinitely exploitable) natural resource: our celebrities….

Lindsay Lohan: This undeniably talented (and for all intents and purposes, former) film actress poses a special challenge. Her only recent work appears to have been as a paparazzi model and professional partygoer, and a big, line-laden dramatic part like Blanche DuBois might be too onerous to start with. So why not put her in the Broadway premiere of “Finishing the Picture,” a late-career Arthur Miller play inspired by the travails of making a movie (“The Misfits”) with his wife Marilyn Monroe? Having seen a production of this play in Chicago, I can testify that the Marilyn part requires only that the actress playing her be willing to appear asleep and stupefied and, briefly, to walk across the stage naked. For Ms. Lohan, who credibly impersonated Marilyn for a New York magazine photo shoot, this ought to be a cinch. Should an eight-performance week prove too taxing, I suggest Paris Hilton for matinees.

This midnight post was suggested by Sunday's midday 4-digit NY Lottery number, 7286, and by the following web pages:

7286 Style by Lindsay Lohan and 7286 Prisoner Transport.

Some background from a third 7286 web page—

Starlet Lindsay Lohan is bringing her signature Hollywood style to the masses with her new 7286 line. The starlet's stylish stamp is on every aspect of the line, from the name (7-2-86 is her birthday) to the brand's tag line : "Give a girl the right handbag, and she can conquer the world!"

Magic Time!

           For fans of Douglas Adams and St. Augustine

Update of 2:20 AM June 13:

For the midday "042" as a reference to Adams, see Wikipedia. The "828" may be interpreted as a reference to St. Augustine's feast day, 8/28… or, for the more secularly minded, a reference to the time 8:28 PM (to go with the evening "0845" as a reference to 8:45 PM). For further details, see Times of the Times . The midday "7286" is more difficult. See midnight's Broadway Cinderella.

See also June 2, 2007, and June 19, 2010,
as well as Kernel of Eternity in this journal.

Some background— Square of Opposition
in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
and Deep Structures in this journal.

" Try this one."

Godfather

"Mr. Messina is no ordinary Twitter user. The self-described
'hash godfather,' he officially invented the Twitter hashtag
in August 2007…."

— Ashley Parker (page ST1 of tomorrow's
    NY Times  National Edition)

But seriously—
Degreeless Noon—

Click to enlarge.
“My card.”

Meet Max

Also* in today's New York Times —

The Times  piece is about Max Mathews, computer-music pioneer,
who died at 84 on Maundy Thursday, April 21.

* See Historical Fiction, 1 PM ET

… But perhaps not a supreme  fiction.

"When we left the theater, my son and I knew we had experienced the most thrilling movie of the summer. 'First Class' is narratively lean, beautifully acted and, at all the right moments, visually stunning. But I had experienced something else. My son is 10 and a romantic, as all 10-year-olds surely have the right to be. How then do I speak to him of this world’s masterminds who render you a supporting actor in your own story?"

Robert A. Heinlein—

    "How about those empty universes?" I demanded.
    "Maybe they are places about which stories will be written
or maybe stories have already been told but aren't favorites
of us four, so we don't emerge close to their scenes.
But those are guesses. So far as my theory is concerned,
such Universes are 'null' — they don't count one way or the other.
We find our  universes."
    "Sharpie, you have just invented pantheistic multiperson solipsism.
I didn't think it was mathematically possible."
    "Zeb, anything  is mathematically possible."
    "Thanks, Jacob. Zebbie, 'solipsism' is a buzz word. I'm saying that
we've stumbled onto 'The Door in the Wall,' the one that leads to
the Land of Heart's Desire. I don't know how and have no use for
fancy rationalizations. I see a pattern; I'm not trying to explain it.
It just is ."

Ernest Hemingway—

"Isn't it pretty to think so?"

Today's midday NY lottery number was 176.

An occurrence of that number in this journal—

Umberto Eco,
Foucault’s Pendulum, page 176:

Here, too, you entered through a little garden…

Here is a picture of 176.

Continued from D-Day eight years ago…

See also Savage Detectives and Two Writers Walk Into a Bar.

"… a little mystery to figure out…." — Bonnie Raitt, 1991

Two writers walk into a bar…
(A phrase from Immoveable Feast on May 28, 2005. See also May 28 this  year.)

Yesterday's post First Class featured a picture of Mystique.

A related passage* from a book pictured here May 28—

See also Wallace Stevens on the Center.

* on participation mystique — "The primitive mind
does not differentiate the supernatural from reality,
but rather uses 'mystical participation'
to manipulate the world."
— Wikipedia

'X-Men: First Class' Does
Good Midnight Business

“Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death,
and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.”
– Ernest Hemingway,
   Death in the Afternoon, Ch. 11

“There is never any ending to Paris….”
– Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

See also Back from the Shadows.

This morning's previous post suggests the following…

* See May 16.

Today is Commencement Day at MIT.

Well, perhaps not quite nothing.

The above pictures were posted here on the day the following book was published—

The lives of the nine Jews in the above book amount to more than Yau's "nothing."

Note, however, that claims by Jews (see Jill Abramson yesterday) 
that their secular publications constitute a substitute for religion
and contain only "absolute truth" should be viewed with at least one
raised eyebrow.

Abramson's remark yesterday that her promotion to New York Times  executive editor
was like "ascending to Valhalla" had a religious flavor worthy of yesterday's
Feast of the Ascension.

In related news from yesterday's Times—

See also a symbol related to Apollo, to nine, and to "nothing"—

A minimalist 3×3 matrix favicon—

This may, if one likes, be viewed as the "nothing"
present at the Creation.  See Jim Holt on physics.

See today's NY lottery numbers* and Gravity's Rainbow , pp. 656-657.
(Penguin Classics paperback, June 1, 1995.)

"Show me all  the blueprints."
— Howard Hughes, according to Hollywood

* Readers new to lottery hermeneutics may consult
  some remarks by Stuart Moulthrop.