Log24

See as well Lester Crystal in Wikipedia.

Update at 8:42 PM ET —  

A French Connection for Friedkin, from
the SXSW opening date of one of his films —

My response to an Instagram story on Michaelmas 2021 —

An ad page you might like — "The epitome of multipurpose,
these balms can be used for lips, hands and any other bits
of skin that need a little extra TLC." —

https://www.petitvour.com/products/
vegan-lip-balm-sweet-orange-tangerine

Related material —

See as well Joseph Wambaugh's classic novel The Golden Orange .

*

Midrash —

"… a difficult novel just sits there on your shelf unread —
unless you happen to be a student, in which case you're
obliged to turn the pages of Woolf and Beckett."

— Jonathan Franzen in The New Yorker , 30 September 2002

The young actress of the previous post in a music video —

The late Richard Burton
in Exorcist 2 : The Heretic —

"Been there, done that."

Click images for some backstories.

Related material: The Wet Hot Summa.

From a search for "snowflake" in this journal —

See also the January 13  death of a mathematician,
graph theorist Ralph Faudree of the University of Memphis.

Two hymns that may or may not be relevant:

Walking in Memphis and Come Falda di Neve,
the song that plays over the ending credits of
Exorcist III —

†

Those who prefer more-secular music may consult
Princeton Requiem, a post from the day of Faudree's death.

for Operation Lightfoot .

†

The bottom three lines of an image search:

For a meditation on the bottom line, see Mary Gaitskill’s story
“The Agonized Face.” See also George C. Scott reciting from
the Scottish play in The Exorcist III.

Continued from remarks of Marissa Mayer at Davos last year —

Related material — This evening's NY lottery…

… and Log24 post number 1424 —

    This journal on April 8—

See also a quote from William Peter Blatty in this journal yesterday.

The green cell in the array may be viewed as representing
Blatty's The Ninth Configuration … or perhaps Plan 9.

Roberta Smith in today's New York Times —

"… the argument that painting may ultimately be about
little more than the communication of some quality of
light and space, however abstract or indirect."

— Review of "Rooms With a View" at the Met

Lowry —

Malcolm Lowry, author of Under the Volcano

Hollywood —

Related material —

Friday, October 8, 2010 m759 @ 12:00 PM   Starting Out in the Evening … and Finishing Up at Noon This post was suggested by last evening's post on mathematics and narrative and by Michiko Kakutani on Vargas Llosa in this morning's New York Times . Above: Frank Langella in "Starting Out in the Evening" Right: Johnny Depp in "The Ninth Gate" "One must proceed cautiously, for this road— of truth and falsehood in the realm of fiction— is riddled with traps and any enticing oasis is usually a mirage." – "Is Fiction the Art of Lying?"* by Mario Vargas Llosa,     New York Times  essay of October 7, 1984 * The Web version's title has a misprint—    "living" instead of "lying."

"You've got to pick up every stitch…"

William Friedkin,
director of
The Guardian,
The Birthday Party,
and The Exorcist.

Related material:

Yesterday’s entry on St. Augustine
and the life of
Robert J. O’Connell, S.J.,
author of
Plato on the Human Paradox,
Fordham U. Press, 1997,
online at questia.com.

See also today’s entry at noon.

The Presbyterian Exorcist

In memory of

Charles W. Dunn, Harvard Professor of Celtic Languages and Literatures Emeritus, who died July 24, 2006, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston at the age of 90.  Dunn was master of Quincy House from 1966 to 1981.

“‘He brought a taste of Scotland to the House, initiating an annual rite of exorcism in September to cleanse the place of evil spirits, during which a Scots bagpiper led a march of residents around the courtyard and Charles intoned an incantation while waving a large baton, banishing ghosts and other harbingers of ill will. His leadership was at its best during magnificent evenings in the Master’s lodging when he taught guests Scottish country dances. Students were fond of him, and he of them.’

Born in Arbuthnott, Scotland, the son of a Presbyterian minister, Dunn began his schooling in Aberdeen and Edinburgh….”

— Harvard University Gazette online, Aug. 2, 2006

Related material:

In Memory of Wallace Stevens,
Presbyterian Saint
(also from Aug. 2, 2006),
and Deaconess.

High Concept, continued:

“In the beginning there was nothing.
 And God said, ‘Let there be light!’
 And there was still nothing,
 but now you could see it.“

— Jim Holt, Big-Bang Theology,
    Slate‘s “High Concept” department

Related material:

1. On the phrase “verbum mentis”
2. From Satan’s Rhetoric, by Armando Maggi
   (University of Chicago Press, 2001):

Beware of…
Jews Peddling Stories:

An episode in the ongoing saga of the conflict between the "story theory of truth" and the "diamond theory of truth."

The following set of pictures summarizes some reflections on truth and reality suggested by the August 9, 2003, New York Times obituary of writer William Woolfolk, who died on July 20, 2003.

Woolfolk was the author of The Sex Goddess and was involved in the production of the comic book series The Spirit (see below).

The central strategy of the three Semitic religions — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — is to pretend that we are all characters in a story whose author is God.  This strategy suggests the following Trinity, based on the work of William Woolfolk (The Sex Goddess and The Spirit) and Steven Spielberg ("Catch Me If You Can").  Like other Semitic tales, the story of this Trinity should not be taken too seriously.

A Confession of Faith:

Theology Based On the Film
"Catch Me If You Can":

The Son to God the Lutheran Father:

"I'm nothing really, just a kid in love with your daughter."

This is taken from a review of "Catch Me If You Can" by Thomas S. Hibbs.

For some philosophical background to this confession, see Hibbs's book

Shows About Nothing:
Nihilism in Popular Culture
from The Exorcist to Seinfeld.

By the way, today is the anniversary of the dropping on Nagasaki
of a made-in-USA Weapon of Mass Destruction, a plutonium bomb
affectionately named Fat Man.

Fat Man was a sequel to an earlier Jewish story,

Trinity.

Cross-Referenced

†

Shortly after midnight on the night of April 22-23, I updated my entry for Shakespeare's birthday with the following quotation: 

"With a little effort, anything can be shown to connect with anything else: existence is infinitely cross-referenced."

— Opening sentence of Martha Cooley's The Archivist

About 24 hours later, I came across the following obituary in The New York Times: 

"Edgar F. Codd, a mathematician and computer scientist who laid the theoretical foundation for relational databases, the standard method by which information is organized in and retrieved from computers, died on Friday…. He was 79."

The Times does not mention that the Friday it refers to is Good  Friday.  God will  have his little jokes.

From Computerworld.com:
1969: Edgar F. "Ted" Codd invents the relational database.	1969: Edgar F. “Ted” Codd invents the relational database. 1973: Cullinane, led by John J. Cullinane, ships IDMS, a network-model database for IBM mainframes. 1976: Honeywell ships Multics Relational Data Store, the first commercial relational database.

For a better (and earlier) obituary than the Times's, see The San Jose Mercury News of Easter Sunday.  For some thoughts on death and the afterlife appropriate to last weekend, see The Matthias Defense.

† The Exorcist, 1973