April 05, 2007

Email

S----,

Left your car at the garage. Not sure which one, but it's in Portland somewhere. It's the one in like, Portland, I think. The other one was cheaper, I noticed while walking home, but I didn't leave it at that one, I left it at the one by the, the thing, with the, you know, there was like a store or something, like nearby. There was some little card that the machine gave me but I was like, screw it, I never keep receipts, they're so totally corporate and I just can't get into that so I like chucked it.

So anyway the car thing's cool.

 

Arlington

UPDATE

Correction: The word "car" above should be "cat".

Comments:

Um, it doesn't look like you even entertained, as they say in philosophy, a successfully referring thought, Arlington. Like, your strings of letters look like a thought, but they're a failed one, since you never anchor them in a stable reference frame. Only the word 'car' in your disjointed missive actually refers to an item in the world, but it's mobile and transient. Not sturdy enough to support your nonsense. That's why everything else fails to refer.

Please try again. You date needs her car.
 
huh?
 
I agree with DA. Let's all try to keep this blog (and the comments) more concise, focused and actionable.
 
I'm reminded of Edmund Husserl's wise words to Martin Heidegger:

"Yeah, I'll give you a referring thought, you cunt, right up your stable reference frame."
 
Nevermind, Arlington. I see I got Dr. Snake Burnkeys almost irate.

What I meant to say if, for someone to grasp your thought, you need to insert an indexical that points to a stable chunk of the world which both you and the interlocutor can use as a reference frame to locate the rest of the thought in it. Here's an example of a thought that lacks one (another example would be your post above):

"Please bring me the coffee cup that's on the table in the room across the hallway from the office where the man with the nondescript briefcase works."

You'd be right to ask again: huh?
 
Great first line desagues. What happens next?
 
When I was visiting friends in Wastesto* one time I had trouble finding their place. So I called them up and asked for directions from where I was, by the phone. And the guy was like, well, where are you. And I told him, patiently, dude I'm right across from a McDonald's and a CVS, on this big sort of main drag street. I mean obviously I'm calling from the PHONE, you know?

Whew. Some people.


*Rochester
 
A. C. Hynes shouldn't be surprised if, instead of a thank-you note from S---, he gets a copy of Frege's collected papers.
 
Not pleasantly surprised, that's for sure!
 
Dr. Frege is famous not only for his contributions to mathematical logic but, in a more practical vein, he is even more widely remembered as the father of the modern concept of refrigeration. Every time we use the word 'Fridge' we are commemorating a true giant's contribution to civilization.
 
True that, Dr W. All true geniuses began their journeys in the vicinity of a fridge, and Frege is just one among many. Einstein commenced his apprenticeship thinking about better methods of refrigeration, while evaluating applications for improved fridges at the Patent Bureau in Berne. Isaac Newton decided to lay the ground for classical mechanics as a devious path towards the kinetic theory of heat -- or whatever may have served to warm his frigid room at Cambridge. "If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants," he modestly replied when asked about the merits of his achievements. Short-sighted historians of physics take this to be his hommage to predecessors. In fact, little do they know that he meant the phrase almost literally -- he would stack up thick tomes by Galileo, Kepler, John Wallis and Robert Hooke to get closer to the ceiling in his room, where the air was warmer and he could study celestial dynamics without his hands going numb from cold.

Fridges, that's where it's always been at.
 
Huh?
 
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