I must have first read about the Situationist International about two years ago. But it is only recently during an excursion to the bookstore that me, trying to reap the benefits of a storewide discount, purchased the lonely copy of “Guy Debord” by Anselm Jappe (translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith) in the Sociology department for serious reading.

Worth it, even if you were to buy it without the discount. From the Afterword by Anselm Jappe for the English translation,

“If you cannot rid yourself of a bandit,” goes an Italian proverb, “make him into a baron.” Until almost his death, Guy Debord was the object of a conspiracy of silence; these days his work, and the work of the Situationists in general, seem rather to have fallen prey to a conspiracy of chatter that is liable to distort their meaning beyond all recognition. In France, the strong tendency now is to treat Guy Debord as an elegant stylist, the actual content of whose writings is of scant interest. In Great Britain and the United States, by contrast, where in the last decade more has been published on the Situationists than anywhere else, even France, and where the subject was taken up by academic and mainstream commentators sooner than in other countries, the Situationist movement is viewed almost exclusively from the angle of the history of culture.

Practically all current discussions of the Situationists embody an attempt – perhaps not always conscious – to render them innocuous, to normalize them by one means or another. One such means is flatly to present this antipolitical and antiartistic movement as political and artistic, and then concentrate entirely on the SI’s aesthetic and “ludic” concerns.

It is so compelling a passage, that I might think it would suffice to make the perfect review. I might as well have nothing to say than to just quote. Until this book, my understanding of Debord was severly limited. Why, even Foucault was easier to get. This was somebody who left, in my opinion then, a trail of cryptic words and flamboyant declarations. It was difficult to begin to understand his terminology; agenda and method. It was like, ramblings of the true legendary hermit-artist who strives only to let go and not worry about being understood.

Dérives; psychogeography; manifestos; “spectacles” – things that sounded greatly surreal, but based upon reality and the world somehow. Like a mega-fiction of the world. Ah well, no essay or article I could find as well to demystify this man and his ideas. The most useful readings only taught one of the methods and practice of the dérive and the détournement. There was really little that could teach me about the why behind the acts. Gradually, I reduced the Situationist International to merely an artistic avant-garde movement. Play for play’s sake.

Hinting at anarchist connotations to Debord was the film “Waking Life”, which became one of my favourite films after I first saw it. This reference to Debord, though, I did not particularly understand either. Here’s the scene, though. I think it’s pretty cool.

The passage by Jappe I quoted makes so much sense to me because of my earlier exposure to Debord. Or at least, it showed how my earlier exposure to Debord didn’t make sense. In fact, reading that as an afterword, and appreciating what it said, signalled to me that I had understood something!

I would not have appreciated the afterword as much if not for the elaboration in the earlier parts of the book, I should qualify. Jappe provides a heavy theoretical basis of Debord’s work in the first part “The Concept of the Spectacle”, providing readers with a Debord-ian interpretation of Marxism and the modern life to show how such became the theory for his later actions and writings. Introducing readers to the spectacle, the cornerstone of Debord’s thought, Jappe is clear with his handling of the subject, unafraid to draw sharp and concise conclusions to aid in the reader’s understanding, without muddling too much with words and overly confuse the reader. This is no 101 guide to Debord, though, if there may ever be one. This book is no light read to me, the formally untrained one in philosophy, taking about 2 months to finish it. However, his writing style does leave one with a sense of awe and satisfaction upon finishing the book.

The second part, “The Practice of Theory” shows how the Situationist broke away from the Letterist International and its growth beyond – its acts and agendas of non-work which showed truly just how avant-garde their thought was at that point in time. It was not political, for they were not just simply Marxist. They were beyond that into a sort of Hegelian Marxism, as Debord would suggest. Indeed, by interpreting Debord and the SI in that light, many things became less cryptic and more logical, it was not just another artistic movement as well. Jappe goes on to show how exactly the SI steered its ship according to the course of Hegelian Marxism and its like e.g. Lukács – its specific observations and conclusi0ns on the world. It was not a haphazard, random mass of individuals; but it was not quite an organized, united front, but it was something that made sense without using our languages of discourse.

The third and final part of the book, “Theory Past and Present” generally discusses the impact of Debord upon the contemporary world, and vice versa for the reader to gain a fuller understanding of the late Debord, until his suicide. It confirms certain earlier hypotheses of Debord, and reinforces what Jappe set out to do as mentioned in the blurb – “Anselm Jappe rejects recent attempts to set Debord up as a “postmodern” icon, arguing that he was a social theorist in the Hegelian-Marxist tradition – not a precursor of Jean Baudrillard but a heir of the young George Lukács of History and Class Consciousness (1923).”, as well showcase Debord’s take on the pre-war Surrealists, which refuted attempts to argue that he was another son of surrealism.

More quotes from the Afterword:

…Debord’s theory is in essence a continuation of the work of Marx and Hegel and that its importance inheres for the most part precisely in this fact… Debord’s work itself effectively demonstrates – though none of the academic or subcultural accounts acknowledge this – that Hegelian-Marxist concepts are still the most useful for understanding the world, particularly the self-destructive character of a society driven by the commodity. Only now, in fact – globalization having finally realized the notorious “totality” – is Hegelian-Marxist theory really coming into its own; and it is no doubt for this very reason that our accredited intellectuals have for quite some time, and with rare unanimity, been declaring that nothing could be as out of date and irrelevant as the concepts of Hegel. Hegel is the greatest absentee of the day, surpassing even Marx in this regard, for even Marxism is acceptable to a degree, so long as it is guaranteed Hegel-free…

…The “derealization” so often evoked by postmodern thinkers had a distinctly “real” basis in the purely speculative boom of the nineteen-eighties, financed by debt and refueled by a great mass of capital no longer susceptible of productive investment. The euphoric climate of the times was a big bubble of false pretenses. In a word, the boom and the euphoria were both simulated. At the same time, derealization was very much yearned for, and even more so once the euphoria evaporated along with the prospect of indefinitely prolonging the artificial life of a financial system devoid of any basis in production. .. The portion of truth contained in postmodern theory resides in its description of virtualization, in the fact that it took those processes seriously… But in the end, thought it [postmodernism] raises real questions, its answers come from nowhere and go nowhere.

…Debord was no nihilist: nothing could be falser than the picture sometimes painted of a dour character mulling hateful and destructive deeds night and day, showering anyone unlucky enough to come in range with insults, denunciations, expulsions and anathemata, and finally crowning this dismal existence with an act of suicide. The truth is that Debord loved many things, among them of course life in the Paris he knew in the nineteen-fifties; in later years he contrived to find people and places to savor, particularly in such quartiers populaires as still existed. Never having been taken in by the spectacle’s false promises of life, he seems to have found some real happiness. For the ostentatious despair that flirts with self-destruction and is so much admired in art galleries and halls of learning Debord had nothing but scorn: as early as 1955 he evoked the “overrated corpse” of Artaud – a barb that can still outrage petty Parisian snobberies forty years later. In his own words, “I have no thought of complaining about anything, and certainly not about the way I have managed to live.”

Kudos for Nicholson-Smith for his translation of the work. I think it’s a damn good read. I hope I haven’t quoted too much for this post, but I really think the original does itself the most justice. Do zoom in the text for a more ergonomic reading experience.

Man, I think it’s chic to be accquainted with, and actually somewhat understand modern French philosophy, non?

Our ideas have no equal

Their brilliance dazzles all

They see the brightness they cannot comprehend

And liken it to the last burst of a dying star

Cold, dark, devoid, empty

Yet when we bestow upon them the knowledge to see

They plead ignorance still, they fear, they don’t see

We treated them with the respect we gave to equals

For once perhaps… But not much more

Alas, the loneliness of the eternal spark!

Felt solely in its own amidst the dark

‘This genius demands an audience!’ We speak

An audience? Wishes of a deluded mind in grandeur

For it still lacks its rightful men!

But this loneliness needs a witness at least

Please could we have a witness at least?

O man! Attend!

What does deep midnight’s voice contend?

I slept my sleep,

And now awake at dreaming’s end:

The world is deep,

And deeper than day can comprehend.

Deep is its woe,

Joy—deeper than heart’s agony:

Woe says: Fade! Go!

But all joy wants eternity,

Wants deep, deep, deep eternity! *

O man, Attend…

I am so unique, so different

I don’t know how to think

O man! Attend!

I am so unique, so different!

I crush the other minds to dust!

I am so unique, so different!

* “Zarathustra’s Roundelay” taken from R. J. Hollingdale’s translation of “Thus Spake Zarathustra” written by Friedrich Nietzsche

It ought to be a musical blasphemy to actually compare two virtuosos and their talents. Yup, music ain’t a science. Hence I’m not exactly going to say who’s better… Just some observations… (NOTE:) From the musically untrained ear, I should qualify.

Hmm. Anyway, how come coincidentally, all the four names I mentioned are all chicks?

The first Chang piece I heard was her Air on the G String by Bach. Thank YouTube for bringing live classical music into the reach of many. For a piece I thought pensive, I think there was too much vibrato. But perhaps it was just that my untrained ear couldn’t process it. I didn’t exactly have a good first impression anyway.

When recently I decided to pick up classical music again, I stumbled upon the works of Mutter. Ah, the first piece I heard from her was Vivaldi’s Summer, third movement – Presto, done with the Berlin Philharmoniker and conducted by . Always a timeless piece, my favourite movement out of the entire Four Seasons; I think I first loved this writing of Vivaldi’s since I heard it, albeit re-arranged in crossover style, in Vanessa-Mae’s Storm. The fury, the intensity, the passion that was hinted by Vanessa-Mae. Ah well, Mutter screamed it. I loved it! Only the original could have such power; any re-arrangement would have it diminished, I think I would now say. No amount of synthesized beats and modern electronics could perfect perfection. Okay, maybe not perfection, but yup, make no mistake. Vivaldi was good…

Some things are there in classical renditions that don’t exist in crossover. The echoes of the string, the imagery of the resonating string. All these effects are reduced if not sacrificed in the playing of electric violins. Deemed undesirable, they would otherwise cause feedback under the artificial amplification of the sound. A significant part of the violinist’s message is lost in the process in the quest for sharper sounds, rather than deeper, more hollowed acoustics. Ah, didn’t Nicolas de Lenfent call the violin the Devil’s instrument for its unnatural, human voice amongst all instruments (From Anne Rice’s “The Vampire Lestat”)?

I’m almost forgetting Sarah Chang and the original aim of this writing… Getting lost in appreciation of the Devil’s instrument. Too bad I can’t play it.

Sarah Chang! In my quest for the perfect Vivaldi, I heard her again. Turns out that she too had her own album of the Four Seasons. It’s been said to be more subdued… But I think actually it sounds like she stresses her violin so much when she plays Presto from Summer, it sounds like she’s making love to it. Subdued? Perhaps mine is a bad recording of it, but I think I hear scratchiness on some strings. But I wouldn’t say that it’s bad skill, in fact, it’s in making her violin struggle, resist, moan that the feeling of the piece comes through. BRUTAL! I think I loved it too! It’s technicality as well in my opinion. It’s not exactly the scratchiness of a beginner, but the scratchiness of a pro, like she meant it to. Like she knows how to make it sound precisely like that, to stretch the limitations of her violin. It shows how much she and her violin are one. All her passion poured into the piece! SHIT! I NEED TO HEADBANG TO THE PIECE!!!

In general, for the whole Four Seasons, Mutter seems to have a much cleaner sound and places equal emphasis on each note. But Chang is like rushing to the last stroke before the rest-note, where she ends off stylistically signing off the release of her musical angst, in the sound unique to each movement and season, then plunging into the next. You can hear it in Summer where it’s an aggressive slash, Autumn where it’s a gentle step-off. If my words may be adequate, Chang likes release, Mutter likes being epic. But they both love the concertos. I enjoy both performances.

The dilemma would be to decide whose rendition I should encode into MP3 for storage in my disk space-challenged phone for portable music listening. Hmm… I think I will settle with Chang’s. No reason. Just feeling. Ah, super-short conclusion for a very long dilemma.

A side-note, I guess after listening to both interpretations, I have come to appreciate the role of vibrato usage in violin playing as well. Vibrato adds feeling, it’s the accent of the violinist. Hmmm. Wasn’t there some debate over whether baroque should be played with any vibrato at all, if tradition ought to be followed in the spirit of history? Ah well, I think you know my answer.

To all who understood that, or the rest who already know what I’m talking about, or use it even (on my blog or not), this lamentation’s dedicated to you.

Certainly, web feeds do get rid of all the distractions of a normal website. You need not waste bandwidth downloading CSS files; JS files and a million and twelve background images. Fast, pure, efficient, brutal. Technological. Simple. Industrialist. Scientific. You get to see where you wanted to read, after all. That is like the main reason you follow the site, ain’t it?

BUT NO! What if, the site author NEVER meant all the CSS; JS and background images as distractions? They could be distractions to YOU, but ART to HIM! They were meant to be savoured together with the rest of the text, the blog posts. A grand scheme of things. A holistic picture. An overall experience.

Oh well, that’s how I see it anyway. Why else would I spend time into making the header and loading image, customizing the theme and installing the many plugins in The Staccato Slur, if it was not meant for your dear enjoyment, my readers; the appreciators of my work? Sure, it might not be van Gogh to you, or that you might already be bored of seeing the same thing all the time, but hey, it’s part of the grand design. It’s like, erm… Ordering fine dining, takeaway please. Reading a book, using Kindle. Dating a girl, straight to the bed. Okay maybe not. Horribly bad assumptions there.

Yes okay, you get the idea. Every time you are there, doing the same thing as you did before, seeing the same thing you would have seen for ages, that is there. Whatever attracted you to it in the first place; the novelty of the very first.

The atmosphere, the façade!

Alright. Why in spite all these then do I still give my readers the option of subscribing to The Staccato Slur via RSS? I could easily disable it via my Wordpress Admin console.

Here is what I think, my part of the deal. If you fancy feeds and cannot bear to part with the convenience it brings,  sure, go ahead and use it on The Staccato Slur. No issue, only if you would come back, once in a while, to see the site in its entirety… Kinda like going for a live concert for your favourite band for once, instead of just listening to their MP3s and watching their DVDs, eh? Oh, and when other people ask you about The Staccato Slur, be sure to direct them to the main site first. Don’t just forward articles from the feed! Deal?

Ah well, by the way, I do use feeds as well, if you wonder.  But purely for data/news sites and updates, technical stuff about Wordpress and Linux that doesn’t usually have an aesthetical element to its content layout. Distractions, that is. Heh, but I do go to the website every now and then to see if they have changed the layout to something more pleasant, and of course, to bask in the non-design of things. The whole experience, still, even if its of a mediocre aesthetic.

Well, about 3 years ago, when I got “The Open Door” (TOD) as a gift, honestly, I didn’t exactly like the sound. I hated it to an extent. I’d already have heard “Call Me When You’re Sober” online, and while it sounded decent, it lacked the feel. Running the album for a few replays, I thought that none of the other songs sounded anything like Fallen or Origin. It seemed like Ben Moody’s departure really changed the creative direction of the band. I wasn’t sure that I liked TOD, and I put the album aside very soon to listen to the other bands of the day.

Where was the magic of My Immortal? The moral drama of Torniquet? The escapism of Imaginary? The desperation of Going Under? The twisted seduction of Whisper and Lies? Gone were the guitar riffs and bridges that were more than that expected of typical pop; the youthful idealism and the angsty songbird. Instead, in its place was a dark, personal maturity that I didn’t really get at the point in time. While in retrospect I think that perhaps at that time I should already have had the necessary means to understand some of the themes, I didn’t then. I guess it’s the exhilaration from the initial recovery then, or inexperience with myself. (Or rather to quote Anne Rice, in Marius’s words to Lestat: “So by innocence you mean not an absence of experience, but an absence of illusions.”) I was still a humanist in-principle back then, if you would understand. I wasn’t so dark.

Bear in mind that I hadn’t entered college that time. College was where I deepened my love for thinking in academic pursuits in epistemology and philosophy, and waged a closet rebellion against the education system. Oh well, if you had followed me through from The Abridged Ajani you’d know… But it suffices now to say that I had a shift in philosophical outlook. I gave up my standard humanism. I began to polish up on inconsistencies. I tried to generate an activism out of this lost optimism but none truly captured who I am. I intuited for the meaning of everything once more and I saw the Savage Garden (You need to read Anne Rice if you don’t understand) and the darkness of it all (which was why The Staccato Slur was born).

Now, about here my musical tastes started to move away from the mainstream as well. Like really distance away. Two separate decisions – first, I wanted to find more bands which sounded more like the Evanescence of Fallen. After all, it was music which I’d deeply identified myself with back then in secondary school. Second, the desire to explore the Savage Garden deeper in its gothic roots.

I became exposed to real hardcore goth rock like Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy and the like. Now, real hardcore goth rock I didn’t really enjoy because it sounded kind of… Old. Sounded like the 80s. But goth rock is dead in the 21st century, in my opinion. Few bands venture into it seriously. If they didn’t need to worry about all the subcultural norms like acceptance, perhaps they would be more original. Unfortunately, most of what I hear is just imitation and remakes. Of course, this is just based upon what I can gather, I never went into a gig before. Yet I was glad when I found out more modern revivals of goth rock which didn’t sound like just trying to imitate the 80s’ once more – like Redemption, but then that’s just one band. Original, yet sounding like the real stuff of the first batcavers – cheeky, punkish, gloomy, introspective.

Oh well, I do like “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by Bauhaus though, if you wish to know if I was really hardly moved at all by the pioneers of gothdom. It must be a goth anthem. And some Depeche Mode (if you consider them as part of the movement back then). I liked the music. It was more than the usual pop, but not too esoteric to enjoy. But that is all. I never claim to be a goth, despite my resonance with some of their key concepts and existentialism, for I enjoy but just a small bit of their music.

A greater part of my musical exploration was spent in the world of metal. Gothic metal, especially. Now, it was then that I discovered the European attitudes to Evanescence. Evanescence is not goth rock to begin with (read last two paragraphs), and is hardly accepted as gothic metal. No, it is a wash-out, a sell-out and a pop-packaged artist. Plus, the elements of gothic metal as the pioneers i.e. Theatre of Tragedy defined weren’t present in Evanescence. But I will need to discuss this later in the text.

For now, understand that I looked to Europe, plunging into the works of Theatre of Tragedy (ToT); Theatres Des Vampires; as well as their lyrically lesser variants, like Lacuna Coil (though they are now just hard rock); Beseech; and Macbeth, just to mention those bands I like. Certainly, one could argue against my classification for some of the bands I’d mentioned. Is X even metal, if gothic metal? “Gothic” metalheads are not metalheads. Real metalheads don’t listen to gothic metal as well. X is a sell-out. Whatever. This is not an exercise in authenticity, in either the gothic and the metal circle (though I found it fun to learn about such stuff), but there is something deeply intellectual and sexy about ToT (when Liv Kristine was still around) and their songs written in the ancestors of modern English. Beauty and the Beast.

Yet metal is a huge genre. I’d have heard a bit of everything – Arch Enemy and In Flames (melodic death metal); Elvenking and Midnattsol (folk); Vader (death metal); Within Temptation and Nightwish (symphonic metal), just to name a few of the sub-genres. I also read deeply and thought about issues in metal (or in fact, subculture music in general) – classification of genres and sub-genres; “selling-out” and authenticity; clothing and lifestyle; goals, outlooks, philosophy etc. I cannot yet conclude, and don’t plan to, my findings in this realm. After all, I am no real member. I speculate, think, guess, poke, confirm and revise.

But truly, the tour in metal (or the debate over whether what I’m listening to is metal) has made me senstitive to a lot of things in music which most do not notice or care about. For one, it is my personal conclusion that metal music is closer to classical compositions structurally than say, your average pop song, strangely, but I cannot really tell you whether X is metal and Y is pop. My informal study is based upon the opinions of those in the scene, those who think they are in the scene, and those who are definitely what they call, poseurs. But ugh, I don’t wish to talk too much about methodology. All these is for my own usage in the end, not for the revolution of a million’s tastes.

Back to Evanescence. While I was having my dances with the personal rise of gothic rock and metal, the latter was subjugated, and the knowledge of Moody’s split and the subsequent departure of all the original members (save Amy) too made me not identify so much with the band. I chuckled at the reference among ex-fans online about the latest happenings with Amy Lee and Her Band. Yet, there still was something definitely with the band.

When I decided (must be because of the rain and solitude ) to re-listen to the band seriously once again over the past days in camp, for the first time in years, TOD sounded like a damned good album suddenly. But shouldn’t I, after my tour in metal, move away from Evanescence in its poseur-ish capacity? Perhaps it was the memory of darker, moodier days now which protects and reminds in retrospect. Yes, I’d have moved away, but I am still the same. (Starts playing Evanescence’s “Lithium”… “I wanna stay in love with my sorrow…” ) I am more comfortable with myself now, more settled, but I still remember. I am an existentialist, but I have a shadow, my slur. Maybe after all there is something alluring about the solo voice who sings alone… The only voice that knows its own personal sorrow that no one else can share in song. More than the interplay of the Beauty and the Beast. It’s made me recall the pre-college days of a more withdrawn, passive existence, instead of the aesthetical-existential aggressiveness I now bear. The band had been critical to me in younger days, in ways I still cannot adequately or convincingly explain. Origin, Fallen and TOD may have differences in structure and theme, but somehow there is this coherent story.

Yet in fact, in my opinion really, I can see some metal influences in TOD… Yes, even in the older songs now I think I hear metal. Is it because of the complexity of the genre or my confusion, ignorance or poseur-ism? What should I call Evanescence? Pop, rock, metal, alternative, classical crossover? I don’t know. Maybe I understand and finally agree with Amy, when she once said that Evanescence cannot be classified into a genre.

Now before I get accused of being infatuated with her again (I’ve been once, ages ago ), I would like to say that she’s really damned smart to have written Weight Of The World and Snow White Queen. Damned smart.

I’ve been catching up on what I missed out as a born-again fan over the past few years these few days again. Some commenter suggested that Amy nowadays adopted a more operatic singing as contrasted with her pre-TOD days. Now I notice it (notice how she drags her words), and I think so too. Sexy. Damn, I feel like I have two years’ worth of Evanescence to write on… The theatricalism… The concepts… Everything!

Now, there’s something I wish to say about Ben Moody, and the like, to make clear my thoughts about the debate about “Amy Lee and her band”. Ben Moody’s a fantastic writer; this is testified by the earlier works, his guitaring and composition for them pwns. Even though he’d confined the works within a typical pop song verse-chorus-bridge structure, his contribution to the songs made them stand out. His post-Evanescence works are great, too. I remember I enjoyed “Everything Burns” greatly before it took me a while to discover that the male singer on the song was Ben Moody! Why, he had done the writing on it as well! But I cannot imagine him being able to co-write something like The Open Door.

Amy was the one who would wanted to truly make it a work of art, not commercial pop. I don’t know now, now that I have begun to love TOD’s themes and structure (or lack of), but it was very much a 50-50 decision. Either way, they’d have success, I think, just in different fans.

I can understand Moody’s pain as he left Evanescence. F**k! This was their child. His and hers, equally. It was a crazy divorce. Of the tale of the final dream come true, the authentic love story, you know, not just the silly teensy puppy love, gone sour. Now, what was truly the reason behind the departure I do not wish to speculate too much, officially it was cited as “creative differences”. Neither do I wish to know about why all the other original members of Evanescence left as well.

(Amy Lee, from “questions questions everywhere but not a drop to speak“)

Last but not least, I often get asked about band members, the whole “is it a band, is it solo, etc” (understandably! There have been quite a few). Everyone who has ever been a part of Evanescence is a part of its story, a part of its soul. From day 1 it has been a collaborative effort and different people have contributed over the years. But it is more than just people. It’s something that has taken on its own life, it has grown, changed and become more interesting, more soulful, more honest than a perfect image will allow. The passion is what makes it live on, the obsessive focus on straight up, head first, love for the music. That is my band. And against all obstacles I’m sticking to it.

Now, so that’s the end… A chronicle of two, three years of my musical tastes and their evolution… And my feelings for Evanescence. Well, it’s been deeply carthatic writing about it. Why, it’s over 2000 words now! I wonder if anybody understands. This has been a confrontation with my shadow. Ah well, there’s been talk of a new album coming out next year. I will definitely buy it, though it might just be like TOD, I might not appreciate it immediately. After all, Amy wrote that “Its definitely not happy married music, but its not like I’m dying the whole time either.”

For those who do not know what I am talking about, Amy Lee has been Amy Hartzler for a while now. She’s married her therapist! Heh. Reminds me of that funny Irvin Yalom novel “Lying on the Couch” I read recently. I think there is some ethical concern there about Amy marrying her shrink… Has the APA done an investigation? Haha. Must be the memory of the book and my imaginative jealousy. Come and think about it, that was a decent book.

By the way, “Good Enough” is a damned good song. Unfortunately, it’s a mindf**k. I have stopped thinking about dark stuff for days now after watching the music video. In fact, I am too distracted by it to read my Tale of the Body Thief (Anne Rice) properly now.

Oh, well. EVANESCENCE ROCKS!!!

For purposes of consistency, I have migrated The Staccato Slur from ajanimgo.com to staccatoslur.com. The old domain name will still continue to exist, but henceforth redirect visitors to the new domain while people get used to the change.  All other related web presences e.g. email address, have been adapted to the new domain as well.

In short, reach The Staccato Slur at http://staccatoslur.com from now on. Shouldn’t mispell it if you can pronounce it.

Driving this opportunity for change is a migration to a new web host, Cyber Ultra. My old subscription at 3iX had expired, and let us just mention that Cyber Ultra gave me a better value-for-money ratio. 3iX is a good host in its own right, though.

For the Wordpress geeks, I have also done a review of the site’s engine; installing new plugins and removing obselete/unoptimized ones. Instead of using the old WP Super Cache, I am now using the W3 Total Cache that does database caching; gzipping; minification and CDN as well in one single plugin. Along with the optimization of a few site images, this should give quite a boost to the responsiveness and speed of the site. Unfortunately this has broken quite a few features e.g. Snap Shots; collapsible sidebars, but I think the end gain in speed could be worth it.

The admin backend is powered now by Fluency Admin. Looks that are consistent; features that are time-saving – why not?

These, and a series of other unstated plugin/method changes now make it easier than before to maintain The Staccato Slur, and understand from an admin perspective.

Does this mean that I will be writing more? Maybe, now that my staff job in the army gives me marginally more time in comfort to think and write.  The alternative would be just to let The Staccato Slur stagnant as usual, but after writing to you of all these changes,  I would guess letting it stay dormant would be dumb. After all, some of these changes e.g. domain name; hosting, cost money. But then, if I had no plans to write more on The Staccato Slur, then why would I have wasted money and time on all these? Hmm… Begging the question.

Certainly, that is existentialist “bad faith”. I always have the time to write. In camp, I could ink my greater thoughts on paper during whatever free time there is, but interrupted philosophical writing, as a result of the fluid military lifestyle, always sucks;even my in-camp penned reflections on military life are often short, brief and staccato. I’m not sure anyone else can understand them for I leave alot of the context out in these writings. The essence of sentences.

Writing on paper, then transferring everything inked online is not precisely an option too. You see, I know that when I am copying a text over anywhere, my hypercorrection kicks in, and I might end up rewriting the entire piece. Hence, my insistence for time to type on The Staccato Slur does create some form of inertia where writing is concerned, for I have not written anything deep, properly for long. I have not started too either the novel I was planning, or the series on existentialism I promised.

I should find some way around this, especially if it’s going to last for about a year and half more. In fact my will to post is because of me being on block leave now for about ten days. Not to worry though, in my mind everything is exploding as usual and ideas fly freely – I’m not stagnanted in thought. Some claim that being in the military reduces their intelligence and vocabulary prowress though. Hmm.Perhaps some just need exclusively a paper education to work their minds.

I feel like being a rare bitch. How about allowing me to say this?

Picking up a passion for the arts and humanities, such that you can be inspired from and speculate on the human condition, anywhere, anytime, without needing to face some abstract numbers and complex physical theories to get your mental fix.

Well, that was un-academic and un-multidisciplinary a comment but hah, it felt himbo-ly great. Don’t weigh it against my book cred though.

Although I consider myself a writer, there nevertheless always exists some form of hypercorrection and crazy perfectionism whenever I wish to write something on The Staccato Slur. Perhaps, this is from my slight fear of how I am interpreted ultimately as a thinker. As said, The Staccato Slur is mostly personal – of what deep thought or mundane act is not shared in real life amongst close friends, will eventually find itself here in the online world, aside from the occassional post about the occassional something else. It all has to do with some sort of putting on a good impression, maybe?

What’s hypercorrection anyway, you may ask? Although there’s like a whole linguists’ literature on it as a linguistic technical phenomena, I would just think of it as an excessive correction of grammar and style in language – in my case, I would not think that the effort I place in it is more than your typical grammar Nazi, but then the paranoia about it is about ten times higher. Rather than to correct the wrong phrasing, the tendency here is to use a very prescriptive guide to language that can be a little unnatural and counter-intuitive. Eventually, I could actually wrong the correct phrasing. Think of awkward “you and I” moments in writing when it would be more nicer to read as “you and me”; but you are using the former because somehow you have picked it up in the past perceiving it to be more “correct”. Hence, my point; and I parse every sentence I write about ten times in a state of hypercorrectiveness before I go onto the next.

The previous post on Strepsils? Haha, I was writing it in a hurry – the style’s slightly different from other posts. Meh, this perfectionism makes my writing of some posts really slow. Admittedly, even after checking, my inherent standard of English’s not fantastic enough to claim perfection still. What a bother.

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I was planning to write a series of posts about advanced topics in existentialist philosophy a while ago. I don’t claim expertise, but hopefully some proficiency enough to be able to argue a coherent position. However, I remembered then that I made a promise, unvetted, regarding the need for a conscious attempt to simplify and introduce any technical topics I may write about to the readers. Modifying my plan a little then, I have decided to instead integrate those posts into part of a greater series which, instead of starting with advanced discussions in philosophy, aims to be a sort of “course in existentialism” where I will try my best to teach existentialism from scratch in Post No. 1 and gradually build upon it in later posts so that the unintiated could actually eventually become proficient in the thought processes of existentialists. This is a big project, of course, and a scary one for me – existentialism can be misinterpreted to become a philosophy of assholes, and I am not qualified academically to say that my understanding is sound. But I do really want to try since it could actually be personal while mostly objective for the uninitiated – in the course, I may find myself managing to perfect and synthesize some of my more raw thoughts about the subject as “teaching material for advanced topics”.

The writing will be slow though. As said, Virgo hypercorrection forbids me from being too haphazard with style; though I assure you my overall subjective expression will be worthy of art. I will try to minimize on unfamiliar words in my writing – by that I mean English words rather than technical terms of philosophy. However, since many times a single difficult word can do the work of a many simple phrases, I apologize if you the reader may find comprehension a hard task. It is necessary though, since I wish to spend more time elaborating on the technical philosophical concepts, that effectively leads to demystifying existentialist philosophy, than using the time otherwise explaining a couple of unfamiliar English words. The complication is when I do not quite share your distinction between what is to be technical and what is to be English; for me it is quite blurred when I unconsciously may use jargon, that has become familiar, in everyday life too.

I will welcome comments and criticism on the series, and complaints about unclear or vague language when the former begins – this post itself of “Hypercorrection” be an acknowledgement of my sometimes hypercorrected language used. Talk about using jargon.

I got a video from the Wordpress blog here about Wordpress 2.7; well, you can see how the admin panel looks like here. I have no wish to congest the Internet further with screenshots of my own panel – they all look about the same anyway.

Quite obviously, I think that 2.7 is but a first step to greater things to come. The new interface will take time getting used to, but hey, they have already simplified plenty of things for me. The inclusion of an in-built plugin installer; comment threading and sticky post system will be good news for other Wordpress users and I, now that we can do away with third-party plugins for such purposes. The most exciting thing is the clear “modular” structure everything now is arranged. That seems to be the trend with Internet applications nowadays e.g. the dashboard has draggable elements; everything is, or looks AJAXed to open and close intuitively etc. I like it. I find everything integrated, tight, uncluttered.

I think that should be it? All about the candy; I don’t have much to bitch about then. I like the candy and only the candy’s changed. I can’t think of what else Wordpress lacks that I cannot extend myself… Ah, the power of open-source.

Well, heck to that. I thought that as long as they were not too long expired (meaning over a year perhaps?), they ought be edible. Their medicinal properties might be a different matter, but maybe I could do with a placebo as equally well. Their colour still looks decent, their taste still minty and delicious anyway.

A while ago while this blog was still The Abridged Ajani, I had written about freeganism. Well, the post might have been gone now, but I think that if I actually wrote about freeganism and had the chance once to think about it, then this Strepsils could be a case of it’s application. Although I am no freegan, but what’s wrong with expired stuff that still works, anyway? Well I’ve been on it for a week, and I’m still surviving. What’s life without a li’l risk?

I’ll be more responsible and post an update about expired stuff’s effectiveness when my cough’s over, anyway. It would be a mini-experiment about the freegan lifestyle, if any. Meanwhile, no guarantees to anything in this post mentioned. For a while during this time, anyway, I was put on conventional Western medicine, though I didn’t take the doses properly; hence this might not be a totally test.