Wordle Blog #1: The Octordle

 I mean, I sort of just give up after my first attempt: what's next? Sesquipedordle, where you solve 150 words with a ratio of wrong guesses that increasingly approaches 50%?!

Also, I'm claiming bonus points for using the prefix "sesqui-" to both refer to "sequipedalian" and "sesquicentennial" for the first time I've ever seen.

Just in case you didn't catch that.

Daily Octordle #29

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8️⃣🟥

octordle.com

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So I tried “aisle,” and got a decent response.

Clearly, with the yellow tiles I had the best bet, so I thought about it, and came up with “shied.”

Surprisingly, I got a green. It took about 10 minutes to come up with my next guess, which I literally screamed at for being right.

Then came the hunt: what was closest to being right on the other words?

I think I tried “sails” next, because it had the highest ratio of green/yellow/gray.

“scaly” and “small” were sort of inevitable, because they were perfectly valid guesses.

Finally, it had to be “stalk.”

I ran the algorithm: my highest ratio was with #7. So I went for it, and after a number of cognitive contortionisms, I finally arrived at the only word I could think of that would satisfy the conditions… and somehow, it was right.

I then went back to #5: It had to be there somewhere, didn’t it? I had a green and four yellows, after all - this was a matter of processing. Eventually, I realized what it must be, and lo and behold, I was right again, much to my shock and awe.

I then went to #4, which I’d been eluding (pun intended). This, too boggled me for quite a while, but somehow the tumblers clicked, and I was able to get it.

And then came the realization: even if I got #3, it wouldn’t be enough. I was stymied. I had already lost.

I mean, it’s arguable that the formula they’re using in terms of how many guesses you get based on the number of words you have is suspect, since the original is a 1/6 ratio, and if Quardle is 4/9, and Octordle is 8/16, then it’s actually getting smaller and smaller with every iteration, but that’s like complaining that your controller is malfunctioning. But seriously, that actually does seem to be what’s happening mathematically, if anyone else has noticed. Just saying.

Either way, I figured if I could get at least ⅞ of this on my first attempt, it would be a personal victory.

And finally, after about 45 minutes with this beast of a puzzle, I came up with “ounce” as the only possible solution, and I beat #3.

I mean, I’m pretty sure I’d have come up with “cleat” on the next guess for #9, right? It does seem fairly inevitable.

I guess you never know, though…

T E N S I O N

You know something. You know something I don't. You know something nobody else knows... and everyone knows something you don't know.

In the theatre of our shared lives, this iteration creates tension.

Some of these things you can communicate - many of them; so many that were you to begin speaking and never stop, your physical body would deteriorate long before you were able to accomplish such a semiotic ritual.

You might draw them, but still - there is not enough space in the universe to contain the infinite complexity of a human life.

Sing them, record them, dance interpretively through the passing of your mortality, and broadcast your every waking moment, and there will always be a basic inequality between information you know and that which you can express.

In silence, sometimes you can hear the truth that you already know everything, though.

Only in complete honesty do we have a chance at understanding.

But is honesty in its purest form even possible? Are there secrets that burrow so deep we hide them from ourselves? When you look into the reflection of your own eyes, is it you at whom you are staring?

We have built our selves so carefully because the truth is dangerous. We have named and affixed to ourselves these kits of identity because we know that underneath it all there is no core upon which it is based.

We are not circles. We are triangles. At the boundaries of the self, we gather and tessellate, each holding together like otters at sea to protect ourselves from the void below.

But this forms a shadow. The shadow of the self. The shadow that, while comforting, means that we are blocking the light.

Through sharing our tension, we give each other the tools to destroy one another - and only by being deconstructed can we see through to what lies beyond.

Be silent. Pay attention. Read. Read the walls and the city, read the strangers who stand next to you. The degree to which things appear random is the degree to which we are unable to see the pattern that lies underneath.

It is there, though. This strange attractor that calls to us in fitful dreams and inebriation, these memories we look in upon through cracks in the wall, the voice that speaks to us in our loneliness... it is the singularity of shared experience, and it is the light.

And it is the tension.

I will not give in to the fear of being broken.

And so we have both the presence of absence and the absence of presence. Is there a difference? When you open the garage door, and you see that your spouse's car is not there - that is is the absence of presence. However, when you open the garage door knowing that it will not be there already - that is the presence of absence. Both contours of reality exist simultaneously - as you perceive, and your pattern-recognition software makes predictions, such data as that which fulfills a pattern creates a presence in the mind. Expectations of that pattern set up a binary - there/not there. When you perceive that a pattern is not met, or expectation fulfilled, you have the absence of presence - the notion and feeling that something is missing. But a pattern that tells you there is inherent incompleteness, something that you know cannot be there, that you would like to exist or be true; there is the presence of absence, the void, the abyss. So it is with god and the self.

Because in order to really create something, something significant and objectively meaningful, you have to die. Perhaps an artist's death can be the greatest thing for their art; we've all seen it happen - but before their physical death, every creator has to undergo their apotheosis. You begin by questioning everything - yes, the foundations of your society - and arrive at a point where you believe you have finally discovered the world for the cannibalistic incest-rape that it actually is: and then you can begin. You begin to deconstruct yourself, your every past life and interminable moment of rumination, and the causes and effects and identity kits of your wants and needs and desires and fears, and you start cutting. You rip away at yourself, an ouroboros of pain addiction, tearing sinew from flesh until you find that at the heart of it all is nothing. There is no bottom, no core, no foundational truth upon which you can rely - cogito ergo cogito: there is no sum, all is tautology. Then, the iterative recursion of perception, and then, the iterative recursion of self-perception, and then, the recursion of iterative perception, and then the humming eternity. Through this background noise, you collapse into the singularity, and you die. The realization that you have always been dead is not lost upon you, but seems unworthwhile in exploring when you arrive at the place where there is no time.

If there's one thing that I've learned, it's that everything is exactly as much bullshit as you think it is. When you see, read, or hear something and decide it's not for you, then you have drawn a line that separates you from it: that's okay to do. However, you have to own that line. Everything has something to do you with you - physically, emotionally, institutionally, or even in that sense when you close your eyes and recognize the contextual nature of your identity and know the interconnectedness of the human experience - there is nothing that has nothing to do with you.

Bozo: A Short Story

Bozo: A Short Story

 

[for Jacob]

 

                The steel wasn't nearly as comfortable as the wood, but he rode it the same way, flat-bottomed and staunch, the magic marker rubbing into the divot it had cut after years and years into his left buttock. Were one to touch it, they'd feel a groove in the skin and a knot on his bone where the pressure had built up calcium growth, like a Muay Thai kickboxer's shin. They hit themselves with branches and pummel tree trunks, drawing out the blood and sweat like demons, the dark bruises coalescing over the point where the skin breaks, the crusty scars healing over and over and the tibia growing thick and knotted like an oak.

                He was called "Cheeky" by the other riders, from when he used his ass to open a stubborn bottle of years-old hooch, pressure from inside holding the cap on so tight naught could free it from the container. All they saw was the crouch, though, then heard the seal break. He felt it give from the weight of his body, a slow torque that can only be applied with the aid of abdominals and gravity - he reached down, finished it with a little application of manual dexterity, and raised the bottle to his mouth to show it was clean to drink.

                "L'Chaim!" He cried, the bubbles in his throat popping with the bitter aftertaste of cheap fermentation, passing to his right and stumbling backwards when the tickle touched his brain.

                "That was cheeky." The voice called out from the several, nobody sure who said it, and yet he knew whose voice it sounded like.

                It sounded like Bozo.

______________________________

                Things were better in the seventies. Food tasted cleaner, the hookers more honest, the young kids - bad as they got - still stopped just short of cutting you over the last bone in a pack of smokes, but they'd make damn sure you split it even. Life was fair if you didn't lie, cheat or steal. That was then, though, back before Bozo left them.

                Trains cross over the land because they have to, but riders do it because they want - he paused, the magic marker burning to find the last word. He put the cap back on as the whistle blew, Stockton's 4:12 going ahead down the inland track toward its next stop, probably Bakersfield. Eight minutes of walking to the China Grove, where Theseus would hand him the joint and they'd catch up on times and lives. The last word would be written. Or it wouldn't; he smiled as he saw it out of the corner of his mind's eye, knowing the angle had just passed where he could've turned to look one last time, and he realized right then that it didn't even need one. The face was his, and everyone else's, the brim of the hat showing forever, the oval of the face framing a countenance that didn't say anything at all: this was how they'd know it was a message from Bozo.

                "How's the eye?" Theseus blew smoke at his face.

                "Fuck you too, man. How's it hanging?" Cheeky laughed, taking the spliff and suckling at it, wincing with his left eye, the world reducing down to a slit and starting to make sense again.

                "Same as it ever was," came the old reply from the Greek, his talent for killing rattlers responsible for his road-moniker. "Jane's dead."

                This shook Cheeky. He stopped mid-exhale, choking a little on the acridity of it, and then instantly accepted it as the necessary fact that it was. "Shit. I see. You alright?"

                Theseus looked down into the dirt, the grove home to a colony of gophers who left holes to dot the grass, one of which he stared into like he was about to burrow into it himself if he were only small enough. "I guess. I ain't seen her since January anyway, so..." The half-truth collapsed and his throat tightened. "I fuckin' miss her, though." He inhaled on the marijuana cigarette, fighting back the tears by way of a rictus wall through which he gritted his near-black teeth, what was left of them, the smoke billowing out through the gaps like a steam-engine. "She's in a better place that this shithole, right?"

                Cheeky nodded, his right arm reflexively drawing up to where he could rub his old wound with an extended index finger. "You betcher ass so, Thee. You bet your ass."

                "Mine ain't worth half what yours is, though." Theseus snickered. Both men chuckled, the birds overhead echoing the sound with a series of crackling caws.

                It was a knife fight, Theseus recalled, staring at the wound unapologetically. "Hey, do the trick one last time for me - cheer me up, yeah?" Cheeky frowned.

                "Really? One last time? Is that your story now?" He prepared for it by knocking a fist against where his right eye used to be, opening up the passage from his sinus and feeling the dull ache that started the endorphins, his heart racing already a little from the weed. "I'll do it 'cause you asked me, you don't gotta justify it."

                He grabbed the joint and drew a mighty breath, almost swallowing before thrusting it back into Theseus' eager fingers, his own reaching up to either side of his eye-hole, pulling them open to expose the long-dead orifice, the nerves having given up on sending signals anymore. He froze solid and quivered a little, pushing with his abdominals like he was trying to take a dump. "You see it yet?"

                "Not quite - wait, there's a wisp, keep going." Theseus's hand limply dangled as he held the lit ember behind him so as he could see the full effect, his grin a child's now.

                The smoke started to billow out of the eye-hole, rising first like a thin trail of vapor until it poured, milk-like and ropy, pluming toward heaven, and Theseus started to laugh.

                "Fuuuuuuu - that is so goddamn awesome!" Theseus bellowed as the last remainder staccato-ed out past the dead nerves, his one ace in the hole for barroom bets and boxcar wagers. They'd have surely called him Smokestack if it hadn't have happened after he already had his moniker. Besides, he didn't really draw smokestacks too well anyway, not that he had to, but his design was set in stone after the beer bottle, his dog-face always starting with the rounded humps of a gluteus maximus before adding the tongue - it was a visual joke, and he loved to tell it over and over to anyone who'd listen.

______________________________

                "First, you draw the butt - like a 'w,' but rounder and wider." The transaction had begun. Bozo was wearing a "Vote for Reagan" button through what looked like his shirt, but revealed the dried blood-stains of a fakir's wound underneath when you looked closely. He'd had it on for about a week since the election, and Cheeky found it almost hard to keep focused on showing him how to draw his moniker without being distracted by the faint smell of pus from the infection. He took a swig of jungle juice to help with the nausea - it was proportionally good.

                "Okay." That's all Bozo would say during the exchange when it was his turn to listen and learn. People seemed to know how to teach him, going in small steps and waiting for his feedback - oftentimes, they didn't even realize themselves how to draw their names on the boxcars, but almost all of them gave it up when they had the opportunity to give to the collector.

                "Now, here's the thing - you start with the tongue next. Thin enough to poke out like a shit coming through... and then you wait. Bozo chuckled, nodding slowly. "Right. Now, and only now do you put the line in the tongue and add the nose by drawing a circle that touches the crest where the two halves of the 'w' meet. Then the nostrils. Then two big loops for the eyes, making the pupils underneath. Then you add the skull with an arc, loop down for the ears, and you close it off with the whiskers." He stopped, looking over to make sure it was sinking in. Bozo was a sponge. "It's just a dog, man, what did you think?"

                Again, Bozo laughs, a deep redolent basso that bounced back off the train to bathe Cheeky, who involuntarily smiled and handed over the marker. Price paid. He was about to learn the meaning of life.

______________________________

                "You sure you can't teach me?" Theseus didn't ever whine, but this was as close as he ever got.

                "I think you know the answer already." He searched his friend's eyes with his one. He suspected everybody knew the answer already, but most people didn't really know it. He didn't know he knew it until a rusty switchblade found its way into his right ocular cavity, severing the occipital nerve and popping his eyeball like a water-balloon. He'd never forget that feeling, the juices and the smell in the back of his nose by his throat. He threw up almost immediately, the sounds coming from him pairing with the squeal of the crowd who didn't expect him to go through with it. He'd tell people later it was a knife fight, but those who were eye-witnesses would tell a different story.

                Hell, I'd give my right eye for a swig of Hennessy right now.

                No, you wouldn't.

                Bet your fuckin' life I would.

                Prove it, then.

                Alright. Do it. I dare you. But you don't got any Hennessy in that flask and I'll fuckin' kill you.

                You don't wanna do this, man.

                Don't tell me what I want to do and what I don't want to do. Do it. I dared you once, you want to make it double?

                You're too drunk.

                Bullshit - I drank myself sober three hours ago, and I need some goddamn Hennessy to get me straight again. Are you gonna do it or not?

                It was that quick, and the conversation burned behind his right eye-hole. It would never leave him. It would form the foundation for everything else he ever had to say, in truth. Anything worth saying, at least. He only realized it after swallowing the last bit of bile, that he could see now. It took one eye to find the other, and it took both to see the truth. But you don't know what the truth is until you lose it, and then you know you had it all along. That was the secret that Bozo reminded him of, and what he couldn't ever tell anyone. He'd just have to write it on a boxcar and hope they got the message. The ones who were listening to it instead of looking at it - they did.

                "Why do you always say that? You know I don't know it, or else I wouldn't be asking." Theseus sat against the tree, staring at China Grove. That's what they called it anyway, the story going something like an old Chinese miner died here a long time ago. It sounded like bullshit anyway, so nobody ever told much of the story except that part. The trees were different, though - each one had a strange mark on it, and for a while they even had some arbologist come out to study what it was that made it happen - some ergot or tree-aids or something, he had suspected, but nothing ever came of it. Just the way they grow in Hyena Falls.

                "You do know, though - you just forgot." He felt the heaviness start - it came on him like a ton of rocks whenever he started talking too much, and stopped him.

                "You always say that too. Man, I don't know what you get out of that stupid old tradition anyway." Theseus narrowed his eyes to two slits. "I ought to take that other fuckin' eye out."

                "Don't say that. This tradition is all we got, Thee - and I know you haven't forgotten that at least." Cheeky cleared up, the anger starting to boil. People got frustrated when they realized you know who Bozo is, and that you've met him and traded names. It drives some to rage. Some to despair. Some to murder. He'd seen it before, men getting caught drawing Bozo's sign on a side-car and just getting killed right then and there - it wasn't just a cucuy story they told to keep people in line, he'd literally seen it with his two eyes one night, the man just came up behind and strangled him to death. Scared him into sobriety for three days straight, and made his soul cry out. He figured that's why he met Bozo so many years later, because he saw what could happen if you tell the truth to the wrong person, and after he remembered what the truth was, he could have it explained to him. Life's funny like that.

                "I know. I know. I'm sorry, Cheek, I just don't understand." Theseus handed over the bottle, taking in return the jungle stew. There was half left. Perfect.

                "Okay." He quashed Thee's hopes by continuing. "That's just it. There ain't nothing to understand." Then the heaviness collapsed him and he woke up the next morning, Theseus long gone and a magic marker in his hand, dry as bone. That's when he knew he was finished.

______________________________

                "You sure you're ready?" Bozo smiled, taking the marker, his eyes soft. This part was always hard because he never knew how people would react. So far, he hadn't gotten murdered - at least he hoped he hadn't - but there was always that random chance after they realized that they knew it the whole time and it was just that no one ever gave them an explanation. It was stupid-easy to draw, after all, and it wasn't until they knew how to draw it from him that they realized why they could tell the reals from the fakes. It made him nervous, the doubt that one day he'd draw a fake, but then he reminded himself how impossible that was, and he smiled, continuing once more to teach the truth.

                "Please." Cheeky said the magic word. They all did, it seemed, even if it was a different one for each student.

                "Okay. Here goes. You start with the hat." He drew it. "You know what that is?" He couldn't tell him, and he stopped and waited.

                "I... that's an infinity sign, right? That means everything." Cheeky felt a little dizzy.

                "You got it. Now, the head." He made a circle through the middle. "What did I just draw?" Again, he waited. This was the test. It sure felt real.

                Cheeky swallowed hard, a tear starting to form. Some men cried when they realized it, and some laughed. "It's a zero. That's nothing." The tear dropped down and hit the top of his shoe. He saw it for the first time again. "Nothing. Over everything."

                Bozo nodded. "Yes. That's right. It's okay, Cheeky. You got it."

                Cheeky laughed, and Bozo laughed with him. They stood there by the boxcar, the moon above also laughing, and the Earth trembled, a great guffaw echoing throughout the land and the sky, and the whole goddamn universe. Bozo walked away, knowing that someone else knew, and that was all he needed to keep going. Cheeky kept laughing, softer and softer until it was just a persistent wavelength radiating in the background of his brain.

                He would never stop laughing.

 

Why They're Winning (or, The Last Thing I Ever Hope to Say About This Whole Stupid Chick-Fil-A Issue)

Posthuman time is a funny thing. The theory was that the "information superhighway" would make us all totally informed of every up-to-the-minute important event across the world, and we'd be like virtual threshing machines, separating the rich wheat of media from the chaff.

Actually, I can see the resemblance.

What we forgot to account for, apparently, is the fact that the practice of critically thinking about all those tasty news-grains headed down our eye-throats (this mixed metaphor is becoming disturbing) has become about as popular as reading the ingredients on a can of soda before you drink it, and all that quickening of time amounts to little more than the point being lost that much faster.

We are consumers, first and foremost, and what we often forget to realize is that what passes for "debate" in contemporary rhetoric is often a purposeful conglomeration of manufactured sound-bytes and talking-points which aim to do nothing more than re-frame a burning issue within the context of whoever is trying to control the topic.

Sorry, Colin, but if you're going to make it in this town, you better spice that prose up. And blame more protestors.

Thus, we have the Chick-Fil-A "debate."

See what they did there? Clever. Totally inaccurate, but clever.

Now, if you woke up yesterday and suddenly decided to check in on that story you heard about an entire month ago, or maybe recently stirred from a coma, then I can sincerely understand how you might be confused about the recent claims regarding the "anti-free-speech" efforts of the Chick-Fil-A boycott.

However, if you've been paying attention, you should be able to see through the smokescreen to what's actually been happening: a classic case of misdirection.

Abraca-free-speech-a-dabra: Voila! My homophobia has disappeared!

Here's a brief timeline of the debacle:


July 2: Reports emerge that CFA donated millions of dollars to organizations that seek to make same-sex marriage illegal.

July 16: Dan Cathy (son of CFA founder Truett Cathy) publicly reaffirms his company's stance on "traditional marriage."

July 18: The Jim Henson Company decides to stop selling its toys through CFA in order to prevent their money going to support anti-gay organizations.

July 20: Boston mayor Thomas Menino attempts to ban CFA from opening any new store locations in his city.

July 23: Mike Huckabee organizes "Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day" to defend their "right to promote Christian values."

July 25: CFA posts disinformation on its restaurants claiming that they recalled the Muppet toys due to "reports of children getting their fingers stuck in the holes of the puppets," and creates a fake facebook profile to provide further "back-up" to this false claim (although I guess the model for Stock Photo's "Pretty Redhead" could have been one of their customers).

July 25: Chicago also attempts to block a new CFA from opening, making up for the questionable decision to allow that weird face-spew monument.

July 26: San Francisco joins the ranks in promising to prevent CFA from operating in the city. "Wow, how shocking," said absolutely nobody ever.

I haven't seen this many people confused
about what they're voting for since Florida, 2000.

August 1: The proverbial feces hit the fan when thousands of people actually show up on "Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day" in defense of the company's.... free speech?










Of course, part of the problem rests in the fact that there is no "definition of marriage" on record in the U.S. Constitution, and thus those who are trying to limit it to "between one man and one woman" have a much easier job to do, message-wise: their thesis is right there in the main argument. Just reiterate it with a bunch of false threats to "tradition" and slap a kid on it, and you're done.

That poor child, being forced to learn about the basic equality of human love. Fortunately, those glasses will blind him in about fifteen minutes. Then his literacy level will also be level with biblical standards.

For those who are trying to oppose this attempt to make the U.S. constitution into a footnote from the book of Leviticus, it's not so easy. What can you say that won't play into the fears that the "gay agenda" is trying to turn our kids into miniature Paul Lyndes, flitting about and queering up the place?

"Yikes. That's even too gay for me."

Furthermore, how do you not wind up sounding like you're trampling on the rights of religious folk to express their constitutional freedom of speech?

 

You shift the topic back. That's how.

The Chick-Fil-A debate is not actually about who should get married to whom. It's not even about who believes what. It's really about corporations, and their influence on politics.

You want freedom of religion? Done. Freedom of speech? You got it. But when you start using your absurd amounts of left-over capital to secretly influence the government, you're not talking about anything that's in any constitution I've ever seen - you're practicing a different kind of "redefinition:" the definition of democracy.

...At least the last time I checked.

So, what really happened is that Chick-Fil-A had a forced outing - they're gay for corporate influence, and they unapologetically love being in bed with political institutions which seek to change America's laws so that they match their own particular agenda. That's the problem.

This is what Christian persecution looks like: note how instead of
protesting, the lion is eating his face. Betcha he wishes Rome would just boycott.

The day that a company starts using their funds to support the banning of churches in America, I will boycott it. When Ronald McDonald starts calling for America to institute Sharia law (all that make up makes me think he's hiding something), I'll protest alongside my friends of different faiths (and non-faiths) in defense of the very same constitution that provides for all of us to be treated equally.

Because political influence is something people have. Not corporations.

But as long as companies like Chick-Fil-A keep us trained on the distraction of who's allowed to say what, they'll keep winning the war of who's allowed to buy what - and if we're not careful, our rights will go up for sale.