| Jan 5 ,1998 | |||||||||||||||
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| We discovered the meaning of cheese | |
1:54 am
I was staring at a stop sign today. I had been looking at it so long, my eyes were starting to have trouble converging on its
octagonal redness. Suddenly, I was enlightened. The meaning of the sign became clear, and I'll explain it
to anyone who will hold still long enough to understand my seemingly paradoxical, but profound realizations.
Look at a stop sign. You see a regular octagon, sliced out of millimeter thick sheet metal. One of its broad surfaces is coated
with a spectrally reflective coating, with colors over it. Pantone red, and the word STOP.
The sheet metal is a sturdy foundation. The only octagonal street sign, it is possible to recognize even ancient stop signs whose markings have worn off, thus is the particular shape functionally perfect. The material is appropriate, too. Signs composed of paper or woven grass may not have the rigidity and endurance to perform the functions of a street sign. The spectral coating is a feature which makes the sign more visible at night, reflecting incoming photons directly back towards the source. A less sophisticated coating might simply reflect the photons in one plane, or scatter them vaguely back towards the oncoming car whose headlights were shining on it. At high speeds, such a sign might not be visible until it was far too late to attempt to stop, negating it. The color red is one that we have been trained since birth to give special attention to. In addition, we have an instinctual neurological reaction to the color red, possibly related to blood-red, or fire-red. The color makes us more alert to the sign's urgent message of cessation, and punches through the cognitive filters which save us from certain insanity given all the information constantly bombarding our senses. Red is also pretty. The word "STOP" attempts to communicate directly to the higher cognitive centers of the brain. Many people can directly interpret this sequence of symbols into the concept of "stop". The concept itself is very general and vague, with 28 definitions for the word given in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition. It is not made exactly clear whether the sign means to command us to stop, or whether it is defining itself as a stop (as its cousin, the "bus stop" sign does), but in either case, the desired action is for you to stop moving after viewing it. Hopefully the world will read my words and understand them, as a great deal of people don't seem to understand the humble stop sign. | |
| Bananarapidfire | |
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Actually, I'm just tired of big, meaningful writing. Writing only takes on as much meaning as the reader
puts into it, and if you have a lot of respect and admiration for someone, you can stuff big wads of meaning
into something they didn't intend to be more than a colorful aside. Maybe thats what zen koans are. They're the meaningless aside
that people try stuffing big wads of meaning into until they finally figure out that there's no room for meaning.
In other big, mean stuffing newses, Julie once again mentioned the possibility of her moving to Alaska. To me it seems like the Mr. Yuck group is distancing themselves from her, except Brian. Well, Brian's Brian, but everyone else seems to be getting tired of the same old Friday night drink-and-smoke routine. I'm pretty happy that I can end up doing stuff with Kris besides watching him smoke and get drunk, tho everyone still gets stoned much too often for my stickbutt-conservative tastes. Yeah, be stoned and have fun, but not right before trying to program drums. Watching Kris try to put down drums stoned is like watching a dimmer-than-average child with his head sticking out of the arm of his shirt. Gahh. Sure, everything's more interesting when you're stupider to begin with. (ex)Michelle apparently started smoking weed in an unsurprising attempt to change her identity again. She used to be worried that I'd end up a junkie because of the people I hung out with. Meh. Summary: |
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