Ntuple Indemnity

I was going to entitle this post “Radio silence something something,” but it sounded terribly familiar – reminiscent, perhaps, of a post I wrote a year ago under nearly identical circumstances.

Now that the hockey season is over (as is, unrelatedly, the examination season), one would think that I would have time aplenty to return to decorating my modest home on the digital range with flighty paper thoughts dangling from the ceiling in precariously threaded mobiles of Idea or Essence or whatever it is that existence precedes. Not so. As is becoming incredibly typical, I have in front of me a plate of noodly grey matter piled higher than a “small” order at Buca di Beppo, waiting the impossible wait to be digested and subsequently inscribed with what one might term a “flushing motion.” There’s simply too much to process.

For instance, after roughly forty hours of play, I had developed a few critical entry points into the connection between Super Paper Mario and the labour theory of value, but there’s just this inescapable feeling that the time spent writing it down would be better spent elsewhere. And there is no shortage of this glutinous, unspecified “elsewhere” ahead of me in the weeks to come – what, with a new Michael Chabon novel arriving on Tuesday, coupled with a second attempt to spin a 50,000-word fiction in the span of a month that will hopefully be a tad more successful than the last short-lived foray.

In short, the dry spell of data here is likely to extend to a full-on drought, one not wholly dissimilar to the sort you can’t easily put away without the assistance of an exiled prophet in a Technicolor dreamcoat. Wriggle, ye writhing wordsmith, wriggle.

I’ll be brief, as every word I’m writing here is a word that isn’t being written on whatever paper it is I’m currently working on. It has something to do with Gil Anidjar and the ambiguous ontological status of “the enemy” in Western metaphysics, which is fitting, as I’m also watching a playoff series between my second- and third-favourite teams in the NHL, and I’m not sure whom I’d like to see win. I’ll be rooting for whoever comes out of this series to win the East (and realistically, it will probably be Ottawa).

But, as I said, in brief: a) It goes without saying that Disneyland was magnificent, though the Red Hot Chili Peppers tie-in at Space Mountain was perhaps questionable, and I’m glad it will be gone by the end of the month. b) Given how much writing I’m required to do this week, yesterday was a very, very bad time for Super Paper Mario to arrive. I probably could have gotten something (academic) done in the six hours I spent playing it. 3) I somehow suspect that short of advancing to the Western Conference Final, Jim Playfair won’t be coaching my team come October. Nevertheless: go Flames.