Intermittent Benjamin: Pretzel, Feather, Pause, Lament, Clowning

[all_unnecessary]

Such unconnected words are the starting point of a game that was very popular during the Biedermeier period. What you had to do was link them up meaningfully without changing their oder. The shorter the sentence and the fewer the intervening clauses, the more the solution was admired. This game produced the most wonderful discoveries, especially

Comments

Harman on DeLanda's assemblages

[agoraphiliac]

"Proximally and for the most part, we would not claim that there is a real assemblage formed by the Pacific Ocean, Helmut Kohl, and the set of all coins and beans that have ever existed and ever will exist. Bizarre scenarios might be invented in which this strange assemblage might be able to exert its force in the world, but this would require immense literary or mechanical labor-- which simply proves that this assemblage does not yet exist. The fact that many strange assemblages can become real should not obscure that they are not now real

:)

[all_unnecessary]

an assemblage formed by the Pacific Ocean, Helmut Kohl, and the set of all coins and beans that have ever existed and ever will exist.

Coins and beans. :)

real assemblages...set their components into new vibrations: This is very like Benjamin's constellations. Curious about "redundant causation" for the choice of example: ritual conspiracy unfolding with grim regularity. Ça me rechauffe!

Re: :)

[grashupfer]

The sad life story of Helmut Kohl's wife might make for some powerful vibrations in any assemblage.

Re: :(

[all_unnecessary]

Driven to suicide by an allergy to sunlight, yegods.

"I can't go out when the sun comes out," she told the newspaper Die Welt last year. "If it gets cloudy, now and then it's OK. I must avoid bright light. Also from lamps."

In an interview with the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, she expressed sadness that Kohl's Berlin apartment was too bright for her.