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saddleblasters

saddleblasters.com

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21 likes
swiftred 5 days ago

I enjoyed reading this one :)

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balckwell 5 days ago

caffeine turns me into friedrich nietzsche. best used sparingly

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sorbier 1 month ago

i sent the post to my friend and she immediately fired back "he forgot the most important one: write about it on neocities"

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daliwali 1 month ago

godspeed, mr. suboptimalism in your quest to meet girls. the future of humanity rests on mr. suboptimalism's quest.

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labyrinth-limbo 1 month ago

the sheer number of reactions to his post is the gift that keeps on giving.

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saddleblasters 1 month ago

behind the humor, there was something very visceral about his post... somehow it's transcended its form

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suboptimalism 1 month ago

unfortunately i'm not in any condition to reply to emails currently...

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suboptimalism 1 month ago

i could put out engagement bait like this every week but i choose not to... what i've written about neocities history might Break this website

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saddleblasters 1 month ago

Update #2: I read another book by Houellebecq https://saddleblasters.com/trades/map

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siqu 1 month ago

The Quiet American (´・ω・`) (i dont have an email, so feel free to ignore)

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readingproject 1 month ago

I love this idea but I'm too overwhelmed with long term projects and other books on my TBR pile to participate

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saddleblasters 1 month ago

@siqu Ok! In return I suggest Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald if you haven't read it. Your writing often has a similar feel to his narration.

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swiftred 1 month ago

Regarding the micro-saddle, I really enjoy what you said about indulging in the fantasy aspect and its role and disconnect it has from reality

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suttaslime 1 month ago

"I’ve wrapped myself in an artifact of another person’s life" - i've always loved the feeling of wearing someone else's clothes, and i think this is a great way of putting it. my childish brain imagines it like an alternate costume for a video game character, or a superhero, or something; like when the black power ranger dons the green ranger's chestplate. it feels cool to adorn myself with a small part of my friends

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saddleblasters 2 months ago

Also, in hopes of doing this again with someone else, I made a page for future book trades: https://saddleblasters.com/trades/

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saddleblasters 2 months ago

My plan to strong arm you into writing something worked! I will have to add Wang Xiaobo to your Murakami vs. Houellebecq analysis at some point and make a three way venn diagram out of them, since he also exhibits many similarities and interesting differences...

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saddleblasters 2 months ago

Also you might have read it already, but Vonnegut's Bluebeard is another meditation on "what is art?" that specifically focuses on Pollock. I like to pair it with his earlier novel Deadeye Dick, narrated by the son of a failed painter.

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suboptimalism 2 months ago

haven't read either of those but i have read the one that came out right in between the two, galapagos...

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swiftred 2 months ago

I really enjoyed reading ‘On Waking’ !

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saddleblasters 2 months ago

I wrote an essay about noise performances I saw last year and poems I wrote about them: https://saddleblasters.neocities.org/essays/noise_poetry

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daliwali 2 months ago

Chinese noise is crazy... i know about Merzbow, Masonna, Gerogerigegege, Les Rallizes Dénudés, ...but had not much clue about the Chinese noise scene.

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saddleblasters 2 months ago

I only really talked about the Shanghai scene in this essay. If you're curious about the Beijing scene, you can read Yan Jun's English language writing (though a lot of it is outdated): https://www.thewire.co.uk/about/contributors/yan-jun/yan-jun_which-hell-do-you-prefer_

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saddleblasters 2 months ago

Added a section for short pieces that don't fit what "records of a saddle" has come to represent.

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thanks for pointing out the delineation of xiang3 vs think. it's tempting to draw conclusions about what the two languages presume is primarily on your mind (desires vs beliefs). in general i think it's really fun to observe how the two different language (families) draw lines around concepts and group them into words -- thinking/speaking in mandarin changes how i think about things compared to english.
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sorbier 3 months ago

that said i think (haha, jue2de) that the average mandarin word performs more roles than the average english word, which renders mandarin more figurative/conceptual broadly. apologies for stating it so definitively though -- agree that it's totally my subjective impression.

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china poetry books reading blog