To beat someone up with a paddle, would you use a penhold or continental grip?

also I love Ping Pong the Animation. Every Christmas Eve I rewatch the scene where Wenge & co. sing “Hitoribocchi no Christmas Eve” at the karaoke.

Paddleblasters

There was a time when my brother was obsessed with ping pong, and convinced our parents to buy balls and the paddles, the “good ones” who have a softer texture and that are a bit heavier. The bouncing balls too, have different levels of quality. Every time we would find a table he would analyze their quality, even the super crooked ones at school. We lost many balls while playing, flying out of the apartment window.

How do you define what is considered "literature" or "literary?" My friend described my diary as "literature" once & I think I laughed. The idea of asynchronous emails reminds me of this thing I just read in Screwtape Letters, prayer being asynchronous. If you find out the solution to writing emails back, let me know, because I need the help. I always feel embarrassed when it takes me too long to reply.

Instead of TS Eliot's letters, I console myself with Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. Sparse & stretched out letters, but there's still a heart to them. A heart like a central nervous system I mean. Something that unites them & keeps them together as one living entity.

I don't have a good definition of literature. For my own writing I am stuck in an attempt to make it fit into some kind of canon -- to be literature in the same way as things I liked in the past. But when I'm just reading things by other people, there seems to be no criteria at all -- just an emotional response.

I might check out Letters to a Young Poet, but I felt a little disappointed to discover that I am already roughly the same age that Rilke, the implied "Older Poet", was when he began writing the letters... I guess I've already lost my chance to be a "Young Poet"

if you didn't have this website, what would be the next thing you'd work on?

@siqu probably making games about a guy with a website that looks exactly like mine

would be curious how you'd design this game. coincidentally thought about the a similar thing, some metagame about building websites... the difficulty is choosing the objective. it'd be conceptually amusing though to boot up a game where you go on a computer day by day, handling emails and improving a website, but wouldn't be sure how to design it, or how it ends, or how it's fun. collect stats through surfing maybe

> there was just something pleasant about their authorial voice, revealed to me a few sentences at a time

that’s how i feel about your website! however you come down on confession, if at all… i like your version of the style

just finished Grass For My Pillow yesterday. i will also be singing the praises of this novel in the future, so you no longer need to feel alone

Sometimes your writing is especially piercing in realizing small things & sensations we think are unique are shared. This particularly struck me for some reason; I read & then reread it twice.

Yours often has this quality too! It's always surprising what manages to suddenly break through the cloudy haze I find myself perpetually trapped in

"I learned to fluently and comfortably write proofs at any level of rigor required, yet is that thinking? After I learned to do it, it felt like a mechanical skill, like diagramming a sentence. [...] I can no longer be awed by mathematical formalisms in economics or the humanities — they instead often feel like an attempt to obscure a lack of thought." god... i hate how true it is

I enjoyed reading this one :)

caffeine turns me into friedrich nietzsche. best used sparingly

Update #1: New micro-saddle https://saddleblasters.com/records#twentysix

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

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

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

@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.

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

"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

I translated an interview with the noise musician Shu Ride: https://saddleblasters.com/translation/shuride

I took suboptimalism up on his book trade offer: https://saddleblasters.com/trades/elementary_particles

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

i've been called out... https://suboptimalism.neocities.org/secret/wang.xml

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...

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.

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