The majority of what we call culture is old, in many senses of the word.

Philip says that when Bruce Banner is the Hulk, he's not responsible for what the Hulk does. But all through the film there are signs that the Hulk takes care not to harm innocents, even if his strength might sometimes overwhelm him. Beings we see die in the movie: Banner's mother, the genetically modified dogs, the bad scientist, and, I suppose, Banner's father, after he transforms.

I don't even really think that Hulk is supposed to be a hero in the film, at least not in the standard superhero-movie sense. But Banner and the Hulk both have plenty of reasons propelling them through the events of the film.

(Why should the Hulk have to represent anything? Speaking of which, I basically ignored the psychoanalytic glosses whenever it suited me.)

'My main discovery is that pleasure cannot be described.'

Also, also, also.

I extract methodological ideas not just from philosophy; Finnegans Wake gives me all kinds of ideas, though I haven't actually tried any of them yet because it's all too easy to see myself quitting (temporarily, of course) sometime in the week after I start.

Interesting that many of my ideas seem far more scientific than usual. It must have to do with my trying to come up with formal and material strategies and techniques - ways to organize what I get from the book so that I can try to integrate some things together when I stand back a bit. Also just ways to force myself to do some of the scratchwork that the pun-language style seems to demand (in order to have a chance to see 'everything' all at the same time). I don't usually like things like that. I mean things that have a definite plan to them, even if one with minimal content to it. (That's probably not true, somehow, but I can't think of how right now.)

(Oh, also, there's the matter of the dozen other books I'm reading right now. I only have uh almost all of Volume II of The Man Without Qualities left! And maybe half of A Thousand Plateaus! Also the last third-to-quarter of the not-as-boring-as-I-initially-feared-but-still-kind-of-boring Kant biography. I really ought to finish at least one book this summer.)

One possible title: 'The Journal of Desultory Thought'.

Some variation on 'Fuck You: A Journal of the Arts' would be nice, but irony being what it is, the people behind 'Fuck You' probably have copyright lawyers.

Apparently I know at least a whole verse of 'El Scorcho' but can't understand the chorus, because in my head at that point I start mumbling. It turns out it's actually kind of hard to mumble without talking.

The other day the 'California Love' beat appeared in my head and I couldn't get it to leave the entire day or the entire night, when my insomnia didn't need any help from Dr. Dre. Any time I was doing nothing in particular at all, it was as if I had basically started singing it out loud: duuuuh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duuuuuh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh (I expect a reader to correct me on that). It kind of blocks the capacity for any useful or even quotidian thought.

Since it went away, probably partly due to having Monk melodies that share some of the same qualities as the beat stuck in my head instead (this was better because I always lose Monk melodies quickly), I've been kind of scared: my mind keeps wandering back to 'California Love', and I don't think the beat but I know it's there, and I'm afraid I'll accidentally think it and get trapped again.

You have no idea how long that one little paragraph took me to write. (I only had the first sentence yesterday.) This is why I have not finished any of these papers yet.