Accompanying music

Only in the night do I feel full,

where the darkness cuts the light stark clear.

Sparked awake by th’sugar treats:

jangling, cooing, thumping melodies.

* * *

Accompanying music

But then the moon must always fall,

revealing all the messiness.

Warped from the ghost with th’world on strings

to choke on millions of inhuman human abstract things.

Falling wind…
weak leaves shake on ends
bright & dim.

“Surrealism,” like many art terms, has many vague definitions, so I’ll make up my own & stick to it throughout. If you, the reader, prefer to think o’ “surrealism” as something else, then feel free to replace that word with something else. It’s the concept that’s important.

To me, surrealism is something absurd, but still attached to reality in some way—only twisted to the point that it seems random, but makes sense if one digs into them. This is as opposed to what is commonly called absurdism, which was usually just purely arbitrary for the sake o’ arbitrary. A common way to make it in the past was to use dreams as inspiration, but I’d argue that the most common method is to mix concepts A & C—or D & so on—when there are connections ‘tween A & B & B & C, but otherwise no connections ‘tween A & C—making them seemingly irrelevant, & thus random, but have relevance if followed down the pipe.

The Super Mario Bros. series, I think, exemplifies this perfectly, creating a rich collection o’ elements somehow both seemingly arbitrary & fitting. It’s amazing the origins o’ many o’ its strangeness—& almost all o’ its strangeness has some obscure origin.

Mario & Luigi themselves are a perfect example. While many mascots, like Sonic, Spyro, Crash Bandicoot, Bubsy, & so on, were created mostly by marketing teams, Mario & Luigi might be some o’ the most antimarketing mascots e’er created. Only the most insane marketing team would decide that the mascots for a multimillion-$ industry aimed @ kids & young adults should be 2 Italian plumbers. ¿What demographics could that possibly be aimed for? But, ‘course, they weren’t aimed @ any particular demographics, as any good art isn’t, but is based on an amazing collection o’ happenstance history & technology.

¿Why are they Italian plumbers? ‘Cause Nintendo’s American landlord looked sort o’ like Mario—then called Jumpman. So they decided to name their character after him & give him what they probably presumed was his nationality, given that Mario is a common Italian name. Since Luigi is ‘nother common Italian name, they gave that to his brother.

¿But why did Mario look the way he did? ¡All technology! Specifically, the graphical limitations o’ ol’ games: Mario’s o’eralls were so it’d be easy to pick out his arms from his clothing; his moustache was so his nose could be picked out from the rest o’ his face; his hat was designed to avoid the trouble o’ animating hair as the character moved.

Luigi, too, was an element o’ graphical limitations—& a common 1, making it fitting that the emblems o’ video games as a whole would be its most iconic example. To save on memory & space, games would oft reuse graphics, but merely apply different palettes. Thus, an easy way to have a 2nd player was to just take the 1st player & give it a different palette. But the creators for the Super Mario series were imaginative ‘nough to create a rationale: these 2 were twin bros., hence why they look similar.

¿Why were the plumbers? Simple ’cause o’ 1 game, Mario Bros., whose main plot excuse was the 2 cleaning sewers o’ vicious enemies—1 out o’ many ho-hum blue-collar jobs the Mario Bros. had. But this 1, for some reason, stuck beyond this game, e’en after it stopped being relevant. Thus, e’en though it made sense for them to travel through pipes while still cleaning urban sewers, they still travel through pipes, e’en in the fantasy world o’ the Mushroom Kingdom, despite later games focusing mo’ on saving medieval princesses while traveling through idyllic acres. Thus we have this otherwise jarring mix o’ scenes you’d expect in The Lord of the Rings & a sewer system you’d expect to see in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

Many o’ the enemies have their origins in random real-life events:

Doglike Chain Chomps (in Japan called “Wanwan,” the Japanese onomatopoeia for barking) are inspired by Miyamoto’s fear o’ a chained-up dog when he was young.

On-&-off Boos¹ were inspired by a designer’s wife, who was usually calm & polite, but once blew up @ her husband for working too late.

Goombas’ Japanese name, “Kuribō,” which means “chestnut people,” comes purely from the fact that 1 o’ the designers thought they looked mo’ like chestnuts than mushrooms, like they were s’posed to be.

Some elements were simple allusions stretched out. Miyamoto took a li’l scene in Alice in Wonderland involving Alice eating a mushroom to grow & shrink & made a whole world out o’ it. & then mixed that with the aforementioned infested sewers. & yet, ‘gain, it all feels natural.

& for westerners, that’s the most recognizable. Most allusions are to Japanese myths that most westerners only know ’bout due Super Mario games, such as the way leaves transform Mario & Luigi into tanuki².

‘Course, some aspects o’ the Mario series seemed to come from nowhere @ all. I don’t think there was e’er an explanation given for the existence o’ fire-spewing flowers, bouncing stars that make one flash & kill one’s enemies by touch, or feathers that make them spontaneously gain capes (to be fair, this last 1 does have the association ‘tween feathers & flight & capes & flight–¡that A & C connected through B ‘gain!).

¿& why’s everything have a face, including the hills & clouds?

Footnotes:

[1] You could say they’re boolean, hur hur hur. Nobody’s made that joke before.

[2] A common complaint gainst newer Mario games that bring back “Tanooki” Mario & Luigi, like Super Mario 3D Land, is that they get it “wrong”; the leaf’s s’posed to turn them into raccoons, while the suit turns them into the “tanooki” form. Actually, this is only what the English translation o’ Super Mario Bros. 3 claimed–& we know how accurate translations were in the 90s. In the original Japanese version, “Raccoon Mario” was simply called “Tail Mario.” Mo’ importantly, the actual myths revolve round leaves being used by tanuki for their shapeshifting powers, not raccoons. It’s usually English translations that turn “tanuki” into “raccoon,” since Americans are familiar with raccoons, that being a species native to North America, while till recently hardly any English-speaking person had e’er heard o’ “tanuki”–save maybe those who read Andrew Lang’s translations o’ Japanese mythology. Contrariwise, raccoons only entered Japan recently,–inspired by western media–& have not nearly the cultural importance as tanuki.

In short, ironically “Raccoon Mario” is almost certainly not the “pure” version o’ the powerup they get ‘pon getting the leaf, but a name created by a somewhat inaccurate (to be fair, 1 that sacrificed accuracy for the sake o’ comprehensibility) translation that was not the original intention @ all. If anything, Super Mario 3D Land‘s new version is mo’ accurate to the myths on which it’s based.

So there. Super Mario 3D Land is relieved o’ any guilt for that made-up crime, & is now stuck with just the crimes o’ being bland, derivative, & repetitive.

Accompan–¡phhh! ¿Can you believe this cover exists? ¡It’s so bad!

Most mainstream economists–most notably Paul Samuelson, the most influential economist in the US, in his highly-influential college textbook, Economics–claim that economics can be split into normative economics, which includes issues such as income distribution, & ’bout which economist claim they should not discuss since it’s not objective, & “positive economics,” which mainly focuses on the “efficiency” o’ an economy, which is s’posedly objective.

This “efficiency” is based on a concept known as “Pareto Efficiency,” which is a case in which no change can be made that could improve one’s wellbeing without hurting ‘nother.

Already, one well-versed in English should see many problems with “Pareto Efficiency” being “objective” & “non-normative”:

1st, “wellbeing,” as well as the increase or decrease o’ such, is inherently subjective. Making any judgment ’bout whether anyone is made “better off” or not must inherently be normative, & thus “Pareto Efficiency” must be inherently normative.

Economists base their judgment on whether people are made better off or not based on a “competitive market” model that relies on many faulty assumptions that they themselves acknowledge are faulty–too many flaws to list, but I talk ’bout how inherently paradoxical the concept o’ a “competitive market” is in ‘nother article. The idea is that a “competitive market” naturally leads to efficiency through supply & demand: people get their wants served by getting money for serving other people willing to spend money & spending that money on anything they’re willing to spend money on. This is a s’posed “objective” system to serving subjective values.

This leads to a big conundrum: Pareto Efficiency not only relies on income distribution, but has an inherent bias toward the status quo income distribution. As we indicated earlier, economists claim that income distribution is inherently normative; economists acknowledge that they can’t objectively determine what is & is not an objectively-correct income distribution, thanks to the effects o’ all the chaos o’ the past (imperialism & slavery are only the biggest examples) & the fact that in a system o’ capital, one’s current income determines one’s potential for future income (one’s potential for investment is an obvious example).

But income distribution doesn’t only affect one’s potential for further economic gain, but also their ability to make purchase choices–to make what economists call “money votes.” It affects the distribution o’ commodity demand, which affects supply. If mo’ money went from people who eat meat to vegans, then obviously that would affect the profitability, & thus production, o’ businesses that sell vegetables & those that sell meat, to use an example as simplistic & made-up as those customary to economics.

As noted, the market’s Pareto Efficiency relies on supply & demand, & thus income distribution. Indeed, economists acknowledge this when they claim that income redistribution hurts efficiency. But this seems to assume that the status quo is the objectively-correct distribution–a claim that economists explicitly say that they aren’t saying, that is purely normative.

Indeed, Pareto Efficiency in general has a bias toward the status quo, with its talk o’ making people “better off” or “worse off” compared to the present state, giving an unfair bias toward the present state as the center for relation. In reality, the existence o’ any possible system o’ “Pareto Inefficiency” should inherently mean that the current system must be “Pareto Inefficienct” compared to that system. By definition, if one makes A better off by making B worse off, then going in reverse must make that B better off by making A worse off.

For example, economists claim that while a “competitive market” makes, for example, a CEO swimming in cash & goods better off by giving him e’en mo’ & a starving laborer better off by giving her the money to eat a’least 1 french fry a day (¡hooray for extreme examples!), income redistribution makes the latter better off by giving her the money to eat a’least 1 french fry a day but makes the former worse off by taxing ‘way a $ out o’ his billions, thereby punishing the possession o’ billions & making that CEO not want to make billions anymo’ in such envy o’ the woman who got 2 free french fries from the government.

But this all revolves round the current situation. If we flip things round–if we assume that the distribution o’ 2 free french fries for the woman & $1 short for the CEO as the center, & the $10 gained for the CEO & the single french fry gained for the starving woman¹–then we must conclude that to not redistribute income is “Pareto Inefficient” in that it makes the starving woman worse off than the CEO.

In fact, there exists no situation in which you could make everyone better off, since there will always be situations that can make someone e’en mo’ better off, & thus in contrast to that, the situation that makes “everyone better off” makes that other someone worse off.

Thus, the assumption that a “competitive market” that produces mo’ meat than veggies is mo’ efficient ’cause mo’ people want to pay for meat than veggies relies on the assumption that those who pay for the meat deserve the money they have to pay for it & that there aren’t people who, given money, would spend mo’ on veggies.

But there’s mo’: demand not only affects supply, but also price, & thus price is reliant on income distribution; & since GPD is based on prices, GPD is also reliant on income distribution–which means that assuming that certain prices or GPD are “objectively efficient” means assuming that the current income distribution is inherently correct. Since economists can’t do the latter, they can’t do the former. They can’t truly say that any prices are objectively mo’ efficient than others, nor that any GPD is objectively efficient compared to others.

Footnotes:

1 As Samuelson would say, where I derived these totally scientific #s is a technological engineering question. So get to answering my questions, technological engineers; I don’t have all day.

A purple too minty to snatch,

so always it’s fading to black;

& all your strong crescent-shaped curves

are melted to coffee-desk burns.

& the firs disperse…

I tried every setting, but none

would work: neither higher exposure,

nor color enhancements. ¿So what

resource will for once offer closure?

“Photo-taking poser…”

& look, I did try to research…

but all I could find were e’en more

those idiot numbered lists churned

by hit-grabbing narcissist whores.

Straying from the core…

Inside I found mo’ settings &

then went outside to try again,

but found the crescent moon had left.

¿& don’t that just fuck me in th’ass

to death?

¡Ack!

The problem with feel-good ideas is that there’s usually a lack o’ standards applied to them, which encourages mindlessness like lead poisoning. This is ‘specially the case with a raw issue like suicide, a complex issue that has no easy rational answers, & yet has extreme consequences.

It’s quite easy to puke out irrational answers, but I doubt it’s easy to actually help someone with them, e’en if you put the pound sign before some mess o’ words mashed together to noncomprehensibility (I love how the internet is making us go backward in terms o’ linguistic development by making us forget how to use spaces). I already mentioned in a previous article wherein I seriously discuss this issue by making fun o’ a teenager’s 1st poem that proves the inherent badness o’ suicide with the famed “Missed Sunset Theory,” wherein I question the effectiveness o’ telling someone thinking o’ suicide, “Duh, don’t do it. Life’s sunny” & passing the buck to suicide prevention hotlines (which was the most effective, actually) & argued that talking ’bout suicide as a single issue was probably futile & only fed this abstraction to the point o’ mindlessness that makes anti-suicide rhetoric so useless.

¡But look @ how my prayers have been answered! Some shadowy figure named YOU’RE NOT FINISHED–whose name sounds mo’ threatening than calming: “DON’T YOU DARE COMMIT SUICIDE. YOU’RE NOT FINISHED. YOU GET RIGHT BACK HERE YOU SON O’ A BITCH”–offers a mathematically-tight proof that suicide is no good, man, in an article full o’ too many insipid Twitter hashtags for me to type here without needing to commit suicide myself in consummate shame:

I have heard (more than I ever want to) from some that suicide is freedom. Suicide is death, so that means if suicide is freedom, death is freedom (according to the math).

Actually, that’s a logical fallacy. Based on that same logic, we can prove that Stevie Wonder is god by showing the Stevie Wonder is blind, & love is blind, & God is love; therefore, blind is God, & thus Stevie Wonder is god.

I could also point out that to call this “math” stretches the definition o’ “math,” which is only 1 definition mangled here. Clearly YOU’RE NOT FINISHED is assuming that “is” means “equals,” & not “is 1 o’ potentially many examples o’,” as it’s clearly used here. It’s also true that murder is death, but no one would call that freedom. When people call suicide “freedom,” they’re focusing on the choice o’ death, the part that distinguishes suicide from other types o’ death. Hence why they say “suicide is freedom” rather than simply “death is freedom.”

Let’s unpack that for a second. To make sure I got this right I looked up the definition of freedom, knowing that word is objective. It can be interpreted to mean so many things to so many people. Three definitions stood out to me most:

Well, you failed there, unfortunately, before you e’en got to this point, & hereafter. Your “knowledge” that the word “freedom” “is objective,” for instance, is quite wrong. Anyone who knows anything ’bout language knows that it’s all, by nature, made up & therefore has no objectivity. “Objectivity” comes from concrete nature, not from people’s minds. That’s why it’s called objectivity–the focus is that it is a concrete object that can be sensed.

Notably, too, YOU’RE NOT FINISHED finished this paragraph wherein they claimed to look up the definition o’ “freedom” without bothering to provide a source, & then admits that the definitions they chose were simply those that “stood out” (can be used to back up the conclusion they already want to decide).

1) the state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement or physical restraint
2) exemption from external control
3) personal liberty, as opposed to bondage or slavery

Note that these definitions are so vague (& to some extent simply repeats the word in a different way) that it could apply to any possible existence, making true freedom impossible. Only the 3rd entry is concrete ‘nough to be meaningful & it’s, tellingly, quite an open definition: pretty much every modern person in the western world would fall under that definition.

But that’s digression. Let’s look @ YOU’RE NOT FINISHED’s brilliant “math” theory:

When you die, you are confined to a coffin.. [sic] […]

Actually, your body is. By definition, if one’s dead, one doesn’t exist.

[…] subjected to people’s perception of you… […]

That’s true o’ being ‘live, too. Mo’ importantly, nowhere in the aforementioned definitions o’ freedom is there anything ’bout controlling other people’s perceptions o’ oneself. That would, ironically, be a violation o’ their freedom o’ thought.

[..] not at liberty to change and better your circumstances or live out your purpose.

Uh O: they’re breaking out into poem. I can already see the sunsets coming.

I don’t think I’d consider “better your circumstances” or “live out your purpose” to be precise ‘nough to be useful for a “mathematical” theory. Also, the rhetoric they use, putting the word “at liberty to” before it, could be used for anything. Indeed, that’s what that word-salad poem I made fun o’ before did:

• You’re not @ liberty to pick what song to play on the radio,
• you’re not @ liberty to pick your nose clean o’ snot,
• you’re not @ liberty to clean out your garage,
• you’re not @ liberty to kill yourself

(Note: that last 1 is actually a serious point–that “suicide is freedom” is self-contradictory, since suicide, ironically, eliminates one’s ability to commit suicide. [Granted, such logic would eliminate almost all freedoms, given the inevitable permanence o’ one’s actions, leading me back to my belief that nothing’s “free”] ‘Course, YOU’RE NOT FINISHED doesn’t bother with such technical nonsense, ’cause it’s clear that they don’t understand basic logic & would rather puke out flowery cliches ‘stead.)

[…] Not free to love and be loved. […]

Like these. Note that the freedom “to be loved” hinges on someone else, & thus the only way to ensure it is to eliminate someone else’s freedom.

[…] You’re gone. […]

(Laughs.) & ‘gain we see someone momentarily hitting a ’bout o’ self-awareness & admitting that their nonsense is helping no one, & thus anyone suicidal ‘nough to need to read this is probably doomed, anyway. Mo’ like YOU ARE FINISHED, ¿amirite?

All of those definitions, even the other two I did not list, […]

Wait, wait, wait: hold on. ¿What other 2? ¿Why aren’t you listing them? ¿Why bring up something that you refuse to e’en tell us? ¿Are you Fermat? ¿Did you prove the Theory o’ Suicide’s Badness, but ran out o’ room in the margin o’ your blog post to type it out?

[…] imply that you have to be alive to experience freedom which means that death could not possibly equal freedom in any circumstance, no matter who you are.

Literally the only example YOU’RE NOT FINISHED–god that’s a stupid name; it’s e’en dumber than “Careerealism” & “Post-Keynesianism”–that is relevant to the listed definitions is the 1st 1 ’bout being stuck in a coffin, which relies on the assumption that someone who choses to leave any consciousness or awareness o’ their body cares what happens to their body afterward, which is doubtful.

& now that I think ’bout it, you could just choose to have your body cremated or e’en frozen. So e’en the assumption that suicidal people have no control o’er their body after they die is obviously false.

This is like the “neoclassicalism” o’ suicidology–& just as useless for curing depression.