Wednesday, 1 September 2010

One White Duck / 0^{10} = Nothing At All

Afternoon.

After virtually no deliberation whatsoever I have decided that, in honour of the current state of my bank account - and the level of political genius swilling around our delightful Lib-Con government - September shall henceforth be known as "Vacuity Month".

[ vacuity: noun (vacuities) 1 the state or quality of being vacuous. 2 a foolish thought or idea. 3 formal an empty space.
(from the Chambers on-line dictionary) ]

So let me invite you most cordially to celebrate the next 30 days of glorious emptiness by posting superficially-meaningful-yet-utterly vacuous statements, (i.e. precisely the kind of stuff that seems to get the most attention on Twitter, advertisements for mobile phones/cars/the latest gratuitous Apple iCack, and 'motivational' posters*), wherever and whenever seems appropriate.

Vacuity, after all, does have a long and noble history - for instance, in Wu Ch'eng-en's C16th Chinese classic "Monkey", the Monkey King is given the name "Aware-of-Vacuity" when he is accepted as a pupil by the Taoist immortal Patriarch Subodhi (chapter 1, page 18 in my copy).

Here then, without further ado, is my first 'Vacuity Of The Day':

"Inspiration can come at any moment, yet the leaf cannot drift upstream"

cheer up, there are only 29 more to go...


*when it comes to "motivation", I much prefer these.

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