Before all else: Thanks once again to Rich Davis, our masterful historian, whose splendid, panoptic eye beholds all. Whose digital netting nothing escapes. Whose energy has been welcomed and universally cheered.

Atlantic City: Our New Dreamland.
We were awed, simply put. One dollar. One dollar was all it cost. To be plucked from Chinatown in Philadelphia and dropped down the rabbithole by the hand of God. Atlantic City. The blinking lights, oxygenated atmosphere, all-welcoming smiles, the bountiful loopholes, unused opportunities: for sure, all that could be said of the American Marketplace could go double for Atlantic City. Gambling afterall is only the dynamic of shopping intensified; a dynamic that shortcuts around use value, even around intangibles, a straight into pure exchange. And as in the "field of shopping," the economic-- the gambling-- aspect of Atlantic City was lost on me. Money is Other People's Dream. To bring non-economic, anti-economic, trans-economic worldviews to Atlantic City will yield either disgust or wonder. For me, I'd have to say it was the latter.

We unloaded at Showboat and collected our all-but-one-dollar refund for travel expenses. We felt the possibilities immediately, somewhere in our inner ear. Willie Hoffman's Birthday Party provided the impetus for our trip. Lucy had called and invited a whole gang along. This whole gang was now moving through their new environment, mesmerized by carpet and psychoengineered lighting and bas reliefs and the whole aviary of elderly gambling addicts.
A heavenly beeping monotone rang throughout the casinos, the sound of all the one-armed-bandits in concert-- and the sound, I presume, that the brain makes when we die. It is my favorite sound, a ring engineered to elicit the excitement receptors in the brain to fire wildly. Before every three machines sat a Q-tip headed woman, card in slot, behavioristically conditioned to press a giant yellow button every time she loses (which was statistically more times than she won). A truckstop postcard come to life.

Our 5-dollar-off-coupon to the French Quarter Buffet did little to shave down the price of the 22 dollar buffet. Luckily, Rich rightly realized that the coupon madness would probably make the sneak-in an easy play.
It didn't have to be quite that easy though. The lines looked an hour long. The new arrivals in Atlantic City, with the itch and gamlbing mentality, leapt at the first bargain that crossed their field of vision.

We walked pass the line and directly into the adjacent restaurant. A trip to the bathroom and one wrong turn later, we were eating all-we-could-eat in the French Quarter Buffet. The table system was somewhat complicated. But it was obvious that patrons paid by the table. We knew as long as we stayed on our feet, no evil would befall us, no one could destroy us.

After enjoying a plate on our feet, we figured we had nothing to lose and we took a table-- for the utensils if nothing else. That instant, our waiter, Joe Piscopo, approached our table.

"Guys, what's going on?," or something to that effect.
Somewhat stiltedly I returned with "We're done with these. You can take them away."
"No, you didn't pay for this table. I know. This isn't your table."
To which I mock-confidently repeated "Yeah. All these. Take'em away."

He threw us out, but not without letting us know, metalinguistically, that he was on our team. This metalanguage basically consisted of him not calling the security.

Never the lesser, we fled with the hint and went to absorb more; more giant rhinestone swans, more Men-In-Black slot-machine/videogame hybrids, more authentic napolitano restaurants.

Outside, along the boardwalk, was beautiful itself. The magical mix of Jersey and Virginia Beach. Our appreciation of this phenomenon was comparable to the appreciation I've been, for some time, adopting toward the whole of the United States. This attitude is neither naive enjoyment nor ironic, sheathed contempt. We've transcended both of these, into a new (sophisticated, I think) form of affirmation. Confident that a special angle, a special eye, special mode of consciousness, can pass through walls and wholly rewrite the meaning of its surroundings.
Atlantic City is a member of a class, whose complexity invites multiple levels of appreciation. The fact that our appreciation only concurs with most others' does not mean it is any less appreciative. The contrary is true. Atlantic City can never disappoint us. It will never ruin our lives. You will will never see us lined up at the Credit Application Office, wrestling off our wedding rings for collateral.
We can enter and exit, at will, to laugh and stagger, at a city-sized, goldleaved reductio ad absurdum. And for only one dollar.

Math and Neuroscience Class:

The South Philadelphia Athenæum, again, proudly presents its summer season of lectures.
"Neuroscience and Why You Are Always Out Of Beer and Cigarettes," by Upenn's Lex Kravitz, was given to a rapt audience. A lecture on motivation directly after our return from Atlantic City. To begin, the basic workings of electrical current were explained--- and demonstrated, with a quick jolt of 120 volts through an unprepared Brandon, and later through a Jonny.
He then raised the ohms a bit by having the room link hands and pray for the virtue and chastisty of our nation's youth.
The neuron was then explained, electrically: dendrites, action potential, and so on.
We then got into a whole spill of electrochemical fun about norepinephren, potassium, seratonin, glutamate, and volumes and volumes about dopamine. And, finally, how pharmacology and addiction and everyday motivation are closely interrelated, analogues of each other.
It offered a perfect picture to order my previously scattered understandings and previously folk-psychological hunches. But I still translate science back into technology (where even behavior itself, in this instance, is a form of technology). I was blown away by how the third-person object of study, Man, can utilize these descriptions for first-person purposes. Even realizing something as fluffy as the fact that these chemicals-- dopamine, seratonin, glutamate, amphetamine-- represent a poetic class of descriptions for the inner and outer world, in the same way that Shelley might describe the "yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red" of autumn. Even to translate human will into neurological terms-- the waking nightmare of reductionists-- became an obvious step to me. I'm just too tenditious to be a proper scientist, I guess. I'll get into "behaviors as technology" later.

Matt Maycock has accepted the offer of Chairman of our Mathematics Department, and led the charge with an opening set theory class. It has re-awakened a monster within me; the mathnerd inside me that eagerly took Complex Analysis classes at fifteen, read Number Theory for leisure, only to definitively drop the topic once I reached the University of Virginia. Mathematics has a dangerous allure for me. I very nearly became a mathematician, but as much for pure puzzle-mongering as anything else. This time I want to try to find a healthier balance.
Maycock has done us proud. We break into probability theory next Wednesday, the 10th. We are also starting up a Maff-Graff Team: a mathematically-oriented graffitti assault team. My tag is QED; all my pieces are proofs.
Look for our work in the bowels of Philadelphia's public works. And, all are invited to the classes.

Mountain Don't and Muscle Factory:

MountainDew has launched-- and hopefully grounded-- their new extreme energy drink; provisionally dubbed Variant No. 516 Mountain Dew X (also known by the name it gained around the Athenæum, Mountain Don't). In celebration, they sponsored a Muscle Factory show at Silk City, and gave away the promotional silver cans by the case. Muscle Factory, brainchild of Darren D'Fizio, is a rockpopsynth concept band where people pump real iron and sculpt abs on stage. Along with Tom, their usual beefcake buddy, Jonny and I and others, lined up with Mountain Dew gear on and sweated our way to victory for two unbroken hours. But I don't know. We had arrived early. Danced. Poured Mountain Dew all over ourselves. Made jogging outfits in preparation. And it all collapsed.
Minutes before showtime, I felt out of sorts. The Mountain Don't-- the absinthe of all energy drinks-- had backfired. Critical and unpredictable effects on your subconscious. Strange depressive waves. I slammed three 14oz cannisters in twenty minutes and found myself immobile on the sidewalk outside, wearing a Mountain Dew diaper. I felt good once we started though, inspired by Darren's pronouncements. "Bigger is better."
After all was sung and pumped, we drove away with a crate of Mountain Dew and Mountain Don't. Literally 500 cans, two carloads. Still unaware of the dangers of this green potion. I understand now, though, the unplumbed possibilities of promotion. We now know that, given our combined force and output, we could have every event and project down to the last, sponsored by some half-cocked promotional gig. Ideally, I would want to find promotional opportunities where we could be earnest, a two-way street. Wild Stallion has been notified of our interest. Dr. Pepper, as well. Perhaps Rite-Aid (who hinted at a special plaque awarded to our august institution). Just as good would be sponsorship by namebrands that are anything but extreme: Ben Gay, Subaru, the University of Pennsyvania.

(On a quicker note: read Georg Lichtenburg's Sudelbücher, or The Waste Books. They are the birth of German aphorism. From the 18th century, but still progressive and oddly Jamesian.)

Invincible?

The Mountain Don't created an atmosphere of overwhelming doubt. It is liquid kryptonite, something to be feared, and something I now believe adversely effects the testicles.
Jonny, Rich, and I made way to West Philadelphia, to the "Baltimore house," where the Schopenhauerian veil finally dropped. Jonny and I sat in the living room, and tried to tie together scraps of Hope... Nothing. All was bleak. Rich found us easily, by following the path of least resistance. We all decided to go home, to admit defeat.
However, on the way there, we ran across a football game at the University of Pennsyvlania stadium-- at 3 o'clock in the morning. "Must be a scrimmage," I thought. On closer inspection, we realized that there was snow on the ground, in July. Closer still, we realized it was movie.
Perhaps we could be one of the thousand extras, sitting in the stands. We asked one of the patrols.
"Absolutely not. They got things just as they need'em."
"What do you mean? What about all those people..." I swerved around mid-sentence, and only then noticed that the stadium was filled with fake people. Thousands of mannequin torsos, decked belt-up in Seventies garb.
Needless to say, that moment was frightening; hyperreality in halts and backflips. All our previous suffering, all that Moutnain Don't, had been in anticipation of that snap-to moment. Perhaps Schopenhauer was right. Our world is a flimsy mock-up, a representation, behind which snarls a blind, monstrous Will. Only at rare moments do we see through, to the essential horror of things. To the starkly inhuman. The second I looked over those glued-on beards and into those sexdoll eyes, I got the shiver. The way Schopenhauer felt on most days, I imagine.

One more priceless occasion for you, long after the Dew and pessimism was out of our system. One more snapshot, before I go to sleep.

Here we are, after being invited up to the hotel room with the Bolshoi Theatre (Moscow's premier Ballet and Theatre company), surrounded by Bolshoi ballerinas, who we wowed with our mock-breakdance moves and crumbs of Russian. Rich entitled the photo, triumphantly, "The Bolshoi Theatre meets the Athenæum."

...........................................................................QED.