12.09.02 - 6:43 p.m.

i keep trying to write an entry and getting bored halfway through and deleting it. the found magazine show was great, mainly due to davy's charisma and his ability to wring drama and laughter out of notes people find on the street. for reasons only those in attendance will understand, i now preface every utterance with the word "BITCH!"

i think i have bronchitis. in the last hour, i have thought about phlegm approximately 500% more than ever before. doesn't that word look like it should be pronounced "flegum"? what do you think of people who hock loogies on the street? is that uncouth? BITCH, what else can you do with your flegum?

missy's party was fun, and i was glad jenny et al came along. there was mulled wine, cheesecake and THE MALIGN GANJA-WEED THAT IS SWEEPING THE NATION. i feel happy when disparate groups of friends get along. i think cornell people and box people can unite for some swellin ragers, bra. what i am possibly talking about, i could not tell you.

a nice asian lady on 26th and mission shaved off 95% of my hair with an electric razor. my sideburns are trimmed as well. i thought about getting a mullet but wussed out. have you heard what they call mullets? "business in the front, party in the back"

elio and i went to see vox populi sing 14th century religious music at some church. their voices were beautiful but it all sounded the same. in the program it said one of the songs was composed by this guy while he was on a boat, and during the course of his voyage the boat was boarded by pirates... twice! if that happened on a southwest airline flight you know i'd be demanding drink vouchers. BITCH! (are you mad?)

ok i'll stop with the in-jokes that nobody will get. i think i just described the whole of my weekend. that and coughing a lot, and finally beating the mission in GTA where you're trying to rescue that fuckwit "vance" from the junkyard. i think i'm becoming desensitized to violence, because yesterday i shot somebody in the face. ROTFL!! that was actually a lie, i didn't shoot anybody.

i shouldn't be writing this entry, it goes against all my precepts. how do words get into my head? do i even know what precepts means? should i just start freewriting even though it's 7:30 and i need to get the fuck home? i will type for a minute and visualize: snowflakes, which i have not seen, and atoms, and the nebulous theoretical concepts such as: oh. nevermind, i will end by relating to you that this morning i got into work and checked my email, and there were two messages from amy and matthew. amy's message was a 38K discussion of the merits and drawbacks of a single-payer health care system, while matthew's was a definition of epistemological distinctions he's making in his graduate research. all well and good but BITCH! NOT UNTIL I'VE HAD MY COFFEE!! todo: create email filter that keeps out everything but ziggy cartoons and penis-enlargement schemes.

>From: "Matthew Ch******" 
>To: "A*** P**"
>Subject: Know
>Date: Sun, 8 Dec 2002 00:40:20 -0500
>
>Amar,
>
>Great to hear from you this evening.  Let me try to articulate what I am
>looking for in examples of context sensitive verbs by saying basically
>how I think knowledge is.
>
>1. I think knowledge is "ascriber context sensitive", which means that
>the standards for ascribing knowledge truthfully of someone depend on
>the context in which it is ascribed, as opposed to the context of the
>person to whom it is ascribed.  Of course sometimes these are the same,
>but sometimes they are different as in when we say "Clinton knew he
>would get caught with his pants down".  I think the standards for this
>knowledge ascription depend on the context in which it is uttered, and
>not on Clinton's context-although features about his mental state might
>be relevant to the ascriber context.
>
>2. I think knowledge is context sensitive, but doesn't admit of
>comparatives.  (I think this is slightly different than what I said on
>the phone.)  Contrast 'to like' and 'to know'.  What it means to like
>something varies from context to context, but it is also comparative
>within context, such that I can like Sprite better than Coke.  However,
>I think what it means to know something varies from context to context,
>but it doesn't make sense to talk about, e.g. knowing that you have
>hands better than you know that you have feet.  (Although there are
>idiomatic expressions like "John knows very well what the consequences
>of his actions are" and "Mary knows better than anyone how hard it is to
>get a job"-the comparatives here I think are pragmatic and not semantic,
>which means that it is not part of the meaning of the verb 'to know'
>that it admits of degree comparisons, although there are sometimes
>pragmatic reasons we use comparatives in this way.)
>
>3. This is a semantic thesis, which means that it is about the meaning
>of the word 'to know'.  Contrast the claim that water is H2O.  This is a
>claim about what water essentially is, but this won't show up in the way
>that fluent speakers use the word 'water' in ordinary discourse.
>However, I think the context sensitivity of knowledge ascriptions shows
>up in how the word is used in ordinary discourse.
>
>The opponents are people who say either (1) that knowledge is not
>semantically context sensitive (although they usually argue that it is
>pragmatically context sensitive-compare 'flat' which we might say is an
>absolute term which for pragmatic reasons gets used loosely), or (2)
>that it is ascribee context sensitive rather than ascriber context
>sensitive.
>
>So what I am looking for is another verb which is obviously context
>sensitive in the way I want to suggest 'to know' is.  The real trick is
>coming up something that is semantically ascriber context sensitive and
>yet doesn't admit of degrees.  For example, our suggestion 'To change'
>seems to be semantically ascriber context sensitive but it admits of
>degrees.  My suggestion 'to foul' seems not to admit of degrees but to
>not be semantically ascriber context-sensitive, since it's the context
>of the game, not the context of those watching from home, which really
>determines whether something is actually a foul.
>
>Does this make sense?  I'm sorry if this is too high-flatulent and you
>just want to ignore this project.  But if you think of any verbs, send
>them my way.
>
>Matthew