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Who Is Putain Vergas?
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I'd tell you lazy little shits to google it...

...But. Sensitive young American children and homophobic old Poles are probably reading this. (The bastards.) And you know how easily folks get the wrong idea these days. Jeepers. People are offended at everything it seems.

Spare the Rod. Spoil the child. That's what I say. Amirite?


What? No. No. Non-non, Nannette! I said do NOT google it! You will most certainly get the wrong idea. Camme toé, pendejo. Whatever your dirty, flirty little minds may be dreaming up, Putain Vergas is not a kinky sex cabal that spans the Pyrenees, deals in naughty transatlantic shenanigans, and brings shame to both Quebeckers and Mexicanos.

And not to get all slut-shamy and whatnot, but really, shame on you for thinking that way. You dirty sluts.

༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄༄

Putain Vergas "is", it turns out, simply a radical devotee of seeing with fresh eyes. S/he recently popped in to our austerely but well-appointed revolutionary broad-casting studio here at Radio Free Dixie, where resistance is always "on the air".

Offered to have a frank.. ..you might even say bare-breasted.. ..discussion.
ωωωωωωωωωωωωωωωωω

On words
On memory
On play
And on truth.

Yes. No. I mean Yes.

We are the decent sort of journalists and commentators here at RFD:
Not vulgar Bulgars,
nor trite penguins,
nor any of the other hoi polloi trash who like pollute the e-air-waves with their "articles" and "opinions" and "news".


We knew -- toute suite and tout bien considéré -- that this here was a delicious proposition.

One that we could not refuse.


As it is scrawled beneath the peerless life-sized portrait of the inimitable Phoenix Quinn which dominates our e-space, in giant red letters crafted by someone who wielded what looks like it was probably a tube of classic MAC Ruby Woo...

"Philosofeez 'r' Us!"

᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀᠀

Words to live by, my squirrel-friends, words to live by.
And so. Just like that. As if infamous philosophes just waltz into our office every day, we lit up and diligently applied ourselves to the task of listening intently to M. Vergas' immaculately unrebarbative ruminations.



This is not a picture of RFW smoking a pipe. Or isn't it not??




What Did S/he Have to Say?
߷߷߷߷߷߷߷෴෴෴෴෴෴෴෴෴෴෴෴෴෴෴෴෴෴෴෴෴෴෴෴෴߷߷߷߷߷߷߷෴

Much to our surprise, s/he did not say much of anything at first.
Just: "Study time, you nitwits! I'm not going to read it for you!"

And then handed a printed page to each of us and instructed us to read it.

At the top of the page, it said "The Heavenly Way to Defeat the Croatian Occupation".
Then there was a list of things...

- words that belong to the emperor

- six suckling pigs

- embalmed players

- mermen

- fabulous cynics

- feral cats

- those who tremble as if they were mad

- innumerable others

- lines drawn with an impossibly thin camel hair brush

- one who has just broken wind

- those who look like specks of schmutzig schmutz from a long way off


We were befuddled. This did not look like a list of ways to resist the vile world-conquering necktie-wearing fiends from Z city on the Sava. Nor did it seem particularly heavenly.

Picking up on our confusion, the heavenly Putain threw a mocking laugh our way before opining,
"Lists are constructed by cherry picking and lemon dropping elements from ill-defined populations. Every list is the result of selection bias. This list could just as well have contained only 'my favorite Giants' and 'some random Upsurt'. Would it be any more accurate?"

We re-lit our pipes and considered carefully what s/he had said. And what s/he had not said.

This led to a long silence.




















At long last, our Correspondent in Charge of Words, Lubezhny Dowchip, piped up, pondering aloud, as befitted the occasion, in that horribly annoying faux-valley-girl millenial-ish way that ends every sentence with a question mark...

"This feeling of confidence? How is this manifested in behaviors?
"Any 'inner process' stands in need of outward criteria, yes?
"An expectation is... embedded, is it not?...
"...embedded in a situation, the situation from which it arises?
"The expectation of an explosion of resistance to occupation arises, doesn't it?,
"from a situation in which such an explosion is to be expected?"

There was a shorter silence.



After a stern look from RFW that means "cut out the valley girl crap and just say what you're thinking", Comrade Dowchip continued.

"If someone whispers 'It'll go off now', instead of saying, 'I expect the social revolution at any moment', still those words do not describe a feeling.

"Although they and their tone may be a manifestation of a feeling. You talk, Putain, as if you weren't really expecting, or hoping, for a manifestation of revolt now -- as I thought we all would?
"Or.
"Well.
"As if what were happening now had had no deep signficance.
"What, after all, is a deep feeling?
"Is hope a report on a situation?
"Does it do more harm than good to act or speak if it only reinforces the deteriorating ideology of our e-zeitgeist?"

There was a longer silence during which everyone rearranged the contents of their pipes while RFW glared at Lubezhny.

Even Putain Vergas lit up.




The RFD staff hard at 'work'.



At last Putain Vergas spoke at some length. None of us were surprised that s/he delivered an etymological recap of the ontological quandaries regarding Truth.

"Consider assertion," s/he said.

"The structure of the symbolic concept 'as' is fundamental to understading and interpretation, yes?

"And yet it has been modified over time. This focus on assertion is central to root problems in ontology. The ancient Greeks, who as you know invented everything and have lots of 'girlfriends', conceptualized logos as the only clue for obtaining access to that which authenticity is, and for defining the being of such e-entities. Assertion has been accepted since ancient times, even before Beta, as the primary and authentic locus of truth."

S/he continued...

"The problem of truth is inextricably linked to the problem of being, though they are not linked explicitly and are not the same thing. Analyzing assertion will prepare the way for the problematic of truth and being.

"There are 3 ways of thinking 'assertion', as any player of eRepublik can deduce...

"First, pointing out.

"Letting an entity be seen by itself, for itself. A primordial distancing from representation. In saying 'the hammer is too heavy' what is discovered is not a meaning. There is an entity only in these sense of a thing that is in the way of sight, that is at-hand. This is neither a 'mere' representation nor a psychological condition of the person who is making an assertion to 'represent' the hammer."

That was not a hammer. Or wasn't it?



S/he continued,
"Seond, predication.

"We assert that a subject is given a definite character. The asserter asserts that there is a 'hammer'. Within the pointing-out, a subject and predicate arise. When we give the thing a character -- it is too heavy for me -- our seeing begins to be restricted.

"It is in this definite character, that hammer there that is too heavy, where there is a setting the two together -- the subject and the predicated situation -- which creates what is not there, in the apophantical gap which must arise between the subject's ability to lift and the object's heaviness.

"Third, communication.

"In pointing-out to an Other, by letting some one else see with us, the sharing is a being-becoming towards what has been pointed-to.

"A shared assertion becomes an entity entering into e-being by nature of its further retelling. The widenening range of mutual seeing becomes abstracted into the ...fake, in our case, but what is 'fake', really?... symbolic realm.

"The entity itself has given no assent to some 'valid meaning'. Even hearsay, even utter balderdash, becomes a being-in-the-world, a being-towards what has been heard, the verbal text.

"And here we are."



Somebody coughed. It was hard to see who, given the amount of smoke in the air.

The portrait of PQ seemed to shimmer and shift amid the wafting clouds of pipe smoke.

It seemed to be urging a being-into-silence, while the crowd roared nonsense behind him...




RFW finally spoke up.

"Good stuff Putain. Very interesting. It reminds me a bit of the problems with cursed phenomena in multi-dimensional spaces, when the volume of spaces becomes so vast that available data is always too sparse for meaningful analysis. When everything is sparse, then we inevitably perceive everything as dissimilar."

That made Putain Vergas laugh, in a cruel but agreeable way.

"Any time someone tries to show you the superiority of their model," s/he said, standing up and making a few steps towards the exit, "be suspicious. A real simulation will show where a method shines, but also be clear about where it breaks."



And with that true paradox, the interview ended.

** cough **