Libation Bearers, 423-428 (Smyth translation):

ἔκοψα κομμὸν Ἄριον ἔν τε Κισσίας
νόμοις ἰηλεμιστρίας,
ἀπριγδόπληκτα πολυπλάνητα δ᾽ ἦν ἰδεῖν
ἐπασσυτεροτριβῆ τὰ χερὸς ὀρέγματα
ἄνωθεν ἀνέκαθεν, κτύπῳ δ᾽ ἐπερρόθει
κροτητὸν ἀμὸν καὶ πανάθλιον κάρα.

rawnbenthicspal..
Soda-l….eguard..
.staffq……….gord..
.sh.au…………rair..
lia……b…….vel
swin…ang…ines
o.iang inesvai r
r… p…………. * *
d….. a …….* *
r……. p….. * *
i………. e… * *
h…………. r. * *
* * * * * * * *

Thought I would put this “out there”, another thrown-together site of mine — Taikonaught Wynd. It is a sort of link blog which offers up a more or less random grouping of lexical, etymological and encyclopedic items for review, updated every other day or so. A typical post looks like this:
………………

Madrepore. The Black Pirate. veria. foules solitaires.

………………
Basically, every time I look something up in Wikipedia, Google Translate, or the like, I bookmark it, create a link to it, place it in a group with other such links, then program it to appear on Taikonaut Wynd. I personally use the site for review (sometimes the items that appear are quite basic) while someone else might find it an interesting source of random concepts — like Madrepore.

Warning: my irregular uses of punctuation and capitalization are especially in evidence on this site. Title comes from a random pairing of two of my looked up words: taikonaut (a Chinese astronaut) and wynd, a narrow road between houses. Meaningless, but potentially evocative.

With respect to the chipper “howdy” with which the attendant greeted customers: it was almost never the case that the first syllable was higher-pitched than the second and was almost always the case that the interval in pitch between the two syllables was greater than one would encounter in normal conversational speech.

Sometimes the tonal distance between the syllables seemed to span several octaves (howwwwww- DY!), sometimes the “dy” seemed not more than a fourth above the tonic of the ‘how’.

(Idea for band name: Tonic Of The ‘How’)

Attendant’s eyes wandered from corner to corner of the ceiling of the store as he tried to apply musical values to his spoken discourse.

Attendant, in spirit of extreme silliness and idleness would contemplate that “do-re-mi-fa-so…” should be replaced by “how-dy-how-dy-how….”

Attendant noticed that customer’s “thaaaaaank YOU” covered about the same ascending tonal interval as his “howwwww DY”, almost a copyright infringement type scenario, he fretted.

—Old Testament,New Testament

—Pentateuch,Septuagint

—Prodigal Son,Good Samaritan (Prodigal Son,Good Samaritan,Sodom and Gomorrah)

—Ecclesiastes,Deuteronomy

—Jew,Hebrew,Israelite,Israeli

—Blessed are the poor,the mighty have fallen

—Book of John,Book of Luke,Book of Matthew,Book of Mark

—Gospel of Mark,Gospel of Matthew,Gospel of John,Gospel of Luke

—New International Version, King James Version,New Revised Standard, Living Bible, American Standard Version

Not the case of course yet interestingly mind-bending to think of Greece as the source of the human race —Diogenes:

Λανθάνουσι δ᾽ αὑτοὺς τὰ τῶν Ἑλλήνων κατορθώματα, ἀφ᾽ ὧν μὴ ὅτι γε φιλοσοφία, ἀλλὰ καὶ γένος ἀνθρώπων ἦρξε, βαρβάροις προσάπτοντες…

“These authors forget that the achievements which they attribute to the barbarians belong to the Greeks, with whom not merely philosophy but the human race itself began” (Translation, R.D. Hicks)

It does seem to be the case, however, that the earliest known examples of homo sapiens outside of Africa were found in Greece — Apidima Cave.

Where do crumbs come from?
From out of the sun?
Do they fall like snow
From a giant hot bun?
Where do they come from?
Do they fly, do they run?
Are they mined like gems?
Are they grown like plums?

Every day I sweep the shop floor clean
Till the corners are clear and the tile grout gleams,
But as soon as I finish, as soon as I’m done,
I turn around and what’s this? I find another crumb.

Where, O where, I ask, do they come from?

Do they shoot from the lamp?
Do they roll down the ramp?
Do they sprout from the floor?
Do they walk through the front door?

Hundreds and thousands, maybe a million,
I find in the cracks and corners of the kitchen.
A giant army that is waiting to come,
An army to attack and cover me with crumbs.

Sometimes I want to weep and weep
there are so many of them left to sweep.
And in the place I have recently swept
Several more have sneakily crept.

Where, I ask, do you all come from?
from a star?
from afar?
from a mountain?
from a fountain?

I realize, of course, it’s often the case
That crumbs come out of my own hands and face.
They came when I cut and they came when I ate;
They came from my bowl and they came from my plate.
But sometimes there seems no way to explain
How my counters have gotten so covered in grains!

All I know, I must confess,
Is that crumbs need cleaning,
As they make a big mess.
And I guess that’s the moral,
I guess that’s the end,
Of crumbs we make many
And to crumbs we must bend.
[Picture of perpetually harassed attendant stooping to sweep crumbs in dust pan.]

I got the blues,
Cause I got sticky shoes.

Don’t know what to do,
Don’t know how I got so glued,
But man do I have the blues,
Because I have sticky shoes.

(Feel like I got nothing to lose,
that’s how stuck I am by these shoes.)

What do I have under there, gum?
Is that why I can’t jump or run?
Is that the cause of the suctiony sound
whenever I lift my foot from the ground?

I’m about to have a fit,
Because of what my shoe has under it.

Man I got some news —
this is not what I would choose
Man I’ve got the blues —
because I’ve got some sticky shoes.

“Une échelle de fer, cramponnée à la paroi, conduisait à son extrémité supérieure. Je demandai au capitaine à quel usage servait cette échelle. « Elle aboutit au canot, répondit-il. — Quoi ! vous avez un canot ? répliquai-je, assez étonné…” “cramponnée à la paroi” (source)

Attendant, having initially judged the sandwich’s tincture to be too dark, now judged it to be within accepted parameters. (He likes them to be “well within” the parameters, while these were just “within”.)

Attendant’s new art project: to be called “Tincture of Sandwich.” In which pieces of toast, at various stages of toasting, from not toasted at all to charred black, are set along the wall like small canvases.

Further, using a specially altered toaster, in the way of a prepared piano, he would create interesting Mark Rothko like effects.

Future exhibitions could include bagels held up by rusty nails or pinned down by railroad ties, while toppings and spreads of various kinds drop and seep from them down the walls.

Prospective title of exhibition: “Bagel Wounds.” Potentially, whole room could be made to resemble a counter top, as if what is called Space-time were this, as if we ourselves were slid endlessly back and forth across this counter of space.

Customer told attendant that no one from India does yoga while latter wiped coffee grounds from fluted rubber fridge door insulation.

The Customer that reminds of an old girlfriend — the customer that is a Construction worker asking if he can charge his phone. The Construction worker having left backpack and white hard hat in patio chair, running for the bus he nearly missed. The construction worker is handed special glasses to safely see the complete solar eclipse, but his friend saying, no, he didn’t want to look through the glasses, didn’t want to see.

Quantum Entanglement of hairbuns: yesterday’s hairbun seen in the mirror, today’s hairbun projecting from a window of the bus. (These hairbuns have a link in space-time, which only the Chinese and myself know about.) “The hairbun of yesterday in the mirror of today.” (book title). (We should have National Hairbun Center to sort all this out. When you see a person with a hairbun, watch out, as they may be transferring the contents of their minds to a satellite. When you see someone with a ponytail really watch out, for those are the “enforcers”.).. Couldn’t see any other part of that bus passenger aside from that “uploading” bun.

Attendant remarks that, when the smell of urine becomes overpowering for miles around, you’ll know he’s been held up at gunpoint (a number of hold ups having been committed recently in the area, though not this place yet). Attendant reviews plans in event of mass-shooter attack: first, barrage of stale cookies; second, serve him the “brioche”; finally, ask him if he’d like a “refill with that” and splash his face with hot coffee — the decaf.

“targeted killing” for non-state actors (Times)

Customer felt that Non-Force could triumph over Force and so lamented that which was forceful in himself;

However, customer felt also there was a kind of force that was Good, and a kind that was Bad, and so lamented, too, that he was not forceful enough in a good way, or for good things against bad things;…

Did “The Good” need to be made stronger and more forceful? or did “The Good” require no strength and the abdication of force, pondered aloud the earnest customer?

It was proposed that “The Good” required Courage, which was a kind of force, but of a very different sort than, say, physical Strength. (Did we call this “Moral force?”)

Courage, much more forceful than physical strength, was also much harder to attain than physical strength, it was added. (We needed courage, –But for what? it was asked further…. implying that courage and moral force were attained through having knowledge — knowledge about which were the right things to fear, about which were the right things to be brave about, about whether physical force was appropriate or not, which was when things started sounding platonic to the attendant.)

Chance Sweepings

Ngrams: triceratops,tyrannosaurus. (Was moved by the preceding to check this out, and am now made to wonder afresh how these species have became so linked together in the public imagination.)

Interested to find, also, that the ‘ops’ in triceratops is the Ancient Greek ‘ops‘ –face.

Here is Jurassic period,Jurassic Park, exactly what you’d guess.

(A taxonomy of stains and spills is conceived — though probably Stains are to be considered a mere phylum of the Kingdom of Spills, as they are nothing but Dried Spills.)

(Name for a band: Kingdom of Spills)

A veritable Linnaeus of splashes and squirts, a Novum Organon of overflows and overruns ; of unwelcome dry and wet discharges of all sorts… Of splotches, of blotches, of smudges, of smears…

Outline of the motions of the wet towel, dried now, on the fridge door — on the counter top, on the door of the milk fridge;– phantom towels;– the fossil footprints of former wipes and former wiping motions — Tyrannosaurus Smudge (another band name) and “Tricerospots” (opening for Smudge) and other such fossils……..Chance Sweepings]

……………… Mate
………………..Hanshan
………………….whip-round
…………………..Pensacola Mountains
inner german borderSuperblockGSA
Cryovolcanoboonie ….hatcondonation
Gulf of Alaskapetrif….ied manAutop
ensubsidenceperq….uisition Georgia
na Cavendishannu….riaSolutrean Hyp
othesis(Post article)Adam Worth
Taishan flounce speculum
“Pepe” Mujica

………………..
At this point in its existence, it’s not clear that “Chance Sweepings” is really the sort of book that could profitably be read from cover to cover, on which account I’ve made this “coffee table version” to facilitate whimsical skimming and browsing. Links lead to small chunks of the text in no particular sequence. The “linear” or sequential version can be found here. Still much work to do on this.