!Leonardo Mind for Modern Times, by Donnie Ross

!Leonardo Mind for Modern Times, by Donnie Ross

Downloadable from the Apple iBookstore FREE!
http://itunes.apple.com/book/id541725141?mt=11

The definitive Atlas of Facial Expressions from Aardvark to Zebra, the acoustic design of car-door slamming, musico-erotic compositions for cello, these peculiar topics lead the reader into the first Findo Gask Mystery.  A fierce bronze Greek gynecoid is dredged from the sea in a fisherman’s net off northern Scotland, while a plot is hatched to displace the quasi-assassinated  Holy Emperor Tony Blair from his niche as a cryochilled presentation to future generations, but what on earth is happening in the University of Aberdeen’s Department of Anthropomimetic Genetics?  Never mind that, who is this Memus44, who spends the last ice age in quite a well-known cave in the Cairngorm Mountains, polishing his mind and emerging from time to time to make sure culture triumphs but Findo Gask doesn’t?

The first Findo Gask Mystery in the Trilogy can hardly be expected to solve the entire mystery, but it might be fun to find out just how far !Leonardo Mind for Modern Times might succeed in answering all these questions, as a series of apparently unconnected preliminary short stories covering a wide range of human experience finally coalesces into an extraordinary postmodern interactive sci-fi novel, building to a powerful climax before falling apart into glittering fragments.  Expect cave ravens, masses of medical detail, excruciating jokes, non sequiturs, invented languages, philosophical posturing, a treatise on sculpture in Plato, erotic encounters of half a dozen kinds.

Illustrated with videos, drawings and paintings by the author, this chaotic book has several underlying intentions - but a sense of humour is essential.  And, if you can find it, a copy of the Atlas of Facial Expressions from Aardvark to Zebra.

© Donnie Ross 2012

http://itunes.apple.com/book/id541725141?mt=11

Deletives Expleted

Most current swearwords were minted in ancient times when the knowlege and ontology of anatomy were crude at best.  Professor Coco (of the Chair of Kanine Kryptopruriency at Aberdeen University) and I have recently determined that suggesting someone should 'stick their greater trochanter up their foramen magnum', would most likely these days cause little more than mild frosting of the recipient's lacrimal canaliculi.

Some of Coco's greatest achievements, though, expose the rich seaminess underlying much of today's poverty-stricken kakolalepithesiology.  For example, the keen ear might discern some 'flechy-frast' fellow muttering to a random 'smakidronty trunterbotty', "Hah - you're well clack-frindled, fuzd ploppet that you are. Uppra junnst!!"

Well, but it wouldn't take a particularly vacuous sprinjonsteron (sez Coco) to tell a 'myucker' from a 'stackled nyard', or a 'fronzpleck' from a 'brattchspock'.  These would be at the level of a 'minish-brutie' out on the ran-dan on their first 'trockle-jim', probably looking for a 'fluurt'.

Sad to say, none of these considerations bring us any closer to discovering the meaning of the truculent yet hauntingly arcane Fraserburgh phrase, "Hemmen, awa ye radge!"  Nor, we fear, can any of the epithets mentioned above out-stottlefrosk the 'scamscunner weezli' of a 'flegphoner'.  We refer of course to that disgusting expression 'Cold Caller'.

Yours etc,

Dr. Dx

Self-monitoring and Social Interactions

I turned up late at a party a few years ago.  It was a curious experience, as I seemed to be the only sober person in the room, and because I was driving I had to stay that way.  The mood of the group, under the influence of generous quantities of alcohol, was of course, loud, humorous and uninhibited.  What I found odd, though, was how I responded to the situation by becoming a little dysinhibited myself.  It was as though I had taken on the group dynamic, perhaps through subconsciously evaluating the degree to which my behaviour could be more relaxed since it would be subjected to less scrutiny.  I felt distinctly less shy than usual about playing guitar in public too, almost as though I’d taken a small dose of a sedative drug.

What can we learn from this odd little episode?  That people adjust their behaviour to conform to standards which they anticipate others expect would hardly be extraordinary news, since the idea of having a ‘theory of mind’ is very well-known. Many other mammals, including various apes, whales and dolphins, and perhaps some birds including parrots and corvids, also appear to have a theory of mind, in that they seem capable of forming opinions about the opinions of other individuals of their own species, and in some cases of other species too.

What surprised me, though, was that the sensation of being slightly inebriated was quite realistic, apart from costing my hosts nothing and leaving me entirely sober when it came time to drive home.  And even then, I had to concentrate for a moment as I got into my car, to remind myself that my blood alcohol level was in fact zero, and to adjust my expectations of my own behaviour accordingly.

This brings me to Facebook, which is another situation where social feedback systems are obtunded, short-circuited or otherwise interfered with.  The stark brevity of a posting leaches meaning and nuance from the message, often leaving both the sender and receiver of the text in a state of perplexity:  what was really meant?  Is the message sarcastic, humorous, over-intense?  Much sleep may be lost in ruminating over such questions, even by mature persons, and one hates to think what suffering may be caused through semiotic uncertainty or social anxiety on the part of teenagers and children for whom these media provide a large proportion of their exposure to interpersonal relations.

There are even darker considerations, though.  Partly through my original nature but to an extent as a result of the situations I commonly found myself in as part of my job, in adult life I discovered an ability to read with a fair degree of sensitivity the mind-states of other people.  I found this a very confusing and difficult characteristic to manage in early life;  there was simply far more information coming in than I could possibly handle.  However, in the Facebook situation, the absence of subtle feedback gives rise to a curious disconnected feeling of having suffered a cut in EIQ, so that I seem on occasions to become as lacking in emotional reciprocity as someone with Asperger’s Syndrome.

So I remain in a bit of a quandary.  It’s difficult to post anything contentious or friendly-but-firm on FB without running a considerable risk of appearing sarcastic or unfriendly, and even appearing to be willing to take that risk may in itself give other people cause for concern.  The alternative though is that FB won’t achieve its full potential as a means of enriching and augmenting social contact if it’s seen as unsafe to use for anything other than saccharine & superficial purposes.  Supportive posting doesn’t have to be eternally patting people on the back, but the question is, can purely ‘abstract’ FB friendships ever be strong enough to support friendship of the kind that develops after people have known each other personally for decades?

© Donnie Ross 2011

Blackbird's Three-Thirty

I awoke today at ten past three. At this time of year it hardly gets dark, and there was a full moon above the trees when I peered through the curtains on my way back from the bathroom.  I immediately started on a round of internal observations.  The nose had stopped throbbing, so I was most probably not going to die imminently of septic shock or galloping nasal gangrene.  I lay for a while luxuriating in the absence of any kind of anxiety, social, free-floating or whatever.  As usual my mind was racing.  Five hours to look forward to at the interface between thinking and dreaming, stuff always happens in that zone, doesn’t it?

Dreaming out of control is less fun, it nearly always seems to involve being in a strange city, unable to remember where I’ve left the car, heading for the airport with no tickets.  Alternatively, on screen two, it’s usually some anaesthesiological mildly nightmarish scenario harking back twenty years and involving lack of the pharmacological agents I normally use, not a happy situation, especially along with unfamiliar lung ventilators.

As the cab drew up at the kerb, I noticed the driver’s face seemed oddly familiar, although I couldn’t place him at all.  He obligingly helped us get the cello settled into the back seat.  It had been a successful concert, a full house and three standing ovations from a highly appreciative audience, and Euridice was in a relaxed and expansive mood.  The taxi took off down the black shiny street, still wet from a recent storm shower.

We turned off into an area of the city that I couldn’t recognise, and after a few minutes stopped at an intersection.  The driver gestured at the red light in front of us, and at once it seemed to enlarge, flickering and rotating.  My first impression was that the traffic signal must have been colonised by advertisers, but while I was considering this unlikely idea, a clattering buzz overtook us and we saw a gigantic metallic green bluebottle swerve over the taxi and disappear over the buildings, wings screaming as it climbed.  “Damned RoboSpies”, muttered the driver, accelerating rapidly away.

It must have been about half past three when the blackbird started to sing.  I was entranced by the complexity of his message – exquisitely crafted phrases, descending in collapsing stacks of glittering cascades, repeated with alternative voicings and rhythms.   I listened for a long time, trying to make  some kind of sense of it as music, but it was completely baffling.  I have exactly the same problem with piano music, it seems to have no relation to birdsong, no matter how hard I search for the connection, in or out of the dreamworld.

© Donnie Ross 2011