scraps...

So, I was reading Patchwork Girl today, which is a rather fantastic hypertext offered on a really... strange... platform... it was a lot of fun, and gave me the begining of a project that I've been thinking about for a while... anyway, this is one of my favorite lines...

“I am made up of a multiplicity of anonymous particles, and have no absolute boundaries. I am a swarm. ‘Scraps? Did you call me Scraps? Is that my name?’”

It's just one of those lines that kinda reaches out and grabs you, ya know? Anyway, here are some other interesting parts...

“What is dreadful about the plural? The swarm, the infestation. Is it that, without the necessary limits of any discrete entity, the swarm seems only accidentally, not essentially bounded in size? That it becomes a fragment of an infinite quantity, suggesting infinity despite its own accidental measurements, just because those measurements are accidental?”

the idea of the swarm is a scary one. there is a friend of mine in the department who is afraid of three things. 1) things that bite, 2)things that crawl, 3)things that swarm... therefore, ants are absolutely terrifying to her.

the swarm has always been a nightmare vision. imagine every bad horror movie you've seen, surely you've seen the swarming inscests that cannot be killed, the tiny dinosaurs that alone are harmless, but in packs are deadly... the swarm is an infinite and seemingly inexhaustable enemy. strangly, it is also the personification of the speaker in Patchwork Girl...

there are other intersting things going on here. A couple of which are listed below.

Until then, I leave you to your evening.

wanderlust_llc

Courtsey of the Oxford English Dictionary:

Scrap, n1.

1. pl. The remains of a meal; fragments (of food); broken meat. rare in sing. Also fig.
2. A remnant; a small detached piece; a piece very small by comparison with the whole; a fragmentary portion. Often with negative context = (not) the least piece. a. Of material things.

(b) scrap of paper: applied contemptuously to a document containing a treaty or pledge which one does not intend to honour. The phrase is said to have been used by the German Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg (1856-1921), in connection with German violation of Belgian neutrality in August 1914 (cf. G. ein Fetzen Papier). Some later examples allude to this.

b. Of immaterial things, conversation, literary compositions, etc.
c. A small picture, cutting, etc. to be put in a SCRAP-BOOK or used for ornamenting a screen, box, or the like.
d. A small person. colloq.
3. pl. a. The pieces of blubber, fish, etc. remaining after the oil has been extracted. Also collect. sing. b. dial. Cf. the synonymous CRAP n.1 3.
4. Founding. a. pl. Remnants of metal produced in cutting up or casting.
5. attrib. quasi-adj. Consisting of scraps.

Scrap, n2 (slang)

1. (See quots. 1725, 1809.) Obs.
2. a. A struggle, scrimmage, tussle; a boxing-match. Also gen., a contest.
b. A contest of words; a row, quarrel, squabble; a heated discussion.