Please Remember to Rewind the Orientation Video
At the Sign of the Yellow Sphinx incorporates several state of the art features, while retaining several timeless characteristics that make it a classic that will make you want to read it again and again to your children and grandchildren, or to people and things that you think are your children and grandchildren.
Among these are:
- A new and entirely unique font carefully designed under the author's express direction, Lamia Intransigent. Lamia Intransigent has been specifically created for ironic, derivative and complex paraliterary prose, to create an easy, yet close reading experience, with none of the "serif covered ants crawling over lidless eyes" feeling that some readers seemed to have anecdotally reported with Times Templar, the original font created for The Encouraging Voice of the Labyrinth As with that work, it is ideally viewed at 14- 18 points, accompanied by a simple sonorous recurrent sound, such as water penetrating the ceiling or hull, or gas leaking and filling the room.
- As with that previous work, each post is designed to be read in a single breathless sitting, and further designed to punish any reader who deviates and allows themselves to be distracted or takes any kind of break.
- This is because At the Sign of the Yellow Sphinx has a more explicit and developed diagnostic and therapeutic program than its predecessor. The "stories" presented in At the Sign of the Yellow Sphinx are designed and developed* for the diagnosis and treatment of many well-established serious mental, affective spiritual and behavioral disorders as well as things that will later fall under that designation.
- As such, your actual interest in any given story is actually determined by whatever mental disorder, deviancy, difficulty, problem or moral failing is dominant in your personality at the time. This comprises the diagnostic feature of the story.
- Having aroused the perverse and terrible instincts of the reader/subject, the story then aims at treating the individual in the form of a protreptic that composes the latter part of the story.
- This is why nearly every story featured here and in The Encouraging Voice of the Labyrinth seems both disappointing and arbitrary and usually ends unhappily or appears incomplete. As with other therapeutic treatments, this irritation or tingling indicates that it is indeed working.
- This is why it is absolutely paramount that once you have begun reading At the Sign of the Yellow Sphinx, that you read it regularly, at least every other Monday, or more often, as needed. Irregularity and infrequency of reading may impair the normal, time-specific therapeutic effect of the blog and may even lead to unexpected complications such as an unplanned fire in your home.
- Further, this why answering the quizzes provided is maximally important. The quizzes are our only opportunity to measure and "recalibrate" the "blog" in accordance to the transformation already underway, whatever wonderful new being you are now becoming, whether your new horns are curling out of your head like those of a goat, or poking through; hardening like a permanent expression or a callous, a crowning and glorious growth like antlers, or a modified tooth, curling out straight as a white lance, like that of the Narwhale –or the Unicorn. Your answers to the quizzes tells us what sort of transformation awaits you, what sort of creature you are becoming and whether this is a blessing, a gift of divinity, a marking of a transition to a higher state, or -a terrible curse like that of the minotaur.
- For instance, in one recent poll indicates that readers would be equally interested in:
- More Interpretations of Wittgenstein
- More Oneiric Detective Stories
- Shorter, punchier posts with less story
- And significantly, 33% of responses complained about the absence of Werewolves.
- Using an extremely complicated algorithm, we can therefore conclude that what is desired is a short, punchy oneiric detective story with not too much plot where Wittgenstein fights a werewolf.
- Unfortunately, it is a well established fact that such a story is, in fact, totally impossible.
- To begin with, there is the dearth of references to wolves in Wittgenstein's corpus, with the exception of Hugo Wolf.
- True, Wittgenstein did defend his isolated rural elementary classroom and pupils in Norway against an exceptionally large and persistent wolf one winter, but it hardly seems warranted to exploit this biographical detail for the purpose of a story.
- Further, consider that Wittgenstein's character renders it prima facie impossible that he could be a werewolf without knowing or acknowledging it.
- This leaves only two other significant candidates to be the bearer of the curse of lycanthropy in such a story: Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore.
- For Russell, getting on in years, and not in philosophy, the sudden vigor of lycanthropy could be an enormous benefit and the distraction created by it could explain his failure to realize the insurmountabilty of the problems for the unity of a proposition as he conceived of it.
- A more likely candidate, however, would be G.E. Moore, who could have easily suffered from lycanthropy without noticing it at all.
- However, this would set the stage for simply another "Wittgenstein saves G.E. Moore from himself (again)" stories, and since Moore operates as a kind of Jimmy Olsen figure in these stories, there are really too many of them already.
- At the Sign of the Yellow Sphinx is designed to be taken internally, that is, figuratively, allegorically, ironically, parabolically, anagogically or, at most, as a synecdoche. It is important not to apply it externally, that is literally; as with many prescriptions designed for internal consumption, applying the same product externally will bring little or no benefit and looks extremely foolish.
- A certain amount of disruption to one's sleep schedule is normal when starting a new blog. Also, sleep walking, sleep reading and finding oneself on an unfamiliar road going nowhere are common and normal positive reactions and NOT contraindications. Women, in particular, may go through a transient period of apparent anemia, where they wander listlessly in demurely lucid sleepwear with or without the appearance of small, insignificant subcutaneous lesions.
- It is also normal to lose interest in certain aspects of daily life, such as work, family or relationships, particularly if these are, all things considered, not very interesting to begin with.
- A desire simply to spend more time with the blog alone, reading it over and over again, appreciating anew, each time, what it is doing for you, is not unwarranted, nor is the feeling that you have simply outgrown the people around you.
- As such, you may find it easier to move to a new city, or, ideally, some sort of empty wilderness or barren wasteland. It will not be necessary to prepare for this transition by notifying family and friends, giving adequate notice, moving or putting one's affairs in order. When it is time, you will simply do it, and understand where you were going all this time.
- This is when you will have understood what the sign points to.
*Not approved by any formal agency for the diagnosis or treatment of any disease. Consult your doctor before beginning any new reading project.
