Michael Zeleny: Larvatus Prodeo - Selected Mementoes of True Love Responding To Hard-Earned Cash

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larvatus prodeo - selected mementoes of true love responding to hard-earned cash

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October 2nd, 2005
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30 Jan 2012 10:02 PM
01:18 am [Link] selected mementoes of true love responding to hard-earned cash A recent Wikipedia controversy concerns claims of Blixa Bargeld, the leader of pop music ensemble Einstrzende Neubauten, having married Erin Zhu for money that she earned under her father and ex-boyfriend Min Zhu, thoroughly degraded in the wake of his recent banishment as an executive and director of WebEx, an Internet conferencing company that he had co-founded. The attached emails shed light on these events. At the time these emails were written, Erin Zhu described Michael Zeleny to all and sundry as her best friend, encouraged him to read her amorous correspondence, and sought out his advice in connection with wooing her illustrious beloved. Copies of these emails remain on file as public record. They can be found in the Santa Clara Superior Court case files of Zeleny v. Zhu & WebEx, Zelyony v. Zhu, and Affeld v. Zhu, all settled by the defendants in 2004. Erin Zhu has authenticated them under oath in her depositions taken in these cases.
Erin Zhu and Blixa Bargeld Erins narratives lend themselves to fascinating sound bites that shed light on the juncture between victimology and starfucking: I was not born and raised a nice girl after all I am my fathers daughter, and I inherited so much from him, his murderous rage, his overwhelming ambitions, his sarcastic contempt, his sadistic streak. I will not be a monster like my father; I am determined and sure of that much. Erin Zhu to Blixa Bargeld, 25 Nov 99 20:14:42 PST She then explains the monstrosity: the summer when I was fourteen, my father suddenly changed his tune when my mother left for an extended visit to China. he took off my clothes, praised my naked form held up to a bathroom mirror, and devoured my body with his lust. I wanted to die; I tried to kill. I did not succeed in either. Erin Zhu to Blixa Bargeld, 27 Dec 99 13:40:45 PST Shortly after presenting her childhood rape claims against Min Zhu Erin accepts her parents offer of fraudulent settlement. The next day she informs her beloved: I have always identified myself with creative, bohemian, fringe elements of society, yet I was driving to a local office of a major investment bank the other day to meet a vice president from their private wealth management division. Erin Zhu to Blixa Bargeld, 21 Mar 00 04:14:11 PST The next week, Erin signs the settlement papers. The same day she tells Blixa Bargeld how she made her fortune:
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What happened? I sold the technology for the main business I was working on to a Hollywood-backed Internet entertainment site that is going public in a couple of months. As with all such deals, since what I actually get is primarily in their stock, the final price is highly variable and still unknown at this time, I wont have much cash probably until the end of the year, and its unlikely that what I built will actually see the light of day since they bought me out to eliminate competition. But even so, even after paying off the legal teams and the investors and the huge amount that goes to taxes, assuming the stock market and economy does not completely crash this year, I will have enough left to never have to work for money again. Erin Zhu to Blixa Bargeld, 30 Mar 00 20:17:31 PST And she never did. Erin Zhu married Blixa Bargeld soon after her financial disclosures. As described in the referenced lawsuits, the newlyweds celebrated their nuptials by maxing out the credit card that Isaak Zelyony had loaned to Erin to tide her over while she was waiting for her blood money from Min Zhu. Since then, Einstrzende Neubauten has credited her as their executive producer and webmaster. The Mounties always get their man.
Received: from 204.68.24.39 by www0j for [209.79.189.211] via web-mailer(M3.3.1.96) on Mon Dec 27 21:40:45 GMT 1999 Date: 27 Dec 99 13:40:45 PST From: Eryn Zhu To: Blixa Bargeld Subject: loneliness X-Mailer: USANET web-mailer (M3.3.1.96) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-MIGRATION-HEADER-ID: 180DLAVOt6288S0j Message-ID: <2c.afa92a.27a82dd3@UNKNOWN>
kills the soul, they say. what can they know of it, I wonder, they who have never lived in my skin, listened to my thoughts, dreamed in my mind? yet they are able to write about loneliness with such conviction, such empathy, that even from the distance of the printed page I am touched by the spirit of their words, and find my own loneliness eased by the distant sharing. such are the powers of the word, the thought rendered concrete, so that even without its original human context, displaced by the passage of time, flattened into the rigid form of text, ghosts of strangers from bygone eras can whisper in my ear and remind me more acutely of my ties to the rest of humanity than all the flesh and blood people I live amongst. once upon a time when I still lived in China, I wanted to be a writer; the cultural and linguistic uprooting and the demands of practicality managed to put an end to that soon after. perhaps I will want to be a writer again. perhaps I will try to write. I have always been more comfortable in the realm of pure thoughts and words than anything material; the result of many years of living in my head and feeling detached from my body, I suppose. in my occasional forays into philosophy I'd always been fascinated by the eternal questions around the mind and truth:
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the mind body duality, the question of other minds, the paradox of the liar, etc. I have never felt a great deal of necessary connection between my mind and my body; never mind the question of which body part(s) the essential "I" may or may not live in, it seems a purely accidental fact that I even come bundled with this physical shape. yet I suspect that I would cease to exist if this body died... the other questions are somewhat easier to resolve: I can escape solipsism because I have met enough people out there who do not think in a way that I understand at all; I can deal with the liar paradox by turning to the meta-theories of mathematics. I have never been particularly comfortable with my body. since I was a child my parents told me that I was plain, that my face deviated in too many ways from the Chinese standards of beauty. when I reached puberty I was told that I'd have to rely on my brains to make my way in the world, since I'd never get anywhere based on my looks. so I wore my brother's castoff clothes, sympathized with the ugly stepsisters, and never dreamed of handsome princes on white horses. the summer when I was fourteen, my father suddenly changed his tune when my mother left for an extended visit to China. he took off my clothes, praised my naked form held up to a bathroom mirror, and devoured my body with his lust. I wanted to die; I tried to kill. I did not succeed in either. instead I learned to disassociate my mind, to build walls in my head so that I do not feel. I live with the residuals to this day: a lingering discomfort with my body; the need to retain control, and an inability to stop thinking, even in the most intimate situations; a body that cannot feel pleasure with anybody I did not completely trust. The latter has been remarkably effective in protecting my virtue: the few attempts I'd made at casual sex ended as spectacular failures. maybe this helps explain why I did not expect to sleep with you in New York; and why I said that I did not, generally speaking, trust men. trust makes me vulnerable, a condition I react badly to because I have been scarred before. until you touched me, I did not think that I would trust you: my body is a drawbridge to my soul and I am not in the habit of granting entry to strangers. I don't quite know why an exception was made for you; that's one reason why I keep writing, I suppose, and why I want to know you better. I don't know how meaningful it is to you, that you are one of only a few people in the world that I trust, and none of them my own family. I hope you will not give me cause for regret. perhaps I've said too much already? Erin ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at
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http://webmail.netscape.com.
Received: from 204.68.24.51 by www0v for [209.79.189.211] via web-mailer(M3.3.1.96) on Fri Nov 26 04:14:42 GMT 1999 Date: 25 Nov 99 20:14:42 PST From: Eryn Zhu To: Blixa Bargeld Subject: memories X-Mailer: USANET web-mailer (M3.3.1.96) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-MIGRATION-HEADER-ID: 730DkyuTT9552S88 Message-ID: Crossing the busy streets of Hong Kong the other day, my mother held on to my hand, a gesture that reversed roles we'd played so long ago. She trusts me, her estranged and prodigal daughter, to guide her safely around the reckless vehicles, I think to myself, and am strangely touched by the thought. I had never been particularly close to my mother; growing up she had always openly favored my brother, and had little patience or affection for me. It was only after I'd left home and became a grown woman that she started making overtures of friendship. To think that we had to come half a world away to renew the tenuous ties of blood between us... It surprises me still, how much I want her to at least accept me and approve of what I do, even after all these years when I told myself that I did not care. She and I sat in the dark watching the glittering Hong Kong skyline, and spoke of our disparate rememberances of the past. Left unspoken between us was the fact that neither of us could think of any happy memories of my childhood. She told stories of me as a baby; I told her small pieces of triumph from my more recent past; the long years that stretched between age three through sixteen went untouched, bypassed with a shake of the head and mutterings of "there were historical reasons"... Eventually she wanted to know if I was going to find myself a nice boy, preferably Asian of course. I did not have the words to tell her what I thought: I lived with a nice boy, mama; when I found myself more lonely in his arms than without I told him to leave... He was too nice for me, mama; I could not even tell him what I really thought for fear of damaging him. I was not born and raised a nice girl -- after all I am my father's daughter, and I inherited so much from him, his murderous rage, his overwhelming ambitions, his sarcastic contempt, his sadistic streak. Sure, talk to my friends and acquaintances and they will tell you, I am a nice person, considerate of other people's feelings, loyal to my friends, generous with my money and assistance, though somewhat anti-social and a persistent loner. Little do they know the degree of control I maintain to lock away the undesirable impulses; it is after all better for me to turn away and seek refuge in my books and my work than take it out on real live people. I will not be a monster like my father; I am determined and sure of that much. I also cannot, I discovered, live with a man who does not
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have a basis for understanding why I wake up with violent nightmares and the constant restraint I exercise to not hurt him. And I do not want anyone that reminds me of my father, of course... So I keep to myself a great deal, and give my mother a vague little response about how I am in no hurry. You asked me once why I wrote to you; I've met very few people in my life that can understand the contradictions in my head. That I am aware of, and am drawn to, many dark areas of the human psyche, but am sufficiently rational and responsible to be a good person. That I have faith in basic human decency, even though I did not come to that by way of innocent naivete or blind religious compliance. And I thought that perhaps there was a slim chance that you might understand, that communication might be possible despite the vast ocean of differences between us. That would be worth far more to me than any sort of physical intimacy. Does this make any sense? I think I've said enough for now. yours, Erin
Received: from 204.68.24.50 by www0u for [207.214.220.88] via web-mailer(M3.3.1.96) on Tue Mar 21 12:14:11 GMT 2000 Date: 21 Mar 00 04:14:11 PST From: Eryn Zhu To: Blixa Bargeld Subject: me, myself, and I X-Mailer: USANET web-mailer (M3.3.1.96) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-MIGRATION-HEADER-ID: 807ecuLTQ1888S69 Message-ID:
Forgive me for returning to the format of a monologue about my life and state of mind. It is 3:30 in the morning, I've recently awaken after a couple of hours of sleep with a vague feeling of dread, and know from experience that I must keep myself awake until this state passes or else my slumber would be disturbed by fullbown nightmares. The curse of memory, of the past clinging to life in the hours when the unconscious rules supreme. In my late teens I was forced to re-evaluate almost everything I thought to be self-evident about myself and my life because of some choices I had made; but I was a poor student then, my head filled with dreams of Platonic ideals, and many decisions were easy. The past several months, I have felt the need to reconsider the distance between my present reality, my perception of myself, and the possibilities for the future. The gap between reality and perception is perhaps the most troublesome. It exhibits itself in small things, for example in my conscious appreciation of sleek wide open modern architectural styles of steel, concrete, glass, and wood, but at home I find myself most
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comfortable when I have a cozy area to curl up with a book. Or the fact that I have always identified myself with creative, bohemian, fringe elements of society, yet I was driving to a local office of a major investment bank the other day to meet a vice president from their "private wealth management" division. Or for that matter, me thinking that I might like to settle down into comfortable couplehood, while in fact turning away several possibly realistic boys and finding myself attracted to someone completely unsuitable. So: I will be taking the occasion of my upcoming birthday to contemplate an alignment between perception and reality -- to figure out not just who I want to be, but who I should be, and to impose that over all relevant aspects of my life, in both action and desires. Whether it's my Asian need for spiritual exercise, or an unrequited manifestation of dialectical materialism, I cannot say. Perhaps it is only the brightness of the full moon high in the heavens, which for the Chinese has always been a bringer of melancholy meditations and homesickness. regards, Erin ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com.
Received: from 204.68.24.81 by ww181 for [63.202.80.134] via web-mailer(M3.3.1.96) on Fri Mar 31 04:17:31 GMT 2000 Date: 30 Mar 00 20:17:31 PST From: Eryn Zhu To: Blixa Bargeld Subject: backwards glance X-Mailer: USANET web-mailer (M3.3.1.96) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-MIGRATION-HEADER-ID: 871ecEeRf5808S81 Message-ID: <7.a6d2ac.27a82e59@UNKNOWN>
Dear Blixa, Thank you for your note. I'm back at home. Signed the papers, drank a glass of champagne, sold out successfully. What happened? I sold the technology for the main business I was working on to a Hollywood-backed Internet entertainment site that is going public in a couple of months. As with all such deals, since what I actually get is primarily in their stock, the final price is highly variable and still unknown at this time, I won't have much cash probably until the end of the year, and it's unlikely that what I built will actually see the light of day since they bought me out to eliminate
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competition. But even so, even after paying off the legal teams and the investors and the huge amount that goes to taxes, assuming the stock market and economy does not completely crash this year, I will have enough left to never have to work for money again. It feels very strange to be sitting here on the last day of my 25th year waiting for that fact to actually sink in. It is a problem with the modern economy that I don't even have anything more concrete than sheets of paper to make it feel more real. I am sorry I have been so touchy and on edge recently; this entire process has been very wearing on my nerves. And I miss you. Erin ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. Tags: degenerates, greed, insanity, love, sex, tasteless, webex, (55 comments | Leave a comment | Read 32 suspicious comments)
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From: aptsvet Date: October 2nd, 2005 06:21 am (local) IP (80.188.207.1) Address:
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The guy's name, which you certainly are aware of, means 'cash'. Sometimes I feel almost sure that life is in fact a parable about life.
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From: larvatus Date: October 2nd, 2005 06:43 am (local) IP (68.66.84.235) Address:
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it gets even better:

Blixa Bargeld was born Christian Emmerich. Life is a parable about life. In not entirely unrelated matters, I am taking solace in the fact that, just as French is reputed to have no word for entrepreneur, so our native tongue has no accurate designation for loser.
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(Link)
Re: it gets even better:

Russian words in general somehow less final than their purpoted English counteparts. Fail - , loser - . English is much better at expressing real meaning; Russian is good at imitating a meaning.
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funny, i would think the opposite

...at least in connection with verbs, Russian speakers benefit from overtly and morphologically marked aspect. I shall have to think about this in more concrete terms.
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Re: funny, i would think the opposite

Well, look at the two examples in question. Russian verb prefixes which serve many useful purposes in fact detract from finality and prcision. is derived from , a totally different meaning, and the compound word feels like an afterthought, like using a wire hanger to open a car window. Whereas fail hits the meaning point-blank. The same in the case of looser.
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let us consider a classic example:

Plenty of verbal compounds here.
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Re: let us consider a classic example:

This I would call a counter-example: the Russian translator is using the grammatical verbal aspect, an obvious advantage in this text. But try translating into Russian a modern work of
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philosophy, something analytical, and you will run into the ground fast. When you need precision in shades of meaning, Russian simply lacks exact words, and it is not just verbs that fail. Recently I read something about the historical importance of distinguishing between "me" and "self" (the author attributes this to Descartes; whether true or false is immaterial here). Just try to do this trick in Russian.
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you have me at a disadvantage:

I cannot claim competence in translating into Russian, what with all my first language attrition. Mais revenons nos moutons, as they say in the old country. You had characterized Russian words in general as somehow less final than their purported English counteparts. For you, English is much better at expressing real meaning, whereas Russian is good at imitating a meaning. Without wishing to contradict you in the general case, I pointed out that the opposite situation appears to obtain at least in connection with verbs, where Russian speakers benefit from overtly and morphologically marked aspect. The plurality of modern construals of the first person singular in the philosophical vocabularies of Descartes, Pascal, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, or Freud, is immaterial to my modest observation that your general case admits of significant exceptions. In fact, by pointing them out, I imagined myself bolstering the basis for your opposition of my claims in our recent exchange.
From: aptsvet Date: October 2nd, 2005 11:16 am (local) Select: IP (80.188.207.1) Address: (Link)
Re: you have me at a disadvantage:

Well, there is no general statement that always remains true (except this one). The Greek language is much closer in its structure to Russian than to English or, say Chinese, so Russian comes with a built-in advantage here.
From: larvatus Date: October 2nd, 2005 04:13 pm (local) Select: IP (68.66.84.235) Address: (Link)
so we can vie with heideggers german

...by claiming a special status for Russian philosophy as the sole legitimate heir of Greek thought? At any rate, I am not granting any special status to analytic philosophy, beyond that of a not quite centennial fashion trend, moribund since Churchs 1949 refutation of Ayers criterion of meaning. While discussing philosophers from Descartes to Hume in his Process and Reality,
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A.N. Whitehead amends his oft-cited notion of footnotes to Plato, writing There is no doctrine put forward which cannot cite in its defence some explicit statement of one of this group of thinkers, or of one of the two founders of all Western thought, Plato and Aristotle. Thats the way (uh huh) I like it. Kant inaugurates the rot. He gave me a book on the Bacon-Shakespeare question, and wrote on the cover: I see your motto is Kant or Cantor and described Kant as yonder sophistical Philistine who knew so little mathematics. Unfortunately I never met him. Bertrand Russell on Georg Cantor As for myself you do know perhaps, that I am a great heretic upon many scientific, but also in many literary matters, as, to pronounce but two of them: I am Baconian in the BaconShakespeare question and I am quite an adversary of Old Kant, who, in my eyes has done much harm and mischief to philosophy, even to mankind; as you easily see by the most perverted development of metaphysics in Germany in all that followed him, as in Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Herbart, Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Nietzsche, etc. etc. on to this very day. I never could understand that and why such reasonable and enobled peoples as the Italiens, the English and the French are, could follow yonder sophistical philistine, who was so bad a mathematician. Georg Cantor to Bertrand Russell, 19 September 1911 Thus spake the greatest metaphysician since Plotinus. No footnotes needed here.
From: aptsvet Date: October 3rd, 2005 09:48 am (local) IP (80.188.207.1) Address:
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Re: so we can vie with heideggers german

As to Russian philosophy, I really have no time for it. What I meant was simply the grammatical affinity - to a certain extent. In Whitehead's quotation the key word is "doctrine," and in this sense he is quite correct. If ever I feel a need for a doctrine, I will rich for the classics. For the time being I subsist on Putnam. On to Cantor. The Baconians and other flat-earthers are a common pest, but a great man is allowed a couple of stupid opinions on subjects he is ignorant of. His statement about Kant is true, I worked out something similar for myself quite independently. But this is not the whole truth about Kant. Or else I should be able to condemn Cantor himself for his Baconianism. Kant should have left the frigging ding-an-sich out of his writings - this would have spared further generations much grief.
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Select: From: aptsvet Date: October 3rd, 2005 09:50 am (local) IP (80.188.207.1) Address:
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Re: so we can vie with heideggers german
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Michael Zeleny: Larvatus Prodeo - Selected Mementoes of True Love Responding To Hard-Earned Cash

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larvatus prodeo - selected mementoes of true love responding to hard-earned cash

October 2nd, 2005

30 Jan 2012 10:02 PM

larvatus prodeo - selected mementoes of true love responding to...

30 Jan 2012 10:02 PM

larvatus prodeo - selected mementoes of true love responding to...

30 Jan 2012 10:02 PM

larvatus prodeo - selected mementoes of true love responding to...

30 Jan 2012 10:02 PM

larvatus prodeo - selected mementoes of true love responding to...

30 Jan 2012 10:02 PM

larvatus prodeo - selected mementoes of true love responding to...

30 Jan 2012 10:02 PM

larvatus prodeo - selected mementoes of true love responding to...

30 Jan 2012 10:02 PM

larvatus prodeo - selected mementoes of true love responding to...

it gets even better:

30 Jan 2012 10:02 PM

larvatus prodeo - selected mementoes of true love responding to...

Re: it gets even better:

funny, i would think the opposite

Re: funny, i would think the opposite

let us consider a classic example:

Re: let us consider a classic example:

30 Jan 2012 10:02 PM

larvatus prodeo - selected mementoes of true love responding to...

you have me at a disadvantage:

Re: you have me at a disadvantage:

so we can vie with heideggers german

30 Jan 2012 10:02 PM

larvatus prodeo - selected mementoes of true love responding to...

Re: so we can vie with heideggers german

30 Jan 2012 10:02 PM

larvatus prodeo - selected mementoes of true love responding to...

Re: so we can vie with heideggers german

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30 Jan 2012 10:02 PM

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