Handling Offensive Language

Here's how we solved the "offensive language" issue on Chowhound, in terms of community management and moderation: We weighted Context.

Remember "context"? Consideration of intent? You know, the part completely ignored by the mechanism of detection and calling out of sinful utterance by packs of vigilant anti-racists patrolling social media and rotely pattern-matching terms on their frequently-updated kill lists? What you meant or who you are hold no place in it. Even if you're Albert Schweitzer, if you've used the term, you take the hit. Period.

We opted to handle human language issues humanely. So this is what we came up with: Any provocative language used with obvious anger or disparagement was deleted (our main problem was with the underlying nastiness, not the words themselves). So this was a no-go:

"The Jewy kitchen served me two lousy meatballs."

But provocative language that was not obviously angry or disparaging could stay. For example:

"The knishes were Jewy wonderment".

More sharply provocative terms received greater scrutiny, but still weren't rotely deleted. "Don't miss the stupendous kike kasha!" would have been permissible, because intent is unmistakably positive (though cloddish).

Kids, "kikes" was a naughty term for Jews. You haven't heard it because we made the word go away, which is why everyone just loves Jews now. See? It works!

The inevitably objection was: "But how can you know?" And our reasonable answer was "If you're unsure, it's clearly not 'obviously angry or disparaging.'"

"Benefit of the doubt", just like the olden days! We weren't morality police meting out punishment. Our job was to create an environment for different people to express themselves in different and colorful ways. And if you needed to be shielded from certain words you found upsetting, we suggested that you reconsider whether the Internet was really for you. It's not the Internet's job to shower you with only your most favorite words, opinions, and ideas. It wasn't Chowhound's role to foster an experience to your perfect specification. That's not community, that's a narcissist's reflecting pond.

It all came down to considerations many of those same people would claim to cherish: tolerance and diversity. Communities tend to enforce conformity of expression and opinion, and we fought that dynamic, recognizing Chowhound would be best if it drew the richest, broadest, and most varied cast of characters. We refused to buff our conversation into an NPR-friendly sheen to gratify a fragile contingent, even though I myself carried around a WNYC tote bag.

My favorite poster was FEDEX GUY - my actual FEDEX delivery guy, fwiw - who'd fling terse, misspelled, highly vulgar tips for obscurities no one else had on-radar. He did not fit in, which I recognized as a shortcoming on our part, but I loved seeing him trudge in amid the Batali acolytes (out-squealing each other over some to-die-for sweet corn crema) with his coarse language and brusque manner. My philosophy of community morality was Rodney Kingism. "Can't we all get along?"


Here's another thing I learned: once you allow people to start weighing in on what offends them, there is literally no end to it. People would much rather talk about that than tacos or har gow. Luckily, in those days, you could still tell a crowd to cut it out and have only a few of them stomp off in a tiff (one of our most veteran posters decided she couldn't remain part of a community where the term "White Trash" was permissible, though the term appeared in the title of a bestselling cookbook, and was never used pejoratively).

Surgery and Noodles and Indulgent Self-Dramatization

A couple of postings ago, I said:

I'm bragging about it. I'm flying business class to Kuala Lumpur, in a cool private compartment, and staying several weeks to devour street food, after swanning around Doha, and I relish your envy. I'm mostly just curious to see what saying this feels like.

How did it feel? Well, in the aftermath it felt, as it always does (which is why people need to chain smoke this stuff) tacky and insufficient and fast-fading. And the dramatic arc-building and poignant complaining left me feeling like crap for a couple of days. I foolishly wrote myself - framed myself - into melodrama. I cocked up a whole story for myself to feel a part of, which is what I used to do years ago, in my misery, before I learned to opt out of dramatization and got real.

What's really going to happen? I'll have the surgery, and it'll suck, and then it'll get better, and the noodles will be awesome and the luxe flying will be a mild tickle and then something else will suck and get better. We're raindrops slowly working down windows, not heroic protagonists.

I'm not ashamed to publicly confess my backsliding and foolishness. Being agile about framing doesn't mean I always choose perfectly. If I can catch myself within two or three days, that's viable. Just so long as I don't spend decades or lifetimes steeped in nonsense!

The Factor of Relevancy in Trumpism

John Podhoretz, the intellectual editor of the conservative journal Commentary, tweeted this during Trump's typically deranged convention speech last night:

Before you sneer with completely appropriate contempt, consider one word: "Relevancy." Roll it around in your mind, because it's an underexplored factor in the MAGA phenomenon (and in all authoritarian grabs).

What we're seeing from our pricey ringside view of authoritiarian takeover is not just the usual greed and ambition driving enablers and go-alongs. There's also something more relateable. And this calls for an analogy!

Here's how I replied - or, actually, replied to Tom Nichols' ridicule of Podhoretz:

Twitter doesn't offer space to really drive home my point, which is about relevance. No film critic can remain relevant while calling crap movies crap. So they don't. And that's 1. normal and 2. squirmingly unpleasant for them.

Film critics are nothing like your nephew Josh who hits the multiplex to catch up on developments in the Marvel Universe or to see stuff blow up. Film critics study Bergman and Tarkovsky. They're highbrows, every one of them. But none would last a week if they let their contempt show, because they write mostly for Josh. It's an excruciating gig. Imagine if food critics were compelled to eat mostly in chains, and had to find something non-snotty to say about them, over and over and over again.

If you want to make a living at it, you can't make yourself irrelevant. You must eat the dog food, and like it. And the same is true for principled conservative writers and editors in a movement completely subsumed by Trumpism. They nearly all loathe him, but their choice is binary: play along and remain relevant, or stomp off and disappear forever and let their family starve.

You or I might indignantly demand that they take a goddam stand, even if it costs them their careers and relationships and ability to feed their children. This is because we are disgusting narcissists who see other people as two dimensional cartoons. How about you? How eager would you be to make yourself irrelevant in your world and go find yourself a new career? Let's play a game: Think of something that sucks about your line of work (I'm sure you can come up with something!), then quit, then go find another whole realm. I'll wait!

Real people play along to stay relevant. Democrats do it all the time. How often do you self-edit to avoid clashing with the expanding litany of taboo thought and speech? How hesitant are you to engage on social media with even mildly non-doctrinaire conversation? How clean do you keep your nose to avoid the withering glare of staunch mouthy cohorts, present and future? How much of yourself have you self-smothered to conform to conceits you privately consider daft?

Podhoretz' tweet was a glimmer of truth, encased in a desperate cry for help, masquerading as a snarky rebuke. Any conservative publicly rebuking Trumpism will lose career, context, and relevence. And if that sounds like the sort of brave stand you yourself would heroically take, no. No, you wouldn't. I know human beings, and here's what they do: they fantasize about being stand-up valiant people - and, under the cover of anonymity or while silently daydreaming, they'll be flamboyantly vocal, stockpiling mental evidence of their gnarly heroism. But they won’t put career and social standing at risk to take a stand. People don't do that.

And, worse of all, it's not evil. It's relateable. God help us.

The Worst of Times, The Best of Noodles...

“I saw this guy hitting himself in the head with a hammer. I asked, "Hey, buddy, why are you hitting yourself in the head with a hammer?” Guy replied “Because it feels so good when I stop!”

       — First joke I learned as a kid


I spent a lot of 2023 either in bed or in hospital due to various health maladies. 2024 hasn't been much better, adding a shoulder meltdown (I'm walking around with a splint, like a Revolutionary War soldier). I'm currently on hold for comprehensive shoulder surgery, whose recovery involves months of unremitting childbirth-style pain. Final recovery in six months, best case. And then I have four other surgeries queued up, including the same on my other shoulder (which is 50% as bad and gaining fast). I don't normally complain (unless there's some insight to be shared in the process), but you'll see why in just a minute.

I recently observed that people in their late 50s and early 60s ought to consider spending a bit more. Plus I need a reward to look forward to during my recovery, to enjoy before I undergo the remaining surgeries. So I have a plan!

The opposite of Portugal is Malaysia (and, like many antitheses, they touch; there is a small remaining strain of Portuguese culture in Malaysia, including one tiny remaining settlement, though this Portuguese connection is not where I'm headed with this). I showed last week how the soul of Malaysian and Portuguese pasta resemble each other, but that was the most tenuous possible stretch. Really, if you want SEA noodles - or anything the least bit Chinese - you won't find anything of the sort here. I've had maybe three East or Southeast Asian meals in 18 months, all on trips outside Portugal, and have gone a bit gastronomically stir crazy, despite eating like a god every blessed meal here. What's more, I've been storing up Malaysian food tips for quite sometime via Google Maps chowhounding.

So here's the plan. Six months after surgery, I will fly to Kuala Lumpur and stay at Tian Jing Hotel, superbly located and reasonably priced in Chinatown, full of street food. I'm bad with jet lag, so I will fly on Etihad Airline, which offers free stopovers in Doha, taking a few days to acclimate and to finally eat in this Persian restaurant I've been fascinated with for years.

Because I need a really shiny reward to look forward to, I'll treat myself with two indulgences I normally wouldn't take in a million years:

1. Because I will be weak and feeble, I'll fly business class (Etihad is super luxe in business class, and also surprisingly reasonable - circa $2800 round trip), and...

2. I'm bragging about it. I'm flying business class to Kuala Lumpur, in a cool private compartment, and staying several weeks to devour street food, after swanning around Doha, and I relish your envy. I'm mostly just curious to see what saying this feels like.


I'm normally as distant from Judaism as a Pashtun warlord, but there's a line from the Torah I like very much: "If you're going to eat pork, the juice should run down your chin."


I soon recanted the boast, the complaint, and really the entire fucking thing.

ChatGPT Guesses Dish Names

I had ChatGPT identify some food pictures I've recently taken. It did extraordinarily well.

Guess: Borscht (Ukraine)
Result: Correct

Guess: Cassoulet (France)
Result: Correct

Guess: Garlic Stir-Fried Water Spinach (Kangkung Belacan)
Result: Incorrect (Stir-fried Snow pea leaves, Cantonese)

Guess: Har Gow (Cantonese) aka shrimp dumplings
Result: Correct

Guess: Cozido à Portuguesa (Portugal)
Result: Correct

Guess: Tagine with prunes and beef (Morocco)
Result: Correct

Guess: Francesinha à Moda do Porto (Portugal)
Result: Incorrect (Bitoque, Portugal)

Guess: Portuguese Hake (Portugal)
Result: Correct

Guess: Arroz de Pato (Portugal) aka Duck Rice
Result: Correct

Guess: Feijoada à Transmontana (Portugal)
Result: Incorrect (Feijoada de Javali, Portugal)

Guess: Maçã Assada (Portugal) aka Baked Apple
Result: Correct

Me: “Bonus question: There's something slightly unusual about the way they prepared this one."

Reply: "Roasting the apple in a way similar to how meat or vegetables might be roasted, which is less common for fruit."

Me: "Very close....they used exactly the Portuguese method of roasting fish."

Guess: Hailam Mee (South East Asia)
Result: Correct

SEA Food Glossary

I've only been to South East Asia once - to Singapore - and I was overwhelmed by menus and foodie conversation full of Chinese terms - and, worse, local pidgin versions of Chinese terms - describing dishes we know by other names. I saw very few unfamiliar items there, but nearly 90% of the terminology was lost on me. Yikes!

I've since looked and looked, but no one has produced a decent glossary. A complete one would be impossibly broad (working far into Indian, Chinese, and Indonesian cuisines, just to name three), but I've created one (PDF download) with the help of ChatGPT focusing on the Chinese end of the spectrum, whose names are less familiar (I'm already cool with roti, biryani, rendang, et al).

It contains nearly 100 terms, 75% of which may be unfamiliar for serious American/European hounds (I included super famous items just for completeness). The descriptions should jar your memory, but always remember the Limster trick: Google Images is your best friend during moments of Chowzheimer's Disease. If you're an experienced eater, never google food names. Google-image them!


Other glossaries I've built (none downloadable):
Filipino Food Glossary
French Food Glossary
Oaxacan Food Glossary

Finally, along similar lines (but so so so much more), the best and most ambitious thing I've ever built: my smartphone app, Eat Everywhere.

Soulful Serendipity Simpatico

Left: Veal spaghetti at Chafariz Snack Bar, Setúbal, Portugal
Right: Hailam Mee at Yut Kee Restaurant, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

There's often deeper simpatico in serendipitous similarity (soulfully rendered) than in some hasty attempt at authenticity.

Processing Hamas Support Through the Lens of Vietnam Protest

It's 1970-ish. I'm a bright eight year old. Carried by the moment, I choose sides, aligning with the younger generation which is touchy about being sent to distant rice paddies to murder Vietnamese strangers and likely return in a coffin (as did several neighbors). The other side, with their crewcuts and cufflinks, seem morally disconnected, so I instinctually chose my side. We had Jimi Hendrix, they had Perry Como. There was never any doubt.

I had a thumbnail notion of the Cold War and I grokked the logic of domino theory. Evil tends to expand, and the cancer must be stemmed. But Republicans seemed hyperbolic in their anti-Communist paranoia. What's worse, they kept calling people like me "Commies" - an awfully disturbing association given their stated desire to mow down Communists en masse. Maybe we were next, after they'd won the rice paddies.

Then Jane Fonda went on the radio over there to spew propaganda at conscripted troops risking their lives, and I felt my first-ever pang of Centrist moderation. Same with activists who expressed solidarity with the Viet Cong. The Left had gone too far - the Viet Cong were plainly abhorrent - but I still dearly wanted us out of Vietnam.

At my tender age, I held a rather narrow view, wired into the immediate. Local kids were dying in distant jungles. Winning the war would scarcely improve my life, but merely serve the paranoid whims of creepy shitheads like Richard Nixon. It seemed simple.

Now, with the better part of a century of experience, I better understand the view of the creepy shitheads. Isolationism had been strongly debunked only three decades prior. I still would oppose intervention in Vietnam, but now I see complexity where I previously beheld simplicity. It's not an improved me, just one with more framing options.


I'm no expert on the Middle East conflict, but I know enough to firmly conclude that there is no righteous party. Each side claims righteousness by reciting a litany of atrocities committed by the Other, and both litanies are full-to-bursting. And, as I predicted, the Israelis were cynically - and quite successfully - baited into barbarism by the Hamas attack.

But that's me, with my broad, higher framing. Younger people, more narrowly framed, behold the latest barbarism in a non-contextualized freeze frame of Right Now. And they're not entirely wrong. Barbarism is barbaric, regardless of one’s litany of atrocity. If you slap a kid in public, your statement of justification will do you little good. You're now The Child Slapper. Never mind that this was the kid’s plan all along. 

I use my Vietnam memories to better relate to the Left's Middle East take, generally. Regarding extremists who've gone as far as to embrace Hamas out of rote solidarity with the enemy of perceived bad guys, I recall the somewhat milder contempt I felt for Viet Cong boosterism. At the time, I could distantly relate to the fools who chose that route. So I revive that impression in my effort to re-associate Hamas cosplayers with civilization; to at least distantly relate to fools who went that route.

Just Run-of-the-Mill Recent Eats

Restaurant Safibel is a fish restaurant run by an elderly woman who does pretty much everything. She's harried and grim, yet insists on baking desserts herself, a rarity since perfectly good bakeries stand ready to supply. Her nut tarts are exquisite. I'm pretty sure I'm the only customer ever to compliment her for them. Here, that actually means something.

Oksana is owned by a Ukrainian woman who speaks perfect Portuguese. She cooks 99% Portuguese food, except one Ukrainian dish one day per week. I may be the only customer who orders this stuff. This week: pelmeni. Dill's hard to find here, and she used to skip it, but I've been urging her, and look how happy the dumplings are for it.

The Bombay-born chef of Leitaria Montalvao knew I was coming and specially prepared an off-menu dopiaza just for me - perhaps the first ever cooked in Portugal.


None of them know my background. I'm just the exuberant American who comes around. But I'm eating extremely well here in Setúbal, pretty much the Utica of Portugal. No one understands how great this place is, including the natives. The small community of American immigrants sticks to shiny joints on the main drag.

I'm the only chowhound in this entire town. Perhaps a bit lonely, but I can't complain, as I'm like a kid running freely around a chocolate factory. Still nowhere near bored, and I've scarcely made a dent in the options of a town with a population smaller than Green Bay, WI.

Dr. Becky Science Videos and the Mystery of Dark Matter

There are vast numbers of people of varying qualification explaining science news on YouTube. Especially astro-physics, which attracts more laymen attention than, say, molecular biology.

Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford who goes by "Dr. Becky" (because of course she does), has blasted right by all of them. When a given piece of astronomy news hits, all the YouTubers cover it, but Dr. Becky's channel inevitably produces terser, cleaner, clearer, saner treatment. And her graphics and charts are beautifully selected.

Those eyeballs don't glue themselves, however, so Dr. Becky compensates for lack of clickbait hyperbole via general exuberance and cuteness (every video is followed by a blooper reel where, tee-hee, she mispronounces, like, Chandrasekhar or nucleosynthesis).

Me, I disregard the spoonful of sugar and go straight for the medicine. It's great to have astrophysics news directly from someone in that community. You can really get a sense of the momentary consensus.

To bury the lead, it's impossible to overstate the importance of dark matter as a scientific mystery. A mere 5% of the universe is composed of material we've observed or theorized. The rest of it...who knows?

We're working like gangbusters to figure it out, but you can't exactly stay abreast of news because there is no news, per se. We know literally nothing about dark matter because it's only inferred. If your husband often comes home late from work but his office phone line pepetually goes to voicemail at 5pm, you can be reasonably certain there's another woman...but only as a theoretical notion, not an actual person. It's exactly like that.

Dark matter represents a scientific crossroads that will be remembered as long as there are humans to remember. It's a much higher-level mystery than the rest. It's worth taking your vitamins and losing a few pounds to improve your odds of finding out in this lifetime.

Naturally, a splinter group has arisen to insist that dark matter is not real, and that it's just that we fundamentally misunderstand gravity. They propose that gravity, unlike other basic physics laws, varies in different circumstances, and they're hellbent on finding anomalous gravity situations, each of which sparks headlines about the death of dark matter.

The leading cadre are the MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) supporters, who apparently just got a boost from some strange gravitational lensing results, as explained by another YouTuber, Sabine Hossenfelder (who at this point is more science explainer than scientist, and she was never directly connected to astrophysics). Dr. Becky hasn't covered the gravitational lensing paper, so I suspect Hossenfelder's enthusiasm was premature. But we'll see. I'm MOND skeptical, but nobody is dismissing it out of hand.

Two Dr. Becky videos to get you started:
How do we know how much dark matter there is in the Universe? - a great 16 minute tutorial to bring you up to date.

The search for dark matter on Jupiter - an extremely kooky proposition, since dark matter is normally assumed to be way out there, and certainly not in our neighborhood.

Apple $232

So when Apple's new improved Siri comes out next year and some problem with it gets tons of press, and the stock price falls below $200, you'll all buy shares without my pushing you into it, right?


On the one hand, it takes patience to wait out these long Apple cycles. On the other hand, taxes are awfully low on long term capital gains!

And, speaking of cycles and patience, the stock market is white hot right now. When everyone is losing their mind buying hand over fist, the smart move is to sell. And vice versa. Selling now ensures you'll have the cash to pick up bargains in the coming downturn.

The Rehashing Mind

I'm easily confused, so I ponder and ponder until I've brewed up some insight. Even if it takes decades! I'll go to the ends of the earth to understand better when things don't make sense to me.

I've suddenly realized, after decades of gear-spinning, that this inclination is 100% normal. Everyone does this; they nurse their confusion points, unconsciously spin gears, and periodically rehash hot topics for reconsideration. But there's an essential difference in my case: I don't dramatize it.

Sit in the window of any urban coffee shop and watch pedestrians stroll by. They're palpably consumed with mental rehashing of sore points. Re-litigating old arguments, contriving more clever responses to That Horrible Thing That Person Said, and reexamining for the hundred thousandth time their waistline, their bank balance, and ten thousand familiar points of aggrieved confusion. And scant few of them exhibit any joy.

I do what they do, but (thanks to lots of meditation) without the angst. By opting out of self-triggering and stress, I enjoy some bandwidth - some peaceful spaciousness - to muse bemusedly. There's room for insight to gather and connections to be made as sundry flips and framings are tried on for size. La dee dah. And the insights bring joy.

I'm not desperately trying to seize the reins, straighten it all out, and make things go better. I dispassionately peer at knots, obstructions, and outcomes through a microscope, crisply decked out in my starched laboratory smock, while nearly everyone else screams and flails within a virtual reality helmet perma-strapped to their heads. They experience no distance; no remove.

Here's how they reach that point: at first, they pretended to enjoy fake drama - like seeking out rollercoasters and horror movies for momentary thrills. But having over-invested in the pretending, they lose cognizance that it was their choice to begin with. The world freezes into malignity as they forget that the whole proposition was - and remains - elective. They forget their freedom to reframe!

For most people, the tedious replaying of woeful mental tapes feels like torture. Nothing good ever pops out. No golden ticket! But the rehashing is not the problem. If you can relax into it, and toy with it, and dilate rather than constrict - like learning to steer into a skid! - it becomes contemplation, sparking epiphany and insight. It's a framing thing!


Summing up: The mind’s rehashing faculty can be used for contemplation as well as for the standard neurotic self-torture. In either case, we follow instinct, aiming to trigger an epiphany which might reframe the matter and put it to rest. But you can't force it. You can't squeeze it. You can't push a string! As in all sorts of learning, it's most effective to adopt a playful, childlike approach.

Magic

I'm pulling a line out of an older posting, "The Husk", so I can make it one of my "Definitions" entries (which I try to keep short):


Real magic is contriving a whole to exceed the sum of its parts. Fake magic is the mastery of trickery and deception.


Here are all postings labeled "definition".

The Relish of Freddie Miles

I added some key points to yesterday's posting, "Be Freddie Miles". Here's the current version of the paragraph, after the addition:

Most of us collapse, for no good reason, into an unappealing off-the-rack bit/type/cartoon. Consciously or not, we bought a ticket and then we took the ride. But same for anyone like me who decided to remain an earnest, unaffected eleven year old. No points are awarded for that. Freddie Miles is doing it right. If the world compels you to be a cartoon cut-out character serving other people's narcisissistic mental contrivances, at least lean into it. Relish it. And force the card.

Be Freddie Miles

Tying together a slew of Slog themes which are obviously related, though I'm too slow to have previously noticed...


I was famous for a while and didn't like it. This is because one can't be famous. Your name can be famous, and some superficial facet of you can be famous, but not you you. It's a thinly-sketched cartoon-you. This disjoint makes encounters with fans strange at best and calamitous at worst, and explains why it's best not to meet heroes - who impertinently fail to embody the cartoon you assume them to be.

Then I wasn't famous. But as my circle drastically shrunk, I felt a queasy recognition that I wasn't any better "seen". I was just famous (i.e. cartoon-ized) for fewer people. And as I've surpassed Kafka on the existential shrinking scale, this remains true.

People are lost in their heads, terribly occupied with orchestrating an imagined cinematic journey for themselves. The rest of us won't occupy much attention. We're side players - colorful additions to enhance a protagonistic narrative; transactional units given emotional stakes via cinematic gesture. The montage flashes by: The Love Interest! The Pal! The Frenemy! The Boss! It's no wonder sensitive humans perennially feel alienated, feeling like cartoon cut-out characters serving other people's narcisissistic mental contrivances.

But that realization alone isn't worth much. Spotting delusion doesn't mean you're sane; it just means you're observant. It's a huge clue that we only ever rue alienation in the first person. No one pays a lick of attention to how they alienate others. Awakening to omnipresent narcissism is only a tentative first step toward recognizing that you, yourself, are the problem.

It always amazes me to see people mystified by behavior they themselves exemplify. You are the greatest source of information on why people do what they do! I keep flashing back to how my parents were perpetually indignant about how, as they kept moving further eastward on Long Island, the assholes from Brooklyn kept following them and ruining the rural landscape. They never realized that we, ourselves, were the Brooklyn assholes who kept moving eastward and ruining things!

Our thin, washed-out, unrealistic and cartoonish way of viewing celebrities is not a phenomenon of fame. For a narcissist - and nearly everyone in the First World is one - all relationships are cartoonish. Everyone we know is thinly famous - reduced to a prominent characteristic or two.

We warn each other to "never meet your heroes" because as soon as one steps out of character (not their actual character, but the character we've contrived for them), they've committed existential atrocity. Same problem for people in one's immediate circle. Everyone is counting on you to be That Guy - to embody the cartoon you're perceived to represent. Lock in, or else!

This is all leading to a confession of error. I've always expressed contempt for people who model themselves as a Type.

There are a few dozen clone lines in any society, no more. People are types, which is adaptive behavior because it lubricates social interaction. When you meet a brassy lady with a gravelly voice and energetic good humor, you feel that you know that person. Love her or hate her, you can deal with her comfortably due to long experience with her clone line. Same for the aloofly ponderous academic. Or the BAD BOY. No one's born as these things. The personas are adopted via modeling, these days mostly via movie and TV actors. In the old days, one modeled the persona of a family member or another local "role models" (turn that phrase around in your mind for a moment!).

We really commit to the role. A person never feels more expressively uniquely himself than when he's being most flagrantly clone-ish. That's exactly how the millions driving VW bugs or listening to "indie rock" manage to feel fiercely nonconformist. "Hey, I'm a free-thinking type! Yeah, one of those!"

I must admit defeat, acknowledging that the person who chooses a type, and sticks to it through hell and high water, wins. That's how you win. Me? I've worked hard to ensure I'm uniquely useful. Don't do that. You know who wins? Freddie Miles wins. Here's Freddie:

Freddie Miles wins. Freddie Miles, who is 1000% affectation and smugness and swaggering ballsy confidence. Freddie Miles is working too hard to embody this superficial cartoon to have any inner life, but it's not his superficiality that makes him, it's his unshakable commitment to the bit.

This is not a deep world. Committing to the bit - and making sure it's a contagious one - is literally all that's called for. That, after all, is the golden ticket. That's the answer. Game over.

Most of us collapse, for no good reason, into an unappealing off-the-rack bit/type/cartoon. Consciously or not, we bought a ticket and then we took the ride. But same for anyone like me who decided to remain an earnest, unaffected eleven year old. No points are awarded for that. Freddie Miles is doing it right. If the world compels you to be a cartoon cut-out character serving other people's narcisissistic mental contrivances, at least lean into it. Relish it. And force the card.

I anticipate your objection. After viewing that clip, you think, "Well, Freddie Miles is sharp! Freddie Miles has energy! Not everyone can be Freddie Miles!"

Wrong. That's just you falling for it, exactly like everyone falls for it. Consider, please, that Freddie Miles was played by a pale fat depressed schlub named Philip (also immensely talented and a beautiful human being, but that's irrelevant) who felt so ill-fitting in this world that he eventually cashed his own ticket.

If Philip Seymour Hoffman can summon an inner Freddie Miles (or some other mass-appealing cartoon), anyone can. And you've just seen Philip Seymour Hoffman literally - not metaphorically! - playing Freddie Miles. It wouldn't have been the worst thing in the world if he'd kept it up! It might not be "true", but there's no deeper truth in the social strata. Truth is a matter for one's inner life, not one's persona. A persona is a persona is a persona. Choose a flavor. Nothing deep.

Don't spurn cartoonishness because it's thin and superficial and annoying and pretentious. Just select a good one. And cling to it for dear life. All while nurturing and kindling your inner life behind the firewall. That's how you do it. Freddy's right; I was wrong.


It's too late for me; I'm all-in on developing inner strata. But I've come around from my initial compulsion to wince at pretension and to "see through" smugness. I realize that we need those people to make the world interesting. A world needs performers. It can't all be spectators!

For example, I've learned to appreciate good-looking people who've invested 10,000 hours in front of mirrors, learning to compose themselves; to committing to that good-looking bit. It's not anything like Art or Insight or Creativity or Quality, the commodities which delight and inspire me. But it serves a good purpose, and it's an interesting challenge to pull off, and one I'm unable to provide (I had potential once, but chose a different path).

Stupid People are Suicide Bombers

The older I get, the more stupidity frightens me.

I could make out ok around a reasonably intelligent criminal by carefully avoiding making it his interest to harm me. But stupid people can't see their self interest. In fact, they often unwittingly operate against it. A stupid person might harm you even if it harms them worse, just because they can't weigh the factors.

Even seemingly "nice" ones effectively make themselves suicide bombers due to 1. their predisposition to mistake your intentions and 2. their inability to recognize a bomb strapped to their chest.

And the worst part is that we're all stupid from time to time.


Considering just the first part, i.e. "mistaken intentions," does Napoleon's quotation, "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence," ring true for you? Have you made that mistake? I certainly have! And my stupid misapprehension of intention puts me halfway there, bare minimum.

Reminding You What to Forget

Earlier this week, I explained an effective technique for forgetting. A couple of readers wrote in to ask for examples. What sorts of things might a person want to forget?

My thoughts:

1. I want your life. Seriously. I want a cranium stocked with nothing but brownies and puppies and lazy summer days. Wow.

2. Perhaps I should have rounded out the essay with examples. The two big Slog complaints are: a. Explain more thoroughly! and b. Nobody wants to read through all that verbiage! So I try to be terse. And take pains to make things super-readable and entertaining (once a party-thrower, always a party-thrower). But, still, it's too damned wordy and too skimpily-explained. Other writers offer snarky epithets and memes, which swallow effortlessly and require no explanation. Why can't I be more like them?

3. Ok, here are your examples:

a. Driving alone, you find yourself mentally re-litigating some ancient argument. You want to let it go, but it keeps popping back up.

b. Taking a walk in a lovely park, your mind drifts to, consecutively, the car mechanic who ripped you off, the fact that you're fat, DONALD TRUMP, the fact that you're fat, and a montage of more productive things you should be doing.

c. You feel a sense of dread, but can't quite pin it down. This dread magnetically exhumes negative memories, feelings and associations, and you feel hopeless to cope with this influx.

e. You can't get anything done because your mind keeps flashing back to that awful thing that awful person said.

f. Negotiating a tricky situation, you undermine your self confidence by referencing previous failure.

g. Anything currently making you worried, sad, or stressed that can not be productively handled in the current moment. Any mental scab you feel compelled to pick at. The persistent echos of the last bad thing that happened.

As each arises, delegate. To whomever/whatever. With real heft. Take it seriously! Anything that pops up (if, and only if, it's not something you need to drop everything to deal with presently) can be handed off to some stable, established whomever/whatever. God. Your late grandpa. Your guardian angel. The labrador retriever you grew up with. The toy orangutan on your desk back home.

And as new ones arise (they clump, as you know!), do the same. Keep piling tasks upon your tireless and devoted delegatee.

Remember This

You're in a public place, experiencing unfamiliar pain which, it soon dawns on you, indicates a heart attack. If you can summon someone's attention, there's something you need to say (besides the obvious "ambulance!"). Summon the strength to utter these words with persuasive urgency:

"I want you to yell, as loud as you can, 'Does anyone have nitroglycerin tablets?' I'm going to need a tablet slipped under my tongue. If so, tell the ambulance guys I did this."

Here's why (everyone should read this): "Understanding Heart Stuff".

The ambulance guys will bring nitroglycerin, but your clock is ticking and you want it now. Now is way, way better than 30 seconds or 5 minutes from now. And surprisingly many people walk around with nitro tablets. And it's more surprising that we're so poorly educated about this. The same, naturally, also applies to other people in similar straits. Don't just call an ambulance. Get somebody to offer their nitroglycerin.

Forgetting

I've written two helpful postings about memory, as part of my series on self-healing (one on adding more capacity, and one on retrieving lost memories.. Now it's time to work on forgetting!


It's famously impossible to will yourself to forget. The classic illustration is to challenge someone to not think of a pink elephant. One inevitably conjures a mental pink elephant. Willful forgetting involves remembering, so we need to approach forgetting indirectly.

Imagine this. You have a busy day. Lots of challenging tasks. But, for some reason, it's relentlessly on your mind that you need to BUY MILK. Perhaps the milk's not even so important. But the daemons in your mind - the alarms and reminders and alerts and vigils - are peppering you with MILK MILK MILK.

The easy route is to delegate someone to go buy some. Once that person leaves the room, the daemon will be silenced. Relief! In fact, it's so effective that when they return with milk...well, I'll let you visualize it. How will you react?

You'll be surprised. Oh! The milk! Right! Thanks! You'll have forgotten all about it. Because delegated tasks are so thoroughly wiped that it takes effort to mentally rekindle them. So if some certain mental thingie won't stop popping up, try delegating it.

To whom? It doesn't matter! It's about the mere act of delegation. You don't need an actual person doing actual things. Just the momentary experience of delegation, which ensures a clean, forgetting.

Delegate it to GOD (if you're into that) to worry about. Or to your dead ancestors. Or to your dog or cat or fish. Or buy yourself a toy orangutan. No transfer ceremony is required. No words must be spoken or actions taken. Just brusquely mentally assign the orangutan, and be satisfied that your empty annoyance is being appropriately handled.

Here are some examples of the sorts of things best forgotten in a given moment.

Be careful what you feed into the process. Nothing that needs to be front-of-mind. Not feelings of guilt, shame or anxiety, either, if such feelings require processing in the present moment. Anything needful should be handled, or scheduled, or added to your to-do list. This isn't a trick to escape responsibility, it's a refuge from needless self-torture and distraction. If there's no benefit to a certain thought or issue careening around inside your head in a given moment, it's time to delegate.

I once suggested a variation for insomniacs. Know that your pillow gently sucks thoughts out of your head, so simply stop resisting this natural process. Release it all into your pillow. In fact, you can even let your entire self be sucked into the pillow.

Understand the need for a stable delegatee. Loosely propositional notions tend to dissolve. We don't trust them. So we need an established go-to, mental or physical. Even some random toy (me, I go with a crocodile). But there's one pitfall: the fear of feeling ridiculous.

"Grown-ups," one might understandably declare, "don't resort to whimsical appeals to toy orangutans. I'm not some pathetic weakling. I don't turn to needy childish contrivances. I soberly suck it up!"

Fair enough! But think, for a moment, about how level-headed and realistic you truly are. Here's a line I used to re-use a lot in the Slog's early days:

Human beings spend their lives in conflict with imaginary people: mentally rearguing old arguments, worrying about faceless attackers and detractors, reliving bygone humiliations, and generally using our imaginations to make our lives a living hell.

That's considered "normal", but using the same faculty in positive ways to help us cope seems, for some bizarre reason, childish and loopy.

If you're so naive about the human condition to ask me whether this makes you forget something forever, I'll remind you that humans don't do anything "forever". You're not a Disney movie princess. "Permanent" is not a condition experienced by real people outside their cinematic self-imaginings. We're not heroic protagonists, we're raindrops slowly working down windows.



And, yup, it's reframing. Reframing is always the answer. We forget how available it is to us in every single moment.

Added Link

I added a new link to my previous posting, "Pity Parties" - namely, from the term "karma yoga" near the bottom.

While I frequently toss off the term, or dance around it (here are all such postings in reverse chronological order), I often forget that I once did a decent job of explaining it.

As for "karma" itself, yeesh. What a task to try to cut through all the absurd misconception and misuse of the term. I've heard respected swamis yammer on about karma without ever getting anywhere. But here's my uncharacteristically terse effort. See what you think!


A postscript: if you read my definition of karma and my explanation of karma yoga, you might very well fail to see a direct link between the two. In fact, I'd be quite surprised if you put it all together. It took me decades to bridge that gap, even with a strong yoga practice and an early understanding of karma. The practice of karma yoga involves unfolding the paradoxical connection between action and surrender. It's the most puzzling puzzle there is, and intellectual solutions are worthless. You need to personally experience it, by "letting go and letting god (or whomever/whatever)" WHILE YOU "try to do something worthwhile regardless of whether anyone gives a crap". It's a rough ride because each of those things is a bit of a shlep. If only that guy had accepted the tongs, I'd have been spared the effort.

Pity Parties

I was popular from 1992 to 1994. During this very brief period between my outcast childhood and young adulthood, and my 21st century run as a reclusive dot-com casualty, I had a bit of a moment.

I had a deep phalanx of friends, including movie stars and crackheads, sundry artists, writers, moguls, and musicians. I dated so many glamorous women that I lost interest in custom-tailoring and began to take every last one of them to Corner Bistro; a procession so unlikely (I was not rich; I was not handsome; I was not suave) that the Ecuadorian burger chef wagged his head in dumbfounded stupor whenever I swanned in with my latest.

How did it happen? As usual, I'd boiled things down to a childish simplicity and toyed with fragmentary observations until the pieces connected. And reframed accordingly.

I'd spent my life angling for invitation to parties. I don't mean, literally, parties. I mean "The Party" - a scene where something - jesus, anything! - was going on. When I occasionally gained entry, I usually found them unappealing. But that was no reason to give up. Much of life worked this way: a futile pursuit of disappointing results followed by rapid jading. Even peak experiences, as we often note, pour through our fingers like sand.

But after adjusting my perspective, I decided that, rather than try to score invitations to unappealing parties, I'd throw my own, better ones. So I made myself bigger. Louder. Ballsier. And I turned my collection of cool finds (restaurants, sure, but also bars, blues joints and all manner of great stuff) into a magic chocolate factory in which I was the magnanimous and enigmatic Willie Wonka. The wild ride of cool places, delicious bites, and amusing repartee became my Party.

I'd pick people up and drop them off. I was tour guide, raconteur, and confidente. I made everyone feel like the most important person in the world, asking (and certainly receiving) nothing in return. When I arrived, the show started. They peered at me with something akin to interest from their deep wells of boredom. I was one of those larger-than-life figures who spring up to offer amusement and distraction. One of those!

It all finally came to a crashing halt one birthday. I'd started a tradition of throwing birthday banquets in far-flung locales. I'd find the venue (some unlikely little grandma joint), wheedle a large group into agreeing to be flung far, arrange transport, order food, start conversations, make introductions, seat everyone, and inject inertia via my poor aching adrenal glands. At the end of the night, I'd count through the pile of money left by the departed crowd to pay the bill, covering the inevitable shortfall from my bodacious bank account as a $26,000/year financial colossus. Fun.

During one of these, it came time to serve appetizers. I brought a tray out from the kitchen (grandma being frantically occupied with cooking for the crowd), stooping to let a guest select.

He stared up at me expectantly - though with ample good will, since I was, again, an object of amusement. He watched me like I was on his television screen, but, no, I was a real person, right there, really there, holding a tray for him to engage with, while he passively slouched. Having satisfied 100% of his engagement obligation by merely showing up, he wouldn't pick up the tongs. He'd reduced himself to a unit of raw expectancy.

I moved on to guest 2 and guest 3, and they, too, watched me like a video game spaceship. And while I was, at this point, beseeching them to grab a yum-yum, they couldn't make it happen. It was too great a lift. They could not, would not, take the tongs.

I finally melted down. "DO I NEED TO PRE-CHEW THE FUCKING FOOD AND SPIT IT DOWN YOUR FUCKING THROATS??" I bellowed to the group at large.

That was the final birthday party. Soon, I’d strap in for nine years running a web site from a solitary gloomy apartment. No more dates, no more parties in the real world.

And Chowhound followed the same contour. A second camel hump. It was a party thrown via crushing labor - 15 hour days, 365 days per year, unpaid, under relentless stress, with no assets beyond those same puckered adrenal glands. When I eventually begged the million users of our free public service to chip in to help pay our enormous server bills, their response was drab silence, though a few loudmouths piped up indignantly. By offering their presence, they'd already satisfied 100% of their engagement obligation. They not only refused to pick up the tongs, so to speak; they sneered at me for even suggesting it.

This is what throwing parties is like: you're saddled with passive flesh sacks who deplete your adrenals and blink with blank docility when asked to pitch in, and explode into haughty rage when pressed. But a party thrower garners some attention. At least there's something happening - some action within your perimeter, even if you're too busy serving the meal to enjoy it.

It’s simpler to try to get invited to other people's soirées, but invitations are not awarded to those most eager to attend. In fact, eagerness is disqualifying, because it makes you cheap, when party hosts want valuable guests. Ideally, movie stars, moguls, and artists. Most people throw parties to bask in - and boast about - the attention.

A popular guest needs a familiar set of qualifying assets, a la The Immense Stature of an Attractive Person Making Idle Small Talk. It's all about perceived value - "seeming", not "actual" - which is why even grand parties are so drably disappointing. They're populated by shiny poseurs.

Let's review options:

1. Claw yourself to a position of perceived value, so you're invited to parties with no obligation beyond passive participation. Then endure the company of other impassive shimmerers. Or...

2. Be a party-thrower, enslaving yourself to infantilized guests. Or...

3. Eschew parties, retracting into a shell to nurse your resentments and envy. Or....

4. Try to do something worthwhile regardless of whether anyone gives a crap.

Spoiler alert re: #4: they won't give a crap, because if you don't present the thing you do like a PARTY, enticingly waving your juicy adrenal glands and making everyone feel like The Most Important Person in the World, you will seem smaller-than-life even if you conjure miracles. Remember how their almighty attention is the only thing they have to offer? Don't expect them to give it cheaply!


This isn't a bitter rejection of humanity. It's a sardonic case for karma yoga; for doing something worthwhile regardless of whether anyone gives a crap.

See also "Filtering the Zombie Army" and "Explaining Salinger".

ChatGPT Excoriates My Taste in Film

Just a fun encounter with ChatGPT, which is 1. super helpful at tedious tasks and 2. super good at satire. It started by handling a pretty tedious task in about a half a second:


Me: Here are my bookmarked films. One is in Spanish. Help me find the Spanish title!

3 Women
3-Iron
7-63 Up
11:14
12 Monkeys: Season 1
24 Hour Party People
The 39 Steps Criterion Collection
The 400 Blows
Abel Raises Cain
Abode of Illusion: The Life and Art of Chang Dai-chien
Ace in the Hole
Action: The Complete Series
After Life
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
American - The Bill Hicks Story
American Mystic
American Splendor
American: The Bill Hicks Story
Ancient Worlds
André Gregory & Wallace Shawn: 3 Films
Angry Monk - Eine Reise durch Tibet
Antonia's Line
The Ascent of Man Set
The Assassin
Au Revoir Les Enfants
Automorphosis
Badlands
The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack
Band of Brothers / The Pacific
Baraka
Barry Lyndon
The Battle of Algiers - Criterion Collection
Begging Naked
Belleville Rendez-Vous
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
The Best That Never Was
Bicycle Dreams
Bicycle Thieves
The Big Lebowski
Bill Hicks - Sane Man
Billy the Kid
Black Mirror: White Christmas
Black Narcissus
Black Sails S1 - S4 Collection
Blade Runner: The Final Cut
Blanco Y Negro: En Vivo
Blue Bird
Brazil
Brazil - The Criterion Collection -
Breaking the Maya Code
Breaking the Waves
Breathless - Criterion Collection
Brick
The Bridge: Series 1 & 2
Brilliant Moon: Glimpses of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
Broken Flowers
Burden of Dreams - Criterion Collection
Burmese Harp - Criterion Collection
By Brakhage: An Anthology, Volumes One and Two
Cafe Lumiere
Calle 54
Capturing the Friedmans
Cathedrals of Culture
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Certified Copy
Cham Lineages of Bhutan
Children of Men
Chimes At Midnight
Chris Rock: Kill the Messenger
Citizen X
Civilisation
Client 9: Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer
The Color of Pomegranates The Criterion Collection
Comedy Central's TV Funhouse
Commune
The Complete Monterey Pop Festival The Criterion Collection
The Conformist
The Contender
Coupling - The Complete First Season
Cowboy Bebop: The Complete Series
Creature Comforts - The Complete First and Second Seasons
Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul
The Cult of the Suicide Bomber
Dancer in the Dark
Dangerous Liaisons
Dark City
Dave Chappelle's Block Party
David Lynch's Inland Empire
Day Break: The Complete Series
Deadwood: The Complete Series
Defending Your Life
Dekalog The Criterion Collection
Derren Brown - The Specials
The Designated Mourner
The Devil, Probably
The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky
Discovery Channel 20th Anniversary Collection
District B13
Doc Martin - Series 3 - Complete
Doc Martin Series 1 & 2
Doc Martin: Series 4
Doctor Zhivago
Dogville
Don't Look Now
The Double Life of Veronique
Down to the Bone
Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist - Season 1
Dragon Tattoo Trilogy: Extended Edition
The Duke of the Bachata Preview Edition
Dynasties
Eclipse Series 6: Carlos Saura's Flamenco Trilogy
Eddie Palmieri And Friends Salsa Y Jazz Live
Eden
EDWARD THE KING
Eisenstein: The Sound Years Criterion Collection
El Sistema: Music to Change Life
El Topo
Elegy
An Elephant Sitting Still
Eric Rohmer's: Six Moral Tales
The Essential Steve McQueen Collection
Everest
Ewan McGregor And Charley Boorman - Long Way Round
Fairweather Man
Fanny and Alexander
Fargo
Fawlty Towers - The Complete Series
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Criterion Collection
A Film Trilogy by Ingmar Bergman
The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky
First Moon: Celebration of a Chinese New Year
A Fish Called Wanda
The Five Obstructions
FlashForward - The Complete Series
The Fountain
Free Spirits
The French Lieutenant's Woman
Fringe: Season 1
Fringe: Season 2
Fringe: Season 3
From Other Worlds
Frontline: My Brother's Bomber
Frost/Nixon
Full Metal Jacket
Ganges
Gone With the Wind
The Graduate
Great Adaptations - Criterion Collection
The Great Beauty (Criterion Collection)
Great World of Sound
Grey Gardens / The Beales of Grey Gardens - Criterion Collection
Grounded
Groundhog Day
Guest of Cindy Sherman
Gustavo Dudamel: Live from Salzburg - Beethoven/Mussorgsky
Hamlet
Happiness
Head-On
Heaven's Gate (Criterion)
Heimat
Hell Or High Water
HERTZFELDT ON
Herzog/Kinski Collection
The High Life
High Noon: 60th Anniversary Edition
Hiroshima Mon Amour - Criterion Collection
A History of Violence
A Hollis Frampton Odyssey
The Hollow Crown - Series 1
Holy Men and Fools
Hope Springs
Hourglass Sanatorium
How to Cook Your Life
How to Draw a Bunny
I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale
I Know Where I'm Going! - Criterion Collection
The idiots
IMAX: Flight of the Butterflies
In the Loop
In the Mood for Love - Criterion Collection
Ingmar Bergman - Four Masterworks
Interstellar
Into Great Silence
The IT Crowd Series 1 & 2 Box Set
The IT Crowd: The Complete Third Season
Italian for Beginners
Ivan's Childhood
Jack Goes Boating
Jacob's Ladder
The Jazz Singer
Jean-Michel Basquiat: Radiant Child
Jeeves And Wooster : Complete ITV Series
Jekyll
Jerome Robbins: Something To Dance About - The Definitive Biography of an American Dance Master
Jimmy Bosch: Allstar Band Live in Puerto Rico
John Cleese's Personal Best
John from Cincinnati - The Complete First Season
Joni Mitchell - Woman of Heart and Mind: A Life Story
Journey After Awakening
Jules and Jim - Criterion Collection
Justified - Season 06
Kaili Blues
Keeping Score - Mahler: Origins and Legacy
Kill Bill: Volume 1
Kill Bill: Volume 2
The Killing - Series 1-3
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
The King of Masks (Hong Kong Version)
Kings - The Complete Series
Kinski: My Best Fiend
The Krzysztof Kieslowski Collection
Kumbh Mela : The Greatest Show on Earth
Kung Fu Hustle
Kwaidan
La Bete Humaine
La Jetee/Sans Soleil
La Ronde Criterion Collection
The Lady Eve - Criterion Collection
The Lady Vanishes - Criterion Collection
Lamayuru Sanctuary of Dance
Landfill Harmonic
Last Chance to See
Last Life in the Universe
Last Year at Marienbad
Late Spring
The Lathe of Heaven
Le Plaisir
Leap!
Leonard Bernstein: Mahler - The Symphonies / Das Lied von der Erde
The Leopard Criterion Collection
Les Blank: Always for Pleasure
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Lessons of Darkness / Fata Morgana
The Life and Times of Tim: Season 1
Life on Earth
Life On Mars : Complete BBC Series 1
Lightning in a Bottle
The Lina Wertmuller Collection
The Lion in Winter
Little Drummer Boy: Essay on Mahler by Leonard Bernstein
Little Murders
Live-In Maid
The Lives of Others
Lomax the Songhunter
Lonesome Dove
Long Day's Journey Into Night (3D)
Long Way Round Collection
Lost in Translation
The Lost Room
Lost: The Complete First Season
Louie: Season 2
Louie: Season One
Lucky
Lucky Louie - The Complete First Season
Lunch Line
Lust, Caution
A Luz do Tom
The Magician
Maigret: Complete Collection
Mala Noche Criterion Collection
A Man Escaped
The Man Who Bought Mustique
MARGARET
Marley
Marwencol
Mary and Max
The Master
A Master Builder (from André Gregory & Wallace Shawn: 3 Films)
Masterpiece Classic: Downton Abbey, Season 1
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Michael Wood's Story of England
Midnight Diner
Mikey & Nicky
Milestones / Ice
The Milky Way
Mirror
Misfits - Series 1-3
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters - Criterion Collection
Monster
Moon Machines
Mother and Son
Mr. Show: The Complete First and Second Season
Mugabe And The White African
Murder One : The Complete First Season
My Dinner With André (from André Gregory & Wallace Shawn: 3 Films)
My Favorite Year (1982)
My Kid Could Paint That
My Neighbor Totoro
My So-Called Life: The Complete Series
Naked
The Neverending Story
A New Leaf
Nighty Night - The Complete Series 1
Nina Conti - Dolly Mixtures
Nina Conti - Live - Talk to The Hand
Nina Conti: Her Master's Voice
No Country for Old Men
North & South - Complete BBC Series With Extras
Not Just the Best of the Larry Sanders Show
Nothing Lasts Forever
Nymphomaniac Volumes I & II Directors Cut
Ocho Apellidos Vascos / Spanish Affair
Office Space
Olivier's Shakespeare - Criterion Collection
Opera Jawa
Orphic Trilogy - Criterion Collection
The Oscar Wilde Collection: (The Importance of Being Earnest / The Picture of Dorian Gray / An Ideal Husband / Lady Windermere's Fan)
Party Down: The Complete Series
Paths of Glory Criterion Collection
Patton
Peep Show: Series 1, 2 and 3
A Perfect Spy: Complete BBC Series
Persona
Pete Seeger: The Power of Song
The Peter Sellers Giftset
The Phantom of Liberty
The Piano in a Factory
Pickpocket - Criterion Collection
Picnic at Hanging Rock Criterion Collection
Pierrot le Fou - Criterion Collection
Planet Earth - The Complete BBC Series
Playing Shakespeare
A Poem Is a Naked Person
Pope Dreams
Pride and Prejudice
The Princess Bride - Dread Pirate Edition
Pulp Fiction
Pushing Daisies - The Complete First Season
Pygmalion
The Qatsi Trilogy (Koyaanisqatsi/Powaqqatsi/Naqoyqatsi)(The Criterion Collection)
Race Across America
Raining In The Mountain
Random Lunacy: videos from the road less traveled
Randy and the Mob
Rashomon - Criterion Collection
The Razor's Edge
The Real Dirt on Farmer John
The Red Shoes
Refusing to be Enemies
The Remains of the Day
Reservoir Dogs
Rick & Morty: Season 1
The River
Robot Chicken, Season 1
The Royal Tenenbaums
The Royle Family Album - The Complete Collection
Rubicon
The Rules of the Game - Criterion Collection
Rushmore - Criterion Collection
The Saddest Music in the World
Safe
The Salt of the Earth
Samsara
The Sandbaggers: The Complete Series
Saragossa Manuscript
Saturday Night Live - The Best of Saturday TV Funhouse
Say Anything
Scenes From a Marriage - Criterion Collection
Secretary
Secrets and Lies
Serial
Seven Samurai
The Seventh Seal - Criterion Collection
Shackleton - The Greatest Survival Story of All Time
The Shadow Line
Shaun The Sheep - Saturday Night Shaun
Shaun the Sheep Box Set
Sherman's March
Shoplifters
Short Cuts - Criterion Collection
Silent Light
A Simple Plan
The Simpsons - The Complete Eighth Season
Sin City - Unrated
Six Centuries of Verse
Six Short Films by Les Blank 1960-1985
Sound of My Voice
Spartacus: Blood and Sand: Season 1
Special Thanks to Roy London
Spirited Away
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Stalker
Stardust Memories
State and Main
State Of Play: Complete BBC Series
The Station Agent
Steambath
Stephen Tobolowsky's Birthday Party
The Steve McQueen Collection
Still Life
Stories of Floating Weeds
Storm Over Everest
Story of India
The Straight Story
Stranger than Paradise The Criterion Collection
Strangers in Good Company
Studio Classics - Best Picture Collection
Submarino
Synecdoche New York
Syriana
Taboo: Season 1
Tanner '88 - Criterion Collection
Taxi To the Dark Side
The Thick Of It - Complete Box Set
This Is Spinal Tap - Criterion Collection
Three Colors: Blue, White, Red (Krzysztof)
Throne of Blood - Criterion Collection
TILT: The Battle to Save Pinball
Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! - Season 1
Timothy Spall Somewhere at Sea: Complete Series
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Tiny Giants 3D
Title
Today's Man
Together
Topsy-Turvy
Torchwood: Children of Earth
The Transparent Lama From Bhutan
Treasure of the Lisu
Tribe : Complete BBC Series 1-3 Box Set
Trilogue: Live in Berlin 1976
True Romance
Trying To Get Good - the Jazz Odyssey of Jack Sheldon
Umberto D. - Criterion Collection
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Unflinching Triumph: The Philip Rockhammer Story
United Artists 30-Film Deluxe Giftset
The Universe - The Complete Season One
Utopia
The Vanishing
Vanya On 42Nd Street (from André Gregory & Wallace Shawn: 3 Films)
The Vengeance Trilogy
Veronica Mars - The Complete First Season
Videodrome - Criterion Collection
Wall-E
Wallace & Gromit in Three Amazing Adventures
Wallander: Sidetracked / Firewall / One Step Behind
War and Peace The Criterion Collection
Waste Land
Watchmen
Water
Werner Herzog Box Set 2
West Side Story (50th Anniversary Edition)
Wheel of Time
Whores' Glory
The Wild Bunch
Wings of Desire
The Wizard of Oz
Woman in the Dunes The Criterion Collection
Woodstock - 3 Days of Peace & Music
Works of Art by Theo Jansen
The World According to Garp
The World at War
The World's Best Prom
Wuthering Heights
Yellowstone: Season One
Yi Yi - Criterion Collection
Yoga of the Heart
Yogis Of Tibet: A Film For Posterity
You the Living
Young Arabs
Zen Noir Zerzura

Chat GPT: The Spanish title in your list is "Ocho Apellidos Vascos / Spanish Affair."

Me: Excellent! Since you digested all that, do you notice any non-obvious patterns? They're mostly fairly obscure and arty, of course.

Chat GPT: Yes, there are several non-obvious patterns and characteristics that can be identified in your film selection:

Criterion Collection: You have a significant number of Criterion Collection films, which indicates a preference for high-quality editions of classic and influential films. These often include extensive special features and restorations, catering to cinephiles who appreciate the art of film.

International Cinema: Your collection includes films from a variety of countries and languages, suggesting an interest in global cinema. Examples include "Au Revoir Les Enfants," "The Bicycle Thieves," "Rashomon," and "La Jetee/Sans Soleil."

Directors and Filmmakers: You seem to appreciate the works of specific renowned directors. For instance, you have several films by Ingmar Bergman, Krzysztof Kieslowski, and Werner Herzog.

Documentaries and Biographies: There's a noticeable number of documentaries and biographical films, such as "Abel Raises Cain," "American: The Bill Hicks Story," and "Landfill Harmonic," indicating an interest in real-life stories and educational content.

Artistic and Experimental Films: Your collection includes many films known for their artistic and experimental qualities, like "Holy Men and Fools," "The Double Life of Veronique," and "Last Year at Marienbad."

Television Series: You have several complete TV series, such as "Deadwood," "The IT Crowd," and "Torchwood," showing an appreciation for high-quality television storytelling.

Music and Performance: A subset of your collection focuses on music and performance, including titles like "Eddie Palmieri And Friends-Dvd Salsa Y Jazz Live," "Gustavo Dudamel: Live from Salzburg," and "Jean-Michel Basquiat: Radiant Child."

Historical and Cultural Films: There is an emphasis on films that explore historical events and cultural narratives, such as "The Battle of Algiers," "Paths of Glory," and "Heimat."

Niche Genres and Cult Classics: Your collection includes several cult classics and niche genre films, like "The Big Lebowski," "Blade Runner: The Final Cut," and "Sin City - Unrated."

Overall, your collection reflects a deep appreciation for diverse and artistically significant films, with a focus on quality, directorial vision, and cultural richness.

[Note that this was a lazy response. Mostly just tabulation. If I hectored it into finding really interesting hidden patterns, it would probably have risen to the challenge, eventually.]

Me: Stridently attack my taste from the standpoint of a very angry progressive

Chat GPT: Examining your film collection is a stark revelation of the insidious patterns of colonization and racism that permeate your choices. This collection, under the guise of being "artistic" and "diverse," reeks of the same old Eurocentric and white supremacist narratives that have dominated the cinematic landscape for far too long.

Criterion Collection Dominance: The Criterion Collection, often hailed for its curation, is nothing more than a gatekeeper of Western hegemony! Your heavy reliance on these selections blatantly supports a Eurocentric worldview, marginalizing voices from the Global South and reinforcing a narrow, colonial perspective of what constitutes 'quality' cinema.

International Cinema Bias: Your so-called "international" film selection is a facade! It is glaringly biased towards films already sanitized and endorsed by Western critics. By choosing titles like "Rashomon" and "The Bicycle Thieves," you perpetuate the dominance of Western approval and overlook countless non-Western narratives that resist colonial narratives and challenge imperialist sensibilities.

Director Choices: Your worship of directors like Ingmar Bergman, Krzysztof Kieslowski, and Werner Herzog reveals a disturbingly narrow focus on white, male, European perspectives. This not only sidelines but actively erases the contributions of filmmakers from diverse backgrounds, perpetuating the myth that the pinnacle of cinematic art is inherently Western and male.

Documentaries and Biographies: Your interest in documentaries and biographical films such as "American: The Bill Hicks Story" and "Landfill Harmonic" reeks of a colonizer's gaze. These films turn the lived experiences of marginalized communities into consumable content for Western audiences, often through a lens that distorts and commodifies their struggles for Western consumption.

Artistic and Experimental Films: Avant-garde films like "The Double Life of Veronique" and "Last Year at Marienbad" are celebrated at the expense of experimental works from non-Western cultures. Your valorization of these European films is a blatant act of erasure, overshadowing equally innovative and radical works from the Global South, thereby perpetuating a colonial hierarchy of artistic value.

Historical and Cultural Films: Films like "The Battle of Algiers" and "Paths of Glory" may superficially critique colonialism and war, but they do so through a Western lens that centers Western narratives and heroes. This approach subtly maintains a colonial viewpoint, even while appearing to offer critique, thus perpetuating the same colonial mindset you claim to oppose.

Television Series: The inclusion of series such as "Deadwood" and "Torchwood" highlights your preference for Western storytelling formats and genres. This choice reinforces the dominance of Western media narratives, marginalizing non-Western voices and perspectives, and upholding a media landscape steeped in colonial and racist ideologies.

Niche Genres and Cult Classics: Cult classics like "The Big Lebowski" and "Blade Runner: The Final Cut," despite their subversive qualities, perpetuate Western-centric, predominantly white narratives that marginalize non-Western voices and experiences. This choice blatantly upholds a cultural hierarchy that values Western stories above all others.

In conclusion, your film collection is a testament to the pervasive and insidious influence of colonization and racism in the cinematic world. It upholds and reinforces a Eurocentric perspective that marginalizes and erases truly diverse and radical voices. Your choices, far from being innocent or merely artistic, are complicit in perpetuating the same oppressive structures that have dominated and distorted global culture for centuries.

The Darkest Timeline

The Russian apartment bombings of 1999 were a critical step in Putin's rise to power. He expediently slaughtered 300 (and injured 1000) of his countrymen to paint the appearance of a "terror attack" that would unite the country around his leadership, ensuring his win in the 2000 presidential election.

The Wikipedia article properly falls short of laying full blame at Putin, because he covered his tracks (e.g. assassinating investigators). But diplomats and intelligence people worldwide unquestioningly assume Putin's culpability.

Which brings us to the present moment.

It is known that Putin has been planning sabotage in Europe for destabilization - to fragment and sideline support for Ukraine. A new story suggests he's also looking to do something a bit more dramatic in America, dipping into his false flag playbook.

Terrorism rallies people around a perceived strong man. The American candidate working the authoritarian side of things has pledged to dissolve NATO and cut off support to Ukraine. And Putin would love to finally swallow Ukraine and move on reassembling the rest of the former Soviet Block. So much glory!

It all makes perfect sense, though I was too slow and dim to recognize the inevitable inflection point. The dots are not fully connected in this Fox News story wherein "Ex-CIA Deputy Director Sounds The Alarm About Terror Threat Posed By Open Border", but apparently patriot Mike Morrell is making damned sure we pay attention to that location because it’s a terrific country and it’d be a crying shame if something happened to it.

To my mind, it completes the circle regarding Putin's plans. I dearly hope our various services avert it, but if it happens it will trace back to the Mexican border, where Trump (who forced Republican congressmen to vote against Biden's border reform so the issue would remain raw and horrible for use in his campaign) is, everybody knows, super tough.

GFSP

Robert Downey's Awesome

And if Downey were in a hurry that night (or had just received some bad news, or his back hurt, or if the guy were less polite), and had just kept walking, we'd all be talking about what an ASSHOLE Robert Downey is. The story would ripple outward like news.


The all-time greatest depiction of this was (as discussed here) the telephone scene in Woody Allen's "Stardust Memories". That film depicted a number of types from my taxonomy of fans.

Pretend Less Hard

Pretend Less Hard. That's what all of spirituality boils down to. Religion. Metaphysics. Psychothearpy. Meditation. Self-development. All of it. In the end, the answer is to pretend less hard. Moderate your pretending!

I've previously offered tastes:

From "Spirituality in 33 Words":

Spirituality is the process of learning to recognize and identify with the immutable subjectivity you are, rather than with the ever-changing persona you've been pretending (merely for kicks, at first) to portray.

From "Soul":

The term “soul” was invented by poseurs to identify the mysterious and unobservable part that’s not posing.

From "What is Tai Chi?":

Tai chi is the practice of embodying the natural flow one normally pretends not to be a part of.

From "Why God Lets Bad Things Happen":

Our problem as a species is that we immerse so deeply in drama (especially the parts that seem deadly serious - the grisliest, saddest, most turbulent storylines) that we forget we're the ones who signed up for this. The solution is to wear it all much more lightly, and to remember that the rollercoasters are merely rides (we waited on line!), not oppressors.

From "Self-Destructiveness":

Self-destructive people may seem irrational, but they're not. They're acting out a drama, just as we all are, but tweeking parameters for more challenging gameplay. They're simply working at a more advanced level, like increasing resistance on a StairMaster. They've rejected the easy win, that's all.

FAQ
Which pretending, exactly, do I need to moderate?

All of it

What's real?

Not much. Only persistent awareness. It is - not coincidentally! - the only thing that's never wavered for your entire life. It's the receptive presence that has perennially peered out from your eyes. Everything else inside and outside changes every millisecond, soon growing unrecognizable. The persistent part is what's real. The rest is pretend. Pretend less hard!

So you're saying my entire life, as Sarah Fleischbaum, mother of four and well-regarded pilates instructor, is a sham?

Yes. But you needn't drop it entirely. Just pretend less hard.

Is it like kids pretending to be cowboys and indians?

Exactly that breezy, yup. If you keep on pretending you're a cowboy or indian after childhood, you'll become some version of that thing. And as you gradually accumulate confirmation and credential, the pose solidifies, perhaps even convincing other people. An adult life is a persistent whimsy.

I get the whimsy. That seems pretty normal. Why do I need to I pretend less hard?

If this whole life thing is going well for you - if you relish your days with zealous gratitude and enjoy the heck out of this ride - no remedial steps are necessary. As you were!

But out of the hundreds of thousands of people I've met, maybe eleven or so were like this. They retain their essential whimsy. I wasn't one of them. Very early on, I sensed a blurry disjoint - something tectonically skewed in either the world or else in my framing - but I couldn't put my finger on it. It nagged at me, spurring me to endure the entire circuit of rigorous practices, daunting sacrifices and rough austerities. Thousands of hours of meditation. Reading all the books and devoting vast tracts of time to pondering and self-inquiry (some of it publicly, here). All of it can be reduced to three words: "Pretend less hard." So there you go. Pay the girl at the counter on your way out.

Isn't this an awfully pat summary of a realm notorious for its inexpressibility?

That's because I'm addressing your actual presence, rather than the Sarah Fleischbaum of it all. Most spiritual writers speak to Sarah, aiming, uncomfortably, to convince her that Sarah’s a delusion ("Hold on, Sarah, don't worry, there's an underlying strata of Pure Awareness, a spooky and distant ghost in your machine for you to 'discover' or 'realize' or 'uncover'!").

That stratum is right here, right now, reading this. Not remote. Not spooky. In fact, you don't even know you're some certain person while you absorb these words until you pause to reload your storyline.