The Silver Lining of Control Freaks

There is a silver lining with control freaks. They are always wonderfully eager to snatch tasks you hate doing - because, naturally, only they can do them right.

Control freaks are the "Mikey" of task allocation. My perceived slovenly incompetence is like a superpower.

Funny Pet Videos Are Not Useless Ditzy Crap

For the past few years, I've had a recurring painful back issue that can only be fixed by paying a sports massage therapist (Dom Lopez, who's - no exaggeration - a genius, with an uncanny ability to put any Humpty Dumpty back together again) for an expensive and painful reset that never lasts more than a few days.

A few weeks ago, after many years of effort, I figured out how to fix it myself, with a certain complicated stretch that takes only like five seconds. Triumph! I'm winning!

But my shoulder, unaccustomed to the torque required to create this stretch (which must be repeated several times per day), developed very painful tendinitis. I had Dom fix the shoulder (I break it, Dom fixes it...that's how it works), but, of course, whenever I repeat my stretch, the shoulder flares back up.

Meanwhile, due to the shoulder pain, I was sleeping poorly. After several days of poor sleep, my immune system lowered and I caught a nasty cold, with fever and nasty cough. So I couldn't go to Dom (debilitating Dom is considered bad form, much discouraged by his other patients).

One more thing: the day before I caught the cold, I developed a toothache. My dentist diagnosed an abscess and put me on antibiotics.

At this point, feeling like I was in "check", if not full "checkmate", a close family member began to die. Lungs filled with fluid and cardiac arrest ensued. As you know from reading this Slog, I'm not one to paint myself into dramatic scenes, but whenever I painfully cough up goop from my lungs, I think my standard ironical thought - "Jesus, I'm gonna die..." - and quickly catch myself. "Oh, wait...."

So, per the "Mad Men" GIF meme, "Not Great, Bob".

But here's why I'm writing. Last night, as I sat in bed with my iPad, tooth and shoulder throbbing in pain, back out of kilter, and lungs struggling with weird sympathetic issues, shocked by bad news, and unable to make anything the least bit better, I instinctively did something I've never done. I surfed YouTube for funny pet videos.

I never do this. I'm not a pet guy, and definitely not a pet video guy. But you know what? Funny pet videos are great. They really are. I finally get it! They are the antidote. They fix it all; like the optimal stretch with no tendinitis aftermath. Please remember this if you ever find yourself in a predicament like this. Funny pet videos are a salvation. No wonder millions flock to them.

Per my posting on Resilience, I'm moving promptly and undramatically to the next scene. I never linger on a cliffhanger, I binge right through into next season, omnivorously eating up plot line. I just live right straight through it. That's what gave me the zeal and resourcefulness this morning to figure out an alternative back stretch that doesn't stress my shoulder, which is already starting to feel better (Triumph!). I'll visit Dom after my cold passes to clean up the damage. And my tooth's much better, though my lungs are worse (for now!). What's more, I've previously learned that grief is mostly about lying to oneself...something I've spent a lifetime learning not to do. And, having found cosmic cheats around lots of typical undue misery, I've decided my lungs have filled with phlegm to ensure that I don't under-suffer (there's surely a Goldilocks point). Each cough forces me to pay attention. Whacky though it is, I can't say it's inappropriate. Anyway, that's my framing.


Still not a bad day, btw. Through cardiac emergencies, crazy worldly friction, a year of indentured servitude to a sadist, and more, I've perennially asked myself a magical question: "If this is the worst thing that happens today, would that mean it's been a good day?" The record is unbroken. It's always been the case. This is a big part of why I believe we're living in Utopia.

And, no, I'm not an optimist. Just reasonably clear-eyed.

The Photo Trick

If you're not sure how someone feels about you, ask them to take your photo. You'll discover how they frame you (literally and figuratively).

Guaranteeing Trump’s Reelection

This is an important article on how Democrats can manage not to help Trump in 2020. The problem is that it fails to address the problem in a way progressives can really grok. Let me take a shot at it.


Progressives! I wish you (apologies in advance to those who reject the "you" pronoun) good morning! Let me sum up what Never-Trump Republican Charley Sykes is saying here in his desperate, panicked desire to assist you in helping to rid America of its current blight. He wants you to perform three acts of kindness and tolerance into the election season. He asks you to recognize that:

1. There are dyed-in-wool liberals outside your cosmopolitan bubble who don't buy into all the boutique issues you deem self-evidently right. Don't alienate them. Broaden, don't narrow.

2. There are moderate Democrats who live VERY different lives from you. Don't alienate them. Broaden, don't narrow.

3. There are Trump-repelled moderate Republicans, former Republicans, and Centrists living in an entirely different universe than you. Don't alienate them. Broaden, don't narrow.

You know how you talk around squares? Talk like that!

You know how in certain social situations (e.g. with your parents' friends) you do your darndest to find common ground, keeping your more doctrinal urgings to yourself? Do that!

And keep it going into the 2020 election. Don't assume Democrats (much less Centrists and apostate Republicans) in Pennsylvania or Michigan, who drive pickup trucks with gun racks, share your lifestyle and your tribal inclinations. Assume that many/most of your potential allies are creepily, disconcertingly, maddeningly behind re: attitude trends you and your friends synch up with via social channels, and maybe decline to eat their flesh for their failure to diligently update.

Tolerate. Embrace. Build a coalition. And, for godsakes, WIN.

At least, do this if you want to defeat Trump. If that's NOT your top priority, then, by all means: as you were.

Frame Yourself in Comedy

Most people go through their lives with greatly inflated notions of who they are and where they're headed. So if you're cursed with even a tad of self-awareness, life becomes hell right around middle age - the age when, it's often observed, you discover who you are. If your self-image was always unrealistic, that's when the mounting evidence becomes hard to ignore.

At that point you have two options:

1. Readjust your self-image, or
2. Live in denial.

#1 seems like the healthier route, and it would be, except for a very perilous trap.

I've written about this trap twice (here and here), in a different context.

If you resign yourself to resetting your self-image with a declaration like "I'm not a hero after all. All my hopes and dreams were just a bunch of empty drama! This, right now, is as good as it's ever going to be!" and if you feel like you're starring in a movie (as nearly everyone does), this will be a sad, sad movie moment. This is where your life movie gets sad and stays sad. You've willed yourself into depression (in fact, I believe this is the most common origin of depression).

It's a shame, because you were so close to nailing it! Confronted with evidence that your self-image was nonsense, and choosing the healthy path of readjusting self-image accordingly, you were so close to equanimity and happiness. But as you spoke the lines to the camera, you decided to play it tragically, gamely adding a quivering lower lip. That's quite a momentous scene; you've placed your character in a box that cannot be climbed out of (at least not without upturning one's framing).

So if you ever find yourself going down that road, forced to concede that maybe you're not the moral paragon and saintly hero you'd imagined yourself to be, and you're never going to pitch for the Yankees, so it's time to readjust your self image, just don't speak to the camera.

Or, if there must be a camera (for most of us it's inescapable), play the scene as light-hearted comedy. Say "I'm not a hero after all. All my hopes and dreams were just a bunch of empty drama! This, right now, is as good as it's ever going to be!", wink mirthfully, and walk to the horizon with a jaunty Chaplin-esque spring in your step, if that fits the character you play. Or walk into a multi-hued sunset, heaving a sigh of relief with your strong shoulders. Or saunter away, cooler than school, having jettisoned the bullshit that had been weighing you down. There are lots of ways to play it, if drama's your thing. If you must be in a movie - if this must be a cinematic moment - find a way to make it a happy one.

“I’m not that great (cute shrug)” as opposed to “I’m not that great (heaving sobs)”. “I probably don’t deserve every great result (carefree grin)” as opposed to “I probably don’t deserve every great result (weighty sigh)”.

It's that easy. It's that stupid. Yet I've seen two people die and more than a dozen people throw away their happiness because they didn't know they could flip this switch.

(Note that there's a trap within the trap. If you're naturally depressive - if negativity is the tone you've chosen for this movie you imagine yourself to be in so that's how you frame most of your scenes - you'll find the brighter comedic framing fluffy and false, whereas the heavier, sadder framing seems truer. That's your own skewing, however; it's not real. Set yourself the task of stretching as an actor, and escaping old habits. Dip your toe in comedy, however unfamiliar it seems, and work to get better at it.)


This is how hypnosis works. We decide how we'll play a scene from a position of relaxed detachment, and, if the hypnosis works, the next run-through is transformationally different (in fact, it's a parallel universe).

The Near-Extinction of Thoughtfulness

News story:

Iranian officials told Reuters that Trump warned Iran an attack was imminent unless they agreed to talk

When Iran did not immediately agree, Trump called off the attackhttps://t.co/Df2cgQLeLZ

— Adrienne Mahsa Varkiani (@AdrienneMahsa) June 21, 2019

Read this important terse analysis.

Two very similar reactions by two influential people:

someday we may actually need someone to take a threat seriously—and of course stupid threats like this make it more likely that they won’t https://t.co/szT0MMx846

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) June 21, 2019

He obviously intended to type “ensure” ("stupid threats like this ensure that they won’t"), but thought about it for a few seconds and decided, correctly, that “make it more likely” was more accurate...even though it's less snappily satisfying.

That pause for reflection, with diligent follow-thru, is a nearly extinct move (outside of the crustiest journalists...who are constantly punished by the Left for their measuredness). I treasure it when I spot it.

Please tell me the Iranians are lying. If not, Trump lost all credibility on future threats. https://t.co/zDioLerx0b

— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) June 21, 2019

So that's the new-school approach: thinking/writing like an addled teenager. Trump didn't lose "some" credibility, or even just "credibility". He's lost all credibility. EVERY IOTA of it.


The second guy's an expert, and a lawyer, so if I were to challenge him on this, he'd sheepishly concede the overstatement. Whereas I'd imagine many readers will see no problem with it. Trump is the worst possible president (he's not. He's a mere "4". We're spoiled.), and has no credibility whatsoever (he has poor credibility). Every bad thing is the worst possible thing; every bad move is the worst possible move; and thus our species slogs miserably through utopia toward its inexorable extinction.

Five Theories of George and Kelly Ann Conway’s Marriage

For those who haven't experienced the tingling joy that is George Conway's Twitter feed, go ahead and feast on it for a moment before continuing (here's this morning's best missive).


Five Theories of George and Kelly Ann Conway’s Marriage:

1. Fade-in on Conway house. George and Kelly Ann are screaming at the top of their lungs, throwing things at each other. Home's a complete war zone, with sandbags and shrapnel.

2. George and Kelly Ann languorously sip wine, sitting close in a love seat, smug smiles on their faces, discussing her exfiltration plan per his careful set-up.

3. Kelly Ann comes home from work and makes only the lightest conversation with George, awkwardly avoiding politics. Several faux pas increase the awkwardness, until finally the word “Trump” comes out of the TV and George leaps across the kitchen, throws Kelly Ann to the floor, and makes furious love to her; cursing her and her boss while she urges him on by calling him a “fucking traitor”.

4. George and Kelly Ann, both wearing heavy reading glasses, are perched anxiously around a dinner table piled with with reports and computer monitors. Image consultants are coaching them on their "bifurcated branding operation". Kelly exults about how she just reached 2.5M Twitter followers. George pecks her cheek affectionately and says "love yuh, babe".

5. George and Kelly Ann finish a painfully cold and silent dinner, sitting at opposite ends of a very, very, very, very long table, and say a perfunctory, clipped "g'night" as they head upstairs to their respective bedrooms. Split screen as Kelly Ann fishes a vibrator from her night table and pleasures herself while watching Trump rallies on TV, while George does likewise watching Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's viral dance video [this one's a cheat; George is a dyed-in-the-wool Republican who happens to be virulently anti-Trump]

Optimism

People often call me "optimistic" or "positive-thinking". It always strikes me as strange, because I'm neither of those things...at all.

Here's the explanation: people are so skewed toward pessimism and negativity - dramatizing the undramatic and catastrophizing the mundane - that being merely levelheaded makes you seem like a Pollyanna ("an excessively cheerful or optimistic person").


79.9% of people are neurotically pessimistic, 19.9% are neurotically optimistic, and .1% enjoy some shred of clarity.

Never forget that everyone's playing a game, an angle (though they get so wrapped up in the pose that they forget they ever had a choice). Here's how it comes about, and here's why.

The Most Helpful Insight About Creativity

I've been gradually sussing out the rules of engagement for creativity (tough to verbalize, since that stuff's inherently native to the intuitive, non-verbal side of the brain). Among the 76 postings (as of now) labeled "Creativity" there are some especially interesting ones (several are listed in the left margin <---). But one insight beat all the others. As usual, it was a total "duh" once you heard it.

My posting "Why Hacks Think They're Geniuses" didn't just explain the mindset of drek purveyors (as well as the merely uninspired). It explains what holds them back, and why they'd never heed a call for greater commitment: they believe they're already very deeply committed. As I wrote:

It's super hard to write a lousy book, compose a lousy symphony, direct a lousy film, or paint a lousy mural. It takes 10 years of instrumental training plus another decade of improvisation experience to even begin to call oneself a jazz musician - far longer than med school! - so it's little wonder that every unexceptional player considers himself some sort of genius.

Every purveyor of crap feels - with good reason! - like they've made the Big Sacrifice. They've suffered for their art, every one of them. That's why uninspired hacks nod along in weary agreement when you discuss "commitment". Just getting to square one, assembling and presenting something with some minimal degree of competence, is inhumanly difficult. They all believe they've done the thing because they've done the thing!

I wrote a few weeks ago about how

Human beings compress extremes. We regress toward means. In plain language, we narrow our perspective, which means we "clip" the ends of the scale, mentally compressing extremes into a nondescript paste.

This is an example of that. Authoring a shitty book takes a year off your life, turns your hair grey, and gives you ulcers, so one would assume that writing a great one requires just a little more of that. But no. "Shitty", "adequate", and "great" are not neighbors. Greatness is a quadrillion times more demanding; a separate realm above and beyond the excruciating rigors of producing any old book.

As I wrote in my tribute to Mamma Grimaldi's spectacular lasagna:

Extremes can be strange. You'd expect them to be like lesser instances, only more so. But sometimes they're a whole other thing; a different world.

This accounts for why most lasagnas, most books, most movies, most music, most art, most creative things generally are so sucky. Crappy purveyors, already working hard, couldn't conceive of trying a quadrillion times harder than is strictly necessary. But this is what people mean when they talk about creating "with love": doing vastly more than is needed while being crushed nearly to death. It requires a stout-heartedness ordinarily only available to ardent lovers. Most people stop well short of that point...hence suckage.

Continuing my quoting from "Why Hacks Think They're Geniuses":

Here's what I'd say to such people: Remember how hard it was just to generate and organize that material and have it be coherent? Well, what if some impossible-to-please tyrant loomed constantly over your shoulder, screaming at you to demolish perfectly adequate chunks and rework them for a result that's far better than it needs to be; far better than audiences will likely even notice, much less appreciate?

What if that belligerent asshole required you to treat every trivial decision like a matter of life or death?

What if every facile choice and easy cliché stabbed at him like a dagger to the heart?

What if, amid the overall death march, he compelled you to weigh yourself down further with seemingly unnecessary extra compulsions and requirements?

What if he demanded ceaseless self-questioning, leaving you perpetually unsure whether you've committed the sin of settling for "good enough" rather than riding the curve of diminishing results all the way to brilliance (100,000 times harder...when it's already so, so hard)?

What if you needed to spend time soothing collaborators who might otherwise feel smothered by the intensity of the demands he compels you to satisfy?

And what if you could never, ever evade this person, because it was you?

I await my X Prize for having at long last derived Sturgeon's Law.


As I once recalled:

I used to teach jazz improvisation workshops around Europe. Among my clever exercises and useful bits of advice, the thing that most helped students was a simple, exasperated and brutal observation:

You guys are sitting there, slumped in your chairs, mopey and dead-eyed. You're honking out jazzy notes like it's the latest dreary task in your daily grind, along with vacuuming the living room or tying your shoes. You're not working hard and you're not particularly trying...even though you absolutely need to, because you're not good yet.

Now, consider me. I'm a professional. I'm good. In fact, I'd sound good even if I sat back like a mope, treating this like some dreary task. Yet I don't. Look at me here, trying phenomenally hard. I'm sweating bullets and considering every note as if my life depended on it. Why are you working and caring so much less than I am? Does it make even the slightest bit of sense?!?

Problem Solvers

People who pride themselves on their sharp problem-solving abilities are frauds. Don't listen to them.

You want the person who walks with a limp and is missing half a tooth and who flinches whenever you move your hands fast. That's the person who has deep experience with coping with problems.

It's another facet of the David Copperfield thing. Shiny, composed people who seem superior have worked hard at shiny composition - at seeming superior. Seeming is a completely separate track from being. Those who've actually got the goods tend not to waste effort on the seeming part. So they're overlooked (here's where I made my original case for that, talking about how hard it is to recognize who's intelligent).


"You know so much about computers!" remarked a friend as I fixed her Mac. "I've had a long string of computer disasters dating back to 1992, and never had someone to zoom in and rescue me...so I gradually figured stuff out," I explained. I didn't sound superior. I didn't seem expert. Just aggravated, aggrieved, and beaten-down.