Inevitablilty

Baudelairean Satanism.

There, I said it.

[#nevermind]

Most Obvious

“I don’t know,” she recited, as if litany, “where you get all that.”
     “Don’t you ever follow the stories in the ads?” he asked, as if it was the most obvious question in the world.
     “No,” she responded, and her tone, as well, suggested she thought this the most obvious of truths.

On the Psychoanalytic Meaning of History (Rivalrous Remix)

In consideration of a psychoanalytic meaning of history, it is enough to wonder what the classicist thought of any real possibility that the psychologist’s basic descriptions of dysfunction would become so influential a cooperative venture within a dissociated composite verging into an alternative, synchronistic paranormality.

Notes on … Oh, Hell, I Forget

[#nevermind]

Okay, so I just don’t understand why it is I cannot walk into a room and simply be allowed to do whatever it is I am doing. Look at me, I can’t even remember what I was there, for, because suddenly I needed to stop whatever I was doing and think about what books I might want for Christmas, as if the question could not wait another second, or, even more, mattered a whit, because we both know those aren’t the books people buy me. And now, what was that, did I just walk into a room and randomly be asked to peruse and approve a household change of some consequence? Really?

Some days, all I want is breakfast. Or a cup of coffee. Or to find that book that was on the foyer table, like, oh, I don’t know, when between yesterday afternoon and right now did it actually disappear? And why do I always find them, in weird places, months later? Of course, maybe it wouldn’t take months if I was allowed to think about why I walked into the damn room in the first place. You know, like: Oh, yeah, that book I’m looking for; it’s not here, so I’d better keep looking. No, of course not. And, just for the record, if the question eventually becomes what the book is doing hidden away in the linen closet behind the broken DVD player we’ve never thrown out, no, we are not changing the subject to why there’s an old, broken DVD player in the linen closet.

Oh, right. Whatever. It’s just, most days it’s true, the functional lesson resolves that the fundamental user error is in the fact of bothering to try, in the first place.

When it gets to the point of pacing back and forth because the mere thought of what happens after leaving the room is so distracting as to forget why I would leave the room in the first place, there is a problem. Solutions exceeding my power are not mine to implement.

Apropos of Howard

Circumstance sometimes reminds it better to take time out for calming breath and deliberate consideration that we might slip through distracting noise and manage something better than headbanging phuqueue and some manner of joke derived from douchebags, or maybe that’s just the coffee.

Behavioral Mysteries Are A Lot Easier to Solve if You Just Accept the Fact That Most People Are Inherently Miserable and Cruel

[#nevermind]

It’s never really that people don’t understand; we always say it as if they are somehow confused, when they are not. Like this:

• Why do people fail to understand that if someone should expect to be criticized every time they walk into the room, to the point that one can actually watch people look around for something to complain about, then no, that person will not want to be in the room with you.

It is not that everyday belligerence doesn’t understand; these people do. It is not that they are somehow confused about why the constant hostility distresses anyone; they aren’t.

If there is any one thing you ask people to not do, they will do it.

This Post Has No Title, These Words Have No Clue

Insofar as a common and significant link ‘twixt the intimacy of driving a knife into another person, to the one, and coital penetration, to the other, is testosterone, the act of shooting the place up starts to seem very nearly masturbatory.

The psychoanalysis^α of that proposition is probably as fascinating as it is grim. At some point it seems to denigrate the American shooting crisis while exploiting the very notion of rape culture, and it is easy enough to call any mass-murderer a pathetic wanker. Yet the analogy persists, and it is easy enough to regret, before it is written or uttered, any phrase about shooting his load in public.

Killing is intimate. Killing is also distal.

He can tell her he loves her; she can believe him; it can be true; and the link between this passion he shares and the violence he might commit against another is testosterone.

____________________

^α The temptation to dismiss, out of hand, expected pop-culture strains of evolutionary psychology according to their obvious weakness presuming coital penetration as inherent to the existential justification of sexual differentiation, would be erroneous in at least one context, as the apparent fault becomes at least symbolically relevant; to the other, invoking semiotic values might be an overstatement. But where the pop strains of evopsych would discuss men evolving to penetrate women, Y previously evolved, and, indeed, continues to this day to adapt and select and evolve, not as delivery unto X, but as environmental distribution of gamete for X. Where human males may have specialized for gamete delivery, this is merely specialization of gamete distribution. And while it is true enough that word games are easy, and phagogenesis could, artistically, at least, be argued an intimate precursor to general environmental gamete distribution, the greater danger is the potential for evopsych to finally recognize the argument that masculine raison d’être really is to be a wanker.

Groovy Mysteries and the Price of Tea at Arcturus

Why do people so desperately need mysteries?

Still, that is not the right question; one can easily see the potential for offense, but there is also a threshold at which it does not matter because someone, somewhere, will be offended by the merest whiff that their humanity is somehow imperfect. But if the comparative question arises that the gas bill is considerably less this year than it was last, and what we really want to know is why, how is it that the most obvious factors—weather and temperature, devices used, and unit cost, just for starters—must necessarily remain mysterious?

There comes a point at which one is frustrated at the lack of actual information about a chart and carefully-devised statistics that hide one particular bit of data: How much does the gas cost per measured salable unit? If we are paying X per Y volume, apparently both X and Y must remain mysterious as we discuss why the gas bill is lower this year than the same period last.

Wait, wait, wait: Must? Who says, “must”?

Either the gas company or the consumer; it is unclear which. Because in the moment when one exclaims, “Why is the one thing we don’t get, here, the cost per unit?” of course the answer is going to be, “I don’t know, it’s probably in all the other pages.” That is, the pages not simply thrown in the recycle bin without reading, but also determinedly torn up for security purposes.

The question remains: What is the proper question? That much, to be certain, remains mysterious.

Everyday Whatnot

[#nevermind]

So, there is this thing people do, sometimes, and perhaps it is perfectly human behavior, except when it is so clearly statistically deviant^α. Or maybe it’s just something about perception. Sometimes we exist in an environment where simple things are impossible: I am writing something; my coffee cup is empty; if you wish to take odds, no, I cannot manage to go refill my coffee cup without someone demanding that I stop what I am doing and undertake another task. And perhaps that summary sounds a bit pointed, but when you can watch someone get up and start searching the room for something to give you, they make some sort of point: Here is something that looks like it has a deadline in about four weeks; you need to stop what you are doing and do this thing right now.

And if you ask about this phenomenon, the one thing people don’t do is explain why they can’t leave you to what you’re doing; indeed, very often they come right out and—what, confess? admit? acknowledge? chide?—say the one has nothing to do with the other.

____________________

^α There is, of course, a recursive dive into the question acknowledging that statistical deviance, real or perceived, is itself perfectly human; this is, to the one, a seemingly legitimate existential consideration, and, to the other, a nihilistic rabbit hole.

Trump and Dumber

#trumpswindle | #WhatTheyVotedFor

I think at some point it is fair if we just take a moment to observe and, inevitably, resent the fact that the godforsaken #trumpswindle is somehow tied into the otherwise inexplicable fact that Dumb and Dumber To actually exists.

____________________

Maddow, Rachel. “With new players, details Trump Russia probe seems far from over”. The Rachel Maddow Show. msnbc. 9 March 2018.