I watched Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac: Volume I (2013) and Nymphomaniac: Volume II (2013) yesterday.

I didn’t watch the director’s cuts, (the normal versions were leaving Amazon) which adds an entire hour onto the second film, and either 25 or 40 minutes to the first film, and so I will not be talking much about these films specifically.

One thing I’d noticed though — it can be hard to make a good BDSM movie because in real life, people getting into BDSM isn’t usually a super big transformative thing for them, BDSM qua BDSM.

People have all kinds of kinks and fetishes, and generally do not have one very big overwhelming defining experience that pushes them into a whole new world. Sometimes this happens when a person enters a new relationship with somebody — but even then, they found something attractive about the person, sought them out, and kept seeing them and getting to know them better, and so it is not a complete phenomenological shock.

There are a few movies that involve a woman being kidnapped, and then “forced to fall in love” or something of this sort — but I have not watched any of these yet, and these would be relying on a sudden intense forced dynamic. (A reminder — very uncommon in actual BDSM, and this intense power dynamic has way less to do with BDSM and way more in common with…being kidnapped.)

Overwhelmingly, people who are into BDSM notice at some point, in small ways across time, and like other interests and other ways of exploring sexuality, are attracted to pursuing the interest and developing it as occasions come up, or as they meet other people with similar interests. There isn’t really a dramatic arc here.

Lydia Laurenson (as Clarisse Thorn) wrote a book I like quite a lot, The S&M Feminist, which has a lot of interesting stories, and also grapples with what it means to be a feminist and also enjoy being hit by men.

This book was written quite a while ago, long before OnlyFans, long before it was seen as particularly safe to be writing about alternative lifestyles.

There is a legitimate set of awakenings that can come from being hit for the first time and having an erotic response, a pleasure response rather than a displeasure response. And then a set of conflict and confusion that comes from how that squares with a pre-existing identity (such as being a feminist).

Dramatic arcs around these conflicts can be built.

However, there isn’t really a good arc around, “whoooa I was vanilla and then had this BDSM experience, crazzzyyy!”

****SPOILERS**** In 50 Shades of Grey, this is kind of what happens. (I have not seen the movie, I started it, found it basically unwatchable, and watched Secretary instead. I have read the book. I found it basically unreadable, but I read it.) But even there, the arc isn’t really about BDSM. It’s about a woman who meets a guy she thinks is weird, and she is into him, he has her do BDSM which she does not want to be doing, and then at the end he spanks her, she gets mad and leaves. The book is about how a woman does not like BDSM but is into this guy, and about her falling in love with him despite finding him pretty weird and annoying. (The book is filled with things like emails and text messages showing her annoyance.) If you replace BDSM with making her get on a fighter jet with him every day because he’s an adrenaline junkie and really needs to be on a fighter jet every day, it would be the same book. That’s how you can tell the book isn’t really about the BDSM.

The Duke of Burgundy (2014) has a very special place in my heart, because of how good it is as a BDSM movie. What makes it so good? I WILL NOT TELL YOU! It is too good a movie. I will not give any spoilers.

This also wasn’t a one-off; he has done things like this with people before. His methods with me are pretty chill though hard-won and I vouch for them.

This post is too spur-of-the-moment to get into that, and so I am just recording some thoughts from today.

We were discussing my strange, now strangest, biggest problem, that has usurped the first place of the migraines, which is my weird debilitating sunstroke / heatstroke / sun sickness thing, wherein I am sometimes somehow incapacitated by the sun for hours. Very inconvenient sometimes to just get knocked out like that! Sometimes I get knocked out every day for a few days, sometimes every other day for a week, sometimes not at all.

This is very inconvenient, and I have thought about it before, and failed to make the progress I wanted to. And so I am now thinking about it again.

I like actually taking your biggest debilitator, or your biggest thing that makes you different from other people in ways that are inconvenient, very seriously. Not overly emotionally — everybody has things like this in some domain. Why not spend some brain cells working on the problems that make you the most sick / most annoyed with yourself / most annoying to other people. It does not mean that this thing makes you fundamentally broken unless you fix it, or anything like that. You don’t even have to fix it or want to fix it. Just if you made a rank-ordered-list, every person would have something at the top of the list. And I consider it virtuous to on occasion devote some brain cells to that.

I suspect that people don’t usually apply vigor to these problems because if it’s your biggest problem, and it’s actually your biggest problem, there’s a good chance that you’ve had it, and were not able to resolve it, for quite a long time. This means that the chance that you tried something for it, with some amount of care and discipline, and it did not work, is high. Which means you went through a judgment-avoidance-hope-failure loop. And if you’ve gone through that a few times, going through it again versus using a different strategy or maintaining a holding pattern can be hard.

Which is why I consider it virtuous, rather than neutral.

Anyway — my sunsickness. Notes!

I do not know much about the historical figure known as the Sun King or much about the Sun God. I have noticed I get similar intense reactions when eating Sichuan food. I often really love the sun, but when I am in a sunstroke mode, happy fondnesses for the sun are hard to access. I have never made a sundial. I do not know anything about sun intensity or how it changes over the course of a day or how it changes due to elevation.

These seem like low hanging fruit to research a bit. If I do not do that, I am not really trying.

My hope is to figure out what is overwhelming about this sun energy some of the time, and get better at channeling it through my mind and body, the way that Zuko channels lightning in Avatar. Or just figure out what the painful thing even is. Or figure out how to make an elixir / figure out what kind of food or drink may be helpful either in prevention of episodes or healing.

My hypothesis is that “figuring out what the painful thing even is” in a straightforward identification will actually end up being harder than healing it. My hypothesis is that learning more about the sun and other adjacent things will somehow allow me transform me in such a way that I end up doing the first option basically automatically and the sun stops being a problem.

My logic as an eleven-year-old was thus: the flute is the smallest of the instruments, and so it would be easy to carry. Over my life when I go places, I would be able to bring the flute with me easily.

I made my decision in large part based on the size of people’s cases. A few years later when I was allowed to borrow two instruments over the summer, I borrowed a saxophone as well as a flute, and did confirm for myself that I did like the act of playing the flute more than I liked playing the saxophone, and I just was better at it for whatever reason. I liked it enough to keep practicing it (I quit the violin after one semester — I liked bowing, but I could not stand sawdust. I did not like the “impure” sound as I was practicing).

As the flute became part of my identity, I overworked, stopped playing in college, started jamming again years after college after going to a jamming music birthday party in Los Angeles — there came a time when I would want to bring my flute places again, but then would not because “it is too much hassle” —

and then I remembered that it fit perfectly sideways into a carry-on into any plane, and what the hell am I doing, saying that it is “too big” or “too inconvenient” to bring places.

This is different from guessing at the actual probability that I would play it or not. The flute being too big to bring because I will not need it is a completely different question from is the flute too big to bring which I had decided as an eleven-year-old it is not and in fact is the easiest instrument to bring somewhere basically of any instrument in the entire world —

I think there is a lesson here somewhere, about remembering your own plans.

The friction is fake. You already decided there wasn’t going to be friction, you already decided you were going to feel free. What’s with this new self-binding?

Too hard, too expensive, too inconvenient, whatever man.

“I’m not the kind of person who — ”

There are real things that you should finish that sentence with.

I’m not the kind of person who puts my dirty shoes on the bed.

I’m not the kind of person who puts my dirty luggage wheels on the bed.

I’m not the kind of person who puts my outside coat on the bed.

My god stop putting stuff on the bed! wtf!

I’m not the kind of person who is the person who washes the bed in this house is what I am hearing.

But otherwise, just this tying up yourself into ropes, wtf

The flute never changed. It’s the same size. It’s a standard size.

Compared to me, the flute only got smaller as I aged. Its relative size only got more and more convenient to bring places.

The optimistic and practical decision was already made. This neurotic hedging is what’s new.

anyweayy all this has solutions and processes. do not despair yet plz. In my poadcast —

Give people small things to take care of

That you can afford to lose

Follow up. See what happens. Have data

Inspired by: watching birds. Remembering I once had 2 parakeets as a kid I liked a lot. We gave them away to family friends when I got a cat. The idea was they would be safer. Both were gone within 6 months

nobody really did anything wrong. one flew into a window and died. one flew out of a door and never came back

flying is what birds do

when i was not watching them, the birds did what birds do

it is obvious, that things do what they do even when we are not looking, but because we are not looking, how do we know?

A different example. I stayed in a friends room while she is away. To thank her I leave her 2 plants. I come back 6 months later. Plants are huge. She redecorated the entire room. From navy blue now everything is wood or cream fabrics. Now enormous plants are a key focal point framing the bed.

Probably if one ran these experiments intentionally or a lot it could be fascinating

It can be unexpected. For example this second character is a spiky sort of lady. But she was nice to the plants 🪴

I gave her gifts in fact because she could get pretty spiky if she does not receive gifts

there will be surprises

you can give a book. often if you loan somebody a book you should expect to never see this book ever again

sometimes if you give someone a book, they will write you notes in the book, and give it back

sometimes they will give you that book back, with notes, and another book, or two books

you can learn about what you yourself want to be more like, when you let people surprise you

you can let people surprise you by making yourself open to surprise by establishing low stakes situations in which you genuinely do not know what is going to happen

when you start making predictions about people’s character, you can start to trip yourself up here.

“I will give her a plant because I bet she will mess it up, and then I will have evidence that she messes this up and I shouldn’t give her more plants to take care of because she cannot take care of things” would not be in the spirit of the exercise I suggest

It is actually the opposite of the spirit!

the spirit is a spirit of generosity towards people’s capacities, and generally to have an appreciation for what happens to “things” when you are not looking

I have learned over the years, that even if a friend seems “responsible” to not store anything in their house for more than a few weeks, because what happens to objects in houses is that they get lost — especially large houses that have the kind of space that can store things.

This would end up being tagged not as a quality of any of my friends, but rather as a “quality of large houses and the objects inside them.”

The few people who I have ever given advice about their dating profiles, unsolicited, inside a dating app, did not care at all. They were getting what they wanted and had their own game they were probably playing. And so given how little most people apply tips anyway, I don’t feel too bad about it, though if you wish to debate this feel free to in the comments.

Show different facial expressions, in different settings

One of the main checks on a dating app, and these days especially, is “are you a real person.”

To show that you are a real person, don’t do the thing where you have five pictures, of yourself, making the same exact face, against five different walls. Instead, have some variety.

That being said, you want to look like you are the same person in the pictures. If in one picture you have long hair, in another short hair, in another you are fat, in another you are skinny, in one you have a beard, in another no beard, the variance can add up to being high enough that it is hard for the viewer to triangulate what you actually look like. Most people do not fall into this error, but I see it on occasion. The “not enough variety” is the error I see more often. You want to use up all your photo slots, even if you think you might not have “enough good photos” because other people will be using all the photo slots, that is standard, and the ability to “make a decision on you” is more important than if every single photo is the best photo of you that’s ever existed. In fact every photo being way too good is itself kind of odd.

So you want to aim for something in the middle — enough variance, and not too much, such that the viewer can go “alright I see what this person is like and can determine if I’m vaguely into it or not.”

If you want to be texted first, have something in your bio

Look we’ve all made that mistake of writing that we are “way into Nietzsche” and then ending up with 20 unsolicited and unique bad Nietzsche takes.

But you still should make it easy, if being texted is what you want.

You can actually even get fancy and have a few different things, in entirely different registers, to know when somebody messages you, what vibe they liked about you and what stood out to them.

For example, if you write that you are into “Emerson, diner milkshakes, and playing rough ;)” you would have one kind of guy texting you about literature, one kind of guy texting you trying to make a date with you at a diner you like in town, and another kind of guy texting you about how he plans to toss you around.

If you get a million texts, and have a kind of guy you are looking for, one of these can be a red herring. For example, if you don’t want to be texting all day and just want to be tossed around, the above would help you see which guys just plan to toss you around, and you can respond to those, versus the guy who is giving you his hot takes on Self-Reliance. Or if you want a slow burn, you can reply to the Emerson guy.

You want to be careful though about how you set this up, and I wouldn’t actually lie about the red herrings. I would be honest, and then see what your authentic feelings are about the messages that come in, and if you are happy with how people are engaging with you and your ability to have conversations you want to be having at the pace you want to be having them, and then tweak accordingly.

Not paying attention to stakes

I am an overswiper. If I might be interested, I just swipe right and move on. I also never message first (the experiences I have had in which I messaged first, ended up being bad ones.)

In consideration of this strategy, I make my profile a bit worse than it could be. I do not want people to actually get way too excited about me given my reply rate. I have had profiles before, and I would get messages like, “WOW your aura is incredible!!”

And then I would go and change it a bit. I do not want to be doing seduction magic on the apps, actually, or get people I don’t know to be obsessed with me. “You seem really interesting” is about as far as I like going.

That being said, something like having a strategy of “not trying at all” (very few, bad pictures, just messaging hi, hi, hi, good morning, hi, hey” which I have seen) is also not considering stakes for people, in that it “recruits somebody else to do all the work.”

There are two main factors to consider.

The first is coordination with your partner. If you are alone, you do not have to worry about this, but perhaps you do have to contend with your own beliefs about what the task means in terms of your broader spirituality or what it means in terms of your self-conception.

(For example, perhaps being a man who does not do his laundry ever, is spiritually important somehow.)

(Or perhaps being a woman who does everybody’s laundry all the time feels somehow demeaning.)

The second factor is to actually set up the physical process of accomplishing the task.

As for the first, coordinating with your partner —

Sometimes this involves both people coming together, deciding neither of them wants to do something, and paying someone else to do it.

Sometimes it involves both people coming together and working out a system such that both of them could do it if they wanted to, easily.

Sometimes it involves one person owning the system for some time, figuring out how to optimize it for ease, and then looping their partner in once that process is done. (Note if a failure of looping-in occurs, there may be a situation in which the optimizer ends up the the default owner of the task for a while, but not optimizing because of this fear is not great — you can just stop doing it again.)

Depending on your specific circumstances, some of these options may be easier than others.

Perhaps you have a lot of money, and not much time to talk to your partner. Perhaps your partner really does not want to be involved, and you do have to figure it out yourself and loop them in later. Perhaps your partner really really wants to be involved, or has specific things they want to do, and you cannot just take it over even though if you may want to just take it over.

There are lots of variations on partner coordination. Regardless on which options around partner coordination are available to you, there are a few task-level guidelines which generally can make it easier.

Have the correct number of baskets

You stay at somebody’s house. You want to be a good guest so you take your sheets and pillowcases and take them to the washing machine. You run the wash. You wait 40 minutes. You move them over. Oh wait there is a ton of stuff in the dryer. There are no baskets around. You cannot move anything out of the dryer unless you put it like…on top? But then would it fall? And you can’t keep the stuff wet…um…

This is a washing machine. Unless you are in europe, also a drying machine. These are machines. When you think machines to make your life easier, also think assembly lines.

Doing the laundry is an assembly line. There is a straightforward, repetitive process, that runs every time. Sometimes there are variations. Most of the variations include “does this delicate item go into the dryer with everything else, or go elsewhere” and “what setting do I put this dryer on.”

Most of the time for most things just do warm and then tumble dry low. Warm actually cleans things, unlike cold, and drying on low keeps most things from getting damaged.

If people disagree on default laundry settings, please tell me in the comments.

But the point is there are only a few variations, and one of those doesn’t even really have to be a variation.

And so you really want to optimize flow, because that is where people get stuck.

First — is there detergent? Just always have a backup, and don’t throw it out when it’s empty. The easiest way for another person to “buy more” is for them to see which one got empty and just buy that exact same one again. That way there is not guessing. Ideally you’d have a spare around because you bought a few, but if for some reason some runs out, whoever is there, your partner, or the guest, or anyone, can just replace it.

Secondly, you want a spot for things that are wet, that do not go into the dryer. That is the first fork in the flow.

Then things go into the dryer. Great.

Lint mesh. Is there a place for people to throw the lint into?

Great.

Is there a basket for things inside of the dryer to go into, before they are being sorted?

Now — and this is important — the basket for clean things needs to be obviously different from the basket for dirty things, for your own health and sanity.

Perhaps they differ by shape. The from-the-dryer ones tend to be wide at the top. The not-even-washed-yet ones usually are narrow at the top.

You can also just do different colors. Black for dirty, white for clean.

Whatever makes sense with your sense of aesthetics and sense of decor. But do not be cheap and just have one.

Just having one laundry basket is a way to mess up your entire flow and start to go insane.

That is how laundry becomes a hard task that nobody wants to do.

(I am very tired, maybe will rewrite this soon)

The first time I had ever seen the tango danced was in a club in Berlin, where I walked into and it seemed like it was a shot out of a movie, everybody dressed up dancing like they are a professional. that scene made a very big impression on me and I kept an eye out for an opportunity to dance it.

this opportunity happened yesterday

This guy invited me, thought I said I knew how, then when I said I did not abandoned me to go dance with all the other people he already knew and who knew how to tango

😢

in his defense he did take me to the main teacher and asked what we should do, and she said to just sign up for the 6 week bootcamp they do

i am in town for 3 days

And so i did what any sensible person would do and i sat and observed trying to figure out the basic step

I could not figure it out

there was this little slide the ladies were doing sometimes, and there were these little spins that the ladies did, but I could not figure out the basic count, the way that exists for the samba, the salsa, and the waltz.

I kept looking at people for a while though

This guy sat next to me and was chatting me up

I said so whats the deal with them not being able to teach me to do literally anything, is tango not teachable?

He said yeah you really just gotta do that bootcamp

I said well is there a basic step

He said no there is not. there is a set of parameters and then you improvise a lot within them

hmmm

alright

this is starting to be promising.

I ask what is your field of study and he said chemistry

At this point I am like alright

Promising

chemistry people often are not intimidated by challenges, or have special ways of pushing through them. they are used to hard psets and staying up late

chemistry people are also potentially good about explaining clear parameters

I say okay chemistry boy

Are you going to attempt to teach me the tango or give up.

You are saying there is a lot of improv involved

And so can we not improv?

He says it is complicated

I say I am not afraid

So we go and he does some stuff

And is like wow you are a very fast learner

And I am like ...

I have at least 6 years on you and have also danced the salsa, the waltz, and the samba in the past. I am not completely confused

😂

And so he dances with me for a long time and I conclude the tango is my favorite of the dances I have done

🔥👏🔥

It is process oriented

There are principles and constraints you improvise inside of

And the man really does have to lead hard and the woman does have to follow very very hard

Then I see the Austrian woman the man who abandoned me left me for to dance with

And get her number

🔥

the man then hits me up an hour later and then 2 hours after than and then 2 hours after that

Which i do not notice because i am drunk with my friend at an indoor smoking shop, trying to write my sonnet for sonnet movie club

Anyway now I think we all should learn to tango

❤️

Just look at this magnificence. Can you imagine hiring an artist to make this statue on the left, going “nah too erotic, your older brother will know what’s up” and then the older brother makes this statue on the right.

The statues are apparently in St. Paul's Cathedral in Liège, Belgium, and so I guess I am going to Belgium.

If you want to looksmaxx for looking like a Greek God specifically, here are some tips.

Use Olive Oil

You do not need to take an entire bath in olive oil. You can get the spray-on-skillet olive oils, and just keep them around for when you feel like it.

You know that feeling when you are taking too many showers, perhaps because it is summer and you are working out and also swimming? And then you are feeling too dry? You can spray yourself with olive oil a little bit, and then not be that dry. There, done.

It is good for your skin, your hair, and your nails. It can be a little heavy, but that’s why you are just spraying some on versus lathering it on yourself.

Use Elastic Bands

Use wide elastic bands and stretch your upper back. Go on youtube and find some videos. Be inspired. The point is not to strength train with the bands. The point is to stretch parts of your back you normally would not think to stretch, and this gets your back used to being in the right position when you are just going about your day, having awesome Greek God posture, or when you are working out, so that the right parts are activated.

I learned this from a guy in the navy, and then again at my climbing gym, so it’s probably good.

Look in the mirror or on your phone and fawn over yourself

There is no reason not to fawn over yourself. Even if you hate yourself there is probably part of yourself that you like. Such as your sexy big toe. Or how your arm looks in that specific lighting with that one lamp.

Do not go “oh well that just looks good under that one lamp specifically.” Do not insult the Glory of God. If you notice perfection upon you, then enjoy it.

Look at old photos of yourself that you liked and fawn over those too.

Aristotle’s ideas of virtue involved becoming more of yourself, and more of who you want to become, through practice of being that. And so by looking at yourself looking like how you want to look, you internalize the image a little more, and actually become that more.

Literally Go to Museums and Pose Like the Statues

Feel the essence. Do not fear embarrassment. If you want to look legit, bring a sketchbook and some pencils, so that it looks like you are a true artist doing the subject its due service. There are all kinds of classes for all age ranges that mandate going to museums and doing weird things. Just have your sketchbook and some story, and you’ll be fine.

“What—” he said, playing his video game.

Oh. Uh.

She was making guacamole, and this was the first thing she’s said in 20 minutes. He remembered the last book he read, Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down by J.E. Gordon. Structural integrity resides both in how materials are assembled, and in the internal strength of the materials. Structures can break down at either point — either due to an internal material weakness, or due to a weakness in the assembly.

Depending on how he answered, his relationship could fall apart right at this moment.

“…Yes. We are having sex…right now.”

Kayla perks up. He must have answered correctly. Her perky breasts in her white crop top excite more aggressively also.

“Mmm,” she says. “Yeah, uh, I love that! So we are edging so hard that actually right now, by not touching me, you are touching me?”

Kamchum was playing Donkey Kong Bananza. He had been playing Donkey Kong Bananza for the past three weeks. He had not touched his girlfriend in this time. He runs a quick enneagram 5 analysis and concludes that his ENFP girlfriend is trying to make the best of her situation. This is very sweet of her, he decides, even though it is distracting him. He wonders what he can say to reward the sweetness.

“…Yes,” he says.

Kayla moans. She puts down her avocado knife and pulls down the v-neck on her white croptop even lower. “And so when you haven’t touched me for three weeks, that was all leading up to this moment.”

He wonders about Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and the limits of language.

“…Yes,” he says.

Kayla lifts up her skirt, enwetteningly. “I LOVE intentionality,” she says all ENFP-wangled. “I love how strategic and thoughtful you always are.”

Kamchum remembers a scene he has seen in an episode of Rick and Morty, which parodies Hellraiser. “Pain is pleasure” he recalls vaguely.

“Is this pain causing you pleasure?” he asks her.

“Yes,” she says. “God, yes. Is it causing you pleasure?”

Kamchum dies on the third Donkey King Kong world boss. He stares at the screen. He has been working on this section for eleven days. A lesser man would have thrown the controller. He does not throw the controller. He is, structurally speaking, a very load-bearing man.

“…Yes,” he says.

Kayla makes a sound that is difficult to transcribe. She pulls her skirt back down because she needs both hands to mash the avocado. You cannot abandon guacamole. This is something they both understand about each other, in the way that only people who have shared a refrigerator for two years can.

“I feel so close to you right now,” she says. “Closer than even if we were touching.”

“I feel close to you too,” Kamchum says, and means it, which is the strangest part.

He respawns. She squeezes some limes, her fingers wet. Outside, the world is doing its usual thing. Inside, by no measurable standard, they are having the sex of their lives.

maybe not. whatever. I am jealous of them and what they have.

It’s like memorizing poetry, a little bit, to know movies and have a depth of feeling attached to them, and to be able to pull them up from memory and to give people recommendations based on mood, or to feel the mood on a given day and know what to put on, like your friend in Wyoming with that record player who sits and knows exactly which record to play and how to switch them for six hours straight. Oh you don’t have that friend?

This is why I feel like I have enough to die happy. Thanks Salton <3

So I made a list of movies for a movie club the other day, and then recursed on it for a bit, and that’s the most like a cinephile I’d ever felt in my life, until afterwards, when I realized that for every movie I wrote down that we would be watching, I would really like to watch an additional movie that I might like as much as the one I wrote down, or one that is somehow thematically or artistically related.

This using the intensity of positive feelings to then find other things you love that generate positive feelings I think is a core spirit of the thing.

An easy way to do this is to just watch another movie by the same director. It is rare for a director to make only one movie.

Then you will realize there are a few directors you like a whole lot, and you want to learn about more directors. Then you just go and…read about movies. With the internet and AI this is insane because you can get insanely tailored recommendations. Like if I put in our first movie The Cow (1969) I get

The Metamorphosis (2002): Directed by Valery Fokin
The Tenant (1976): Directed by Roman Polanski

And these sounds like really good interesting movies I should really want to watch if I am interested in continuing looking at themes of metamorphosis. Even though I am confused about how I’m supposed to feel about watching Polanski, these are good for recommendations I got in 3 seconds.

It seems like the first step is actually to just watch a bunch of movies and to have some core group of ones you really like, and if you are not watching movies that you actually really really like, unambiguously, that you would be more than happy to rewatch, try to get recommendations from somebody who seems like they know what they are talking about, or try to go down a rabbit hole.

I was not a rabbit hole person. Somebody with good taste sat with me and watched a lot of really good movies. And some of those movies I did not understand. Some of them I thought I did understand, and then I rewatched them, and then it turned out I did not actually understand it the first time.

Some movies I thought I would be really into, and then was not into, like The Machinist.

But anyway…

So you have your core movies that make you happy and then you find other movies that make you happy.

Cinephile is just a lover of movies.

For all you beautiful ladies and gents who are looksmaxxing, here are some words of wisdom you might not have ever heard of before.

On Hair

First of all — Your hair has feelings. It reacts to how you interact with it, how you feel about it. If you love it, it’ll love you back. Your hair is dead, but where it attaches to your scalp is alive. Consider it like tree bark. The outside of tree bark is completely dead, but then as you go more inward, there is a mixture of dead cells and alive cells, and then fully alive cells.

Even though your hair is dead, it is close enough to the alive stuff that how the alive stuff is interacted with matters.

Secondly — get it out of your head that “hair” is the category that you are working with. There’s curly hair, fine hair, asian hair, Latina hair, stringy hair, sad hair, tuberculosis hair — if you can start thinking of your hair with even one adjective, you will be better off.

Why? Because then things like “hair care” and “getting a haircut” start taking on way more specific meaning.

consider this: a hairdresser has to be prepared for any person, of any age, hair type, or ethnicity, to come in during the day and ask to have their hair cut, and they have to service them and whatever style they are asking for. It is a hard profession to do very well.

Compare this to something like getting a wax done — it is basically the same for each person, every time. In fact the less “artistry” you do and the more consistent you are at just following the instructions for the setup, the less painful it will be for the client.

You have some hair specialists who have hair specialties. There are hair artists who do asian hair, who do curly hair, who do bangs, who do men’s hair…

And so it helps you to understand “what kind of hair you have” and “what -kind of person knows what to do with it.”

I used to follow the advice of getting recommendations from my friends about where to go for a haircut. It took me way too long — but not too long — to ask the question, “my female friends I am asking are Chinese — does this matter?” When I started being pickier about my hair, I was paying more attention and yeah — it mattered - a lot. Asian hairdressers would not actually know how to handle my hair. They use a lot of techniques for straight, thick hair, that would absolutely not work on my wavy, finer hair.

It took me some time to go from that, to realizing that the people who understand my hair are people who do curly hair — and especially people who have specialized in cutting curly hair dry. Now, I mentioned that my hair is wavy, not curly. Actually when it is shorter, it is basically straight. This is what I mean. “What kind of hair I have” is not completely obvious. If I want my hair to be long and wavy and actually look good, I need to go to somebody who specializes in curly hair. This is not completely obvious. This took a bunch of thinking, and a bunch of experiences actually paying a lot, to people who really did not know what they were doing with the bangs-like parts in front.

It can also help to go to somebody who has your same hair type. This way they know what the pain points would be from personal experience. This is not necessary if the person actually has studied a specific hair type for 10 years, and themselves do not have this hair type.

and this is why going through this process is better than just looking at reviews — you have no idea what these people who give the reviews, what their pain points are, unless you read something like “my wispy blonde hair is really hard usually and this person nailed it.” Then if you have wispy blonde hair you might want to check out that person.

When you have done the thinking and have thought about what kind of person might be able to handle you, then telling them to do whatever they you want to do with, or telling them to tell you what they would want to do if they had full artistry, or telling them to do whatever they want within a range of ethoses, can be a pretty good idea.

Other thoughts….

products.

If you travel, the products stop working. actually though, if I fly from the east coast to the west coast, my products like, do not work as well.

The air is different. the water is different. The way my hair looks just ends up being different in hard-to-explain ways.

I like to have some expensive products that work extremely well that are my signature me products that I order online, and also have some CVS brands that I consider reliable and can just go to the store and get it wherever I am.

But often when I travel, the expensive stuff doesn’t work as well at the new location.

I had found Garnier Fructis to be too intense. Too powerful, too drying. Maybe it works well for some people, but that and Herbal Essences I stay away from, even though both brands smell very exciting.

I like Pantene, OGX usually. Redken, Tresemme. I do just buy ones that look cool in the flavor I like and for the hair type I have. Buying random shampoo for curly hair tends to work pretty ok for me. And then I have an expensive conditioner I like that I order online, but it sometimes randomly doesn’t work as well, and at those times I don’t like using it all up, and want to try using a bunch of something cheap instead.

Other thoughts…

the vitamins that are advertised as “hair skin and nails” do make your hair skin and nails better — or at least the ones I’d tried. Collagen.

Scalp massages are good. Do that for yourself

Cold water is good.

I found it very interesting to read people’s detailed accounts of their experience. I thought I would write a note about what it is like to live without food noise as part of that conversation.

I wake up in the morning. On a completely normal day, I am not hungry at all, and not thinking about food. If there is a free hotel breakfast, or somebody is making breakfast, I would have some, but I would try to go on a walk outside first if it is possible, because otherwise eating right after waking up usually feels pretty bad to me, digestively speaking. I can generally get myself to eat 30 minutes after waking up if I have to. If I am hungover, or did not eat much the day before, or something unusual is happening I might be starving. But generally, I am either not thinking about food at all, or I am completely starving and need food basically immediately (probably needed food during sleep for some process and would wake up pretty messed up).

I have acquired a taste for very good black coffee, so I’ll have some of that and then do some kind of fasted workout. Then I’ll come back and have a protein shake. I am lucky because I actually very much enjoy the taste of protein powder, and there are a few premade shakes I really really like, and like as food rather than as protein shakes.

I really like bananas, and so if I have them, I’ll eat one of those. Then I will go do something else and not think about food for a while.

After a few hours I will realize I am hungry and that I should eat lunch. I will be pretty ambivalent about the lunch. A caesar salad would be fine. So would steak and broccoli. So would any sandwich. Often I have leftover pizza. I often eat leftovers for lunch, because that is fast. I try to make it a bit festive and not eat it too fast. Usually I would make a cool tea, or have a cool drink to pair with the leftover lunch. I would try to have some vegetables with whatever the leftovers are. I try to make sure I eat the lunch, because it would be pointless to fast in between breakfast and dinner too much, versus just having a good lunch, and then a light and earlier dinner, and then fast longer at night. But I can easily prolong eating lunch or forget about it for a long time, until I notice my mood is not great and I am having too many weird thoughts. Then I realize I should probably eat.

After lunch, I do not think about food, because I am full. Dinner comes and I’ve always lived with people so either I cook or we cook together or people order food or I decorate more leftovers. It is very rare that I would crave sugar, though sometimes I do crave ice cream. If I drink a protein shake, I generally don’t need the ice cream though, and if I eat ice cream, I can be very happy with less than a scoop.

If somebody brings in a decadent desert, I will have some and not feel guilty about it, because it is special, but too much sugar at night messes with sleep, and so I will be wary of that.

Then, I do not think about food. If I stay up past midnight, I will get hungry again, but the trick of drinking a lot of water or a lot of different calorie-free beverages works very well for me.

And so I go through my day mostly not thinking about food 90% of the time unless I am hungry. If a picture of a food I like appears on the TV, in a show or in an advertisement, I will think about that food though. I am extremely impressionable when it comes to visual food on TV. I also sometimes think about sushi, when I am hungry and want sushi. This happens once or twice a month. Usually what makes that feeling go away for a while is going and eating sushi.

Core for Movie Club: The “trickstery filmmaking” collection:

• The Fall, 2006, Tarsem Singh

• The Cow, 1968, Dariush Mehrjui

• The Cell, 2000, Tarsem Singh

• Rashomon, 1950, Akira Kurosawa

• Santa Sangre, 1989, Alejandro Jodorowsky

• The Cyclist, 1987, Mohsen Makhmalbaf

• Mulholland Drive, 2001, David Lynch

• Videodrome, 1983, David Cronenberg

• Pig, 2021, Michael Sarnoski

• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 1962, John Ford

The point of this would be to have a diversity of filmmakers, countries, and time periods, including both classics and cult-classics, showcasing what can be done with the craft of filmmaking both as filmmaking and as storytelling via filmmaking. Trickstery probably isn’t the right word — I’m talking about form in the sense of form versus plot in books, and form here in that the films are doing something interesting with time or perspective.

The Cow is a very famous Iranian film, from the golden age of modern Iranian cinema. So is The Cyclist. The Fall is basically a complete favorite for some people, and is known as Tarsem’s masterpiece. The Cell is a more “hollywood” film, but I really really like it for very specific reasons that I won’t say as that would spoil the movie a bit. Roshomon is a classic, and then Santa Sangre is a classic in certain circles, but most people have not seen it and is a movie I think everyone should see, but if you really hate horror it does count as horror and I have seen some people be disturbed by it, and one couple have a fight about it after one party found it disturbing, and one party found it deeply beautiful.

We could have a film club just watching the ten David Lynch feature films, but absent that, I think Mulholland Drive should be on this list.

And then Videodrome is fun and on theme and is also a cult classic.

I would say if I were suggesting movies for a film club for my first run, I would use this list. A lot of these do something about the question “what is a film” or “what can be done with filmmaking” that I consider cool.

Other movies I have not seen but want to check out are:

• Three Stories (1997)

• Seconds (1966)

• Performance (1970)

• The Color of Pomegranates (1969)
  

Additional: The “beautiful movies” collection:

• The Fountain, 2006, Darren Aronofsky

• Solaris, 1972, Andrei Tarkovsky

• The Holy Mountain, 1973, Alejandro Jodorowsky

• The Fall, 2006, Tarsem Singh

These are just stunningly beautiful. I would say these should be watched on the best setup you can get. These are just terrific big, grand, operatic movies. Solaris is very very famous. The Fountain a bit less so. Having a mix of “classic important movies” and other stuff seems important for a film club! The Fountain is the movie by Aronofsky one might consider the director of Requiem for a Dream to be capable of making, given the beauty of that film, and Aronofsky really delivers here. If one liked Requiem for a Dream, went to see Pi, and then was disappointed because it was “smaller” then expected, The Fountain is the really really big masterpiece.

Holy Mountain is something you might have seen if you’re into Jodorowsky, but then otherwise might not have heard of, and it’s excellent.

There will be many more beautiful movies on this list. I like beautiful movies. But these ones you can tell that the beauty was in large part “the point.”

Additional: The “children are people too” collection:

• The Fall, 2006, Tarsem Singh

• Where Is the Friend's House?, 1987, Abbas Kiarostami

• The Lure, 2015, Agnieszka Smoczyńska

• Let the Right One In, 2008, Tomas Alfredson

• Dogtooth, 2009, Yorgos Lanthimos

I have a soft spot for movies that feature children as complicated and interesting, with depth of emotion and as central characters. You would notice that four of these are not in English! I find that foreign films capture children better.

Additional: The “uncomfortable and sexy” collection:

• Secretary, 2002, Steven Shainberg

• The Duke of Burgundy, 2014, Peter Strickland

• Dogtooth, 2009, Yorgos Lanthimos

• In Fabric, 2018, Peter Strickland

• The Lure, 2015, Agnieszka Smoczyńska

• Wild at Heart, 1990, David Lynch

• Blue Velvet, 1986, David Lynch

• Santa Sangre, 1989, Alejandro Jodorowsky

If you feel like watching something pretty sexy but also with the potential that it may feel very uncomfortable I think that’s a category worth fleshing out.

Additional: The “masculinity and grief” collection:

• The Cow, 1968, Dariush Mehrjui

• The Straight Story, 1999, David Lynch

• Pig, 2021, Michael Sarnoski

Stories with central male figures, dealing with traditional masculinity subject matter.

Margarita Lovelace has died of —

Oh dear. We had a worksheet last time of four ways to die, and we discussed our favorite ones.

I do not know if every hospice organization has its members go through these exercises, and I just was not in the right premed circles in college to overhear these conversations.

But alright. Let’s go.

I wrote that of the four choices listed, I would prefer to have both arms and one leg amputated, and then die of old age. (The other options presented were dying painlessly in four months, after learning about it and learning there is nothing you can do, dying in 5 years from a debilitating cancer, or dying instantly, right now, from a heart attack).

(Everybody gave different answers, when discussing this question! The reasons were very personal, and also varied based on if dependents were in the picture, and life stage. It was deeply moving to hear everybody’s thoughts.)

I see that if I live to old age, what is likely to take me is heart disease or cancer. I imagine I would have some compounding illnesses, perhaps a strange cancer that they can’t really diagnose, and before figuring it out I would die of a respiratory disease because I kept socializing, or something like this.

Perhaps I would sort of faint and waste away, listening to audiobooks and watching movies. I would insist that somebody come in and turn off the motion blur setting that makes everything look like a soap opera.

I would also insist to be near a window, and for there to be plants around me. This way I can look at organic shapes and chill out.

Maybe I would make paintings until my dying breath, or keep memorizing and repeating poetry. Maybe I would get a heart attack playing tennis.

I am not sure what this meditation is supposed to accomplish — I hope I am doing it right.

The idea behind including this in the training is that people are much better at this job if they have grappled with their own mortality.

The second idea behind it (I bet) is that there isn’t actually that much they can do to prepare all the new volunteers in the three all-day sessions before shadowing and on-the-job training, apart from general explainers of the different staff, departments, and basic protocols, but still they would want to do something so that we bond and understand what we are getting ourselves into. And so preparing us emotionally in this way is probably the best way to use our time, rather than — I don’t know, oral quizzes on protocols.

But enough on the meta. Obviously I am distracting myself. I am supposed to be writing my obituary! They sent us a “fun” obituary to read as an example, and some of us will be reading ours out loud.

Ack.

The “fun one” included surviving people who loved them, pets. Communities they were involved in. Cause of death. What loved ones said about them.

What real ones have I read in my life? I’d read the ones of people I know who’d died. I’d read completely garbage pieces doing a hatchet job on people I care about. I would make a few clicks on Facebook and be checking someone out, only later realizing they had died, and I’d read that. Or a celebrity who I was checking out who I didn’t hear any news about for a while.

I have no idea what anybody would say about me because truth be told I don’t know who would be around to do any of the saying. I hope that my friends would say that I was a good friend. I hope they would say that I was ethical and inspiring in some way, and that I moved them, and helped them live the life they wanted to be living in some way. If I write this as if I died suddenly, tomorrow, that would also be a bit of a different activity — and really intense.

There would be a focus on immediate family as my main locus of identity. “Survived by” the other immediate family members. But there is so much life that this would fail to capture. So many other “Survive by” people who would be on that list.

They might know who they are, and might know who the others are, because they are in Signal group chats with each other.

And then ah! what would all my Signal chats say?

I am getting too emotional, thinking about it!

The other post I had in mind for today was “Bro I am Not Avoidant I have Negative Schizotypy” which would have required a lot more research explaining negative and positive schizotypy, and both feel equally risky to me!

So I took the Kinsey Scale Test the other day, because people around me were talking about it and then wrote a quick post after reading some Sartre, Bisexuals Should Be Existentialists.

The test gave me a 3. I am not sure how I feel about that, because I do not feel like I have enough context on how other people talk about their own position on that scale, and generally what the differences mean in reality, for this to mean too much for me.

Scales like that make sense if fleshed out in actual social context, and so I will attempt to describe some of mine, to see if it inspires comments from people sharing some of their own context!

• I think I would be happy to have something-like-a-wife, if I also have a husband. If I only have a husband, that would be ok. If I only have a wife, I would keep searching for a husband. If I have a husband and no wife, I still expect to have very close female friendships. If somebody wants to be my wife, and I want to be her wife, I don’t think I would wait to have a husband “first” in order to make the having a husband part of my identity “more real,” but I would tell her I’d still be on the lookout for a husband. Since most states don’t allow polygamy, this would be complicated, and so I do not expect anybody to want to be my wife under these conditions of future uncertainty! This is unlikely enough that I do not think about legal edge cases. I do not expect most men to let me have something-like-a-wife on these conditions either, though I see it as more likely.

• I often do not feel female competition as a default. If somebody is doing female competition dynamics with me, I will grok it and do some stuff probably, but I do not have an innate disposition for female competition.

• I do have much more of a radar for female friendship. If somebody wants to be friends with me, usually I keep a lookout for what shape might work for us. This can include a sexy shape. I do not turn women away for not wanting something sexy, and I also do not turn them away if they do.

• I tend to have an easier time liking women if they like me, and then I have an easier time even more if they have some degree of sexual disposition towards me.

• I am mostly demisexual, unless I do some specific things in which I am being more sexual because somebody I love is into it, or because it is part of a broader context or broader game and I am able to bring a lot of those positive feelings into my feelings about the sex. This means that it can be hard for me to want to have sex with anybody, really, versus doing aura-connection-stuff, and so my default is it do aura-connection stuff versus more overt flirting.

• I do not know what the “game to be involved with a lady” signals even are. It is possible I miss a lot of them entirely. Or it is possible that they are pretty overt and I do not miss them. I have no data that I trust from myself on this question.

• If I meet a couple, I usually do not do things like get close to the woman, so *that* I could get close to the man. I think I have noticed some women do this with me — where I am with a man they are interested in, and he is with me, and so they are talking to me. It is with too much eagerness often and too fast into a kind of depth, but it is also not sexual towards me. The mismatch in them going fast and deep and me not liking it would often later be revealed that they did have sexual feelings, but they were towards a man and I was the obstacle, and hence the weird feelings. I am not fully sure about this though. If there is a couple I usually get close to the woman to be close to the woman and get close to the man to be close to the man. Usually my interest is not based on gender but is based on how they react to me / if they like me / if they are assholes or not.

Anyway, I don’t know what this is for. I am curious about other people’s experiences, and so I will share!

obviously I can’t do my actual writing yet or I would be doing it. But I generally believe that doing something is better than doing nothing.

but all of that is the boring stuff

the real thing I care about is if I can’t think about the things I want to think about, then having larger pieces, put down here, might mean that I can do something with those pieces later.

if whatever I am thinking about that was a slurry of words I put into blog-post shapes, then the next round later I can look at multiple blog posts and “find” the blog posts I didn’t write because I could not conceptualize those blog posts because I could not see it in my mind.

I would like a better process for this. Some kind of fairly simple method for inter-blog-post mathematics that I can hang out with and think about, or if I am not sure what to write about, I can pick a few blog posts, run some process on them, and that produce something more complex and closer to whatever I envision my “real work” to be.

Maybe let’s think of an example.

The past few blog posts, including this one, were pretty math-y, but not really related to each other.

Actually the past 12 blog posts are all ones I care a fair deal about getting a “good” version of, but it feels pretty out of my current skillset to do that in a timely manner.

But that also doesn’t make sense to me as real. There are probably ways for me to think about those, and work on those.

Maybe I don’t want to edit old blog posts, because there are new blog posts to work on, every day!

But that doesn’t make sense to me either, because I can just make a new blog post that is a revision of an old blog post.

Anyway, I see my blog posts are building blocks for other blog posts, and also building blocks for their own best versions, and if I never get around for actually doing the good versions or writing the interblog-post-super-special-good blog posts, whatever I managed to do is still up on here.

that way I at least don’t feel this weird pressure in my head in which I am trying to do something that is way too hard for me, on some axis, without even making progress on figuring out the axis.

this blog post itself can be better, under my own complaints of my other blog posts. it is also unfinished.

it falls under the same rules and limitations as everything I am talking about here.

I can probably think more deeply about this “math between blog posts” I care about and this way of making my blog posts better that seems impossible

but my issue is conceptual, it’s not in the writing

it might be in the writing, the two can be coupled in unexpected ways