Wanna earn a million dollars?

Start by (re)watching Wait Until Dark.

Then rewrite the script to cast a female as the assassin and Alan Arkin as the blind victim.

Get it directed by a 'hawt' thriller director in The Current Year.

Earn a million bux.

It's ON like TRON...

1. TRON is alluring because there are no straight lines in our world. It shows us the world we must believe in to know, and must know to understand our own world. Geometry as idealism, mathematics as utopia.

1. Google Translate: TRON是誘人的，因為沒有直線，在我們的世界。它向我們展示了世界，我們必須相信知道，必須知道，了解我們自己的世界。

2. TRON is alluring because in our world there are no straight lines. It shows us the world in which we must believe in order to know, and the world which we must know in order to understand our own world.

2. Google Translate: TRON是誘人的，因為在我們的世界裡，沒有直線。它表明我們的世界中，我們必須相信，以了解，世界，我們必須知道，以了解我們自己的世界。

Act now!

Hurry! Spend more money! You'll live longer and feel better! Stave off the darkness inside with shadows of opulence! Bigger, better, faster!

For instance: 3D no better than 2D and gives filmgoers headaches, claims study –– www.guardian.co.uk

Tales from Lynchdom…

A couple recent Lynch moments.

A few days ago when I got home from the gym, I stopped by a local (grand)mom-and-(grand)pop shop to buy tuna and a sports drink. I had to wait a minute behind another customer and his son (?). Their backs were turned to me but I sensed they were shuffling their hands around a shelf. They said nothing. They turned to leave the shop and came at me with bright red daggers of fingers. Oh. They had merely bought sweetened, dyed strips of squid for a snack. Turns out the father was mute/deaf and he and his son were bickering over how many squid strips they had bought (or could still buy). As they were bickering, in their audibly halcyon way, a middle school girl sidled up to them to join the debate, even though I don't think she spoke sign language. Realize, of course, that whatever fluency the father and son had in sign language was gone with the wind, unraveled by the strips of squid seizing their stammering fingers. I was tired from my workout but also rushing to get a shower to go to work, so the whole thing felt like a time-lapse film.

And the other…

I forgot while writing this post and multitasking on the Internet.

[UPDATED:

I remembered my Lynch moment. Tuesday at my cram school, I got there early to sub for someone, so I was surrounded by students I don't normally see. I was making copies with the machine near the bathroom door and one boy, maybe five years old, came closer, pointing at the bathroom. "It's changed," he chirped. "It was pink, now it's not." Another teacher corrected him that nothing had changed. "It's changed, it's not pink now." As my copies extruded sheet by sheet, I had an insight. I reached over and flicked the light switch on. The floor tiles took on a dull patina of pink. He and the even smaller girl beside him waddled closer to examine the change. "Yes, it's pink, see!" Then I flicked the light off and they giggled. I stepped away and they proceeded to play with the switch for themselves.

This may seem more like a Norman Rockwell than a David Lynch moment, but the reason it struck me is because I imagined myself morphing into a child as I had my epiphany about the boy's perception of bygone pink. And in my reduced state, he swelled to an incredible intellect, like a boyish wizard. And when he pointed into the bathroom again, through the drapes wafting in the doorway, the lights flicked on and off, each second of light revealing Twin Peaks Bob hopping in a crouched ball of sadistic glee.]

But I can tell you about a dream I had a couple nights ago.

I was being extorted by a mobster into pulling a hit on his main rival. I was staked out in a building under construction and was given a long-range bolt gun (a super nail gun, really). The weird part is that my shooting position was across the hallway from the mobster's office, perhaps so he could keep an eye on me and be sure I "done de t'ing right." I think the building was the mobster's new headquarters, and it was already partially in use even while still being built, so all kinds of people were popping in on me. I tried to escape once or twice, I think to go save my family, but I was always brought back to finish the hit. I remember a few close-up views of my targets through the scope and although I killed the rival early on, I had to keep fighting his henchmen as they were firing back at me. This led to a sequence of me shooting numerous nails into a few video-game-esque henchmen on the roof a couple blocks away. At one point they shot a grappling hook cable onto the girder on my (third) floor. I killed the henchmen, unhooked the grappling hook, ran downstairs and refastened it on the girder on the first floor so as to mislead them of my location when other henchmen rushed into the building. My plan was to ambush them from the stairwell as they looked for me (they knew the grappling hook had been fired accurately by the henchmen I later killed). I woke up thinking, "But wouldn't they just rush up the staircase and outgun me?" I realized, grimly, that I'd just have to take them on with my bolt gun.

Dream job?

A couple weeks ago my girlfriend (yes, I have a girlfriend, it's not a secret, nor is it a subtle metaphor) notified me of an ad at an online classified website seeking... wait for it... a tutor in philosophy with... wait for it... both a focus on Kant's thought and... wait for it... the freedom-determinism debate! And the pay is more than adequate. I thought it was a prank. How much more fitting could it be? "Must speak good Chinese and excellent English... a background in humanities or philosophy or law... Etc." Long story short, after some flirting about an answer and providing samples of my writing, I and the contact arranged a meeting this morning. Well, sort of a meeting. (Who is Keyser Söze?)

Good news: I got the gig!

It's a week(end)ly 2.5-hour lecture-seminar that will be held at the man's house, with his daughter and her boyfriend, and perhaps the mother, in attendance. After the "heavy vetting session" this morning--during which I did not meet the man himself, but only his daughter and her boyfriend, and during which we spoke for over two hours on the fly without a single text--, I headed to a bookstore to get a few resources. I ended up getting a small book in Chinese on Kant (since I want to be clear on his terminology in Chinese), Pockett, et al. (eds.) Does Consciousness Cause Behavior?, and Mele (ed.) The Philosophy of Action. Needless to say (...), I have numerous other texts on my bookshelves and in my hard drive which I shall study and use for the seminars.

They mentioned that Powerpoint-style lectures would be nice (that's Asian politeness for "Use Powerpoint or die," I believe). Tonight I was also told I am to lecture in Chinese, though I know their English is good enough to read and understand my notes or desperate forays into English as I try to explain things I already barely grasp in a foreign language. I realized how worthwhile it will be to start assembling such lecture materials now, which I am sure I can use in the future, during grad school and beyond. Meanwhile, these seminars will sharpen my dialectical skills, give me constant material for my book(s) on these topics, and improve my Chinese by having to lecture and debate in that tongue, albeit with those occasional desperate trench-dives into English. So? I'm basically the research assistant for a seemingly very well-off retired man with a tickle, I suspect, to be convinced that determinism is wrong. Next week's topic is twofold: 1) Do humans have free will? 2) What have scientists (esp. in the past 100 years or so) said about determinism?

I now want to record a few notes from this morning's discussion (the conversation more or less followed the order below, though I have streamlined it to cut out the usual back and forth recursion of such conversations):

• The fourfold nature of the debate [not that this begins to capture all the nuances!]: 1. incompatibilist determinism (ID), 2. incompatibilist indeterminism (II), 3. compatibilist determinism (CD), 4. compatibilist indeterminism (CI). (I think I invented the fourth category rather on the spot.) If these views could talk, they would say:

1. ID: All things in our world, including humans, happen by necessity from antecedent causes, therefore human action happens by necessity from antecedent causes and free will is at best an illusion.
2. II: While it may be true that all things in our world happen by necessity from antecedent causes, certain dimensions of human action are exempt from this principle, therefore free human action does not happen by necessity from antecedent causes.
3. CD: While all things in our world, including human actions, happen by necessity from antecedent causes, human action is still "free" in the sense that if and when it emerges from humans as genuine members of the causal matrix.
4. CI: The world is not determinist in the way ID, II, and CD suppose, but human action is not therefore free: things just happen.

• If determinism (D) is the doctrine that all states of affairs (SOA) necessarily result from antecedent causes, then from what SOA did the initial conditions of the whole world (C_i:W) result? If C_i:W is supposed simply to exist from all time, then D is not true for all SOA. If C_i:W simply comes to be for reasons we do not know, and which perhaps we cannot in principle articulate, then why can't other SOA (such as my own actions) result in the same way?


• The IDist wants to corner me between two articles of faith: first, that all my actions happen for compelling psychological reasons which "overrun" my rational free will, and, second, even if we don't know what such causes are for any case, they still exert their power on my will by 'occult' means. Imagine my consciousness as the hub of a cartwheel: it is frozen in place by the n psychological factors impinging on my power to act. For some reason, though, some spokes are "thicker" (i.e. stronger) than others, and therefore induce my will to move in line with their perceived vector. The problem, however, is that we must now ask what factor accounts for the greater thickness of some spokes (call them ego-spokes) versus others. So... we posit more occult spokes (them id-spokes or meta-spokes) around the dominant ego-spoke supposedly manifested in my action. But, then... what induced those id- or meta-spokes to influence the dominant ego-spokes? And so on, ad infinitum. Eventually the IDist will just say, "It's the universe, stupid," in other words, it's the entire SOA of the whole world which caused my action. This, unfortunately, is no more illuminating than saying, "You chose what you chose because you are the kind of person who chooses such things, and you live in a world which generates people like you." Oh. I see.


• Add to this the problem that, every time you nudge me to explain how my decision is determined by psychological factors beyond my control, you thereby expand my self-awareness and sharpen my rational agency by allowing me to be even more keenly, and thus freely, introspective, about my motives. If by such means I asymptotically reach a reflective equilibrium, which includes a humble awareness of my savory and less-than-savory inclinations, and make a full self-aware decision F, and yet you still insist I did F for some motive that's not even possible for me to be aware of... well, this begs the question: Are motives which are not consciously felt and not even unconsciously detectable really "motives" at all? If I act based on occult factors which plague me despite my best rational efforts, you might as well say I have demons. Actually, being told I have demons would be better, since at least then I'd have even more radically expanded self-awareness and publicly rational means for exorcising them and augmenting my freedom. If D can be true based on a promissory complete science which we only asymptotically achieve, then by the same token, ID can be true as a promissory, asymptotic victory. If it's only rational to accept beliefs based on adequate, if not compelling, empirical evidence, could it ever in principle be rational to espouse D (especially considering free will informs not only the myriad of normal human encounters, but also pervades our self-consciousness as agents)?


• Gödel. Say I devise a system S of five axioms: 1. A = A. 2. A ≠ B. 3. B = B. 4. A = D. 5. A = D. Fine. But then for S to be consistent, I need to add an axiom that no other axioms can be added which might compromise my axioms under different conditions. So then I have axiom 6: This is the last axiom of S. How would I secure this finality without a seventh axiom, though? On the completeness side of things, notice that I did not give an axiom for the sequence of 1-->5, nor that D in axiom 4 is the same D as in axiom 5 (or that A in axiom 1 is the same as A in axiom 5). I need more axioms, ad infinitum... or not, since it's up to me to decide when and where S "ends." So it is with every system of deduction: we decide its limits. As the boyfriend put it, "We are not limited by the tool if we don't want to use it." If human action supposedly falls out from deduction from its own assumptions, then there's good reason to think such deduction is actually subject to the agent's usage of them, not vice versa.


• Who says multiple layers of explanation are incompatible? I may say my nephew is being cranky because "his atoms are out of whack," my friend may say it's "because of a chemical imbalance," my neighbor may say it's "because society warps kids with TV," while his mom may just say it's "because he's hungry." They're all true, but only the latter account "maximizes intelligibility" (as Kant likes to put it in reference to natural teleology) and provides us with an efficient, rational course of action: put a sandwich in his mouth.


• Here's another tenet of ID: Science resorts to probability due to ignorance, not due to an actual indeterminacy in an event E's microconstituents. Imagine E is the flipping of a coin on a cool spring morning. Even though we say there is a "fifty-fifty" chance of the coin landing heads or tails, in fact, unseen by our pinhole eyes, there is strictly only one possible outcome for the coin. If we could implant a supremely cognizant observer (SCO) at the time of the coin toss, he could predict with total certainty how the coin would land. Unfortunately, however, his presence would alter the initial conditions of E (C_i:E), which would render invalid his prediction of E. We would then need a higher observer (SCO') to account for the influence of the SCO on C_i:E. But then we'd need an observer (SCO'') for C_SCO:E, and so on ad infinitum. It turns out then that D is only coherently possible if we grant there is an omniscient, immaterial agent who puts total attention on our world. In other words, D is just Calvinism with some serious Father Issues.


• Certainly we can retrospectively reconstruct the causal chain of events that led to an event G--say, a man finding a winning lotto ticket in the gutter after he storms out of an unforeseen feud with his girlfriend--, but this is not logically equivalent to saying that before G, there was only one possible chain of events which could lead to that SOA. The problem for the scientifically inclined IDist is that, while he wants to defend ID based on the elegant rigor with which science constructs causal accounts of events like G, he also must admit that our science is riddled with uncertainty--recall that it is only "human" weakness/ignorance which generates probability. The tools of science, which include probability, are supposed to vindicate determinism, which excludes probability, by providing an absolute, logically incontestable explanation for G. Here we see, though, how D is more of a theological superstition, a dogma, than a logical deduction. If the IDist says my defense of freedom is a "will of the gaps," then I can just as easily say his defense of D is based on a "determinism of the gaps." For imagine if one day science discovered a randomizer--a genuine cosmic gizmo that randomly altered the micro-principles of natural law--, science would prove not-D. This eventuality aside, the key point is that the 'deterministic' rigor of our scientific reconstructions of causal chains is a function of the exactitude of our science(s), and insofar as empirical science is always revisable, always provisional, always falsifiable (or so they say), always statistical, etc., so too are "deterministic" reconstructions revisable and probable (viz. not deterministic).


• On a camping trip. My friend is across the lake using his flash light to tell me, in Morse code, "Hurry, fire, help." I go there and help him. That night we are drifting off to sleep in our only slightly singed tents when it starts to rain. I hear a pattern of raindrops on the canvas which sounds exactly like "Hurry, fire, help." Why don't I get up to rescue the sky? Well, we "know" that my is rational and "know" the rain is not. How do we know this, though? Presumably, because we have "access to" a level of cognition which includes both people and raindrops and Morse code and our own appropriate action. It is this "higher level" of cognition, however, which is at the heart of rational freedom. Human freedom means that we can "take a step back from" our options and rationally deliberate about a course of action. Moreover, we can take another step back from this primary mode of deliberation (d:d1) to deliberate about the worth of deliberation (in d:d2). We can even "take a step forward," so to speak, and choose to "deactivate" our rational deliberation (in d:d0), such as in the movie Yes Man.


• In any event, a retort I've heard before about the raindrops/Morse code scenario is that a human is more complex than a series of raindrops, and therefore rightly amenable to a rational interpretation. By this logic, rationality is a function of complexity. (As one of my philosophy professors put it when challenged by the incredible complexity and spontaneity of human behavior, "Yeah, well, lots of weird stuff happens when billions of atoms jiggle together.") If this were true, I should credit more rationality to more complex things. (I should also view Rube-Goldberg machines as monuments of reason... but I will leave it to you to ponder why that's crucially absurd.) By all accounts, a weather system, such as the one raining on my smoky tent by the lake, is at least as complex, if not much more complex than, the system of a man's thumb on a flashlight and some photons hitting my eye. At the extreme we'd have to say that the entire universe is the most rational thing in..., well, in the world. But then "stoically reductive hard science" just gets us pantheism and gross anthropomorphism. Add to this the scenario that, when I was a small child, my big brother trained me in Morse code precisely by training on the pitter-patter of raindrops (like a music buff who challenges his friends to "name that clip" before he can). Despite my years of education, I never really shook the profoundly beautiful idea that, when it rains, "the world is talking to me." And so I listen when it rains. You never know what the world might reveal. Fortunately, I've learned to block out most of what people say, since we all know everything people say is just neurologically determined sea spray from the waves of their genetic rise and fall in spacetime. Oh. Wait....


• The bottom line is that, if I and the rain and the coin to be tossed are in principle equally subject to the same single set of causal constraints (i.e. if ID is true), then I either have just as much reason to treat rain and "triple rainbows" as complex rational agents as I treat my friends and family, or I have just as little reason to treat my friends and family with rational deliberation as I have to respect the rational interests of rain and black holes. If I can always in principle reduce anyone's decisions to the occult ramifications of their psyche and cognitive defects, then I not only have no obligation to listen to others as genuinely rational coins, I mean, people, but also have no grounds for faulting anyone for rejecting D. If it is irrational to base one's career choice on a coin toss--and, indeed, sadistically irrational to decide the fate of another person on coin tosses, as seen in Dark Knight and No Country for Old Men--, and if people are just as mechanistically determined as those coins, then it is irrational to base one's actions on the behavior of those pathetic bundles of tossed coins, those paragons of Kludgedom, known as human beings.

Above I linked to Bob "The Information Philosopher" Doyle's website about the nuances of this debate and I happened to discover his excellent Flash tutorial for his own thesis.

I'm watching the movie…

…but I've never known anything about the series before. An interesting tidbit from the Wikipedia entry on "The Green Hornet":

He would be accompanied by his similarly masked chauffeur/bodyguard/enforcer, who was also Reid's valet, Kato, initially described as Japanese, and by 1939 as Filipino of Japanese descent.[4] Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, references to a Japanese heritage were dropped.[5]

Specifically, in and up to 1939, in the series' opening narration, Kato was called Britt Reid's "Japanese valet" and from 1940 to '45 he was Reid's "faithful valet." However, by at least the June 1941 episode "Walkout for Profit," about 14 minutes into the episode, Reid specifically noted Kato having a Philippine origin and thus he became Reid's "Filipino valet" as of that point.[6] When the characters were used in the first of a pair of movie serials, the producers had Kato's nationality given as Korean.

Is on is on…

Hegelianism is Marxism on Jungianism.

Jungianism is Freudianism on Hegelianism.

Psychoanalysis is everything on Quentin Tarantino.

Watch the birdie…

I wasn't really paying attention until about mid-way through, so I didn't "get it" at first. Well done! An ode to the analogy of being and modes of signification!

An interesting documentary…

If you happen to watch it, note the point made by one interviewee (with spectacles and a gray goatee) that, insofar as "there is always a time lag" between a protest movement and its manifest impact, the value of persisting in protest must, to some extent, be "taken on faith" (ca. 1'32"). So much for secular progress by "purely political" means.

I love Rage's music and have always accepted as much of their prophetic message (that religious thing again!) as my grain of salt permits.

Let's all go to the movies…

…and shut the hell up.

[WARNING: This is my cranky, caffeine-laden intellectual-persona speaking.]

AXIOM: There is a direct proportion between a person's intelligence and how little he or she speaks during a movie in a theater.

PROVISO: This holds unless it is a larger cultural exigency that everyone is allowed, and even encouraged, to natter on during a movie.

SUB-AXIOM: There is a strong correlation between a person's intelligence and how much he or she speaks after a movie in the theater.

This afternoon I went to see The American again and would have enjoyed even more than I already do, had I not been stricken with what I call "cinemal sub-vocalizers" in the seats behind me. Sub-vocalization is the name of a reading deficit wherein the reader vocalizes the text as she reads. Children are taught to outgrow this crutch, and advanced readers do not sub-vocalize. Rather, they read with "the voice in their heads." Famously, this ability was a marvel to Augustine when he witnessed Ambrose reading silently in Milan. (Read this post for a discussion of Ambrose's broader impact on Augustine.) By now, silent reading is par for the cognitive course. In the world of reading, at least, but not yet in the deteriorating world of public cinema.

In a theater, cinemal sub-vocalizers are "those people" who, as soon as they hear dialogue, see an object, ponder a plot twist, misunderstand an event, or, really, just let their eyes and ears get stimulated by anything in the room, involuntarily and promptly vocalize every passing reaction: Why'd he do that? What's that? Who's she? Where are they going? These are the cinematic equivalent of backseat drivers, the movie world's mouth-breathers, and they inspire me to train my neck muscles just so I perform Olympic-level reverse headbutts over a chair.

I'm tempted to call cinemal sub-vocalization a kind of audio-visuallly induced epilepsy, since it's like "those people" take a mental bathroom break every few seconds and come back to ask what they missed. Then, without fail, as soon as the credits roll––if not sooner!––, the sub-vocalizers begin nattering on about something completely unrelated as they scurry out. By the last third of the film today I lost count of how many times I sighed and face-palmed, to no avail. Was I really so wrong to hope a bullet or two from George Clooney's gun might have broken the fourth wall and 86'd the mouth-breathing on my neck?

There can be only one...

The famous tagline for The Highlander movies (movies which became increasingly infamous and cringe-worthy as time passed). If you've seen the trailer for part 1 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows--I admit I've never read a Potter book nor watched any of the films-- , perhaps you noticed one of the slogans: "Only One Can Live." I've been reading Thomas Aquinas on a daily basis for the past few weeks and one "slogan" I've encountered many times in his writings is along the lines that "all things tend to one," or that "Nature is disposed to unity." So when I saw the slogan in the Harry Potter trailer, I was struck by how perennial wisdom surfaces even in the most unexpected places. No one goes to a Harry Potter for lessons in metaphysics--well, perhaps some people go for lessons in "the metaphysics section at Borders" metaphysics--, yet in that slender slogan, they are encountering a fundamental principle of true metaphysics. The quest of scientists for a grand unified theory is a profound reflection of the metaphysical 'instinct' in all things to find unity in the final end of all reality. The highest aim of science is to reach a total, intelligible account of reality, even reality that surpasses humans' perceptual and, indeed, conceptual powers.

This is all a sad instance of man's noetic fallenness, for, in a rectified intellect, the willingness to admit an ultimate account of reality, rooted in principles that surpass spatiotemporal perception and which, of themselves, unalterably account for the contents of reality, should generate a parallel admission of an equally autonomous cause of reality as existing metaphyiscally prior to the spatiotemporal contours of the final account. The convergence of all things to unity--and this unity would of course be absolute and non-contingent, on account of its pure non-composition--, is but the mirror image of their origin from one cause.

The appearance of this principle in something as "fluffy" as Harry Potter reveals how the primacy and ultimacy of the One is not only a metaphysical but also an ethical principle. It is only the dramatic tension of all things converging to unity--"There can be only one"--which makes Harry Potter a genuinely human and humane narrative. A life directed to many disparate ends is a degenerate life, not the life of a hero.

Lines that made me laugh…

"He's a violent, sociopathic, Haitian criminal named Cheese. Either you know 'im or you don't."
–– Remy Bressant, Gone Baby Gone

The measure of a man…

In college I took a course on existentialism, so, naturally, we read a fair share of Sartre. I don't recall in which text I read it, but I do recall Sartre made an argument against essence along the following lines. Imagine a famous author that died too young. Perhaps David Foster Wallace, or Franz Kafka, etc. It is a common sentiment, Sartre notes, that "he surely had one more great novel/story left in him, if only…." Yet, Sartre says, this is folly, for as a matter of existential fact, all that so-and-so had in him was what he actually wrote. When his time was up, his "essential" abilities were gone too. Wallace had no great work left in him, since he died having written only as much as he in fact wrote, and, thus, only as much as he could have written. Likewise, Heath Ledger had no future glory in him, since he died having performed only as much as his actual nature allowed him. There is no essence which grounds human potential, Sartre argues, but only the existential exigencies of what each of us does here and now, et puis c'est fini. This view I shall call existential actualism.

Something about this reasoning has always bothered me. Imagine for instance a wine glass falling from a table that is caught in midair by the waiter. Presumably, Sartre would say that the wine glass could not have fallen any further than it did, since it did not fall any further than it fell. But this is not only a truism but also undermines reasoning and physical science. If nothing can fall farther than it in fact fell, then we have no basis for conceiving of what "fall" is, since only what is understood to have traversed from point x to point y is understood to fall. And if something can be understood to traverse the distance from x to y, then it can just as meaningfully be understood to traverse the distance from y to z. Further, if every time an experimenter declared the subject of his study could not in principle have acted differently than it did in fact act, then there would be no basis for inquiring how anything else acts. Hence, there would be no reason for Sartre to look at "humanity" on a case by case basis, since knowing what Human #XYZ did is just to know what "human nature" itself can or cannot do. If human #XXYYZZ can, upon "concrete" investigation" do other than what #XYZ did, then the ascription of "humanness" to #XYZ and #XXYYZZ is equivocal, and Sartre's theory has proved nothing about human nature, much less about the nature of #XYZ. At most he has proved that #XYZ cannot do -P when #XYZ did P. A truism of existential proportions.

An even more fundamental problem with Sartre's position, however, is that it undermines his own theory of existential action, since, if at any time t, agent A could not in principle do otherwise than he is doing, then there is no grounds for saying that A at t+1 could do something different. If A is defined existentially by the concrete actuality of his existence at t, then only an essence which persists from t to t+1 grounds any changes which might be meaningfully ascribed to A. Hence, despite all his passionate exhortations to political, sexual, aesthetic, etc. action, Sartre's existential actualism amounts to a paralyzing form of fatalism that strait-jackets the will inside its immediate existential accidents. In this light, it is even more apt to consider David Foster Wallace vis-à-vis Sartre's argument, since, apparently, as an undergraduate at Amherst, Wallace wrote a paper to refute Richard Taylor's doctrine of fatalism.

In any event, I want to propose a novel scenario which I think further highlights the absurdity (irony alert!) of Sartre's existential actualism. Consider a man, named Jack the Bear, with an incorrigible desire to slap women in the face (if not much else worse besides). Cue the soundtrack of A Clockwork Orange! After a few tragic cases, the authorities realize Jack the Bear is incorrigible and take steps to sequester him from society. In jail, however, it proposed that an electrical device be inserted in Jack's inguinal region, a device which electrocutes him every time a conjunction of various "violent" motor actions and "lustful" intentions occur. (Presumably, neuroscience is advanced at this point to "map" the brain so precisely.) After many trials, the Jack is set free and, lo and behold, every time he gets reaches to fulfil his sadistic-misogynistic urges, Jack is crippled by a shock to the groin. And so he spends his days, never again harming a woman. At his funeral, it is said of Jack that he was a good man, since he never again harmed a woman after some sad earlier moral failures. Yet, would Jack the Bear really be good just because he had not hurt any women after his operation? I should say not. I gope yo agree. A rabid dog on a leash is still rabid, not healthy. Yet, Sartre would have to say Jack the Bear died a virtuous man, since, objectively, he never again committed any violence, nor even rose to half the stature of lashing out. He was a pleasure to live with, in fact (once one learned to ignore his agonized screams and flailing). The absurdity of Jack's case underscores the fact that goodness resides more in the (rational) will than in the (behavioral) effects of the will. Hence, a person, like Jack, is more than his existential actualities. Anything more than what it is in concrete actualities, however, has an essence which dynamically "overflows" anything it does existentially. Hence, anything a man does never fully exhausts what he is essentially.

So, let me ask you: Is it a capacity given by your human nature (or, your essential humanity) to read any farther than the following asterisk? *





























































I thought so.

Gym regimen - September 2010

28 September 2010
Ur-Workout, 60 mins
91kg, BMI 25.5

0. Warmup: Stretching, curls, flyes, dips, squats

1. Bench press: 12, 9, 6 @ 65kg, 75kg, 85kg

2. Lat pulldown: 12, 9, 6 @ 65kg, 75kg, 85kg

3. Dumbbell curl (per hand): 10, 8, 6 @ 17–27kg
[Something about these weights––as I've written them––seems off. I mean to tell me that I curled 59lb for 6 reps per hand on my last set?! Or, then again, that I curled the equivalent of 54kg for two hands?! I guess dumbbell curls are just easier. Admittedly, I alternated hands, which gave the opposite hand a slight rest every rep. I will have to confirm the weights next time I am at the gym. Maybe I've been using kilograms so long now that I've lost my sense of how many pounds I should be able to do, but 60lb curls sounds, well… either sadly inaccurate or… totally awesome!]

4. Barbell military press (seated): 10, 8, 6 @ 40–45kg

5. Dips: 10, 11, 12

6. Squat: 12, 9, 6 @ 70kg, 77.5kg, 85kg

7. Stiff-leg deadlift (EZ bar): 12, 9, 6 @ 57kg, 67kg, 77kg

+ + +
I went lighter on the bench press today and did dips for my triceps. Dips! Holy tricep, Batman! It was the first time I have done dips in a very long time, so I wasn't sure about my form, and don't even have a recollection of it now, since I just wanted to do what I could on a diagnostic test run. I definitely felt stronger when I crossed my feet and the dips gave me an awesome pump. According to this page, the benefits of dips fall out like so: "Push-ups have your feet planted. Dips move your whole body through space. Dips are harder and thus superior to Push-ups because you have to balance your body. Other benefits of Dips: Build Strength. Dips build lockout strength: straightening your elbows. This helps the Bench Press & the Overhead Press. Build Muscle. Dips will develop your triceps & chest muscles." You can say that again.

I'll work traps and abs tomorrow. I need to sleep better.

Had a great confessor last Sunday. I love the Mass. I love the Mass. I love the Mass!

I've got a good number of posts I hope I can get out in the next few weeks but I've got a lot of teaching hours and I'm collaborating to author an ESL textbook, among other things.

I recently saw Miami Blues and Glengarry Glen Ross, the former which stars Alec Baldwin and the latter which features him in a seven-minute quasi-monologue––and then not again––, for which he nearly won an Oscar. I have a new found respect for Alec Baldwin as a phenomenal actor. A true screen "presence." And very versatile: tender, comical, wounded, sadistic, innocuous.

I also recently got around to watching City of God, the award-winning 2002 Brazilian film about life in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. It's a searing depiction of even more searing realities. Well worth more than one viewing. It is the film that Slumdog Millionaire tried to be. (Tried to be, mind you.) The director, Fernando Meirelles, has been likened to Martin Scorsese, and City of God would be an interesting film to watch in conjunction with Mean Streets.

The thought that persists most vividly for me is, "What sense can the Christian Gospel make of the antagonist, Li'l Zé?" He is a sadist from childhood and grows up to become, for a time, the lord of crime in Rio de Janeiro. From that perspective, he is a disturbingly vivid instance of the truth of original sin. On the other hand, I can't fathom what it would be like trying to evangelize and convert someone like him. (I should mention that Li'l Zé is merely one token of a more pervasive type in the favela, which only amplifies my discomfiture.) To say that life is cheap in the favelas is a truism, and to say life is cheap in Li'l Zé's eyes is virtually a tautology. I can't imagine what would move him, on a purely human, psychological level, to repent and pursue anything like a chaste life of humble piety. Warning him of Hell would, I fear, do nothing: he would either say, "Bring it," or simply be unable to imagine a difference between Hell and life as he's known it. Conversely, enticing him with the prospect of Heaven would, I suspect, only fuel his incorrigible lust for power––"What will my take be when we get there, how big will my turf be?"

Hence, I suppose the only "sense" Christianity can make of someone like Li'l Zé, or the only way the Gospel can "handle" the Li'l Zé's of the world is by truly supernatural means. Only the Holy Spirit can, or would, change a heart like Li'l Zé's. Unfortunately, he so consistently hardens his heart against natural goodness––and has been so deeply hardened by life––that it may be just as much an act of God's glory, as a just God, to release Li'l Zé to a perpetual insensibility to supernatural goodness. This is an important truth: if you can't love anything natural, the supernatural has that much less ability to generate divine love in such a craggy heart. If you don't have a natural affection for animals, you lack one step in the ladder that rises to loving the Maker of animals. Perhaps because Li'l Zé insists the world be as bleak and mercenary as he feels it is, he ends up with exactly the world he deserves, that is, the world of his own making. Getting a whole world all to yourself, all by yourself––that is, in a sense, all that the doctrine of Hell means: you get to wallow in your own delusions and fears forever since you chose to wallow in them, and make others wallow with you, before dying.

It dawns on me, of course, that a secular ethic has an even harder time making sense of Li'l Zé, since, on that ethic, life is about maximizing your own human potential without causing inordinate suffering in others. And while Li'l Zé certainly caused plenty of suffering in others, it is arguably impossible to say he caused inordinate suffering, since he instinctively followed a fiercely self-authentic "inner compass" and a socially regulated ethic that can only be judged from within the very milieu in which it functions. To deny the reality of absolute good and evil is to allow for two absurdities: first, that nothing Li'l Zé, or someone like him, does is intrinsically evil, and, second, that there is no truly greater good for which Li'l Zé, or any other person, could live and be called simply good. Goodness resides in an execution of one's will, as the power of affection, to gravitate towards that which is good. If, however, that-which-is-good simpliciter does not exist, there is nothing toward which the will can gravitate in principle, and thus, no one is good. Consequently, if no one is good, no one is bad, and Li'l Zé is not evil or mean or villainous: he's simply amoral in a different way. Which is of course just more bullshit to be shoveled out by secularist ethics.

Gym regimen - September 2010

10 September, 2010 (W)
Ur-Workout: 50-60 mins
90kg, BMI 25

0. Warmup: Stretching, leg extensions, leg curls, lat pulldowns, bench press

1. Bench press: 12, 10, 8, 6 @ 60–80kg

2. Pullups: 13, 15, 16*
[I used wrist straps for my second and third set. My right forearm has been really sore lately, partially due to the pronation involved in curls, partially due to the habit of resting my forearm on the table when I read, and partially just due to, um, all the bobdybuilding I've been doing the last three months. The 16th rep on the 3rd set used a big kip/negative.]

2a. Lever bench row: ø

3. EZ Bar military press: 10, 8, 6 @ 35-55kg

4. Barbell curl: 10, 8, 6 @ 35–45kg
[Very high and tight form on these, though I did feel more tired than on Wednesday. Awesome pump on my 3rd set. It's definitely Friday, time for a full weekend off.]

5. Elbows-out extension: 10, 8, 6 @ 18–22kg (per hand)

6. Decline leg press: 16, 13, 11* @ 160kg, 170kg, 185kg
[I could have gone a good bit heavier on these. The 11th rep of the 3rd set was a bottoms-up press: I lowered the plate all the way to the bottom and pressed up from negative. A deep dig on that one!]

7. Stiff-leg deadlifts: 12, 10, 8 @ 55–70kg

8. Standing calf raise: ø

+++
I'll be joining in for the annual Sun Moon Lake swim this Sunday. 27,300 people swimming across the lake. It will be a nice full-body workout, but I will be taking it nice and slow. Get myself limber. I've been doing my Ur-Workout for a month now and the results are satisfying. I will be taking next week easy, mostly to give my forearms some time to recover, but also so that my body is refreshed to go to a slightly higher level with the Ur-Workout. I see no reason--and have little time--to go on a 4-day routine until I feel the Ur-Workout isn't getting me anywhere, which should not happen for another few months. Rest is actually a much larger part of strength training than most people realize. I'm looking into it!

UPDATE:

Thursday was the first time in weeks I have been able to do jumping jacks! I only did 60, but it shows my foot is getting much better. It was an off-day so at home I did dumbbell shrugs, standing Russian twists, oblique leans, and alternating rowing crunches. For the Russian twists I hold some weight at my throat/chest and twist from side to side with a dip in the legs each time. I've explained the oblique leans before, but I noticed they only feel effective with a fairly large weight, or at a very high number of reps. I've been doing rowing crunches since I was 13. I alternate in a set between, say, 10 straight reps and then 10 reps from side to side. Here's a demo video, but I've never been trained to do them on a bench, nor to hold onto anything. In crew, we did them on the ground and kept our hands crossed at our chest, or at least hovering by our hips. Having the hands at your chest really adds a nice touch to the alternating reps.

Now that my foot is on the mend, I can get back to my successful career as a diamond thief. The Russians got the better of me last time, but I should be ready for another job in the next few weeks. Hey, a switchblade in the foot will slow anybody down.

I've also finally decided that Inception is simply not a great film. It's a great series of gimmicks and high-intensity close-ups glued together with far too much clichéd existentialist, Jungian, Freudian, meta-narrative allegorisation. I don't regret that I saw it five times, since seeing it each time involved hanging out with friends.

Stay tuned.

Gym regimen - September 2010

4 September, 2010
Ur-Workout: 60+ mins
90kg, BMI 25

0. Warmup: Stretching

1. Bench press: 12, 10, 8, 6 @ 60–75kg
[I held myself back from putting up too much weight. I'm really serious about giving my chest time to develop and catch up with the rest of my physique. I refuse to be in a rush. Interestingly, since I had to work my tris more the last couple weeks to let my strained left pec recover, I can really feel how much a role my tris and lats play in my bench. From what I have read, this is a very good thing, since most lifters place so much emphasis on a "celebrity chest" (with flyes, chest compressions, exercises with truncated range of motion and high pump, etc.) that they actually fail to develop the elements of a strong bench press. I definitely felt more confident and stronger on the bench. 6 reps at 75kg felt very good.]

2. Pullups: 13, 14, 15 @ bodyweight
[I used wrist straps on my last set.]

2a. Lever bench row: ø

3. Barbell military press: 12, 8, 6 @ 35-45kg
[These felt pretty good. I think I'll shoot for 35kg, 45kg, 50kg next time. I raised the front end of a bench up with some planks of wood, so as to keep my hips more tucked under me and curb that unpleasant bowing of my spine.]

4. Barbell curl: 10, 8, 6 @ 35–45kg
[Felt very good. Getting stronger! Patience, Humility, Confidence…]

5. Supine French press: 10, 8, 6 @ 30–40kg
[Very good form on these. Less intense weight than my previous workout, but I'd rather work my triceps up to real strength slowly with better form than yank my way through a few extra kilograms. I will swap them out for elbows-out tricep extensions next time.]

6. Leg extensions: 18, 15, 12 @ 40kg, 50kg, 55kg
[These just aren't as satisfying as the decline leg press, so I'll go back to that beloved exercise next time. In fact, maybe I should do both by dropping the weight on my leg extensions and moving them to my first exercise as a warmup.]

7. Leg curl: 16, 13, 10 @ 35-45kg
[Felt some strain in my right knee on my second set, so I might drop the weight a bit for these on my next workout.]

8. Standing calf raise: ø

9. Kneeling rope pulldown (20 + 10 obliques): 30, 30, 30 @ 35kg, 40kg, 40kg
[I used wrist straps on my last set, since these were just killing my forearms and thus making me lose good form.]

Cooldown: Ski machine and stretching

+++
I had a long nap this afternoon so, while I was a bit sluggish getting out the door and hadn't had lunch or much of a dinner before working out, I felt good tonight. There were very few people at the gym, which might have been due to the light rain, but is probably more due to the fact it was Saturday night. I make a special effort to workout the same time in the future, since not having to deal with other people makes everything smoother and faster.

Speaking of naps, I had a dream this afternoon. I rarely remember my dreams but lately I've been having dreams more frequently. Despite having seen it three times in the theater, I think part of the reason I can't sink my teeth into Inception, like so many other people seem to be doing, is because I can't get into its depiction of "the dream world." On the one hand, its portrayal of dream consciousness just seems fake to me, too smooth, not erratic or creepy or soothing enough––in a word, all too consciously designed. On the other hand, insofar as the characters are supposed to be professional dreamers––masters of lucid dreaming––, while Inception's depiction of that kind of dreaming may be spot-on, it's a kind of dreaming so far removed from my own experience as to seem boring and phony. I had a friend in high school who got very good at lucid dreaming; once, he told me, he flew to school one night to look for a lost textbook of his and found it in the same spot the next day. Props! As for me, I've only had a couple recurring dreams and my total dream catalogue would probably not amount to more than a few hours of "cutting room floor footage" glued together for people with lots of peyote in their bloodstreams.

DiCaprio was in Shutter Island, which came out six months or so before Inception and Shutter Island had the most stunning and believable depiction of dreams I have ever seen. Scorcese nailed what dreams are like: innocuous objects suddenly loom large, backgrounds shift without warning, disturbing symbolic motifs pop out of nowhere, and such events are nearly always taken in stride. I also recently got sucked into "the Primer universe." Primer is a 2004 independent film, by former software engineer and first-time director Shane Carruth, which not only has received high critical acclaim but is also a cult classic. Carruth made the film for US$7000 in five weeks (!) and only hired one professional actor for it, but it really is one of the best SF films ever made, and certainly a contender for the best "time travel" film in history. It is immensely complex, since by the end of the film, we are trying to navigate multiple non-linear timelines, so I ended up watching Primer three times in a row (whilst intermittently reading online "explanations" of it) one day last week. (Hey, it's only 77 minutes.) Primer deals with dreams only circumstantially––apparently, a certain kind of shared dreaming is an effect of the technology used by the characters––but it added to my recent interest in dreaming as such.

It also dawns on me now that there are some long-standing contributing factors to my perplexed, "bystander's" interest in dreams. For one thing, the opening chapter of my favorite book, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, is a dream sequence. Second, one of my all-time favorite films is The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which, while it focuses on memories, does show how dreams give body to our memories and memories give birth to our dreams. Third, another of my top-favorite films is Blade Runner, which is the film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? And then there's my recent return to Twin Peaks, a TV show that simultaneously intrigued and baffled me as a kid. I believe dreams are very important to David Lynch, since his work is so heavily driven by dreams (for better or worse!). Indeed, Special Agent Cooper's famous dream in "the Red Room" is the (ahem) linchpin to the progress of the series, as he claims he knows who the killer is based on some revelations in the dream which need only be deciphered to crack the case. I suppose it also says something that I've got a "Dreams" category in my blog, which surprised me when I re-realized that fact while writing this post, even though there are only two (now three) posts in that category. I generally find sleep boring since it's unproductive and, more important, I have such a scrawny dreamscape. Yet, dreams seem interesting enough to me that I've made a category for them. Frankly, I wish I enjoyed sleep more, which I think I would if I dreamt more. So….

So I have once again taken up the gauntlet and have begun a dream journal. I've once more taken up trying to read Harary and Weintraub's Lucid Dreams in 30 Days. (Incidentally, this video is a subtly hilarious saga of one man's journey to achieve lucid dreaming in 30 days with the same book!) Keeping a dream journal is one of the core steps in developing higher dream consciousness, since, allegedly, it says to your brain that you are serious about accessing your dreams. Another step is to develop the waking habit of frequently asking (and checking, by various means), "Am I awake right now?" so that, while dreaming, you may reflexively ask the same question and thereby trigger semi-lucid awareness in the dream. Another technique is to write an "A" (for "Awake") on your hand or arm, etc., so that, in the dream, you may recall seeing the "A" and thus wake yourself in the dream. Another technique is to note "dreamlike incidents" during the day, so that you will be more keen at saying to yourself, "This feels like a dream," which may allow you to say the same thing in a dream.

I won't record my recent dreams here, but I do want to record a few dreamlike experiences I've recently had.

1) A few weeks ago at Mass, I was sitting in a pew towards the back of the church. I glanced ahead and seated about twelve pews ahead of me, to my left, was an older woman holding a very large stuffed bear. I couldn't believe my eyes. I visibly squirmed in my seat and stared at her for several moments just to confirm what I was seeing. It was truly unheimlich. (A funny coincidence is that in Lynch's Twin Peaks, there is "the Log Lady," who is also an older woman––remarkably similar in appearance to the woman I saw at Mass––who carries a log with her wherever she goes. I saw "the Bear Lady" weeks before recalling "the Log Lady" by watching clips of Twin Peaks.) It was one of the few times when I could genuinely say, "I feel like I'm in a David Lynch movie." I said that to myself in the Mass, weeks before coming back to Twin Peaks. I saw her again a couple weeks later––with the bear in the crook of her elbow––, so it was not a figment of my imagination. Just that much more unheimlich.

2) A couple nights ago I was sitting talking with someone and there was a pause in the conversation. Suddenly a soft but insistent moaning sound filled the room. It was the tea kettle, in the kitchen, apparently designed to howl gently rather than whistle like conventional teapots. As soon as the sound began, I felt my ears arch back, like a cat's, and my spine stiffened. Again, extremely unheimlich and dreamlike; and again I said to myself, "Am I in a David Lynch movie?"

3) Just this afternoon I was reaching for something on the counter when I accidentally knocked an object into the sink. It gently struck a metal thermos and at the exact same instant my cell phone beeped to alert me to a text message. Certainly it was a trivial and perfectly explicable coincidence, but what made me pause––spine stiffened––was the exact timing and how the tones were in perfect harmony.

4) A few days ago I was catching up with a friend in Gmail chat. She told me she'd had a very vivid dream about me and some things in my life. What she told me was very apt. Hearing about her dream didn't seem dreamlike but, obviously, it stoked the flames of my interest. This friend is a very devout Christian and she wanted to encourage me that her dream could very well be a message of encouragement and confirmation from God. I admit it had that effect to some degree.

The Bible lays a lot of stress on the importance of dreams and in college a friend asked me, "What do you think is the biblical teaching on dreams?" (Apparently, she had a very active dream life and was wondering how to interpret various dreams: from God or just neurological backwash?) I pondered for a moment, trying to devise one of those dense aphorisms I strive for. I said, "Biblically, dreams are either indications of what's going within you or signs of what God is doing around you." That doesn't settle the question of "immanence"––viz., whether a dream is just my subconscious or an actual spiritual disclosure from God––but my point is that that may be a false dichotomy. Biblically, a Christian's entire 'external' life is but a mode of his 'inner' life with God and, more fundamentally, his existence as interiorized in the life of Christ Himself. Hence, if there is anything to the abiding, spiritual, and sacramental bond created between the believer and Christ, what my subconscious is showing me directly bears on what God is showing me, and vice versa.

Here's to praying my aversion to sleep and my scrawny dream life is not a sign of blocking out God or some truths about myself.

Well, that was immensely depressing…

I saw Formosa Betrayed tonight. And it left me profoundly depressed. I have a feeling the claim that the KMT killed 20,000 people in one day (February 28, 1947) is a bit inflated, but, even so––seeing a movie about how the foundation of Taiwan, the country I've called home for about seven years, was built on a military occupation… and that my own government abetted it all to go on… well, it's just depressing, even if a melodramatic depiction. My only "consolation" is that it just confirms my––our––pilgrim-status on earth. As Hebrews 11 says:

[13]These all died in faith, not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
[14] For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.
[15] If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return.
[16] But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

13 這 些 人 都 是 存 著 信 心 死 的 ， 並 沒 有 得 著 所 應 許 的 ； 卻 從 遠 處 望 見 ， 且 歡 喜 迎 接 ， 又 承 認 自 己 在 世 上 是 客 旅 ， 是 寄 居 的 。
14 說 這 樣 話 的 人 是 表 明 自 己 要 找 一 個 家 鄉 。
15 他 們 若 想 念 所 離 開 的 家 鄉 ， 還 有 可 以 回 去 的 機 會 。
16 他 們 卻 羨 慕 一 個 更 美 的 家 鄉 ， 就 是 在 天 上 的 。 所 以 神 被 稱 為 他 們 的 神 ， 並 不 以 為 恥 ， 因 為 他 已 經 給 他 們 預 備 了 一 座 城 。

A few other things are weighing on me as well––some translations and essays I have failed to complete for too long, some echoes of a past I said I would not revisit, general existential angst, etc.––so the movie only added to my transient melancholy. All I want to do is serve at St. Coletta's, study, write, and workout.

Part of the problem with "Taiwan and me" is that, while I "know" I "must" support Taiwan's independence––"democracy" is a demanding buzz word––, I don't have a clear idea of what Taiwanese independence would mean, functionally speaking. If it were granted complete diplomatic autonomy tomorrow, would this necessarily mean life here would get better? What if that just led to more machinations by the PRC to sabotage relations between Taiwan and others? Or to outright war? Or what if it led to a regime that expunged all non-Taiwanese elements and thus led to a culturally anemic and xenophobic island? Presumably, the idea of "freedom" is so noble in its own right that the Taiwanese, like all people, deserve to enjoy it, even if it entails pragmatic difficulties and woes. But that just assumes a lot of classic values which I don't think many advocates of Taiwanese independence are willing to grant in a different context. Specifically, and in a typically metaphysical vein, if determinism is true and "freedom" is an illusion for humans, why should I fight for it on behalf of these agents called nations? Divorced from a robust conception of human freedom as an irreducible good, much of the activism for "independence" boils down to politics and hedonism: "We don't like how Those Guys run things, because they run things, so we want to run things. And we don't like not being able to buy what we want, so we want to get what we want."

Maybe I feel like the protagonist in the movie: having never thought of coming to, or caring about, Taiwan, there came a point when he saw things, lived things, loved things, and lost things which he can never forget. Taiwan is a tainted place for him, like a giant haunted house. Maybe I feel the same way about Taiwan sometimes: having seen, lived, loved, lost––now what does going forward mean? At least Agent Kelly could quit the FBI; I can't quit myself. Like Agent Kelly, I find myself devastated by what I've lived, learned, loved, and lost in this country, and I can only wonder what the road ahead holds. Much to ponder.

A surprisingly effective evening…

…so effective, in fact, that I'm blogging about it! The world must know!

I've had some screwy nights of sleep lately and so, after Mass this morning, and after dragging myself to finish watching David Cronenberg's eXistenZ, I took a looooong nap. Then I had a shower––it's been so muggy and smoggy here lately––and headed out to meet a friend for dinner after not seeing each other for a while. On the way I picked up my laundry. We ate at a restaurant where another friend had left some items for me in the wake of his exodus from Taiwan. (I now have a sap, baby!) I had kimchi beef noodles (!) and we had a nice conversation. Then I swung by my favorite video shop and bought the whole Twin Peaks series at a bargain price (and with Chinese subtitles, if I'm not mistaken), as well as David Lynch's Elephant Man. On the way back home I got more cat food, with a bag of kitty litter thrown in for free, and then I got home to feed Cheetoh. She's "had a thing" lately about climbing up my dresser and, thus, knocking about various items and an icon of Our Lady with Child, so I had to crack down on her––I thumped her on the nose, yanked her out of the cranny, and tossed her out of my room with retributive force. Strangely enough, when I followed after her to seal my point and make peace, she knelt down and purred intensely while I held her. The funny thing is, for the past few weeks I haven't been able to find a knife of mine, but before I headed out this evening, Cheetoh crawled into and then behind a dresser drawer, which led me to extract the drawer––and there was my knife! Good evil kitty, good!

I've had a fairly slobbish bachelor streak lately, so I really need to clean up my room.

One thing I think I can safely say is that I find David Cronenberg's films consistently overrated. And I suspect I would say the same thing about Brian De Palma's films if I bothered to invest in viewing them. I understand how Cronenberg's Videodrome and Scanners truly were ahead of their time, and boasted enduring high-grade gory special effects, but in retrospect, I find them hammy and polluted by stilted acting. I don't think anything's changed in the intervening years, either, since eXistenZ (1999) was just as plodding and insufferably "thought-provoking" as Videodrome. The Brood and SHivers might be more promising, since they seem to be 'straight' horror flicks, rather than pretensious "concept movies" with indulgent visual gimmicks. Speaking of the latter, to this day I still have an ambient dread of the Unheimlichkeit of Cronenberg's adaptation of Naked Lunch, so maybe my subconscious is biased. I admit that Cronenberg's The Fly is a SF masterpiece by all accounts, but I don't think his other work should get a pass just because he struck gold with The Fly. Videodrome was a pioneering cult-classic "mindfuck flick," like the later Brazil, Memento, American Psycho, eXistenZ, The Machinist, Lost Highway, Shutter Island, and Inception, among many others of the genre. Alas I have come to realize how much I generally dislike mindfuck flicks––you know, those movies that "try too hard" and insist by any convoluted means to "raise doubts" in the audience's mind about "reality vs. illusion." Yawn. Give me a concrete story, like The Fly or Memento or American Psycho, with discernible moral and existential stakes. By contrast, eXistenZ is just boring, predictable, and ultimately irrelevant. What's a game and what's real? I don't know, and I don't even care. That's the problem: if, in a movie, the main part of the plot is a total illusion that functions just like a total reality, then who cares where the characters end up? Memento and Shutter Island worked because they were diagetically taut and dealt with a tragic figure who was ultimately protrayed on the real horns of a real-world dilemma. American Psycho worked as well but for a different reason: it conveyed the madness of misogynistic nihilism in an unparalleled way and left us grasping for a way out of the protagonist's mind. Pardon my rambling, but it irritates me how easily some "auteurs" can puff up sensational viewings just with some amateur philosophical tricks and special effect gimmicks. Or maybe I just find unbearable any director who is so self-consciously psychoanalytic with his imagery: slugs as phallus, a gun as phallus, an uplink cable as phallus, etc., etc.

Tomorrow morning I'll be helping the pastor here to set up some software on his computer tomorrow and then hit the gym. And I absolutely must finish an essay revision for a collaboration presentation at a conference in November!

Oh and here's something amazing I read in C. H. Vanderwolf's The Evolving Brain: a diet of fresh (raw and/or cured) fat meat plus water provides a complete nutrition. Despite having no fruits or vegetables or grain in their diet, Eskimos don't develop rabbit starvation and in the early 20th century two researchers mimicked their diet (plus black coffee and tea) for a year without any serious setbacks, one of the men having lived on the Inuit diet for nine years before that study. I guess I'm the type of guy who's tempted to try that diet for at least half a year.

Gym regimen – July 2010

July 31, 2010

I did a few minutes of jump rope and stretching, but my calves felt tired. Plus I knew I was only warming up for… AN ERG! I had decided to do another erg on the last day of my 7-day trial membership at World Gym, and––old habits die hard––my mind was sweating it and my stomach was in tiny knots all Saturday before I got to the gym. The erg I did last week was a lark, but this latest challenge was intentional and, moreover, driven by a desire to beat my previous time (7'32"). I did about 500m of warmup strokes at about 26 strokes per minutes. And then I hit it. I felt more tired than on the previous erg but I was determined to "punch it in." My strokes dipped to about 28 per minutes around 1000–1200m but I got it back up and then 'sprinted' at about 33spm for the last 500m. My time? 7'10" raw (6'39" adjusted!). Booyashaka. So, I accomplished my goal, and then did about 500m of cooldown. The problem now is that I must try to defeat my new PR the next time I get on an erg… which, while a grim prospect, is not likely to happen anytime soon. Working out at World Gym is the only way I know of to use an erg in Taichung, though someday I'd love to invest in one for my "home."

After the erg, I did three sets of bench press, finding with some delight that I did 2 reps at 80kg (176lb), which means I'm not so totally far from my college strength as I had feared. The problem is that my "A" workout had me doing 36 reps over 4 sets, which drained anything I had for power on, among other things, the bench. My Ur-Workout, which I plan to commence tomorrow, will have me doing at most 24 reps over three sets, so I should be able to get more volume and power… and, thus, strength… in the coming weeks.

After the bench, I did 4 sets of cable pulldowns (30 reps or so at about 50kg) for abs and serrati anterior. I also did a little decline bench and grip training. Melted in the hot tub and showered up. Met a Ukrainian guy, too, so maybe I'll try to learn Russian for the next five months while he's still in Taiwan.

Oh, yeah… earlier in the day I saw Inception and while it is technically excellent, I admit I found it longwinded and rather tiring. Despite my highly abstract nature, "concept movies" leave me flat much of the time. (My Dinner with André, for example, was good… but not that good.) I will, however, see it again, since allegedly seeing it again, but with gnosis about what's really happening (!!!), will totally alter one's perception of the film, and, of course (cue rousing timpani!), of REALITY ITSELF!!! I heard and thought the same would be true of DiCaprio's previous "gnostic mindfuck flick", Shutter Island, but in fact I loved it on my first viewing and found it tiresome and transparent on a second viewing. Unfortunately, Inception doesn't have the advantage of a deeply satisfying first viewing, so I hope a second viewing will catch me by surprise. Maybe I should have a coffee before I see it. Or maybe I'm just having a typical inverted-snobbish allergic reaction to way too much hype. Or maybe I should take a zolpidem and fight the delirium during the film so, verily, it will be like living a dream within a dream. (Anyone remember the Bad Idea Jeans skit on SNL about 20 years ago?!)

Stay tuned.

Random observations…

I think Freud missed his target by a few species. All that stuff about stages of anal and fecal and genital fixation in human children––bah! I've never seen a greater fecal fixation than in my new kitten. I had cats when I was a kid but I never realized how fascinated––obsessed?––they are with their own excretions. Cheetoh may be mewling for food and then ear-deep in the bowl, but as soon as I go over to shovel the piss pebbles and sandy little turds out of her litterbox, she drops everything (as it were, since cats, you understand, don't have hands, and therefore…) to sit attentively by the box, watching my every move. It's as if she hid drug money in there and is waiting to see if I'll discover it this time around. Or maybe she's curious to see what I can contribute to the malodorous little sandbox.

Is this normal cat behavior?

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Generally, in Taiwan, if it's open, it's open; if it's not open, it's closed. Shops and restaurants, I mean. Despite having heard Taiwanese people tout themselves on how "green" they are as a nation, it is totally run of the mill to see the doors of a shopping mall or a restaurant wide open to the sun, allowing hordes of cold-air ghosts to gush out. (And don't get me started on how much snoke they produce by burning "ghost money" every few days for lunar events.) Often, restaurants won't even have doors; they'll just have retractable metal security walls that roll up for business hours and roll down for security after hours. As a result, customers will be lined up halfway in and halfway out of the place, as those leaving or those just looking buzz and weave around pillars and the crowd at every angle. As long as the doors are open, the shop is open for business, even if it looks dark or slow from the street. By contrast, in the USA, it is my recollection that every establishment has well maintained doors and that the only way you'll know if it's open or not is if the lights are on and customers are visible. How many times have I (or you) heard this line, "Son, go up and check the hours", to ascertain whether a place is open or not?

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I saw Predators last week and loved it. It really brought back the old rush from the original. I was a big Predator fan, though I never got into the sequels. Plus, hey, the original was AN AHNOLD MOVIE!

I also watched Session 9 last night, having heard rave reviews of it at, of all places, Dr. Feser's blog, and hoo boy was that creepy, even despite the fact I was on and off busy sorting and haging clothes, warding off a curious kitten from the keyboard, and other such bacheloristic diversions. It's currently available for viewing at Youtube (in nine parts, aptly enough) and I highly recommend it. I'm about a third the way through The Ninth Configuration, for which I have seen many very positive reviews from some friends and Internet-acquaintances. It is surreal and gripping, but also plain funny. Sort of like Catch-22 meets My Dinner with Andre. I understand it ultimately deals with some very profound religious matters, such as evil and suffering, and it was written by Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist, and by all accounts a very devout Catholic. Also highly recommended, and also (again, in nine parts!) available for viewing at Youtube.

Time for coffee.