william.scherk

CLUE:

Wrong, Adam, Anticipation is one of the eight possibly correct answers to the question. See the clue above. Daunce, Love is, unfortunately, not basic. I can give you a fresh hint after dinner.

Can you go back and change your poll results? There is a coupon in it for you.

Special Hint:

Okay, then I'm going to change my answer to Ann Coulter's sister, Robert Conrad's dad, Laura Branigan's niece, Bill Hader's daughter, Dave Letterman's cousin, and Maggie Gyllenhaal's mom. Ah, I see. Well, you are Almost Correct, let`s just put it that way. Kinda like Almost winning the lottery, but anyway. Do you need another hint? Carol, to be explicit, the 'colour-wheel' is just an aide-memoire and a tool that HINT used for representation. The colours are of course arbitrarily chosen, so your reactions are understandable, but not in the remit of the POLL. Note that when we scored Adam's answer, we did so not because of Yellow, but because of FEAR. The pointing, not the finger, sister.

Someone must dial up the Time Lord's number and explain that a Certain Someone has been transported here against her better interests. I am not a master in these matters. Are her answers up on the board? Does she know where she is? All I care about is The Experiment, dammit!

I thought it was a collection of celebrities' relatives: Ann Coulter's mom, Robert Conrad's little brother, Laura Branigan's cousin, Bill Hader's sister, Dave Letterman's uncle, and Maggie Gyllenhaal's grandmother. J Jonathan, you are temporarily disqualified for writing in grey. But you are, as seen by the new numbers on the board, edging into the lead at this time. Here is your hint: Plutchik

At this moment there are 3 incorrect answers in the Poll results. [NB 1 -- HINT: you must choose 8 answers from the poll, every single one of you who are now on the board. Go back and change your answers to reflect this criteria). Adam, you have just received three bonus points, because I believe you already guessed without hinting that 8 is the key. So, here's the deal. I will double your points if you can tell me ONE of the answers on the board already that is wrong. Check the edit time on this message to set your clock. You have one hour. For each incorrect answer you give me I will give you one correct answer backstage. Remember, everyone can cheat, even me. That is what being Teacher/Torture Fantasy Facilitator is all about. I will be revising this HINT in 10 minutes. It might disappear, it might have an untrue statement added to it. It might contain misdirection by changing emphasis. Free HINT for Phil: One of the statements in the paragraph above is untrue. The statement is less than eight words long from capital to period.]

At this moment, there are six correct answers in the Poll results. [NB 1 -- this is both a good clue and a bad clue? Which one? I am not saying at the moment. Check back for details]

I can't read pencil.

Scores as of the editing time. Bill [score obscured, since he doesn't want anyone to know how he crapped out from the top of his head when he tested his own knowledge before devising the test] Adam A+ [a fuller breakdown is available at my blog post, linked below. It contains clues and also a five-dollar coupon. Phil is, for the moment, on my ignore list, so that he cannot even see the clues on the Blog -- if he logs out and tries to cheat he will not be able to see ANYTHING of any blog at all.] Phil F [Phil can get a fuller breakdown at my blog, but only when and if he complies with the Rules. Since I am a fair person in between fits of rage and destruction, I suspend the rules for 24 hours from the dateline on this post. But, here is the kicker. If you have played by the rules so far, you can message me** for the Correct Answers. There are no rules for this -- as soon as all 8 correct answers appear in the Poll results, you can bullshit me that you already answered them anyway. And remember, since I CANNOT read pencil, I also have no clue if you cheat. Or how kids cheat these days. So, if Adam wants to get all the answers out of me and sell them to Phil (or Carol, if she gets on the board) he can do that.]

Phil, there are two special rules for you in this thread and two special exceptions from General Rules, and one Explicit Rule that everyone else understands implicitly. 1. Pay Attention 2. Look For Clues 3. Watch what I am pointing at, not The Finger 4. Answer the Poll if you want to be replied to in this thread by me from this moment on 5. You may change your answers in the poll at any time 6, You, and YOU ALONE are able to bring in further illustrations to broader our understanding of both The Point and The Question. 7. If you quote another post from OL, you will use either of the two following formats in your quotation: a) standard OL quote / includes conversational paraphrase such as earlier in this discussion (two posts up), George said this, "Blah Blah Phil Fuck Blah Argh Kill Me No Not the Challenge ARGH!" b) None (meaning, in particular, if you use one of your fucking little left-caret or 'left-angle' bracket things (circa Usenet 1996 and email lists since the dawn of time, I CANNOT SEE YOU. 8. There are eight correct answers to the Poll. That is your final answer, Phil. Now, since you at least grasped a portion of the task, I will score you. a) what you did was label three of the 'false flag' clues from the second image. You forgot about 1) the Poll 2) the first image b) your labels were anger, fear, disgust surprise, joy/happiness/pleasure, sadness or wistfulness or longin c) your attempt at the task Adam recognized resulted in 0 answers, thus giving you 0 on task awareness at this stage. However, you transferred the task paradigm to the second target (which had no labels, and was a False Friend). You get then, full points only for 1/2 of the answer FEAR, and thus would get 1/6 of the score applied to the whole task set. Since, unlike Adam, you did not understand what was being asked of you by a exponent of 1/8, this further reduces your provisional score, I am sad and disappointed to say. Phil, if you have an understanding of only 1/8, and have misapplied two clues, you are not eligible for bonus or percentage as was Adam. Your score stands at only 7 per cent, Phil (and no, that is not 70 marks against Adam's provisional 55. It reads SEVEN. And Teacher is getting just a little bit vexed with you already.

NB -- if you do not participate in the poll, I judge that you are not participating in the thread. However, since that was not Explicit in the instructions: If you do NOT vote in the poll, I cannot see you in the replies. You are invisible to me. Remember the teacher (usually some beeyotch of any gender with Very Tight Hair) who would tell you "I don't read pencil," or worse (her name was Miss Whateverthefuck in Grade 8 and I Crushed her that year because she had also said, "I can tell if you MADE UP your essays." I thought to myself, "If you are too stupid to be able to read pencil, then you are also too stupid to discover that my Final Essay was COMPLETELY made up, from references (I didn't even look in the Library) to statements (ALL made up), and not only that, Beeyotch, but I wrote it ENTIRELY the night before it was due, just to put the final torch to your presumption that "I CAN TELL if you wrote it the Night Before It Was Due." No, you couldn't, you stupid thing, and you quashed all imagination in your class except in me, who watched as your mouth and face moved but your hair did not, none of it, and while you obviously had PENCILS in your fucking desk (I looked, bitch), and you had notes written in fucking PENCIL in your desk on some shit from some fucking teacher committee meeting. You were a liar, and you spoiled school for me that year because I was such a bitter little thing at twelve). So, Rule: if you do not write in pen, in the poll, I CANNOT see your replies. If you persist, you will be penalized. HOWEVER, since we start with a Fresh Slate here in this classroom, I will assign initial points. Adam, you got three options (knowing that there are two correct answers and one incorrect answer on the poll right now). You put forth one correct answer out of three possible correct answers, so that your first score is I in 3. I adjust your score upward (for being the first to answer in a succinct way). I add a bonus 20 points to the 100 point index, putting your score at 53.3 per cent, rounded up to a score of 54. Once I add further adjustments for bravery, the secret Brevity formula, the Pertinent Words Percentile algorhythm, we arrive at your initial score of 55. Good work. On the task, however, you have a raw score of 0 so far, so if we used a co-factor of two to the Question in the Poll (correct numbers of basic emotions/correct answers) by ratio. You are in the lead only because you are in the game. Otherwise ...

Over on the main OL forum, under Psychology, I started this poll or quiz or whatchamacallit. I think I might only issue instructions to the pupils prisoners respondents on the main forum as the Lesson Plan unfolds. Here is perhaps where I will react. Ha! And patrol the comments like a mongoose. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ This comes with rolling quiz questions, and also clues and hints and helping information. My Name is Mrs Grundy. This is my classroom. Please fasten your harnesses and we will begin. The subject is emotion. The question is, "If we could illustrate our emotions by way of a 'colour wheel,' what would it say?" 1. Here is one image which contains clues, hints, ideas for cheating, and helping information. There are no 'correct' answers (until I unveil them and begin with the Corrective Ruler). Look at the Orange slice of the pie and figure out what is written there. Also please note that the examining magistrate has already seeded the results with two correct answers (and one incorrect one). Good luck. Prizes and Punishments will be announced later. 2. Here is another image. It contains a very good hint and helping information (if you know the purpose to which this image was used in psychological study -- and, better yet, know to what purpose it is used as evidence of the very thing it was used to look for. You do not need to steep in Foucault or Rand to get this helping information. It contains the key to the rest of the exam, and the Central Point of my Joycean Rant. In other words, I give you every opportunity to Cheat Wildly) but also a bit of unhelpful information in these notes. I might be drunk. I might want to entice you into the Torture Classroom.This is Open Book. Beware, this picture contains False Friends, like a page of mugshots that misses suspects entirely. Source: A Necronomicon for Emotion, Or, The Emotonomicon

This comes with rolling quiz questions, and also clues and hints and helping information. My Name is Mrs Grundy. This is my classroom. Please fasten your harnesses and we will begin. The subject is emotion. The question is, "If we could illustrate our emotions by way of a 'colour wheel,' what would it say?" 1. Here is one image which contains clues, hints, ideas for cheating, and helping information. There are no 'correct' answers (until I unveil them and begin with the Corrective Ruler). Look at the Orange slice of the pie and figure out what is written there. Also please note that the examining magistrate has already seeded the results with two correct answers (and one incorrect one). Good luck. Prizes and Punishments will be announced later. 2. Here is another image. It contains a very good hint and helping information (if you know the purpose to which this image was used in psychological study -- and, better yet, know to what purpose it is used as evidence of the very thing it was used to look for. You do not need to steep in Foucault or Rand to get this helping information. It contains the key to the rest of the exam, and the Central Point of my Joycean Rant. In other words, I give you every opportunity to Cheat Wildly) but also a bit of unhelpful information in these notes. I might be drunk. I might want to entice you into the Torture Classroom.This is Open Book. Beware, this picture contains False Friends, like a page of mugshots that misses suspects entirely. undefined

Here's an excerpt from Phil's standalone "The Objectivist Psychologists and Me."

What is almost interesting is that the whole conception and implementation of lese-majesty laws is fascinating. And yes, Phil was no doubt joking. Whew. Anyway, in an uninteresting digression, I should point out what a potent thing was lese-majesty. If you could fuse the personality of th eking with his minions, you could come up with a class of laws that would last a thousand years. In Syria there are about 5 lese-majesty laws. Most are of the standard Insulting the Dignity of the State varieties, but Syria's suite is quite sophisticated. Symbols of the states include its head, its judiciary, on and on to Catch-376. Thus you get things like a former high judge charged and jailed for fifteen years for Lese-Majesty. In my many researches this year, I tried to understand the criminal code offences that webbed free expression guaranteed by its constitution. What the one hand giveth, the right hand taketh away. In France recently a farmer who insulted Sarkozy in his face was charged with a code offence. Luckily not tortured and jailed. Phil, it is an interesting digression for particular folks, so I won't quibble no more, but hey, all I meant to say was that this wasn't my focus, nor my message. Lese-majesty, lovely lese-majesty, lovely majesty that must not be wounded. For those whose religions forbid dictionaries, lesion is the word-cousin to lese in lese-majesty. Lesion is a fancy way of saying wound. Onward, onward, to the drain!

Carol, this is when the room starts to spin and my neck starts to prickle and I have The Feeling that I have been here before, because I am hit with the memory that I have already posted pictures to OL of these self-same seamless subway marvels. He wants to live here, but we will only let him come for visits, the monkey.

I am so, sooooo sorry Phil. I curtsy, I bow, I watch you slog back your drink and smack your lips and then watch you go down to the pit below the bar, again. I shall scurry over to Wikipedia, and in sombre tones let them them know that upon investigation, we have discovered, you and I, all breathless and a-flutter with our thrilling turn-up, that when you put a Google hound on the phrase 'lese majeste,' well, that hound comes back with a Wikipedia entry for some gawdawful stupid trash about a concept in law (mostly suffixes of Norman onto common-law procedures) called Lese-Majesty! As soon as I calm down and adjust my skirts, this is what I am going to sent off: I tell, you, Mr Smartypants Wikipedia, that we the hill people have turned up your fraud. Lese-Majesty is not a word. No one on earth spells it like that without being Degenerate. My gawd, Wikipedia, it is Wrong. Can you simply correct this quietly, sir, and Mr Coates and I can get back to his dinner? Oh, and before we go, I should let you know that I will be contacting Mr Dictionary and other important people who have been stunned and gutted by your fraud. It is not over, sir. I may speak softly, but even across this marble hall, across this symbol of power, across this mahogany rink of a desk, across the interstellar vacancies of the universe, from yon distant tower which is my prison home, you will forever hear me whisper, hoarsely, YOU are wrong, sir. Sir, you are wrong. I come but once a year, sir, from the pit in which I have been imprisoned on remand for seven hundred years, to correct your spelling of foreign-derived terms. And you stumble, sir, you stumble. The world and its precious words darkens back into medieval nightmare, I to the pit and then the tower and my tortures, you to your beer parlours and hockey rinks and Dictionaries lisping your garbled French through the stumps. . Hearken! Toodeloo! Bonnehomme Sept-heure! Boogeyman! Hamburger! Gros-porteur and courriel to you for your rendez-vous with justice, Mr Dictionary!

Yes! Even though I have ranted recently about who I write for (for me first), imagine the kind of writer who does not want a hall before him applauding as he trots out his schtick (or gives his talk) Of course, and I would be a liar if I say that making people laugh and twanging a string on Phil's banjo is not rewarding. Jeepers, even the fun I have on my volunteer shifts (with seniors) contains a large box named Audience. And of course, an Audience can be your best friend with a cold, sitting on the couch and asking you to shut the fuck up, she has heard it all before. The friend who fixes you with his You Are Boring Me look. And so on. And so of course, I ask myself how I did with the crowd and my Audience here. Not too bad, I would say. No Pantheon for me, but hey. Here's something that I did for another segment of my audience.

William, I refer you to my memoirs that I wrote on the old SoloHQ and the earliest works I wrote here on OL. You'll find plenty of me there from that angle is that is your interest. I will be retaking this path in life, so you hold onto your pants... Frankly (and if I hadn't already noted my opinion) those are you at your best, telling the stories of your life and perceptions, explaining how things fit together Then and how they fit together Now. And using self-examination not to preen (too much, at least not as much as me!) at the results, but to offer to Yourself (first!) and others a first-polish. That shit is Brave, Michael. I can't do it and you can. So bless me and forgive me if I have not given you your due. For any faults (and I mean those you see) they have the power of truthful telling and an urge to parable. I fucking love parable. So stern by intent (the Lesson) but so gentle in delivery, so healing, so anciently helpful. Yes, your memoirs are good. So are Phil's. Here on OL, his own memoirish posts are the strongest and most valuable (in my scheme). I think there are only three or so, but in parts ... but they are great reports, revealing, pregnant ... just some good and valuable shit. I wish he could see the good path that personal puzzling and truth-telling can lead to, as have you to your great and enduring benefit, and to those whom you are united by love. It is a good thing to remind us, that if we want people to know us, we must tell them. They cannot, ultimately, guess. Thanks again for opening the rink, coach, and for the whistle. We still like to watch you skate, too. As with Carol, if you are not kin, you must be kith. Otherwise why would I choose this rink of all others in the league (maybe Carol can help me articulate my garbled hockey references)? Kith? It must be. Why else would we circling on the ice here under your lights, boss?

I think you ought to lay off the autistic. They have it hard enough without being compared to Phil. Aspies can take care of themselves, especially high-functioning guys like Ba'al and several among my thirty-year friends (NB that a diagnosis placing you somewhere on the spectrum can be a revelation and a liberation -- it can open the door for community and acceptance. And since it is a spectrum disorder, and a mystery, I don't see much wrong with stressing that question for Phil. They are all the same question, studded like currants in the vast dough of my post above. What are you? But, yes, Ninth, one of the staggering ironies that pass through Phil like neutrinos through the earth's core, like radio waves through a television, like a storm of fatal solar radiation that for an immune organism (like the cockroach) is inconsequential is any and all arguments that use as a basis an appreciation of human nature. Phil does not do some things 'naturally' but from learning as with Ba'al. He has a repertoire of behaviours like all of us, and like all of us, Aspies can have the full menu of emotions -- sadness, anger, joy, fear, disgust, trust, surprise, anger, anticipation -- and feel them deeply, and will structure his or her life to best deal with, manage and express the emotion to others as well as he or she is able to do. But along the spectrum is that other spectrum, the social deficit, the empathy gap, the depth and breadth of the inability to read other people's emotions.** So, I do not pummel the autistic in any way, so I won't lay off Phil with the questions he has avoided for Lo these seven hundred years. Is he a vampire? Can he see himself in the mirror? Can he see others in himself and vice-versa? Can he understand the biplay of emotion in a group well enough to help him get to his goals? If I straight up asked Phil if he had ever wondered if he might be the special kind of person who could find himself on the Aspergers Spectrum, what then, ND? I guess I have figured that since Phil has already picked out all the currants from the bun, he doesn't really like ANY of these pesky questions anyway. At least he knows they are all in the same general class of things. A bit tougher to chew and process. To be avoided. The Staggering Irony of him spitting out all the cogent questions from others while relentlessly re-issuing his Challenges, well, ND, what can we do but speculate ...? Thanks for that note. Oh dear, I wonder if the central lese-majesty (Spelling! Mrs Grundy!) point is actually what Phil has stated here? I shall consult the author. No, the central point is not at all summed up with lese-majesty, nor 'inappropriateness' of constant criticism. Sigh. All those words, all those commas, all those currants plump and perfectly toothsome. Oh well. Phil, Let's remember the correct meaning we saw under the magnifying glass as we swirl it around the room to examine something else (like William's style). I don't believe for a minute William was talking about "criticizing your betters" in terms of the whole human being. He was not saying that you, Phil, are an inferior human being to anyone else. I do believe he was talking about criticizing the efforts and intents of someone who has much more knowledge, skill and achievement in a specific area than you do. Before a master craftsman, you, I and everyone else have our "betters." Well, indeed, Michael it was about something uniting the relation between peers, betters, pupils, students, teachers, torture classrooms -- but not about criticizing peers or betters in essence, as central hook. I would invite you to do what Phil would not do, and skim back through for the questions that I know Phil will not entertain, all about how he sees himself, the mirror, the hierarchy, the game, his emotional understanding of others, and his emotional understanding of himself. He could have so much to learn (in a pop-psych neo-O environment) from Branden's later corrections of his work, especially as he adds his O-inflected opinions and guides to managing emotions. And this is from someone who doesn't really have an attachment to Branden's work and life. But in the single aspect of writing skills, I think everyone can be a critic nowadays. Phil's analysis of Bill's piece shows he is a good critic of structural elements. Look at these things, you two (disrespect of a master/lese-majesty & good critic of structural elements). A master (or peer), a critic. I mean, run with that, see where Phil casts himself: does he play the part of the Emperor or the parade-viewer who notes nakedness? I was not, I hope, trying to emphasize Master/Slave relations or Royalist horror or any of that shit, though that shit is fun for all. I was trying to help Phil sharpen his perceptions, and to help him ponder his social perceptions and relations, the Mirror. Not to accept or assign rank in the Guild of Greats, Lessers, Beginners and Those Who Get Snacks. Because, as Carol points out I am not a published writer in any common sense of the world. In fact, I am sure that Phil's serious output exceeds my pitiful news reporting in the Chetwynd Echo, and my commentary and reporting in Angles by a great and enduring degree. It was long ago, I do not trumpet it, though it changed my game. I write for my own mysterious motives, but obviously not to climb into any Pantheon. I am what I am, an internet fiend and not much more in the medium of words. I do not ultimately burn to write a memoir or fiction before I die ... I was but a singer and I left my scratchings. And this, of course: .You said it before, Carol (as did George), it is self-awareness. As a tool, it is one of the Top Five, I think, and you always carry it in your head, leaving your hands free for shopping and keyboards. And if your self-assessments are as reliable and intelligent as your assessments of the other primates, the game of life can be played to better effect for you, your kin, and your kith. Carol, I gotta say it again, if you are not actual kin, you gotta be actual kith. Phil, I never called you a sad little monkey. I called you a sad monkey. I fear you might be damaged by Objectivism, damaged as only those who need love and encouragement can be. I fear you do not have a fucking clue what I mean by questioning you about the mirror or whacking the gong repeatedly on empathy, emotion, the social world, the game, the mirror, all that shit. Gawd, Phil, I have failed this round. Do you know what failure tastes like? It feels like, suddenly, all the fears of annihilation of my life come to a boil and scald me. I pace my tiny tower room. I rattle my shackles. I scream out the slit at the festive crowds below: You FOOLS! Nobody hears me above their happy sounding idiot songs. I do not even have a chance to throw myself to my death. And I can expect the same splat of breakfastlunchdinner in my bucket tomorrow. ___________ **This is my special interest, ND, emotion. I have entertained more than a few flabby hypotheses in this murky/bright area, but to myself and many since crushed. Do you think Phil's non-grokking might place him on the Spectrum? I mean do you remember when he Could Not Get The Fucking Joke about Ninth Doctoring? Would you really have that kind of buttfaced stupidity ascribed to malice or self-delusion or Evul? Me, I think giving him a rear-exit from the lonely tower is at least worth examining. Just to explain how my Odometer is set up. No offence. You have long ago won the game of Butterfly with Phil. I write nine thousand words, all the specimens escape and breed. You, you use the long pins and them suckers stay pinned for eternity. I recognize a Master.

I gotta be honest once more. I read all this gurp and then I went all hypnotized. I was like, "Yeah, but you know how a vampire can't be seen in a mirror, right?" Then I go, "So, can a vampire see himself in a mirror, too? -- if we can see him in the room but not in the mirror we still don't know what he sees himself, right?". ****************************** There is a kind of autism here in Phil, no? I mean, what else can explain this exquisite perception of slights and 'attacks' (on his vast sliding scale from friendly to nuclear) from people he has nagged and hectored for the last (it seems) three decades -- but few empathetic guesses or surmised reports of other's wounds. Indeed a disinterest in the 'gossip' of wounds and slights of others, in the nuts and bolts of how tragic situations evolve. . Phil, do you see what we see in yourself? Is there the slightest fog of a resemblance between the Degenerates (I mean everybody to whom you offered your tirades and snits and general sighing grumpypants rants over the centuries in your long incarnation and bloodsucking and stalking the earth looking for humans to sap)? Do you hold thoughts that you are a Titan? Well, there should be none. Each of the Titans at whom you have thundered your critique (as The Bravest Man In The Universe) has at least written a book (yes, a book! A book --- a full noxious stinking error-laden rotten pig-belly soaked in the ignorant sloughs of error and degeneracy and Turning Away and cowardice and stupidity and bad notes and lesser skill with the ladies to which I applied my Corrections in the most stunning blows against Error that the world has ever seen, though I have been, like all genius, derided, locked in towers, banished, tortured, locked in other towers, forced to pay taxes, refused service at Texaco in LA because of Incident Two, ignored by Peikoff that fool and David Kelley that hypocrite and by Ed Hudgins that gladhander and MSK whose noisome blog is such a cesspit of snakes and mud and human feces and insects and cunts that I vomit and have left and come back nine times so far, mistreated by the fools and anklebiters and bad French spelkers such as otherwise-nice WSS whom I will patronize and suffer memory lapses of great fugue-depth stupor when he asks me to look at the mirror and what does he know anyway, what does he know of being attacked with nuclear weapons and so on, I say, attacked unjustly when all I do is point out errors) but you have not written a book. They have published articles and maybe even more than one book. Books, articles (some published in gasp newspapers, though mostly lesser things like refereed journals) and chapters in books and recorded speeches and videos and television appearances and radio spots and vast public speaking and instruction experience, ostensibly learned (though all gravely in error) in a few cases, including such useless trifles as advanced degrees) and perhaps even taught at a long dreary roadshow of third-tier campus contracts instead of your calm, secure position at the Vanguard. Phil, your stance towards your betters and your peers is collossally ignorant and hypocritical across the board and evinces a hideous emptiness in your heart, an autistic lack of awareness of the entire musical tone and heritage of human social engagement - the time for harmony, when discord is sad and piquant, what tones arouse, which calm, why we lullaby ... It is appalling that you continue to imprison yourself in mazes of faulty social judgements that you must obsessively repeat over and over and over again. It must be torture for you, and perhaps this residual pain of misunderstanding is what fuels your lesson plan, your recurring lesson, its sadistic undertones and its masochistic refrains. Do you not hurt yourself when you throw yourself against the wall again and again, Phil? What door are you trying to open? How are you trying to instruct us? The same autistic lesson plan delivered to a classroom of pupils (not even students), as you cow them, correct them, rap their little knuckles, give them tasks and purse your lips and mark them and correct them and sometimes shame them and try to make them feel small and stupid next to you? Who are you, what are you to try to lure folks into your manic self-torture routines? Are you the equivalent of a bloodsucker in the world of books and articles and philosophy, a mould, an infection or infestation, are you a vampire offshoot of humanity that cannot see itself in a mirror? You have never published a fucking professional review-grade look at an author in your fucking life. You have never published an article in a journal. You have never published a chapter in a book. You have never published a monograph. You have never published your own 'articles' or commentary on your own dime, under your own name, on your own terms, in your own fucking nightmare fantasy autistic schoolhouse of pain and repetition and obedience here on the fucking internet. You have never started a blog. You have never implemented one single suggestion anyone has given you in terms of producing some published material in the long seven-hundred years of your haunting this earth, in all the aeons of time that you have nursed like a bedbug on the achievements of humanity) Phil, the best that can be said about your haunting is that your initial innocence and benevolence and loveliness of spirit (all of which were deformed by Objectivism's cruelties, of course) sometimes lurches into a Mrs Grundy Groundhog Day horror movie loop. The worst is that you feel you have a right of cultured response from those whom you reduce to extras in your script, a right to cast the kings as slave boys, schoolmarms as empresses, pioneers as stumblers, and have everyone sing perfectly songs you cannot even mumble ... You have no right to that, friend. In the scheme of things, you have reason to note your basic value as a human being, your independent ways, your own achievements, your own songs. You have an acknowledged right to your voice and your script and your own dance. But you have no right to expect anyone to follow you into your crazy schoolhouse like hamsters, Phil. Your wild torture fantasies can never be implemented. Although we are Degenerate, we are not always hamsters. ******************* MSK, thank you for underlining the freedom we have to get on the carousel, to feed the monkey when the signs clearly say Do Not Feed The Monkey. Am I feeding this thing, this vampire creature of ancient vintage? If I am, I should make the decision to uncap and plunge my thumb down on this red button here? Right now as I look at this button, I think to myself. I do not want this spawn of humanity to suffer or die. I wish him no active harm. I only want him to be fully human. You see, ordinary humans see themselves not only in the mirror, but in the actions and emotions of other humans. They learn to read the entire landscape the way a coyote or monkey learns. It takes or it doesn't. A runt or sport falls early, usually. With we primates, the ability to understand yourself, to see yourself in the mirror, compare your interior thoughts to your exterior actions, remember the errors, the lessons of bites and pummellings and smiles and cuddling, build response repertoires to aggression, learn and implement strategies of alliance and mutual aid, of trust and commitment -- these are gifts of the mirror and gifts to our lives that even runts and orphans can use to their advantage. Anyway, before I uncap and impose a Nuclear Winter on Phil, before I actually blank out his crankery and belligerence for a while, I need to badger some more. Not about vampirism or if he sees himself in the mirror, but the question I implicitly ask him in my kinder missives -- what exactly does he think will happen to him if he admits a fault and makes amends? Will he die? Will he suddenly contract COPD and be unable to breathe normally? Will his limbs begin to wither? ************************ I think of me and George and entire cast of OL gathered in a vast saloon (in Chicago) considering the multiple implications of the seven-century mystery of People Like Phil, while Phil is brought up to the bar, English-style, in suit and sober, from the dungeons of detention (barrel cellar) below. George, as ceremonial Tryer on this instance of the ancient boozy ritual evening of What Can We Do About Those Kinds Of People, examines Phil from the ceremonial Try table. He puts to him this question: Will Our Friend Try The Question put to him over these last nights in these precincts? [NB -- now, according to lore and anthropology some seven centuries] Will Our Friend Answer The Question? [again according to lore and documents stored in London's magnificent Coates Library (now revealed by recent deep excavation to also be the site of ancient pre-Pictish torture-cult classroom pits). Coatsism's links to and the implications to the blood-drinking practices of pre-Dorset culture still remain hotly debated after some forty years, having slumbered for some time since the validation of Yershitstinkztuyunov's hypothesis that People Like Phil colleges were established in Warsaw and Lodz in the late 12th century. I have no fucking clue about this stuff. What I do have a clue about is that the person playing the Person Like Phil refuses to answer the question, hoists his drink for a slog, asserts that the question was not actually asked properly anyway, formally refuses to acknowledge that the question had merit, takes another slog, calls the assembled the sick, degenerate and demented for presuming to question him, since he Had Asked The First Question and that subsequent aeons of bitching had obscured this fact. One more final juddering slog of his drink and then he lets forth a barrage of invective, declares All Of You Are Fucked, There Is Nothing Wrong With Me That Wasn't Started By You Know Who, and slams the beer-cellar door on his way back down to his remand facilities. Of course, moments later the Phil character is assisted back upstairs, in civilian clothes and then commences the final segment of the boozy ritual, a free-wheeling Why Are People Like That session.] ********************* My gawd, have I run on. I really cannot keep feeding the monkey. Stop looking at the monkey's sad eyes. Think of the monkey free and independent of my human intervention, happy, how I harm the monkey by interceding in his natural behaviour. Why am I in the Monkey House on New Year's Eve? Sigh. I raise my New Year horn. I toot. I think across the ether to Phil's mirror, how it waits for him, how it sparkles. How it can instruct him, how he can see himself in others, how he can see others in himself, letting go of the hauntings of his own mind, of failure, rejection, frustration, loneliness, dread of the unmarked plot of an unsung hero ... I shall see you the next time they bring you up from the pit, Phil my sad monkey. Don't see how you can consolidate your audience if you do not really like your audience and they really don't like you too much when you get like this, but hey. I will be seeking a brisk reconnoitre on the Seniors Deck Promenade on the HMS Torment when I return you from oblivion, when I'm next found on Endless Torture Cruises' To Nowhere And Back, Forever.

Smashing, thanks. A very smart filleting. Economy, wit, and perfect comic crunch. Lets match you up with graphic artist and make the Syndicate some money.

Let's go Dutch. If you be my Boydstun, I will be your Dragonfly ... I am a great fan of Fusion Poutine and -- being Canadian -- enjoy cooperative (if not collective) dining.