Supple Towel Cuddle

DISCLAIMER: I'm feeling ... like I'm in kind of a mood between bad and neutral, so I will probably end up sounding angry and impassioned, like I'm trying to rally troops for some needless Wandyteeth-type cause; this tone can be off-putting, even on good days, so if you're not in the mood to think I'm the man, please just don't read this until you are. I don't want you to think I'm not the man, and reading this if you do isn't going to help change your mind.

But I'm also feeling ... snackish:

* O.K. Soda was so, so delicious. Even if it truly, objectively wasn't.

* Waffle Crisp, which was abruptly discontinued a couple years ago, is BACK in ACTION.

* Capri Sun, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Pringles are all now significantly less perfect than they were in our preteen years, although they are still pleasing.

* Nacho Cheesier Doritos taste differently from bag to bag. Some bags taste extremely great, and these bags' chips can be distinguished from lesser bags' by their zesty, red bell peppery aftertaste; this savory subtlety is the first thing to go when the chips' cheese powder is too potent or garlicky. As far as I know, this has mostly to do with the age of the bag.

* The science of flavor is obviously in its early stages of development if experts think Splenda is okay to put into food and drinks.

* Taste-Alikes you'll go "whoa, weird!" at, or else, more probably, you'll disagree with because they demand too much of a paradigm shift regarding such an unoffending topic for you to feel like you're overestimating your ability to discern flavors in foods with significantly unlike appearance and texture: (1) Trix taste exactly like Fruity Pebbles. (2) Peanuts and raisins, eaten togther, taste exactly like a PB and J. (3)Squirt tastes exactly like Orange Fanta, challenging as this may be to imagine; do a side-by-side sometime, with your eyes closed, and be prepared for disappointment if you're like me and always liked Orange Fanta way more than Squirt. (4) The Italian Night Club (i.e., #9) at Jimmy John's tastes like a bologna sandwich, unless you ask for No Ham (although the ham, by itself, tastes nothing like bologna). (5) Vault is just Surge, renamed with an "energy"-oriented marketing twist. (6) Blue raspberry flavored candies are usually just blueberry flavored. And a few Do-Not-Taste-Alikes: (1) Twizzler Pull 'n Peels do not taste like Twizzler Nibs. The P'nPs are what can only be called "spicier." (2) Off-brand Froot Loops do not taste a thing like real Froot Loops, despite this merely being the result of packaging differences. (3) Diet Dr. Pepper does not taste just like regular Dr. Pepper. Neither does Mr. Pibb, although the resemblance is uncanny. (4) This isn't taste-related, really, but: Orange juice CAN justly be called milky. Because it's milky. It's really seriously opaque. IDK why, but just because it doesn't have milk in it, people seem ready to disagree.

No now switching to a more irksome topic, because now I'm feeling a little argumentative. One more taste-alike: (7) When publicly subscribed to, Atheism is almost always just reduced to antideism, i.e., the belief that there is no godlike diety; which is a valid belief, but by itself one that hardly defines Atheism. Atheism literally means "without religion," and it's more of a state of mind than a system of beliefs. That being said, it's really just a term that exists solely for its usefulness in naming that sort of religionless lifestyle choice; in reality, it's definitively impossible to be an athiest, to believe in nothing, since even a belief in nothing requires that you believe in your ability to believe in nothing--which point is the competent, scoff-free version of "a belief in nothing is still a belief in something."

Like it or not, we're a species doomed to Agnosticism, i.e., the ultimatum of uncertainty. I suggest you like it, rather than not, since it's more fun that way.

Let's put a common, common, common misperception to rest regarding the intent of religion. No offense, but you'd have to be a silly, stupid asshole to believe the original author of Genesis--not its first scribe, but its original conceiver--set out to defy reason and instigate the highest mass-ignorance in human history. He was just storytelling, just trying to make a point in words, and you have to admit God is a really really clever idea for a main character, just overall, even compared to like Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen. And "God" was just the result of what everyone's been doing since the dawn of interaction: resisting Solipsism.

Solipsism. That self-concept to end all self-concepts. That unimaginary philosophical black hole. That question to every answer to every question. That word that probably shouldn't be a word. Solipsism is the necessarily private belief that "I beget the universe begets me," or more commonly and kind of misleadingly, the belief that life is a dream. Unfortunately, this latter definition sort of gets it confused with some kind of meta-schizophrenia, like Truman Show syndrome on an intergalactic scale, and so it's almost always disregarded as a bankrupt philosophy.

Obviously life isn't a dream, because there needs be a difference between what we call dreams and what we call waking life, if only just to keep from overgeneralizing in a needlessly confusing manner. But yeah that's what we HAVE to say, since no one wants to be the asshole who admits he believes the universe revolves around him; that's the dreadful, inescapable irony of it. I mean, the fact that there's a word for it is probably the one property of Solipsism most responsible for its unpopularity in the first place. So long as it has to be introduced, whoever learns the word "Solipsism" will obviously be approaching it with a bias toward practical interaction, both the practicality and interactivity of which are mutually exclusive with the lack thereof inherent in Solipsism; in other words, there's no good way to tell you that you're Solipsistic. You just are. Good luck coming to terms with it, is about all I can say. Saying anymore just gets confusing.

Why You Shouldn't Worry, It's Okay to be Solipsistic:

The Explanatory Gap, i.e., the impossibility of explaining consciousness, assures us that, on top of being doomed to Solipsism, we are doomed to be incapable of expressing the full extent to which we are doomed. But that just means that, logically speaking, you and I can both be Solipsistic at the same time--and even have a conversation about its merits and drawbacks--because even the most friendly, presumptuous dialogue is still a failure to contradict the possibility that "you" and "I" are only illusorily discrete to begin with. Physics would suggest that this is so, anyway. Indeed, Solipsism and science work just fine together. Even the most orthodox Sciencist won't have to feel alienated by his Solipsistic fundamentals, though what he perceives to be his fundamentals might have to adapt in accordance with his ever-changing understanding of the universe. The rules for Solipsism are not written down anywhere worth looking into, as they are highly subject to change; don't let this dissuade you, though, from thinking you know what they are.

Solipsism passes even the strictest tests of Well-Then-What-About-[Insert largely undebated fact here], including all of those pertaining to physics and evolution and stuff. It rejects no factual understanding of the universe, but simply assimilates that which it didn't already have; that is, you have to be as clever as the things you know if you want to understand your own Solipsism; and here, I'll finally say it: any deliberate rejection of Solipsism is just a failure of intellect.

An Atheist, on the other hand, should have a hard time explaining what he/she believes Physics is without some reference to their being an existent existence, which referent they cannot possibly have any belief in. (Richard Dawkins is just a fucking contrarian riding a wave of popular misunderstanding; I'd say he's a moron, too, the fucking bastard, but he's mostly brilliant and his Selfish Gene theory is one of the profoundest (and most profoundly misunderstood) in its field.) An Agnostic would probably just refer to the ease with which one can simply ignore the very hardest questions everyday and all the time; agnostics are regularly unconcerned with their uncertainty. They are happy being distracted by the seventy or so years they've got going for them. And this is justified. I mean, I get distracted pretty much all the time; when I'm not pondering the nature of my Solipsism and/or existence, I'm more or less just doing the whole non-meta experiential thing: talking to people, talking to myself, thinking to myself, thinking about doing things, doing things, remembering things I've said, or thought, or done, wondering what I've forgotten, wondering what I haven't forgotten but can't remember right now, wondering why, worrying and worrying and worrying, etc.

Sorry I haven't been very good about predicting where I was going with this whole blog post. Sorry. It's late and I'm just more interested in getting this all off my chest in whatever order it's caked on than I am in making this neat and cohesive. Seriously, though, I'm sorry.

The whole big part not pertaining to snacks can basically be summed up like this: We have two moods: Solipsistic and Agnostic, and while these are mutually exclusive concepts, they are nevertheless both how we are, all the time. Rejection of either of these is just a complicated mistake; faith in God, for instance, is precluded by a belief in your own soul, which belief is an intrinsically Solipsistic one. And to those who would reject Agnosticism, one should just ask "Why?" a few dozen times until the rejector has his/her much-needed epiphany and becomes an acceptor.

...

And all of a sudden, I feel like I'm done. I've made the same point enough times. I'm tired of feeling like Solipsism is a secret and/or a mistake. It's neither. It's inescapably logical. I don't welcome you to disagree, because I don't want to be that guy who retorts with "You just aren't thinking big enough." Just know in advance you'd be wrong, and be cool with it. It isn't simple, Solipsism isnt. It really isn't. Because physics isn't simple, nothing as simple as magnetism is simple, nothing where "time" is a dimension comprised of quanta is simple, and nothing as big and as strangely shaped as our entire universe is simple. The fact that we can't personally recall a time when we weren't thinking isn't simple. The fact that we can't do this really really really isn't simple. So don't feel like Solipsism is quaint, like it's cute or clever but not for you. If it isn't for you, it is, all the moreso.

If you think it isn't for you, then I beg of you: Just pretend, for real, one time, that see things Solipsistically. See it as a daunting, horrific challenge that awaits you whether you plan to embrace it or evade it. See it as the promise that you will never see another sunrise again, so that it makes you stare at every one you *do* see as hard as you can, and then some, so that it makes you wonder what the promise meant, but at the same time makes you understand what it meant, and makes you wonder why the hell you understand yet still keep on wondering. See it as something you can forget about if you so choose. And then, if you do that, then okay you can bitch about how longwinded this post is.

Towel, out.

Sorry for the post about the major writing goal. In retrospect, I feel like I was channeling Liz Granger somehow--not that she's a bad writer at all to channel, in fact she's great, but I don't like the schizophrenia that comes with reading myself sounding like I'm writing for the Lance instead of for you. I probably need to come back to the topic of Writing and its Major Goals some time in the future when I'm less sure of myself about all of it. Just ignore the post, meantime.

--Towel

Towel, reporting.

Now I wouldn’t call it THE goal of writing, or of becoming a writer, because—and pardon me while I go on this tangent here, sorry—THE goal has specifically and immutably assigned to it a certain ineffability; such that even if we come to know all or part of it during our many attempts to articulate it, we still cannot articulate it, because it must defy articulation. It’s not that it's some abstract, quasi-religious entity that I’m just trying to sound smart by talking about. Clearly. It’s just that ‘articulation’ is/requires a sort of mental writing process in itself, so just to begin to describe the goal of writing is like figuring out where to begin untying a Gordian knot. It’s just… nevermind.

A goal of writing, a major one, is to sort of improve the usefulness of thought. I mean, if this is not a cliché already, it should be. The harder one is on oneself as a writer, the more often one will find oneself, just in general, making excuses (= Useful Thought, in action (when successful)). Where this comes from is because of the way writers study the behaviors of others and themselves as really and interestingly as they possibly can, in order to like write stories in which folks behave in interestingly natural ways--if anything just for a few You-know-what-I-mean?-type yucks (though the potential profundity or/and severity of this practice at its most masterful probably warrants its own more sober caliber of rationale). And it just happens naturally, then, that as writers hone this meta-awareness, they become aware of the opportunities for practice inherent in situations where they are called to make mundane everyday excuses for themselves. The mundaner the better. Rather than do the normal, irresponsible, American thing and say “my bad,” writers attempt to elucidate their situation. They attempt to win by the same strange, untenable logic that one uses when forgiving oneself for private misdeeds. Should they fail to do so, it simply means they need to keep practicing writing until they are so clearly understood, like w/r/t their internal motives, that their excuse-hearer would never again dare misjudge the writer's “excuse” as having stemmed from anything less than an unfortunately-fundamental truth. This may or may not be plain old stubbornness, but I defy you to convince them otherwise.

Like for instance.

This evening I was on the phone, when my battery, because it was a cell phone that I was talking on, up and died right in the middle of talking. Right when I had just very passionately asked “Why the fuck wouldn’t you want to see Star Trek?” (Which question I only asked so vehemently because I thought I was about to have to defend the honor of a movie whose honor should require no such defense; in the end, though, it was because the girl is waiting to see it with her dad.) I plugged the phone into its charger and turned it back on and redialed my girlfriend’s number and the conversation picked up where it left off. Sure enough, pretty soon, like fifteen minutes in, I had that chemical stress in my bladder that says it's go-time, but I found myself tethered to a spot next to a wall where I couldn’t really reach a toilet. The cord on the charger is, by the way, a kind of terrible not-very-long that keeps my shoulders almost imperceptibly hunched while I'm on the phone, as if there’s a very weak gravity pulling me downward diagonally, so weak in fact that that is what makes it all the more agonizing, if you can see how that would make sense; erstwhile, this needing to pee keeping me focused on my current physical state made both the slightly-agonizing slight-hunching and the needing to pee all the worse. Like a feedback loop of discomfort. Over nothing, I know. But its being over nothing was just another part of what was bad about it! (Don’t be difficult with me, Reader, I always want to say.) Anyway, I almost brought this need-to-pee up to my girlfriend on the phone, but realized I already knew what she would say: put the phone down, Silly, and go pee. To which my automatic, logical retort was and would have been: since it probably has enough charge in it by now to stay alive for a minute or two, I could actually just unplug the phone, carry it with me to the bathroom, go pee, come back, and plug it back in, no interruption needed—presuming she would be okay with my going pee while on the phone with her (N.B. she is cool with it). And this is the choice I should have made. I should have trusted that the phone probably had charged a bit in the fifteen or so tethered minutes that it had taken me to realize I needed to pee, and that this charge was enough to keep the conversation alive until I was able to bring the phone back to its power source. But there was and is still something to resist about this choice of action, just as a human. I know this, because I didn’t do it, even once I‘d thought about the fact that I was thinking about writing about it later; in fact, the moment I'd finished thinking through its perfect logic, my “feeling” about it was a kind of “meh” or “nah” or “no thanks” or “hold on, um, well is it okay if I say no?” So I didn’t do it. I’ve done it before, I know, but this time: Not this time.

And why? What, if anything, was my excuse? Well, in no particular order: because it would hurt at least just slightly a little bit to stoop down and plug the phone back in when I came back from peeing; and because talking/listening while peeing kind of sucks at least somewhat more than peeing while free of distraction; and because peeing while one hand is holding the phone or peeing two-handed with the phone tucked between the ear and shoulder are both somewhere between neutral and unpleasant things to do, whereas peeing by itself is intrinsically sort of pleasant; and because realistically I’d rather just come back from peeing and not have to plug the phone back in so that I may live untethered—whether we’ve hung up or not—and though we may be able to keep speaking in such a manner, I mean though the battery may be that enough-charged, we may nevertheless be interrupted again, and this latter chance seems not even worth even finishing sentences about, it’s that vaguely boring and off-putting. … Seeing it all written out, here, this reasoning seems even more ridiculous and hedonistic than it felt at the time, and even then it felt pretty ridiculous and hedonistic. Alas.

In the end, the thing is, I wasn’t willing to unplug the phone and go into the bathroom with it, and the thing also is, when I really thought about why, this is all that came up. This “reasoning,” as in all the bullshit following the colon, above. And though this might be a terrible case just by itself, it’s nonetheless a bright and shining exemplar of a needless little effort like the kind surreally better writers than I make all the time when they’re climbing inside the heads of their little epiphanically human characters. It’s patently crazy, and it’s the stuff of like pot-circles the world round, but it’s also utterly worth the risk of failure, of sounding vacuously unnatural, of sounding like you’re trying too hard, of sounding High As Fuck, &c. Because when this crazy-ass kind of excuse succeeds, it’s … well, it’s definitely not called an “excuse” anymore. I don’t even know if there’s a good, non-cliché word for it. I guess “poignant” always gets thrown around in Intro workshops about this type of thing, like when it’s so strikingly present in Raymond Carver and Lorrie Moore and other such heartbreakingly widely-known Postmodernists. It’s the This Author Just ‘Gets’ Me factor. It’s the … what writer-types are putting to the test when they pull this type of crap in their day-to-day; it’s their standard “I shouldn’t make this particular choice” mechanism acting less as a mine detector and more as a divining rod. It’s a major goal, but not THE one. Because if it were THE one, what would be the point? Why know the ins and outs of yourself and others like you? Eventually, if we're going to figure everything out, as like a community of intellects, then whatever writers come up with as THE fundamental truth needs to rhyme with whatever physics comes up with as THE fundamental truth, and with whatever philosophy comes up with, and neuroscience, and so on. All I'm saying is there doesn't seem to be much of a consensus as to the nature of being, just by itself, I mean... or, well, nevermind.

BTW: In the end I just held it and went pee when the phonecall was over.