Narcissists' Dilemma

Many of us assumed (desperately hoped) that the Twitter debacle, the deluge of idiotic and banal tweets, in 30 words or less, would be as bad as it got - the bottom of the social media barrel, as it were. No such luck.

"I'm not sure why, but just saying the word tweet makes me hate myself, even more than I normally do."

In his new book, The Social Media Disease, Dr. Wilburt Humpies refers to social media phenomena as a bottomless pit of potential self-abuse and destruction.  Any mass-participatory social system, according to Humpies, rapidly seeks the lowest common denominator; judgment, awareness and overall intelligence rapidly plummet, resulting in a disturbing collective stupidity, all the more worrisome because this blatant dumbness is generally misperceived as trendy coolness.

"I have 25,000 followers on Twitter. Unfortunately, they're all morons."

So you might inquire, what could possibly be more appalling than a billion people sending out speculative tweets on the actual dimensions of Kim Kardashian's ass?  (Hint: it's smaller than a planet)

How about a 'Selfie' of Kim Kardashian's ass?

Got a face?  Got an ass?  Got a camera?  The entire population of Earth is apparently dying to see it.

"I usually spend 4 hours a day doing selfies. I guess it could be considered obsessive - I mean, my boyfriend left me, claimed he couldn't compete with my phone - but how else would I know I exist?"

No question that the selfie is the narcissist's ultimate wet dream. After all, it's all about me anyway, and now my face is here to prove it. A recent study conducted by the Institute of Secretive Psychology concluded that 80% of the U.S. population now displays clear cut narcissistic tendencies. Further analysis determined that 79.8% of those had absolutely no right to do so.

What's the difference between a solipsist and a narcissist?
The solipsist says, 'Only the Self is real.'
The narcissist says,  'Correction. Only my self is real.'

Fortunately, there is light at the end of this dark tunnel of mindless self-involvement. Much like nature itself, irony will always find a way.

Professor Linden Henkel, at the Litchfield Connecticut Community College, has been investigating social media, some might say obsessive-compulsively - even while admitting to spending a not infinitesimal amount of time surfing porn sites - and has uncovered a fascinating by-product of the self-photo craze.

 Memory loss. 

"The obsessive concern with controlling and projecting self image - via the so-called selfie - onto social media unquestioningly results in a kind of mental impairment; specifically a deterioration of identity, accompanied by a gradual loss of ability to recognize oneself."

Have to love it, right?

  I don't exactly know who this is in the photo, but whoever it is, he keeps jumping in front of my camera whenever I try to take a picture of myself.

Sending you my latest selfie. If by any chance you recognize me, please let me know who I am.











 

Jupiter Roars, Mars Can't Sleep

So yeah, it's like, uh, like a, you know, a roar, or a howl, or a scream, or a hum, that's it, a hum, but nothing like no ordinary hum, like humming along with a song on the radio, remember radio, people used to listen to them, radios I mean, and hum along, only now the whole thing is out of control, a disaster, most likely lethal in the long term, meanwhile driving a person to the brink of bloody madness.

That woman drove her husband to an early grave.
Yes, but at least she didn't force him to walk.

The situation with schizophrenics is a fundamental inability to contain themselves within their own skins.  The desire, often experienced as unremitting terror, call it a tendency with extremely rigid guidelines, is to be transposed out of one's own head, beyond self, into a state nothingness, where at least it is relatively quiet.

So, she asked me, what are your future goals?
Have none, I told her.
That's so sad, she said, her eyes peering directly through me, gazing off into space where, presumably, her own future goals hovered, bathed in golden light, still out of reach, but nonetheless inevitable.
 
Back in those days, of course, one could claim to be 'living in the moment' with a straight face, without first having to explain the concept of intentional self-obliteration. Nowadays everyone is living in the moment with one eye trained on the clock. So maybe this particular moment didn't quite work out - on the other hand I haven't had a single suicidal thought in the past 30 seconds - but I maintain exceedingly high expectations for the next moment, in which, it goes without saying, I will be exclusively living.

But what about the future?
Don't make me laugh.
No goals?
My only goal, in the moment, needless to say, is to terminate this conversation with you as soon as possible.

After I got a Masters degree in Philosophy, this guy I knew, though didn't particularly like, made one of those incredulous faces - the sort one might make after being informed by someone that they were regularly abducted by aliens - asking with minimally disguised contempt, "What are you going to do with that?"

My clever retort:  "The more important question, from my perspective at any rate, is what will it do with me?"

Not a whole lot, as it's turned out, except for providing me with an ever-increasing fuzzy frame of reference within which to display a fairly unsophisticated grasp of irony. But then again, the sheer hopeless impracticality of it continues to resonate.

So, your future goal is ..?
Uh, a life of hopeless impracticality.
Oh My God, that's soooooo sad!
And of course to obtain an advanced degree in philosophy.
Okay, now you're just being redundant.
Irony?
Go to hell, loser!

So yeah, like I was saying, it comes on at night, this sound, rattling around in my head, a buzzing, screeching, vibrating racket. At first I thought I was losing my hearing, then that I was losing my mind, but now I'm convinced it's coming from out there, tearing holes in the sky, seeping through the walls, an inexplicable phenomenon that, for reasons beyond all human knowing, has targeted ..... me. 

I'm so tired, I haven't slept a wink

I'm so o tired, my mind is on the blink...

Temporaily Lost, But Not Entirely Forgotten

Based (however loosely) on a true story....

A spate of disappearances recently; planes, planets, hope, my car keys...  The latest version of things eerily vanishing involves four young women who on a whim hiked into the Yosemite wilderness in the middle of the night and haven't been seen since.

Yeah, it was either four women or eight, reports vary, self-proclaimed eyewitnesses keep changing their stories. One theory is that the four women were actually four pairs of identical twins, that it was some sort of twin thing, like a pact or something, although local law enforcement officials are actively playing down the whole twin angle.

At his daily media briefing, Sheriff Mort Stetson was fairly adamant:  "At this point in the investigation there is no credible evidence to support the twins hypothesis. Until otherwise indicated, our official position is that this is nothing more than a malicious rumor generated on social media, its sole intention to fuel conspiracy fringe hysteria. Now I'll take a few questions."

"Excuse me, Sheriff, but is there any possibility the four sets of twins are actually two sets of quadruplets?"

"Did you not hear what I just said?"

"Any credence to the report that search teams have been operating in the wrong area of the park?"

"Based on credible intelligence, we were initially concentrating out efforts in the eastern section of the park, although it now appears that the hikers may have mysteriously changed course, retracing their tracks and then inexplicably turning north. We are admittedly baffled by this, but suspect that, if true, some sort of illicit drug use may very well be involved.

"Has terrorism been ruled out, Sheriff?"

"At this point nothing has been ruled out entirely, although if one or more of these girls is a terrorist, we're more or less stumped as to what their objective might be. I mean, what are they going to do, blow up a tree?"

"Could you comment on Chinese involvement in the search effort?"

"As one of the missing women may be of Chinese ancestry,  however remotely, and as two of the women currently live in San Francisco's Chinatown, the Chinese government felt justified in inserting itself into the investigation. Chinese satellite imagery, however, depicting what appears to be a large circus tent on fire and several confused elephants roaming aimlessly about the nearby forest, has been for the most part discounted. I have been assured that there are no circuses currently operating in Yosemite, nor is any sub-species of elephant indigenous to northern California."

"Isn't it possible, Sheriff, that a herd of elephants escaped undetected from a local zoo?"

About as likely as you scoring over 75 on a standardized I.Q. test. "I'm certainly no expert on elephants, but I think we can all agree that subtly and subterfuge are not exactly two of their strong suits."

"Is it conceivable these apparent elephants are actually other animals cleverly disguised as elephants, or possibly dinosaurs?"

"Okay, I won't answer that, for reasons which should be painfully obvious, but I will take one more question."

"How seriously are you entertaining the suggestion that these women are suffering from some form of collective fugue state?"

"We have consulted with several psychologists on the fugue phenomenon, who inform us that in certain high stress situations, often involving spatial/temporal disorientation, it can be infectious. We therefore have to consider it, although frankly we are hoping this is not the case. If these girls have gone fugue, they could be all the way into Oregon by now. On a more positive note, I can tell you that one of the women was apparently fitted with a microchip locator implant sometime prior to this reckless hiking fiasco. Once activated, this locator gives off a steady ping, inaudible to the human ear, but easily detected by the various highly sophisticated technology we are currently employing.  The downside on this is that while the ping is inaudible to humans, it is highly audible to wolves, bears and other natural predators."

"How about elephants?"

"I believe my position on answering any further elephant-related questions has been clearly established."

"So what your saying is that these women might be killed and at least partially eaten by the time they're found."

"Regrettably, yes, but let's not lose sight of the most important issue here. We will find them. Dead or alive, their loved ones deserve closure."

"Oh, what a load of crap!"

"Okay, who said that? The elephant guy?"

  






  

Of Simulacrums, Strange Attractors & Scandinavian Coffee Klatsches

Heading presumably north, the shift in air texture more or less a giveaway, but the compass needle is acting up, no more than a jittery approximation of direction. The poles are in flux, possibly contemplating some dramatic rearrangement, the prophesied reversal perhaps, happens every 450,000  years or so, lucky us to be here for it this time around.

One of the many consequences of a major magnetic repositioning is likely to be a dramatic rise in confusion. The simple act of pointing north will become a challenge, a vague though palpable uneasiness will no doubt grip the human population, a kind of global disorientation that will have people walking into walls, attempting to stand on their heads and, for a not insignificant number of people, a descent into full blown madness. 

So basically no discernible difference.  Aside from the fact that we can no longer refer to the Australians as being 'down under.' They would now be 'up over,' as ridiculous as that sounds. And yes, there is the off chance that a magnetic flip would wipe out all life on Earth, and yet we are compelled to ask ourselves, if our entire species was eradicated from the planet in, say, the next 30 seconds, would anyone really notice?

Hey, did you feel that? What the heck just happened?
What are you talking about? I didn't feel anything?
You don't feel like your skin is suddenly melting from non-deflected solar radiation?
I have absolutely no idea what that would feel like, so how would I know?
In any case, you might want to take a peak in the mirror, which by the way appears to be hanging upside down, not to mention pulsating in a way I can only describe as decidedly ominous.
Are you completely insane?
Now that you mention it...

Meanwhile the magnetosphere sighs, the Northern Lights have been turned off in an effort to conserve energy and Jupiter roars. As it usually does, Not so much because it cares, more because it doesn't. Damn distant gas giant!

A woman writes in to an online advise column, asking:
"What exactly is a strange attractor, and is it at all possible that I am one? Admittedly, I am no stranger to the occasional bout of strangeness, and the men I seem to attract are, well, let's just say they tend to give a whole new meaning to the concept of strange. I've also been told that I use the expression, 'Wow, that's so strange' way too often."

 Regrettably, with the exception of a few scientist types who think chaos is cool and in general behave quite strangely themselves (you may have even dated one of them), no one actually knows what a strange attractor is. Suffice it to report that ...

Strange attractors can take an infinite number of different forms, all fractal in nature and demonstrating infinite self-similarity.   Say what now?

You might also want to consider that computer simulations of strange attractors are invariably quite beautiful.  So why not start thinking of yourself as this year's viral version of a fractal beauty pageant winner and while you're at it begin upgrading your standards vis-a-vis the male of the species.

Or simply do what I've done, head north (south actually) to Scandinavia, the new down under, for an out of this world cup of coffee.  Sit back, savor a giant mug and wait for the lights to be turned on again. You probably won't even realize that the climate now resembles Argentina.

 









  

Twilight Of The Headshrinkers

 

Excerpted from Confessions of a Rogue Psychotherapist, by Desmond Darling.

Case Study # 37 

Sitting across from me is my three o’clock, Sandra Levy, a brooding, enigmatic Jewess with raven hair, volatile green eyes and a body literally demanding some form of ungodly worship. A raging physical beauty with a seriously disturbed mind. Classic case of dissociative personality is my best guess, brought on, no doubt, by an early childhood trauma.

Psycho-therapeutic Note: When in doubt, always blame an early childhood trauma. It sounds compelling and, as few people have any actual memories of early childhood, there is little chance of being challenged on it.

As usual, Sandra is wearing next to nothing; a wispy, see-though blouse, sans-bra, a shiny, oh so short, artificial snakeskin miniskirt and, making an educated guess here, no underpants. She has her hair done up like the Bride of Frankenstein, minus the white streaks, her lips a shade of indigo reminiscent of the fluid emitted by certain species of exotic jellyfish when aroused. I’m not sure whether to hammer a stake through her heart, or make wild, lethal love to her in an giant fish tank.

  Somehow I restrain myself from doing either.

“So, Sandra,” I say. “How are we today?”

"We?"

"You, then. How are you today?"

“How do you think I am?” she wants to know, sounding annoyed. “I saw her again this morning, following me, as usual.”

“And by her you mean...?”

“Me, of course. That psycho bitch!”

Lest we lose sight of the elusive thread here, Sandra believes that whenever she leaves her apartment she is being followed by herself. Not merely someone who looks exactly like her, but she herself, following her. On rare occasions there is more than one of herself following her.

“And how did that make you feel?”

“What kind of dumb fucking question is that? How do you think it made me feel?”

“It helps to say the words, Sandra.”

“Okay," Sandra snarls, "Let's see. Upset, pissed off, stressed out, depressed, enraged, sad, murderous, ill, revolted, angry, dead inside, horny...”

Wow, that's a lot of stuff. Maybe I should be taking notes, cause all I can remember is ...

“So, horny, huh?"

“Uh, yes, one of the many emotions I was experiencing.”

“Go on.”

“She followed me into my favorite clothing shop. Everything I tried on, she tried on the same thing, only she looked better. A lot better, actually.”

"Which prompted you to ..?"

"Start screaming, naturally."

"Somewhat reasonable under the circumstances."

"Not how the security guard saw it. He threw me out of the store." 

"Well, you were screaming."

“She was screaming, too. He didn’t throw her out. If that's not a blatant of some kind of discrimination, I don't know what is.”

"What did you do next?"

"The only thing I could do. I accosted the blind guy selling pencils outside the train station, dragged him into the nearest restroom and had sex with him."

"Bet he never saw that coming."

"What?"

"Nothing.  And was she - and by she I of course mean you - there while you were ..."

"No, she never follows me when I'm having sex."
"If only you could be having sex all the time, problem solved."
"Believe me, Doctor, I am trying."

"And how did this rather sordid sexual encounter with the visually impaired pencil seller cause you to feel?"

"Again with the feelings?"

"Trust me, why don't you?"

Sandra's expression confirms that trust is not something I should be expecting anytime soon. She issues a lengthy, exasperated sigh, at the end of which ... "soiled, depraved, vaguely satisfied, nauseous, hungry, existentially challenged, promiscuous, dull, dizzy, disappointed, horny..."

"Still horny?"

"Pretty much always." 

“Okay, Sandra, let's approach this from a different angle. Contrary to all available evidence, you're not hopelessly insane. What you are is a twin. You have a long-lost, identical twin sister, of whom, for reasons embedded in your unique psychopathology, you have repressed all conscious memory. She, in an effort to reestablish a relationship with you, her sister, but wary of your reaction, and no doubt constrained by her own challenging mental typography, has no recourse but to surreptitiously follow you."

“I have a twin brother, Doctor.”

 “Your brother is a twin? Really? Any chance of triplets?” 

 “I can only hope you’re joking." 

“Hey, a little levity never hurts. In fact, I think that if you could begin to appreciate the comical

 nature of your situation, vis-a-vis yourself who follows you, you might start to feel a lot better.”

“But what’s comical about being followed by yourself?” 
“The question, Sandra, is what’s not comical about it?”

Pass the Prozac, Pray to Jesus, Pull the Damn Plug

"One is hard pressed to make the case that the world is not continuing along its plodding though seemingly ineluctable path towards the precipitous brink of ... if not outright doom, then at least a chronic state of ultra- absurdity."

Even a cursory glance at any day's 'news' suggests that the above is more than merely an exercise in glib fatalism.

*Global stupidity levels are up (way up, actually). People are also becoming fatter and uglier at an alarming rate. One respected futurist predicts that by the year 2080 it will be extremely difficult to find anyone on the planet who is not fat, dumb and bad-looking.

"There will be exceptions, of course, but these slim smart attractive people will be considered dangerous anomalies, evolutionary hybrids, and will most likely be ostracized, possibly exiled to remote polar regions."

*A photo secretly smuggled out of North Korea shows Great Leader, Kim Jung (chubby boy) Un, attending an apres mass execution party dressed as Minnie Mouse. Whether the extremely tall Donald Duck in the background is in fact Dennis Rodman cannot be independently verified.

"Kim has never made any attempt to conceal his love for all things Disney. He envisions an exotic merger between the Hermit Kingdom and the Magic Kingdom, which he has tentatively decided will be called the Maggot Kingdom."

 *Justin Dweeber, or whatever his name is, now has 40 million twitter followers.
 Not sure what that means, but imagine it describes a situation in which vast multitudes of female tweenies stare mindlessly at their cell phones all day long in breathless prepubescent anticipation of their favorite pop poodle boy tweeting something insipidly inspiring to their mostly incomprehensible lives.

#no talent but somehow keep getting away with it // eating pizza with pet monkey/a.k.a. bodyguard Bruno. Cripes! No napkins. Gonna smoke some hash tag (ha ha) later / maybe get busted in Boston. How Cool Me Is!

*Leading story on CNN:  "The growing threat of toothpaste tube terrorism."

What will these evildoers think of next?  It is apparently possible to blow up an airplane or, say, an Olympic venue with a single economy size tube. Somewhat ironically, the average terrorist rarely if ever brushes after meals.

CNN:  "So how concerned should the general public be?"

Anti-terrorist expert:  "Well, people should not necessarily begin fearing their toothpaste. We do however advise that toothpaste should not be left unattended, particularly in places where terrorist types are known to congregate."

*Mental health experts from 173 countries have convened at a secret location (these people take paranoia quite seriously) for their annual psycho-therapeutic conclave.

Reports one British psychiatrist, "It's a bloody madhouse but, the occasional delusional episode aside, we are making progress."

Perhaps the most disconcerting revelation thus far: 80% of the world's population now suffers from some form of depression.

"We are essentially a depressive planet, trapped in mindless cultural constructs, vaguely aware that the erosion of an authentic individual identity is the sine qua non for the rampant cannibalistic consumerism upon which the Capitalist paradigm thrives, but helpless to do anything about it."

More troubling, at least from the therapists' point of view, is the prospect of the worldwide depression rate hitting 100%, thereby rendering the very concept of depression as a mental disorder effectively moot. Basically, if everyone is crazy then, by definition, no one is. Not much money to be made offering treatment for a nonexistent illness.

As one therapist put it, "Shit, now I'm depressed."

*Once again - and not terribly surprising - Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana have been voted the most religious states in the good old U.S.A.  Coincidentally, these states also lead the nation in high school dropout rates, obesity and gun ownership.

What does this suggest?  That in Mississippi one is as likely to be randomly shot by a disgruntled fat person in a church as by a deranged psychopath in a shopping mall.

*And finally football / U.S. style.
At last week's supremely boring Superbowl game, the Coca Cola company ran a commercial in which the American anthem was sung by foreign people in a variety of languages.
(I've heard that the Lithuanian version was especially moving)

Completely missing the subtle message that the emerging global culture is strictly corporate in nature - so prepare yourself to be conquered and consumed - thousands of angry American morons - sorry! - patriots took to - what else? - twitter to denounce the beverage giant.

One tweet in particular not only nicely sums up this situation, but also reflects just how essential the mindless application of social media has become in our lives.

"fuck outa here you communist liquid!"

  

Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart

Yes, dear reader, the results are in and they are not particularly good. Apparently we are all aging,  at least according to the experts, many of whom have been studying the phenomenon for so long, and are as a result so old themselves, that a certain amount of skepticism regarding their data is unavoidable.

Nevertheless, the aging process, also referred to as Personal Entropy Affliction (P.E.A. for those of us generally too short of breath to actually say Personal Entropy Affliction) is by and large incontestable.

As we may recall, all systems move inexorably towards a state of maximum disorder. And while this may be fortuitous on cosmic scales, as it enables temporary pockets of life to pop into being, on the human scale there is pretty much a zero upside. The arrow of time, in other words, is the friend of no man.

Noted Gerontologist Mindy Middlemarch focuses her research on what she refers to as the 'two-pronged assault' on the human life form.

Prong one concerns the gradual, though persistent and, to be perfectly honest, irreversible breakdown of the physical body. Things start to hurt, stop working or, in some cases, simply fall off. There is also the unpleasant tendency for things to mysteriously turn into other things, for which teams of specialists are standing by to provide names.

 A normal human head, for example, can over time take on the appearance of a lumpy, discolored root vegetable.

78 year old man:  So, Doc, can you tell me what the hell's going on here?
Highly trained specialist:  The explanation is fairly complex, quite likely beyond what your current intellectual status will allow you to fully grasp.
Man:  Still, I'd like to hear it.
Specialist:  Well, if you insist. You're suffering from an aging-related phenomenon, the precise medical term for which is Potato Head Syndrome.
Man:  Oh dear God!  Can it be treated?
Specialist: Afraid not.
Man: So what's my prognosis?
Specialist: Hard to predict. You may remain a potato, or progress to the engorged turnip stage, or, in the most extreme case, you could end up resembling a rotting pumpkin.
Man: That's terrible!
Specialist:  True, but look on the bright side. You'll be a big, scary hit come Halloween.

Prong two deals with the deterioration of mental faculties, or as Dr. Middlemarch graciously  characterizes it, the metamorphosis of the mature mind. "Old people don't necessarily lose their minds," she says. "Rather they undergo a critical divergence with temporal reality, what I like to call acute memory displacement, frequently accompanied by a slipping out of sync with current cultural paradigms."

Say what?

Take, for example, the curious case of John P., an 86 year old living in the more or less exact epicenter of the memory-impaired Mid-West. John can recall in exquisite, some might say excruciating, detail the first time he kissed a girl, some 70 years earlier - the contours of her face,
her aroma, skin condition (two tiny pimples on her chin), the tensile adaptability of her lips,
the torque of her trembling hips  (T = r x F), the formulation of her tongue (reluctantly inserted into his mouth for precisely 2.7 seconds), the color of her bra (pale blue, glimpsed furtively while her eyes were closed), the sound she emitted during the kiss (a high-pitched, almost squeaky moan), etc. 

What John cannot recall is which of his five dresser drawers contain his underwear.

Even curiouser is John's apparent disdain for the laws of probability. Statistically speaking, on at least one of every five days, based entirely on random choice, John should be able to put on a clean pair of boxers.

According to Agnes, his wife of 66 years, John has now gone 137 days without the benefit of clean undergarments.  "The situation has become fairly desperate," she tells us.  "He's gotten a lot more stubborn in his old age, refusing to look in any more than one drawer per day, and of course he always gets it wrong. I pretty much have to hold my nose whenever we're in the same room."

When asked to comment on Agnes' assertion,  John says,  "I have no idea who this woman is, but I'm pretty sure she's been stealing my underwear."

*Shown a faded photo of his elementary school class, John was able to correctly name 29 of the 32 students.  However, when handed a framed photo of himself and Agnes on a recent vacation to Orlando, Florida, and given three chances to identify it correctly, his answers were ...
  a) a Biblical artifact   b) a one-way mirror   c) a piece of fruit.

I don't know about you, but I'm really starting to like this guy.


Next time:  How millions of elderly Japanese attempt to stave off dementia by driving  automobiles at unbelievably slow speeds, and the extent to which this practice is responsible for the alarming increase in depression, high blood pressure, heart palpitations and sudden brain aneurisms in the younger Japanese driving population.