Skip to main content

Sucking on Lloyd's titties, for nurturance sake (18 February 2009)

James, While it is true that I do one day hope to find myself sucking on Lloyd's titties in an effort to secure for myself some delicious DeMausian milk, I know for certain that I cannot have, as you suggest, a cult-like interest in DeMause and his work. It's impossible. I
know because I've been a life-long user of apple products, and no one who uses macs regularly can be anything but a buoyantly happy and healthy human being.

Let me relate a story. A couple months ago I had a party where a whole bunch of us were sitting in a circle talking this and that. Someone asked me about my interest in psychohistory, and, after
explaining why I don't actually like the term, and after emphatically DIScouraging them from studying history and emphatically ENcouraging them to read books by people who are alive now, I explained the idea of psychoclasses and suggested that one would probably find that those people who are of the helping (advanced) psychoclass used macintosh computers, while those who were of the socializing class (or worse) used windows machines. My friend
suddenly grabbed everyone's attention, and asked everyone to indicate the kind of computer they used -- Mac or PC. Turned out that all the people who used Mac were seated on one side, and all the
others, on the other. What had happened, of course, is that without knowing it, members of the same psychoclass had sought each other out. It was like Loyalist vs. Patriot, all over again (Mac users being the Patriots, and PC users being the dumpy Loyalists,
of course.)

But while I don't want to dump on my PC using friends, it is true that most of them wear more drab clothing, are more inclined to smoke, and are more likely to be personality-challenged than my mac using friends. If you go into an Apple store, you'll get a good sense of what we're like. We tend to wear bright, extravagant, "fun," clothing. We tend to smile a lot, and hang out with other people who wear bright clothing and smile a lot. We're always the life of the party -- even when we're trying not to be. We like taking pictures of one another smiling, and delight in sending these pictures of our smiling selves to one other. One might make the mistake of thinking we're narcissistic -- like the barbaric greeks were, according to our darling DeMause -- but really we just like being in one another's sunshine -- it's such a great way to live!

You know if I was to have a party where I invited only my mac using friends, I'd might think to invite over that James Dale Davidson of yours. You know, he's no Paul Krugman, and he does seem to enjoy the
idea of being a survivor amidst financial societal ruin -- which isn't the best of fantasies -- a little too much, but he is fun and adventurous, and I bet some more time amongst those healthier than himself might bring him a little further toward the sunnier side.

Oh! -- that's another thing we mac people like to do!!!: We mac people enjoy helping others!!!
Makes us smile : ) in fact.

maccultenthusiastsincebirth,
psycholiteraturely,
patrickmh

Link: RealPsychohistory

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Discussion over the fate of Jolenta, at the Gene Wolfe facebook appreciation site

Patrick McEvoy-Halston November 28 at 10:36 AM Why does Severian make almost no effort to develop sustained empathy for Jolenta -- no interest in her roots, what made her who she was -- even as she features so much in the first part of the narrative? Her fate at the end is one sustained gross happenstance after another... Severian has repeated sex with her while she lay half drugged, an act he argues later he imagines she wanted -- even as he admits it could appear to some, bald "rape" -- but which certainly followed his  discussion of her as someone whom he could hate so much it invited his desire to destroy her; Severian abandons her to Dr. Talus, who had threatened to kill her if she insisted on clinging to him; Baldanders robs her of her money; she's sucked at by blood bats, and, finally, left at death revealed discombobulated of all beauty... a hunk of junk, like that the Saltus citizens keep heaped away from their village for it ruining their preferred sense ...

Salon discussion of "Almost Famous" gang-rape scene

Patrick McEvoy-Halston: The "Almost Famous'" gang-rape scene? Isn't this the film that features the deflowering of a virgin -- out of boredom -- by a pack of predator-vixons, who otherwise thought so little of him they were quite willing to pee in his near vicinity? Maybe we'll come to conclude that "[t]he scene only works because people were stupid about [boy by girl] [. . .] rape at the time" (Amy Benfer). Sawmonkey: Lucky boy Pull that stick a few more inches out of your chute, Patrick. This was one of the best flicks of the decade. (sawmonkey, response to post, “Films of the decade: ‘Amost Famous’, R.J. Culter, Salon, 13 Dec. 2009) Patrick McEvoy-Halston: @sawmonkey It made an impression on me too. Great charm. Great friends. But it is one of the things you (or at least I) notice on the review, there is the SUGGESTION, with him being so (rightly) upset with the girls feeling so free to pee right before him, that sex with him is just further presump...

The Conjuring

The Conjuring 
I don't know if contemporary filmmakers are aware of it, but if they decide to set their films in the '70s, some of the affordments of that time are going to make them have to work harder to simply get a good scare from us. Who would you expect to have a more tenacious hold on that house, for example? The ghosts from Salem, or us from 2013, who've just been shown a New England home just a notch or two downscaled from being a Jeffersonian estate, that a single-income truck driver with some savings can afford? Seriously, though it's easy to credit that the father — Roger Perron—would get his family out of that house as fast as he could when trouble really stirs, we'd be more apt to still be wagering our losses—one dead dog, a wife accumulating bruises, some good scares to our kids—against what we might yet have full claim to. The losses will get their nursing—even the heavy traumas, maybe—if out of this we've still got a house—really,...