elle ne saura quoi

in what distant deeps or skies
burnt the fire in thine eyes?
…
and what shoulder, and what art?
could twist the sinews of thy heart?

– william blake

–

ladies and gentlemen, the topic of today’s interdisciplinary studies class is applied physics.

refractive index:
the extent to which a material bends the rays of illumination passing through its boundary.
the higher a material’s refractive index, the greater the distortion.

total internal reflection:
a phenomenon in which no light is allowed to escape from the interior of a material, due to (a) the material’s high refractive index and (b) the oblique angle at which light hits the material’s surface.

–

today’s lesson:
the refractive index of the soul is greater than that of the eye.

as wise minds have realized since antiquity, the refractive index of the soul is so high that few can shine the light of introspection at the proper angle to see anything resembling a true picture.
the eye, however, renders much more accurate images.

the result:
most of us are generally aware of our physical “type”.
however, most of us — especially the young and innocent, whatever their age and level of experience — will have no clue whether a particular context or situation will press our arousal buttons.
until…
it just happens.

the refractive index of the soul is high indeed.

–
there is a grim equivalence between the woman who, despite her plaintive lamentations of being repeatedly used and abused, continues to seek badder and badder bad boys, and the man who, despite his vocal denunciation of mercenary sluts, continues to seek provocatively-dressed and -made-up women whose every word, gesture, and subtext is designed to lull men’s instincts with the Soma of concentrated, aggressive sexuality before moving in for the coup de grâce.

we just don’t learn.

projected from the wrong angle, the light will never reach our consciousness.

total internal reflection.

–

moreover, many of our most primal situational triggers are strictly prohibited in polite society. in fact, one could form a reasonably accurate definition of “polite society” just from knowing which drives must be starved, suppressed, and shunted into more materially productive endeavors.

the result?
if and when one of these situations rears its beautifully ugly head, its raw reptilian appeal will be doubled by the sweet taste of forbidden fruit, and compounded further by deafening cognitive dissonance.

non cogito, ergo sum.
descartes was wrong.
the more our rationality is shattered, the more we feel alive.

–

now, we’ll get even more interdisciplinary, and discuss inequalities.

men are primarily aroused by concrete visual and behavioral stimuli, which are easily understood and identified.
women are primarily aroused by situational, contextual, and subtextual stimuli, which are refracted beyond recognition for all but the most coldly perceptive among us.

therefore, women’s relative powerlessness in resisting skilled seduction is real.
and actionable.
and capable of being exploited.

Sample Problem 1
if one gold-digger can dig gold from ten men, and one blessed seducer can dig gold from ten such gold-diggers, then this seducer shall receive __________

Answer
a hundredfold now in this time

–

also, equalists, read the following and weep:
there is limited justification here for the claims of women caught in affairs and infidelities that “it just happened” and that they are thus less complicit in their transgressions than are men.
specifically:
if a woman is subconsciously and primally seduced by a new and exciting situation, context, or subtext — of whose appeal she is really, truly, and fully unaware at the outset — then, much to the chagrin of her long-term partner, her claims of being helpless, passive prey are the naked truth.

things really do “just happen”.

this is not to excuse the ultimate conduct of such women: “is” and “ought” are not the same, nor are explanation and justification.
however, it must be accepted that women, much more than men, will find themselves in situations that stealthily build up unconscious, unexpected arousal. indeed, in less than the time required for that reptilian arousal to diffuse to the cortex, a well-executed seduction can reach fever pitch, insurmountable by any earthly means.

–

Exercise 1
the policy implications of the above, concerning men’s and women’s differential freedom of movement and association, are left as an exercise for the reader, but i will be helpful enough to point out that herein lies full justification for assigning much stricter curfews, rules, and punishments to daughters than to sons — and likewise for wives vis-à-vis husbands.

Exercise 2
likewise left as an exercise for the reader is the role of non-earthly means — such as ardent, irrational religious faith — in countering women’s otherwise irresistible arousal.
hi gorbachev!

 

opening doors

my great-uncle stood just inches away from the old wooden radio console, his head craned toward its one remaining functional speaker as the game crackled over the AM airwaves. his beloved louisville cardinals, trailing heavily favored ohio state by only seven points, had steadily and systematically driven from deep within their own territory to within two yards of the goal line; the remaining time had ticked down to less than a minute.
my restless brain noted the eerie mirroring of his grizzled face — brought ever closer to the speaker with an almost menacing glare, as if to intimidate the announcer’s excited staccato into bringing good news — by the fresher, smoother face of the dog staring respectfully into the horn on the radio’s lovingly restored brand plate, eternally awaiting its master’s voice.
i opened my mouth, intent on breaking the tense vibe by pointing out this parallelism. as i began to deliver the quip, i fixed my gaze on his face, both wizened and wisened by a life of hard labor.
i never delivered the quip. my words were just gone, as if they had been ripped directly from the myelin express lanes leading from my brain to my mouth.
at that moment i felt the sheer magnitude of what i had always taken for granted — the passion in the hearts of men.
the passion that, when provoked, emerges from its slumber with the sound, fury, and heat of a welder’s torch, its emotional acetylene creating bonds that last a lifetime.
the passion that makes tragedy and loss saturate every molecule of a man’s body, but at the same time infuses objectively frivolous pursuits with the elixir of life to overcome such tragedies.

–

“all right boys.”
louisville had broken into the endzone with half a minute remaining, bringing the score to within one point. still, he managed these words of encouragement only sotto voce, as if trying not to lull his team into complacency.

–

two and a half years earlier, he had taken his beloved wife to the dealership to take delivery of the new pickup that was her birthday present. though normally the type to insist on driving when they were together, he had handed her the keys for the ceremonial first drive.
she never made it home.

–

a commercial break ensued.
despite the touchdown, which had capped an impressive scoring drive, my great-uncle marched toward the bathroom with no hint of joy or hope piercing his characteristic impassive scowl. he strode past the old, slightly cockeyed screen door, which had gradually drifted wide open on its freshly oiled hinges, and slammed it shut with unusually vigorous derision.
“fucking door.”
he was a man of few words.

he had slammed the door so hard that it vibrated lazily on the hinges, preventing its lip from securely entering the strike plate. the two danced momentarily, the door attempting a clumsy seduction, but they just didn’t click.

–

they had been broadsided by a drunk driver’s four-ton lifted truck, whose front grille had gone directly through the driver’s door, taking his wife’s life in a mercifully short instant. whether out of love, sadism, or both, though, the gods had saved my uncle from so much as a scrape.
he had stormed out of the new truck’s completely unscathed passenger door, the blinding white flame of his passion burning away all of his moral checks and balances. within seconds, my great-uncle had smashed through the drunk driver’s door, yanked the lock open, dragged the stuporous driver from the seat onto the hard, unforgiving pavement, and beaten him to within an inch of his life.
the driver needed only a few hours in the emergency room to go one more inch.

the jury acquitted my great-uncle of all charges after less than twenty minutes of deliberation.

–

“no… fuck, no.”
louisville had decided to be gutsy and try the two-point conversion, going for the big upset rather than settling for the tie. ohio state’s defense had correctly anticipated a pass play and had sent a heavy rush, forcing the louisville quarterback to float a desperation toss that glided tantalizingly out of reach above the intended receiver’s head.
ohio state 20, louisville 19.

–

the door, which was in plain view, had begun to drift back open into the still, humid air of west louisville.
silently, inexorably, at a steady angular velocity too slow to be perceptible, the door drifted back open, releasing some of my uncle’s pent-up passion into the dank, darkly aromatic, eerily silent night. a cloud of moths, clustered around the flickering yellow light outside, took this as an invitation.

–

my great-uncle’s otherwise unbearably monotone, gritty, tragedy-wracked life was animated by only three things: his faith, his family, and the louisville cardinals.
the saying that ardent fans live and die with their teams is usually meant metaphorically, but it became a literal truth in the year my great-uncle lost his wife.

his family was slowly dwindling, taken by accidents, cancer, violence, and disease.
his God had answered his faith by sparing him from the accident, but, with all the other things He had to attend to, had callously forgotten to do the same for his wife.

that year the oft-maligned cardinals posted their best season in school history, destroyed alabama on new year’s day, and very possibly saved my great-uncle’s life.
the following year, once my great-uncle had learned to handle the grief to the point where he no longer needed them, the cardinals reverted to their usual form, again losing more games than they won.

–

“NO!”
he stared at the old radio with visible shock.
louisville had successfully converted an onside kick and had run the ball all the way to the red zone — but the play was nullified, since the ball had traveled just shy of the requisite ten yards before being touched by a louisville player.

–

by this point, the door had drifted fully perpendicular to the frame, allowing the moths the run of the house.

–

final score, ohio state 20, louisville 19.
my great-uncle collapsed back onto the couch, despondent. “we shouldn’t have gone for the win. too greedy, you get nothing.”
one-and-a-half sentences. i was impressed with his verbosity.

“shit.
fuck!”

what?

“i forgot to shut the door.”

i sat there, sharing his burden as i best could.
in years past his wife would have sat next to him, wordless, putting her arms around him until it was time for him to go to the bathroom yet again.
but now it was just him.
and family like me, who would make the trip to visit when we could.
and the louisville cardinals.

–

–

the questions i haven’t been able to answer:

is it better to love deeply, never knowing when that love might be ripped away, or not to love at all?

is it a gift, or a tragedy, that i’ve come to see women as so alike that i will probably never feel that sort of love, no matter how i might want to?

if i learn exactly how to bond a woman to me, how to bond myself to her, and how to continually strengthen that bond — and i do so, consciously — can that still be called love?

–

the other thing i figured out that night:

the door opened so silently, slowly, and smoothly that its opening had become imperceptible.
so imperceptible, in fact, that my great-uncle had entirely forgotten the initial state — his having shut the door, even with such sound and fury — and had transferred the responsibility onto himself.

the key to successfully transforming your woman is to be like the brand-new oil in those door hinges.
be the lubricant that allows her to change, and the gravity that forces her to change, in the ways that will keep her enthralled.
slowly.
smoothly.
implicitly.

if you transform her slowly, smoothly, implicitly, and skilfully enough, she’ll wake up one day and realize that she is your slut, yours to do anything you want with, for as long as you want — or at least for as long as you keep pushing.
and she won’t know how she got there.
she won’t even realize that it was your conscious (wo)manipulation.

it just happened. … because you made it happen.
we know how women love when things just happen.

we grew closer. … because you’ve created everything she has become.
i respect him. … because you own her.
i trust him. … because you know her better than she knows herself.

he makes me feel like a woman.

i can be myself around him.

i forgot to shut the door.

the most powerful forces are those that we don’t see, don’t feel, and don’t notice, until they have transformed us.

 

hold ‘em

POST THE SECOND
in which the Author reveals that PUA-style pickup game is not for everyone**

The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
[your] times are in [your] hand
[so say] “A whole I planned”

– adapted from robert browning

**this fact is almost universally overlooked in “the community”, not least because noting it would drastically slash the size of the target audience to which the community’s ersatz leaders hawk their products.

–

let’s begin by throwing personality types into a sieve, sifting vigorously, and seeing what shakes out.

broadly speaking, men’s ways of striving for experience and achievement — in the very inclusive sense of the term, covering everything from boldfaced résumé mainstays to drunken escapades — lie on a continuum.

at one extreme of this continuum are what i’ll call “vertical integrators”, men who seek to build something cumulative, with many overlaid layers of significance, development, and meaning. these are the thoroughgoing monomaniacs who dedicate their lives to building specific industry-niche businesses at work, or, if they find no such calling, to creating the industry niches themselves; to developing hard-earned talents, with a flat return curve prior to virtuoso level, at their esoteric pursuits; and to building large, patriarchal families.

at the other extreme are what i’ll call “horizontal integrators”, the dilettantes, dabblers, rogues, and picaroons who look to sample as many different swatches as possible from the mottled tapestry of life. drifters in good days and derelicts in bad, these are the restless transients who defy the law prohibiting perpetual motion. at work, at play, and in (and out of and in and out of and in and out of) love, they value diversity over depth. they are like junk bonds — their values may vary greatly from one hour to the next — but they never stray too far from the notion that quantity has a quality all its own.

these two categories correspond, very roughly, to one narrowly defined dimension of the alpha/beta dichotomy, although it would be foolish to define a reductionist alpha/beta dichotomy according to them.

–

the above is not a binary, nor is it a bimodal distribution; it’s a continuum on which lies a skewed bell curve, whose median lies on the side of vertical integration.

surely there are some chameleons, who masquerade as vertical integrators just long enough to have plausible deniability for their rogue exploits.
and for each of these sneaky fuckers, we can find an antithesis: a man of predominantly conservative disposition, who periodically emerges from the woodwork to white-knuckle a few peer-pressured bouts of chemically assisted derring-do, strutting and fretting his 15 minutes upon the stage in an ill-advised attempt to catch and sing the sun in flight.
these types notwithstanding, though, most men in modern western society are vertical integrators. of the minority who prefer azimuth to altitude, most will find themselves gazing inexorably further away from the horizon and toward the sky with the passing years, as time gradually whittles away their supply of the great horizontal integrator known as testosterone.

-.– — ..- –..– – — — –..– … …. .- .-.. .-.. .–. .- … …

ok, so, who cares?
you should.
because, for vertical integrators (that’s most of you guys out there), pick-up artistry is a sweet-tasting, slow-acting poison.

if you are a vertical integrator working at building or improving a long-term relationship, then do not use mystery-method-style PUA techniques.
notice the word “techniques”. you can and should still use reputable PUA material — especially from sources that have achieved prominence based on quality alone — to strip away the pretty lies and reconstruct the real real world, from first principles.
but, unless you’re getting incredibly lucky at an oversized game of battleships, you should not proceed a1 a2 a3 c1 c2 c3 s1 s2 s3 with your long-term prospect. this sequence can and will get you laid, but in the long term it will almost certainly be counterproductive, causing you to be blown out of the water as soon as the proverbial paint begins to dry.

first, understand that PUA game is to long-term relationships what a hammer is to a phillips-head screw; although one would think it obvious from the name, many people need to be reminded that PUA techniques are designed for pick-up, not for hold ‘em.
it is designed for a task whose payoffs are not cumulative. it’s pure horizontal integration — a sisyphean task, of essentially constant difficulty level, repeated ad nauseam.
can you learn to write a novel by writing 1000 opening vignettes?
can you become a chessmaster by becoming really good at the catalan?
no.
NO.
you can’t.
but the PUA fellows are telling, and selling, the notion that you can.
fool, money, parted.
worse, though, PUA techniques are not just some inert chemical in the mix of a long-term relationship. in the conception, nurturing, and birth of a long-term relationship, PUA techniques play the role of thalidomide — allowing the birth to occur, but crippling the potential and shortening the life of the bond.
why?
as stated before, women are elastic bands.
effective PUA game works by stretching those bands at an extremely rapid velocity — rapid enough to produce consistent and reliable one-night stands for proficient practitioners.
and yes, haters, it works.
so what’s the problem?
the problem is that PUA technique gets you from point a to point s3 really quickly, and then locks up like a grocery cart that’s just hit the yellow line around the parking lot.
do you want your nascent relationship to end not with a bang, nor with a whimper, but with the dull thud of a grocery cart ramming into your solar plexus?
didn’t think so.
neither did neil strauss, who was the best pua in the world until he met his own grocerycarterloo — when his beloved lisa leveridge, about whom he had waxed so sentimental at the end of the game, unceremoniously dumped him after the exact period of time that normally characterizes rotating polyandry.
ahem.
want to make it across the desert? don’t drive the car that goes really fast but gets six miles per gallon.

 

elastic bands

close your eyes and imagine the elastic in the waistbands of cheap clothing.
or one of the gummy erasers of decades past, small chunks of which could be gently and lovingly — with a little friction and heat — drawn out to a length of several feet, starting from less than an inch, given just the right amount of pressure.

the fundamental polymeric structure of these materials will gradually distend in response to constant pressure, stretching the material permanently — if, and only if, this pressure is skilfully applied just beyond the elastic’s threshold of comfort. if the pressure is steadily applied at this barely supra-threshold rate, the material is gradually slackened to a length unattainable by a single, more powerful impulse.

women are like this, too.
as are men.
as are frogs in pots of water slowly heated to boiling.

but women are especially vulnerable, since their very nature compels them to search for that je ne sais quoi** that is exactly 0.1 standard deviations past their “limit”.
pushing the envelope.

so, how is the elastic stretched?
THRILL is a quality that begins a few inches inside the envelope of prior experience.
DISCOMFORT, however, does not begin until a few inches outside the envelope.
there are, of course, exceptions; some phobics feel discomfort will into the interior of the envelope, while some adrenaline junkies don’t feel thrill until miles outside it. however, for most decently well-adjusted people, the above conditions obtain.

the most addictive experiences for women (and for men, too), then, are those that lie on, OR BARELY OUTSIDE, the envelope of experience — simultaneously maximizing the factor of thrill and minimizing that of discomfort.

importantly, though — and this is the single factor that causes many long-term relationships to fail, especially among PUA the types who have learned to approach and seduce women at high velocities — this tension on a woman’s “envelope” will gradually cause the elastic to expand.
and the Thrill and Discomfort borderlines recede.
and she chases them.
and a slut is made.
and elastic never goes back.

–

**in a very literal sense, to be explained in future postings.

 

the political spectrum

our world
is not
a matrix
but
rather
a scrolling
marquee

FIGURE

collective
experiences
craft
faintly
discernible
scripts
on the
scroll
left to right

GROUND

experienced
collectives
craftily
script
discernible
feints
that
scroll
right to left

ACT ONE

the
blissfully
ignorant
ignorantly
blissful
comfortable
and
youthful
thought
to be
a brighter
lot
than
the more
obscure
masses

they
glow
with the
blissfully
ignorant
ignorantly
blissful
glow
of
comfort
and
youth
that obscures
a more
massive
lot of
brighter
thoughts

they
are blind
to the
fact
that
they
are blinded
to the
facts

they
cannot
see
the faint
figure
on the
scroll
instead
(it
figures)
they
see
the
scrolling
feints
in its stead

and so
their mind (singular)
will
drift
right to left

INTERMISSION

the glow
is magnified
by
“education”
in schools
only
focusing
their
burning
rays
of “knowledge”
directly
upon
the
soul
of
the world

after all
they
told us
education is the lighting of a fire
didn’t
they?

burn

america

burn

our tears
will evaporate
in the flames
anyway
nothing to see here
move on

ACT TWO

the
glow
is extinguished
only
by
true learning
direct
knowledge
raised
and focused
solely
by being
burned
and
schooled
by
the world

what of
those
whose
school
education
is razed
burned
extinguished
directly
by
the world?
what of
those
back from the mouth of hell,
their souls,
all that was left of them,
shatter’d and sunder’d?

some
will
reason
why
when they get
out

they
will
reason
out
the
script
when they get
why

and
their minds (plural)
will
drift
left to right

ACT THREE

and
what of
those
intense
diverse
purposeful
put-upon
few
who
figure
the crafty
intents
and
purposes
of
those
invisible hands
crafting
diversions
to
put upon
the figure?

they
see
right beyond
the feints
scripted
by the left
but
also
beyond
the faint
left to right
script

and
so
the masses
who
can’t
see
beyond
what
they
can
see
don’t mind (verb)
the
few
warnings
put upon
them
by
the
put-upon
few

and so
those
few
who
see
what
those
who
can’t
see
can’t
see
are
left to write