What have we learned so far?

I still am who I am.

I still am who I am.

The rules have changed. But I have my own rules.

Don’t use race as a weapon.

Don’t use sex as a weapon.

Don’t use class as a weapon.

Don’t use wealth as a weapon.

Don’t use the earth as a weapon.

And don’t forget the Prime Directive.

Except that everybody forgets everything all the time. Why I act so mad so much of the time. Everybody has a window of right now consciousness. Yours is the size of an iPhone screen. Mine is the size of an IMAX screen times ten.

You have no idea how much I can hold in the forefront of consciousness at the same time. It’s killing me. Pretty quickly.

So pay attention while I’m still here.

And remember the Prime Directive. The Smithsonian Channel just did a bio of Isaac Newton. Asperger’s sufferer. Like Einstein and Darwin. Genius is a disease. Newton was focused on three separate obsessions. Math, alchemy, and theology. I have three obsessions too. The Rolling Stones, the life of the United States, and women’s bodies.


Greatest music video ever. (Surpassing this one.) A woman telling the truth.

Do we understand one another now?

More rules will follow.

6 comments

  1. Instapunk’s avatar

    MCP? Hardly. Well, kinda. Sorta. I love women who are smart and intuitive and funny and charismatic even without makeup. Those women mostly don’t exist. There’s my wife. There’s Sarah Palin, whom I’d be willing to watch grow old in office. There’s Barbara, whom I’ve never laid eyes on. There’s Edna, who’s probably carrying a gun. There’s Rita, who actually scares me, and there’s, uh, [unintelligible face saving list].

    Not a long list. Male Chauvinist Pig? Who out there, male or female, has a longer list?

    1. Peregrine John’s avatar

      Oh. I thought he meant Master Control Program. You know, the electric villain in Tron. Only MCP I knew of.

      Have you seen the recent BBC series, Sherlock? I seem to recall you had, and objected to their portrayal of Holmes as too iconoclastic, which is amusing. He’s less so than other neo-Holmeses, from Elementary and House, who are often intentionally unpleasant, arguably as a “new take” on the character. I mention it because his genius is in fact treated like a disease, or more accurately a disorder. His brother Mycroft learned to manage it well, but Sherlock, as in the books, occasionally slips into drug use to slow himself down enough to cope with the normal world. It is discussed at length in one of the most recent episodes.

      I dunno, sounds familiar.

      1. Peregrine John’s avatar

        (Not the drug use sounding familiar. At least with our Punks. I mean the thought at a different speed thing. Mycroft is described as living in a world of comparative goldfish.)

        1. Instapunk’s avatar

          No need to be tactful. I’m more Holmes than not. Without stimulus — human or sensory — my natural state is staring at the ceiling, wandering through my own wilderness. I do have to slow that down to be able to post. I need a present focus. Otherwise you’re all just a blur. Why I bark about silence. I’ve been trying to explain it. Never registers, never takes. So easy for me not to be anywhere. Nothing to do with drugs. Never did cocaine, meth, heroin, LSD, mescaline, or any of the other popular zone outs. Where my mind wants to go anymore. Waste of time me talking about this, I guess.

          1. Peregrine John’s avatar

            Not really. I’ve always understood it, but have different ways of coping. Often not better, I’ll admit. Why am I usually silent? You know that, since I’ve said it often enough: blank agreement is boring, and on the odd occasion I disagree factually (opinion matters very little to me), an argument is usually trying to punch way above my weight. Learning is usually more useful, but doesn’t contribute much to commenting either. Rely on the hit stats, not the comment lists. We return to reread and further digest. Even tetchy old curmudgeons like to chat, yes, but the odds of sparking conversation seems inversely proportional to the significance of the original article.

            Lately I’ve been helping my son through the oddness of discovering everyone else isn’t like him, a subject I’ve been trying to explain to him for quite a long time. He thought he understood but is coming into actual understanding through experience. (He is smarter than me, even less naturally at ease in this lunatic world.) Usually surrounded by brilliant, creative, talented, interesting people, he seems slightly amazed at regular folks. How he decides to interact with them may be like I do, like you do, or some other approach. Who knows? I downplay my abilities for a few reasons (genuine humility when among the brilliant, for one), but it’s not the only approach. How he slows things down or channels mental energy to avoid that awful boredom, now that’s something to be concerned with.

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