581% return

Maciej's delicious links pointed to "How to transition to boyfriend status" with the very accurate tags: ugh howto self-help idiot sex

The "get a girl" self-help guru subculture is exactly the pyramid scheme "network marketing" subculture about sex instead of money. They're all convinced that some foolproof scheme exists for acquiring the desired object: a beautiful woman. (Note: must be beautiful, preferably a professional model of some kind.) Once this formula is discovered and applied, women meeting their criteria will be attracted and compelled to submit to them. They live entirely in the world of the 13-year-old boy who knows that he wants to have an extremely hot woman, and that he cannot. This isn't dating, it's Weird Science.

Like the "network marketing" people, these maniacs always believe in their latest version of self-help sexual magick, which is entirely unlike all those others. Also like the pyramid schemers, they give each other authoritative advice in the complete absence of success even on their own unusual terms. The guy in the beat-up '85 BMW who tells you he has the key to becoming a millionaire here presents himself as the quivering, porn-clutching misogynist with the sure-fire method for creating a supermodel out of old magazines and a flux capacitor.

A cheerfully annoying loon from my college days, a guy who loved to disrupt any political speech on campus with loud, disjointed heckling and wore a permanent disturbed clownlike grin, later morphed into "The Speed Seduction Guy". I remember spitting out my drink in disbelief seeing him on TV sometime in the 90s pitching his "method". OH NO WAY IT'S THAT GUY, OH MAN, HE'S SELLING WHAT?

What these poor bastards are after, of course, isn't dating or even just sex. It's power. Fortunately for them, the sorcery they're practicing just reaps another $49.95 each time for the book and tape set, without the statue of the Commendatore showing up and dragging them off to Hell.

woo

My five CD Richard Thompson box set just arrived!

rip rip rip

flesh that walks

1. Bibliodyssey has a fascinating article on the encrypted religious poetry of the 9th century German theologian Rabanus. This is the kind of thing I see and immediately want to know everything about!
   
   
2. On a totally different spectrum of awesome, here's a formula 1 V10 engine warming up and revving, just to show you what the peak of gearhead technology looks and sounds like.
   
   
3. I hope this is an incorrect report, but it's not unbelievable that the world's two best-known child molesters would make beautiful music together.

Where's the hierophant for this hypnopomp?

I keep most of my psychologically related stuff on the brain filter now, but here are some recent factoids of interest that have come up from my own situation.

One theory for the effect of NFB is that it replicates the twilight states of the brain, the hypnagogic and hypnopompic states of going to and coming from sleep. The theory is that the brain does a lot of "figuring out" emotional issues and trauma in those states, and that inducing or prolonging them is helpful.

Digestive health has way, way more effect on mental health that many people realize. An ounce of Metamucil is worth a ton of neurochemical intervention.

Mindfulness is hard. Oh, you knew that, though.