Sunday, October 24, 2010
Friday, October 22, 2010
Letter to a Materialist Sam Harris
First - Your talk at the Texas Book Festival was wonderful and many atheist brains were there with neural correlates of right morality. Except for the nihilist. I saw the security detail and realized how much stress you are under for announcing an obvious truth about faith. Keep it up.
There is nothing you have written or said that I disagree with so this is nuance that I want to share for what it's worth. As a materialist I am drawn to eliminativism because - thanks to your books - I do not believe that "faith" or "belief" explain much of anything. Simply put - all these faithists live in a state of perpetual and unending anxiety which lays the groundwork for atrocious action. When I hear "God has a plan for your life and THAT'S why you're completely fucked!" it *still* makes me anxious and I am on decent meds now.
Consider two subjects:
Akbar - sees his female property in the cloth bag and prays for the death of all apostates five times daily, has just been fitted with a vest full of C4 and ball bearings.
Bubba - lives in a gated community in Birmingham Alabama to keep gang-bangers from raping his women, has just added a fully automatic pistol to his gun collection.
My conjecture is that in both cases the "faith" and "belief" of these two are non-existent. The actual brain state of anxiety caused by continued reminders that people are dreaming of messing with their shit is the problem. These daily exposures to the frightening material world create the seeds from which suicide vests and guns to kill black people sprout.
Right up until last Thursday Benoit Mandelbrot was calm fractal. Dr. Weinberg thinks about particle physics day and night for 50 years and gets smarter *not* anxious (although I did get him started on meatpuppets on board the ISS on Saturday before I saw you). Dr. Dawkins thinks about extended phenotypes day and night for 40 years and gets smarter *not* anxious. Anxiety is not a meme it is a meme substrate (memestrate) upon which mischief flourishes. What I believe but cannot prove is that the brain states like the ones you had on the powerpoint are the substrate upon which all memes grow. People can be sad, mad, glad, transcendent, bemused directly from the same brain state because their particular meme-sauce rides on top of the energy produced by particular brain states. This crackpot idea comes from two sources:
1. "The End of Certainty" by our late UT peer Dr. Prigogine
2. Certain wild explanations for my lack of female companionship
This is all hush-hush because I don't want to go back to in-patient treatment again.
Which brings me to my last point. Where is your "Selfish Gene"? I have a place for it on my bookshelf for anything you write but I need a popularized science book on the brain to put next to "In Search of Memory". If I have to wait until after you're Nobel that will be okay.
Stand by our President,
Kirk Holden
There is nothing you have written or said that I disagree with so this is nuance that I want to share for what it's worth. As a materialist I am drawn to eliminativism because - thanks to your books - I do not believe that "faith" or "belief" explain much of anything. Simply put - all these faithists live in a state of perpetual and unending anxiety which lays the groundwork for atrocious action. When I hear "God has a plan for your life and THAT'S why you're completely fucked!" it *still* makes me anxious and I am on decent meds now.
Consider two subjects:
Akbar - sees his female property in the cloth bag and prays for the death of all apostates five times daily, has just been fitted with a vest full of C4 and ball bearings.
Bubba - lives in a gated community in Birmingham Alabama to keep gang-bangers from raping his women, has just added a fully automatic pistol to his gun collection.
My conjecture is that in both cases the "faith" and "belief" of these two are non-existent. The actual brain state of anxiety caused by continued reminders that people are dreaming of messing with their shit is the problem. These daily exposures to the frightening material world create the seeds from which suicide vests and guns to kill black people sprout.
Right up until last Thursday Benoit Mandelbrot was calm fractal. Dr. Weinberg thinks about particle physics day and night for 50 years and gets smarter *not* anxious (although I did get him started on meatpuppets on board the ISS on Saturday before I saw you). Dr. Dawkins thinks about extended phenotypes day and night for 40 years and gets smarter *not* anxious. Anxiety is not a meme it is a meme substrate (memestrate) upon which mischief flourishes. What I believe but cannot prove is that the brain states like the ones you had on the powerpoint are the substrate upon which all memes grow. People can be sad, mad, glad, transcendent, bemused directly from the same brain state because their particular meme-sauce rides on top of the energy produced by particular brain states. This crackpot idea comes from two sources:
1. "The End of Certainty" by our late UT peer Dr. Prigogine
2. Certain wild explanations for my lack of female companionship
This is all hush-hush because I don't want to go back to in-patient treatment again.
Which brings me to my last point. Where is your "Selfish Gene"? I have a place for it on my bookshelf for anything you write but I need a popularized science book on the brain to put next to "In Search of Memory". If I have to wait until after you're Nobel that will be okay.
Stand by our President,
Kirk Holden
Thursday, September 16, 2010
My Sum of Histories
When I was three years old I walked across the parking lot at El Matamoros holding Daddy's hand. We were headed to a dark 1953 model Chevy sedan. I don't remember getting into that car or any other car. I don't remember what I ate or even if I had anything to eat. Momma may have been holding my hand in the parking lot. The resturant may have been El Toro and not El Matamoros. This moment of three seconds duration in my three year old working memory was reinforced on the night that this happened in about 1959 or 60 by a dream that same night.
By the time I woke up the next morning several neurons grew dendrites that reinforced various synapses to fix this span of time that probably lasted as long, in real time, as two bars of music. I can think of no reason that I would remember this. It is likely that this is now my earliest memory that made its way to long term memory.
Tobin, my brother, came home on February 11th or 12th from the hospital with Momma. Daddy borrowed a sweet red and black Plymouth from Max who worked with Daddy at Hoffman Paints on Burnet road. I was 30 months old. I may have been at El Matamoros walking across the parking lot around this same time. These are confusing first long term memories not yet bracketed by slightly earlier and slightly later memories from which I build the narrative for what later became my self or my ego or my autobiography.
Lou Ann, my older sister, climbed to the top of a bookshelf that Momma and Daddy put on the porch to strip
By the time I woke up the next morning several neurons grew dendrites that reinforced various synapses to fix this span of time that probably lasted as long, in real time, as two bars of music. I can think of no reason that I would remember this. It is likely that this is now my earliest memory that made its way to long term memory.
Tobin, my brother, came home on February 11th or 12th from the hospital with Momma. Daddy borrowed a sweet red and black Plymouth from Max who worked with Daddy at Hoffman Paints on Burnet road. I was 30 months old. I may have been at El Matamoros walking across the parking lot around this same time. These are confusing first long term memories not yet bracketed by slightly earlier and slightly later memories from which I build the narrative for what later became my self or my ego or my autobiography.
Lou Ann, my older sister, climbed to the top of a bookshelf that Momma and Daddy put on the porch to strip
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Keeping Up
Of the two choices; keeping up and ~(keeping up, we find keeping up an evolutionary stable strategy. On the first day that the first proto-chimpanzee gather the visionary proto-chimps and set out for the savannah - the lower quartile on the visionary scale did what they always did - they got left behind because the could not keep up.
Monday, September 13, 2010
I Algorithm
Momma's fingers in my mouth. Getting the dirt out. Watching her hands as the made dinner. Waving her hands while she tells a story with a new voice for each character. Falling in love with a girl and putting our tongues in each others mouth. I put my finger in her and she puts her fingers on me. Watching her write notes in the library.
Corpus Callosum Tuning
The Corpus Callosum is the largest white matter structure in the brain, consisting of 200–250 million contra lateral axonal projections. It connects the left and right cerebral hemispheres and facilitates inter-hemispheric communication.
I run experiments daily exercising the workings of the CC.
1. Two presentations feeding the visual cortex. I am not aware of the probable relationship of the frontal lobe to "bring together" the left-eye/right-lobe and right-eye/left-lobe visual information integration.
While driving, I stare at a spot (bug splatter) on the windshield and 'see past' the short focal length. Two spherical projections like two snow globes - the left eye and the right eye integration of visual information not yet joined together.
2. Stare at the 'vanishing perspective' of I-20 on the horizon either on a straight line or a gentle curve. With music playing, I relax and blink in sync with the musical rhythms. The effect of looking into the arm of a fractal starfish is impressive. I smoke K2 blunts and eat chocolate with almonds. I take sips of Diet Coke on ice from a 32oz foam cup. The interplay of the senses brings the fractal starfish to amazing emergence of integrated information. This I believe but cannot prove is the 'empire of the senses' [citation] from Claude Levi Strauss.
3. Walk on a nature trail and stare into the structure of plants. Look at nature through the lens of the blackberry phone.
4.
Thursday, September 02, 2010
Yeshua ben Yosef - the wrong IP addr.
[I made this up from scratch, just like John the beloved disciple who never met Yeshua.]
Yeshua ben Yosef was a religious fanatic known as ‘Yeshua the Failed Carpenter’. Losing three fingers to sharp hand tools convinced him to follow in the footsteps of his cousin, ‘John the River Dwelling Fanatic’. He preached a message of love and earthly destruction. If you think he was your Jesus you have the wrong IP address in your route table. Yeshua was stoned to death at age 31 for apostasy. 13 other apostates had been stoned to death that year, 17 would be stoned to death the next, 11 had been stoned to death the previous year. To keep the whores, prophets and publicans under control they kept plenty of stones at hand.
The tired message, "I am the messiah, the world ends now!" was tired. You just could not shut these fuckers up without a hail of stones, a wooden club or the jaw bone of an ass. Once they bled-out in the middle of the street, they calmed down a bit. To be replaced by the next batter on deck. It was a messiah factory. Hanging or crucifying would have turned anonymous fanatics into famous fanatics. Quelling insurrection FAIL.
The 13 heads hanging from the gates of Jerusalem had lost their impact but they made the authorities feel authoritative. The bones of the fanatics, gnawed on by the dogs that were kept for such purposes, made excellent furniture and decorative accessories for the hut or hovel.
For several hundred years many street corner sermons and at least three subsequent scrolls plagiarized this popular fable for its popular although incomprehensible plot and wildly mixed metaphors. Poor people who got poorer, rich people who got richer, poor people that were healed, rich people that got demons. It was like X-Men crossed with the Justice League - there was no telling how this shit turned out. Was Magneto a hero or a villain? Was Yeshua THAT Yeshua? No, the other Yeshua, the one that hung out with Yehuda - no not THAT Yahuda, the other Yahuda. The Yehuda they called Rocky. No, not the Rocky named Simon, the Rocky that herded goats or fished – I cannot remember exactly. There only like 7 names available so it gets confusing.
The Syrian Greeks were in the midst of a Jewish Intifada when the temple fell in 70AD [sic]. The Romans felt that a militarized client state could provide them with a strategic foothold in the Levant. To keep things unbalanced the Romans arbitrarily switched regimes every once in a while. The Syrian Greek Intifada had ended several years before. The next Syrian Greek Intifada was scheduled 7 years hence. This was an infinite loop. It continues today. Remember the stones? They still had plenty of them in piles to throw at each other.
An excerpt from the Haaretz of the time, Josephus, gives a play by play of the action. This was like Basic Cable – Josephus was a Red State talking head. He worked for a policy group and appeared before the Roman Senate to debate the Blue State talking head from SHITAC, the Syrian Hellenistic Israel Tribunal Affairs Committee (whose works were burned by the Council of Who Gives a Fuck in 475 AD):
http://www.bibleweb.com/content/josephus1templefall.htm
What Josephus describes is a perpetual civil war across the Levant. That is not news. Look at this YouTube video:
http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=jlr3eqlxSGs&feature=related
If you prefer the view from the other side it is available in your favorite confirmation bias.
37 year after Yeshua died (no, not THAT Yeshua...), the Romans instituted a Two State solution by demolishing the Temple in 70AD [sic] and encouraging the Jews to get the fuck out of the Levant. Several generations of Hellenistic Jewish scholars debated the words of many philosopher/fanatics of Yeshua's generation and several earlier generations. Fanatics from generations before these fanatics were “prophets” both major and minor.
One fanatic, Mark, wrote an allegorical description of a soon to be long dead Jewish nation that rejected any doctrinal criticism and especially apostasy, the gravest sin against Yahweh (father of a thousand fanatics). The message of this fable - this is a massive cluster-fuck of a region to be born in – was lost on subsequent generations. This tale of woe was written years or months before the fall of the Temple in 70AD. The fact that it seemed prophetic should be tempered by a quick read of “Fooled by Randomness”. Put 500 chimps in a room and one of them will spell more words right than the other 499. Burn the other 499 scrolls with fire. Successful algorithm for selecting prophets is successful.
To recap, generation after generation of zealot marched around the streets and alleys of Jerusalem begging to be stoned and eaten by feral dogs. If you can’t generate four ripping yarns from this rich tapestry of fanaticism - you are just not doing it right. Remember, L. Ron only had imaginary spaceships and dormant volcanoes and look how that turned out.
"Believe in me! I come to kill your grandchildren." says a man blocking your way in the alley behind the church. IMHO we can all feel the hand of the almighty at work here.
I will be making up other accounts shortly. I think I will write four garbled fables. That should cover all the bases. Don't count on them to be coherent. I will be starving (not for 40 days that would be life threatening) when I write the first. I will be on shrooms when I write the second. I will be stoned when I write the third. I will go off my anti-depressants for the fourth. To save time the first three stories will be cut and paste versions with snippets of ‘The Zombie Survival Guide’ and ‘Fodor’s Tajikistan’
Using a random sentence quotation generator on my texts, I will prove that fish live in trees.
That's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Next Week: Cthulhu was a Thetan
Yeshua ben Yosef was a religious fanatic known as ‘Yeshua the Failed Carpenter’. Losing three fingers to sharp hand tools convinced him to follow in the footsteps of his cousin, ‘John the River Dwelling Fanatic’. He preached a message of love and earthly destruction. If you think he was your Jesus you have the wrong IP address in your route table. Yeshua was stoned to death at age 31 for apostasy. 13 other apostates had been stoned to death that year, 17 would be stoned to death the next, 11 had been stoned to death the previous year. To keep the whores, prophets and publicans under control they kept plenty of stones at hand.
The tired message, "I am the messiah, the world ends now!" was tired. You just could not shut these fuckers up without a hail of stones, a wooden club or the jaw bone of an ass. Once they bled-out in the middle of the street, they calmed down a bit. To be replaced by the next batter on deck. It was a messiah factory. Hanging or crucifying would have turned anonymous fanatics into famous fanatics. Quelling insurrection FAIL.
The 13 heads hanging from the gates of Jerusalem had lost their impact but they made the authorities feel authoritative. The bones of the fanatics, gnawed on by the dogs that were kept for such purposes, made excellent furniture and decorative accessories for the hut or hovel.
For several hundred years many street corner sermons and at least three subsequent scrolls plagiarized this popular fable for its popular although incomprehensible plot and wildly mixed metaphors. Poor people who got poorer, rich people who got richer, poor people that were healed, rich people that got demons. It was like X-Men crossed with the Justice League - there was no telling how this shit turned out. Was Magneto a hero or a villain? Was Yeshua THAT Yeshua? No, the other Yeshua, the one that hung out with Yehuda - no not THAT Yahuda, the other Yahuda. The Yehuda they called Rocky. No, not the Rocky named Simon, the Rocky that herded goats or fished – I cannot remember exactly. There only like 7 names available so it gets confusing.
The Syrian Greeks were in the midst of a Jewish Intifada when the temple fell in 70AD [sic]. The Romans felt that a militarized client state could provide them with a strategic foothold in the Levant. To keep things unbalanced the Romans arbitrarily switched regimes every once in a while. The Syrian Greek Intifada had ended several years before. The next Syrian Greek Intifada was scheduled 7 years hence. This was an infinite loop. It continues today. Remember the stones? They still had plenty of them in piles to throw at each other.
An excerpt from the Haaretz of the time, Josephus, gives a play by play of the action. This was like Basic Cable – Josephus was a Red State talking head. He worked for a policy group and appeared before the Roman Senate to debate the Blue State talking head from SHITAC, the Syrian Hellenistic Israel Tribunal Affairs Committee (whose works were burned by the Council of Who Gives a Fuck in 475 AD):
http://www.bibleweb.com/content/josephus1templefall.htm
What Josephus describes is a perpetual civil war across the Levant. That is not news. Look at this YouTube video:
http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=jlr3eqlxSGs&feature=related
If you prefer the view from the other side it is available in your favorite confirmation bias.
37 year after Yeshua died (no, not THAT Yeshua...), the Romans instituted a Two State solution by demolishing the Temple in 70AD [sic] and encouraging the Jews to get the fuck out of the Levant. Several generations of Hellenistic Jewish scholars debated the words of many philosopher/fanatics of Yeshua's generation and several earlier generations. Fanatics from generations before these fanatics were “prophets” both major and minor.
One fanatic, Mark, wrote an allegorical description of a soon to be long dead Jewish nation that rejected any doctrinal criticism and especially apostasy, the gravest sin against Yahweh (father of a thousand fanatics). The message of this fable - this is a massive cluster-fuck of a region to be born in – was lost on subsequent generations. This tale of woe was written years or months before the fall of the Temple in 70AD. The fact that it seemed prophetic should be tempered by a quick read of “Fooled by Randomness”. Put 500 chimps in a room and one of them will spell more words right than the other 499. Burn the other 499 scrolls with fire. Successful algorithm for selecting prophets is successful.
To recap, generation after generation of zealot marched around the streets and alleys of Jerusalem begging to be stoned and eaten by feral dogs. If you can’t generate four ripping yarns from this rich tapestry of fanaticism - you are just not doing it right. Remember, L. Ron only had imaginary spaceships and dormant volcanoes and look how that turned out.
"Believe in me! I come to kill your grandchildren." says a man blocking your way in the alley behind the church. IMHO we can all feel the hand of the almighty at work here.
I will be making up other accounts shortly. I think I will write four garbled fables. That should cover all the bases. Don't count on them to be coherent. I will be starving (not for 40 days that would be life threatening) when I write the first. I will be on shrooms when I write the second. I will be stoned when I write the third. I will go off my anti-depressants for the fourth. To save time the first three stories will be cut and paste versions with snippets of ‘The Zombie Survival Guide’ and ‘Fodor’s Tajikistan’
Using a random sentence quotation generator on my texts, I will prove that fish live in trees.
That's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Next Week: Cthulhu was a Thetan
Thursday, August 26, 2010
The Will to Flower
Spinoza's god, the universe, contains all things.
The thinking things (res cognitans) and the unthinking. But our attraction to will, especially unfettered, unconstrained, untamed or unhingeded will appears perverse.
As I dig each Sunday to uncover the diamond the size of refrigerator buried in my back yard, I ponder my will - the motivator for or cause of my shoveling. God's dirt is on God's yard. God's dirt is in God's hole. The answer not only blows in the wind, it exists along with the wind. Wind, the movement of some but not all gas molecules in our sea of molecules, curls like the gnarly pipeline above.
The Flower Sermon captures the motivation for the kind of will we can use. The student yearning for the glimpse of non-self "in charge" of decisions "from our selves" or the color of the flower petal.
I cannot regret my past. I am the product of my past and exist because of a sum of possible histories that delivered me here.
I cannot rewind the tape - no spoon exists. I cannot bend the spoon - no tape exists.
a aaabcd deeeee eee iiin nn nnnnn ooooo o oopprs ssss stt ttttw xx
The thinking things (res cognitans) and the unthinking. But our attraction to will, especially unfettered, unconstrained, untamed or unhingeded will appears perverse.
As I dig each Sunday to uncover the diamond the size of refrigerator buried in my back yard, I ponder my will - the motivator for or cause of my shoveling. God's dirt is on God's yard. God's dirt is in God's hole. The answer not only blows in the wind, it exists along with the wind. Wind, the movement of some but not all gas molecules in our sea of molecules, curls like the gnarly pipeline above.
The Flower Sermon captures the motivation for the kind of will we can use. The student yearning for the glimpse of non-self "in charge" of decisions "from our selves" or the color of the flower petal.
I cannot regret my past. I am the product of my past and exist because of a sum of possible histories that delivered me here.
I cannot rewind the tape - no spoon exists. I cannot bend the spoon - no tape exists.
a aaabcd deeeee eee iiin nn nnnnn ooooo o oopprs ssss stt ttttw xx
Monday, August 23, 2010
The Rough Beast: Respect Her Authoritaah
I was musing this weekend about the May 6, 2010 "flash crash" that drove the Dow down 1000 pts. in 10 minutes. What I believe but cannot prove - that the Rough Beast has flexed her slow thighs - has some confirming evidence here:http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2010/08/market-data-firm-spots-the-tracks-of-bizarre-robot-traders/60829/
Briefly, a small market analysis firm, Nanex, monitors bot trades that are short, sharp and meaningless. These trades are "nonsensical" with respect to buying and selling securites - they exist purely to plot frequency response of the global financial systems. As I commented on that link:
"These are testing the Z, the impedance of various networks. Once the frequency response is known, that information is itself a market commodity. Next algorithms that send signals over THAT channel to measure Z will start. It's turtles all the way up."
As Dan Dennett says - this is a substrate free Rough Beast. The conceit that we are waiting for a Singularity as a distinct machine with specific computational qualities ignores the obvious - the protists that eventually accommodated mitochondria did not have to wait to develop mitochondria own their own. Natural selection is not the college board.
I note with interest the R-christianist adulation of all forms of Authoritaah. Now "free enterprize" joins the canon of more god, more guns and lynched gays. This accommodation of the very engine of middle class financial ruin by the wage slave middle class confirms Marx better than all the failed projects of Lenin, Stalin and Castro.
The christianist ideal is substrate neutral. God IS the market. With CDO's and CDS's he is well pleased. Robot trades, his modern angels, make the straight the crooked paths.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
The Book I Read is in Your Eyes
Regarding Spacial Disorientation (SD)
The Peripersonal [3.1416] is for reaching & direct manipulation of objects, your strike zone.
Focal Extrapersonal is for visual search & object recognition.
Action extrapersonal is for navigation & orientation within topographically defined space.
Ambient extrapersonal is for postural control and orientation in earth-fixed space.
I cannot see my face reflected in my eyeball in a mirror. My face would be inside my pupil but the pupil is a hole in the iris that does not reflect. If the book I read is in your eyes it does not have my face in the book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Buddhabrot_logistic_map_animation.gif
I can see that the lobes of the cartoid are a saddle and that the big circle is one in front of another. The brain actually contains the Mandelbrot set as the mind. The mind is the Mandelbrot surface in the brain.
Look at the top of the Blog - the spiral arms of the fractal are represented by the green ribs on the left. The car is at X(0) at T(0) with the vanishing perspective (VP) inside the Starfish arm. Lights in the dark are Starry Night
The horizon converges on the vanishing perspective. Imagine moving down the road at 70 mph such that the time to reach the horizon shrinks to a vanishingly small time. The encryption and compression on the holograms.
[3.1416] Flight Motion Effects on Human Performance, F.H. Previc from International encyclopedia of ergonomics and human factors, edited by Waldemar Karwowski c 2006.
Friday, July 30, 2010
I like Coffee, I'm drinking some now. PS [3.14]
For a long time 0-45 I did not consider myself a coffee drinker. In fact I was a dedicated coffee avoider. I even had a story about my coffee avoidance.
As Little Bobby I believed that rejection of coffee implied my rejection of Little Bobby-hood. I was wrong about the particulars. I did not like coffee because everyone drank bad coffee back then. Robusto beans taste like shit. I didn't need a jolt because I got plenty of sleep. There was absolutely no reason for coffee to touch my young lips.
Daddy liked coffee even on hot summer days. When Nana Fay came up from SA the two of them would exchange family updates over coffee. They got caught up from the last time they talked. They paid special attention to the unexpected or unpredictable. Anything other than "she's just like that" or "he said before that he was going to do that next time". Sharing family behavior is a good trick. You find out who has a hand out or who can give you a leg up - depending on your situation.
The self-deception I invented was that I didn't want to be just like Daddy. Otherwise I would have liked coffee. Daft of course but that's what I came up with. Worse still, later when I mistakenly rejected Daddy's skewed perspective on life I lumped the coffee avoidance into a transference narrative. Also completely wrong.
In college I started drinking Diet DP and later Diet Coke. I enjoyed both. I didn't miss coffee because I was still around bad coffee at work and no coffee at home. When I was a young 40, Beverly Vann and I were at work after 10pm and she invited me for coffee. I held up my Diet Coke "don't do coffee". She told me that I was missing something. The warm coffee delivered a jolt that the cold DC did not. I didn't try it then (??? dumb, stubborn ???).
In San Francisco, Olga and I both tried Irish Coffee at the Buena Vista and I was hooked. When we were leaving for the airport Olga got me a latte at SB and we added some Jamesons. Heavenly. I could be Little Bobby again. Which was always self-deception.
SBOP
For a long time 0-45 I did not consider myself a coffee drinker. In fact I was a dedicated coffee avoider. I even had a story about my coffee avoidance.
As Little Bobby I believed that rejection of coffee implied my rejection of Little Bobby-hood. I was wrong about the particulars. I did not like coffee because everyone drank bad coffee back then. Robusto beans taste like shit. I didn't need a jolt because I got plenty of sleep. There was absolutely no reason for coffee to touch my young lips.
Daddy liked coffee even on hot summer days. When Nana Fay came up from SA the two of them would exchange family updates over coffee. They got caught up from the last time they talked. They paid special attention to the unexpected or unpredictable. Anything other than "she's just like that" or "he said before that he was going to do that next time". Sharing family behavior is a good trick. You find out who has a hand out or who can give you a leg up - depending on your situation.
The self-deception I invented was that I didn't want to be just like Daddy. Otherwise I would have liked coffee. Daft of course but that's what I came up with. Worse still, later when I mistakenly rejected Daddy's skewed perspective on life I lumped the coffee avoidance into a transference narrative. Also completely wrong.
In college I started drinking Diet DP and later Diet Coke. I enjoyed both. I didn't miss coffee because I was still around bad coffee at work and no coffee at home. When I was a young 40, Beverly Vann and I were at work after 10pm and she invited me for coffee. I held up my Diet Coke "don't do coffee". She told me that I was missing something. The warm coffee delivered a jolt that the cold DC did not. I didn't try it then (??? dumb, stubborn ???).
In San Francisco, Olga and I both tried Irish Coffee at the Buena Vista and I was hooked. When we were leaving for the airport Olga got me a latte at SB and we added some Jamesons. Heavenly. I could be Little Bobby again. Which was always self-deception.
SBOP
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