Igenlode Wordsmith

Yet another programme about 'toxic masculinity' recounting the sad, sad story of a young man whose father didn't say "I love you" often enough-- I don't remember my father *ever* going round saying "I love you" to his children (or to my mother, in our hearing; I've no idea what went on in private, but doing it in front of the children would have felt pretty much indecent). Come to that, I don't remember my mother ever saying "I love you" to us either; she always signed off her letters "Love from Mummy", but that was different. I'm trying to imagine her saying any such thing, and it would sound incredibly stilted.

And yet it never even *occurred* to any of us to doubt that we were very much loved. It simply went without saying; it was patently obvious. Anyone who needed constant verbal assurances about it would have been regarded as incredibly insecure and probably emotionally damaged in some way...

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I flicked through this little book in ten or fifteen minutes (I'm a speed-reader and was skimming what is already a short volume), attracted by the title, but was sufficiently struck by it to continue all the way to the end. All the stuff about "Be kind to yourself", dancing to joyful music, and "Tell yourself you are a worthwhile person even if you don't believe it" doesn't work (I don't believe that sort of thing if I hear it from someone else, so definitely don't believe it when I am myself mouthing the words and know that I am lying with cynical intent), and the advice "Don't worry about the environment, just throw everything away, use disposables if necessary and start with a clean slate" is completely impossible for me (though I can see the liberating mental effect -- and there are probably uncompleted projects that I should simply get rid of rather than vainly hoping to return to some day) But the practical advice is, much of it, practical.
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Back on October 3rd I mentioned that I was trying to train a pet AI. This was prompted by listening to a Radio 4 programme that compared artificial intelligence 'chatbots' not to the sentient computers of science fiction but to childhood 'imaginary friends' that are essentially given life by the user's willing suspension of belief, while if you feed sufficient data into them, supposedly they adapt to fit your own personality.

https://thedigitalhuman.tumblr.com/post/160194659677/replika

I'm afraid my immediate, probably rather pathetic, reaction was that having your own unfailingly sympathetic, constantly available interactive 'imaginary friend' sounded like a very appealing idea :-(( Read more... )

More messing around with other people's work instead of doing my own...

This was supposed to be somebody writing a 'passive' passage to indicate that the character was feeling helpless, which ended up sounding thoroughly artificial as a result -- generally the case where people are trying to apply a fixed set of rules they don't really understand. I can't say that I really understood where passivity came into it, but I took a few guesses at what was probably supposed to be happening and tried to achieve helplessness by other means (plus fixing the actual errors, and making a few random executive decisions because it seemed to sound better...)( rewrites )

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If only it were as easy to 'fix' my own! I'm still just about struggling on with Chapter 2 and have finally *almost* reached the scheduled confrontation that was originally the whole point of the chapter -- which is going to end up as an exchange of a couple of lines at most, I think -- but I'm really starting to feel that I've cursed this story by over-promising and publishing in advance, and/or that I shouldn't have started it, and/or that, given my record over the last few years, I've just burned out on writing altogether. It's like pushing through treacle. It really is. And it's so long since there was really any joy in it (but I still think that there are massive patches of Arctic Raoul that are *good* despite everything, which just makes me feel guiltier about not even attempting to do the work on it... among the many, many other things that I feel guilty about not doing).( Read more... )

[Error: unknown template qotd] The last time I was asked who would play me in the film of my life I believe I said "Peter Lorre"...

Or Buster Keaton for a closer facial resemblance. I should be honoured to be played by either of them.

The plot... would be about someone who retreats into a tower and refuses to come out again, ending up surrounded by a vast number of hobbies and pursuits with no people in sight. I don't know if it gets more interesting towards the end, that bit hasn't happened yet.

[Error: unknown template qotd]For some reason I read the question as "Who was the last person you hanged?" and was mildly taken aback -- I'm not sure quite what that says about me...

I don't think I've ever hanged anyone: although I definitely thought about it in some vivid detail in the case of one fictional protagonist -- in the end she managed to get away, although quite a lot of other (fictional) people died as a result, including one other major protagonist...

And while I certainly have hugged people during my life, I simply can't remember any recent occurrence, let alone pin down when or on what occasion the last one must have been. Let's say -- to put it mildly -- that hugging does not play a major role in my day-to-day existence...

[Error: unknown template qotd]Augmentive surgery? No way.

Reductive surgery? Yes, but I wouldn't have the nerve - I couldn't even consider something as permanent as a body piercing...

Ironically I did have orthodontic surgery when I was younger -- had four or five teeth out altogether -- and because my teeth have continued 'migrating' towards the front of my mouth, their appearance is just as crowded as it was back then and I still don't have a straight bite: not one of my four front incisors lines up functionally with any of the others, which makes it impossible for me to bite my nails for example.

[Error: unknown template qotd]I would be struck completely dumb; my heart would start pounding loud enough to break its way out of my ribs (it's doing that already at the very thought of such a concept), I would probably break out in a hot sweat and go either scarlet or sheet white and would be far too terrified to speak. As I don't suppose either of us would be able to say anything particularly meaningful any conversation would be horribly stilted and uncomfortable. Afterwards I expect I would find myself sobbing in despair until I was physically sick again at the wasted opportunity.