"You're not bored, are you?"

I looked up that clip from my second-favorite TV series — "Joe Pera Talks With You" — after running across this wonderfully evocative examination of the question whatever happened to the wet set, a TikTok video that got the perfect comment: "I still have a weekly roller set lady 😁 she gets the whole thing teased. It’s the highlight of my week":

I thought it was just me, but apparently it's a big, sad trend.

I don't like shopping. I can't make myself go (other than food shopping). Occasionally, I consider forcing myself to go shopping — find some clothes to try on and buy at least something — but I'm beset with boredom, and I do not go. Have I even set foot in a clothes store in the past year? Somehow I pictured other women going into the shops, getting excited about clothing items, and splurging on things.

But here's Robin Givhan — in "Why Is Shopping an Abyss of Blah?" (NYT) — "Shopping has become a drag. A bore. An obligation. A thing you do alone on your phone, not out in the world.... Shopping should be about lust. Instead, shopping has become a slog.... Our senses are flattened, our appetites dulled. Nothing seems quite right.... Shopping has become a grotesquerie of commodified consumerism and environmental waste.... Retailers became more corporate and mimed soliloquies on status and trends. Shoppers’ aesthetic discernment grew weak and flabby. A once lively conversation between sellers and buyers quieted. Shopping lost its fizz...."

"[President John Quincy] Adams had very little to do save work. He had decided to follow Monroe’s example of accepting no social invitations..."

"... lest he give offense to whomever he refused. Nor did he attend political events or even harmless functions. Declining an invitation by the Maryland Department of Agriculture to attend a cattle show, Adams reflected that he ought not 'set a precedent for being claimed as an article of exhibit for all the cattle-shows throughout the nation.' Occasionally he attended lectures, such as one on 'the organ of amativeness' —the penis—which he found 'more indelicate than philosophical.' But Adams’ life was confined almost entirely to the White House; his daily round was much more dull and routine than it had been when he was secretary of state."

I'm reading "John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit" by James Traub (page 320)(commission earned).

I see (with the help of Grok) that John Quincy Adams wrote this in his diary for June 8, 1825:

James Comey's now-infamous Instagram account is mostly about marketing his novel... which has a theme that's suspiciously close to his "8647" gambit.

At the top of his Instagram account (quoting Publisher's Weekly):

Thanks to Charlie Martin for pointing me at Comey's book: "So, now it turns out that Comey actually has a book coming out in a few days about a Mary Sue main character who investigates, arrests, and apparently convicts a conservative radio talker of inciting a murder by dog-whistling. Coincidentally."

I read Martin's post while I was still in bed this morning looking at my iPhone, and I quickly dictated this question into the ChatGPT app (I usually access A.I. by typing things into Grok):

"What is the argument that James Comey by showing a photograph of rocks in the shape of 8647 was really teasing a novel that he had written, which is about someone accused of inciting violence by giving out an obscure message and [Comey] will actually benefit from this new attention he’s getting from the right because people on his left will actually get excited about his otherwise incredibly boring book."

Yeah, that's the way I talk when I'm, essentially, talking to myself. Notice my lazy bias toward thinking everything is boring. Anyway, I had these follow-up questions:

1. "How smart is James Comey?"

2. "He would need to be smart in a marketing and media sense to have come up with the idea of posting that photograph as a way to gin up interest in his novel. He strikes me as someone who is too boring and staid to attempt such a flashy scheme, and he would have to be willing to do something different to expose himself to criminal accusations. It almost seems like something Trump would do ironically."

You can read all ChatGPT's responses here, but the bottom line is: "Your read—that he’s too boring and staid for such a risky, theatrical move—aligns far more closely with what we’ve seen of him than the idea of a QAnon-baiting media play."

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"Maybe God doesn't speak to us because we would (in our weakness) find Him boring."

That's the 4th prompt I gave to Grok just now. The first 3 were:

1. Summarize this article

I gave a link to the NYT article "Can God Speak to Us Through A.I.? Modern religious leaders are experimenting with A.I. just as earlier generations examined radio, television and the internet." 

2. Give me a one sentence answer to the question posed in the headline

3. So the article is incredibly boring compared to the headline

That reminds me. Soren Kierkegaard wrote: "Boredom is the root of all evil — the despairing refusal to be oneself." Blogged here in 2006.

Maybe you're one of those people who cue up "The Bible in a Year" podcast and listen to "Day 1: In the Beginning" on New Year's Day. If so, you've just listened to the story of creation and the interpretation that God "wasn't lonely":

"'Hookahs and music were banned from the beginning, said Yahia Naeme, the owner of the cafe..."

"... who said the ban had lost him business because many people used to come to his cafe specifically to smoke hookahs. 'If we can’t offer it, they’ll get bored and go elsewhere,' he said. Other cafes in Idlib have skirted the law by offering hookahs in speakeasy-type environments behind closed doors. But Mr. Naeme did not want to risk running afoul of the area’s rulers...."

From "Cafes Can’t Play Music, but the Water Taps Work: Life Under Syria’s Rebels/The Islamists who now lead Syria have ruled the city of Idlib for years. Residents say they imposed some strict laws, but also heeded some complaints and improved public services" (NYT).

"In the manifesto, called 'War Against Humanity,' the author writes that they have 'grown to hate people, and society' and calls their parents 'scum.'"

"The author also writes that they acquired weapons 'by lies and manipulation, and my father's stupidity' and describes wanting to die by suicide, but feeling like carrying out a shooting was 'better for evolution rather than just one stupid boring suicide.'"

Writes Newsweek, in "Natalie Rupnow's Reported Manifesto: What We Know" (about the school shooting that took place in my city yesterday).

The use of the word "scum" in a manifesto makes me think of "SCUM Manifesto," a 1967 feminist document. I discussed it back in 2017, when Facebook was banning some women who wrote about men as "scum." The "SCUM Manifesto" begins: "'Life' in this 'society' being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of 'society' being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex."

And yet, this new manifesto — what I'm seeing of it, anyway — uses the language of gender neutrality: "Humanity... people... society... parents." There is, however, "father." I see that Newsweek is using they/them pronouns for the killer.

Newsweek also reports President Joe Biden's hasty response: "We need Congress to act. Now. From Newtown to Uvalde, Parkland to Madison.... Congress must pass commonsense gun safety laws: Universal background checks. A national red flag law. A ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines...."

But when he pardoned his son Hunter for violating existing gun laws, Joe Biden attacked the prosecution as unfair and biased. One might have thought he'd refrain from calling for more gun laws when he so recently and conspicuously treated a gun law as not justifying enforcement. And yet didn't we all expect it — expect that next time there's a school shooting, Joe would indignantly cry out for more gun laws? #hypocrisy

Goodbye to commenter Michael K.

Other commenters mark his passing in the comments to Tuesday night's sunrise post and in this earlier post that day.

This morning I'm seeing Neo's blog post, "RIP commenter 'Mike K'": "RIP Mike K, and all the commenters here who may have died but all we know is that they disappeared never to return."

Yes, I've mourned the unexplained loss of Bissage for 15 years.

Bissage was a dearly beloved commenter on this blog who disappeared one day, when the uncooperative dear became uncooperative. I've tried to call him back: "Come back, Bissage. We're counting oranges again. Remember? 42. 42. 42..." To no avail.

I appreciate hearing the specific news that a commenter has died, like when Gahrie's brother's dropped into a comments thread: "Hello.... This is my brother gahries account, and it appears this post was close to the last thing he read/saw before he passed away Sunday morning sometime after 130am...."

I miss Gahrie and Bissage and Michael K and many others who died or drifted away and even some of those who left in a huff. They, unlike the dead, can drop back in. Why don't they? It's not for me to figure out. The blog, like life itself, can only move forward, and the day will come when we will all be left behind. So thanks to all — except the actual trolls — who walked along this way as far as they did.

Kamala Harris sounds so weary of all those people in Pennsylvania. Does she even want to be President?

Let me preface this with the assurance that I have never trusted the people who want to be President, and I have despaired over the structural problem that we're always stuck having to vote for somebody who has strongly desired the presidency. But it is possible occasionally — through ascension from the vice presidency — to end up with a President who didn't want the job.

Please watch the TikTok video I've put at the bottom of this post, after the jump, or you can also go here, for YouTube video (begin at 1:06). Alternatively, read the text.

But you won't get the point from the cold text, so I'll have to ask you to imagine a first rate actress reading the lines in the role of a woman who can barely cover up that she's really had it with being carted around to these bullshit nothing places with their tedious needy people:

"I am feeling very good about Pennsylvania, because there are a lot of people in Pennsylvania who deserve to be seen and heard. That's why I'm here in Johnstown, and I will be continuing to travel around the state to make sure that I'm listening as much as we are talking and, ultimately, I feel very strongly that I've got to earn every vote, and that means spending time with folks in the communities where they live, and so that's why I'm here.  We're going to be spending a lot more time in Pennsylvania."

Harris was speaking at a bookstore in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Can you put your usual partisanship to the side and genuinely empathize with her as human being?

"The modern style of parenting is not just exhausting for adults; it is also... not supported by evidence from our evolutionary past."

"For most of human history, people had lots of kids, and children hung out in intergenerational social groups in which they were not heavily supervised. Your average benign-neglect day care is probably closer to the historical experience of child care than that of a kid who spends the day alone with a doting parent.... A parenting style that took its cue from those hunter-gatherers would insist that one of the best things parents can do — for ourselves as well as for our children — is to go about our own lives and tote our children along. You might call it mindful underparenting.... [F]ollowing adults around gives children the tremendous gift of learning to tolerate boredom, which fosters patience, resourcefulness and creativity.... An excellent way to bore children is to take them to an older relative’s house and force them to listen to a long adult conversation about family members they don’t know. Quotidian excursions to the post office or the bank can create valuable opportunities for boredom, too...."

Writes the psychologist Darby Saxbe, in "Parents Should Ignore Their Children More Often" (NYT).

By the way the most boring long adult conversation about family members they don’t know is the long adult conversation about the health problems of family members they don’t know. Just a child-rearing tip, in case you decide to embrace the let's-be-like-the-cavemen-and-bore-them-out-of-their-skull approach.

"You studied semiotics in college. I’m curious if that also shapes the way you think of narrative...."

Sarah Larson asks Ira Glass, in "Ira Glass Hears It All/Three decades into 'This American Life,' the host thinks the show is doing some of its best work yet—even if he’s still jealous of 'The Daily'" (The New. Yorker).

Glass answers:

For me, the most important book was “S/Z,” by Roland Barthes, where he takes apart a short story by Balzac phrase by phrase, paragraph by paragraph. What he’s interested in is, How does this story get its hooks into you? Why do you read to the next paragraph? Why do you care? And that feeling that you get at the end of a really good story, where you just feel, like, Ahh!—what produces that? And he names a bunch of mechanisms that, once you know them, you can create yourself.

"It may very well be that 10 years from now people will pay $10,000 in cash to be castrated just in order to be affected by something."

Says Andre Gregory in "My Dinner With Andre" — page 59 of the screenplay — a 1981 movie. 

It's not 10 years later. It's more than 40 years later. But think of the things we're doing now just in order to be affected by something.

For example, there's Zoraya ter Beek, 28, who "expects to be euthanized in early May" (The Free Press):

She said she was hobbled by her depression and autism and borderline personality disorder. Now she was tired of living—despite, she said, being in love with her boyfriend, a 40-year-old IT programmer, and living in a nice house with their two cats.

"A girl being like, 'Um this guy didn’t report.' Is the most female ref way to ruin a game."

A tweet I found after Meade put some time into trying to explain what happened in that Lions game, but I got tired of the explanation. First time I'd ever heard of this "report" concept. In any event, I'd seen this headline earlier this morning — "Lions rip refs for penalizing first 2-point try: 'don’t want to talk about it'" — and got excited reading the first 2 words, then realized it was about football and got bored.

"It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions... to be a man worth hearing; but as a rule they don’t know anything outside their own businesses."

Said Theodore Roosevelt, quoted in "Theodore Rex" by Edmund Morris (commission earned). 

Context:

"The neutral-tinted individual is very apt to win against the man of pronounced views and active life."

Wrote Theodore Roosevelt, quoted in "Theodore Rex" (available atAmazon, whence I earn a commission).

He was referring to Alan B. Parker, who became his adversary in the 1904 presidential election, and I quote the passage from the book in full because it seems to have something to do with how we react to candidates today and because I have liked colorless politicians (and judges) — perhaps too much:

"I was quite sheltered culturally. My parents listened to almost only classical music, there was no TV, we almost never went to see movies."

"Even restaurants, I realize, we didn’t go to. My stepdad, who raised me, was an economist. He had a schedule that was all about control, and my mom, who was a homemaker, went along with it. He ate the same thing every day. Every night, he would put half a dry fig and a small piece of bread under a glass, and that was his breakfast. And he went to eat lunch at the same spot every day and had the same thing. So it was very self-denying. I wasn’t exposed to popular culture at all, so I drew and read all the time, because that was the only entertainment I had. We lived in the suburbs, so you couldn’t even go out and walk around and see people. It was pretty isolating and very boring."

From "How Louise Bonnet Learned to Stop Thinking/A conversation with the painter, who has a new show at Gagosian, about what it feels like to be a woman, the body as a site of complication, and how to banish one’s judgmental inner voice" (The New Yorker).

That is one kind of deprived childhood, but it actually sounds excellent. Anyone else have an economist for a father and, if so, did it involve anything akin to putting a half a dry fig and small piece of bread under a glass every night?

Hey, New Yorker, consider the downside of scheduling your "Daily Cartoon" in advance.

Here's today's cartoon, obviously chosen — I hope! — back when the top news was the dreary deja vu of Congress needing to fund the government again and Biden and Trump tripping and stumbling their way toward another major-party nomination:

  

That seems so out of it, even as it's intended to make fun of New Yorker readers who are out of it. Or was it trying to make New Yorker readers feel sophisticated for feeling bored by all the hopeless shenanigans out there in the world? Whichever, it's painfully crass today.

Is this America — men shuffling in slippers, barely alive?

"Trump is sitting, arms folded, as he listens to Kevin Wallace, a lawyer for the attorney general, deliver his opening arguments."

"Trump is occasionally shaking his head in disagreement and at times looks angry, and also bored. As I write these posts about 'generally accepted accounting principles' and 'materiality' it occurs to me that this opening statement is already deep in the legal and financial weeds where most of this trial will take place. Were this a jury trial, we might be getting a glossier, more exciting version of this opening statement. But perhaps because [Judge] Engoron is the arbiter of fact here, Wallace seems to feel no qualms about a far more detailed, less flashy presentation...."

I'm reading the live updates from "Trump Civil Fraud Trial Trump’s Trial in New York Fraud Case Begins/The former president is accused in a lawsuit of inflating his net worth to win favorable terms on loans. The trial is scheduled to last until the end of December but is expected to end sooner" (WaPo).

End of December! And a journalist doing the moment-by-moment commentary is already antsy and bored — projecting that boredom onto the jury that doesn't exist. Deep in the weeds... on Day One? You'll need to trek a thousand miles into those weeds.

"[P]eople enjoy repeat experiences more than they predict they will. And not because they use the sameness to lull themselves into a comfortable trance..."

"... but because they discover new things they’d missed first time around.... 'Doing something once may engender an inflated sense that one has now seen "it," leaving people naive to the missed nuances remaining to enjoy.' It’s less a question of loving the familiar, then, than of discovering it wasn’t so familiar after all. This isn’t so surprising when you consider the mismatch between the information bombarding our brains at any given moment and the tiny amount our conscious minds can process (about 0.0003% of the total, according to one estimate) which means almost everything gets filtered out.... We have no trouble accepting that the work of Shakespeare or Austen repays multiple encounters. But our limited capacities mean the same is true, to some extent, of any airport thriller or TV reality show. When you relate to everyday life in this spirit, you begin to grasp what the writer Sam Harris means when he says that 'boredom is always just a lack of attention.'"

 From "Do you love doing the same thing over and over? Here's why it doesn’t make you boring/We don’t always need new distractions – there’s a value to experiencing something more than once" (The Guardian).

That's from January 2020. I found it this morning because I googled "I love doing the same thing every day." 

Why am I not interested in fooling around with A.I.?

I wonder, prompted by this NYT listicle, "35 Ways Real People Are Using A.I. Right Now."

This momentarily caught my interest, but almost immediately I was overtaken with ennui:

People are using A.I to …

1. Plan gardens....

2. Plan workouts....

Are people using A.I. to plan articles about A.I.? 

3. Plan meals....

So tedious!

6. Organize a messy computer desktop....

Can I use A.I. to organize my messy thoughts about A.I.? Write me a blog post in the style of Ann Althouse about how news media are resorting to listicles in an effort to shore up the flagging interest in A.I.