DIETROLOGY 11

DIETROLOGY 
Bingo And The Suicide Strategy

Don't ask why as I can't even remember myself how, as a teenager, I started going along to bingo evenings at the local Mecca, a gaudy cavernous hall in Brighton that had clearly once seen more elegance and glamour. Maybe it was just the allure of experiencing an unusual subculture; it certainly wasn't in order to meet anyone there, mostly frequented by  middle-aged or elderly women as it was. Each and every one armed with a drink and a fat marker pen, all entirely focused on their table array of bingo cards, readying themselves for eyes down.

Clickety Click, sixty-six. As a panicky neophyte fish amongst these experienced female bingo sharks, I found it surprisingly hard to keep up with the numbers, even with my one tragically solitary card. Two Fat Ladies, eighty-eight. Most of the other players would have, incredibly, by comparison, from six to a dozen cards each to keep track of. Kelly's Eye, number one.

The tension got really bad in the second game when all the numbers on my card started filling up. Fuck, I now only need the 11 to win! Legs Eleven, number eleven. 'Bingo!', I blurted out. There was a sharp disapproving collective intake of breath. Not only did this male interloper insult formal bingo protocol but he had the cheek to win the £50 prize with his lone card. Unlucky For Some, number thirteen.

It was in conversaton a few weeks later I made the facetious remark to someone that I was now qualified to write The Skill Of Bingo. Surprisingly, and unwittingly, that turned out to be an invaluable lesson to me, and formed the basis of a rather special longstanding theory of mine. Heaven's Gate, seventy-eight.

See, on the face of it, bingo is a game of pure chance. Ostensibly, there is no skill. But, upon reflection, I began to realise that there was quite a bit. But not in the obvious sense.

First, to get the best odds you should only have one card. Otherwise you're effectively playing against yourself in a game in which the house takes a percentage; a bit like for example the folly of backing the entire field in a horse race, or betting on every number on a spin of roulette.

However, more than that, the most important skill of all: you must cross the numbers off correctly.

One number mistaken or missed and you cannot win a game of bingo. Many of these older ladies are playing with far too many cards at once and often simply can't keep up. Why do they do it? Because it's edge play, it appeals to superstition, to marginalisation, it's more exciting, it appears to give them more winning chances. In truth, it's a suicide strategy.

It sounds too obvious, and yet this is a priceless transparent concession, one where delusion is the inevitable precursor to success, and failure to disappointment. In other words, what if the most critical skill isn't founded in doing something well, it's in the simple managing to avoid adopting strategies for self-destruction? The longer that resonates, the more it begins to make sense, in all kinds of unexpected ways. Staying Alive, eighty-five.

DIETROLOGY 10
DIETROLOGY 9
DIETROLOGY 8

DIETROLOGY 10

DIETROLOGY 
Say Your Vows

Damn, I've forgotten what I was going to write about here... though I assure you it was going to be a good one.

DIETROLOGY 9
DIETROLOGY 8
DIETROLOGY 7

DIETROLOGY 8

DIETROLOGY
From The Sublimated To The Ridiculous

When you find yourself absorbed by some thing no longer do you control the musculature. The first real gun I ever saw close up was on a table in a Taco Bell during my first US tour. It belonged to a cop enjoying a mondo-sized cup of breakfast coffee. Scary and fascinating. He occasionally toyed with it, the pistol, holding it up to the light to lovingly caress its glistening muzzle, before finally returning it to its reassuring dark brown leather holster.

You can easily see why they are considered as potent phallic symbols. And yet in notable countries like the USA, along with others such as the Philippines, Indonesia, or Afghanistan, firearms have become so culturally embedded a curious reversal has occurred. The phalli have now themselves become gun symbols.

So you get guys holding their cocks, visualising. Sex is a trigger-happy sport. Uzi drive-bys. Nuthing But A G Thang. Dirty Harry shoot-out fantasy with a Magnum. Do you feel lucky, punk? A John Woo Mexican stand-off. Bang, bang, bang. Pissing is an exercise in target practice. Take aim, fire. A warm penis is an AK-47.

The tipping point between genital symbol and genital substitute is reached at a moment of sheer ubiquity (thanks to technological and cultural changes), or at the forming of a particularly close personal attachment, one which provides greater pleasure or succour. And the phenomenon appears the same for other objects such as guitars and mobile phones (the latter being the preferred choice of clitoral replacement).

Later on the aforementioned tour, in Colorado, I actually got to fire a .44 Special when  taken out to the mountains by our host. The weapon was hastily wrested back after I popped a couple of frighteningly wayward rounds at a nearby tin can. The recoil nearly broke my wrist. And that was that.

DIETROLOGY 7
DIETROLOGY 6
DIETROLOGY 5

DIETROLOGY 7

DIETROLOGY
Shop Window Reflection

A crucial part of the sexual allure of clothes is often the obstruction placed on what we would want to see, added to markers or gateways pointing us in the direction of said focus. Yummy. As I irreverently discussed in MUSTN'T HAVES 1 and MUSTN'T HAVES 2, there may also be misdirection applied to move our attention away from the less attractive, something possibly even fully visible; yet the obscured object of desire is that which we notice. It's a cognitive process based upon our own shifting perceptual, experiential, and cultural assumptions, one that encourages response potential via our tastes.

Have you ever thought about the differences between seeing, looking, and noticing?

Even though we may not see something, we are acutely aware of its probable existence. And likewise, that which we do see and even look at directly, is very often not noticed. You may have a watch that you have looked at hundreds of times to check the time, and yet (without cheating!) how sure are you of the design of its numerals? How many are there? Are they Roman, Arabic, or just lines or dots?

We could sum it up thus:
- that which we are least aware of may be visible
- that which we are most aware of may be obscured

But see, here's the big thing: that which is obscured may not even exist in the way that we imagined it to exist, or indeed at all! And such is the power of these cognitive beliefs, that it functions even when we know that is indeed the case. Hence, the universal need for mirrors is, perversely, to reinforce illusion and to mask reality.

Dietrological analysis involves awareness of the behind acting as a blindfold to what is in front.

DIETROLOGY 6
DIETROLOGY 5
DIETROLOGY 4

DIETROLOGY 6

DIETROLOGY
Poker Face

No limit hold'em poker's extraordinary surge in popularity was partly triggered by the 2004 NHL lock-out which resulted in TV sports channels having hours of empty time to fill. At the same time the game was becoming a very lucrative internet business, allowing cheap and fast readily-available games around the clock. And important, in the world of gambling (online and live), was the ability to play against other humans rather than against a distrusted casino, with all their guaranteed mathematical edge.

As a TV spectacle, since there's so little to see beyond the dodgy baseball caps and shades, poker would have been cripplingly soporific were it not for the innovation of the lipstick camera, a cunning way for the viewers to see the players' hole cards. Thus, the fascinating inner psychological world of body language and emotional response, that's so alluring to the game's participants, is beautifully contextualised. So essentially, for us the viewers, a delicious transparent concession becomes visible; a privilege to which the players themselves are, naturally, denied.

And it's this denial of meaningful information, other than who's winning and losing, that's an integral part of the appeal for the players themselves. Because it allows them to hold on to their most cherished superstitions about themselves and others. See, poker isn't what it at first seems to be: it's not a card game. It's a people game founded on probabilistic outcomes based on severely incomplete data.

It's rather similar to the attractive delusions us guys (typically) have about our alleged skills in the bedroom, or say, behind the wheel of a car. They're beliefs that, reassuringly, can't be challenged because neither we nor anyone else are permitted meaningful means of contrast, comparison, or calibration. It's a perfect breeding ground for zealously exaggerated I-thinks, and when added to the rushes and thrills to be had from gambling and Lady Luck, poker becomes all too irresistible.

DIETROLOGY 5
DIETROLOGY 4
DIETROLOGY 3

DIETROLOGY 5

DIETROLOGY
What Are Movie Credits For?

The afternoon used to be a nice time for a movie visit if you're particular about where you sit and are averse to noisy popcorn munchers. Used to until that moment a few years ago I had that entire Las Vegas movie theatre for myself just before the start. But typical: someone else comes in and sits down.

Of course, that would be trivial if he hadn't chosen the same row two seats along from my own. Didn't anyone tell the creep that there are fixed rules for people displacement in public places such as buses, trains, urinals, and yes, cinemas? But it's moments like these when you quickly learn how much our own behaviour and emotional responses are much more a product of the nature of our environment as it's clear his proximity was only worrying relative to the room's emptiness. In other words, the physiology of the environment was the key to the scary discomfort, not where he and I happened to be sitting, which naturally would, in the presence of a larger audience, be perfectly normal.

So nowadays it's packed evenings at the cinema. There we all sit enjoying the pre-movie ritual of the trailers of forthcoming attractions. That bit where we find out about what's coming up - even though you know right away that you mostly won't like them. But occasionally, something will intrigue you, catch your eye, enough that you'll really be impatient to see it in full when it comes out, that for me, I can tell straight away.

Then there's a short pause before the curtain is drawn, which is great because that's when everybody magically shuts the fuck up. And we see the famous Metro Goldwyn Mayer lion roar, the Paramount mountain top, or the mechanised Lionsgate (whose association with the Saw franchise often causes one an ice-cold anticipatory shudder). These brief logo sequences act as a preparation to lead us irresistibly to the induction of the opening credits that hopefully allow us to enjoy reaching the extended altered trance state we crave for the entire film.

The process has become so ritualised nowadays. It's not certain how much film producers are even aware of the credits' true importance, considering them a mere exercise in vanity, and thus abusing the audience in the mistaken belief that we care much about their content (other than perhaps IDing the name of a song). The current trend for opening titles that can last for several minutes often seem to prematurely break the entry towards the desired state, rather than help us achieve it.

Going to the movies is participating in a powerful form of mass hypnosis, which is what makes it so much more memorable and fun than sitting at home and watching some thing on TV. We enter into an unwritten contract with the moviemakers to manipulate the hell out of us for the duration, and for it to be done really satisfyingly and effectively well. If we partake in eating and drinking, far better it be stuffs that don't need to be seen, that can be mechanistically applied to our cataleptic torsos.

To neatly bring us out of trance, old films would announce 'The End' or 'Fin', whilst modern films are still followed by the customary scrolling credits to allow us some valuable contemplation time to recompose our emotions, feelings, and thoughts, if not our state of un/dress. And to then file back out into the lobby in an orderly fashion. Nothing worse than being caught in the harsh glare of houselights being switched back on, is there?

Meanwhile at Las Vegas, I got the hell out of there well before any of that and left the other guy to it.

coming soon:
DIETROLOGY : Poker Face

DIETROLOGY 4
DIETROLOGY 3
DIETROLOGY 2
DIETROLOGY: INTRODUCTION

DIETROLOGY 4

DIETROLOGY
The Nature Of Facebook/Twitter Updates - Addendum

There have been a few mails requesting further details on elements included in the hierarchical list I included in the above-mentioned post - some expansion is hereby added to some of the entries.

- use of first person pronouns (I, me, my, mine etc.)
the most obvious marker of egocentricity: all discourse that we process is filtered through our own 'I', represented by our own feelings, emotions, experiences, hypotheses, sensorial awarenesses - use of first person thus demands that we, the listener, can relate to the utterances in a meaningful way, something which demands a lot of our tolerance (especially if we have no implicitly invested interest) - in turn therefore, first person statements are often reciprocated with similarly themed first person retorts to balance the interaction

- frequency of first person pronouns

- proximity of first person pronouns to the beginning (e.g. commencing with 'I')
since we process language in the order in which we receive it, the closer to the beginning of the utterance that first person forms appear in during discourse, the greater the effort required of us (see comments above) - contrast 'MY favourite new album is X' to 'X is my favourite new album' to ' the new album X is my new favourite'

- use of active or passive voice
the use of passive forms is a deceptive device that can be used to dissociate the speaker from the action in question, yet also act as a device to lessen the degree of egocentricity for the benefit of the listener, achieved through the suppression (or delay) of first person forms

- expressions of opinion (an implicit or explicit 'I think that...')

- ratio of factual detail (times, places, names etc.) over process language (feelings)
as stated above, factual detail (unless it directly concerns the listener) can be more challenging to process as it requires more neurological energy to relate to, which is why long bouts of 'small talk', 'technical talk', 'job talk' and similar, can be -shall we say- rather less than riveting

- degree of assumption of second person interest
the degree of assumption of the listener's interest directly correlates to consciously or unconsciously perceived egocentricity by the listener - in extreme cases, this can mean an interpretation of outright arrogance on the speaker's part

- pseudo-attempts to engage (e.g. throwing out a question, attention-seeking, sympathy-seeking)
only rarely are people consciously aware of these gambits, yet after their initial responses, there are often rapid unconsciously enacted moving-away strategies when people feel their attention is being thus manipulated

- enigmatic, in-jokes
it would seem (perhaps surprisingly) that the more obscure the in-joke, the better tolerated the utterance is, possibly due to the greater potential afforded the listener for their own personal interpretation

coming soon:
DIETROLOGY : What Are Movie Credits For?
DIETROLOGY : Poker Face

DIETROLOGY 3
DIETROLOGY 2
DIETROLOGY: INTRODUCTION

DIETROLOGY 3

DIETROLOGY
The Nature Of Facebook/Twitter Updates

Ana's simple question, so disarmingly articulated, rendered me speechless. It happened about twenty years ago during a chat over coffee, and I would have been effusively babbling on about my day. After listening politely, she hit me with charming directness.

"William, why are you telling me all this?"

Initially seemingly unanswerable, I contemplated upon it for many months, whilst, at times painfully, reevaluating almost every subsequent utterance I, and others, made. Ostensibly, I'd been telling her about my day, and yet what purpose did that serve her or me? What was behind this communication, for that matter any conversational communication?

Eventually, I came to the conclusion that it's little more than a need to be heard.

A need to be heard for existential validation. And to successfully realise this mutual need we: allow for conversational reciprocity; employ rhetorical devices to make our chatter entertaining (e.g. through humour), or intriguing (through common themes of interest); exploit status differences to be heard (e.g. teachers, leaders, priests, etc.); use devices to elicit sympathy; and so on.

It was with this increased sensitivity to the hidden whys of communication that I initiated a fascination with the modern phenomenon of our Facebook/Twitter/MySpace updates. They have two curiously unique features: first, the communication is made to nobody in particular, as if to an unknown second person, to an unspecific you; second, there is a severely tight numerical word restriction.

On the face of it, these updates are just small chunks of trivia, with little depth or meaning. Or are they?

There's an old joke of the apprentice Trappist monk who is permitted two spoken words at the end of each initial twelve months' training in silent contemplation; at the end of year one, he tells the abbot, 'bed hard'; after the second, 'food horrible'; and the third and final, 'go home; to which the abbot exclaims, 'well, thank God for that because you've done nought but complain since you got here!!'.

Paradoxically, it seems the more restricted our opportunities to communicate, and the more remote and less defined the second person is (the you), the more meaningful the utterances become. 'Meaningful' I define here as more revelatory of our identity, along with our illusion of identity. In the case of ostensibly glib online status updates, through the application of dietrological analysis, much can be inferred.

Accepting and bearing in mind this need to be heard to be validated, below is a suggested hierarchy of factors for measuring that need.

- use of first person pronouns (I, me, my, mine etc.)
- frequency of first person pronouns
- proximity of first person pronouns to the beginning (e.g. commencing with 'I')
- use of active or passive voice
- expressions of opinion (an implicit or explicit 'I think that...')
- ratio of factual detail (times, places, names etc.) over process language (feelings)
- degree of assumption of second person interest
- pseudo-attempts to engage (e.g. throwing out a question, attention-seeking, sympathy-seeking)
- enigmatic, in-jokes

The feeling of validation from conversation comes with verbal and nonverbal responses to our utterances which we've already established as often not being a reliable indicator of chemistry or rapport owing to the invisible effects of, for example, our choice of language patterns. This is even more the case here.

coming soon:
DIETROLOGY : What Are Movie Credits For?
DIETROLOGY : Poker Face

DIETROLOGY 2
DIETROLOGY: INTRODUCTION

DIETROLOGY 2

DIETROLOGY
The Collateral Damage Of Everyday Conversation

Within academia there is a punishment/reward structure that heavily favours a language register that can be generalised in two ways: firstly, emphasis on the precise use of specialised lexis and labels (often of Latin/Greek origin, an historical hangover from the relationship between learning and the clergy); in other words lots of long words, which in turn has triggered a certain inverted snobbery from non-academics. And secondly, the language of detail is preferred to that of feelings and emotions.

This goes some way to explaining why so many lecturers, teachers, and postgraduates evolve programmed into such crashing bores. That said, it's pretty obvious when we are bored with someone: perhaps you lean your head on your hands, perhaps an impatient check of the watch or mobile phone, or perhaps a tactfully stifled yawn. My god, is that the time?

However, what is loosely, but not inaccurately, termed as the 'chemistry' between people is mostly happening imperceptibly - both in terms of the responses, and the specific triggers for such responses. For example, the arbitrary angles we might approach a person we wish to communicate with is a factor that we rarely consider, and yet, critically, a frontal 45 degree approach angle is experienced by the other party as friendly, whereas one from directly in front as hostile; or worse still from the side or behind. What if you passed or failed that job interview based on that fact alone? And without being aware of such a factor, it's easy to see how superstitious explanations for the outcomes of personal interaction predominate.

Academic overemphasis on content language is as ironic as it's misguided: it's from having an acuter awareness of the tiny, oft-ignored words, and the simple patterns to which they belong, that offer far more rhetorical expressiveness and control of desired responses, and therefore chemistry. When we like or dislike somebody, we may have all sorts of superstitious 'I think...' beliefs about what we like or dislike, but they are far more likely to be rationalisations for unconscious biological and chemical responses.

Some of the effects of language usage have been touched on in previous postings (cf. SIGNFICANCES, METASIGNIFICANCES). One of whose number which seems to exist in most languages is the extraordinarily common 'yes, but...' conversational pattern (variants being 'I agree (with you), but....', 'that's true, but....', and so on). This, invisibly, causes enormous collateral damage to rapport owing to its deadly subtext of 'what I'm about to say is more important than what you've said' - in fact, amazingly, outright disagreement causes less collateral damage than this murky use of 'but'. The negative effect can easily be repaired by substituting the word 'but' with 'and', the subtext then being one of friendly corroboration - even when going on to disagree with the original statement in otherwise exactly the same way.

This is a simple example of how the use of two tiny words in a language pattern can have, psycholinguistically speaking, contrasting polar responses of critical importance. Simple, but not easy. Schools and universities might reward your deployment of all kinds of polysyllabic goodliness and convoluted subordinate clauses within the discussion of various hypotheses, but thanks to an historically ingrained institutional ignorance, you won't find out about the really good stuff like 'and'. There's so much more to learn.

DIETROLOGY : The Nature Of Facebook/Twitter Updates
(text coming soon)

DIETROLOGY : What Are Movie Credits For?
(text coming soon)

DIETROLOGY: INTRODUCTION

DIETROLOGY

DIETROLOGY
Introduction

You wouldn't believe the size of the mug of Americano in front of me in this Cologne coffee shop. Total mondo. Not to impress you, it's to help get this tricky post finished.

Dietrology. For quite some time now, I've sought a word to conceptually unite many personal ideas and recent theories within a single domain. For that purpose, I've brazenly co-opted dietrologia (from the Italian 'dietro' - behind). It is, therefore, the study or analysis of the perceptually invisible, of what lies behind language, events, actions, processes, and behaviours.

It's clear we all have a natural tendency to posit instant opinions about subtexts, prefaced explicitly or implicitly with languaging such as 'I think....' - something I prefer to classify under the umbrella of superstition. The other tendency, related, is to assume that that which does not makes sense to us is nonsense; exemplified by the etymological origin of barbarian derived from the ancient Greek term for 'foreign', a derogatory onomatopoeic reference to the sound non-Greeks seemed to make. Another example is represented by patronising Western attitudes towards African music and art with terms such as 'primitive', or even 'world' or 'ethnic'.

The first lesson of dietrological analysis is to recognise that something that doesn't make sense to us may very well have complex sense, or indeed, may have no sense whatsoever. The directly perceptual is not enough to make the assumption one way or another. The second lesson is relative: the quantity and quality of the perceptually invisible is not measurable.

However, the third and most critical, is that dietrology differs from opinion and superstition in that it represents an inquiry into the heart of the matter, that which is factual. And in an illustrative way, the study of atomic particles, just as they cannot be seen with the naked eye (with or without the aid of microscopes) owing to their being hundreds of times smaller than the smallest light waves, is a form of dietrological analysis.

Anyway, enough dry talk already. Let's launch a few introductory sub-articles for the series; as always, comments highly appreciated.

DIETROLOGY : The Collateral Damage Of Everyday Conversation
(text coming soon)

DIETROLOGY : The Nature Of Facebook/Twitter Updates
(text coming soon)

DIETROLOGY : What Are Movie Credits For?
(text coming soon)