>Hansel and Gretel were, depending on how one looks at it, two children or two data points that lived at the edge of a forest that functioned less like geography and more like an algorithm whose purpose was to reduce things [1]. There was a house, there was a father who loved them in the abstract, there was a stepmother whose practicality had the brittle sheen of something decided in advance. there was a famine, famine in fairy tales being less of an agricultural phenomenon and more of a moral weather pattern. It arrived the way a bad season of television arrives: suddenly everyone was talking about it, and it justified decisions that would otherwise require apologies [2].>The decision, presented as logistics, was that two children constituted an inefficiency. The stepmother framed it as a walk, which is what adults do when they want motion without accountability. Hansel, who had already discovered that attention is a form of currency, listened hard enough to hear the father crying and the plan inside the plan. He collected stones, which are small, white, and have the decency to stay where you put them [3]. Gretel watched him do this and said nothing, which was her way of understanding that some problems are solved sideways.>The forest was dense in the way systems are dense: repetitive, indifferent, full of micro-choices that feel meaningful until they aren’t. The stones worked. Moonlight, that great collaborator [4], turned each one into a reassurance. They returned home to relief that had the odd aftertaste of disappointment, as if the stepmother had been briefly deprived of a solution they’d already practiced defending.>...
>>24997989>[2] When I was a teenager, my father, who was himself a man of few words but many unspoken expectations derived from his own Midwestern upbringing in the shadow of post-war stoicism and the kind of Protestant work ethic that equated bodily functions with moral weakness, once pulled me aside after noticing my fidgety discomfort during a family dinner where I'd consumed an ill-advised quantity of root beer floats at the local A&W drive-in earlier that afternoon, and in his gravelly voice that always seemed to emanate from some subterranean chamber of paternal authority, advised me that true manhood involved mastering one's urges, not unlike the way a tennis player—ah, but here we veer into territory I'd later explore in essays about athletic discipline, though at the time tennis was just another obligatory PE torment for a kid more inclined toward library stacks and the infinite regressions of calculus problems—must anticipate the ball's trajectory without betraying panic, which is to say, he implied without ever quite articulating it, that holding one's bladder was a metaphor for holding one's composure in the face of life's inexorable pressures, and this paternal nugget, lodged like a kidney stone in my adolescent psyche, resurfaced with excruciating vividness on that fateful Friday evening in the summer of my sixteenth year when I found myself on a date with Emily Hargrove, the girl from AP English who quoted Camus with a casual fluency that made my heart stutter like a faulty carburetor and whose laugh was a cascade of notes that could render even the most banal observation—say, about the weather or the cafeteria's mystery meat—into something profound and erotically charged, and we'd gone to the drive-in theater on the outskirts of town, the one with the flickering neon sign proclaiming "Double Features Every Night" and screens large enough to make you feel dwarfed by the projected neuroses of Hollywood stars, where we parked my father's borrowed Buick in a spot that afforded a modicum of privacy amid the rows of other hormone-fueled vehicles, and as the first film unspooled—a forgettable teen comedy involving pratfalls and misunderstandings that now, in retrospect, seems like a cruel parody of my own unfolding dilemma—I began to feel the insidious buildup of urinary pressure, that insidious hydraulic insistence starting as a whisper in the lower abdomen but escalating into a symphonic roar that drowned out the dialogue crackling from the tinny speaker hooked to the window, exacerbated no doubt by the large cherry cola I'd chugged earlier in a misguided attempt to appear nonchalant and refreshingly hydrated, and yet, bound by the invisible chains of teenage decorum and the terror of appearing vulnerable or, worse, corporeal in front of this ethereal creature who smelled of strawberry lip gloss and whose hand occasionally brushed mine in a way that sent electric jolts straight to
>>24998006my prefrontal cortex, overriding any rational impulse to excuse myself to the distant concession stand's restroom, which was itself a gauntlet of fluorescent-lit horror replete with sticky floors and graffiti that chronicled the basest human impulses, I instead chose to endure, clenching internal muscles I'd only vaguely been aware of until that moment, engaging in a kind of covert Kegel exercise regimen that would have impressed a urologist, all while attempting to maintain the facade of rapt attention to the screen, nodding at Emily's occasional wry comments about the plot's absurdities, my mind fracturing into parallel tracks—one desperately calculating the remaining runtime of the film (approximately 87 minutes, give or take the previews we'd already suffered through), another replaying my father's stoic mantra like a looped cassette tape, and a third spiraling into catastrophic fantasies of what might happen if I failed: the warm flood of embarrassment, the indelible stain on the upholstery that would require explanations to my father the next morning, the irrevocable shattering of whatever nascent romantic aura I'd managed to cultivate through awkward compliments about her essay on Infinite Jest (which, ironically, she'd dismissed as "overrated but fun," a judgment that both wounded and aroused me), and yet deeper still, the shame wasn't merely physiological but existential, a confrontation with the body's betrayal of the soul's aspirations, where the urge to void one's bladder became a synecdoche for all adolescent impotence, the inability to control the narrative of one's own desires in the presence of the desired other, leading me to squirm imperceptibly—or so I hoped—in my seat, crossing and uncrossing my legs under the pretense of adjusting for better viewing angles, sweating now not from the humid Illinois night but from the internal furnace of repression, my bladder distending like a balloon in a pressure chamber, each laugh from Emily (prompted by some on-screen slapstick) sending seismic waves through my midsection that threatened structural integrity, and as the intermission loomed—a blessed ten-minute reprieve advertised by cartoon hot dogs dancing toward concession stands—I weighed the pros and cons of suggesting a snack run, which could plausibly include a detour to relief without explicit admission, but fear of verbalizing even that much, of
>>24998010puncturing the bubble of shared cinematic immersion with something as prosaic as "I need to pee," kept me mute, paralyzed by the same solipsistic loop that would later inform my writings on addiction and the tyranny of the self, until finally, as the second feature began (a horror flick, appropriately enough, with its own motifs of trapped victims and mounting dread), the pressure crested into a dull, throbbing ache that transcended pain into a kind of meditative trance, where I dissociated from my corporeal form, imagining myself as a stoic philosopher enduring the rack for the sake of platonic ideal love, or perhaps as a Federer-like figure on the court of courtship, holding serve against the onslaught of biology, and in this convoluted mental gymnastics—punctuated by parenthetical asides to myself about the irony of Camus's absurd hero Sisyphus pushing his rock while I pushed back against my own internal tide—I managed, through sheer force of will augmented by strategic shallow breathing and the occasional surreptitious thigh squeeze, to outlast the double bill, emerging from the car at evening's end with legs wobbling like a newborn foal's, bidding Emily a hasty goodnight with a peck on the cheek that tasted of victory mingled with desperation, and only then, racing home along the back roads with the windows down and the radio blaring to drown out my own whimpers, did I finally pull over at a darkened cornfield's edge to release the pent-up torrent in a cathartic arc under the stars, feeling at once relieved and profoundly ashamed, not just of the act but of the elaborate psychic architecture I'd erected to avoid it, a shame that lingered like a phantom limb into adulthood, informing every subsequent date, every moment of vulnerability, every essay where the body's demands clash with the mind's pretensions, until it became clear that my father's advice, well-intentioned as it was, had equipped me not with mastery but with a lifelong aptitude for convoluted endurance in the face of the inescapably human.
This retard killed himself. The opinion of anyone that commits suicide is worthless.
>>24998017He was pretty good in Guns n' Roses
>>24998017I share a similar opinion. However, i make an exception with him, he was a full blown schizophrenic, the complete deal with visual and auditive hallucinations since childhood. Sometimes living like that is just too much.
>>24998006>>24998010>>24998015shut the fuck and space those paragraphs ,you undignified monkey
>>24998421>paragraphs its a single sentence, u a casual?
>>24998017What about martyrs?
>>24998670Especially martyrs
>>24998421>no I can't READ without my precious reddit spacing!!!
>>24998679Something tells me you're glued to your ego.
>>24998700My life is nailed to my spine.
>>24998742Materialist.
>>24997989>Hansel and Gretelyou mean these guys?https://pornhub.com/model/hansel-grettel
>>24998017isn't this just a parody of DFW?>I found myself on a date with Emily Hargrove, the girl from AP English> whatever nascent romantic aura I'd managed to cultivate through awkward compliments about her essay on Infinite Jest (which, ironically, she'd dismissed as "overrated but fun," a judgment that both wounded and aroused me)
>>24997989marking you down for missing a glaring opportunity to include a 3800 word nigh tangential diatribe arguing both for and against the necessity of reduction (from both a human and algorithmic standpoint) with [1]11ᴼᶠ ᶜᵒᵘʳˢᵉ, ᵗʰᵉ ˢᵉᵃˢᵒnᵉᵈ ᴰᶠᵂ ᵖᵃʳˢᵉʳ ʷᶦˡˡ ᶜᵒnᶜᵘʳ ᵗʰᵃᵗ ᵗʰᵉ ᵉnᵗᶦʳᵉ ᵉˣᵉʳᶜᶦˢᵉ ᵐᵘˢᵗ ᶜᵒnˢᶦᵈᵉʳ ᵗʰᵉˢᵉ ᵃnᵈ nᵒ ᵈᵒᵘᵇᵗ ᵐᵃnʸ ᵒᵗʰᵉʳ ᶜᵒᵐᵖˡᵉᵗᵉˡʸ ᵗʰᵉᵒʳᵉᵗᶦᶜᵃˡ ˢᵗᵃnᶜᵉˢ ˢᵉᵉᵐᶦnᵍˡʸ ᵖˡᵘᶜᵏᵉᵈ ᶠʳᵒᵐ ᵗʰᶦn ᵃᶦʳ; ᵈʳᵉˢˢᵉᵈ ᵘᵖ ᵃˢ ᵠᵘᵃˢᶦ-ʳᵉˡᵉᵛᵃnᵗ (ʷᶦᵗʰ ᵃ ˢᶦᵈᵉ ᵒʳᵈᵉʳ ᵒᶠ ᵐᵉᵃnᵈᵉʳᶦnᵍ ᵃnnᵉᶜᵈᵒᵗᵉ/ᵃˡˡᵉᵍᵒʳʸ/ʰʸᵖᵉʳᵇᵒˡᵉ) ᵇᵘᵗ ᵘˡᵗᶦᵐᵃᵗᵉˡʸ ˢᵉʳᵛᶦnᵍ nᵒ ᵍʳᵉᵃᵗᵉʳ ᵖᵘʳᵖᵒˢᵉ ᵗʰᵃn ᵖʳᵒˡᵒnᵍᶦnᵍ ᵗʰᵉ ᵃˡʳᵉᵃᵈʸ ᶜᵒʳᵖᵘˡᵉnᵗ ᶠᴺ ᵃnᵈ ᵍᵉnᵗˡʸ ᵉʳᵒᵈᶦnᵍ ᵗʰᵉ ʳᵉᵃᵈᵉʳ'ˢ ᵃᵗᵗᵉnᵗᶦᵒn ˢᵖᵃn, ˢᵗᵃᵐᶦnᵃ ᵉᵗ ᵃˡ. ᵗᵒ ᵗʰᵉ ᵖᵒᶦnᵗ ᵒᶠ ᵈᵉˢᵉᶜʳᵃᵗᶦnᵍ ᵗʰᵉ ᵖʳᵉ-ᶠᴺ ᶠˡᵒʷ ᵒᶠ ᵗʰᵉ ᵖʳᵒˢᵉ ᵃnᵈ ˡᵉᵃᵈᶦnᵍ ᵘᵖ ᵗᵒ ᵃ ᶠʳᵘˢᵗʳᵃᵗᶦnᵍˡʸ ᶦnᶜᵒnᶜˡᵘˢᶦᵛᵉ ᵗᵉʳᵐᶦnᵘˢ. ᴴᵉʰᵉ ˢᵐᵃˡˡ ᵗᵉˣᵗ ᶠᵘnnʸ.
>>24998017Great bait. Next time try saying he made his pronouncements under the influence of psychopharmaceuticals THEN killed himself when he went off them. Lol.
>>24998017Ad hominem
Studying mathematics in college permanently crippled his ability to write pleasant prose. Stay the fuck away from STEM, bros.
>>24999752He was a master of style though
>>24999752More like his interest in literature destroyed his ability to understand math. Everything and More is one of the worst non-fiction books I've ever read.
Tf did I just read? A grown man doesn't know how to excuse himself to the bathroom
>>24999953His style is quite turgid
>>24999752Came here to post something similar, like "this is your brain on modal logic".
>>24997989>when they want motion without accountability.This is usually my thinking when I take a walk
>>24997989>James: Do you like jokes? Here’s one of my favorites. Why is a horse the most biased politician?>Randy: Hmm. Good one.>Steven: Horses can’t be in politics so they can’t be a politician.>James: It’s because the horse can only vote neigh.>Steven: Isn’t that what horses say? I don’t get it.>James: A nay vote means a vote against something. That’s N-A-Y. Neigh, N-E-I-G-H, sounds the same. Thus, a horse would only ever vote against stuff, a major bias.>Steven: Oh, I get it now.>James: Okay, how about this one. What do get when you cross a banana with a knife?>Steven: A cut banana?>James: A banana split, a type of food.>Randy: Wow! You’re good with jokes.
>>25002576Is the joke autism?
