Liz’s Advice Blog

Liz,
Where do people get ideas for stuff to say?  All my ideas are elaborate plans for revenge.  As I read and observe I find so many people with so much to say, none of which is actually worth saying but some of which momentarily masquerades as being worth hearing.  If I could steal that ability, I could create just enough confusion to make all my dreams come true.  I guess what I really want to know is what part of the human brain is responsible for this ability, and if I eat it, will I own it?
Tim San "Dimas" Diego, CA

Tim,

The creative part of the brain is the anterior superior temporal gyrus, and you don’t have to eat it!  You can just figure out where it is (it’s in your right temporal lobe) and light it up on your home fMRI machine.

Tim, Liz thinks you’ve got it exactly right.  There’s stuff aplenty which momentarily masquerades as being worth hearing.  It’s a brief candle of a flickering window in which people are willing to indulge you.  All you need to do is find that hole and fill it.  This usually involves the pretense of giving what was asked for, or else something that could be used later. 

Facts work well.  Facts are worth saying; they seem like something that can be pinned down.  Little known fact: the butterfly collection is live.  When the glass is found cracked and the case empty, burglary is most often assumed.  Fact: facts are not dead butterflies.

Another thing worth saying is a bit of visceral currency or text pill that creates a reaction in the reader.  Examples of this include the joke "The Aristocrats", a certain witch’s poem that makes pregnant women go into labor, the fabled ruddy-toned ringtone that gets off slags, the drunken mumbling that women mistake for love, the books and surname of John Updike, the word "you", Python’s "the funniest joke in the world".  People really take to this stuff: smut, emitting children, sex, love, sex and smut, egotism, literally being killed by laughing.  It is enjoyable.

So if you know what’s worth hearing, even briefly, then you know what’s worth saying.  The problem lies in the horrific return of said (or in saying) words after their use lives out, as in writing or in the memory.  To navigate this tire trial, there are two tunes to which you can high step.

1. Change yourself: Say something so inane it is timeless & universal.  These things are even less helpful than facts, but, in actual use, make like little bits of visceral currency pacifying adult children.  Most pervasive quotations are of this idea-for-stuff-to-say trope.

2. Change what you want: Say something you’ll regret.  Someone said, "All is forgiven in the end if your heart was in the right place, if you lived an honest life, if you tried."  When it keeps coming up in your throat and it burns, you will have already become the person sitting next to you and you will find it fascinating as a realist biographical sketch and call it fiction.

So definitely say stuff about revenge and eating brains.  Sometimes it is the only thing that helps the pain, as for instance, when you are a zombie.

Aiming for the inane and forgivable (and yet, even now, setting down the greatest stuff (ever!) said by a living, being human in humankind’s long run, glycolytic or ketotic),
-Me

Dear Liz,
What the hell does it mean to "Live Life to the Fullest"? The fullest of what? I think anyone who says that is the fullest of shit.
(Do I get two?)
I had another question for you . . . oh yeah, why am I so pretentious? I’m really pretentious, and I get more pretentious every day. It’s as though I existed in a frictionless environment with a constant force exerted on me along a vector of pretension. Why?
-Sincerest Clay Washingthong, DC

Hi Clay!

"Live Life to the Fullest" is a proverb, and a saying, as well as a maxim that many people use but do not fully understand.  It means to the fullest extent. 

Keep ‘em coming. 

You are really pretentious.  It is as if you existed in Schrödinger’s box, and a cat were sitting next to it with the option to press a button whose consequences would be either a continuation of your pretension as it exists now or an incineration of your physical form producing an ultrafine pretension gas ten times more bioavailable in vivo to the cat than your words alone. 

So pretentious,
-Me

Dear Liz,
I have been dating a robot from work, I’ll call her Roberta. She has the lines of a Toyota Prius, more dials than 747, and says and thinks all the right things. And although she can be quite introspective and reflective about her life and our life together I’m not sure Roberta is "conscious" if you know what I mean. I am a materialist and believe it is possible she could be conscious of her own existence and, therefore, my existence and our "love"  But I can’t help feeling this ain’t "the real thing" and I am living a lie.
Should I end this relationship and seek a relationship with something I know is conscious or is consciousness not all its cracked up to be? What is consciousness anyway?
-Pap Man Gloucester, MA
P.S. I have attached a couple of pictures of Roberta in two of her many moods. 

Hi Papa,

Really?  That’s great!  Here are some fruitful ways women deal with their seemingly robotic men: 

1. Emasculate your robot.  Or, undercut her ("hardly automatic") artificiality.
2. Watch Brokeback Mountain.  Haha - gay.
3. Read self-help books like "Men are from Mars, Robots Are Self-Replicating Nano-Murderers", "You Just Don’t Understand Me, A Robot", "You Just Don’t Understand Me, Robot", and the following pamphlet (I give out at the conclusion of my own counseling sessions):

You and Your Robot: Coming Together

ONE Spatial Navigation
You and your robot were socialized in very different ways.  When you leave your house in the morning, you usually go to work or school, using a mental map to estimate time and distance.  Now that you are in a relationship with your robot, you wake up, turn her on, and drive around aimlessly looking for the next checkpoint or mission.  Sometimes this takes hours without any headway being made.   

TWO Dominance and Control
You and your robot have different ideas about the purpose of communication.  Consider the interaction you had with your robot as Carl Johnson in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

You: Shit. I’ll fly it, then. We can re-spray it at the airstrip.
Zero: Yeah, Carl. It’ll be just like fighting Berkley, only bigger!
You: Yeah, thanks for that.

Here, Zero, (TV’s voice artist David Cross) offers you humor to ease mounting tension while you plan a job.  Robots offer conversation as a gift - one that you do not appreciate, because you use conversation to determine dominance and to plan a successful act of fraudulent artifice on Caligula’s Casino.  Then…

Zero: Question: how does the Mafia normally move cash out of Caligula’s?
You: Bingo! Stripes for Mr. Zero here.
Occupant: Ha hey! Good job, you little ass kisser!
[pats Zero on the back]
Zero: [moans in pain]

Here, you let an occupant berate Zero, who is trying very hard to please you.  You see Zero’s efforts as weakness, because he does not employ language as you do, as a means for insulting people.  Sometimes I wonder about you.

Consciousness, Papa, as studied by philosophers, psychologists, and neurologists may include the qualities of self-awareness, intelligence, sentience, and/or subjectivity.  Roberta has these algorithms, just like you, differently.  Seems to me, the greater deficit to your relationship is the missing qualities we could call "subconscious", but I will call "hypothink" because I, like L. Ron Hubbard, am home to one million dumb ideas. 

Roberta is not clumsy or excitable or unpredictable, because she’s sub-hypothink minded.  We may never know what went wrong with this relationship, and I’m fine with that.

Circles and Squares,
-Me

P.S. Thank you for the photographs.  I can see the Prius comparison.  Very striking!  Where are the dials?

Dear Liz,
Where do we go when we die?
-Karl Upper Eastside, NY

Karl!

Liz has exciting news about where we go when we die!  This will also be relevant to Phil from borough, NY.  Because I am far too busy to tackle this one and as I recently received the following email from the International Tract Ministries Co., LLC, I’m just gonna cut and paste this shaggy puggledoodle…

Tract # 309
"Eternal Life Is Not Just A Possibility, It Is A Wildly Exaggerated Possibility.  Still."

HEAVEN: Do you want to go there?  Do you prefer compass directions with distances or landmarks?  "This is a trick question, because if you don’t have a preference, you are probably gay and maybe you don’t know it, but irregardless, it’s a mute point, inasmuch as you’re inflammably not going to HEAVEN." (Hebrews 9:12b) 

YOUR BRAIN IS STUPID:  Accept it.  "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." (Romans 10:13)  Whosoever means YOU!  Shall means "prank".  Lord means "Jerky Boys". "Upon the name of" means "less expertly than".  "Be saved" means "Maybe you should try calling a random number and asking the person on the line honestly for what it is you hope to take away from the interaction."

CHURCH MEMBERSHIP CANNOT SAVE YOU: God does not play poker, so when you are in church, God does not "check". 

(Fold)

YOU CANNOT JUST BE A GOOD PERSON: Being a good person can help you navigate spatially and make really funny frank phone calls, but it will not help you play poker.  To play poker well, you must be a man and wear a "good luck" personality affectation.

SURE "YOU" CAN BELIEVE ME OR NOT BELIEVE ME BUT DO YOU KNOW WHAT?:  The Bible says, "You’ve got death!" (Romans 6:23a).  But maybe THAT doesn’t make sense (?) because we all will die each and every one, so what’s the point of sin-avoiding or not, but I think, in this quotation, "death" is an "[emphasis mine, but implied by GOD] ETERNAL SENSATION OF SOMEONE WATCHING YOU BUT WHEN YOU TURN AROUND THERE IS NO ONE THERE, ONLY PROFOUND DEJA VU ABOUT ONE LIMB BEING ASLEEP AND FEAR OF SENSING SAND UNDER THE FINGERNAIL."

Please call and let me know if you have trusted me as your personal savior,
-Me

Dear Liz,
Is it better to be helpless or heartless? 
Helpless = totally useless and needs others to mediate all social interactions; blames heartless for all world ills and own inability to function. Heartless = refuses to mediate helpless’s social interactions for lack of time/space; harbors total disinterest in helpless’s ineptitude, etc.
A question I have long questioned.
-Sarah Providence, RI

Oh Sarah,

That is a whopper of a question, and so too it is an opportunity for personal growth.  Not for me.  But with a little luck, you can learn a lot from listening to me, as I pound and flatten memory lane.  Come along, won’t you? 

I should explain that I smile at most everyone who smiles at me.  Now I will tell the gist.  No, I should set the scene now.  Marco was standing joblessly in front of the women’s room in a Boston train station.  He introduced himself and offered me pot I declined.

"You’re not going to put me down because I’m a black man, right?"

I laughed.

"Can you be real with me?"

"Sure".  Standing too close, Marco touched my hair, and I stepped back.  "I have a boyfriend."

"Can we work something out, you and me and your boyfriend?"

"No, sorry."  At the time, I had problem walking away from people who make eye contact.  I also have that problem now.

"So you can’t help me out because I’m not your man, is that it?  If I’m not your boyfriend, you can’t help me out?  Unless I’m… stickin’ my dick in you… you can’t be real with me?  Is that how it is?"

In Providence, a woman asked me to sit with her a short while in a storefront doorway and give her my hand.  She said she had cancer and AIDS, and showed me some kind of ID card as proof of this.  It didn’t seem like she had long-practiced palm reading, but she touched the lines on my hand, told me they were "the lines", and asked me for 80 dollars. 

Her eyes, like her ID, were proof she was not lying when she said, "Oh, there’s a man in your life.  And he wants to be intimate with you!" 

In these cases, the Heartless (me) are less vulgar and more frightened than the Helpless (homeless), who are, in turn, conspiring to force consanguinity between the Heartless and the Helpless.  Explicably, I was the one chosen for this.

Sarah, I’m holding out in the hope that there is a third type in your taxon, if not more.  This other personality, call him "Selfless," would get off on altruistic social service and could bond with the Helpless in convergent evolution not unlike the (now) inextricable mitochondria in our cells.  Like a braided stream.

Who’s the best (from best to worst):
1 Helpless-Selfless-Symbionts
3 Heartless
4 Smileless
5 Worthless
6 Horseless

Sorry I exploded the duality.  Let me know if you hear anything more about the conspiracy.

Remember my memoir,
-Me

Dear Liz,
How can you win back your soulmate who hasn’t talked to you in a year?
-Maria De Los Angeles, CA

Lady,

I should have said this to Chris who asked, "How do you keep the one who got away?"  I’m sorry I was flippant.  To you two and anyone else planning to ask the same question:

Keep in mind you always have the option to read Dan Savage’s column.  Love is a well-worn base path.  I’m no sexpert.

But I know you, because I’ve seen you laugh, and I just don’t think this "soulmate" or "gotter away" deserves your time.  Maria, you are a talented artist and a marathon-running nanny to a beautiful celebrity.  Chris, you are just a talented artist, but you are a very good artist.  Maria, I’m not saying you’re not as good as Chris, but he is arguably more accomplished.   Guys, I understand if you’re bored and just want to entertain the idea of love, but don’t either of you let yourself rationally believe this person is right for you.  If he were, he wouldn’t have lacked the feeling of not knowing how to quit you. 

And someday you’ll be loved in the way that you’ve always deserved.  And one day you will find love in the vastness you’ve earned.  And as certain as I am of this, I also know you’ll lose that love.  Write me when that happens, and we’ll do "laughter twister yoga," the kind where they turn up the heat and suspend you from a lewd statue with bungee.

Wholly,
-Me

Dear Liz,
Has "reductionism" become a meaningless code word for "I don’t like that theory"?
-Matt Diego, CA

Big Pants,

Matt, I can validate this statement easily, simply, and meaningfully - by testing a few cases.  This method yields a high ROI.  You should be quite satisfied.

Abstract
In an interview for his new book, "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon," philosophy professor Daniel Dennett told Salon staff, "’Reductionism’ has become a meaningless code word for ‘I don’t like that theory.’"   

Procedure
If reductionism is jargon for "I don’t like that theory", then let’s make the substitution and see if meaning holds:

Trial 1
Overheard in the sauna: "That’s why I’m doing the elliptical, Liz, and I don’t know why I’m opening up to you like this, because we’re strangers, but yeah, I’m really trying to I don’t like that theory the fat around my waists and hips.  This fat right here."  [Woman gestures to indicate inelasticity]

Trial 2
Ibid:  "Jimmie says it’s a theory of net calories, but, well, and do you know what, Liz? …I don’t likes I don’t like that theory my calories.  I likes Tater Tot casserole."  [Woman pushes my shoulder in womanly acknowledgement of common struggle]

Trial 3
Here, I’ve caught the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defining "reductionism" cyclically:
"reductionism: the theory that complete I don’t like that theory is possible."

Trial 4
Gym Sauna: "Your dictionary doesn’t get wet in here, sweetie?  Actually, I’ve been thinking that… that I don’t like that theory theory… I like it.  Because I likes Jimmie.  I think he’s really going to try to make it work this time.  I’m going to I don’t like that theory my weight a little, and he’ll I don’t like that theory the time he spends I don’t like that theory his soup stock so I can use the crock pot once in a while." [Woman pantomimes eating Woman's Famous Homemade Sodium-Reduced Chicken Stock Crock Pot Tater Tot Pate]

Trial 5
Jimmie’s place of employment, Christian-themed television studio:  "How does this sound, Michael?  ‘Evolution is a wonderous theory, but one that ultimately amounts to an ignorance of the infinite complexity the universe abounds and, frankly, I don’t like that theory.’?  Additionally, let me say that having a wife is awful."  [Jimmie rolls his eyes, and a bible, which was sitting on the soundboard, cries.]

Conclusion
Our results are mixed.  Sometimes "reductionism" is a code for "I don’t like that theory."  Other times the bible is besogged.  Our control, the dictionary, stayed dry in the sauna.

Discussion,
-Me

Dear Liz,
This is kind of along the same lines as Bill’s question.  Why is no one silly anymore?
-Liz Standover, MA

Dear Me,

I am VERY backed up with questions.  I try to give EVERYONE the advice every one so wants and needs.  No, I am happy to do it…  To preface what will surely seem to you a harsh reply, let me say: I like silliness.  Silliness is the best excuse we have for why kids aren’t good at normal everyday tasks such as taking accurate phone messages and cooking Stove Top stuffing. 

The trouble is, your inopportune silliness is getting in the way of my ability to do my job.  If you had forethought to consider the motivations and lives at stake, perhaps you would not be so self-indulgent as to think I share your opinions.

And Liz, some people are concerned with putting food on the table.  Oh no way, your mom’s making Stove Top?  That’s weird, because my mom’s making Stove Top as well.

Goodbye,
-Me