Michael Aird
The Conditions Under Which You Are Most Likely to Have Difficulty Describing What You Do for Fun
Eyes should be open, but with lids slightly drooped
               the buccinators might be activated
                              but no flexion should be found
                                             in the zygomatic muscle
Clinically relevant expressions
can be difficult to determine, yet
you know him reader, that delicate monster
                                                            Dear Franklin W. Dixon: did the Hardy boys
                                                            ever get bored? I seem to remember
                                                            that they always had plans, ambitions
                                                            or engaged in normative delinquencies
                                                            like goofing off at work
               Perhaps that’s why I find
               leading a startup so intoxicating,
               whereas around 85% of my colleagues
               suffer from an indolence of the heart
               that’s resulted in reduced
                              spontaneous speech
                              emotional responsiveness
                              social interactions
                              interest in usual pastimes
Wasn’t the indecisiveness of the prince
               simply a quasi-cultivation
               of world-weariness and cynical detachment
                              mixed with a depletion
                              of optimal resources because of
                              underarousal
                                             I would have thought the French had cornered boredom,
                                                            but as it turns out U.S. students scored
                                                                           significantly higher on measures
                                                                           of boredom proneness than their
                                                                                                         European counterparts
               Of particular interest,
               people prone to boredom generally appear
               higher in paranoid ideation—
                              which makes sense given how our findings suggest
                              that among male undergraduates
                              those who favored Dukakis were less bored
                              than those who favored Bush
Certainly, correlational analyses
reveal a marked negative relationship
between boredom proneness and psychosocial
development
                                                            Are gamblers necessarily sensation seekers,
                                                            or are they avoiding dysphoric moods?
                                                            Are those youth truly committed to radical Islam,
                                                            or are they instead
                                                            fending off their akinetic mutism?
Although, it’s only with the inception
                              of Christianity really
                              that the Sensation Seeking Scale
                              takes centre stage as a spiritual
                              or intellectual concern
                              Several hypotheses have been described
                              to account for a vigilance decrement,
                                             but at the end of the day
                                             boredom is that existential that precludes
                                             its own intelligibility
I’m not going to join the war on boredom,
                              because we need to listen to the emotion
                                                                           and ask what it’s trying to tell us
One team simply left subjects in a room
alone with a button that allowed them
to give themselves an electric shock,
which many did elect to do
                                                            To this rare breed belong artists
                                                            and contemplative men of all kinds:
                                                            they do not fear boredom, but view it
                                                            as that disagreeable lull of the soul
                                                            that precedes a happy voyage and cheerful winds
If boredom is an historically
               contingent mood or condition,
               it can occasionally
harbour flashes of subversive insight
and the seeds of transformational praxis
                                             As Smallwood points out,
                                                            new theory suggests that we have
                                                            some responsibility for our own
                                                            levels of boredom
               Remain slouched or hunched over if you want,
               etherized at the table,
               or else
               adopt the facial expression you are targeting,
               the emotional body posture that says
               flow proneness and mood labelling,
               St. Martha,
               I erected this boredom, but never bore
               of this erection
The Work Concentrates on the Surprising Aspects of the Projection and Assumes a Rigid World Setting
To put it another way,
is not every square inch of the deconcealment of being
a place-congruent continuity
               which can now be organized
                              around the category of the SCENE as such
               We tend to know when a scene works
               and when it doesn’t
                              unlike a wannabe scene or girly fucker
                              who suddenly decides to listen to
                              my chemical romance
                              act all br00tal and wear too much eyeliner
It starts and ends with a character
               arriving or leaving—
it gives the sensation that a character
               is trapped in this moment and must go through it—
it takes on the character
               of a human in the loop…observing…
                              from the artifice of absolute distance
                                                            In the industry we call these pictures
                                                            establishing shots—
                                                            this is because the development
                                                            of scenic institutions also increases
                                                            the number of scenic gatekeepers
                                                            who support the preservation of
                                                            scenic distinctiveness
At Scenic America, we believe
we have a choice about how we want to live—
               therefore it’s vital to examine
               who is most engaged in the discursive construction
               within the context of the scene—
                              lest you want to leave it to those
                              emo-looking kids or those Warez fucks
Benjamin has indeed famously remarked
               of Atget’s photographs
               of deserted Paris streets
that he photographed them like scenes of a crime
                              To be honest, scene cohesion
                              is usually manipulated
                              by including objects that do not fit
                              into the scene complex
Two different mechanisms
have been suggested to account for this
                              advantage of incongruent objects
To begin with, covert attention
               is drawn to an object when there’s difficulty
               reconciling that object’s identity
               with the overall meaning of the scene,
               thereby fixating the perverse object
               earlier in the assemblage
                                             And secondly, incongruent stimulus,
                                             engaging attention longer
                                             in rival situations, exhibits
                                             a duration dominance dwarfing that
                                             of non-arousing stimuli
It’s all about being both
improbable and novel—
                              because heart rate and skin conductance measurements
                              under novelty-induced conditions
                              are maximized by those protagonists
                                                            burdened by expanded possibilities
                                                                                                                        of the self
What do you have that compares with cocaine?—
                                             other than two buses: one headed
                                             for Nowhere, the other for Boredom
                                                                                          Are any number of crimes, in fact,
                                                                                          committed not against
                                                                                          people or property, but against
                                                                                          a certain vacant commonality
               In moments like these
               we cultural criminologists embrace
                              the epistemic surprise stored
                              in geo-specific data
                                             Is every passer-by a culprit?
                                             Are there streets that are assassins?
It’s worth considering that public spaces
               are difficult to control
               and that such context violations
               are referred to in the literature
               as a form of urbicide
                              There’s a void in understanding
                              the sense of a scene as it’s experienced
                              by local residents—
                              and while there might be cautionary flags
                                             (such as the five basic principles
                                             of designing defensible space),
                              it’s not as simple as assigning
                              a semantic label to the tableau vivant
               The term scene is rarely applied
                              to a particular space
                              unless there is a substantial degree of rawness
                              penetrating deeper
                                             than the holistic properties of the
                                                                                          spatial envelope
Scene parsing is thus the challenging problem
of making every pixel appear
               at precisely that scandalous point
               we bob on the horizon
               of our own feature-classifier paradigm
But by then the gatekeeper comes along
creates
alternative or consequent or attendant scenes
               some of which
                              contain similar haunting qualities
               some of which
                              contain only a residue of the dreamy
                              revelation
I Took that Carnosine to Mean There’d Be No More Abuse by the Shelterbelt
This comes in the form of what Marx calls
                              the faux frais of the void ratio
                                                            during an internal erosion process
               In neuroscience we name this programmed death
               “creative destruction”—the thinking being
                                             if a microtubule array
                                             is to be erected, a microtubule array
                                             must be destroyed
How’s that cup looking now?
Are you down to the dregs?
Is your crumb structure compromised to the point
where you might just wash away?
                                                            While we’re all merely a necrobiome
                                                            waiting to be
                                                            deducted from the product
                                                            you don’t have to be old to feel the effects
                                                            of mojo depletion
               In fact, the No. 1 health complaint
               in doctor’s offices today
               is a sort of imperceptible sheetwash
               of the horny layer
                                             likely caused by an energy leak
                                             or some psy-vampirism
Speaking more technically,
               a tightening in the chest under
               predictable circumstances, the feeling
               of being slimed after talking to a
               certain person, tolerable or intolerable
               soul loss
                              Then, with wonderful dexterity,
                                             I perceived him loosening my shadow from the ground
                                                            in a very measured deformation
It’s said Werner Herzog and his film crew
in the Peruvian Amazon
were given the graphic description
                                                            of face-peelers
                                                                           (A quick survey of the oft-photographed—
                                                                           Lindsay Lohan, Lady Gaga, Madonna—
                                                                           makes me wonder if there isn’t something
                                                                           to this chemical denudation)
One of the first things to do
               is to recognize when you’re being drained
                              For example,
                              exploring the metaphorical links
                              between physical and social temperatures
                              (like “warm smile” or “cold as ice”)
                              researchers found a more reliable
                              subjective vitality
                              nestled in the micro-architecture
                                             of embodied cognition
I met a Traveler from an antique land
who said, “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
stand in the desart, thereby triggering
                              a perceived associative cluster
                              of homeostatic dysregulation”
                                             But what is the quenched condition?
                                                            hydration might be an essential
                                                            patrimony of the skin,
                                                            yet purge fluid is so rich in nitrogen
                                                            that after a short scorched earth period
                                                            it will fertilize future generations
Unproductive expenditure
               may well be the very point
                              of the conjunctive synthesis of consumption
               The wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
                              can’t identify what is and is not
                              too metabolically expensive
                              to maintain
                                                            If one looks in any depth into the world
                                                            of this writer’s fiction one can see
                                                            elegant self-control concealing
                                                            until the very last moment
                                                            a state of inner disintegration
                                                            and biological decay
               We have to adapt—
                              so we majored in the Humanities
                              and companies only want engineers—
                              embrace the message of Herman Hesse’s Demian:
                              keep reading novels, but start learning
                              a new skill
Is a shattered visage the punctum
that greets you in the morning’s mirror?
Is a single parent material
that which no longer pushes apically
up out of your purse?
                                             So be it—
                                             all Aufheben happens outside history
                                             and begins with detachment—
                                             my “thirst for valorization”
                                             is like the photograph’s having been there
                                             prior to transport downstream
                                             a scarcely visible discount
                                             on repeated viewing
previous page     contents     next page
Eyes should be open, but with lids slightly drooped
               the buccinators might be activated
                              but no flexion should be found
                                             in the zygomatic muscle
Clinically relevant expressions
can be difficult to determine, yet
you know him reader, that delicate monster
                                                            Dear Franklin W. Dixon: did the Hardy boys
                                                            ever get bored? I seem to remember
                                                            that they always had plans, ambitions
                                                            or engaged in normative delinquencies
                                                            like goofing off at work
               Perhaps that’s why I find
               leading a startup so intoxicating,
               whereas around 85% of my colleagues
               suffer from an indolence of the heart
               that’s resulted in reduced
                              spontaneous speech
                              emotional responsiveness
                              social interactions
                              interest in usual pastimes
Wasn’t the indecisiveness of the prince
               simply a quasi-cultivation
               of world-weariness and cynical detachment
                              mixed with a depletion
                              of optimal resources because of
                              underarousal
                                             I would have thought the French had cornered boredom,
                                                            but as it turns out U.S. students scored
                                                                           significantly higher on measures
                                                                           of boredom proneness than their
                                                                                                         European counterparts
               Of particular interest,
               people prone to boredom generally appear
               higher in paranoid ideation—
                              which makes sense given how our findings suggest
                              that among male undergraduates
                              those who favored Dukakis were less bored
                              than those who favored Bush
Certainly, correlational analyses
reveal a marked negative relationship
between boredom proneness and psychosocial
development
                                                            Are gamblers necessarily sensation seekers,
                                                            or are they avoiding dysphoric moods?
                                                            Are those youth truly committed to radical Islam,
                                                            or are they instead
                                                            fending off their akinetic mutism?
Although, it’s only with the inception
                              of Christianity really
                              that the Sensation Seeking Scale
                              takes centre stage as a spiritual
                              or intellectual concern
                              Several hypotheses have been described
                              to account for a vigilance decrement,
                                             but at the end of the day
                                             boredom is that existential that precludes
                                             its own intelligibility
I’m not going to join the war on boredom,
                              because we need to listen to the emotion
                                                                           and ask what it’s trying to tell us
One team simply left subjects in a room
alone with a button that allowed them
to give themselves an electric shock,
which many did elect to do
                                                            To this rare breed belong artists
                                                            and contemplative men of all kinds:
                                                            they do not fear boredom, but view it
                                                            as that disagreeable lull of the soul
                                                            that precedes a happy voyage and cheerful winds
If boredom is an historically
               contingent mood or condition,
               it can occasionally
harbour flashes of subversive insight
and the seeds of transformational praxis
                                             As Smallwood points out,
                                                            new theory suggests that we have
                                                            some responsibility for our own
                                                            levels of boredom
               Remain slouched or hunched over if you want,
               etherized at the table,
               or else
               adopt the facial expression you are targeting,
               the emotional body posture that says
               flow proneness and mood labelling,
               St. Martha,
               I erected this boredom, but never bore
               of this erection
To put it another way,
is not every square inch of the deconcealment of being
a place-congruent continuity
               which can now be organized
                              around the category of the SCENE as such
               We tend to know when a scene works
               and when it doesn’t
                              unlike a wannabe scene or girly fucker
                              who suddenly decides to listen to
                              my chemical romance
                              act all br00tal and wear too much eyeliner
It starts and ends with a character
               arriving or leaving—
it gives the sensation that a character
               is trapped in this moment and must go through it—
it takes on the character
               of a human in the loop…observing…
                              from the artifice of absolute distance
                                                            In the industry we call these pictures
                                                            establishing shots—
                                                            this is because the development
                                                            of scenic institutions also increases
                                                            the number of scenic gatekeepers
                                                            who support the preservation of
                                                            scenic distinctiveness
At Scenic America, we believe
we have a choice about how we want to live—
               therefore it’s vital to examine
               who is most engaged in the discursive construction
               within the context of the scene—
                              lest you want to leave it to those
                              emo-looking kids or those Warez fucks
Benjamin has indeed famously remarked
               of Atget’s photographs
               of deserted Paris streets
that he photographed them like scenes of a crime
                              To be honest, scene cohesion
                              is usually manipulated
                              by including objects that do not fit
                              into the scene complex
Two different mechanisms
have been suggested to account for this
                              advantage of incongruent objects
To begin with, covert attention
               is drawn to an object when there’s difficulty
               reconciling that object’s identity
               with the overall meaning of the scene,
               thereby fixating the perverse object
               earlier in the assemblage
                                             And secondly, incongruent stimulus,
                                             engaging attention longer
                                             in rival situations, exhibits
                                             a duration dominance dwarfing that
                                             of non-arousing stimuli
It’s all about being both
improbable and novel—
                              because heart rate and skin conductance measurements
                              under novelty-induced conditions
                              are maximized by those protagonists
                                                            burdened by expanded possibilities
                                                                                                                        of the self
What do you have that compares with cocaine?—
                                             other than two buses: one headed
                                             for Nowhere, the other for Boredom
                                                                                          Are any number of crimes, in fact,
                                                                                          committed not against
                                                                                          people or property, but against
                                                                                          a certain vacant commonality
               In moments like these
               we cultural criminologists embrace
                              the epistemic surprise stored
                              in geo-specific data
                                             Is every passer-by a culprit?
                                             Are there streets that are assassins?
It’s worth considering that public spaces
               are difficult to control
               and that such context violations
               are referred to in the literature
               as a form of urbicide
                              There’s a void in understanding
                              the sense of a scene as it’s experienced
                              by local residents—
                              and while there might be cautionary flags
                                             (such as the five basic principles
                                             of designing defensible space),
                              it’s not as simple as assigning
                              a semantic label to the tableau vivant
               The term scene is rarely applied
                              to a particular space
                              unless there is a substantial degree of rawness
                              penetrating deeper
                                             than the holistic properties of the
                                                                                          spatial envelope
Scene parsing is thus the challenging problem
of making every pixel appear
               at precisely that scandalous point
               we bob on the horizon
               of our own feature-classifier paradigm
But by then the gatekeeper comes along
creates
alternative or consequent or attendant scenes
               some of which
                              contain similar haunting qualities
               some of which
                              contain only a residue of the dreamy
                              revelation
This comes in the form of what Marx calls
                              the faux frais of the void ratio
                                                            during an internal erosion process
               In neuroscience we name this programmed death
               “creative destruction”—the thinking being
                                             if a microtubule array
                                             is to be erected, a microtubule array
                                             must be destroyed
How’s that cup looking now?
Are you down to the dregs?
Is your crumb structure compromised to the point
where you might just wash away?
                                                            While we’re all merely a necrobiome
                                                            waiting to be
                                                            deducted from the product
                                                            you don’t have to be old to feel the effects
                                                            of mojo depletion
               In fact, the No. 1 health complaint
               in doctor’s offices today
               is a sort of imperceptible sheetwash
               of the horny layer
                                             likely caused by an energy leak
                                             or some psy-vampirism
Speaking more technically,
               a tightening in the chest under
               predictable circumstances, the feeling
               of being slimed after talking to a
               certain person, tolerable or intolerable
               soul loss
                              Then, with wonderful dexterity,
                                             I perceived him loosening my shadow from the ground
                                                            in a very measured deformation
It’s said Werner Herzog and his film crew
in the Peruvian Amazon
were given the graphic description
                                                            of face-peelers
                                                                           (A quick survey of the oft-photographed—
                                                                           Lindsay Lohan, Lady Gaga, Madonna—
                                                                           makes me wonder if there isn’t something
                                                                           to this chemical denudation)
One of the first things to do
               is to recognize when you’re being drained
                              For example,
                              exploring the metaphorical links
                              between physical and social temperatures
                              (like “warm smile” or “cold as ice”)
                              researchers found a more reliable
                              subjective vitality
                              nestled in the micro-architecture
                                             of embodied cognition
I met a Traveler from an antique land
who said, “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
stand in the desart, thereby triggering
                              a perceived associative cluster
                              of homeostatic dysregulation”
                                             But what is the quenched condition?
                                                            hydration might be an essential
                                                            patrimony of the skin,
                                                            yet purge fluid is so rich in nitrogen
                                                            that after a short scorched earth period
                                                            it will fertilize future generations
Unproductive expenditure
               may well be the very point
                              of the conjunctive synthesis of consumption
               The wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
                              can’t identify what is and is not
                              too metabolically expensive
                              to maintain
                                                            If one looks in any depth into the world
                                                            of this writer’s fiction one can see
                                                            elegant self-control concealing
                                                            until the very last moment
                                                            a state of inner disintegration
                                                            and biological decay
               We have to adapt—
                              so we majored in the Humanities
                              and companies only want engineers—
                              embrace the message of Herman Hesse’s Demian:
                              keep reading novels, but start learning
                              a new skill
Is a shattered visage the punctum
that greets you in the morning’s mirror?
Is a single parent material
that which no longer pushes apically
up out of your purse?
                                             So be it—
                                             all Aufheben happens outside history
                                             and begins with detachment—
                                             my “thirst for valorization”
                                             is like the photograph’s having been there
                                             prior to transport downstream
                                             a scarcely visible discount
                                             on repeated viewing