GalacticMu

Consider the human face. Most faces contain the same basic features. Two eyes, a nose, a mouth, etc. When describing your face, you use the shortcut of assuming all those features and only call attention to the ones that differentiate you.  In the same way, your mind can be described by the things that you think about regularly.

I call this “Mental Mapping.”*

Picture your mind as a planetoid. Your consciousness is like the view through a telescope from that planetoid. You observe your thoughts, passing by your consciousness, as stellar objects. Some pass by frequently, on a regular orbit, like moons. Others are irregular, their orbits eccentric, like comets. Some you only “see” if you direct your consciousness there; some are only visible at certain times of day or during certain seasons. And so on.

Most moon-thoughts are as common as noses. They are not really worth commenting on, or considering as a defining characteristic. For example, I regularly think “I don’t want to go to work tomorrow.” That’s a classic moon-thought.

What you are searching for, when Mental Mapping, is ideas or thoughts that are relatively unique or at least very unusual, and that occur to you with some regularity. Captain Subspace regularly finds herself thinking about “eating grapes the size of a watermelons.” That’s notable.

Collect these orbital eccentric thoughts on a list; try to estimate their frequency. Now you have a mental map, a little rough perhaps, but a fair likeness of your mind.

More later.

Always here to help,
Halcyon
Psych Officer
GalacticMu

*For several years, I credited Nicholson Baker with this concept; I swore that I had read it in “The Size of Thoughts.” Having re-read the source (the essay in particular was called “Changes of Mind”), it turns out that my theory was spored from the dingy and ill-kempt laboratory of my own mind, and had merely taken root in the fertile agar Mr. Baker had so kindly supplied. I highly recommend you read his essay; you can find it at any decent library.

The Hollywood brain trust is planning to release another Incredible Hulk Movie.

There is only one rational response to this: why, for the love of all that is green, go there?

Maybe because the previous incarnation, directed by Ang Lee, was roundly despised. Much of the criticism centered around the cartoonish CGI. I asked my good friend Captain Obvious of the good ship O’rlly what he thought.

H: Do you think the hulk was too cartoonish?
CO: The hulk was a cartoon.

The hulk originally appeared in Marvel Comics (1962), in a story penned by Stan Lee and drawn/plotted by Jack Kirby. Here’s the gist of the plot, for you Rigelians and trans-dimensional entities with your soundlessly gibbering mouths: a meek and mild-mannered scientist is exposed to deadly gamma radiation, barely survives, and thereafter is prone to fits of “hulking out”: turning gray, getting big and muscle-y, gaining an unquenchable desire to smash things, and losing any interest in sustained silent reading.

It’s a modern retelling of Dr Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde. A scientist made to suffer for the excess of science. Id vs. Super-ego, made visible. The essential conflict is man vs. self.

Ang Lee’s hulk (2003) strayed from the essential conflict by introducing a “bad-guy” secondary character (played well by Nick Nolte). However! The theme (the price of scientific excess) remained, since Nolte’s character was the epitome of a morally bankrupt scientist.

Nolte rounded out a stellar ensemble cast (notably featuring Sam Elliot and Jennifer Connelly) and a remarkably nuanced performance from a mis-cast Eric Bana as the hulk. Character motivations are believable and subtly played. The military man (Elliot) rightly recognizes the Hulk as a threat and moves to subdue and destroy it. Bana enjoys and fears the Hulk persona. Connelly is caught between. The movie is well-edited and uses some split-screen cuts to enjoyable campy effect.

Not this time! The new Hulk will stow that thinky crap by introducing a troglodytic arch-nemesis (Abomination), made using the Hulk’s blood. No complex moral quandaries will vex this Dr. Banner (Edward Norton): he wants to destroy the Hulk, but is bound by a sense of duty to kick the bad guy’s assssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.

He wishes it didn’t have to be this way, but hey, Support our Hulk.

The new movie will not admit to being campy. It is grim as death. So it trades cartoonish CGI for ghoulishly overdrawn bodybuilder CGI (all the better for the extended musclebound-monsters-punching-on-each-other sequences). Because this is serious business, people. The fate of the world hangs in the balance or something.

That level of seriousness, about a movie, about a giant green monster-man movie, reveals a dangerous pathology on the part of the film-makers.

Listen up, filmy people: the Hulk isn’t a monster, out there, in the world. It’s a monster inside you. You need to learn to laugh at the Hulk. You need to hug the Hulk and teach the Hulk to love itself. Only when the smashing stops can the healing begin.

Always here to help,
Halcyon
Psych Officer
GalacticMu

Commander Seuss: You ever see “7 Brides for 7 Brothers?”

Major tiltawhirl: The musical? No.

Commander Seuss: It’s pretty offensive.

Major tiltawhirl: Because it’s a musical?

Commander Seuss: Here’s what it teaches you: if you want a woman, just kidnap one and hold her hostage for six months in filthy cabin deep in the woods. She’ll never want to leave you.

Major tiltawhirl: Really?

Commander Seuss: That’s what love is, apparently.

Major tiltawhirl: Huh.

Commander Seuss: It’s also known as “Stockholm Syndrome.”

Major tiltawhirl: All I remember is a lot of hairy-chested men chopping firewood and singing.

Here I provide a educational illustration of Away Team member Quagmire’s intergalactic garbage-scow Atmo. Originally designed for sub-orbital refuse processing, this sturdy scow was retrofitted for deep-space service.

While offensive for some to look upon – as it is no rarefied and fragile little hot-rod – the Atmo brings tears of affection to the eyes of the most grizzled cosmonauts. Such a fine ship is few and far parsecs between.

(Note: names altered to protect the identities of our brave lasersponges)

Major Seuss: … that was at the height of the hobo wars.

Brigadier Jumbopwn: When was that? Right after world war one?

General Ibwndurma: Great depression.

Brigadier Jumbopwn: 27? 28?

General Ibwnurma: In the thirties.

Major Seuss: Which ended when Roosevelt unleashed the polio virus.

Commander MyBologna: Finally, a fucking intellectual discussion on Halo!

Found at the Avalanche Software employee art blog. Sam Nielson’s personal blog is available here.

Q: Does the dog have buddha nature or not?
A: Mu

Mu, from Japanese, means “without” or sometimes “emptiness.” In this context: “unask the question.”

Q: Can we travel back in time?
A: Mu

This question is invalid because it assumes that time has a “back” and a “fore.” Ask a Tralfamadorian.

Q: Is light a particle or a wave?
A: Mu

Categorical thinking, such as this, is usually delusional, and not the fun kind of delusional. Remember this when playing mind-chess on the fourth satellite of shoggoth and some mouthless muttering moon ape tries to pin you with a false duality. Just say “mu.”

Always here to help,
Halcyon
Psych Officer
GalacticMu