when you gotta go, you gotta go

Ephesians 6:11-18

AI and consciousness

Dr. V tackles the question of AI and consciousness, primarily through a Platonic-Kantian-Husserlian lens. He emphasizes the unity of consciousness—a unitary substrate that holds all past sensory phenomena together such that we are able to perceive things like melodies (which are not merely series of successive notes, chords, etc., but those things in their entirety), and he doesn't see how AI, at least in its current form, possesses that unity.

Suppose my mental state passes from one that is pleasurable to one that is painful. Observing a beautiful Arizona sunset, my reverie is suddenly broken by the piercing noise of a smoke detector. Not only is the painful state painful, the transition from the pleasurable state to the painful one is itself painful. The fact that the transition is painful shows that it is directly perceived. It is not as if there is merely a succession of consciousnesses (conscious states), one pleasurable the other painful; there is in addition a consciousness of their succession. A succession of consciousnesses need not amount to a consciousness of succession.

In the example given, there is a consciousness of succession. For there is a consciousness of the transition from the pleasant state to the painful state, a consciousness that embraces both of the states, and so cannot be reductively analyzed into them. A consciousness of their succession is a consciousness of their succession in one subject, in one unity of consciousness. It is a consciousness of the numerical identity of the self through the transition from the pleasurable state to the painful one. Passing from a pleasurable state to a painful one, there is not only an awareness of a pleasant state followed by an awareness of a painful one, but also an awareness that the one who was in a pleasurable state is strictly and numerically the same as the one who is now in a painful state. This sameness is phenomenologically given, although our access to this phenomenon is easily blocked by inappropriate models taken from the physical world. Without the consciousness of sameness, there would be no consciousness of transition.

[ ... ]

May we conclude from the phenomenology of the situation that there is a simple, immaterial, meta-physical substance that each one of us is and that is the ontological support of the phenomenologically given unity of consciousness? Maybe not! This is a further step that needs to be carefully considered. The further step takes us from the phenomenologically given unity of consciousness to an underlying immaterial soul substance which is the ‘seat’ of consciousness and the ultimate subject of consciousness. I don’t rule this move out, but I also don’t rule it in. I don’t need to take the further step for my present purpose, which is merely to show that a computing machine, no matter how complex or how fast its processing, cannot be conscious. This is because no material system can be conscious.

Another example is provided by the hearing of a melody. To hear the melody Do-Re-Mi, it does not suffice that there be a hearing of Do, followed by a hearing of Re, followed by a hearing of Mi. For those three acts of hearing could occur in that sequence in three distinct subjects, in which case they would not add up to the hearing of a melody. (Tom, Dick, and Harry can divide up the task of loading a truck, but not the ‘task’ of hearing a melody, or that of understanding a sentence.) But now suppose the acts of hearing occur in the same subject, but that this subject is not a unitary and self-same individual but just the bundle of these three acts, call them A1, A2, and A3. When A1 ceases, A2 begins, and when A2 ceases, A3 begins: they do not overlap. In which act is the hearing of the melody? A3 is the only likely candidate, but surely it cannot be a hearing of the melody.

This is because the awareness of a melody involves the awareness of the (musical not temporal) intervals between the notes, and to apprehend these intervals there must be a retention (to use Husserl’s term) in the present act A3 of the past acts A2 and A1. Without this phenomenological presence of the past acts in the present act, there would be no awareness in the present of the melody. This implies that the self cannot be a mere bundle of perceptions externally related to each other, but must be a peculiarly intimate unity of perceptions in which the present perception A3 includes the immediately past ones A2 and A1 as temporally past but also as phenomenologically present in the mode of retention. The fact that we hear melodies thus shows that there must be a self-same and unitary self through the period of time between the onset of the melody and its completion. This unitary self is neither identical to the sum or collection of A1, A2, and A3, nor is it identical to something wholly distinct from them. Nor of course is it identical to any one of them or any two of them. This unitary self is co-given whenever one hears a melody. (This seems to imply that all consciousness is at least implicitly self-consciousness. This is a topic for a later post.)

What I find interesting is how Dr. V makes his argument without ever once using the word memory. But has Dr. V inadvertently made an argument for how the tune-identifying app Shazam works? Most apps these days can handle chronologically sequential data, like musical notes (or medical data, or economic trends), and find patterns in that chronological sequence. Granted, Shazam isn't conscious of anything and therefore has no unity of consciousness, but it is nevertheless capable of identifying many tunes after only a few notes of music. 

A philosopher of mind named John Searle (1932-2025) once made an argument now known as "the Chinese room." Searle's point was to show how consciousness can be simulated without actually being there. In this scenario, you've got a Chinese-knowledgeable person who comes up to a closed room. He writes a question or statement on a piece of paper and slips it under the room's door. What he doesn't know is that, inside the room, there's a guy who doesn't know any Chinese, but who has a rulebook or program that shows the responses to the patterns of the Chinese characters slipped under the door. The guy inside the room finds the appropriate pattern for the response, then outputs that response. From the perspective of the guy outside the room, it seems that "the room" is conscious and has successfully communicated with him, but we observers know that "the room" (i.e., the guy in that room) has no knowledge of Chinese.

This thought experiment, Searle and Searlians contend, shows that consciousness can be simulated without actually being consciousness. But there are at least two responses to this: (1) What if the Chinese room proves too much? What if it proves that we ourselves aren't conscious at all but merely "zombies" that process reality in a way that we label "consciousness"?* And (2) Going in a completely different direction: Couldn't it be that the Chinese-room scenario is indirectly harboring consciousness in the form of the rulebook for Chinese? Some conscious minds had to create the rulebook, right? So consciousness was at least indirectly involved in the outside man's interaction with the inside man.

If we follow argument (1), well, that's the Shazam argument. You don't need consciousness or a unity of consciousness to process auditory data and find patterns. If Shazam can do that without being conscious, why should our ability to perceive melody be seen as proof of consciousness? If we follow argument (2), we see a reflection of the sticky situation we're in today, which mirrors the rebuttal to Searle's Chinese room: consciousness has already been smuggled into the scenario. People can say with assurance that "AI isn't conscious" (a statement I agree with), but in truth, it's people's consciousnesses that are helping to form AI. Consciousness factors into everything as we inevitably assume the godlike role of creating things (eventually, beings?) in our own image and likeness. We ourselves can do parkour-style standing backflips. We now have robots that can do the same, and they can recover from the flip with an inbuilt "sense" of balance. Robots can cook, clean, etc., and soon, they'll be able to do all of the physical labor that we can do, just better because the robots will be faster, stronger, and unable to experience fatigue, frustration, and anger. (The extent to which we can "program emotion" is an interesting question for a different discussion.)

So—is AI conscious? Not yet, and probably not for a long time. But we are using consciousness to build aspects of consciousness into the machines we're creating: balance, dexterity, pattern-recognition, reactions to changing environments—these are all features of consciousness. It won't be long, I fear, before the answer to the question Is it conscious? will no longer be a simple yes or no.

* * *

As an unrelated side note, did you see the grammar error here?

Passing from a pleasurable state to a painful one, there is not only an awareness of a pleasant state followed by an awareness of a painful one, but also an awareness that the one who was in a pleasurable state is strictly and numerically the same as the one who is now in a painful state.

__________

*The pro-consciousness response to this is that I have access to my own consciousness, which is proof enough to me that I am a conscious being. That may be sufficient for the philosophers who take first-person subjective insights to be evidential or probative, but if we're talking about scientific standards of proof, well, that sort of proof only holds weight in a third-person objective context. And unfortunately for you (and me), your consciousness is directly available only to you. So, what's been proved, objectively speaking?

don't walk like a victim

From what I gather, it comes down to looking alertly purposeful.

more lawn ASMR

Are you as satisfied as I am to watch this lawn get brought under control? To watch the, uh... bushes get trimmed?

tentative Geumgang Trail walk schedule

GEUMGANG WALK SCHEDULE

1. Day 0 (3/15): Train to 신탄진역 (대전), walk to motel.
2. Day 1 (3/16): Cab the next morning to 금강자전거길 기점 (대청댐 인근).
3. Day 1 (3/16): Walk to 세종보 인증센터, 37 km.
4. Day 1 (3/16): Walk to & stay at 커플링 모텔, 2.8 km.
5. Day 2 (3/17): Walk from 커플링 모텔 to 공주보 인증센터, 21 km.
6. Day 2 (3/17): Walk to & stay at 금강온천 모텔, 1.6 km.
7. Day 3 (3/18): Walk to 백제보 인증센터, 25 km.
8. Day 3 (3/18): Walk to 부여전통한옥 펜션, 2.5 km.
9. Day 4 (3/19): Walk to 익산성당포구 인증센터, 34 km.
10. Day 4 (3/19): Camp at the campground, open or not.
11. Day 5 (3/20): Walk to 금강하굿둑 인증센터, 24 km.
12. Day 5 (3/20): END. Take train from 군산역 to Seoul.

In more English:

GEUMGANG WALK SCHEDULE

1. Day 0 (3/15): Train to Shintanjin Station (Daejeon), walk to motel.
2. Day 1 (3/16): Cab next morning to Geumgang Path Start Point (near Daecheong Dam).
3. Day 1 (3/16): Walk to Sejong Dam Certification Center, 37 km.
4. Day 1 (3/16): Walk to & stay at Coupling Motel, 2.8 km. (sic)
5. Day 2 (3/17): Walk from Coupling Motel to Gongju Dam Cert Center, 21 km.
6. Day 2 (3/17): Walk to & stay at Geumgang Hot Springs Motel, 1.6 km.
7. Day 3 (3/18): Walk to Baekche Dam Certification Center, 25 km.
8. Day 3 (3/18): Walk to Buyeo Traditional Hanok Pension, 2.5 km.
9. Day 4 (3/19): Walk to Iksan Seongdanpogu Certification Center, 34 km.
10. Day 4 (3/19): Camp at the campground, open or not.
11. Day 5 (3/20): Walk to Geumgang Estuary Barrage Certification Center, 24 km.
12. Day 5 (3/20): END. Take train from Gunsan Station to Seoul.

There are still some details to iron out. This doesn't look to be a convenient trail for walkers: there are huge segments at the beginning and near the end, and I won't be doing any rest days. I'll be trusting that my feet can't be that torn up after only five days' walking.

I did end up designing a modest tee shirt. Click the tee image on my sidebar to go see it and maybe buy one. I've bought one of each design for myself: a front-and-back design and a front-only design (to wear while walking).

Adam does food

Gordon Ramsay vs. the world

I wasn't there for the moment when Gordon Ramsay utterly screwed the pooch by totally fucking up a simple grilled-cheese sandwich (I have, however, since seen the highlights). But this series of match-ups, pitting Gordon against a variety of experts, is pretty interesting.

another "uncleanable" one

the crunch is coming

With a possible walk on the schedule for March, and with the end of February on the horizon, it'll soon be time for me to start generating more Substack content. This time around, I need to make enough material to get me through April. I'll stop working on my movie-review book on February 20 and start working on Substack material. I think I have a system now: churn out the easy content first (Bad Online English, creative writing, crosswords and word finds), then do the longer content in smaller chunks. Once I get all of that done, I can go back to my book projects and drag out my video equipment to start making videos through most of April. Come the end of April, though, and the crunch will start all over again. This is samsara, the painful wheel of existence. I enjoy what I do, but it's a slog.

upping the reps (and other news)

I've been doing an abbreviated form of my workout since getting back from the walk last November. Despite my resistance-band workouts en route, I got weaker during the three weeks that I was out walking, and when I got back, I took a couple weeks off from doing anything, which was undoubtedly the wrong move, but it's the sort of move to expect from a naturally lazy person. So to simplify my life, I've been doing the exact same exercises I had printed out for myself before last year's walk, but I've been doing only a single set of each exercise. If the exercise involves reps, then I've been doing only ten reps. Today, though, I decided to bump all of my "repped" exercises up to fifteen reps (except for my 10-kilogram lateral raises, which went up from five to eight, roughly in line with a 50% increase in reps).

Since I'm so busy with other stuff, this one-set workout lets me get through a gauntlet of exercises in about 20-25 minutes. I realize it's at the expense of more rapid gains, but it's nice to know that I can keep stacking the reps on periodically, and these modest sets can eventually become supersets while still taking no longer than 30-35 minutes to do.

In other news: today and again this weekend, I'm baking (not eating) cookies to distribute for Lunar New Year, which is on the 17th this year, meaning the holiday runs from Monday to Wednesday. I might do a rare thing and pay my #3 Ajumma a visit tomorrow, a small batch of almond-flour cookies in hand. Ajumma's in her 80s now. She occasionally texts to ask when I'm going to come over, but those texts have been getting rarer lately.

As for this year's long walk... yeah, I might do the Geumgang route, which at a mere 146 km is short. Depending on how I divvy up the route segments, it should take about a week. And being a week-long walk, I don't think I'll need any rest days. Which leaves me to wonder: if the walk is under 150 km, is it even worth my while to make a tee shirt? Hm. Much to ponder, and only a month to do so. If I were to shift this walk to the fall, though, I'd have more time to plan. The only problem is that, if I go back to university work, I'm not going to have time for a fall walk. But we'll see. Always in motion is the future.

they spent how much?

"you can have anything you wan' / at Andy's ol' restaurant"

shirtses!

The walk tees that I'd ordered from Spring weeks ago (January 24) have finally arrived. See below. The tee on the left has no image on the back; this is the shirt I would have worn on my walk last year had there not been a massive, months-long fuckup that prevented me from getting my order, which I had made at least a month in advance of the walk. (No rear image = safe for backpacks.) The shirt on the right has, as you see, an image on the back; this shirt is meant for everyday activity, not for long hikes with a backpack.

This year, I'm trying to decide whether to walk in the spring or in the fall. Assuming I have to get back to the life of a prole come fall, it's probably better for me to walk in the spring—maybe from about mid-March. That's next month. I haven't done a springtime walk across South Korea since my first long walk in 2017. Depending on the state of my funds, there's a chance I might also just do the Geumgang trail this year. That trail, not even 150 km long, is even shorter than the Nakdong River trail (officially 385 km); walking the Geumgang might take about a week at a leisurely pace. Stay tuned as I cogitate more.

"prison hooch"

What's the point of having wine tasters?

AI cats... mit Händen

I wish I were this creative

“Why are you taking so long in the shower”

Me:
pic.twitter.com/NJQ3aY5nr9

— Science girl (@sciencegirl) February 11, 2026

someone who speaks my language

We interrupt this regularly scheduled YouTube video-embedding to bring you... more video-embedding! But what's interesting about this guy's commentary is how similar it is to my own, to the point where I have to say in my own defense that I did not see this video before watching "Nosferatu" and writing my own review. I watched this gent's video below only a few minutes ago. Incredible. Almost point for point in some areas, but with a richer evocation of religious imagery. I feel weirdly vindicated.

So I looked up the guy's Substack (he has links to his other online presences on his YouTube page), and sure enough—he seems to have a background in theology. So I'd say that 90% of what he says in the video is content I've heard (or said myself) before. Wow. A religion bro. Most people's eyes just glaze over when I start talking about what interests me.

Of course, I've been out of the religious-studies game for decades (and religious studies is not the same as theology), so I doubt a conversation with this guy would be fruitful. If anything, my brain would end up overtaxed. I've been away from the wellspring for too long.

but can you make them into skull-shaped danju?

let's play musical cats

art and games

"Nosferatu": review

L to R: the shadow of Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) and Ellen "(Lily-Rose Depp)

"Nosferatu" is a 2024 Robert Eggers film that is a remake of the 1922 silent movie "Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror." The film stars Lily-Rose Depp (Johnny Depp's daughter), Nicholas Hoult, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney, and Bill Skarsgård as Count Orlok the Nosferatu. As you see by my use of the article "the," this movie treats Nosferatu as a title (like the Christ or the Buddha instead of just Christ and Buddha, which are not surnames). The 1922 silent movie is itself based on Bram Stoker's Dracula, a story published in 1897. A bit like the Batman movies and their many remakes, "Nosferatu" is another take on what is by now a very old story.

We begin in the city of Wisburg, Germany. Young Ellen (Depp), feeling lonely, calls out into the night for companionship. Her innocent, open heart invites the evil presence of the Nosferatu, known to most mortals as Count Orlok (Skarsgård). Orlok's visitations at first give Ellen a sense of pleasure and even ecstasy, but these feelings gradually give way to pain, distress, and terror as Orlok—spiritually—has his savage way with the girl. Later in life and still a young woman, Ellen marries the handsome Thomas "Tom" Hutter (Hoult), who has just gotten a job at a real-estate firm where he is to work under Mr. Knock (McBurney), and the very first assignment is for Tom to travel to the far-off country of Transylvania to allow Count Orlok to sign a deed for a property in Germany where Orlok claims he plans to retire. Ellen, who had suffered horrible night terrors before marrying Tom, feels a sense of foreboding as Tom prepares to go to Transylvania. Tom is chipper and reassuring, promising a safe return and having no idea what's in store for him. He puts Ellen with his friend Friedrich Harding (Taylor-Johnson), his wife Anna (Corrin), and their two daughters. Tom travels to the Carpathians, arriving at the forbidding fortress-castle of Count Orlok. Everything from here on in becomes creepy and surreal as Tom meets the huge, imposing, gravel-voiced Orlok. As the atmosphere of dread rises to a fever pitch, Tom wakes up to find his chest covered in bite marks, and he discovers his host, who only ever appears at night, is not of this world. Back in Germany, Ellen begins suffering even worse night terrors than before her marriage, and just as a plague is hitting the city, the local doctor calls in the help of a former mentor, Herr Doktor Albin Eberhart von Franz (Dafoe), who had departed from science to study the occult.

The rest of the story is about Tom's escape from Orlok's castle, Orlok's arrival in Wisburg by boat; what Orlok does (or threatens to do) to Tom, Ellen, and Friedrich's family; and von Franz's discovery of the way to combat Orlok's evil. One theme of the movie is about how science fails in the face of pure evil, a theme also touched on in both the novel The Exorcist and the movie "The Exorcist." Being unfamiliar with the 1922 movie, I was unprepared for the final solution to the Orlok problem, and my understanding is that Eggers's 2024 film hews fairly closely to the plot of the 1922 movie, albeit with a bit more sex and gore along the way. I won't spoil this movie's conclusion, but I can tell you that it does not involve a beheading or a stake through the heart.

I've seen two of Robert Eggers's previous movies: "The Lighthouse" and "The Northman." Eggers is an impressive director in terms of how he manages his actors and how he manages lighting and cinematography. There are certain directors, like Denis Villeneuve, whose very names can inspire trust and confidence. Even when they produce flawed movies, those movies remain eminently watchable. Eggers, like Villeneuve, has earned my trust, so I knew going in that this was going to be a good experience, and it was. "Nosferatu" is a visual treat, with many of the special effects being reminiscent of what Francis Ford Coppola had done in his 1992 "Bram Stoker's Dracula." Parts of Eggers's film are so lacking in color saturation that certain sequences—especially the evening and nighttime scenes—feel almost black and white. Even the daytime scenes, despite their color, feel as if some evil force is leaching away the world's chromatic beauty. The period dialogue is also of note: the characters are supposed to be German (except for Orlok, who is presumably Romanian/Transylvanian and the speaker of an ancient language that often reminded me of the Black Speech of Mordor), but the dialogue is in stylized, slightly archaic English. I can't say how well Bill Skarsgård did at speaking in Romanian or ancient-ese, but when Count Orlok spoke in English, it was with a heavy and sinister Eastern European accent. I'll also comment that the film could have been much more exploitative of women than it was: while there are instances of female nudity in the film, there are also plenty of nightgown scenes in which backlighting would have revealed the silhouette of a naked female form, but this was tastefully avoided. When there is nudity, it's always in the service of vulnerability, a way of portraying purity in the face of a predator.

Lily-Rose Depp is excellent as the beleaguered Ellen, hypnotized and even possessed by Orlok from afar (she looks a lot like her mom, Vanessa Paradis). Her role demands that she cry frequently and that she moan sensually; her possession/night-terror scenes are also unsettling—and all without special effects. Nicholas Hoult finds himself once again in a role where he plays a quivering mouse of a man, but his portrayal of sheer terror in the presence of Orlok is a performance for the ages. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin are solid as the skeptical couple who don't understand what's happening to poor Ellen (nicknamed "Leni," by the way). Simon McBurney, as Knock, is excellent as this movie's version of Renfield: as Tom's boss, he's the one who sends fresh meat to the Nosferatu. Ralph Ineson is authoritative as the doctor who calls on his old mentor to solve the unsolvable problem of Ellen's condition, and Willem Dafoe, when he finally appears, is magnificent as Doktor von Franz, this story's Van Helsing. And standing above them all is Bill Skarsgård as Orlok the Nosferatu, completely unrecognizable in his heavy, leprous makeup, but utterly owning the character of Orlok through his unearthly voice and accent. I thought this role was a much better fit for Skarsgård than the ridiculous Pennywise from "It" (see here and here). Skarsgård may have flubbed his French-speaking role in "John Wick: Chapter 4," but he's a convincingly menacing Transylvanian in this movie.

After "Heretic" and "Abigail," this is my third horror movie in a row to feature people who get lured into a domicile whose owner is evil. And as in "Heretic," Nicholas Hoult's character is drawn further into the domicile by his own politeness and inability to say no. By the time he co-signs what he thinks is the contract for Orlok's new property in Germany, Tom barely has a will of his own. In truth, the contract he's just signed—written in Orlok's original, ancient tongue—nullifies his marriage to Ellen and gives her over to Orlok, who must nevertheless not take possession of her until she accepts the situation of her own free will.

If I had a problem with the movie, it's the same one I have with so many depictions of vampires: vampires always seem capable of sudden and confusing teleportation, but only in limited spaces, like a mansion or a room. Why does Orlok need a boat to reach Germany? Why not just teleport to Ellen instead of doing the vampiric version of the Jedi Force-projection we saw in "The Last Jedi"? Aside from that, I was willing to suspend my disbelief about Orlok's other capabilities. To his credit, Orlok at least never morphed into a bat or a werewolf.

In all, "Nosferatu" wasn't a scary film, but it did build suspense well and had some rather vivid visuals. The acting was superb all around, and the Nosferatu was portrayed as a feral, hungry, implacable evil wearing only the trappings of civilization—just enough to lure people into his lair. Because of the way the story ends, I suppose this could be considered a "sad" story, but not because we discover some poignant fact about the vampire's origins or motivations. If the movie teaches any lessons, it's that science can't explain everything, that real evil does exist, and that in times of crisis, innocent people die.

preggers

Vader versus Yoda

AI slop is the way of the future. But it occurs to me that checking on its progress is probably not a bad thing. We will soon have entirely AI-made movies. They'll still require a human hand, but they'll be 90% AI-powered. AI is still not very good with creating action where things actually happen from scene to scene, but it's getting better.

past writing (cringe)

Reading blog posts from more than two decades ago (my first movie-review book compiles reviews from 2004 to 2015; I'm currently at around 2006) is an exercise in cringeworthiness (or as the kids say these days: an exercise in cringe). Not that my prose has gotten much better over the years, but damn—I was a callow, superficial writer. 

And back then, in the early 2000s, I was right around the age Stephen R. Donaldson was in the 1970s when he wrote his first Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. True: if you go back and read Donaldson from that era (his early thirties), he too betrays all the signs of being a young writer, but his writing was still leaps and bounds above my own in quality and depth. I'm older now, though, and I can see Donaldson's flaws a lot more clearly (including embarrassing gaffes on the merely technical level—e.g., the man has no idea how to use semicolons). More trivia: Stephen King was around the same age when he wrote The Stand. What was I doing with my life?

Unfortunately, the clarity and wisdom of age bring with them the pain and shame of critically evaluating my own long-ago prose. And it's awful. I admit I'm making a few changes, here and there, to my old reviews for this new collection, but I'm also leaving the overall style and tone of my early crap as it is, so most of the problems with my early writing will be out there for everyone to see. I have a sinking feeling that, for people who buy this first book in the series, the first half of the book is going to be a slog through some very immature, undeveloped prose. A lot of the mistakes that I, as a latter-day proofreader, have accused others of making are found smack-dab in my own prose from that era. So I add my commas and change my wording here and there; I use italics instead of quotation marks; I make other stylistic tweaks as needed. But the era of writing that I'm currently working on, covering the early 2000s, is pretty rough, and even with retroactive cosmetic surgery, the prose still looks laughably coarse. When I write this book's foreword, I'll be sure to beg the reader's forgiveness for the slog they've signed up for. And I promise the next two or three books will be better.

Of course, with this being a compilation of reviews, there's no reason why a person should read the whole thing linearly from end to end. But even for people who tackle the book's chapters in random order, it's still going to be a jarring, bumpy ride. The next two books, though, will be a lot better. In fact, by the end of this first collection (2015), it's fair to say that my prose has smoothed out a lot because I've found my rhythm as a reviewer.

My reviews have also grown longer over time, but you can always tell how much or how little a film interested or provoked me by how relatively long or short my review is. If a movie or book gets a one- or two-paragraph review, it probably wasn't worth my time and attention, which means I don't think it'll be worth yours. If I write an encyclopedia, go see it or read it.

More on all of this as I go. What's in the compilation so far:

1. Kill Bill: Volume 2
2. Wrestling with S. Mark Heim (book review)
3. Million Dollar Baby
4. Revenge of the Sith
5. Batman Begins
6. Sin City
7. War of the Worlds (2005, Spielberg/Cruise)
8. Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince (book review)
9. Bubba Ho-Tep
10. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
11. The View from Mars Hill (book review)
12. Jesus Camp

Only 108 more reviews to go for this book, taking me through 2015. The plan is to make this an ebook first, then to create a print-on-demand paperback that will include little illustrations (done by me, not AI) for every chapter. The paperback will be much more expensive, so the illustrations will be there to make the book more worth your while.

stromboli

Only for cheat days.

haven't seen these in a while

Memes! But not political.

how they fought

no more hostages for you

Give the gift of lead.

"Frankenstein" by Honest Trailers

I reviewed the movie here.

visiting the "Chef" truck

I reviewed the movie "Chef" years ago here.

Ave, Charles!

Charles gets it done. And he ends his piece (final sentence) with a funny mixed metaphor. I also understand a bit how he feels, for I too have used plate-spinning imagery.

Let me elaborate on that: Striving for perfection itself is not a weakness, but being unable to perform mental triage—that is, deciding when and where you should spend your limited time and energy—is a weakness, I think. At least, it sure does make life a lot harder. I sometimes find myself wishing I could care just a little less about some things. I’ve got plenty of other projects that I had to put on the back burner, and I probably could have kept those going on the side if I had been capable of not devoting myself entirely to these classes. Now, though, I find myself in the position of having to shift gears and try to get back into a project that has had about two months to cool off.

Then again... maybe I wouldn’t have been able to keep all those plates spinning at once. I think a corollary of my inability to not give my current project everything I’ve got is the inability to shift back and forth between projects. I tend to pour all my time and energy into a project until it is done or something else more urgent comes up. I’ve tried dividing up my attention between projects, spending a couple hours on one project and then switching to another project for a couple of hours, and it hasn’t really worked out too great. I think I tried it because I had read somewhere that it was an efficient way to work or a good way to avoid getting into a rut or something like that, but I don’t think my brain works that way. It takes me a while to get warmed up and really get into an efficient flow, so if I am constantly switching projects, I feel a lot less efficient than I might otherwise be. I suppose that’s a long-winded way of saying that I’m kind of crap at multi-tasking.

Yup, I definitely know the feeling.

who killed "The Acolyte"?

what's happening outside of my hole?

I heard there was a Super Bowl. And the Seahawks beat the Patriots. Not that I care about either woke New England or woke Seattle (which was still beautiful when I was there in 2008). Not that I follow football (haven't followed in decades, not since college). Not that my home team even exists anymore: the beloved Redskins became the Commanders.

Oh, and I heard there's this other thing that's been going on since February 6: the Olympics. In Milan. Or "Milano Cortina," as they're calling it (apparently short for "Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo"). Considering how politicized the Olympics have always been, and considering the US team has a lot of young members who are not proud to represent the States, what's my motivation to watch that?

So, it seems to me that nothing, really, is happening outside my hole.

better

It needs a more-than-superficial flip-through, but when I looked through my second Amazon hard copy of the 2026 edition of Think Like a Teacher, I saw that it at least superficially looked better. I'll give the book a closer scan soon, and if I see any further problems, I'll correct them and talk about them here.

Here's the most bothersome problem, which I somehow hadn't caught before initially uploading. Below, you see page 9 of the Korean-language half of the book. Note how it seems as if the chapter ends with that final paragraph. Then go down to the photo of page 10.

Did the chapter end? Click image to make clearer.

Oho! See how page 10 is the actual ending for the chapter.

Hmmm. There's more to the chapter here. Click image to make clearer.

Below, you see the second try after editing. Note how page 9's text now goes down to the bottom, so you know right away that this isn't the end of the chapter.

Click image to make clearer.

And when you flip to page 10 of the newly edited manuscript:

Click image to make clearer.

When it comes to text formatting, every change you make has implications for other pages. Most often, these implications ripple forward, but they do ripple backward, too, which is what I think happened in this case: I'd been making adjustments to the text toward the end of the document, but one or more of those adjustments caused a backwards-rippling effect that made page 9 look like a chapter-ending text. I fixed the problem, then checked forwards and backwards to make sure all was kosher before re-uploading the manuscript PDF.

With the movie-review book I'm working on now, there's nothing but English, so format-checking ought to be easier. We'll see. Thinking ought to be easier can be a trap leading to the appearance of yet more stupid mistakes. More on that as it happens.

Paul Chato scoffs at a list of "best comedies of all time"

manger comme un paysan médiéval

this always makes me laugh

Just enjoy. The body armor means nothing. The guy is dead.

the magic is gone

Speaking only for myself: I'm all Marveled out.

"Abigail": one-paragraph review

Alisha Weir as the eponymous Abigail

Barely a day after watching "Heretic," I watched another 2024 "horror" movie called "Abigail," which I later found out had been billed as a horror-comedy. I had gone in thinking it was purely a horror movie. The effort stars Alisha Weir, Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, Will Catlett, Kevin Durand, Angus Cloud, and Giancarlo Esposito. The story begins with what appears to be ballet practice for a twelve-year-old girl named Abigail (Weir), who has no idea she's the object of a heist involving a team of anonymous-to-each-other experts who will kidnap Abigail and extort her father for millions. The team is led by "Frank" (Stevens) and includes "Joey" (Barrera), a former Army medic; "Sammy" (Newton), a hacker and security expert; "Peter" (Durand), a dimwit who is the group's muscle; "Rickles" (Catlett), the ex-Marine sniper; and "Dean" (Cloud), the stoner getaway driver and loose cannon. Coordinating the group from afar is Lambert (Esposito), who meets the team at a creepy mansion after they've abducted Abigail. Lambert tells the group that the easy part is done, and that they must merely wait out the next 24 hours with Abigail secured to a bed. Lambert leaves; Joey is given the assignment of checking in on Abigail periodically; she and Abigail seem to form a bond. As it turns out, though, Abigail is a centuries-old vampire who has orchestrated the gathering of this group of people, most of whom are or were enemies of her father. When people start dying, the deaths are initially blamed on Abigail's father's legendary but never-seen right-hand man Valdez. As it turns out, the killings of past enemies were all orchestrated and carried out by Abigail herself. As with the just-reviewed "Heretic," "Abigail" comes down to a final girl, following the horror trope to a T. There are plenty of exploding bodies and tons of flying, ropey, gloppy blood and viscera. Throats are savagely bitten; faces are ripped halfway off; heads are completely ripped off (it was easy to predict who would be the first to die); a couple people get turned into vampires themselves, and Lambert—himself a vampire—is revealed to be something like a familiar or servant. Abigail's father, whose cold approval Abigail has been seeking this entire time, reveals himself only at the very end of the movie. While watching, I dimly began to realize this was a horror-comedy once I saw the first few scenes of exaggerated, Raimi/De Palma-level blood and gore. Another clue was Abigail's fighting style, which is something of a comic travesty of ballet. Young actress Alisha Weir, who does a fine job and looks winsome in human form, appears positively creepy as the vampiric Abigail, reminding me faintly of Linda Blair in "The Exorcist" (how have I not reviewed either Blatty's novel or Friedkin's movie?). As in "Heretic," the house in "Abigail" locks the principals in and is a character in its own right, but the place is not nearly as creepy as Mr. Reed's house in "Heretic," except maybe for Abigail's swimming pool of bloated, rotting corpses. Overall, though, I didn't find this movie either that horrific or that funny. Many of the plot twists and scares were entirely predictable; there were no jump scares to speak of, and none of the psychological tension of "Heretic." While the majority of critics apparently loved "Abigail," I'm not one of them. "Heretic" had its flaws, but compared to that movie, "Abigail" feels as if it's barely trying. Had the movie been directed by Sam Raimi and included Bruce Campbell, had it tried harder with the humor and been more tonally consistent, it might have been a much better story. You might watch "Abigail" and feel differently, but personally, I'd recommend that you skip this. Life is short. Oh, a bit of trivia: the actor who played stoner getaway-driver Dean, Angus Cloud, was in fact a real-life stoner and probably not acting: Cloud died at age 25 after an accidental overdose following the taking of a cocktail of drugs, including "fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine, and benzodiazepines." Way to go, guy.

looks fantastic, but...

This seems like a lot of work for relatively little payoff.

on mac & cheese

But is it really the best?

"Heretic": review

L to R: Sophie Thatcher as Sister Barnes, Hugh Grant as Mr. Reed, and Chloe East as Sister Paxton

[WARNING: vague spoilers.]

"Heretic" is a 2024 horror film by quirkily independent company A24. It's directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, and it stars that most unlikely of horror villains, Hugh Grant, perhaps best known for his stammering, 90s-era romantic comedies as well as for his 1995 in-car indiscretions with ugly prostitute Divine Brown while he was dating the gorgeous Elizabeth Hurley. (Was Hurley that much of a bitch?) Grant's co-stars, Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East, play two hapless Mormon girls. 

The movie is about many things, especially the one dead horse that Hollywood loves to beat: religion itself. Imagine a nearly two-hour version of a debate you may have had with a door-to-door Christian. This happened to me once, long ago, when I was alone in the parents' house, and a Korean Jehovah's Witness came up to make his case. We stood outside on the front stoop, in the cold, since I was in no mood to let the man in, and I recall him mentioning how "God is a God of order," to which I argued for the necessity of chaos and randomness and disorder if anything new is ever to occur. The guy left soon after.

The movie's premise is a simple one: two young Mormon missionaries, 20-year-old Sister Barnes (Thatcher) and 19-year-old Sister Paxton (East), are casing their designated area to proselytize. They have heard that a Mr. Reed (Grant), who lives in a slightly secluded house, has expressed an interest in learning more about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. As the weather begins to turn ugly, the girls lock their bikes at Mr. Reed's front gate and knock on his door in the rain. Mr. Reed invites the girls in, and if you've watched horror movies before, you can guess that the front door is now locked, and the two girls are essentially flies who have landed in the spider's web.

While that's the basic premise of the plot—and it's fairly predictable on that level—the devil is, as they say, in the details. "Heretic" falls into that subgenre of horror movies in which the protagonists seal their own fate simply by being too polite (cf. "Speak No Evil"). Mr. Reed, it seems, has an agenda. He reassures the girls that his wife is baking a blueberry pie but is shy about meeting the girls. (The girls had said they couldn't come in if no woman was present.) He is also no babe in the woods when it comes to religion, and much of the movie is a long dialogue about the origins of religious figures like Jesus and the purpose of religion in general. The revelation of what the seemingly anti-religious Mr. Reed calls "the one true religion" is not much of a revelation; the Matrix movies, for all their flaws, actually did it better, and with the same revelation. At the same time that Mr. Reed is revealing how knowledgeable he is about religion, the girls are feeling a dawning sense of horror as they realize that Reed is delaying them as well as leading them more deeply into his house, where there is no wife in the kitchen, but there is a blueberry pie that plays a rather interesting role in the film's final third.

I wanted to like this movie more given that the dialogue is, mostly, right up my alley thanks to my grad work in religious studies. But especially by the end, I couldn't shake the feeling that the dialogue—all of that religion-talk—was beside the point. The real point was the exploration of one man's insanity as ultimately expressed through the typical horror-movie tropes of dark, labyrinthine basements, screaming women, a metal-meshed house designed to block cell-phone signals, dungeons, zombie-like women in cerements, stabbings, slashings, and a "final girl." There was a missed chance to go for quietly evil instead of openly predatory.

Too much of the movie passes beyond the realm of plausibility. How did Reed amass so many caged women without anyone ever noticing? Why would candles be lit everywhere inside the labyrinthine basement (and how much maintenance does that require?)? How was Reed able to create a house that so specifically fit his evil wants and needs?

Not to say the movie had no good points: Grant's and the young ladies' acting is spot-on, and there are true moments of tension as well as a couple of silly jump scares. The house, for all of its implausible features, is a character unto itself and would make for a great, spooky amusement-park attraction. The ongoing debate about religion is superficially fascinating as a review of things Joseph Campbell had written about decades ago—Isis and Horus and Mithra and Krishna. Even Buddhism gets a one-and-done mention.

But by the end, "Heretic" becomes another typical horror movie, devolving into violence and relying on a screamingly obvious "Chekhov's gun" move to bring us most of the way to the film's ambiguous conclusion—a conclusion that leaves us to wonder whether one of the main characters does, in fact, make it out alive. I suspect not: she had mentioned, earlier in the movie, how she hoped to come back as a butterfly after dying, landing on the hands of her loved ones to show them she was still around. When this character sees an actual butterfly on her hand, then a moment later sees nothing on her hand, the evidence tilts pretty clearly toward the idea that she is, in fact, dying or dead. Add to this the fact that the storm that began right as the girls were entering Mr. Reed's house had morphed from rain to snow over the course of the night, meaning butterflies would be unlikely to show up when there's snow on the ground. There are, in reality, a few butterfly species that can appear after snowstorms, but this still doesn't explain the sudden disappearance of the butterfly in question.

The butterfly, as a Christian symbol, is often used to represent resurrection (pupa/chrysalis of death followed by the butterfly of new life), which is a concept that comes up several times in the film, both in dialogue and as literal visuals (of apparently dead people apparently coming back to life). Symbols are, of course, multivalent, so the film's ending can be interpreted in different ways. I've seen online theories claiming that this character is still on the floor of Reed's basement, bleeding out from a stab to the gut, experiencing the wild visions the brain generates as it's dying (which is another topic that one character talks about—the visions of a dying brain). Others online claim the butterfly symbolizes another one of the dead characters, but this makes little sense given how the first character had described what she wanted for herself. The simulation hypothesis gets a mention around the middle of the film, and it's possible to read the entire movie as one big simulation. This is to tied a moment in the discussion/debate when Reed mentions the Chinese philosopher (Chuang-tzu) who speculated on whether he was a man dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was a man. In Reed's view, it could be that dreams and simulations are close cousins.

Some critics were turned off by the film's talkiness, but I thought that this was one of its greatest merits, almost like a Socratic dialogue come to life, even if all of the talk was merely a superficial cover for the primitively predatory subtext. And for you Freud fans who might have come away from the film thinking that no sex ever happened, consider that Reed, when he finally uses his knife, has the goal of penetrating the two girls.

In conclusion, "Heretic" is more fun to talk about than to watch, and most of the talk will naturally center on the movie's final few minutes. Whether or not such a movie is your idea of a fun time is up to you. Are you into epistemology and the study of doxastic praxis? If yes, this movie is definitely for you. For me, I found the discussions about religion to be rehashed, 101-level digs at a social phenomenon that has endured for millennia—an interesting but fundamentally unserious exchange. But your own mileage may vary. Perhaps the best aspect of the movie is how directors Beck and Woods take all the cutesy mannerisms of 90s-era Hugh Grant and turn them into something first subtly then plainly horrifying. For all of its flaws and implausibilities, "Heretic" is nothing if not mildly entertaining. Watch at your own risk.

ADDENDUM: The Cinema Therapy guys—both Mormons—give their review. The guys also have a longer video in which they sit down with the directors.

the dirty wife strikes again

I love these sketches, but I have a hard time believing the hubby is seemingly that prudish. Suspension of disbelief goes only so far. That said, if his Missus is like this in real life—i.e., a cock-hungry slut—he should consider himself lucky.

boeuf bourguignon, overthought

I'm very partial to the boeuf bourguignon recipe in my French cookbook, so this Fallow recipe for the same dish comes off as nice-looking but way overthought and pretentious. Maybe you disagree. Fight me in the comments.

the eulogy of Rian Johnson's Star Wars trilogy

"every animal's ribeye"

Many highs, many lows.

still agitated

Having put aside my app for the moment, I'm working on putting together the first of a series of book- and movie-review collections that will ultimately be available as both Kindle ebooks and Amazon print-on-demand paperbacks. Since I have a ton of book and movie reviews dating back to 2004, I don't expect to get more than one book done over the next couple of months (Volume 1: 2004-2015; Volume 2: 2016-2018; Volume 3: 2019-2025). There's a lot of editing and reformatting that need to be done, and MS Word can sometimes balk at even simple tasks. But if this takes my mind off the damn app, then it's worth it.

It occurs to me that, close to the end of February, I need to get back to generating content for Substack. Time is running out. I'm also thinking that, with my storehouse of funds finally on the cliff's edge of running low, I ought to do a big walk in the spring this year instead of waiting for the fall, when I'll have even less money. Maybe from early March to the end of March...? If I'm back to university teaching by the fall, I won't have time to do such walks anymore; going back to uni work will spell the end of an era.

Sam smash!

Huh. Korean-style smash burgers. Nice.

torture that Glock

the petty feeling of victory that comes with denial

I knew one woman, an online efriend (never met in person) from an old AOL writing forum who, over the years, began to develop a perverse pleasure in uttering denials. By the time she died (her boyfriend wrote me a long, long spiel about her life, her slow decline, and her death), she was constantly swatting away both attempts at guessing about her condition and sympathetic advice to help get her to a better place. Turns out she was over three hundred pounds when she died (hence why she never showed pictures of herself)—a stinking, bedridden sack of meat who consumed movies and TV, who shat the bed, whose boyfriend had basically become her arms and legs, i.e., her way of obtaining things since she couldn't do anything for herself. Like a lot of fat people who become less mobile and more dependent over time, she had learned the not-so-fine art of controlling others around her through her voice, and as I said above, she took petty satisfaction in uttering some form of No! or Wrong! to anyone who presumed to guess about her condition or tried to make suggestions to help her out. When you reach a point where your existence involves being confined to a bed, the only power really left to you is the petty power of denial, the only way to feel any power at all. It was a sad and lonely way to live, and eventually a sad and lonely way to die. I think a lot of older folks are in that position, grasping for ways to feel empowered and realizing the only real power left to them is the feeble power of the veto.

yo, Silly Eyelash!

What a stupid-looking, stupid-sounding twat. Thanks, AI.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/YwYl6OFwha

— Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) February 6, 2026

a-rattin' we will go

there once was a bloke with a gun
who knew there would be lotsa' fun
if with pellets he splattered
the murine brain matter
jus' takin' 'em down one by one

Andong on Chinese lamb-flatbread soup

the Drinker on "Wicked for Good"

flange

makeshift weight bench

The good news about my frozen—now thawing—shoulder continues. I figured out a way to jury-rig a weight bench. I can't make it adjustable, but my setup works to allow my elbows to go below the level of my supine back, which is something I've been wanting to test since the beginning of this year. Up to now, precisely because of the pain of the frozen shoulder, I've been using my 10-kilo weights to do light bench presses on the flat of my bed. Of course, this has meant that my elbows couldn't go below the level of the bed, which in turn means that, until very recently, I haven't been doing the full range of motion for a real bench press. Something is better than nothing, I reasoned. Now, however, I've figured out that, if I hang my head over a corner of the bed and lie diagonally across the bed, I can do real bench presses with the full range of motion because my elbows can now go below the level of my back. But hanging my head over the bed's corner puts a strain on my neck, so the final piece of the puzzle is to move a padded chair over to the corner—something on which to rest my head. Ah, much better. I now have something like a weight bench. 10-kilo weights seem to be about my max for the moment, and I know I can't use my 20-kilo weight for bench presses (or curls, or lateral raises, etc.) because I'm still too much of a wimp, so I'll probably just increase my reps. For now, the 20-kilo weight is for farmer's carries, which strengthen the core.

the Korean lunar-new-year bow

He was a King for 3 seconds 😂 pic.twitter.com/VAbuFv9NM2

— Clip Station (@Clip_Station_) February 5, 2026

can we solve the fresh-water crisis?

I'd use my Grayl, but you can't scale that up efficiently.

RIP

Pastor Bob Criswell

Now and then, I get curious about random and not-so-random people from my past, and I wonder what might be going on with them these days. When it's older people who were old back when I knew them, I wonder whether they've died with the unceasing passage of time. Today, my thoughts turned to one of the longest-lasting pastors of my old church, Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church: Robert Criswell who, as it turns out, died in 2022 at the age of 82. By the time my mother had died, Pastor Criswell had retired in New York State. In PCUSA, pastors rotate in and out, never finding a permanent home, but Bob was with our church for more than a decade. I wasn't very politically aware when I knew him; these days, I think he'd fit neatly into the "left-liberal" box. That's fine for me on a theological level since I'm an off-the-scale religious liberal (pluralist, nonliteralist, etc.) but not a political liberal. Now, when I think back to a lot of the tensions and conflicts that would simmer and flare in our congregation, I see them as happening along political lines. 

Pastor Criswell didn't let his physical limitations get in the way of his preaching. It may not be obvious in the above photo, but he had a strangely shaped lower jaw that occasionally made it hard for him to contain the occasional blob of drool that would glop out of his mouth while he was talking. This wasn't a frequent thing, and from the front, I'm pretty sure none of it was visible from the pulpit while he spoke. I also recall one gathering of the Session (council of active elders) in which he suddenly ripped out a long, luxurious fart that went on for five seconds. Everyone was too polite to say a thing. I, at first, couldn't believe what I was hearing and, for a brief instant, wondered whether it had been a fart at all. During one communion, the pastor's robe's sleeve caught on the chalice, and the thing tipped over, spilling grape juice (no wine—we're timid Protestants) everywhere. Pastor Criswell calmly refilled the chalice from the nearby pitcher. I don't mention these things to besmirch the pastor's memory; my point is that the guy was as human as everyone else. 

In the Presbyterian church, there are two types of elders: ruling elders (me and other elders) and teaching elders (ministers, pastors, reverends). The will of the congregation is expressed through a polity of elders who all manage—in our church, anyway—councils of laypeople and inactive elders: worship council, outreach council, property council, etc. It's not exactly a representative system, though: elders hear the will of the laity but are allowed to vote their conscience. This is very different from a congregationalist polity in which the direct-democratic will of the congregation is law. I remember, back when I was a Baptist, how the congregation decided by acclamation who its next pastor was going to be.

All that said, I got along well enough with Pastor Criswell; when I was an active elder during his ministry, I would often serve as a liturgist, standing alongside him to help serve communion. I haven't been an active elder in years, and these days, I wonder whether I'm even an elder anymore. The vow you take in the ordination ceremony means that, technically, you're an elder for life, but I think my own vow was hollow from the beginning: I became an elder when I was still in high school, and I recall vainly bragging to various friends and teachers about being ordained, thus entirely missing the point of my ordination. Idiocy has been a signal trait of my life, and I started being an idiot back when I was a kid. When my Korean Christian relatives later found out I'd been ordained an elder, they reacted with confusion because of the biblical injunction that elders be actual older folks (1 Tim. 5:1, but seen in conjunction with other mentions of presbuteros/πρεσβύτερος, i.e., elders, in that book; see 1 Tim 5:17-19)—something Korean Presbyterians are more literal about.

Well, I haven't been churchy for years, but finding out, earlier today, that Pastor Criswell had died in 2022 left me feeling a bit sad. On a happier note, the man had lived an earnest and full life; being the pastor of our politically mixed and often-contentious church meant being on call 24/7. I wouldn't want that job and would probably end up throttling any lay member who got on my nerves. Pastor Criswell was a far better man than I'll ever be.

deadly Cali food

Well, deadly for the likes of me, anyway.

berry good vegan dessert

the Frankensteining continues

I admit I felt a bit creeped out.

on greenlighting "The X-Files"

I'm giving up for a while

God, this is frustrating. I've basically made no advances today with the coding of this massive quiz. There are several ways to move forward, but for the moment, and for my sanity's sake, I'm going to put this thing aside to work on some other projects. For the past few hours, I've been trying to make a particular quiz question—one with check-box answers—both appear on the quiz and actually function. I'm not even at the appear stage yet, and I don't know what the problem is. I even tried copying and pasting the check-box code used in my religion quiz, but that code is actually written in a slightly different style: When I pasted it into the current code for this big quiz, the entire big quiz simply stopped appearing. So—back to square one.

After undoing my changes and restoring the partially working code, I rooted around other parts of the code to change up the wording and text formatting of some of the quiz questions. For example, several questions needed a prompt telling the quiz-taker to enter a number (on an alphanumeric keyboard, people might type a "nine" instead of the required "9"). Such prompts are needed because some people, faced with computers, just freeze up and go stupid. In other cases, the text formatting was lost when the AI rendered the questions, so I had to go in and manually re-add things like bold and italic and bold-italic. Example: 

Look at this sentence:
Cheryl plucked the feathers out of her frizzy hair.
How many nouns do you see?

a. 4

b. 2

c. 3

d. 1

I changed that to:

Look at this sentence:

Cheryl plucked the feathers out of her frizzy hair.

How many nouns do you see?

a. 4

b. 2

c. 3

d. 1

One thing I can do to make progress is to copy-paste code from earlier sections of the quiz into later sections as a template, then manually type in the requisite questions and answers, overwriting the earlier code. It's a slow process—one I had engaged in earlier this afternoon—but I gave up on that route when I hit the aforementioned snag of the check-box question that wouldn't become visible. What I might do is skip that nettlesome question and manually recode the questions that can be recoded, then figure things out from there.

Another thing I can do is vibe code small sections of the quiz since I've successfully done that sort of vibe coding eight times before. It's not that I'm new at vibe coding; it's that this current project is much, much bigger and has a larger variety of question formats. Anyway, if I adopt this strategy, I'll code single sections of the quiz, then tell the AI what the quiz's larger architecture should look like, up to and including the various fades and buttons and section-to-section transitions and features.

I also watched a video today about how, if you're vibe coding an app, you need to be mindful of security issues as well. I think the only potential security hole for me would be in how to get customers to pay their $0.99 safely. But that problem still lies a long way off; it's not an immediate worry. I need a complete quiz first, and I'm barely halfway there.

So for the moment, I'm taking a break and just breathing. Fuck, this is frustrating. Eventually, I'll get back to this project—maybe days from now, maybe weeks from now—but right now, I need to step away before I punch a hole in my goddamn monitor.

Meanwhile, go try what there is of the quiz for yourself. And yeah, I already know what bugs you'll encounter, so you don't need to tell me, but if you want, leave a comment on that post, anyway. If it makes you feel better.

VFX guys versus AI shopping scams

back from the tea thing

You may remember that, in April of 2024, I went to a Buddhist-themed tea festival/exhibition at the SETEC building down the street from where I live. That day, I had severe shortness of breath and angina, and no idea what was coming down the line. My ex-boss wondered whether I'd like to meet him for this year's exhibition, and against my better judgment, I said yes. The ex-boss's wife was there today, and my Korean ex-coworker showed up, having come all the way from Gimpo.

I could take only about an hour of walking aimlessly up and down the various aisles flanked by booths before I finally called it quits. The ex-boss, though, loves this kind of thing, which is why I got invited (if the ex-boss loves it, then of course everyone must love it). I imagine he's still there, chatting up the tea sellers, many of whom are monks. I saw one particularly fat monk lumbering around the aisles and had to wonder how one gets fat in Korean Buddhism, which can be fairly austere. In the refectory at Haein-sa, there used to be a laminated, blown-up photocopy of a news article featuring Haein-sa's abbot, and in the article's headline, he was saying, "We did not come into this world to eat"—a harsh reminder to any potential gluttons (like me) in the refectory. Anyway, I often broke away from the ex-boss and his wife to go wandering on my own while the ex-boss sat and drank tea and chatted endlessly. I gave him and my ex-coworker copies of my new book, then a few minutes later, I headed for the exit.

Plenty of coding (ahem, "coding") to do today. I'm going to try to do a lot of it on my own. I don't expect to be done by this evening. I'll still have to rely on Grok for a few things, but we'll see how much I can do myself. Fingers and tentacles crossed.