The internet abolished closing hours. The new wave is abolishing the pause. Both moves are economic in origin and psychological in effect. Both promise convenience and deliver a different kind of cost. The first cost was paid in time. The second is being paid in attention. How that arithmetic finishes is the open question.
I sold my first paid byline to a Lincoln, Nebraska, newspaper at the age of ten. That was 1975. In the fifty-one years since, I have continued to be paid to construct figures that audiences will find frightening, or sympathetic, or contemptible, or laughable, on schedule, in plays and musicals and screenplays and novels and podcast scripts and editorial work. My Dramatists Guild membership dates from 1984. My MFA is from the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Graduate Theatre Studies at Columbia University. A publishing house I founded in the same year I sold the first byline has operated without interruption since. The inventory exists for a single reason: the labor of figure-construction is something I know from inside the work, and the working-dramatist’s perspective on that labor is the perspective from which my new book is written.
Delusions aren’t just quirky thoughts; they’re deeply held beliefs that defy logic and evidence. They’re like stubborn weeds in the garden of the mind, refusing to budge even when confronted with the most compelling counterarguments. But why do they take root in the first place? Often, it’s because they serve a purpose, acting as a psychological shield against the harsh realities of life. Think of them as a mental coping mechanism, a way to cushion the blow of painful truths or overwhelming anxieties. The DSM-5, the psychiatrist’s bible, defines them as fixed beliefs resistant to change, often arising from complex emotional and cognitive landscapes. They’re not mere whims, but rather a reflection of a deep-seated psychological need.
Continue reading → Psychology of Delusions: Why We Cling to False Beliefs
I enjoy playing online games, even though finding just the right game that suits my style can be a challenge. I have loved SuperPoke Pets in the past, and now, this week, I have a whole new endearment to endorse — SimCity — even though I have yet to play the game!
Continue reading → My SimCity Review: Even Though I Have Yet to Play the Game
My childhood years took place, if you consider that to mean toddler to teenager, mostly in the nineteen eighties. This was a big time for logo shirts — I so badly wanted to have a polo style shirt with either the classic tiny little Polo Pony from Ralph Lauren or the Lacoste alligator or even the tiger from the Le Tigre line. What I loved about the shirt was that the bulk of the shirt was focused on the design of the shirt and it took being up close to the shirt to actually recognize the logo.
Continue reading → Feeling the Mallet of Ralph Lauren's Big Pony Line
Society is materialistic. The university used to be a safe haven where ideas mattered and thoughts were given greater standing than finding ways to make more money. Peter Thiel believes higher education is a bubble ready for the bursting — but you can only agree with Thiel’s thesis if you also believe students attend university to get a job. I don’t happen to purchase his premise. I believe students should attend university in order to learn what they do not know.
Continue reading → Did the Business School Ruin the University?
When a team of “experts” manage to get something wrong — especially when that team decides that they have decisively come to the only correct conclusion possible — it confounds us and makes us wonder how we can ever trust people that call themselves experts.
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