Super Conference Pending
In case I didn’t make the case in my last update, you should attend the Love Systems Super Conference this weekend in Las Vegas. All our instructors will be out there with a few additions, e.g. Brad P, and it’s going to be heaps upon layers crammed into tunnels made entirely of fun. And vagina.
Lose time:
- Tons of sampling from Half-Life 1 and Half-Life 2, clever implementation of a video game styled HUD, and the only good use of first person perspective I’ve seen so far in live action. One question remains unanswered, though: what’s in the box?
- I’m reading Niall Ferguson’s Ascent of Money. It’s a dramatic departure from the fantasy series I’ve been reading since July, George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire. Dr. Ferguson is smart and a very good writer, but reading Ascent of Money makes me feel like I tested well and should be in the slow class. That said, the farther in the book I read, the more prescient Dr. Ferguson appears. Perhaps he can get a fourth PhD in Cassandraism. After that will be, in this order, A Whole New Mind, Why Women Should Rule the World, Little White Lies, Deep Dark Secrets: The Truth About Why Women Lie, The Artist’s Way, and then back to fiction with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and House of Leaves. I’m sad because except for the first one, NONE of those books are available for my Kindle.
- Get a Kindle. Girls (and guys and homeless people) will start conversations with you to talk about it. As with any situational opener, it then falls on you the Romantic Philosopher (RS)* to continue the conversation. I could go on and on about this amazing device. If you’re scrunching your face and muttering something about how much you miss the feel of books, I would point to the weight of the device and its note-taking abilities and its nearly infinite battery life. And then I would kick you in the shins and call you a Luddite.
- This is a video of a goat that screams like a person. (Thanks, Shanna)
- I read Gretchen Rubin’s blog every day, and I am never more than a few inches from her 12 commandments of happiness. They are the first thing I scrawl in any notebook. Her book is coming out soon, but the blog is filled with thoughtful ideas about individual, familial, and societal happiness.
- Tuesday, 6 October 2009. With the exception of an errant shot of tequila at the Atlanta boot camp, a shot of tequila shoved in my hand by an excited Marine last weekend, and a glass of red wine foisted on me by a girl this recent Sunday, this is day 39 of a Future without Alcohol.
*—On this new term. I hate the terminology of the SUISC, and I love how my company has strived to bridge the gap between the Mystery-led herd of blind children to the rest of the mortal population. I eschew terminology like “PUA” or “player” or “pimp” because they wreak of a disingenuousness based on the faux excellence they imply. When I first taught at a boot camp, a student asked me how long it took me to become a “PUA”, and although I probably should have restrained myself, I looked at him like he was crazy. I have had success with women, and I have had failure. I can repeat my successes consistently, and I can talk meaningfully about the times I achieved or fell short of my goals. Any wisdom regarding my relationships with women I have attained by grasping it from the crucible of failure/awkwardness/embarrassment with bare hands. When I fight approach anxiety or have to use my knowledge to explain away a rejection, I carry the same frame of mind I did when I first discovered the SUISC. In those moments, I am no guru, just another student of human nature with a lofty heart.
Tags: atlanta, books, brad p, glossary, half-life, kindle, las vegas, RP, super conference, video games, witb