Evidently there is a gushing river of verbal creativity in the normal human mind

Evidently there is a gushing river of verbal creativity in the normal human mind, from which both artistic invention and lying are drawn. We are born storytellers, spinning narrative out of our experience and imagination, straining against the leash that keeps us tethered to reality. This is a wonderful thing; it is what gives us our ability to conceive of alternative futures and different worlds. And it helps us to understand our own lives through the entertaining stories of others. But it can lead us into trouble, particularly when we try to persuade others that our inventions are real. Most of the time, as our stories bubble up to consciousness, we exercise our cerebral censors, controlling which stories we tell, and to whom. Yet people lie for all sorts of...

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Posted on 22 Jun 2011 | Comments Off

FOX’s Traffic Light: How to Make Lying Unfunny

I didn’t plan on watching FOX’s new show “Traffic Light” last night on Hulu, but I was trying to switch my brain off after a particularly intense round of homework. Little did I know that those twenty-two minutes would annoy me enough for me to write a review. There are many things I could say about “Traffic Light”, many things that I hope other, better reviewers will say. Right now, my annoyance is focused on how “Traffic Light” sucks all the funniness out of lying. In real life, lying isn’t funny. I’m not talking about hyperbole or sarcasm, because those are plenty funny. I am talking about the lying that “Traffic Light” depicts: misrepresenting oneself intentionally to another person in...

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Posted on 10 Feb 2011 | 8 comments

It’s My Phone

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Hawk and I went to Anchor & Hope for dinner. It was a wonderful evening: we crossed off #48 on 7×7′s 2010 Big Eat SF list, plus I told a story that made Hawk laugh. He mentioned that I might want to lead with the story next time. So here I am, not leading with the story. After work and before I was due at Anchor & Hope, I headed to Westfield because, despite it being a large collection of stores I avoid, it has one thing I love: Maido, a lovely stationery shop filled with fountain pens and notebooks and tiny stickers shaped like frogs and kittens and wheelbarrows and what appear to be smiley-faced boogers. I kicked around Maido for a while, checking out the happy booger stickers, and then did something I rarely...

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Posted on 25 May 2010 | 2 comments