Never to Leave that Valley his Fathers Called their Home.

This begins what will hopefully become a regular series of posts on art criticism focused around those pieces with specific applications to our ongoing investigation of sleep-eating. Today’s selection, Saturn Devouring His Son, was only the most obvious and disturbing of a large collection we plan on glossing.

Francisco Goya’s overeager biographers are quick to point out that the artist’s diminishing eyesight and growing isolation at the end of his life contributed to the gloomy oeuvre of his later work. I am quick to point out that the dude was painting depressing shit his whole life, and that if anything changed when he went blind it was only a matter of degree.

Oh, cheer up, Mr. Sappy-pants!

Another frequently held opinion about the work is that it somehow represents blindness and insanity; the madness that a rapidly encroaching death confers on the elderly. Erik Weems writes, “[Goya] renders [him] blatantly insane, Saturn shown without any recognizable expression of premeditation.” This line of interpretation belongs in O magazine, just above the picture of Oprah on a bicycle. I would first like to know what an “expression of premeditation” is. Perhaps when a cannibalistic act is premeditated the cannibal in question achieves an inner peace as he consumes his/her victims. Apparently Erik Weems knows about these things. I must admit I do not.

Erik Weems can tell this was not planned.

What I do know about is the painting itself, and although it is impossible to determine premeditation from it, Goya does leave us with substantial clues as to its interpretation. The original myth has Saturn assured of his children's eventual usurpation of his role. Thus motivated, he eats them in order to prevent his eventual downfall. Samuel Beckett seems to substantiate Saturn’s concerns when he says, “there is no hope, for everyone is a parent.” And, yes, that is a pun: Beckett was fond of them.

In defense of Erik Weems’ position, there is something jarring in Saturn’s expression; namely, he does not look on his victim (his son) but gazes past him and out at the audience. The resulting experience (for the viewer) is the impression that Saturn is more interested in us than in the son he is devouring.

The act of cannibalism is often referred to as “primal,” or, alternately, “savage.” These are both words, coincidentally, that were used in a recent Cosmopolitan article that heralded fucking against a wall as the greatest sexual position. On the one hand is the unthinkable crime: the familial betrayal of protective father against dependent son--like Abraham raising the axe above Isaac’s head; yet made even worse through the act of feeding. On the other hand is the thrilling sexual act, in which you are encouraged to claw at one another and scream in order to heighten the “primal” and “savage” enjoyment.

The question should be, How WILL you sleep when he's not there?

The disturbing point is that in the Cosmo-approved fucking there is a piece of Saturn Devouring His Children. The desires are crisscrossed: the perversion of food-lust has the meat of the ram transubstantiated into the helpless Isaac; the wall-fucking transforms procreation into mock-violence. Notice also how in the media food is frequently sexualized and vice-versa—not just in women’s magazines, but even things as (seemingly) harmless as advertisements for frozen pizza.

Death Mask and I have provided plenty of evidence already describing how sleep-eating connects with a distant past in which desires existed at their “primal” geneses. That is not to say that this “time” ever existed, but that it exists qua universal point of intersection of all human desire. This point of universal desire, of the excess of all possible satisfaction, exists dependent on the fact that it is impossible i.e. that it can never be symbolized or dominated by interpretation. Because it resists our efforts to subjugate it we strive towards it with stupid and blind stabs in the dark; we fuck against a wall or eat an entire frozen pizza while sleeping or watch Spielberg movies about the Holocaust. These efforts, however pleasurable in the short term, continue to deny us access to that point of original (terrible) joy. Instead we get only glimpses, only tiny crumbs off the enormous Whole.

Here, in Goya’s painting, rests the impossible Whole. It stares us in the face because it already knows us—knows us like it knows its own children.

All Heaven in the Sphincter

Well now there IS a germ-free alternative to traditional necking.

There are two ways of looking at the natural opposition of yourself and everyone else. The first, mostly influenced by Kant, describes an impassible void that mediates any experience between the self and the Other. This void is both compelling and repulsive; it attracts and denies the advances of the individual towards those outside him/herself. It is described as the focal point of human relations.

I think this is horseshit, and so does Jean Genet. He holds the opposite opinion, essentially that there is no void--that the chasm between self and Other is perpetually recreated by the self in an interminable effort to preserve the self. The real horror is not the idea of an impossibly unfathomable line separating oneself from the rest of humanity, but instead the concept of no differentiation at all. In his essay titled, "What Remains of a Rembrandt Torn into Four Equal Pieces and Flushed Down the Toilet," Genet describes the experience of realizing that he is exactly the same as a man with a "disgusting moustache" on the Paris Metro. The experience, for him, is more jarring than any difference between the two of them could be. In fact, he longs for difference to provide a source of solace as his realization is broadened.

Portrait intended for Genet's unpublished work, "What Remains of a Giacometti Torn into Four Equal Pieces and Flushed Down the Toilet."

Sleep-eating is perceived initially as a phenomenon contained wholly by the self. This would seem self-evident*. But the number of cases of sleep-eating that involve onlookers and bystanders has begun to pique my interest. Besides, one never remembers nor ever wholly witnesses one's own sleep-eating act. While it is taken as a matter of cause that the sleep- and food-lust that intersect in the act are universal, to what degree does the mediation of the act provide its own cathartic release of these universal tensions?

This post serves as notice of the development of a new branch of parasomnial investigation: the realm of the self v. the universal within the tradition of sleep-eating.

*I apologize for the pun, but I really can't help my self.

Of the Filthy, Sturdy, Unkillable Infants of the Very Poor

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."

When talking about the supposed universality of Freud's theories on the repressed surfacing in sleep, Wittgenstein made reference to the inherent problem of semiology and dreams; whereas he agrees that dreams leave the unmistakable mark of decipherable signifiers in our consciousness, he disagrees that any "fluency" in this "language" is possible. His hypothetical example involves a man who claims fluency in French, but can only translate from French into English and lacks any and all ability to translate in the reverse direction. In other words, Freud fails (by his own standards of universality) at any claim to translate dreams.

Now, Wittgenstein is a crafty fellow, and many people are quick to point out his tendency towards ironic dialectic synthesis. He himself has said that the key to his Tractatus Logico Philosophicus is "what is not in it." The argument could be made that Wittgenstein only came up with a somewhat misleading hypothetical in order not to discredit Freud but instead to lend credence to his theories. Colleagues have claimed that Wittgenstein stated that he found the "Viennese fellow" compelling and "very interesting."

Did you realize this guy went to school with Hitler? No shit!

But what if we take the emphasis of Wittgenstein's hypothetical off of the relationship to psychoanalysis? What if we ask Wittgenstein a question (since Wittgenstein himself seems fond of asking Wittgenstein questions)? What if we say, but Herr Wittgenstein, isn't there someone who can translate truth into dreams?

Hegel says, "The soul is a bone." I say, "I am a private East Coast university." For years I defined myself against what I perceived as an imaginary line drawn between the elite world of academia and myself in the (pejoratively) public state university. Well, unfortunately for both my definition of myself as the stain on the otherwise rosy fall landscape on the metaphoric brochure photograph of academia and my bank account, I'm on the other side of the line. And what I've discovered about this line is that it does not belong to the realm of the imaginary. It is both of the Real and a prescient bit of reality. While the former may be a little more obvious, the latter was a shock to me. Every single building on campus is protected as though we are surrounded by flesh eating zombies. Lack of identification guarantees that you will not be allowed in anywhere, even to a classroom, without contacting the central identification office. The real benefit of crossing the line, I suppose, is that I am now of the "community" that can safely take a shit on a clean toilet. Before, I would have had to shit my pants on the subway like anyone else.

My own private hell/haven

Of course, my contempt for the world of private elitist universities was a rouse behind which I hid my true desire to be a part of that world. As always, my desire being realized is not a source of satisfaction, but instead a troubling sensation reminiscent of Freud's notion of the uncanny. Like in a nightmare, reality is changed only slightly--the result of which is more troubling than the complete suspension of recognizable reality. In this way, I feel that my original (waking) dream has been translated into reality, yet is intractably perceived as a dream, as something that demands interpretation. Only my familiarity with the illusion makes it seem any less uncomfortable and indecipherable than it is.

It's for this reason I stand by my question to Wittgenstein. True genius is not manifest in the discovery of truth, but in the domination of this truth qua transference to the realm of signification; in other words, into a dream.

Speaking of Asians (or Skipping the First Step and the Wonders of We Got Married)

The last month, month and a half, have seen a spike in my anxiety. I've been on the fringe of graduating, moving jobs, losing my two best friends to NYC (because of this YHTALMM is now a bi-coastal operation), inserting the Nuva Ring into my daily life, and moonlighting (because of this YHTALMM has a direct relationship with food service). My appetite has decreased twofold, and my nocturnal consumptions have barely stirred.

"Why serial killers?"

I get hungry much later in the day, and since I'm stuck behind a cash register when my appetite is aroused, I've been eating when I am not hungry at all in order to preempt late-afternoon hunger pangs. This is frustrating for me because eating is my primary drive for living. Life is merely a symptom of eating food. When one desire isn't being satisfied the psyche tends to shop for a substitute desire or pleasure as a coping mechanism. I've been filling my hunger-void with television. I watched the entire First Person series in two afternoons and have watched Gene Kelly's special appearance on The Muppet Show more times that I've watched Singin' In The Rain- which is a lot. My favorite show to surfeit on, the acme of my replacement enjoyment, is a Korean reality show called We Got Married. The only way I've been able to avoid binge watching TV shows, or Paul Newman interviews (I always end up with a face covered in tears), is by accident- when the food I ate as a plug is miraculously what I was truly hungry for. For instance, last week I stuffed a Kaiser roll into my bag then stole butter from my bookstore's adjoining coffee shop and stuffed it in my face before my next shift. I was accidentally satisfied. The Kaiser roll and butter were exactly what I needed, except I didn't recognize this until after they were consumed, which brings us back (thankfully), to We Got Married.

It's like my childhood made this for my adulthood!

My co-worker said it best, "You have to watch We Got Married with an open heart." That's the only advice you'll never need regarding the watchability of WGM. However, I do have a mouthful (pun intended) to comment on why I love this program as much as I do.

First a brief synopsis of WGM: South Korean celebrities are paired up in four sets and agree to live together in an assimilated marriage. The entertainment is not where you'd expect: in the States the show would be something of a parred down Surreal Life, where two marginally famous assholes are trapped in a house together and the camera would ensnare their senses of entitlement and overall dumbness. Don't get me wrong, I would watch the show I just described, but WGM operates above this. The celebrities chosen, although spoiled, are not rotting in the fame. They are all polite, thoughtful, and optimistic.

Andy Oppa made Solbi a princess bed.

What a show like this does to a Western audience is jarring. Reality shows are so boring, and the people who watch them are so bored, that the only residual enjoyment to be had in them is the factor of immediate kitch and intentional low-browing. WGM reinvests my interest in sincerity since I am watching it for its intended purpose. Though three of the paired couples are clearly going through the motions of the program, making the most of their uncomfortable situation with tepid chemistry, there is one pair (Andy and Solbi) whose faux marriage has struck a romantic chord in each of them. The function of the show, the nature of its setup, is what sparked an otherwise latent interest in a love affair. What WGM does, or did, to Andy and Solbi is swaddle them into a situation where each party is justifiably entitled to certain things (outing together, back rubs, home cooked meals, and comfort), whereas in Real romantic onsets both sides are often plagued by the discomfort of wanting to want something from the other party, and/or are confused by what they are to one another.

WGM did all the work for Andy and Solbi. They are husband and wife, or at least have to preform as so, and are expected to familiarize each other with the quirks of their personalities for the camera. It's not, however, the quirks that have sparked the flame between the two, but the performance of them. Much akin to how Lacan points out the "performative" aspect of being a king in Hamlet (the king is charismatic and loved because he is treated as so, not the other way around), Andy and Solbi are drawn to each other by how they themselves are forced to treat the other person.

Not the first or the last time YHTALMM uses this image

They have skipped the most treacherous step of falling in love- the beginning. And are able to enjoy the joy of initiation (first kisses, etc) without the unbearable remainder of questioning reciprocity (after all they are married). Or fake-married, but to do a good job at their job (preforming in the television show) they must act in love. The situation is a win-win. Anxiety over behaving too enamored is wiped away, for the sake of the program, for the sake of the audience. Much like how I am only happy with what I eat if it's no longer premeditated, Andy and Solbi are in the midst of finding love because they were not seeking it. In fact both parties were probably questing for little more than money, or more notoriety, but what they've garnered in the end is much greater, and is also what the watching audience is hoping for.

An Eye Most Apt in Gelatines and Jupes

Everyone, in my experience, is aware of two ways to eat at a Chinese restaurant. The first involves every member of the dining party ordering a different dish from the menu. When the dishes arrive the entire party eats small helpings of every dish that has been ordered. If you happen to dislike something one of the dining party members ordered you deal with it privately; chances are someone resents you for your choice as well. This first method, I suppose, could be considered the “family style” method.

The second method is wrong.

For a long time this has been my de facto test of potential friends and sexual partners. If when the dishes arrive at the table the acquaintance pulls their ordered dish toward him/herself and removes the oversized serving spoon (an obvious sign of the superiority of the “family style”) I understand that the relationship will not advance from the table. From that point on I have the freedom to treat the meal like a farewell luncheon. I ask my failing acquaintance long-term questions about the direction s/he thinks his/her life might go. When we split the bill not into equal parts but instead pay individually for every dish ordered I am reminded of why I am letting this person disappear into the ether of my consciousness.

Fuck you, Time magazine

I do not read the introductions of books until I have finished the book that is being introduced. Generally this is so I can better ridicule the introducer. Usually the book will be introduced by a scholar with a chair in some prestigious east coast university. S/he will use his/her advanced biographical knowledge of the author s/he has attached him/herself to like a lamprey eel in order to illuminate the more obscure autobiographical notes of the text. Usually these observations can simply be summed up as “wrong,” or, as is often the case, “laughably wrong.” Occasionally a work of fiction will be introduced by a contemporary author judged to be similar to the master whose work demands introduction. Such is the case of the piece by John Updike which grows like a malignant tumor off the front end of the Complete Works of Franz Kafka. Updike has nothing to say about Kafka, and yet says it for nearly forty pages. If I were to sum up all the useful information a reader of Kafka could glean from reading Updike’s introduction, I would have to do it thusly:

“ .”

Conceal/Reveal

John V. Smyth, the author of The Habit of Lying, is fond of an example which in his estimation illustrates the extent to which deception naturally permeates and mediates human behavior. The example is clothing. It’s simple to understand, really: we choose our clothing as a means of disguising and defining ourselves. When the body is revealed as the clothing is removed, the viewer of the exposed body is treated (presumably) to the unveiling of a closely kept secret. Hence the historical ugliness associated with sharing your secret with too many people: once everyone knows about it it’s not much of a secret.

The problem with this example is that I’m convinced it’s completely ironic. Clothing is not the “natural” sign of man’s tendency towards deception—it’s the body itself. While the sloughing off of clothes is an easy way to illustrate the conceal/reveal move to power that dictates Foucault’s system of “confession,” it is an inherently false construction. Exposing your body only exposes the many different ways you are concealing anything and everything you do; it illustrates that human deception runs so deep it can only be sloughed off in the realm of the symbolic, dictated by the authority we all bow to when engaging in this erotic ritual. In this way, natural human deception is not mediated through dressing oneself, but by feeding oneself.

Deception mediates feline society as well.

I finished reading Enjoy Your Symptom! without reading the introduction (as usual). I was intrigued by any introduction to a Zizek work. Would Zizek allow a completely wrong introduction to preface his book? Or would he get one of the many brilliant people who are on a first-name basis with him (e.g. Judith Butler) to expose his many ironies? As I began reading it I was convinced of the former. The introduction writer begins by explaining how he hates the “family style” of eating Chinese food, “insist[ing on] finishing [his] plate alone.” Then he talks about the proposed psychoanalysis of this preference: a tablemate suggests that the introduction writer conceals his fear of sharing sexual partners with his “repulsion” towards sharing Chinese food dishes. The introduction writer then turns the haphazard psychoanalytical suggestion around by claiming that it would be more likely that one would insist on sharing sexual partners in order to disguise one’s hatred of sharing Chinese food. This kind of game is very cute and Zizekian but it ultimately left me wondering who this knob was that wrote the terrible introduction.

Of course it was Zizek.



The inherent question this all poses is, where is the act of concealing in sleep-eating? Is it the sleeping, or the eating? Furthermore, to what depths does the answer to the previous question suggest that human deception runs? How far do we go to deceive ourselves? And, lastly, is the sexual act always disguised by some other act (sharing Chinese food, etc.), or—as Nabokov once suggested—is it really always the other way around?

Behind the curtain

For the first time in a long time I re-watched Singin' in the Rain and realized a common theme behind it, and my sleep eating. Both portray a monster in front of the curtain. In Singin in the Rain it's Lina Lamont, silent film's biggest starlet who's facing an imminent wake up call- talking pictures are invading and Lamont's shrill Jersey accent negates her regal screen persona. As a temporary fix for Lamont's (most) repelling attribute the film studio hires Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynold's) to dub all of Lamont's audio work. In the film's finest scene Lamont lip synchs to a packed house as Selden sings the film's namesake, hiding behind the curtain Lena is in front of. The irony of course being that even though Lena is in plain view, the curtain serves to hide her more so than it does Kathy.

In Singin' in the Rain's scope, the curtain serves to hide a bitter truth or remedy to the false. But what's interesting is that the remedy is actually more appealing than what's presented in front of the curtain. (Is this why My Fair Lady sucks and why I've always assumed The Matrix sucks?) Most obviously, Debbie Reynolds' Kathy Selden (cute) is the vocal stand in for Jean Hagan's Lina Lamont (thick). But we also see this in the film's positive portrayal of talkies (to the extent of it's presentation being a hyper-talkie- a musical). And then there's the great, abandon sound stage scene in which Gene Kelly's activates every gimmick a sound stage has to offer (fog, mood lighting, backdrops), just to tell Kathy how much he likes her.

A classic line dissecting the appeal of Hollywood is how "the extraordinary impersonate the ordinary" but films like Singin' in the Rain throw that dichotomy for a loop by doubling it; and when the fog threatens to clear around the façade, it reveals an even more savory Real. Gene Kelly is extraordinary impersonating the extraordinary (Don Lockwood). Musicals work best under this kind of doubling because the act of singing and dancing relies on an extraordinary skill. Les Girls, a Cukor directed Gene Kelly movie, relies on the same strategy- a performer is simply performing.

How all of this correlates to sleep-eating, specifically my sleep eating, is simple. I hate the act of falling asleep and attempt to fend it off nightly. This is not to be me mistaken with insomnia; I've always been envious of those who suffer from insomnia. It's not that I can't sleep, it's that I don't want to.

Maybe I should have brought up earlier in this forum (YHTALMM) my fear of death and loathing of sleep. I try to stay awake as long as possible to maximize my living, or wake-time. I fall asleep with a light purposefully left on in the hopes I'll re-awake in the night and start to read or write. I've only succeeded a handful of times but I still believe in my method and and patiently awaiting the day I wake up and read Light in August or write the first draft to a screenplay. Two nights ago this backfired- I left the Cary Grant movie Only Angels Have Wings playing and woke up thinking "If Cary Grant's dead, I'm going to die too." Most nights, however, I just fall asleep peaceful and disgusted with myself.

We never cryogenically freeze anyone good!

More often than the intended purpose, the light left on stirs me (I'm guessing) with the urge to eat. Sleep-eating, however, has provided me with the one topic of prose and a keen conversation starter at my new job (blog about my new job is on its way). What's behind the curtain of my embarrassing habit of slumber- ACTIVITY! Beautiful.

In Zizek's Parallax View he discusses a similar inquiry. As an audience we can see Lina's audience's perception of her and Kathy's persevering sweetness and talent. Or, we can oscillate between the two women (or the one woman and the acknowledgment of the other woman's existence) because of quick-cuts showing us what's in front of and behind the literal curtain.

Ah! Something wild!

As a sidenote, I'm thinking of creating another blog page called "Gave Birth to Monsters" centered on really hot/cute celebrities whose offspring are repugnant beasts like Debbie Reynolds (Carrie Fisher), Janet Leigh (Jamie Leigh Curtis), Tippi Hendren (Melanie Griffith).

A Sudden Blow: The Great Wings Beating Still

We here at YHTALMM are very pleased to announce the publication of the first ever YHTALMM guest lecture. Today’s visiting professor is TP (which probably stands for Tom Patriot) who will address food and the fear of flight. Following the lecture YHTALMM founding members Death Mask (DM) and HC Earwicker (HCE) will provide the first of what could prove to be several interpretive discussions/debates over the content.

Without further introduction, I’ll pass the podium to TP.

I was recently on a plane that almost crashed. Well, there was a loud sound from the engine, followed by a shaking. Several women made a noise that was halfway between a scream and a constipated moan. My ears popped and we moved closer to the layer of clouds beneath us. The captain came on over the loud speaker and said, "We're having some engine...pause (1...2...3)...irregularities, and we'll be making a (1...2...3) landing in Oklahoma City. Our descent was quicker than usual, or it seemed like it anyway. Not just to me, but to the muttering people around me, and the white-knuckled man in the aisle seat of my row. Maybe we we're actually safe all along, but the point is that none of the passengers seemed to think so.

When we had touched down and taxied to the gate, the flight attendant explained that we would be waiting in the otherwise-closed terminal for another plane to come from Austin and a crew from Dallas. It seemed it would be awhile. She did, however, mention that there would be refreshments served.

Now, considering that we all had, collectively, at least a fleeting sensation of impending death, I would have expected that to be the consensus topic of conversation--the what-does-it-all-mean and before-my-eyes and kids-growing-up-without-a-whatever bullshit seemed inevitable. I was wrong.

Pretzels. Flight 916 was mostly concerned about pretzels. Every topic of conversation I overheard was about snacks. "So, I guess they'll be serving us snacks." "The lady said there would be snacks, or food, or something...I hope it's something good." "God, they almost killed us, the least they could do is hurry up with those snacks." NOTE: I don't completely disagree with the last sentiment.

When the snacks did come (little bags of pretzels along with the standard array of non-alcoholic beverages that can be found listed in the back of your in-flight magazine...they wouldn't even give us the fucking booze!), it was what I would have expected the crowd to look like as it rushed toward the emergency rows of a burning fuselage. In my experience, no one really likes those little pretzels (not to be confused with the big pretzels you can get with a variety of dipping sauces as free samples at the mall), but will certainly eat them if they are placed in front of you. They seem, to me, like a totally neutral object. Not something one would scorn, but certainly nothing you feel a strong sense of desire toward.

Maybe it is just another indicator that Americans are fat and stupid (many of these passengers, I should note, were eating shitty airport food while we waited in Dallas...they couldn't have been THAT hungry). But I wonder if it was something more.

I know that your blog deals specifically with sleep-eating (many of my fellow passengers were, of course, asleep in that dark cabin prior to the rude awakening), but I wonder if there is any correlation between this specific type of gluttony and a brush with that eternal, final sleep.

HCE: Do you want to start or should I start?

DM: I’ll start.

HCE: Okay. Good.

DM: To answer TP's closing question, yes, there is a correlation between the sudden desire to eat and your flight’s brush with disaster. For example, you only have to watch Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” for about ten minutes before Anthony asks his ethnic tour guides what their final meal would be if given the chance to choose. After an abrupt brush with death your fellow passengers were made aware how close they all came to forgoing their last meal-wish and as an attempt to regain a harness on the longevity of their lives. The passengers on Flight 916 immediately desired a food-object which is barely enjoyable, and non-substantial as if to say “I’m alive and going to live on to eat many, many meals and therefore I’m going to eat shit right now.”

HCE: I find Anthony Bourdain abrasive. I feel like he’s purposefully confrontational with the other chefs, like he’s trying to start shit. Although he was purposefully reverential when he went to el bulli because he knew that dude would fuck him up (in a strict culinary sense) if he played him like that. I don’t know that the food was necessarily an expression of the “will-to-live” like you suggest. I think it was more of an “anything to get through” kind of deal. I think the whole brush-with-death-gives-you-a-sunny-look-on-life thing originates from Hannah and Her Sisters, and now people feel obligated to have it. When I fell off the bow of a deep sea fishing boat and was pulled out of the sea I was mostly embarrassed that I almost killed myself. I certainly didn’t write a bucket list or some shit like that. I’m going to lob you a softball and close by positing that rather than being the affirmation of life that you suggest the pretzels signify what Zizek refers to as the “nothing” that fills the void of modern existence. I’ll let you elaborate because I know that will make you happy.

DM: Anthony Bourdain looks a lot like Humphrey Bogart and works for the Travel Network now, not the Food Network. And I’m not saying that those on board of TP’s flight consciously were aware of their renewed zest for living- I’m more trying to express how immediately after a near-death experience, humans revert back into killing themselves slowly. On Zizek’s “nothing”, you’re right, I really like talking about this. In Welcome to the Desert of the Real, the documentary unfortunately titled, ZIZEK!, Slavoj talks about how modern products are sold without their malignant quality. Coke without sugar, decaffeinated coffee, cyber-sex, etc. Pretzels, in TP’s experience acts as Zizek’s “nothing”. If the flight offered “the big pretzels you can get with a variety of dipping sauces as free samples at the mall,” they would no longer place themselves as the “nothing”. The reason why these products are interesting to Zizek is because he feels the “nothing-ness” quality makes their consumers feel like they always desire them: since they consist of nothing one can never satisfy their hunger for them.



HCE: Right. Right on. The thing about it is, in The Fragile Absolute, Zizek talks about how the “nothing” of meaningless and substanceless food products fills the “void” created by how the horrible unavoidable shit of human existence is slowly encroaching on everyday life. This “void,” according to Zizek, used to be filled with holy objects; beautiful works of art in the renaissance were the response to the dead babies that clogged the renaissance’s aqueducts. Now, though, the “void” is filled with “nothing.” In this case, the “void” is created by the imminent reality of a hollow metal tube filled with ash-crusted corpses. The “nothing” that the passengers stuffed their craws with just happened to be the most meaningless (free) object. Pretzels.

This is exactly how I’ve been thinking about sleep-eating lately. Like the waking part of life creates the “void,” and like Freud said in The Interpretation of Dreams, at the fundamental level dreams are simply the fulfillment of deferred waking desires. Therefore, since now all of our “holy objects” are food, the void that needs to be filled in sleep because of the omnipresent horror of waking life must be filled with “empty” calories.

DM: Freud also believed that dreams are presented as they are (through symbols) because if we saw our actual desires face to face, it would be so upsetting we’d wake up. Like if I were married but wanted to sleep with my husband’s brother, I might have a dream where I sleep with someone with his name or job or another signifier of the brother. Like in Annie Hall when Annie dreams that she breaks Frank Sinatra’s glasses. The film interprets this as her want to break away from her controlling relationship with Alvy Singer. TP mentions how certain items on the flight menu were made unorderable or unavailable. By barring specified objects (actual meals and actual drinks) the passengers were spared a total awakening to the trauma that had just occurred. Much like how I sleep-eat foods I feel no hunger for or are only partial foods of an entire craving (breakfast bars).

HCE: But in a way I feel like even if the shitty drinks and expensive sandwiches were available to buy, the majority of the people on the plane would choose the free pretzels, because they are the most arbitrary and meaningless (as a means of avoiding any choice). So, in a way I agree with your assertion that the alcohol and grinders are closer to the horror of true desire.

Two Woody Allen references, two Freud references, two Zizek references, THREE Anthony Bourdain references. What does that say about us? Also, how do you think the Death Wish plays into TP’s submission. Oops, that’s three for Freud.



DM: Okay, I agree with your first statement but I think that the passengers are more satisfied with having something barred from them than they would be if the menu was entirely open. They like the idea of having something they only marginally desire forced on them. Upping the Zizek reference to FOUR, he claims that there are two schools of fathering. The first being the “tough”, “patriarchal” father is the kind of parent who will force their child to call their grandparents every weekend, because “they have to.” The second is the father who tells his child to call his grandparents only if they want to- but what this ultimately does is make the child feel like they have to want to call their grandparents. In the end, Zizek believes that the first version of the father is the preferable one because it is less manipulating. People dislike choices and therefore the passengers aboard TP’s flight were relieved not to make one.

As far as Freud’s death wish goes, I hit upon that above when I noticed how after a confrontation with death, the passengers chose to consume an object which their body reacts negatively towards.

HCE: Wow. Thanks for that Death Wish illumination. Seriously enlightening.

Okay, I’m done being a dick. But I do really like your Strict Dad/Lenient Dad comment. You’re right. The passengers were relieved that the “for sale” items on the menu were disallowed. It represented the authority that they sorely longed for when “The captain came on over the loud speaker and said, 'We're having some engine...pause (1...2...3)...irregularities.' Like, if the captain had just said “Sorry, we’re all going to die. No cell phone use” the passengers would have been relieved.

Alright. Final thoughts. On a scale from 1 to 10 how YHTALMM is this?

DM: I like the new forum. I think it’s about a 7.5, pictures considered. We should do this to a film sometime soon.

HCE: I’ll concur. You had the first word and I want you to have the last one. Quick! Name the film we’ll make:

DM: P.S. She Fell Over.

Among his Dogs and Playthings, Who is Stirred

A Performance of Titus Andronicus Staged by Your Genetic Material.

I had promised some thoughts on the transubstantiation qua interchangeability of inheritable qualities in a previous post. The thing about inheritance is in the physical tangible sense the conversation does not just hinge on the a priori but demonstrates on the most basic level how we understand all a priori debate. In the pejorative sense we instinctually recognize the details of deformation in the parent body manifest in the child; this recognition of the duplicated other is as fundamental as shrinking away from a punch. Whether or not the actual genetic trait is as obvious as a hunchback the introspective Quasimodo provides the perfect signifier for the collective understanding of these a priori shortcomings; i.e. the pockmarks on a mother’s face predict and explain the poor skin that isolates the daughter. As I previously mentioned, this basic recognition is the explanation for all knowledge of the preexisting. To borrow a phrase from Spinoza, we identify the chain of cause and effect that explains away the present dependent on our intrinsic physical understanding of how children look and develop into their parents.

Yet common knowledge still fails us in its inability to recognize the similarity between these (perceivably) inescapable physical traits and the (assumed) avoidable mental ones. The thought that the development of the personality is a posteriori of any genetic interference is pure ridiculousness. The development of the hunchback ego follows a surprisingly identical path to the one of the hunchback father. Outside the sheer improbability of a cultural shift in the perception of hunchbacks, the same could hold true for countless repeated generations. And, personally speaking, if the Disney film can’t make hunchbacks lovable I don’t know what could (other than key passages from Malone Dies and Finnegans Wake).

You could probably read every word of Finnegans Wake and not realize this is the protagonist.

Although I’ve gone a long way to get to a simple point, Death Mask is right when she suggests sleep-eating could be dependent on her mother, just not in the way she might have hoped. In a sense, her sleep-eating was preordained; it exists as an a priori trait similar in all aspects to her hair and eye color. And in case anyone misunderstands me as arguing for the viability of fate, I suggest you read this post again. Now, ask yourself, what is the difference between fate and inevitable universality? Anything?


Big things cracking at YHTALMM. Sometime this week we get our first guest lecture, followed by sleep-eating in classic movies (by Death Mask) and the dissembling aspect of the corporal body (By HC Earwicker).

When We Were Children, Staying at the Archduke's

These twins both independently thought of the same cheesecake at the same time.

The actual ability of anyone to simultaneously come to the same conclusion as another without outside communication is commonly relegated to the realm of urban myth and Robert Stack’s steely narration of the episode of “Unsolved Mysteries” where those identical twins predict each other’s car wrecks. Or something like that. However, the phenomenon is considerably more normal and only goes to show that the reality of instructive structure and its limiting effects on the cultural boundaries of man’s natural inclinations make us much more alike than anyone would care to admit. Frequently the end result is the forced dissimulation of our congruence through the concussive interference of fists.

Fully two weeks of my childhood were spent solely in watching this program.

A historical example of this phenomenon (although it probably doesn’t even deserve that title) was frequently imparted to me by my favorite college professor; namely, the discovery of the calculus by Leibniz and Newton concordantly. If we can forgive the fact that it is supremely annoying when someone refers to it as “the Calculus” when “Calculus” would certainly suffice, we find evidence that shows (supposedly) that although the two were in frequent contact both Newton and Leibniz were so overwhelmed with paranoia that they refused to discuss with one another the enormous mathematical discovery they were both in the process of stumbling upon. When both published their findings within a year of one another their worst fears appeared to have been realized and they immediately hated each other with such a fervent ferocity it’s surprising Newton didn’t just stab Liebniz in the heart and throw him out a window. Although he may have, my historical knowledge is spotty.

Newton to Leibniz: Checkmate, bitch.

In any case, during my usual research on the continuing impotence with which modern medicine addresses sleep-eating (they call it “parasomnia” – HA!) I stumbled upon a passage that may encourage Death Mask to pursue a Newton v. Leibniz strategy with the author of Talkaboutsleep.com:

Sleep eating is more common in younger women. Symptoms typically begin in the late 20s. Episodes may reoccur, in combination with a stressful situation, or an episode may occur only once or twice. Additionally, many parasomnias seem to run in families, which may indicate that sleep eating is genetically linked. (From www.talkaboutsleep.com)

The interchangeable nature of genetic inheritance (i.e. a priori medicinal pseudo-physiological physical scientific anthrobiological deoxyribonucleic-acidic anatomical reproduction) and psychological inheritance (i.e. Freudian Elektral and Oedipal residual bricolage of inheritable and free-repeating trauma) will be further discussed at a later date. Succinct preview: contagion is ontologically and physically permeable.

Leftovers Pt. 2: Art = Nutrigrain

If there is a connection between butyric acid which stinks and the best perfumes, could we on that account put "the best perfume" in quotes? Could we therefore say: "the 'best' scent is really all sulphuric acid?"

- Wittgenstein

LEFTOVERS Pt. 1: Smaller courses and the residue of hunger

My colleague is correct. Sleep eating did "strike back", but in a subdued form. From first glance I perceived the return of sleep eating as mere sloppiness on my behalf.

Why wasn't I using the trash can in my room?

Why are there little wrappers everywhere?

The truth hit me when I found the casing to a snack bar I don't even like in between my bed frame and the wall. Only in my sleep do I eat food I barely enjoy! Sleep eating had entered my life again! This time, however, my subconscious knows the evidence has to be less direct, less incriminating. Previously my affliction felt free to sprawl itself throughout my slumber (I'd eat entire, messy meals), now it knows to curl and conceal itself from me in the form of convenient snack food. Why has my ailment (cure?) chosen to scurry away from me? As discussed before, I believe it is due to my consciousness' reciprocity for my unconsious' desire to sleep eat. This blog's acknowledgement of sleep eating comes too near to consummating the Real desire- to eat while awake, and interrupts the direct relationship between sleep eating and the unconscious mind. The ruptures result in this new subdesire, or subdued desire, and culminates into what Freud would call "residue".

For Freud the residue is the cause of art. Art becomes a storage place for the excess desires the conscious minds has learned is unrewarding to pursue. I am not an artist. I only eat. Therefore the ruptures or short circuits in my psyche make themselves present through my eating habits. For instance, the other day I was close to skipping my volunteer job and after realizing how awful that instinct was, I ate enough Taco Bell, became so sick I should have skipped the volunteer gig and forced myself to go anyway as punishment for the evilness in me inclined to skip.


(LEFTOVERS PT.II is in the works. I plan on tying these theories together with the help of a graph which blames my parents. I just had a birthday and I've found myself less able to use scanners than I was last year. Therefore, the graph will be posted under my partner's name.)

Slouching Towards Bethlehem to be Born

Alas, his lifelong desire for the number two was undone by its fulfillment.

Whatever thing we may not lightly have,
Thereafter will we cry all day and crave.
—Chaucer


It’s coming.

But like a parent with an overly curious child, I can’t tell you how I know or why I am so steadfastly convinced of it. All I can tell you is that if you really want to get that first communion wafer you have to believe with all your heart that it really is the body of Christ. Then you have to sleepwalk to the altar and take it.

Death Mask got me thinking when she brought up an excellent point about reciprocal desire; that in her courting sleep-eating she felt she was pushing it away. And she was right. Sleep-eating chose her (as it once chose me), yet as soon as she chose it back it thought a lot about it and decided it might be making a mistake and the only way to know for sure was to spend some time apart to just gather all the feelings you know? Just take a moment to breathe and analyze and sort through all of this shit it’s going through right now.

The mistake is not the desire, but the courting. Specially preparing meals for sleep-eating and going out of one’s way to open doors for it makes sleep-eating feel coddled. Sleep-eating needs its independence.

Except when it doesn’t. Like, for instance, when it comes back to me and I start treating sleep-eating like shit.

I would like a pound of that honey-cured ham eek half a pound of provolone.

See, the thing is, like the Wife of Bath in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, sleep-eating loves he who “was of his love so dangerous to [it].” And in case you have trouble with the Middle English, maybe I’d better explain that the Wife of Bath is saying her favorite husband is the one who “had beaten [her] on every bone.” And if that’s too difficult to understand still, I recommend you go re-read Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” And if you’re still lost, I guess just go write a paper on “Cathedral.”

Teacher says, every time a freshman writes a paper on "Cathedral" Carver makes this face and rolls around in his grave.

The point is, sleep-eating will come back to me because I want it. And because I won’t respect it.

In that Sleep of Death What Treats May Come

Alas, poor Yorrick. I ate him, Horatio.

We’ve already discussed the desire for sleep in a blog previously posted titled “The Sleep-Lust Parabasis.” If anyone needs a refresher I suggest you go ahead and click on that in order that you may marvel at the proscribed role sleep-lust plays in our society. Furthermore, if you think I made up the word “Parabasis” just because your Mozilla browser doesn’t recognize it, I suggest you go find a copy of the fucking OED and educate yourself as to the viability of that particular word. As for you, Mozilla spell-check dictionary: You’re on my list.

The original plan was that I would post a “Food-Lust Denouement” in order that the two could be inexorably linked and their oblique concurrences illuminated for all to see. Unfortunately, I found the subject far too embarrassing and personal. Food-lust is not just a phenomenon; it is the defining phenomenon of my American generation. As much as we like to believe we relate to one another through our ridiculously arbitrary musical tastes and director preferences, it’s all so disgustingly similar it gets to the point it makes me want to throw up in your face. I get it, you really like Wilco but you didn’t like the latest Wes Anderson film. GET THE FUCK OVER YOURSELF.

Memo to everyone: Go fuck yourselves.

The truth is it is through our relation to food that we learn and discriminate the most. Those with a hatred for a specific race are antiquated mummies when compared to the growing fascination with body size and food intake. As fast as people are growing to despise the hefties among us these selfsame hefties are circumscribing their food-lust in the language of disease (!!!). Food-lust is not looked upon with the inauspicious gaze of those who glance on sleep-lust so inertly. The hateful gaze directed towards food-lust is as active and baleful as punching a hefty right in his/her jiggling fat-pouch.

It is interesting, then, that in the case of a clinical diagnosis of sleep-eating a doctor would so openly accept that food- and sleep-lust are intimately connected, claiming, “I think two instinctual behaviors become intertwined.”

But my case for the separation between the two lusts (and the holy post our relation to food maintains) is in the fact that those afflicted with Ambien-caused sleep-eating “realize they have an eating problem but do not associate it with…sleeping.” The lust for food is a “problem,” yet the lust for sleep is so benign they march their swollen ankles dutifully to the pharmacy to refill their tranquilizers in order that they may further clog their gullets with the silky-smooth embrace of JIF and Skippy as their horrified teenage sons look on. In horror.

This leads us to perhaps the most telling revelation of the article, that “abnormal behaviors [read: sleep-eating] like those could be unmasked in a small minority of patients taking any [sleep] medications.” In other words, perhaps those who are insomniacs are by nature the most likely to sleep eat.

When I began my foray into the realm of sleepy-time munching, I was in fact suffering from insomnia. I spent (spend) the nights consumed in worry until my lower-right eyelid twitched (twitches) uncontrollably. Then I would count the twitches until I fell (fall) asleep. Then I would wander about my childhood house and snack in complete ignorance of my own actions.

The point is, perhaps the same worries that keep us up at night are the transubstantiated forms of our repressed and hated sleep- and food-lust. Maybe the muted muffled voice of our animal past manifests itself in our concerns over our jobs, schooling, and haircuts. Maybe our whole societal structure is intended to limit how our true instincts are expressed. Yes, Derrida, I am plagiarizing your corpse. But in a context you may not have dreamed of and certainly would not approve.

This is why all old men should smoke pipes.

More to come next week, including a discussion of the following:

The first night her son was there, he found her standing in the kitchen, body cast and all, frying bacon and eggs. The next night he found her eating a sandwich, Ms. Evans said, and sent her back to bed. Later that same night, her son arose to find her standing in the kitchen again. "I had turned the oven on," she recalled. "I store pots and pans in the oven and I had turned it to 500 degrees."

Ah, the recognition of my youth…

What a difference a day makes

It's been a while since I posted and that is because I HAVEN'T SLEPT-ATE IN ALMOST A WEEK.

I just finished my Wong Kar-Wai midterm and wrote on the mastery of desire through abandoning it (mainly in Chungking Express). After the test I was so sad the teacher didn't talk to me, I cried in the school parking garage and kicked a cardboard box until I was laughing. The reason I bring this up is because I feel like sleep-eating has abandoned me because I reciprocated my desire for the sickness. Furthermore, I'm scared the object behind the reason I sleep-eat has shifted forms into sheer madness. The other example I'm willing to give up is the case of my bawling into the laundry basket, unprovoked. I know I spit a lot of shit about not wanting to become fat, but I'd rather be a big, fat fatty than a psychopath almost any day.

Back to what I was saying about reciprocation: I've started making extra dinner in consideration of sleep-eating. I box up the dinner and instead of hiding it like before, I place it in center-stage of the fridge. It's goes untouched until the next morning. Maybe my recognition of sleep-eating, this blog included, has created a mutual (waking) desire for it and therefore it has retreated back into my psyche and devolved into a typical mental-breakdown. B-O-R-I-N-G.

Naked [Sleeping] Lunch

Just got a hankerin' for a few dozen popsicles and candy bars

The thing about drug-induced sleep eating is that it presents what could be considered a “golden ticket” of the Willy Wonka ilk that promises a lifetime supply of chocolate and definitive contact with a distant animal past. The article makes sure to mention that the drug’s side effect does not cause the usual psychological over-eating that Americans are all too familiar with, but a “primal” need for food that our culture is so foreign to it's ridiculous. This is part of what I identified earlier as the true attraction and joy of sleep-eating; that it in essence connects the advanced desire of symbolism and repetition of our current culture with an indistinguishable animal past.

Admittedly, my time with sleep-eating is most likely over. It was a constant and sticky companion throughout the years of my adolescence. When I found out Death Mask was afflicted with it to this day my initial and continuing reaction was bald envy. Therefore, the prospect of Ambien handing me a potential route by which I could relive the thrill of my somnambulant snacking gave me hope.

There is a problem, though, and that is the way that the “side-effect” of this drug is causing unbelievable weight gain. As the article claims, some woman in SoCal gained one hundred motherfucking pounds by sleep-eating candy bars and popsicles. Furthermore there were concerns that those who were sleep-eating would “choke” themselves in the process. This is not the re-enactment of awake eating that I remember so fondly, this is the action of a dog who destroys a rat trap and eats over three pounds of poisonous fucking rat bait because she is too stupid to know the shit will kill her. As Joseph K. exclaims at the end of Kafka’s The Trial, “Like a dog!”

This dog is so fucking stupid

The point is, perhaps the balance of modern to primal eating instincts when spurred by the drug tips heavily towards “primal,” making those foraging forays into the pantry a tipsy trip up the trunk of a prehistoric family tree. While this phenomenon may be just as interesting as the variation of sleep-eating we’ve been discussing up to this point, it is trivialized by the fact that it lacks a context in our society. I think the sleeping consumption of meticulously breaded shrimp preserved specifically for lunch in a Ziploc bag, or the unconscious preparation and consumption of a toasted PB&J resonate more clearly in the 21st century than the blind desperation involved in eating an entire bag of flour at 3 a.m. while your horrified teenage son looks on. In horror.

Coming Friday: Part 2, including interpretation of the following:

No cause has been found for sleep-related eating disorder, but Dr. Schenck says he believed that it happened when the brain confuses two basic instincts: sleeping and eating. "Those two become linked," he said. "In the sleep stage you eat. I think two instinctual behaviors become intertwined."

It's almost like there's an echo in here.

Et Tu, Mick?

From "Rocks Off," Exile on Main Street:

"I only get my rocks off when I'm sleeping."

I'm working furiously on that Ambien post.

Ineluctable Modality of the Awesome

I don't think this needs any further explanation

When the Mcsweeney's editors are ready for us to do our guest column the best way to reach us is by telephone:
Death Mask: (971) 219-1288
HC Earwicker: (503) 880-6890

Penguins Feed their Young

I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE...after you spit it out.

The previous post raises the question that at heart I have been trying to dance around. That is, the context in which sleep-eating becomes more than a popular cultural phenomenon sweeping the nation and instead a subject for silent contemplation and the ever-further furrowing of my permanently furrowed brows.

Take, for example, a young JJ Rousseau rolling around in Mme. de Warrens’ bed like a dog scenting himself in the carcass of a jellyfish on the beach. The irony of Rousseau’s most amusing confession of the Confessions is that at the height of his effervescence his lust demands mediation—-even at its climax the participle orgasm is nothing more than the joy of watching a woman read a letter. The point is that as the romance loses its intensity--as Rousseau ages--the propensity towards actual physical contact increases. In other words, our sex drives work in counter to our capacity to love violently. Happy Anniversary.

Jean-Jacques also gives us the memorable episode in which his ebullient adolescent passions grow closest to the realm of the sensual; and unsurprisingly (for this blog, anyway) the moment is centered on a piece of food:

Sometimes even in her presence I committed extravagances that only the most violent love seemed capable of inspiring. One day at table, just as she had put a piece of food into her mouth, I exclaimed that I saw a hair on it. She put the morsel back on her plate; I eagerly seized and swallowed it. (Rousseau, Confessions)

The opportunity for interpretation is so large here I almost get dizzy trying to start. Of course, most want to wink and mention "Mamon," Mme. de Warrens’ maternal nickname. Most of these people are into role-playing anyway and should not be taken seriously. What I find most interesting is the transmutation of the desire for survival (food) into the desire for intimacy (sex): food and sex are often comingled but infrequently without the inane winking of the role-players mentioned above.


This man wiped his ass with silk laced doilies.

And since Proust was already brought up and my coexistent desires to prove I have read him and weigh in cannot be contained, I find it prudent to mention the transmutation of desire is the same in Swann’s Way as it is in Confessions; yet the addition of the desire for sleep rewrites the whole equation. We are taken from the precocious desire for intimacy that causes insomnia in a child whose imagination cannot withstand the knowledge that his mother is among strangers to the practically blasphemous transubstantiation of cookie (note the inherent difference between pastry and wafer) to pre-pubescent girlfriend.

All of these examples are pointing to T.S. Elliot’s notions of the “objective correlative,” or the object that is more than its physical presence. The half-chewed morsel, the Madeline, the shiny packet of ninja turtle gummies—-all these present evidence both of the mutated role of food in our consciousness and the conscious acceptance of symbolism. Storytelling is affirmed in our very ability to express ourselves better through metaphoric memories than in our own invented languages.*

But here’s my final question: what if our nameless narrator had thought about his infantile infatuation, actually fallen asleep, and then sought out the madelines in his unconsciousness? What if li’l Jean-Jacques had grasped the morsel from Mamon’s mouth, hid it under a stack of magazines, fell asleep, and then devoured it in his dreaming state? Would that not constitute an affirmation that symbolism is not just a necessity in the society of man, but a natural state contained by the structure of human society?

Enough with the erudition for now. I’m coming back big time with a post on that Ambien article I put up a while back.

*Vico would argue that language comes into place only once storytelling is established, that in fact the natural urge towards storytelling (myth) makes language inevitable rather than vice-versa.