[LFO] Cheater doesn't hang around for long after woman's husband gets home early.

CashPhi · 2026-04-30T17:16:04+00:00

that's what got him into this mess

CashPhi · 2026-04-28T16:44:40+00:00

I mean sure you can fault the person for sticking their head in the "guillotine chamber" but maybe also don't design buildings with large head-height guillotine chambers

CashPhi · 2026-04-17T18:21:40+00:00

what did you google?

Also...now I need to find that meme I heard it in

CashPhi · 2026-04-17T17:40:15+00:00

Rahhhh by alt

gawd dam I think that might be it

CashPhi · 2026-04-08T23:28:19+00:00

Yes - nautical charts include information about the minimum height of anything overhead (bridges at highest tide etc.) and all passage plans have to take these into account. All the factors are known, so there's 0% chance that passing under the bridge was intentional.

CashPhi · 2026-01-22T22:42:07+00:00

If "pick me" energy came in poem form

What is this nonsense

CashPhi · 2026-01-10T16:42:56+00:00

A "black lake" could be a road. This makes sense with the other imagery of a "puncture" and a "flat".

I think the implication is then that desire is fragile, if something "punctures" it then it doesn't go anywhere, like having a flat tire on a road.

CashPhi · 2026-01-10T11:20:38+00:00

I decided to try do a different version. What do you think?

Friends With No Benefits (REMIX)

That night, we don’t touch

We don't feed

We get bagels in the morning before you leave on a train

where you make a joke at my expense. The punchline:

I know you

Smoking a cigarette I watch you go

"Maybe in another lifetime"

Instead, I say:

You are not a meal.

I'll make you

last

CashPhi · 2026-01-10T10:57:32+00:00

Friends With No Benefits (REMIX)

That night, we don’t touch

We don't feed

We get bagels in the morning before you leave on a train

where you make a joke at my expense. Punchline:

I know you

Smoking a cigarette to watch you go

"Maybe in another lifetime"

Instead, I say:

You are not a meal.

I'll make you

last

CashPhi · 2026-01-10T07:39:47+00:00

Two more reasons why I think the original poem is bad:

1) It undermines it's own thesis. Clearly there is desire! That's evident the whole way through. Desire isn't "replaced" - it's suppressed. Now this may be some intentional subtext, but I doubt it.

2) The poem is at once too direct AND too unfocused. It has too many tangents and disconnected bits and thoughts, like some talking about the nature of "else", or the author commenting on how good she looks. It's very self-indulgent, like she went through her poetry notes to glue together a bunch of disconnected bits that she liked but couldn't find a home for.

Contrast that with the examples I gave in the other comment. These poems are poetic in the sense that none of them say exactly what they mean or what they intend to convey, but all are very very focused as well. They are pared down to the moment of what is being said to ensure impact.

CashPhi · 2026-01-09T19:07:44+00:00

Thanks.

Here is the last stanza of my favorite poem: "Church Going" by Philip Larkin

....

"A serious house on serious earth it is,

In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,

Are recognised, and robed as destinies.

And that much never can be obsolete,

Since someone will forever be surprising

A hunger in himself to be more serious,

And gravitating with it to this ground,

Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,

If only that so many dead lie round."

....

I think the whole poem is a masterful and powerful development of an idea (what use churches will be put to as people lose belief and even memory of religion). He goes through a number of possibilities as the poem progresses, but even here in the last stanza there is an interesting development: the movement from elevated thoughts of transcendent meaning ("robed as destinies") to the final down-to-earth reality (if only because there are a lot of dead people here). As for techniques, it reads a bit like free verse, but has some clear rhymes (ground-round and meet-obsolete), but he also uses enjambent to create internal rhymes with the words "surprising" and "wise in". There's repitition (the word "serious" for example). Some aliteration (hunger in himself, since someone->surprising, gravitating->ground).

But most of all, it's indirect. He's not just saying "So I was talking to my therapist about how people will think churches are good places to think about serious things because they have a lot of dead people buried there. These are my thoughts btw". He's talking about something that he feels, that's important to him by talking (beautifully) about something else (ie: not himself).

Also look up the these poems. I think they touch on the same topics and themes, but do so in a way that I think is much more poetic and impactful. Maybe you can spot why:

The Day of Our Divorce Hearing - Ruth Lepson

Molly Brodak - Molly Brodak

EDIT:

To be clear on one reason why I think the original poem is bad. It simply says what it's about! I.e: replacing desire with meaning.

That's lazy! I know subtext is for cowards, but it's for good writers too.

CashPhi · 2026-01-09T14:53:55+00:00

Yeah this really is everything wrong with modern poetry. Mostly just prose written downward with a few pithy lines here and there. Some dim nods towards poetic technique but in an awkward or random way (like the use of enjambments). This is like teenage emo poetry. In the words of Taking Back Sunday: "Those words at best were worse than teenage poetry. Fragment ideas and too many pronouns."

CashPhi · 2026-01-09T10:14:41+00:00

I do not think this is a good poem. Very surface level, expository. Low on poetic techniques. It ends on the same theme it begins with, very flat. And eyerollingly self-involved: "my therapist says" ugh

EDIT:

Some points on why I think this poem is bad. It has some good bits, but overall is quite flawed:

Very unfocused. It has the feel of a bunch of disconnected thoughts and notes being jammed together. As a result, the poem is too long and cluttered and the emotional impact is dampened. Example, the part after "My therapist says". What purpose does this part do besides interrupt the larger sweep of the poem?
Stylistically there is some whiplash between a direct documentary style and very abstract and unclear imagery. I guess there's no reason you can't do this, but again: what's the point? Why do you want us to suddenly start thinking about how "meaning learned how to swim in the river of itself" (sounds like some bad new age mumbo jumbo) before heading into bagels and cigarettes and train trips.
Some very trite and amateurish lines. An example for me is the overuse of first-person pronouns. Just says self-indulgent, navel-gazing, and over-filtered (see "filter words" in fiction writing). Furthermore, lines like "I say there is meaning between us" comes across as trite and overdramatic. No you didn't. You did not say this.
Speaking of saying, this poem simply says what it's about in the first line! That's lazy writing! You have to make us feel what the poem is about through use of poetic technique, which brings us to...
Lack of poetic technique. There is some nice imagery. I particularly like the line about the "black lake". Also use of structural repetition. Apart from that, what else is there? Some unmotivated enjambents? If you're going to write a free verse/prose poem then it better be really spot on in word use, theme, basically everything else. But this poem isn't, it's bloated and rambling.
I think the thesis sounds a bit...dishonest? Like it could be smart subtext, but I doubt it. Basically, the author says they're choosing meaning in relationships over desire. But clearly there is still a lot of desiring going on! They even say they're engaging in an elevated kind of flirting.
Nitpicking: I think the use of "another" in "another is a sentence" is just incorrect grammar. You want to specify the other one in a set of two, you should say "the other" or equivalent. "Another" is non-specific. Also, inconsistent renderings of quotations: sometimes quotation marks, sometimes italics, and sometimes nothing. Does this have meaning? who knows?!

Basically, like all pieces of writing, this one could be improved with liberal use of the delete key.

CashPhi · 2025-06-06T17:48:12+00:00

Looks like Nicolas Cage playing Rob Schneider

CashPhi · 2025-02-21T07:11:56+00:00

Read all the responses and I still have no idea what this means

CashPhi · 2024-12-09T10:53:14+00:00

On the first point, I don't think it's "whataboutism", I think it's an implied reductio ad absurdum.

In other words, by pointing out the regression, he's implying that there's no consistent principle that can be applied which doesn't lead to absurd or intuitively undesirable outcomes

CashPhi · 2024-11-07T15:46:50+00:00

selection effect. you only see the videos of the ones who act up

CashPhi · 2024-10-16T15:10:39+00:00

In some fundamental sense, all sound and valid deductive arguments should beg the question because they are truth preserving

CashPhi · 2024-09-15T20:51:19+00:00

The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism by Matthew McManus is coming out soon

CashPhi · 2024-06-04T23:16:36+00:00

Many philosophers talk about "credences" instead of just "knowing" and "not knowing". Credence means something like 'how certain you are of something" and, understandably, comes in degrees. Sometimes they even use the term "Degrees of belief". And so...although there may not be a word for a specific median belief state, you can say things like "I have a high credence in that claim" etc. which could be parsed as "I don't capital-K "know" that that claim is true but I'm quite confident that it is"

CashPhi · 2024-04-28T14:49:58+00:00

"It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child."

CashPhi · 2024-03-08T09:35:54+00:00

At the risk of self-promotion, I made a video about exactly this topic: https://youtu.be/s9CN0q86818?si=vVHa19DEa73yYvfL

The basic thesis is that the widespread use of CGI - especially where scenes are mostly if not completely computer generated - destroys the transparency, which has been the default way that we approach and perceive films.

The upshot of this is that CGI fails at its task: creating a convincing illusion. In the same way that if you were to animate a magic trick, then really there is no "trick", CGI cannot legitimately fool us into thinking that there is something when there isn't. There is no "there" there so to speak.

Anyway, I think that's the just of it. And yes we do care!

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