Cinemorphosis

Author: Jeffrey McMahon

  • The Comedians of Cell Block B

    The Comedians of Cell Block B

    Last night I dreamed I was in a bustling, overlit restaurant packed with the usual suspects—people chewing too loudly, waitstaff dodging elbows, silverware clinking like wind chimes in a windstorm. I was halfway through what I assumed was risotto when I realized two of my teeth had come loose, flapping in my gums like faulty hinges.

    Panicked, I waved down a waiter. He listened gravely, nodded with theatrical sympathy, then pointed toward a man in a white coat weaving through the crowd like a prophet leaving a revival. “That’s Dr. Beltrán,” he said. “Fixes teeth. Fixes lives. If you move now, you might catch him before he ascends to the exit sign.”

    So I followed. Fast forward to the next day: I’m in a waiting room that looked more like a casting call for eccentric sitcom roles. Among the crowd sat a married couple, both comedians. Raffi, a Canadian import with the weary charisma of someone who’s done too many festivals, and Tina, his statuesque, golden-haired wife, radiantly pregnant and visibly amused by the absurdity of her own life.

    Turns out Raffi and I had gone to college together, which gave our small talk the sheen of nostalgia. Tina, meanwhile, was the sort of woman you describe as a “former beauty queen” only because it sounds more manageable than “mythical being with a driver’s license.”

    Then the tone shifted. They told me they were serving life sentences. Yes—life sentences—for misreading pesticide instructions. About five years ago, they’d tried to fumigate their house for fleas and spiders but sprayed an industrial outdoor poison all over their bedroom carpet. Their organs liquefied. They almost died. When they recovered, they were arrested. The terms of their punishment? Eternal residence in a dungeon—an actual pitch-black basement beneath a towering apartment block. They were allowed out only for comedy gigs. Art, apparently, still mattered to the state.

    Dental work complete, Raffi left for Canada to perform at a club. Tina, contractions ticking in her belly like a countdown timer, insisted on showing me the dungeon. The space was a horror. Not just black-as-night oppressive, but physically punishing—an absurdly low ceiling crisscrossed by thick beams of lumbar that made it feel like you were crawling through a collapsed IKEA warehouse.

    So I did what any good houseguest-slash-dream hero would do: I went to the nearest hardware store, returned with a comically oversized saw, and spent the afternoon hacking through beams like a man possessed. Tina cheered me on from a folding chair, one hand on her belly, the other clutching her flip phone, waiting for Raffi’s call.

    When I finished, the dungeon felt ever so slightly less apocalyptic. She looked at me and said, “I think the baby’s coming.” I nodded like I’d just finished installing a light fixture. My work here was done.

  • FOMO and the Mirage of Desire (a college writing prompt)

    FOMO and the Mirage of Desire (a college writing prompt)

    Begin your essay by clearly defining FOMO—the fear of missing out—as both a cultural phenomenon and a psychological force. Then, in roughly 300 words, write a personal narrative that illustrates a time when FOMO led you into a situation filled with traps, illusions, or regrets. If you’d prefer not to write about your own experience, you may interview a friend or family member and recount their story instead.

    Your narrative should focus on how FOMO clouded your judgment. Describe how it made you ignore red flags, suspend critical thinking, or believe in something too good to be true. Whether it was a product, an experience, a relationship, or a trend, reflect on how the desire to be part of something—or to not be left out—overpowered your better instincts. Show how FOMO doesn’t just spark curiosity or envy; it distorts decision-making and often leads to costly or embarrassing consequences.

    Use vivid details, clear storytelling, and reflective insight. The goal is not just to entertain but to unpack how FOMO can seduce intelligent people into chasing mirages—shiny promises that evaporate upon closer inspection.

  • My Philosophy of Grading in the Age of ChatGPT and Other Open-AI Writing Platforms (a mini manifesto for my syllabus)

    My Philosophy of Grading in the Age of ChatGPT and Other Open-AI Writing Platforms (a mini manifesto for my syllabus)

    Let’s start with this uncomfortable truth: you’re living through a civilization-level rebrand.

    Your world is being reshaped—not gradually, but violently, by algorithms and digital prosthetics designed to make your life easier, faster, smoother… and emptier. The disruption didn’t knock politely. It kicked the damn door in. And now, whether you realize it or not, you’re standing in the debris, trying to figure out what part of your life still belongs to you.

    Take your education. Once upon a time, college was where minds were forged—through long nights, terrible drafts, humiliating feedback, and the occasional breakthrough that made it all worth it. Today? Let’s be honest. Higher ed is starting to look like an AI-driven Mad Libs exercise.

    Some of you are already doing it: you plug in a prompt, paste the results, and hit submit. What you turn in is technically fine—spelled correctly, structurally intact, coherent enough to pass. And your professors? We’re grading these Franken-essays on caffeine and resignation, knowing full well that originality has been replaced by passable mimicry.

    And it’s not just school. Out in the so-called “real world,” companies are churning out bloated, tone-deaf AI memos—soulless prose that reads like it was written by a robot with performance anxiety. Streaming services are pumping out shows written by predictive text. Whole industries are feeding you content that’s technically correct but spiritually dead.

    You are surrounded by polished mediocrity.

    But wait, we’re not just outsourcing our minds—we’re outsourcing our bodies, too. GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic are reshaping what it means to be “disciplined.” No more calorie counting. No more gym humiliation. You don’t change your habits. You inject your progress.

    So what does that make you? You’re becoming someone new: someone we might call Ozempified. A user, not a builder. A reactor, not a responder. A person who runs on borrowed intelligence and pharmaceutical willpower. And it works. You’ll be thinner. You’ll be productive. You’ll even succeed—on paper.

    But not as a human being.

    If you over rely on AI, you risk becoming what the gaming world calls a Non-Player Character (NPC)—a background figure, a functionary, a placeholder in your own life. You’ll do your job. You’ll attend your Zoom meetings. You’ll fill out your forms and tap your apps and check your likes. But you won’t have agency. You won’t have fingerprints on anything real.

    You’ll be living on autopilot, inside someone else’s system.

    So here’s the choice—and yes, it is a choice: You can be an NPC. Or you can be an Architect.

    The Architect doesn’t react. The Architect designs. They choose discomfort over sedation. They delay gratification. They don’t look for applause—they build systems that outlast feelings, trends, and cheap dopamine tricks.

    Where others scroll, the Architect shapes.
    Where others echo, they invent.
    Where others obey prompts, they write the code.

    Their values aren’t crowdsourced. Their discipline isn’t random. It’s engineered. They are not ruled by algorithm or panic. Their satisfaction comes not from feedback loops, but from the knowledge that they are building something only they could build.

    So yes, this class will ask more of you than typing a prompt and letting the machine do the rest. It will demand thought, effort, revision, frustration, clarity, and eventually—agency.

    If your writing smacks of AI–the kind of polished mediocrity that will lead you down a road of being a functionary or a Non-Player Character, the grade you receive will reflect that sad fact. On the other hand, if your writing is animated by a strong authorial presence, evidence of an Architect, a person who strives for a life of excellence, self-agency, and pride, your grade will reflect that fact as well. 

  • North Star or Snake Oil? The Search for Purpose in the Age of Bro Influencers (college writing assignment)

    North Star or Snake Oil? The Search for Purpose in the Age of Bro Influencers (college writing assignment)

    Many young men today face a crisis of direction. Without clear boundaries, a sense of purpose, or structured models of discipline and development, they are left to navigate a world that often feels chaotic and hollow. Scholars and cultural critics such as Richard Reeves and Scott Galloway have explored this issue, arguing that the absence of a guiding purpose—or “North Star”—leaves many young men drifting in an existential vacuum. In your first paragraph, summarize the key points made by Reeves, Galloway (find essays or videos of your choosing online), or both about this phenomenon and how it reflects a broader social and psychological struggle.

    In your second paragraph, reflect on someone you know—perhaps even yourself—who has experienced the effects of growing up without a clear sense of purpose. Describe how this lack of direction may create a deep hunger for structure, meaning, or identity. Then explain how this hunger can make young men especially susceptible to so-called “Bro Programs” like those promoted by the Liver King or the creators of The Game Changers. Consider how the promise of transformation, strength, and belonging offered by these influencers might seem like solutions, even as they often exploit vulnerability and suspend critical thinking.

  • Toothpaste, Technology, and the Death of the Luddite Dream

    Toothpaste, Technology, and the Death of the Luddite Dream

    A Luddite, in modern dress, is a self-declared purist who swats at technology like it’s a mosquito threatening their sense of self-agency, quality, and craft. They fear contamination—that somehow the glow of a screen dulls the soul, or that a machine’s hand on the process strips the art from the outcome. It’s a noble impulse, maybe even romantic. But let’s be honest: it’s also doomed.

    Technology isn’t an intruder anymore—it’s the furniture. It’s the toothpaste out of the tube, the guest who showed up uninvited and then installed a smart thermostat. You can’t un-invent it. You can’t unplug the century.

    And I, for one, am a fatalist about it. Not the trembling, dystopian kind. Just… resigned. Technology comes in waves—fire, the wheel, the iPhone, and now OpenAI. Each time, we claim it’s the end of humanity, and each time we wake up, still human, just a bit more confused. You can’t fight the tide with a paper umbrella.

    But here’s where things get tricky: we’re not adapting well. Right now, with AI, we’re in the maladaptive toddler stage—poking it, misusing it, letting it do our thinking while we lie to ourselves about “optimization.” We are staring down a communications tool so powerful it could either elevate our cognitive evolution… or turn us all into well-spoken mannequins.

    We are not guaranteed to adapt well. But we have no choice but to try.

    That struggle—to engage with technology without becoming technology, to harness its speed without losing our depth—is now one of the defining human questions. And the truth is: we haven’t even mapped the battlefield yet.

    There will be factions. Teams. Dogmas. Some will preach integration, others withdrawal. Some will demand toolkits and protocols; others will romanticize silence and slowness. We are on the brink of ideological trench warfare—without even knowing what colors the flags are yet.

    What matters now is not just what we use, but how we use it—and who we become in the process.

    Because whether you’re a fatalist, a Luddite, or a dopamine-chasing cyborg, one thing is clear: this isn’t going away.

    So sharpen your tools—or at least your attitude. You’re already in the arena.

  • Why Reading Is the Last Romantic Act

    Why Reading Is the Last Romantic Act


    If you take my Critical Thinking class, let me set expectations up front: I will not stand at the front of the room and lecture you into becoming an intellectual. That’s not how it works. I can’t command you to read. I can’t install curiosity like a software update.

    What I can tell you is this: the default setting is mediocrity. It’s smooth, seductive, and socially acceptable. The world—especially its algorithmic avatars—is built to exploit that setting. Platforms like OpenAI don’t just offer tools; they offer excuses. They whisper: You don’t have to think. Just prompt.

    You’ll get by on it. You’ll write tolerable essays. You might even land a job—something stable and fluorescent-lit with a breakroom fridge. But if you keep outsourcing your critical thinking to machines and your inner life to streaming platforms, you may slowly congeal into a Non-Player Character: a functionally adequate adult with no self-agency, just dopamine hits from cheap tech and cheaper opinions.

    The world needs thinkers, not task-completers.

    And that’s why I push reading—not as an obligation, but as a doorway to a higher mode of existence. Reading changes the texture of your thoughts. It exposes you to complexity you didn’t ask for and patterns of mind you didn’t inherit. But here’s the inconvenient truth: no one can make you read.

    Reading isn’t a commandment. It’s a love affair—and like any love worth having, it’s irrational, wild, and self-chosen. You don’t read because it’s good for you. You read because at some point a book wrecked you—in the best way possible. It made your brain itch, or your chest tighten, or your worldview crack open like an old floorboard.

    And that’s what I want for you. Not because it makes me feel like a good professor, but because if you don’t fall in love with ideas—on the page, in the margins, in someone else’s wild, flawed sentences—you’ll live a life someone else designed for you.

    And you’ll call it freedom.

  • Ozempification and the Death of the Inner Architect

    Ozempification and the Death of the Inner Architect

    Let’s start with this uncomfortable truth: you’re living through a civilization-level rebrand.

    Your world is being reshaped—not gradually, but violently, by algorithms and digital prosthetics designed to make your life easier, faster, smoother… and emptier. The disruption didn’t knock politely. It kicked the damn door in. And now, whether you realize it or not, you’re standing in the debris, trying to figure out what part of your life still belongs to you.

    Take your education. Once upon a time, college was where minds were forged—through long nights, terrible drafts, humiliating feedback, and the occasional breakthrough that made it all worth it. Today? Let’s be honest. Higher ed is starting to look like an AI-driven Mad Libs exercise.

    Some of you are already doing it: you plug in a prompt, paste the results, and hit submit. What you turn in is technically fine—spelled correctly, structurally intact, coherent enough to pass. And your professors? We’re grading these Franken-essays on caffeine and resignation, knowing full well that originality has been replaced by passable mimicry.

    And it’s not just school. Out in the so-called “real world,” companies are churning out bloated, tone-deaf AI memos—soulless prose that reads like it was written by a robot with performance anxiety. Streaming services are pumping out shows written by predictive text. Whole industries are feeding you content that’s technically correct but spiritually dead.

    You are surrounded by polished mediocrity.

    But wait, we’re not just outsourcing our minds—we’re outsourcing our bodies, too. GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic are reshaping what it means to be “disciplined.” No more calorie counting. No more gym humiliation. You don’t change your habits. You inject your progress.

    So what does that make you? You’re becoming someone new: someone we might call Ozempified. A user, not a builder. A reactor, not a responder. A person who runs on borrowed intelligence and pharmaceutical willpower. And it works. You’ll be thinner. You’ll be productive. You’ll even succeed—on paper.

    But not as a human being.

    You risk becoming what the gaming world calls a Non-Player Character (NPC)—a background figure, a functionary, a placeholder in your own life. You’ll do your job. You’ll attend your Zoom meetings. You’ll fill out your forms and tap your apps and check your likes. But you won’t have agency. You won’t have fingerprints on anything real.

    You’ll be living on autopilot, inside someone else’s system.

    So here’s the choice—and yes, it is a choice: You can be an NPC. Or you can be an Architect.

    The Architect doesn’t react. The Architect designs. They choose discomfort over sedation. They delay gratification. They don’t look for applause—they build systems that outlast feelings, trends, and cheap dopamine tricks.

    Where others scroll, the Architect shapes.
    Where others echo, they invent.
    Where others obey prompts, they write the code.

    Their values aren’t crowdsourced. Their discipline isn’t random. It’s engineered. They are not ruled by algorithm or panic. Their satisfaction comes not from feedback loops, but from the knowledge that they are building something only they could build.

    So yes, this class will ask more of you than typing a prompt and letting the machine do the rest. It will demand thought, effort, revision, frustration, clarity, and eventually—agency.

    Because in the age of Ozempification, becoming an Architect isn’t a flex—it’s a survival strategy.

    There is no salvation in a life run on autopilot.

    You’re here. So start building.

  • Boots, Pie, and Nostalgia: Dispatch from Mortimer Farms

    Boots, Pie, and Nostalgia: Dispatch from Mortimer Farms

    Last night we time-traveled to a Norman Rockwell fever dream: a retro barn dance at Mortimer Farms in Dewey-Humboldt, Arizona, where about 500 people—sunburned, denim-clad, and wholly unironically patriotic—gathered to eat, dance, and mainline nostalgia.

    The soundtrack? A whiplash blend of twangy country and 70s rock that made you want to two-step and tailgate at the same time. Dinner was an unapologetic heartland spread: cheeseburgers grilled to smoky perfection, heirloom salad straight from the farm, and homemade blueberry and apple pies so rustic they practically came with a grandmother.

    As I looked around—kids doing cartwheels in the dust, old men tapping their boots in rhythm, teenagers pretending not to enjoy themselves—I realized I hadn’t tasted this much deep-fried Americana since trick-or-treating in San Jose in 1967, pillowcase in hand, chasing sugar highs under suburban streetlights.

    So yes, we took a family portrait. Not just to capture the night, but to memorialize the moment we voluntarily stepped into a live-action postcard, brazen nostalgia and all.

  • When It comes to Swim Briefs the Size of a Hotel Mint, Maybe Opt Out

    When It comes to Swim Briefs the Size of a Hotel Mint, Maybe Opt Out

    Today’s New York Times article, titled “Skimpy Men’s Swimming Briefs Are Making a Splash,” offers a solemn dispatch from the front lines of GLP-1 drugs, but I would guess that men—having exhausted every form of visible self-optimization—are now expressing their Ozempic-enabled slenderness via tiny, Lycra-clad declarations of status. We’re talking male bikinis, or what I like to call the ego sling.

    Apparently, if you’re dropping $18,000 a year to chemically suppress your appetite and shed your humanity one subcutaneous injection at a time, you deserve the privilege of looking like a Bond villain’s pool boy. I suppose this is the endgame: pay to waste away, then wrap what’s left in a luxury logoed banana peel.

    Luxury houses, never ones to miss a chance to monetize body dysmorphia, are now marketing these second-skin briefs not as mere swimwear, but as power statements. To wear them is to say: “I’ve defeated fat, joy, modesty, and comfort in one fell swoop.”

    I’m almost 64. My aspirations remain high—ideally, I’d like to look like a special-ops operator on vacation in Sardinia. But I know my place. I wear boxer-style swim trunks, the cloth of the pragmatic and the semi-dignified. They’re not exciting, but neither is seeing a sun-leathered septuagenarian adjust a spandex slingshot over a suspicious tan line.

    There’s a difference between being aspirational and being delusional. The former means striving for vitality, strength, and energy. The latter means stuffing yourself into a satirical undergarment and pretending you’re 28 with a sponsorship deal.

    To my fellow older men: sculpt your body like it’s your spiritual obligation—but when it comes to swim briefs the size of a hotel mint, maybe opt out. Not every part of youth is worth reliving. Some of it deserves to be left in the chlorine-stained past, right next to Axe body spray and Ed Hardy tank tops.

  • Post-Vacation Penance: A Dietary Manifesto in Four Meals

    Post-Vacation Penance: A Dietary Manifesto in Four Meals

    There’s something bleakly comical about spiraling into despair on vacation—the kind that sets in when you’re no longer tethered to your sacred rituals of productivity, restraint, and the sweet, tight belt of routine. Out here, in this plush exile of self-indulgence, I’ve become a man who stares into a plate of hotel hash browns and thinks, This ends when I get home.

    And so, to soothe the spiritual rot that sets in after too many mornings without my normal suffering, I’ve started building a plan—a post-vacation austerity program disguised as wellness.

    First, the coffee. I will reclaim my morning dignity with the $89 Ninja 12-cup glass carafe coffee maker. No plastic pod disgrace. I will grind dark roast beans with the solemnity of a monk at matins, using my burr grinder like a weapon forged for righteousness.

    Breakfast will not be an act of contrition but one of redemption: buckwheat groats or steel-cut oats, topped with protein powder, berries, walnuts, and chia seeds—like an edible TED Talk on anti-inflammation.

    Lunch will be a spartan affair: arugula so bitter it judges you, and tofu braised until it forgets it was once bland. Dressing? A holy trinity of balsamic vinegar, spicy mustard, and nutritional yeast. This is not food—it’s penance with flavor.

    Afternoon snack? Greek yogurt, protein powder, and berries. The combination is reliable, unexciting, and doctrinally correct.

    Dinner is where things get unhinged in a good way. I will reach for my Le Creuset Dutch oven (color: colonial blue, attitude: smug) and conjure quinoa with zucchini, fire-roasted tomatoes, nutritional yeast, and a whisper of coconut milk. I will mix in braised tofu until the pan hisses in agreement.

    And yes, there will be protein pancakes, crafted from oats, baking powder, protein powder, eggs (or applesauce, if I’m feeling woke), yogurt, cinnamon, honey, chia seeds, and vanilla extract. The batter will feel like spackle. The result will feel like victory.

    Exercise? Four days of kettlebells instead of five—because joints are finite, and ego is not a medical plan. On my “off” days, I’ll alternate between the exercise bike and power-flow yoga, both of which will mock me in their own way.

    Diet soda? Dead to me. I’ve seen what happens when it wins: a family friend guzzles it by the gallon, her health circling the drain like a cautionary fable. I will swap it out for sparkling water and the moral superiority it confers.

    This is not about orthorexia or self-hate disguised as wellness. This is about escaping confusion, that modern affliction where “healthy” means both everything and nothing. I will eat four times a day. I will consume 160 grams of protein. I will not exceed 2,400 calories. I will fight entropy with routine, bloat with balance, and preserve the image of myself I still—somehow—believe is possible.