Cinemorphosis

Blog

  • Clean Teeth and the Lost Art of Touch

    Clean Teeth and the Lost Art of Touch

    Before my teeth cleaning this morning, I found myself venting to the office manager about the days when a cleaning was so gentle you could practically nap through it, instead of today’s ultrasonic assault that feels like you’re being interrogated by NASA hardware. My hygienist overheard me and promised to go old-school: mostly hand tools, reserving the high-frequency torture wand for the bottom front teeth, those stubborn little stalactites of tartar that laugh in the face of manual labor.

    The result was 38 minutes of blissful nostalgia—quiet, precise, almost tender. And while my mouth was being cleaned, my ears took a trip back to childhood. Through the thin partition I could hear my dentist chatting with a few middle-aged men as he worked on their crowns—no drill whine, just the low murmur of camaraderie. They talked about sports, camping trips, family vacations, and cars in the same unhurried rhythm I remembered from the 1960s barbershops of my youth.

    Back then, my father would get a hot towel and a straight-razor shave while I sat on the cracked vinyl chair, inhaling the comforting cocktail of menthol, talc, and motor oil drifting in from the mechanic’s next door. I’d chew my complimentary piece of Bazooka bubblegum and leaf through Mad Magazine while the barber’s razor sang against my father’s stubble. The air was thick with aftershave, laughter, and unspoken faith in the goodness of ordinary life.

    That’s what I felt again this morning—a fleeting return to a world where work was done by hand, talk was unhurried, and trust was the background hum. My teeth may be cleaner, but what really got polished was my nostalgia for human touch in an age of whirring machines.

  • Why Modern Dentistry Is More Barbaric Than Ever

    Why Modern Dentistry Is More Barbaric Than Ever

    Modern dentistry has gotten so bad that I’m already resentful about my 10 a.m. teeth cleaning, which is coming up in about three hours. By the time I get home from the dental clinic and swing a kettlebell, it’ll be past eleven, and I’ll be more drained from the dentist’s chair than from deadlifts. What used to be a minor inconvenience—like getting an oil change—has mutated into something I actively dread.

    About three years ago, I noticed the shift. My hygienists are top-notch: precise, cheerful, and merciless. They’ve traded their humble hand tools for futuristic contraptions that sound like dental drones and feel like punishment. Since COVID, the industry has embraced high-frequency ultrasonic and piezoelectric scalers that vibrate at tens of thousands of cycles per second—tiny jackhammers pulverizing tartar with surgical precision and medieval sadism. Add to that the air-polishing jets that blast your gums with baking soda dust, the industrial-strength suction roaring in your ear, and the chemical rinses that sting like mouthwash brewed in hell, and you’ve got yourself an ordeal.

    Once upon a time, a cleaning was almost meditative—forty minutes of harmless scraping and daydreaming under the warm hum of fluorescent lights. Now it’s an endurance sport in which I try to appear stoic, pretending the ultrasonic harpoon digging into my gumline is just “a mild tickle.” What was once a routine tune-up has become a high-tech excavation—cleaner, faster, and infinitely more barbaric.

    It’s one of those perverse cases where technological progress has made the experience worse. Dentistry has gone digital, and comfort has gone extinct. Here’s hoping I can channel this resentment into a rage-fueled kettlebell session worthy of the gods of molar misery.

  • Among the Sprout People

    Among the Sprout People

    I’ve been a bodybuilder since 1974, which means I’ve spent half a century haunting health food stores. Not the modern corporate ones with sterile aisles and soothing playlists, but the old-school mom-and-pop operations run by barefoot idealists and tense, caffeine-free librarians who smelled faintly of patchouli and moral superiority.

    Those stores had a bouquet unlike any other—a humid cloud of brewer’s yeast, carob dust, desiccated liver tablets, toasted wheat germ, and stale bran, all marinated in tea tree oil and valerian root. Mix it together and you got the unmistakable scent of loneliness and intestinal distress.

    The shelves sagged with mimeographed books from obscure presses, all preaching salvation through sprouts, tofu, and lentils. Reading them, you understood the subtext: renounce pleasure, annoy everyone, and either die alone or join a small cult where everyone smells faintly of alfalfa and martyrdom.

    In the back corner sat the “Alternative Reading” section—dog-eared manifestos about conspiracies, telepathy, UFOs, and energy vortices. These weren’t health stores; they were secular monasteries for the over-enlightened and under-medicated.

    Most shoppers weren’t buying vitamins—they were buying deliverance. They came searching for answers: to their chronic bloating, their failed relationships, their career detours, their lingering sense that the world had been designed without them in mind. They were pilgrims in pursuit of absolutes, desperate to turn meaninglessness into a smoothie.

    I often tried to avoid eye contact. The vibes were heavy, like wet hemp. They looked at me—broad shoulders, protein powder in hand—and saw a defector. In their eyes, I wasn’t a fellow seeker; I was a pragmatic muscle robot looking for more bioavailable amino acids. They, meanwhile, communed with chlorophyll and cosmic vibrations.

    In that ecosystem, I was the natural enemy: a bodybuilder. My very existence refuted their gospel. My muscles were proof of a material world they’d spent decades trying to transcend through spirulina and good intentions.

    These days, I skip the incense and buy my protein online. It’s efficient, impersonal, and utterly free of judgment—mine or theirs. They can keep chasing transcendence through powdered algae; I’ll settle for FedEx and 160 grams of protein a day. Somewhere, they’re still sniffing valerian root and waiting for the universe to text them back.

  • Sam Harris Has Tea with a Christian Nationalist

    Sam Harris Has Tea with a Christian Nationalist

    Sam Harris has always been a curious kind of mystic—one who believes in meditation, not miracles; consciousness, not creeds. He seeks transcendence without theology, a spiritual depth unburdened by institutional clutter. Religion, he concedes, sometimes gestures toward the same inner world he explores, but it arrives dragging a freight train of dogma, myth, and moral detritus.

    That distaste for organized faith didn’t stop Harris from sitting down with one of its most unyielding champions: Doug Wilson, a self-described “Christian nationalist” pastor out of Moscow, Idaho. Wilson is the sort of man who makes the Bible sound less like scripture and more like federal law. He calls himself a scriptural absolutist, affirms the Apostles’ Creed word for word, believes the earth is 6,000 years old, defends the Old Testament’s death penalties for Sabbath violators, and dreams of a Reformed Presbyterian theocracy—America governed by divine fiat and fossilized certainty.

    When Wilson argued that moral relativism was America’s undoing, Harris did not interrupt. The pastor warned that tolerance would rot the nation from within—imagining a slippery slope from pluralism to polygamy, from open borders to moral anarchy. Harris listened quietly, allowing Wilson to build his own cathedral of logic brick by brittle brick.

    Throughout the conversation, Harris stayed composed, probing only occasionally—asking about the justice of eternal damnation, or how exactly divine law handles marriage beyond the traditional mold. His restraint was surgical. He wasn’t there to score points; he was there to let the argument reveal itself.

    At one point, Wilson lamented that secular institutions had failed us. Oddly, Harris seemed to nod—at least internally. They shared a disappointment in modernity’s moral anemia, though their prescriptions could not be more opposed. Harris seeks meaning through reason and mindfulness; Wilson seeks it through submission and authority.

    By the end, no one converted anyone. Harris didn’t embrace theocracy, and Wilson didn’t abandon it. But something subtler occurred: civility. Wilson, almost startled, thanked Harris for his respect and good manners—an acknowledgment that such conversations usually end in shouting.

    So what did Harris accomplish? He held a mirror to theocratic ambition without breaking it. By letting Wilson speak freely, he illuminated the growing movement that longs for a Christianized state—a homegrown version of moral authoritarianism dressed as righteousness. Harris didn’t win an argument; he revealed the landscape of the battlefield.

  • Brushing His Teeth in Purgatory

    Brushing His Teeth in Purgatory

    Yesterday, I ran into B—a colleague and friend of thirty years—in the faculty bathroom. He stood at the sink, looking tiny in an oversized blue oxford and baggy black pleated slacks, brushing his teeth with grim determination, the way a soldier might polish his boots before a hopeless battle. His reflection wore a bloodhound’s face: drooping eyes, sagging mouth, the look of someone who’d run out of surprises.

    We exchanged small talk about our students, about AI, about how much the classroom had changed. His voice was thin, almost apologetic.
    “They’ve checked out,” he said. “They use AI so much, they’ve just… checked out.”

    I tried to commiserate, mentioning how quickly the culture had shifted since the first wave of ChatGPT essays three years ago. But he didn’t answer. He rinsed, spat, and walked out without another word—already halfway gone.

    It isn’t just B. My younger colleagues say the same thing. Even my wife, who teaches writing in middle school, tells me her students have that same vacant look. Everyone seems ghosted by their own profession, still performing the motions of care while quietly surrendering.

    The image that won’t leave me is B—graying, stooped, and haloed in the pitiless glow of the faculty bathroom’s fluorescent lights—scrubbing his molars like an inmate serving life. He looked less like a man starting his day than one serving time in it, counting down to a retirement that recedes faster than his gumline.

  • Have I Gone Overboard with My Protein Obsession?

    Have I Gone Overboard with My Protein Obsession?

    Five nights ago, I dreamed I was trapped at a houseboat party. The decks heaved with music and laughter; people swayed, bottles clinked, lights shimmered across the water. Somewhere between the bass thump and the spray of cheap champagne, I decided it was time to save everyone. I climbed onto a railing and began lecturing on the virtues of a high-protein diet.

    The crowd ignored me. The more I shouted about the glory of amino acids, the louder the DJ turned the volume. My words scattered across the lake like crumbs for fish. I tried compromise—lowering the daily requirement from 200 grams to 120—but no one cared. Eventually, hoarse and defeated, I realized I’d become a mad prophet of whey protein, screaming into the void. When I woke, I asked myself the obvious question: Had I gone overboard on my protein obsession?

    That question lingered until this morning, when I read Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall’s Food Intelligence: Protein, the “Only True Nutrient.” They argue that our worship of protein is centuries old. In 1853, a Parisian newspaper mocked vegetarians as gaunt weaklings too frail to walk out of a restaurant unaided. A hundred years later, Arnold’s gospel of 250 grams a day turned protein into a civic duty for gym rats. Now, with Google searches and supplement sales hitting record highs—an industry worth $28 billion—protein has become both religion and racket. Everyone preaching its holiness seems to be selling tubs of it.

    Protein has always been marketed as a competitive edge: animal protein supposedly bestows power, plant protein supposedly punishes you with mediocrity. Yet Belluz and Hall dismantle this myth. Plant eaters, they write, can easily get all essential amino acids from a diverse diet—no powders, no “meat extract,” no panic required.

    Even more humbling, they admit that no one actually knows the optimal daily dose. Our bodies, they say, have a built-in governor called “protein leverage,” which drives us to crave roughly what we need. Too little protein and we lose muscle, which shortens life. Too much—especially at the expense of a balanced diet—and we hasten the same end. Somewhere between the extremes lies the sweet spot, but it’s not a round number you can print on a supplement label.

    That answer frustrated me. I like numbers. I like goals. “More” has always felt safer than “enough.” Reading their chapter, I remembered the summer of 1978, when I was sixteen and backstage with Mr. Universe Mike Mentzer before his posing exhibition set to 2001: A Space Odyssey. I asked how much protein he ate. “About a hundred grams,” he said, barely looking up from his shake. I was stunned. Arnold had taught us to eat at least 250.

    “Why not more?” I asked. Mentzer shrugged. “It’ll just make you fat.” Then, with equal candor, he mentioned his steroid stack—Deca-Durabolin included. Even then I could tell: genetics, not shakes, were the true miracle. At five-foot-eight and 225 pounds, he was carved from marble, but it was marble under pressure. He died of heart failure at 49, just five miles from where I live.

    Now I’m 64, taking in 180 grams a day and wondering if I’ve turned protein into a creed. I’m strong for my age but heavier than I’d like. Maybe the excess that built my muscle also built my burden. That houseboat dream feels less like absurdity and more like warning. It’s time to stop shouting about protein and start listening—to appetite, to reason, and maybe to the quiet voice reminding me that balance, not bulking, is the real art form.

  • The Laptop That Refuses to Die

    The Laptop That Refuses to Die

    I never imagined my $3,000 Acer gaming laptop—armed with an RTX 2080 and given to me as a review model back in 2019—would still be chugging along like a caffeinated mule nearly seven years later. It was supposed to be a flashy fling, not a long-term relationship. Yet here we are, the old beast still running my digital life as a home desktop replacement, while newer machines preen on YouTube reviews like showroom models whispering, “You deserve better.”

    Recently, I started the ritual again—tech research as performance art. I even discovered a comment I’d left a year ago under a Mac Mini review, declaring with absolute conviction that it would be my next computer. A year later, I’m still typing this on the Acer. Why? Because the damn thing refuses to die. Sure, I’m not exactly rendering Pixar films here; the most demanding task I throw at it is uploading Nikon footage. But still—seven years? That’s geriatric in tech years.

    Then came the unnerving thought: what if this laptop outlives my enthusiasm? What if it just… keeps working? The fantasy of upgrading evaporates under the weight of practicalities—transferring files, wrestling with two-step verification, updating passwords, the tedium of digital reincarnation. Let’s be honest: the desire for a “new system” might be less about performance and more about the dopamine of novelty.

    A darker impulse lurks beneath: part of me wants the Acer to fail, to give me permission to move on. But it won’t. It boots up every morning like a loyal mutt, eager to serve. And really—what are the odds that a new Mac Mini or Asus A18 Ryzen 7 would deliver another seven trouble-free years? Slim to none. So, I’m waiting. Not quite ready to buy, not quite ready to let go. Maybe the pursuit of new tech is its own kind of seduction—the chase more intoxicating than the catch.

  • I Am the Last Hands-Free Professor

    I Am the Last Hands-Free Professor

    The twins are home today—the high school’s closed for Veterans Day while my college closes for it tomorrow—so I left the house fifteen minutes early, a small luxury that spared me the traffic gauntlet. As I crossed campus, I spotted two young professors striding toward the Science Building. They could have been clones: mid-thirties, tall, lean, the same curated beard, and that monochrome uniform of urban intellect—black derby jackets, black jeans, black everything. It was as if an algorithm had dressed them.

    Each hand was occupied. Their left hands dangled a thermos and a lunch case like matching luggage; their right hands gripped identical strapped tech bags, no doubt cradling laptops and a faint sense of self-importance. Watching their synchronized march, I realized something about myself. After thirty-five years of teaching, I’ve never once looked professorial. My fatal flaw? Free hands. I move from car to office unburdened, thanks to my trusty backpack—functional, roomy, and entirely devoid of aesthetic ambition. It says less “professor” than “Wyoming park ranger with tenure.” But practicality has its own dignity.

    Until this morning, I’d never questioned my need to be unencumbered. Why not juggle a thermos, lunch case, and tech bag like everyone else? The answer reached back decades—to the zoo trips of childhood, when my mother insisted I bring a sweater “just in case.” I never needed it. I only needed freedom. That sweater haunted every outing, tied around my waist, falling in the dirt, collecting dust like a symbol of parental over-preparation. My whole day was spent managing it. Somewhere between those early years and now, the sweater evolved into the backpack—my lifelong protest against needless carrying.

    I could, I suppose, upgrade to a minimalist tech-sleek backpack that would make me blend in with the black-jacket brigade. But I won’t. I’ve made peace with my pack. It’s my declaration of independence—my refusal to let adulthood turn into perpetual sweater management.

  • Bad But Worth It? De-skilling in the Age of AI (college essay prompt)

    Bad But Worth It? De-skilling in the Age of AI (college essay prompt)

    AI is now deeply embedded in business, the arts, and education. We use it to write, edit, translate, summarize, and brainstorm. This raises a central question: when does AI meaningfully extend our abilities, and when does it quietly erode them?

    In “The Age of De-Skilling,” Kwame Anthony Appiah argues that not all de-skilling is equal. Some forms are corrosive and hollow us out; some are “bad but worth it” because the benefits outweigh the loss; some are so destructive that no benefit can redeem them. In that framework, AI becomes most interesting when we talk about strategic de-skilling: deliberately off-loading certain tasks to machines so we can focus on deeper, higher-level work.

    Write a 1,700-word argumentative essay in which you defend, refute, or complicate the claim that not all dependence on AI is harmful. Take a clear position on whether AI can function as a “bad but worth it” form of de-skilling that frees us for more meaningful thinking—or whether, in practice, it mostly dulls our edge and trains us into passivity.

    Your essay must:

    • Engage directly with Appiah’s concepts of corrosive vs. “bad but worth it” de-skilling.
    • Distinguish between lazy dependence on AI and deliberate collaboration with it.
    • Include a counterargument–rebuttal section that uses at least one example of what we might call Ozempification—people becoming less agents and more “users” of systems. You may draw this example from one or more of the following Black Mirror episodes: “Joan Is Awful,” “Nosedive,” or “Smithereens.”
    • Use at least three sources in MLA format, including Appiah and at least one Black Mirror episode.

    For your supporting paragraphs, you might consider:

    • Cognitive off-loading as optimization
    • Human–AI collaboration in creative or academic work
    • Ethical limits of automation
    • How AI is redefining what counts as “skill”

    Your goal is to show nuanced critical thinking about AI’s role in human skill development. Don’t just declare AI good or bad; use Appiah’s framework to examine when AI’s shortcuts lead to degradation—and when, if used wisely, they might lead to liberation.

    3 building-block paragraph assignments

    1. Concept Paragraph: Explaining Appiah’s De-Skilling Framework

    Assignment:
     Write one well-developed paragraph (8–10 sentences) in which you explain Kwame Anthony Appiah’s distinctions among corrosive de-skilling, “bad but worth it” de-skilling, and de-skilling that is so destructive no benefit can justify it.

    • Use at least one short, embedded quotation from Appiah.
    • Paraphrase his ideas in your own words and clarify the differences between the three categories.
    • End the paragraph by briefly suggesting how AI might fit into one of these categories (without fully arguing your position yet).

    Your goal is to show that you understand Appiah’s framework clearly enough to use it later as the backbone of an argument.

    2. Definition Paragraph: Lazy Dependence vs. Deliberate Collaboration

    Assignment:
     Write one paragraph in which you define and contrast lazy dependence on AI and deliberate collaboration with AI in your own words.

    • Begin with a clear topic sentence that sets up the contrast.
    • Give at least one concrete example of “lazy dependence” (for instance, using AI to dodge thinking, reading, or drafting altogether).
    • Give at least one concrete example of “deliberate collaboration” (for instance, using AI to brainstorm options, check clarity, or off-load repetitive tasks while you still make the key decisions).
    • End the paragraph with a sentence explaining which of these two modes you think is more common among students right now—and why.

    This paragraph will later function as a “conceptual lens” for your body paragraphs.

    3. Counterargument Paragraph: Ozempification and Black Mirror

    Assignment:
     After watching one of the assigned Black Mirror episodes (“Joan Is Awful,” “Nosedive,” or “Smithereens”), write one counterargument paragraph that challenges the optimistic idea of “strategic de-skilling.”

    • Briefly describe a key moment or character from the episode that illustrates Ozempification—a person becoming more of a “user” of a system than an agent of their own life.
    • Explain how this example suggests that dependence on powerful systems (platforms, algorithms, or AI-like tools) can erode self-agency and critical thinking rather than free us.
    • End by posing a difficult question your eventual essay will need to answer—for example: If it’s so easy to slide from strategic use to dependence, can we really trust ourselves with AI?

    Later, you’ll rebut this paragraph in the full essay, but here your job is to make the counterargument as strong and persuasive as you can.

  • The Outrage Economy: How Moral Fury Became America’s Favorite Spectator Sport (college essay prompt)

    The Outrage Economy: How Moral Fury Became America’s Favorite Spectator Sport (college essay prompt)

    In a 1,700-word argumentative essay, analyze how the Netflix docuseries Mr. McMahon and Jonathan Haidt’s essay “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid” explore the rise of moral outrage as a form of entertainment, social currency, and group belonging. To what extent do these works suggest that the pursuit of outrage has eroded our ability to think critically and engage in good-faith dialogue?

    Your essay should take a clear position on whether Haidt and Mr. McMahon portray moral outrage as a symptom of cultural decay, a profitable spectacle, or a distorted form of moral engagement—and whether they overstate or accurately diagnose its impact on public reason. Support your argument with specific examples and analysis from both sources.

    Be sure to include a counterargument and rebuttal section, and a Works Cited page in MLA format with at least three sources.