Cinemorphosis

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  • The ChatGPT-Book: My Dream Machine in a World of Wearable Nonsense

    The ChatGPT-Book: My Dream Machine in a World of Wearable Nonsense

    I loathe smartphones. They’re tiny, slippery surveillance rectangles masquerading as tools of liberation. Typing on one feels like threading a needle while wearing oven mitts. My fingers bungle every attempt at precision, the autocorrect becomes a co-author I never hired, and the screen is so small I have to squint like I’m decoding Morse code through a peephole. Tablets aren’t much better—just larger slabs of compromise.

    Give me a mechanical keyboard, a desktop tower that hums with purpose, and twin 27-inch monitors beaming side by side like architectural blueprints of clarity. That’s how I commune with ChatGPT. I need real estate. I want to see the thinking unfold, not peer at it like a medieval monk examining a parchment shard.

    So when one of my students whipped out her phone, opened the ChatGPT app, and began speaking to it like it was her digital therapist, I nodded politely. But inside, I was muttering, “Not for me.” I’ve lived long enough to know that I don’t acclimate well to anything that fits in a jeans pocket.

    That’s why Matteo Wong’s article, “OpenAI’s Ambitions Just Became Crystal Clear,” caught my eye. Apparently, Sam Altman has teamed up with Jony Ive—the high priest of sleekness and the ghost behind Apple’s glory days—to sink $5 billion into building a “family of devices” for ChatGPT. Presumably, these will be as smooth, sexy, and addictive as the iPhone once was before it became a dopamine drip and digital leash.

    Honestly? It makes sense. In the last year, my ChatGPT use has skyrocketed, while my interaction with other platforms has withered. I now use it to write, research, plan, edit, make weight-management meal plans, and occasionally psychoanalyze myself. If there were a single device designed to serve as a “mother hub”—a central console for creativity, productivity, and digital errands—I’d buy it. But not if it’s shaped like a lapel pin. Not if it whispers in my ear like some clingy AI sprite. I don’t want a neural appendage or a mind tickler. I want a screen.

    What I’m hoping for is a ChatGPT-Book: something like a Chromebook, but with real writing DNA. A device with its own operating system that consolidates browser tabs, writing apps, and research tools. A no-nonsense, 14-inch-and-up display where I can visualize my creative process, not swipe through it.

    We all learn and create differently in this carnival of overstimulation we call the Information Age. I imagine Altman and Ive know that—and will deliver a suite of devices for different brains and temperaments. Mine just happens to want clarity, not minimalism masquerading as genius.

    Wong’s piece doesn’t surprise or shock me. It’s just the same old Silicon Valley gospel: dominate or be buried. Apple ate BlackBerry. Facebook devoured MySpace. And MySpace? It’s now a dusty relic in the basement of internet history—huddled next to beta tapes, 8-tracks, and other nostalgia-laced tech corpses.

    If ChatGPT gets its own device and redefines how we interact with the web, well… chalk it up to evolution. But for the love of all that’s analog—give me a keyboard, a screen, and some elbow room.

  • The Sundays Can’t Come Back—They Never Wanted to Be Here

    The Sundays Can’t Come Back—They Never Wanted to Be Here

    I estimate there are maybe 50,000 diehard fans of The Sundays left on Earth—middle-aged romantics who imprinted on their music in their twenties like baby ducks and have carried that delicate soundscape in their bones ever since. These are the ones still haunting Reddit threads and aging fan forums, half-pleading, half-praying for Harriet Wheeler and David Gavurin to reemerge from their English countryside exile and record something—anything—before they fully dissolve into myth.

    I count myself among them. I think “You’re Not the Only One I Know” is the most beautiful song ever written, full stop. And yes, I have complicated feelings about its sudden afterlife on TikTok. On one hand, I’m glad new ears are discovering it. On the other, I want to slam the door and shout, “Get off my lawn—it’s my song.” Like any relic of private beauty, it feels stolen once it trends.

    But here’s the thing: The Sundays aren’t coming back. And they shouldn’t. Their music is a love letter to solitude. It’s woven from the threads of retreat, quiet heartbreak, and the refusal to participate in the world’s noisy charade. Every line aches with the voice of someone who’d rather be home. A comeback would be a contradiction—like resurrecting Greta Garbo to guest on a reality show. Their brilliance was their withdrawal.

    Take “You’re Not the Only One I Know”—the narrator, calmly stationed in a chair, shooing people away like pigeons. Or “Here’s Where the Story Ends,” where every attempt at connection curdles in the air. Or “My Finest Hour,” which ends not in triumph but in a gentle surrender to domestic retreat. These aren’t anthems for a reunion tour. They’re hymns of hibernation.

    The Sundays were never built for comebacks. Their art was a form of aesthetic convalescence, a music of shy resilience. Their narrators, like the band itself, are Edward Scissorhands types—fragile, inward, best left unbothered in their Victorian turret. If they returned, they wouldn’t be The Sundays. They’d be Tuesday Afternoon.

  • Hungerphoria: Finding Comfort in the Empty Stomach

    Hungerphoria: Finding Comfort in the Empty Stomach

    Let’s get something straight: my weight-loss quest isn’t about vanity. I’m not trying to become the next shirtless fitness guru hawking collagen peptides to the dopamine-addled masses on Instagram. No, this is about survival—mental and physical, which, despite popular delusion, are not separate departments. They’re a single, tangled mess of neurons and cravings, and if one goes down, the whole system buckles.

    So, I’ve been on a high-protein, calorie-restricted diet for five weeks (15 pounds lost so far). Not the sexy kind with green smoothies and acai bowls—this is grim, disciplined, macro-tracked warfare. And yet something strange and glorious is happening: my brain is beginning to like it.

    Case in point: I used to get jittery before class, pacing my office like a caged animal and convincing myself I needed a protein bar or an apple just to face a room of disinterested freshmen. But lately? I stroll in on an empty stomach like a monk walking into a Zen garden. The hunger is there, sure, but it doesn’t bark anymore. It purrs.

    Last night, same story. Three hours after dinner, the belly murmured—but instead of scrambling for almonds or scanning the fridge for peanut butter-oatmeal “protein” balls, I smiled. That emptiness didn’t feel like punishment. It felt like progress. A signal. A secret handshake from my metabolism saying, “We’re doing it. Keep going.”

    Which brings me to what I’m now calling Hungerphoria.

    Let’s define it properly, shall we?

    Hungerphoria is the paradoxical joy one feels in the disciplined embrace of hunger—a fleeting but addictive high that replaces food anxiety with a sense of mastery and serenity. Rather than viewing hunger as a threat or an emergency, the hungerphoric individual interprets the growl of an empty stomach as applause from the body’s metabolic engine. It’s not deprivation; it’s affirmation. Hungerphoria turns a late-night craving into a badge of progress, a quiet reminder that transformation is happening invisibly, molecule by molecule. Like the runner’s high or the monk’s calm, hungerphoria isn’t about denial—it’s about the subtle euphoria of restraint, the mental alchemy of converting appetite into purpose.

    Did I stumble onto this like a weary gold miner striking the motherlode? Maybe. Should I start selling merch—Hungerphoria hats, mugs, crop tops? Tempting. Should I become a lifestyle influencer preaching the gospel of the empty belly? Possibly.

    But then a voice in my head, the responsible one who still wears pants with belt loops, whispers: “Easy, tiger. Lose another thirty. Keep it off for a year. Then maybe you can start printing t-shirts.”

  • The Coldplay Apocalypse: Notes from a Smoothie-Drinking Future

    The Coldplay Apocalypse: Notes from a Smoothie-Drinking Future

    Welcome to the future—where the algorithm reigns, identity is a curated filter pack, and dystopia arrives not with a boot to the face but a wellness app and a matching pair of $900 headphones that murmur Coldplay into your skull at just the right serotonin-laced frequency.

    We will all look like vaguely reprocessed versions of Salma Hayek or Brad Pitt—digitally airbrushed to remove all imperfections but retain just enough “authenticity” to keep our neuroses in play. Our playlists will be algorithmically optimized to sound like Coldplay mated with spa music and decided never to take risks again.

    We’ll wear identical headphones—sleek, matte, noise-canceling monuments to our collective disinterest in one another. Not to be rude. Just too evolved to engage. Every journal entry we write will be AI-assisted, reading like the bastard child of Brené Brown and ChatGPT: reflective, sincere, and soul-crushingly uniform.

    Our influencers? They’ll all look the same too—gender-fluid, lightly medicated, with just enough charisma to sell you an oat milk subscription while quoting Kierkegaard. Politics, entertainment, mental health, and skincare will be served up on the same TikTok platter, narrated by someone who once dated a crypto founder and now podcasts about trauma.

    Three times a day, we’ll sip our civilization smoothie: a beige sludge of cricket protein, creatine, nootropic fibers, and a lightly psychoactive GLP-1 variant that keeps hunger, sadness, and ambition at bay. It’s not a meal; it’s a contract with the status quo. We’ll all wear identical sweat-wicking athleisure in soothing desert neutrals, paired with orthopedic sneakers in punchy tech-startup orange.

    We’ll all “take breaks from social media” at the same approved hour—between 5 and 6 p.m.—so we can “reconnect with the analog world” by staring at a sunset long enough to photograph it and post our profound revelations online at 6:01.

    Nobody will want children, because who wants to drag a baby into a climate-controlled apartment where the rent is half your nervous system? Marriage? A relic of a time when humans still believed in eye contact. Romances will be managed by chatbots programmed to simulate caring without requiring reciprocation. You’ll tell the app your love language, it’ll write your messages, and your partner’s app will do the same. Everyone’s emotionally satisfied, no one’s truly known.

    And vacations? Pure fiction. Deepfakes will show us in Bali, Tuscany, or the moon—beaming with digital joy, sipping pixelated espresso. Real travel is for the ultra-rich and the deluded.

    As for existential despair? Doesn’t exist anymore. Our moods will be finely tuned by micro-dosed pharmacology and AI-generated affirmations. No more late-night crises or 3 a.m. sobbing into a pillow. Just an endless, gentle hum of stabilized contentment—forever.

  • Deepfakes and Detentions: My Career as an Unwilling Digital Cop

    Deepfakes and Detentions: My Career as an Unwilling Digital Cop

    Yesterday, in the fluorescent glow of my classroom, I broke the fourth wall with my college students. We weren’t talking about comma splices or rhetorical appeals—we were talking about AI and cheating, which is to say, the slow erosion of trust in education, digitized and streamed in real time.

    I told them, point blank: every time I design an assignment that I believe is AI-resistant, some clever student will run it through an AI backchannel and produce a counterfeit good polished enough to win a Pulitzer.

    Take my latest noble attempt at authenticity: an interview-based paragraph. I assign them seven thoughtful questions. They’re supposed to talk to someone they know who struggles with weight management—an honest, human exchange that becomes the basis for their introduction. A few will do it properly, bless their analog souls. But others? They’ll summon a fictional character from the ChatGPT multiverse, conduct a fake interview, and then outsource the writing to the very bot that cooked up their imaginary source.

    At this point, I could put on my authoritarian costume—Digital Police cap, badge, mirrored shades—and demand proof: “Upload an audio or video clip of your interview to Canvas.” I imagine myself pounding my chest like a TSA agent catching a contraband shampoo bottle. Academic integrity: enforced!

    Wrong.

    They’ll serve me a deepfake. A synthetic voice, a synthetic face, synthetic sincerity. I’ll counter with new tech armor, and they’ll leapfrog it with another trick, and on and on it goes—an infinite arms race in the valley of uncanny computation.

    So I told them: “This isn’t why I became a teacher. I’m not here to play narc in a dystopian techno-thriller. I’ll make this class as compelling as I can. I’ll appeal to your intellect, your curiosity, your hunger to be more than a prompt-fed husk. But I’m not going to turn into a surveillance drone just to catch you cheating.”

    They stared back at me—quiet, still, alert. Not scrolling. Not glazed over. I had them. Because when we talk about AI, the room gets cold. They sense it. That creeping thing, coming not just for grades but for jobs, relationships, dreams—for the very idea of effort. And in that moment, we were on the same sinking ship, looking out at the rising tide.

  • Today Was the Day My College Writing Class Woke Up

    Today Was the Day My College Writing Class Woke Up

    Today, I detonated a pedagogical bomb in my college writing class: a live demonstration of how to actually use ChatGPT.

    I began with a provocative subject—stealing food from other cultures—and wrote a series of thesis statements from different personas: a wide-eyed college student, a weary professor, and a defensive restaurant owner. Then I showed the class how to train ChatGPT to revise those theses, using surgical language: “rewrite with acid wit,” “rewrite with excessive academic language,” “rewrite with bold, lucid prose,” and my personal favorite, “rewrite with arrogant bluster.”

    The reaction was instant. One student literally gasped: “Oh my God! There’s no flowery AI-speak!”

    “Of course not,” I said. “Because I trained it. ChatGPT isn’t magic—it’s a writing partner with the personality of a golden retriever until you teach it how to bite. And you can’t teach it unless you already have a working command of tone, syntax, and rhetorical intent.”

    Then I gave them this analogy: “Imagine I’m out of shape. I eat like a raccoon in a dumpster and haven’t exercised since Obama’s first term. Then I walk into the ChatGPT Fashion Store and buy a $3,000 suit. Guess what? I still look like crap. Why? Because ChatGPT can’t polish turds.”

    Laughter, nods, lightbulbs going off.

    “But,” I added, “if I’m already in decent shape—if I’ve done the hard work of becoming a competent writer—then that same suit from the ChatGPT store makes me look like a GQ cover model. You have to bring something to the mirror first.”

    Most of the class agreed that “rewrite with acid wit” produced the best work. We unpacked why: it cuts the fluff, subverts AI’s default tendency toward cloying politeness, and injects rhetorical voltage into lifeless prose.

    For once, they weren’t just listening—they were riveted. Not because I was lecturing about passive voice or comma splices, but because I was showing them how to wrestle with a tool they already use, and will absolutely keep using—whether for term papers, job applications, or texts they want to sound smart but not too smart.

    By the end, they were writing like editors, not customers. Next week, we do the same drill—but with counterarguments and rebuttals. And yes, ChatGPT will be coming to class.

  • 700 Calories or Bust: The Cardio Ultimatum

    700 Calories or Bust: The Cardio Ultimatum

    Every time I saddle up on the Schwinn Airdyne for my daily hour of self-inflicted cardio torment, I don’t just ride—I perform. My mission? Burn 720 calories in 60 minutes. My method? A particularly deranged form of mental gamification I call Suffering-as-Spectacle Syndrome—the belief that my private workout is being broadcast live to a breathless nation, complete with commentary by Jim McKay and Howard Cosell.

    In my mind’s eye, the camera pans across a roaring stadium. A chyron flashes: “BREAKING: McMahon Must Hit 700 Calories to Avert National Crisis.” Jim McKay, with his signature gravitas, informs viewers that if I fail to meet my target, the U.S. economy will spiral into recession, gas prices will surge to $14 a gallon, and toilet paper will vanish from store shelves once again. The stakes are ludicrous. And completely imaginary. But they work.

    By the 50-minute mark, drenched in sweat and gritting my teeth through lactic-acid hell, I’m at 600 calories. McKay’s voice echoes through the fantasy ether: “Ladies and gentlemen, we may just be in the clear. Barring catastrophic collapse, Mr. McMahon appears poised to save the republic.”

    And I believe him. For that final, lung-shredding stretch, I’m not just pedaling a stationary bike in my garage. I’m anchoring Western civilization.

    This isn’t just exercise. It’s an endorphin-fueled psychodrama. It’s Rocky Balboa meets CNN breaking news. And yes, it’s completely unhinged—but so is trying to extract meaning from a piece of cardio equipment designed to make you question every life choice you’ve ever made.

  • The Futility of Being Ready

    The Futility of Being Ready

    In December of 2019, my wife and I, both lifelong members of the National Society of Worrywarts, stumbled upon reports of a deadly virus brewing in China. Most people shrugged. We did not. I jumped on eBay and ordered a bulk box of masks the size of a hotel mini-fridge. It felt ridiculous at the time—a paranoid lark, like filling a doomsday bunker because you heard thunder on a Tuesday. But three months later, on March 13, 2020, the world shut down, and that cardboard box of N95s felt less like overreaction and more like prophecy.

    These days, I teach college in what I call the ChatGPT Era—a time when my students and I sit around analyzing how artificial intelligence is rewiring our habits, our thinking, and possibly the scaffolding of our humanity. I don’t dread AI the way I dreaded COVID. It doesn’t make me stock canned beans or disinfect door handles. But it does give me that same uneasy tremor in the gut—the sense that something vast is shifting beneath us, and that whatever emerges will make the present feel quaint and maybe a little foolish.

    It’s like standing on a beach after the earthquake and watching the water disappear from the shore. You can back up your files, rewrite your syllabus, and pretend to adapt, but you know deep down you’re stuck in Prepacolypse Mode—that desperate, irrational phase where you try to outmaneuver the future with your label maker. You prepare for the unpreparable, perform rituals of control that offer all the protection of a paper shield.

    And through it all comes that strange, electric sensation—Dreadrenaline. It’s not just fear. It’s a kind of alertness, a humming, high-voltage awareness that your life is about to be edited at the molecular level. You’re not just anticipating change—you’re bracing for a version of yourself that will be unrecognizable on the other side. You’re watching history draft your name onto the roster and realizing, too late, that you’re not a spectator anymore. You’re in the game.

  • Why I’m Sure the $450 Sony WH-100XM6 Headphones Would Make Me Miserable

    Why I’m Sure the $450 Sony WH-100XM6 Headphones Would Make Me Miserable

    At $89, my Sony WH-CH720N headphones are like a charming B-movie that knows what it is—solid, dependable, and blessedly low on expectations. I’m content, maybe even grateful. But shelling out $450 for the Sony WH-1000XM6? That’s not just buying headphones—that’s enrolling them in the Ivy League of Audio. For that kind of money, I expect sonic transcendence, noise-cancellation that erases my student debt, and bass so rich it pays taxes. 

    This is the curse of Pricefectionism—a condition where the higher the sticker, the more unreasonable your expectations become. At four hundred and fifty bucks, I don’t want headphones. I want a personal sound butler whispering hi-res lullabies directly into my cerebral cortex.

  • Flabnesia and the Fall of the Weight-Loss Hero

    Flabnesia and the Fall of the Weight-Loss Hero

    Congratulations! You’ve shed 47 pounds over 8 months, sliding from a swollen 247 to a sleek, even 200—the numerical promised land. At 247, you weren’t just overweight; you were a walking billboard for metabolic dysfunction. A bloated monument to poor impulse control. Your blood pressure was climbing Mount Everest, your triglycerides were hosting a rave, your fingers cracked like old parchment, and your foot buzzed with the low-voltage horror of neuropathy. Your joints? They screamed in Morse code every time you dared to walk more than half a Target.

    And let’s not forget the existential FOMO—not Fear of Missing Out on parties or vacations, but on the you you were supposed to be. The one who didn’t sound like an old staircase every time he stood up.

    But then, in a moment of uncharacteristic clarity—or maybe rage at your own reflection—you declared war on the fat demon. You slashed your calories to a monk-like 2,300, jacked your protein intake to bodybuilder levels, and banished refined carbs and sugar like they owed you money. Your entire cerebral cortex was repurposed into a fat-loss mission control center. Progress became your dopamine drip. Watching the numbers fall on the scale felt like watching your soul return from exile.

    You were, in the language of gymfluencers, “on a journey.” A phrase so overused it should be banished to a motivational poster graveyard. But cliché or not, the journey gave your life narrative structure. It made you feel heroic. Disciplined. Alive.

    And then—you arrived.

    Two hundred pounds. The exact number. Mission accomplished. Cue the existential silence.

    Because now what?

    With the drama over, meaning slips through your fingers like a protein shake on a sweaty treadmill. You no longer wake up with a fat war to fight. And into that vacuum slithers the ancient enemy of every former fatty: complacency.

    Complacency brings friends. First comes Calorie Creep—just a nibble here, a mindless bite there, a slow but deliberate loosening of your former austerity. Then arrives Flabnesia, that insidious amnesia that erases the memory of how awful 247 felt—how humiliating, how painful, how limited. Your jeans start getting tight again, and you blink in confusion as if the dryer is gaslighting you.

    Next, the cruelest symptom of all: Goalstalgia—a perverse longing for the righteous high of the weight-loss struggle. You miss the purpose, the metrics, the drama. And in a dark twist of psychological masochism, you begin to sabotage yourself, just to start over—to claw your way out of the hole you’re actively digging again.

    And so the cycle begins anew. You are no longer the master of your fate or the captain of your macros. You are a cautionary tale—an Ouroboros in athleisure, endlessly consuming your own progress.