We used to play with the house rule that draws stack and transfer until the player is unable to play some kind of deflection. Nothing like sending grandma packing with a Draw 16 stack! (Who am I kidding, granny was the one always whipping our asses at cards! 😭)
“Masking” is a thing neurodivergent people talk about a lot, but it’s comparable to comparing “normal clothes” and costumes or drag. There is no “normal.” When you get dressed for the day, you’re putting on a costume. Maybe it’s a business suit or a uniform, but maybe it’s just “your look” for the day.
The thing is that “you” don’t exist. There’s memory continuity of the consciousness that drives your body each day, but how you act to other people, the beliefs you have, and the clothes you wear are all part of a complex construction that you think of as yourself. But none of that is individually “you.” If you put on a costume, you would probably act different: you’d be “in-character” but you probably don’t think about this as being a different you, you still feel like yourself, just wearing a costume.
But if you changed your clothes, changed your interactions with others, changed your beliefs, then people would say “you’ve changed” as though you had shifted into a different person.
Everyone puts on masks for different groups of people. You wear a professional mask at work, an extrovert mask when out with friends, an intimate mask (which maybe feels like no mask at all) with family. Social media puts social pressure and often monetary pressure behind maintenance of a particular mask/identity. The fact that so many people are aware of the artiface of it is what you’re seeing.
It used to be that most people’s days were split up into a home period, a work period, a recreational period, etc. With the modern “always online, always available” world, our masks have become fluid and a constant part of us. Instead of putting on your work face in the morning and taking it off after a long day, you have to constantly be ready to break out the correct persona at any time, depending on who is contacting you on the phone. This leads to more “cracks” in the masks. People aren’t “more fake,” they’re revealing more of themselves than intended because the masks keep slipping. This doesn’t necessarily reveal any “true self” either because there is no such thing. Rather it let’s the common parts slip out more (most people hide a lot of their personal selves from work colleagues) and reveals the contradictions in the other parts that normally can embe kept seperate.
I’ve dealt with depression for most of my life, but with a lot of work and medicine and care, it’s possible to get past self loathing and pity. And then, you can stretch “staring into the abyss” into an all day activity as you reflect on how good personal mental health doesn’t make the world less of a nightmare!
The “Kubrick Stare” is one of Stanley Kubrick‘s most recognizable directorial techniques, a method of shot composition where a character stares at the camera with a forward tilt, to convey to the audience that the character in question is at the peak of their derangement.
City Park here in NOLA is 1300 acres (50% larger than Central Park) and was established in 1854, making it three years older as well. Stay losing NYC! 😜
I’d accept Maria’s as the only Christmas song anyone is allowed to play if it meant that they never played goddamn fucking awful Wonderful Christmastime ever again!