E5: Hyper-Focus Disorder Street Fighter; S14: Yet Another Layer of Self-Regulation When I'm Bored (Or Unambivalently Horny - Thanks Motivational Interviewing)

<p>I have made another thing that I really like, which is inconvenient because I have absolutely no time to promote it. Apparently making things and telling people that you made them are two separate jobs. I have barely agreed to do the first one.</p><p>I especially like the cover. It features a reimagined version of a guy I was completely obsessed with when I was young. It carries some of his general voltage without looking enough like him that he could reasonably appear and say, “What are you doing? Why are you using my picture?” Because I am not using his picture. Technically. Emotionally, the relevant administrative body has not yet issued a ruling.</p><p>The episode itself moves through boredom, hyper-focus, ADHD, television, systems collapse, immigration, privilege, ethical limits, queer memory, self-correction, and the strange experience of hearing yourself think while you are still busy thinking it.</p><p>That last part is recursive. Oops, I suppose I have to explain that now.</p><p>It means the process keeps turning around and noticing itself. I say something. I hear myself say it. I react to what I heard. Then I clarify it, correct it, become annoyed with it, discover something through it, or wander into an entirely different subject that turns out—possibly—to have been the subject all along.</p><p>Throughout this episode, I am teeter-tottering on quite a few things, including facts, interpretations, and theories that have not necessarily been subjected to what academics might call “adequate methodological scrutiny.” In other words, I may not have thought all of this through.</p><p>But the ideas function well inside the piece.</p><p>What I am looking for here is not exactly objective truth. It is functional truth: the kind of truth that helps the next thought happen, makes an experience visible, or lets me recognize what I am doing while I am doing it. Functional truth is not the same as factual accuracy, and it does not receive diplomatic immunity from being wrong. It just means that sometimes an idea can be useful before it has finished becoming correct.</p><p>There are two songs wrapped around a monologue. The first wonders whether hyper-focus might be useful when the world is becoming increasingly disordered. The second says: careful with your superpower. Between them, I attempt to explain myself and accidentally produce additional evidence that explaining myself may be impossible.</p><p>Very scientific.</p><p>Also, yes, the cover is clickbait. There are two hot men, an open bathroom door marked ALL GENDERS, several incompatible decades, and a decision that has effectively already been made.</p><p>If you click expecting the bathroom story, it is in there.</p><p>Briefly.</p><p>Then you are getting systems theory, motivational interviewing, queer migration, self-regulation, artificial intelligence, and an ethical crisis.</p><p>I don’t have time to promote this properly. Apparently seduction will have to do. Oh my god, those lips. We both tasted like cigarettes, which—in the 80s—was sexy.</p>