Life of Brian

Myspace Updated . . .

I have just finished a number of changes to my myspace pages at http://www.myspace.com/briandavidphillips . . . be sure to check 'em out. If you haven't done the ol' "add friend" to me, be sure to do so.

- Brian

"my cat annie" from zefrank

This is a wonderful page. See ZeFrank's my cat annie for some very clever animated gifs and short videos of his incredibly talented cat. Be sure to read his commentary. Wow.

Dominant Body Positions

I know it looks like a sex manual, complete with saucy position names and photographs, but it's not . . . dominant body positions.

Don't Spit, Swallow . . . the guide

The folks at Don't Spit, Swallow have advice to be taken to heart . . . or, not. Some good points though.

Standing Ovation Psychology

Jesse McKinley writes about The Tyranny of the Standing Ovation and notes that even shows that suck, die, and commit suicide are getting standing ovations these days:

The phenomenon has become so exaggerated, in fact, that audiences now rise to their feet for even the very least successful shows. Recent Broadway flops like "Jackie Mason's Laughing Room Only," which closed in less than two weeks, "The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All," which closed on opening night, and "Bobbi Boland," which closed in previews, all received standing ovations.

There seems to be a reason for it . . . folks are paying so much for tickets that they feel they have to stand up for the ovation in order to create the impression they are having the experience they paid for:

Most Broadway veterans trace the change to the steep rise, over the last decade or so, in the cost of a ticket. "I guess the audience just feels having paid $75 to sit down, it's their time to stand up," said the playwright Arthur Miller. "I don't mean to be a cynic but it probably all changed when the price went up." Just how those rising prices produce rising audiences is not, however, an easy question. John Lahr, the theater critic for The New Yorker magazine, sees a complex psychological dynamic at work. "I think it's generally an attempt by the audience at self-hypnosis," he said. "They think if they go to a show and stand at the end they've had a good time. They're trying to give themselves the experience they thought they should have."

This is related to what Robert Cialdini calls the Law of Consistency, one of the nine laws of influence where a person will behave consistently to what they have said or done before. So, if you want folks to do something, get them to say they will do it or that they believe in it. This, coupled with the Law of Expectancy where folks will generally have the experience they have expected to have and you have stupidity in the aisles where folks are shelling out a bunch of bucks to see a great show and rather than admit they've just witnessed a crappy show, they try to sucker themselves into believing it was great by standing up and clapping with the rest of the lemmings.

Too bad, but true.

Of course, it's also too bad that the general quality of live entertainment has fallen to a degree where even trash receives accolades (while closing) . . . albeit, taped and filmed entertainment is doing pretty well . . . we seem to be in one of those cycles where Spectacle is the element of Aristotle's set from Poetics that is holding primacy . . . spectacle and tits and ass . . . with no regard for plot or craft . . . of course, I like spectacle and I love tits and ass . . . I'd just like to see some skill in there before leaping to my feet and pounding my mittens together.

Penis Pride

Leanne Bell writes that a woman should love her husband's penis, adore the thing, really love to get up close to it:

Everything a woman values most in life can be directly attributed to her husband's penis.

Read it for your self. She's making some real sense. You may or may not agree with her on some of her other points or articles, but she makes a thougtful and intelligent case. She's not really reducing a relationship to a relationship with a penis, she's expanding it out and away from simply being reduced to a relationship away from a penis.

Burning Man 3-D

Harold Baize has a wonderful collection Burning Man 3-D photographs that he's been maintaining for a number of years. If you're not familiar with stereographic photography, then you're really missing out on something. I really wish the photo galleries at typepad would let me upload some jps images like Harold's. I have been shooting 3D for years and own several stereocameras and run a couple email lists related to the hobby - see my Domain webpages for more.

A Name By Any Other Name Is Still a Name

Take a peek at Name Statistics - How popular are your first and last names? and see just how mindless or original your parents were when they named you. "Brian" is the #20 most common male name. 0.736% of men in the US are named Brian. Around 901600 US men are named Brian! Of course, that's nothing compared to the originality of my buddy Michael's parents. Maybe that's one of the reasons why he named his son "Gareth" - and has nothing to do with the Arthurian knight as he usually claims or the hunkishness of the guy in Four Weddings and a Funeral as most folks assume.

The Domain of the Langren: Brian David Phillips, Ph.D., C.H.

If you're not familiar with it, my regular home page is at The Domain of the Langren whee I have a ton of material on all sorts of topics. Eventually, I will be moving a lot of that material to other locations, particularly the hypnosis and trance material.

Welcome and So It Begins . . .

Welcome to the Life of Brian . . . by Brian David Phillips. I am currently putting things in order and working out the kinks and getting things in shape. Check back frequently to see how things blossom and grow.