Hi
Life is going. Work suddenly got busy. I’ve been nearly working Monday-Saturday for the last 2-3 weeks. I’m a bit exhausted lol. Other than that, I’ve been inching my way on a big post. Not much else is new. 🫡

This post has some photos of naked people in it.
Booby signing out!

* * *

The Most Difficult Philosophy Book

There are lots of difficult books. Not just in philosophy.

But if I had to give it to one book, it would be G.W.F. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel is a very important philosopher to learn because his ideas are super influential. You’ll need to learn him in order to read anyone from Marx all the way to Derrida and Lacan.

Goodreads has a list of the most difficult books list. It is based on votes from readers (link). I’ve actually read a surprising number of them. I’ve read the entirety of Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, along with Margins of Philosophy by Jacques Derrida. Same with Beyond Good and Evil and Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche. I’ve read around 80% of Nietzsche’s published works. I’ve also read solid amounts of Kant, Lacan, Freud, Foucault, Beckett, Descartes, Heidegger, and Sartre who are on this list.

Freud is difficult, but he is a good writer. Meanwhile, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is full of long run on sentences. It’s also a huge book that no one will finish unless you’re doing a PhD on him. I’m surprised Alain Badiou is not on there. Being and Event is pretty hard to read.

William Faulkner’s Absalom Absalom! is also very hard to read. I remember this book from grad school. I’ve also read several books by Virginia Woolf. James Joyce is also very hard. I never finished reading Ulysses. 😅

* * *

The Nurburgring Nordschleife 24 Hours Endurance Race

I watched some of it and it was more exciting than Formula 1 these days. It has more thrilling action and crazy aggressive driving lines on a tight track. F1 is not what it was when compared to back in the V10 and V8 eras. It was actually about racing back then, not about who runs out of batteries first.

But Max Verstappen was so fast the entire race at the Nurburgring. Too bad their car broke down. I’m happy the BMW M3 touring won the SPX (experimental) class and 5th overall place. The Nurburgring is one of the world’s most difficult and famous track that pushes cars to its limits. Many manufacturers not only spends millions to try and win the 24H race, they also seek to set lap records on there to prove their mojo.

The current all time lap record is held by Mercedes One AMG, which is not surprising since it’s basically a street legal F1 car. The new Ford Mustang GTD Competition recently took 2nd place from the Porsche 911 GT2 RS. The GTD has considerably more power that can provide more sustained speeds around certain parts of the track, particularly on the long straights; instead of just shaving time off corners like the GT2 RS. The 911 is fast, but it flats out quick on the straights. It could use more hp to get to the next corner faster. But good for Ford for making this time. Not many American cars are on the fastest lap sheets except for Corvettes. It’s mostly dominated by European cars.

Meanwhile, the Volkswagen Golf GTI 50 recently took first place crown away from the FL5 Honda Civic Type R in the FWD production car segment. But it was only by a millisecond LOL. I think the GTI 50 is really cool. It’s basically a front wheel drive Golf R that is lighter. I’m stoked for next year when VW brings their new heavily modified R to the Nurburgring 24H.🔥The front splitter on it looks so ridiculous Lol (link).

* * *

Grad School and University

I met some young guy the other day where we spoke about whether it matters what university you attend.

No in the sense that it is more about the person than the school. As education becomes highly commodified, Ivy leagues are more like a brand that sticks to your name like a Louis Vuitton purse. People hears the name and will immediately go “Oh wow!” like they drive a Ferrari or something. For the most part, intelligence is not tied to your education and alma matter.

Yes in the sense that most people thinks it matters because of some special value given to these elite institutions, and therefore it matters—even if it is for the wrong reasons. It’s mostly branding. Many people gets caught up going like I’m from McGill, Harvard, Yale, or wherever. I could careless about people throwing their institutions at me. It’s meaningless other than maybe telling me they’re might be a privileged rich kid who can afford the tuition LOL. Or maybe they’re in huge student loan debt.

Truth is, most prominent intellectuals came from no where fancy. Many professors who teaches at Ivy leagues came from universities that are not famous at all. They are often those who had always lived in the margins of institutions that challenged its dominance from the outside. Though this might be more true in the humanities.

* * *

Is everyone crazy according to psychoanalysis?

I came across this question the other day.

I won’t say people are “crazy”. It’s neurosis. If by definition “crazy” is normal, then everyone is crazy. Science and philosophy are some of the most prominent forms of neurosis in history. This is to say that neurosis is when someone can’t handle ambiguity and seeks to produce knowledge and explain everything that is unexplainable so to conceal its underlying ambiguity (object a).

One of the keystones to human intelligence is neurosis. There are much more commonalities that runs between intelligence, love, and madness than what most people think. To be sure, being “mad” is the norm, and not the exception as modern psychology tries to make it out to be. We are just a bunch of talking animals—insane animals, as Nietzsche might put it.

Our capacity for speech, meaning, and understanding reveals our blind spots of the unconscious at the same time. It is like the double slit experiment in quantum mechanics and Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty. The latter states that it is impossible to measure both the exact position and the momentum of a particle at the same time. The more the particle’s position is measured, the less we know about its momentum—just like the relationship between speech and the unconscious. The more one is certain of their conscious words, the more uncertainties are revealed. This comes down to saying that we do not know what we are saying. It’s sort of like when Eashel said yes when I asked her out, even when she wanted to say no (speaking of which, I haven’t seen her in a long time 🥲). There is someone else who speaks through our words where we do not think much of. And every once awhile, this someone reveals themselves where they signify unintended meanings. Our unconscious desires and symptoms are revealed through these slips of the tongue. There are no mistakes.

It is like one of the examples I remember Bruce Fink mentioned, where the analysand spent 30 min of her session analyzing Dostoevsky where she used a metaphor to describe his “near misses” on his publishing of his famous works. Yet, the analyst knows the analysand recently fled the country after she rejected an unwanted marriage proposal, where the analysand unconsciously wanted to say she became “near Mrs”. This is a good example of a Freudian slip at play, where the slurs of our words implies another meaning unconscious to the speaker.

Our symptoms are what allows us to live our lives. Whether this is our obsession with reading, video games, eating, traveling, body building, partying, or cars. To enjoy our lives is to enjoy our symptoms. And it isn’t until such symptoms reach a point where it disrupts the person’s life in a negative way where they might seek analysis.

* * *

The Influence of Deconstruction

I think it is much more influential than what most people think. Derrida is very influential in academia and influenced a host of disciplines that can be felt by the public sphere—especially in the arts, politics, ethics, and law. In academia, Derrida had a huge influence in everything that had to do with interpretation which included departments such as sociology, literature, linguistics, philosophy, theology, fine arts, psychology, film studies, political science, economics, and a ton more.

His ideas also influenced people like Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak who is one of the major figures in colonial studies. She is also a major translator of Derrida’s works from French to English. There is also Judith Butler who is renown for the idea of “gender performativity” who really kick started the whole idea that gender as being socially constructed (which is not the same as our sex; as in biology); though I think Butler was more influenced by Foucault. Helene Cixous is also greatly influenced by Derrida. She is a poet and a Nobel Prize of Literature nominee, more than once I believe. Then there are a few more people like Paul de Man, Jean-Luc Nancy, Edward Said, Catherine Malabou, Geoffrey Bennington, Barbara Cassin, and a few more.

There is an entire architectural style influenced by deconstruction. Some of these famous buildings includes the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles by Frank Gehry, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, and the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku by Zaha Hadid.

* * *

The R

I finally installed my Maxton Design front splitter and side skirts that I bought last year! Unfortunately, I still don’t have any cool pictures to show.😅 I need to take some dope shots this summer. I’ve also been retorqueing my summer wheels religiously after I installed them back on Lol. I sometimes drive my car pretty hard around corners and the lug nuts will loosen up a tiny bit just after every time I switch from winters to summers. I retorque them to spec until they’re permanently tight.

I lost over 1″ of ground clearance on my front bumper after installing the front splitter. My car is not lowered, so speed bumps are still fine. I try to avoid parkades with steep inclines, even if I think it “should” be okay. I want to lower the car by another 1″, but I know I will regret it. The stock stance with my current summer wheel set up is fine. But just 1″ lower would make it look better! I think wider tires would make a difference too.

I recently bought a Zaero EVO-1 rear diffuser to complete the look. I already installed it, but I won’t share a booty pic because I don’t have any good ones.🤣 The rear diffuser is the bottom horizontal black trim under the bumper by the exhaust tips. The back of my car looks similar to this one (link). Some of my favourite Golf builds on Instagram is Trippy mk8 (link) and Linda mk8 (link). But I’m pleased with the way my car is built so far. It is clean.🫡 Here is a recent photo of mine after a fresh ceramic coat and wash:

My next mod will be a catback exhaust. I haven’t decided what to get because they’re so expensive ($2500 to $5000). But it “might” happen this summer. It will either be from Invidia, AWE, Remus, or Miltek. It will also be resonated. I prefer one that keeps the valves because I still want to be civilized LOL (it lets me close 2 of the 4 exhausts on command to make the car more quiet). But valved exhausts are more expensive. I will consider valveless if it’s not too loud at low RPMs.

It’s funny how understated the R looks. It only draws attention from those who knows what it is or when they hear its exhaust from a cold start. The stock exhaust is tame, but it’s only a 4 cylinder. You can feel the gas pressure if you stand behind the car when idling. In the summer, I often get random car guys chat me up about it. I also had a group of younger kids check it out when I went out for Teppanyaki in downtown for my friend’s birthday where I was street parked (from Calgary, right outside National on 10th). But I didn’t have time to yap because I was almost late lol. Meanwhile, most people just sees it as a small hatchback car. My sister’s SO called it a Jetta.

But the R can also attract unwanted attention. It’s a little different than driving a regular economy car because its got street cred. I sometimes run into people who wants to race. I also run into those who suddenly have something to prove the moment they see me. In Alberta, trucks are the most common to do this; and it’s never the cool fast ones either. Some of these trucks have so much small penis energy, it’s hilarious Lol. I’ve had a few who always tried to stay ahead of me to not let me pass (i.e. they accelerate when I accelerate). I just let them because it’s dangerous. Other times, they’re friendly car guys doing flybys as a salute. They are sometimes accompanied by a ✌️, 👍, 🤙, 🫰 or 🫶 .

Most people have no idea how fast Golf Rs are because they look ordinary. They’re pretty fast stock. A built R with forged internals and big turbo making 600+ hp that weighs 3300 pounds is no joke. Have y’all seen that video from Carwow where they drag raced a 1000 hp Golf R against a Ferrari SF90 and a 1000 hp BMW M240i? Here is the link. Straight line speed is far from everything, but watch all 3 races if you think a hybrid Ferrari is fast.😏 That BMW is a rocket.

I thought of joining car clubs and going to meets just to make some new friends for cruises. But I work too much lol. I also realized a lot of them gets rowdy fast. The ones with police presence seems a little better. The biggest Volkswagen club in Canada is probably Volkswagen True North (VWTN on Instagram). I have some of their club stickers.

I also recently ceramic coated my car with Gyeon Syncro. I installed it myself because it’s way cheaper. The coating gives the car a deeper full bodied shine to it. I’ve been big on detailing for a few years and I am extremely picky about dust, finger prints, and random uncaring things people do when they sit in my car LOL. I have a ton of detailing products and a custom modified portable foam cannon that I use at car wand washes for shampoo application. I sometimes have people at the wash ask me how I clean my car. It is a lot of work to say the least. I keep a bottle of diluted ONR (Optimum No Rinse) in my trunk and two microfiber towels in case someone leaves their finger prints on the paint or a bird poops on it.

I kind of wished I got my R in black LOL. White cars don’t draw as much attention from cops, but blacked out Rs are so bad, even if they’re high maintenance to keep clean. I want to wrap my car when it gets older. Though it likely won’t be black. I’ve been thinking of a dark red wine color. The one on this Golf looks soooo good (link), but that one is custom paint and not a wrap. The CT Carbon body kit on it is also 🔥.

* * *

Questionable Popular Psychology Terms

“Parasocial Relationship”:
I always thought this term was funny when it first started to spread across the internet. I think it makes sense if you think about it practically in that parasocial relationships are relationships where it is imaginary with someone and not real; or that said relationship doesn’t exist in real life. But if you shift the context into psychoanalysis, pretty much every relationship consists of an imaginary dimension to it. Our reality is influenced by our unconscious fantasies and desires that are found in dreams and other random moments of our lives (Freudian slips). These fantasies and desires are what shapes reality.

It is reminiscent to our relationship with language that we use to express ourselves, which is also largely imaginary and “misses the point”. This is especially true once you consider that languages are just made up sounds that signifies specific meanings (they’re imaginary); the latter which also consists of more made up sounds pointed towards more meanings in a never ending chain of sounds and images. When we listen to someone speak to us, we are “imagining” what we think they mean in our heads. This imaginary is influenced by our unconscious desires and fantasies that shapes our intention and interpretations of whatever it is the person is saying—sort of like how you are reading what I am writing right now. And thus, we form imageries, pictures, and metaphors about said sounds at a symbolic and imaginary level when we listen to someone talk to us, or when we read the news or a book. Even our interpretation of our own lives is influenced by space, time, and infinity.


“Love Bombing”:
I know this term originates from mainstream psychology that got turned into pop psychology. But it is another term that only makes sense if you look at it from the surface, which describes someone who overwhelms the other person with their “love” by giving them lots of attention, affection, showers them with fancy flowers or grandiose gifts. They do so as a form of emotional manipulation. But this view is a terrible assumption of love.

There is nothing about “love bombing” that tells us anything about love because the definition assumes these actions are what makes love what it is. If anything, it might be more appropriate to call it “lust bombing” or “affection bombing”. The problem I have is a disagreement of its definition. The “love” which “love bombing” assumes is incorrect. At least from my perspective. I don’t even have to go into any deep psychoanalysis for anyone to get it (I already have). Love is about difference. It is about compromise, care, and sacrifice. If the term “love bombing” involves these characteristics, then I would agree. But if we change its original definition to this, then it doesn’t even sound all that bad. Like oh wow, lets bomb them with care, compassion, compromise and sacrifice!

Love is like the annoying things the other person does that you have “over looked” at the beginning of the relationship. It’s like having someone you love pass away, where you miss how annoying they are and wished they were there to annoy you. That is love!

I’ve said this before. But I think people over emphasize on their interpretation of “compatibility” and seeks to find the “right match” where all the pieces must magically fit together and they must be perfect for each other. Yet unbeknownst to them, the Other’s desires is always a deceptive one. Their interpretations of the other are a misrecognition. Love is never where we think. It is as Bruce Fink once said, love only happens when things don’t quite fit.

* * *

On Studying Photography and Philosophy

Studying photography was something that just happened. My dad bought me a Nikon D300 when I was 20 and I really liked it. So I eventually pursued a Bachelor of Design degree in photography. Initially, I was interested in fashion photography. But it quickly wasn’t enough for my thirst for knowledge. I always wanted to think deeper. There were a few teachers back then who really fostered my discoveries in the relationship between fashion, art, capitalism, class hierarchies, and its relationship with the sexual nature of fashion images.

Eventually, my work evolved from women in clothes to women without clothes LOL. Some people definitely thought I was a creeper. But I didn’t care. I was focused on my work and didn’t do anything weird. I was friends with most of the ladies I photographed. I’m surprised how many of them were comfortable getting naked in front of me LOL. Of course I was very respectful, and never made them do anything they were uncomfortable with. A lot of the photos eventually went from digital medium to film, where I shot mostly with a Zeiss Ikon and a Hasselblad 501c in 35mm and 120mm medium format.

From then on, my works were sexually charged with nudity. They represented the early phases of my intellectual endeavors. My photographs, in conjunction with my studies in philosophy at the time, earned me a reputation in school and kind of made me famous….Perhaps for all the wrong reasons.😅

Photography had taught me how to “see” not just in an ocular way, but intellectually. It taught me how to “see” our world. This was where my intellectual endeavors really began. During my 3rd year, I read my first philosophy book called “All For Nothing” by Rachel K. Ward who kick started my interests in Jean Baudrillard (Ward was a student of Baudrillard before he died). I also started reading and studying sociology and economics in relationship with art. One book led to the next where it eventually brought me to Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction that I’ve spent 3-4 years engaging with post-undergrad. I read the entirety of Of Grammatology among many of his most influential works. I was eventually introduced to Jacques Lacan.

When I finished my undergraduate studies, I became the recipient of the Board of Governor’s Graduating Student of my class. I got to walk the graduation stage twice because of it. But it was funny because I’m not a fan of being in the spot light. So I tried to walk across the stage as fast as possible and almost ran away from the guy who was supposed to shake my hand. He was like, “Wow wow wow! Where do you think you’re going!?”.🤣

Behind all this, there was one teacher who forever changed me. She later became my mentor after I graduated who encouraged me to pursue a masters degree in a discipline that is completely different from photography and design. She revealed to me that she is a PhD student where her supervisors were Alain Badiou, Catherine Malabou, and Geoffrey Bennington. 😶‍🌫️ I was shocked, because philosophers like Badiou are major figures in 20th century philosophy. He is literally a historical figure.

Fast forward 5 years later where I audited many courses in multiple disciplines at my local university, I eventually did my masters degree in English. While I enjoy literature, I wasn’t a literary fanatic like my colleagues. I was a hardcore philosopher and literary theorist with a strong emphasis on Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction. And I was ruthlessly good at it. The biggest reason I was in this major was because I needed a competent professor who knew his stuff that can supervisor me. It was more about the supervisor than the major. He was incredibly smart and understood my esoteric personality quite well.

I met this prof in the English department from auditing his literary theory class. He was impressed when he read my sample essay on Derrida where he was like, “No one at a masters level knows what you know about deconstruction” (I shared the essay on here; link). Then he offered to write one of my reference letters for grad school, where my other reference was my mentor at the time. I also remember when he first saw my CV, he was like, “I got the sense that you were a super star in your undergraduate studies”.😂 I was like “……..uhhhmmm, kind of”.😅

He specialized in British Romanticism and psychoanalysis who kick started my interest in Lacanianism. Given my extensive background in 20th century continental European philosophy, Lacan was a little easier to read for me. I also got special permission to take a MA/PhD graduate seminar on deconstruction and psychoanalysis as an Open Studies student before I even got accepted into my masters degree.

During my time there, a lot of profs thought I was a PhD student due to the massive knowledge I had in philosophy.😂 Apparently, word got out quick and some profs in the department already knew who I was before I even got into the program. I was also lucky to get a free ride. If it wasn’t for the department for giving me partial funding, and my supervisor who gave me some funding from his SSHRC grant (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada), I would’ve had to spend my own money to cover some of the costs. I am very grateful.

This was how I went from photography to philosophy in a nutshell. Here are the highlights of my best photographs from 10+ years ago. I’ve moved on from these long ago and don’t make them anymore. They were shot in 35mm and 120mm Ilford HP5 film scanned onto the computer. One was printed at 4x4ft as my grad piece.✌️I actually still have it! Some of these are not the final edited version.