Ftrain, by Paul Ford

Waving my arms at the mirror. Back down again. Shrinking the cells.

This is supposed to be a disease, and that in some way is intended to be liberating. By acknowledging my disease I can thus accept the treatment. But this formulation is lacking to me. I don't feel particularly diseased. I had a very good sense of what was going on with me--I was in group therapy for my eating disorder at fifteen. Rather than a disease it was a perfectly rational human response, in a time of plenty, to my own confusions and anxieties. Perhaps a better term is condition.

One of the things that I find fascinating about computers is that they're binary. The operating system, the web, games and Hulu videos, you could do it all with a big enough pile of NAND gates. It's like building a city on a pinhead. There's an assumption that computers are good at math, and that's why they're good at the other things that make them useful. But they're terrible at math. All they can do, really, is turn switches on and off at such a speed that it gives the illusion of capability. Much like a series of static images, flipped quickly, is perceived by the brain as motion, and on that simple principle you end up with The Godfather or Solaris, you flip enough switches and you can end up calculating the reflection/absorption of light off the window in your virtual car as you careen through some imaginary world, etc.

But despite all appearances it's basically a few very fast light switches at the bottom, and unless you understand those switches...

"We eat too much cereal. Four boxes in a week is too much."

"I think we eat just the right amount of cereal. I've lost all this weight eating a lot of cereal."

"You're chewing off your arm because you aren't getting enough different kinds of food."

"I think you woke up this morning to give me advice."

"Jesus Christ, I'm saying, maybe we shouldn't eat all this cereal. I'm saying I can talk about cereal."

"Don't Jesus Christ it."

"I can Jesus Christ it if I want."

Weight: 304 lbs