Rose, the Scribbler

When you have the idea to write a book on, and devote a considerable about of your time to BAYESIAN THINKING, what’s the first thing you do? 

Come up with a title, ideally involving a play on words.

THEN, write the book.

The book will be sinophilic, for some reason. 
The girl he’s interviewing today to be his assistant is Asian.

Also covering Bayesian analysis, obv.

Trying to connect it to everyday life, linking from poker and games of strategy.

Gauging problems in a 100% way is a mystical self-help delusion. 
You should generally take 10% off to allow for crazy things.

• Harrington covers this.
  
  • Maybe the person is insane.
    
  • Maybe they’re making a mistake / misread their cards.
    
  • Maybe they are “mixing it up.”
    

Helps to make your guess more educated.
On top of the straight 10% we want to take off, further adjustments can be added, based on the circumstances.

She’s an Asian girl, but she hangs out with groypers.

What’s a groyper?

I think the best way to put it is, well,
They call themselves ironybros sometimes. 
They’re like I was in college, into irony, sarcasm, life as a prank basically.

Trolling. 
Racist.
At least that’s what normies tell me? 

Sure. So she made a cake out of a swasteeka one time.

What’s a swasteeka?

Swastika. That’s just how I pronounce it.

Ah. You know that’s a weird thing to mention at your first interview for a new job.

I know, sorry. I am candor, personified. Is that going to be a problem?

No, I dig candor, honey.

I also don’t want to work for someone who doesn’t get me, you know? I mean, I know we’re like...five generations apart.

Watch it.

But I think we can get along. Anyway, I was dating this guy and he was a Nazi so I made him a swasteeka cake, but I made it all fucked up, with these individual cakes adding up to create the design. One of the spokes or whatever you call them looked longer and wonkier than the others.

Hm.

I looked at it for a while and the funny thing is, I know my brain must have been capable of seeing how to fix it (in hindsight it’s obvious -- just imagine making a swasteeka with 8 equal-sized rectangles, centered around a cupcake with a diameter the same as the short end of the rectangles -- there’s no way to fuck that up) -- but I did fuck it up, and I couldn’t figure it out, but I’m not sure I wanted to figure it out -- cuz swasteekas gave me an icky feeling even then -- so what if it used to be a spiritual symbol, used by ancient civilizations --

I feel the same way about the word vegan. If you are one, the word has a good connotation. But it doesn’t have a good reputation in the larger community of human beings. Period. So why use the word? Plant-based sounds so much better because it’s untainted. Just call yourself plant-based.

See? We are going to get along.

The writer has her in his room, going through his infinite library. 
They’re not actual books, not all of them.
Some are but ideas for books. 

Some are his; most are written by others. 
But it’s closer to a 50/50 split than you might think.
He’s started a lot of books that no one has ever read.

Sometimes he will have gone to the trouble of self-publishing a book with 300 pages, but only 40 of them have actual type on them. 
Other times it’s handwritten in a journal with the same story, hundreds of pages, only a handful written on.

This is the one where this old codger lives with other dilettante artists, all old, and they interview a hot girl to help them as a special art assistant. Maybe that’s the one we’re in now? 

(He looks her up and down. Shakes his head.)

It’s autobiographical. Loosely to majorly based on my life, but most of these are. This book here saved my life, or at least kept me going through some tough times.”

This book I hope will bring justification to everything I ever did, but not for centuries until after I’m dead.

Wouldn’t the book have to survive that long? I mean--

Yes of course. Don’t be silly.

This book reveals the secret names of God.

This is the book I lifted high over my head, intending to smash a roach in my fiancee’s bedroom; instead, I fucked up my back and fell into bed, where I don’t remember leaving for quite some time.

In this book, a man tries explaining his wife’s painful, humiliating death to their son. Reading this is like walking through a wall of setting cement.

This book is plagiarized. Most of my books could be accused of plagiarism by dolts unaware of fair use or unaware of most things really.

This book taught me everything I know about women. Notice how short it is.

This book I wrote for kids, hoping to bring some color and imagination to them in a world grown dim.

This is a section of books by women. 
I don’t read them, and only keep them as an emergency: if I ever want to rile myself up and get really angry, I think about these books, how terrible they are, how much praise they got anyway, how no one would have ever read them if they were written by a man, how dumb the average human must be to think men have more power than women.

Smell this book. What does it smell like to you?

I dunno.

Contrary to my previous comments, this book picks on men. There’s a lot wrong with men, too.

You don’t say.

Look at all the dog-ears I made in this book. 
I was supposed to go back and review all these pages. 
There’s something worth re-reading on each of these pages.

So...why don’t you? Why haven’t you re-read them?

Look at them all. They all have dog-ears. 
It’s my MO. 
There’s only so much time in the day. 
Maybe you and I can get through them, though.

(She reaches for one; starts to pull it off the shelf.)

Not now. 
This book poured its bile into my 20s. 
There should be a better word for your 20s. 
Let’s make that our top priority project, Rose.

Okay. (She scribbles it down). But my name is Mai.

Oh, that’s such a pretty name.
It really is, don’t get me wrong.
It’s not personal, I mean, but I have a habit of calling women Rose. 
One day, maybe one day I’ll explain. 

Mhm.

Likely, I won’t though, Rose.
I apologize in advance.
Rose the Scribbler, what do you keep jotting down over there? 
I like your notepad, by the by.

Oh it’s -- thanks -- I’m writing about you, about this. 
Maybe it’ll be a book you can add to your collection one day.

That would be great -- ah! --This book here says nasty things about women. 
There were several phases in my life where I blamed women for all the world’s problems.

I’m noticing a theme.

I stopped noticing themes a long time ago. 
It got exhausting, noticing themes, really patterns of any kind. 
Just exhausting. 
I’m sure I exude themes, patterns, what-have-you, but I’m really good at not getting meta about any of it -- my brain just deleted that ability, you know?

Mhm. No.

This book was smuggled through Guatamala, Honduras, and Mexico to get here, one page at a time, in tiny pill containers, usually in the cracks of asses; usually alongside condoms full of drugs. 
Hundreds of “undocumenteds” risked their lives over this book. 

Is it a good book?

I want so desperately to be able to say yes.

This book is probably one of the worst books I own. 
A girl named Jeanne gave it to me, or left it in my car. 
She was special, so I kept the book. I wonder what she’s up to. 
Can you look her up for me?

(Rose makes a note; but the writer doesn’t follow up in any way).

This book of poetry was set in type and printed by hand, by Ariel Rhoads’ then husband, the poet Tim-Bob Hayes VI, in 1976. 
I once gave Ariel and Tim-Bob a painting I had done. 
I’m a shit painter, and I knew and everyone knew it. 
It was still disappointing to see the looks on their faces when I handed them this “gift.” 
I know it ended up in a landfill in South Memphis somewhere.
I like to think its molecules mingled with molecules from Elvis Presley’s trash.
 
What was it a painting of?

I dunno -- ah -- It was a severed leg, surfing against a massive Hawaii-sized wave. 
On top of the severed leg was a massive foot in a shoe -- the foot of a giant -- wearing pressed black work slacks.

This is one of the few books that made me laugh out loud. Too bad he’s a child molestor, that writer.
This is one of the few books that literally gave me hard-ons.
Wow, I’m getting one now -- just kidding.
This book deflected a bullet. 
I have another couple-three more around here like this as well.

This whole section -- is secret -- don’t tell anyone about this section. 
I think I’m on government lists because I own these books. 
Who knows.

This is the book I pretended to read one day in a bygone Borders outside Philadelphia. 
A beautiful, lean, I want to say Spanish for some reason, woman with a short bob haircut (and I normally hate bob haircuts). 
She picked up the same book from the main display. 
A shit book, a chick book, but I didn’t really read it anyway. 
I plotted to take it up and put it back, to show solidarity -- but then what? 
Instead, she sauntered over in my direction, right up in my face in fact, it was jarring -- all she wanted to say was, “Your book’s upside-down.” 
Maybe she was the one that got away.

Did you not say anything to her?

I smiled, but no.
That was damn near 60 years ago.
This book is all about merkins. 
I remember being in college when I first heard what merkins are. 
Do you even know what they are? 
Fuck. You know what a cod piece is, right? 
Holy fuck. 
Also, have you ever thought about how, when you get out of college, and for like at least five years:
a.) You talk about college a lot. And things that happened there.
b.) When you talk about it, you say, “In college I…” or “I did that in college.”
But when you reach a certain age, without fail, you naturally start saying “Back in college I…” or “I did that back in college.” 
Why are you making that face? Did you just google Merkin?

Mhm.

Feel this book’s cover. 
That’s human skin.

What!?!

No just kidding. 
But you know that exists right?

This is a book of my dreams. 
This whole section of these are. 
Mostly terribly boring dreams.

This is a book about how I destroyed my first marriage. 
The book about my second marriage is around here somewhere.
You weren’t married, at least I didn’t think you were.

No.
I was engaged, once. 

No one gets married any more, and I like reminding people that marriage is a thing, or at least used to be a thing.

This is a book of some guy’s conversations with God. 
There’s a bunch of them. 
I’ve read more than I have. 
Somewhere downstairs there’s a section with all of my conversations with God, but these are some that some other dude had, I think his name was Neale-Bob.

I’m reminded all of a sudden of a poet who wrote about a book he stole. 
I can only think of one book I stole and it was a meh Tom Robbins novel, maybe if I had a multiple choice question I’d remember which one. 
Stole it from a friend of a friend. 
Was leaving that dude’s house (the friend of a friend) with our common friend when I showed him the book I had stuffed down my pants. 
Dude, he said, he would have lent you the book. 
I remember saying, meh in response. 
It was out of character for me, like I said. 
Although you know what now that I think about it I accidentally stole a book by Donald Trump. 
Actually read it. 
It’s around here. 
I’ll find it. 
Was skimming it at a bookstore, as I was wont to do, had a bag and some papers and my computer and when I left I just scooped everything up. 
Realized it pretty soon, didn’t care -- but I digress, this poet said he stole a book and then wrote that the book itself longed for “its Dewey’d place in the dim-lit stacks.” 
I thought it was a middling turn of phrase at the time, but overly bold, and I’ve remembered it to this day.

Hold on, let me open to my favorite part of this book.
Here it is: “A diet of berries, vinegar, and goat’s milk will eventually not only cure your cancer, but will allow a man to become impregnated.” 
And there’s diagrams, also they talk about Jews controlling the New World Order a lot. If you know any Social Justice Warriors, this is the book for them.

Ah.

Let’s go into this room over here.