Who says you can’t go back

October 20, 2026 JulianLeave a comment

In which a ghost flits through l’école… [Written Mar 20 2026]

My father and I explored Étampes today, including a lunchtime visit to the school where I spent 4 months over the last year.
We chatted briefly with the administrators; I said hi to a few students.
The school felt oddly empty. Perhaps students spend their lunchbreak during these warmer months acquiring baguettes or eating outside.

Two students said hi along with my name, and I returned the greeting, then recalled their name a few minutes later.

Another student startled at seeing me. They looked like they’d seen a ghost.

Then, after school, around 4:30 or 5pm, I ran the 3.5mi loop I’ve done so many times.
I ran it slower than I did before I broke my foot.
I’ve become over the last few months: much fatter and happier.

I arrived home and wanted an orange.
I’ve enjoyed sumo citrus oranges these last weeks in New York.
I donned a shirt and walked to the local market.

On my way back, oranges in hand, I spotted two students sitting together.
One, a person who had wanted to fuck me.
The other, the person who wrote me hate mail.

What an odd experience.

I walked past, noticing how odd it is to be of any interest to others.
To gossip about a person gives them power.
Celebrity is formed by being an interesting subject for gossip.

Then later, I received a text from the at-school startler, asking if I’m returning to school.
I told them how “JuJu plans and JuJu laughs…”
They prodded again.
I repeated my lack of planning.
They said, “alright man, you do you. just know you’re a bit of a controversial figure so it would put people a bit at ease if they knew what to expect”.

What a weird thing to say.
Are you trying to protect others from feeling uncomfortable?
How do you think that makes me feel?

Does it make me feel good? Loved? Enjoyed? Respected? Seen? Invited? Welcome?
Or does it make me feel alone? Ostracized? Rejected?
Is it fun for me to feel those feelings?

Should I tell you that their discomfort makes me feel uncomfortable?
Is that enough to be conclusive?
If I feel uncomfortable, is that the end of the conversation?
Who are “they” exactly, and what exactly do they have to say?
Do they have some gripe with an underlying reason?
If so, I don’t know exactly what it is.

Only one even had the balls to message me about my being a pariah.
And that message was unhinged.
Unhinged, for example, in that they wrote three long, unanswered blocks of text and then finished with “Merry christmas” (they had sent it two days before christmas), and then deleted only the merry christmas message.
Why would you delete the only kind part?
That’s frightening. Objectively frightening.

Is this what celebrity is?
Being interesting enough to be spoken of?

I first wanted to attend this school because of the Bouffon class.
Some clowns are desirable, friendly, and fun.
Others are grotesque, disgusting, horrid (bouffon).
I have always found myself outcast by groups.
This group is not the first, nor will it be the last.
My elementary school administration, middle school classmates, college secret society, after-I-graduated improv group as well. Now this: a clown school.

If running away to join the circus is what people do when they’re rejected by society,
what do we do when we’re kicked out of the circus?

I have a great relationship with the admin. They’re kind, thoughtful, good-teaching bunch.
I also have a few friends I’ve made from school.
But man, there are a lot of crazies and stupids at clown school.
I don’t really care about being most of their friends.
What would be the point? What do they have to offer? What would be the mutually beneficial part of our spending time together?
But it sure does hurt to be yet again ostracized for bullshit reasons.

Returning now to the text and the question:
Why is their discomfort more valuable than mine?
Have you ever asked that question?
Their discomfort is conceptual – fear at some concept?
You’re making me hurt in the here and now.

I would pose that very question to this texting clown…
but he’s an absolute dolt and owes me money.

So I smile and I wave and I play the politician
and his life continues on
and theirs does too.

And I leave this year of clown school,
going instead to New York City.

And maybe in a year or two I will run into one of them
and they will shriek and run away
and by the time that happens
I will have learned
how to turn their fear

into gold.

P.s. No, it did not make me feel loved, seen, appreciated, and accepted.
It made me feel alone, rejected, hurt, and sad.
It conjured up the image of a bunny cowering in a corner
while some dark shadowy figure looms above it…

But that’s the key about dark shadowy figures:
what can a shadow do?
No arms. No legs.

They’re dispelled by the light.

Top-Secret Games: Airport Edition

May 22, 2026May 22, 2026 JulianLeave a comment

Serious places make the silliest games

Airports pretend they’re fancier than bus stations. Some games to remind them of their silliness:

Packing

Try “one–bagging”: no matter how long the trip, pack everything in a personal-item-sized backpack. Partner and I traveled through Europe for 4 months with one 20L backpack each. Benefits include:

Less to lug
Recognize how little you actually need.
Save $50+ per budget airline flight (which charge for carry-ons). That $50 (or $75!) could go toward a new shirt or hat or socks or whatever-you-neglected-due-to-your-limited-space-and-probably-won’t-need-anyway.

Checking in

Snap a picture of the airplane seatmap. This may come in handy.

TSA Checkpoints

Which line?

Most people choose by line length. But length is often less important than throughput speed. At a fork, neither line is likely to be 25% longer. But one TSA agent often is 25% slower.

Free Awkward Massage

When you’ve arrived to the airport with ample time to spare, tell the TSA agent, “I’d like to opt out of the body scanner”.

They’ll summon an agent who aligns with their perception of your gender appearance (androgynous people: I have no idea).

That person will blandly-and-with-dead-eyes presage the next two minutes of your future. Their articulation will be simultaneously formal (“I will first pat down your upper body, then your lower body…”) and ridiculous (“When I get to your sensitive areas, such as the waistband, I will use only the back of my hands”).

The experience feels like a procedural drama crossed with a lazy streetwalker naming service prices. You know it’s pointless and dumb. They know it’s pointless and dumb. And now they’re obligated to touch you.

For an added joy, leave something innocuous in your pocket: your passport or a few coins or a used dental flosser.

While they’re performing this intimate massage, try not to laugh.

Or guffaw at their pointlessness.

Or lean on them while they’re bending over to pat you.

On a societal level: there’s no winning. It isn’t a game. It’s a farce.

In the Lounge

0. Play credit card games to acquire lounge access. (These games are pre-preparation.)

Before leaving the lounge, choose between Future Fueling Level 1 (stuffing your backpack with canned drinks to go), and Future Fueling Level 2 (squirreling food into the ziplocs you brought). I play level 1; Partner Level 2.

At the Gate

If it’s your birthday, tell the counter check-in people it’s your birthday. (Most of their work is dealing with annoyed travelers, so they really love this refreshing opportunity!)
If it’s not your birthday, ponder the ethics of telling them it’s your honeymoon. (Decide against it as your partner doesn’t have a ring and you really don’t want them to ask, plus lying to win games is cheating.)
Ask the gate agent whether the airplane is full. If it’s not, ask them if they could move you to better seats. Do not pay for the change: that’s how the terrorists win.

When lining up for budget airlines with your Onebag®, do the following:

0. Have a bag that, if need be, is small enough to fit in the sizer if you put on all your layers and jam your pockets full. (The first step to winning is choosing a game you can win.)

Seek the person who is least interested in doing their job correctly.
Position your body to hide your bags.
Upon approaching the desk, ask them a question that distracts them without increasing their engagement, something like “Have you been to [destination city]? It’s my first time.” Be kind and friendly and light. You’ll know you’ve succeeded when their dead eyes shift energyless to the person behind you.

Boarding the Plane

If the plane has open seating, board earliest. See the “final note” (below) for methods to keep your neighboring seat empty.
Board last. If the agents ask, tell them it’s because “Boarding last is lucky!” And it is! The last person on the plane gets to see what seats are available before taking theirs.
1. This approach enables the harnessing of what million milers call “poor man’s first class” (an open row).

Final Note

Throughout this experience, if you ever want to repel someone’s attention (maybe your bag is slightly too big; maybe the plane is open-seating and you want the open seat beside you to remain), make a grotesque face and pick your nose. (Only pull this trick if you want to distract their attention and don’t have to interact with them. If the interaction is mandatory, this move can be dangerous.) Really get into it. Remind yourself, “No one expects a nose-picker to be strategic. Some people actually look like this or pick their nose like this. I wouldn’t want to interact with them, either!”

Brass Birmingham: A Play-Log

May 19, 2026May 19, 2026 JulianLeave a comment

When life is a dream, what is the point of dreaming?

While sleeping last night, I played a board game I have never played.

Despite what my subconscious may tell you, I suspect these are not the rules:

Setup

While one player provides an insufficient explanation of the rules, other players select a difficulty level for the game, indicated by various wooden logs.

Level 1:

A big log.

Level 2:

Three smaller logs.

Level 3:

A big log, but a slightly different color.

Components

You, now physically at a lumber mill in a small town in upstate California (not near redwoods), are met by an older, experienced logger who comments on the uniqueness of the region’s dirt.

Turn Sequence

You place your token at the beginning of the board. You move your token around the board with little understanding of why or wherefore.

When you land on a space, the space enacts a horror-themed mechanic reminiscent of Luigi’s Mansion.

Variants

You brainstorm various puns on Brass Birmingham.

Some of these places place the Birmingham in England (“Neon Newcastle”); others place the Birmingham in Alabama (“Copper Chattanooga”).

Return to Reality

You awaken and text the friend with whom you will be playing Brass Birmingham the following day.

You mention this dream and your plan to watch a video containing the actual rules.

Not because that game sounds more fun, but because flying to California for a logging session would take longer than the allotted three hours.

There’s a Fine, Fine Line Between Campy & Bad

May 10, 2026 JulianLeave a comment

Bad + heightened + self-aware = camp. Bad + heightened – self-aware = bad.

Can you discern between campy acting and bad acting?

On Thursday, I watched a play. Half the actors performed camp; the other half were unskilled. Camp is the mimicry and affectionate mockery of bad. There’s a fine, fine line between them: to the untrained observer, camp could appear as bad.

Thus, the performers must train the observers.

What’s in a Play?

A skilled actor who cannot entertain is not a skilled actor. However, in this situation, I do not think the actors are entirely to blame. An actor in an uncurated environment can only do so much.

The director is responsible for show cohesion, just as a coach is responsible for team cohesion. (A football player can reasonably say, “I played my role perfectly; today’s loss is not my fault.”)

Thursday’s show presented individuals but lacked a bigger picture. Every actor played according to their ability. Some of those abilities were poor. The director failed to account for this gap. Again, I think this is a coaching issue. Plenty of highschool sports teams have bench warmers and waterboys. Plenty of highschool plays contain “tree #1”. (And New York City theater likely has far more people auditioning than available roles.)

Just as a comedian must wink at the audience lest we think him a liar, this play needed a wink. The play was a small-theater (but professional) production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, a musical containing archetypes — archetypes that, as over-the-top portrayals, may not be authentic. Inauthentic acting done well may be camp. Done poorly? Amateurish.

When the actors first entered the stage, playing mock-audience members, one could have said, “This is going to be campy.” A director’s note in the printed programs could have said, “We lean into the camp.” Instead, the performances fell into the uncanny valley.

A Holistic Hole

A basketball coach must do more than ensure each teammate performs their role. They must ensure the team gets the ball into the basket. Otherwise, you end up with beautiful acrobatics but complete strategic failure.

Or, in this case, a play that audiences did not want to watch.

Wise to the Game

April 18, 2026 JulianLeave a comment

A relaunch.

I’m most alive when I’m playing games.

A few months ago, my sister asked me about an unspoken rule in her business culture – an implicit game. I told her about games where explicit acknowledgment of the rule breaks the rule, and pointing that out is also against the rule. She thanked me and said I should write about the philosophy of games.

I’ve been thinking about that ever since.

Near the end of my senior year of college, I ushered my father into a room above the library and drew three circles on a whiteboard: writing, philosophy, and befriending eccentric people. In the middle I wrote the question that would pick my profession: “in what areas am I in the top 5% of my classmates?”

The answer that fell out: befriend eccentric people, then write their philosophy.

Not wanting to be a starving writer, I asked one follow-up: who in that circle has money? Growing up in Silicon Valley, the answer was tech founders. I spent the next six years building that business and rose to the top of the technology ghostwriting industry. It was fun while I was growing. It’s not fun anymore. The game is too easy.

So today I ran the exercise again, with the ikigai framework:

What do I love? Games. Learning new things. Befriending eccentric people.
What am I paid for? Writing.
What does the world need? Play. Whimsy. Fun.
What am I good at? Making complex things clear.

The answer that fell out is games, which makes sense: games are a bounded, examinable instance of the thing the world needs more of. If the world needs more play, games are where play can be examined. I learned this at clown school: the first course isn’t about humor or fun or jokes; it’s about games.

The three pillars of this publication, going forward:

Games.
Eccentric people.
Practical philosophy.

Writing is the medium. Speaking, eventually.

The new name is Wise to the Game. (My last name is Wise. It’s a pun. A double-pun? No: a triple-pun. Try to keep up.)

More tomorrow.

Selections & Sewage (Apr 13 2026)

April 13, 2026 JulianLeave a comment

In which Our hero explores options.

Click here for the accompanying video.

Today, Partner and I visited an appliance showroom. Here’s what we learned:

Shower heads come with flow rate limiters. The national legal maximum is 2.5 gallons per minute. You can remove your flow rate limiter, as the salesman at the showroom once did. His shower subsequently shot water with such force that it knocked the shower door clean off and flooded his bathroom.
If you buy a thermostatic shower handle, you can have infinite separate shower heads all pointing at you. The shower heads are each limited at 2.5 gallons per minute. The thermostatic valve caps out at 14 gallons per minute. So even with three shower heads you won’t lose water pressure! All you have to do is ensure you’re shipping the showerhead to a state that does not have more restrictive requirements (California and New York both cap showerheads at 1.8 gallons per minute)
Some faucets cost $150. Some cost $800. Some cost $2400. They all dispense water. The $800 vs $2400 is cosmetic. The $150 vs $800 can be functional.
The cheapest toilets and the expensive toilets both will ultimately contain sewage. The cheapest toilets don’t have glazed piping, so over time the sewage will accumulate in the pipe. The mid-range vs expensive toilets are functionally equivalent, just with different aesthetics and different ease of cleaning the part that doesn’t touch sewage.
No one makes a bidet seat in black.
Everyone likes a toto toilet, especially if you’re getting one with a bidet. I’m not convinced. I enjoy a vigorous stream when shooting water around my anus. The toto toilets I have used are disappointing in this context.
Linear drains (long, thin rectangular ones) in New York City are much more expensive than normal, square drains since they must legally be made of more expensive materials.
Steam showers cost $5k, minimum.
Neither Partner nor I like rain head showers. Our dislike, according to the showroom attendant, is a common perspective.
I will likely be able to realize my dream of three showerheads all at once. Bully for me!
One model of toilet costs just over $26,000. It is not made of gold. I did get to sit on it.

An Art (Apr 4 2026)

April 4, 2026 JulianLeave a comment

An off-off-off-off Broadway day.

I attended an art today. A very Burning Man-ish art. Listen:

You knock on a door in Brooklyn. A clown-not-yet-in-costume opens the door. She tells you the show starts when she dons her hat. But now, she is hatless, so the show must not have started.

You introduce yourself to the other attendees. There are five of you: you, your partner, a couple (she’s from Bulgaria; he’s a stand up comedian), and a woman of about 80 who formerly performed voiceover work for the Muppets.

The host dons her hat. She provides you a passport and divides you into groups: you’re with the Bulgarian and Muppet; your partner is with the Standup. The host introduces you to the town: five stations, each themed around a custom topic for you. (Mine was Consistency & Stability.)

You visit the five stations in sequence. At one, you marry your theme. At another, your theme writes you a letter.
At the beginning of the experience, you ask yourself, “Why am I here?” You imagine yourself leaving to go to a park. Getting some much-needed rest away from the world.

At one station, the Muppet tells you of how she was engaged to a man in L.A. A beautiful man, an incredible musician. But he had a nervous breakdown and moved back to Las Vegas. And she moved back home to New York City. And had she not done that, she would never have been the in-demand voice over artist she ended up being.

By the end, you have found in this activity a bit of solace, peace, and comfort.
You met some people who enjoyed the time they passed with you.
You learned a small bit experientially.
If you generally had positive memories, you would have positive ones here too.

After the experience, the clown host mentions she previously studied in France, under the same teacher who founded the clown school you attended.
She says she left his instruction back in the early 2000s, thinking he had failed her. Only after he died did she recognize he had been right all along.
You wonder how much that’s true for you too.
You wonder where you have to go.

An hour later, you see a dear friend for a bite of dim sum.
It’s his birthday. It’s nice to laugh.
You wander toward home, a bit colder than expected.
You check your texts, and find a thank you from the clown host. She says that your conversation helped her. She may return to that school.

You arrive home.

And all this time,
still,
throughout the entire day,
you wonder
why you feel
so utterly
alone.

Food & Fluff (April 2 2026)

April 2, 2026 JulianLeave a comment

A view into my daily life.

“Write about oxtail soup.”
“You could write about how good I am at making tasty food in all sorts of ways.”
“Nooooooo you can’t say that.”
–Partner, in answer to my question, “What should I write about today?”

Partner and I have a new approach to food.
As we recently moved in and are about to renovate our apartment, cooking options are limited to 1) A sous vide, and 2) Two Instant Pots.

Why two Instant Pots?
They were free. Unused. From Facebook. From the same person.

Why did they have two unused Instant Pots?
🤷‍♀️

Partner: “I learned how to make frybread once.”

Me: “Mmhmm?”
Partner: “End of story.”

Partner: “Okay, the context was someone else talking about the best food and … Indian fry bread.”

Partner: (Mockingly) “Native American fry bread.”

Partner is now saying things in an effort to make me write them.
I will not comply.

—

Me: “You have any edits [on my daily writing]?”
Partner: “Boooooo.”

Partner, 2 minutes later: “Now I have to self-censor.”
Me: “No you don’t.”
Partner: “Because what I want to say is ‘Poopy butts’.”
<Seeing my writing>
“You wrote it wrong. It was ‘Poopy butt face’. That’s funny. ‘Poopy butts’ is disgusting. You’re an unreliable narrator.”

—

Partner: “I feel like you need a closing… something clever.”

(Upon reading this) “That’s not clever.”

A Triathlon of Triathlons (Mar 31 2026)

March 31, 2026 JulianLeave a comment

A friend and I created a monster. Let me explain:

We started playing Pokemon during the pandemic. We would race to see who could complete the first gym the fastest. After a few attempts, this got stale, so we expanded to other Pokemon games. There are many to choose from.

Then we developed a scoring system. Pokemon games are naturally divided into 9 segments: 1 for each gym badge, and 1 for the Elite Four. For each segment, whoever completes it faster receives a point. At the end, most points wins.

But that was an insufficient amount of game. So we created a triathlon: play that competition across 3 Pokemon games, crowning victorious whoever wins best two out of three.

But even that was an insufficient amount of game. So we added a second category: total points across all three games. If one player ekes out victories in two of the legs but gets swept in the third, they could win the 2-out-of-3 but lose the points game.

And then, naturally, we play the triathlon three times. A triathlon of triathlons.

First triathlon: I won the 2-out-of-3 but lost the points.
Second triathlon: I lost the 2-out-of-3 but won the points.
Third triathlon: TBD.

Our tiebreaker begins soon. Stay tuned — or better yet, try it yourself. I’ve invented many an excellent game. Maybe someday one will spread to others.

The Gut is The Gut. So What? So What!

March 27, 2026 JulianLeave a comment

A poem by Dr Peuss

When my gut feels bleh
my stable off-kilts
like a broken see-saw
that saws unseen guilt.

How does it saw over and over?
knocking down trunks,
kathunk. kathunk.

i do not like this saddened gut.
i do not like it.
ugh. sad. blut.

And so I say: gut, let’s make nice.
I’ll feed you oats. I’ll feed you rice.
You do your job, I’ll do mine —
and by tomorrow? We’ll feel fine.

And so I eat my daily fiber.
Or else my gut is a poop-miser.