The appeal is obvious: it grants authority w/o requiring competence. He doesn't need to understand the subject. Just imply he understands you. Instead of refuting your conclusion, he explains why someone like you would need to believe it. Especially handy if the argument's going poorly. Facts are stubborn, logic is humiliating, evidence keeps existing independently of his self-image. So Reply Guy™ changes games.

Can't beat the point? Pathologize the person.

Can't play the hand? Play the man!

Every response self-validates. Deny it, the denial confirms it. Object to the framing, the objection confirms the frame. Intellectual taxidermy: the convo is killed, stuffed & mounted as evidence of his insight.

He never meets a proposition on its own ground. He relocates the dispute from truth to character where he's appointed himself physician, judge & priest. The point stops mattering. Just what kind of damaged person would make it.

The classic Reply Guy™ does not actually argue. Argument requires risk: the possibility of being wrong, the burden of evidence, the vulgar inconvenience of addressing what was said. He performs amateur diagnosis instead.

Your claim is "revealing" rather than mistaken. Your evidence is a symptom rather than weak. Your anger is trauma, your confidence is mere narcissism, your disagreement is insecurity. Refuse the diagnosis & the refusal proves it. You've touched a nerve!

#ReplyGuy

Trade off is fewer episodes, but each feel like an event than another excuse to revisit the same hiking trail in Vancouver. I'd take 10 episodes of Foundation over 25 episodes of recycled settings any day of the week.

Stargate is the perfect example. After 7 years of exploring the Milky Way's endless conifer forests, the characters travel to the Pegasus Galaxy, millions of light years away, only to find out it has somehow evolved the exact same forests in British Columbia.

Modern prestige shows take a different approach. Series like Foundation or Westworld spend more time & $$$ on production, VFX, scope.

People complain that TV seasons used to have 20-30 episodes instead of the 8-10 we get today. That's nostalgia talking more than reality. Those classic scifi shows (Stargate, Star Trek, etc) were masters of stretching a budget. 80% of those 'alien worlds' were filmed in the same patch of forest behind the same 5 trees. Reusing locations was cost-cutting. Became such a staple that fans could practically recognize the same dirt road showing up on planet after planet.

By nighttime, at the ASL Slam, the signs sped up, the alcohol went down, & everyone got more aggressive, looser, more alive. Much fun was had. Much dignity was misplaced. One lady even informed me that she's my "plus one" for an upcoming wedding in Europe, as if I've been consulted & found irrelevant.

Fair? Perhaps.

She teamed up with the Dream Team of Deaf women professors: Dr. Hou, Dr. Stapleton-Ramirez, Dr. Garcia Fernandez, and Dr. Guerrero Cantor. The workshop included an activity on privilege & disadvantage using yarn, 10 volunteers & 2 people announcing their identities while the rest of the volunteers physically raised or lowered the string.

Naturally, I volunteered. Naturally, my buddy caught my less-than appropriate remarks on video, cuz history deserves evidence.

That kind of praise from someone like him is the sort of thing you pretend to accept calmly while your inner child starts tossing tables.

The real highlight of the day, though, was my sister Dr. Rez's workshop on intersectionality - the uses, abuses & ritual overfeeding of a word everyone likes to throw around till it starts foaming at the mouth. And yes it was the showstopper of the conference.

Since my books already vanished into the hands of wiser, earlier buyers, I didn't see much point in hauling the corpse upstairs.

But then I finally met David Call, one of the great Deaf artists of our time. He told me he's retiring from art due to age & physical limitations have made linoleum carving too punishing on the body. That hit pretty hard. The body always comes to collect. Still, he was warm, generous & encouraging. Said he was impressed with my art, that I "have it."

Unlike the 1st day, the exhibition area was closed except for delegates & workshop attendees, which meant foot traffic was less "conference buzz" & more "post apocalyptic" hallway. Those who stopped by were mostly other exhibitors or delegates wandering in between voting rounds & workshops, looking like they were just mugged in a hotel ballroom.

As a compromise NAD organizers said we could move our booths upstairs to the evening events, which were open to the public.

Day 3 of #NAD was the strange afterlife of commerce.

With most of my books already gone, I returned to the exhibition area carrying little more than prints, optimism & the faint smell of missed opportunity. My plan was to network with other luminaries cuz when you have nothing left to sell, you sell your personality. God help us all!

There was some NAD delegate kerfuffle, naturally cuz no conference is complete w/o a procedural hostage situation.

We hit it off, which means he'll be presenting later this year for my American Deaf Cultures class on Deaf Influencers & gatekeepers. Perfect topic for the perfect witness.

Today all I got left are prints, flyers & the haunted faces of customers who waited till the last day to buy my books. Let this be a lesson: hesitation is how you end up holding a tote bag full of regret.

Second reason? The people.
I got to meet up with several worthwhiles, including Sam Sepah & Tar. Sam is your classic Tech Bro but the useful kind: Google access work, Deaf world, all that. He's also a master storyteller, the sort of guy who always got the right anecdote loaded & chambered.

Then there's Tar, the Deaf community's most notorious vlogger, patron saint of saying what everyone else pretends not to think.

Day 2 was the day the table got picked clean. The NAD conference hit its high water mark yesterday for 2 reasons: first, i sold out the remaining copies of Volume 1 & 2 cuz apparently I mistook demand for a polite suggestion. Brought about 50 copies, which should be enough, right? Cute. They vanished in a few hours like cigarettes at a family crisis.

So, now my colorist prep the NAD flyer cuz when the books are gone, you sell the ghost of those books. Welcome to capitalism but with failed gods.

After a bizarre "dinner with the president" in the exhibition area, my old buddy & I escaped to the best cigar lounge in town, Cigar Bar & Grill. Some long distance friendships survive on text messages, shared obsessions & the stubborn refusal to disappear. This one does.

Still nothing beats sitting across from someone in person, $30 cigar smoke in the air, the day behind you & the whole circus waiting to burn brighter tomorrow.

Then the day got weirder & better: I sold out of my 3rd book, Pantheon Heterogenia. Not the 1st volume which I usually overpack cuz it's the realiable little workhorse. No, the 3rd book. Gone.

Since Day 1 was only the opening act & Thursday/Friday are supposed to be heavier traffic, I may be forced to disappoint a few customers. A tragic condition, very literary.

Instead, Vegas. Then a reroute to Oakland. Then 11am arrival. Then an Uber to the Hilton. By noon, we staggered into the exhibition area & found what every exhibitor dreams of: everyone else already set up, smiling, functional, alive. I was the last booth standing in pieces.

Naturally I told folks celebrities always arrive late.

The machine tried to chew us up, but failed.

By afternoon, people were stopping by who knew me from SM, mutual worthies, etcetera.

Day 1 is in the dirt. Rolled into the 58th National Association of the Deaf conference with 3 students form my university. As well as a travel story that'll make you believe airports are just psychological experiments. Southwest in its infinite corporate wisdom, canceled our flight to Oakland so we sprinted for a connecting one to Las Vegas. Mere contestant in some bankrupt reality show.

The plan was simple: land in Oakland, get to SF, make the first workshop at #NAD.

Their outlook may be bleak but at least it's internally consistent. They do not resent reality for failing to resemble a moral fable.

The wounded idealist says "people were supposed to be better so now I'll pretend I never believed that."

The cynic says "people are mostly what they've always been. Build your expectations accordingly."

One speaks from diagnosis. The other is scar tissue lecturing atop a soapbox.