Quote of the day

[iambiguous]

Osamu Dazai from No Longer Human

Even the servants, when asked by my mother about the meeting, answered as if it were their spontaneous thought, that it had been really interesting. These were the self-same servants who had been bitterly complaining on the way home that political meetings are the most boring thing in the world” Osamu Dazai

Personas...don't leave home without them.

Greed did not cover it, nor did vanity. Nor was it simply a combination of lust and greed. I wasn't sure what it was, but I felt that there was something inexplicable at the bottom of human society which was not reducible to economics.

Let's tackle this...theoretically?

Something hard about her gives you the impression less of a beautiful woman than of a handsome young man.

Unless "she" is, well, you know.

The incomprehensibility of society is the incomprehensibility of the individual. The ocean is not society; it is individual.

Pick three
1] dasein
2] dasein
3] dasein

I should like to record that as I manipulated the peeling lacquer chopsticks to eat my jelly, I felt unbearably lonely.

Can you say that?

Even if released, I would be forever branded on the forehead with the word "madman," or perhaps, "reject".
Disqualified as a human being.
I had now ceased utterly to be a human being.

Go ahead, release me. You know, before I release you.

[iambiguous]

Requiem for a Dream

Sara Goldfarb: I'm somebody now, Harry. Everybody likes me. Soon, millions of people will see me and they'll all like me. I'll tell them about you, and your father, how good he was to us. Remember? It's a reason to get up in the morning. It's a reason to lose weight, to fit in the red dress. It's a reason to smile. It makes tomorrow all right. What have I got Harry, hm? Why should I even make the bed, or wash the dishes? I do them, but why should I? I'm alone. Your father's gone, you're gone. I got no one to care for. What have I got, Harry? I'm lonely. I'm old.
Harry Goldfarb: You got friends, Ma.
Sara Goldfarb: Ah, it's not the same. They don't need me. I like the way I feel. I like thinking about the red dress and the television and you and your father.

He wondered where π fits into all this.

Harry Goldfarb: [on the phone] Marion... I've been thinking about you so much... are you okay?
Marion: When are you coming home?
Harry Goldfarb: Soon.
Marion: When?
Harry Goldfarb: Soon... you holding out alright?
Marion: Harry... can you come today?
Harry Goldfarb: Yeah...
[Both Harry and Marion start to cry]
Harry Goldfarb: I'll come... I'll come today. You just wait for me, alright?
Marion: Harry...
Harry Goldfarb: I'm coming back, Marion.
Marion: Yeah.
Harry Goldfarb: I'm really sorry, Marion...
Marion: I know.

Of course, she doesn't know what we know about Harry, does she?

Marion: Getting the money's not the problem, Harry.
Harry Goldfarb: Then what's the problem?
Marion: I don't know what I'm going to have to do to get it.

And now we know.

Tappy Tibbons: We got a winner, I said we got a winner, we got a winner! Our next winner is that delightful personality, straight from Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, please give a juicy welcome to Mrs. Sara Goldfarb!
The Audience: Juice by Sara, juice by Sara, juice by Sara oh, Sara's got juice, Sara's got juice, ohhhhhhhh Sara!
Tappy Tibbons: I'm delighted to tell you, that you've just won the grand prize!
Sara Goldfarb: [elated] Oh, no!
Tappy Tibbons: Now let me tell you what you've won. Your prize has a sweet smile, and his own private business. He just got engaged, and is about to get married this summer. Will you please give a warm and juicy welcome, Harry Goldfarb!
The Audience: Juice by Harry, juice by Harry, juice by Harry, ohhhh Harry! Harry's got juice, Harry's got juice, ohhhhhh Harry.
Sara Goldfarb: I love you, Harry.
Harry Goldfarb: I love you too, Ma.

The "last lines" let's call them.

Sara Goldfarb: How come you know more about medicine than a doctor?
Harry Goldfarb: Believe me, Ma: I know.

Obviously, Ma doesn't know what we know about Harry.

Sara Goldfarb: [about her pills] Purple in the morning, blue in the afternoon, orange in the evening.
[to refrigerator]
Sara Goldfarb: There's my three meals, Mr. Smartypants.
[back to pills]
Sara Goldfarb: And green at night. Just like that. One, two, three, four.

Mother's little helpers, right Mick?

[iambiguous]

Despair...

“The sun loses more than a million tons of material from its surface every second. She felt like the sun. Radiating with rage, despair, regret and a million other tons of mixed feelings. Each shedding only for other feelings to reappear.” Soroosh Shahrivar

That's 86,400 million tons a day, 604,800 million tons a week or 31,449, 600 million tons a year. So, which comes closest to describing your rage, despair and regret?

"Upon hearing the news about Hiroshima, Hersey was immediately overwhelmed by a sense of despair.” Lesley M.M. Blume

Of course, you're reaction might have been different.

“Dear God, make my life one that ignites a passion to live in the lives of those who are considering the choice not to live.” Craig D. Lounsbrough

Go ahead, ask me how that's going.

“Maybe for short periods of time it seemed to him, inside that stinking bed, that some people were exempt from tragedy and pain, but those respites were short; in the scheme of things and in the length of eternity, respites were nothing but anomalies in a relentless flow of despair and pain and sadness and horror that surely would eventually sweep everyone away.” Adam Nevill

Anyone exempt from tragedy and pain here? Tell, us, what's the secret?

“I am so alone. We live together. We eat together. We sleep together. But I have never felt more alone in my entire life.” Colleen Hoover

Uh, we post together?

“JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE JUDE PLEASE JUDE” Holly Black

Now that's despair.

[iambiguous]

Heathers

Veronica Sawyer: Heather, why can't you just be a friend? Why do you have to be such a mega-bitch?
Heather Duke: Because I can be.

Lots of them here too. Though most, admittedly, are bastards.

Veronica Sawyer: You know, I have a little prepared speech I tell my suitor when he wants more than I'd like to give him. Gee, blank, I had a really nice...
Brad: Save the speeches for Malcolm X, I just want to get laid.
Veronica Sawyer: You don't deserve my fucking speech.

What does he deserve, J.D.?

Heather Chandler: You stupid fuck.
Veronica Sawyer: You goddamn bitch.
Heather Chandler: I brought you to a Remington party and what's my thanks? It's on a hallway carpet. I got paid in puke.
Veronica Sawyer: Lick it up, baby. Lick. It. Up.

Of course, she's not a Heather.

Veronica Sawyer: That knife is filthy.
J.D.: What do you think I'm going to do with it, take out her tonsils?
Veronica Sawyer: Excuse me, I think I know Heather a little bit better than you do. If she were going to slit her wrists, the knife would be spotless.

Big Blue it is then.

Officer Milner: [arriving on crime scene] So, what's the deal?
Officer McCord: Suicide. Double suicide. They shot each other!
Officer Milner: Hey, that's Kurt Kelly!
Officer McCord: And the line backer, Ram Sweeney.
Officer Milner: My God, suicide. Why?
Officer McCord: [holds up bottle of mineral water found next to one of the bodies] Does *this* answer your question?
Officer Milner: [appalled] Oh man! They were fags?
Officer McCord: [grimly] Listen up:
[reading from forged suicide letter]
Officer McCord: "We realized we could never reveal our forbidden love to an uncaring and un-understanding world."
Officer Milner: [disgusted] Jesus H. Christ!
Officer McCord: The quarterback, buggering the linebacker...
[shaking head]
Officer McCord: What a waste!
Officer Milner: Oh, the humanity!

And now all this transgender shit!
Right?

J.D.: Is your life perfect?
Veronica Sawyer: I'm on my way to a party at Remington University... No, my life's not perfect. I don't really like my friends.
J.D.: I... I don't really like your friends either.
Veronica Sawyer: Well, it's just like - they're people I work with, and our job is being popular and shit.
J.D.: Maybe it's time to take a vacation.

And what a vacation it will be.

[iambiguous]

Suicide...

“It was only later, replaying the scene in her mind again and again, that she began to believe it was the expression of a man who was methodically unplugging himself from reality, one cord at a time. The face of a man who was heading out of the blue and into the black.” Stephen King

In other words, who's next?

“The wind made me shiver as i pulled my arms into my T-shirt. There I was, cold, isolated and desperate for something I knew I couldn't have.
A solution. A remedy. Anything.
The silence continued except for my own footsteps. I hated it. Alone and confused was the last place I wanted to be.
Somehow I knew I deserved this.” Brian Krans

On the other hand, what if you don't deserve it?

“I've been accustomed to mysteries, holy and otherwise, since I was a child. Some of us care for orphans, amass fortunes, raise protests or Nielsen ratings; some of us take communion or whiskey or poison. Some of us take lithium and antidepressants, and most everyone believes these pills are fundamentally wrong, a crutch, a sign of moral weakness, the surrender of art and individuality. Bullshit. Such thinking guarantees tradgedy for the bipolar. Without medicine, 20 percent of us, one in five, will commit suicide. Six-gun Russian roulette gives better odds. Denouncing these medicines makes as much sense as denouncing the immorality of motor oil. Without them, sooner or later the bipolar brain will go bang. I know plenty of potheads who sermonize against the pharmaceutical companies; I know plenty of born-again yoga instructors, plenty of missionaries who tell me I'm wrong about lithium. They don't have a clue.” David Lovelace

I was prescribed lithium myself back then. Maybe that explains...something?

“When Sherri asks questions about who would find me if I killed myself and what their reaction would be, I think that whoever knew me would be sad. But then everybody would get over it. I would fade away. I don't think I'm that important to anyone. Nobody's opinion about me killing myself would stop me from doing it.” Albert Borris

I suspect it is different for all of us. Still, if you don't stop me, I won't stop you.

“I love death because life hates me.” Luffina Lourduraj

So, is this...logical?

“Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of those who had 'given' their lives. But on what assurance did we know that these gifts had really been made? Only the survivors—the living—could attest to it. In order to know that a person had truly laid down his life for his friends, or comrades, one would have to hear it from his own lips, or at least have heard it promised in advance. And that presented another difficulty. Many brave and now dead soldiers had nonetheless been conscripts. The known martyrs—those who actually, voluntarily sought death and rejoiced in the fact—had been the kamikaze pilots, immolating themselves to propitiate a 'divine' emperor who looked (as Orwell once phrased it) like a monkey on a stick. Their Christian predecessors had endured torture and death (as well as inflicted it) in order to set up a theocracy. Their modern equivalents would be the suicide murderers, who mostly have the same aim in mind. About people who set out to lose their lives, then, there seems to hang an air of fanaticism: a gigantic sense of self-importance unattractively fused with a masochistic tendency to self-abnegation. Not wholesome.
The better and more realistic test would therefore seem to be: In what cause, or on what principle, would you risk your life?” Christopher Hitchens

You first?

[iambiguous]

Slavoj Žižek

What about animals slaughtered for our consumption? who among us would be able to continue eating pork chops after visiting a factory farm in which pigs are half-blind and cannot even properly walk, but are just fattened to be killed? And what about, say, torture and suffering of millions we know about, but choose to ignore? Imagine the effect of having to watch a snuff movie portraying what goes on thousands of times a day around the world: brutal acts of torture, the picking out of eyes, the crushing of testicles -the list cannot bear recounting. Would the watcher be able to continue going on as usual? Yes, but only if he or she were able somehow to forget -- in an act which suspended symbolic efficiency -- what had been witnessed. This forgetting entails a gesture of what is called fetishist disavowal: "I know it, but I don't want to know that I know, so I don't know." I know it, but I refuse to fully assume the consequences of this knowledge, so that I can continue acting as if I don't know it.”

Yeah, what about that?

What makes you depressed?
Seeing stupid people happy.

Or, scarier still, stupid people who are unhappy.

The fact that a cloud from a minor volcanic eruption in Iceland—a small disturbance in the complex mechanism of life on the Earth—can bring to a standstill the aerial traffic over an entire continent is a reminder of how, with all its power to transform nature, humankind remains just another species on the planet Earth.

Next up: The Big One!

Beyond the fiction of reality, there is the reality of the fiction.

Whatever that means. You know, "in reality".

I think that the task of philosophy is not to provide answers, but to show how the way we perceive a problem can be itself part of a problem.

Objectively, for example.

Nowadays, you can do anything that you want—anal, oral, fisting—but you need to be wearing gloves, condoms, protection.

Not here -- https://knowthyself.forumotion.net/f6-agora -- you can't.

[iambiguous]

Eyes Wide Shut

Alice Harford: When she is having her little titties squeezed, do you think she ever has any fantasies about what handsome Dr. Bill's dickie might be like?

Too close to call?

Dr. Bill Harford: The woman lying dead in the morgue was the woman at the party. Well, Victor, maybe I'm missing something here. You call it fake, a charade... Do you mind telling me what kind of fucking charade ends up with somebody turning up dead?
Victor Ziegler: [getting angry and defensive] Okay Bill... let's cut the bullshit, alright? You've been way out of your depth for the last 24 hours! You want to know what kind of charade? I'll tell you what kind. That whole play-acted, "take me" phony sacrifice that you've been jerking off with had nothing to do with her real death. The truth is nothing happened to her after you left that party that hadn't happened to her before. She got her brains fucked out. Period! She was just fine when they took her back to her hotel room. And the rest is all there in the paper. There was no foul play regarding her death. She OD'd. She was alone in her room, her door was locked from the inside, the police are happy... end of story! Come on, Bill. You said it yourself to Mandy...that woman with the big tits who OD'd in my bathroom? She was an addict. You told her yourself the other night that it was only a matter of time before it came to that.

Well, that could true, right?

Alice Harford: So, because I'm a beautiful woman, the only reason any man wants to talk to me is because he wants to fuck me? Is that what you're saying?

That's what I'm saying.
Well, unless, of course, I'm wrong.

Marion: I love you. I don't want to go away with Carl.
Dr. Bill Harford: Marion, I don't think you realize...
Marion: I do, even if I'm never to see you again, I want at least to live near you.
Dr. Bill Harford: Marion, listen to me, listen to me. You're very upset right now and I don't think you realize what you're saying.
Marion: I love you.
Dr. Bill Harford: We barely know each other. I don't think we've had a single conversation about anything except your father.
Marion: I love you.

Like the song says, "Love is strange".

Dr. Bill Harford: There was a... there was a... there was, uh... a woman there. Who, uh, tried to warn me.
Victor Ziegler: I know.
Dr. Bill Harford: Do you know who she was?
Victor Ziegler: Yes. She was... she was a hooker. Sorry, but... that's what she was.
Dr. Bill Harford: A hooker?
Victor Ziegler: Bill, suppose I told you that... that everything that happened to you there... the threats, the- the girl's warnings, her last minute intervention, suppose I said that all of that... was staged. That it was a kind of charade. That it was fake.
Dr. Bill Harford: Fake?
Victor Ziegler: Yes, fake.
Dr. Bill Harford: Why would they do that?
Victor Ziegler: Why? In plain words... to scare the living shit out of you. To keep you quiet about where you'd been and what you'd seen.

Unless, of course, he's lying.
But that's another script altogether.

Bill Harford: Was it the second password? Is that what gave me away?
Victor Ziegler: Yes, finally. But not because you didn't know it. It's because there was no second password. Of course it didn't help you too much that those people arrived there in limos... and you showed up in a taxi. Or that when they took your coat, they found the receipt to the costume from the rental house in your pocket made out to you-know-who.

Next up: the rental shop owner's daughter.

[iambiguous]

Nihilism...

“I decided to give up meaningless sex, but then I remembered that everything is meaningless.” Oli Anderson

For all practical purposes, perhaps, but not theoretically.

“There is no such thing as progress or regress. The world is not getting better and better, nor is it getting worse and worse. It is simply moving along into the future, reiterating in different configurations the patterns that have already occurred. We can’t help but play a role in this unfolding drama, but it is a mistake to think that what we do makes any difference to the grand scheme of things.” John Marmysz

I know, I know: don't get me started.

“You have to take an interest in something in life, I told myself. I wondered what could interest me, after I was finished with love. I could take a course in wine tasting, maybe, or start collecting model aeroplanes.” Michel Houllebecq

How about pinning down once and for the meaning of life? He can join us here, right?

“We act by virtue of what we recognize as beneficial. At the present time, negation is the most beneficial of all—and we deny.” Ivan Turgenev

Different things, of course.

“I am only a shadow, sitting by the gates of Hades beside that arrogant Ulysses telling stories of my grievances to my father’s indifferent ghost who, from time to time, gusts an ash wind at me and whispers son, for the nonsense you talk pour me even a drop of life this shit hole of eternity suffocates terribly.” Sigitas Parulskis

That ever happen to you?

“To say that life is meaningless is to express an attitude, not to state a fact” Peter Singer

Yep, even I believe that's true.

[iambiguous]

Match Point

Chris Wilton: I think it's important to be lucky in anything.
Chloe Hewett Wilton: Well, I don't believe in luck. I believe in hard work.
Chris Wilton: Oh, hard work is mandatory, but, I think everybody's afraid to admit what a big part luck plays. I mean, it seems scientists are - confirming more and more that all existence is here by blind chance. No purpose, no design.

Lucky I'm here, right?
Oh, and point taken.

Chris Wilton: Look, you can't blame me for trying to hide the fact that I had an affair with her. I know that it's not the most honorable thing to cheat on your wife, but that does not make me a murderer.

More like a diabolical murderer. And in an amoral universe to boot.

Chris Wilton: I'm sure she's not more beautiful than you are.
Nola Rice: What I am is sexy. But Linda's, my sister, is classically beautiful.
Chris Wilton: So, you are aware of your effect on men?

Even as an alien if you get my drift.

Nola Rice: You're gonna do very well for yourself, unless you blow it.
Chris Wilton: And how am I going to blow it?
Nola Rice: By making a pass at me.

On the other hand, who wouldn't?

Chris Wilton: The innocent are sometimes slain to make way for a grander scheme. You were collateral damage.

Then the grandest scheme of them all: Gaza.

Nola Rice: Would you like to play for a thousand pounds a game?
Chris Wilton: [passing the ball to Nola to serve first] What did I walk into?
Nola Rice: [serves and Chris smashes] What did I walk into?

A shotgun shell eventually.

[iambiguous]

God...

“How often the priest had heard the same confession--Man was so limited: he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had died: the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater the glory lay around the death; it was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or civilization--it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.” Graham Greene

Lots and lots of Gods in fact.

“Our heaven is their hell, said God. I like a balanced universe.” Margaret Atwood

Not to worry. It might not be your God at all.

“'What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?'
'I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is.'” Stanisław Lem

And, no, not just on Solaris.

“Science adjusts its views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved.” Tim Minchin

How about we just leave it at that?

According to the most common interpretation of biblical prophecy, Jesus will return only after things have gone horribly awry. Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency.” Sam Harris

This and fascism.

“It's God that's worrying me. That's the only thing that's worrying me. What if He doesn't exist? What if Rakitin's right -- that it's an idea made up by men? Then, if He doesn't exist, man is the king of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God? That's the question. I always come back to that." Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Who doesn't?

[iambiguous]

Pi

Maximillian Cohen: Restate my assumptions: One, Mathematics is the language of nature. Two, Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. Three: If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge. Therefore, there are patterns everywhere in nature. Evidence: The cycling of disease epidemics; the wax and wane of caribou populations; sun spot cycles; the rise and fall of the Nile. So, what about the stock market? The universe of numbers that represents the global economy. Millions of hands at work, billions of minds. A vast network, screaming with life. An organism. A natural organism. My hypothesis: Within the stock market, there is a pattern as well... Right in front of me...hiding behind the numbers. Always has been.

And then -- going back to Pi? -- he tossed it in a fucking trash can!

Sol Robeson: You remember Archimedes of Syracuse, eh? The king asks Archimedes to determine if a present he's received is actually solid gold. Unsolved problem at the time. It tortures the great Greek mathematician for weeks, insomnia haunts him and he twists and turns in his bed for nights on end. Finally, his equally exhausted wife-she's forced to share a bed with this genius-convinces him to take a bath to relax. While he's entering the tub, Archimedes notices the bath water rise. Displacement, a way to determine volume, and that's a way to determine density, weight over volume. And thus, Archimedes solves the problem. He screams "Eureka" and he is so overwhelmed he runs dripping naked through the streets to the king's palace to report his discovery. Now, what is the moral of the story?
Maximillian Cohen: That a breakthrough will come.
Sol Robeson: Wrong! The point of the story is the wife. Listen to your wife, she'll give you perspective. Meaning, you need a break. You have to take a bath or you'll get nowhere. There would be no order only chaos. Go home, Max, and you take a bath.

Wrong!

Maximillian Cohen: I'm trying to understand our world. I don't deal with petty materialists like you.

Like me too?

Sol Robeson: This is insanity, Max.
Maximillian Cohen: Or maybe it's genius.

As though it can't be both?

Maximillian Cohen [first lines]: 9:13, Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six I did. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal. I was terrified, alone in that darkness. Slowly, daylight crept in through the bandages, and I could see. But something else had changed inside of me. That day I had my first headache.

Not your ordinary headache though, is it?

Sol Robeson: The Ancient Japanese considered the Go board to be a microcosm of the universe. Although when it is empty it appears to be simple and ordered, in fact, the possibilities of gameplay are endless. They say that no two Go games have ever been alike. Just like snowflakes. So, the Go board actually represents an extremely complex and chaotic universe. And that's the truth of our world, Max. It can't be easily summed up with math. There's no simple pattern.
Maximillian Cohen: But as the game progresses, the possibilities become smaller and smaller. The board does take on order, soon the moves are predictable.
Sol Robeson: So? So?
Maximillian Cohen: it, there is a pattern, an order underlying every Go game. Maybe that patter is like the pattern in the stock market, the Torah, this 216 number...
Sol Robeson: This is insanity, Max!
Maximillian Cohen: Maybe it's genius! I have to get that number!
Sol Robeson: Hold on! Slow down! You're losing it! You have to take a breathe. Listen to yourself. You're connecting a computer bug with one you might've had and some religious hogwash. If you want the number 216 in the world, you will be able to find it everywhere. 216 steps from your street corner to your front door, 216 seconds you spend riding on the elevator. When your mind becomes obsessed with anything you filter everything else out and find that thing everywhere. 320, 450, 22, whatever. You've chosen 216 and you'll find it everywhere in nature. But, Max, as soon as you discard scientific rigour, you are no longer a mathematician, you're a numerologist.

Back to that trash can?
Or is it too late?

[iambiguous]

Leonora Carrington from The Hearing Trumpet

“People under seventy and over seven are very unreliable if they are not cats.” Leonora Carrington

And, come on, most dogs.

You may not believe in magic but something very strange is happening at this very moment. Your head has dissolved into thin air and I can see the rhododendrons through your stomach. It's not that you are dead or anything dramatic like that, it is simply that you are fading away and I can't even remember your name.

Let alone what you post here.

One has to be careful what one takes when one goes away forever.

What could you take?

I am never lonely, Galahad. Or rather I never suffer from loneliness. I suffer much from the idea that my loneliness might be taken away from me by a lot of mercilessly well-meaning people.

You either grasp this or you don't.
As, for example, I do.

Houses are really bodies. We connect ourselves with walls, roofs, and objects just as we hang on to our livers, skeletons, flesh and bloodstream. I am no beauty, no mirror is necessary to assure me of this absolute fact. Nevertheless I have a death grip on this haggard frame as if it were the limpid body of Venus herself.

You either grasp this or you don't.
As, for example, I do.

I often feel I am being burned at the stake just because I have always refused to give up that wonderful, strange power I have inside me that becomes manifested when I am in harmonious communication with some other inspired being.

Come on, someone inspire me here!

[iambiguous]

Requiem for a Dream

Harry: [about the failed drug score] See, everything was going good, and then some dumbass junkie...
Marion: Did what? Some dumbass junkie did what? You mean, you fucked it up!
Harry: What the fuck is wrong with you?
Marion: You promised me that everything was gonna be okay, remember? I fucked that sleaze bag for you and I put myself through fucking hell for you?
Harry: There's nothing out there!
Marion: I don't give a shit! You fucking loser!

Love and junk, let's call it.

Harry Goldfarb: [Waking up after his arm was amputated] Marion? Marion?
Angelic Nurse: It's all right. Don't worry, you're in a hospital.
Harry Goldfarb: Marion?
Angelic Nurse: Who's that? She'll be sent for, she'll come.
Harry Goldfarb: No.
Angelic Nurse: No?
Harry Goldfarb: No... she won't.
Angelic Nurse: [confidently] She'll come.
Harry Goldfarb: [Crying] No, she...

...won't.

Sara Goldfarb: [examining her newly dyed hair] If this is a red, I wanna know, what's orange?

It's about as orange as orange gets. And I'm colorblind.

Uncle Hank: Ass to ass.

...said the perverted old man.

Big Tim: I know it's pretty, baby, but I didn't take it out for air.

Marion meets Big Tim: https://youtu.be/JY4vAci4s0w?si=GGMzdxkGsqudIv8U&t=325

Harry Goldfarb: I'm sorry I haven't been around in a while, Ma. But, but I been busy, real busy.
Sara Goldfarb: [excited] Oh, yeah? You got a good job? You doin' real well?
Harry Goldfarb: Yeah, real good. Real good.
Sara Goldfarb: What kind of business?
Harry Goldfarb: Well, uh, I'm sort of a distributor, like. For a big importer.

Back when he still had both arms.

[iambiguous]

Philip K. Dick from Ubik

I am Ubik. Before the universe was, I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them there. They go as I say, then do as I tell them. I am the word and my name is never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik, but that is not my name. I am. I shall always be.

God on crack?

“The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.”
He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.”
“I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.”
In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.
“You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug.
From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door.
“I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out.
Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.”

What's up with your door?

Perhaps your definition of your self-system lacks authentic boundaries. You've erected a precarious structure of personality on unconscious factors over which you have no control. That's why you feel threatened by me.

Hint, hint.

Metabolism, he reflected, is a burning process, an active furnace. When it ceases to function, life is over. They must be wrong about hell, he said to himself. Hell is cold; everything there is cold. The body means weight and heat; now weight is a force which I am succumbing to, and heat, my heat, is slipping away. And, unless I become reborn, it will never return. This is the destiny of the universe. So at least I won’t be alone.

And how comforting that must be.

One of these days, Joe said wrathfully, people like me will rise up and overthrow you, and the end of tyranny by the homeostatic machine will have arrived. The day of human values and compassion and simple warmth will return, and when that happens someone like myself who has gone through an ordeal and who genuinely needs hot coffee to pick him up and keep him functioning when he has to function will get the hot coffee whether he happens to have a postcard readily available or not.

Let's try to actually understand this.

'Everything is destined to reappear as simulation. Landscapes as photography, woman as the sexual scenario, thoughts as writing, terrorism as fashion and the media, events as television. Things seem only to exist by virtue of this strange destiny. You wonder whether the world itself isn’t just here to serve as advertising copy in some other world.’ Jean Baudrillard

Let's try to actually understand this.

[iambiguous]

Network

Howard Beale: I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

So, what are we not willing to take here anymore?

Arthur Jensen: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU... WILL... ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.
Howard Beale: Why me?
Arthur Jensen: Because you're on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.
Howard Beale: I have seen the face of God.
Arthur Jensen: You just might be right, Mr. Beale.

Imagine then Jensen's reaction to this: https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.p ... s#p2187045

Howard Beale: [laughing to himself] But, man, you're never going to get any truth from us. We'll tell you anything you want to hear; we lie like hell. We'll tell you that, uh, Kojak always gets the killer, or that nobody ever gets cancer at Archie Bunker's house, and no matter how much trouble the hero is in, don't worry, just look at your watch; at the end of the hour he's going to win. We'll tell you any shit you want to hear. We deal in illusions, man! None of it is true! But you people sit there, day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds...We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality, and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you! You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing! We are the illusion! So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off! Turn them off right in the middle of the sentence I'm speaking to you now! TURN THEM OFF...

Let's make that applicable here, he suggested.

Narrator [last lines]: This was the story of Howard Beale: The first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings.

You've got to draw the line somewhere, right?

Louise Schumacher: Then get out! Go anywhere you want, go to a hotel, go live with her, but don't come back. Because after twenty-five years of building a home and raising a family and all the senseless pain that we have inflicted on each other, I'm damned if I'm going to stand here and have you tell me you're in love with somebody else. Because this isn't a convention weekend with your secretary, is it? Or - or some broad that you picked up after three belts of booze. This is your great winter romance, isn't it? Your last roar of passion before you settle into your emeritus years. Is that what's left for me? Is that my share? She gets the winter passion, and I get the dotage? What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to sit home knitting and purling while you slink back like some penitent drunk? I'm your wife, damn it. And if you can't work up a winter passion for me, the least I require is respect and allegiance. I hurt, don't you understand that? I hurt badly.

Absolutely incredible fucking acting: https://youtu.be/kzj1ViCA6RI?si=Aggv1O8-2dNrbZSJ

Diana Christensen: Hi. I'm Diana Christensen, a racist lackey of the imperialist ruling circles.
Laureen Hobbs: I'm Laureen Hobbs, a badass commie n*****.
Diana Christensen: Sounds like the basis of a firm friendship.

They had no idea.