Quote of the day

[iambiguous]

Breach

O’Neill: Wait, what if he’s smarter than I am? I’ve never misread anyone this badly before. Except maybe you.
Burroughs: A couple of years ago, the bureau put together a task force. Lots of assets had been disappearing. So this task force was formed to find the mole who was giving them up. Our best analysts poring over data for years looking for the guy, and they could never quite find him. Guess who was put in charge of the task force? He was smarter than all of us. Actually, I can live with that part. It’s the idea that my entire career has been a waste of time, that’s the part I hate. Everything I’ve done since I got to this office, everything we’ve all been paid to do, he was undoing it. We all coulda just stayed home.

Next up: Putin and Trump.

Hanssen [voiceover]: One might propose that I am either insanely brave or quite insane. I’d answer neither. I’d say, insanely loyal. Take your pick. There’s insanity in all the answers.

He picked that that from me, right?

Juliana: Do you trust me?
O’Neill: (sighs) Yes.
Juliana: 'Cause I think you’ve got this idea somehow that telling me the truth about him would mean you were betraying your country or something.

Sorry, Juliana, it's all strictly on a "need to know" basis.

Hanssen: I have to be sure that I can trust you.
O’Neill: Why don’t we go back to the office? You can polygraph me.
Hanssen: You heard of Aldrich Ames?
O’Neill: Of course.
Hanssen: Worst spy in U.S. History. Sold $2.5 million worth of information to the Soviets, and passed every polygraph the Agency gave him. But he never would have gotten past me. I can read anyone.

Uh, including himself?

O’Neill: The page was from Juliana, obviously. My wife. She’s trying to reach me because I told her I’d be home by now, and because we’re in another fight, caused by you, as usual. Thanks for dropping by unannounced and lecturing her about Opus Dei. That was real helpful. Oh, and thanks for staring at her in church like she was from Mars. That also worked out great. Let me guess. You were testing her, too. You know, she asked me this morning why you’re like this. I had all these answers for her. ‘He’s misunderstood.’ ‘He’s trying to fix the bureau and no one will listen.’ ‘He was born in the wrong century.’ ‘His father’s a jerk.’ I got a whole list. But you know something Sir, at the end of the day it’s all crap. You are who you are. The why doesn’t mean a thing does it? DOES IT?!
Hanssen: I…matter…plenty.

Especially to the other other side. Those godless bastards.

Hanssen [being arrested]: So, this is how it goes.

In Hollywood?

Hanssen [to Agent Plesac]: Maybe now you’ll listen.

You tell me.

Plesac: Even if all you give them is why you did it, it buys you some goodwill. Well, that’s what Ames did at first. Just gave up the why.
Hanssen: That mustn’t have taken long. All Ames cared about was the money. Why else would he have done it? It’s not so hard to guess, is it? Considering the human ego. Can you imagine, sitting in a room with a bunch of your colleagues, everybody trying to guess the identity of a mole and all the while, it’s you they’re after, you they’re looking for? That must be very satisfying, wouldn’t you think? Or maybe he considered himself a patriot. Maybe he saw it as his duty to show us how lax our security was. We can’t rule that out as a possibility. Or maybe he… Oh, what good does speculating do? He spied. The why doesn’t mean a thing. Does it?
Plesac: No, I guess it doesn’t.

You know, in an essentially meaningless world.

Hanssen: Pray for me.
O’Neill: I will.

On the other hand...

The filmmakers fictionalized much of Eric O’Neill’s story, as mentioned in the end credits. Among the major changes made for the film:

The real O’Neill knew going in that Hanssen was the subject of a counterintelligence investigation. There was no cover story about sexual perversions, and no dramatic meeting where O’Neill learned the truth.
There was no extensive contact outside the office between O’Neill and Hanssen as portrayed in the film (the O’Neills visiting the Hanssens, the Hanssens dropping by O’Neill’s apartment). However, Hanssen did take O’Neill to church.
The scene where Hanssen takes O’Neill out into the woods and drunkenly fires his pistol is fictional.
Unlike in the movie, O’Neill never saw Hanssen after the arrest.
While O’Neill did obtain Hanssen’s PDA, he took it to FBI techs to download rather than downloading it himself. wiki

[iambiguous]

Who can really understand what it means to live as Leonard does until they live as he does? What the hell is the meaning of reality [from day to day] in this world? Amnesia is one thing. You can wrap your head around forgetting everything and starting over. But never being able to start over again? What can that be like? Who can you trust when everything comes down to what you wrote down yesterday regarding what you think you understood then and there?

Even going forward from the past now I am unsure what it all means. Is he better off then? Not counting all the violence and the folks lining up to take advantage of him?

There are no doubt folks who take pride in fully understanding what the hell is going on here. But I’m not one of them. It’s too goddamn surreal.

But here is someone who takes a stab at it:
https://taylorholmes.com/2010/07/28/memento-explained/



Memento

Leonard: I guess I’ve already told you about my condition.
Teddy: Oh, well, only every time I see you.

RIP, Ted.

Leonard: I have no short-term memory. I know all about myself, I just…Since my injury I can’t make new memories. Everything fades. If we talk for too long I’ll forget how we started…and next time I see you I won’t remember this conversation. I don’t even know if I’ve met you before. So if I seem a little strange or rude, or something, uh…I’ve told you this before, haven’t I?
Burt: I don’t mean to mess with you but it’s so weird.
Leonard: You don’t remember me at all?
Burt: No. But we’ve talked a bunch of times.
Leonard: I’m sure we have.

Come on, how sure can he be about anything that isn't tattooed somewhere on his body?

Natalie: But even if you get revenge you’re not gonna remember it. You’re not even going to know that it happened.
Leonard: My wife deserves vengeance. It doesn’t make any difference if I know about it. Just because there are things I don’t remember…doesn’t make my actions meaningless.

Of course, today he could have always recorded it all on his...phone?

Leonard: I meet Sammy through work. Insurance. I was an investigator. I’d investigate the claims to see which ones were phony. I had to see through people’s bullshit. It was useful experience, 'cause now it’s my life.

Or, rather, what's left of it.

Leonard: Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They’re just an interpretation, they’re not a record, and they’re irrelevant if you have the facts.

The right facts, of course.

Leonard [voiceover]: Sammy can think just fine but he can’t make new memories. He can only remember things for a couple of minutes. He’d watch TV but anything longer than a couple of minutes was too confusing… he couldn’t remember how it began. He liked commercials. They were short. The crazy part was that this guy who couldn’t follow the plot of Green Acres anymore could do the most complicated things…as long as he learned them before the accident…and as long as he kept his mind on what he was doing.

Yo, God! What the fuck?

[iambiguous]

Ludwig Wittgenstein

For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed.
The riddle does not exist.
If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.

I dare you to bring this down to Earth.

I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before me by another.

Besides, all sources are wholly determined anyway.

It is a dogma of the Roman Church that the existence of God can be proved by natural reason. Now this dogma would make it impossible for me to be a Roman Catholic. If I thought of God as another being like myself, outside myself, only infinitely more powerful, then I would regard it as my duty to defy him.

Burn, Ludwig, burn!

Tell me, Wittgenstein's asked a friend, why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the Earth rather than that the Earth was rotating?
His friend replied, Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth.
Wittgenstein replied, Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?

Uh, whatever?

What is troubling us is the tendency to believe that the mind is like a little man within.

Or, if you're a pussy, a little girl?

The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.

Of course, the man was a genius, right?

[iambiguous]

Memento

Sammy [after being shocked]: What the fuck?
Doctor: It’s a test, Sammy.
Sammy [flipping him the bird]: Test this, you fucking quack!

Of course, we know better.

Leonard: Natalie, right?
[Holds up photo of a bloody face, labeled “Dodd”]
Leonard: Who the fuck is Dodd?
Natalie [Looks at photo]: Guess I don’t have to worry about him anymore.
Leonard: What the fuck have you gotten me into?

And around and around around they spin him.

Leonard [on the phone]: Even with total short-term memory loss Sammy should have learned instinctively to stop picking up the wrong objects. Other cases responded to conditioning, Sammy didn’t respond at all. It suggested that his condition was psychological not physical. We turned down his claim on the grounds that he wasn’t covered for mental illness. His wife got stuck with the bills and I got a big promotion.
Teddy: You know, I’ve had more rewarding friendships than this one, Leonard. Although I do get to keep telling the same jokes.

Two different worlds let's call them.

Leonard [finding a beaten man in his closet]: …who did this to you?
Dodd: What?
Leonard: Who did this to you?
Dodd: You did.

Which tattoo now, Leonard?

Teddy: A gun. Why would I have a gun?
Leonard [pulling a gun out of a drawer]: It must be his. I don’t think they’d let someone like me carry a gun.
Teddy [more to himself]: Fucking hope not.

Ever come across someone like him, yourself?

Leonard [running]: OK, so what am I doing?
[sees Dodd also running]
Leonard: Oh, I’m chasing this guy.
[Dodd shoots at Leonard]
Leonard: No… he’s chasing me.

Deeper and deeper into the past we go. What for all practical purposes does that mean to someone suffering from this...

The medical condition experienced by Leonard in this film is a real condition called Anterograde Amnesia - the inability to form new memories after damage to the hippocampus. IMDb

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterograde_amnesia

[iambiguous]

Time

“The proper, wise balancing of one's whole life may depend upon the feasibility of a cup of tea at an unusual hour.” Arnold Bennett

For you though it might a cup of coffee...or dope.

“Your past is a skeleton walking one step behind you, and your future is a a skeleton walking one step in front of you. Maybe you don't wear a watch, but your skeletons do, and they always know what time it is.” Sherman Alexie

Let's synchronize our skeletons.

“Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.” Alan Lightman

Anyone here want to be stuck there with me?

“If I could, I would stop the passage of time. But hour follows on hour, minute on minute, each second robbing me of a morsel of myself for the nothing of tomorrow. I shall never experience this moment again.” Guy de Maupassant

Uh, theoretically?

“Time has taught me not to lose hope, yet not to trust too much in hope either.” Carlos Ruiz Zafón

My guess: it depends on the context.

“It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and -- what will perhaps make you wonder more -- it takes the whole of life to learn how to die.” Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Are you wondering more?

[iambiguous]

Memento

Leonard [on phone]: This is a difficult condition to understand. Look at Sammy Jankis. His own wife couldn’t deal with it. I told you how she tried to get him to snap out of it. She came to see me at the office. I found out all kinds of shit. She told me about life with Sammy. How she treated him. She’d get Sammy to hide food around the house…then she’d stop feeding him to see if his hunger would make him remember. She wasn’t a cruel person. She just wanted her old Sammy back.

The things we're forced to do for love?

Mrs. Jankis: You know all about Sammy and you’ve decided he’s faking.
Leonard: The company’s position isn’t that Sammy’s faking anything… …just that his condition can’t be shown to be…
Mrs. Jankis: I just want to know your honest opinion about Sammy.
Leonard: We shouldn’t be talking like this while the case is still open to appeal.
Mrs. Jankis: I’m not appealing the decision.
Leonard: Then why are you here?
Mrs. Jankis: Try to understand, when I look at Sammy, I don’t see some vegetable. I see my same old Sammy. What do you think that’s like for me to suspect that he might be imagining this whole problem? That if I just could say the right thing…he’d snap out of it and go back to being normal. If I… If I knew that my old Sammy were truly gone…then I could say goodbye and start loving this new Sammy. As long as I have doubt I can’t say goodbye and move on.
Leonard: What do you want from me?
Mrs. Jankis: I want you to forget the company you work for for thirty seconds…and tell me if you really believe that Sammy’s faking his condition. I need to know…what you honestly believe.
Leonard: I believe that Sammy should be physically capable of making new memories.
Mrs. Jankis: Thank you.

Welcome to the medical industrial complex.

Teddy: You ever wonder how long you can hang around here…before people start asking questions?
Leonard: What sort of questions?
Teddy: The same questions you should be asking yourself.
Leonard: Like what?
Teddy: Like how did you get this suit, the car?
Leonard: I have money.
Teddy: From what?
Leonard: My wife’s death. I used to work in insurance. We were well covered.
Teddy: Oh! So in your grief you wandered into a Jaguar dealership? You don’t have a clue, do you? You don’t even know who you are.
Leonard: Yes, I do. I don’t have amnesia. I remember everything right up until the incident. I am Leonard Shelby, I am from San Francisco…
Teddy: That’s who you were. You do not know who you are. What you’ve become since the incident. You wander around playing detective. You don’t even know how long ago it was. Let me put it this way. Were you wearing designer suits when you sold insurance?
Leonard: I didn’t sell insurance, I investigated it.
Teddy: Right, right. You’re an investigator. Maybe you should investigate yourself.

How can we not wonder how in the hell we would react if we were similarly afflicted.

Leonard: Hey, don’t talk about my wife.
Natalie: I can talk about whoever the fuck I want! I can say whatever I want and you won’t remember! I can call your wife a fucking whore and we can still be friends. You can’t get scared! You don’t know how, you fucking idiot!
Leonard: This has nothing to do with me.
Natalie: How the fuck would you know? You don’t know a fucking thing! You pathetic piece of shit! I can say whatever the fuck I want and you won’t have a clue, you fucking retard! I’m gonna use you. I’m telling you now because I’m gonna enjoy it much more if I know that you could stop me if you weren’t such a fucking freak!

Maybe she killed his wife?

Natalie: I read about your condition, Leonard. You know one of the causes of short-term memory loss? Venereal disease. Maybe your **** of a fucking wife…sucked one too many diseased cocks and turned you into a retard! You sad, sad freak. I can say whatever the fuck I want and you won’t remember. We’ll still be best friends. Or maybe even lovers.

Were smart phones even around back then?

Leonard [on phone]: It’s completely fucked because nobody believes you. It’s amazing what a little brain damage will do for your credibility. I guess it’s poetic justice for not believing Sammy. You know the truth about my condition, officer? You don’t know anything. You feel angry, you don’t know why. You feel guilty, you have no idea why. You could do anything and not have the faintest idea ten minutes later.

You post here. Ten minutes later...

Leonard [on phone]: She went into a coma and never recovered. Sammy couldn’t understand or explain what happened. Oh! He’s been in a home ever since. He doesn’t even know his wife is dead. I was wrong about Sammy and I was wrong about his wife. She wasn’t interested in the money. She needed to understand his problem. His brain didn’t respond to conditioning but he wasn’t a con man. And when she looked into his eyes, she thought he could be the same person. When I looked into his eyes, I thought I saw recognition. Now I know you fake it. If you think you’re supposed to recognise somebody, you pretend to. You bluff it to get a pat on the head from the doctors. You bluff it to seem less of a freak.

Of course: God's mysterious ways.

Leonard: Jimmy knew about Sammy, why would I tell him about Sammy?!
Teddy: You tell everybody about Sammy! Everybody who’ll listen! “Remember Sammy Jankis?” “Remember Sammy Jankis?” Great story. Gets better every time you tell it. So you lie to yourself to be happy. There’s nothing wrong with that. We all do it. Who cares if there’s a few little details you’d rather not remember?
Leonard: What the fuck are you talking about?
Teddy: Your wife surviving the assault. Her not believing your condition. The torment and pain and anguish tearing her up inside. The insulin.

What to believe actually did happen in other words.

Leonard: See, Sammy’s wife came to me…
Teddy: Sammy didn’t have a wife. It was your wife who had diabetes.
Leonard: My wife wasn’t diabetic.
Teddy: You sure?
Leonard: She wasn’t diabetic. You think I don’t know my own wife? What the fuck is wrong with you?
Teddy: I guess I can only make you remember the things you want to be true. Like old Jimmy down there.
Leonard: He’s not the right guy.
Teddy: He was to you. Come on, you got your revenge. Enjoy it while you still remember.

About 10 minutes say.

Teddy: No reason, Lenny, no conspiracy, just bad fucking luck. Couple of junkies too strung out to realise your wife didn’t live alone. But when you killed him I was so convinced that you’d remember. But it didn’t stick. Like nothing ever sticks, like this won’t stick.

Next up: what doesn't stick here?

Leonard [voiceover]: I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still have meaning. Even if I can’t remember them. I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world’s still here. Do I believe the world’s still here? Is it still out there? Yeah. We all need memories to remind ourselves who we are. I’m no different. Now, where was I?

So, what do you have to believe?

[iambiguous]

It’s a world I know almost nothing about. The South. Small town. Farming. Evangelism. Nymphomania.

Way too much religion for me. People finding spiritual redemption through finally giving in to all the things that God expected of them anyway.

But better this I suppose than what they were before.

As for a black man keeping a young white girl chaimed in his house to a radiator, well, even given the context, lots of folks got something to say about that.


Black Snake Moan

Lazarus: Mayella, it ain’t never happened. And it damn sure ain’t gonna happen tonight.
Mayella: Oh, Laz, I know you’re hurtin’. But you should know more than me, ain’t no better cure for the blues than some good pussy.

Anyone know if that's actually true?

Lazarus: Cain slew Able, slew him out of envy. God put his mark on Cain for his sins, is that what you want Deke? Huh? Is that what you come here for? I’ll do it for you, all you got to do is say it again… Say you love me.
[pause]
Lazarus: SAY YOU LOVE ME NIGGA!

He figured it was probably best not to.

Rae: Why you got me chained?
Lazarus: I wanted to tell you about that.

Like she couldn't figure it our herself.

Lazarus: God saw to it to put you in my path. And I aim to cure ya of your wickedness. You sick. You got a sickness…we broke that fever…now we gonna break that hold the devil got on ya.

Where was God when she was dumped on the road?

Rae: Why you old men gotta talk so much? You gotta talk yourself into fucking me? Like little boys. It’s okay. I’m grown, I know. We can go slow.
[pause]
Rae: You gonna give me another bath?

Sex. There's just no getting around that. Not without a script, anyway.

R.L.: Now, this got anything to do with Rose?
[Lazarus shakes his head]
R.L.: Then what?

He finds out.

R.L.: Are you outta you’re Goddamn mind?!

Next up: the kid.

Lazarus: R.L., you watch yourself in there. That gal be on your dick like stink on shit.

And race got nothing to do with it.

R. L. [to Rae]: Ima tell you something and it’s just gonna be between you and me. I think folks carry on about heaven too much, like it’s some kind of all you can eat buffet up in the clouds and folks just do as they told so they can eat what they want behind some pearly gates. There’s sinning in my heart, there’s evil in the world but when I got no one, I talk to God. I ask for strength, I ask forgiveness, not peace at the end of my days when I got no more life to live or no more good to do but today, right now…What’s your heaven?

Don’t you sometimes wish religion [faith in God] could come down to this? Each one making his own pact. Leaving everybody else out of it.

Lazarus [freeing Rae]: Not my place to change your mind, or anybody else’s. People gonna do how they please. You only get one life…should be lived the way you wanna live it. I can take you back to town now if you want.
Rae: Laz, will you do something for me.
Lazarus: Whatever you want.

I forget: what was it?

Rae: You don’t even got to say you’re sorry… Just say how you knew what he was doing to me.
Mother: Only thing I’m sorry for is listenin’ to my parents and having you instead of doin’ what I should’a done.

She never had a fucking chance, did she?

Ronnie: It ain’t been but a week and you already some n*****’s whore.

Not even close. So Ronnie gets saved too.

[iambiguous]

I spent years in college surrounded by intellectuals of the, uh, pedantic sort. Men and women [but mostly, by far, men] who found it inordinantly important to erect walls between them and the “philistines”.

And for a while I was one of them. Fortunately, I bumped into folks able to show me just how insufferable we could be.

I can just imagine then what it must be like when your favorite parent is hell bent on making you one too. And poisoning your relationship with the parent less favored.

On the other hand, I have never really gotten along well with folks who don’t “care about books and interesting films and things.”
I just don’t judge them as I once did.

And, let’s face it, divorce effects some kids more adversely than others. But Frank is in a league all his own.



The Squid and the Whale

Walt: We’re reading A Tale of Two Cities in English. Is that any good?
Bernard: It’s minor Dickens. Popular in schools. But I think David Copperfield or Great Expectations is much richer. What is it about high school, you read all the worst books by good writers.
Joan: You should read it yourself and see what you think of it.
Walt: I don’t want to waste my time.

Pick one:
1] Dad
2] Mom

Bernard: She’s a very risky writer, Lili. Very racy. I mean, exhibiting her **** in that fashion is very racy. I mean Lili has her influences in postmodern literature, it’s a bit derivative of Kafka, but for a student, very racy. Did you get that it was her ****?

How could anyone miss it.

Bernard: What are you writing?
Joan: I’m working on the Peugeot story.
Bernard: Did you take my note about the ending.
Joan: Some of it.
Bernard: Does he still die?
Joan: Yeah.
Bernard: Then you didn’t take my note.

The fool?!

Walt: Who’s Richard?
Bernard: Oh, a man from the neighborhood. I think she met him at one of Frank’s Little League games. A shrink. Seems sort of like an ordinary guy. Not an intellectual.

Fuck him then.

Sophie: Yeah. I mean, it’s gross when he turns into the bug, but I love how matter of fact everything is.
Walt: Yeah, it’s very Kafkaesque.
Sophie [looking at him oddly] Because it’s written by Franz Kafka…It would have to be.

Trying to emulate Dad, let's say.

Bernard: Ivan is fine but he’s not a serious guy, he’s a philistine.
Frank: What’s a philistine?
Bernard: It’s a guy who doesn’t care about books and interesting films and things.
Bernard: Your mother’s brother Ned is also a philistine.
Frank: Then I’m a philistine.
Bernard: No, you’re interested in books and things. You liked The Wild Child when you saw it.
Frank: Lot’s of people like that. No, I’m a philistine.

Let's hope not, okay?

[iambiguous]

The Squid and the Whale

Frank: Mom’s dating Ivan.
Bernard: Really? Ivan, back there, Ivan?
Frank: Yeah.
Bernard: Are you sure? Why didn’t you say something? Why is your mother dating all these jocks? Very uninteresting men.
Frank: Ivan is very interesting.
Bernard: Ivan’s not a serious possibility for your mother.
Frank: I think he is.
Bernard: I don’t want to badmouth Ivan. But I don’t know what Joan is thinking.
Frank: I think Ivan…
Bernard: Frank.

Let's say say that Frank's on Mom's side.

Bernard: How do you know they were both Frank’s?
Ms. Lemon: Well, I suppose it’s possible other kids are masturbating and spreading their semen around the school as well…It’s possible, but, uh, somewhat unlikely.
Bernard: Oh, it happens, I’m sure, much more than we know.
Joan: Bernard, have you ever done anything like this?
Bernard: I’m not going to answer that.

After all, who hasn't?

Joan: You’re living with a twenty-year-old.
Bernard: It’s none of your business, Joan.
Joan: It’s my business when you have our kids! It’s confusing for them. Frank says Walt’s in love with her.
Bernard: Walt has a girlfriend. Fuck off, Joan. I don’t ask about you and Ivan. Stay out of my life. I can’t believe you’d talk to me like this. You left all those fucking ticket stubs and letters lying around! You wanted me to know. It was fucking torture, Joan! FUCKING TORTURE!

And now she's about to eclipse him as a published "intellectual".

Walt: It’s like…we were pals then…we’d do things together…we’d look at the knight armor at the Met. The scary fish at the Natural History Museum. I was always afraid of the squid and whale fighting. I can only look at it with my hands in front of my face.

The "brute facticity" of nature, perhaps? And the part we play [or think we play] in it?

Walt: I shouldn’t have broken up with Sophie.
Joan: Why did you?
Walt: I thought I could do better.
Joan: Better how?
Walt: I don’t know.

Though we suspect that we know.

Bernard [Waiting to be taken away in an ambulance after having a heart attack]: Degolas.
Joan: What?
Bernard: It means “bitch.” Don’t you remember?
Joan: You’re calling me a bitch?
Bernard: No, don’t you remember the last line of Godard’s “A Bout De Souffle”? Belmondo calls Seberg a bitch. “Degolas.” We saw it at the Thalia with the Dicksteins. I got you in for the children’s price. You were pregnant with Walt.
Joan: Like six weeks.
Bernard: I still got you in for a children’s ticket. You told me you didn’t like Godard. You thought the jump-cuts were...
[He is loaded into the ambulance]
Bernard: I’d check for the cat behind the ashcans, under the Golodners’ stoop!
Joan: OK.

As endings go, you tell me.

[iambiguous]

One is totally immersed in the world politically and the other treats politics as a mere prop in his ultra feminine fantasies. That he is also a homosexual way back then in a South American prison makes the exchange between them all the more surreal.

And then the beautiful woman. She has many roles to play. And, in part, because there are many roles she can play. Her beauty is the key to open lots of doors.

These two are locked up in a world where the idiots have won. And there is not a damn thing either one of them can do except to seethe with outrage or to escape into fantasy.

Only things are not at all what they seem. And yet however it ends what creates the conditions that make men such as these prisoners doesn’t change. You can’t reduce the world down to a narrative like this however effective it might be in opening our eyes. To prevail you must have the power to prevail. Being “right” doesn’t mean shit.



Kiss of the Spider Woman

Molina: She’s…well, she’s something a little strange. That’s what she noticed, that she’s not a woman like all the others. She seems all wrapped up in herself. Lost in a world she carries deep inside her.

You either grasp this or you don't.

Arregui: Don’t talk about food. I’m serious. No food and no naked women.

It's a prison cell, remember?

Arregui: Why did the interrogations stop?

Next up: why they started.

Molina [as a new prisoner arrvives]: Is it a political prisoner?
Arregui: They don’t treat you that way for stealing bananas.

Unless, of course, they do now.

Arregui: I find you boring.
Molina: Darling, you don’t know page one. You know I’m a faggot? Well, congratulations. You know I corrupted a minor? Well that’s even on TV, film at 11.

Uh, sizing each other up?

Arregui: You really like those Nazi blonds, don’t you?
Molina: Well, no, you see I detest politics but i’m mad about the leading man. He’s so romantic.
Arregui: Your nazis are about as romantic as the fucking warden and his torture room.
Molina [subdued]: I can imagine.
Arregui: No…You can’t.

A failure to communicate let's call it.

Arregui: God help me.
Molina: You atheists never stop talking about God.
Arregui: And you gays never face facts. Fantasies are no escape.
Molina: If you’ve got the keys to that door, I will gladly follow. Otherwise I’ll escape in my own way, thank you.
Arregui: Then your life is as trivial as your movies.

You know, if that's actually true.

[iambiguous]

Roberto Bolaño

Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people's ideas, like listening to music, like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.

My guess: depending on what you read.

Books are finite, sexual encounters are finite, but the desire to read and to fuck is infinite; it surpasses our own deaths, our fears, our hopes for peace.

Uh, technically?

If you're going to say what you want to say, you're going to hear what you don't want to hear.

Let's hope we steer clear of that here.

There is a time for reciting poems and a time for fists.

Next up: rap battles?

Only in chaos are we conceivable.

Some more than others, let's say.

Nothing good ever comes of love. What comes of love is always something better.

You know, generally.

[iambiguous]

Kiss of the Spider Woman

Molina: Do you really think eating this avocado will make you spoiled and weak? Enjoy what life offers you.
Arregui: What life offers me is the struggle. When you’re dedicated to that, pleasure becomes secondary.

On the other hand, what if both of them are right?

Molina: Does your girlfriend avoid pleasure too?
Arregui: She knows what really counts. That the most important thing is serving a cause that is noble.
Molina: What kind of cause is that? One that doesn’t let you eat an avocado?

This part: https://youtu.be/YsvGPj0LH0M?si=TqEOGd8dj3GMy1Ca

Arregui: Don’t act like that. You sound just like a...
Molina: Like a what? Say it. Say it. Like a woman, you mean.
(Arregui nods)
Molina: What’s wrong with being like a woman? Why do only women get to be sensitive? Why not a man, a dog, or a faggot? If more men acted like women, there wouldn’t be so much violence.

Let's run this by the sexual fascists here.

Arregui: You son of a bitch! They’re killing one of my Brothers, and what am I doing? Listening to your fucking Nazi movie! Don’t you know what the Nazis did to people – Jews! Marxists! Catholics! Homosexuals?
Molina: Of course I know.
[Arregui hurls Molina across the cell]
Arregui: You don’t know shit. You wouldn’t know reality if it was stuck up your ass.
Molina: Why should I think about reality in a stinkhole like this? Why should I get more depressed than I already am?
Arregui: You’re worse than I thought! Do you use these movies to jerk yourself off?
Molina [Crying]: If you don’t stop, I will never speak to you again!
Arregui: Stop crying! You sound just like an old woman!
Molina [Whimpering]: It’s what I am! It’s what I am!
Arregui [Forcing Molina’s legs apart]: What’s this between your legs, huh? Tell me, “lady”!
Molina: It’s an accident. If I had the courage, I’d cut it off.
Arregui: You’d still be a man! A MAN! A MAN IN PRISON! JUST LIKE THE FAGGOTS THE NAZIS SHOVED IN THE OVENS!

One of them wins, right?

Molina: The nicest thing about feeling happy is that you think you’ll never be unhappy again.

Yeah, he thought, that once happened to him about 50 years ago.

Molina: There’s something I’d like that you’ve never done, although we’ve done much more.
(pause)
A kiss.
Arregui: Okay. But first promise me something.
Molina: I told you, I can’t. I’m so sorry.
Valentin: No, no. Promise me you will never let anybody humiliate you again, that you’ll make them respect you. Promise me you’ll never let anybody exploit you again. Nobody has the right to do that to anybody.

Their relationship...evolves.

Molina [to bis sleeping mother]: You remember, Mama, when I was little and you used to come into my room to kiss me good-night. I always pretended to be asleep, but I was always waiting for your kiss. Although you’re sleeping now, I know you understand me. It’s time for me to take care of my own life. You understand, don’t you, Mama. Don’t be sad.

Repeat as necessary.

Pedro [voiceover]: Subject was shot to death by the extremists. His recent activities, such as closing his bank account…suggest that he planned to escape with them. Also, the way he was shot seems to indicate that he had agreed, if necessary, to be eliminated by them. In any case, it appears that he was more deeply involved than we suspected.

Not even close.

Doctor [to Arregui who has been tortured]: This is morphine. So you can get some rest. Okay? Oh my God, the way they worked you over. Don’t tell about this or I’ll lose my job. Just count to forty and you’ll be asleep.

We'd all like someone like that in our lives, right?

[Impenitent]

"Guilty"

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/11/politics ... index.html

-Imp

[iambiguous]

God

“But what of faith? What of fidelity and loyalty? Complete trust? Faith is not granted by tangible proof. It comes from the heart and the soul. If a person needs proof of god's existence, then the very notion of spirituality is diminished into sensuality and we have reduced what is holy into what is logical.” R.A. Salvatore

Complete horseshit.
If I do say so myself.

“Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does, the better.” André Gide

Complete horseshit.
If I do say so myself.

"Only the hopeless love God.” Jennifer Donnelly

Does He know that?

I say to myself: "Who are you to measure infinite power?” Rousseau Jean-Jacques

How about you?

“Despite the earnest belief of most of his fans, Einstein did not win his Nobel Prize for the theory of relativity, special or general. He won for explaining a strange effect in quantum mechanics, the photoelectric effect. His solution provided the first real evidence that quantum mechanics wasn’t a crude stopgap for justifying anomalous experiments, but actually corresponds to reality. And the fact that Einstein came up with it is ironic for two reasons. One, as he got older and crustier, Einstein came to distrust quantum mechanics. Its statistical and deeply probabilistic nature sounded too much like gambling to him, and it prompted him to object that “God does not play dice with the universe.” He was wrong, and it’s too bad that most people have never heard the rejoinder by Niels Bohr: “Einstein! Stop telling God what to do.” Sam Kean

And we're still at it today, aren't we?

“This was not the time to say “I don’t know.” The brothers had begging, hungry looks, like dogs waiting to be fed. They wanted an answer. It would be nice if it was the right answer, but if it couldn’t be, then any answer would do, because then we would stop being worried...and then his mind caught alight.
That’s what the gods are! An answer that will do! Because there’s food to be caught and babies to be born and life to be lived and so there is no time for big, complicated, and worrying answers! Please give us a simple answer, so that we don’t have to think, because if we think, we might find answers that don’t fit the way we want the world to be.” Terry Pratchett

Uh, keep them doped with religion?

[iambiguous]

A slice of life.

In a typical small town people go about the business of living their lives. Some are complete strangers. Some are good friends. Some are family. But who they think they are precipitates behaviors that culminate in a calamitous collision of lives at 11:14 PM on one particular day. It’s like observing this all unfolding from above and noting the manner in which contingency, chance and change weave in and out of our lives in ways we can scarcely begin to grasp. Look for Benjamin Button on steroids.

And then sitting down and wondering, “hmm, what the hell does all that mean?”

Everything comes down to perception and perspective. What you perceive to be true from your own understanding of the world around you. And what you perceive that others perceive to be true. And the realization of how the tiniest of things can snowball into a FUBAR of the utmost [and ugliest] consequences.

And here, much of that comes to revolve around a severed penis.

This is one superbly choreographed piece of film making.


11:14

Officer Hannagan: Don’t move!
Norma: You’ll burn for what you did to my daughter!
Jack [confused]: Daughter?

Lots and lots of confusion in this one.

Eddie: What’s with the books?
[Tim holds up a book and tries to light it on fire]
Eddie: You’re gonna burn a book?
Tim: It’s not like this is great fucking literature or anything. I’m doing the world a favor.

Kid stuff let's call it.

Tim [to Eddie]: Don’t worry, alright? I’m gonna find it.

His severed penis.

Mark: Tim, it’s been cut off!
Tim: So they can reattach it.
Mark: Well how the fuck are they gonna do that?
Tim: What am I, a surgeon? They use leeches and shit.

Anyone here ever had theirs's reattached?

Officer Hannagan [talking to a medic]: We got a human penis right there by the curb. Somebody’s gotta be looking for that.

After all, what if it was yours?

Eddie: Did you get it?! Did you get it?!
[Tim throws Eddie’s severed penis onto his lap]
Tim: Sorry it took me so long, I was looking for something bigger.

Uh, yuck, yuck?

Mark [after coming up with a story to tell the cops]: You hear that Eddie? I never hit you.
Eddie: Why should I lie?
Mark: What are you talking about?
Eddie: Why should I lie, when this is all your fault?
Mark: My fault? How the fuck is this my fault?
Eddie: Well if you hadn’t been so worried about your paint job, my penis would be in my pants right now and not in my fucking hand!!

What about that. Mark?

Duffy: Where the fuck’s my bowling ball?

Let's run that by Cheri.

Jack: Did you get the money?
Cheri: I got Aaaron’s.
Jack: What about Duffy’s? Did he find out? Did he? Does he know you’re not really pregnant?
Cheri: No. He believed me.

Did she get yours?