Quote of the day

[iambiguous]

What it’s, uh, about?

The adventures of an upper-class suburban family abruptly confronted with the younger brother’s discovery of his homosexuality, the elder sister’s suicide attempt and sadomasochist tendencies, and the intrusion of a very free-spirited maid and her husband. And it all started with the arrival in the family of an innocent looking rat… IMDb

Listen for the sound of the coo-coo. Then the gunshots. Then the screams.

Then the title card: “Several months earlier…”

And then we’re off into what one film critic described as “John Waters meets Franz Kafka.” By way of Father Knows Best? Or maybe Married With Children?

Hmm. Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman?

Just imagine the family next door, perhaps. With the volume set at 11.

Bottom line: If the family is dysfunctional almost anything can trigger the dominoes to topple. Or for that matter set them up. Depending of course on what you construe to be dysfunctional. As opposed to, say, therapeutic.

See if you can guess why they called it “Sitcom”.


Sitcom

Sophie [after Nicolas announces…out of the blue…he is a homosexual at the dinner table]: Hey, if he’s a fag, he’s a fag!

That's one approach to it.

Father [at the dinner table]: The Ancient Greeks saw male love differently than we do. The concept of perversion was unknown. No mention in their literature of what we call sadomasochism. They made no distinction between hetero and homosexuality because they were naturally bisexual without having defined the concept. Homosexuality was an institution, free of guilt, with its own rules and codes of behavior. In a couple, the older one was virile, active and usually bearded, while the younger one was femine, passive and always clean-shaven.

Any Ancient Greeks still around here?

Sophie: Want me to whip you while you lick me?

Oh, yeah.

Maria [each time the doorbell rings]: Are you here about the ad?

You know the one.

Mother: Sweetie, we should talk.
Sophie: About what?
Mother: About what’s been going on since your accident.
Sophie: I told you it wasn’t an accident! It was a choice. The accident is that I’m still alive.

I hear that.

Mother: I love you as much as David. Father does too.
Sophie: My father…THE FAGGOT!
Mother: You know your father isn’t a homosexual. You and your brother are living proof!
Sophie: Just because he touched you…twice.
Mother: Shut up! You’re filled with poison!
Sophie: IT’S THE POISON OF TRUTH!

Like mine here.

Wife: Honey, we’ve got to talk.
Husband [buried in the newspaper]: HmHmm.
Wife: You’ve probably noticed the kids aren’t doing too well.
Husband [blandly]: Youth must sow its wild oats.
Wife: Yes, but does that include being a homosexual and a practising sadomasochist?
Husband [nonchalantly]: It’ll pass.

Next up: it doesn't.

Shrink: It’s just a dream. Expressing it subconsciously is better than acting it out.
Mother: That’s just it. There’s a problem.
Shrink: Yes?
Mother: It wasn’t a dream.

Click?

Sophie: Do you know about Mother and Nicholas?
Father: Yes, of course.
Sophie: What do you think?
Father: I don’t think incest will solve the problems of Western Civilization, but your mother is an exceptional woman.
Sophie: You know, I can be exceptional too.

Uh, hint, hint?

Mother: We killed it.

I won't spoil it for you.

[iambiguous]

Ludwig Wittgenstein

...a nothing will serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said.

Or lots of completely contradictory things can be said.

Understand or die.

Uh, let's make that applicable here?

It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language disguises thought.

When it's not completely undermining it.

The primary question about life after death is not whether it is a fact, but even if it is, what problems that really solves.

He's joking right?

Telling someone something he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not be able to understand it.

More to the point [here]: you'll just get mocked all the more.

When I came home I expected a surprise and there was no surprise for me, so of course, I was surprised.

Next up: you come here.

[iambiguous]

A sort of rebellious loner and a sort of cabal of bullies at a sort of Catholic boys’ school. What could possibly go wrong? After all, they’re just selling chocolates.

I would have lasted about 20 minutes in this place. But never having been enrolled in one I have no idea how close to or far away from a “typical” school it is. You tell me.

Anyway, God’s goons. Sometimes, the worst of all. So you know whose side I’m on, right?

Actually, neither one.

You can’t help but wonder: Is this how Skull and Bones started out? Well, each denomination to their own devices, I suppose. But there is always a chain of command with these things. Starting with God. And then the lords of discipline.

On the other hand, how rebellious is this? It’s not exactly like renouncing the faith. Or the anti-war movement. Or OWS. A metaphor, perhaps? On the other hand, I may be entirely missing the point.

For sure though: It’s not just a coincidence that virtually the entire cast here is male.


The Chocolate War

Archie [to Opie]: Put him down for the chocolates.

Let's make chocolates a metaphor for...God?

Opie: You know, Archie.
Archie: What?
Opie: Life is sad sometimes.
Archie: Life is shit.

Have a chocolate.

Archie: How many boxes?
Brother Leon: 20,000.

Approved by the ADA of course.

Brother Leon: Can I count on you?
Archie: But what can I do? I’m just one guy.
Brother Leon: You have influence, Archie.
Archie: Influence. I’m not a class officer. I’m not a member of the student council. I didn’t even make the honor roll.
Brother Leon [slamming the desk with his arms]: You know what I mean!!
Archie [after long pause]: I know what you mean.

And we certainly do.


Brother Leon: Boys will be boys.

Monsters in other words.

Brother Leon: Do you know what has happened? Do you know why sales have fallen off?
Brian: No sir.
Brother Leon: The boys have become infected. A terrible disease, difficult to cure. Before a cure can be found though the carrier must be discovered.

Being infected here.

Brother Leon: I’m warning you Archie, if the sale goes down the drain, you and the Vigils go down the drain. We all go down the drain together!

Good.

Archie [to Jerry]: You’ve disobeyed the Vigils once already Jerry. This calls for punishment. Now, we the Vigils don’t believe in physical violence, but we’ve found it necessary to have a punishment code. The punishment is usually worse than the assignment. We can make your life…sad. But we’re letting you off easy Jerry. Tomorrow, we’re simply asking you to sell the chocolates.

Or, these days, gummies.

Archie [to Bill and the Vigils]: Let me put it like this. At the end of the sale, Renault will be wishing with all of his heart that he had sold the chocolates, and the school will be glad that he didn’t.

Nope, not quite. But…close?

Opie: Hey, Arch.
Archie: Yes?
Opie: I don’t know why you were always complaining. This is easy.

What is easy?

[iambiguous]

They run away from home and become prostitutes. Or they are shoved into it by others. Then others start poking around in it. Trying to determine, for example, how much of it they brought on themselves.

"That was a stupid thing to do!"

But what can they possibly know about all that came before though? What do they know about sets of circumstances that always nudge different people in different directions for different reasons. And these are fucking kids.

Men who do these things to children should have their balls cut off and then be locked away for…forever. In the prison GP. Yes, they have their own sets of circumstances…their own nudges. But I can’t see anything less than a really brutal punishment as a deterrent to others. I’m the eye for an eye sort here.

Not, however, that this too is not just one more personal opinion rooted existentially in dasein.

That and scrapping both the working class and poverty. In other words, it’s hopeless.

The only consolation being the brutal things they often do to each other. Of course none of the characters here are what you’d call sympathetic. And the “blokes” who pay for these little girls? Let’s just say that some of them are part of the “establishment”. It’s straight out of Mona Lisa.

Or, uh, Pizzagate?

You do see the ending a mile away but that doesn’t make it any less satisfying.


London To Brighton

Kelly: Can you put a toy in it please?

She's a kid!

Derek [to girl]: All right, come on. Stop this now. All right? Come on. You’re the most beautiful girl I know. Do you know that? When I first saw you, I thought you was like a star or something. You know? And do you know what’s more? Hmm? We’ve got a future, you and me. Something really good. Do you believe me? Come on. Do you believe me? Yeah. Right, good. So, get in there and fuck 'em for me. All right? They’ve come down a long way. They’re good friends of mine.

Pick one:
1] genes
2] memes

Kelly: Why the fuck did you run away?
Joanne: Becasue living at home was shit. Mom’s dead. And my dad was a bastard, beat me. He’s always pissed. The other week I nicked his fags and he kicked me in the ribs.
[she shows Kelly the bruise]
Kelly: It’s big.
Joanne: Massive last week.

It's a good thing God is loving, just and merciful, right?

Derek: Duncan Allen. He wants a girl.
Kelly: All right. Book me.
Derek: No. He wants a young girl, don’t he?
Kelly: How young?
Derek: Younger than you. I don’t know. 10, 11.

That's quite a bit younger than her.

Derek: Look, I’ll give you 200 quid.
Kelly: It’s a little girl, Derek
Derek: Look, If I don’t find her, he’s gonna get one from somebody, so I might as well do it or he won’t come back to me, will he? I don’t want to fuck him off, do I?
Kelly: I don’t know. Where would I find someone? Can’t go out and fucking kidnap some kid.
Derek: You don’t have to, do you? All right? You’re gonna give her some money. Go down Waterloo and the Embankment. You find a runaway. They’ll need the money.

Runaways: https://youtu.be/0gQo_lXw2zg?si=mk3LrXktXxnlGtaR

Derek: How old are you?
Joanne: Nearly 12.
Derek: I need someone like you. Someone with a bit of fucking brains. Someone who can take care of herself.
Joanne: Well, how can I help you?
Derek: Has anyone got to you yet? Since you’ve been out? You been with anyone?
Joanne: What? What do you mean?
Derek: Are you a virgin? Do you know what a virgin is?
Joanne: Yeah.
Derek: So, are you one? Come on. Are you a virgin? Have you fucked anyone? You just told me you knew what a virgin was. So, are you one? Yes or no?

Just business.

[iambiguous]

Science

“The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there's any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all.” Neil deGrasse Tyson

See, I told you.

“Magic's just science that we don't understand yet.” Arthur C. Clarke

Unless, of course, it is just magic.

“The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.” Carl Sagan

Of course, the man was a genius.

“Problem is (follow me closely here, the science is pretty complicated), if I cut a hole in the Hab, the air won't stay inside anymore.” Andy Weir

Go ahead, try it yourself.

"God creates dinosaurs, God kills dinosaurs, God creates man, man kills God, man brings back dinosaurs." Michael Crichton

"Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth." Dr. Ellie Sattler

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” Carl Sagan

Perspective let's call it.

[iambiguous]

Gautama Buddha

Words do not express thoughts very well; every thing immediately becomes a little different, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom of one man seems nonsense to another.

Fortunately, however, the only thing that is at stake here is your very soul.

Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.

The Benjamin Button Syndrome let's call it.

True love is born from understanding.

Or, for the objectivists here, born from misunderstanding.
Unless, of course, I'm wrong.

Nothing is forever except change.

That and from time to time instant karma.

As you walk and eat and travel, be where you are. Otherwise you will miss most of your life.

If only virtually?

The tongue like a sharp knife...kills without drawing blood.

Ah, of course...that elusive spirit.

[iambiguous]

Logic

“In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony God's blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my own intelligence.” Karl Marx.

Imagine, then, if he were still around today.

“Nothing is so conducive to spiritual growth as this capacity for logical and accurate analysis of everything that happens to us. To look at it in such a way that we understand what need it fulfills, and in what kind of world.” Marcus Aurelius

He means less conducive, of course.

"...they are making this complicated just to make me more confused.” Dmitry Dyatlov

Or: “they are making this less complicated just to make me more confused.”

“I didn't like feeling things. Emotions were ever-shifting and devoid of logic, and they gave me no way to sink my blade into them.” Carissa Broadbent

For better or for worse, that hasn't changed, of course..

“The necessary incompleteness of even our formal systems of thought demonstrates that there is no non-shifting foundation on which any system rests. Our knowing minds are not embedded in truth. Rather the entire notion of truth is embedded in our minds.” Rebecca Goldstein

Next up: rather informal systems of thought.
Say, for all practical purposes.

“Some theists fall in these categories
Using:

1. Circular Reasoning: Assuming the conclusion in the premise, essentially restating the same idea without providing new information.
2. Argument from Ignorance*=: Asserting something as true simply because it hasn't been proven false, or vice versa.
3. Appeal to Authority: Using the opinion or testimony of an authority figure as evidence in an argument.
4. False Dichotomy: Presenting an argument as though there are only two options when there could be more.
5. Argument from Personal Incredulity: Rejecting a claim because one finds it difficult to understand or believe.

Those are most fallacies which believers use” Deyth Banger

Let's run this by William Lane Craig.

[iambiguous]

London To Brighton

Customer: What happened to your face?
Kelly: It’s a long story. Can I help you?
Customer: Can I fuck you?
Kelly: 30 quid.
Customer: No way.
Kelly: Fuck off, mate. It’s 30 quid.
Customer: 30 without a johnny.
Kelly: You’re fucking taking the piss. 40 without.
Customer: All right, get in.

Next up: without a johnny here.

Joanne: Is this your house?
Duncan: It is.
Joanne: Are you a millionaire?
Duncan: Mm-hmm. What’s your name?
Joanne: Joanne.
Duncan: Joanne. So, are you gonna come upstairs with me, then?

Sort of.

Karen: Kelly needs to work.
Paul: Work as what?
Karen: On the street.
Kelly: I need to get some money. Just tell me where to go.
Paul: Face like that, no one’s gonna pick you up.
Kelly: Trust me. They will.

Would you?

Joanne: Kelly! Kelly! Kelly! Kelly, help me, please! Help me!
Kelly: Joanne?
Joanne: Aah!
Kelly [bursts into the bedroom]: Fucking hell! It’s all right, darling!
Joanne [crying]: He’s in the bathroom, Kelly!
Kelly [to Duncan]: You fucking ****! She’s a little kid!!!

Of course, that's the whole point, isn't it?

Stuart: I found some cigarettes that belonged to my dad once. I was probably not far off your age. I took one and I smoked it in the toilet upstairs. He caught me. As a punishment he made me eat the whole packet. Everything. The filters. The cardboard. The little bit of silver paper you get inside. He sat there, and he watched me eat the lot. I was throwing up every two seconds. He just watched me. Didn’t look away. I never smoked again.

Let's try that here.

Stuart [to Joanne]: I want you to tell me what happened. What did my father do to you?

Don't get her started?

[iambiguous]

Chariots of the Gods? The Elephant Man? The Grim Reaper?

People invent stuff like this because it is probably as close as we are ever going to come to actually imagining the answers: Why are we here? How did we get here? What’s it all mean? When, where did it all start? You and I will almost certainly be long dead and gone before any real answers begin to emerge. But it’s always fascinating and fun [entertaining, profitable] to speculate about it.

Still, folks from each new generation manage to convince themselves it’s not all just a movie. They will be the ones to TOE it.

Here at least everything is out in the open: it’s funded by “the company” and so the denouement will be what “the company” wants. Well, if anyone from the company survives.

And it’s not so much us looking for ETs…we are from ETs. It’s either that or God. But then how does it fit into the evolution of life on earth? You know, Darwin and all that stuff?

And, most crucially of all, what does it have to do with saving our “soul”? After all, that’s the part that goes on forever, isn’t it? Got to have a cross in there somewhere.

Where the film stumbles though, is, in my view, in the characters. They are just nowhere near as interesting and entertaining as the personalities in Alien and Aliens. More like the ones in Alien3. Easily forgettable. I mean, did you actually care about any of them? Except maybe Elizabeth. A little.

Especially the stock characters at the end chuckling nobly in the face of death. That shit always rankles the hell out of me.

"According to Ridley Scott, the film’s plot was inspired by Erich von Däniken’s writings about ancient astronauts: 'Both NASA and the Vatican agree that it is almost mathematically impossible that we can be where we are today, without there being a little help along the way. That’s what we’re looking at: we are talking about gods and engineers, engineers of space. Were the Aliens designed as a form of biological warfare, or biology that would go in and clean up a planet?'”

The Vatican’s official newspaper L’osservatore Romano gave a negative review of this film saying that it “mishandles the delicate questions raised by… the battle eternal between good and evil.” IMDb


Promethious

Young Elizabeth: How do you know that Heaven is beautiful?
Father: Because that’s what I choose to believe.

It works the same way here, doesn’t it?

Meredith: Good morning. I am Meredith Vickers, and it is my job to make sure you do yours.

Right, for example.

Weyland [as a holographic recording]: Hello, friends. My name is Peter Weyland. I am your employer. I am recording this, 22 June, 2091. And if you’re watching it, you have reached your destination. And I am long dead. May I rest in peace. There’s a man sitting with you today. His name is David. And he is the closest thing to a son I will ever have. Unfortunately, he is not human. He will never grow old and he will never die. And yet he is unable to appreciate these remarkable gifts for that would require the one thing that David will never have. A soul.

That was to be expected, right?

I have spent my entire lifetime contemplating the questions: Where do we come from? What is our purpose? What happens when we die? And I have finally found two people who convinced me they’re on the verge of answering them. Doctors Holloway and Shaw, if you would please stand. As far as you’re concerned, they’re in charge. The Titan Prometheus wanted to give making equal footing with the gods and for that, he was cast from Olympus. Well, my friends, the time has finally come for his return.

Uh, whatever that means?

Fifield: So you’re saying we’re here because of a map you two kids found in a cave, is that right?
Elizabeth: No. Not a map. An invitation.
Fifield: From whom?
Elizabeth: We call them Engineers.
Fifield: Engineers? Do you mind, um, telling us what they engineered?
Elizabeth: They engineered us.

So, who manufactured them?

Meredith: Weyland found you impressive enough to fund this mission. But I’m fairly certain your Engineers are nothing but scribblings of savages living in dirty little caves. But let’s say I’m wrong, and you do find these beings down there, you won’t engage them, you won’t talk to them. You will do nothing but report back to me.

The Federation?

[iambiguous]

Promethious

Charlie: Um, Miss Vickers, is there an agenda that you’re not telling us about?
Meredith: My company paid a trillion dollars to find this place and to bring you here. Had you raised the monies yourself, Mr. Holloway, we’d happily be pursuing your agenda. But you didn’t. And that makes you an employee.

Though others prefer "wage slave".

David: I was designed like this because you are more comfortable interacting with your own kind. If I didn’t wear a suit, it would defeat the purpose.
Charlie: They’re making you guys pretty close, huh?
David: Not too close, I hope.

And how close might that be?

David: There is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing.

Though that is what is in store for him. Women too. And for all of eternity.

Meredith: Son of a bitch. They were right.
Janek: What did you want them to be? Wrong?

Now that's a good point. As often as not say?

Charlie: What we hoped to achieve was to meet our makers. To get answers. Why they even made us in the first place.
David: Why do you think your people made me?
Charlie: We made you because we could.
David: Can you imagine how disappointing it would be for you to hear the same thing from your creator?
Charlie: I guess it’s good you can’t be disappointed.

Wink, wink.

David: They were in the process of leaving…before things went to pot.
Elizabeth: Leaving to go where?
David: Earth.
Elizabeth: Why?
David: Sometimes to create, one must first destroy.

Happens all the time here.

David’s talking robot head [watching Elizabeth put on her cross]: Even after all this, you still believe don’t you?

Me? Well, I still want to believe.

Elizabeth: Final report of the vessel Prometheus. The ship and her entire crew are gone. If you’re receiving this transmission, make no attempt to come to its point of origin. There is only death here now, and I’m leaving it behind. It is New Year’s Day, the year of our Lord, 2094. My name is Elisabeth Shaw, last survivor of the Prometheus. And I am still searching.

You know what that transmission leads to. A sequel among other things. Then the whole fucking franchise!

[iambiguous]

Meaning

“What we needed were not words and promises but the steady accumulation of small realities.” Haruki Murakami

And, sure, occasionally, a really, really big reality.

“Better than a thousand sayings
Made up of useless words
Is one word of meaning
Which calms you to hear it.” Anonymous

How about this: I won't say it if you don't make me.

“When we are dealing with human beings, no truth has reality by itself; it is always dependent upon the reality of the immediate relationship.” Rollo May

Existence, he called it.

“Once, somebody asked Robert Schumann to explain the meaning of a certain piece of music he had just played on the piano.
What Robert Schumann did was sit back down at the piano and play the piece of music again.” David Markson

Or, here:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/a-man ... sein/31641
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/moral ... live/45989
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/back- ... lity/30639

“Religion, mysticism and magic all spring from the same basic 'feeling' about the universe: a sudden feeling of meaning, which human beings sometimes 'pick up' accidentally, as your radio might pick up some unknown station. Poets feel that we are cut off from meaning by a thick, lead wall, and that sometimes for no reason we can understand the wall seems to vanish and we are suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of the infinite interestingness of things.” Colin Wilson

Ask me to explain this better -- a hell of a lot better -- than he does.

“Accept the universe
As the gods gave it to you.
If the gods wanted to give you something else
They’d have done it." Alberto Caeiro

So, did they?

[iambiguous]

When you live out in the middle of nowhere [anywhere] and decide [as an “alienated” youth] to rebel what are the options? Well, as with most things, it will depend in large part on whatever it is [as dasein] you happen to think of. But in the age of the internet you can be prompted [by others] to think of lots and lots and lots of things.

And the new things Niroka starts to think about all revolved around new friends on line. And they lived in Tokyo.

The mystery is always this: Why do some feel compelled to “rebel” and others do not? You know my own thoughts. But it’s one thing to know what you want to lose and another thing altogether to know what you want to find. And the young are impressionable. And that can be dangerous.

The thing about identity [for some] is this: if you don’t like the one given to you, you make up one of your own. But once you start down this path you can begin to recognize how who you think you are is always just a fabrication of one sort or another.

Here [briefly] they even explore the role that capitalism in modern Japan plays in reconstructing identities of old. Survival of the fittest in a world that can be bursting at the seams with ancestral “truths”.

But how some arrive at suicide here [from premises largely unintelligible to me] is the further mystery. I can’t make that leap. Not now, anyway.


Noriko's Dinner Table [Noriko No Shokutaku]

Noriko [voiceover]: I was a teenager stuck in the boondocks.

Lost in translation, let's say.

Noriko [voiceover]: Tokyo. Tokyo. Tokyo. I had no idea what was in Tokyo, but I decided to gamble. I was born to breathe but I wasn’t breathing just because I was born.

The Big City syndrome. But over there.

Noriko [voiceover]: I wanted to live, challenge, wish, forget, learn, know, ask, see, stare, understand, hear, listen, speak, meet…and be there.

Well, that narrows it down. Except for the part about what and where.

Noriko [voiceover]: I’ve been pretending to be busy until today; now I feel naked.

That works for me.

Noriko [voiceover to Yuka]: Everything is our own made up story. Isn’t that wonderful?

In other words, "Lost in translation? Who the fuck cares?"

Yuka [voiceover]: After three months of investigation, my father wrote the following: 1] the Suicide Club exists 2] Members meet at Haikyo.com 3] The dots on Haikyo.com represent suicides. The white ones are men. The red ones are women.

Uh, let's start one here?

Suicide Circle member to Noriko’s Father: It’s time for you to wake up to your role. Who are you? You said you were connected to yourself but are you really? You’re not believable as a reporter or as a father. The world is so full of lies that people can’t play their roles convincingly. They fail as husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, children etc. So, the only way to figure out what we can be is to lie openly and pursue emptiness.

And then if all that wasn't bad enough, those fucking bots!

Kumiko [voiceover]: I’d made up my past and stuffed it all into that cold, metal locker. But reality is soft like a cardboard box. So fragile it would dissolve in the rain. And outline. Humans have only an outline.

Virtually let's call it.

Kumiko: Someone has to play the role of the victim. But everyone wants to be the champagne, not the glass. Everyone wants to be the flower, not the vase. But the world needs glasses and vases. These roles need to be filled. Like a master servant relationship. Maybe that’s how capitalism is.
Friend: What’s capitalism?
Kumiko: I’ll tell you later.

Like they aren't already hopelessly [and many helplessly] embodying it.

Kumiko [voiceover]: Some will kill, some will be killed. That’s the circle of life, though there are contradictions. There are no perfect circles anywhere in nature. But if you draw a circle with a compass and a big fat marker, a thick outline will make it seem perfect. I’ll give you a sense of perfection, Tetsuzo. You can be a lion. I’ll be a rabbit. I don’t need thick outlines. My metal box is starting to rot. I’m gonna go to a higher level. A rabbit, a suicide, a killer, evil, water overflowing from a glass…I’ll be whatever no one else wants to be. I’m sick of shameless outlines of people seeking happiness. They don’t wanna be rabbits. They just wanna eat rabbits. There’s no such jungle.

What it means is often beside the point. The point, instead, is 'what does it mean to you?'

[iambiguous]

Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Understand or die.”

Not here, of course.

It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language disguises thought.

Here especially.

When I came home I expected a surprise and there was no surprise for me, so of course, I was surprised.

And, no, not just theoretically.

What is the proof that I know something? Most certainly not my saying I know it.

And not just up in the clouds, of course.

There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.

I wouldn’t go that far myself.

Roughly speaking: to say of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and to say of one thing that it is identical with itself is to say nothing.

How roughly?

[iambiguous]

From the director of L.I.E. above. So you know it is going to be grim and gritty. Chunks of it anyway.

For example: Rudy dies when local bullies set fire to a tree house. While he is in it.

[No they thought it was empty]

And you know the point of view here will often come from children. But of a certain demographic to be sure. Boys of that demographic in particular. But here a very mixed up girl too.

Then the idea is to peruse the film for other snapshots of America. There must be a million of them.

Some hopeful, most not. A few really, really excruciating.


12 And Holding

Leonard: Why were you saving piss?
Rudy: Just in case. Pretty smart, huh?

Next up: number 2.

Ashley [the mother, to Jim]: You tell him!
Jim [the father, to Jacob]: The boys who killed Rudy cut a deal. They got a year in juvenile hall and five years’ probation.
Ashley: One year. That’s what his life is worth. One year.
Jim: Just calm down.
Ashley: How can you be so unaffected by this? Your son was murdered!
Jim: It was an accident. It was an accident. And those boys are juveniles.
Ashley: So that makes it okay?

This is a tough one. It revolves around, among other things, intention and maturity.

Jacob: Is your cell small.
Kenny: Yes.
Jacob: So is a coffin.

Although sometimes, sure, that's the whole point.

Ashley: Jeff Laskey is dead.
Jim: What?
Ashley: He committed suicide in his jail cell last night. Justice is served.

Or, for others, injustice.

Kenny: Jacob, the entire time I was in here you are the only one who came to see me.

That part here too?

Jacob: No offence, but I never thought my future brother would be a…well, a “brother”.
Keith: I never thought my future brother would have a Kool-Aid stain, smeared across his face.
Jacob: Fuck you, it’s a birthmark!

Besides, most take them all the way to the grave.

Mother: Is that what this is about, food?
Leonard: I’m trying to save your life, Mom.
Mother: I don’t need you to save my life, Leonard. I need you to OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!

Yep, another "failure to communicate".

Gus [to Carla his psychologist]: One of the last fires I ever fought was a brownstone. Whole families wiped out. During the inspection, I went upstairs. And I found a little girl. The whole right side of her face was burned off. But her eyes were open. She was still alive.
[pause]
Gus: Uh…the pain…You know that the–the pain must’ve been excruciating. You know?
[long pause, stuggling to speak]
Gus: She was–she was begging me to–to kill her.
Carla: What did you do?
Gus: I did what she wanted me to do. I killed her.
[he breaks down]
Gus: I kept telling myself that that was the right thing to do. You know…it’s–it’s just…But I’ve never been sure.
Carla: That was devastating. But what does it have to do with Malee?
Gus: When I saw her last night…she had the same look on her face as that little girl. She just wanted me to take her pain away.

I can live with that.

Ashley: You are my son and I love you. I would do anything for you. I would kill for you, I’d die for you!
Jacob: Rudy used to say the same thing.
Ashley: And he was right. And as un-Christian as it sounds, I still want the…the boy that killed Rudy dead.

So be it.

[iambiguous]

Stumbling about in desert. Dressed in a suit. And no one knows why. Not even him apparently. And you can be sure we aren’t going to find out. But we do learn he fucked up a once in a lifetime relationship with the greatest woman on earth. And then miraculously he is able to stumble back into her life. And into the life of his son. But there is no putting this thing back together again. Least ways not how it used to be.

True love disintegrating in the postmodern world.

And even when we find out why they did what they did then [and do what they do now] we only come to realize how far removed we still are from really understanding anything. And not just about them. If you are perceptive enough you trace it all the way back to yourself.

Most don’t though. Not because they can’t, but because they won’t. There’s just too much at stake to give up believing they can figure these things out. Or even fix them.

The ending however becomes increasingly disconcerting. To me anyway. There’s Walt and Anne hundreds of miles away. There’s Jane and Hunter in the hotel. There’s Travis gone again. This time surely forever.

I just don’t buy it anymore. Years ago I wanted Hunter to be with Jane. But now I want him back again with Anne.


Paris, Texas

Sign in a bar in the middle of the desert: "The dust has come to stay. You may stay or pass on through or whatever."

Dust and all the rest of us.

Walt: Anne, honey…I just got this strangest phone call.
Anne: Who from?
Walt: From some hospital in south Texas, place called Terlingua. They say they’ve found Travis.

If "found" is the right word, of course.

Walt [finding Travis walking in the desert]: Travis! Hey. Don’t you recognize me? It’s Walt. It’s your brother, Walt. What the hell happened to you anyway? You look like forty miles of rough road.

You tell me. Because he won't.

Walt: Trav? Would you mind telling me where you disappeared to for the last four years? Uh…have you seen Jane? Or talk to her? Gee, Anne and I uh … we sort of gave up on you, we actually…we thought you were dead, boy.

Or might just as well have been?

Walt [after Travis once again takes off walking]: You mind telling me where you’re headed, Trav?
[He points to the horizon]
Walt: What’s out there? There’s nothing out there.

More to the point, Jane's in a whole different direction.

Walt: Travis, do you remember your little boy, Hunter? Well he’s with us. He’s been living with Anne and me ever since you disappeared. We didn’t know what else to do. So, we just kept him. One day, he was just standing at the door. All he could tell us was someone brought him there in a car. He didn’t know what’d happened to you, or Jane. So we tried everything we could think of to find you, or Jane. Tried to locate her, she’d vanished too. We didn’t know what else to do.

And then [more or less out of the blue] it all changes. For some though considerably more so than for others.