Quote of the day
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Ansiktsburk
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Re: Quote of the day
I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me
- attofishpi
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Re: Quote of the day
Nah, he's just a narcissist. (iambiguous)
- iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day
The actual title of this film [in French] is A Pornographic Liason. The English DVD, however, changes it to An Affair of Love. That in and of itself speaks volumes regarding cultural differences. On this side of the pond it is just too unseemly for a man and woman to predicate their relationship on sexual encounters. And sexual encounters presumed to be “kinky”. Though the exact nature of the act itself is never explicitly named.
Still, it is the sexual fantasy of a relatively young and attractive woman who was not able to get any of her male partners to perform it with her. So her only recourse was to put an ad in one of “those” magazines. You can imagine then just how “out there” it must have been. But, again, we are never told what it actually was.
What they hadn’t counted on apparently…but certainly should have anticipated as one possibility…was an emotional attachment. But then what’s one more misunderstanding in a world consumed by millions of them everyday.
So, is sex stranger than love?
In some respects, it’s like a remake of Last Tango In Paris. It’s about two people meeting anonymously to fuck: no names, no occupations, no back stories about the family, about the past. It just seems more…civilized? And no butter as far as I could tell.
An Affair of Love [Une Liaison Pornographique]
Her [to interviewer]: It was a pornographic affair. That’s it. A purely and expressly pornographic affair. That’s pornography: It’s sex, nothing but sex, only sex. We were there just for sex. Well, a special kind of sex. I had this fantasy that I wanted to carry out.
And, of course, the equivalent of that here. If only theoretically up in the clouds.
Interviewer: This thing you did…why won’t you talk about it? Out of modesty?
Him: No, no, no. Not out of modesty, it’s not that.
Her [in another location]: Look, at my age, I can talk freely vabout sex, but that…
Interviewer [to Her]: You don’t dare?
Nope, not that. Just something they want to keep between themselves. Better perhaps for us to imagine what our own fantasy might be.
Her [voiceover]: In the movies, sex is either heaven or hell. In life, it’s often between the two. But with him it was perfect. Total osmosis.
Next up: sex here. Virtually as it were.
Her: Declaring your love isn’t picking a woman up. You simply declare your love. Sometimes you don’t want to seduce someone. Sometimes, you’re so much in love all you can do is declare your love. Have you ever felt that? A feeling so strong, you have no choice, you have to declare your love.
Just once for me. And look how that turned out.
Her: I love you. I love you like I’ve never loved anyone before. The feeling is so strong, that it has to be true, you see?
He does, he doesn’t. Then he becomes pragmatic.
Him: There’ll be other things. Things you’ll find out about me that you didn’t know before. Things that may disturb you.
Her: Maybe.
Him: You’ll end up hating me.
Her: Maybe, maybe not. I’m ready to risk it.
Him: We don’t know each other.
Her: People never know each other. We don’t even really know ourselves! What about you? What do you feel for me?
Him: I don’t know.
Cue dasein. Among other things, of course.
Him [to interviewer]: For me it was obvious. I was in love. The ideal woman. I wanted to make a bet. On her. On us. You only live once.
[a long pause]
Him: And then I knew. She didn’t want to. She wanted to stop. She hadn’t said anything but it was obvious. I could read her face. She wanted to stop. She was afraid of saying it. She didn’t dare. I had to dare for her.
That ever happen to you? Pornography in, love out?
Her [to interviewer]: I’d decided to stay with him. I’d even decided to fight to the bitter end if he refused. And then when he said that the two of us wouldn’t work it seemed obvious. He was right. We had to split up.
Love and human remains. Again. But every once in a while, a couple of folks come close to it.
Interviewer: Couldn’t you tell us what it was? Your fantasy…
Him: No. Even if you tortured me, blinded me, or strapped electrodes to my testicles, no. I’d rather die first.
And how fucking intriguing is that?
Pun intended? I'm not sure.
Her [to interviewer]: Who the hell cares what it was! It could be anything, yet it was always the same thing. It was an act of love. Even if it was special, even if people don’t understand, even if they find it sick, even if it was purely sexual at first—that’s what it was all the same—an act of love. That’s the important part.
My best guess: Uh, something...scatological?
Still, it is the sexual fantasy of a relatively young and attractive woman who was not able to get any of her male partners to perform it with her. So her only recourse was to put an ad in one of “those” magazines. You can imagine then just how “out there” it must have been. But, again, we are never told what it actually was.
What they hadn’t counted on apparently…but certainly should have anticipated as one possibility…was an emotional attachment. But then what’s one more misunderstanding in a world consumed by millions of them everyday.
So, is sex stranger than love?
In some respects, it’s like a remake of Last Tango In Paris. It’s about two people meeting anonymously to fuck: no names, no occupations, no back stories about the family, about the past. It just seems more…civilized? And no butter as far as I could tell.
An Affair of Love [Une Liaison Pornographique]
Her [to interviewer]: It was a pornographic affair. That’s it. A purely and expressly pornographic affair. That’s pornography: It’s sex, nothing but sex, only sex. We were there just for sex. Well, a special kind of sex. I had this fantasy that I wanted to carry out.
And, of course, the equivalent of that here. If only theoretically up in the clouds.
Interviewer: This thing you did…why won’t you talk about it? Out of modesty?
Him: No, no, no. Not out of modesty, it’s not that.
Her [in another location]: Look, at my age, I can talk freely vabout sex, but that…
Interviewer [to Her]: You don’t dare?
Nope, not that. Just something they want to keep between themselves. Better perhaps for us to imagine what our own fantasy might be.
Her [voiceover]: In the movies, sex is either heaven or hell. In life, it’s often between the two. But with him it was perfect. Total osmosis.
Next up: sex here. Virtually as it were.
Her: Declaring your love isn’t picking a woman up. You simply declare your love. Sometimes you don’t want to seduce someone. Sometimes, you’re so much in love all you can do is declare your love. Have you ever felt that? A feeling so strong, you have no choice, you have to declare your love.
Just once for me. And look how that turned out.
Her: I love you. I love you like I’ve never loved anyone before. The feeling is so strong, that it has to be true, you see?
He does, he doesn’t. Then he becomes pragmatic.
Him: There’ll be other things. Things you’ll find out about me that you didn’t know before. Things that may disturb you.
Her: Maybe.
Him: You’ll end up hating me.
Her: Maybe, maybe not. I’m ready to risk it.
Him: We don’t know each other.
Her: People never know each other. We don’t even really know ourselves! What about you? What do you feel for me?
Him: I don’t know.
Cue dasein. Among other things, of course.
Him [to interviewer]: For me it was obvious. I was in love. The ideal woman. I wanted to make a bet. On her. On us. You only live once.
[a long pause]
Him: And then I knew. She didn’t want to. She wanted to stop. She hadn’t said anything but it was obvious. I could read her face. She wanted to stop. She was afraid of saying it. She didn’t dare. I had to dare for her.
That ever happen to you? Pornography in, love out?
Her [to interviewer]: I’d decided to stay with him. I’d even decided to fight to the bitter end if he refused. And then when he said that the two of us wouldn’t work it seemed obvious. He was right. We had to split up.
Love and human remains. Again. But every once in a while, a couple of folks come close to it.
Interviewer: Couldn’t you tell us what it was? Your fantasy…
Him: No. Even if you tortured me, blinded me, or strapped electrodes to my testicles, no. I’d rather die first.
And how fucking intriguing is that?
Pun intended? I'm not sure.
Her [to interviewer]: Who the hell cares what it was! It could be anything, yet it was always the same thing. It was an act of love. Even if it was special, even if people don’t understand, even if they find it sick, even if it was purely sexual at first—that’s what it was all the same—an act of love. That’s the important part.
My best guess: Uh, something...scatological?
- iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day
Yuval Noah Harari
Not only rationality, but individuality too is a myth. Humans rarely think for themselves. Rather, we think in groups. Just as it takes a tribe to raise a child, it also takes a tribe to invent a tool, solve a conflict, or cure a disease. No individual knows everything it takes to build a cathedral, an atom bomb, or an aircraft. What gave Homo sapiens an edge over all other animals and turned us into the masters of the planet was not our individual rationality but our unparalleled ability to think together in large groups.”
Yeah, what about that Mr. My Way or the Highway Objectivist?
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. According to the science of biology, people were not ‘created’. They have evolved. And they certainly did not evolve to be ‘equal’.
Next up: the part all women play.
We are full of fears and anxieties over our position, which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous.
Or, for some here, Stoogery?
Immediately after birth the calf is separated from its mother and locked inside a tiny cage not much bigger than the calf’s own body. There the calf spends its entire life – about four months on average. It never leaves its cage, nor is it allowed to play with other calves or even walk – all so that its muscles will not grow strong. Soft muscles mean a soft and juicy steak. The first time the calf has a chance to walk, stretch its muscles and touch other calves is on its way to the slaughterhouse. In evolutionary terms, cattle represent one of the most successful animal species ever to exist. At the same time, they are some of the most miserable animals on the planet.
Well, you can't have everything, can you?
Whatever is possible is by definition also natural.
Go ahead, I dare you to actually think that through.
And then get back to us.
When we break down our prison walls and run towards freedom, we are in fact running into the more spacious exercise yard of a bigger prison.
The good news? Only all the way to the grave.
Not only rationality, but individuality too is a myth. Humans rarely think for themselves. Rather, we think in groups. Just as it takes a tribe to raise a child, it also takes a tribe to invent a tool, solve a conflict, or cure a disease. No individual knows everything it takes to build a cathedral, an atom bomb, or an aircraft. What gave Homo sapiens an edge over all other animals and turned us into the masters of the planet was not our individual rationality but our unparalleled ability to think together in large groups.”
Yeah, what about that Mr. My Way or the Highway Objectivist?
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. According to the science of biology, people were not ‘created’. They have evolved. And they certainly did not evolve to be ‘equal’.
Next up: the part all women play.
We are full of fears and anxieties over our position, which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous.
Or, for some here, Stoogery?
Immediately after birth the calf is separated from its mother and locked inside a tiny cage not much bigger than the calf’s own body. There the calf spends its entire life – about four months on average. It never leaves its cage, nor is it allowed to play with other calves or even walk – all so that its muscles will not grow strong. Soft muscles mean a soft and juicy steak. The first time the calf has a chance to walk, stretch its muscles and touch other calves is on its way to the slaughterhouse. In evolutionary terms, cattle represent one of the most successful animal species ever to exist. At the same time, they are some of the most miserable animals on the planet.
Well, you can't have everything, can you?
Whatever is possible is by definition also natural.
Go ahead, I dare you to actually think that through.
And then get back to us.
When we break down our prison walls and run towards freedom, we are in fact running into the more spacious exercise yard of a bigger prison.
The good news? Only all the way to the grave.
- iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
From the director of Nine Queens above. Another masterpiece. Sadly, he died of a heart attack in 2006. He was only 47 years old.
Here’s a guy trapped in the mundane routine that is his daily life. Yet he is always plotting something daring. But the schemes never come out from inside his head. What might happen then if he stumbled into a set of circumstances in which the plotting involved actual daring. And actual consequences. How might that measure up to the plots he concocts inside his head?
But first he has to get to it.
Sontag invites him to go hunting. He declines. But his wife just left him so he changes his mind. But once there the hotels are all booked. As it turns out though there’s a local who has rooms to rent deep in the woods…
And that’s how it all begins to unfold. Chance and contingency melding again into change. And [for some of them] nothing is ever the same. Though it’s not out of the question that one might just end up back where he started.
In other words, he takes that crucial leap. The one many of us imagine taking ourselves. But this not like the bank job in his head. After all, you can’t carefully plot something when you are forced to wing it from day to day to day.
And then there’s that sword of Damocles dangling over his head: the epilepsy. The aura. He can never be certain when it will descend.
El Aura
[Esteban is telling a friend in great detail how the bank they are now in could be robbed]
Estaban: It can be done neatly. It can be done well.
Sontag: And if it’s that easy, why aren’t people robbing them all the time?
Esteban: People are robbing all the time, but they do it badly. Because they’re idiots. The police and the criminals, all of them.
Sontag: I still don’t get what’s stopping you from really doing it.
Estaban: It’s just a game.
And then, out of the blue, it's not.
Sontag: And what if something goes wrong? What if someone dies?
Estaban: There’s no reason why anyone should die.
Sontag: Yes, there’s a reason. There’s a load of guys with guns. The typical situation in which people die.
Estaban: No, not if everything’s properly planned.
Sontag: What the fuck are you talking about? Who do you think you are? Billy the Kid? You’ve got a very weird fantasy for a taxidermist.
Cue reality?
Diana: What are they like? The fits, I mean. Do they hurt?
Estaban: No…No, they don’t hurt.
Diana: And do they come on all of a sudden?
Estaban: Well, no…A few seconds before it happens I know I’m going to have an attack. There’s a moment…a shift. The doctors call it an aura. Things suddenly change. It’s as if…as if everything stopped, and a door opened in your head, that lets things in.
Diana: What things?
Estaban: Sounds…music…voices…images…smells. The smell of school, of kitchen, of family…It tells me the fit is coming and there’s nothing you can do to stop it… nothing. It’s horrible…and it’s perfect because during those few seconds, you’re free. There’s no choice, there’s no alternative, nothing for you to decide.
The human fucking brain!!
Casino insider: Does Dietrich have something to tell me?
Estaban: What do want me to say?
Casino insider: Are you fucking with me? He didn’t come yesterday, he hasn’t called or confirmed. And now he sends some guy to the casino playing his chips, his system, and wearing his fucking tie! Are you fucking with me?! Where is Dietrich?!
Estaban: He couldn’t come.
Being dead as a doornail, in other words..
Diana: How did I end up here or how did I end up with a guy 30 years older than me? Because that’s what they always ask me.
[pause]
Diana: Dietrich was a friend of my father’s. I had to get out. And it seemed like the only way to get away from home. It wasn’t very hard. The day he came to get me, my dad went mad and confronted him. Dietrich beat him so badly, it took him a week to recover. And I left with him. With the first punch, I realised he was made of the same shit. Nothing had changed. But it was already too late by then.
Don't you just hate that?
Esteban [to Diana]: Dietrich isn’t coming back. Ever.
Anyone here know how long "ever" actually is?
Here’s a guy trapped in the mundane routine that is his daily life. Yet he is always plotting something daring. But the schemes never come out from inside his head. What might happen then if he stumbled into a set of circumstances in which the plotting involved actual daring. And actual consequences. How might that measure up to the plots he concocts inside his head?
But first he has to get to it.
Sontag invites him to go hunting. He declines. But his wife just left him so he changes his mind. But once there the hotels are all booked. As it turns out though there’s a local who has rooms to rent deep in the woods…
And that’s how it all begins to unfold. Chance and contingency melding again into change. And [for some of them] nothing is ever the same. Though it’s not out of the question that one might just end up back where he started.
In other words, he takes that crucial leap. The one many of us imagine taking ourselves. But this not like the bank job in his head. After all, you can’t carefully plot something when you are forced to wing it from day to day to day.
And then there’s that sword of Damocles dangling over his head: the epilepsy. The aura. He can never be certain when it will descend.
El Aura
[Esteban is telling a friend in great detail how the bank they are now in could be robbed]
Estaban: It can be done neatly. It can be done well.
Sontag: And if it’s that easy, why aren’t people robbing them all the time?
Esteban: People are robbing all the time, but they do it badly. Because they’re idiots. The police and the criminals, all of them.
Sontag: I still don’t get what’s stopping you from really doing it.
Estaban: It’s just a game.
And then, out of the blue, it's not.
Sontag: And what if something goes wrong? What if someone dies?
Estaban: There’s no reason why anyone should die.
Sontag: Yes, there’s a reason. There’s a load of guys with guns. The typical situation in which people die.
Estaban: No, not if everything’s properly planned.
Sontag: What the fuck are you talking about? Who do you think you are? Billy the Kid? You’ve got a very weird fantasy for a taxidermist.
Cue reality?
Diana: What are they like? The fits, I mean. Do they hurt?
Estaban: No…No, they don’t hurt.
Diana: And do they come on all of a sudden?
Estaban: Well, no…A few seconds before it happens I know I’m going to have an attack. There’s a moment…a shift. The doctors call it an aura. Things suddenly change. It’s as if…as if everything stopped, and a door opened in your head, that lets things in.
Diana: What things?
Estaban: Sounds…music…voices…images…smells. The smell of school, of kitchen, of family…It tells me the fit is coming and there’s nothing you can do to stop it… nothing. It’s horrible…and it’s perfect because during those few seconds, you’re free. There’s no choice, there’s no alternative, nothing for you to decide.
The human fucking brain!!
Casino insider: Does Dietrich have something to tell me?
Estaban: What do want me to say?
Casino insider: Are you fucking with me? He didn’t come yesterday, he hasn’t called or confirmed. And now he sends some guy to the casino playing his chips, his system, and wearing his fucking tie! Are you fucking with me?! Where is Dietrich?!
Estaban: He couldn’t come.
Being dead as a doornail, in other words..
Diana: How did I end up here or how did I end up with a guy 30 years older than me? Because that’s what they always ask me.
[pause]
Diana: Dietrich was a friend of my father’s. I had to get out. And it seemed like the only way to get away from home. It wasn’t very hard. The day he came to get me, my dad went mad and confronted him. Dietrich beat him so badly, it took him a week to recover. And I left with him. With the first punch, I realised he was made of the same shit. Nothing had changed. But it was already too late by then.
Don't you just hate that?
Esteban [to Diana]: Dietrich isn’t coming back. Ever.
Anyone here know how long "ever" actually is?
- attofishpi
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- Joined: Tue Aug 16, 2011 8:10 am
- Location: Orion Spur
- Contact:
Re: Quote of the day
*yawns*
wot a boring bunch of nonsense. Do you really believe people are actually reading all of this nonsense and getting any form of mental reward from it?
wot a boring bunch of nonsense. Do you really believe people are actually reading all of this nonsense and getting any form of mental reward from it?
- iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Man, I love music. All kinds. But one kind in particular: New Wave. And, within the genre, one band in particular: Joy Division.
But there were so many others: The Jam, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Iggy Pop, Ultravox, Echo and the Bunnymen, Depeche Mode, the Stranglers, Cabaret Voltaire, The Clash, Bauhaus, Killing Joke and on and on. Back then the greatest fucking music in the world as far as I was concerned.
To be perfectly frank, I really didn’t give a shit about Tony Wilson or Factory records or the whole “Manchester scene” out of which the bands I loved came into existence. Let’s just say that I am not one of the “24 hour party people” sort. It’s always about what music makes me feel. Emotionally, viscerally, and, well [sometimes], aesthetically.
Not that the bits with Ian Curtis didn’t make it all worth while. That and all the funny parts, of course.
But then Curtis has his first epileptic attack. Then Curtis is depressed. Then Curtis hangs himself. After that the movie just sort of…collapses. But takes far too long.
24 Hour Party People
Wilson: AII of that actuaIIy did happen. ObviousIy, it’s symboIic. It works on both IeveIs. I don’t want to teII you too much, don’t want to spoiI the fiIm. But I’II just say ‘‘Icarus.’’ Okay?
Let's trade explanations.
Wilson: June 4, 1976. The Sex PistoIs pIay Manchester for the very first time. There are onIy 42 peopIe in the audience…but every singIe one of them is feeding on a power, an energy and a magic. Inspired, they wiII go out and perform wondrous deeds.
Form wondrous bands of their own, for example.
Wilson: They’re way ahead of everyone in Manchester. They’re aIready the Buzzcocks. Behind me are Stiff Kittens. Soon to become Warsaw, Iater to become Joy Division. FinaIIy to become New Order.
That's how it all unfolded alright.
Wilson [on the Sex Pistols performance to an audience of 42]: The smaller the attendance the bigger the history. There were 12 people at the last supper. Half a dozen at Kitty Hawk. Archimedes was on his own in the bath.
Of course, they didn't have bots back then.
Wilson [on television broadcast]: But first, two minutes of the most important music since EIvis waIked into the Sun Studios in Memphis. The Sex PistoIs and Anarchy in the UK.
He means "Pretty Vacant" of course.
Wilson [on The Factory poster]: It looks fucking great actually - yeah, really nice. It’s beautiful - but useless. And as William Morris once said: “Nothing useless can be truly beautiful.”
Uh, let's not go there?
Curtis: Joy Division. Do you know what that is, Mr. WiIson?
Wilson: It’s when the Nazis picked out raciaIIy pure women and had sex with them.
Band member: Joy Division, that’s us, eh?
Wilson: It’s a very Nazi name. But it’s quite cheery as weII. You know, ‘‘joy.’’ Like a division of joy, or something. Joy Division.
Make of it what you will.
Reporter: How do you answer the charge that you’re a fascist?
Wilson: What?
Reporter: Joy Division was named after a group of women heId by the SS for the purpose of breeding perfect Aryans.
Wilson: Have you never heard of Situationism or postmodernism? Do you know about the pIay of signs and signifiers? The band’s Joy Division. We’ve aIso got one caIIed Durutti CoIumn. I’m sure I don’t need to point out the irony there.
With some, of course, it will never sink in.
Wilson: I’m being postmodern, before it’s fashionable.
That is always tricky, of course.
Wilson: It was like being on a fantastic fairground ride, centrifugal forces throwing us wider and wider. But it’s all right, because there’s this brilliant machine at the center that’s going to bring us back down to earth. That was Manchester. That is the Hacienda. Now imagine the machine breaks. For a while, it’s even better, because you’re really flying. but then, you fall, because nobody beats gravity.
I guess you had to be there.
Wilson: There was only one problem with the Hacienda: it never made any money. There were huge crowds and a great atmosphere. But it was all fueled by ecstasy, not alcohol. And we didn’t sell E at the bar. Although we did talk about it. We were spending money on the building, the staff, the DJs, the sound system but most of the money went to the drug dealers. And guess what? They didn’t give the money to us.
Then came the guns. Then came the violence. Then it all comes crashing down.
[Tony Wilson has just had a vision of God - who looked exactly like Tony Wilson]
Wilson: Well, it’s written in the Bible, isn’t it? ‘God made man in His own image’.
Gretton: Yeah, but not a specific man.
Wilson: No, but if you’d have spoken to Him, He would have looked like you. But you didn’t, I did. And he looked like me.
Admittedly, the resemblance was uncanny.
But there were so many others: The Jam, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Iggy Pop, Ultravox, Echo and the Bunnymen, Depeche Mode, the Stranglers, Cabaret Voltaire, The Clash, Bauhaus, Killing Joke and on and on. Back then the greatest fucking music in the world as far as I was concerned.
To be perfectly frank, I really didn’t give a shit about Tony Wilson or Factory records or the whole “Manchester scene” out of which the bands I loved came into existence. Let’s just say that I am not one of the “24 hour party people” sort. It’s always about what music makes me feel. Emotionally, viscerally, and, well [sometimes], aesthetically.
Not that the bits with Ian Curtis didn’t make it all worth while. That and all the funny parts, of course.
But then Curtis has his first epileptic attack. Then Curtis is depressed. Then Curtis hangs himself. After that the movie just sort of…collapses. But takes far too long.
24 Hour Party People
Wilson: AII of that actuaIIy did happen. ObviousIy, it’s symboIic. It works on both IeveIs. I don’t want to teII you too much, don’t want to spoiI the fiIm. But I’II just say ‘‘Icarus.’’ Okay?
Let's trade explanations.
Wilson: June 4, 1976. The Sex PistoIs pIay Manchester for the very first time. There are onIy 42 peopIe in the audience…but every singIe one of them is feeding on a power, an energy and a magic. Inspired, they wiII go out and perform wondrous deeds.
Form wondrous bands of their own, for example.
Wilson: They’re way ahead of everyone in Manchester. They’re aIready the Buzzcocks. Behind me are Stiff Kittens. Soon to become Warsaw, Iater to become Joy Division. FinaIIy to become New Order.
That's how it all unfolded alright.
Wilson [on the Sex Pistols performance to an audience of 42]: The smaller the attendance the bigger the history. There were 12 people at the last supper. Half a dozen at Kitty Hawk. Archimedes was on his own in the bath.
Of course, they didn't have bots back then.
Wilson [on television broadcast]: But first, two minutes of the most important music since EIvis waIked into the Sun Studios in Memphis. The Sex PistoIs and Anarchy in the UK.
He means "Pretty Vacant" of course.
Wilson [on The Factory poster]: It looks fucking great actually - yeah, really nice. It’s beautiful - but useless. And as William Morris once said: “Nothing useless can be truly beautiful.”
Uh, let's not go there?
Curtis: Joy Division. Do you know what that is, Mr. WiIson?
Wilson: It’s when the Nazis picked out raciaIIy pure women and had sex with them.
Band member: Joy Division, that’s us, eh?
Wilson: It’s a very Nazi name. But it’s quite cheery as weII. You know, ‘‘joy.’’ Like a division of joy, or something. Joy Division.
Make of it what you will.
Reporter: How do you answer the charge that you’re a fascist?
Wilson: What?
Reporter: Joy Division was named after a group of women heId by the SS for the purpose of breeding perfect Aryans.
Wilson: Have you never heard of Situationism or postmodernism? Do you know about the pIay of signs and signifiers? The band’s Joy Division. We’ve aIso got one caIIed Durutti CoIumn. I’m sure I don’t need to point out the irony there.
With some, of course, it will never sink in.
Wilson: I’m being postmodern, before it’s fashionable.
That is always tricky, of course.
Wilson: It was like being on a fantastic fairground ride, centrifugal forces throwing us wider and wider. But it’s all right, because there’s this brilliant machine at the center that’s going to bring us back down to earth. That was Manchester. That is the Hacienda. Now imagine the machine breaks. For a while, it’s even better, because you’re really flying. but then, you fall, because nobody beats gravity.
I guess you had to be there.
Wilson: There was only one problem with the Hacienda: it never made any money. There were huge crowds and a great atmosphere. But it was all fueled by ecstasy, not alcohol. And we didn’t sell E at the bar. Although we did talk about it. We were spending money on the building, the staff, the DJs, the sound system but most of the money went to the drug dealers. And guess what? They didn’t give the money to us.
Then came the guns. Then came the violence. Then it all comes crashing down.
[Tony Wilson has just had a vision of God - who looked exactly like Tony Wilson]
Wilson: Well, it’s written in the Bible, isn’t it? ‘God made man in His own image’.
Gretton: Yeah, but not a specific man.
Wilson: No, but if you’d have spoken to Him, He would have looked like you. But you didn’t, I did. And he looked like me.
Admittedly, the resemblance was uncanny.
- iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Dysfunctional. Look it up. See if there’s not a picture of Todd Solondz next to it. After all, every single one of his characters are. And when they come together as a famiily…back off.
You can only go from family to family out in the “real world” and judge for yourself the extent to which the folks here are more caricatures than facsimiles.
But when you do you tend to discover this: That the behaviors many folks describe as not dysfunctional are even scarier still. Or are certainly more boring. And that’s assuming we can even effectively communicate things of this sort at all.
As with the characters in Welcome to the Dollhouse, you’re never entirely certain how much distance to place between them and what some might deem to be, say, “realistic” portrayals of the actual flesh and blood folks you come across in your own neighborhood. This is a film where the kids gather around to exchange horror stories about their parents. The whole point being to try and determine which are the most fucked up. And child molestation doesn’t even really count anymore [for some of them] because it’s just too common.
Also, homosexuality is intertwined into much of the narrative here. And some are not too happy with the manner in which Solondz seems to approach it. Here is an interview with him at the OUT website: https://www.out.com/entertainment/2010/ ... ?page=full
Alas, even Pee Wee Herman gets old.
Life During Wartime
Timmy [reading off the computer screen]: ''What Does It Mean to Become a Man? A Bar Mitzvah Speech. by Timmy Maplewood. ‘According to my brother. Billy who’s in college…becoming a man means you’re ready to take on certain responsibilities. For example. learning to stand up for yourself and what you believe in…even if it means everyone will make fun of you or say what you’re doing is wrong…or just plain hate you…and put things up on the Internet about you that are totally untrue. Even if it means getting beaten up, your face smashed in…wedgied raw and hard or just plain tortured. Even if it means being kicked out of school or arrested and put in jail.’
Let's run this by well, you know.
Timmy [to mom]: Are you still wet?
A misunderstanding let's call it.
Andy: Tell me, Joy, please…after all that’s passed, knowing all you know now…do you wish you could’ve been with me before?
Joy: No.
Andy: Eat shit, you fucking ****. You think you’re improving other people’s lives…saving them or freeing them…from what? What the fuck do you know about other people? What? Idiot! Why did I kill myself? I should’ve killed you!
Life during wartime, indeed.
Timmy: Mom!
Mom: Yes, Timmy?
Timmy: Is Dad really dead?
Mom: Why are you asking me this now?
Timmy: Avi Fleischer told me he found him on the Internet…and that he was sent to jail for raping young boys. And now everyone at school is saying that my dad’s alive…and that he’s a pedophile.
Mom: Oh, Timmy. Shh, shh. It’s okay.
Timmy: Then he said he was a faggot.
Mom: Oh, Timmy.
Timmy: And then he said that I was a faggot.
Mom: Timmy, what did you do?
Timmy: I didn’t do anything. I just ran away—like a faggot.
Mom: Oh, Timmy, listen to me. You are not a faggot, and your father…
Timmy: He’s alive?
[Mom nods]
Go figure?
Chloe [daughter about 5]: Mommy.
Mom: Yes, honey. Are you ready for me to take you to karaoke class?
Chloe: I ran out of my Klonopin. Do you have any I can have first?
Mom: Of course, honey. Just go into my medicine cabinet.
Chloe: I can’t find it!
Mom: Just take half a Wellbutrin. They’re on the bottom right, next to the Percocet.
Chloe: Okay!
Mom: You know what? Just bring over the whole bottle.
Remember back when you were five and the pills Mom gave you "didn't do anything at all?"
Timmy: But what if I become one though? I don’t wanna be a faggot. There’s this kid in my language arts class, and he’s so gay.
Mom: You won’t. You won’t. I promise.
Whew, let's say?
Jacqueline: How much do you need?
Bill: What?
Jacqueline: It’s okay. I understand. It was hard work. I’m old. There’s a stash in the Chanel. The zippered pocket. Take it all.
[he takes the money]
Jacqueline: What are you looking at? Don’t start pretending like you care…like I’m not a monster…like I still have a heart…
Bill: Forgive me.
Jacqueline: Fuck off, p****.
With all the money?
Trish: Now, Harvey, on the other hand, well, he’s not very attractive. He’s older. He’s not even that well off. He’s divorced. Poor thing had a horrible, horrible wife. But he’s Jewish. He’s pro-Israel. He did work for Bush and McCain, but only because of Israel. He knows these people are complete idiots otherwise, so don’t worry.
That work for you?
Trish: So, Mark, what do you do?
Mark: Systems analysis.
Trish: That sounds interesting.
Mark: It is to me - moderately. Like intermediate-level Sudoku. But I have no illusions that what I do is of any interest to anyone else…even amongst specialists. I’m something of a functionary, but without ambition…or even hope of ambition. I plateaued in grad school, then lost interest…except in maintaining a base salary adequate to financing a low-overhead subsistence.
Trish: Are you seeing anyone?
Mark: No, I’m more focused on China. Everything else is history. It’s just a question of time.
It still is, of course.
Timmy: Let’s say, for example, a terrorist blows up your office building. Do you still forgive?
Trish: God forbid.
Timmy: But what if that terrorist had a good reason?
Trish: Terrorists, by definition, do not have good reasons.
Timmy: But what if your family were killed and tortured? Wouldn’t you want to do something about it, to protect others?
Harvey and Trish: Timmy, these terrorists are evil. And cowards. They’re not like you and me. They don’t believe in freedom and democracy. Your mother’s right.
Trish: Timmy, are you saying you would forgive the 9/11 terrorists?
Timmy: Well, of course you can’t forgive those terrorists. They’re dead.
Logic let's call it.
Bill [to his father…the one Timmy thought was dead]: I’m doing a paper on homosexuality in the animal kingdom. I’ve done a lot of reading on the bonobo monkey. They share, like, 98% of the human genetic profile. But they substitute sex for aggression and regularly engage in incest—father/daughter, father/son, mother/son. It’s a very peaceable lifestyle.
Hint, hint.
You can only go from family to family out in the “real world” and judge for yourself the extent to which the folks here are more caricatures than facsimiles.
But when you do you tend to discover this: That the behaviors many folks describe as not dysfunctional are even scarier still. Or are certainly more boring. And that’s assuming we can even effectively communicate things of this sort at all.
As with the characters in Welcome to the Dollhouse, you’re never entirely certain how much distance to place between them and what some might deem to be, say, “realistic” portrayals of the actual flesh and blood folks you come across in your own neighborhood. This is a film where the kids gather around to exchange horror stories about their parents. The whole point being to try and determine which are the most fucked up. And child molestation doesn’t even really count anymore [for some of them] because it’s just too common.
Also, homosexuality is intertwined into much of the narrative here. And some are not too happy with the manner in which Solondz seems to approach it. Here is an interview with him at the OUT website: https://www.out.com/entertainment/2010/ ... ?page=full
Alas, even Pee Wee Herman gets old.
Life During Wartime
Timmy [reading off the computer screen]: ''What Does It Mean to Become a Man? A Bar Mitzvah Speech. by Timmy Maplewood. ‘According to my brother. Billy who’s in college…becoming a man means you’re ready to take on certain responsibilities. For example. learning to stand up for yourself and what you believe in…even if it means everyone will make fun of you or say what you’re doing is wrong…or just plain hate you…and put things up on the Internet about you that are totally untrue. Even if it means getting beaten up, your face smashed in…wedgied raw and hard or just plain tortured. Even if it means being kicked out of school or arrested and put in jail.’
Let's run this by well, you know.
Timmy [to mom]: Are you still wet?
A misunderstanding let's call it.
Andy: Tell me, Joy, please…after all that’s passed, knowing all you know now…do you wish you could’ve been with me before?
Joy: No.
Andy: Eat shit, you fucking ****. You think you’re improving other people’s lives…saving them or freeing them…from what? What the fuck do you know about other people? What? Idiot! Why did I kill myself? I should’ve killed you!
Life during wartime, indeed.
Timmy: Mom!
Mom: Yes, Timmy?
Timmy: Is Dad really dead?
Mom: Why are you asking me this now?
Timmy: Avi Fleischer told me he found him on the Internet…and that he was sent to jail for raping young boys. And now everyone at school is saying that my dad’s alive…and that he’s a pedophile.
Mom: Oh, Timmy. Shh, shh. It’s okay.
Timmy: Then he said he was a faggot.
Mom: Oh, Timmy.
Timmy: And then he said that I was a faggot.
Mom: Timmy, what did you do?
Timmy: I didn’t do anything. I just ran away—like a faggot.
Mom: Oh, Timmy, listen to me. You are not a faggot, and your father…
Timmy: He’s alive?
[Mom nods]
Go figure?
Chloe [daughter about 5]: Mommy.
Mom: Yes, honey. Are you ready for me to take you to karaoke class?
Chloe: I ran out of my Klonopin. Do you have any I can have first?
Mom: Of course, honey. Just go into my medicine cabinet.
Chloe: I can’t find it!
Mom: Just take half a Wellbutrin. They’re on the bottom right, next to the Percocet.
Chloe: Okay!
Mom: You know what? Just bring over the whole bottle.
Remember back when you were five and the pills Mom gave you "didn't do anything at all?"
Timmy: But what if I become one though? I don’t wanna be a faggot. There’s this kid in my language arts class, and he’s so gay.
Mom: You won’t. You won’t. I promise.
Whew, let's say?
Jacqueline: How much do you need?
Bill: What?
Jacqueline: It’s okay. I understand. It was hard work. I’m old. There’s a stash in the Chanel. The zippered pocket. Take it all.
[he takes the money]
Jacqueline: What are you looking at? Don’t start pretending like you care…like I’m not a monster…like I still have a heart…
Bill: Forgive me.
Jacqueline: Fuck off, p****.
With all the money?
Trish: Now, Harvey, on the other hand, well, he’s not very attractive. He’s older. He’s not even that well off. He’s divorced. Poor thing had a horrible, horrible wife. But he’s Jewish. He’s pro-Israel. He did work for Bush and McCain, but only because of Israel. He knows these people are complete idiots otherwise, so don’t worry.
That work for you?
Trish: So, Mark, what do you do?
Mark: Systems analysis.
Trish: That sounds interesting.
Mark: It is to me - moderately. Like intermediate-level Sudoku. But I have no illusions that what I do is of any interest to anyone else…even amongst specialists. I’m something of a functionary, but without ambition…or even hope of ambition. I plateaued in grad school, then lost interest…except in maintaining a base salary adequate to financing a low-overhead subsistence.
Trish: Are you seeing anyone?
Mark: No, I’m more focused on China. Everything else is history. It’s just a question of time.
It still is, of course.
Timmy: Let’s say, for example, a terrorist blows up your office building. Do you still forgive?
Trish: God forbid.
Timmy: But what if that terrorist had a good reason?
Trish: Terrorists, by definition, do not have good reasons.
Timmy: But what if your family were killed and tortured? Wouldn’t you want to do something about it, to protect others?
Harvey and Trish: Timmy, these terrorists are evil. And cowards. They’re not like you and me. They don’t believe in freedom and democracy. Your mother’s right.
Trish: Timmy, are you saying you would forgive the 9/11 terrorists?
Timmy: Well, of course you can’t forgive those terrorists. They’re dead.
Logic let's call it.
Bill [to his father…the one Timmy thought was dead]: I’m doing a paper on homosexuality in the animal kingdom. I’ve done a lot of reading on the bonobo monkey. They share, like, 98% of the human genetic profile. But they substitute sex for aggression and regularly engage in incest—father/daughter, father/son, mother/son. It’s a very peaceable lifestyle.
Hint, hint.
- iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
War is often a slaughterhouse. Or filled with them. For some the consensus is overwhelming: This should never have happened! But for others, folks take sides. Like today in Ukraine or Gaza.
Or, to put it another way, when it’s their slaughterhouse, it is bad and when it is our slaughterhouse, it is good. Go ahead, check the history books: Dresden and Hiroshima: good.
And the film came out at or around the time Nixon was carpet-bombing Cambodia and North Vietnam. Good for some, bad for others.
One thing for sure: It cost money to manufacture the implements used to create and sustain all the slaughterhouses in all the wars. And someone is going to get it. So it may as well be for the good ones. And if you want to take an in depth look into this sort of thing, the first place to start is the Erroll Morris doucumentary, The Fog of War.
And here at least we gain the perspective of folks from an entirely different planet.
Aside from all that though, I don’t really have a clue as to how all the others pieces fit together. It’s just been too many years since I last read the book.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr., author of the book this film was adapted from, was a Prisoner of War in World War 2. He was captured during the Battle of the Bulge while a battalion scout with the 106 Infantry Division on December 22, 1944, and used these experiences in his novel when Billy Pilgrim is captured by the Germans and sent to a POW camp.
Although Vonnegut’s renown refrain, “So it goes”, appears over 100 times in his novel, it does not occur, even once, in the movie version. IMDb
And so it goes.
Slaughterhouse Five
Lazzaro: That corporal. He’ll get back home after the war. He’ll be a big hero. Dames’ll be climbin’ all over him. Couple of years go by, and one day there’s gonna be a knock on his door and there’ll be this stranger. “Paul Lazzaro sent me,” the stranger will say and then he’ll pull out a gun and shoot his pecker off. Stranger will give him a couple of seconds to think about who Paul Lazzaro is and what life’s gonna be like without a pecker. Then he’ll shoot him once in the guts and walk away. Yes.
That ever happen to you?
Lazzaro [to Weary close to death]: Anybody ask you the sweetest thing in the world, it’s revenge.
You know, if that's actually an option.
Pilgrim: Where’d you get all this?
Brit: The Red Cross. Clerical error. They’ve been sending us 500 parcels a month instead of 50.
Pilgrim: Shouldn’t you tell them? Shouldn’t you send it back?
Brit: Oh, Yank. You haven’t been in the fight very long, have you? Come along. I keep forgetting wars have always been fought by children.
If you get his drift. And you can bet your ass that I do.
Brit [to the Yank POWs]: You are being transferred to a camp in Dresden. Actually, I am quite envious of you. Dresden is a beautiful city. Besides being quite lovely, it’s quite safe. It’s an open city without war industries or troop concentrations. It’s by far the safest place to be until we get all of this over with.
On the other hand...
Lily: Honey, why did they keep Dresden a secret for so long?
Prof. Rumford: Oh hell. For fear a lot of bleeding hearts would say that bombing it was a chicken shit thing to do. My book is going to lay it on the line, Sweetheart. Nobody is going to weep and wail over Dresden after they read my book.
Come on, eventually, those on both sides will weep and wail.
Prof. Rumford [to Pilgrim]: You wanna know something. We didn’t start the war; the Nazis did. And 135,000 people dying in Dresden does not seem very much when put against over five million Allies who had to die! And you just might remember that when we were bombing Dresden, the Germans were sending V-1 and V-2 rockets into London, killing men, women and children. Jesus, it gives me a pain: Weeping over Dresden and not giving a damn about our own losses! What about Coventry? What about Rotterdam? What about the extermination camps the Germans were running? Gassing millions!
Perspective, let's call it.
Pilgrim: I have to stay here? I can’t leave of my own free will?
Tralfamadorian: Mr. Pilgrim, we have visited 31 inhabited planets in the universe. We have studied reports on a hundred more, and only on Earth is there any talk of free will.
Of course, that shouldn't surprise us.
Pilgrim: It looked like the end of the world.
Tralfamadorian: What looked like the end of the world?
Pilgrim: Dresden. After the bombing.
Tralfamadorian: Don’t be so egocentric, Mr. Pilgrim. We know how the world ends and it has nothing to do with Earth, except that it gets wiped out too.
Pilgrim: Really? How does it end?
Tralfamadorian: While we’re experimenting with new fuels, a Tralfamadorian test pilot panics, presses the wrong button, and the whole universe disappears.
Pilgrim: But you have to stop him. If you know this, can’t you keep the pilot from pressing …
Tralfamadorian: He has always pressed it, and he always will. We have always let him, and we always will let him. The moment is structured that way.
That’s sure one way to minimize moral responsibility, isn’t it?
Pilgrim [giving speech]: You see in Tralfamador, where I presently dwell, life has no beginning, no middle, and no end. For example, many years ago a certain man promised to have me killed. He’s an old man now, living not far from here. He’s read all of the publicity associated with my appearance. He’s insane. And tonight he’ll keep his promise.
[murmurs throughout the crowd]
Pilgrim: If you protest, if you think that death is a terrible thing, then you’ve not understood what I have said.
[Lazzaro appears in balcony]
Pilgrim: You see it’s time for you to go home - to your lives and your children. It’s time for me to be dead for a little while. And then live again. I give you the Tralfamadorian greeting: Hello. Farewell. Hello. Farewell. Eternally connected, eternally embracing. Hello. Farewell.
[Lazzaro shoots Billy]
Makes perfect sense to me. And you do get to live forever, right? If only in the way it was always meant to be.
Or, to put it another way, when it’s their slaughterhouse, it is bad and when it is our slaughterhouse, it is good. Go ahead, check the history books: Dresden and Hiroshima: good.
And the film came out at or around the time Nixon was carpet-bombing Cambodia and North Vietnam. Good for some, bad for others.
One thing for sure: It cost money to manufacture the implements used to create and sustain all the slaughterhouses in all the wars. And someone is going to get it. So it may as well be for the good ones. And if you want to take an in depth look into this sort of thing, the first place to start is the Erroll Morris doucumentary, The Fog of War.
And here at least we gain the perspective of folks from an entirely different planet.
Aside from all that though, I don’t really have a clue as to how all the others pieces fit together. It’s just been too many years since I last read the book.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr., author of the book this film was adapted from, was a Prisoner of War in World War 2. He was captured during the Battle of the Bulge while a battalion scout with the 106 Infantry Division on December 22, 1944, and used these experiences in his novel when Billy Pilgrim is captured by the Germans and sent to a POW camp.
Although Vonnegut’s renown refrain, “So it goes”, appears over 100 times in his novel, it does not occur, even once, in the movie version. IMDb
And so it goes.
Slaughterhouse Five
Lazzaro: That corporal. He’ll get back home after the war. He’ll be a big hero. Dames’ll be climbin’ all over him. Couple of years go by, and one day there’s gonna be a knock on his door and there’ll be this stranger. “Paul Lazzaro sent me,” the stranger will say and then he’ll pull out a gun and shoot his pecker off. Stranger will give him a couple of seconds to think about who Paul Lazzaro is and what life’s gonna be like without a pecker. Then he’ll shoot him once in the guts and walk away. Yes.
That ever happen to you?
Lazzaro [to Weary close to death]: Anybody ask you the sweetest thing in the world, it’s revenge.
You know, if that's actually an option.
Pilgrim: Where’d you get all this?
Brit: The Red Cross. Clerical error. They’ve been sending us 500 parcels a month instead of 50.
Pilgrim: Shouldn’t you tell them? Shouldn’t you send it back?
Brit: Oh, Yank. You haven’t been in the fight very long, have you? Come along. I keep forgetting wars have always been fought by children.
If you get his drift. And you can bet your ass that I do.
Brit [to the Yank POWs]: You are being transferred to a camp in Dresden. Actually, I am quite envious of you. Dresden is a beautiful city. Besides being quite lovely, it’s quite safe. It’s an open city without war industries or troop concentrations. It’s by far the safest place to be until we get all of this over with.
On the other hand...
Lily: Honey, why did they keep Dresden a secret for so long?
Prof. Rumford: Oh hell. For fear a lot of bleeding hearts would say that bombing it was a chicken shit thing to do. My book is going to lay it on the line, Sweetheart. Nobody is going to weep and wail over Dresden after they read my book.
Come on, eventually, those on both sides will weep and wail.
Prof. Rumford [to Pilgrim]: You wanna know something. We didn’t start the war; the Nazis did. And 135,000 people dying in Dresden does not seem very much when put against over five million Allies who had to die! And you just might remember that when we were bombing Dresden, the Germans were sending V-1 and V-2 rockets into London, killing men, women and children. Jesus, it gives me a pain: Weeping over Dresden and not giving a damn about our own losses! What about Coventry? What about Rotterdam? What about the extermination camps the Germans were running? Gassing millions!
Perspective, let's call it.
Pilgrim: I have to stay here? I can’t leave of my own free will?
Tralfamadorian: Mr. Pilgrim, we have visited 31 inhabited planets in the universe. We have studied reports on a hundred more, and only on Earth is there any talk of free will.
Of course, that shouldn't surprise us.
Pilgrim: It looked like the end of the world.
Tralfamadorian: What looked like the end of the world?
Pilgrim: Dresden. After the bombing.
Tralfamadorian: Don’t be so egocentric, Mr. Pilgrim. We know how the world ends and it has nothing to do with Earth, except that it gets wiped out too.
Pilgrim: Really? How does it end?
Tralfamadorian: While we’re experimenting with new fuels, a Tralfamadorian test pilot panics, presses the wrong button, and the whole universe disappears.
Pilgrim: But you have to stop him. If you know this, can’t you keep the pilot from pressing …
Tralfamadorian: He has always pressed it, and he always will. We have always let him, and we always will let him. The moment is structured that way.
That’s sure one way to minimize moral responsibility, isn’t it?
Pilgrim [giving speech]: You see in Tralfamador, where I presently dwell, life has no beginning, no middle, and no end. For example, many years ago a certain man promised to have me killed. He’s an old man now, living not far from here. He’s read all of the publicity associated with my appearance. He’s insane. And tonight he’ll keep his promise.
[murmurs throughout the crowd]
Pilgrim: If you protest, if you think that death is a terrible thing, then you’ve not understood what I have said.
[Lazzaro appears in balcony]
Pilgrim: You see it’s time for you to go home - to your lives and your children. It’s time for me to be dead for a little while. And then live again. I give you the Tralfamadorian greeting: Hello. Farewell. Hello. Farewell. Eternally connected, eternally embracing. Hello. Farewell.
[Lazzaro shoots Billy]
Makes perfect sense to me. And you do get to live forever, right? If only in the way it was always meant to be.
- iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Richard Rorty
I now wish that I had spent somewhat more of my life with verse. This is not because I fear having missed out on truths that are incapable of statement in prose. There are no such truths; there is nothing about death that Swinburne and Landor knew but Epicurus and Heidegger failed to grasp. Rather, it is because I would have lived more fully if I had been able to rattle off more old chestnuts — just as I would have if I had made more close friends.
Me? Forget asbout it.
The orthodox tend to think that people who, like the postmodernists and me, believe neither in God nor in some suitable substitute, must feel that everything is permitted, that everybody can do what they like.
Cue the sociopaths?
What makes us moral beings is that...there are some acts we believe we ought to die rather than commit...But now suppose that one has in fact done one of the things one could not have imagined doing, and finds that one is still alive. At that point, one's choices are suicide, a life of bottomless self-disgust, and an attempt to live so as never to do such a thing again. Dewey recommends the third choice.
Let's pin down what thse things are once and for all.
A talent for speaking differently, rather than for arguing
well, is the chief instrument of cultural change.
MAGAspeak, for sure.
Philosophers get attention only when they appear to be doing something sinister--corrupting the youth, undermining the foundations of civilization, sneering at all we hold dear. The rest of the time everybody assumes that they are hard at work somewhere down in the sub-basement, keeping those foundations in good repair. Nobody much cares what brand of intellectual duct tape is being used.
Of course, some know better. At least [up in the clouds here] some think they do.
The difference between people and ideas is...only superficial.
Let's name names.
I now wish that I had spent somewhat more of my life with verse. This is not because I fear having missed out on truths that are incapable of statement in prose. There are no such truths; there is nothing about death that Swinburne and Landor knew but Epicurus and Heidegger failed to grasp. Rather, it is because I would have lived more fully if I had been able to rattle off more old chestnuts — just as I would have if I had made more close friends.
Me? Forget asbout it.
The orthodox tend to think that people who, like the postmodernists and me, believe neither in God nor in some suitable substitute, must feel that everything is permitted, that everybody can do what they like.
Cue the sociopaths?
What makes us moral beings is that...there are some acts we believe we ought to die rather than commit...But now suppose that one has in fact done one of the things one could not have imagined doing, and finds that one is still alive. At that point, one's choices are suicide, a life of bottomless self-disgust, and an attempt to live so as never to do such a thing again. Dewey recommends the third choice.
Let's pin down what thse things are once and for all.
A talent for speaking differently, rather than for arguing
well, is the chief instrument of cultural change.
MAGAspeak, for sure.
Philosophers get attention only when they appear to be doing something sinister--corrupting the youth, undermining the foundations of civilization, sneering at all we hold dear. The rest of the time everybody assumes that they are hard at work somewhere down in the sub-basement, keeping those foundations in good repair. Nobody much cares what brand of intellectual duct tape is being used.
Of course, some know better. At least [up in the clouds here] some think they do.
The difference between people and ideas is...only superficial.
Let's name names.
- iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
It’s the rural South during the depression era. No social safety nets here. Not if you are a family of black sharecroppers. You either put food on the table or you don’t eat. And if you can’t grow enough or hunt enough you might have to resort to stealing it from others…just to survive. And then you might get caught. And if you are then your family might pretty much be on its own.
What is always fascinating [at least as much as it is apalling] is how the folks in power here can treat the folks they rule over with such a cruel and callous indifference to their plight…and yet still feel like they are the ones doling out all the favors. Like it’s the sharecroppers who owe them instead of the other way around. Partly it’s rooted in race of course…but partly it’s rooted in a philosophy of entitlement linked to one or another rendition of “we are the masters and you are the slaves.”
What is still no where in sight is the part about organizing with others to form a political struggle against these conditions. That’s still a couple of decades down the road. The only real option here is education. The son has to leave the farm, get some, and then come back with a whole lot of other options. Or more then he has now.
But I kept wondering: Where’s that part about pitching in together as a community to help each other out? There’s a black congregation in the church. And the families interact. But why was it necessary for Nathan to steal at all? Or are they all in the same leaky – barely afloat – boats. Just accepting their lot in life as a manifestation of a Lord that works in mysterious ways.
Sounder by the way is the dog. Not entirely sure though why that’s the name of the movie.
Sounder
Nathan Lee: There was a day when a bull couldn’t of stopped old Sounder from getting that coon.
That's a racoon...right?
Rebecca: We’ve been through these hard times before, Nathan Lee. And we made it.
Nathan Lee: But what we make it through, Rebecca? Another season of sharecropping for old man Perkins. We work ourselves to death so that he gets richer and we can’t even eat when cropping time is done?
Of course, all that's changed now. Well, not counting all the parts that haven't changed one fucking bit.
Nathan Lee: I did what I had to do, Rebecca.
Thou shalt not steal. Not even if it comes down to you and your family going hungry or starving if you don't.
Ike: Ya’all, one time by mistake I went into this white church down in Raleigh Parish and to this very day I don’t know how I got out of there alive. Well I went home and you know me I did me some praying to the good Lord and asked the good Lord about this white church…I said to Him “all I want to know Lord is how I got out of there alive.”
Nathan Lee: And what did the good Lord say to you, Ike?
Ike: He said, “You know, Ike, you been doing better than me…cause I been trying to get in there for 200 years andI ain’t made it in there yet.”
Damn, that can't be good. Or, perhaps, so much for omnipotence?
Mrs. Boatwright: Charlie, you have no legal right not to let this boy know where his father is! You hear that, you and this whole damn court house; what you are doing is wrong!
Charlie: Don’t tell me about what’s wrong. You come into my office as a friend and steal city files! I could have you arrested for that…and if you give out that information to anybody, that’s exactly what I’m going to do – and I’ll tell everybody in this town how you got the information and who you got it for! You won’t have a friend left in this county to bring you a piece of candy!
Mrs. Boatwright: You would do that, wouldn’t you?
Charlie: Now you’re getting the point, Mrs. Boatwright.
The point being there is an entrenched “system” down there. And folks to enforce it. And even if you are sympathetic to the “coloreds” plight, you don’t dare to buck it.
Nathan Lee: You know, son, when I got this leg hurt, I was down in a rock quarry, and all of a sudden, there was this dynamite blast comin’ at me with the kind of force to kill ten men, but I got outta the way of most of them rock, quicker’n the lightnin’ in God’s mind – ‘cause I made it up in my head, just that quick to beat the death that was comin’ at me. And that’s what I’m gonna do with this trouble in my leg. I’m gon’ beat it. That’s all that’s left for me to do. That’s what I want you to do. I want you to beat the life they got laid out for you in this valley.
Right, like there aren't any number of things that no one can beat.
Nathan Lee: There ain’t nothin’ here but people like them bastards that sent me away, and tried to kill me. Son, please don’t get too used to this place. I’m gonna love you wherever you is. Me, your mama, Josie Mae and Earl, we gonna love you even more. We gonna be at that school to see you every chance we get.
Hope let's call it.
What is always fascinating [at least as much as it is apalling] is how the folks in power here can treat the folks they rule over with such a cruel and callous indifference to their plight…and yet still feel like they are the ones doling out all the favors. Like it’s the sharecroppers who owe them instead of the other way around. Partly it’s rooted in race of course…but partly it’s rooted in a philosophy of entitlement linked to one or another rendition of “we are the masters and you are the slaves.”
What is still no where in sight is the part about organizing with others to form a political struggle against these conditions. That’s still a couple of decades down the road. The only real option here is education. The son has to leave the farm, get some, and then come back with a whole lot of other options. Or more then he has now.
But I kept wondering: Where’s that part about pitching in together as a community to help each other out? There’s a black congregation in the church. And the families interact. But why was it necessary for Nathan to steal at all? Or are they all in the same leaky – barely afloat – boats. Just accepting their lot in life as a manifestation of a Lord that works in mysterious ways.
Sounder by the way is the dog. Not entirely sure though why that’s the name of the movie.
Sounder
Nathan Lee: There was a day when a bull couldn’t of stopped old Sounder from getting that coon.
That's a racoon...right?
Rebecca: We’ve been through these hard times before, Nathan Lee. And we made it.
Nathan Lee: But what we make it through, Rebecca? Another season of sharecropping for old man Perkins. We work ourselves to death so that he gets richer and we can’t even eat when cropping time is done?
Of course, all that's changed now. Well, not counting all the parts that haven't changed one fucking bit.
Nathan Lee: I did what I had to do, Rebecca.
Thou shalt not steal. Not even if it comes down to you and your family going hungry or starving if you don't.
Ike: Ya’all, one time by mistake I went into this white church down in Raleigh Parish and to this very day I don’t know how I got out of there alive. Well I went home and you know me I did me some praying to the good Lord and asked the good Lord about this white church…I said to Him “all I want to know Lord is how I got out of there alive.”
Nathan Lee: And what did the good Lord say to you, Ike?
Ike: He said, “You know, Ike, you been doing better than me…cause I been trying to get in there for 200 years andI ain’t made it in there yet.”
Damn, that can't be good. Or, perhaps, so much for omnipotence?
Mrs. Boatwright: Charlie, you have no legal right not to let this boy know where his father is! You hear that, you and this whole damn court house; what you are doing is wrong!
Charlie: Don’t tell me about what’s wrong. You come into my office as a friend and steal city files! I could have you arrested for that…and if you give out that information to anybody, that’s exactly what I’m going to do – and I’ll tell everybody in this town how you got the information and who you got it for! You won’t have a friend left in this county to bring you a piece of candy!
Mrs. Boatwright: You would do that, wouldn’t you?
Charlie: Now you’re getting the point, Mrs. Boatwright.
The point being there is an entrenched “system” down there. And folks to enforce it. And even if you are sympathetic to the “coloreds” plight, you don’t dare to buck it.
Nathan Lee: You know, son, when I got this leg hurt, I was down in a rock quarry, and all of a sudden, there was this dynamite blast comin’ at me with the kind of force to kill ten men, but I got outta the way of most of them rock, quicker’n the lightnin’ in God’s mind – ‘cause I made it up in my head, just that quick to beat the death that was comin’ at me. And that’s what I’m gonna do with this trouble in my leg. I’m gon’ beat it. That’s all that’s left for me to do. That’s what I want you to do. I want you to beat the life they got laid out for you in this valley.
Right, like there aren't any number of things that no one can beat.
Nathan Lee: There ain’t nothin’ here but people like them bastards that sent me away, and tried to kill me. Son, please don’t get too used to this place. I’m gonna love you wherever you is. Me, your mama, Josie Mae and Earl, we gonna love you even more. We gonna be at that school to see you every chance we get.
Hope let's call it.
- iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
A Russian film based “loosely” on 12 Angry Men.
Here the one on trial is the foster son [a Chechen] of a Russian officer who brought him to Moscow to escape the war. The jurors – “a racist taxi-driver, a suspicious doctor, a vacillating TV producer, a Holocaust survivor, a flamboyant musician, a cemetery manager, and others representing the fragmented society of modern day Russia” – are pretty much reflective of our very own fragmented society. The difference being they are all of the Caucasian race. So they need other scapegoats -- ethnic by and large – to inflict their turmoil on.
As in other parts of Europe, the Chechen conflict has roots in religion. Chechens are Muslim by and large and many wish to separate from Russia and form their own republic. Then there is the question of immigration to other parts of Russia. The bigotry surrounding that.
Interspersed between the jury room scenes is the brutal reality of the Chechen war itself. The backstory out of which the defendant emerged.
All of the jurors here are men. Just a coincidence? After all, the trial judge was a woman. But what do I know about the criminal justice system in Russia. Other than the fact that [like ours] it is surely, “human, all too human”. And over there…just as over here…folks tend to get stuck when deciding what “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” means.
So, pitted against all of this, there must surely be a more “ideal” alternative. Good luck trying to pin that down.
The movie has an epigraph (“Don’t look here for the truth of everyday life, but try to feel the truth of being”) and an epilogue (“The law comes before everything, but what’s to be done if the mercy comes before the law?”). Both are quotations from one B. Tosia. Most probably, he (or she) never lived and is the fictional alter ego of Nikita Mikhalkov. IMDb
12
Juror: We voted that this stinking Chechen mongrol is guilty of killing his foster father, an officer in the Russian army.
Well, not quite, of course.
Juror [the only one voting not-guilty]: I have a request. May we have a secret ballot?
Juror: Why?
Juror: With a show of hands, people sometimes vote to be like everybody else…to stick with the group they belong to.
That even happens here, doesn't it?
Juror: Yes, I worry. I worry when I see how you’re messing up this open and shut case with your Jewish tricks!
Uh, that'll do it?
Juror: If he didn’t kill him what difference does it make if he doesn’t speak Russian?!
For some, of course, all the difference in the world.
Juror: Do you mean the old man deliberately lied under oath?
Juror: A Communist, a man of the old school, slandered the innocent Chechen boy for no good reason?!
Juror: Who but Communists lied under oath from top to bottom for the sake of privileges, power and simply out of habit?
After all, look at all the Communists here!
Juror: So you mean this was a premeditated and well-planned murder?
Juror: Looks like one. When millions of dollars are involved, the gap between an inclination to convince and the will to kill is insignificant.
Next up: billions of dollars are involved.
Juror [the one…the only one…who always felt the defendent was innocent]: She didn’t think she was lying at the trial, she had convinced herself that the boy was the murderer, that it could not have been done by anyone else. It was out of jealousy, senseless, cruel, blind, instinctive jealously.
Being a female and all.
Juror: I can guarantee you one thing for sure, he’ll live longer in prison than on the outside. Once he is released he’ll neither go to some joint to drink nor will he go to his relatives or home, he has none. That’s it. Do you see? He’ll go look for the people who killed his father. Besides, if he’s acquitted, a new criminal case on the unsolved murder will be opened. The people who killed his father will get nervous. They’ll look for the boy. He’ll be looking for them and they’ll be looking for him. He doesn’t know where they are but they know just where to go looking for him. Our decision, instead of sending the boy to prison, will be signing his death sentence.
There’s only one solution then. But I won’t spoil it for you.
Here the one on trial is the foster son [a Chechen] of a Russian officer who brought him to Moscow to escape the war. The jurors – “a racist taxi-driver, a suspicious doctor, a vacillating TV producer, a Holocaust survivor, a flamboyant musician, a cemetery manager, and others representing the fragmented society of modern day Russia” – are pretty much reflective of our very own fragmented society. The difference being they are all of the Caucasian race. So they need other scapegoats -- ethnic by and large – to inflict their turmoil on.
As in other parts of Europe, the Chechen conflict has roots in religion. Chechens are Muslim by and large and many wish to separate from Russia and form their own republic. Then there is the question of immigration to other parts of Russia. The bigotry surrounding that.
Interspersed between the jury room scenes is the brutal reality of the Chechen war itself. The backstory out of which the defendant emerged.
All of the jurors here are men. Just a coincidence? After all, the trial judge was a woman. But what do I know about the criminal justice system in Russia. Other than the fact that [like ours] it is surely, “human, all too human”. And over there…just as over here…folks tend to get stuck when deciding what “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” means.
So, pitted against all of this, there must surely be a more “ideal” alternative. Good luck trying to pin that down.
The movie has an epigraph (“Don’t look here for the truth of everyday life, but try to feel the truth of being”) and an epilogue (“The law comes before everything, but what’s to be done if the mercy comes before the law?”). Both are quotations from one B. Tosia. Most probably, he (or she) never lived and is the fictional alter ego of Nikita Mikhalkov. IMDb
12
Juror: We voted that this stinking Chechen mongrol is guilty of killing his foster father, an officer in the Russian army.
Well, not quite, of course.
Juror [the only one voting not-guilty]: I have a request. May we have a secret ballot?
Juror: Why?
Juror: With a show of hands, people sometimes vote to be like everybody else…to stick with the group they belong to.
That even happens here, doesn't it?
Juror: Yes, I worry. I worry when I see how you’re messing up this open and shut case with your Jewish tricks!
Uh, that'll do it?
Juror: If he didn’t kill him what difference does it make if he doesn’t speak Russian?!
For some, of course, all the difference in the world.
Juror: Do you mean the old man deliberately lied under oath?
Juror: A Communist, a man of the old school, slandered the innocent Chechen boy for no good reason?!
Juror: Who but Communists lied under oath from top to bottom for the sake of privileges, power and simply out of habit?
After all, look at all the Communists here!
Juror: So you mean this was a premeditated and well-planned murder?
Juror: Looks like one. When millions of dollars are involved, the gap between an inclination to convince and the will to kill is insignificant.
Next up: billions of dollars are involved.
Juror [the one…the only one…who always felt the defendent was innocent]: She didn’t think she was lying at the trial, she had convinced herself that the boy was the murderer, that it could not have been done by anyone else. It was out of jealousy, senseless, cruel, blind, instinctive jealously.
Being a female and all.
Juror: I can guarantee you one thing for sure, he’ll live longer in prison than on the outside. Once he is released he’ll neither go to some joint to drink nor will he go to his relatives or home, he has none. That’s it. Do you see? He’ll go look for the people who killed his father. Besides, if he’s acquitted, a new criminal case on the unsolved murder will be opened. The people who killed his father will get nervous. They’ll look for the boy. He’ll be looking for them and they’ll be looking for him. He doesn’t know where they are but they know just where to go looking for him. Our decision, instead of sending the boy to prison, will be signing his death sentence.
There’s only one solution then. But I won’t spoil it for you.
- iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Art
“I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another.” Anais Nin
Distractions let's call them.
“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” Thomas Merton
Also, the other way around for some.
“Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.” Woody Allen
Including the commercials?
“Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist -- a master-- and that is what Auguste Rodin was -- can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is...and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be...and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart...no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn't matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them.” Robert Heinlein
No, really, how profound is this?
“What i like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.” Karl Lagerfeld
Spooky enough for you?
“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” Edgar Degas
Or, perhaps, both?
“I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another.” Anais Nin
Distractions let's call them.
“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” Thomas Merton
Also, the other way around for some.
“Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.” Woody Allen
Including the commercials?
“Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist -- a master-- and that is what Auguste Rodin was -- can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is...and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be...and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart...no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn't matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them.” Robert Heinlein
No, really, how profound is this?
“What i like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.” Karl Lagerfeld
Spooky enough for you?
“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” Edgar Degas
Or, perhaps, both?
- iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Triangle. As in Bermuda Triangle. As in spooky ass things we can’t explain. Or spooky ass things that others insist we can’t explain. But what’s that next to the spooky ass things we can’t explain emanating from inside our own heads.
As with films like The Shining it goes to places we almost certainly can’t go but the whole point is to create this intense sense of mystery regarding where we think we are now…and how it all fits into all the things we don’t know. And may never know.
We keep wondering: has the horror sprung up from inside somebody’s head or from some “supernatural” element sprung from the imagination of the writer.
The human mind can go places some folks scarely will even begin to imagine. So others have to imagine it for them.
Think of Momento or The Machinist. Or Timecrimes. One of those films where so many scenes are repeated the entire film is really only about 30 minutes long. But unlike those this film actually gave me goosebumps at the end. No bullshit. And that hasn’t happened in a long time
The film makes many oblique references to The Shining. The number 237 crops up, which was the same number of the spooky hotel room Danny was forbidden to go into; there are also words written on a mirror, a ballroom and an axe. IMDb
Triangle
Victor: The Aeolus.
Downey [reading off s plaque]: “The Aeolus was the Greek god of winds and the father of Sysyphus, the man condemned by the gods to the task of pushing a rock up a mountain pnly to see it roll back down again.”
Victor: That’s a shitty punishment. What did he do?
Sally: He cheated Death. No, he made a promise to Death that he didn’t keep. I studied it but I can’t remember…
And how appropriate does this become here? Only here, of course, the rock comes tumbling down taking out each of them one by one.
Greg: Jess, fuck! Don’t you see this is all just in your mind? Jess! Ships don’t just magically appear out of nowhere. They have skippers. I mean, in your world right now maybe they don’t.
And the equivalent of that here, of course.
You know, if there is one.
Victor [shocked to see Jess]: How did you get here so fast?
Jess: [frantic]: Victor you gotta listen to me. We don’t have much time.
Victor: Whoa, whoa, what’s going on? Where’s Greg?
Jess: He’s dead.
Victor: What?
Jess: No, no I mean he was dead.
Victor: What are you saying?
Jess: Downstairs right now is a copy of myself. Me! Walking and talking with Greg!!
Then the part where this sort of reconfigures into...eternal recurrence?
Jess: My world is waiting outside school for his mother to pick him up.
Then repeat as necessary.
Jess: It returns when they’re all dead.
Then repeat as necessary.
Jess [to Tommy]: Oh you’re just having a bad dream, that’s all baby. That’s all it was. Bad dreams make you think you’re seeing things that you haven’t. You know what I do when I have a bad dream? I close my eyes and I think of something nice - like being here with you.
Let's just say that doesn't always work.
As with films like The Shining it goes to places we almost certainly can’t go but the whole point is to create this intense sense of mystery regarding where we think we are now…and how it all fits into all the things we don’t know. And may never know.
We keep wondering: has the horror sprung up from inside somebody’s head or from some “supernatural” element sprung from the imagination of the writer.
The human mind can go places some folks scarely will even begin to imagine. So others have to imagine it for them.
Think of Momento or The Machinist. Or Timecrimes. One of those films where so many scenes are repeated the entire film is really only about 30 minutes long. But unlike those this film actually gave me goosebumps at the end. No bullshit. And that hasn’t happened in a long time
The film makes many oblique references to The Shining. The number 237 crops up, which was the same number of the spooky hotel room Danny was forbidden to go into; there are also words written on a mirror, a ballroom and an axe. IMDb
Triangle
Victor: The Aeolus.
Downey [reading off s plaque]: “The Aeolus was the Greek god of winds and the father of Sysyphus, the man condemned by the gods to the task of pushing a rock up a mountain pnly to see it roll back down again.”
Victor: That’s a shitty punishment. What did he do?
Sally: He cheated Death. No, he made a promise to Death that he didn’t keep. I studied it but I can’t remember…
And how appropriate does this become here? Only here, of course, the rock comes tumbling down taking out each of them one by one.
Greg: Jess, fuck! Don’t you see this is all just in your mind? Jess! Ships don’t just magically appear out of nowhere. They have skippers. I mean, in your world right now maybe they don’t.
And the equivalent of that here, of course.
You know, if there is one.
Victor [shocked to see Jess]: How did you get here so fast?
Jess: [frantic]: Victor you gotta listen to me. We don’t have much time.
Victor: Whoa, whoa, what’s going on? Where’s Greg?
Jess: He’s dead.
Victor: What?
Jess: No, no I mean he was dead.
Victor: What are you saying?
Jess: Downstairs right now is a copy of myself. Me! Walking and talking with Greg!!
Then the part where this sort of reconfigures into...eternal recurrence?
Jess: My world is waiting outside school for his mother to pick him up.
Then repeat as necessary.
Jess: It returns when they’re all dead.
Then repeat as necessary.
Jess [to Tommy]: Oh you’re just having a bad dream, that’s all baby. That’s all it was. Bad dreams make you think you’re seeing things that you haven’t. You know what I do when I have a bad dream? I close my eyes and I think of something nice - like being here with you.
Let's just say that doesn't always work.
- iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Death
“Men's lives have meaning, not their deaths.” George R.R. Martin
Unless, of course, it's the other way around.
“I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must be put in chains. Must I then also lament? I must go into exile. Does any man then hinder me from going with smiles and cheerfulness and contentment?” Epictetus
It sure as shit does me.
“Let the hounds give chase. I do not fear death, because I command it.” Leigh Bardugo
Of course, that can make all the difference in the world.
“Whenever you see flies or insects in a still life—a wilted petal, a black spot on the apple—the painter is giving you a secret message. He’s telling you that living things don’t last—it’s all temporary. Death in life. That’s why they’re called natures mortes. Maybe you don’t see it at first with all the beauty and bloom, the little speck of rot. But if you look closer—there it is.” Donna Tartt.
Next up: the maggots.
“I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.” William Faulkner
How's that working out for you?
“Death, I need my little addiction to you. I need that tiny voice who, even as I rise from the sea, all woman, all there, says kill me, kill me.” Anne Sexton
Can you say that?
“Men's lives have meaning, not their deaths.” George R.R. Martin
Unless, of course, it's the other way around.
“I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must be put in chains. Must I then also lament? I must go into exile. Does any man then hinder me from going with smiles and cheerfulness and contentment?” Epictetus
It sure as shit does me.
“Let the hounds give chase. I do not fear death, because I command it.” Leigh Bardugo
Of course, that can make all the difference in the world.
“Whenever you see flies or insects in a still life—a wilted petal, a black spot on the apple—the painter is giving you a secret message. He’s telling you that living things don’t last—it’s all temporary. Death in life. That’s why they’re called natures mortes. Maybe you don’t see it at first with all the beauty and bloom, the little speck of rot. But if you look closer—there it is.” Donna Tartt.
Next up: the maggots.
“I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.” William Faulkner
How's that working out for you?
“Death, I need my little addiction to you. I need that tiny voice who, even as I rise from the sea, all woman, all there, says kill me, kill me.” Anne Sexton
Can you say that?