Nikola Tesla
If your hate could be turned into electricity, it would light up the whole world.
For starters, let's say.
I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.
Let's think of one.
What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife... Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment...”
Blah, blah, blah. And then some.
I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success . . . Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.
Just out of curiosity, has that ever happened to you?
Me neither.
One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.
So, what does that explain here?
Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine.
Let's run this by the Grim Reaper. And God if there is one.
Quote of the day
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Impenitent
- Posts: 5775
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Fanatic.
The famous contend with both. But they want the one and not the other. The fanatics worship you. But [often] only on their own terms. Violate those terms and there can be hell to pay. Especially when the fanatic is a character in a Stephen King novel.
Of course King fanatics are of two sorts: the natural and the supernatural. The natural are scarier. Why? Because they might be any one of us. And maybe with a screw loose and maybe not. Or maybe with a whole box of screws loose.
Hell, we’ve even got a few of them here, don’t we?
After all, few things are less easily grasped than the human mind. For example, try reasoning with one when she is fanatical. Like Annie. On the other hand, Annie did just save his life. And he is truly, truly grateful. Right up to the moment when he spots the first [of many] cracks.
And let’s face it: there really are people out there who get fanatically wrapped up in book characters or characters on television or in the movies. So much so that any changes – like, say, killing them off! – can be a truly traumatic experience for them. As in, well, reality. All you can do then [if you want to survive] is to play into their fantasy. Then bide your time.
Misery was almost turned into a Broadway play with Julia Roberts as Annie Wilkes. King vetoed the idea because Annie is (in his words) “a brawny woman who can sling a guy around, not a pixie.” IMDb
Misery
Paul: I haven’t been a writer since I got in the Misery business.
Marcia: It’s not a bad business. And it would still be growing, too. The first printing for Misery’s Child was the most ever. Over a million. Misery Chastain is putting your daughter through college, bought you two houses and seats to the Knicks. What thanks does she get? You go and kill her!
Paul: I never meant for it to become my life. If I hadn’t gotten rid of her now, I’d have ended up writing her for ever. Now I’m leaving for Colorado to try to finish the new book. If I can make this work…I might just have something I want on my tombstone.
The set up let's call it.
Annie [to Paul after she saves his life]: I am your number one fan. There is nothing to worry about. You are going to be just fine. I am your number one fan.
Providing of course...
Paul: I guess it was kind of a miracle you finding me.
Annie: No, it wasn’t a miracle at all. In a way, I was following you.
Paul: You were following me?
Oh, yeah.
Annie [to Paul]: What’s the ceiling that Dago painted?
Paul: The Sistine Chapel.
Annie: Yeah! That and “Misery’s Child”, those are the only two divine things ever in this world!
Tell that to Misery.
Annie: How could you? She can’t be dead! Misery Chastain cannot be dead!
Paul: Annie, women often died in childbirth back then. Her spirit is the important thing. Misery’s spirit is still alive.
Annie: I don’t want her spirit! I want her! And you murdered her!
Of course, this changes everything.
Annie: And don’t even think about anybody coming for you, Paul. Not the doctors, not your agent, not your family. 'Cause I never called them. Nobody knows you’re here. And you better hope nothing happens to me. Because if I die…you die.
Really, what would you do?
Annie [to Paul]: Sometimes my thinking is a little muddy, I accept that. It’s why I couldn’t remember all they asked me on the witness stand in Denver. But this time I thought clearly. I asked God about you…and God said “I delivered him unto you so that you may show him the way.”
You knew He was bound to show up, right?
Annie: Anything else I can get for you while I am in town? How about a tiny tape recorder, or how about a homemade pair of writing slippers?
Paul: No, just the paper would be fine.
Annie: Are you sure? Because if you want I can bring back the whole store for you!
Paul: Annie, what’s the matter?
Annie: WHAT’S THE MATTER? I will tell you “what’s the matter!” I go out of my way for you! I do everything to try and make you happy. I feed you, I clean you, I dress you, and what thanks do I get? “Oh, you bought the wrong paper, Annie, I can’t write on this paper, Annie!” Well, I’ll get your stupid paper but you just better start showing me a little appreciation around here, Mr. MAN!
He can be his own worst enemy, to say the least.
Annie [dejected]: Here’s your pills.
Paul: Annie? Annie, what is it?
Annie: The rain. Sometimes it gives me the blues. When you first came here, I only loved the writer part of Paul Sheldon. Now I know I love the rest of him, too. I know you don’t love me, don’t say you do. You’re beautiful, brilliant, a famous man of the world and I’m…not a movie star type. You’ll never know the fear of losing someone like you if you’re someone like me.
Paul: Why would you lose me?
Annie: Book’s almost finished, your legs are getting better. Soon you’ll be wanting to leave.
Paul: Why would I leave? I like it here.
Annie: That’s very kind of you, but I’ll bet it’s not all together true.
[Annie pulls out a gun]
Annie: I have this gun.
[pulls the trigger]
Annie: Sometimes I think about using it. I’d better go now. I might put bullets in it.
The ante has been upped.
Annie: Paul, do you know about the early days at the Kimberley diamond mines? Do you know what they did to the native workers who stole diamonds? Don’t worry. They didn’t kill them. That would be like junking a Mercedes just because it had a broken spring. No, they had to make sure they could go on working, but they also had to make sure they could never run away. The operation was called “hobbling”.
Let’s just say it involves a sledgehammer
Annie [after she murders the sheriff]: It’s a sign. You see, I’ve known for some time why I was chosen to save you. You and I were meant to be together forever. But now our time in this world must end. But don’t worry, Paul. I’ve prepared for what must be done. I put two bullets in my gun, one for you and one for me. Oh darling, it will be so beautiful.
You can't help but wonder...is she a sociopath or a psychopath?
Paul [holding a page of his manuscript]: Do you remember how for all those years, nobody ever knew who Misery’s real father was, or will they ever be reunited? It’s all right here. Does she finally marry Ian, or will it be Winthorne? It’s all right here.
Paul: [lights a match]
Annie: Paul you can’t!
[she drops her glass]
Paul: Why not? I learned it from you.
[Paul burns his manuscript]
Now that takes me back.
Paul [shoving burnt manuscript pages into her mouth]: Here, you want it? You want it?! Eat it! Eat it till you choke, you sick, twisted fuck!
Cue Nietzsche. And you know what I mean.
18 months later…
Waitress: Excuse me, I don’t mean to bother you, but are you Paul Sheldon?
Paul: Yes, I am.
Waitress: I just wanted to tell you I’m your number one fan.
Paul: That’s very sweet of you.
He said...meekly.
The famous contend with both. But they want the one and not the other. The fanatics worship you. But [often] only on their own terms. Violate those terms and there can be hell to pay. Especially when the fanatic is a character in a Stephen King novel.
Of course King fanatics are of two sorts: the natural and the supernatural. The natural are scarier. Why? Because they might be any one of us. And maybe with a screw loose and maybe not. Or maybe with a whole box of screws loose.
Hell, we’ve even got a few of them here, don’t we?
After all, few things are less easily grasped than the human mind. For example, try reasoning with one when she is fanatical. Like Annie. On the other hand, Annie did just save his life. And he is truly, truly grateful. Right up to the moment when he spots the first [of many] cracks.
And let’s face it: there really are people out there who get fanatically wrapped up in book characters or characters on television or in the movies. So much so that any changes – like, say, killing them off! – can be a truly traumatic experience for them. As in, well, reality. All you can do then [if you want to survive] is to play into their fantasy. Then bide your time.
Misery was almost turned into a Broadway play with Julia Roberts as Annie Wilkes. King vetoed the idea because Annie is (in his words) “a brawny woman who can sling a guy around, not a pixie.” IMDb
Misery
Paul: I haven’t been a writer since I got in the Misery business.
Marcia: It’s not a bad business. And it would still be growing, too. The first printing for Misery’s Child was the most ever. Over a million. Misery Chastain is putting your daughter through college, bought you two houses and seats to the Knicks. What thanks does she get? You go and kill her!
Paul: I never meant for it to become my life. If I hadn’t gotten rid of her now, I’d have ended up writing her for ever. Now I’m leaving for Colorado to try to finish the new book. If I can make this work…I might just have something I want on my tombstone.
The set up let's call it.
Annie [to Paul after she saves his life]: I am your number one fan. There is nothing to worry about. You are going to be just fine. I am your number one fan.
Providing of course...
Paul: I guess it was kind of a miracle you finding me.
Annie: No, it wasn’t a miracle at all. In a way, I was following you.
Paul: You were following me?
Oh, yeah.
Annie [to Paul]: What’s the ceiling that Dago painted?
Paul: The Sistine Chapel.
Annie: Yeah! That and “Misery’s Child”, those are the only two divine things ever in this world!
Tell that to Misery.
Annie: How could you? She can’t be dead! Misery Chastain cannot be dead!
Paul: Annie, women often died in childbirth back then. Her spirit is the important thing. Misery’s spirit is still alive.
Annie: I don’t want her spirit! I want her! And you murdered her!
Of course, this changes everything.
Annie: And don’t even think about anybody coming for you, Paul. Not the doctors, not your agent, not your family. 'Cause I never called them. Nobody knows you’re here. And you better hope nothing happens to me. Because if I die…you die.
Really, what would you do?
Annie [to Paul]: Sometimes my thinking is a little muddy, I accept that. It’s why I couldn’t remember all they asked me on the witness stand in Denver. But this time I thought clearly. I asked God about you…and God said “I delivered him unto you so that you may show him the way.”
You knew He was bound to show up, right?
Annie: Anything else I can get for you while I am in town? How about a tiny tape recorder, or how about a homemade pair of writing slippers?
Paul: No, just the paper would be fine.
Annie: Are you sure? Because if you want I can bring back the whole store for you!
Paul: Annie, what’s the matter?
Annie: WHAT’S THE MATTER? I will tell you “what’s the matter!” I go out of my way for you! I do everything to try and make you happy. I feed you, I clean you, I dress you, and what thanks do I get? “Oh, you bought the wrong paper, Annie, I can’t write on this paper, Annie!” Well, I’ll get your stupid paper but you just better start showing me a little appreciation around here, Mr. MAN!
He can be his own worst enemy, to say the least.
Annie [dejected]: Here’s your pills.
Paul: Annie? Annie, what is it?
Annie: The rain. Sometimes it gives me the blues. When you first came here, I only loved the writer part of Paul Sheldon. Now I know I love the rest of him, too. I know you don’t love me, don’t say you do. You’re beautiful, brilliant, a famous man of the world and I’m…not a movie star type. You’ll never know the fear of losing someone like you if you’re someone like me.
Paul: Why would you lose me?
Annie: Book’s almost finished, your legs are getting better. Soon you’ll be wanting to leave.
Paul: Why would I leave? I like it here.
Annie: That’s very kind of you, but I’ll bet it’s not all together true.
[Annie pulls out a gun]
Annie: I have this gun.
[pulls the trigger]
Annie: Sometimes I think about using it. I’d better go now. I might put bullets in it.
The ante has been upped.
Annie: Paul, do you know about the early days at the Kimberley diamond mines? Do you know what they did to the native workers who stole diamonds? Don’t worry. They didn’t kill them. That would be like junking a Mercedes just because it had a broken spring. No, they had to make sure they could go on working, but they also had to make sure they could never run away. The operation was called “hobbling”.
Let’s just say it involves a sledgehammer
Annie [after she murders the sheriff]: It’s a sign. You see, I’ve known for some time why I was chosen to save you. You and I were meant to be together forever. But now our time in this world must end. But don’t worry, Paul. I’ve prepared for what must be done. I put two bullets in my gun, one for you and one for me. Oh darling, it will be so beautiful.
You can't help but wonder...is she a sociopath or a psychopath?
Paul [holding a page of his manuscript]: Do you remember how for all those years, nobody ever knew who Misery’s real father was, or will they ever be reunited? It’s all right here. Does she finally marry Ian, or will it be Winthorne? It’s all right here.
Paul: [lights a match]
Annie: Paul you can’t!
[she drops her glass]
Paul: Why not? I learned it from you.
[Paul burns his manuscript]
Now that takes me back.
Paul [shoving burnt manuscript pages into her mouth]: Here, you want it? You want it?! Eat it! Eat it till you choke, you sick, twisted fuck!
Cue Nietzsche. And you know what I mean.
18 months later…
Waitress: Excuse me, I don’t mean to bother you, but are you Paul Sheldon?
Paul: Yes, I am.
Waitress: I just wanted to tell you I’m your number one fan.
Paul: That’s very sweet of you.
He said...meekly.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
The Muscles From Brussels.
Since I had never seen a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, I was certainly curious about this one. At Rotten Tomatoes, most of his past action flicks averaged about a 15% fresh rating. One was 5% and three of them were 0%. But this one had an 83% fresh rating on 102 reviews. In other words, huh?
This is a very strange movie to say the least. For example, part of it details the personal travail JCVD is going through at the time – the taxman is hounding him, the ex-wife wants to take his kid away, his agent may be ripping him off; and part of it is a crime drama. Another part is your standard action-adventure fare. You watch it all unfold and you are constantly wondering: did this stuff actually happen? After all, I didn’t know anything about the man.
At wiki, it’s described as a “semi-fictionalized” account of him. But how does that help?
But the guy’s performance here is really fascinating. It’s a marvel to watch.
The plot: JCVD goes to the post office in his hometown of Brussels to retrieve money. While he is in there the place is held up. And the cops think that he is in on it. That he is in fact the mastermind behind the robbery. Instead, he is in there trying to keep things from spiraling out of control…trying to keep folks from getting killed.
Meanwhile, outside the PO, it’s like Dog Day Afternoon.
JCVD
Police officier: Central to Unit 27. Jean-Claude Van Damme’s robbing a post office. I need back-up.
The Army?
Van Damme: He’s in shock. He’s still in shock. Once in the film “Hard Target”, I took a shot from a blank. It took salts to revive me.
Arthur [one of the bank robbers]: “Hard Target”! John Woo!
Lawyer: Gloria, would you rather live with your mommy or with your daddy?
Gloria: I don’t wanna live with Dad.
Lawyer: Why, Gloria?
Gloria: Every time my dad is on a TV Show, my friends make fun of me.
Lawyer: But you love your daddy?
Gloria: Yes.
Lawyer: But you would rather stay with your mom.
Gloria: I just want them to stop making fun of me.
Fucking bullies.
Arthur: Got any new projects?
Van Damme: Not for now.
Arthur: I saw a thing on the web, what’s it called? Purple…
Van Damme: “Purple Amulet”. Steven Seagal got the part.
Arthur: What?! He got the part. Steven Seagal?! You’re ten times better!
Van Damme: Well, he cut off his couette.
Arthur: His what?
Van Damme: His couette. His ponytail. For the first time.
Arthur: Oh, I see…That’s a tough one…
What might prompt you to go that far?
Van Damme: Well, they could come naked. In hostage movies, the bad guys ask the good guys to come in naked, so they know they’re clean.
Bank robber: How about naked?
Bank robber leader: Fine, tell them.
Think The Insider. And then some.
The crowd outside the PO: JEAN-CLAUDE! JEAN-CLAUDE! JEAN-CLAUDE! JEAN-CLAUDE!
Though, as i recall, none of them were naked.
Then this strange monologue…as though he were yanked up out of the movie itself.
J.C.V.D.: "This movie is for me. There we are, you and me. Why did you do that? Or why did I do that? You made my dream come true. I asked for it. I promised you something in return and I haven’t delivered yet. You win, I lose. Unless…the path you’ve set for me is full of hurdles where the answer comes before the question. Yeah I do that. Now I know why. It’s the cure, from what I’ve seen here. It all makes sense. It makes sense to those who understand. So… America, poverty, stealing to eat…stalking producers, actors, ‘movie stars’, going to clubs hoping to see a star, with my pictures, karate magazines. It’s all I had. I didn’t speak English. But I did 20 years of karate. ‘Cause before I wasn’t like that.
[points to flexed bicep]
This…this is me today. I used to be small and scrawny. And I took up karate. Hence the Dojo, hence respect, thou shall believe people who say, “Oss!” It’s Samurai code. It’s honour, no lies. So this guy in the US, it’s not the same thing. No one says “Oss” to you. Sometimes people in show business say, "We’re gonna’ fuck em’". I believed in people, in the Dojo. I was blessed and had a lot of ‘wives’. I always believed in love. It’s hard for a woman with three kids to say, “Which one do I love more?” A mother… If you have 5, 6, 7, or 10 wives in a lifetime, they’ve all got something special, but no one cares about that in the so-called media. What about drugs? When you got it all, you travel the world. When you’ve been in all the hotels, you’re the prima donna of the penthouse. And in all hotels the world over, traveling, you want something more. And because of a woman…well, because of love, I tried something and I got hooked. Van-Damme, the beast, the tiger in a cage, the “Bloodsport” man got hooked. I was wasted mentally and physically. To the point that I got out of it. I got out of it. But…it’s all there. It’s all there. It was really tough. I saw people worse off than me. I went from poor to rich and thought, why aren’t we all like me, why all the privileges? I’m just a regular guy. It makes me sick to see people…who don’t have what I’ve got. Knowing that they have qualities, too. Much more than I do! It’s not my fault if I was cut out to be a star. I asked for it. I asked for it, really believed in it. When you’re 13, you believe in your dream. Well it came true for me. But I still ask myself today what I’ve done on this Earth. Nothing! I’ve done nothing! And I might just die in this post office, hoping to start all over here in Belgium, in my country, where my roots are. Start all over with my parents and get my health back, pick up again. So I really hope… nobody’s gonna’ pull a trigger in this post office…It’s so stupid to kill people. They’re so beautiful! So, today, I pray to God. I truly believe it’s not a movie. It’s real life. Real life. I’ve seen so many things. I was born in Belgium, but I’m a citizen of the world. I’ve traveled a lot. It’s hard for me to judge people and it’s hard for them…not to judge me. Easier to blame me. Yeah, something like that.
Or, sure, nothing like that at all.
Since I had never seen a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, I was certainly curious about this one. At Rotten Tomatoes, most of his past action flicks averaged about a 15% fresh rating. One was 5% and three of them were 0%. But this one had an 83% fresh rating on 102 reviews. In other words, huh?
This is a very strange movie to say the least. For example, part of it details the personal travail JCVD is going through at the time – the taxman is hounding him, the ex-wife wants to take his kid away, his agent may be ripping him off; and part of it is a crime drama. Another part is your standard action-adventure fare. You watch it all unfold and you are constantly wondering: did this stuff actually happen? After all, I didn’t know anything about the man.
At wiki, it’s described as a “semi-fictionalized” account of him. But how does that help?
But the guy’s performance here is really fascinating. It’s a marvel to watch.
The plot: JCVD goes to the post office in his hometown of Brussels to retrieve money. While he is in there the place is held up. And the cops think that he is in on it. That he is in fact the mastermind behind the robbery. Instead, he is in there trying to keep things from spiraling out of control…trying to keep folks from getting killed.
Meanwhile, outside the PO, it’s like Dog Day Afternoon.
JCVD
Police officier: Central to Unit 27. Jean-Claude Van Damme’s robbing a post office. I need back-up.
The Army?
Van Damme: He’s in shock. He’s still in shock. Once in the film “Hard Target”, I took a shot from a blank. It took salts to revive me.
Arthur [one of the bank robbers]: “Hard Target”! John Woo!
Lawyer: Gloria, would you rather live with your mommy or with your daddy?
Gloria: I don’t wanna live with Dad.
Lawyer: Why, Gloria?
Gloria: Every time my dad is on a TV Show, my friends make fun of me.
Lawyer: But you love your daddy?
Gloria: Yes.
Lawyer: But you would rather stay with your mom.
Gloria: I just want them to stop making fun of me.
Fucking bullies.
Arthur: Got any new projects?
Van Damme: Not for now.
Arthur: I saw a thing on the web, what’s it called? Purple…
Van Damme: “Purple Amulet”. Steven Seagal got the part.
Arthur: What?! He got the part. Steven Seagal?! You’re ten times better!
Van Damme: Well, he cut off his couette.
Arthur: His what?
Van Damme: His couette. His ponytail. For the first time.
Arthur: Oh, I see…That’s a tough one…
What might prompt you to go that far?
Van Damme: Well, they could come naked. In hostage movies, the bad guys ask the good guys to come in naked, so they know they’re clean.
Bank robber: How about naked?
Bank robber leader: Fine, tell them.
Think The Insider. And then some.
The crowd outside the PO: JEAN-CLAUDE! JEAN-CLAUDE! JEAN-CLAUDE! JEAN-CLAUDE!
Though, as i recall, none of them were naked.
Then this strange monologue…as though he were yanked up out of the movie itself.
J.C.V.D.: "This movie is for me. There we are, you and me. Why did you do that? Or why did I do that? You made my dream come true. I asked for it. I promised you something in return and I haven’t delivered yet. You win, I lose. Unless…the path you’ve set for me is full of hurdles where the answer comes before the question. Yeah I do that. Now I know why. It’s the cure, from what I’ve seen here. It all makes sense. It makes sense to those who understand. So… America, poverty, stealing to eat…stalking producers, actors, ‘movie stars’, going to clubs hoping to see a star, with my pictures, karate magazines. It’s all I had. I didn’t speak English. But I did 20 years of karate. ‘Cause before I wasn’t like that.
[points to flexed bicep]
This…this is me today. I used to be small and scrawny. And I took up karate. Hence the Dojo, hence respect, thou shall believe people who say, “Oss!” It’s Samurai code. It’s honour, no lies. So this guy in the US, it’s not the same thing. No one says “Oss” to you. Sometimes people in show business say, "We’re gonna’ fuck em’". I believed in people, in the Dojo. I was blessed and had a lot of ‘wives’. I always believed in love. It’s hard for a woman with three kids to say, “Which one do I love more?” A mother… If you have 5, 6, 7, or 10 wives in a lifetime, they’ve all got something special, but no one cares about that in the so-called media. What about drugs? When you got it all, you travel the world. When you’ve been in all the hotels, you’re the prima donna of the penthouse. And in all hotels the world over, traveling, you want something more. And because of a woman…well, because of love, I tried something and I got hooked. Van-Damme, the beast, the tiger in a cage, the “Bloodsport” man got hooked. I was wasted mentally and physically. To the point that I got out of it. I got out of it. But…it’s all there. It’s all there. It was really tough. I saw people worse off than me. I went from poor to rich and thought, why aren’t we all like me, why all the privileges? I’m just a regular guy. It makes me sick to see people…who don’t have what I’ve got. Knowing that they have qualities, too. Much more than I do! It’s not my fault if I was cut out to be a star. I asked for it. I asked for it, really believed in it. When you’re 13, you believe in your dream. Well it came true for me. But I still ask myself today what I’ve done on this Earth. Nothing! I’ve done nothing! And I might just die in this post office, hoping to start all over here in Belgium, in my country, where my roots are. Start all over with my parents and get my health back, pick up again. So I really hope… nobody’s gonna’ pull a trigger in this post office…It’s so stupid to kill people. They’re so beautiful! So, today, I pray to God. I truly believe it’s not a movie. It’s real life. Real life. I’ve seen so many things. I was born in Belgium, but I’m a citizen of the world. I’ve traveled a lot. It’s hard for me to judge people and it’s hard for them…not to judge me. Easier to blame me. Yeah, something like that.
Or, sure, nothing like that at all.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Stupidity
“All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I'm not meant to call them stupid, even though this is what they are.” Mark Haddon
Here? You first.
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Robert J. Hanlon
Of course, for some here, it can often be both.
“Everyone has a sense of humor. If you don't laugh at jokes, you probably laugh at opinions.” Criss Jami
Howl he means.
"I doubt you can understand the magnitude of the stupidity in your statement.” Robert Jordan,
He still doesn't.
“Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.” Joseph Joubert
Objectively as often as not.
“There are so many different kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.” Thomas Mann
Actually, I love clever myself.
“All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I'm not meant to call them stupid, even though this is what they are.” Mark Haddon
Here? You first.
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Robert J. Hanlon
Of course, for some here, it can often be both.
“Everyone has a sense of humor. If you don't laugh at jokes, you probably laugh at opinions.” Criss Jami
Howl he means.
"I doubt you can understand the magnitude of the stupidity in your statement.” Robert Jordan,
He still doesn't.
“Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.” Joseph Joubert
Objectively as often as not.
“There are so many different kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.” Thomas Mann
Actually, I love clever myself.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
I’ve always thought of Woody Allen as an ironist. In film after film he will have characters voicing opinions that pretty much reflect his own. But then he will have other characters effectively criticizing them with counter arguments that can be said to be equally reasonable.
But in this film, above all others, ironism seems to reign supreme. He often has characters here deconstructing [even lampooning] the character that everyone seems to associate with him.
And irony of ironies is that this film came out at the same time the Soon-yi Previn/child molestation scandal exploded. A pummeling [from both sides] that continues to this day. Irony in “real life” as it were.
Sex, love and the upper middle class. There really does not seem to be any way in which to get them right. And particularly not in the world we live in today. There are just too many different combinations [sets] of circumstances that can throw any particular frame of mind for a loop. Mostly we see that perennial tug of war in which ambivalence prevails. They want something new but they don’t really want to completely give up what is old. Obviously, some couples fare better here than others. Or else it’s A loves B and B loves C. And D. And then E comes along and everything gets all the more convoluted still. Some of them are married, some of them are not.
The bottom line seems to be that in love and marriage…whatever works. And, regarding this, one size does not even come remotely close to fitting all.
Contrary to general perception, Mia Farrow’s role is not autobiographical. Indeed, Woody Allen originally wrote the Judy Davis part with the idea of Farrow playing it. Farrow chose to take on the role of the cuckolded wife instead as it meant less shooting time for her.
Hoping to piggyback on the scandal surrounding Woody Allen’s break-up with Mia Farrow, TriStar opened the film on 865 screens, the largest amount ever given over to a Woody Allen picture. They were rewarded with an opening weekend of $3.52 million, the biggest ever for an Allen film. IMDb
Husbands and Wives
TV Scientist: Einstein was then celebrating, uh, the seventieth birthday anniversary and there was a colloquium given for him. And he said, “God doesn’t play dice with the universe”.
Gabe: No. He just plays hide-and-seek.
He wondered if God could be hiding here.
Judy: You lose patience if the student isn’t Dostoyevsky.
Gabe: No, that isn’t true. That’s crazy. It’s worth it when you get a gifted pupil. A young girl in my class just wrote a great story: “Oral Sex in the Age of Deconstruction.”
One of the Yellowjackets as it turns out.
Judy: Do you ever hide things from me?
Gabe: Me? What kind of things?
Judy: I don’t know. Feelings, you know. Longings. Complaints.
Gabe: No. Do you?
Judy: No.
Again, remember when this film came out.
Gabe: It’s cruel to bring life into this terrible world.
Judy: Oh, please. Don’t glorify your refusal on philosophical grounds.
Good point. Not that his point isn't perhaps a better one.
Sally [to Paul]: What are you upset about? Fucking men! A woman gets to this age, it’s a different ball game. It’s great till you start to show your age, then they want a newer model.
Truer now more than ever, he suspected.
Gabe [to interviewer]: One time, many years ago I was living with this fabulous, interesting woman named Harriet Harmon. I’m ashamed to say this, but Harriet Harmon was the great love of my life. It was a very passionate relationship. I loved her very intensely. And, you know, we just made love everywhere. She was sexually carnivorous. We did it in stalled elevators…and in bushes and people’s houses, at parties in the bathroom…She got into dope for a while. She’d break that thing that you sniff when she’d have her orgasm. I was getting a real education. I was fascinated. I was absolutely nuts about her. And ultimately she wound up in an institution. I mean, it’s not funny, it was a very sad thing. She was great, but nuts. See, I’ve always had this penchant for what I call “kamikaze women.” I call them kamikazes because they crash their plane. They’re self-destructive. But they crash it into you, and you die with them.
Think...Betty Blue?
Jack: I love Sally. But what’s wrong with aerobics? What am l? A snob?
Gabe: What’s it got to do with aerobics?
Jack: Big deal. So she’s not Simone de Beauvoir. I want somebody who screams when I fuck her.
Gabe: She’s a fucking cocktail waitress.
Unless, of course, it's all "in the stars".
Gabe [to Rain]: I thought your line was great. “Life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television.”
Or half time at the Super Bowl.
Interviewer: How are things going with Sam?
Jack: Great. Absolutely great. Saturday, we got up. We had a run down by the river. It was a beautiful day. It was terrific. I’m down to a good weight. I’m exercising. It feels incredible to get in shape. I eat great. Salads, no meat. Never touch meat. Later in the day, we rented some kind of a video. Some sort of dopey, funny, stupid little thing. Something Sally wouldn’t have allowed. I laughed like hell. I had a terrific time and I didn’t have to feel guilty about it. Like I said, she’s not Simone de Beauvoir. We argue sometimes.
[cut to Jack and Sam walking down the street]
Jack: Trust me. It’s King Lear. Shakespeare never wrote about a King Leo.
Sam: Well, Mr. Intellectual. Shakespeare wrote in English, not Japanese.
Again, it may well all be "in the stars"
To witless:
Man at party: If astrology were true, twins would have the same fate.
Sam: It is true! It is totally, totally, totally provable, you know?
Female Party Guest: Provable how? From gypsies?
Sam: Well, it’s totally logical, right? You know, why wouldn’t the position of the planets have an influence on our personalities?
Female Party Guest: You know who believes this stuff? My babysitter.
Sam: They know. They know there is more crime during the full moon. It’s like the universe knows this stuff. You guys are all so smart but you just don’t get the fundamental basics of…
Female Party Guest: You should meet my babysitter. She doesn’t know anyone in New York…
Sam: Because the position of the planets is crucial to your life. I can’t stress this enough. And your body…
Female Party Guest: Be logical.
Sam: But I’m totally logical. I would not put a Sagittarius…
Jack: Sam, we gotta go. Come on.
Yo, Jakob! You're up!!
Jack: This bullshit astrology. It’s stupid.
Sam: It’s not stupid.
Jack: I’m sick of listening to your crap about soybeans and Zen foods. They’re having an intellectual conversation in there, and you’re jerking off about tofu.
Intellectual snobs, let's call them. Right, Samantha?
Sally [to the interviewer]: I thought that I liked what Michael was doing to me, and it felt different from Jack; more gentle. And more exciting. And I thought how different Michael was from Jack. How much deeper his vision of life was. And I thought Michael was a hedgehog and Jack was a fox. And then I thought Judy was a fox and Gabe was a hedgehog. And I thought about all the people I knew, and which were hedgehogs and which were foxes. Al Simon, a friend, was a hedgehog, and his wife Jenny was a hedgehog. And Cindy Salkind was a fox. And Lou Patrino was a hedgehog.
Don’t ask.
Rain reads from Gabe’s new book: “The heart raged, grew melancholy and confused…and toward what end? To articulate what nitwit strategy? Procreation? It told him something. How millions of sperm competed for a single egg, not the other way around. Men would make love with any number of women…even total strangers, while females were more selective. They were catering to the demands of one small egg. While males had millions of frantic sperms screaming wildly: ‘Let us out, let us out now!’…Feldman longed to meet an attractive woman with this personality: A sense of humour equal to his…a love of music equal to his with a particular love of Bach and balmy climates. In short, himself as a pretty woman.”
Yo, Dina!
Rain reads from Gabe’s new book: “What happened after the honeymoon? Did desire grow or did familiarity make partners long for other lovers? Was the notion of ever-deepening romance a myth along with simultaneous orgasm? The only time Rifkin and his wife experienced a simultaneous orgasm was when the judge granted their divorce. Maybe in the end, the idea was not to expect too much out of life.”
But then...
Rain: I just think that maybe I…I could’ve been threatened by certain things in the book.
Gabe: Like what…?
Rain: Um, some of the attitudes towards women and your ideas on life.
Gabe: You told me you love the book.
Rain: I do. I do love it, yeah.
Gabe: What were your criticisms?
Rain: Um, nothing.
Gabe: No, tell me. Tell me what your criticisms were.
Rain: I was a little disappointed, I guess, with, ah, with some of your attitudes.
Gabe: Like what? What attitudes?
[Rain sighs]
Gabe: With what?
Rain: The way your people just casually have affairs like that, that’s…
Gabe: Well, the book doesn’t condone affairs. You know, I’m exaggerating for comic purposes.
Rain: Yeah, I mean but are our choices really between chronic dissatisfaction and suburban drudgery?
Gabe: No, but, you know, that’s how I…I’m deliberately distorting it, you know, 'cause I’m trying to show how hard it is to be married and…
Rain: Well, you have to be careful not to trivialize with things like that.
Gabe: Well, Jesus, I…I hope I haven’t.
Rain: Well, the way your… your lead character views women, it’s so retrograde. It’s so shallow, you know?
Gabe: What are you talking…You told me you…you know, that… you told me it was a great book.
Rain: Yeah, it’s wonderful. And I never said great. I said it’s brilliant, and it’s alive, and… You know, that’s not what I’m…We’re not arguing about whether it’s brilliant or not. I’m, you know… Triumph of the Will was a great movie, but you despise the ideas behind it.
Gabe: What…what are you saying, now? You despise my ideas?
Rain: No, I don’t despise them. All right, that… that example was wrong.
[pause]
Rain: OK, isn’t it beneath you as a mature thinker, I mean, to allow your lead character to waste so much of this emotional energy obsessing over this psychotic relationship with a woman that you fantasize as powerfully sexual and inspired when, in fact, she was pitifully sick?
Gabe: Look, let’s stop this right now because I don’t need a lecture on maturity or writing from a 20-year-old twit.
So, who won?
Gabe: Boy, I’d hate to be your boyfriend! He must go through hell.
Rain: Well, I’m worth it.
Actually, it's too close to call.
Judy: That’s the way I felt then. People change. I’m not the same person I was.
Gabe: That’s why relationships go sour.
Judy: Yeah, you hate change.
Gabe: Change equals death!
Judy: What kind of bullshit? That’s just a bullshit line! Maybe you fool your twenty-year-old students into thinking that’s some kind of a, an insight or something, but it means nothing! Change is what life is made of! Change…if you don’t change, you don’t grow, you just shrivel up!
Actually, it's too close to call.
Judy [to Gabe]: You use sex to express every emotion except love.
A man, let's call him.
Sally: [to interviewer]: I’ve learned, anyway, that love is…not about passion and romance necessarily. It’s also about companionship and…it’s like a buffer against loneliness, I think.
Jack: That stuff is really important. Somebody to grow old with. What kills most people is unreal expectations.
Interviewer: What about things that can’t be talked about? Like sexual problems, for instance.
Sally: Unresolved.
Interviewer: Unresolved?
Sally: Well, there’s some things you can’t solve and then…you have to live with it. You construct some kind of patchwork thing. But sometimes they flare up.
Jack: They do, and when it happens…it gets tough when that happens.
Sally: You learn to deal with it and then push it back down.
Jack: And it works. That’s the weird thing. It’s not bad.
Sally: You can’t force yourself to conform to some abstract vision of love, or, you know, marriage. Every situation’s different.
Jack: Whatever works is the deal. Ours is just one way.
Whatever works! See, I told you.
But in this film, above all others, ironism seems to reign supreme. He often has characters here deconstructing [even lampooning] the character that everyone seems to associate with him.
And irony of ironies is that this film came out at the same time the Soon-yi Previn/child molestation scandal exploded. A pummeling [from both sides] that continues to this day. Irony in “real life” as it were.
Sex, love and the upper middle class. There really does not seem to be any way in which to get them right. And particularly not in the world we live in today. There are just too many different combinations [sets] of circumstances that can throw any particular frame of mind for a loop. Mostly we see that perennial tug of war in which ambivalence prevails. They want something new but they don’t really want to completely give up what is old. Obviously, some couples fare better here than others. Or else it’s A loves B and B loves C. And D. And then E comes along and everything gets all the more convoluted still. Some of them are married, some of them are not.
The bottom line seems to be that in love and marriage…whatever works. And, regarding this, one size does not even come remotely close to fitting all.
Contrary to general perception, Mia Farrow’s role is not autobiographical. Indeed, Woody Allen originally wrote the Judy Davis part with the idea of Farrow playing it. Farrow chose to take on the role of the cuckolded wife instead as it meant less shooting time for her.
Hoping to piggyback on the scandal surrounding Woody Allen’s break-up with Mia Farrow, TriStar opened the film on 865 screens, the largest amount ever given over to a Woody Allen picture. They were rewarded with an opening weekend of $3.52 million, the biggest ever for an Allen film. IMDb
Husbands and Wives
TV Scientist: Einstein was then celebrating, uh, the seventieth birthday anniversary and there was a colloquium given for him. And he said, “God doesn’t play dice with the universe”.
Gabe: No. He just plays hide-and-seek.
He wondered if God could be hiding here.
Judy: You lose patience if the student isn’t Dostoyevsky.
Gabe: No, that isn’t true. That’s crazy. It’s worth it when you get a gifted pupil. A young girl in my class just wrote a great story: “Oral Sex in the Age of Deconstruction.”
One of the Yellowjackets as it turns out.
Judy: Do you ever hide things from me?
Gabe: Me? What kind of things?
Judy: I don’t know. Feelings, you know. Longings. Complaints.
Gabe: No. Do you?
Judy: No.
Again, remember when this film came out.
Gabe: It’s cruel to bring life into this terrible world.
Judy: Oh, please. Don’t glorify your refusal on philosophical grounds.
Good point. Not that his point isn't perhaps a better one.
Sally [to Paul]: What are you upset about? Fucking men! A woman gets to this age, it’s a different ball game. It’s great till you start to show your age, then they want a newer model.
Truer now more than ever, he suspected.
Gabe [to interviewer]: One time, many years ago I was living with this fabulous, interesting woman named Harriet Harmon. I’m ashamed to say this, but Harriet Harmon was the great love of my life. It was a very passionate relationship. I loved her very intensely. And, you know, we just made love everywhere. She was sexually carnivorous. We did it in stalled elevators…and in bushes and people’s houses, at parties in the bathroom…She got into dope for a while. She’d break that thing that you sniff when she’d have her orgasm. I was getting a real education. I was fascinated. I was absolutely nuts about her. And ultimately she wound up in an institution. I mean, it’s not funny, it was a very sad thing. She was great, but nuts. See, I’ve always had this penchant for what I call “kamikaze women.” I call them kamikazes because they crash their plane. They’re self-destructive. But they crash it into you, and you die with them.
Think...Betty Blue?
Jack: I love Sally. But what’s wrong with aerobics? What am l? A snob?
Gabe: What’s it got to do with aerobics?
Jack: Big deal. So she’s not Simone de Beauvoir. I want somebody who screams when I fuck her.
Gabe: She’s a fucking cocktail waitress.
Unless, of course, it's all "in the stars".
Gabe [to Rain]: I thought your line was great. “Life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television.”
Or half time at the Super Bowl.
Interviewer: How are things going with Sam?
Jack: Great. Absolutely great. Saturday, we got up. We had a run down by the river. It was a beautiful day. It was terrific. I’m down to a good weight. I’m exercising. It feels incredible to get in shape. I eat great. Salads, no meat. Never touch meat. Later in the day, we rented some kind of a video. Some sort of dopey, funny, stupid little thing. Something Sally wouldn’t have allowed. I laughed like hell. I had a terrific time and I didn’t have to feel guilty about it. Like I said, she’s not Simone de Beauvoir. We argue sometimes.
[cut to Jack and Sam walking down the street]
Jack: Trust me. It’s King Lear. Shakespeare never wrote about a King Leo.
Sam: Well, Mr. Intellectual. Shakespeare wrote in English, not Japanese.
Again, it may well all be "in the stars"
To witless:
Man at party: If astrology were true, twins would have the same fate.
Sam: It is true! It is totally, totally, totally provable, you know?
Female Party Guest: Provable how? From gypsies?
Sam: Well, it’s totally logical, right? You know, why wouldn’t the position of the planets have an influence on our personalities?
Female Party Guest: You know who believes this stuff? My babysitter.
Sam: They know. They know there is more crime during the full moon. It’s like the universe knows this stuff. You guys are all so smart but you just don’t get the fundamental basics of…
Female Party Guest: You should meet my babysitter. She doesn’t know anyone in New York…
Sam: Because the position of the planets is crucial to your life. I can’t stress this enough. And your body…
Female Party Guest: Be logical.
Sam: But I’m totally logical. I would not put a Sagittarius…
Jack: Sam, we gotta go. Come on.
Yo, Jakob! You're up!!
Jack: This bullshit astrology. It’s stupid.
Sam: It’s not stupid.
Jack: I’m sick of listening to your crap about soybeans and Zen foods. They’re having an intellectual conversation in there, and you’re jerking off about tofu.
Intellectual snobs, let's call them. Right, Samantha?
Sally [to the interviewer]: I thought that I liked what Michael was doing to me, and it felt different from Jack; more gentle. And more exciting. And I thought how different Michael was from Jack. How much deeper his vision of life was. And I thought Michael was a hedgehog and Jack was a fox. And then I thought Judy was a fox and Gabe was a hedgehog. And I thought about all the people I knew, and which were hedgehogs and which were foxes. Al Simon, a friend, was a hedgehog, and his wife Jenny was a hedgehog. And Cindy Salkind was a fox. And Lou Patrino was a hedgehog.
Don’t ask.
Rain reads from Gabe’s new book: “The heart raged, grew melancholy and confused…and toward what end? To articulate what nitwit strategy? Procreation? It told him something. How millions of sperm competed for a single egg, not the other way around. Men would make love with any number of women…even total strangers, while females were more selective. They were catering to the demands of one small egg. While males had millions of frantic sperms screaming wildly: ‘Let us out, let us out now!’…Feldman longed to meet an attractive woman with this personality: A sense of humour equal to his…a love of music equal to his with a particular love of Bach and balmy climates. In short, himself as a pretty woman.”
Yo, Dina!
Rain reads from Gabe’s new book: “What happened after the honeymoon? Did desire grow or did familiarity make partners long for other lovers? Was the notion of ever-deepening romance a myth along with simultaneous orgasm? The only time Rifkin and his wife experienced a simultaneous orgasm was when the judge granted their divorce. Maybe in the end, the idea was not to expect too much out of life.”
But then...
Rain: I just think that maybe I…I could’ve been threatened by certain things in the book.
Gabe: Like what…?
Rain: Um, some of the attitudes towards women and your ideas on life.
Gabe: You told me you love the book.
Rain: I do. I do love it, yeah.
Gabe: What were your criticisms?
Rain: Um, nothing.
Gabe: No, tell me. Tell me what your criticisms were.
Rain: I was a little disappointed, I guess, with, ah, with some of your attitudes.
Gabe: Like what? What attitudes?
[Rain sighs]
Gabe: With what?
Rain: The way your people just casually have affairs like that, that’s…
Gabe: Well, the book doesn’t condone affairs. You know, I’m exaggerating for comic purposes.
Rain: Yeah, I mean but are our choices really between chronic dissatisfaction and suburban drudgery?
Gabe: No, but, you know, that’s how I…I’m deliberately distorting it, you know, 'cause I’m trying to show how hard it is to be married and…
Rain: Well, you have to be careful not to trivialize with things like that.
Gabe: Well, Jesus, I…I hope I haven’t.
Rain: Well, the way your… your lead character views women, it’s so retrograde. It’s so shallow, you know?
Gabe: What are you talking…You told me you…you know, that… you told me it was a great book.
Rain: Yeah, it’s wonderful. And I never said great. I said it’s brilliant, and it’s alive, and… You know, that’s not what I’m…We’re not arguing about whether it’s brilliant or not. I’m, you know… Triumph of the Will was a great movie, but you despise the ideas behind it.
Gabe: What…what are you saying, now? You despise my ideas?
Rain: No, I don’t despise them. All right, that… that example was wrong.
[pause]
Rain: OK, isn’t it beneath you as a mature thinker, I mean, to allow your lead character to waste so much of this emotional energy obsessing over this psychotic relationship with a woman that you fantasize as powerfully sexual and inspired when, in fact, she was pitifully sick?
Gabe: Look, let’s stop this right now because I don’t need a lecture on maturity or writing from a 20-year-old twit.
So, who won?
Gabe: Boy, I’d hate to be your boyfriend! He must go through hell.
Rain: Well, I’m worth it.
Actually, it's too close to call.
Judy: That’s the way I felt then. People change. I’m not the same person I was.
Gabe: That’s why relationships go sour.
Judy: Yeah, you hate change.
Gabe: Change equals death!
Judy: What kind of bullshit? That’s just a bullshit line! Maybe you fool your twenty-year-old students into thinking that’s some kind of a, an insight or something, but it means nothing! Change is what life is made of! Change…if you don’t change, you don’t grow, you just shrivel up!
Actually, it's too close to call.
Judy [to Gabe]: You use sex to express every emotion except love.
A man, let's call him.
Sally: [to interviewer]: I’ve learned, anyway, that love is…not about passion and romance necessarily. It’s also about companionship and…it’s like a buffer against loneliness, I think.
Jack: That stuff is really important. Somebody to grow old with. What kills most people is unreal expectations.
Interviewer: What about things that can’t be talked about? Like sexual problems, for instance.
Sally: Unresolved.
Interviewer: Unresolved?
Sally: Well, there’s some things you can’t solve and then…you have to live with it. You construct some kind of patchwork thing. But sometimes they flare up.
Jack: They do, and when it happens…it gets tough when that happens.
Sally: You learn to deal with it and then push it back down.
Jack: And it works. That’s the weird thing. It’s not bad.
Sally: You can’t force yourself to conform to some abstract vision of love, or, you know, marriage. Every situation’s different.
Jack: Whatever works is the deal. Ours is just one way.
Whatever works! See, I told you.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Identity
“It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” Patrick Rothfuss
Pick 3
1] historically
2] culturally
3] experientially
“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.” Ralph Ellison
Though still invisible.
“A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.” Coco Chanel
So, how's that working out for you?
“We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.” Chuck Palahniuk
So, how's that working out for you?
“You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis.” Chuck Palahniuk
Unless, of course, you are.
“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.” Gabriel García Márquez
However fractured and fragmented that might turn out.
“It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” Patrick Rothfuss
Pick 3
1] historically
2] culturally
3] experientially
“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.” Ralph Ellison
Though still invisible.
“A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.” Coco Chanel
So, how's that working out for you?
“We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.” Chuck Palahniuk
So, how's that working out for you?
“You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis.” Chuck Palahniuk
Unless, of course, you are.
“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.” Gabriel García Márquez
However fractured and fragmented that might turn out.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
This was the final film from Adrienne Shelly. On November 1, 2006, she was found dead in her work studio. She had been murdered. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrienne_Shelly#Death
For some folks, being a waitress is living a life that is fucked up enough. But when you are a waitress weighted down with all manner of sad disappointments and problems, well, that is practically unthinkable.
On the other hand, if you are waitress that is still reasonably young and beatiful there may still be, say, options? Or more options than if you are not.
Marriages seem to fall apart either because lots of things change or nothing at all does. This one is more latter. Made all the more unstable though when it becomes the former. In other words, both.
And Earl. He’s an asshole. But the worst kind. The kind that doesn’t even know know he is one. And even were he able to admit that sometimes he is an asshole it would only be because Jenna makes him that way.
How the hell do marriages like this ever even get started?! And then I remember my own.
Also, Earl is not very keen on irony. Jenna can tell him almost anything [and in any tone of voice] and he basically takes it literally.
Look for the role that money plays in the lives of those who barely scrape by. And how through the magic of scripting that can all be made to just go away.
Waitress
Jenna [after the pregnancy test]: Why did I get drunk? I do stupid things when I’m drunk… like sleep with my husband!
That ever happen to you?
Jenna: I’m thinking I want to borrow some money from you.
Earl: And my answer to that, of course, is no.
Jenna: There’s a big pie Bake-Off in Jonesville in a couple months. And I’d like to go.
Earl: And my answer to that, of course, is no.
Jenna: Prize money is pretty good.
Earl: Why do you need money? I give you everything you need, don’t I?
Jenna: Absolutely.
Earl: You want for nothing, don’t you?
Jenna: Yes, Earl, I want for nothing.
Earl: I mean, your pies ain’t bad. But what’s so important about that when you got me to take care of?
Jenna: That’s a good point, Earl.
Get the picture?
Becky [to Dawn]: You have fun on your five-minute date, Hon. And use a five-minute condom.
You tell me.
No, not really.
Dawn: It was the worst five minutes in my life. I made the mistake of telling him I work here. How could a five-minute date be that bad? He took me through the entire medical and psychiatric history of his family. And he told me he wants to marry me. Marry me! And he’s not giving up, not ever giving up, that’s what he said. First guy that pays any attention to me in years, and he turns out to be the mad stalking elf. What am I supposed to do?
Jenna: You go over there and you tell him you’re not interested.
Dawn: I told him that last night.
Jenna: Tell him better.
Dawn: Come with me.
Jenna: I can’t. I’ve got to go throw up.
For some, it's always never nothing.
Old Joe [after reading an advice column about a woman contemplating suicide]: Oh how I love living vicariously through the pain and suffering of others.
There's a word for that. German as I recall.
Jenna: It seems I’m almost five months pregnant.
Cal: Yeah, so?
Jenna: So I just thought I should tell you.
Cal: I already knew.
Jenna: You did?
Cal: Yeah, I thought everybody knew.
Jenna: Oh, who told you?
Cal: Nobody told me. Nobody needed to tell me. I mean, look at you! Truth be told, as long as you can carry a tray and fill a pie tin I don’t care if you give birth while doing it.
A wage slave to boot.
Becky [after Jenna catches her with Cal]: I didn’t plan it, Jenna. It just happened.
Jenna: Your poor husband.
Becky: My poor husband wears a diaper, curses constantly and sleeps in a separate room.
Jenna: So why don’t you just divorce him then?
Becky: I can’t just leave a sick, crazy, old man. What kind of person would do that?
Jenna: I don’t know. What kind of person has an affair with Cal, who’s married to Ethel, who we see all the time?
Becky: He says she’s awful. Maybe anyone you stay married to for 15 years starts to seem awful.
Jenna: But we know Ethel. She’s not awful. She tells Cal not to yell at us.
Becky: Hey, you’re supposed to be my friend, not Ethel’s.
Jenna: Having an affair is a terrible thing to do. It destroys people’s lives, and I don’t want you messed up with all that.
That’s when the married man she is having an affair comes into the diner.
Jenna: Cal, are you happy? I mean, when you call yourself a happy man, do you really mean it?
Cal: You ask a serious question, I’ll give you a serious answer: Happy enough. I don’t expect much. I don’t get much, I don’t give much. I generally enjoy whatever comes along. That’s my true answer, summed up for your feminine judgment. I’m happy enough.
I actually came close to that myself once.
Jenna [voiceover]: Dear baby. Somewhere in the space between the pie baking and Earl eating it later that night, began the most intimate conversation of my life. About my mama, about how much she loved me, how sad she’d be to see my life turned out like this. About Earl and how he changed after we married, became someone I feared. About how lonely it is to be a woman so poor and so afraid.
Sound familiar? Well, it should.
Jenna [voiceover]: Dear damn baby, If you ever want to know the story of how we bought your damn crib, I will tell you. Your crib was bought with the money that was supposed to buy me a new life. Every time I lay you down in that damn crib, I’m going to think, “Damn baby, damn crib. Me stuck like a pin in this damn life.”
Stuck. If [this time] only scripted.
Jenna [just before giving birth]: Dr. Pomatter?
Jim: Yes, Jenna?
Jenna: I just want to make sure we’re clear about one thing.
Jim: What’s that, Jenna?
Jenna: I want drugs. I want massive amounts of drugs. I want the maximum legal limit of drugs.
Jim: Noted and understood.
I could use a massive amount of drugs myself. Though not necessarily legal.
For some folks, being a waitress is living a life that is fucked up enough. But when you are a waitress weighted down with all manner of sad disappointments and problems, well, that is practically unthinkable.
On the other hand, if you are waitress that is still reasonably young and beatiful there may still be, say, options? Or more options than if you are not.
Marriages seem to fall apart either because lots of things change or nothing at all does. This one is more latter. Made all the more unstable though when it becomes the former. In other words, both.
And Earl. He’s an asshole. But the worst kind. The kind that doesn’t even know know he is one. And even were he able to admit that sometimes he is an asshole it would only be because Jenna makes him that way.
How the hell do marriages like this ever even get started?! And then I remember my own.
Also, Earl is not very keen on irony. Jenna can tell him almost anything [and in any tone of voice] and he basically takes it literally.
Look for the role that money plays in the lives of those who barely scrape by. And how through the magic of scripting that can all be made to just go away.
Waitress
Jenna [after the pregnancy test]: Why did I get drunk? I do stupid things when I’m drunk… like sleep with my husband!
That ever happen to you?
Jenna: I’m thinking I want to borrow some money from you.
Earl: And my answer to that, of course, is no.
Jenna: There’s a big pie Bake-Off in Jonesville in a couple months. And I’d like to go.
Earl: And my answer to that, of course, is no.
Jenna: Prize money is pretty good.
Earl: Why do you need money? I give you everything you need, don’t I?
Jenna: Absolutely.
Earl: You want for nothing, don’t you?
Jenna: Yes, Earl, I want for nothing.
Earl: I mean, your pies ain’t bad. But what’s so important about that when you got me to take care of?
Jenna: That’s a good point, Earl.
Get the picture?
Becky [to Dawn]: You have fun on your five-minute date, Hon. And use a five-minute condom.
You tell me.
No, not really.
Dawn: It was the worst five minutes in my life. I made the mistake of telling him I work here. How could a five-minute date be that bad? He took me through the entire medical and psychiatric history of his family. And he told me he wants to marry me. Marry me! And he’s not giving up, not ever giving up, that’s what he said. First guy that pays any attention to me in years, and he turns out to be the mad stalking elf. What am I supposed to do?
Jenna: You go over there and you tell him you’re not interested.
Dawn: I told him that last night.
Jenna: Tell him better.
Dawn: Come with me.
Jenna: I can’t. I’ve got to go throw up.
For some, it's always never nothing.
Old Joe [after reading an advice column about a woman contemplating suicide]: Oh how I love living vicariously through the pain and suffering of others.
There's a word for that. German as I recall.
Jenna: It seems I’m almost five months pregnant.
Cal: Yeah, so?
Jenna: So I just thought I should tell you.
Cal: I already knew.
Jenna: You did?
Cal: Yeah, I thought everybody knew.
Jenna: Oh, who told you?
Cal: Nobody told me. Nobody needed to tell me. I mean, look at you! Truth be told, as long as you can carry a tray and fill a pie tin I don’t care if you give birth while doing it.
A wage slave to boot.
Becky [after Jenna catches her with Cal]: I didn’t plan it, Jenna. It just happened.
Jenna: Your poor husband.
Becky: My poor husband wears a diaper, curses constantly and sleeps in a separate room.
Jenna: So why don’t you just divorce him then?
Becky: I can’t just leave a sick, crazy, old man. What kind of person would do that?
Jenna: I don’t know. What kind of person has an affair with Cal, who’s married to Ethel, who we see all the time?
Becky: He says she’s awful. Maybe anyone you stay married to for 15 years starts to seem awful.
Jenna: But we know Ethel. She’s not awful. She tells Cal not to yell at us.
Becky: Hey, you’re supposed to be my friend, not Ethel’s.
Jenna: Having an affair is a terrible thing to do. It destroys people’s lives, and I don’t want you messed up with all that.
That’s when the married man she is having an affair comes into the diner.
Jenna: Cal, are you happy? I mean, when you call yourself a happy man, do you really mean it?
Cal: You ask a serious question, I’ll give you a serious answer: Happy enough. I don’t expect much. I don’t get much, I don’t give much. I generally enjoy whatever comes along. That’s my true answer, summed up for your feminine judgment. I’m happy enough.
I actually came close to that myself once.
Jenna [voiceover]: Dear baby. Somewhere in the space between the pie baking and Earl eating it later that night, began the most intimate conversation of my life. About my mama, about how much she loved me, how sad she’d be to see my life turned out like this. About Earl and how he changed after we married, became someone I feared. About how lonely it is to be a woman so poor and so afraid.
Sound familiar? Well, it should.
Jenna [voiceover]: Dear damn baby, If you ever want to know the story of how we bought your damn crib, I will tell you. Your crib was bought with the money that was supposed to buy me a new life. Every time I lay you down in that damn crib, I’m going to think, “Damn baby, damn crib. Me stuck like a pin in this damn life.”
Stuck. If [this time] only scripted.
Jenna [just before giving birth]: Dr. Pomatter?
Jim: Yes, Jenna?
Jenna: I just want to make sure we’re clear about one thing.
Jim: What’s that, Jenna?
Jenna: I want drugs. I want massive amounts of drugs. I want the maximum legal limit of drugs.
Jim: Noted and understood.
I could use a massive amount of drugs myself. Though not necessarily legal.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Now that cable television channels like Discovery, Nat Geo, The History channel etc. have joined the vast wasteland that is “reality programming”, it was inevitable that some of the programs would get around to the making of moonshine. I haven’t watched any of them myself but from what I have read, what goes on up in the mountains today reflects much the way thing that has always been done.
Well, sort of. Just as, sort of, this film is based on a true story.
But one thing was clearly different. Back in the days of Lawless there was this thing called Prohibition. And once you make something that millions of folks want illegal, there is a much bigger incentive for folks to go outside the law to fill that demand. And that means there are millions to be made. And that means organized crime. And that means lots and lots of violence.
This is yet another tale of how the “amateurs” who resort to crime [many just to keep their families afloat…at least at first] come to bump into the “professionals”. And how they either do or do not come to an…accommodation. And of course how the corrupt cops and politicians come to accommodate themselves too.
It’s a man’s world. Testosterone reigns supreme.
Actor Shia LaBeouf drank moonshine in order to gain as authentic an appearance as possible. By his own admission his drinking and over-aggressive attitude caused co-star Mia Wasikowska to try and leave the film.
The movie is based on actual events, as explained in the 2008 book “The Wettest County in the World” written by Matt Bondurant, grandson of Jack Bondurant (Shia LaBeouf’s character in the film). IMDb
Lawless
Jack [voiceover]: My brother Forrest once said, nothing can kill us. We can’t never die. The reason being that in the Great War, my eldest brother, Howard, saw his entire battalion drown in the sea, every last one of them. He was the only survivor. And Forrest, well, that same year, Spanish Lady Flu damn near wiped out the entire state. Got Ma and Pa and Forrest, but against all the odds he somehow managed to fight it off. So you could see why Forrest felt that way. Me and my brothers are moonshiners, bootleggers. In 1920 they paid us the Prohibition Act, making sale of alcohol illegal. Well, at least it was supposed to be.
Of course: God works in mysterious ways.
Jack [voiceover]: They call Franklin the Wettest County in the world on account of almost everybody makin’ the stuff. Now you can make moonshine whiskey from just about anything. Turnips, pumpkins, blackberries, cornmeal, tree bark. Anything. But at night, in them hills, you can see them fires from the stills burnin’ like lights on a damn Christmas tree. And over them mountains, in the cities, there was the biggest crime wave this country had ever seen.
Let's connect the dots here. You know, existentially.
Jack [voiceover]: And all the illegal liquor was flowin’ down from the hills to the cities by the truck, and gangsters were just scoopin’ money off the streets, like candy. Good men like Al Capone, Tommy Maloy, that mad dog Floyd Banner, they just moved in and took over. Meanwhile we were haulin’ the stuff around in our old beat-up truck.
Just out of curiosity, what's illegal here?
Forrest [to a guy trying to rob them]: Now listen here mister. We got no way of understanding this world. We got about as much sense of it as a bird flyin in the sky. Now there's a whole lot that bird don’t know, but the world is happenin around him just the same. What I’m tryin to say is, the course of your life is changing right in fron of you, and you don’t even see it…
The Benjamin Button Syndrome!
Wardell: Can I help you, son?
Forrest: Yeah. You send your clown with the bow tie around here again, and I guarantee you’ll personally pull a cleaver out of his fucking skull. You understand me?
Wardell: You’re gonna regret this, Forrest.
Rakes: He’s already regretting it, he’s just too ignorant to know it yet.
Yeah, well, we'll see how that turns out.
Sheriff: I don’t rightly understand what you mean, but there’s a feelin’ around these parts that Forrest Bondurant is different than other folks.
Rakes: Different?
Sheriff: indestructible.
Rakes: Do you mean, immortal?
[Rakes laughs]
Rakes: You…you fucking hicks are sideshows onto yourselves.
[he continues to laugh]
Rakes: Sheriff, do you have any idea what a Thompson submachine gun does to an “immortal”?
Yeah, well, we'll see how that turns out.
Forrest [after Rakes beats the shit out of Jack]: So you wanna get into this racket, but I see you sittin there lookin like somebody’s punchin bag. So I ask you, what do you intend to do now?
Jack: What do I intend to do?
Forrest: Yeah. What did you think someone else was gonna handle this for you? Howard maybe?
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, Jack.
Forrest: Jack, it is not the violence that sets men apart, alright, it is the distance that they are prepared to go.
Pick two:
1] moral nihilists
2] moral objectivists
Banner [to Jack]: I respect you Bondurants standing up to that Commonwealth’s District Attorney. He’s got everybody in his pocket. He takes a shit and half of Virginia falls out his ass.
Only half?
Jack [voiceover]: I kept hearing the country was in a real bad way. Folks outta work, people dusted out, losing their homes and their farms and all. But from my perspective, the situation was something different entirely. Once we started shifting that liquor across the county line, that money just started pouring in.
So, when does the money start pouring in here?
Rakes: That friend of yours, he called me a nance. Why would he say that?
Cricket: I don’t know, sir. Maybe 'cause you smell funny.
Nope: "an effeminate male. · Extremely Disparaging and Offensive. a contemptuous term used to refer to a gay man."
Maggie: I gotta watch you die all over again.
Forrest: What you talkin’ about?
Maggie: I gotta find you lying in a pool of your own blood? Drag your damn body into my car. Drive you down to the hospital, your throat cut from ear to ear?
Forrest: You did that? That was you? I thought I walked.
Maggie: Isn’t that just like you to believe your own damn legend?
II almost believed it myself.
Jack [voiceover]: In December 1933, Prohibition finished. So ended the great Franklin County Moonshine Conspiracy, as it became known.
Next: Methamphetamine?
Jack [voiceover]: Forrest once said nothing could kill us, that we could never die. And back then I think I actually believed it. Hell, I know Forrest did. 'Cause no matter what this world flung at him he seemed to be able to just stand up and keep on going. Getting a little more bent, a little more twisted each time. But nobody leaves this world alive. Not even Forrest. And in the end, it was dumb luck and pneumonia that got him. It was as simple and indifferent as that.
Amen?
Well, sort of. Just as, sort of, this film is based on a true story.
But one thing was clearly different. Back in the days of Lawless there was this thing called Prohibition. And once you make something that millions of folks want illegal, there is a much bigger incentive for folks to go outside the law to fill that demand. And that means there are millions to be made. And that means organized crime. And that means lots and lots of violence.
This is yet another tale of how the “amateurs” who resort to crime [many just to keep their families afloat…at least at first] come to bump into the “professionals”. And how they either do or do not come to an…accommodation. And of course how the corrupt cops and politicians come to accommodate themselves too.
It’s a man’s world. Testosterone reigns supreme.
Actor Shia LaBeouf drank moonshine in order to gain as authentic an appearance as possible. By his own admission his drinking and over-aggressive attitude caused co-star Mia Wasikowska to try and leave the film.
The movie is based on actual events, as explained in the 2008 book “The Wettest County in the World” written by Matt Bondurant, grandson of Jack Bondurant (Shia LaBeouf’s character in the film). IMDb
Lawless
Jack [voiceover]: My brother Forrest once said, nothing can kill us. We can’t never die. The reason being that in the Great War, my eldest brother, Howard, saw his entire battalion drown in the sea, every last one of them. He was the only survivor. And Forrest, well, that same year, Spanish Lady Flu damn near wiped out the entire state. Got Ma and Pa and Forrest, but against all the odds he somehow managed to fight it off. So you could see why Forrest felt that way. Me and my brothers are moonshiners, bootleggers. In 1920 they paid us the Prohibition Act, making sale of alcohol illegal. Well, at least it was supposed to be.
Of course: God works in mysterious ways.
Jack [voiceover]: They call Franklin the Wettest County in the world on account of almost everybody makin’ the stuff. Now you can make moonshine whiskey from just about anything. Turnips, pumpkins, blackberries, cornmeal, tree bark. Anything. But at night, in them hills, you can see them fires from the stills burnin’ like lights on a damn Christmas tree. And over them mountains, in the cities, there was the biggest crime wave this country had ever seen.
Let's connect the dots here. You know, existentially.
Jack [voiceover]: And all the illegal liquor was flowin’ down from the hills to the cities by the truck, and gangsters were just scoopin’ money off the streets, like candy. Good men like Al Capone, Tommy Maloy, that mad dog Floyd Banner, they just moved in and took over. Meanwhile we were haulin’ the stuff around in our old beat-up truck.
Just out of curiosity, what's illegal here?
Forrest [to a guy trying to rob them]: Now listen here mister. We got no way of understanding this world. We got about as much sense of it as a bird flyin in the sky. Now there's a whole lot that bird don’t know, but the world is happenin around him just the same. What I’m tryin to say is, the course of your life is changing right in fron of you, and you don’t even see it…
The Benjamin Button Syndrome!
Wardell: Can I help you, son?
Forrest: Yeah. You send your clown with the bow tie around here again, and I guarantee you’ll personally pull a cleaver out of his fucking skull. You understand me?
Wardell: You’re gonna regret this, Forrest.
Rakes: He’s already regretting it, he’s just too ignorant to know it yet.
Yeah, well, we'll see how that turns out.
Sheriff: I don’t rightly understand what you mean, but there’s a feelin’ around these parts that Forrest Bondurant is different than other folks.
Rakes: Different?
Sheriff: indestructible.
Rakes: Do you mean, immortal?
[Rakes laughs]
Rakes: You…you fucking hicks are sideshows onto yourselves.
[he continues to laugh]
Rakes: Sheriff, do you have any idea what a Thompson submachine gun does to an “immortal”?
Yeah, well, we'll see how that turns out.
Forrest [after Rakes beats the shit out of Jack]: So you wanna get into this racket, but I see you sittin there lookin like somebody’s punchin bag. So I ask you, what do you intend to do now?
Jack: What do I intend to do?
Forrest: Yeah. What did you think someone else was gonna handle this for you? Howard maybe?
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, Jack.
Forrest: Jack, it is not the violence that sets men apart, alright, it is the distance that they are prepared to go.
Pick two:
1] moral nihilists
2] moral objectivists
Banner [to Jack]: I respect you Bondurants standing up to that Commonwealth’s District Attorney. He’s got everybody in his pocket. He takes a shit and half of Virginia falls out his ass.
Only half?
Jack [voiceover]: I kept hearing the country was in a real bad way. Folks outta work, people dusted out, losing their homes and their farms and all. But from my perspective, the situation was something different entirely. Once we started shifting that liquor across the county line, that money just started pouring in.
So, when does the money start pouring in here?
Rakes: That friend of yours, he called me a nance. Why would he say that?
Cricket: I don’t know, sir. Maybe 'cause you smell funny.
Nope: "an effeminate male. · Extremely Disparaging and Offensive. a contemptuous term used to refer to a gay man."
Maggie: I gotta watch you die all over again.
Forrest: What you talkin’ about?
Maggie: I gotta find you lying in a pool of your own blood? Drag your damn body into my car. Drive you down to the hospital, your throat cut from ear to ear?
Forrest: You did that? That was you? I thought I walked.
Maggie: Isn’t that just like you to believe your own damn legend?
II almost believed it myself.
Jack [voiceover]: In December 1933, Prohibition finished. So ended the great Franklin County Moonshine Conspiracy, as it became known.
Next: Methamphetamine?
Jack [voiceover]: Forrest once said nothing could kill us, that we could never die. And back then I think I actually believed it. Hell, I know Forrest did. 'Cause no matter what this world flung at him he seemed to be able to just stand up and keep on going. Getting a little more bent, a little more twisted each time. But nobody leaves this world alive. Not even Forrest. And in the end, it was dumb luck and pneumonia that got him. It was as simple and indifferent as that.
Amen?
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Absurdity
“Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.” Albert Camus
If, like me, you get his drift.
“In Britain, a cup of tea is the answer to every problem.
Fallen off your bicycle? Nice cup of tea.
Your house has been destroyed by a meteorite? Nice cup of tea and a biscuit.
Your entire family has been eaten by a Tyrannosaurus Rex that has travelled through a space/time portal? Nice cup of tea and a piece of cake. Possibly a savoury option would be welcome here too, for example a Scotch egg or a sausage roll.”
David Walliams
Someone run this by Maia.
“Absurdity is the ecstasy of intellectualism.” Criss Jami
If only up in the clouds.
“He almost danced to the fridge, found the three least hairy things in it, put them on a plate and watched them intently for two minutes. Since they made no attempt to move within that time he called them breakfast and ate them.” Douglas Adams
Next up: lunch and dinner.
“The mind, placed before any kind of difficulty, can find an ideal outlet in the absurd. Accommodation to the absurd readmits adults to the mysterious realm inhabited by children.” Andre Breton
New thread?
We no longer believe because it is absurd: it is absurd because we must believe.” Julio Cortázar
You tell me.
“Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.” Albert Camus
If, like me, you get his drift.
“In Britain, a cup of tea is the answer to every problem.
Fallen off your bicycle? Nice cup of tea.
Your house has been destroyed by a meteorite? Nice cup of tea and a biscuit.
Your entire family has been eaten by a Tyrannosaurus Rex that has travelled through a space/time portal? Nice cup of tea and a piece of cake. Possibly a savoury option would be welcome here too, for example a Scotch egg or a sausage roll.”
David Walliams
Someone run this by Maia.
“Absurdity is the ecstasy of intellectualism.” Criss Jami
If only up in the clouds.
“He almost danced to the fridge, found the three least hairy things in it, put them on a plate and watched them intently for two minutes. Since they made no attempt to move within that time he called them breakfast and ate them.” Douglas Adams
Next up: lunch and dinner.
“The mind, placed before any kind of difficulty, can find an ideal outlet in the absurd. Accommodation to the absurd readmits adults to the mysterious realm inhabited by children.” Andre Breton
New thread?
We no longer believe because it is absurd: it is absurd because we must believe.” Julio Cortázar
You tell me.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Here is another film based on a novel from Stephen King. But it is one of the few [as with Misery above] that do not play host to a supernatural element as the main protagonist. Instead it prefers to delve more into the mysteries of human consciousness itself. All of the ways in which ordinary men and women go about making the choices they do. And how estranged others can become when it is time to understand them. Even [in this case] when they are mother and daughter.
Naturally, for lives to come to this, there must be secrets buried in the past. Small towns. Small secrets. Or maybe instead it’s two murders and two mysteries. Only they loom all the larger for the folks born and raised in small towns. Still, big or small, only when we have a much better understanding of the relationship between now and then can we even begin to grapple with an understanding of why one set of behaviors was chosen and not another.
Of course one of those secrets isn’t all that hard to guess.
But just think of all the lives that we pass judgment on in which we do not really have a clue as to how the past and the present are connected. Instead, we often base our judgments on how we connect our own past to the present.
But there’s a catch here: So much depends on how accurate our recollections of the relationship is. Sometimes we end up taking the word of someone who, though honest in their intentions, have both the pieces and the puzzle itself completely out of whack.
And then there’s the rich bitch, Vera. Proud to be one too. Insufferable? Only because she can afford to be. But even rich bitches get old. Even rich bitches start to fall apart at the seams. Money just makes it all a little more bearable. Or a whole lot more unbearable.
Even Stephen King and his hundreds of millions can’t stave that part off much longer.
Dolores Claiborne
Selena [to Peter]: Right. So not only are you not fucking me now, you’re fucking me too.
That can't be good.
Kid on street: Look!
Kid on street: Hey Miss Claiborne! kill anyone else today?
Dolores: Not just yet, but when I change my mind I’ll know exactly where to start.
Good for her!
Det. Mackey: I’m sorry, but I think it’s for the best if you got yourself some legal representation.
Dolores: You’re sorry, are you? Bet the last time you were sorry was when you needed to use the pay toilet and the string on your pet dime broke.
She is...provocative?
Dolores [to Joe after tossing the hatchet in his lap]: Go on. All I ask is that you do it quick. And don’t let Selena see the mess once it’s over. You want to run me down? You go right ahead. You can be as mean and hurtful as you want. But this is the last time you will ever hit me! You do it again and one of us is going to the bone yard.
Or goes up in smoke.
Vera [to Dolores, who is hanging her sheets to dry]: Six pins, Dolores! You know that’s the way I like it, six pins, not five!
Let's just say their relationship gets increasingly...private?
Selena [of Det. Mackey]: That is the last guy in the world you want make an enemy out of.
Dolores: I ain’t making one, I’m keeping one.
Selana: What the hell is that supposed to mean?
Dolores: You gonna tell me you don’t remember him?
The past in other words. But only as it is remembered, of course.
Dolores [to Selena, who is frantically taking pills]: How is that going to help?
Selena: Because in ten minutes, I’m gonna be fine.
Dolores: Selena…
Selena: JUST GIVE ME TEN MINUTES!
I hear that!
Dolores [sobbing]: Why? Why’d you do this, Vera?
Vera: Because I hate the smell of being old.
I hear that!
Dolores [to Det. Mackey]: Now, you listen to me, Mr. Grand High Poobah of Up yer Buttcrack, I’m just about half-past giving a shit with your fun and games.
Next up: half-past giving a shit here.
Selena [to Dolores]: What happened in that house?
Indeed, everything revolves around getting that part right.
Selena [leaving her mother]: I’m sorry, Mother. Sometimes being a bitch is the only thing a woman has to hang on to.
Let's run this by, well, you know.
Vera: It’s a depressingly masculine world we live in, Dolores.
Let's run this by, well, you know.
Dolores: What if I’m wrong?
Vera: What if you’re right? Husbands die every day, Dolores. Why… one is probably dying right now while you’re sitting here weeping. They die…and leave their wives their money. I should know, shouldn’t I? Sometimes they’re driving home from their mistress’s apartment and their brakes suddenly fail. An accident, Dolores, can be an unhappy woman’s best friend.
You know, being philosophical.
Dolores: I got another surprise for you, Joe.
Joe: What, did someone invent a pill to cure ugly?
That wasn't the surprise.
Selena: Eighteen years ago, my father drank a bottle of scotch and fell down a well. Detective Mackey didn’t think it was an accident, which is… why we’re here today.
Det. Mackey: And what do you think, Selena?
Selena: I think I owe you an apology. I called you a son of a bitch. You said you thought we were a lot alike, and you were right. We both spent the past 18 years prosecuting this woman. We came out here – I know I did – believing she was guilty. We forgot this case is about Vera Donovan. Not my father.
Det. Mackey: And what if it wasn’t an accident?
Selena: Look. It’s been 18 years. I don’t know what this has done to you, but let me tell you, it’s consumed me. I have lived with this every day of my life. Every day. I was wrong and I won’t do it anymore. And if I can say that, my God, can’t you?
The irony being it wasn’t really an accident at all. But it certainly wasn’t a cold blooded murder either.
Naturally, for lives to come to this, there must be secrets buried in the past. Small towns. Small secrets. Or maybe instead it’s two murders and two mysteries. Only they loom all the larger for the folks born and raised in small towns. Still, big or small, only when we have a much better understanding of the relationship between now and then can we even begin to grapple with an understanding of why one set of behaviors was chosen and not another.
Of course one of those secrets isn’t all that hard to guess.
But just think of all the lives that we pass judgment on in which we do not really have a clue as to how the past and the present are connected. Instead, we often base our judgments on how we connect our own past to the present.
But there’s a catch here: So much depends on how accurate our recollections of the relationship is. Sometimes we end up taking the word of someone who, though honest in their intentions, have both the pieces and the puzzle itself completely out of whack.
And then there’s the rich bitch, Vera. Proud to be one too. Insufferable? Only because she can afford to be. But even rich bitches get old. Even rich bitches start to fall apart at the seams. Money just makes it all a little more bearable. Or a whole lot more unbearable.
Even Stephen King and his hundreds of millions can’t stave that part off much longer.
Dolores Claiborne
Selena [to Peter]: Right. So not only are you not fucking me now, you’re fucking me too.
That can't be good.
Kid on street: Look!
Kid on street: Hey Miss Claiborne! kill anyone else today?
Dolores: Not just yet, but when I change my mind I’ll know exactly where to start.
Good for her!
Det. Mackey: I’m sorry, but I think it’s for the best if you got yourself some legal representation.
Dolores: You’re sorry, are you? Bet the last time you were sorry was when you needed to use the pay toilet and the string on your pet dime broke.
She is...provocative?
Dolores [to Joe after tossing the hatchet in his lap]: Go on. All I ask is that you do it quick. And don’t let Selena see the mess once it’s over. You want to run me down? You go right ahead. You can be as mean and hurtful as you want. But this is the last time you will ever hit me! You do it again and one of us is going to the bone yard.
Or goes up in smoke.
Vera [to Dolores, who is hanging her sheets to dry]: Six pins, Dolores! You know that’s the way I like it, six pins, not five!
Let's just say their relationship gets increasingly...private?
Selena [of Det. Mackey]: That is the last guy in the world you want make an enemy out of.
Dolores: I ain’t making one, I’m keeping one.
Selana: What the hell is that supposed to mean?
Dolores: You gonna tell me you don’t remember him?
The past in other words. But only as it is remembered, of course.
Dolores [to Selena, who is frantically taking pills]: How is that going to help?
Selena: Because in ten minutes, I’m gonna be fine.
Dolores: Selena…
Selena: JUST GIVE ME TEN MINUTES!
I hear that!
Dolores [sobbing]: Why? Why’d you do this, Vera?
Vera: Because I hate the smell of being old.
I hear that!
Dolores [to Det. Mackey]: Now, you listen to me, Mr. Grand High Poobah of Up yer Buttcrack, I’m just about half-past giving a shit with your fun and games.
Next up: half-past giving a shit here.
Selena [to Dolores]: What happened in that house?
Indeed, everything revolves around getting that part right.
Selena [leaving her mother]: I’m sorry, Mother. Sometimes being a bitch is the only thing a woman has to hang on to.
Let's run this by, well, you know.
Vera: It’s a depressingly masculine world we live in, Dolores.
Let's run this by, well, you know.
Dolores: What if I’m wrong?
Vera: What if you’re right? Husbands die every day, Dolores. Why… one is probably dying right now while you’re sitting here weeping. They die…and leave their wives their money. I should know, shouldn’t I? Sometimes they’re driving home from their mistress’s apartment and their brakes suddenly fail. An accident, Dolores, can be an unhappy woman’s best friend.
You know, being philosophical.
Dolores: I got another surprise for you, Joe.
Joe: What, did someone invent a pill to cure ugly?
That wasn't the surprise.
Selena: Eighteen years ago, my father drank a bottle of scotch and fell down a well. Detective Mackey didn’t think it was an accident, which is… why we’re here today.
Det. Mackey: And what do you think, Selena?
Selena: I think I owe you an apology. I called you a son of a bitch. You said you thought we were a lot alike, and you were right. We both spent the past 18 years prosecuting this woman. We came out here – I know I did – believing she was guilty. We forgot this case is about Vera Donovan. Not my father.
Det. Mackey: And what if it wasn’t an accident?
Selena: Look. It’s been 18 years. I don’t know what this has done to you, but let me tell you, it’s consumed me. I have lived with this every day of my life. Every day. I was wrong and I won’t do it anymore. And if I can say that, my God, can’t you?
The irony being it wasn’t really an accident at all. But it certainly wasn’t a cold blooded murder either.
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
The best of intentions. We are rooting for her. But then it all turns to shit. The drug dealing bastard she aimed to kill [the man she accuses of causing the death of her husband and of poisoning the children she teaches] is still around. But four innocent people are now dead as a door nail. Including two small children. She sets out to rid the world of evil and evil is what ensues instead.
How do you respond to that? Is she scum? Should she not have anticipated the possibility of a cleaning crew when she put the bomb in a wastebasket? And why plant it in a crowded office building at all? Not only that but she was in the process of divorcing her husband. And it was the man who she holds responsible for his death who was the intended target of the bomb.
So, we have to get around [eventually] to what might constitute justice here. But first there is all that corruption to scale. And in modern day Italy don’t even get them started.
And more dope. Around the world [the modern industrial world] it seems the most conservative nations are always hellbent on keeping drugs illegal. And their capitalist infrastructures create the conditions of alienation, of estrangement, of day to day drudgery that drive folks to drugs in the first place. But then they pass laws to make them verboten. Though [of course] not alcohol or cigarettes. And when millions want access to the sort of escape these drugs provide there are billions of dollars to be made in manufacturing and selling them. So much money in fact that political and police corruption becomes part and parcel to the whole systemic cesspool.
The ending here is nothing short of surreal. You can only make of it what you will.
Heaven
Helicopter Pilot [in simulation]: Follow the terrain. Good. Keep it perpendicular to the ridge. That’s it. Under real conditions you might have to compensate for the wind here. Now, maintain you height. Watch your height, careful.
[climbing higher simulator switches off]
Helicopter Pilot: In a real helicopter you can’t just keep flying higher.
Filippo: How high can I fly?
The prologue as it were.
Philippa [on phone with the police]: I’ve called you so many times, but you didn’t do anything. Now I’m doing it myself. In his office is a bomb. It will explode in … fifty seconds.
Policeman: Who is this?
Philippa. Philippa Paccard.
Capitalism and corruption in our postmodern world...
Inspector: Place of birth?
Philippa: Bristol.
Inspector: Profession?
Philippa: Teach. I’m a teacher.
Inspector: Marital status?
Philippa: Um, I don’t know.
Inspector: You don’t know whether you’re married or not?
Philippa: I was in the process… I was getting divorced, but my husband died during proceedings.
Then she finds out just how terribly wrong it all went:
Inspector: You are being accused, of the explosion in an office building, where four people died.
Philippa [not understanding]: Four?
Inspector: Yes, four. Because of the explosion an elevator fell down. There were four people inside. A father with his two daughters and a cleaning lady. Three of them were immediately dead. The youngest girl died last night in the hospital.
[the look on her face – she is numb from shock – then she bursts into anguished tears – then she faints and falls to the floor]
Let's go back to her intentions?
Inspector: So, what you’re trying to say is that this Mr. Vendice, the chairman of Ulcom Electronics is selling drugs from his office? Why should we believe this?
Philippa: He would give my husband who was a friend from school a discount. He even gives the kids in my school a discount. He even gives the Carabineri [the police] a discount. Thirteen year old children who have already been in rehab. This is what I have been writing and writing and writing and writing to you about.
Inspector: There is no recored of any letters. No record of any calls. Nothing.
Philippa: I have copies of those letters in my apartment. I have receipts that have been stamped by the Carabineri…
Inspector: We’ll check…
And there it is – the plot – in a nutshell. It is then only a matter of discovering who is or is not corrupt. And what Fillipo’s role is in all this.
Philippa: Why did you change the plan?
Filippo: My father always said, at the right moment, you have to do what nobody expects.
And who was expecting what he did?
Philippa: Do you know why I agreed to this? Do you know why I agreed to escape?
[Filippo shakes his head]
Philippa: I don’t want to escape punishment. I’ve killed four innocent people and I want to answer for that, but before I do, I want to kill him. That is the only reason I agreed to escape.
I certainly believed her.
Philippa: Do you remember me?
Vendice: Yes.
[Philippa shoots him dead]
Tell that to the four who died in the elevator.
Philippa: Four innocent people died because of me. I can’t live with that. I’ll never be able to. I shot a defenseless man…which you know. But then what you don’t know is…I’ve ceased to believe.
Filippo [after a long pause]: Ceased to believe in what?
Philippa: In innocence. In justice. In life.
But then the ending…
What is going on here? As Roger Ebert intimated:
"We require theology to get to the bottom of the story: It is wrong to commit an immoral act in order to bring about a good outcome. No matter how beneficial the result, it is still a sin. This is a good movie that could have been great if it had ended in a form of penance."
Is this true though? In a world sans God? But how does this end when the dots are connected between those four dead innocent human beings and that helicopter disappearing from view?
How do you respond to that? Is she scum? Should she not have anticipated the possibility of a cleaning crew when she put the bomb in a wastebasket? And why plant it in a crowded office building at all? Not only that but she was in the process of divorcing her husband. And it was the man who she holds responsible for his death who was the intended target of the bomb.
So, we have to get around [eventually] to what might constitute justice here. But first there is all that corruption to scale. And in modern day Italy don’t even get them started.
And more dope. Around the world [the modern industrial world] it seems the most conservative nations are always hellbent on keeping drugs illegal. And their capitalist infrastructures create the conditions of alienation, of estrangement, of day to day drudgery that drive folks to drugs in the first place. But then they pass laws to make them verboten. Though [of course] not alcohol or cigarettes. And when millions want access to the sort of escape these drugs provide there are billions of dollars to be made in manufacturing and selling them. So much money in fact that political and police corruption becomes part and parcel to the whole systemic cesspool.
The ending here is nothing short of surreal. You can only make of it what you will.
Heaven
Helicopter Pilot [in simulation]: Follow the terrain. Good. Keep it perpendicular to the ridge. That’s it. Under real conditions you might have to compensate for the wind here. Now, maintain you height. Watch your height, careful.
[climbing higher simulator switches off]
Helicopter Pilot: In a real helicopter you can’t just keep flying higher.
Filippo: How high can I fly?
The prologue as it were.
Philippa [on phone with the police]: I’ve called you so many times, but you didn’t do anything. Now I’m doing it myself. In his office is a bomb. It will explode in … fifty seconds.
Policeman: Who is this?
Philippa. Philippa Paccard.
Capitalism and corruption in our postmodern world...
Inspector: Place of birth?
Philippa: Bristol.
Inspector: Profession?
Philippa: Teach. I’m a teacher.
Inspector: Marital status?
Philippa: Um, I don’t know.
Inspector: You don’t know whether you’re married or not?
Philippa: I was in the process… I was getting divorced, but my husband died during proceedings.
Then she finds out just how terribly wrong it all went:
Inspector: You are being accused, of the explosion in an office building, where four people died.
Philippa [not understanding]: Four?
Inspector: Yes, four. Because of the explosion an elevator fell down. There were four people inside. A father with his two daughters and a cleaning lady. Three of them were immediately dead. The youngest girl died last night in the hospital.
[the look on her face – she is numb from shock – then she bursts into anguished tears – then she faints and falls to the floor]
Let's go back to her intentions?
Inspector: So, what you’re trying to say is that this Mr. Vendice, the chairman of Ulcom Electronics is selling drugs from his office? Why should we believe this?
Philippa: He would give my husband who was a friend from school a discount. He even gives the kids in my school a discount. He even gives the Carabineri [the police] a discount. Thirteen year old children who have already been in rehab. This is what I have been writing and writing and writing and writing to you about.
Inspector: There is no recored of any letters. No record of any calls. Nothing.
Philippa: I have copies of those letters in my apartment. I have receipts that have been stamped by the Carabineri…
Inspector: We’ll check…
And there it is – the plot – in a nutshell. It is then only a matter of discovering who is or is not corrupt. And what Fillipo’s role is in all this.
Philippa: Why did you change the plan?
Filippo: My father always said, at the right moment, you have to do what nobody expects.
And who was expecting what he did?
Philippa: Do you know why I agreed to this? Do you know why I agreed to escape?
[Filippo shakes his head]
Philippa: I don’t want to escape punishment. I’ve killed four innocent people and I want to answer for that, but before I do, I want to kill him. That is the only reason I agreed to escape.
I certainly believed her.
Philippa: Do you remember me?
Vendice: Yes.
[Philippa shoots him dead]
Tell that to the four who died in the elevator.
Philippa: Four innocent people died because of me. I can’t live with that. I’ll never be able to. I shot a defenseless man…which you know. But then what you don’t know is…I’ve ceased to believe.
Filippo [after a long pause]: Ceased to believe in what?
Philippa: In innocence. In justice. In life.
But then the ending…
What is going on here? As Roger Ebert intimated:
"We require theology to get to the bottom of the story: It is wrong to commit an immoral act in order to bring about a good outcome. No matter how beneficial the result, it is still a sin. This is a good movie that could have been great if it had ended in a form of penance."
Is this true though? In a world sans God? But how does this end when the dots are connected between those four dead innocent human beings and that helicopter disappearing from view?
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Intellectuals
“The man was such an intellectual he was of almost no use.” Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
If only down out of the didactic clouds.
“Too much elite education renders a person unpractical. And tell you what? The highly educated people are further away from reality than the less educated ones. I would rather rely on the opinion of a less educated poor person who constantly deals with people, than an overly educated idiot who views this world only through an academic lens while sitting alone on his comfy couch.” Abhaidev,
Of course: Will Durant's "epistemologists".
“Intellectuals are judged not by their morals, but by the quality of their ideas, which are rarely reducible to simple verdicts of truth or falsity, if only because banalities are by definition accurate.” Perry Anderson
Enough said?
Even intellectuals should have learned by now that objective rationality is not the default position of the human mind, much less the bedrock of human affairs.” Roy Blount Jr.
The fool!
“Trotsky was so much an intellectual that in the final analysis, Marxism was not quite enough for him.” Christopher Hitchens
You know, in a No God world.
“What is an intellectual? In general, someone seriously devoted to what used to be called the “life of the mind”: thinking pursued not instrumentally, for the sake of practical goals, but simply for the sake of knowing and understanding.” Gary Gutting
What, for example?
“The man was such an intellectual he was of almost no use.” Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
If only down out of the didactic clouds.
“Too much elite education renders a person unpractical. And tell you what? The highly educated people are further away from reality than the less educated ones. I would rather rely on the opinion of a less educated poor person who constantly deals with people, than an overly educated idiot who views this world only through an academic lens while sitting alone on his comfy couch.” Abhaidev,
Of course: Will Durant's "epistemologists".
“Intellectuals are judged not by their morals, but by the quality of their ideas, which are rarely reducible to simple verdicts of truth or falsity, if only because banalities are by definition accurate.” Perry Anderson
Enough said?
Even intellectuals should have learned by now that objective rationality is not the default position of the human mind, much less the bedrock of human affairs.” Roy Blount Jr.
The fool!
“Trotsky was so much an intellectual that in the final analysis, Marxism was not quite enough for him.” Christopher Hitchens
You know, in a No God world.
“What is an intellectual? In general, someone seriously devoted to what used to be called the “life of the mind”: thinking pursued not instrumentally, for the sake of practical goals, but simply for the sake of knowing and understanding.” Gary Gutting
What, for example?
-
Impenitent
- Posts: 5775
- Joined: Wed Feb 10, 2010 2:04 pm
Re: Quote of the day
"I see," said the blind man; to which the deaf man replied, "No, you don't."
-Imp
-Imp
Re: Quote of the day
Even intellectuals should have learned by now that objective rationality is not the default position of the human mind, much less the bedrock of human affairs.” Roy Blount Jr.
Why quote wannabe intellectuals. As Plato noted, as the computer demonstrates, as your body tells you, there are only two parts of speech. Now, if we have the correlatives objective and subjective, can either of them actually form a single word without the other? So, what moron would claim that there is such a thing as two distinct types of rational behavior, each of them unable to even make a single word?
So many paste words together, without the least effort of a thought.
Why quote wannabe intellectuals. As Plato noted, as the computer demonstrates, as your body tells you, there are only two parts of speech. Now, if we have the correlatives objective and subjective, can either of them actually form a single word without the other? So, what moron would claim that there is such a thing as two distinct types of rational behavior, each of them unable to even make a single word?
So many paste words together, without the least effort of a thought.