Quote of the day

[iambiguous]

Identity

“When you meet a man who is broken, pick him up and carry him. When you meet a woman who’s broken, put her all into your arms. Cause we don’t know where we come from … we don’t know where we are. ” Laurie Anderson

Cryptic enough for you?

“I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking.” George MacDonald

Can you say that?

“I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it.” Orson Scott Card

Pick Two:
1] somatic anguish
2] mental anguish

“Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets.” Joseph Conrad

The horror! The horror!

“Through others we become ourselves.” Lev S. Vygotsky

Historically, culturally and experientially, for example.

“All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints.” David Sedaris

He means DNA, of course.

[iambiguous]

Jolting between the past and the present the whole point is in connecting the dots between them. Adam before and Adam after. And how this relationship plays itself out when he becomes newly entangled in the lives of Les and Ella. What do we really know about the folks who [fortuitously] become a part of our world? Other than in what they choose to tell us.

We roll the dice. It’s only a question of how self-conscious we allow ourselves to become of this when they get in deeper and deeper.

First up: A dead [nearly naked] body floating in the river. And Adam’s unsettling reaction to it.

Provincial lives. What else is there but to make them a bit less so. Sex has always worked here. And given this particular context was there ever any question of that? Only the consequences left to poke about.

And one of them is almost always this: what was once new, gets old. That and the [almost inevitable] pregnancy.

All the more grim when you dream of being someone you simply do not have the talent to be.But does an innocent man then have to die because of his own failings? It would seem so. And that he makes any effort at all here is surprising enough.

This was the first film which Ewan McGregor did not take his family along for the shoot. IMDb

See if you can spot the reason why.

Young Adam

Les: I think she fell in the water.
Joe: So how do you explain she was half naked?
Les: Maybe she was drunk. Maybe she wandered onto a boat or something.
Joe: Maybe she was pregnant.

An accidental murder it turns out to be.

Les: So what do you think, Joe?
Joe: I think she went to a bridge fully dressed and stood there breathing the warm night air. And she took off her jacket and folded it neatly on the ground. And then she unbuttoned her blouse and undid her brassiere and let it drop down on top of the other clothes. And she’d unbutton her skirt and let it slip down over her hips. And then she’d unroll her stockings and hold them out so that they blew in the breeze like penance before she let them float off into the night. And she’d shiver and ask herself if she really wanted to go through with this, and she’d answer that question by kicking her clothes into the river. And hurriedly now she’d take off her garter and her knickers. And there’d she be, standing in her petticoat, thinking about whatever it was that brought her to this. And then with her petticoat billowing around her she’d drop into the water like a rose, float there for a moment, and be gone.
Les: What kind of woman would do that?
Joe: Just an ordinary woman.

Of course, we know what he knows about her.

Joe [after having sex with Ella]: Are you sorry?
Ella: Fat lot of good that would do me.

Now that's a good point.

Cathie: I am pregnant. It’s yours. Two months has gone.
Joe: Two months ago you wanted me out of your life.
Cathie: I just thought you should know. You could marry me and we’ll make wonderful babies together.
Joe: Kids is not exactly us, is it?
Cathie: Why not, Joe? What are you afraid of?
Joe: There’s a kid on the barge and I spend almost every moment wanting to kick him over the side.
Cathie: You don’t have to be like that. We can work it out intelligently.
Joe: It’s not about us. It’s about what kids do to people. Cathie, I am not someone you want to marry and you know that.

He can say that again.

Joe: I’m sorry, Les. It just happened. There’s nothing personal against you.
Les: I should just kick your fucking head in.
Joe: I won’t fight you, Les. Hit me if you think it’ll make you feel better.
Les: What about my son? What do you think happens to my son when you are fucking my wife?
Joe: It wasn’t like that.
Les: Like what, Joe? Tell me what it was like.

Crude and ridiculous, I thought.

Joe [reading about Dan in the paper]: Poor bastard.
Ella: How? He killed an innocent woman.
Joe: He didn’t do it.
Ella: What makes you say that?
Joe: It was an accident.
Ella: How do you know that?
Joe: I know.

What to do?. Meanwhile Dan is found guilty and is sentenced to be hanged.

[iambiguous]

This film is based on “actual events”. But with one very, very, very big difference:

Inspired by a true story, that of Jean-Claude Romand. In reality, Romand went on to kill, on January 9, 1993, his wife, two children and both his parents.Romand at wiki:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Romand

This sort of thing pops up in the news from time to time. Someone loses his job and is simply unable to own up to it. Not to his family and friends. For example, there have been accounts of men who turned to crime [like robbing banks] while pretending to go to work from day to day. Meanwhile no one around him suspects a thing. That is until the whole contraption begins to collapse all around them.

And [eventually] they all do. And we know this. Lie upon lie upon lie upon lie. How long can it be sustained? Lies about leaving the old job. Lies about starting the new job. And then the Ponzi scheme to bilk folks out of their money. The hole getting deeper and deeper and deeper. It’s just a matter of how effectively the film maker is able to draw us into their lives. And how excruciating it becomes as the cracks keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. A lot will depend on the extent to which we hold the protagonist responsible for the hole he is in. Imagine all the folks who lost their jobs when crony capitalism nearly collapsed a few years back. They were basically just so many spokes in the wheel.

But his guy creates a whole new wheel. And the wheel only exists in his head. You see, he is counting [as they all do] on the greed of others to keep the wheel moving on down the road. The “deal” isn’t strictly legit. And it is predicated in turn on the lie that his new “job” involves working for the UN.


Time Out [L’Emploi Du Temps] 

Vincent [on one level confessing to his wife]: Things aren’t going the way I had hoped. I knew it would take time to adapt. I didn’t think it would be this hard.
Muriel: You only started a few weeks ago.
Vincent: I get along well with my colleagues. Easy to talk to. Good atmosphere. But still perverse. That makes lying easy, telling myself that everything is fine. That’s a lie. I’m afraid I’ll disappoint.
Muriel [confused]: Afraid of what?
Vincent: Afraid I’ll disappoint. Afraid I won’t make the grade.
Muriel: You’ve had worries like this before, but you always pull through.
Vincent: I can’t handle anything right now. I’m just going along. Sometimes I just don’t know what I am supposed to do. Nor what’s expected of me. So I start to panic. A simple phone call becomes overwhelming. I go from meeting to meeting. No time to sum things up or take a step back. I can’t think anymore. My mind is blank. I look around me, at the people I work with. I only see totally unknown faces. Like moments of absence…

You won't believe the lengths to which he goes to pull this off.

Jean-Michel [who is on to Vincent’s scam]: Let’s start with what is true in your story. Anything? You aren’t working in Switzerland?
Vincent: I’ve been out of work for about 3 months. My wife doesn’t know. None of my family knows.
Jean-Michel: What about the money your friends give you? You can’t really think that your story can last? One day your friends will want their money. Six months, maybe a year. What will you do then?
Vincent: I know it won’t last. I know…I’m just buying time. For now…
Jean-Michel: You’re out of your mind. Aside from the ones I’ve seen, how many have you convinced?
Vincent: It’s getting up there. I’ve been in touch with a dozen people.
Jean-Michel: All friends of yours?
Vincent: More or less.
Jean-Michel: So what to do now?

That’s when he introduces Vincent to his own [illegal] scam: smuggling goods on the black-market.

Vincent: What’s wrong?
Julien [his son]: You know what’s wrong. You bullshit us!
Vincent: What’s wrong? Just tell me. What’s different? Didn’t I take care of you all? What did you think? It’s not that easy.
[he hugs him]
Vincent: So you think I’m a bastard? But nothing changed for you. I did that so that you could live like nothing happened. I could have run off. You know that? I could have run off.

That's true.
For what it's worth?

Vincent [to his family]: I’m so tired. None of you know how tired I am.

In the end though he comes back full circle. But at least he had that option.

[iambiguous]

Abortion

“Radical Muslims fly planes into buildings. Radical Christians kill abortion doctors. Radical Atheists write books.” Hemant Mehta

Let's put them in the correct order.

“In the Netherlands now, I imagine it's legal to marry your own children. Get them pregnant, and you can abort your unborn grandbabies in a free clinic that used to be a church.” David Sedaris

Let's run that by Vincent Vega.

I am not a one-issue voter in the sense that indicates I am an ignorant fundamentalist who only cares about one thing. I believe in protecting the environment. I believe in caring for the poor, the orphan, the widow in her distress. These are some of the so-called "issues" that many of us use to justify voting for Obama. How can we possibly claim it is Christian love for the poor and helpless that motivates us to vote for such a man when he is so committed to the killing of the most helpless among us?” Joseph Bayly

Next up: all those miscarriages and still births. If you get my drift.

...life is just the misery left between abortion and euthanasia...” Sebastian Horsley

You know, being optimistic.

“The lie that abortion is murder is right-wing propaganda designed to demonize Democrats. Abortion is legal all over the world because a fetus without a cerebral cortex cannot think or feel before the 27th week. According to the CDC almost all abortions happen before the 13th week.” Oliver Markus Malloy

A rationalization some will call it.

“All you Trump fans are gonna be really pissed off when your condom breaks and your sister can't get an abortion.” Oliver Markus Malloy

You tell me.

[iambiguous]

The Wicker Man. Not to be confused with the 2006 remake with Nicolas Cage. As though anyone would or could confuse them. What’s the difference? Well, among other things, the original 1973 movie [this one] garnered a 90% favorable rating at RT [on 48 reviews]. The 2006 remake garnered a 15% favorable rating [on 105 reviews].

Strange island, strange people. Strange people, strange religion. And when a young girl is reported missing from the island a policeman is sent to investigate. One Sergeant Howie then stumbles upon a religious rendition not at all in sync with his own more traditional upbringing. Considerably more carnal for instance. What some might even call debauched. But then human sexuality has always had a rather problematic presence among the faithful.

These folks [it seems] are pagans:
Miss Rose: "Here, we do not use the word dead. We believe that when the human life is over, the soul returns to trees, to air, to fire, to water, to animals, so that Rowan Morrison has simply returned to the life forces in another form."

So the young girl is not really “missing” at all…is she? She has merely been “reincarnated” into another life form. Unless of course she is just…bait?

Could this then be about the absurdity of all religious beliefs? Hundreds of them out there…and each one convinced that only their own tall-tale reflects the one true path to salvation?

The film was inspired by an engraving called “The Wicker Image” in Britannia Antiqua Illustrata by Aylett Sammes in 1676. Some people have doubted the historical existence of the Wicker Man suggesting that it came from Roman propaganda by people such as Julius Caesar. There is, however, undeniable evidence that the Druids and the Celts practiced human sacrifice.

According to Britt Ekland, some animals may have actually perished inside the burning Wicker Man. However, according to director Robin Hardy, the animals were not inside the Wicker Man when it was set alight (this scene was faked) and great care was taken that they were not in danger of being hurt.  IMDb


The Wicker Man

Miss Rose [a teacher to a class of young girls]: Now, uh, Daisy, will you tell us what it is, please, that the maypole represents? Really, Daisy. You’ve been told often enough.
Student: Miss Rose, I know!
Miss Rose: All right, then, anybody.
Student: The phallic symbol.
Miss Rose: The phallic symbol. That is correct. It is the image of the penis, which is venerated in religions such as ours, as symbolising the generative force in nature.

Next up: penis envy?

Sergeant Howie: Miss Rose, you can be quite sure that I shall report this to the proper authorities. Everywhere I go on this island, it seems to me I find degeneracy. And there is brawling in bars, there is indecency in public places, and there is corruption of the young, and now I see it all stems from here – it stems from the filth taught here in this very schoolroom!

Next up: the filth here?

Sergeant Howie: The children never learn anything of Christianity?
Miss Rose: Only as a comparative religion. The children find it far easier to picture reincarnation than resurrection. Those rotting bodies are a great stumbling block for the childish imagination.

That and, as often as not, the adult imagination.

May Morrison: Can I do anything for you, Sergeant?
Sergeant Howie: No, I doubt it, seeing as you are all raving mad!

Of course, he's prejudiced.

[outside, several young girls are dancing naked over a fire]
Lord Summerisle: Good afternoon, Sergeant Howie. I trust the sight of the regenerative young people refreshes you.
Sergeant Howie: No sir, it does NOT refresh me.

I'm wondering if it might refresh me. On the other hand, how young?

Sergeant Howie: Your lordship seems strangely… unconcerned.
Lord Summerisle: Well I’m confident your suspicions are wrong, Sergeant. We don’t commit murder here. We’re a deeply religious people.
Sergeant Howie: Religious? With ruined churches, no ministers, no priests… and children dancing naked!
Lord Summerisle: They do love their divinity lessons.
Sergeant Howie [outraged]: But they are…are naked!
Lord Summerisle: Naturally! It’s much too dangerous to jump through the fire with your clothes on!
Sergeant Howie: What religion can they possibly be learning jumping over bonfires?
Lord Summerisle: Parthenogenesis.
Sergeant Howie: What?
Lord Summerisle: Literally, as Miss Rose would doubtless say in her assiduous way, reproduction without sexual union.
Sergeant Howie: Oh, what is all this? I mean, you’ve got fake biology, fake religion…Sir, have these children never heard of Jesus?
Lord Summerisle: Himself the son of a virgin, impregnated, I believe, by a ghost…

Gotcha?

Lord Summerisle: It’s most important that each new generation born on Summerisle be made aware that here the old gods aren’t dead.
Sergeant Howie: And what of the TRUE God? Whose glory, churches and monasteries have been built on these islands for generations past? Now sir, what of him?
Lord Summerisle [matter of factly]: He’s dead. Can’t complain, he had his chance and, in modern parlance, blew it.

That is one way to look at it.

Lord Summerisle: What my grandfather had started out of expediency, my father continued out of…Love. He brought me up the same way - to reverence the music and the drama and rituals of the old gods. To love nature and to fear it, and to rely on it and to appease it where necessary. He brought me up…
Sergeant Howie: He brought you up to be a pagan!
Lord Summerisle: A heathen, conceivably, but not, I hope, an unenlightened one.
Sergeant Howie: Lord Summerisle, I am interested in one thing: the law. But I must remind you, sir, that despite everything you’ve said, you are the subject of a Christian country!

You know, like Maia.

Lord Summerisle: What do you think could have happened to her?
Sergeant Howie: I think Rowan Morrison was murdered under circumstances of pagan barbarity, which I can scarcely bring myself to believe as taking place in the 20th century. Now, it is my intention tomorrow to return to the mainland and report my suspicions to the Chief Constable of the West Highland Constabulary. And I will demand a full inquiry takes place into the affairs of this heathen island.
Lord Summerisle: You must, of course, do as you see fit, Sergeant.

At least until it is no longer an option. 

Sergeant Howie [reading from a book about “May Day festivals”]: “Primitive man lived and died by his harvest. The purpose of his spring ceremonies was to ensure a plentiful autumn. Relics of these fertility dramas are to be found all over Europe…In pagan times these dances were not simply picturesque jigs. They were frenzied rites ending in a sacrifice by which the dancers hoped desperately to win over the goddess of the fields. In good times, they offered produce to the gods and slaughtered animals, but in bad years, when the harvest had been poor, the sacrifice was a human being.”

I wonder where he's going with that?

Sergeant Howie [of the sacrifice]: What do you mean, “right kind of adult”?
Lord Summerisle: You, Sergeant, are the right kind of adult, as our painstaking researches have revealed. You, uniquely, were the one we needed.
Willow: A man who would come here of his own free will.
Librarian: A man who has come here with the power of a king. By representing the law…
Willow: A man who would come here as a virgin…
Librarian: A man who has come here as a fool!

I wonder where they are going with that?

Sergeant Howie: I am a Christian, and as a Christian, I hope for resurrection. And even if you kill me now, it is I who will live again, not your damned apples.

See how it works? You simply have to believe it. 

Sergeant Howie: I believe in the life eternal, as promised to us by our Lord, Jesus Christ. I BELIEVE IN THE LIFE ETERNAL, AS PROMISED TO US BY OUR LORD, JESUS CHRIST
Lord Summerisle: That is good. For believing what you do, we confer upon you a rare gift, these days – a martyr’s death.

Unless, of course, death is death is death.

Sergeant Howie: Now, all of you, just wait and listen to me. And you can wrap it up any way you like. You are about to commit murder. Can you not see? There is no Sun god. There is no goddess of the fields. Your crops failed because your streams failed. Fruit is not meant to be grown on these islands. It’s against nature. Don’t you see that killing me is not going to bring back your apples?!

Nope, they see nothing like that at all.

Sergeant Howie: Think! Think what you are doing! For the love of God, think what you are doing!

But aren't they sending him to...Heaven? He should be eagerly awaiting his first encounter with God Himself.

Sergeant Howie [about to be consumed by the flames enveloping the Wicker Man]: Oh, God. I humbly entreat you for the soul of this, thy servant, Neil Howie who will today depart from this world. Do not deliver me into the enemy’s hands or put me out of mind forever. Let me not undergo the real pains of hell, dear God, because I die unshriven and establish me in that bliss which knows no ending, through Christ.

Well, both of them can’t be right. And then there is always the possibility that neither of them are.

[iambiguous]

You can’t help but wonder at times about the potential for a gap between what most middle aged men will tell you about the sexual feelings they have for young girls and the feelings they really do have instead. Why the very thought of it [many will no doubt insist] fills them with revulsion. But then how many would be willing to take a lie detector test in order to confirm it?

And of course in a world where young girls are becoming increasingly more sexualized one suspects that only a small fraction of most men [of any age] would dare to take one.

Would you?

Not to leave out a same sex attraction of course.

Why is this? What are we to make of it with respect to the manner in which the human sexual libido will always be a profoundly problematic admixture of nature and nurture. Somehow all “civilized” people have to, well, “fit it into” the things that rational and enlightened citizens have been brought up to accept as the norm.

Things do get rather mixed up and messy at times though. Especially regarding those who are wont to put aside the conventions of the day. Those who are more inclined instead to make up their own rules. One in particular: if it feels good, do it.

Here though Lolita bumps into two such men. And they both can’t have her. And she knows well enough what they want. After all, she is rather precocious. And that can sometimes make all the difference in the world. A sophisticated innocence that some men find almost impossible to resist. She’s just a kid…but then there are the times when she’s not. That and the fact that she is drop dead gorgeous.

Still, I much preferred the way in which Quilty’s character was handled in the book. And his turn as the “shrink” was straight out of Dr. Strangelove. But then Nabokov [along with Kubrick] did write the screenplay. So, imagine how many otherwise sane men [grown men] have allowed themselves “in reality” to sink down into this sort of misery. Love and lust. And then they find themselves having to compete in turn with all of the men [boys] “her own age”. Like Dick. The sheer banality of it all!

Oh well, it’s “just the way things are.”


Lolita

Humbert: Quilty! Quilty?
Quilty: Ah, what? Who’s there?
Humbert: Are you Quilty.
Quilty: No, I’m…Spartacus. You come to free the slaves or sumpn?
Humbert: Are you Quilty?
Quilty: Yeah, yeah, I’m Quilty, yeah, sure

If only for a few minutes longer.

Humbert: Read this.
Quilty: What’s this, the deeds of the ranch?
Humbert: It’s your death sentence. Read it. Read it, Quilty.
Quilty: “Because you took advantage of a sinner. Because you took advantage…Because you took…Because you took advantage of my disadvantage. When I stood Adam-naked before a federal law and all its stinging stars. Because you took advantage, because you cheated me, because you took her at an age when young lads…”
Humbert: That’s enough!

For both of them as it turned out.

Charlotte: What was the decisive factor? My garden?
Humbert: It was…I think it was your cherry pies.

Right.

Humbert [writing in his journal]: What drives me insane is the twofold nature of this nymphet, of every nymphet perhaps, this mixture in my Lolita of tender, dreamy childishness and a kind of eerie vulgarity. I know it is madness to keep this journal, but it gives me a strange thrill to do so.

Any nymphets here perchance ? You're up.

Lolita: I guess I won’t be seeing you again.
Humbert: I shall be moving on. I must prepare for my work at Beardsley College in the fall.
Lolita: Then I guess this is goodbye.
Humbert: Yes.
Lolita: Don’t forget me.

The plot thickens. Or is about to.

Humbert [writing in his diary]: The wedding was a quiet affair and when called upon to enjoy my promotion from lodger to lover did I experience only bitterness and distaste? No, Mr. Humbert confesses to a certain titillation of his vanity…to some faint tenderness, even to a pattern of remorse daintily running along the steel of his conspiratorial dagger.

Next up: the dainty daggers here.

Charlotte: Do you believe in God?
Humbert: The question is does God believe in me?
Charlotte: I wouldn’t care if your maternal grandfather turned out to be a Turk. But if I ever found out that you didn’t believe in God I think I would commit suicide.

That’s when the gun makes an appearance. And then we know that he knows where this is going.

Humbert [voiceover]: No man can bring about the perfect murder. Chance, however, can do it. Just minutes ago she had said it wasn’t loaded. What if I had playfully pulled the trigger then?
[then imagining his explanation to the police]
Humbert: “She had said it wasn’t loaded…It belonged to the late Mr. Haze. She was having her morning tub. We had just finished talking about our plans for the future. I decided to play a practical joke and pretend I was a burglar. We were newlyweds and still did things like that to each other. As soon as it happened I called an ambulance, but it was too late…”

But he couldn’t go through with it. And so chance – honest to god fortuity – intervenes for him. She finds the diary…

Humbert: You know, I’ve missed you terribly.
LoIlita: I haven’t missed you. In fact, I’ve been revoltingly unfaithful to you. But it doesn’t matter a bit, because you’ve stopped caring anyway.
Humbert: What makes you say I’ve stopped caring for you?
Lolita: Well, you haven’t even kissed me yet, have you?

Among other things.

Lolita: Why don’t we play a game?
Humbert: A game?
Lokita: I learned some real good games in camp. One in particular was fun.
Humbert: Well, why don’t you describe this one particularly good game.
Lolita: Well, I played it with Charlie.
Humbert: Charlie? Who’s he?
Lolita: Charlie? He’s that guy that you met in the office.
Humbert: You mean that boy? You and he?
Lokita: Yeah. Are you sure you can’t guess what game I’m talking about?

Spin the pickle?

Lolita [in a letter]: “Dear Dad,
How’s everything? I have gone through much sadness and hardship. I’m married. I’m going to have a baby. I’m going nuts because we don’t have enough to pay our debts to get out of here. Please send us a check…”

Out of the blue as it were.

Humbert: Then this isn’t the man who took you from the hospital?
Lolita: No, of course not!
Humbert: Who is the man that I’m looking for?
Lolita: There’s no point in going into that. It’s all over.
Humbert: Lolita, I have to know.
Lolita: I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you.
Humbert: Lolita, I have a perfect right to know this.
Lolita: Crimeny! I should never have written to you.
Humbert: You wouldn’t have written if you hadn’t needed the money. Now, if you’re a sensible girl, and if you want what I’ve come to give you, you’ll tell me what I want to know.
[she considers it]
Lolita: Do you remember Dr. Zemph?
Humbert: Dr. Zemph?

The script within a script.

Lolita: I don’t suppose it ever occurred to you that when you moved into our house my whole world didn’t revolve around you. I’d had a crush on him ever since the times that he used to come and visit Mother. He wasn’t like you and me. He wasn’t a normal person. He was a genius. He had a kind of, uh, beautiful Japanese oriental philosophy of life.

Lots of things hadn't occurred to him.

Lolita [trying to console Humbert]: I’m really sorry that I cheated so much. But I guess that’s just the way things are.

You can say that again.

[iambiguous]

Intellectuals

"I take umbrage at the lionization of lightweight, empty-suited, empty-headed motherfuckers like Ibram X. Kendi. Who couldn't carry my book bag. He hasn't read a fucking thing. If you ask him what Nietzsche said, he would have no idea. He's an unserious, superficial, empty-suited, lightweight - he's not our equal, not even close.” Glenn C. Loury

Umbrage here. Virtually, as it were.

“I was utterly convinced that an intellectual could never be anything but an intellectual, was simply not capable of being anything else, that his intellectuality would, sooner or later, erode his faith or erode whatever he'd masked it with . . . For example, intellectuals like to dress themselves up as peasants . . . but it never works. The intellectual's constitution is impervious to such things - it permits only one object of worship - oneself. Generally speaking, an intellectual in the contemporary version is an exceptionally resourceful and, essentially, pitiful being.” Leonid Borodin

If the shoe fits...?

“I cleaned the shit off my pink high-tops and drove home, stopping for an espresso at the coffeehouse across from the college. Men and women were hunched over copies of Jean Paul Sartre and writing in their journals. Most wore the thin-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses favored by intellectuals. Their clothes were faded to a precisely fashionable degree; you can buy them that way from catalogs now, new clothes processed to look old. The intellectuals looked at me in my overalls the way such people inevitably look at farmers. I dumped a lot of sugar in my espresso and sipped it delicately at a corner table near the door. I looked at them the way farmers look at intellectuals.” Mary Rose O'Reille

If both shoes fit...?

“Man who does not manage to satisfy himself through Action in and for the World in which he lives flees from this World and takes refuge in his abstract intelligence...”
Alexandre Kojève

Here? Let's name names.

“Intellectuals are the trickiest nuts to crack. They are so eager to impress you with their own understanding of their condition that they tend to carry on their own commentary as they are talking.” Graeme Macrae Burnet

Here? Let's name names.

“Ah, intellectuals. And you wanted me to sign one up. What is it that the less one has to say the more one says it, and in the most pompous and pedantic way possible?” Corelli asked. “Is it to fool the world or to fool themselves?” Carlos Ruiz Zafón

See, I told you.

[iambiguous]

As with “modern art”, avante-garde, “progressive” music has its, uh, detractors? To some, hip-hop, gansta rap music sounds like “Moon River” next to it. It’s just “goddamn noise” in other words. And percussionists in particular are often the least tolerated of all.

But who would go so far as to call them “anarchists”. “Terrorists” even.

Here six of them set out to make music utilizing things that most folks don’t exactly consider to be musical instruments. Think the equivalent of Marcel Duchamp, art and urinals.

Four “movements”: in a hospital during a surgical “operation”, in a bank they are “holding up”, by thumping bulldozers outside an opera house and hanging from high tension power lines, playing them like violins. That is their “concert” of, by and for the city.

I’m sure you can think of hundreds more.

Then there is the cop who sets out to track them down. The irony being that he was born into a family that lived and breathed music. His parents named him Amadeus. Yet he came to despise it. Perhaps because he was born into the world utterly tone-deaf.

This in other words: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_deafnessIf

I understand what that means and I think I would rather have been aborted.


Sound of Noise

Sanna [to the assembled drummers]: There are four movements in four locations. I want to be very clear that some things will be illegal. Some will be dangerous. But it’ll be one hell of a work of art.

Or, for some, it will all seem ridiculous.

Amadeus [voiceover as we see a photograph of him as a young boy]: Here I am at my mother’s grand piano. It was the last time I sat there before Mom and Dad gave up. But I never wanted to play. All I wanted was silence. I dreamed of music made of silence.

The sound of silence? Let's try that here.

Police chief on a news broadcast: They won’t get away with this! We’re going to rid this city of musical scum!!

Of course: they do get away with it.

Amadeus [smashing 4 metronomes with a guitar]: Damn musicians! I want silence!!
[then he starts smashing all the other instruments]
Amadeus: I want silence! You idiotic musicians! I just want silence! Don’t you know that you stupid musicians! Just silence…

Oh, well, what's one more failure to communicate?

Amadeus: This music will change the world.
Brother: You’re not the first to say that.

And certainly will not be the last.

[iambiguous]

There really is only so far most of us can go [in this world] before [one way or another] everything seems to start revolving around money. Not having enough of it usually. There are just so many things we seem to need it for. So, sure, from time to time, when an opportunity arises, most are willing to stretch the parameters of what is strictly legal in order to get more of it. And who better to twist the law into a pretzel than an attorney.

And he is, after all, “a good man”. He "helps old people”. It’s just that now he has this opportunity to take advantage of that. And it’s not like Leo will be living in a cardboard box out on the street somewhere.

But then things start to get complicated. Like out of the blue. Leo’s grandson Kyle shows up. He needs a place to live. So [temporarily] he moves in with Mike and Jackie. And the next thing you know he’s like part of the family. And a damn good wrestler. Though there is something about him that is not, well, all that it seems to be. But not to worry.

So, from Mike’s point of view, things are all starting to fall into place. This is the Win Win part. But then [as they often do] things start to get really complicated again. Indeed, only the script manages to keep him from tumbling down into the abyss that is Lose, Lose.[/b]

Alex Shaffer was indeed the New Jersey state high school wrestling champion the year before the film was made. However, he had to quit the sport due to a back injury.  IMDB


Win Win

Abby: Where’s Daddy?
Jackie [Mom]: He’s running.
Abby: From what?

Good point?

Mike: And it’s not like I’m some, you know, scumbag. I help old people for Christ sake. No offense but your pal, Finley doesn’t give a crap about anything but making money.Terry: Yeah. But that’s why he makes it.
Mike: No shit, Ter. Thanks for the update.

Sarcasm, let's call it.

[Jackie locks Kyle in the basement]
Mike: Whare’re you doin’?
Jackie: We have kids, Mike. I’m not taking any chances with Eminem down there.
Mike: There’s not even a bathroom down there, Jack.
[Jackie reluctantly unlocks the door]

That'll all change.

Mike: When’s the last time you wrestled?
Kyle: A couple years ago.
Mike: Why’d you stop?
Kyle: Just felt like it.
Mike: So let me ask you something, Kyle. How good are you?
Kyle: I’m pretty good.

Real wrestling, let's call it.

Coach Vig [of Kyle]: I don’t think we can teach him anything.

Quite the opposite.

Mike [to the wrestling team]: Now, did you all see what Kyle did the other day? He exploded up, right? Kyle, show the guys what you did.
Kyle: It’s kind of my own thing.
Mike: Well, can you share it with us?
Kyle: But it’s not even a move or anything.
Mike: It’s okay.
Kyle: All right. Well, I just tell myself that the guy on top’s tryin’ to take my head and shove it under water and kill me, and if I don’t wanna die on bottom, I have to do whatever the fuck it takes to get out.
Coach Vig [breaking a stunned silence]: Okay. So the move is “Whatever the fuck it takes.” Let’s go. Let’s work on it.
Terry [chiming in forcefully as if knowledgeable]: WHATEVER THE FUCK IT TAKES! LET’S GO, GENTLEMEN. UP!

Next up: WHATEVER THE FUCK IT TAKES!...here? 

Terry [on the phone to Mike about Kyle]: Dude, this kid really hates his mother. I mean like even more than I hate my ex wife.

Maybe even more than some here hate...me?

Mike: Cindy, your father disinherited you from his will. Completely. And I’m afraid that can’t change now that he’s been declared incapacitated.
Cindy: (stunned) Is that true?! Who did he leave it too? Did he leave it to Kyle?!
Mike: No.
Cindy: Then who? You?
Mike: No. Actually, he left everything to the municipal parks system. He wanted the town park dedicated in his name.
Cindy: That scumbag! He never cared about anyone but himself and his fucking money. Did you know about this?
Eleanor: Cindy please!
Cindy: Well, I’m not taking care of him if I’m not getting anything for it.

Doesn't surprise me.

Cindy: I want that commission! That’s supposed to be mine!
Mike: And that’s why you’re doing all this? For fifteen hundred dollars a month? My god.
Cindy: Isn’t that why you took him?

The pot calling the kettle black?

Kyle [to Mike]: You’re just like her.

Ouch. And then some. But is it true?

Jackie: So why’d you move him if he wanted to stay here.
Mike: Because it would have been too much work to leave him here. I couldn’t have done it.
Jackie: Then you shouldn’t have taken him.
Mike: I had to, alright?
Jackie: Why?
Mike: Because I needed the money! We needed the money.
Jackie: You moved an old man out of his house to make money? Have you lost your freaking mind?
Mike: No! I just didn’t think it would get this complicated.
Jackie: Really? Or you just didn’t think you’d get caught?

I’m with Mike on this one. There are just some things you can’t control.

[iambiguous]

Absurdity

“I suppose I'm what they call a decadent, one whose spirit is outwardly defined by those sad glimmers of artificial eccentricity that incarnate an anxious and artful soul in unusual words. Yes, I think that's what I am, and that I'm absurd.” Fernando Pessoa

The Book of Disquiet of course.

“The worst does sometimes happen. As men we have to count on that possibility, have to arm ourselves against it, and above all we have to realize that since absurdities necessarily occur, and nowadays manifest themselves with more and more forcefulness, we can prevent ourselves from being destroyed by them and can make ourselves relatively comfortable upon this earth only if we humbly include these absurdities in our thinking, reckon with the inevitable fractures and distortions of human reason when it attempts honestly to deal with reality." Friedrich Dürrenmatt

The pledge, let's call it.

“If you’re going to be a fool, you’d better do it right.” Sol Luckman

You tell me: viewtopic.php?t=44059

“From the sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step.” William Hazlitt

And the other way around...?

“I cannot shut my eyes and plunge confidently into the absurd; that is for me an impossibility, but I do not praise myself for it. I am convinced that God is love; this thought has for me a primordial lyrical validity. When it is present to me I am unspeakably happy; when it is absent I long for it more intensely than the lover for the object of his love. But I do not believe; this courage I lack.” Søren Kierkegaard

A considerably less blind leap of faith, perhaps, but a leap nonetheless.

“Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices." Voltaire

Important to bring this one back from time to time.

[Belinda]

Absurdity

“I suppose I'm what they call a decadent, one whose spirit is outwardly defined by those sad glimmers of artificial eccentricity that incarnate an anxious and artful soul in unusual words. Yes, I think that's what I am, and that I'm absurd.” Fernando Pessoa

The Book of Disquiet of course.

“The worst does sometimes happen. As men we have to count on that possibility, have to arm ourselves against it, and above all we have to realize that since absurdities necessarily occur, and nowadays manifest themselves with more and more forcefulness, we can prevent ourselves from being destroyed by them and can make ourselves relatively comfortable upon this earth only if we humbly include these absurdities in our thinking, reckon with the inevitable fractures and distortions of human reason when it attempts honestly to deal with reality." Friedrich Dürrenmatt

The pledge, let's call it.

“If you’re going to be a fool, you’d better do it right.” Sol Luckman

You tell me: viewtopic.php?t=44059

“From the sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step.” William Hazlitt

And the other way around...?

“I cannot shut my eyes and plunge confidently into the absurd; that is for me an impossibility, but I do not praise myself for it. I am convinced that God is love; this thought has for me a primordial lyrical validity. When it is present to me I am unspeakably happy; when it is absent I long for it more intensely than the lover for the object of his love. But I do not believe; this courage I lack.” Søren Kierkegaard

A considerably less blind leap of faith, perhaps, but a leap nonetheless.

“Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices." Voltaire

Important to bring this one back from time to time.

Regarding absurdities;
is the leap of faith a heuristic , an opiate, or both?

[iambiguous]

Animated films. I don’t like them. Why? Well, it seems that, however far removed they become from “cartoons”, there is just something “unreal” about them that repels me. Really, I hate them. Just a weird predilection I suppose.

I make an exception though with this one. In part because the subject matter is provocative and intellectually stimulating. In part because “behind” the animation are real actors acting out real parts. The creators just throw in a bunch of “cartoonish” stuff I come to tolerate. And in part because it is based on a book I have read.

Substance D: "Dope. And dumbness. And despair. And desertion. And death. All personal friends of mine in one or another respect. So to speak."

Dope is always a subject that has particularly tied me into knots. In some respects it infuriates me that, while cigarettes and alcohol can be consumed legally, many of the “controlled substances” I once enjoyed “recreationally” are now beyond my reach. I just don’t have access to the folks who were once able to procure them for me. And yet I can still grasp the validity of the arguments that many make regarding the appalling harm some of these drugs cause for any number of folks who abuse them. I have seen a number of friends destroyed because of dope. It’s always about context. Freedom of the individual to choose meets Big Brother is just just too simplistic a narrative. But there it is nonetheless. Along with Big Business. And [it goes without saying] organized crime. Though here the emphasis is more on an encroaching police state. And the way in which the technology makes that increasingly less…intrusive? Meaning far easier for them to pull off. Though sometimes [of course] with the best of intentions.

But, come on, how far removed will entities like New Path be from Big Brother? That’s the part they missed here. Or so it seems to me. For now though it is just one more “truther” narrative.

Based on Philip K. Dick’s personal drug experiences.According to director Richard Linklater, filming was completed in 23 days; the animation process took 18 months.  IMDb


A Scanner Darkly

Fred: I’m not going to tell you first what I do as an undercover officer engaged in tracking down dealers and the source of their illegal drugs in the streets of our cities and the corridors of our schools here in Orange County. I’m going to tell you what I’m afraid of.

And well he should be.

Fred: … Substance D. “D” is dumbness, and despair, desertion–desertion of you from your friends, your friends from you, everyone from everyone. Isolation and loneliness…and hating and suspecting each other. “D” is finally death. Slow death from the head down.

Bummer.

Freck: What do you think about the New Path?
Barris: While it doesn’t matter what I think, I kinda have to tip my hat to any entity that can bring so much integrity to evil. I mean, imagine this: a seemingly voluntary, privatized gulag which has managed to eliminate the meddling middlemen of public accountability and free will and wrap it up in a little bow and give it to the public like a gift.

Sure, why not, Dystopia on steroids.

Medical Deputy: You know, Fred, if you keep your sense of humor like you do, you just might make it.
Fred: Make it? Make what? The team? The chick? Make good? Make do? Make out? Make sense? Make money? Make time? Define your terms. The Latin for ‘make’ is facere, which always reminds me of fuckere, which is Latin for ‘to fuck’, and I have been getting jack shit in that department as of late.

Tell me about it.

Bob Arctor: The pain, so unexpected and undeserved, had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. I realized I didn’t hate the cabinet door, I hated my life… My house, my family, my backyard, my power mower. Nothing would ever change; nothing new could ever be expected. It had to end, and it did. Now in the dark world where I dwell, ugly things, and surprising things, and sometimes little wondrous things, spill out in me constantly, and I can count on nothing.

Or, again, "very little...almost nothing."

Luckman: Well! So much for our great trip to San Diego Bob, I told you we should have gone to San Francisco.
Barris: What like going to San Francisco would not have caused this problem with the engine?
Luckman: Yeah because when you’re going north, it screws this way, and when you’re going south it screws that way!
Barris: If we were in Australia!

That’s the dope talking. Unless, of course, it’s true.

Freck Suicide Narrator: Charles Freck, becoming progressively more and more depressed by what was happening around him, decided, finally, to off himself. There was no problem in the circles where he hung out in putting an end to yourself. You just bought a large quantity of downers and took them with some cheap wine. The planning part had to do with the artifacts he wanted found on him by later archeologists. He had spent several days deciding, much longer than he had spent deciding to kill himself. He would be found lying on his back, on his bed, with a copy of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and an unfinished letter to Exxon, protesting the cancellation of his gas credit card. That way, he would indict the system, and achieve something by his death, over and above what the death itself achieved. At the last moment, he changed his mind on a decisive issue and decided to drink the pills with a connoisseur's wine, instead of Ripple or Thunderbird. So he set off on one last drive, over to Tiny’s Liquors, which specialized in fine wines, and bought a bottle of 2001 Azalea Springs Merlot, which set him back almost seventy dollars. Back home again, he uncorked the wine, let it breathe, drank a few glasses of it, tried to think of something meaningful but could not, and then, with a glass of Merlot, gulped down all the pills at once. However, he had been burned. Instead of quietly suffocating, Charles Freck began to hallucinate. The next thing he knew, a creature from between dimensions was standing beside his bed, looking down at him disapprovingly.
Freck: You gonna read me my sins?
[Creature nods]
Freck: Eh, it’s gonna take a hundred thousand hours.
Creature: Your sins will be read to you ceaselessly, in shifts, throughout eternity. The list will never end.
Creature [starts reading]: “The Sins of Freck”
Freck Suicide Narrator: Charles Freck wished he could take back the last half hour of his life.
Creature [Creature continues to read]: “… theft of fingernail clippers…” “… you did knowingly and with malice…” “… punched your baby sister, Evelyn…” “… December, theft of Christmas presents…” “… one billion lies…”
Freck Suicide Narrator: One thousand years later, they had reached the sixth grade, the year he had discovered masturbation.
Creature [Creature continues to read]: “… November fourteenth, Percodan… Vicodin… Cocaine…”
Freck Suicide Narrator: Charles Freck thought, “At least I got a good wine.”

New thread? 

Man with megaphone: “Where did Substance D come from? Why can’t we stop it? The bigger this war gets, the more freedoms we lose…the more Substance D is on our streets. Can’t you figure this out? Look around you. Look how far we’ve come. Humanity wasn’t meant to live like this. Our every waking moment tracked and traced and scanned. It’s time to stop submitting to this tyranny. It’s time to realize that we’re being enslaved.”

And the MAGA folks wouldn't have it any other way.

Fred [voiceover]: What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me? Into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly because I can’t any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone’s sake the scanners do better, because if the scanner sees only darkly the way I do, then I’m cursed and cursed again.

Next up: a darkly scanner here.

Audrey: I just wonder if it even matters at this…
Mike: It matters, Audrey. It matters when we can prove that New Path is the one growing…
manufacturing and distributing.
Audrey: How does he look? I mean, do you think he’s gonna be able to pull through for us?
Mike: All we can do is hope that when he finally gets in there…a few charred brain cells will flicker on and some distant instinct will kick in.
Audrey: It’s just…It’s just such a cost to pay.
Mike: Yeah. But there’s no other way to get in there. I couldn’t, and think how long I tried. They got that place locked up tight. They’re only gonna let a burnt-out husk like Bruce in. Harmless. You have to be, or they won’t take the risk.
Audrey: Yeah, but to sacrifice someone…a living person, without them ever knowing it. I mean, if he’d understood, if he had volunteered…but he doesn’t know and he never did. He didn’t volunteer for this.
Mike: Sure he did. It was his job.
Audrey: It wasn’t his job to get addicted. We took care of that.

Next up: the charred brain cells here.

Mike [to Audrey]: I believe God’s M.O. is to transmute evil into good and if he’s active here, he’s doing that now…although our eyes can’t perceive it. The whole process is hidden beneath the surface of our reality and will only be revealed later.

Need we say it's postmortem?

[iambiguous]

Tesla

Every living being is an engine geared to the wheelwork of the universe. Though seemingly affected only by its immediate surroundings, the sphere of external influence extends to infinite distance.

See, I told you.

Science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without.

Unless, of course, he's wrong.
Unless, of course, he's right.

Today the most civilized countries of the world spend a maximum of their income on war and a minimum on education. The twenty-first century will reverse this order. It will be more glorious to fight against ignorance than to die on the field of battle. The discovery of a new scientific truth will be more important than the squabbles of diplomats. Even the newspapers of our own day are beginning to treat scientific discoveries and the creation of fresh philosophical concepts as news. The newspapers of the twenty-first century will give a mere 'stick' in the back pages to accounts of crime or political controversies, but will headline on the front pages the proclamation of a new scientific hypothesis.

Little did he know...

Most certainly, some planets are not inhabited, but others are, and among these there must exist life under all conditions and phases of development.

Sheer speculation. If only all the way to the grave.

So astounding are the facts in this connection, that it would seem as though the Creator, himself had electrically designed this planet...”

Anyone here know for sure?

Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment and merging of races, and we are still far from this blissful realization.

And now getting farther and farther away with each passing executive order.

[iambiguous]

Sergeant J.J. Sefton. I have always found him to be a rather fascinating character. Fascinating because my reaction to him has always been hopelessly ambivalent.

On the one hand, he is a rotten son-of-a-bitch. A monomaniacally selfish bastard intent only on turning everything to his own advantage. He may be just one more prisoner of war in one more German stalag but damned if he isn’t going to be [by far] the most comfortably situated. And if that means using everyone else as pawns [or dupes] in his various “business” enterprises, so be it. He figures it’s going to be a long war so he may as well make the best of it. And boy does he ever. He becomes, well, the very embodiment of dog-eat-dog capitalism.

On the other hand…

Yes, there is another side. Sefton may be all of these things…but he’s the one to go to to get things done. The guy that makes things happen. He’s the one who brings all of these dazzling enterprises to life. And boy do they ever make life in the barracks one hell of a lot more…stimulating. The telescope, the horse race, the distillery, the gambling. How unimaginably duller life would be there without him.

Think of him as, say, one of Nietzsche’s Ubermen. Only a less principled – philosophical? – rendition.
But then things get complicated. The Germans have planted a spy in the barracks. They seem to know everything the POWs are up to. Who could it be? Well, those in charge loathe Sefton. So he becomes their number one target. But Sefton [once again] manages to put the pieces [starting with a big one on the chessboard] together first.

Lots and lots of laughs here too. Thanks in particular to Animal and Shapiro. But this is no Hogan’s Heroes. Or, at any rate, the Germans are considerably less cartoonish.

The movie was shot in sequence. Many of the actors were surprised by the final plot twist.

William Holden did not like the part of Sefton at all as written in the script, thinking him too selfish. He kept asking Billy Wilder to make Sefton nicer and Wilder refused. Holden actually refused the role but was forced to do it by the studio. IMDb


Stalag 17

Cookie [narrating]: I don’t know about you, but it always makes me sore when I see those war pictures… all about flying leathernecks and submarine patrols and frogmen and guerillas in the Philippines. What gets me is that there never w-was a movie about POWs - about prisoners of war. Now, my name is Clarence Harvey Cook: they call me Cookie. I was shot down over Magdeburg, Germany, back in '43; that’s why I stammer a little once in a while, 'specially when I get excited. I spent two and a half years in Stalag 17. “Stalag” is the German word for prison camp, and number 17 was somewhere on the Danube. There were about 40,000 POWs there, if you bothered to count the Russians, and the Poles, and the Czechs. In our compound there were about 630 of us, all American airmen: radio operators, gunners, and engineers. All sergeants. Now you put 630 sergeants together and, oh mother, you’ve got yourself a situation. There was more fireworks shooting off around that joint… take for instance the story about the spy we had in our barracks…

Cue the ping pong balls.

Hoffy: They ought to be under the barbed wire soon.
Shapiro: Looks good outside.
Animal: I hope they hit the Danube before dawn.
Price: They’ve got a good chance. The longest night of the year.
Duke: I’ll bet they make it to Friedrichshaven.
Animal: I bet they make it all the way to Switzerland.
Sefton: And I bet they don’t get out of the forest.
Duke: Now what kind of crack is that?
Sefton: No crack. Two packs of cigarettes say they don’t get out of the forest.
Hoffy: That’s enough, Sefton. Crawl back in your sack.
Shapiro: He’d make book on his own mother getting hit by a truck.
Sefton: Anybody call?

Price?

[after hearing gunshots, Sefton, who bet against the escapees, glumly collects the cigarettes]
Duke: Hold it, Sefton. I said hold it! So we heard some shots. So who says they didn’t get away?
Sefton [sadly]: Anybody here want to double their bet?

Nope, not a one.

Duke: What slipped up, Hoffy?
Hoffy: Don’t ask me. Price was elected Security.
Duke (To Price): Okay, Security – what happened?
Price: I wish I knew. We had everything figured out to the last detail.

Except one.

Duke: Come on, Trader Horn, let’s hear it. What’d you give the krauts for that egg?Sefton: 45 cigarettes. Price has gone up.Duke: They wouldn’t be the cigarettes you took us for last night?
Sefton: What was I gonna do with them? I only smoke cigars.
Duke: Nice guy. The krauts shoot Manfredi and Johnson last night, and today he’s out trading with them.
Sefton: Look. This may be my last hot breakfast on account of they’re going to take that stove out of here, so would you let me eat it in peace?
Animal: Now ain’t that too bad? Tomorrow you’ll have to suck a raw egg.
Shapiro: Oh, he don’t have to worry. He can always trade the krauts for a six-burner gas range. Maybe a deep freeze, too.
Sefton: What’s the beef, boys? So I’m trading. Everybody here is trading. So maybe I trade a little sharper. That make me a collaborator?
Duke: A lot sharper, Sefton. I’d like to have some of that loot you got in those footlockers.
Sefton: Oh you would, would you? Listen, stupe. The first week I was in this joint, somebody stole my Red Cross package, my blanket, and my left shoe. Well, since then I’ve wised up. This ain’t no Salvation Army - this is everybody for himself, dog eat dog.

Split the difference?

Sefton [to Duke and Price and Hoffy]: What’re you guys trying to prove anyway? Cutting trap doors! Digging tunnels! You know what the chances are to get out of here? And let’s say you do get all the way to Switzerland! Or say to the States? So what? They ship you to the Pacific and slap you in another plane. And you get shot down again and you wind up in a Japanese prison camp. That’s if you’re lucky! Well, I’m no escape artist! You can be the heroes, the boys with the fruit salad on your chest. Me – I’m staying put. And I’m going to make myself as comfortable as I can. And if it takes a little trading with the enemy to get me some food or a better mattress – that’s okay by Sefton!

Okay by you?

Price: Which one of us is the informer?
Schultz: You are trying to say that an American would inform on other Americans?
Duke: That’s the general idea.
[he looks over at Sefton]
Duke: Only it’s not so general as far as I’m concerned.
Schultz: You are talking crazy!
Sefton: It’s no use, Schulz, you might as well come clean. Why don’t you just tell them it’s me, because I’m really the illegitimate son of Hitler, and after the Germans win the war, you’re going to make me the Gauleiter of Zinzinnati!

Of course, even we don't know who or what to believe at this point.

Cookie [narrating]: I guess it’s about time I told you a few more things about that Sefton guy. If I was anything of a writer I’d send it in to the Reader’s Digest for one of those ‘Most Unforgettable Characters You’ve Ever Met’…He was a B.T.O., Sefton was. A Big Time Operator. Always hustling, always scrounging. Take for instance the horse races. Every Saturday and Sunday he would put on horse races. He was the sole owner and operator of the Stalag 17 Turf Club. He was the Presiding Steward, the Chief Handicapper, the Starter, the Judge, the Breeder and his own bookie. He was the whole works, except that I was the stable boy for ten smokes a day.

See, he makes things happen. They get that part, no doubt, but... 

Hoffy: What’s the big idea, Sefton? Take that telescope out of here.
Sefton: Says who?
Hoffy: Says me.
Sefton: You take it out. Only you’re going to have a riot on your hands.
Hoffy: Every time the men get Red Cross packages you have to think up an angle to rob them.
Price: When the Krauts find that gadget they’ll throw us all in the boob.
Sefton: They know about that gadget. I’d worry more about the radio.
Duke: I suppose they also know about your distillery and the horse races?
Sefton: That’s right.
Duke: Just what makes you and them Krauts so buddy-buddy?
Sefton: Ask Security. Go on, tell him, Price. You’ve got me shadowed every minute of the day. Or haven’t you found out yet?
Price: Not yet.

Uh, mission impossible?

Sefton: What is this anyway, a kangaroo court? Why don’t you get a rope and do it right?
Duke: You make my mouth water.
Sefton: You’re all wire-happy, boys. You’ve been in this camp too long. You put two and two together and it comes out four - only it ain’t four.
Hoffy: What’s it add up to you, Sefton?
Sefton: It adds up that you got yourselves the wrong guy. Because, I’m telling you, the krauts wouldn’t plant two stoolies in one barracks. And whatever you do to me, you’re gonna have to do all over again when you find the right guy.

No problem.

Duke: Go on Price tell the crumb where he stands.
Price: All right, Sefton. You got away lucky last night. One more move, no matter how small, and you’ll wake up with your throat slit!
Hoffy: You heard that, Sefton?
Sefton: Sure I heard it. I still got one good ear. But one thing. There are two people in this barracks who know I didn’t do it. Me and the guy that did do it. And it could be any one of you.

And we still don't know who the scumbag is.

Geneva man [to Sefton]: What happened to you? Were you beaten?
[Sefton doesn’t answer]
Geneva man: Why don’t you answer?
[he turns to Hoffy]
Geneva man: What did you do to this man?
Sefton: They didn’t do nothing.
Geneva man: Who beat you?
Sefton: Nobody beat me. We were playing pinochle. It’s a rough game.

No snitching?

Sefton: What’s the matter, Cookie? You on their team now? You think I’m the guy?
Cookie: I don’t know anymore.
Sefton: I understand how you feel, Cookie. It’s sort of rough – one American squealing on other Americans. Then again, Cookie – maybe that stoolie’s not an American at all. Maybe he’s a German the krauts planted in this barracks. They do this type of thing. Just put an agent in with us – a trained specialist. Lots of loose information floating around a prison camp. Not just whether somebody wants to escape, but what outfits we were with and where we were stationed, and how our radar operates. Could be, couldn’t it?
Cookie: In this barracks?
Sefton: Why not? Just one of the boys. Sharing our bunks. Eating our chow. Right in amongst the ones that beat me up. Except that he beat hardest.

The bastard!

Cookie: Who is it?
Sefton: That’s not the point, Cookie. The point is what do you do with him? You tip your mitt and the Jerries pull him out of here and plant him someplace else, like Stalag Sixteen or Fifteen. Or you kill him off and the Krauts turn around and kill off the whole barracks. Every one of us. So what do you do?
Cookie: Who is it?
[Sefton doesn’t answer]
Cookie: If you don’t want to tell me, why don’t you tell Hoffy? Or Security?
Sefton: Yeah. Security…

Bingo!

Price: Are we going to stand around here and listen to him until the Germans find out where Dunbar is?
Sefton: The Germans know where Dunbar is.
Hoffy: How do they know?
Sefton: You told them, Hoffy.
Hoffy: Who did?
Sefton: You did.
Hoffy: Are you off your rocker?
Sefton: Uh-huh. Fell right on my head.

https://youtu.be/wcQj8Ey9SsY?si=mDkvzhZOTuoNbJpf

Sefton: Okay, Herr Preismaier, let’s have the mail box.
Price: The what?
Sefton: The one you took out of the corner of your bunk and put in this pocket.
[Sefton snatches the black queen out of Price’s coat pocket]
Sefton: Now let me show you how they did it.

Clever to say the least.

Duke [to Sefton]: Brother, were we all wet about you!

Drenched in fact.

Duke [referring to Sefton’s safe escape with Dunbar]: Whadda ya know? The crud did it.
Shapiro: I’d like to know what made him do it.
Animal: Maybe he just wanted to steal our wire cutters. You ever think of that?

I guess we'll never know.

[iambiguous]

Stupidity

"Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time.” George Bernard Shaw

Actually, some might disagree.

“When the Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwah, I felt at once that here was something that completely committed me. It was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying, and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual, and the defense of free expression. Plus, of course, friendship—though I like to think that my reaction would have been the same if I hadn't known Salman at all. To re-state the premise of the argument again: the theocratic head of a foreign despotism offers money in his own name in order to suborn the murder of a civilian citizen of another country, for the offense of writing a work of fiction. No more root-and-branch challenge to the values of the Enlightenment (on the bicentennial of the fall of the Bastille) or to the First Amendment to the Constitution, could be imagined. President George H.W. Bush, when asked to comment, could only say grudgingly that, as far as he could see, no American interests were involved…” Christopher Hitchens

Enough said?

“If stupidity got us in this mess, how come it can't get us out.” Will Rogers

On the other hand, now he is "banned for life".

“We're not stupid! We're just poor! And we have a right to insist on this distinction.” Orhan Pamuk

Well, when there is one, of course.

"I'm fairly certain that YOLO is just Carpe Diem for stupid people.” Jack Black

Here? Let's name names.

“Brave? Or stupid?"
Roger shrugged. "I've never been quite sure where brave stopped and stupid began, myself." Gerald Morris

My guess: Sooner or later, no one is.