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Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2024 9:57 pm
by iambiguous
Death...
“I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens.” Woody Allen
On the other hand, is that even possible?
“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.” Anais Nin
Naturally, in other words.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” Mark Twain
Well, he was a humorist, right?
“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” Mark Twain
That doesn't work for all of us, of course.
“It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know." Lemony Snicket
Next up: it happens to you.
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!” Hunter S. Thompson
Can you say that?
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2024 3:34 am
by iambiguous
Philosophy...
“I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.” Ludwig Wittgenstein
Also, there's a poker involved.
“Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person.” Epictetus
Down out of the book world clouds, for example.
“I don't want to be a tree; I want to be its meaning.” Orhan Pamuk
Starting [of course] with the weeping willow.
“If it turns out that there is a God...the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.” Woody Allen
Either that or a moral monster.
“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?” Stephen Hawking
Praise the Lord?
Or is it spookier still?
“To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures who people the tree of your life and give it new branches. To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches. To lose your mother, well, that is like losing the sun above you. It is like losing--I'm sorry, I would rather not go on.” Yann Martel
Tell that to Hank Reardon.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2024 8:00 pm
by iambiguous
Stalker
Stalker: May everything come true. May they believe. And may they laugh at their passions. For what they call passion is not really the energy of the soul, but merely friction between the soul and the outside world. But, above all, may they believe in themselves and become as helpless as children. For softness is great and strength is worthless. When a man is born, he is soft and pliable. When he dies, he is strong and hard. When a tree grows, it is soft and pliable. But when it's dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death's companions. Flexibility and softness are the embodiment of life. That which has become hard shall not triumph.
Sure. If only one stalker's opinion.
Writer: My conscience wants vegetarianism to win over the world. And my subconscious is yearning for a piece of juicy meat. But what do I want?
A vegggie burger?
Writer: A man writes because he is tormented, because he doubts. He needs to constantly prove to himself and the others that he's worth something. And if I know for sure that I'm a genius? Why write then? What the hell for?
Hint: "it's rooted existentially in dasein".
Stalker: Are you awake? You were talking recently about the meaning of our life...unselfishness of art...Let's take music...It's really least of all connected; to say the truth, if it is connected at all, then in an idealess way, mechanically, with an empty sound... Without...without associations...Nonetheless the music miraculously penetrates into the very soul! What is resonating in us in answer to the harmonized noise? And turns it for us into the source of great delight...And unites us, and shakes us? What is its purpose? And, above all, for whom? You will say: for nothing, and... and for nobody, just so. Unselfish. Though it's not so...perhaps... For everything, in the end, has its own meaning... Both the meaning and the cause...
Music! Only time itself is more mysterious.
Writer: While I am digging for the truth, so much happens to it that instead of discovering the truth I dig up a heap of, pardon...I'd better not name it.
Uh, philosophy?
Stalker: There's no need to speak. You must only - concentrate and recall all your past life. When a man thinks of the past, he becomes kinder.
Trust me: not always.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2024 9:59 pm
by iambiguous
Leo Tolstoy from A Confession
Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.
Their majority, not ours.
The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.
Relatively speaking?
I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it.
Though less and less, of course.
I felt that what I had been standing on had collapsed and that I had nothing left under my feet. What I had lived on no longer existed, and there was nothing left. My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink, and sleep, and I could not help doing these things; but there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfillment of which I could consider reasonable.
Me? Something like that for sure.
Faith is the strength of life. If a man lives he believes in something. If he did not believe that one must live for something, he would not live. If he does not see and recognize the illusory nature of the finite, he believes in the finite; if he understands the illusory nature of the finite, he must believe in the infinite. Without faith he cannot live.
Religion in a nut shell, perhaps?
There is an Eastern fable, told long ago, of a traveller overtaken on a plain by an enraged beast. Escaping from the beast he gets into a dry well, but sees at the bottom of the well a dragon that has opened its jaws to swallow him. And the unfortunate man, not daring to climb out lest he should be destroyed by the enraged beast, and not daring to leap to the bottom of the well lest he should be eaten by the dragon, seizes s twig growing in a crack in the well and clings to it. His hands are growing weaker and he feels he will soon have to resign himself to the destruction that awaits him above or below, but still he clings on. Then he sees that two mice, a black one and a white one, go regularly round and round the stem of the twig to which he is clinging and gnaw at it. And soon the twig itself will snap and he will fall into the dragon's jaws. The traveller sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish; but while still hanging he looks around, sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the twig, reaches them with his tongue and licks them. So I too clung to the twig of life, knowing that the dragon of death was inevitably awaiting me, ready to tear me to pieces; and I could not understand why I had fallen into such torment. I tried to lick the honey which formerly consoled me, but the honey no longer gave me pleasure, and the white and black mice of day and night gnawed at the branch by which I hung. I saw the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tasted sweet. I only saw the unescapable dragon and mice, and I could not tear my gaze from them. and this is not a fable but the real unanswerable truth intelligible to all. The deception of the joys of life which formerly allayed my terror of the dragon now no longer deceived me. No matter how often I may be told, "You cannot understand the meaning of life so do not think about it, but live," I can no longer do it: I have already done it too long. I cannot now help seeing day and night going round and bringing me to death. That is all I see, for that alone is true. All else is false. The two drops of honey which diverted my eyes from the cruel truth longer than the rest: my love of family, and of writing -- art as I called it -- were no longer sweet to me. "Family"... said I to myself. But my family -- wife and children -- are also human. They are placed just as I am: they must either live in a lie or see the terrible truth. Why should they live? Why should I love them, guard them, bring them up, or watch them? That they may come to the despair that I feel, or else be stupid? Loving them, I cannot hide the truth from them: each step in knowledge leads them to the truth. And the truth is death.
Next up: Western fables.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2024 11:05 pm
by iambiguous
Osamu Dazai from No Longer Human
I find it difficult to understand the kind of human being who lives, or who is sure he can live, purely, happily, serenely while engaged in deceit.
Well, first they have to catch you.
Communal living had proved quite impossible for me. It gave me chills just to hear such words as “the ardor of youth” or “youthful pride”: I could not by any stretch of the imagination soak myself in “college spirit".
Let alone cheering on the home team. #-o
Yes, I may be a loser, but I'm the best damn loser you'll ever meet.
Or [of course]: Yes, I may be a winner, but I'm the worst damn winner you'll ever meet.
These clownish words of deceit were taken more seriously than the truth.
Not here though, of course.
The clash between rich and poor is a hackneyed enough subject, but I am now convinced that it really is one of the eternal themes of drama.
Pick one:
1] Karl Marx
2] Groucho Marx
Virtue and vice are concepts invented by human beings, words for a morality which human beings arbitrarily devised.
I know, I know: What if that were actually true?!
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2024 1:15 am
by iambiguous
The Queen
Robin Janvrin: The Prime Minister is on his way, ma'am.
HM Queen Elizabeth II: To be, Robin, Prime Minister to be. I haven't asked him yet.
No, really, what if she [or now he] refused to?
Title card: "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown" - Henry IV
Of course, back then things were a bit different.
HM Queen Elizabeth II: Do you think it wise for the boys to go stalking so soon?
HM The Queen Mother: Anything that gets them into the fresh air is a good thing.
HM Queen Elizabeth II: Well maybe they shouldn't take their guns, I mean if a photographer were to see them it might send out the wrong signal.
HM The Queen Mother: If there is a photographer out there, he could be the first kill of the day.
Tee-hee?
Cherie Blair: I don't know why I'm surprised. At the end of the day, all Labour Prime Ministers go ga-ga for The Queen.
Tony Blair: [staring intently at the TV screen watching The Queen's speech] What?
Tee-hee?
Alastair Campbell: Flippin' heck. You think the Royals are nutters? You should meet their flunkies. Two and a half hours of whether she should be carried in a hearse or a gun carriage.
Next up [sort of]: Trump's flunkies here.
Alastair Campbell: You going to speak to the Queen?
Tony Blair: Yep.
Alastair Campbell: Ask her if she greased the brakes.
Of course, everyone knows it was Prince Phillip.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2024 8:14 pm
by iambiguous
Despair...
"The luminous and shocking beauty of the everyday is something I try to remain alert to, if only as an antidote to the chronic cynicism and disenchantment that seems to surround everything, these days. It tells me that, despite how debased or corrupt we are told humanity is and how degraded the world has become, it just keeps on being beautiful. It can’t help it.” Nick Cave
Next up: the luminous and shocking beauty of the everyday here.
“To hope is to accept despair as an emotion but not as an analysis. To recognize that what is unlikely is possible, just as what is likely is not inevitable. To understand that difficult is not the same as impossible." Rebecca Solnit
And who needs a context here, right?
“At some age you fancy you might rise above these sorts of things and at some age you dont. What is it that we're looking for? It's not grace or salvation and it is droll beyond words to imagine that it's love.” Cormac McCarthy
Uh, wisdom?
“Nothing is simpler than despair, but I don't think any simple story tells the whole story. So all hail complexities” John Green
That's where I come in, isn't it?
“I'm the sacrifice everyone is willing to make.” Brent Weeks
Actually, I don't even know him.
“Birth is stressful, aging is stressful, death is stressful; sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are stressful; association with the unbeloved is stressful, separation from the loved is stressful, not getting what is wanted is stressful.” Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta
Pronouncing his name is no doubt stressful for some.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2024 11:05 pm
by iambiguous
High Plains Drifter
Lewis Belding: I got 18 people in my hotel! Where are they gonna go?
The Stranger: Out.
But all is not lost for them...
Preacher: See here, you can't turn all these people out into the night. It is inhuman, brother. Inhuman!
The Stranger: I'm not your brother.
Preacher: We are all brothers in the eyes of God.
The Stranger: All these people, are they your sisters and brothers?
Preacher: They most certainly are.
The Stranger: ...Then you won't mind if they come over and stay at your place, will ya?
And it won't cost them a penny more than what Belding was charging.
Sheriff Dan Shaw: Well, I been needin' to talk with you; now's as good a time as any.
The Stranger: What about?
Sheriff Dan Shaw: Billy Borders.
The Stranger: Don't know the man.
Sheriff Dan Shaw: Well, you missed your chance; you shot him yesterday.
The wild, wild West as it were.
Scripted, of course.
Mordecai: What about after we do it?
The Stranger: Hmm?
Mordecai: What do we do then?
The Stranger: Then you live with it.
Not much that isn't applicable to.
Warden: Bridges, you Carlin boys, don't forget your tickets back to my little hotel
[throws their guns and gun belts on the ground]
Warden: Don't worry, they ain't loaded.
Stacey Bridges, Outlaw: What about our horses? We rode in here on three good animals.
Warden: What do you think you been eatin' the last six months.
Of course, Peta wasn't around back then.
Callie Travers: Just what do you consider going too far? Isn't forcible rape in broad daylight a misdemeanor in this town?
Too close to call?
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Fri Feb 16, 2024 12:50 am
by iambiguous
Slavoj Žižek
Love feels like a great misfortune, a monstrous parasite, a permanent state of emergency that ruins all small pleasures.
Not unlike hate, for that matter.
Because the horror of Communism, Stalinism, is not that bad people do bad things — they always do. It's that good people do horrible things thinking they are doing something great.
Any good people here? You're up!
Yeah, because I'm extremely romantic here. You know what is my fear? This postmodern, permissive, pragmatic etiquette towards sex. It's horrible. They claim sex is healthy; it's good for the heart, for blood circulation, it relaxes you. They even go into how kissing is also good because it develops the muscles here – this is horrible, my God! It's no longer that absolute passion. I like this idea of sex as part of love, you know: 'I'm ready to sell my mother into slavery just to fuck you for ever.' There is something nice, transcendent, about it. I remain incurably romantic.
Fuck that, he thought.
In a traditional German toilet, the hole into which shit disappears after we flush is right at the front, so that shit is first laid out for us to sniff and inspect for traces of illness. In the typical French toilet, on the contrary, the hole is at the back, i.e. shit is supposed to disappear as quickly as possible. Finally, the American (Anglo-Saxon) toilet presents a synthesis, a mediation between these opposites: the toilet basin is full of water, so that the shit floats in it, visible, but not to be inspected. It is clear that none of these versions can be accounted for in purely utilitarian terms: each involves a certain ideological perception of how the subject should relate to excrement.
Your toilet might be different. So, get back to us on that, okay?
A German officer visited Picasso in his Paris studio during the Second World War. There he saw Guernica and, shocked at the modernist chaos of the painting, asked Picasso: Did you do this? Picasso calmly replied: No, you did this!”
You tell me: https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=0 ... =620&dpr=1
The true ethical test is not only the readiness to save the victims, but also - even more, perhaps - the ruthless dedication to annihilating those who made them victims.
Pick one:
1] our victims
2] their victims
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Fri Feb 16, 2024 2:30 am
by iambiguous
Heathers
Heather Chandler: Well, fuck me gently with a chainsaw. Do I look like Mother Teresa?
Big blue it is then.
J.D.: Today was great! Chaos is great. Chaos is what killed the dinosaurs, darling.
And where would we be today if it hadn't?
Veronica Sawyer: Dear Diary, my teen-angst bullshit now has a body count.
On the other hand, they were scumbags.
J.D.: Football season is over, Veronica. Kurt and Ram had nothing left to offer the school except date rapes and AIDS jokes.
And who can argue with that?
J.D.: The extreme always seems to make an impression.
Not counting me here, though, of course.
Heather Duke: I prayed for the death of Heather Chandler many times and I felt bad every time I did it but I kept doing it anyway. Now I know you understood everything. Praise Jesus, Hallelujah.
A True Christian indeed!
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Fri Feb 16, 2024 7:42 pm
by iambiguous
Nihilism...
“...pick up your axe, start at the roots
don't miss the trunk, never forget:
to end life truly and finally
start at the roots or end there.” Moonshine Noire
And what might be the roots here?
“Nihilism isn’t sustainable as a magic feather. I don’t want to be able to sleep at night because I don’t care about what’s happening tomorrow.” Liz Harris
Your task? To explain that.
“There is no more hope for meaning. And without a doubt this is a good thing: meaning is mortal. Appearances, they, are immortal, invulnerable to the nihilism. This is where seduction begins.” Jean Baudrillard
He wondered: "Is this the philosophical equivalent of blah, blah, blah?"
“In every life there are events that reshape one's sense of existence. Afterward, all is different and the past is dimmed.” Annie Proulx
Mine? Song Be. Now yours.
“Life to be bearable must be lived intensely. Through it a continuous stream of emotion passes. Though that emotion is ever changing as flowing water changes, it at least bears us along on a current that gives the illusion of continuity and permanence. But analyze life, tear its trappings off, lay it bare with thought, with logic, with philosophy, and its emptiness is revealed as a bottomless pit; its nothingness frankly confesses to nothingness, and Despair comes to perch in the soul.” Giovanni Papini
So, let's bring this down out of the clouds.
“I praise, I do not reproach, nihilism's arrival. I believe it is one of the greatest crises, a moment of the deepest self-reflection of humanity. Whether man recovers from it, whether he becomes master of this crisis, is a question of his strength.” Friedrich Nietzsche
Uh, cue the Übermensch?
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Fri Feb 16, 2024 8:24 pm
by iambiguous
Stalker
Stalker: You can't be happy at the expense of another's unhappiness.
Theoretically?
Stalker: [the wagon stops, the scene is in color now] We are home!
If only up on the silver screen?
Stalker: The Zone is a very complicated system of traps, and they're all deadly. I don't know what's going on here in the absence of people, but the moment someone shows up, everything comes into motion. Old traps disappear and new ones emerge. Safe spots become impassable. Now your path is easy, now it's hopelessly involved. That's the Zone. It may even seem capricious. But it is what we've made it with our condition. It happened that people had to stop halfway and go back. Some of them even died on the very threshold of the room. But everything that's going on here depends not on the Zone, but on us!
Writer: So it lets the good ones pass and kills the bad ones?
Stalker: I don't know. I think it lets those pass who have lost all hope. Not good or bad, but wretched people. But even the most wretched will die if they don't know how to behave. You have been lucky, it just warned you.
Not all that different from...Judgment Day?
Stalker: The Zone wants to be respected. Otherwise it will punish.
Next up: your Zone.
Writer: Some bastard abuses you, you're hurt. A different bastard praises you, you're hurt.
Heads they win, tails you lose.
The bitches too.
Writer: You put your heart and soul into your work and they devour you. They even devour the filth in your soul. They're all literate. They all have voracious appetites. They all keep crowding round - journalists, editors, critics, a constant stream of women. All of them clamoring for more. What kind of writer am I if I detest writing? It it's torture for me, a painful, shameful occupation, something akin to extruding hemorrhoids. I used to think my books helped people to become better, but nobody needs me. If I die, in a couple of days, they'll find someone else to devour. I wanted to change them, but they've changed me to fit their own image.
And, of course, the equivalent of that here.
If there is one?
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Fri Feb 16, 2024 9:45 pm
by iambiguous
God...
“If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse.” Woody Allen
Let's speculate on what that might be.
“I don't believe in any actual thinking God that marks the fall of every bird in Australia or every bug in India, a God that records all of our sins in a big golden book and judges us when we die. I don't want to believe in a God who would deliberately create bad people and then deliberately send them to roast in a hell He created...but I believe there has to be something” Stephen King
Something works for me. Or, sure, something else.
“Why worry about minor little details like clean air, clean water, safe ports and the safety net when Jesus is going to give the world an "Extreme Makeover: Planet Edition" right after he finishes putting Satan in his place once and for all?” Arianna Huffington
No, really, where does Satan fit into the Second Coming?
“Science can teach us, and I think our hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supporters, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make the world a fit place to live.” Bertrand Russell
And how hopelessly naive might this be?
“When the faithful are asked whether God really exists, they often begin by talking about the enigmatic mysteries of the universe and the limits of human understanding. ‘Science cannot explain the Big Bang,’ they exclaim, ‘so that must be God’s doing.’ Yet like a magician fooling an audience by imperceptibly replacing one card with another, the faithful quickly replace the cosmic mystery with the worldly lawgiver. After giving the name of ‘God’ to the unknown secrets of the cosmos, they then use this to somehow condemn bikinis and divorces. ‘We do not understand the Big Bang – therefore you must cover your hair in public and vote against gay marriage.’ Not only is there no logical connection between the two, but they are in fact contradictory. The deeper the mysteries of the universe, the less likely it is that whatever is responsible for them gives a damn about female dress codes or human sexual behaviour.” Yuval Noah Harari
Hell bound, isn't he?
“And why does this same God tell me how to raise my children when he had to drown his?” Robert G. Ingersoll
Hell bound, isn't he?
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Fri Feb 16, 2024 11:44 pm
by iambiguous
Picnic at Hanging Rock
[first lines]
Miranda: What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream.
Especially, as it turned out, at Hanging Rock.
Marion: A surprising number of human beings are without purpose, though it is probable that they are performing some function unknown to themselves.
Or, as likely as not, improbable?
Miranda: Everything begins and ends at the exactly right time and place.
Or, as likely as not, at exactly the wrong time and place.
Miss McCraw: This we do for pleasure, so that we may shortly be at the mercy of venomous snakes and poisonous ants. How foolish can human creatures be.
Imagine then her reaction to us here.
Edith: Except for those people down there, we might be the only living creatures in the whole world.
Spookier still, the whole universe?
[last lines]
Narrator: The body of Mrs. Arthur Appleyard, Principal of Appleyard College, was found at the base of Hanging Rock on Friday 27 March 1900. Although the exact circumstances of her death are not known, it is believed she fell while attempting to climb the rock. The search for the missing school girls and their governess continued spasmodically for the next few years without success. To this day their disappearance remains a mystery.
On the other hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picnic_at ... in_reality
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Sat Feb 17, 2024 6:59 pm
by iambiguous
Body Heat
Matty: [to Ned] You aren't too smart, are you? I like that in a man.
Ned: What else do you like? Lazy? Ugly? Horny? I got 'em all.
Matty: You don't look lazy.
The lady from Hell.
[Ned is getting the arson set-up from Teddy]
Teddy Lewis: Hey now, I want to ask you something. Are you listening to me, asshole? Because, I like you. I got a serious question for you: What the fuck are you doing? This is not shit for you to be messin' with. Are you ready to hear something? I want you to see if this sounds familiar: any time you try a decent crime, you got fifty ways you're gonna fuck up. If you think of twenty-five of them, then you're a genius - and you ain't no genius. You remember who told me that?
[Ned nods, "yes"]
He should have nodded louder.
Ned: Maybe you shouldn't dress like that.
Matty: This is a blouse and a skirt. I don't know what you're talking about.
Ned: You shouldn't wear that body.
He's doomed.
Ned: Can I buy you a drink?
Matty: I told you. I've got a husband.
Ned: I'll buy him one too.
Matty: He's out of town.
Ned: My favorite kind. We'll drink to him.
Matty: Only comes up on weekends.
Ned: I'm liking him better all the time.
What could go wrong?
Ned: I need someone to take care of me, someone to rub my tired muscles, smooth out my sheets.
Matty: Get married.
Ned: I just need it for tonight.
Though it turned out a bit longer.
Ned: How's the cop business, Oscar?
Oscar: Real good. Always starts hopping in weather like this. When it gets this hot, people try to kill each other.
And, down there, who can blame them.