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Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2024 5:26 am
by iambiguous
Eyes Wide Shut
Mysterious Woman: Stop! Let him go! I am ready to redeem him. Take me!
Red Cloak: [stands up from his throne] You are ready to redeem him? Do you realize what you are taking upon yourself... in doing this?
Mysterious Woman: Yes!
[there is a pause as the masked and cloaked cult members murmer and gasp while Bill looks on]
Red Cloak: Very well. Take her away.
[to Bill]
Red Cloak: Mister... you are free to go. But I warn you... if you make any further inquires, or if you tell a single soul about what you've seen here tonight... there will be very dire consequences for you and your family! Do you understand?
Dr. Bill Harford: [as he watches the mysterious woman being led away by another cult member] What is going to happen to that woman?
Red Cloak: No one can change her fate now. When a promise has been made here, there is no turning back. As for you... you are free. Go!
And, of course. we'll never know what really happed to any of them.
Dr. Bill Harford: I know you would never be unfaithful to me.
Cue the real world?
Alice Harford: Hmmm, tell me something, those two girls at the party last night. Did you, by any chance, happen to fuck them?
No, but, if not for the girl with big tits, what are the odds that he wouldn't have?
Alice Harford: ...And at no time did he ever leave my mind. If he wanted me, I would give up everything.
Let's just say he dwells on this...intensely.
Alice Harford: Why don't you tell me?
Sandor Szavost: It was the only way they could lose their virginity and be free to do what they wanted with other men. The ones they really wanted.
Alice Harford: Fascinating.
Dangerous liaisons let's call them.
Mr. Milich: Was your Costume a Success?
That's one way to put it.
Now, let's move on to his daughter.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2024 8:18 pm
by iambiguous
Leo Tolstoy from A Confession
I understood, not with my intellect but with my whole being, that no theories of the rationality of existence or of progress could justify such an act; I realized that even if all the people in the world from the day of creation found this to be necessary according to whatever theory, I knew that it was not necessary and that it was wrong. Therefore, my judgments must be based-on what is right and necessary and not on what people say and do; I must judge not according to progress but according to my own heart.
How naive can you get!
If it is naive.
...in infinite space and time everything develops, becomes more perfect and more complex, is differentiated, is to say nothing at all. Those are all words with no meaning, for in the infinite is neither complex nor simple, no forward nor backward, or better or worse.
Next up: finite time and space.
Same difference?
With all my soul I longed to be in a position to join with the people in performing the rites of their faith, but I could not do it. I felt that I would be lying to myself, mocking what was sacred to me, if I were to go through with it.
Imagine then those like him on Judgment Day. What say You, oh Lord?
I turned my attention to every thing that was done by people who claimed to be Christians, I was horrified.
Next up [of course]: All the things that God's done:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_earthquakes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l ... _eruptions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... l_cyclones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tsunamis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landslides
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fires
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_floods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... ore_deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_diseases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events
My brother's death: wise, good, serious, he fell ill while still a young man, suffered for more than a year, and died painfully, not understanding why he had lived and still less why he had to die. No theories could give me, or him, any reply to these questions during his slow and painful dying.
The Fool!
Right, IC?
I do not live when I lose belief in the existence of God. I should long ago have killed myself had I not had a dim hope of finding Him. I live really live only when I feel him and seek Him.
He wondered how that turned out.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2024 9:08 pm
by iambiguous
Adaptation
Charlie Kaufman: There was this time in high school. I was watching you out the library window. You were talking to Sarah Marsh.
Donald Kaufman: Oh, God. I was so in love with her.
Charlie Kaufman: I know. And you were flirting with her. And she was being really sweet to you.
Donald Kaufman: I remember that.
Charlie Kaufman: Then, when you walked away, she started making fun of you with Kim Canetti. And it was like they were laughing at me. You didn't know at all. You seemed so happy.
Donald Kaufman: I knew. I heard them.
Charlie Kaufman: How come you looked so happy?
Donald Kaufman: I loved Sarah, Charles. It was mine, that love. I owned it. Even Sarah didn't have the right to take it away. I can love whoever I want.
Charlie Kaufman: But she thought you were pathetic.
Donald Kaufman: That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you. That's what I decided a long time ago. What's up?
Charlie Kaufman: [stunned] Thank you.
So, who loves me here, he wondered. 
Charlie Kaufman [first lines]: [voiceover] Do I have an original thought in my head? My bald head. Maybe if I were happier, my hair wouldn't be falling out. Life is short. I need to make the most of it. Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I'm a walking cliché. I really need to go to the doctor and have my leg checked. There's something wrong. A bump. The dentist called again. I'm way overdue. If I stop putting things off, I would be happier. All I do is sit on my fat ass. If my ass wasn't fat I would be happier. I wouldn't have to wear these shirts with the tails out all the time. Like that's fooling anyone. Fat ass. I should start jogging again. Five miles a day. Really do it this time. Maybe rock climbing. I need to turn my life around. What do I need to do? I need to fall in love. I need to have a girlfriend. I need to read more, improve myself. What if I learned Russian or something? Or took up an instrument? I could speak Chinese. I'd be the screenwriter who speaks Chinese and plays the oboe. That would be cool. I should get my hair cut short. Stop trying to fool myself and everyone else into thinking I have a full head of hair. How pathetic is that? Just be real. Confident. Isn't that what women are attracted to? Men don't have to be attractive. But that's not true. Especially these days. Almost as much pressure on men as there is on women these days. Why should I be made to feel I have to apologize for my existence? Maybe it's my brain chemistry. Maybe that's what's wrong with me. Bad chemistry. All my problems and anxiety can be reduced to a chemical imbalance or some kind of misfiring synapses. I need to get help for that. But I'll still be ugly though. Nothing's gonna change that.
On the other hand, he is Charlie Kaufmann.
Who are you?
John Laroche: Point is, what's so wonderful is that every one of these flowers has a specific relationship with the insect that pollinates it. There's a certain orchid look exactly like a certain insect so the insect is drawn to this flower, its double, its soul mate, and wants nothing more than to make love to it. And after the insect flies off, spots another soul-mate flower and makes love to it, thus pollinating it. And neither the flower nor the insect will ever understand the significance of their lovemaking. I mean, how could they know that because of their little dance the world lives? But it does. By simply doing what they're designed to do, something large and magnificent happens. In this sense they show us how to live - how the only barometer you have is your heart. How, when you spot your flower, you can't let anything get in your way.
Of course, he used to feel the same passion for fish, remember? And what is it now...pornography?
Charlie Kaufman [at a writing seminar]: Sir, what if the writer is attempting to create a story where nothing much happens? Where people don't change, they don't have any epiphanies, they struggle and are frustrated and nothing is resolved. More a reflection of the real world.
Robert McKee: The real world?
Charlie Kaufman: Yes, sir.
Robert McKee: The real fucking world. First of all, you write a screenplay without conflict or crisis you'll bore your audience to tears. Secondly, nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corruption. Every fucking day somewhere in the world somebody sacrifices his life to save somebody else. Every fucking day someone somewhere takes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ sake a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church! Someone goes hungry, somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can't find that stuff in life, then you my friend don't know crap about life! And why the FUCK are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don't have any use for it! I don't have any bloody use for it!
Charlie Kaufman: Okay, thanks.
Next up: the real world here. Let's find it.
Susan Orlean: There are too many ideas and things and people. Too many directions to go. I was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something, is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size.
You know, like the search for wisdom and the meaning of life here.
John Laroche: You know why I like plants?
Susan Orlean: Nuh uh.
John Laroche: Because they're so mutable. Adaptation is a profound process. Means you figure out how to thrive in the world.
Susan Orlean: [pause] Yeah but it's easier for plants. I mean they have no memory. They just move on to whatever's next. With a person though, adapting is almost shameful. It's like running away.
Here to one or another One True Path.
Unless, of course, it's mine.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2024 9:23 pm
by iambiguous
Osamu Dazai from No Longer Human
No less than myself, though in a different way, he was entirely removed from the activities of the human beings of the world. We were of one species if only in that we were both disoriented.
Of course, virtually might not count. But point taken.
My unhappiness was the unhappiness of a person who could not say no.
Not unlike a person who can't say yes. If you get my drift.
I was frightened even by God. I could not believe in His love, only in His punishment. Faith. That, I felt was the act of facing the tribunal of justice with one's head bowed to receive the scourge of God. I could believe in hell, but it was impossible for me believe in the existence of heaven.
But I repeat myself.
Crime and punishment. Dostoievski. These words grazed over a corner of my mind, startling me. Just supposing Dostoievski ranged ‘crime’ and 'punishment’ side by side not as synonyms but as antonyms. Crime and punishment—absolutely incompatible ideas, irreconcilable as oil and water. I felt I was beginning to understand what lay at the bottom of the scum-covered, turbid pond, that chaos of Dostoievski’s mind—no, I still didn’t quite see … Such thoughts were flashing through my head like a revolving lantern…
Antonyms my ass, he fumed.
It is true, I suppose, that nobody finds it exactly pleasant to be criticized or shouted at, but I see in the face of the human being raging at me a wild animal in its true colors, one more horrible than any lion, crocodile, or dragon.
Don't get me started, right?
It has seemed to me in fact that those who called me lucky were incomparably more fortunate than I.
Uh, life's not fair?
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2024 9:57 pm
by iambiguous
Pi
Sol Robeson: That is the truth of our world, Max. It can't be easily summed up with math.
Let alone determinism?
Sol Robeson: There will be no order, only chaos.
Like there isn't always -- and always will be? -- an ineffable intertwining of both.
Whatever that means?
Rabbi Cohen: Who do you think you are? You are only a vessel from our god. You are carrying a delivery that was meant for us.
Maximillian Cohen: It was given to me.
I'll bet that shut him up.
Not.
On the other hand...
Maximillian Cohen: It was given to me. It's inside of me. It's changing me.
Rabbi Cohen: It's killing you, because you are not ready to receive it.
Let alone Christians and Muslims, right?
Maximillian Cohen: [to Rabbi Cohen and a group of Kabbalists] It's just a number. I'm sure you've written down every 216 digit number. You've translated all of them. You've intoned them all. Haven't you? What's it gotten you? The number is nothing! It's the meaning. It's the syntax. It's what's between the numbers. You haven't understood it. It's because it's not for you! I've got it. I've got it! And I understand it and I'm going to see it. Rabbi, I was chosen!
Dasein? I was chosen! 
Maximillian Cohen: If the number's there I'll find it!
Huh? Everyone already knows it's 666.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2024 10:53 pm
by iambiguous
Jeanette Winterson from Written on the Body
You’ll get over it… It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it because ‘it” is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?
Or, as the cynics among us note, "blah, blah, blah"?
Time that withers you will wither me. We will fall like ripe fruit and roll down the grass together. Dear friend, let me lie beside you watching the clouds until the earth covers us and we are gone.
We are still talking about oblivion here, aren't we?
You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? 'I love you' is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them.
Love? Someone ought to write a song about it.
There is no discovery without risk and what you risk reveals what you value.
Of course, you can always take this too far.
When she bleeds the smells I know change colour. There is iron in her soul on those days. She smells like a gun.
Then like a bullet.
Trust me, I'm telling you stories....I can change the story. I am the story.
Want me to make up one for you?
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2024 12:10 am
by iambiguous
Requiem for a Dream
Mr. Rabinowitz: Such a son. Your mother needs you like a moose needs a hat rack.
Tell her that?
Harry Goldfarb: [Harry has just found out that Sara is on diet pills] Does he give you pills?
Sara Goldfarb: Of course he gives me pills. He's a doctor!
Harry Goldfarb: What kind of pills?
Sara Goldfarb: Uh, uh, a blue one, a purple one, an orange one...
Harry Goldfarb: I mean, like, what's in 'em.
Sara: Like, what's in the smack, Harry?
[deleted scene let's call it]
Tappy Tibbons: Now we come to step three. This... drives... most... people... crazy.
Of course, that's not actually disclosed. Let's take some guesses.
Big Tim: You know what I like best about paddy chicks? They give good head. But black broads don't know nothing about no head. I don't know why. Maybe it has something to do with some ancient tribal customs.
A tribe of scumbags, no doubt.
Harry Goldfarb: Let's do this right.
Tyrone: Naturally.
Pick one:
1] Cue Satyr
2] Cue Maia
Tyrone: [about the TV] Shit, this muthafucka's startin' to look a little seedy, man.
Harry: What's the matter, you particular all the sudden?
Tyrone: Hey, baby, I don't care if the motherfucker's growing hair just so long as we get our bread.
Drugs? Just say No!
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2024 9:23 pm
by iambiguous
Control
Ian Curtis: I wish I were a Warhol silk screen hanging on the wall. Or little Joe or maybe Lou. I'd love to be them all.
All New York's broken hearts and secrets would be mine. I'd put you on a movie reel, and that would be just fine.
Never happened though.
Ian Curtis: Existence. Well, what does it matter? I exist on the best terms I can. The past is now part of my future. The present is well out of hand.
And then his future today.
John Cooper Clarke: The colour scheme is fuckin' brown Everywhere in chicken town, The fuckin' pubs are fuckin' dull The fuckin' clubs are fuckin' full of fuckin' girls and fuckin' guys with fuckin' murder in their eyes, A fuckin' bloke gets fuckin' stabbed waitin' for a fuckin' cab, You fuckin' stay at fuckin' home, The fuckin' neighbours fuckin' moan, Keep the fuckin' racket down This is fuckin' chicken town The fuckin' pies are fuckin' old, The fuckin' chips are fuckin' cold, The fuckin' beer is fuckin' flat, The fuckin' flats have fuckin' rats, The fuckin' clocks are fuckin' wrong The fuckin' days are fuckin' long, It fuckin' gets you fuckin' down Evidently chicken town.
Or evidently not some insist.
Ian Curtis: I struggle between what I know is right in my own mind, and some warped truthfulness as seen through other people's eyes who have no heart, and can't see the difference anyway.
Between attacks as it were.
Ian Curtis: I don't want to be in the band anymore. Unknown Pleasures was it. I was happy. I never meant for it to grow like this. When I'm up there, singing they don't understand how much I give and how it affects me. Now they want more. They expect me to give more. And I don't know if I can. It's like it's not happening to me, but... someone pretending to be me, someone dressed in my skin. Now we're going to America. I have no control anymore. I don't know what to do.
And then one day he did.
Ian Curtis: Side effects include: drowsiness, apathy, and blurred vision...I'm taking two.
The actual side-effects could be truly debilitating.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2024 9:37 pm
by iambiguous
Despair...
Where should I direct this burning resentment, this feeling beyond despair? Who should I curse if I do not even believe in a god?” Kafka Asagiri
On this side of the grave, anyway.
“...if his cruelty had the sharp edge of despair, if slights and taunts were all that fell from his tongue now, what did it matter? He had always been awful. Now he was just worse.” Holly Black
Let's name names.
There's data in the world available only to those who have reached a certain level of wretchedness. You dont know what's down there if you havent been down there.” Cormac McCarthy
Here it's members taking aim at other members, while having lived a life that is utterly, utterly different.
“How much more straightforward it was to bear a physical illness or malady. You need not do anything but rest, and the body simply healed itself. Miseries of the mind, however, were quite another matter; they were a sticky spider's web, and Beatrice had learned that the more you struggled against them, the tighter the strands seemed to bind you.” Alexandra Bell
And, for many, forget about untangling it for others.
“I went to the window and looked out over the mounds of snow, wishing I could do everything in my life once as practice and then go back and do it again.” Leslie Feinberg
Fuck that. How about practicing until it's perfect?
“My hearing was not attuned to the sound of such bitterness. I guess I should not have been surprised. I should have known that in an atmosphere where false promises are daily realities, where deferred dreams are nightly facts, where acts of unpunished violence toward Negroes are a way of life, nonviolence would eventually be seriously questioned. I should have been reminded that disappointment produces despair and despair produces bitterness, and that the one thing certain about bitterness is its blindness. Bitterness has not the capacity to make the distinction between some and all. When some members of the dominant group, particularly those in power, are racist in attitude and practice, bitterness accuses the whole group.” Martin Luther King Jr.
Of course, that's easier to believe when you are actually convinced that there is a Judgment Day. Divine Justice? Don't leave home without it.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2024 10:57 pm
by iambiguous
Network
Max Schumacher: You need me. You need me badly. Because I'm your last contact with human reality. I love you. And that painful, decaying love is the only thing between you and the shrieking nothingness you live the rest of the day.
Diana Christensen: [hesitatingly] Then, don't leave me.
Max Schumacher: It's too late, Diana. There's nothing left in you that I can live with. You're one of Howard's humanoids. If I stay with you, I'll be destroyed. Like Howard Beale was destroyed. Like Laureen Hobbs was destroyed. Like everything you and the institution of television touch is destroyed. You're television incarnate, Diana: Indifferent to suffering; insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death are all the same to you as bottles of beer. And the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split seconds and instant replays. You're madness, Diana. Virulent madness. And everything you touch dies with you. But not me. Not as long as I can feel pleasure, and pain... and love.
[Kisses her]
Max Schumacher: And it's a happy ending: Wayward husband comes to his senses, returns to his wife, with whom he has established a long and sustaining love. Heartless young woman left alone in her arctic desolation. Music up with a swell; final commercial. And here are a few scenes from next week's show.
[Picks up his suitcases and leaves]
Not a dry eye in the house?
Diana Christensen: I'm sorry for all those things I said to you last night. You're not the worst fuck I ever had. Believe me, I've had worse. You don't puff or snorkel and make death-like rattles. As a matter of fact, you're rather serene in the sack.
Max Schumacher: Why is it that a woman always thinks that the most savage thing she can say to a man is to impugn his cocksmanship.
Diana Christensen: I'm sorry I impugned your cocksmanship.
Max Schumacher: I gave up comparing genitals back in the schoolyard.
When did you give that up?
Howard Beale: Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube. This tube is the gospel, the ultimate revelation; this tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers; this tube is the most awesome goddamn propaganda force in the whole godless world, and woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people, and that's why woe is us that Edward George Ruddy died. Because this company is now in the hands of CCA, the Communications Corporation of America; there's a new chairman of the board, a man called Frank Hackett, sitting in Mr. Ruddy's office on the twentieth floor. And when the 12th largest company in the world controls the most awesome goddamn propaganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what shit will be peddled for truth on this network?
Let's imagine his reaction to the internet.
Howard Beale: Good evening. Today is Wednesday, September the 24th, and this is my last broadcast. Yesterday I announced on this program that I was going to commit public suicide, admittedly an act of madness. Well, I'll tell you what happened: I just ran out of bullshit. Am I still on the air? I really don't know any other way to say it other than I just ran out of bullshit. Bullshit is all the reasons we give for living. And if we can't think up any reasons of our own, we always have the God bullshit. We don't know why we're going through all this pointless pain, humiliation, decays, so there better be someone somewhere who does know. That's the God bullshit. And then, there's the noble man bullshit; that man is a noble creature that can order his own world; who needs God? Well, if there's anybody out there that can look around this demented slaughterhouse of a world we live in and tell me that man is a noble creature, believe me: That man is full of bullshit. I don't have anything going for me. I haven't got any kids. And I was married for thirty-three years of shrill, shrieking fraud. So I don't have any bullshit left. I just ran out of it, you see.
Imagine Howard Beale...here?
Howard Beale: [on the air] I just ran out of bullshit.
Harry Hunter: [picks up ringing phone in editing room] Mr. Schumacher's right here, do you want to talk to him?
Howard Beale: Bullshit is all the reasons we give for living. If we can't think up reasons of our own, we always have the God bullshit.
Max Schumacher: [on the phone] Yeah, Tom, what is it?
Howard Beale: We don't know why we go through all this pointless pain, humiliation, and decay. So there better be someone somewhere who does know. That's the God bullshit.
Max Schumacher: He's saying that life is bullshit, and it is, so what are you screaming about?
[hangs up]
He wondered if death was bullshit.
Diana Christensen: Look, I sent you all a concept analysis report yesterday. Did any of you read it?
[Aides stare blankly at her]
Diana Christensen: Well, in a nutshell, it said: "The American people are turning sullen. They've been clobbered on all sides by Vietnam, Watergate, the inflation, the depression; they've turned off, shot up, and they've fucked themselves limp, and nothing helps." So, this concept analysis report concludes, "The American people want somebody to articulate their rage for them." I've been telling you people since I took this job six months ago that I want angry shows. I don't want conventional programming on this network. I want counterculture, I want anti-establishment. I don't want to play butch boss with you people, but when I took over this department, it had the worst programming record in television history. This network hasn't one show in the top twenty. This network is an industry joke, and we'd better start putting together one winner for next September. I want a show developed based on the activities of a terrorist group, "Joseph Stalin and His Merry Band of Bolsheviks," I want ideas from you people. This is what you're paid for. And by the way, the next time I send an audience research report around, you'd all better read it, or I'll sack the fucking lot of you. Is that clear?
Of course, we're lucky enough to have Donald Trump, aren't we?
Now, back to The Mod Squad.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2024 11:18 pm
by iambiguous
Suicide...
“I will kill myself soon. But until then how do l tame my pain?” Sonali Deraniyagala
Want to know what I do?
“You may say suicide is a loss of control and cowardly. Foolish as it may sound, I am prepared to argue.” Dee Remy
Argue away. But then get on with it.
“Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
'Good-morning,' and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich--yes, richer than a king--
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.” Edward Arlington Robinson
Or: https://youtu.be/fAGKpoVFbmw?si=EVqwoflJTTkzhZEV
Just thank the Lord that you're not a rich capitalist!
“He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it.” G.K. Chesterton
How's that working out for you?
“You cannot breathe life into someone refusing to inhale." Colleen Songs
Of course, you could always join them.
“Have you ever, for even a second, thought about how hard it is for people like me just to stay alive?” Inio Asano
Anyone like him here?
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2024 2:54 am
by iambiguous
Adaptation
Susan Orlean: Do you ever get lonely sometimes, Johnny?
John Laroche: Well, I was a weird kid. Nobody liked me. But I had this idea. If I waited long enough, someone would come around and just, you know... understand me. Like my mom, except someone else. She'd look at me and quietly say: "Yes." Just like that. And I wouldn't be alone anymore.
So, would anyone here like to, you know, understand me?
John Laroche: Look, I'll tell you a story, all right? I once fell deeply, you know, profoundly in love with tropical fish. I had 60 goddamn fish tanks in my house. I'd skin-dive to find just the right ones. Anisotremus virginicus, Holacanthus ciliaris, Chaetodon capistratus. You name it. Then one morning, I woke up and said, "Fuck fish." I renounce fish, I will never set foot in that ocean again. That's how much "fuck fish." That was 17 years ago and I have never stuck so much as a toe in that ocean. And I love the ocean.
Susan Orlean: But why?
John Laroche: Done with fish.
See, I told you.
Valerie Thomas: I guess we thought that maybe Susan Orlean and Leroche could fall in love, and...
Charlie Kaufman: Okay. But, I'm saying, it's like, I don't want to cram in sex or guns or car chases, you know...or characters, you know, learning profound life lessons or growing or coming to like each other or overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end, you know. I mean...The book isn't like that, and life isn't like that. You know, it just isn't. And...I feel very strongly about this.
Of course, being philosophers, we know all about this stuff.
Charlie Kaufman: Mr. McKee?
Robert McKee: Yes.
Charlie Kaufman: I'm the guy you yelled at this morning.
Robert McKee: I need more.
No unnecessary voiceover!
Charlie Kaufman: We open on Charlie Kaufman. Fat, old, bald, repulsive, sitting in a Hollywood restaurant, across from Valerie Thomas, a lovely, statuesque film executive. Kaufman, trying to get a writing assignment, wanting to impress her, sweats profusely. Fat, bald Kaufman paces furiously in his bedroom. He speaks into his hand held tape recorder, and he says: "Charlie Kaufman. Fat, bald, repulsive, old, sits at a Hollywood restaurant with Valerie Thomas."
Of course, now his net worth is over ten million dollars.
John Laroche: Who's gonna play me?
Susan Orlean: Well, I've gotta write the book first, John. Then, you know, they get somebody to write the screenplay.
John Laroche: Hey, I think I should play me.
And now we know!
And, I should note, so did the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2024 11:22 pm
by iambiguous
Slavoj Žižek
Do not blame people and their attitudes: the problem is not corruption or greed, the problem is the system that pushes you to be corrupt. The solution is not, "Main Street, not Wall Street," but to change the system where Main Street cannot function without Wall Street.
So, don't forget to vote. At least until the workers of the world unite.
I despise the kind of book which tells you how to live, how to make yourself happy! Philosophers have no good news for you at this level! I believe the first duty of philosophy is making you understand what deep shit you are in!
So, how am I doing here?
…I am a good Hegelian. If you have a good theory, forget about the reality.
Of course, he's only paraphrasing Veritas Aequitas.
Ideology is strong exactly because it is no longer experienced as ideology…we feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.
Start here: determinism.
An enemy is someone whose story you have not heard.
Unless, of course, it's a friend.
We’re not dreamers. We’re awaking from a dream turning into a nightmare. We’re not destroying anything. We’re watching the system destroy itself.
That sound you now hear is the system chortling.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2024 11:31 pm
by iambiguous
Pi
Maximillian Cohen: Failed treatments to date: Beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, adrenalin injections, high dose ibuprofen, steroids, Trager Mentastics, violent exercise, cafergot suppositories, caffeine, acupuncture, marijuana, Percodan, Midrine, Tenormin, Sansert, homeopathics. No results. No results...
Want to know all of my own failed treatments to date?
Lenny Meyer: The Torah is just a long string of numbers. Some say that it's a code sent to us from God.
Or a code sent from us to God?
Maximillian Cohen: 10:28. Results: bullshit.
Not counting the one, well, you know the one.
Rabbi Cohen: [a group of Kabbalists, the Rabbi speaks to Max] The Talmud tells us it began 2,000 years ago, when the Romans destroyed the second temple.
Maximillian Cohen: What is this?
Rabbi Cohen: Max, you will understand everything if you listen... The Romans also destroyed our priesthood, the Cohanim. And with their deaths, they destroyed our greatest secret. In the center of the temple was the heart of the Jewish life, the Holy of Holies. It was the earthly residence of our God. The one God. It housed the Ark of the Tabernacle, which stored the original ten commandments which God gave to Moses. Only one man was allowed to enter this Holy of Holies on one day, the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur. On the Day of Atonement, all of Israel would descend upon Jerusalem to watch the High Priest, the Cohen Godul, make his trip to the Holy of Holies. If the High Priest was pure, he would emerge moments later and we were secured a prosperous year. It meant that we were closer to the Messianic Age. But, if he was impure, he would die instantly and it meant that we were doomed. The Holy Priest had one ritual to perform in the Holy of Holies, he had to intone a single word... That word, was the true name of God.
Maximillian Cohen: So?
Rabbi Cohen: The true name, which only the Cohanim knew, was 216 letters long.
Next up: the Holy of Holies here.
Marcy Dawson: Ah, the pursuit of knowledge.
In other words, for Marcy and her ilk, the pursuit of money.
Lenny Meyer: You gave it to those Wall Street bastards?
Like they needed it, right?
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2024 12:38 am
by iambiguous
Time
“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” Marthe Troly-Curtin
Does that let us off the hook here then?
“Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying: Let’s not forget this.” Dave Eggers
Posts too?
“How did it get so late so soon?” Dr. Seuss
Again and again and again, in other words.
“Top 15 Things Money Can’t Buy:
Time. Happiness. Inner Peace. Integrity. Love. Character. Manners. Health. Respect. Morals. Trust. Patience. Class. Common sense. Dignity.” Roy T. Bennett
Though not necessarily in that order, he suspected.
“Don't waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.” Paulo Coelho
Wow, what if that was actually true here too?!
“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.” Eric Roth
The Benjamin Button Syndrome...Part Two?