Quote of the day

[accelafine]

Bored are you? You should try gardening.

[iambiguous]

Moneyball

Grady: Major League Baseball thinks the way I think. You’re not gonna win. And I’ll give you a nickel’s worth of free advice. You’re never going to get another job when Schott fires you after this catastrophic season you’re setting us all up for. And then you’re gonna have to explain to your kid why you’re working at Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Billy: I’m not gonna fire you, Grady.
Grady: Fuck you, Billy.
Billy: Now I will.

That'll do it.

Radio host: We’ve got Grady Fuson, former head of scouting for the Athletics. Grady, can you interpret for us what is going on?
Grady: They call it Moneyball.
Host: Moneyball?
Grady: Yes, and it was a nice theory, and now it’s just not working out.
Commentator: Billy Bean has build this team on the ideas of a guy, Bill James, who wrote an interesting book on baseball statistics. The problem is that Bill James never played, never managed. He was in fact a security guard at a pork-and-beans company.

Whatever works?

Billy [to himself—with the team in last place]: What the hell am I doing?

Let's get back to that.

Billy: Art, you got a minute?
Art: Yeah. Take a seat.
Billy: You can’t start Peña at first tonight. You’ll have to start Hatteberg.
Art: Yeah, I don’t want to go fifteen rounds, Billy. The lineup card is mine, and that’s all.
Billy: That lineup card is definitely yours. I’m just saying you can’t start Peña at first.
Art: Well, I am starting him at first.
Billy: I don’t think so. He plays for Detroit now.

That is a problem.

Billy: I hate losing even more than I wanna win. And there’s a difference.

A hell of a difference?

Billy: When your enemy is making mistakes, don’t interrupt him.

In fact, don't even think about it.

John Henry: For forty-one million, you built a playoff team. You lost Damon, Giambi, Isringhausen, Pena and you won more games without them than you did with them. You won the exact same number of games that the Yankees won, but the Yankees spent one point four million per win and you paid two hundred and sixty thousand. I know you’ve taken it in the teeth out there, but the first guy through the wall. It always gets bloody, always. It’s the threat of not just the way of doing business, but in their minds it’s threatening the game. But really what it’s threatening is their livelihoods, it’s threatening their jobs, it’s threatening the way that they do things. And every time that happens, whether it’s the government or a way of doing business or whatever it is, the people are holding the reins, have their hands on the switch. They go bat shit crazy. I mean, anybody who’s not building a team right and rebuilding it using your model, they’re dinosaurs. They’ll be sitting on their ass on the sofa in October, watching the Boston Red Sox win the World Series.

Just out of curiosity...Moneyball today?

[iambiguous]

When it comes to man’s inhumanity to man this is barely a blip on the screen. And those who pop up here have nothing but the best of intentions spurring them on. Just ask them.

Racism. It is so pervasive [over the course of human history] some argue it must somehow be programed into our genes.

But so much of it is rooted in turn in memes. In class. In ignorance. In scape-goating. In the politics of race-baiting.

And, needless to say, Christianity is everywhere here.

But then some will note: “Well, maybe taking them the way they did is wrong…but aren’t they really better off in the ‘modern world’”? And in some contexts this can surely be a considerably more complex state of affairs than in others.

This is truly a remarkable story. We are talking about three little girls [the oldest 14] making a 1,500 mile journey into the Australian outback. All to get home.


Rabbit-Proof Fence

Title Card: Western Australia 1931. For 100 years the Aboriginal Peoples have resisted the invasion of their lands by white settlers. Now, a special law, the Aborigines Act, controls their lives in every detail. Mr. A. O. Neville, the Chief Protector of Aborigines, is the legal guardian of every Aborigine in the State of Western Australia. He has the power “to remove any half-caste child” from their family, from anywhere within the state.

Hard to believe?

Molly [voiceover, in native language]: This is a true story - story of my sister Daisy, my cousin Gracie and me when we were little. Our people, the Jigalong mob, we were desert people then, walking all over our land. My mum told me about how the white people came to our country. They made a storehouse here at Jigalong - brought clothes and other things - flour, tobacco, tea. Gave them to us on ration day. We came there, made a camp nearby. They were building a long fence.

On the other hand, they could have been Nazis.

A.O. Neville: Er, now, this report from Constable Riggs about three little half-caste girls at the Jigalong fence depot - Molly, Gracie and Daisy. The youngest is of particular concern. She is promised to a full-blood. I’m authorising their removal. They’re to be taken to Moore River as soon as possible.

And that settles that.

A.O. Neville: As you know, every Aborigine born in this State comes under my control. Notice, if you will, the half-caste child. And there are ever-increasing numbers of them. Now, what is to happen to them? Are we to allow the creation of an unwanted third race? Should coloureds be encouraged to go back to the black? Or should they be advanced to white status and be absorbed in the white population?

To absorb or not to absorb.

A.O. Neville: Now, time and again, I’m asked by some white man, "If I marry this coloured person, 'will our children be black?' And as Chief Protector of Aborigines, it is my responsibility to accept or reject those marriages. Here is the answer. Three generations. Half-blood grandmother. Quadroon daughter. Octoroon grandson. Now, as you can see, in the third generation, or third cross, no trace of native origin is apparent. The continuing infiltration of white blood finally stamps out the black colour. The Aboriginal has simply been bred out.

Simple biology.

Gracie [in native language to her cousins]: New clothes!
Miss Jessop [in English]: This is your new home. We don’t use that jabber here. You speak English.

Next up: the jabbers here.

[iambiguous]

For those here who are truly, truly outraged that I am making a mockery of posting one quote a day here, I"d like to remind you that I created this thread...

viewtopic.php?t=38677

...as an alternative for the particularly hardcore sticklers.

I'll bump it to the top from time to time, okay?



A reminder:

Please note:

1] only one quote per day
2] preferably somewhere in the general vicinity of philosophy
3] absolutely nothing from The Onion

[iambiguous]

Rabbit-Proof Fence

Molly [to herself about everybody in Moore River] These people…make me sick! They make me sick.

So much for the best of intentions.

Molly: We’re hungry.
Woman: Are youse that lot from Moore River?
Molly: Yeah.
Woman: What - you girls walk all that way?
Molly: Yeah.
Woman: 800 miles? I was there. Too scared to run away, but. Everyone was always caught, stuck in that boob. Youse got the furtherest. Where you heading?
Molly: Home.

And more than half-way there already.

A.O. Neville [dictating a letter]: To Constable Riggs, Police Station, Nullagine. At present, we lack the funds to pursue the missing half-caste girls, Molly and Daisy. I would ask to be kept informed of their whereabouts, so that at some future date, they may indeed be…recovered. We face an uphill battle with these people…especially the bush natives, who have to be protected against themselves. If they would only understand what we are trying to do for them.

They probably still don't.

Molly [voiceover as an old woman in the present day]: We walked for nine weeks, a long way, all the way home. Then we went straightaway and hid in the desert. Got married. I had two baby girls. Then they took me and my kids back to that place, Moore River. And I walked all the way back to Jigalong again. carrying Annabelle the little one. When she was 3, that Mr. Neville took her away. I’ve never seen her again.

It's all for the best, of course.

Title card: Mr Neville was Chief Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia for 25 years. He retired in 1940. Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families throughout Australia until 1970. Today many of these Aboriginal people continue to suffer from this destruction of identity, family life and culture. We call them the Stolen Generations.

Next up: Native Americans right here at home. And slavery of course.

[iambiguous]

Free Will

“Yes I have free will; I have no choice but to have it.” Christopher Hitchens

And I have no choice but to disagree.

“In fact, if you are faced with the prospect of running across an open field in which lightning bolts are going to be a problem, you are much better off if their timing and location are determined by something, since then they may be predictable by you, and hence avoidable. Determinism is the friend, not the foe, of those who dislike inevitability.” Daniel C. Dennett

Click.

“Your personal will is the web your disease sits and spins in. The will you call your own ceased to be yours as of who knows how many Substance-drenched years ago.” David Foster Wallace

Reason enough to snuff it?

“Christianity would be helpless without the idea of free will and the idea of free will would be helpless without incongruity.” Kedar Joshi

Uh, let's not go there?

“Free will? Either you follow the word of God, or you'll be punished with eternal hellfire. That's the same kind of "choice" an abuse boyfriend gives you: 'Either you do exactly what I say, or I'll beat the shit out of you.” Oliver Gaspirtz

Yeah, what about that?

“No one denies that we are influenced by genes and environment. What is denied is that we are determined by our genes and/or environment, that we are literally puppets that cannot act differently, that we have no moral agency, no personal accountability, that we are mere machines." Mike Hockney

Unless, of course, God or No God, we were never able not to deny it.

[iambiguous]

The age of innocence? Isn’t that the age before ironism?

Hmm. Is there an age after it?

Inncocence here being a proper place for everything and everything being in its proper place. And then extending that iron clad truth to people.

And given the way in which people actually are what could possibly be more ironic?

It’s not that ironists did not exist back then, but that they had to keep it all well hidden. After all, among the gentry a faux paux was not to be taken lightly.

But in a sense these people really were innocent in that it would never even occur to them the world could be understood in any other way.

In large part this revolves around conflicting notions of human freedom: is it aimed more outward or inward? Is someone completely at home in a particular world more or less free than another who flits about more ambiguously in several?

They are both gorgeous but once together how long would the passion last? How different was it really back then? And in being gorgeous many others would go after them, right?

Bottom line: Is he an honorable man…or a coward?


The Age of Innocence

Narrator: Carriages waited at the curb for the entire performance. It was widely known in New York, but never acknowledged, that Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly than they want to get to it.

Now, of course, for many, it's amusement 24/7.

Narrator: But only by actually passing through the crimson drawing room could one see “Return of Spring,” the much-discussed nude by Bougeureau, which Beaufort had had the audacity to hang in plain sight. Archer enjoyed such challenges to convention. He questioned conformity in private but in public he upheld family and tradition. This was a world balanced so precariously that its harmony could be shattered by a whisper.

Psst...

Narrator: On the whole, Lawrence Lefferts was the foremost authority on “form” in New York. On the question of pumps versus patent- leather Oxfords, his authority had never been disputed.

The good old days let's call them.

Mrs. Archer: Poor Ellen. We must always remember what an eccentric bringing-up Medora Manson gave her. What can you expect of a girl who was allowed to wear black satin at her coming-out ball?

Gasp!

Narrator: They all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world. The real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs. These signs were not always subtle, and all the more significant for that. The refusals were more than a simple snubbing. They were an eradication.

Here we call it getting banned.

Ellen: Can I tell you, though what most interests me about New York? It’s that nothing has to be traditional here. All this blind obeying of tradition. . . somebody else’s tradition. . . is thoroughly needless. It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it a copy of another country. Do you suppose Christopher Columbus would have taken all that trouble just to go to the opera with Larry Lefferts?
Newland: I think if he knew Lefferts was here the Santa Maria would never have left port.

What, no Columbus Day?

[iambiguous]

Stanisław Lem from Solaris.

And he has created eternity, which was to have measured his power, and which measures his unending defeat.

Unless, perhaps, He is a sadistic monster?

“And perhaps Solaris is the cradle of your divine child," Snow went on, with a widening grin that increased the number of lines round his eyes. Solaris could be the first phase of the despairing God. Perhaps its intelligence will grow enormously. All the contents of our Solarist libraries could be just a record of his teething troubles…” Stanisław Lem

Dare to go there?

“It might hear us. But what's its name? We have named all the stars and all the planets, even though they might already have had names of their own. What a nerve!

Repeat as necessary. And, eventually, it always is.

I was still a prisoner in my nightmares, and every morning the play began again.

This just popped into my head: https://youtu.be/p3czJ5zA_nI?si=zTKYUnqxMvRJhXx8

We all know that we are material creatures, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and not even the power of all our feelings combined can defeat those laws. All we can do is detest them.

See how fucking tricky this can all get?

Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him.

See how fucking tricky this can all get?

[iambiguous]

Age of Innocence

Ellen: Is fashion such a serious consideration?
Newland: Among those who have nothing more serious to consider.

Next up: what we do here?
You know, back then.

Newland: What could you possibly gain that would make up for the scandal.
Ellen: My freedom?

Whatever that's worth? In other words, given how much some are willing to pay to escape it.

Narrator: He could feel May dropping back to inexpressive girlishness. Her conscience had been eased of its burden. It was wonderful, he thought, how such depths of feeling could co-exist with such an absense of imagination.

Though getting less and less wonderful all the time.

Ellen: Newland. You couldn’t be happy if it meant being cruel. If we act any other way I’ll be making you act against what I love in you most. And I can’t go back to that way of thinking. Don’t you see? I can’t love you unless I give you up.

Of course, that's still going on.

Narrator: Archer had gradually reverted to his old inherited ideas about marriage. It was less trouble to conform with tradition. There was no use trying to emancipate a wife who hadn’t the dimmest notion that she was not free.

Here? Let's name names.

Newland: We had an awfully good talk. Interesting fellow. We talked about books and things. I asked him to dinner.
May: The Frenchman? I didn’t have much chance to talk to him, but wasn’t he a little common?
Newland: Common? I thought he was clever.
May: I suppose I shouldn’t have known if he was clever.
Newland (quickly, resigned): Then I won’t ask him to dine.
Narrator: With a chill he knew that, in the future, many problems would be solved for him in this same way.

Yes, dear!

[iambiguous]

Age of Innocence

Mrs. Mingott: I gave up arguing with young people 50 years ago.

Indeed. And they sure as shit gave up arguing with me.

Newland: You gave me my first glimpse of a real life. Then you asked me to go on with the false one. No one can endure that.
Ellen: I’m enduring it.

Cue Madame de Tourvel?

Ellen: I think we should look at reality, not dreams.
Newland: I just want us to be together!
Ellen: I can’t be your wife, Newland! Is it your idea that I should live with you as your mistress?
Newland: I want… Somehow, I want to get away with you…and…and find a world where words like that don’t exist!
Ellen: Oh my dear…whare is that country? Have you ever been there? Is there anywhere we can be happy behind the backs of people who trust us?
Newland: I’m beyond caring about that.
Ellen: No, you’re not. You’ve never been beyond that. I have. I know what it looks like. A lie in every silence. It’s no place for us.

She's got him there. He's no Vicomte de Valmont.

May: Newland! You’ll catch your death.
Newland: Catch my death. Of course.
Narrator: But then he realized, I am dead. I’ve been dead for months and months. Then it occurred to him that she might die. People did. Young people, healthy people, did. She might die, and set him free.

Pick one:
1] accident
2] suicide
3] murder

Narrator: Newland guessed himself to have been, for months, the center of countless silently observing eyes and patiently listening ears. He understood that, somehow, the separation between himself and the partner of his guilt had been achieved. And he knew that now the whole tribe had rallied around his wife. He was a prisoner in the center of an armed camp.

Society!

Narrator: The silent organization which held this whole small world together was determined to put itself on record. It had never for a moment questioned the propriety of Madame Olenska’s conduct. It had never questioned Archer’s fidelity. And it had never heard of, suspected, or even conceived possible, anything at all to the contrary. From the seamless performance of this ritual, Archer knew that New York believed him to be Madame Olenska’s lover. And he understood, for the first time, that his wife shared the belief.

Really, not all the that much different from the objectivists here.

Ted [son]: The day before she died, she asked to see me alone, remember? She said she knew we were safe with you and always would be because once when she asked you to, you gave up the thing you wanted most.

So, who won?

[Impenitent]

"We finally beat Medicare" - Joe Biden

-Imp

[iambiguous]

The 25th hour is a whole other world. One almost all of us want to avoid.

Drug laws in America. Too draconian? Or not draconian enough? But Lee doesn’t show the side he does In Jungle Fever. Remember the Taj Mahal and Gator? Monty is the scumbag here in this regard. But, as always, it is the scumbags behind him that are the most frightening of all.

His other friend is hooked on Wall Street. And who then is the bigger threat to folks like us? The folks they’ll tell you really count.

Bottom line? In the end [or so it seems] fuck everyone. One way or another they all play a part in it. And [it goes without saying] DON’T TRUST NOBODY!

Not realistic at all for most folks but relationships like this are everywhere. And in the Big City they are often everywhere else too.

But [in the end] what are friends for if not to make you ugly before you go into the joint.

Look for 9/11. And [sigh] God.


25th Hour

Kostya: You’re bad luck, Monty. You bring bad luck on me. Always everything that can go wrong, go wrong. It is not just you and me anymore when we go out. It’s you and me and Doyle.
Monty: Who’s Doyle?
Kostya: Doyle! Doyle’s Law.
Monty: It’s Murphy.
Kostya: What? Who is Murphy? Who’s Murphy?
Monty: Who’s Doyle? It’s Murphy’s Law – “Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.”
Kostya: Him! Yes.

Next up: Putin's Law.

Phelan: Uhm, what’s the big deal with the unemployment number anyway?
Frank: Fellan…
Phelan: It’s, uh… Phelan.
Frank: Whatever, look…more jobs means fewer people looking for work, means it’s harder to find good people to fill those jobs, means you gotta raise wages to get them, means inflation goes up. You got it?
Phelan: Yeah.
Frank: No, I didn’t think so. That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing and you’re handing out junk mail.

At least until the workers of the world get pissed off about that.

Naturelle: What do you want?
Monty: I want to be like that girl in the X-Men – that one that can walk through walls.

Did she or didn't she?

Agent Flood: Sh-e-e-e-it. Mr. Brogan, I do believe you’re fucked.

I don't doubt it.

James [Pop]: This should never have happened. You could’ve been – you wanted money, you could’ve done anything you wanted – doctor, lawyer. That’s all I’m saying.
Monty: Don’t lay that on me. When Sal and his crew were squeezing you for the payments, I didn’t hear you wishing I was a law school student then. Not one word from you back then. Where’d you think that money was coming from – Donald Trump?

Let's run that by what's left of Joe Biden.

Monty: …everything’s gotten so strange, Pop. I look at these people around me, and I’m thinking, “These are my friends? I don’t even know these people.” You know, and – and Naturelle, even. Do I – do I really know her?

Other than Biblically, he means.

[iambiguous]

25th Hour

Monty [standing in the men’s bathroom, talking to himself in a mirror with “FUCK YOU!” written on it]: Yeah, fuck you, too. Fuck me? Fuck you. Fuck you and this whole city and everyone in it. Fuck the panhandlers, grubbing for money, and smiling at me behind my back. Fuck the squeegee men dirtying up the clean windshield of my car - get a fucking job! Fuck the Sikhs and the Pakistanis bombing down the avenues in decrepit cabs, curry steaming out their pores stinking up my day. Terrorists in fucking training. SLOW THE FUCK DOWN! Fuck the Chelsea boys with their waxed chests and pumped-up biceps. Going down on each other in my parks and on my piers, jingling their dicks on my Channel 35. Fuck the Korean grocers with their pyramids of overpriced fruit and their tulips and roses wrapped in plastic. Ten years in the country, still no speaky English? Fuck the Russians in Brighton Beach. Mobster thugs sitting in cafés, sipping tea in little glasses, sugar cubes between their teeth. Wheelin’ and dealin’ and schemin’. Go back where you fucking came from! Fuck the black-hatted Chassidim, strolling up and down 47th street in their dirty gabardine with their dandruff. Selling South African apartheid diamonds! Fuck the Wall Street brokers. Self-styled masters of the universe. Michael Douglas, Gordon Gekko wannabe mother fuckers, figuring out new ways to rob hard working people blind. Send those Enron assholes to jail for FUCKING LIFE! You think Bush and Cheney didn’t know about that shit? Give me a fucking break! Tyco! Worldcom! Fuck the Puerto Ricans. Twenty to a car, swelling up the welfare rolls, worst fuckin’ parade in the city. And don’t even get me started on the Dom-in-i-cans, ‘cause they make the Puerto Ricans look good. Fuck the Bensonhurst Italians with their pomaded hair, their nylon warm-up suits, their St. Anthony medallions, swinging their Jason Giambi Louisville Slugger baseball bats, trying to audition for “The Sopranos.” Fuck the Upper East Side wives with their Hermès scarves and their fifty-dollar Balducci artichokes. Overfed faces getting pulled and lifted and stretched, all taut and shiny. You’re not fooling anybody, sweetheart! Fuck the uptown brothers. They never pass the ball, they don’t want to play defense, they take five steps on every lay-up to the hoop. And then they want to turn around and blame everything on the white man. Slavery ended one hundred and thirty seven years ago. Move the fuck on! Fuck the corrupt cops with their anus-violating plungers and their 41 shots, standing behind a blue wall of silence. You betray our trust! Fuck the priests who put their hands down some innocent child’s pants. Fuck the church that protects them, delivering us into evil. And while you’re at it, fuck J.C.! He got off easy! A day on the cross, a weekend in hell, and all the hallelujahs of the legioned angels for eternity! Try seven years in fuckin’ Otisville, J.! Fuck Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and backward-ass cave-dwelling fundamentalist assholes everywhere. On the names of innocent thousands murdered, I pray you spend the rest of eternity with your seventy-two whores roasting in a jet-fuel fire in hell. You towel-headed camel jockeys can kiss my royal Irish ass! Fuck Jacob Elinsky. Whining malcontent. Fuck Francis Xavier Slaughtery my best friend, judging me while he stares at my girlfriend’s ass. Fuck Naturelle Riviera, I gave her my trust and she stabbed me in the back, sold me up the river, fucking bitch. Fuck my father with his endless grief, standing behind that bar sipping on club sodas, selling whisky to firemen, and cheering the Bronx Bombers. Fuck this whole city and everyone in it. From the row-houses of Astoria to the penthouses on Park Avenue, from the projects in the Bronx to the lofts in Soho. From the tenements in Alphabet City to the brownstones in Park Slope to the split-levels in Staten Island. Let an earthquake crumble it, let the fires rage, let it burn to fucking ash and then let the waters rise and submerge this whole rat-infested place.
[pause]
Monty: No. No, fuck you, Montgomery Brogan. You had it all, and you threw it away, you dumb fuck!

So, did he get you?

Jakob [staring down at the 9/11 construction]: Yeah, The New York Times says the air’s bad down here.
Frank: Oh, yeah? Well, fuck The Times. I read the Post. E.P.A. says it’s fine.
Jakob: Somebody’s lying.

Gasp! Surely, not about that!!

Frank: Come on, Jake, don’t feed me that bullshit. Yeah, he got caught. But hello – Monty’s a fucking drug dealer. Shit. What, are you – you driving a vintage Super “B”? - No. He is. Yeah, paid for by the misery of other people. He got caught. He’s gonna get locked up. And I’ll tell you something else. You two are my best friends in the whole world, and I love him like a brother, but he fucking deserves it. He deserves it.

They all do!
Maybe when Trump's back in office?

Agent Flood: You don’t read the papers much, do you smart guy? In New York? We’ve a wonderful thing called the Rockefeller laws. Let me educate you. You had a kilo in your sofa. That kind of weight makes it an A1 felony. 15 years to life minimum for a first offense. Now with that much spread in the sentencing guidelines, the judges take their cues from the prosecutors. So if the prosecutors wife busted his chops that morning, you’re fucked. You’re gone for good. If you get lucky? Really lucky? And let’s say he got some good trim the night before. Maybe he’ll plea you off to an A2. But that’s still 3 to 8 for first time, minimum. How much of that stretch you pull is all up to the mood of the prosecutor. And he’s gonna ask us, “Did he play ball?” So, why don’t you tell us about your friend, Nikolai? Let us make it easy on you.
Monty: [to Agent Cunningham] Can I ask you one question?
Agent Cunningham: Sure.
Monty: When you have your dick in his mouth, does he just keep talking like that? Cause it seems to me he just never shuts up. I’m just curious does that get annoying? You know, you’re fucking a guy in the mouth and he just won’t shut up?
Agent Cunningham: Look here, you vanilla motherfucker. When you’re upstate, takin’ it in the culo by a buncha guys callin’ you Shirley, you’ll only have yourself and Governor Rockefeller to thank for the privilege.

I know, I know: what if "the system" reallhy was like that?!

Frank: You know what a man should never ask in a Victoria’s Secret shop, Jake?
Jakob: What?
Frank: “Does this come in children’s sizes?”

There are other stores for that.

Monty: I’m not gonna make it, Frank.
Frank: Yes, you will.
Monty: There’s a thousand guys up there who are harder than me. I mean, in a room, some junkie doesn’t want to pay me, and Kostya behind me, I’m pretty scary. Up there, I’m a skinny white boy with no friends.

"...let's just see what we can do about that."

Frank [to Naturelle]: Fucking last 10 years, I’ve been watching him get deeper and deeper in with these friends of his, these fucks who you wouldn’t want petting Doyle. And did I say, “Hey, careful, Monty, you better cool out, man”? I didn’t say shit. I just sat there and watched him ruin his life. And you did, too, all right? We both did. - We all did.

He'd show them the money.

Naturelle: I told Monty he should quit a hundred times.
Frank: Did you? Was that before or after you moved into his apartment?
Naturelle: Of all nights, please not tonight. Just don’t start.
Frank: Who paid for the apartment? Who paid for the Cartier diamond earrings… this silver dress you’re wearing? Paid in full by the addictions of other people.

Oh, yeah, that part.

Monty [to Frank]: I need you to make me ugly.

Even Shirley won't recognize him.

[iambiguous]

It’s not your America, it’s not my America, it’s their America. And that will make all the difference in the world. America is a frame of mind rooted in a particular set of experiences unfolding at a particular moment in time.

In other words, before it’s all those things that some of us will insist it is instead.

The rest is politics. Which is to say, why should hard working families ever have to live like this in the richest country on earth? And in that regard, those who “run things” here will always be scum to me. But, then again, that’s my America. More or less fractured and frafmented from day to day.

Imagine raising your own kids in “the dope addict building”.

Life is hard. But this film, in being based in large part on the director’s own life, shows lots of different ways to make it less so. But nothing ever makes it easy.

And always the same wrenching decision for some: With or without God?

Do you believe in miracles?

[nope]


In America

Christy [voiceover]: There’s some things you should wish for and some things you shouldn’t. That’s what my little brother Frankie told me. He told me I only had three wishes, and I looked into his eyes, and I don’t know why I believed him.

On the other hand, did they come true...miraculously?

Immigration Officer: How many children do you have?
Johnny: Three.
Sarah: Two.
Johnny: Two.
Immigration Officer: Says three here.
Johnny: We lost one.

And which one can make all the difference in the world.

Christy [voiceover]: We heard Manhattan before we ever saw it, a thousand strange voices coming from everywhere. And you’re not going to believe this, but we had to go under the water to get to the city. And we lost contact with everything; it was like we were on another planet.

Next up: the gangs of New York?

Christy [voiceover]:And then summer came, and with it the heat. And a new word; humidity.

And now the "heat index".

Christy [voiceover]: Ariel was worried about a blind man called José.
Ariel: Christy, why can’t José see?
Christy: It’s not “José, can you see”, it’s “Oh say, can you see”.

They're new at it.

Johnny: Why would youse wanna be the same as everybody else?
Ariel: 'Cause everybody else goes trick-or-treating.
Sarah: What’s that?
Ariel: It’s what they do here for Halloween.
Johnny: What do you mean? Like, help the Halloween party?
Christy: No. Not help the Halloween party. You don’t ask for help in America. You demand it. Trick-or-treat- you don’t ask, you threaten.
Sarah: You can’t do that on our street.
Christy: Why not?
Sarah: Because you can’t threaten drug addicts and transvestites, that’s why.
Ariel: What are transvestites?
Christy: A man who dresses up as a woman.
Ariel: For Halloween?

Then too.

[iambiguous]

Logic

“To think or not to think? That is the new question.” Nadina Boun

Next up: the new answer.

“To want to tackle everything rationally is irrational.” Ilyas Kassam

In other words, rooted existentially in dasein.

“Some philosophers can't bear to say simple things, like "Suppose a dog bites a man." They feel obliged instead to say, "Suppose a dog d bites a man m at time t," thereby demonstrating their unshakable commitment to logical rigor, even though they don't go on to manipulate any formulae involving d, m, and t.” Daniel C. Dennett

Then the part where the dog rips the man's balls off.

“Doctrines which can stand the trial of logic and reason can do without persecuting skeptics.” Ludwig von Mises

Not counting the other guy's doctrines of course.

“We are raised in a society where we are taught to believe a more logical reason for an illogical happening rather than the illogical reason for something which may be of the unknown, hence, why the logical answer is illogical to the logical person.” Nicholas A. McGirr

On the other hand, why rock the boat? Especially on the way to the bank.

“Reason itself is fallible, and this fallibility must find a place in our logic.” Nicola Abbagnano

Uh, not always easy though, is it?