Philosophy Now Forum

State of Play

Stephen: Putting war in the hands of mercenaries and those who consider it a business is a contradiction in terms in any langage.

But isn’t this exactly the same thing that happens when the government buys everything the military needs to prosecute wars from very, very big and powerful defense contractors—companies that pour millions of dollars into the election and reeclection efforts of the folks on Capital Hill [and on the White House] who decide when and where we go to war?

Stephen: May I remind you sir, that the wars this country fought that defined it, were fought despite what they cost, not because of it.

This is true…up to a point. But only up to it.

PointCorp insider: Do you have any idea what your friend the Congressman is threatening? This is $30 to $40 billion annually. That’s wrath of God money.
Cal: The hearings are saying 3 to 4 billion.
PointCorp insider: Overseas. The real money is what PointCorp stands to make in its domestic operations.
Cal: I wasn’t aware that they had any.
PointCorp insider: Who was sent in for crowd control after Katrina? Us. Who’s training Chicago police on new interrogation techniques? Soon PointCorp will take over from the NSA on phone taps, terrorist databases, all of it. It’s a fundamental restructruing of domestic intelligence policy. It is the privatization of Homeland Security. Billions and billion of dollars. Now, do you really think they are going to forfeit all that because some hero from the seventh district of Pennsylvania thinks that they should?

Uh, nope?

Cal: Sonia Baker’s mother’s first name is?
Rep. Fergus: Pardon me?
Cal: You heard me, family friend.
Rep. Fergus: Do you really think that your new owners, these responsible corporate citizens, are going to allow you to publish this…this…this speculative drivel?

Let's run it by the advertisers.

Della [referring to Foy]: And why do you think he’s gonna talk?
Hank: Because he’s scared.
Della: How do you know?
Cal: Because I’m gonna scare him.

Of course, in Washington, that invariably works both ways.

Cal [to Cameron]: Maybe you would like to explain to me how, when and why MediaCorp chopped off your balls. This is as big and connected as it gets. You follow any fissure of this, it’s a massive story. You got Fergus, you got PointCorp, and now you got MediaCorp all connected, all in collusion, all playing for the same country club.

Bingo! This is how it works. Wall Street, K Street, political power brokers, the corporate media. Just follow the fucking money.

Based on historical events.

Back then – at the time of the actual kidnapping – I was right on the cusp between Marxism, Democratic Socialism and Existentialism. In other words, well before I fell over the edge into the abyss that is moral nihilsm.

Which is to say, had I been typing this back then instead of now very different words would be appearing on your screen. But that is the nature of dasein, isn’t it? We think about the particular world we are living in in a particular time in a particular way. But 33 years later it’s no more the same world than I am the same person.

But I have always admired folks who take an interest in the world around them politically. Almost anything is better than the political apathy our culture seems to mass produce now.

The Red Brigade. Considerably more sophisticated politically than the Symbionese Liberation Army and their ilk but still hard-core ideologues…authorirarian extremists. However well-intentioned. The rhetoric and the reality of revolution. The rhetoric and the reality of reaction. Almost everthing is on the surface here.

And yet “back then” I came so goddamn close to it myself.

Aldo Moro kidnapping at wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnappin ... _Aldo_Moro


Good Morning, Night

Mariano: What was that?
Charia: Nothing. A baby. A new born.

Jesus, I wonder if that actually happened?!

Ernestino: Why aren’t the people rebelling?
Mariano: Not everyone agrees with him.
Ernestino: Okay, but why is no one rebelling? Why? Everyone is applauding him!

Him being a government spokesperson. These folks really were convinced they were igniting The Revolution.

Ernestino: What are they saying at work?
Charia: They are saying we are murderers.
Ernestino: Go ask in the factories who the real murderers are.

Exactly!
Well, more or less.

Primo [and eventually all of them]: The working class must command. The working class must command. The working class must command. The working class must command.

Repeat as necessary.

Mariano: I remember as a child I was so fond of religion that I hoped to die so I could go to Heaven as soon as possible. How absurd!
Aldo Moro: Aren’t you scared of dying?
Mariano: Every man will die someday. But not every death has the same meaning. I believe that this is our superiority. We are willing to die for our ideal. The Communists are like that.
Aldo Moro: Christian martyrs, too. After all, yours is a religion, too, like mine. In fact, it’s much more strict. For example, it despises the body more than we Catholics do. Once upon a time, Christianity was like that. But it’s not anymore.

Now we're talking!

Chiara: We are soldiers.
Ernesto: Some soldiers.

Mostly, they sit around watching television.

Mariano [reading from a “document”]: “The proletarians, the workers and all the exploited know well what the Democratic Christian regime means because they suffer from it first-hand. The trial of Aldo Moro is just a stage of the greater trial of the regime going on in the country…the class war for Communism. Aldo Moro’s responsibilities are the same as those for which this nation is on trial. His guilt is the same as that for which the Christian Democratic Party and its regime will be completely defeated by the Communist fighting forces. With no doubt, Aldo Moro is guilty, and is therefore sentenced to death.”

All the more absurd given the politicos that govern Italy today. Does the name Silvio Berlusconi ring a bell? As for Italian Communism…not many Antonio Gramscis still around I suspect. But then successful revolutions had occured in Russia and China. And it seemed to be spreading across the globe. A different world back then in other words.

Enzo: They are crazy. And stupid. That scares me.
Chiara: I don’t understand you. You make me angry. You talk about the brigadists like they were demented. Accountants who masturbate with Playboy and go around killing people. But can’t you see the others? The faces of the Christian Democrats…and their slaves, their hypocrisy.
Enzo: The brigadists are worse than them because they want to imitate them. Their bulletins are frenetic. Think if people who wrote that way had to govern us.

Shudder to think, he means.

Painted on wall: PEOPLE DIE OF HEROIN, PEOPLE DIE OF WORK, WHO THE FUCK CARES IF ALDO MORO DIES?

I can't remember my own reaction at all anymore.

Mariano: To free him without conditions would be a farce.
Ernesto: Chiara, they are not willing even to acknowledge us.
Chiara: Why should they acknowledge us when we do not acknowledge them?
Ernesto: Aren’t you with us?
Chiara: Yes, but I don’t understand why we should kill him. Nothing makes me think that is the right thing to do. Can I say that?
Mariano: This is the evidence that there must be no humanitarian limit in a revolutionary war. There is no deed we cannot do. For the victory of the working class, even killing one’s own mother is right. What today seems inconceivable, absurd, inhuman is actually a heroic action of supreme annihilate of our subjective reality. The best of humanity.

For better or for worse, it was existentialism that yanked me back from my own precipice.

My own short term memory is beginning to crumble so I can certainly empathize with another in the same boat. Even if I’m not a contract killer in a movie. Your whole sense of identity revolves around all the things you remember about yourself. What happens when you remember less and less? What of “I” then? All the more problematic for starters.

At least I haven’t reached the point where I am writing things down on my arm in order to remember them. But even he hasn’t reached the point yet where he has to tattoo them instead.

Right and wrong. Or what he remembers of it. But surely anyone can remember that pimping out your 12 year old daughter – that pedaphilia – is wrong. Wrong. But if you can get away with it in a world without God?

A film where you are manipulated into rooting for the cold blooded killer because he is out to avenge an innocent child…and to expose pedaphiles. And political corruption. It works for some but not for others.


The Memory of a Killer [De Zaak Alzheimer]

Ledda: Are you clever? Because if you are, you will know who sent me?

A hitman thing let's call it.

Ledda: She’s not even 13. I won’t do it. She’s a child.
Seynaeve: One quick call to Marseilles!
Ledda: You don’t understand. Nobody will do it.

Somebody will do it.

Ledda: You were right, Gilles. For guys like us there is no retirement.

Tell that to the Grim Reaper.

Vincke: Is that legal?
Verstuyft: No… it’s Japanese.

Or else you're in Chinatown.

Vincke: …traces of animal feces.
Verstuyft: Feces?
Vincke: Shit, Freddy, dog shit, cow shit…shit.
Verstuyft: Vincke…I know where he is…pigeon shit.

Bullshit?

Baron de Haeck: This is ridiculous. I hired you. I paid you.
Ledda: I’ve come to reimburse you.

And then some.

Ledda: We do have a problem, Chief. The tape is lost already. I don’t remember where I hid it. I don’t even know if I made a note where. If only you knew how empty my head is…

And getting emptier all the time.

Ledda [to Vincke]: You know the difference between us? You believe people. That’s very dangerous.

And, up to a point, that includes practically everyone of us.

Free Will

“Harris expects us to dismiss free will as an illusion, whilst he fails to comprehend that he has generated a much greater mystery, namely, if matter can’t be free, how on earth can it suffer from delusions and illusions that it is free? Why are illusions of free will more scientifically plausible than free will? Where’s the scientific theory for this? There simply isn’t one. Harris has proposed that the “rational” alternative to free will is collections of atoms subject to mental illness.” Mike Hockney

Yeah, what about that?

"The very fact that we believe ourselves free, means, by the strict application of Occam’s Razor, that we are free. To argue otherwise is to make the insane claim that the real world, for no conceivable reason or purpose, invents illusions. If that were true, we could never know anything at all because absolutely everything could be an illusion." Mike Hockney

Yeah, what about that?

"We would be living in the fantasy world created by Descartes’ malevolent demon. In rather similar terms, fundamentalist materialists propose that a more rational alternative to the concept of “God”, which they say explains nothing, is scientific randomness. However, randomness also explains nothing since it operates via miracles happening for no reason, and is even more of a mystery than God!” Mike Hockney

Yeah, what about that?

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was not convincing the world that he didn’t exist; the greatest trick he ever pulled was making us believe we have free will.” Abhaidev

Or that he had it?

“True freedom is solipsism. True freedom is believing that the world will cease to exist the moment you die. True freedom is realizing that only you have free will, while the others are mere puppets, hive minds. True freedom is, therefore, nothing less than insanity.” Abhaidev

True freedom it is then.

“As an act recedes into the past and becomes imbedded in the network of one’s individuality it seems more and more a product of fate – inevitable. However, an act in the immediate present seems to be more a product of free will.” Sylvia Plath

Then right up until she sticks her head into the oven.

Watch enough episodes on the Discovery ID Channel and you know there aren’t many cops like this out there. Mostly it’s do whatever it takes to close the case. And fuck it if they get the wrong guy. Just get it off the books. That’s almost always job one.

And how far away can God be from the nutjobs here?

There is a pervasive sense of “spooky” that runs through the film. Especially the last half. And the end is goddamned unhinged.

There are things going on inside the heads of other people we just don’t have access to.

Bottom line? Even if you are “right all along” about something that others believe you are wrong about what counts in the end is what finally does come out in the open. And what never does.

The child murders depicted in the film were loosely based on actual cases that had been worked by Det. Joe Depczynski, the film’s technical advisor. However, the cases were not thought to be the work of a single killer, as the film depicted, nor did the real detective come to the same end that Det. Jerry Black did. IMDb


The Pledge

Duane Larsen: I want to see my daughter.
Black: I don’t think that would be a good idea. l know what l’m saying might sound cruel…but l think it’s better if you don’t go to your Ginny now.
Duane Larsen: WHY WOULDN’T THAT BE A GOOD IDEA?!
Black: Because we hardly dared to look ourselves.

Next up: the pledge.

Margaret Larsen: Who did this?
Black: We intend to find out, Mrs. Larsen.
Margaret Larsen: Do you promise me that you will?
Black [after a pause]: Yes. Yes, Mrs. Larsen, l promise.
Margaret Larsen: By your soul’s salvation? Do you swear by your soul’s salvation on this cross made by the hands of our daughter?
Black: Yes. Yes, on my soul’s salvation.
Margaret Larsen: You’ve sworn by your salvation.

That's what makes the ending so powerful, of course.

Black [after his partner unconventionally gets a confession out of Toby] .

Whatever works? Only this time...

Krolak: I thought you were supposed to be fishing in Mexico.

So did he.

Doctor: Have you always been a chainsmoker?
[Black seems to hear the voice of Margaret Larsen]
Doctor: You always been a chainsmoker?
Black: Recent. Recent.
Doctor: Are you still sexually active?
Black: Yes.
Doctor: Does that embarass you?
[Black seems confused]
Doctor: Have experienced any sudden fevers, perspiration?
Black: No.
Doctor: Or voices? Do you hear voices?

Oh, yeah.

Margaret Larsen: There can’t be such devils out there.
Black: There are such devils.

And, no, not just in Trumpworld.

Gary Jackson [to Chrissy]: Has your mommy talked to you about the Word?

Meet the Wizard.

Chrissy: I met the Wizard today.

Praise the Lord!

Krolak: There is no Wizard, Jerry.
Black: You don’t know what the fuck you are dealing with! The Wizard is real and I know it!

Yes, he's real. Yes, we know that too. But even in the either/or world there's still the part where we need God in order to pin down the objective truth.

Black: She said it. She said it. She did.

He was right all along. But so what?

Stanisław Lem from Solaris

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.

Or, perhaps, all we could, in fact, ever have done is to detest them?

Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox...

Next up: eternal recurrence.

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

The fools!

Put simply, unlike terrestrial organisms it did not adapt to its surroundings over the course of hundreds of millions of years, so as only then to produce a rational species, but it had gained control over its environment from the start.

Next up [of course]: actual contexts on Solaris.

I’ve no intention of trying to dissuade you. I’ll only say one thing: in an inhuman situation you’re trying to behave like a human being. That may be admirable, but it’s also futile. Though in fact I’m not even sure it’s admirable—I’m not sure something foolish can also be admired.

Not much that isn't applicable to.

The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that finis vitae sed non amoris, is a lie, useless and not even funny. So must one be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox...

Well, this explains very little, almost nothing, right?

Incest and insanity. But then the whole fucking family is nuts. Fortunately, they are rich enough to be called eccentric.

This is what they call “a dark and twisted black comedy”. It’s the house of “yes” because the consequences of saying “no” can be dire. Almost as dire as being born and bred in the working class. Like being employed in a doughnut shop as a waitress.

What makes this particulaly enjoyable is how the actors are perfectly balanced between farce and something you could imagine actually happening…to one of those families. In other words, a family able to afford living right down the road from the Kennedys.

It’s hard to say exactly what you are watching here. It’s hilarious. Except the parts where it’s anything but.


The House of Yes

Mother: Oh my God, I sounded just like a mother! Didn’t I sound just like a mother?
Marty: You are a mother.
Mother: I know, but I still can’t believe it. I look at you people and wonder, how did you ever fit in my womb?

In other words, the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree.

Mother: All I know is Jackie and Marty belong to each other. Jackie’s hand was holding Marty’s penis when they came out the womb.

True story?

Mother: Marty, just what are you trying to do?
Marty: Be normal.
Mother: It’s a little late for that, young man.

Indeed, Jackie can confirm that.

Marty: So, tell me, why shouldn’t this marriage take place?
Mother [getting up to leave the room]: If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go baste the turkey and hide the kitchen knives.

Even the forks for that matter.

Jackie-O: What’s the wildest place you’ve ever made love?
Lesly: With Marty?
Jackie-O: Yes.
Lesly: I can’t talk that way about your brother.
Jackie-O: Pretend he is not my brother. I do.

That's what Adam and Eve all the kids must have done.

Jackie-O: Marty and I tell each other everything.
Lesly: Everything?
Jackie-O: We’re twins.
Lesly: Did he tell you about his other girlfriends?
Jackie-O: Did he tell you about his other girlfriends?

This goes on and on and on. Right up until...

The House of Yes

Jackie-O: Men and their secrets.
Lesly: Not all men have secrets.
Jackie-O: We all have our secrets.

Next up: secrets...and insanity?

Jackie-O: Sorry about that scar, by the way, I didn’t mean to maim you. I only meant to kill you.
Marty: These things happen.

They're twins, remember?

Anthony: I’m wearing a jacket because it’s Thanksgiving
Jackie-O: You weren’t wearing it before.
Anthony: I put it on after Marty got here.
Marty: I appreciate it. It looks nice.
Anthony: I think it belonged to a Kennedy.
Marty: Why? Is there a bullet hole?

A family obsession let's call it.

Jackie-O: I suppose you think I’m going insane just to be fashionable.
Lesly: I don’t think you’re insane.
Jackie-O: You don’t?
Lesly: No.
Jackie-O: You don’t think I’m an eensie weensie bit insane?
Lesly: I don’t think you’re insane. I think you’re just spoiled.
Jackie-O: Oh please, if everyone around here is going to start telling the truth, I’m going to bed.

Clever and then some. If I do say so myself, Parker.

Lesly: Boy, it’s been a long day.
Jackie-O: Not as long as yesterday. Yesterday was 24 hours.

See what I mean?

Marty: Excuse me Anthony, we’re talking about you now. We’re expressing familial concern.
Anthony: No, we’re not.
Marty: We’re not?
Anthony: No, you’re playing the familial concern game.
Jackie-O: Oh, don’t be so sincere, Anthony. It’s déclassé.

Next up: déclassé here.

Anthony: Hey, don’t make fun of her! I won’t let you make fun of her!
Marty: I wasn’t going to make fun of her. I was going to ask what she cries about.
Jackie-O: What do you think? You want somebody for a very long time…and then you have them. And they love you. And they make love to you. But it’s not enough. This is the truth about sex.
Anthony: Is that why Peter was lousy in bed?
Jackie-O: I’m not talking about Peter, Anthony. Jesus, I’m talking about Marty.

What the hell is Anthony even doing here?

Jackie-O: Marty, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. There’s this thing I’ve heard, and if I thought for one second it was true I’d probably kill myself. Does your fiancee work - in a doughnut shop?

Yeah, what about that, Marty?

Lesly: So what if I slept with his brother? He slept with his sister!
Mother: I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about.

The "house of yes" she calls it.

Mother: What’s that gun doing there?
Jackie-O: It’s not a gun. It’s a camera.
Mother: It’s a gun.
Jackie-O: It’s a camera that looks like a gun.
Marty: Relax, Mama, it isn’t loaded.
Mother: How do you know?
Marty: I checked.

Cue Alec Baldwin?

Lesly: It was his first time.
Marty: Yeah. Right.
Lesly: You mean it wasn’t?
Marty: What do you think?
Lesly: Then why would he say it?
Marty: To get laid.
Lesly: Well, I’m sorry, but when somebody says something to me, I tend to think it’s the truth. It’s just the way I am, the way I was brought up. And if somebody forgets to mention something, I wouldn’t think to ask, for example, “Did you sleep with your sister?”

Relax. He'll be dead soon.

Being a sex addict and a famous celebrity and a man? It’s a barrel of depravation…and one without a bottom. Yet, come on, for many men it still embodies the American Dream.

Crane had to play both parts. The loving family man and the fatuous stud. But the extent to which he was willing to hoist himself up on his own petard soon becomes…painful to watch.

The show gets cancelled. The work dries up. His life devolves into the simply pathetic. And that is saying something for him.

His life falls apart at the seams. But, by then, who cares?

And then there’s the business about his death. John Carpenter was eventually tried for murder but acquitted. They’re both gone now. And mostly long forgotten.


Auto Focus

Bob [voiceover]: Eddie Cantor once said that likability is 90% of the battle. Well, that’s me. I’m a likable guy.

Now strip!

Lenny [chortling]: It’s set in a German prison camp!
Bob: It’s a drama?
Lenny: No! That’s it…It’s a comedy.
Bob: Oh, with the funny Nazis.
Lenny: It’s a POW camp.
Bob: With a laugh track?!

Set to 11?

Bob: It’s something I’ve been working toward my whole career.
Anne: You’ve been working towards Holocaust comedy?

To this day I’ve never understood how they pulled it off. I guess as long as it’s funny. And the Nazis are depicted as buffoons.

Mel Rosen: So this new show. It’s set in a concentration camp. A comedy?
Bob: Prisoner of war camp. Yeah. It’s got all your typical comedy elements: Gestapo, police dogs.
Mel Rosen: So I guess it’s fair to say that if you loved World War II, you’re gonna love Hogan’s Hereos.
Bob: Uh, no, let’s not…
Mel Rosen: Actually, I got what I want.
Bob: Mel, I thought you were a fellow entertainer.
Mel Rosen: I’m also a Jew.
Bob: It’s the same thing!

You know, in Hollywood.

Interviewer: You’ve been married to your high school sweetheart for sixteen years.
Bob Crane: Fifteen, actually.
Interviewer: Fifteen years. How do you do it? What’s your secret?
Bob Crane: Three words: Don’t… make… waves. As every sailor knows, when one set of waves meets another set of waves, it can set up some chop. And when three sets of waves come together, it can make for some mighty rough sailing. It also helps sometimes to have a harmless safety valve. So when I get tense, I blow off steam. And so, when it comes to my own family, I don’t make waves.
Interviewer: That’s inspirational. You’re a fortunate man.
Bob Crane: Yes. Yes, I am.

All the while in the background he is having sex with every imaginable woman in every imaginable position.

Bob [watching his videotaped orgy]: What is that on my ass? Freeze it. What the hell is that on my ass?
Carpenter: That is my hand.
Bob: Rubbing my ass?
Carpenter: So what?
Bob: Your fingers are up my cheeks. What you doing in there?
Carpenter: lt’s an orgy, Bob.
Bob: So you can just touch my ass?
Carpenter: I thought you liked it.
Bob: I thought it was her! God!
Carpenter: What’s the difference?
Bob: The difference? You got your fingers up my asshole!

So, who's right, here?

Bob: I’m a normal, red-blooded American man. I like to look at naked women. I love breasts, any kind. I love 'em! Boobs, bazooms, balloons, bags, bazongas. The bigger, the better. Nipples like udders, nipples like saucers, big pale rosy-brown nipples. Little bitty baby nipples. Real or fake, what’s the difference? I like tits. Who’s kidding who? Tits are great!

Any naked women here?

Bob [in dream sequence]: All I think about all day long is sex. Having sex. Filming sex. Watching sex.
Klink: Hogan, that’s all any of us really think about.

Let's run that by Jack Horner.

Bob: Whoa, whoa. All you’ve done for me? What are you talking about? How the fuck do you think you got those broads? You think you show up and say, “Hey, I’m John Carpenter. Fuck me.” Huh? No, they’re with you because of me. They don’t want you, they want Bob Crane.

Fuck that?

We all know this: that how you look means everything in a world that puts how you look up on a pedestal and worships it. Or, for some, how, uh, big you are?

Why? Well, among other things, it lets you get away with things that other mere mortals -- ugly as sin? -- would not even dream of. And in a culture where life imitates art [or what passes for it] it only gets all the more valuable, doesn’t it?

Second only to money in some quarters.

You’re thinking: What if he hadn’t slapped her? Like really, really hard? Would that have made any difference?

One thing though. Whatever bad things happen to them at least they deserve it. And as long as they do it to each other, fine. But when they start in on duping folks like us, I take umbrage.

In the end, you’ve just got to hope and pray you’re not the one she picks.

Hmm. Or maybe this is actually a romantic comedy. You’ll know what I mean if you’ve seen it.


The Last Seduction

Mike: Chris, these women are anchors.
Chris: Here he goes again.
Mike: How many guys in this bar have felt her up?
Chris: All of them.
Mike: Right. And how many have gone home with her, how many guys have slept with her?
Chris: None, including yourself.
Mike: Right, I rest my case.

I didn't doubt him.

Bridget: Could you leave? Please?
Mike: I haven’t finished charming you yet.
Bridget: You haven’t started.
Mike: Gimme a chance.
Bridget: Look, go find yourself a nice little cowgirl and make nice little cowbabies and leave me alone.
Mike: I’m hung like a horse. Think about it.
[pause]
Bridget: Let’s see.
Mike: Excuse me?
Bridget: Mr. Ed, let’s see.

Next up: hung like an elephant.

Frank: I’ll tell you who does want to know where you are though. He’s called three times. Something about a loan shark and his thumb. Anyone check you for a heartbeat recently?

Who'd try to find out?

Bridget: You’re my designated fuck.
Mike: Designated fuck? Do they make cards for that? What if I want to be more than your designated fuck?
Bridget: Then I’ll designate someone else.

And drop dead gorgeous women are particular good at that.

Mike: What do you want to pitch to cheating husbands?
Bridget: Nothing. I want to pitch to their wives.
Mike: What do you want to pitch to their wives?
Bridget: Murder.

Then how it all gets back to her.

Bridget: Commonality, Mike. We don’t like to have the same kind of fun.
Mike: This is fun?
Bridget: Yeah. It’s bending the rules. Playing with other people’s heads.
Mike: You’re sick. You’re really sick.

Better call the Men In Black.

Bridget: Is it true what they say?
Harlan: What?
Bridget: You know, size?
Harlan: Is it true what they say about white women?
Bridget: What’s that?
Harlan: No ass.
Bridget: Oh, come on. I was wondering for real. Let me see it.
Harlan: Fuck you. Drive.
Bridget: I’m sorry.
Harlan: About what?
Bridget: About your shortcoming.
Harlan: I’m not gonna play this game.
Bridget: Is that why you carry a big gun?
Harlan: The Freudian mind-fuck isn’t gonna work either.
Bridget: Ooh, touchy. I’m sure your woman is very understanding.
Harlan: Exactly how is it that we end this phase of our relationship?
Bridget: By you showing it to me. Come on, let me see it. I’ve never seen one before.
[pause]
Bridget: I’ll show you my ass.
Harlan: What makes you think I wanna see your bony ass?
Bridget: Show me.
Harlan: Show me.
Bridget: I’m driving. You go first.
Harlan: No, you go first.
[pause]
Harlan: You’ll shut the fuck up if I show you?
Bridget: I’m sure I’ll be too stunned to speak.
Harlan: I don’t believe this. You’re crazy. Shit.
[he exposes himself]
Harlan: Okay, there, you happy?

Yeah. But for an entirely different reason.

Mike: You’re talking about murder.
Bridget: Yeah, so? Oh, that’s right, it’s one of the Commandments isn’t it?

You know, just in case he [and we] had forgotten.

Clay: I had to borrow 100K from a man whose first name begins and ends in a vowel. I hired a detective for 50% but now that I know where you are I am perfectly willing to spend all of the money to hire a clinical sociopath to take it from you and fuck you through the eye sockets JUST FOR FUN!!!

And that's only if she's lucky.

Mike: There might be one thing…

Sorry, Mike, she thought of that.

Milan Kundera from Immortality

“To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly. Man doesn't know how to be mortal. And when he dies, he doesn't even know how to be dead.” Milan Kundera

Bummer?

Hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary.” Milan Kundera

Let's hope that never happens here.

I think, therefore I am' is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.

He means herniated discs of course.

The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen.

No, really, where exactly is this "I" we keep referring back to?

Man reckons with immortality, and forgets to reckon with death.

My guess: woman too.

She blushed. It is a beautiful thing when a woman blushes; at that instant her body no longer belongs to her; she doesn't control it; she is at its mercy; oh, can there be anything more beautiful than the sight of a woman violated by her own body!

No, really, can there be?

Logic

“How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. An artist is emotional, they think, and uses only his intuition; he sees all at once and has no need of reason. A scientist is cold, they think, and uses only his reason; he argues carefully step by step, and needs no imagination. That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.” Isaac Asimov

Nothing about what we do here, alas.

‘It seemed to me,’ said Wonko the Sane, ‘that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.’ Douglas Adams

Of course: smart toothpicks!

“We seem to inhabit a universe made up of a small number of elements-particles-bits that swirl in chaotic clouds, occasionally clustering together in geometrically logical temporary configurations.” Timothy Leary

That and dasein, of course.

"There can never be surprises in logic.” Ludwig Wittgenstein

Does that surprise you?

“When I say “The good man gave his good dog a good meal,” I use “good” analogically, for there is at the same time a similarity and a difference between a good man, a good dog, and a good meal. All three are desirable, but a good man is wise and moral, a good dog is tame and affectionate, and a good meal is tasty and nourishing. But a good man is not tasty and nourishing, except to a cannibal; a good dog is not wise and moral, except in cartoons, and a good meal is not tame and affectionate, unless it’s alive as you eat it.” Peter Kreeft

Socratic Logic let’s call it.

“In the strange anomaly of my existence, feelings with me had never been of the heart, and my passions always were of the mind.” Edgar Allan Poe

On the other hand, for some of us, anomalies are par for the course.

8,000 prisoners. One Doctor. AIDS.

Attica State in Brazil. So you know it is going to be a whole lot worse.

This is a true story about events that unfolded in an actual prison “down there”. Not many headlines about it “up here” though.

Carandiru was [at the time] the biggest prison in all of Latin America. It had a maximum capacity of 4,000 inmates. But the actual prison population was more than double that.

It was a hellhole. It was a shithole. Dark and dank. And it had lots and lots of rules.

And lots and lots of sex. And lots and lots of AIDS. This is the story of a doctor who went into the prison to try and deal with a disease that had just begun to take its terrible toll around the globe.

In some ways though it was actually better [more humane] than being incarcerated in an American prison. The part about “vistor’s day” for example.

The real Carandiru prison was demolished in 2002, it was to be transformed into a park with arts facilities. One block (#2) was left intact to be used as a museum. The film was the last thing they used the prison before demolishing 90% of it. IMDb

at wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carandiru_massacre



Carandiru

Warden: So, Lula, what brought you back in here?
Lula: I left here, went home and found my wife in bed with someone else. The son of a bitch had the nerve to tell me, “That’s life”. I shot him three times just to prove the contrary!

That'll do it.

Apolio [to the doctor]: I got AIDS from all the ass I’ve had in jail. Plenty of ass.

That'll do it.

Inmate [to doctor]: I’m a junkie and a dealer here. In my business, if a guy doesn’t pay up, I can’t take back what I sold him. The bastard’s already smoked it, snorted it. I take whatever he’s got. If he’s got nothing, I kill him.

Logical enough for you?

Doctor [voiceover]: I knew many of those men hadn’t shown their victims any mercy but society has its judges. And I wasn’t one of them. At the same time what did I have to do with all that? I had two choices: Forget or go back.

Let's think up a few more.

Doctor: And partners. How many?
Lady Di: About 2,000.

Some other Lady Di, no doubt.

Zico: What’s wrong with selling dope to folks who want to buy it?

I remember back in the day when I could buy them.

Matias: You’ve had over 2,000 men and you’re clean!

Yeah, right. Right?

Chico [to the doctor after 30 days in the hole]: It’s all right, doctor. So many years locked up the mind learns to control the body.

And this may as well have been an actual hole in the ground. No ad-seg units here. Think Papillon.

Dagger [to doctor]: How can you tell for sure if you are going mad?

You know, theoretically.

The riot...

Inmate: Some say it got started because of a debt for five packs of cigarettes. Others say that it was a fight over the soccer game. One or two say it was about a pair of underpants. Like they say: “Jail’s no home for the truth.”

And which truth might that be?

Inmate: They came in to kill us, shouting we all had AIDS…that they’d catch it if they touched us.

The riot squad just gunned them all down. As depicted here, it was cold blooded murder.

Title card: “On October 2, 1992, 111 men died at the Sao Paulo Detention Center. There were no police deaths. The only one who knows what really happened are God, the police and the inmates. I only heard from the latter.” Dranzio Varella

The final scenes are of the prison buildings imploding from a controlled demolition that brought it all down.

Sex and religion. A rather conservative bunch so the narratives can be especially surreal. And here at least the young girls are as preoccupied with it as the boys are. However much they connect the dots to love. And to God. And [sometimes] to each other.

Out of the blue he rubs up against her sexually in a crowd. She is 16 years old. Is this the sign from God she’s been told to watch for?

So now she has to save his soul.

She is both sexually naive [and thus vulnerable] and sexually aware [and thus provocative].

Things can become quite, uh, peculiar watching these two worlds cross paths.

Thinking with his penis, a man does something very, very stupid; and then his whole world can come crashing down around him. Over and over and over and over again these things happen in “real life”. What then does that tell you about human sexuality in a culture saturated with it; and one where sex is turned into a commodity?

The ending here is absolute perfection.


The Holy Girl [La Niña Santa]

Here is what these young girls are meant to [and most do] buy hook, line and sinker:

Inez: The important thing is always to be alert for God’s call. God calls us and that is a vocation. He calls us to save and to be saved. And that is the only meaning our existence should have. What do I have to do? What is my role in the Divine Plan? Is it this? Is it that? What matters is to always be alert for the call…and not lose hope. God sends us signs. That’s what’s important.

How about your own signs from God?

Josefina [after a naked man falls onto her patio and stumbles through the sliding door]: He’s dead. Those are just reflex movements.

No fucking way he's dead.

Helena: Dr. Jano, this is my daughter, Amalia.

Uh, oh. Maybe that is his sign from God.

Josefina: Is that him?

Oh, yeah.

Helena [to Freddy]: Have you noticed that Dr. Jano is becoming withdrawn?

He should be. And then what we know that he doesn't.

Josefina [to parents…trying to wiggle out of her own sexual predicament with Julian]: Something horrible happened. I was telling Julian about it. He’s the only one who listens to me. It’s horrible. A doctor at the conference molested Amalia.

The Benjamin Button Syndrome let's call it.

Dr. Jano [to Amalia]: I’m going to tell your mother everything.

Meanwhile Mom is, well, on the prowl?

Amalia: I have something to tell you.
[she whispers it in his ear…he shakes his head in consternation]

My guess: “God forgives you”. Then he goes to confess to Amalia’s mother. Only, again, she has sex on her mind too.

Dr. Jano’s wife [to Dr. Jano]: I think there is going to be a scandal. They’re going to report a doctor who molested the girl from the hotel.

Of course he doesn’t know it’s actually another doctor!

https://hannitys3.b-cdn.net/original/4X ... 7197f.jpeg

Trump and Putin according to Biden

-Imp