Philosophy Now Forum

Roberto Bolaño

Reality is an AIDS-riddled whore.

Steer clear?

For her, reading was directly linked to pleasure, not to knowledge or enigmas or constructions or verbal labyrinths…

And, no, not just pornography.

Reading is never a waste of time.

Define "never"?

Ah, what a shame they don’t make Los Suicidas mezcal anymore, what a shame that time pases, don’t you think? what a shame that we die, and get old, and everything good goes galloping away from us.

Who gets shamed for it though?

Even on the poorest streets people could be heard laughing. Some of these streets were completely dark, like black holes, and the laughter that came from who knows where was the only sign, the only beacon that kept residents and strangers from getting lost.

Same here? For example, when henry quirk posts?

He was an atheist and it had been years since he read a book, despite the fact that he had amassed a more than decent library of works in his specialty, as well as volumes of philosophy and Mexican history and a novel or two. Sometimes he thought it was precisely because he was an atheist that he didn't read anymore. Not reading, it might be said, was the highest expression of atheism or at least of atheism as he conceived of it. If you don't believe in God, how do you believe in a fucking book? he asked himself.

Reading posts here is still okay though, right?

Thank You For Smoking

Senator Finistirre: Please state your name, address, and current occupation.
Nick: My name is Nick Naylor. I live at 6000 Massachusetts Avenue. I am currently unemployed but until recently I was the Vice President of the Academy of Tobacco Studies.
Senator Finistirre: Mr. Naylor, as Vice President of the Academy of Tobacco Studies, what was required of you? What did you do?
Nick: I informed the public of all the research performed in the investigation on the effects of tobacco.
Senator Finistirre: And what, so far, has the Academy concluded in their investigation into the effects of tobacco?
Nick: Well, many things actually. Why just the other day they uncovered evidence that smoking can offset Parkinson’s disease.
Senator Finistirre: I’m sure the health community is thrilled. Mr. Naylor, who provides the financial background for the Academy of Tobacco Studies?
Nick: Conglomerated Tobacco.
Senator Finistirre: That’s the cigarette companies.
Nick: For the most part, yes.
Senator Finistirre: Do you think that might affect their priorities?
Nick: No. Just as, I’m sure, campaign contributions don’t affect yours.

Game, set and match for Nick?

Nick: Well, the real demonstrated #1 killer in America is cholesterol. And here comes Senator Finistirre whose fine state is, I regret to say, clogging the nation’s arteries with Vermont Cheddar Cheese. If we want to talk numbers, how about the millions of people dying of heart attacks? Perhaps Vermont Cheddar should come with a skull and crossbones.
Senator Finistirre: That is lud...The great state of Vermont will not apologize for its cheese!

Next up: Wisconsin?

Senator Lothridge: What about the children?
Nick: Gentlemen, it’s called education. It doesn’t come off the side of a cigarette carton. it comes from our teachers, and more importantly our parents. It is the job of every parent to warn their children of all the dangers of the world, including cigarettes, so that one day when they get older they can choose for themselves. I look at my son who was kind enough to come with me today, and I can’t help but think that I am responsible for his growth and his development. And I’m proud of that.
SenatorFinistirre: Well, having said that, would you condone him smoking?
Nick: Well, of course not. He’s not 18. That would be illegal.
Senator Finistirre: Yes, I’ve heard you deliver that line on 20/20, but enough dancing. What are you going to do when he turns 18? C’mon, Mr. Naylor. On his 18th birthday will you share a cigarette with him? Will you spend a lovely afternoon - like one of your ludicrous cigarette advertisements? You seem to have to have a lot to say about how we should raise our children. What of your own? What are you going to do when he turns 18?
Nick: If he really wants a cigarette. I’ll buy him his first pack.

On the other hand, with him as a father, what are the odds that he won't?

Nick: Gentlemen, practise these words in front of the mirror: Although we are constantly exploring the subject, currently there is no direct evidence that links cellphone usage to brain cancer.

In other words, we're assholes but so are they.

Senator Lothridge: Mr. Naylor is not hear to testify on the goings on of the Academy of Tobacco Studies. We’re hear to examine the possibility of a warning label on cigarettes. Now, Mr. Naylor, I have to ask you out of formality, do you believe that smoking cigarettes, over time, can lead to lung cancer and lead to other respiratory conditions such as emphysema.
Nick: Yes. In fact, I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who really believes that cigarettes are not potentially harmful. I mean - show of hands - Who out here thinks that cigarettes aren’t dangerous?

A show hands here please.

Nick: Michael Jordan plays ball. Charles Manson kills people. I talk. Everyone has a talent.

And, perhaps, more to the point, in a world "beyond good and evil"?

God

“If in my life I fail completely to heed others, solely out of a desire to be 'devout' and to perform my 'religious duties', then my relationship with God will also grow arid. It becomes merely 'proper', but loveless.” Pope Benedict XVI

Of course, now we all know that Catholics are not True Christians.

“God is dead and I am his replacement.” J.D. Robb

Her and God knows how many others.

“Sometimes doubting is not a lack of faith, but an expression of it. Sometimes to doubt is to merely insist that God be taken seriously not frivolously, to insist that our faith is placed in and upheld by something other than seeming conjuring tricks.” Mark Buchanan

That's the loophole I'm counting on come Judgment Day.

“The choices we’re working with here are a block universe, where past, present and future all coexist simultaneously and everything has already happened; chaos, where anything can happen and nothing can be predicted because we can’t know all the variables; and a Christian universe in which God made everything and it’s all here for a purpose but we have free will anyway.” Audrey Niffenegger

Pick three.

“And if there is no god? You act as if there is, and it's the same thing.” Janet Fitch

Yep, thst's all it takes, alright.

“In ridiculing a pathetic human fallacy, which seeks explanation where none need be sought and which multiplies unnecessary assumptions, one should not mimic primitive ontology in order to challenge it. Better to dispose of the needless assumption altogether. This holds true for everything from Noah's flood to the Holocaust.” Christopher Hitchens

He's still dead...roasting in Hell...right, God?

I love those characters: iconoclasts, skeptics, bohemians, nonconformists…the heterodox outsiders. The loners. The folks that always seem to be way way off-the-beaten-path. The dissidents.

Those [back then] who always said fuck the A list, fuck the jocks, fuck the snobs, fuck the bullies, fuck the SGAs and fuck the...sheep?

It’s the only way I could have graduated from high school. Though I’ve matured considerably since then.

Boys will be boys? Yeah, right.

The movie takes place in the mid 1960s—at the very tip of cultural changes that would sweep the industrial world; taking it from Leave It To Beaver to All In the Family. And then beyond.

This is the sequel to The Year My Voice Broke.

Look for Jean-Paul Sartre…ringside.

Intended to be the Australian-born Nicole Kidman’s farewell to Australian cinema; by the time the film went into production, she had received international acclaim for her part in Dead Calm, and was being courted by US studios to appear in American productions. She wouldn’t star in another Australian film for another decade, (2001’s Moulin Rouge!). As a result of Kidman’s fame, she received top billing and was prominently featured in print advertising for the film, despite only appearing in a few scenes. Conversely, star ‘Noah Taylor’ only appeared in print ads in silhouette. IMDb

In other words, everything the film was trying to expose as a fraud. On the other hand, she hardly had just a bit part in the film. And I thought she really nailed the character.


Flirting

Danny [narrating]: One thing about boarding school…twenty-four hours a day, you were surrounded. Either you abandoned yourself and became a herd animal or you dug a cave deep into your head and skulked inside peering through your eye sockets.

Much like, say, me here?

Girl: Anyone got a banana?

For the...ape?

Thandiwe [who is from Uganda]: There are other things going on in the world besides skinny rock ‘n’ roll singers jumping around.
Girl: Yes, of course. Little Miss Sophistication can tell us all about it.
Thandiwe: It might actually concern you.
Girl: I doubt if it’ll concern you. They’re certainly not going to mention Uganda. I never heard it mentioned ever. They’re not even in the Olympic games. Probably not eligible.

Next up: Idi Amin.

Moderator: Good afternoon. The subject of today’s debate is that this house agrees with Bertrand Russell…that intellectual pursuits are the highest form of human endeavor. And it’ll be ladies first. Speaking for the affirmative Miss Nicola Radcliffe.
Nicola: Professor Barbour, Reverend Nicholson members of the adjudicating panel ladies and gentlemen. And others. The central thrust of our argument will be that the pleasures of the intellect are of a higher order altogether as opposed to the other simple pleasures of life. And, to this end, we will be citing evidence from such illustrious sources…as William Shakespeare, Immanuel Kant, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Bishop Barclay, Samuel Pepys, Sir Robert Menzies, Aristotle…and the Duke of Edinburgh. Firstly, to begin with William Shakespeare…
Danny: I’d like to suggest that rugby football is the highest form of…highest form of…human endeavor. How can one go past the fluid inspiration of Jock Blair sprinting down the wing for a brilliant try? How can one not be moved to tears by the naked courage of a smaller player hurling himself at a much larger opponent bouncing off, but picking himself up again and again… in a frenzy of guts and determination? Rugby football embodies all the noblest virtues enshrined in a school like ours-- teamwork, bravery, pride, school spirit…creativity, intelligence…love of one’s fellow man–surely the virtues which distinguish human beings from brute animals.

Wink, wink.

Moderator: The final speaker for the affirmative side is Miss Thandiwe Adjewa.
Thandiwe: Having listened carefully to the speakers of both sides and wishing to be totally impartial I feel the position for which my team is arguing is untenable…though not for the tedious reasons given by our opponents…the last speaker excepted. My colleagues have quoted many poets and philosophers to support our case…that intellectual pursuits are the highest form of human endeavor…but most contemporary artists seem more interested in bodily functions. For example… ''I don’t want you toast my bread. ‘‘I don’t want you make my bed.’’ ''I don’t want your money, too". ‘‘I just want to make love to you.’’ ‘‘Tutti frutti, au rutti.’’ ‘‘Tutti frutti, au rutti.’’ ‘‘Tutti frutti, au rutti.’’ ‘‘A-wop-bop a-loom-op a-lop bam boom.’’ If these philosopher-poets are any guide the so-called animal side of human beings leaves the intellectual side for dead. Is this just a recent development or are we only now becoming mature enough to reveal our dirty washing?

Wink, wink.

Bourke: Who’ve you got lined up, Embling? Didn’t think you’d ever manage to finish as…as…as…asking someone out.
Danny [voiceover]: People wonder how Hitler managed to get so many followers? It’s never surprised me.

Me neither, of course. After all, look at all his followers here.

Flirting

Thandiwe: I met Sartre.
Danny: Really? Where?
Thandiwe: In Paris.
Danny: What did you say to him?
Thandiwe: I suggested marriage was a doomed institution.
Danny: What did he say?
Thandiwe: He agreed most people marry to please their parents… or society.
Danny: Not keen on marriage yourself?
Thandiwe: I see so many terrible ones. People just stop communicating. My father and stepmother are brilliant communicators. They hardly ever talk to each other these days…except in public. Anyway, I doubt whether I’ll find anyone complex enough to keep me interested. I lose interest in people. I imagine they’re far more fascinating than they are…so I’m always disappointed.

Of course, she hasn't met me yet.
Okay, okay or you.

Danny [voiceover]: I would have asked Jean-Paul about anguish. Seemed like a pretty romantic concept at the time.

Even after they kicked him out of boarding school.

Schoolmate [to Danny]: They can be pretty, you know, desperate, these black women. Look at National Geographic.

What issue?

Danny [voiceover]: When I started thinking about Africa I realized the only images I knew were from old annuals…Tarzan comics, and Hollywood movies. Cannibals with bones through their noses… lions tearing the throats out of antelopes… and a lot of wondrous oozing words… like Limpopo… Zambezi… Mombasa… Tanganyika.

Umgawa!
https://youtu.be/CkRtsJtWVEU?si=D6xc9viEV3IGmqwn

Danny [voiceover]: People like to have someone to look down on. Makes them feel better about themselves. No one realized what a great community service I was performing by being the school scapegoat. I didn’t care. I’d met this girl…

From Westworld.

Nicola: I think we should swap partners in the musical. Why? You’re writing to him, aren’t you?
Thandiwe: Not anymore.
Nicola: What happened?
Thandiwe: He showed one of them around.
Nicola: That wasn’t him. One of the other kids stole it and read it out aloud.

Benjamin Button!

Danny [voiceover]: Thandiwe started telling me about Africa as she knew it. How her mother was killed in the Mau-Mau period in Kenya…how her father wrote books about African nationalism and the problems created as the colonial governments scrambled to get out. There had been terrible times the last few years–the Belgian Congo…Zanzibar…Angola…Kenya. Places I’d barely heard of.

With even more terrible times to come.

Thandiwe: Women’s clothes are much better designed for this sort of thing. You must get all squashed up in there.
Danny: It can get pretty tricky sometimes.
Thandiwe: When it’s big?
Danny: Yeah, if it’s like…when you’re in church or something.
Thandiwe: Does it happen there?
Danny: It can happen anywhere.

Ever happen to you here?

Nicola: Do you remember the young guy who was fixing the bell tower? I took him a cup of tea each morning before assembly. I liked him, even though he never said much. I used to close my eyes and sit on a chair…and let him touch me all over. As long as he promised not to take anything off. I thought I was so exquisitely daring I’d almost faint. I’d have to sit down. I’d be trembling so much, my legs would’ve given way. Afterwards, I’d be reading the lesson convinced all the teachers must know because I was so…so shivery delicious all over.

On her way to Tom as it were.

Danny [voiceover]: I don’t think fate is a creature or a lady… like some people say. It’s a tide of events sweeping us along. But I’m not a fatalist, because I believe you can swim against it… and sometimes grasp the hands of the clock face…and steal a few precious minutes. If you don’t…you’re just cartwheeled along. Before you know it, the magic opportunities are lost. And for the rest of your life it lingers on in that part of your mind which dreams the very best dreams…taunting and tantalizing you with what might have been.

Uh, let's not go there?

Thandiwe: You keep this half of the world going.
Danny: You look after the other!

It just wasn't enough, alas.

Danny [voiceover]: I realized I hadn’t any idea what she’d gone back to. Her letters came every week. She told me about an army officer called Idi Amin…and how her stepmother had disappeared and she was looking after her brother and sister. We read in the papers her father had been executed. Then the letters stopped.

And then...

Thandiwe [voiceover from her letter]: ''Danny…we’re in Nairobi now and finally safe. A lot of things have happened. I’m very different to how I was when you last knew me…but I’m waiting for the time we’ll sit down together and look into each other’s eyes again. I look forward to that time more than I can say."

No sequel though.

Norway. 1915. Reform school. Brutal conditions. Reactionary governor.

But then one brave individual…

Films like this are made all the time. And that’s because the social, political and economic conditions that spawn them have been around [one way or another] all the time. For example, throughout human history.

It’s like watching the prototype for Cool Hand Luke. Only boys this time and not men. Boys from impoverished and working class communities. More or less uncouth and uneducated.

And as with many such films there are three sets of relationships. The one among the inmates, the one between the inmates and the jailors and the one between the jailors and God.

And, as with the Magdalene Sisters above, the intentions of the jailors can be quite sincere.

Based on a true story:

Although it is set in winter, the film is a fictionalized retelling of a rebellion among the youth at the Bastøy Reform School in May 1915. The reformatory was located on Bastøy Island in the Oslo fjord south of Horten municipality in the county of Vestfold in Norway. The Norwegian government purchased the island in 1898 for 95,000 kroner, and the reformatory opened in 1900. wiki


King of Devil's Island [Kongen av Bastøy]

Erling [voiceover]: I once saw a whale get hit by three harpoons, and still keep going. It took him all day to die. We found the whale again. Got closer than we’d ever been. He was weaker, because of the harpoon I’d hit him with. And covered in scars from all the battles he’d fought.

A metaphor let's call it.

Governor: Our goal, and your goal, is to find an honorable, humble, useful Christian boy in you. Shape and polish him. And if we don’t find him, you’ll stay here.

You knew that was coming.

Governor [to stoolie]: See that they learn the rules.

My guess: or else.

Governor: C19. Stand straight. Stand straight! This is pretty meaningless, isn’t it? Just like your behavior this morning.
Erling: I’m sorry, Governor.
Governor: No, you’re not.
Erling: It’s just that I don’t belong here, Governor.
Governor: Oh, yes. You belong here. Now carry all those rocks over to that pile. That’s where they belong.

You’ll know what this reminds you of: 1] Lucas Jackson and the Captain 2] Sisyphus and the boulder. Sooner or later, they break you.

House Father: Forest duty. Half rations.

A potent combination let's say.

Governor [of Ivar’s death]: …anyway, he is at peace now. God has taken him home.

And they've already put him through Hell.

Governor: You’re accused of sexual relations with a child! If there is one iota of truth to that, I’ll have you rot in prison for the rest of your life.
House Father: I understand how hard it must be for a man in your position. With a young wife, all that responsibility, all the choices you have to make. All those funds which were meant to benefit the boys and the island. Funds you have used on yourself, to make your life easier. I understand that. But others might not.

So, who wins?

Olav: You know what the committee and governor said about us?
Erling: It doesn’t matter. Bastoy is nothing but a small rock in the water.

Right.

Death

“When the time comes to die, make sure that all you have to do is die!” Jim Elliot

You tell me.

“No more let life divide what death can join together.” Percy Bysshe Shelley

You tell me.

“The flesh surrenders itself. Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of Time. What can we say of this? I occurred. I am not...yet, I occurred.” Frank Herbert

Ah, a philosophical death.

“Death didn't bother me much. Strong Christian and all that. Method of death did. Being eaten alive. One of my top three ways not to go out.” Laurell K. Hamilton

Start here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_d ... s_to_human
On the other hand, how many of them were Christians?

“I’ll never speak to God again.” Sylvia Plath

How about now though?

“If you die in an elevator, be sure to push the up button.” Sam Levenson

Like that will fool God!

Some will despise him only a bit more than they would like to be him. Or at least be able to confront all the assholes that make their life miserable…like he does. Of course he’d have to start with himself.

I guess if you find yourself in a world like this you’ve got to come up with something to fit the living from day to day part into. It’s just entertainment though for most of the folks who don’t live in it. But then the one world spills over into the other from time to time and maybe we should think about that more constructively.

Many, however, only think this: As long as the assholes are doing it to each other fuck em. As though a lot of innocent folks don’t eventually go down with them.

But others will glorify this sort of behavior in and of itself. He’s a thug, true, but a witty, charismatic thug. In the end though [and for all too many] he becomes a bloody rock star. But from his perspective, he was just ridding the world of “filth”.

And, after watching this, you can hardly argue with that.


Chopper

Chopper [to interviewer]: I’m just a bloody normal bloke. A normal bloke who likes a bit of torture.

He ever torture you?

Chopper [to Keithy]: Even Beethoven had his critics. See if you can name three of them.

Start here: https://artsandculture.google.com/story ... h7yA?hl=en

Chopper [to prison officals]: Look, all I can tell you is what I’ve already told Mister Beasley: none of us saw anything. It was just one of those things: Bluey Barnes was reading a magazine; Ambrose Hatcheson was taking a piss; Johnny Price was washing his hands; Jimmy Loughnan was watching a bullant crawl across the table, and I was watching Jimmy watching the bullant.

It didn't seem that way to me though.

Chopper: Look I’m sure when Keithy wakes up from his slumber this morning, he’ll swear to God that I didn’t stab him.
Prison official: Well, he’s not going to wake up…he died this morning.

Judgment Day!

Chopper: Jimmy, if you keep stabbing me, you’re going to kill me.

He stopped of course.

Chopper: Look. The bloke’s been me best mate since 1975. We’ve had our fallouts from time to time, it’s no big deal. Y’know, it’s like… if ya mum stabs ya, whaddya do? Y-ya don’t get upset. Ya don’t get angry, ya go, “Shit, mum’s stabbed me, I better get off to the hospital.”

She'll probably drive him herself.

Philosophy

“...it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.” Ernest Hemingway

How's that going for you? Here, I mean.

“Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply an admission of the obvious. In fact, 'atheism' is a term that should not even exist. No one needs to identify himself as a 'non-astrologer' or a 'non-alchemist.' We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.” Sam Harris

Sounds a lot like a libertarian to me.

“The truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it.” Frank Herbert

No, really, actually think about that this time.

“To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.” Blaise Pascal

Define "really"?

“...as soon as we renounce fiction and illusion, we lose reality itself; the moment we subtract fictions from reality, reality itself loses its discursive-logical consistency.” Slavoj Žižek

How's that working out for you?

“Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables.” Thomas Aquinas

And Gods, of course.

Chopper

Chopper: Look, you’re not still angry at me about the leg, are you?
Neville Bartos: Nah, forget about it.
Chopper: Because I don’t know if you remember, Neville, but I had that bloody shotgun pointed at your head. I reconsidered and dropped it down to your kneecap. Remember?
Neville Bartos: Forget about it. All right?
Chopper: I mean, what the bloody hell were you doing getting lippy at me with a bloody shotgun? I had a bloody loaded shotgun.
Neville Bartos: The leg is okay, all right?

With friends like this...

Chopper [to detective Downie at bar]: You’ve probably read all the newspaper stories about me, and you’ve heard the word on the street about me, and you’ve probably got a picture in your head of what Chopper Read’s like and we’re sitting here at this bar all very nice and cosy and I’m a bit of a let down to you.

Give it time...

Detective Downie [about Neville]: So you took him to the hospital?
Chopper: No, I didn’t take him to the bloody hospital. Now tell me this, right? Why would I shoot a bloke - BANG - and then put him in the bloody car and whiz him off to the hospital at a hundred miles an hour? It defeats the purpose of having shot him in the first place. What’s more, it’s bloody insulting, it’s bloody insulting. I mean, am I the only bloody standover man in the country who provides a medical plan for some of these characters?

Thuggery and logic?

Detective Cooney: We know you didn’t shoot the Turk.
Chopper: I just told you I shot the Turk.
Detective Downie: They’ve picked up the bloke that did it.
Chopper: What fucking bloke that did it? I did it!
Detective Downie: No, Homicide have picked up the guy, right? They’ve even got the murder weapon.
Chopper: What murder weapon?
Detective Cooney: .410 shotgun.
Chopper [pulls out his shotgun]: Here. This bloody .410 shotgun.
Detective Downie: Put it away, Mark. Just put the bloody thing away. This thing’s a .410. Fine, it’s a .410. There’s a fucking million .410s out there. That’s not the .410 that did it.
Chopper [incredulous]: You don’t want this? It’s a fucking murder weapon!

Jerking each other off, let's call it.

Mandy: Jimmy and the boys are bringing the car. You help set up the big fellow, it’ll make you a star.
Sammy the Turk: They said they had it farmed out, they had it ghosted. But when I walked out the door, they just left me posted.
Jimmy: The gun was for real, it was not a lark. But the twit took him out to the wrong car park.
Chopper: Silly boys, that’s all that Chopper had to say, and poor little Sammy got blown away.

And how clever is that?

Interviewer: You’ve written a best-seller…
Chopper: Yeah, I know - and I can’t even bloody spell. What about those poor bloody academics, those college graduates, battling their guts out to write some airy-fairy piece of exaggerated artwork? And here’s a bloke, sitting in a cell, who can’t spell, and he’s written a best-seller. It’s sold two hundred and fifty thousand copies. And it’s still selling. And he’s writing another one. And I can’t even spell. I’m semi-bloody-illiterate. They must hate my guts, eh?

On the other hand, for those who can spell, are they obligated to?

It’s time for liberals [students of course] to up the ante. Give the reactionaries a good argument, sure, but if they still refuse to see the light…poison them. As in to death.

That’s the premise.

It revolves around the hypothetical of going back in time and meeting Hitler when he was still an art student: If you had the chance, would you kill him then?

It’s just a big fat juicy fantasy of course but, hey, don’t tell me it hasn’t crossed your mind from time to time. I mean, we are talking the most infuriating blockheads here. In or around the vicinity of Talk Radio. Or Donald Trump.

Or, if you are one of the conservative blockheads, reverse it and think of people like me.

It’s the blackest of comedies with lots of political stuff in it.

It also has a really, really good soundtrack.

Too bad about the ending though. Even accounting for the irony that runs rabid throughout the film, I didn’t buy the last dinner guest at all. And the very ending? I mean, come on.


The Last Supper

Norman [on TV]: …and I say angry feminists like there was some other kind.

Think Fox News on steroids.

Zach: I was in the Marines. I was in the war.
Pete: War? What war?
Zach: Desert Storm.
Luke: Was that really a war? I just thought that was a Republican commercial campaign.
Zach: You got a problem with patriotism?

Here we go…

Zach: Hitler had the right idea.
Marc: Excuse me?
Zach: I’m not saying that killing the Jews was right. If he really did. There’s no real proof, you know.

He's a dead man talking.

Zach: Funny ain’t it. When it comes to buying shit, the Jews always bring the numbers down, but when it comes to WWII, they’re always pushing the numbers up.

Did I mention he's a dead man?

Marc: What in your infinitely finite wisdom do you think Hitler had the right idea about?
Zach: It’s common knowledge that the Jews, no offense, were stealing money from the Germans, just like they do here.

Offense taken, let's say.

Marc: First of all, the Jews were Germans.
Zach: The Jews aren’t like that. It’s always being a Jew first. That’s why everybody hates them.

Uh, the chosen ones?

The Last Supper

Zach [to Luke]: You know what my grandfather used to say, “if he knew you boys were going to be so much trouble, we’d pick the damn cotton ourselves.”

Luke being black, of course.

Zach: You all just sit back, whine and complain like you always do, but you don’t do nothing. You left wingers make me puke. Liberals never take a stand you’d be willing to…
Luke: …to die for?
Zach: Nah. Boy, dying is easy. There is nothing heroic about dying. But if you can take a stand for something you’d be willing to kill for, that is something, something special…We do all the fighting, working and dying, and you do all the bitching.

Yo, Marc! You're up!!

Paulie: Is he really dead?
Jude: Yes, Paulie, he’s really dead. It’s a side effects of having a knife in your back!

See, I told you.

Luke: I say we just bury the cracker and have dessert.

Pie, as I recall.

Luke: People disappear all of the time.
Jude: Especially in Iowa. We probably saved him from an alien abduction.

Or the Iowa caucuses?

Marc: Here’s a hypothetical. You’re a time traveler. It’s 1909 in Austria. You’re in a pub having a schnapps with a stranger…a young art student with one testicle. Let’s say his name is Adolf. Now Adolf at this point in his life has done no wrong. He’s not bitter. He’s not angry. He’s committed no crime. He has not killed anybody. He certainly hasn’t started a world war.
Pete: You’re point being?
Marc: Do you kill him? Do you poison his schnapps to save all those millions of innocent people?

Uh, let's not go there?

Free Will

“Reason is but choosing.” John Milton

And what reason might that be?

“I believe that artificial intelligence is quite possible precisely because our human intelligence is artificial. What is natural is stupidity.” Alexander Dugin.

Click?

“Freedom means the possibility to choose from a set of unfree options.” Radoslav Rochallyi

Click?

“They’re trying to reduce us all to safe little reflex machines, extensions of their own will.” Cliff Jones Jr.

They're convening in Milwaukee right now. Then later in Chicago.

“Eternity. It stretches above and blow, and to right and left of this little Earth of yours, and Earth is lost within it. Eternity is so vast that your little human mind cannot encompass its meaning. Yet it is in this little moment of time you call life that you must choose. And so I say, look how you choose, you choose for eternity.” Hilda Lewis

Uh, whatever that means? Though, sure, by all means, point taken.

“Those who whisper freedom to your ears are the greatest threats to your existence.” Eduvie Donald

In other words, you are free to be exactly as they are. Or else.

The Last Supper

Luke: What if you kill somebody whose death makes the world a better place? Think about all the right-wing assholes the world would’ve been better off without if someone had wasted them before they did any damage.

And, come on, the extreme left-wing assholes too? After all, woke is woke.

Luke: The blue bottle is bad. The green bottle is good.

Next up: the guests.

Luke: So, Reverend, how did you and Jude come to know each other?
Jude: I interviewed the good Reverned for a research paper I was doing.
Reverend: Yes, on the vileness.
Luke: The vileness?
Reverend: The gay plague of course.

Your own plague might be different of course.

Pete: So you don’t believe in comforting the families of AIDS victums.
Reverned: No, I do not believe in comforting the families of irredeemable mortal sinners.
Pete: Of course, AIDS is not a sin, it’s a terrible disease.
Reverend: Not quite. Homosexuality is the terrible disease and AIDS is the cure.

A dead man talking?

Jude: The Reverend is the leader of God’s Way.
Reverend: Homosexuals are the living, breathing cesspool of pathogens. We simply propose to put them out on a desert island with enough foodstuffs to last them for their limited lifetimes. And what would that be…two years tops. That way, for a nominal cost to us they would all die.

Time for the blue bottle perhaps?

Pete: Call 911!
Everyone: NO!!

No it is then.

Stanisław Lem from Solaris

Apathy robbed me of the strength even to despise myself.

Though not to despise others, of course.

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

Though it might close any day now.

I didn’t believe for a minute that this liquid colossus, which had brought about the death of hundreds of humans within itself, with which my entire race had for decades been trying in vain to establish at least a thread of communication—that this ocean, lifting me up unwittingly like a speck of dust, could be moved by the tragedy of two human beings.

Imagine our ocean acquiring its own specks of dust. And, no, not just in the Bermuda Triangle.

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.

God's will?

Human beings set out to encounter other worlds, other civilizations, without having fully gotten to know their own hidden recesses, their blind alleys, well shafts, dark barricaded doors.

What do you think, some more than others?

We’re not searching for anything except people. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is.

I'll be your mirror if you'll be mine.