Quote of the day

[iambiguous]

As I recall, the movie The Departed is a remake of this film. They are both equally well made. Too close to call as far as I am concerned. But there is only one Jack Nicholson. So maybe not.

Both films deal with the same aspect of identity. You go in undercover thinking of yourself one way. But the new experiences you have [prolonged over the years] can change who you think you are. The best example of this is still Donnie Brasco. But there are overlapping ramifications explored here as well.

Here’s the thing though. If I’m a gang boss worried about undercover cops I’d order all of the men under me to commit some major crime. A hit for instance. Or if I’m a top cop worried about the men under me I’d order them all to take a lie detector test. Which makes you wonder how this all really does unfold out in the “real world”.

Or, again, just make the stuff legal to buy. You know, like booze and tobacco. Restrict and regulate the sale…but take the criminal element out of it.

When Yan and SP Wong are waiting at the elevator, the digital floor counter skips the 4th floor. In China and Hong Kong, the number 4 is considered bad luck because it sounds similar to the word ‘death’.

The alternative ending found as a special feature on most Western DVD releases was created for release in China, where the authorities were uncomfortable with the political implications of the original ending. IMDb


Internal Affairs [Mou Gaan Dou]

Title card: [Nirvana Sutra] Verse 19: “The worst of the eight hells is called Continuous Hell." It has the meaning of Continuing Suffering. Thus the name.

In that case, they chose a good one.

Sam: What thousands must die, so that Caesar may become the great. But I don’t believe in destiny. We now have the power to take fate in our hands.

Pick one:
1] over here in the West
2] over there in the East

Wong: Yan, you’ve been busted for assault three times. So I’m offically setting you up with a department shrink. You’re much too involved in your role. You’re acting like a real criminal. Have you forgotten you’re a cop?
Yan: You tell me it’s only 3 years. But it keeps getting extended over and over. I’ve been doing this shit now for 10 years!
Wong: I could erase your file if you’d rather be a gangster.
Yan: What do you want me to do? Never get my hands dirty? That doesn’t work for a gangster. I might as well wear my badge.

He does have a point there, doesn't he?

Wong: Let me tell you a story. Two men need an organ transplant, but there’s only one organ. So they play a game. They each put a card in their pocket. Whoever can guess the other’s card wins the organ.
Sam: You know I can see your card.
Wong: I see yours as well.

Well, you know what I’d recommend.

Mary [to Ming]: I know what my next novel will be about. A man with multiple personalities. The second he wakes up, he could be anybody. He starts to forget which one is the real him.

On the other hand, what if there isn't one?

Yan: Should I salute you?
Ming: No, don’t. How long have you been an undercover?
Yan: I’ve followed Sam for 3 years; I had several other bosses before. All together, it’s been 10 years.
Ming: 10 years? I should salute you, instead.
Yan: I just want an identity. I want to be a normal man.
Ming: Getting tired?
Yan: You’ve never been a mole. You won’t understand.

Oh, I think he does.

Yan: Too bad I still can’t find the stooge. I’ll take him down when I’ve found him.
Ming: Don’t worry. Let me give you back your identity, I’ll open your file, but I don’t have the password.
Yan: What’s the Morse Code for undercover?

A bunch of dots and dashes as likely as not.

[iambiguous]

There is no way many folks today will understand the reaction to the original astronauts. Or imagine the risks involved. Back then no one was really entirely sure what would happen to a plane and a pilot that broke the sound barrier…let alone travel thousands of miles an hours in a zero g environment. Somebody always has to go first.

And only one can be the very first to get it all started. On the other hand, if Jay Leno goes Jaywalking and stops folks on the street to ask them, “Who is Chuck Yeager?”, how many do you suppose will know? And while a few might remember John Glenn, how many can name the other six?

Of course back then you had to be both white and male to even have a chance to risk it all.

Not sure how true it actually is but one of the funniest things you’ll ever see on film are the top scientists here trying to decide what sort of folks to pick as the first astronauts. But it does show clearly how new all this was. And you’ve got to remember all this unfolded in reaction to the initial Soviet accomplishments in space. It scared the shit out of many. As Senator Lyndon Johnson grumbled, “…and now the Communists have established a foothold in outer space. Pretty soon they’ll have damned space platforms so they can drop nuclear bombs on us, like rocks from a highway overpass.”


The Right Stuff

Narrator: There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. Their controls would freeze up, their planes would buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man could ever pass. They called it the sound barrier.

So, what are we up to now? Mach wise.

Girl at Pancho’s: I just noticed that a fancy pilot like Slick over there doesn’t have his picture on your wall. What do you have to do to get your picture up there anyway?
Pancho: You have to die, sweetie.

Do we dare to make that the standard here as well?

Yeager: Half these engineers’ve never been off the ground. They’re liable to say the sound barrier’s a brick wall in the sky. It’ll rip your ears off if you try to go through it. If you ask me, I don’t even believe the damn thing exists.

Let's run that by him later.

Man on the ground as Yeager reaches Mach 1: What’s that sound?
Pilot: He bought the farm.

I forget: did he?

Yeager: Hey, Ridley, make another note here, would ya? Must be something wrong with this ol’ Mach meter. Jumped plumb off the scale. Gone kinda screwy on me.
Ridley: You go ahead and bust it, we’ll fix it.

On the other hand, not all the time.

Pancho: What are you two rookies gonna have?
Cooper: Rookies? Now hold on, sis. You are looking at a whole new ballgame here now. In fact, in a couple of years, I bet you’re even gonna immortalize us by putting our pictures up there on your wall.
[unwittingly referring to the dead pilot memorial over the bar]
Cooper: What? I say somethin’ wrong here?

Oh, yeah.

[iambiguous]

The Right Stuff

Chief Scientist: Our Germans are better than their Germans.

Better at what?

Chief Scientist: I agree with those who say we could launch a pod.
Senator Johnson: A pot?
Chief Scientist: A POD - a, uh, capsule. Now, we would be in full control of zis pod. It vill go up like a cannonball, and come down like, uh, a cannonball, splashing down into ze water, the ocean, vith a parachute to spare the life of the specimen inside.
Senator Johnson: Spaceman?
Chief Scientist: SPE-CI-MEN.
Senator Johnson: Well, what kind of spe-ci-men?
Chief Scientist: A tough one. Responsive to orders. I had in mind a jimp.
Senator Johnson: JIMP? Well what the HELL is a jimp?
Chief Scientist: A jimp. A-a-a jimpanzee, Senator. An ape.
President Eisenhower: The first American into space is not going to be a chimpanzee!

Any jimps here?

Yeager [to NASA recruiters]: You need lab rabbits.
Recruiter: Sorry, I didn’t get that.
Yeager: I said you need lab rabbits to curl up in your damn capsule. With its heart going “pitter-patter”. And a wire up the kazoo. I don’t hold with it.
Crossfield: I don’t either. You want a pilot to become a balistic missile. And then splash down - possibly get lost at sea.
Pancho: See, some peckerwood’s gotta get the thing up there. And some peckerwood’s gotta land the son of a bitch. And that “peckerwood” is called a “pilot”.

You actually had to be there as I recall.

Cooper [during the lung capacity test]: Ha! 93 seconds. Read it and weep.
[notices Glenn and Carpenter are still exhaling]
Glenn: Congratulations, Scott. Darn good.
Carpenter [shaking Glenn’s hand]: You were probably just getting warmed up, John. Next time I doubt I’ll be the one to win.
Grissom [to Gordo]: You hear that? We were competing with Archie and Jughead!

Let's run that by Banky and Hooper X.

Cooper [ordered to give a sperm sample]: Yeah, but uh, nurse, how am I supposed to uh…
Nurse Murch: The best results seem to be obtained through fantasization, accompanied by masturbation, followed by ejaculation.
Cooper: Well, that sounds easy enough.

Let's run that by E.L. and the sperm bank nurse.

Astronaut groupie: Four down, three to go.

Next up: philosophy groupie.

Slayton: What Gus is saying is that we’re missing the point. What Gus is saying is that we all heard the rumors that they want to send a monkey up first. Well, none of us wants to think that they’re gonna send a monkey up to do a man’s work. But what Gus is saying is that what they’re trying to do to us is send a man up to do a monkey’s work. Us, a bunch of college-trained chimpanzees!

What's that make us then?

[iambiguous]

The Right Stuff

Shepard: Dear Lord, please don’t let me fuck up.
Cooper: I didn’t quite copy that. Say again, please.
Shepard: I said everything’s A-OK.

Let's run that by the Kantians here.

Eric Sevareid [broadcasting]: There’s another hold from NASA, another delay. Alan Shepard sits there, patiently waiting. What can be going through a man’s mind at this moment?
[cut to Shepard in his space capsule]
Shepard: Gordo?.. Gordo, I have to urinate.
[cut to Alan’s wife]
Wife: Alan must have had four cups of coffee before he left this morning.
[cut to Shephard]
Shepard: Request permission to relieve myself.
Cooper: Look, the man has got to go. Now, it’s either that or we get the lug wrench and pry kim out.
Chief scientist: Do it in the suit.

That ever happen to you?

Betty Grissom [after her husband’s flight]: I thought I was going to be Honorable Mrs. Astronaut, and now they are treating me like I’m Honorable Mrs. Squirming Hatchblower.
Grissom: I did not do anything wrong! The hatch just blew! It was a glitch! It was a technical malfunction! Why in hell won’t anyone believe me?!

Probably because they would lie themselves in the same situation.

Yeager: Monkeys? You think a monkey knows he’s sittin’ on top of a rocket that might explode? These astronaut boys they know that, see? Well, I’ll tell you something, it takes a special kind of man to volunteer for a suicide mission, especially one that’s on TV. Ol’ Gus, he did all right.

Not all of them did, if you'll recall.

Cooper: You know something, Gus? I got me a new house, new furniture. Got me $25,000 a year on a magazine contract. Got me a Corvette. Got free lunch from one end of America to the other - and I ain’t even been up there yet.
Grissom: Yeah, I noticed that.
Cooper: Oh, you noticed that, did you? Well I guess they’re just saving the best for last.
Grissom: Yeah, I guess so, Hot Dog. Just be sure you don’t screw the pooch.

Next up:

Narrator: The Mercury program was over. Four years later, astronaut Gus Grissom was killed, along with astronauts White and Chaffee, when fire swept through their Apollo capsule. But on that glorious day in May 1963, Gordo Cooper went higher, farther, and faster than any other American - 22 complete orbits around the world; he was the last American ever to go into space alone. And for a brief moment, Gordo Cooper became the greatest pilot anyone had ever seen.

Well, at least until Pete Mitchell.

[iambiguous]

Meaning

“When I reached the street I didn't know whether to go right or left. Soon I'd have to start acting like a person who cared about what happened to him.” Denis Johnson

Wow, does that take me back.

“After Carol had left, as Symons threw away a pile of used tissues and rearranged the cushions on the couch, he remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see him [as a career counselor] was the idea that they ought somehow, in the normal course of events, to have intuited--long before they had finished their degrees, started families, bought houses and risen to the top of law firms--what they should properly be doing with their lives. They were tormented by a residual notion of having through some error or stupidity on their part missed out on their true 'calling.” Alain de Botton

Fortunately, however, we did all end up here.

“To live, is to suffer. To survive, well, that's to find meaning in the suffer.” DMX

Of course, he only had about 50 years to figure this out himself.
Did he?

“We possess art lest we perish of the truth.” Friedrich Nietzsche

He means religion, of course.

“So is it just human nature to believe that things happen for a reason — to find some shred of meaning even in the worst experiences?" Molly asks when Vivian reads some of these stories aloud.
"It certainly helps," Vivian says.” Christina Baker Kline

Want me to read you mine?

“Work should be personal. For all of us. Not just for the artist and entrepreneur. Work should have meaning for the accountant, the construction worker, the technologist, the manager and the clerk.” Howard Schultz

What we got instead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management

[iambiguous]

John Fowles from The Magus

It is not only species of animal that die out, but whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know, but pity yourself for what it did.

I know that I do.

He was one of the most supremely stupid men I have ever met. He taught me a great deal.

So, how might that possibly be appropriate here? And let's name names.

“The craving to risk death is our last great perversion. We come from night, we go into night. Why live in night?

So, don't forget to vote!

There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be. You are too young to know this. You are still becoming. Not being.

Of course, now he's being dead.

I will tell you what war is. War is a psychosis caused by an inability to see relationships. Our relationship with our fellowmen. Our relationship with our economic and historical situation. And above all our relationship to nothingness, to death.

Tell that to military industrial complex. Then get back to us.

Duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical.

Like, uh, logging in here?

[promethean75]

Tim Dorsey -


Florida Cable News. A gray-haired man behind the anchor desk reported near tragedy at a state motor vehicle office, where a man who had failed the eye exam pulled a gun and fired fifteen shots at the staff, hitting nobody.

A prosthetic leg with a Willie Nelson bumper sticker washed ashore on the beach, which meant it was Florida. Then it got weird.

Always walk away from a fight. Then ambush.

Serge bowed his own head and closed his eyes "God, please protect us from your followers. Amen"

Do you think heaven's like that?

Could be worse, said Serge. You know all those pushy people who keep telling us we're not going to heaven? It could be full of them instead.

There was no Disney World then, just rows of orange trees. Millions of them. Stretching for miles And somewhere near the middle was the Citrus Tower, which the tourists climbed to see even more orange trees. Every month an eighty-year-old couple became lost in the groves, driving up and down identical rows for days until they were spotted by helicopter or another tourist on top of the Citrus Tower. They had lived on nothing but oranges and come out of the trees drilled on vitamin C and checked into the honeymoon suite at the nearest bed-and-breakfast.
"The Miami Seaquarium put in a monorail and rockets started going off at Cape Canaveral, making us feel like we were on the frontier of the future. Disney bought up everything north of Lake Okeechobee, preparing to shove the future down our throats sideways.
"Things evolved rapidly! Missile silos in Cuba. Bales on the beach. Alligators are almost extinct and then they aren't. Juntas hanging shingles in Boca Raton. Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo skinny-dipping off Key Biscayne. We atone for atrocities against the INdians by playing Bingo. Shark fetuses in formaldehyde jars, roadside gecko farms, tourists waddling around waffle houses like flocks of flightless birds. And before we know it, we have The New Florida, underplanned, overbuilt and ripe for a killer hurricane that'll knock that giant geodesic dome at Epcot down the trunpike like a golf ball, a solid one-wood by Buckminster Fuller.
"I am the native and this is my home. Faded pastels, and Spanish tiles constantly slipping off roofs, shattering on the sidewalk. Dogs with mange and skateboard punks with mange roaming through yards, knocking over garbage cans. Lunatics wandering the streets at night, talking about spaceships. Bail bondsmen wake me up at three A.M. looking for the last tenant. Next door, a mail-order bride is clubbed by a smelly ma in a mechanic's shirt. Cats violently mate under my windows and rats break-dance in the drop ceiling. And I'm lying in bed with a broken air conditioner, sweating and sipping lemonade through a straw. And I'm thinking, geez, this used to be a great state.
"You wanna come to Florida? You get a discount on theme-park tickets and find out you just bought a time share. Or maybe you end up at Cape Canaveral, sitting in a field for a week as a space shuttle launch is canceled six times. And suddenly vacation is over, you have to catch a plane, and you see the shuttle take off on TV at the airport. But you keep coming back, year after year, and one day you find you're eighty years old driving through an orange grove.

[iambiguous]

There are folks able to think about time travel in ways that are one hell of a lot more sophisticated than I can. I simply don’t have the background in the requisite sciences needed to grasp just how plausible this stuff [in the film] is.

Maybe folks like James S. Saint can come back to tell us [once and for all] just how close to or far away from it is to the actual Rational and Metaphysical truth.

It really would be nice though to actually know what the hell they are talking about. But the film hits the ground running as far as the science is concerned. If you don’t get it, tough shit.

Start here:
https://youtu.be/tUzy-xPf0MI?si=PqEtKdlJKML-qsqW
https://youtu.be/-sf9fChyRoc?si=rFFCUK43YmJht9GB

What is most intriguing though is the way they plug the science into a day to day [and then month to month] narrative that is actually rather suspenseful. It’s not all just science. It even comes down [as one might expect] to a matter of life or death. And [of course] it destroys their friendship. Well, whoever these characters even are now. Or how many of them there are.

The budget for the entire film was around $7000. Most of the money was spent on film stock. IMDb


Primer

Aaron [voiceover]: Meticulous, yes. Methodical, educated; they were these things. Nothing extreme. Like anyone, they varied. There were days of mistakes and laziness and in-fighting, and there were days, good days, when by anyone’s judgment they would have to be considered clever. No one would say that what they were doing was complicated. It wouldn’t even be considered new, except for maybe in the geological sense. They took from their surroundings what was needed and made of it something more.

Way, way, way, way more?

Robert: My free time? Which free time? Free time after the fifty hours a week at work, after the thirty hours I spend working nights in the garage…?
Abe: We’re all working the same schedule. We’re all working the same schedule. I know.
Robert [with hurt feelings]: And, and it’s not a Tesla coil.
[sarcastically]
Robert: I guess I could shave a couple minutes off my day by eating on the toilet.

He'll get them back in the past...or the future.

Aaron: You know that story, about how NASA spent millions of dollars developing this pen that writes in Zero G? Did you ever read that?
Abe: Yeah.
Aaron: You know how the Russians solved the problem?
Abe: Yeah, they used a pencil.
Aaron: Right. A normal wooden pencil. It just seems like Philip takes the NASA route almost every time.

Next up: the Pentagon.

Aaron [voiceover]: There was value in the thing. Clearly. Of that they were certain of. But what is the application? In a matter of hours… they had pinned it to everything from mass transit to satellite launching. Imagining devices the size of jumbo jets. Everything would be cheaper. It was practical and they knew it. But above all that, beyond the positives…they knew that the easiest way to be exploited…is to sell something they did not yet understand. So they kept quiet.

And still nothing as far as I can tell.

Aaron [voiceover]: Abe had taken on the task of quantifying and explaining the device. But as weeks became months their enthusiasm became a slow realization that they were out of their depth.

Tell us about it!

Abe: If you ditch work this afternoon, and promise to do the few small things I ask you; I will in return show you the most important thing that any living organism has ever witnessed.

No, really, what might that be?

[iambiguous]

Yuval Noah Harari

Money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.

Uh, theoretically?

The romantic contrast between modern industry that “destroys nature” and our ancestors who “lived in harmony with nature” is groundless. Long before the Industrial Revolution, Homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinctions. We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of life.

That can't be good. If for some more than others.

Questions you cannot answer are usually far better for you than answers you cannot question.

Define "usually"?

This is the best reason to learn history: not in order to predict the future, but to free yourself of the past and imagine alternative destinies. Of course this is not total freedom – we cannot avoid being shaped by the past. But some freedom is better than none.

In other words, our freedom is better than theirs.

So, monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. There is one logical way of solving the riddle: to argue that there is a single omnipotent God who created the entire universe – and He’s evil. But nobody in history has had the stomach for such a belief.

So, instead, we killed Him.

As far as we can tell from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose. Our actions are not part of some divine cosmic plan, and if planet earth were to blow up tomorrow morning, the universe would probably keep going about its business as usual. As far as we can tell at this point, human subjectivity would not be missed. Hence any meaning that people inscribe to their lives is just a delusion.

Next up: as far as others can tell.

[iambiguous]

Primer

Aaron: In RussellfieId, I got a hoteI room and tried to isolate myself.
Abe: Wait, what do you mean ‘‘isolate’’?
Aaron: I closed the windows, I unplugged everything in the room—the telephone, TV, clock, radio, everything. I didn’t want to take the chance of running into someone I knew or seeing something on the news that might…If we’re dealing with causality, and I don’t even know for sure. I just…
Abe: What?
Aaron: Took myself out of the equation.

And what might that equation actually be?

Abe: I know you’ve done it, and I can only assume that you don’t have cancer or male impotence. But what is your opinion on how safe this thing is?
Aaaron: I can imagine no way in which this thing would be considered anywhere remotely close to safe. All I know is I spent six hours in there and I’m still alive.

Yep, that's how it's scripted alright.

Aaron: Look, Abe, look, I’m not going to pretend like I know anything, okay, about paradoxes, you know, or what follows them. And, honestly, I really don’t believe in any of that group anyway, you know, kill your mom before you’re born, whatever. It must work itself out, somehow. This is what I know for sure. The worst thing in the world is to know that the moment you are experiencing has already been defined, that this is the second or third time through, or whatever. And do you ever feel like…I don’t know…maybe things aren’t right, like maybe your life is in disarray…or just not what you would like and you start to wonder what caused this.

All that dasein stuff, in other words.

Abe: I’m not into the whole ‘‘destiny, there’s-only-one-right-way’’ thing.
Aaron: I’m not either. But which is worse, thinking you’re being paranoid or knowing you should be?

Next up: your "click" or mine.

Aaron: Abe, are you hungry? I haven’t eaten since later this afternoon.

Time travel humor let's call it.

Abe: How, how do cell phones work? If, if there’s two duplicate phones and I call the same number, do they both ring at the same time, or is there…
Aaron: That’s not how it works.
Abe: Yes, it’s a radio signal, so it…
Aaron: No, it’s a network. The network, the network checks each area. When it finds a phone, it stops ringing. It only, it rings the first one.
Abe: This, this one’s ringing.
Aaron Right.
Abe: So, the one your double has in Russellfield can’t be…
Aaron: Right. I think we broke symmetry.
Abe: Are you sure that’s how cell phones work?
Aaron: No.

No, really, how is it even possible for them to work? Isn't that what most of us are thinking?

Abe: A half an hour ago I was asleep. This car alarm woke me up. These kids were down skating by, hitting all cars on the block. So we go right now, do our business at Platts’, get back in the box and come back before those kids set off those alarms. All we really have to do is stand there in plain sight. That should scare them off. That way my double sleeps through the night they don’t have this conversation, and they get in the box tomorrow as usual.

What could possibly be clearer?

Abe: There is no way I wouId tell anyone about this. No way.
Aaron: Can you think of any reason you might?
Abe: No.
Aaron: Sometimes we do things but don’t know how we got to that point.
Abe: No, I can’t. I can’t think of any reason why I would.
Aaron: Well, I can’t either.
Abe: What if it was an emergency?
Aaron: So you’d do it if it was an emergency?
Abe: No, I don’t know.
Aaron: What, so you might then?
Abe: I don’t know. What kind of emergency?
Aaron [voiceover]:The permutations were endless. They tried again going to the source, but even while keeping them separated from Abe by two rooms, Thomas Granger’s condition could only be described as vegetative. From this, they deduced that the problem was recursive; but, beyond that, found themselves admitting, against their own nature, and once again, that the answer was unknowable.

What could possibly be clearer?

Aaron [voiceover]: I can tell you with certainty what I did that night, when it was my turn, but I think it would do little good. Because what the world remembers, the actuality, the last revision, is what counts, apparently. So, how many times did it take Aaron, as he cycled through the same conversations, lip-synching trivia over and over? How many times would it take, before he got it right? Three? Four? Twenty? I’ve decided to believe that only one more would have done it. I can almost sleep at night, if there’s only one more. Slowly and methodically, he reverse-engineered a perfect moment. He took from his surroundings what was needed, and made of it something more. And once the details had been successfully navigated, there was nothing more. Maybe the last minute moral debate…until the noise of the room escalates into panic and background screams, as the gunman walks in. And eventually he must have got it perfect and it must have been beautiful…with all the praise and adoration he had coming. He had probably saved Iives, after all. Who knows what wouId have happened if he hadn’t been there?

That ever happen to you...past, present or future?

Aaron [voiceover]: Now I have repaid any debt I may have owed you. You know all that I know. My voice is the only proof that you will have of the truth of any of this. I might have written a letter with my signature, but my handwriting is not what it used to be. Maybe you’ve had the presence of mind to record this. That’s your prerogative. You will not be contacted by me again. And if you look…you will not find me.

The end?

[iambiguous]

Who can count on you? And what exactly qualifies someone to insist that another should be counted on? Counted on to do what exactly?

What are our obligations to others? And what are their obligations to us?

Especially family obligations. Over and again we hear things like, “But he’s your brother [or sister, mother, father etc]. You have to do it.”

Huh?

I certainly did let my own family down. Abandoned them more or less. I honestly don’t know if they are dead or alive. Fortunately, none of them ever really counted on me for much either. They just expected me to think about things more or less the way they did.

Watching this is like looking at inkblots. Different people will see different things depending on the manner in which they were predisposed to react one way rather than another. I don’t particularly see myself here in any of them. But I was certainly rooting for some more than others. One in particular.

Terry has no roots and he doesn’t want any. But: does he know that?


You Can Count On Me

Terry: I’ve actually got to confess to you, Sammy that the reason you may not have heard from me for a little while is that I’ve been kind of unable to write…on account of the fact that I was in jail for a little while.

A jail without mail?

Terry: But you know what? I can’t run around all the time doin’ stuff or not doin’ stuff because it’s gonna make you worry! Because then I come back here, and I tell you about my fucking traumas, and I get this wounded little “I’ve Let You Down” bullshit, over and over again, and it really just – cramps me! Like I just want to get out from under it! And here I am back in this fuckin’ hole explaining myself to you again!

That’s when he tells her he’s just back in the “fuckin’ hole” to ask her for money.

Sammy: Terry? Can I ask you something?
Terry: Sure.
Sammy [with some difficulty] Well – I mean, do you ever go to church anymore?
Terry: Come on, Sammy, can we not talk about that shit?
Sammy: Do you?
Terry: Um – No, Sammy. I don’t.
Sammy: Can you tell me why not?
Terry: Um, yeah. Because I think it’s ridiculous.
Sammy: Well – can you tell me without like, denigrating what I believe in?
Terry: Because I think it’s primitive, OK? I think it’s a fairy tale.

Unfortunately, I think he's right.

Terry: Did you not even want me to come visit?
Sammy: Of course I want you to visit, you idiot! I’ve been looking forward to seeing you from the moment I got your letter. I told everyone in town that you were coming home. I cleaned the whole fucking house just so it would look nice for you! But I had no idea you were just broke again! I wish you’d just send me an invoice!

Ouch?

Terry: You mind if I ask you a personal question?
Rudy: I don’t know.
Terry: Do you like it here, I mean in Scottsville?
Rudy: Yeah.
Terry: Why?
Rudy: I don’t know, my friends are here, I like the scenery…I don’t know.
Terry: I know, I know, it’s just so…there’s nothing to do here.
Rudy: Yes, there is.
Terry: No, there isn’t, man. It’s narrow. It’s dull. It’s a dull, narrow town full of dull, narrow people who don’t know anything except what things are like right around here. They have no perspective whatsoever, no scope. They might as well be living in the 19th century 'cause they have no idea what’s going on, and if you try and tell 'em that they wanna fucking kill you.
Rudy: What are you talking about?

Rudy is 8 years old.

Rudy: Who are you talking about?
Terry: Some wild kids we used to know.
Rudy: Were you a wild kid?
Terry: Not as wild as your mom.
Rudy: Yeah, right…
Terry: Oh, you don’t believe me?
Rudy: No.
Terry: Ask her.
Rudy: Mom, were you wild?
Sammy [after a long pause]: No comment.

We never do learn what that means.

[iambiguous]

Ludwig Wittgenstein

In this sort of predicament, always ask yourself: How did we learn the meaning of this word ("good", for instance)? From what sort of examples? In what language-games? Then it will be easier for you to see that the word must have a family of meanings.

Let's start with this one: dasein.

Telling someone something that he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not understand it. If you have a room which you do not want certain people to get into, put a lock on it for which they do not have the key. But there is no point in talking to them about it, unless of course you want them to admire the room from the outside! The honourable thing to do is to put a lock on the door which will be noticed only by those who can open it, not by the rest.

How might that be applicable here?

For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules-- it hasn't been taught to us by means of strict rules, either. We, in our discussions on the other hand, constantly compare language with a calculus preceding to exact rules.

Logically, as it were?

Philosophy must set limits to what can be thought; and, in doing so, to what cannot be thought. It must set limits to what cannot be thought by working outwards through what can be thought.

Again...

Philosophy must set limits to what can be thought; and, in doing so, to what cannot be thought. It must set limits to what cannot be thought by working outwards through what can be thought.

Hope that helped.

It is difficult to describe paths of thought where there are already many paths laid down, and not fall into one of the grooves.

Then the part where the grooves themselves just get deeper and deeper.

[iambiguous]

You Can Count On Me

Sammy: I realize that you’re mad at me…
Terry [deadpan]: I’m not mad at you…
Sammy: …but he didn’t do anything to you. And you cannot promise a little boy that you’re gonna…
Terry: …I just, you know, after all that religious conversation, I just realized it’s probably not so good for him to be spending so much time with someone like me who doesn’t believe his life is important “in the scheme of things”.

The right scheme in other words.

Sammy: I don’t know what the church’s official position is on fornication and adultery these days, and I felt really hypocritical not saying anything to you about it before, but…what is the official position these days?
Ron: Well…it’s a sin.
Sammy: Good, I think it should be!
Ron: But we try not to focus on that aspect right off the bat.
Sammy: Why not? I think you should.
Ron: Well…
Sammy: Maybe it was better when they screamed at you from the box for having sex with your married boss, they told you what a terrible thing it was, they were really mean to you. Maybe it would be better if you just told me that I’m endangering my immortal soul and that if I don’t stop, I’m gonna burn in hell. Don’t you ever think that?
Ron: No, not really.
Sammy: Well, it’s a lot better than all this, “Why do you think you’re in this situation” psychological bullshit you hear all the time.
Ron: Well… Why do you think you’re in this situation?
Sammy: W-W-Which one?
Ron: All of them.

Of course, that might take days and days.

Sammy [answers the phone]: Hello?
Brian: Yeah, Sammy, it’s Brian.
Sammy: Brian!
Brian: What the hell happened to you today, lady?
[Sammy rolls her eyes and hangs up]
Sammy [after phone rings again]: Hello…
Brian: You’re fired!
Sammy: Good!
[slams phone down]

Now that takes me back. Over and over again.

Sammy [to Terry]: You know, I admit I may not be the best mother in the world, but I’m doing the best I know how, and he doesn’t need you to rub his face in shit because you think it’s good for him! He’s gonna find out that the world is a horrible place and that people suck soon enough and without any help from you!

Now, that's a good point.

Rudy [as Terry is packing up to leave]: Where are you going?
Terry: I don’t know. I just want to get out of this town. And if you’ve got any sense when you get old enough you’ll get out of here too. Your Mom’s gonna live in this town for the rest of her life, and you know why? Because she thinks she has to. Don’t ask me why, but that’s the truth. She thinks there’s all these things she has to do, but you want to know one thing about your Mom? She’s a bigger fuck-up than I ever was. I mean, I know I messed up. You think I enjoy getting thrown in jail because I wanted you to face that p**** your Dad like a little man and see what kind of a guy he is? I know I got a little carried away, and I lost my temper just a little bit - which is not the end of the world either, by the way, just for future reference - And now she’s kickin’ me out of my own house because - you know, because I fucked up a little bit. Which I totally admit. I was like - totally ready to admit that.

Or, sure, a lot.

Sammy [to Brian]: You know, if I were you, I’d be a little nervous about firing somebody I’d just had an affair with, okay?

The boss [Ferris Bueller].
And his wife is 6 months pregnant.

Terry: I do know where I’m going. I’m going to Worcester and I’m gonna try to see that girl. And then depending on what happens there, I thought I’d try to see if there’s any work for me out West. And if there is, I’m gonna head out there for the summer and try to make some money. And if there isn’t, I’ll figure something else out. Maybe I’ll stay around the East. I don’t know…I really liked it in Alaska. It was really beautiful. You just – It made me feel good. And before things got so messed up I was doin’ pretty well out there. Seriously. But I couldn’t stay here, Sammy: I don’t want to live here.

And it's not like he has a son to raise.

[iambiguous]

Science

“Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.” Isaac Newton

God, right? Until the child asks, "who sent God in motion then?"

“You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.” Ben Goldacre

My guess: that is exactly what they are thinking about us too.

“If you imagine the 4,500-bilion-odd years of Earth's history compressed into a normal earthly day, then life begins very early, about 4 A.M., with the rise of the first simple, single-celled organisms, but then advances no further for the next sixteen hours. Not until almost 8:30 in the evening, with the day five-sixths over, has Earth anything to show the universe but a restless skin of microbes. Then, finally, the first sea plants appear, followed twenty minutes later by the first jellyfish and the enigmatic Ediacaran fauna first seen by Reginald Sprigg in Australia. At 9:04 P.M. trilobites swim onto the scene, followed more or less immediately by the shapely creatures of the Burgess Shale. Just before 10 P.M. plants begin to pop up on the land. Soon after, with less than two hours left in the day, the first land creatures follow.
Thanks to ten minutes or so of balmy weather, by 10:24 the Earth is covered in the great carboniferous forests whose residues give us all our coal, and the first winged insects are evident. Dinosaurs plod onto the scene just before 11 P.M. and hold sway for about three-quarters of an hour. At twenty-one minutes to midnight they vanish and the age of mammals begins. Humans emerge one minute and seventeen seconds before midnight. The whole of our recorded history, on this scale, would be no more than a few seconds, a single human lifetime barely an instant. Throughout this greatly speeded-up day continents slide about and bang together at a clip that seems positively reckless. Mountains rise and melt away, ocean basins come and go, ice sheets advance and withdraw. And throughout the whole, about three times every minute, somewhere on the planet there is a flash-bulb pop of light marking the impact of a Manson-sized meteor or one even larger. It's a wonder that anything at all can survive in such a pummeled and unsettled environment. In fact, not many things do for long.” Bill Bryson

And, no, not just theoretically.

“What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school...It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it...That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does.” Richard P. Feynman

He suspected, however, that some understand it better than others.

“I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.” Robert Sapolsky

Next up: scientism.

“The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.” Kurt Vonnegut

Or four if you count what we do.

[iambiguous]

Anyone who has made a political commitment over an extended period of time knows the price that is sometimes paid with respect to family and friends. Especially when the commitment is to radical politics.

Is it worth it?

Well, if you see the world one way and you want it to be another way instead…what are you going to do about it? What are you willing to do about it? What are you willing to give up to make this “a better world”? It’s a trade-off. Some can make it, some cannot. The kids, however, never set it all in motion. They sort of have to go along because everything revolves around how “safe” it is for the parents.

This film always rips me to shreds. It portrays a world that really needs to be changed but the consequences of doing so can be no less substantial. There’s just no way it can be ordered so that bad things don’t happen to good people. And even good and bad here are often just points of view. And then so much of the outrage is internecine: reform or revolution?

For example, how do you feel about those who help to manufacture napalm? Fuck them? On the other hand, when they blew up the facility a janitor [who wasn’t supposed to be there] was blinded and paralyzed for life. The rest is politics. If you share their political convictions you’ll find a way to rationalize it, and if you don’t, you won’t. It’s tragic that the world has to be this way but it is really the only way it can be if folks are convinced it really needs to be changed. And then they cross paths with those who want to keep it exactly the way it is—and won’t back down.

Oh, and then there is still all the goddamn personal shit.


Running On Empty

Harry [reading the paper aloud]: Arthur and Annie Pope continue to elude capture despite several sightings of the couple who went underground after claiming responsibility for the 1971 bombing on the University of Massachusetts military research lab. The laboratory is credited with the development of napalm used extensively in the Vietnam war.
[he puts the paper aside]
Harry: Why did they have to blow it up?
Danny: Because they didn’t stop making it when they asked them politely.
Harry: Come on, Danny, I’m serious.
Danny: Because they were dropping that stuff on people.

Okay, but that was perfectly legal.

Annie: It’s just music.
Arthur: It’s bourgeois crap. Fucking chamber music. It’s decadent white skin privelege crap!

More to the point, he actually believes this. If only ideologically.

Danny: Aren’t we supposed to question authority? You taught me that! Who do you think you are, General Patton?

But, uh, this is different?

Annie: You’re not a revolutionary. No, that requires more than playing with guns. It requires compassion and discipline…
Gus [who wants Arthur and Annie to help them rob a bank for the “revolution”]: Hey, you judging me? No, you judge yourself, lady. You’re living like some kind of middle-class suburban housewife. You’re living a lie. Just like you said. Why don’t you take this little Norman Rockwell family and turn them in?!

No, really, this sort of internecine "exchange" on the left was often the rule back then.

Annie: Look what we are doing to these kids, Arthur. They’ve been running their whole lives like criminals, and they didnt do anything! It isn’t fair.

Here is basically what it all comes down to:

Father: I wonder if you will know what it’s like not to see your child for 14 years.
Annie: Dad…
Father: Not knowing if she is living or dead. Not knowing if that child was responsible for the death and mutilation of another human being.
Annie: I didn’t kill anybody.
[pause]
Annie: Look, I didn’t come here to defend myself or to talk politics. If you don’t believe by now that what I did was an act of conscience to stop the war then there is nothing I can say to you that will change your mind.
Father: That man was blinded and paralyzed.
Annie: He wasn’t supposed to be there!

Ah, the Benjamin Button Syndrome!

Arthur: We’re moving base camp kids.

Again, in other words.


Arthur: Get the bike out of the back.
[pause]
Arthur: Now, get on it.
Danny: What are you talking about, dad…
Arthur: Get on the bike. You’re on your own, kid. I want you to go to Juilliard.
Danny: But, dad, I want to go with you.
Arthur: We’ll see you again. You can be sure.
[pause]
Arthur: Your mother has arranged things with your grandfather, alright- call him. And I think you have some friend’s around here.
Annie: I love you, baby.
Arthur: We all love you. Now, go out there and make a difference. Your mother and I tried. And don’t let anyone tell you any different.

I tried myself. Now, however, it's godot all the way down.

Harry: Bye, Danny!

This really is a fucking tragedy.
If I do say so myself.