The first voice we hear is Maria Bartiromo’s. That…irked me. She plays herself as one the news media’s Money Honeys. CNBC. And who advertizes throughout the day on CNBC? Only the biggest fucking corporations in the world. In particular those companies in the “finance industry”. So how objective is CNBC going to be in reporting the business news when these folks earn their living selling advertising to the very entities they are reporting on? At best anything pertaining to Wall Street will be reduced down to a morality play. In other words, capitalism as a political economy is nowhere to be seen. Instead, there are the good capitalists and the bad capitalists. The bad capitalists, of course, being the folks that are just a bit too greedy. The cutthroat capitalists who just use people until they are used up. Then dump them somewhere.
They may even break a few laws along the way. Or lie to their loved ones. About a lover, for instance.
A lover who dies when this particular capitalist falls asleep behind the wheel of a car. And then the whole world begins to crumble all around him. Really, as Letterman would say, “I wouldn’t give this guy’s troubles to a monkey on a rock.” Unless it has script approval.
This is also a peek inside the world economy. Here there are so many different players in so many different parts of the globe. Some are corporations. Some are governments. Some are murky agglomerations of both. And since information is everything here there are that many more chances of being given the wrong information. Or of leaving something out of your calculations. And it’s like With Nick Leeson above: it can always go either way “in the market”. The guy can be history or a hero.
The world, it seems, is cold.
Actually, though, most of the stuff above is, well, incidental. This is really just more more potboiler about the callous, calculating capitalist who makes tons of money but in doing it the way he does loses the love and the respect of his innocent daughter. It happens, sure. But what does that really have to do with arbitrage?
Arbitrage
Maria Bartiromo: But you took a huge bet on the housing crisis in the middle of the biggest boom in housing anybody has ever seen. Why?
Robert: I’m a child of the '50s. My father welded steel for the Navy, and my mother worked at the V.A. They lived through the Depression, Pearl Harbor, and the bomb. They didn’t think that bad things might happen. They knew that bad things would happen.
Maria: Is that what’s happening now?
Robert: When I was a kid, my favorite teacher was Mr. James. Mr. James said world events all revolve around five things. M - O - N - E - Y.
Oh my God! What if that is actually true?!!
Ellen: It’s all going to be fine. It always is. Just follow the plan.
Robert: And what is that plan?
Ellen: Confidence equals contract.
Robert: You sound like a fortune cookie.
Ellen: They are your words, actually.
Robert: Then you married an idiot.
Actually, that's all rather moot in a zero-sum world. And, sans the welfare state, that's basically what capitalism is.
Ellen: But seriously, Robert, how much money do we need? Do you want to be the richest guy in the cemetary?
Unless, of course, he can take it with him.
Jimmy [to Robert]: Hey, Yo. So that’s it? You get in a bind and you call the only n***** you know?
Pretty much?
Syd: The situation would be manslaughter.
Robert: What would you advise such a person to do?
Syd: There’s about fifty things that person wouldn’t have thought of. Fingerprints, DNA, cell phone records. If that person were closing a merger with a large bank, any arrest could derail the transaction.
On the other hand, this is Wall Street. Or is that the game they play?
Det. Bryer [interrogating Jimmy]: So, you were asleep and the phine rings and it’s a wrong number?
Jimmy: Right.
Det. Bryer: Why do you accept the charges on a collect call from a wrong number? And then you stay on the phone for a minute and a half with a wrong number. What the fuck do you talk about? Area codes?
Either that or the dead woman in the car.
Robert: This is a trust, in your name, assets of two million dollars. Take a look at that.
Jimmy: Are you serious? You think money’s gonna fix this? Huh?
Robert [perplexed]: What else is there?
Cue the Kantians here?
Robert [about a copper mine deal in Russia]: There is so much money coming out of this. You can’t believe it. You can’t stop it. And yes. I am the oracle. I have done housing and arb’d credit swaps. I’ve done it all. And yes! I know it is outside the charter, but it is fucking minting money! It is a license to print money! For everybody! Forever! It’s God!
Brooke: Until?
Robert: Until it’s not. The money is trapped. I can’t get it out. Probably never will.
Putin prabably gave it to Trump.
Syd: What’s baffling to me, despite your sentimental history together, is why you would put your family’s future in this kid’s hands.
Robert: He’s not like us.
Syd: Is that a good thing?
Let's just say that is useful or it's not.
Robert: Just for the record. What you did is way beyond the money.
Jimmy: Nothing is beyond money for you, Robert. We both know that.
That makes at least three of us then.
Ellen: You broke our little girl’s heart.
Robert: That’s how it all works, Ellen. You know that.
Ellen: I know, but she didn’t.
Robert: She’ll be better for it. The world is cold.
Ellen: Then you’re gonna need a warm coat.
I think he can afford it.
Quote of the day
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Ottessa Moshfegh from My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Nothing seemed really real. Sleeping, waking, it all collided into one gray, monotonous plane ride through the clouds. I didn't talk to myself in my head. There wasn't much to say. This was how I knew the sleep was having an effect: I was growing less and less attached to life. If I kept going, I thought, I'd disappear completely, then reappear in some new form. This was my hope. This was my dream.
Dream on? On the other hand, who the hell really knows?
Maybe they understood, in fact, that beauty and meaning had nothing to do with one another.
And how ambiguous is that?
I had no big plan to become a curator, no great scheme to work my way up a ladder. I was just trying to pass the time. I thought if I did normal things - held down a job, for example - I could starve off the part of me that hated everything.
So, how normal is what we do here?
The world was out there still, but I hadn’t looked at it in months. It was too much to consider in all, stretching out, a circular planet covered in creatures and things growing, all of it spinning slowly on an axis created by what — some freak accident? It seemed implausible.
Oh, it's plausable alright. Well, whatever that means, of course.
Education is directly proportional to anxiety, as you've probably learned, having gone to Columbia.
Next up: what ignorance is directly proportional to. Aside from bliss, in other words.
I counted the seconds passing. Time could go on forever like this, I thought again. Time would. Infinity loomed consistently and all at once, forever, with or without me. Amen.
PTL?
Nothing seemed really real. Sleeping, waking, it all collided into one gray, monotonous plane ride through the clouds. I didn't talk to myself in my head. There wasn't much to say. This was how I knew the sleep was having an effect: I was growing less and less attached to life. If I kept going, I thought, I'd disappear completely, then reappear in some new form. This was my hope. This was my dream.
Dream on? On the other hand, who the hell really knows?
Maybe they understood, in fact, that beauty and meaning had nothing to do with one another.
And how ambiguous is that?
I had no big plan to become a curator, no great scheme to work my way up a ladder. I was just trying to pass the time. I thought if I did normal things - held down a job, for example - I could starve off the part of me that hated everything.
So, how normal is what we do here?
The world was out there still, but I hadn’t looked at it in months. It was too much to consider in all, stretching out, a circular planet covered in creatures and things growing, all of it spinning slowly on an axis created by what — some freak accident? It seemed implausible.
Oh, it's plausable alright. Well, whatever that means, of course.
Education is directly proportional to anxiety, as you've probably learned, having gone to Columbia.
Next up: what ignorance is directly proportional to. Aside from bliss, in other words.
I counted the seconds passing. Time could go on forever like this, I thought again. Time would. Infinity loomed consistently and all at once, forever, with or without me. Amen.
PTL?
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Somewhere between Mickey and Frederick. That was me for years. Now I don’t even take that seriously. Life is all of the terrible things that Frederick rails against…and the horror is all the more visceral because, as Mickey insists, there is no fundamental meaning out of which to make sense of it all. But while many critics complained that Allen bowed to the will of the producers and made the film ending more upbeat, who is to deny that life really is about all the distractions [and relationships] that make the shit parts bearable.
And then there are all the funny parts.
As much as anything though the narratives here revolve around a clash of well-beings. We speak altruistically of it but more often than not well-being construed by one can involve taking it away from another. We’re all looking for similar things but there are only so many of these things to go around. As when we find ourselves falling in love with the same people. And then we have to fit ourselves into the wants and needs of others when what we really want and need [or often do] are things to be entirely different. These upper middle class New Yorkers are just more sophisticated in grappling with the complexities that can arise. Which is to say they take them more seriously by, in part, recognizing how vulnerable we can all become in a very ambiguous world.
Basically, it’s how Allen is able to intertwine the Big Questions into the trials and tribulations of a life lived from day to day. Somehow we have to strike a balance. The only difference is that Allen is far more obsessed than others with how this plays out in a meaningless world. The tug of war for him is always considerably more amplified. Or distressing.
Look for The Abyss.
Woody Allen was originally going to have a more downbeat ending, but the studios asked him to make it more upbeat.
After actors Max von Sydow and Barbara Hershey finished filming their characters’ break-up scene, the film crew gave them a standing ovation. IMDb
Hannah and her Sisters
Lee [to Elliot]: Frederick sold a picture. One of his better drawings, a beautiful nude study. Actually, it was of me. It’s a funny feeling to know you’re hung naked in a stranger’s home.
Anyone here want to pose for me?
Mickey: Standards and practices? Okay, why all of a sudden is the sketch dirty?
Standards and practices: Child molestation is a touchy subject.
Mickey: Read the papers. Half the country’s doing it.
Standards and practices: But you name names.
Mickey: No, we don’t name names, we say “The Pope.”
Let's pin down the irony here.
Dr. Wilkes [to Mickey]: Well, yes, I guess the dark side of the spectrum is…uh…brain tumor.
The fucking abyss.
Gail: But there’s nothing wrong with you.
Mickey: Then why does he want more tests?
Gail: He has to rule out things.
Mickey: Like what?
Gail: I don’t know. Cancer.
Mickey: Don’t say that. I don’t wanna hear that word.
Gail: But you don’t have symptoms.
Mickey: What do you mean? I’ve got the classic symptoms of a brain tumor.
Gail: Two months ago, you thought you had a malignant melanoma.
Mickey: Naturally, I, I…The sudden appearance of a black spot on my back!
Gail: It was on your shirt!
On the other hand, any day now, Woody.
Frederick: I’m not interested in what your interior decorator thinks!
Dusty: I can’t commit to anything without consulting her first. That’s what I have her for, okay?
Frederick: This is degrading. You don’t buy paintings to blend in with the sofa.
Dusty: It’s not a sofa - it’s an ottoman!
No, really, does that make a difference?
[what Mickey expects to hear from the doctor]:
Doctor: Mr. Saxe, I’m afraid the news is not good. If I can show you where the tumor is…and why we feel that surgery would be of no use.
Mickey reacting: It’s over. I’m face to face with eternity. Not later, but now. I’m so frightened, I can’t move or speak or breathe.
[What Mickey does hear instead]
Doctor: You’re just fine. There’s nothing here at all. And your tests are all fine. I admit, I was concerned, given your symptoms. What caused this hearing loss, we’ll never know. But whatever it was, it’s not anything serious. I’m very relieved.
On the other hand, it can always go either way.
Gail: What do you mean, you’re quitting? Why? The news is good. You don’t have cancer…
Mickey: Do you realize what a thread we’re hanging by?
Gail: You’re off the hook. Celebrate!
Mickey: Can you understand how meaningless everything is? Our lives, the show, the whole world.
Gail: But you’re not dying.
Mickey: I’m not now. When I ran out of the hospital…I was so thrilled. I’m running down the street and then…it hit me. So I’m not gonna go today, not tomorrow…but eventually I’m going to be.
Gail: You’re just realizing this now?
I suspect that Woody might have picked this up in the womb.
Frederick [to Lee]: You missed a very dull TV show on Auschwitz. More gruesome film clips, and more puzzled intellectuals declaring their mystification over the systematic murder of millions. The reason they can never answer the question “How could it possibly happen?” is that it’s the wrong question. Given what people are, the question is “Why doesn’t it happen more often?” You see the whole culture. Nazis, deodorant salesmen, wrestlers, beauty contests, a talk show. Can you imagine the level of a mind that watches wrestling? But the worst are the fundamentalist preachers. Third grade con men telling the poor suckers that watch them that they speak with Jesus, and to please send in money. Money, money, money! If Jesus came back and saw what’s going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.
Pick one:
1] he goes too far
2] he doesn't go far enough
Elliot [to himself]: What passion today with Lee! She’s a volcano. It was totally fulfilling… just as I’d dreamed it’d be. That’s what it was. It was like living out a dream, a great dream. Now I feel very good and cozy next to Hannah. Hannah is very real and lovely. She gives me a very deep feeling of being part of something. She’s a wonderful woman, and I betrayed her. She changed my empty life…and I paid her back by banging her sister. God, I’m despicable!
Then Lee calls...
Mickey [voiceover]: Millions of books written on every conceivable subject by all these great minds… but none of them knows anything more about the big questions of life than I do. I read Socrates. He used to knock off little Greek boys. What the hell’s he got to teach me? And Nietzsche, with his theory of eternal recurrence. He said the life we live, we’ll live over and over…the same way for eternity. Great. I’ll have to sit through the Ice-Capades again. It’s not worth it. And Freud, another great pessimist. I was in analysis for years. Nothing happened. My poor analyst got so frustrated the guy finally put in a salad bar.
Bummer?
Holly: I was so bored.
Mickey: You don’t deserve Cole Porter. Stay with groups that look like they’re gonna stab stab their mothers.
Holly: I’m open to new concepts.
Mickey: And you snort so much cocaine! What do you do, carry a kilo around in your purse?
Holly: This crowd wouldn’t know the difference. They’re embalmed.
You gotta love Holly!
Priest: Why would you like to convert to Catholicism?
Mickey: I have to believe in something or else life is just meaningless.
Priest: But why did you make the decision to choose the Catholic faith?
Mickey: First of all, because it’s a very beautiful religion. It’s strong and well-structured. I’m talking about the against school prayer, pro-abortion, anti-nuclear wing.
Priest: So at the moment you don’t believe in God?
Mickey: No, and I want to. I’ll do anything. I’ll dye Easter eggs if it works. I need some evidence. I gotta have proof. If I can’t believe, life isn’t worth living.
Exactly! If there is a God, no one wants to be saved more than I do.
Mickey: I don’t understand. I thought you’d be happy.
Father: How can we be happy?
Mickey: Because I’m finally giving God serious thought.
Father: Catholicism? Why not your own people?
Mickey: I got off on the wrong foot there. I need a dramatic change.
Father: You’ll believe in Jesus Christ. But we raised you as a Jew. Why Jesus Christ? Why not become a Buddhist?
Mickey: That’s totally alien to me. Look, you’re getting on in life. Aren’t you afraid of dying?
Father: Why be afraid?
Mickey: You won’t exist! That doesn’t terrify you?
Father: I’m alive. When I’m dead, I’m dead.
Mickey: Aren’t you frightened?
Father: I’ll be unconscious.
Mickey: But never to exist again?
Father: How do you know? Who knows what’ll be? I’ll either be unconscious, or I won’t. If not, I’ll deal with it then. I won’t worry now.
Mickey: Mom, come out of the bathroom.
Mother: Of course there’s a God, you idiot. You don’t believe in God?
Mickey: Then why is there so much evil in the world? On a simple level, why were there Nazis?
Mother: Tell him, Max.
Father: How the hell do I know why there were Nazis? I don’t know how the can opener works.
This is the best argument of them all. Now all I need to do is to believe it.
Hare Krishna disciple: You’d like to become a Hare Krishna?
Mickey: I’m not saying I wanna join…but you believe in reincarnation so I’m interested.
Hare Krishna disciple: What’s your religion?
Mickey: I was born Jewish, but last winter I tried Catholicism. It didn’t work for me. I studied and tried, but for me it was: “Die now, pay later.” I just couldn’t get with it.
Hare Krishna disciple: You’re afraid of dying?
Mickey: Yeah, naturally. Aren’t you? In reincarnation…does my soul pass to another human? Or would I come back as a moose or an aardvark?
And how could that not make all the difference in the world?
Mickey [to Holly]: I remember very clearly I walked the streets, I walked and I walked I didn’t know what was going through my mind, it all seemed so violent and unreal to me. I wandered for a long time on the upper west side, it must have been hours. My feet hurt, my head was pounding, and I had to sit down I went into a movie house. I didn’t know what was playing or anything I just needed a moment to gather my thoughts and be logical and put the world back into rational perspective. And I went upstairs to the balcony, and I sat down, and the movie was a film that I’d seen many times in my life since I was a kid, and I always loved it. I’m watching these people up on the screen and I started getting hooked on the film. I started to feel, how can you even think of killing yourself, I mean isn’t it so stupid. Look at all the people up there on the screen, they’re real funny, and what if the worst is true. What if there is no God and you only go around once and that’s it. Well, ya know, don’t you wanna be part of the experience? You know, what the hell it’s not all a drag. And I’m thinking to myself, Jeez, I should stop ruining my life searching for answers I’m never gonna get, and just enjoy it while it lasts. And after who knows, I mean maybe there is something, nobody really knows. I know maybe is a very slim reed to hang your whole life on, but that’s the best we have. And then I started to sit back, and I actually began to enjoy myself.
In other words, back to this:
"Woody Allen was originally going to have a more downbeat ending, but the studios asked him to make it more upbeat." IMDb
And then there are all the funny parts.
As much as anything though the narratives here revolve around a clash of well-beings. We speak altruistically of it but more often than not well-being construed by one can involve taking it away from another. We’re all looking for similar things but there are only so many of these things to go around. As when we find ourselves falling in love with the same people. And then we have to fit ourselves into the wants and needs of others when what we really want and need [or often do] are things to be entirely different. These upper middle class New Yorkers are just more sophisticated in grappling with the complexities that can arise. Which is to say they take them more seriously by, in part, recognizing how vulnerable we can all become in a very ambiguous world.
Basically, it’s how Allen is able to intertwine the Big Questions into the trials and tribulations of a life lived from day to day. Somehow we have to strike a balance. The only difference is that Allen is far more obsessed than others with how this plays out in a meaningless world. The tug of war for him is always considerably more amplified. Or distressing.
Look for The Abyss.
Woody Allen was originally going to have a more downbeat ending, but the studios asked him to make it more upbeat.
After actors Max von Sydow and Barbara Hershey finished filming their characters’ break-up scene, the film crew gave them a standing ovation. IMDb
Hannah and her Sisters
Lee [to Elliot]: Frederick sold a picture. One of his better drawings, a beautiful nude study. Actually, it was of me. It’s a funny feeling to know you’re hung naked in a stranger’s home.
Anyone here want to pose for me?
Mickey: Standards and practices? Okay, why all of a sudden is the sketch dirty?
Standards and practices: Child molestation is a touchy subject.
Mickey: Read the papers. Half the country’s doing it.
Standards and practices: But you name names.
Mickey: No, we don’t name names, we say “The Pope.”
Let's pin down the irony here.
Dr. Wilkes [to Mickey]: Well, yes, I guess the dark side of the spectrum is…uh…brain tumor.
The fucking abyss.
Gail: But there’s nothing wrong with you.
Mickey: Then why does he want more tests?
Gail: He has to rule out things.
Mickey: Like what?
Gail: I don’t know. Cancer.
Mickey: Don’t say that. I don’t wanna hear that word.
Gail: But you don’t have symptoms.
Mickey: What do you mean? I’ve got the classic symptoms of a brain tumor.
Gail: Two months ago, you thought you had a malignant melanoma.
Mickey: Naturally, I, I…The sudden appearance of a black spot on my back!
Gail: It was on your shirt!
On the other hand, any day now, Woody.
Frederick: I’m not interested in what your interior decorator thinks!
Dusty: I can’t commit to anything without consulting her first. That’s what I have her for, okay?
Frederick: This is degrading. You don’t buy paintings to blend in with the sofa.
Dusty: It’s not a sofa - it’s an ottoman!
No, really, does that make a difference?
[what Mickey expects to hear from the doctor]:
Doctor: Mr. Saxe, I’m afraid the news is not good. If I can show you where the tumor is…and why we feel that surgery would be of no use.
Mickey reacting: It’s over. I’m face to face with eternity. Not later, but now. I’m so frightened, I can’t move or speak or breathe.
[What Mickey does hear instead]
Doctor: You’re just fine. There’s nothing here at all. And your tests are all fine. I admit, I was concerned, given your symptoms. What caused this hearing loss, we’ll never know. But whatever it was, it’s not anything serious. I’m very relieved.
On the other hand, it can always go either way.
Gail: What do you mean, you’re quitting? Why? The news is good. You don’t have cancer…
Mickey: Do you realize what a thread we’re hanging by?
Gail: You’re off the hook. Celebrate!
Mickey: Can you understand how meaningless everything is? Our lives, the show, the whole world.
Gail: But you’re not dying.
Mickey: I’m not now. When I ran out of the hospital…I was so thrilled. I’m running down the street and then…it hit me. So I’m not gonna go today, not tomorrow…but eventually I’m going to be.
Gail: You’re just realizing this now?
I suspect that Woody might have picked this up in the womb.
Frederick [to Lee]: You missed a very dull TV show on Auschwitz. More gruesome film clips, and more puzzled intellectuals declaring their mystification over the systematic murder of millions. The reason they can never answer the question “How could it possibly happen?” is that it’s the wrong question. Given what people are, the question is “Why doesn’t it happen more often?” You see the whole culture. Nazis, deodorant salesmen, wrestlers, beauty contests, a talk show. Can you imagine the level of a mind that watches wrestling? But the worst are the fundamentalist preachers. Third grade con men telling the poor suckers that watch them that they speak with Jesus, and to please send in money. Money, money, money! If Jesus came back and saw what’s going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.
Pick one:
1] he goes too far
2] he doesn't go far enough
Elliot [to himself]: What passion today with Lee! She’s a volcano. It was totally fulfilling… just as I’d dreamed it’d be. That’s what it was. It was like living out a dream, a great dream. Now I feel very good and cozy next to Hannah. Hannah is very real and lovely. She gives me a very deep feeling of being part of something. She’s a wonderful woman, and I betrayed her. She changed my empty life…and I paid her back by banging her sister. God, I’m despicable!
Then Lee calls...
Mickey [voiceover]: Millions of books written on every conceivable subject by all these great minds… but none of them knows anything more about the big questions of life than I do. I read Socrates. He used to knock off little Greek boys. What the hell’s he got to teach me? And Nietzsche, with his theory of eternal recurrence. He said the life we live, we’ll live over and over…the same way for eternity. Great. I’ll have to sit through the Ice-Capades again. It’s not worth it. And Freud, another great pessimist. I was in analysis for years. Nothing happened. My poor analyst got so frustrated the guy finally put in a salad bar.
Bummer?
Holly: I was so bored.
Mickey: You don’t deserve Cole Porter. Stay with groups that look like they’re gonna stab stab their mothers.
Holly: I’m open to new concepts.
Mickey: And you snort so much cocaine! What do you do, carry a kilo around in your purse?
Holly: This crowd wouldn’t know the difference. They’re embalmed.
You gotta love Holly!
Priest: Why would you like to convert to Catholicism?
Mickey: I have to believe in something or else life is just meaningless.
Priest: But why did you make the decision to choose the Catholic faith?
Mickey: First of all, because it’s a very beautiful religion. It’s strong and well-structured. I’m talking about the against school prayer, pro-abortion, anti-nuclear wing.
Priest: So at the moment you don’t believe in God?
Mickey: No, and I want to. I’ll do anything. I’ll dye Easter eggs if it works. I need some evidence. I gotta have proof. If I can’t believe, life isn’t worth living.
Exactly! If there is a God, no one wants to be saved more than I do.
Mickey: I don’t understand. I thought you’d be happy.
Father: How can we be happy?
Mickey: Because I’m finally giving God serious thought.
Father: Catholicism? Why not your own people?
Mickey: I got off on the wrong foot there. I need a dramatic change.
Father: You’ll believe in Jesus Christ. But we raised you as a Jew. Why Jesus Christ? Why not become a Buddhist?
Mickey: That’s totally alien to me. Look, you’re getting on in life. Aren’t you afraid of dying?
Father: Why be afraid?
Mickey: You won’t exist! That doesn’t terrify you?
Father: I’m alive. When I’m dead, I’m dead.
Mickey: Aren’t you frightened?
Father: I’ll be unconscious.
Mickey: But never to exist again?
Father: How do you know? Who knows what’ll be? I’ll either be unconscious, or I won’t. If not, I’ll deal with it then. I won’t worry now.
Mickey: Mom, come out of the bathroom.
Mother: Of course there’s a God, you idiot. You don’t believe in God?
Mickey: Then why is there so much evil in the world? On a simple level, why were there Nazis?
Mother: Tell him, Max.
Father: How the hell do I know why there were Nazis? I don’t know how the can opener works.
This is the best argument of them all. Now all I need to do is to believe it.
Hare Krishna disciple: You’d like to become a Hare Krishna?
Mickey: I’m not saying I wanna join…but you believe in reincarnation so I’m interested.
Hare Krishna disciple: What’s your religion?
Mickey: I was born Jewish, but last winter I tried Catholicism. It didn’t work for me. I studied and tried, but for me it was: “Die now, pay later.” I just couldn’t get with it.
Hare Krishna disciple: You’re afraid of dying?
Mickey: Yeah, naturally. Aren’t you? In reincarnation…does my soul pass to another human? Or would I come back as a moose or an aardvark?
And how could that not make all the difference in the world?
Mickey [to Holly]: I remember very clearly I walked the streets, I walked and I walked I didn’t know what was going through my mind, it all seemed so violent and unreal to me. I wandered for a long time on the upper west side, it must have been hours. My feet hurt, my head was pounding, and I had to sit down I went into a movie house. I didn’t know what was playing or anything I just needed a moment to gather my thoughts and be logical and put the world back into rational perspective. And I went upstairs to the balcony, and I sat down, and the movie was a film that I’d seen many times in my life since I was a kid, and I always loved it. I’m watching these people up on the screen and I started getting hooked on the film. I started to feel, how can you even think of killing yourself, I mean isn’t it so stupid. Look at all the people up there on the screen, they’re real funny, and what if the worst is true. What if there is no God and you only go around once and that’s it. Well, ya know, don’t you wanna be part of the experience? You know, what the hell it’s not all a drag. And I’m thinking to myself, Jeez, I should stop ruining my life searching for answers I’m never gonna get, and just enjoy it while it lasts. And after who knows, I mean maybe there is something, nobody really knows. I know maybe is a very slim reed to hang your whole life on, but that’s the best we have. And then I started to sit back, and I actually began to enjoy myself.
In other words, back to this:
"Woody Allen was originally going to have a more downbeat ending, but the studios asked him to make it more upbeat." IMDb
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promethean75
- Posts: 7113
- Joined: Sun Nov 04, 2018 10:29 pm
Re: Quote of the day
"Anyone here want to pose for me?"
I will pose nude for you.
I will pose nude for you.
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promethean75
- Posts: 7113
- Joined: Sun Nov 04, 2018 10:29 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Wait, Biggs, i didn't mean it! I was about to reply to Maia in another thread while posting here, too, and i got my tabs mixed up and thought she asked that.
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Of course, the only way a blind from birth artist can paint/sculpt/draw someone is by touch. Head to toe as it were.promethean75 wrote: ↑Mon Oct 28, 2024 12:33 pm Wait, Biggs, i didn't mean it! I was about to reply to Maia in another thread while posting here, too, and i got my tabs mixed up and thought she asked that.
Like this guy: https://youtu.be/UBnQnWK3XFA?si=15UWWkjrgIxC1P7e
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promethean75
- Posts: 7113
- Joined: Sun Nov 04, 2018 10:29 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Speaking of blind artists, due to the lateralization of the posterior pole of the occipital lobe in Maia's brain for additional skill sourcing (since it isn't being used to process visual info), it's possible for her to become extra good extra fast at something if she hunkers down at it. An instrument, for example.
Although, her brain may have already allocated those resources to something else, given her age, in which case lateralization is already achieved and Maia may never rise to the ranks of a Stevie Wonder on the keyboard in less than seven days. It may take her years now.
Although, her brain may have already allocated those resources to something else, given her age, in which case lateralization is already achieved and Maia may never rise to the ranks of a Stevie Wonder on the keyboard in less than seven days. It may take her years now.
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Exploring the human mind experimentally. Altering its state just to see what happens. In an isolation tank for example. On mushrooms. What happens here has never actually happened yet. At least not to my knowledge. But the mind is mysterious. It is like no other matter there has ever been. If for no other reason that no other matter is discussed with respect to a “duality” or a “soul”.
This is really what science fiction is all about. It extrapolates from what we think we already know about something now and projects that into the future. There we are able to speculate about it further in whatever manner we wish. The idea is to provoke thought about lots of truly fascinating things. The line between fact and fiction can be drawn in so many different places. This one takes the expression “the naked ape” to a whole other level.
Both the book and the movie are based on the work of John C. Lilly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Lilly
But I digress: With respect to my own emotional relationships with others, Eddie comes about as close to it as I am ever likely to get. With the possible exception perhaps of Stephan from The Heart in Winter. At least with respect to cinema. I simply do not to experience them as others would seem to describe their own. Love in particular. It’s all part and parcel though of the mystery of human consciousness. Why this way and not some other? And why does it exist at all given the seeming mindless nature of all other matter?
Author Paddy Chayefsky disowned this movie. Even though the dialogue in the screenplay was almost verbatim from his novel he reportedly objected to the general tone of the film and the shouting of his precious words by the actors, this conflicting with director Ken Russell typical style of wanting heightened performances. Paddy Chayefsky had not seen the film before he took his name off the credits, the script being credited to “Sidney Aaron”, a pseudonym for Chayefsky, the two names being Chayefsky’s real first and middle names. Director Ken Russell and Chayefsky fought constantly during production, Russell maintaining that almost nothing was changed from Chayefsky’s script and stating that he was “impossible to please.”
In a 1981 interview with ‘The New York Times’, actress Blair Brown said many of the actors and crew tried out the isolation tank. William Hurt actually hallucinated, while Brown found it very peaceful. IMDb
Altered States
Emily: What sort of work do you do?
Eddie: Toxic metabolite stuff. We’re replicating Heath’s and Friedhoff’s strategies trying to find maverick substances specific to schizophrenia.
Emily: So you don’t think schizophrenia can be reduced to a single etiological agent?
Eddie: I’m not even sure it’s a disease.
Emily: You think madness is simply another state of consciousness?
Eddie: There’s a body of evidence to support that.
Or at least a skeleton?
Eddie [to Emily]: I’ve always been interested in interior experiences, especially the religious experience. The only reason I’m working with schizophrenics now is the religious experience is so significant in schizophrenia.
Gee, what to make of that, right?
Eddie [telling Emily about the death of his father]: I stopped believing in God. It was very dramatic. My father died a very protracted and painful death of cancer. I was 16 years old and very fond of my father. For the last few weeks he was in a coma. One day I thought I heard him say something. I leaned over him…my ear an inch away from his lips. “Did you say something, Pop?”. Then I heard the word he was desparately trying to say, a soft hiss of a word. He was saying…“terrible”…“terrible”. So the end was terrible, even for good people like my father. So the purpose of all our suffering is only more suffering. By dinnertime I had dispensed with God altogether. I never had another vision.
[pause]
Eddie: I haven’t told anyone this in ten years. I’m telling you now because I think you have a right to know what kind of a nut you might be getting mixed up with here.
Emily: Arthur was right. You are a fascinating bastard.
Much like me, right?
Emily: You are a Faust freak, Eddie. You would sell your soul to find the great Truth. Well, human life doesn’t have great truths. We’re born in doubt, die in doubt. We spend our lives persuading ourselves we’re alive. And one way we do that is we love each other.
Passionaitely, for example.
Eddie: Emily’s quite content to go on with this life. She insists she’s in love with me - whatever that is. What she means is she prefers the senseless pain we inflict on each other to the pain we would otherwise inflict on ourselves. But I’m not afraid of that solitary pain. In fact, if I don’t strip myself of all this clatter and clutter and ridiculous ritual, I shall go out of my fucking mind. Does that answer your question, Arthur?
Arthur: What question was that?
Eddie: You asked me why I was getting divorced.
Arthur: Oh, listen, it’s your life.
Go figure.
Eddie: What dignifies the Yogic practices is that the belief system itself is not truly religious. There is no Buddhist God per se. It is the Self, the individual Mind, that contains immortality and ultimate truth.
Emily: What the hell is not religious about that? You’ve simply replaced God with the Original Self.
Eddie: Yes, but we’ve localized it. Now I know where the Self is. It’s in our own minds. It’s a form of human energy. Our atoms are six billion years old. We’ve got six billion years of memory in our minds.
Let's all agree on exactly what this means.
Eddie: Memory is energy! It doesn’t disappear - it’s still in there. There’s a physiological pathway to our earlier consciousnesses. There has to be; and I’m telling you it’s in the goddamned limbic system.
Mason: You’re a whacko!
Eddie: What’s whacko about it, Mason? I’m a man in search of his true self. How archetypically American can you get? We’re all trying to fulfill ourselves, understand ourselves, get in touch with ourselves, face the reality of ourselves, explore ourselves, expand ourselves. Ever since we dispensed with God we’ve got nothing but ourselves to explain this meaningless horror of life.
Hear, hear?
Well, not counting the true self, of course.
Mason: It looks to me like the architecture is slightly abnormal.
Dr. Wissenschaft [looking at the x-ray of Eddie]: Somewhat? This guy’s a fucking gorilla!
The turning point?
Eddie: You saved me. You redeemed me from the pit. I was in it, Emily. I was in that ultimate moment of terror that is the beginning of life. It is nothing. Simple, hideous nothing. The final truth of all things is that there is no final Truth. Truth is what’s transitory. It’s human life that is real. I don’t want to frighten you, Emily, but what I’m trying to tell you is that moment of terror is a real and living horror, living and growing within me now, and the only thing that keeps it from devouring me is you.
Emily: Why don’t you just come back to us?
Eddie: It’s too late. I don’t think I can get it out of me anymore. I can’t live with it. The pain is too great.
Only apparently it’s not. All we need is…love?
This is really what science fiction is all about. It extrapolates from what we think we already know about something now and projects that into the future. There we are able to speculate about it further in whatever manner we wish. The idea is to provoke thought about lots of truly fascinating things. The line between fact and fiction can be drawn in so many different places. This one takes the expression “the naked ape” to a whole other level.
Both the book and the movie are based on the work of John C. Lilly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Lilly
But I digress: With respect to my own emotional relationships with others, Eddie comes about as close to it as I am ever likely to get. With the possible exception perhaps of Stephan from The Heart in Winter. At least with respect to cinema. I simply do not to experience them as others would seem to describe their own. Love in particular. It’s all part and parcel though of the mystery of human consciousness. Why this way and not some other? And why does it exist at all given the seeming mindless nature of all other matter?
Author Paddy Chayefsky disowned this movie. Even though the dialogue in the screenplay was almost verbatim from his novel he reportedly objected to the general tone of the film and the shouting of his precious words by the actors, this conflicting with director Ken Russell typical style of wanting heightened performances. Paddy Chayefsky had not seen the film before he took his name off the credits, the script being credited to “Sidney Aaron”, a pseudonym for Chayefsky, the two names being Chayefsky’s real first and middle names. Director Ken Russell and Chayefsky fought constantly during production, Russell maintaining that almost nothing was changed from Chayefsky’s script and stating that he was “impossible to please.”
In a 1981 interview with ‘The New York Times’, actress Blair Brown said many of the actors and crew tried out the isolation tank. William Hurt actually hallucinated, while Brown found it very peaceful. IMDb
Altered States
Emily: What sort of work do you do?
Eddie: Toxic metabolite stuff. We’re replicating Heath’s and Friedhoff’s strategies trying to find maverick substances specific to schizophrenia.
Emily: So you don’t think schizophrenia can be reduced to a single etiological agent?
Eddie: I’m not even sure it’s a disease.
Emily: You think madness is simply another state of consciousness?
Eddie: There’s a body of evidence to support that.
Or at least a skeleton?
Eddie [to Emily]: I’ve always been interested in interior experiences, especially the religious experience. The only reason I’m working with schizophrenics now is the religious experience is so significant in schizophrenia.
Gee, what to make of that, right?
Eddie [telling Emily about the death of his father]: I stopped believing in God. It was very dramatic. My father died a very protracted and painful death of cancer. I was 16 years old and very fond of my father. For the last few weeks he was in a coma. One day I thought I heard him say something. I leaned over him…my ear an inch away from his lips. “Did you say something, Pop?”. Then I heard the word he was desparately trying to say, a soft hiss of a word. He was saying…“terrible”…“terrible”. So the end was terrible, even for good people like my father. So the purpose of all our suffering is only more suffering. By dinnertime I had dispensed with God altogether. I never had another vision.
[pause]
Eddie: I haven’t told anyone this in ten years. I’m telling you now because I think you have a right to know what kind of a nut you might be getting mixed up with here.
Emily: Arthur was right. You are a fascinating bastard.
Much like me, right?
Emily: You are a Faust freak, Eddie. You would sell your soul to find the great Truth. Well, human life doesn’t have great truths. We’re born in doubt, die in doubt. We spend our lives persuading ourselves we’re alive. And one way we do that is we love each other.
Passionaitely, for example.
Eddie: Emily’s quite content to go on with this life. She insists she’s in love with me - whatever that is. What she means is she prefers the senseless pain we inflict on each other to the pain we would otherwise inflict on ourselves. But I’m not afraid of that solitary pain. In fact, if I don’t strip myself of all this clatter and clutter and ridiculous ritual, I shall go out of my fucking mind. Does that answer your question, Arthur?
Arthur: What question was that?
Eddie: You asked me why I was getting divorced.
Arthur: Oh, listen, it’s your life.
Go figure.
Eddie: What dignifies the Yogic practices is that the belief system itself is not truly religious. There is no Buddhist God per se. It is the Self, the individual Mind, that contains immortality and ultimate truth.
Emily: What the hell is not religious about that? You’ve simply replaced God with the Original Self.
Eddie: Yes, but we’ve localized it. Now I know where the Self is. It’s in our own minds. It’s a form of human energy. Our atoms are six billion years old. We’ve got six billion years of memory in our minds.
Let's all agree on exactly what this means.
Eddie: Memory is energy! It doesn’t disappear - it’s still in there. There’s a physiological pathway to our earlier consciousnesses. There has to be; and I’m telling you it’s in the goddamned limbic system.
Mason: You’re a whacko!
Eddie: What’s whacko about it, Mason? I’m a man in search of his true self. How archetypically American can you get? We’re all trying to fulfill ourselves, understand ourselves, get in touch with ourselves, face the reality of ourselves, explore ourselves, expand ourselves. Ever since we dispensed with God we’ve got nothing but ourselves to explain this meaningless horror of life.
Hear, hear?
Well, not counting the true self, of course.
Mason: It looks to me like the architecture is slightly abnormal.
Dr. Wissenschaft [looking at the x-ray of Eddie]: Somewhat? This guy’s a fucking gorilla!
The turning point?
Eddie: You saved me. You redeemed me from the pit. I was in it, Emily. I was in that ultimate moment of terror that is the beginning of life. It is nothing. Simple, hideous nothing. The final truth of all things is that there is no final Truth. Truth is what’s transitory. It’s human life that is real. I don’t want to frighten you, Emily, but what I’m trying to tell you is that moment of terror is a real and living horror, living and growing within me now, and the only thing that keeps it from devouring me is you.
Emily: Why don’t you just come back to us?
Eddie: It’s too late. I don’t think I can get it out of me anymore. I can’t live with it. The pain is too great.
Only apparently it’s not. All we need is…love?
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Even a film that succumbs to fantasy or the supernatural can manage to provoke an interesting discussion. This one did. For a few days anyway.
I have never believed in werewolves. But it is also entirely true that human existence is just the end of the line [for now] with respect to the evolution of life on earth. The wolf is locked up inside all of us somewhere. The limbic system for example.
But then so is testosterone. In men, in particular.
This is all about “the male battle”. Making your mark and then marking your territory. And nothing brings out this “survival of the fittest” mentality quite like capitalism. But not all men measure up, do they? But the fantasy here really revolves around folks [men and women] who have to take shit from people they have no respect for. And then being able to imagine themselves turning it all around.
Of course, you can’t help but wonder: If this stuff was all real would I want that wolf bite? Oh, yeah. I wouldn’t think twice about it.
Alas, the last third of this movie is where it all just crumples. Oddly enough, they reshot the last third because they were unsatisfied with the original footage. I can only shudder to think what that must have been like. It started out as a psychological thriller that provoked you into thinking about human behavior and then devolved into a run of the mill horror film. Why do I suspect that’s what the producers insisted on.
Wolf
Charlotte: How did you get him to sign the contracts?
Will: I did it the old fashioned way.
Charlotte: What do you mean?
Will: I begged.
Before his encounter with the wolf obviously.
Party guest: I do not think of Time-Warner as a multinational media conglomerate but as decent caring people because I just do not believe that money always implies ruthless ambition, Mr. Alden. Am I insane?
Alden: I would say so, yes.
Stark raving mad in fact.
Alden: Look, Will, it’s nothing personal. You are clearly a man of taste and individuality, which I prize. But these days, not only in corporate America but all around the globe, taste and individuality are actually something of a handicap.
Will: Well, just out of curiosity, on what basis did you pick my successor, vulgarity and conformity?
I guess we'll never know.
Laura: My father just fired you, didn’t he?
Will: Demoted actually. I’ve been offered a choice between no job and a job no one would want.
Laura: So what will you do?
Will: I’ll probably take the job no one would want. I don’t have the courage to be jobless at my age.
Bit by bit, though, the wolf emerges.
Mary: Is the worm turning, Mr. Randall?
Will: The worm has turned and it is now packing an Uzi, Mary.
Mary: It’s about fucking time, sir.
Sounds a bit like iwannaplato, doesn't it?
Stewart: I love you Will. I know how ridiculous that sounds but I do…You’ll never forgive me for this will you?
Will: No.
Stewart: Okay, but still I would like your permission to ask Alden to forget about that Eastern European thing…and keep you on as senior editorial consultant. Will you let me do that?
Will: I’m going to get you Stewart.
Alden too as it turns out.
Roy: Two things, how many investors do we have?
Will: I don’t know. Haven’t called any yet.
Roy: But you want me to say it anyway?
Will: Yes.
Roy: Second thing: Is any of this true?
Will: Not yet.
Roy: You are my God.
He ain'tseen nothing yet.
Aldin: It doesn’t really matter to my daughter what your name is Mr. Randall. What is important to her is that you are unemployed and inappropriate and that I don’t approve of you.
On the other hand, let's fast forward here to their next meeting.
Will: What do you do?
Laura: Why do you care?
Will: I don’t. I was just making polite conversation.
Laura: I’d rather not discuss what I do.
Will: You know, I think I understand what you’re like now. You’re very beautiful and you think men are only interested in you because you’re beautiful, but you want them to be interested in you because you’re you. The problem is, aside from all that beauty, you’re not very interesting. You’re rude, you’re hostile, you’re sullen, you’re withdrawn. I know you want someone to look past all that at the real person underneath but the only reason anyone would bother to look past all that is because you’re beautful. Ironic, isn’t it? In an odd way you’re your own problem.
Laura: Sorry. Wrong line. I am not taken aback by your keen insight and suddenly challenged by you.
Obviously: they both won.
Dr. Alezias: I was recently told that I am dying…speaking of mystical and terifying experiences…I would like you to bite me.
Will: What?
Dr. Alezias: I would like you to bite me. I ask you to honor me with your bite. And I too will become a demon wolf.
Will: You’d rather be damned than die?
Dr. Alezias: Damnation is not a part of my system of my beliefs. And it feels good to be a wolf, doesn’t it?
Oh, yeah.
Stewart [watching Will piss on his shoes]: What are you crazy?!
Will: No. I’m just marking my territory, and you got in the way.
Stewart [wiping his shoes]: Nice. Real nice. Suede shoes.
Will: Asparagus.
That'll do it.
Charlotte: I never loved Stewart. It was a mistake Will. I’m going to talk to him. Stewart, never for one moment, meant anything to me.
Will: You think that makes it better? That you betrayed me over and over again with a man that meant nothing to you? To know that you betrayed me for nothing?
The rest is “the last third of the film”.
I have never believed in werewolves. But it is also entirely true that human existence is just the end of the line [for now] with respect to the evolution of life on earth. The wolf is locked up inside all of us somewhere. The limbic system for example.
But then so is testosterone. In men, in particular.
This is all about “the male battle”. Making your mark and then marking your territory. And nothing brings out this “survival of the fittest” mentality quite like capitalism. But not all men measure up, do they? But the fantasy here really revolves around folks [men and women] who have to take shit from people they have no respect for. And then being able to imagine themselves turning it all around.
Of course, you can’t help but wonder: If this stuff was all real would I want that wolf bite? Oh, yeah. I wouldn’t think twice about it.
Alas, the last third of this movie is where it all just crumples. Oddly enough, they reshot the last third because they were unsatisfied with the original footage. I can only shudder to think what that must have been like. It started out as a psychological thriller that provoked you into thinking about human behavior and then devolved into a run of the mill horror film. Why do I suspect that’s what the producers insisted on.
Wolf
Charlotte: How did you get him to sign the contracts?
Will: I did it the old fashioned way.
Charlotte: What do you mean?
Will: I begged.
Before his encounter with the wolf obviously.
Party guest: I do not think of Time-Warner as a multinational media conglomerate but as decent caring people because I just do not believe that money always implies ruthless ambition, Mr. Alden. Am I insane?
Alden: I would say so, yes.
Stark raving mad in fact.
Alden: Look, Will, it’s nothing personal. You are clearly a man of taste and individuality, which I prize. But these days, not only in corporate America but all around the globe, taste and individuality are actually something of a handicap.
Will: Well, just out of curiosity, on what basis did you pick my successor, vulgarity and conformity?
I guess we'll never know.
Laura: My father just fired you, didn’t he?
Will: Demoted actually. I’ve been offered a choice between no job and a job no one would want.
Laura: So what will you do?
Will: I’ll probably take the job no one would want. I don’t have the courage to be jobless at my age.
Bit by bit, though, the wolf emerges.
Mary: Is the worm turning, Mr. Randall?
Will: The worm has turned and it is now packing an Uzi, Mary.
Mary: It’s about fucking time, sir.
Sounds a bit like iwannaplato, doesn't it?
Stewart: I love you Will. I know how ridiculous that sounds but I do…You’ll never forgive me for this will you?
Will: No.
Stewart: Okay, but still I would like your permission to ask Alden to forget about that Eastern European thing…and keep you on as senior editorial consultant. Will you let me do that?
Will: I’m going to get you Stewart.
Alden too as it turns out.
Roy: Two things, how many investors do we have?
Will: I don’t know. Haven’t called any yet.
Roy: But you want me to say it anyway?
Will: Yes.
Roy: Second thing: Is any of this true?
Will: Not yet.
Roy: You are my God.
He ain'tseen nothing yet.
Aldin: It doesn’t really matter to my daughter what your name is Mr. Randall. What is important to her is that you are unemployed and inappropriate and that I don’t approve of you.
On the other hand, let's fast forward here to their next meeting.
Will: What do you do?
Laura: Why do you care?
Will: I don’t. I was just making polite conversation.
Laura: I’d rather not discuss what I do.
Will: You know, I think I understand what you’re like now. You’re very beautiful and you think men are only interested in you because you’re beautiful, but you want them to be interested in you because you’re you. The problem is, aside from all that beauty, you’re not very interesting. You’re rude, you’re hostile, you’re sullen, you’re withdrawn. I know you want someone to look past all that at the real person underneath but the only reason anyone would bother to look past all that is because you’re beautful. Ironic, isn’t it? In an odd way you’re your own problem.
Laura: Sorry. Wrong line. I am not taken aback by your keen insight and suddenly challenged by you.
Obviously: they both won.
Dr. Alezias: I was recently told that I am dying…speaking of mystical and terifying experiences…I would like you to bite me.
Will: What?
Dr. Alezias: I would like you to bite me. I ask you to honor me with your bite. And I too will become a demon wolf.
Will: You’d rather be damned than die?
Dr. Alezias: Damnation is not a part of my system of my beliefs. And it feels good to be a wolf, doesn’t it?
Oh, yeah.
Stewart [watching Will piss on his shoes]: What are you crazy?!
Will: No. I’m just marking my territory, and you got in the way.
Stewart [wiping his shoes]: Nice. Real nice. Suede shoes.
Will: Asparagus.
That'll do it.
Charlotte: I never loved Stewart. It was a mistake Will. I’m going to talk to him. Stewart, never for one moment, meant anything to me.
Will: You think that makes it better? That you betrayed me over and over again with a man that meant nothing to you? To know that you betrayed me for nothing?
The rest is “the last third of the film”.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Meaning
“When you put together deep knowledge about a subject that intensely matters to you, charisma happens. You gain courage to share your passion, and when you do that, folks follow.” Jerry Porras
Indeed! Just look at my following here!
“...when man was put into the garden of eden, he was put there with the idea that he should work the land; and this proves that man was not born to be idle.” Voltaire
Any farmers here?
“What does this beauty or this music mean to you? You cannot see the waves rolling up the beach or hear their roar. What do they mean to you?' In the most evident sense they mean everything. I cannot fathom or define their meaning any more than I can fathom or define love or religion or goodness.” Helen Keller
On the other hand...
“All names disappear. Children should be taught that in elementary school. But we're afraid to teach them.” Roberto Bolaño
You tell me.
“She was in that flagging mood when to go on living seems only to load more unmeaning moments on to your memory.” Elizabeth Bowen
Ah, the good old days!
“Is Death important? No. Everything that happens before Death is what counts.” Ray Bradbury
Actually, it's still rather important to some of us.
“When you put together deep knowledge about a subject that intensely matters to you, charisma happens. You gain courage to share your passion, and when you do that, folks follow.” Jerry Porras
Indeed! Just look at my following here!
“...when man was put into the garden of eden, he was put there with the idea that he should work the land; and this proves that man was not born to be idle.” Voltaire
Any farmers here?
“What does this beauty or this music mean to you? You cannot see the waves rolling up the beach or hear their roar. What do they mean to you?' In the most evident sense they mean everything. I cannot fathom or define their meaning any more than I can fathom or define love or religion or goodness.” Helen Keller
On the other hand...
“All names disappear. Children should be taught that in elementary school. But we're afraid to teach them.” Roberto Bolaño
You tell me.
“She was in that flagging mood when to go on living seems only to load more unmeaning moments on to your memory.” Elizabeth Bowen
Ah, the good old days!
“Is Death important? No. Everything that happens before Death is what counts.” Ray Bradbury
Actually, it's still rather important to some of us.
-
promethean75
- Posts: 7113
- Joined: Sun Nov 04, 2018 10:29 pm
Re: Quote of the day
"Untroubled, scornful, outrageous — that is how wisdom wants us to be: she is a woman and never loves anyone but a warrior.”
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Who does this better than Altman? You stick a whole bunch of different characters into a whole bunch of different narratives and then somehow when the end credits scroll up they all seem to fit into…
But that is always up to us isn’t?
God. Government. Politics. Celebrity. The Entertainment Industry. Love. Sex. All this and so much more. And in lots and lots and lots and lots of cuts.
Of course the times have changed considerably since back then. In some respects we may as well be living on a different planet. But you’ll recognize all the parts that will probably never change. Or have actually gotten considerably worse.
These “show business” folks are pure plastic. On the other hand, they do have to put on an act for the “fans”. But take all that away and they still don’t go down a whole lot deeper. Or maybe it’s me—I just don’t get it.
As for the music, well, some folks like it more than others.
Look for the second coming of Tocqueville.
Nashville
Opal: Good Lord love a duck!
Bud: This is a choir… a black choir… from, uh, part of… from Fisk University here in town.
Opal: Good Lord! The lady singing is… is she a missionary?
Bud Hamilton: No, she’s not. She’s a gospel singer. She’s the wife of our attorney.
Opal: I was making a documentary in Kenya… and there was this marvelous woman who was a missionary. That’s why I asked if she was a missionary. She was sensational. She was converting Kukuyos by the dozens. She was trying to convert Masais. Of course, they were hopeless. They have their own sort of religion. Look at that. That rhythm is fantastic. It’s funny… You can tell it’s come down in the genes… through ages and ages and hundreds of years, but it’s there. I mean, take off those robes and one is in… in… in darkest Africa. I can just see their naked, frenzied bodies… dancing to the beat of… Do they carry on like that in church?
Bud: Depends on which church you go to.
That'll do it.
Hal: Who do you think is running Congress? Farmers? Engineers? Teachers? Businessmen? No, my friends. Congress is run by lawyers. A lawyer is trained for two things and two things only. To clarify - that’s one. And to confuse - that’s the other. He does whichever is to his client’s advantage. Did you ever ask a lawyer the time of day? He told you how to make a watch, didn’t he? Ever ask a lawyer how to get to Mr. Jones’ house in the country? You got lost, didn’t you? Congress is composed of five hundred and thirty-five individuals. Two hundred and eighty-eight are lawyers. And you wonder what’s wrong in Congress. No wonder we often know how to make a watch, but we don’t know the time of day.
Must be another Congress. But, sure, point taken.
Albuquerque: See, what happened is, he made a million dollars on a fly swatter, because it had a red dot in the center.
Only a million?
Lady Pearl: That’s John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Well, he…he took the whole South, except for Tennessee, Florida, Kentucky. And there’s a reason he didn’t take Tennessee. But he got 481,453 votes, and the asshole got 556,577 votes. Now, the problem we got here… is anti-Catholicism. These dumbheads around here, they’re all…Baptists and whatever, I don’t know. Even to teach ‘em to make change over the bar you gotta crack their skulls, let alone teach ‘em to vote for the Catholic…just because he happens to be the better man. And all I remember was just lookin’ at that TV set and seein’ it all, seein’ that great fat-bellied sheriff sayin’, "Ruby, you son of a bitch. " And Oswald…and her in her little pink suit. And then comes Bobby. Oh, I worked for him. I worked here, I worked all over the country, I worked out in California, out in Stockton. Well, Bobby came here and spoke and he went down to Memphis and then he even went out to Stockton California and spoke off the Santa Fe train at the old Santa Fe depot. Oh, he was a beautiful man. He was not much like John, you know. He was more puny-like. But all the time I was workin’ for him, I was just so scared - inside, you know, just scared.
An outier let's call her.
If you know what she means.
l [In an automobile junkyard]: I’m wandering in a graveyard. The dead here have no crosses, nor tombstones, nor wreaths to sing of their past glory, but lie in rotting, decaying, rusty heaps, their innards ripped out by greedy, vulturous hands. Their vast, vacant skeletons… sadly sighing to the sky. The rust on their bodies… is the color of dried blood. Dried blood. I’m reminded of…of an elephant’s secret burial ground. Yes. Cette aire de mystère. Cette essence de I’irréel. These cars are trying to communicate. O cars, are you trying to tell me something? Are you trying to convey to me some secret…
Kenny: What… Excuse me?
Opal: Oh, excuse me! I thought I was completely alone. How embarrassing. Oh, you’re a musician!
Opal? You never really know where she is going to turn up next.
Opal [speaking into a micro recorder as she walks through a school bus parking lot]: The buses! The buses are empty and look almost menacing, threatening, as so many yellow dragons watching me with their hollow, vacant eyes. I wonder how many little black and white children have yellow nightmares, their own special brand of fear for the yellow peril…Damn it, it’s got to be more…positive. No, more negative! Start again. Yellow is the color of caution. No. Yellow is the color of cowardice. Yellow is the color of sunshine. And yet I see very little sunshine in the lives of all the little black and white children. I see their lives, rather, as a study in grayness, a mixture of black and…Oh, Christ, no. That’s fascist. Yellow! Yellow, yellow, yellow. Yellow fever…
No, that's Opal.
Next up: Barbara Jean
Barbara Jean [she finishes singing a song at her concert]: Thank you. I wanna tell you all a little secret which you might not know, and that is that last night I thanked my lucky stars that I could be here at all to sing for ya. I heard on the radio this little boy, nine years old. Sometimes a deejay’ll play a tune and ask everybody to phone in and say how they like it. I was listenin’, and this little nine-year-old called in. The song had voices in the background, like the way they use backup voices these days, soundin’ like little munchkins. He called up, the deejay said, “How old are you, son?” The boy said, "I’m nine, and I think it’s gonna be a hit. " The deejay said, “Why?” "Because it had those chipmunks in it. " And I thought that was so cute, because, well, I can sing like a munchkin myself. I’m real fond of The Wizard of Oz. Plus, I live out, you know, just a ways off of Interstate on the road to Chattanooga. So you can see why I kinda related to that. I think me and the boys are gonna strike up another tune for you now. Let’s go, boys. I think there’s a storm… seems like it’s a-brewin’. That’s what my grandaddy used to say before he lost his hearin’. Once he got deaf, he never talked much no more. ‘Cept sometimes he’d say “Oh, gosh” or “Durn it” or “My word!” My granny’d go around clickin’ her teeth to the radio all day. Boy, was she a lot of fun, and cooked my favorite, roast beef. She was a sweetheart. She raised chickens too. She, um… Did you ever hear a chicken sound? You know how chickens go? Here, chick, chick, chick. Here, chick, chick, chick. Anyway, I guess we’d better strike up this tune before it’s too late. Okay, boys. The first job I ever really got… Grandma… She’s the one who clacked her false teeth to the radio. She taught my mama how to sing, and my mama taught me. One time she took me, ‘cause we was gonna get a new Frigidaire. She took me to the Frigidaire store where the man was advertisin’. This record was goin’ ‘round, and Mama told him I knew how to sing. He said, "If she learns this tune, I’ll give y’all a quarter. " So Mama and I went home… And then what happened? Let’s see, I think… Uh, yeah. We went home and I learned both sides of the record in half an hour. We went back and told him that I’d learned ‘em, and he said, “Let me hear,” so I sang both sides of the record instead of just one. So he gave us cents, and we went across the street and had us a soda. Ever since then I been workin’. I don’t… I think ever since then I been workin’ and doin’ my… - Come on, come on. - Supportin’myself. Anyway…
Barnett [comes up on stage and starts to pull her from the microphone]: Hey, hey. Hey, hey.
Barbara Jean: Am I all right? Am I all right?
Barnett: Oh, you’re fine, darlin’.
You really had to be there.
Howard K. Smith [on a television news broadcast]: Little more than a year ago, a man named Hal Phillip Walker excited a group of college students with some questions. “Have you stood on a high and windy hill and heard the acorns drop and roll? Have you walked in the valley beside the brook, walked alone and remembered? Does Christmas smell like oranges to you?” Within a commencement speech, such questions were fitting, perhaps, but hardly the material with which to launch a presidential campaign. Even those who pay close attention to politics probably saw Hal Phillip Walker and his Replacement Party as a bit of frost on the hillside. Summer, if not late spring, would surely do away with all that. Well, now that summer, along with presidential primaries, is heavy upon us and the frost is still there, perhaps we should take a closer look. Hal Phillip Walker is, in a way, a mystery man. Out of nowhere with a handful of students and scarcely any pros, he’s managed to win three presidential primaries and is given a fighting chance to take a fourth - Tennessee. A win in that state would take on added significance, for only once in the last fifty years has Tennessee failed to vote for the winning presidential candidate. No doubt many Americans, especially party-liners, wish that Hal Phillip Walker would go away, disappear like the natural frost and come again at some more convenient season. But wherever he may be going, it seems sure that Hal Phillip Walker is not going away. For there is genuine appeal, and it must be related to the raw courage of this man. Running for President, willing to battle vast oil companies, eliminate subsidies to farmers, tax churches, abolish the Electoral College, change the National Anthem, and remove lawyers from government - especially from Congress. Well at this point, it would be wise to say most of us don’t know the answer to Hal Phillip Walker. But to answer one of his questions, as a matter of fact, Christmas has always smelled like oranges to me.
I know who you're thinking of. But it is actually someone else.
Albuquerque [singing]: It don’t worry me, no, it don’t worry me. You may say that I ain’t free but it don’t worry me.
https://youtu.be/uwZw0VacWDw?si=F6ffYHvay-9m_cUb
But that is always up to us isn’t?
God. Government. Politics. Celebrity. The Entertainment Industry. Love. Sex. All this and so much more. And in lots and lots and lots and lots of cuts.
Of course the times have changed considerably since back then. In some respects we may as well be living on a different planet. But you’ll recognize all the parts that will probably never change. Or have actually gotten considerably worse.
These “show business” folks are pure plastic. On the other hand, they do have to put on an act for the “fans”. But take all that away and they still don’t go down a whole lot deeper. Or maybe it’s me—I just don’t get it.
As for the music, well, some folks like it more than others.
Look for the second coming of Tocqueville.
Nashville
Opal: Good Lord love a duck!
Bud: This is a choir… a black choir… from, uh, part of… from Fisk University here in town.
Opal: Good Lord! The lady singing is… is she a missionary?
Bud Hamilton: No, she’s not. She’s a gospel singer. She’s the wife of our attorney.
Opal: I was making a documentary in Kenya… and there was this marvelous woman who was a missionary. That’s why I asked if she was a missionary. She was sensational. She was converting Kukuyos by the dozens. She was trying to convert Masais. Of course, they were hopeless. They have their own sort of religion. Look at that. That rhythm is fantastic. It’s funny… You can tell it’s come down in the genes… through ages and ages and hundreds of years, but it’s there. I mean, take off those robes and one is in… in… in darkest Africa. I can just see their naked, frenzied bodies… dancing to the beat of… Do they carry on like that in church?
Bud: Depends on which church you go to.
That'll do it.
Hal: Who do you think is running Congress? Farmers? Engineers? Teachers? Businessmen? No, my friends. Congress is run by lawyers. A lawyer is trained for two things and two things only. To clarify - that’s one. And to confuse - that’s the other. He does whichever is to his client’s advantage. Did you ever ask a lawyer the time of day? He told you how to make a watch, didn’t he? Ever ask a lawyer how to get to Mr. Jones’ house in the country? You got lost, didn’t you? Congress is composed of five hundred and thirty-five individuals. Two hundred and eighty-eight are lawyers. And you wonder what’s wrong in Congress. No wonder we often know how to make a watch, but we don’t know the time of day.
Must be another Congress. But, sure, point taken.
Albuquerque: See, what happened is, he made a million dollars on a fly swatter, because it had a red dot in the center.
Only a million?
Lady Pearl: That’s John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Well, he…he took the whole South, except for Tennessee, Florida, Kentucky. And there’s a reason he didn’t take Tennessee. But he got 481,453 votes, and the asshole got 556,577 votes. Now, the problem we got here… is anti-Catholicism. These dumbheads around here, they’re all…Baptists and whatever, I don’t know. Even to teach ‘em to make change over the bar you gotta crack their skulls, let alone teach ‘em to vote for the Catholic…just because he happens to be the better man. And all I remember was just lookin’ at that TV set and seein’ it all, seein’ that great fat-bellied sheriff sayin’, "Ruby, you son of a bitch. " And Oswald…and her in her little pink suit. And then comes Bobby. Oh, I worked for him. I worked here, I worked all over the country, I worked out in California, out in Stockton. Well, Bobby came here and spoke and he went down to Memphis and then he even went out to Stockton California and spoke off the Santa Fe train at the old Santa Fe depot. Oh, he was a beautiful man. He was not much like John, you know. He was more puny-like. But all the time I was workin’ for him, I was just so scared - inside, you know, just scared.
An outier let's call her.
If you know what she means.
l [In an automobile junkyard]: I’m wandering in a graveyard. The dead here have no crosses, nor tombstones, nor wreaths to sing of their past glory, but lie in rotting, decaying, rusty heaps, their innards ripped out by greedy, vulturous hands. Their vast, vacant skeletons… sadly sighing to the sky. The rust on their bodies… is the color of dried blood. Dried blood. I’m reminded of…of an elephant’s secret burial ground. Yes. Cette aire de mystère. Cette essence de I’irréel. These cars are trying to communicate. O cars, are you trying to tell me something? Are you trying to convey to me some secret…
Kenny: What… Excuse me?
Opal: Oh, excuse me! I thought I was completely alone. How embarrassing. Oh, you’re a musician!
Opal? You never really know where she is going to turn up next.
Opal [speaking into a micro recorder as she walks through a school bus parking lot]: The buses! The buses are empty and look almost menacing, threatening, as so many yellow dragons watching me with their hollow, vacant eyes. I wonder how many little black and white children have yellow nightmares, their own special brand of fear for the yellow peril…Damn it, it’s got to be more…positive. No, more negative! Start again. Yellow is the color of caution. No. Yellow is the color of cowardice. Yellow is the color of sunshine. And yet I see very little sunshine in the lives of all the little black and white children. I see their lives, rather, as a study in grayness, a mixture of black and…Oh, Christ, no. That’s fascist. Yellow! Yellow, yellow, yellow. Yellow fever…
No, that's Opal.
Next up: Barbara Jean
Barbara Jean [she finishes singing a song at her concert]: Thank you. I wanna tell you all a little secret which you might not know, and that is that last night I thanked my lucky stars that I could be here at all to sing for ya. I heard on the radio this little boy, nine years old. Sometimes a deejay’ll play a tune and ask everybody to phone in and say how they like it. I was listenin’, and this little nine-year-old called in. The song had voices in the background, like the way they use backup voices these days, soundin’ like little munchkins. He called up, the deejay said, “How old are you, son?” The boy said, "I’m nine, and I think it’s gonna be a hit. " The deejay said, “Why?” "Because it had those chipmunks in it. " And I thought that was so cute, because, well, I can sing like a munchkin myself. I’m real fond of The Wizard of Oz. Plus, I live out, you know, just a ways off of Interstate on the road to Chattanooga. So you can see why I kinda related to that. I think me and the boys are gonna strike up another tune for you now. Let’s go, boys. I think there’s a storm… seems like it’s a-brewin’. That’s what my grandaddy used to say before he lost his hearin’. Once he got deaf, he never talked much no more. ‘Cept sometimes he’d say “Oh, gosh” or “Durn it” or “My word!” My granny’d go around clickin’ her teeth to the radio all day. Boy, was she a lot of fun, and cooked my favorite, roast beef. She was a sweetheart. She raised chickens too. She, um… Did you ever hear a chicken sound? You know how chickens go? Here, chick, chick, chick. Here, chick, chick, chick. Anyway, I guess we’d better strike up this tune before it’s too late. Okay, boys. The first job I ever really got… Grandma… She’s the one who clacked her false teeth to the radio. She taught my mama how to sing, and my mama taught me. One time she took me, ‘cause we was gonna get a new Frigidaire. She took me to the Frigidaire store where the man was advertisin’. This record was goin’ ‘round, and Mama told him I knew how to sing. He said, "If she learns this tune, I’ll give y’all a quarter. " So Mama and I went home… And then what happened? Let’s see, I think… Uh, yeah. We went home and I learned both sides of the record in half an hour. We went back and told him that I’d learned ‘em, and he said, “Let me hear,” so I sang both sides of the record instead of just one. So he gave us cents, and we went across the street and had us a soda. Ever since then I been workin’. I don’t… I think ever since then I been workin’ and doin’ my… - Come on, come on. - Supportin’myself. Anyway…
Barnett [comes up on stage and starts to pull her from the microphone]: Hey, hey. Hey, hey.
Barbara Jean: Am I all right? Am I all right?
Barnett: Oh, you’re fine, darlin’.
You really had to be there.
Howard K. Smith [on a television news broadcast]: Little more than a year ago, a man named Hal Phillip Walker excited a group of college students with some questions. “Have you stood on a high and windy hill and heard the acorns drop and roll? Have you walked in the valley beside the brook, walked alone and remembered? Does Christmas smell like oranges to you?” Within a commencement speech, such questions were fitting, perhaps, but hardly the material with which to launch a presidential campaign. Even those who pay close attention to politics probably saw Hal Phillip Walker and his Replacement Party as a bit of frost on the hillside. Summer, if not late spring, would surely do away with all that. Well, now that summer, along with presidential primaries, is heavy upon us and the frost is still there, perhaps we should take a closer look. Hal Phillip Walker is, in a way, a mystery man. Out of nowhere with a handful of students and scarcely any pros, he’s managed to win three presidential primaries and is given a fighting chance to take a fourth - Tennessee. A win in that state would take on added significance, for only once in the last fifty years has Tennessee failed to vote for the winning presidential candidate. No doubt many Americans, especially party-liners, wish that Hal Phillip Walker would go away, disappear like the natural frost and come again at some more convenient season. But wherever he may be going, it seems sure that Hal Phillip Walker is not going away. For there is genuine appeal, and it must be related to the raw courage of this man. Running for President, willing to battle vast oil companies, eliminate subsidies to farmers, tax churches, abolish the Electoral College, change the National Anthem, and remove lawyers from government - especially from Congress. Well at this point, it would be wise to say most of us don’t know the answer to Hal Phillip Walker. But to answer one of his questions, as a matter of fact, Christmas has always smelled like oranges to me.
I know who you're thinking of. But it is actually someone else.
Albuquerque [singing]: It don’t worry me, no, it don’t worry me. You may say that I ain’t free but it don’t worry me.
https://youtu.be/uwZw0VacWDw?si=F6ffYHvay-9m_cUb
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
John Fowles, from The Magus
Utram bibis? Aquam an undam? Which are you drinking? The water or the wave?
No, really.
I want to tell you what's really happened.
Not now. Please not now. Whatever's happened, come and make love to me.
And we did make love; not sex, but love; though sex would have been so much wiser.
I hear that.
I did not pray for her, because prayer has no efficacy; I did not cry for her, or for myself, because only extroverts cry twice; but I sat in the silence of that night, that infinite hostility to man, to permanence, to love, remembering her, remembering her.
Little does he [or we for that matter] know...
I had always believed, and not only out of cynicism, that a man and a woman could tell in the first ten minutes whether they wanted to go to bed together; and that the time that passed after those first ten minutes represented a tax, which might be worth paying if the article promised to be really enjoyable, but which nine times out of ten became rapidly excessive.
Um, maybe?
Why should I struggle through hundreds of pages of fabrication to reach half a dozen very little truths?
For fun?
Fun! He pounced on the word. Words are for truth. For facts. Not fiction.
What a novel idea, right?
He said it as if ‘very rich’ was a nationality; as perhaps it is.
Next up: 'very poor'.
Utram bibis? Aquam an undam? Which are you drinking? The water or the wave?
No, really.
I want to tell you what's really happened.
Not now. Please not now. Whatever's happened, come and make love to me.
And we did make love; not sex, but love; though sex would have been so much wiser.
I hear that.
I did not pray for her, because prayer has no efficacy; I did not cry for her, or for myself, because only extroverts cry twice; but I sat in the silence of that night, that infinite hostility to man, to permanence, to love, remembering her, remembering her.
Little does he [or we for that matter] know...
I had always believed, and not only out of cynicism, that a man and a woman could tell in the first ten minutes whether they wanted to go to bed together; and that the time that passed after those first ten minutes represented a tax, which might be worth paying if the article promised to be really enjoyable, but which nine times out of ten became rapidly excessive.
Um, maybe?
Why should I struggle through hundreds of pages of fabrication to reach half a dozen very little truths?
For fun?
Fun! He pounced on the word. Words are for truth. For facts. Not fiction.
What a novel idea, right?
He said it as if ‘very rich’ was a nationality; as perhaps it is.
Next up: 'very poor'.
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
The true story of a “mild-mannered” guy who needed some excitement in his life. And the story being true always makes the film more interesting for me.
Gambling. I just do not get it. And, for folks like Mahowny, the money seems to be beside the point. At least until they lose a ton of it. Instead, it is the “thrill” they feel doing it. But this guy ain’t exactly a “whale”. Not unless you count the bank’s money. Once he starts using that though the sky is the limit. He does, after all, have access to $20 million. And boy do the casinos have milking suckers like him down to a science!
And boy does he gamble! He bets on everything: horses, sporting events, casino games. He doesn’t really even make the effort to do it intelligently. For example, he bets a thousand on all the National League home teams winning, and a thousand on all the American League teams losing. Or he bets wholesale on all the “underdogs” winning.
And dice, the roulette wheel, blackjack? It’s all basically luck. Where’s the thrill in that?
Ironically enough this guy works in a bank [as the assistant manager] and banks are always gambling too. Only for them it is even more of a sure thing. Unless they take the gambling to Wall Street. And even then all they have to be is “too big to fail”.
Wow. At first, I didn’t even recognize Minnie Driver.
Owning Mahoney
Psychologist [to Mahowny]: Some folks believe that everyone has a public life, a private life and a secret life.
Actually, by now, that would include all of us.
Frank [to Dan]: Do I make you do business with me?
Like asking a junkie if you make him do business with you.
Casino employee [watching Mahowny bet]: He’s making some pretty big bets…on impulse. No consistent pattern.
Casino manager: My kind of guy.
Let's try to pin down why.
Dan [to Doug]: Would you take these chips, please. And don’t give them back to me no matter what I say.
Enough said?
Casino employee: He told her he was only interested in Lady Luck.
Casino manager: No sex, no booze, no drugs. All he cares about is the next hand. He’s a beauty! I love him!
The next hand here?
Frank [to his partner]: Do you know why he wants to win? So he has the money to keep losing. How fucked up is that?
Let's run this by Lady Luck.
Dan: How much for the bags?
Car Rental Girl: They’re free for customers.
Dan: Great, can I have one?
Car Rental Girl: Well, you’re not a customer, so…
Dan: Okay… how much for the bags?
I forget: did he get them?
Investigator: You’ve got a gambling problem, right?
Dan: No…
[chuckles]
Dan: No, sir.
Investigator: Come on. You didn’t get a buzz out of it?
Dan: I have a…financial problem. A shortfall.
Let's explain the difference.
Psychologist: How would you rate the thrill you got from gambling, on a scale of one to 100?
Dan: Um…hundred.
Psychologist: And what about the biggest thrill you’ve ever had outside of gambling?
Dan: Twenty.
Here’s the thing though: He never looks thrilled. Even when he’s winning. How he mostly looks is fevered.
Title card: Dan Mahowny received a 6 year sentence for fraud. He married Belinda on a three day pass in Enterprise, Ontario. He has not placed a bet since his arrest.
And now? For what it's worth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Molony
Gambling. I just do not get it. And, for folks like Mahowny, the money seems to be beside the point. At least until they lose a ton of it. Instead, it is the “thrill” they feel doing it. But this guy ain’t exactly a “whale”. Not unless you count the bank’s money. Once he starts using that though the sky is the limit. He does, after all, have access to $20 million. And boy do the casinos have milking suckers like him down to a science!
And boy does he gamble! He bets on everything: horses, sporting events, casino games. He doesn’t really even make the effort to do it intelligently. For example, he bets a thousand on all the National League home teams winning, and a thousand on all the American League teams losing. Or he bets wholesale on all the “underdogs” winning.
And dice, the roulette wheel, blackjack? It’s all basically luck. Where’s the thrill in that?
Ironically enough this guy works in a bank [as the assistant manager] and banks are always gambling too. Only for them it is even more of a sure thing. Unless they take the gambling to Wall Street. And even then all they have to be is “too big to fail”.
Wow. At first, I didn’t even recognize Minnie Driver.
Owning Mahoney
Psychologist [to Mahowny]: Some folks believe that everyone has a public life, a private life and a secret life.
Actually, by now, that would include all of us.
Frank [to Dan]: Do I make you do business with me?
Like asking a junkie if you make him do business with you.
Casino employee [watching Mahowny bet]: He’s making some pretty big bets…on impulse. No consistent pattern.
Casino manager: My kind of guy.
Let's try to pin down why.
Dan [to Doug]: Would you take these chips, please. And don’t give them back to me no matter what I say.
Enough said?
Casino employee: He told her he was only interested in Lady Luck.
Casino manager: No sex, no booze, no drugs. All he cares about is the next hand. He’s a beauty! I love him!
The next hand here?
Frank [to his partner]: Do you know why he wants to win? So he has the money to keep losing. How fucked up is that?
Let's run this by Lady Luck.
Dan: How much for the bags?
Car Rental Girl: They’re free for customers.
Dan: Great, can I have one?
Car Rental Girl: Well, you’re not a customer, so…
Dan: Okay… how much for the bags?
I forget: did he get them?
Investigator: You’ve got a gambling problem, right?
Dan: No…
[chuckles]
Dan: No, sir.
Investigator: Come on. You didn’t get a buzz out of it?
Dan: I have a…financial problem. A shortfall.
Let's explain the difference.
Psychologist: How would you rate the thrill you got from gambling, on a scale of one to 100?
Dan: Um…hundred.
Psychologist: And what about the biggest thrill you’ve ever had outside of gambling?
Dan: Twenty.
Here’s the thing though: He never looks thrilled. Even when he’s winning. How he mostly looks is fevered.
Title card: Dan Mahowny received a 6 year sentence for fraud. He married Belinda on a three day pass in Enterprise, Ontario. He has not placed a bet since his arrest.
And now? For what it's worth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Molony
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promethean75
- Posts: 7113
- Joined: Sun Nov 04, 2018 10:29 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Three magnificent N-bombs i first encountered at the tender young impressionable age of 20 and i was like, "Oh my goodness." I had just discovered Plato and Socrates and the gang and thought I was about to be on to something... and then Fritz was like um... no.
"Every word instantly becomes a concept precisely insofar as it is not supposed to serve as a reminder of the unique and entirely individual original experience to which it owes its origin; but rather, a word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases — which means, purely and simply, cases which are never equal and thus altogether unequal. Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things. Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept "leaf" is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects."
"We still do not yet know where the drive for truth comes from. For so far, we have heard only of the duty which society imposes in order to exist: to be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors. Thus, to express it morally, this is the duty to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie with the herd and in a manner binding upon everyone. Now, man, of course, forgets that this is the way things stand for him. Thus, he lies in the manner indicated, unconsciously and in accordance with habits which are centuries' old; and precisely by means of this unconsciousness and forgetfulness, he arrives at his sense of truth."
"Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself — in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity — is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them. They are deeply immersed in illusions and in dream images; their eyes merely glide over the surface of things and see "forms.""
"Every word instantly becomes a concept precisely insofar as it is not supposed to serve as a reminder of the unique and entirely individual original experience to which it owes its origin; but rather, a word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases — which means, purely and simply, cases which are never equal and thus altogether unequal. Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things. Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept "leaf" is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects."
"We still do not yet know where the drive for truth comes from. For so far, we have heard only of the duty which society imposes in order to exist: to be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors. Thus, to express it morally, this is the duty to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie with the herd and in a manner binding upon everyone. Now, man, of course, forgets that this is the way things stand for him. Thus, he lies in the manner indicated, unconsciously and in accordance with habits which are centuries' old; and precisely by means of this unconsciousness and forgetfulness, he arrives at his sense of truth."
"Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself — in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity — is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them. They are deeply immersed in illusions and in dream images; their eyes merely glide over the surface of things and see "forms.""