Quote of the day

[iambiguous]

Stupidity

“All the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity.” Philip Pullman

Of course, the real crux here is that over and again, what some call wisdom others call stupidity.

“Fourth Doctor: You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: they don't alter their views to fit the facts; they alter the facts to fit their views.” Chris Boucher

Pick two [and only two]:
1] Elon Trump
2] Donald Musk

“To generalize is to be an idiot.” William Blake

Let's cite examples.

“There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.” Frank Zappa

I'm prepared to defend that. How about you?

“Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing after all.” Jane Austen

Start here: https://youtu.be/pvvGR09P5XI?si=GQx--vhupkYftZ8d

“Unknowing ignorance is preferable to informed stupidity.” Brandon Sanderson

New thread?

[iambiguous]

“I don’t know.”

You don’t know what? Well, there’s the part about love, the part about sex, the part about kids, the part about money, the part about work, the part about family, the part about all the other stuff.

There really is a lot not to know when you are in a relationship with someone. And that’s not even counting all the stuff you don’t know because you don’t even think of it.

And then there is the part about demographics. Class matters. At least it does in a class society. Some things [we either know or don’t know] seem to cross those lines. But others are more separate and distinct to what can be very different experiences.

Dean and Cindy wobble somewhere between the working class and the lower middle class. And all the different things that can mean to different people. One thing for sure: in some important respects, I’ve been here myself. The same sort of conversations about the same sort of things. Converstaions in which we just kept tripping over each other’s words as we try to untangle all of the possible things we think the other might be feeling.

I think what it captures best though is that part in a relationship [one down the road a bit] in which you still crave the parts that work while becoming increasingly more alienated from the parts that don’t. Only Dean seems to focus more on the former and Cindy on the latter.

You can really become conflicted. I know I did.

The scenes in the ‘past’ when Dean and Cindy are falling in love were shot first, in three weeks. After this Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams spent a month together in a rented house to age themselves in preparation for the ‘present’ scenes. They spent a lot of their time grocery shopping, cooking dinner and learning to pick fights with each other.

According to Derek Cianfrance, after shooting the first part of the love story, there were serious discussions about not doing the second one, retitling the movie simply “Valentine”, and make it a depiction of falling in love. IMDb


Blue Valentine

Dean [to Marshall at work]: I feel like men are more romantic than women. When we get married, we marry, like, one girl, 'cause we’re resistant the whole way until we meet one girl and we think, “I’d be an idiot if I didn’t marry this girl. She’s so great”. But it seems like girls get to a place where they just kinda pick the best option… ‘Oh he’s got a good job.’ I mean they spend their whole life looking for Prince Charming and then they marry the guy who’s got a good job and is gonna stick around.

Pick three:
1] contingency
2] chance
3] change
Though not necessarily in that order.

Cindy [to Dean]: I’m not going to some cheesy sex motel.

We'll see about that.

Dean: I’m asking you, please. Let’s get out of here. We gotta get out of here. Baby, we have to get out of this house. Let’s go get drunk and make love. Now, do you want the Cupid’s Cove…or the Future Room?

Though we suspect that their own future [together] is doomed.

Cindy: What did it feel like when you fell in love?
Gramma: Oh… oh dear, I don’t think I found it
Cindy: Even with grandpa?
Gramma: Maybe a little, in the beginning. He didn’t really have any regard for me as a person. You gotta be careful with that. You gotta be careful with the person you fall in love is worth it…to you.

Next up: my own "shotgun" wedding!

Cindy: I never want to be like my parents. I know they must’ve loved each other at one time right? To just get it all out of the way before they had me. How do you trust your feelings when they can just disappear like that?
Gramma: I think the only way you can find out is to have the feeling. You’re a good person. You have the right to say I do trust. I do trust myself.

Imagine then how that "works" for me.

Dean: You think I stole that money, don’t you? Yeah, you do.
Cindy: No.
Dean: Look, I’ve stolen money before, okay, I know what it’s like to get busted. That’s what it feels like. I didn’t steal it. I’ve got a job. Okay? This is my job.
Cindy: Okay, I got it.

It did look rather suspicious though.

Dean [to Cindy]: Whoa. We’re inside a robot’s vagina.

That ever happen to you?

Dean: In my experience, the prettier a girl is, the more nuts she is, which makes you insane.
Cindy: I like how you can compliment and insult somebody at the same time.

Let's give him a break and say subconsciously.

Dean: I don’t know if you are not funny. Tell me a joke.
Cindy: So there’s a child molester and a little boy walking into the woods. They keep walking in further and further. It’s getting darker and darker and they’re getting deeper and deeper into the woods and the little boy looks up at the child molester and he says, “Gee, mister, I’m getting scared!” And the child molester looks down at him and says, “You think you’re scared, kid? I gotta walk outta here alone.”
[Dean just shakes his slowly head back and forth]
Cindy: You don’t think that’s funny?

Here is the crux of it:

Cindy: Isn’t there something you wanted to do? Isn’t there something you wanna do?
Dean: Like what?
Cindy: I don’t know. You’re good at so many things. You could do anything you wanted to do, you’re good at everything that you do. Isn’t there something else you wanna to do?
Dean: Than what? To be your husband, to being Frankie’s dad? What do you want me to do? What-what-what… in your, like, dream scenario of me, like, doing what I’m good at, what would that be?
Cindy: I don’t know. I just… you’re so good at so many things. You can do so many things. You have such capacity.
Dean: For what?
Cindy: I don’t…you can sing, you can draw, you can…
[chuckles]
Cindy: …dance.
Dean [exhales]: Listen, I didn’t wanna be somebody’s husband, okay? And I didn’t wanna be somebody’s dad. That wasn’t my… goal in life. For some guys it is - wasn’t mine. But somehow I’ve… it was what I wanted. I didn’t know that. And it’s all I wanna do. I don’t want to do anything else. That’s what I want to do. I work so I can do that.
Cindy: I’d like to see you have a job where you don’t have to start drinking at 8 o’clock, in the morning, to go to it.
Dean: No, I have a job that I can drink at 8 o’clock in the morning. What a luxury… you know? I get up for work, I have a beer, I go to work, I paint somebody’s house - they’re excited about it. I come home, I get to be with you. What’s… Like, this is the dream.
Cindy: Doesn’t it ever disappoint you?
Dean: Why? Why would it disappoint me? I could still do whatever I could do.
Cindy: Because you have all this potential.
Dean: So what? Why do you have to fucking make money off your potential?
Cindy: Look, I’m not even saying you have to make money off it. Do you miss it?
Dean: What does potential mean? What does even potential mean? What does that mean “potential”? Potential for what? To turn it into what?
Cindy: We rarely sit down and have an adult conversation because every time we do…you take what I say and turn it around into something that I didn’t mean. You just…twist it. Start blabbing. Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.
Dean: If you’re not interested in what I have to say, then maybe I just shouldn’t say anything.
Cindy [laughing]: I’d like to see you think about what you say instead of saying what you think all the time. Good luck. Give it a try.

I've been there myself.
Twice.

Cindy [to Dean]: You asshole. You fucking asshole. I’m so out of love with you. I’ve got nothing left for you, nothing, nothing. Nothing, there is nothing here for you.

Not many punches pulled here.

Dean [long silence before he speaks]: You know, it’s not just us, we got a little girl we gotta think about.
[he breaks into tears]
Cindy: I know…I…I can’t do this anymore.
Dean: You’re just thinking about yourself. What about Frankie? You want her to grow up in a broken home? Is that what you want?
Cindy: I am thinking about Frankie.
Dean: You’re not thinking about Frankie.
Cindy: I am thinking about my own kid.
Dean: No, you’re not. Is this how you want her to grow up?
Cindy: I don’t want her to grow up in a home where her parents treat each other like this.
[Dean cries and slaps the wall all over and over]
Dean: Tell me how I should be. Just tell me. I’ll do it.
Cindy: I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to say.
Dean: Just tell me. I’ll do it, I’ll do it, I’ll do it.
Cindy: Don’t. We’re not good together, we’re not good anymore. It’s how cwe treat each other. I can’t stop, you can’t stop. I don’t know what else to do.
Dean: I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Baby, I’m sorry.
Cindy [sobbing]: I can’t do this anymore.

Some might insist, however, that Dean is actually the better parent. He clearly loves Frankie and Frankie clearly loves him. in part because in any number of ways he's still a kid himself.

Dean: Baby, you made a promise to me, okay? You said, “for better or worse”. You said that. You said it. It was a promise.
Cindy: I’m sorry.
Dean: Now this is my worst, okay? This is my worst. But I’m gonna get better. You just gotta give me a chance to get better.

Nope: https://youtu.be/39TQKFFy6Fs?si=cSKZTe8WaLr0kfbi

[iambiguous]

Rachel Cusk from Outline

I would like to be a D.H. Lawrence character, living in one of his novels. The people I meet don’t even seem to have characters. And life seems so rich, when I look at it through his eyes, yet my own life very often appears sterile, like a bad patch of earth, as if nothing will grow there however hard I try.

Me? The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

What she couldn’t stand, she said, was pretence of any kind, especially the pretence of desire, wherein someone feigned the need to possess her wholly when in fact what he wanted was to use her temporarily. She herself, she said, was quite willing to use others too, but she only recognised it once they had admitted this intention in themselves.

To use or not to use? And how to tell them apart.

The worst thing, it seemed to her, was to be dealing with one version of a person when quite another version existed out of sight.

Personas we call them. On the other hand, "No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true."

Writing comes out of tension, tension between what's inside and what's outside.

So, in regard to this, how fractured and fragmented are you?

If a man had a nasty side to his character, she wanted to get to it immediately and confront it. She didn’t want it roaming unseen in the hinterland of the relationship: she wanted to provoke it, to draw it forth, lest it strike her when her back was turned.

Next up: the nasty side of her character.

One could make almost anything happen, if one tried hard enough, but the trying - it seemed to me – was almost always a sign that one was crossing the currents, was forcing events in a direction that they did not naturally want to go, and though you might argue that nothing could ever be accomplished without going against nature to some extent, the artificiality of that vision and its consequences had become – to put it bluntly - anathema to me.

Any events being forced here? How about events that ought to be?

[iambiguous]

How would most people even begin to compare the lives they live with the one they imagine that Bob Dylan has. Some folks it seems are just able to have a fuller life than others. Not that Dylan would probably do much more than scoff at that.

Still, I suspect that most of us wish that our own lives could have been a bit more…eventful?

Not that Dylan wouldn’t be willing to start from scratch if he could be 18 again. That’s the thing about accumulating so much in life. It’s that much more you have to lose when you get to the part where it’s all over.

Dylan was just one of those kids that became transfixed by and through music. It took him out of the place he lived and allowed him to imagine other places…other ways to live. This works with all the arts of course but there is just something about music that seems to sink in deeper. In a similar vein, some folks can’t seem to accommodate themselves to all those other things that “normal” people are taught to think and feel and do. But then deciding what to move away from is not nearly the same thing as deciding what to move towards. So, some folks come to make it up as they went along. And out of this comes some things that never were before at all.

One thing about Dylan though is you can never really believe what he tells you about himself. He’ll just make something up that suits him or let others make something up that suits them.

Bottom line: He wrote hooks. He wrote songs that stuck in your head. Songs that make you think and feel things you never thought and felt before. Songs that blended together the personal and the political in a way that had never quite been done before.

And I like where the film ends – about the same time I stopped buying his albums and started borrowing them from the local library. With some obvious exceptions of course.

Martin Scorsese never met or discussed the film with Bob Dylan during filming. However, he worked extensively with him during the filming of The Last Waltz (1978). IMDb


No Direction Home

Dylan: I was born very far from where I’m supposed to be, and so I’m on my way home.

So, how many of us are supposed to be here.

Dylan: In the house that my father bought I found something…something that had kind of mystical overtones. There was a great big mahogany radio. It had a 78 turntable when you opened up the top. And I opened it up one day and there was a record on, a country record…it was a song called “Drifting Too Far From Shore”. The sound of the record made me feel like I was somebody else…that I was maybe not even born to the right parents, or something.

I hear that.

Dylan: The name just popped into my head one day. But it really didn’t happen any of the ways I read about. I mean, I just don’t feel like I had a past and, you know, I couldn’t relate to anything other than what I was doing in the present time and, you know, it didn’t matter to me what I said. It still doesn’t, really.

I wonder how "fractured and fragmented" his own value judgments might be.

Allen Ginsburg: The poet Charlie Plymell played me a record of this new young folk singer. And I heard Hard Rain. And wept. 'Cause it seemed that the torch had been passed to another generation. From early bohemian or beat to illumination and self-empowerment.

https://youtu.be/T5al0HmR4to?si=OfR9dZZrwR4x6mDz

Allen Ginsberg: There is a very famous saying among Tibetan Buddhists: “If the student is not better than the teacher, then the teacher is a failure.” …Poetry is words that are empowered to make your hair stand on end, that you realize instantly as being some form of subjective truth that has an objective reality to it, because somebody has realized it. Then you call it poetry later.

Or, fuck it, philosophy?

Dylan: I didn’t realize that Pete Seeger was a Communist. I really wasn’t sure even what a Communist was. If he was it wouldn’t have mattered to me anyway. I really didn’t think about people in those terms.

Next up: he goes electric.

Dave von Ronk: Bobby was not really a political person. He was thought of as being a political person and a man of the left. And in a general sort of way, yes, he was. But he was not interested in the true nature of the Soviet Union or any of that crap. We thought he was hopelessly politically naive. But in retrospect, I think he might have been more sophisticated than we were.

And that was the gist of it: Not that he turned electric but that [politically] he was no longer “one of us”. And it was particularly galling for many when they had to admit that maybe he never really was. It appalled those he’d “left” because he wrote such good songs. It was all captured here in this song by Joan Baez: https://youtu.be/t6NqoaW2fzY?si=EgbY3VcLSM3XFH0r
But he was able to move on to other things [successfully] because he wrote such good songs. The music was, well, fucking fantastic.

Dylan [about his words at the ECLU]: I was like an ousider, anyway. I’d come to town an outsider, and still, in a lot of ways…I was more outside than I ever was, really. They were trying to make me an insider to some kind of trip they were on. I don’t think so.

Maybe he's as busted as "I" am. Existentially, say.

Dylan: An artist has got to be careful never to really arrive at a place where he thinks he is “at” somewhere. You always have to realize that you’re constantly in the state of becoming, you know.

See, I told you.

Dylan: I can’t self-analyze my own work and I wasn’t going to cater to the crowd because I knew certain people like it, and certain people didn’t like it. I had gotten in the door when no one was looking. I was in there now, and there was nothing anybody from then on could ever do about it.

Me too.
And then some.

Bobby Neuwirth: In those days, artistic success was not dollar-driven. It was, you know…Those were simpler times. If you had something to say, which was basically the way people were rated. They’d say “Have you seen Ornette Coleman?” And you’d say, “Does he have anything to say?” And it was the same with Bob Dylan or anybody else. Do they have anything to say or not?

On the other hand, those like Phil Ochs had plenty to say. And look where that got him. https://youtu.be/_bmUQMDrep0?si=VPISo0HrmRbIZK_3

Bobby Neuwirth [reacting to Dylan’s music]: No one had ever heard anything like this. They’d never heard anything like it before.

The guy was a fucking genius. Whatever that means?

D.A. Pennebaker: We showed him the first rough cut of Don’t Look Back. What he saw must have made him look like he was bare bones. And I think that was a big shock to him. But then he saw, I think the second night, he saw that it was total theatre. It didn’t matter. He was an actor, and he suddenly had invented himself as the actor within this movie, and it was okay.

Think David Bowie.

Joan Baez: Bob is one of the most complex human beings I’ve ever met. I think at first I tried to figure this guy out. No. I gave it up, and so I don’t know. I don’t know what he thought about, all I know is what he gave us.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan_discography

Paul Nelson: Rock n roll was considered a real sellout music for a lot of folk fans and “Like a Rolling Stone” seemed like a direct slap in the face to everything that topical songs represented. “How does it feel to be on your own”. And they took it as this most extremely negative, you know, selfish statement basically and it was not better-world-a-coming, you know, it was not that.

Only back then, lots of us really believed in our "cultural revolution".

Reporter: How many people who labor in the same musical vineyard in which you toil, how many are protest singers? That is, people who use their music, and use the songs to protest the uh, social state in which we live today, the matter of war, the matter of crime, or whatever it might be.
Dylan: Um… how many?
Reporter: Yes. How many?
Dylan: Uh, I think there’s about uh, 136.
[People around him giggle. The reporter doesn’t laugh]
Reporter: You say ABOUT 136, or you mean exactly 136?
Dylan: Uh, it’s either 136 or 142.

He was good at that. In fact, the only one better was Andy Warhol.

Dylan: I’d just about had it, though, I’d had it with the whole scene. And, uh, whether I knew it or didn’t know it, I was, uh, lookin’ to quit for a while.
Reporter: Well, what about the scene? What had you “had it with”? What about the scene were you sick of?
Dylan: Uh, well, ya know, people like you, people like, uh, ya know, just, ya know, like bein’ pressed and hammered and, uh, bein’ expected to answer questions. It’s enough to make anybody sick, really.

Me? Go ahead, ask me anything.

[iambiguous]

I still recall the time my ex-wife and I were coming home from the Enoch Pratt library on a bus. We were sitting in the back when a woman got on and sat down in the front. I looked at her and then I nudged my wife. She looked at her. And then we looked at each other. This woman looked remarkably like my wife. I mean really, really like her. But she never looked back at us and neither my wife nor I made any attempt to bring this to her attention. She got off the bus a short time later and it was all over.

On the other hand, I have never come upon anyone that I thought really, really looked like me. Others pointed to men they thought looked like me but I just didn’t see it. It is true of course that somewhere in the world is someone who looks the most like you. But what are the odds that you will ever see each other. It’s just that I think that my ex-wife did. And they both live in the same town.

What’s it all mean? Nothing as far as I have ever been able to discern. Just a strange coincidence. But there is always a part of us that wishes it might be connected to something more.

Here is one of them. There is the other. The one here is drop dead gorgeous and so is the one there. But the one here literally drops dead gorgeous. A heart attack. And so the other one goes into mourning.

It’s all a bit preternatural to me. But there is so much about existence that is, if nothing else, kind of “spooky”. Yet I have never experienced any sense of my own doppelganger “out there” somewhere in the world.

And then there is the music and the photography here. Both are equally gorgeous.

Kieslowski originally wanted Andie MacDowell to play Veronique. IMDb

Nope. Wouldn’t have worked. At least not for me.


The Double Life of Veronique [La Double Vie de Véronique]

Weronique: I have this strange feeling. I have this feeling that I am not alone.
Father: Not alone?
Weronique: Not alone in the world.
Father: You’re not.
Weronique: I’m not sure.

I'm now as alone in this world as I've ever been. Why? Just lucky, I guess.

Friend: What’s the matter? Are you sad?
Veronique: No. Yes. I don’t know why. It’s like I’m in mourning.
Friend: Mourning someone?
Veronique: I don’t know.

That and all the other truly "spooky" experiences we bump into from time to time. Mine for yours?

Veronique: I had a strange feeling not long ago. I felt alone, all of a sudden, even though nothing had changed.
Father: Like someone had disappeared from your life?
Veronique: Yes, that’s right. When Mom died, didn’t you feel this way?
Father: But something really had changed then.

Same here. Only neither one of them are privy to it.

Alexandre: I want to write a real book now. In this book, there would be a woman, a woman who would answer a stranger’s call. So I was wondering if it was possible. If a woman, psychologically…Well, if it was possible.
Veronique: Why me? Why did you choose me?
Alexandre: Because…I don’t know.

Back to all of that "spooky" stuff.

Veronique: What else do you want to know about me?
Alexandre: Everything
[Veronique picks up her purse and gently dumps the contents on the bed in front of him]

The puppet master pounces on it. At least, to the best of my recollection.

Veronique: Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with why you chose me, or maybe it does. All my life, I’ve felt I was here and elsewhere. It’s hard to put in words, I know, But I always sense what I need to do.

Cue the photograph.

Alexandre: That’s a beautiful photograph. You with that big coat.
[Veronique looks at the picture]
Veronique: That’s not me.
Alexandre: Sure it is.

Go ahead, try and tell them apart.

Veronique [looking at the puppet Alexandre has made]: Is that me?
Alexandre: Of course it’s you.
Veronique: Why make two?
Alexandre: Because during performances I handle them a lot. They get damaged.

Back again to Weronique.

[iambiguous]

Marshall McLuhan

In accepting an honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame a few years ago, General David Sarnoff made this statement: “We are too prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for the sins of those who wield them. The products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value.

Of course, he's only paraphrasing Shane.

Today's child is growing up absurd, because he lives in two worlds, and neither of them inclines him to grow up.

I'm still not.

In Jesus Christ, there is no distance or separation between the medium and the message: it is the one case where we can say that the medium and the message are fully one and the same.

In other words, whatever that means.

Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either.

You first.

Politics offers yesterday's answers to today's questions.

Next up: tomorrow's answers. Politics aside.

Environments are not passive wrappings, but are, rather, active processes which are invisible. The groundrules, pervasive structure, and over-all patterns of environments elude easy perception.

What, even virtually?!

[iambiguous]

Musicals? Hardly ever watch them. Hardly ever get them. I’m like Jeff, maybe: "I don’t understand. In musicals, why do they start to sing and dance all of a sudden? I mean, I don’t suddenly start to sing and dance much myself."

And even with this film, I fast forward at the “song and dance” bits.

It’s just that, for folks like us, there is something disjointed about a narrative unfolding in such a bizarre manner. Especially this grim narrative. There are the parts that break your heart and the parts that infuriate you. Singing and dancing…like this was My Fair Lady or something? It just doesn’t work for me.

Call it a personal prejudice.

Just as you might call it it a political prejudice when I react to a world where people are forced to endure certain things simply because they do not have the monetary wherewithal to access remedies. I know there are people who are fortunate enough never to have known what it is like to barely scrape by from week to week. And I know that some of them concoct political narratives so as to shift the blame for this solely on those that do. And, sure, that is not entirely irrelevant at times. But their simplistic ideological agendas leave no room at all for complexity, for ambiguity, for contingency, chance and change. Aside of course from those who suddenly find themselves caught up in it all themselves.

Here is a woman who is saving up every penny she can so that her son can have an operation to keep him from going blinding like she is going blind. So naturally if her own blindness interferes with that she has no one to blame but herself. Besides, she is only a lowly factory worker.

Then she gets caught up in a web of lies that flows from one man’s life of quiet desparation. The lies then become twisted further into the sort of “truth” we see unfold all too often in America’s criminal “justice” system.

This all takes place in the State of Washington in 1964. Was it really the case then and there that a mother would have to choose between money for a lawyer [to save her life] or money for an operation [to save her son’s sight]? I don’t know. But we do know that folks less well off than others “in reality” face tradeoffs like this everyday.

Lars von Trier has said that each morning before filming, Björk would say “Mr. von Trier, I despise you,” and spit at him.

Lars von Trier originally cast himself as the angry man who chastises Selma and Cathy in the movie theater. However, due to the contentious on-set relationship between himself and Björk, he feared that he might end up losing control and overacting, so the part went to Michael Flessas instead.

Premiere voted this movie as one of “The 25 Most Dangerous Movies”. IMDb

In a word: Huh?! Or I suppose one could call it dangerous in that it exposes so much in life that is a sham.


Dancer in the Dark

Selma: Something up, Bill?
Bill: No, no, I just couldn’t sleep, that’s all.
[pause]
Bill: I have no money. All the money that I inherited is…It’s gone. And Linda… Linda… She spends and spends. And my salary’s nowhere near enough. I can’t say no to her. The bank’s gonna repossess the house because I’m so far behind on the payments. And I’m gonna lose Linda. I know it. I know I am.

Of course, that's not all bad news.

Bill: I shouldn’t have told you.
Selma: Don’t worry.
Bill: Shouldn’t have told you.
Selma: It’s okay. Don’t worry.
Bill: No, I think you’ve got enough…stuff.
Selma: Would it make you feel better if I told you a secret?
Bill: What secret could you tell me?
Selma: I’m going blind. Not yet, but…soon. Maybe sometime this year.

Next up: her son.

Selma: Well, I came to America because in America, they can give Gene an operation. You know?
Bill: Gene?
Selma: He doesn’t know about it. You…you mustn’t tell him, because then it could get worse. I just have to save up money, you know, enough money to…Oh, I almost got it. To, uh… For the operation.
Bill: And that’s why you put in all these hours and do all these pins and do everything you do. For him. For his operation.
Selma: Well, it is my fault. I guess…
Bill: How is it your fault?
Because l…I knew he would…he would have bad eyes like me. But I had him all the same.

Why should some parents have to go through this merely because they were born and brought up on the wrong side of the tracks?

Selma: You like the movies, don’t you?
Bill: I love the movies. I just love the musicals.
Selma: But isn’t it annoying when they do the last song in the films?
Bill: Why?
Selma: Because you just know when it goes really big… and the camera goes like out of the roof and you just know it’s going to end. I hate that. I would leave just after the next to last song and the film would just go on forever.

Sure, whatever works I always say.

Jeff: You can’t see, can you?
Selma: What is there to see?

That's certainly one way to look at it.

Bill: Selma, stop. I’m pointing my gun at you, Selma.
Selma: I don’t believe you. You’re just trying to scare me. I can’t see a gun.
[he approaches, let’s her feel the gun]
Bill: Selma…Just…feel this. Feel this. Just feel it! Feel it! Do you believe I have the gun?
Selma: I believe you. But it’s my money.

He’s a slimeball. But he is also a desperate slimeball.

Prosecutor: So why did you kill him, actually? If I may be so bold to ask?
Selma: He asked me to.
Prosecutor: He did? How intriguing. A man with a fine career and some wealth, a happy marriage, why would this Bill Houston ask you to kill him?
Selma: I promised not to say.

Here’s where you begin to grasp just how differently folks can see themselves in the world. Or rather here is where I point out that never in a million years could I imagine it myself as she does. The blind leading the blind.

Selma [to prison guard]: You know, when I used to work in the factory…I used to dream that I was in a musical, because, in a musical, nothing dreadful ever happens.

On the other hand: https://collider.com/darkest-musicals-of-all-time/

Jeff [referring to Gene]: Why did you have him? You knew he would have the same disease as you.
Selma: I just wanted to hold a little baby.

So, did she do the right thing or the wrong thing?

[iambiguous]

Identity

"In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity." Erik Erikson

Yep, that's what they tell me.

"You have to be willing to go to war with yourself and create a whole new identity." David Goggins

On the other hand, look what happened to me.

"Human identity is the most fragile thing that we have, and it's often only found in moments of truth." Alan Rudolph

Or in moments that we think are true?

"If I ever found a place where I belonged, that in itself would be an identity crisis to me." Mitski

So, where do I belong? Or, perhaps, more to the point, where would you put me?

"We live in a society that wants to label you with a color, sexuality, religion, or ethnicity. It divides us, but it also allows us to find pride in our identity." Logan Browning

Next up: virtual labels?

"Spiritual identity means we are not what we do or what people say about us. And we are not what we have. We are the beloved daughters and sons of God." Henri Nouwen

Next up: spiritual bullshit.

[iambiguous]

Young girl moves from the big city to a “backwoods hick town”. She becomes involved [entangled] in relationships with both her teacher and the town stoner. So, lots of opportunity here for drama. Then it just comes down [as it always does] to how sophisticated the narrative becomes in exploring it.

On the other hand, I am so far out of touch now with the mentality that might pervade a small-town high school, I have no way of knowing just how close to or far away from “reality” this film is. On the other hand, I do see examples of the mindless mentality of American Youth on display in the media…and so often I’ve got to assume it is pretty damned close. But then I suspect few are more cynical about Pop Culture than I am. Among other things, I hold it in utter contempt.

Here however much depends on how you react to Caroline. If you like her, you like the movie. I liked her a lot. It’s not that no part of her isn’t infected by the American Youth Syndrome. It’s all the parts that seem to have been yanked clear of it.

This is really just one more snapshot of how fractured the culture has become. And it sure as shit helps to explain the explosion of drug use. Then they just keep feeding on each other to make things worse and worse. Or better and better if you’re actually into this shit.

Of course, all of this revolves around the beautiful people.

Look for Travis Bickle.


Daydream Nation

Caroline [voiceover]: The year this story takes place is the year nearly everything happened to me. It was the year I moved from the city to a backwards hick town to finish high school. It was the year an industrial fire wouldn’t stop burning just outside of town. The year my dad first discovered an itch that much later became cancer and later still took all his hair and then his life. It was the year a serial killer wearing a white suit roamed the county, leaving pretty young kids dead in his wake. But mostly it was the year when I tried to become someone else for a while and for the first time went crazy insane for love. And it seemed that the whole world was about to end.

Trust me: it never does.

Security guard [taking a metal lighter out of her purse]: What’s this?
Caroline: A bowling ball.

Sarcasm let's call it.

Caroline: The guys here are just so immature and sexist. And the girls are worse. They eat it up – no self-respect. And it’s just all so different from where we’re supposed to be at this point in women’s history, you know?
Barry [her teacher]: Yeah. I wish I could argue.

Next up: the history of women and MAGA?

Barry [to Caroline]: I have a hard time believing that Monica Lewinski is the historical figure you most admire.

Next up: Linda Tripp?

Thurston [talking about Caroline]: A girl like that is born with a boyfriend, I guess.
Rolly: So, you steal her away.

Or, rather, try to.

Jenny [seeing Caroline in the restroom]: Ugh, slut.
Caroline: What did you call me?
Jenny: I think I just called you a slut, slut.
Caroline: Why?
Jenny: Because everyone knows that you’ve banged, like, forty different guys since you came here.
Caroline: Really? Forty?
[pauses to look in mirror]
Caroline: Okay, let’s just say that I have banged forty guys. What’s the problem? You’re just jealous because you’ve been, ah, brainwashed by puritanical assholes who think sex is a sin. But then again, your, ah, little gerbil-sized brain has been reprogrammed by the media to believe that sex is the be-all, end-all. So now you’re stuck, right? 'Cause on the one hand you love to fuck, but afterwards you feel overwhelmed by guilt & you’re not sure why. Maybe it’s because sex is neither as good or as evil as you’ve built it up to be.
Jenny [hurt pause]: Shut up, slut!
Caroline: Jenny, seriously, listen to me! The highlight of your entire life is gonna be your yearbook photo. You are already nostalgic for shit that has not even happened yet 'cause you have so precious little to look forward to. You’re gonna spend the first half of your life planning your wedding & you’re gonna spend the second half regretting it. And if I were you - and thank god I’m not, 'cause you have terrible hair - I would stop and I would reconsider your whole value system, because everything you think you know is wrong.

Bravo!

Caroline [voiceover]: I know you probably think I’m a manipulative bitch for sleeping with two guys, but try looking at it this way: the sexual revolution is just like any other revolution. There are going to be casualties.

But she is so much more than just beautiful though. She is one of the few young folks on which youth has not been wasted.

Mr. Wexler: And what about your husband?
Enid: Oh, he passed. About three years ago.
Mr. Wexler: He died?
Enid: Well, I don’t know…but I’d like to think so.

You get this or you don't.

Caroline [voiceover]: People will tell you nothing matters, the whole world’s about to end soon anyway. Those people are looking at life the wrong way. I mean, things don’t need to last forever to be perfect.

I don’t know about that. Of course, it always makes more sense to think things like this when you are young.

[iambiguous]

Everything [and everyone] eventually expires. So, sure, why not turn it into a philosophical issue. In fact, why not take the time to ponder the implications of this for hours on end. For example, what if memories had expiration dates? Or love?

That’s what Cop 223 does. He thinks about stuff like this. In fact, he has insights into lots of ordinary everyday…things. Of course there is also the part about crime and criminals. How much? Well, let’s just say this is one of Quenton Tarantino’s favorite films.

Not that Cop 223 doesn’t also reserve time for love and human remains. This is the modern world. And how much different can things really be in Hong Kong.

And then the “second story”. Cop 663. He just walks a beat. But in the same general vicinity as Cop 223. His thing? He likes to talk to inanimate objects.

And Faye? California Dreamin’ generally. One thing for sure. You don’t want her anywhere near your apartment.

One of the strangest love stories ever filmed.

The title is an amalgamation of two “landmarks” in Hong Kong. 1) Chungking Mansions, a drug-filled, rundown hostel populated by Indians, Pakistanis and Nepalese. 2) Midnight Express, a Indian fastfood store in Lan Kwai Fong, a major bar district populated by foreign yuppies. IMDb


Chungking Express [Chung Hing Sam Lam]

He Qiwu [voiceover]: Everyday we brush past so many other people. People we may never meet or people who may become close friends. I’m a cop, No. 223. My name’s He Qiwu.

More to the point? His expiration date.

He Qiwu [voiceover]: This was the closest we ever got. Just 0.01 of a centimeter between us. But 57 hours later…I fell in love with this woman.

Is that the woman in the blonde wig. The one into human trafficking and dope smuggling? I think so. That and cold blooded murder.

He Qiwu [voiceover]: We’re all unlucky in love sometimes. When I am, I go jogging. The body loses water when you jog, so you have none left for tears.

Luck and love. And lust, of course.

He Qiwu [voiceover]: We split up on April Fool’s Day. So I decided to let the joke run for a month. Every day I buy a can of pineapple with a sell-by date of May 1. May loves pineapple, and May 1 is my birthday. If May hasn’t changed her mind by the time I’ve bought thirty cans, then our love will also expire.

Well, at least it's scientific.

He Qiwu: I never dreamed two Mays could dump me in one night. To get over it, I promise myself never to go out with another girl named May.

Well, at least it's scientific.

He Qiwu [voiceover]: Somehow everything comes with an expiration date. Swordfish expires. Meat sauce expires. Even cling-film expires. Is there anything in the world which doesn’t?

Uh, God?

Woman in blonde wig [voiceover]: Actually, really knowing someone doesn’t mean anything. People change. A person may like pineapple today and something else tomorrow.

Or, perhaps, it's pineapple all the way to the grave.

He Qiwu [voiceover]: On May 1, 1994…a woman wishes me a happy birthday. Now I’ll remember her all my life. If memories could be canned, would they also have expiration dates? If so, I hope they last for centuries.

Alas, however, they expire when we do..

Cop 663: You like noisy music?
Faye: Yes. The louder the better. Stops me from thinking.
Cop 663: You don’t like to think? What do you like?
Faye: Never thought about it.

Cue Faye Wong: https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=b ... =616&dpr=1

Air Hostess [in dear john letter to Cop 633]: “Change of flight. Your plane cancelled. Here’s your key. Bye.”

Everyone in the restaurant reads it but Cop 633.

Faye [just as Cop 633 opens his front door and finds her standing there with a bag of goldfish]: What are you doing here?
Cop 633: I live here.
Faye: You live here?
Cop 633: Why are you here?
Faye: Buying goldfish.
Cop 633: No one here sells goldfish.
Faye: No.
Cop 633: You came to buy goldfish?
Faye: Yes.
Cop 633: Buy them or sell them?
Faye: What do you mean?

Meaning, however, doesn't really matter much here. If you know what I mean.

Faye: Where’s my cousin?
Cop 633: He opened a karaoke bar. Said he needed a change. So I took over here. Didn’t he tell you?
Faye: I haven’t seen him.
Cop 633: He has great business sense. First he sold me fish and chips, then the whole thing.

What now, Faye?

Faye: Where do you want to go?
Cop 633: Wherever you want to take me.

Cue the expiration date?

[iambiguous]

Richard Yates from Revolutionary Road

Everything is selling. Nothing happens in this world, nothing comes into this world, until somebody makes a sale.

In other words, someone is willing to buy it.

Wasn’t it true, then, that everything in his life from that point on had been a succession of things he hadn’t really wanted to do?

If only going back to the womb.

She cried because she'd had such high, high hopes about the Wheelers tonight and now she was terribly, terribly, terribly disappointed. She cried because she was fifty six years old and her feet were ugly and swollen and horrible; she cried because none of the girls had liked her at school and none of the boys had liked her later; she cried because Howard Givings was the only man who'd ever asked her to marry him, and because she'd done it, and because her only child was insane.

Next up: she laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed..

...that if you wanted to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone.

Let's explain this.

“my first wife passed away in the spring of—” and for a moment he is touched with terror. The spring of what? Past? Future? What is any spring but a mindless rearrangement of cells in the crust of the spinning earth as it floats in endless circuit of its sun? What is the sun itself but one of a billion insensible stars forever going nowhere into nothingness? Infinity!

He means trillions and trillions of suns, of course.

In the East, he then believed, a man went to college not for vocational training but in disciplined search for wisdom and beauty, and nobody over the age of twelve believed that those words were for sissies. In the East, wearing rumpled tweeds and flannels, he could have strolled for hours among ancient elms and clock towers, talking with his friends, and his friends would have been the cream of their generation. The girls of the East were marvelously slim and graceful; they moved with the authority of places like Bennington and Holyoke; they spoke intelligently in low, subtle voices, and they never giggled. On sharp winter evenings you could meet them for cocktails at the Biltmore and take them to the theater, and afterwards, warmed with brandy, they would come with you for a drive to a snowbound New England inn, where they’d slip happily into bed with you under an eiderdown quilt. In the East, when college was over, you could put off going seriously to work until you’d spent a few years in a book-lined bachelor flat, with intervals of European travel, and when you found your true vocation at last it was through a process of informed and unhurried selection; just as when you married at last it was to solemnize the last and best of your many long, sophisticated affairs.

That's exactly what happened to me when I was in the East. Well, more or less, let's say.

[iambiguous]

Every fuck-up in every family is different. There is always a different dynamic that can never be repeated in exactly the same way. I wasn’t exactly a fuck-up in my own family, for example, but I was by far the one who never, ever could come up with a way to fit into it. I faked being able to a lot but in the end I had to walk away from them.

And other than the times that I do, I have never regretted it. Here the problem is exaserbated however because the fuck-up was usually doped-up too. I tried every drug imaginable way back then but not the kind that you become so hopelessly addicted to it can completely wreck your life. I was fortunate enough to avoid that fate. Almost certainly because I became a father. Without that I may well have taken the plunge.

Anyway, here Kym [the fuck-up], is still in contact with her upper-middle class family and is thus struggling to come up with a way to meet them somewhere in the middle. There is still a certain measure of love and civility between them. But there is also a certain measure of “long simmering tensions” too. Also, when Kym was on dope there was a tragedy.

And then there’s “the group”. On the one hand, empathy and support. On the other, all the other shit you have to endure being around them. Like God and all that “spiritual” bullshit.

Even the big fancy wedding stuff is just bullshit to me. I got married in my old Army fatigues by some government official. And then after it was over my ex-wife and I [both in college at the time] went back to class.

Just to note: the bride is white, the groom is black. The wedding consist of dozens and dozens of black and white folks interacting. And not once did the question of, say, race, IQ and evolution come up. Go figure.


Rachel Getting Married

Walter: I want my fucking Zippo now!
Rosa: Walter, this is a behavior…
Walter: Fuck you!
Rosa: And you are making a choice.
[Rosa’s cell phone rings]
Rosa: Hold on… hello?
Walter: God!
Kym: Don’t you get it, Waldo? She’s making a choice not to give you your lighter because you’ll torch the Self-Help library again.
Walter: Kill anybody recently? Run over anybody with a fucking car?

Rehab as I recall.

Kym [at the clinic]: Hi. Hi, I’m here to pee into a cup.

Whose there to watch her?

Kym [to Rachel and Emma]: You know, everyone in the house is looking at me like I’m a visiting sociopath. I mean, seriously, what do you expect me to do, burn the house down?

On the other hand, why shouldn't they think that?

Kym [toasting the bride and groom her way after all the conventional renditions]: I am Shiva the destroyer, your harbinger of doom this evening. I would like to thank you all for coming and welcome you. Even though I haven’t seen most of you since my latest stretch in the big house. But you all look fabulous. So during the 20 minutes or so that I was not in the hole for making a shiv out of my toothbrush, I actually did participate in the infamous 12-step program. Twelve steps. Step-ball-change. Step-ball-change. Still waiting for the change part…

It's ever and always about her, isn't it? And on and on and on…making herself the point rather than her sister. Kind of excruciating to watch.

Rachel [reading from the dictionary]: Amends. Noun, usually followed by ‘for,’ off-set a disability “or frustration by development in another direction.” Mmm-hmm. Yes. But you’ve never said anything to me that’s remotely apologetic, yet all of sudden at my wedding dinner in front of everybody, you decide to grace us all with your development.
Kym: I just got home.
Rachel: Gee. Hey, everybody and guests, just in case you might be thinking about something else for five minutes, like, I don’t know, my sister’s wedding, they just cut me loose. I’m a loose cannon! Hey! Anybody up for some rehab humor? Because I’m really, really fine with acknowledging my disease. Hey, and now watch me be really selfless and weave a lovely blanket apology to my sister for being just a tad out of her loop.
Father: Rachel, enough. Rachel, she is making an effort here.
Rachel: Oh! An effort, is that what that was? Because I think she presumes that since everything has always revolved around her disease, that everything else is going to revolve around her recovery. That’s what I think.

Me too.

Kym [speaking before “the group” at a 12 step meeting]: When I was sixteen, I was babysitting my little brother. And I was, um…I had taken all these Percocet. And I was unbelievably high and I…we had driven over to the park on Lakeshore. And he was in his red socks just running around in these piles of leaves. And, um, he would bury me and I would bury him in the leaves. And he was pretending that he was a train. And so he was charging through the leaves, making tracks, and I was the caboose, and I was, um…so he kept saying, coal, caboose! Coal, caboose! And, um, we were…it was time to go and I was driving home…and…I lost control of the car. And drove off the bridge. And the car went into the lake. And I couldn’t get him out of his car seat. And he drowned. And I struggle with God so much, because I can’t forgive myself. And I don’t really want to right now. I can live with it, but I can’t forgive myself. And sometimes I don’t want to believe in a God that could forgive me. But I do want to be sober. I’m alive and I’m present and there’s nothing controlling me. If I hurt someone, I hurt someone. I can apologize, and they can forgive me…or not. But I can change. And I just wanted to share that and say congratulations that God makes you look up, I’m so happy for you, but if he doesn’t, come here. That’s all. Thank you.

A God, the God, let's say.

Rachel: Dad, look at me. Okay? I am right here. Okay? And I am telling you that after Ethan died, I wanted her to get better or just die.
Father: Rachel, she’s better. And…
Rachel: No, no. Recovery doesn’t work if you lie. She knows that.

Want to hear about mine?

Kym: I love you guys. I need you guys, but you don’t get to sit around for the rest of my life deciding what I’m supposed to be like. I mean, you weren’t there. You weren’t inside of my head when I was fucked-up. You are certainly not there now. You haven’t got any idea how I feel.
Rachel [almost at a whisper]: Kym, you took Ethan for granted. Okay? You were high for his life. You were not present. Okay? You were high.
Kym [whispering]: Yes.
Rachel: And you drove him off a bridge…and now he’s dead.
Father [weeping]: Rachel, it was an accident.
Kym: Yes, I was. Yes, I was stoned out of my mind. Who do I have to be now? I mean, I could be Mother Teresa and it wouldn’t make a difference, what I did. Did I sacrifice every bit of love I’m allowed for this life because I killed our little brother?

I mean what else is there? Unless, of course, there is a God.

Kym: Why did you leave me in charge of him? You knew. All of you knew.
Mother: Kym.
Kym: People told you. I was a junkie. I was a crazy drug addict. I stole from you. Yes. I lied to your face. I weighed six pounds. My hair was falling out. I spent every dinner in the bathroom.
Mother: Honey, you were sick. That was an illness.
Kym: You know what I was. I stayed in my room for days. I passed out all the time. What were you thinking? Why would you leave me in charge of him?
Mother: Because you were good with him.
Kym: Mom, Mom, why would you leave a drug addict to watch your son?
Mother: No! You were good with him! You were the best you were with him!
Kym: Listen to me! Listen!
Mother [hysterically]: I didn’t expect you to kill him, sweetheart! You were not supposed to kill him!!

Mom apparently missing the point.

Kieran: You making a break for it?
Kym: Yeah. Yeah, I got to go.
Kieran [giving her a business card]: Yeah. Okay. If you ever need anything…
Kym: If I need to post bond?
Kieran: No. If you ever need anything.
Kym: Thank you.

The end?

[iambiguous]

There are two directions a movie like this can go. In one, the character acting strange can be someone who has a complex intellectual, emotional, psychological, spiritual etc. narrative. Then it comes into conflict with another who either does not understand it or is not really interested at all in exploring it. In the other, the character acting strange turns out to be, say, psychotic?

So, which one is this? Unfortunately, it is more the latter. But the context [and all the other characters…not to mention the plot twists] are still fascinating to ponder. One of those, “suppose this happened to me?” kind of films.

To wit: When do you hold someone morallly responsible for choosing a behavior that you would not have chosen yourself? Or for not choosing a behavior that you would have? And how do we determine the optimal choice when the context just suddenly bursts into existence and becomes basically an emergency – a set of circumstances where everything has to be decided [more or less] in the blink of an eye?

And then the part about love. About enduring love. It works both ways. It can be a love that endures or [as seems more the case here] it can be a love that you endure. Joe gets it from both directions. And he [being a post modern intellectual for the most part] doesn’t even really believe in love.


Enduring Love

Joe: There’s not a lot we can do now.
Jed: We can pray. I find it helps at times like this.
Joe: Well…it’s really not my thing.
Jed: I think you really need to.
Joe: Look, sorry, no. You, please. I…If you need to, then go ahead.
Jed: Why won’t you?
Joe: Well, don’t you think he prayed?

On the other hand, sure, go ahead and pray for me from time to time.

Joe: But I let go of the rope. I let go…
Claire: But if you hadn’t…
Joe: Yeah, but I let go.
Claire: If you hadn’t, I’d be here without you.
Joe: Yeah, but if I hadn’t have let go…If none of us had let go…we could’ve brought that balloon down.

Maybe. But that’s the gamble. Gambling on the unknown. But he was the first to let go. Or was he?

Joe [to his class]: When we say we’re in love, what does it mean? Could it be that this complex, dazzling, transformative feeling is just an illusion? Could it be just a trick? A trick played on us by nature just to make us fuck? We imagine that love is meaningful. But, could it in fact be… meaningless?

First up, however: click.

Jed: You…You know what I’m talking about. Do you want me to spell it out?
Joe: Yeah, I think I would, actually. I’m a bit in the…
Jed: Come on, Joe, be a sport.
Joe: I’m in the middle of something. I don’t know what this is about.
Jed: Nonsense. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.
Joe: Well, I don’t.
Jed: Why can’t you just say it? Just say it. Open up to me.

By then, I'm ready to strangle him myself.

Joe: So, we’re saying art is just an evolutionary tool. Perhaps all sorts of complex human behaviour serves the same purpose. Perhaps moral behaviour’s another one. Fairness. Kindness. Self-sacrifice.
Student: So…So, it’s nothing to do w- w-with character or… or p-personality, or, you know, simple… goodness.
Joe: Maybe that’s an illusion, too.

Of course, Jed is anything but an illusion.

Joe: I thought you said we weren’t going to see each other again.
Jed: Haven’t you got something to say to me?
Joe: You’ve got to stop following me like this. This is getting a bit weird.

A bit?

Jed: Don’t you think it’s time you faced up to who you really are?
Joe: Who I am. I don’t…
Jed: “The fruit of the Spirit is love.”
Joe: What?
Jed: Love. Galatians, chapter five.
Joe [really starting to get exasperated now]: Oh, Jesus, no. Come on.

Quite a bit more, let's say.

Claire: You can’t help feeling responsible. We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Joe: Yeah, but I can’t help thinking that we might have saved him.
Claire: I don’t think so.
Joe: Well, he thinks so.
Claire: How? In a helicopter? There’s no way you should feel responsible.
Joe: I just wish I’d been able to do something. I wish we’d saved him, I really wish we had, because, you know, it would just be so much easier now.
Claire: Why? So you wouldn’t feel so bad?
Joe: No, because he fucking died!

No one doubts that.

Joe: I’m saying all these things have meaning, but only because we, as human beings, give them meaning.
Student: That’s your theory? Life is a meaningless Darwinian expedient. It’s just biology, but humans struggle to give it meaning. That’s what makes us human.
Joe: It’s a good theory. Simple but effective.

And now he struggles to fit the dead guy into it somehow.

Joe: I should…you know…do something constructive. Instead of sitting on my fucking arse. I need to do things. I never do anything. All I do is pontificate about…I have never ever made anything that you can hold in your hand. I’ve never…I’ve never helped anybody. I just have…theories.

Of course, here, that's more or less all that is needed.

Jed: I remember we prayed. We knelt and prayed together, remember?
Joe: Yeah. Well, it was…I was humouring you.
Jed: You touched me on the shoulder and you looked at me, and the way you looked at me, I could tell you knew what had passed between us.
Joe: What passed between us?
Jed: Love. God’s love.
Joe: For fucks sake! You’re mad.
Jed: That’s what they said about Jesus once.
Joe: They also said it about a lot of mad people.

In fact, it turns out he might actually be a psychopath. And that changes everything. For some of us.

Robin: It’s physics, dear.
Joe: No, it’s not. It’s biology. When we’re in love, or when we think we’re in love, we do the things we do to ensure good breeding. To ensure a fuck. We’re just stupid organisms. It’s meaningless. Don’t even know why we fucking bother.
Robin: I think what Joe’s trying to say is um…that to have an understanding of the science of love doesn’t make it any less remarkable.
Claire: Yes, but most people don’t need to understand the science of it, do they?

Maybe they ought to.

Jed: Hey, come on. Look, I was just having a bit of fun, come on.
Joe: Fuck off.
Jed: I was just trying to cheer you up, Joe.
Joe: Fuck off.
Jed: I was just trying to cheer you up. Come on, Joe, Jo-Jo.
Joe [grabs Jed and shoves him up against the wall]: Listen to me, listen to me. If you ever, ever, ever fucking bother me again, if you ever come anywhere fucking near me, I wil follow you, I will find you and I will gut you like a fucking fish, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?!!
Jed: You started this, you made this happen. Why don’t you admit it? You pretend it’s not happening, nothing’s happening?
Joe: YOU FUCK!
Jed: Giving me all your secret fucking signals so that I come towards you!
Joe: Why don’t you leave me alone, eh? What do you want? What do you want?
Jed: I love you! I love you!

Next up: the trip to his apartment.

Claire: It’s over.
Joe: Claire? Claire! All right, then, let’s get married, then, shall we? Let’s get married. Let’s get married and have lots of children. Let’s have dozens of the fuckers and a big dog! Move to the country. See what fucking good it does! See how long we last!

Now, he's cracking up.

Joe: I’m still… I still…
Claire: Don’t, Joey.
Joe: I made it so complicated, and…And it doesn’t need to be complicated. It’s not complicated. It’s really…I don’t know what to say.
Claire: Don’t say anything…Don’t say anything…

Next up: the affair?

[iambiguous]

Abortion

"We're always going to argue about abortion. It's a hard choice and it's controversial, and that's why I'm pro-choice, because I want people to make their own choices." Hillary Clinton

Well, not counting the unborn of course.

"Abortion isn't a lesser evil, it's a crime. Taking one life to save another, that's what the Mafia does. It's a crime. It's an absolute evil." Pope Francis

Next up: miscarrages and still births.
God's very own abortions?

"I consider abortion to be a deeply personal and intimate issue for women and I don't believe male legislators should even vote on the issue." Alan K. Simpson

Well, unless, of course, one of them gets pregnant.

"No woman has an abortion for fun." Elizabeth Joan Smith

I've never known one to.

"In 1973, the Roe v. Wade decision concluded that women have a constitutionally protected right to safe and legal abortions. That landmark decision wasn't the beginning of women having abortions; it was the end of women dying from abortions." Jan Schakowsky

Hadn't thought of that, I'll bet.

"Abortion is clearly wrong." Jordan Peterson

Or: "forcing women to give birth is clearly wrong."

[iambiguous]

Max Planck

“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”

See, I told you: the brain explaining itself?

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

Uh, going all the way back to...God?

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

In your head, perhaps, but some things never really seem to change at all. Instead, it's either/or all the way down

Science advances one funeral at a time.

Next up: philosophy advances one...

It is not the possession of truth, but the success which attends the seeking after it, that enriches the seeker and brings happiness to him.

Any one successfully possess it here? Yes? Okay, are you happy?

All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.

Not counting those, of course, who assume the opposite.