Quote of the day

[iambiguous]

A Clockwork Orange

[first lines]
Alex: There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.

Which, of course, we studiously avoid here. Even among the Stooges...so far.

[last lines]
Alex: I was cured, all right!

Pick one:
1] the movie ending
2] the book ending

[listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony]
Alex: Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now. As I slooshied, I knew such lovely pictures!

Just what the world needs, another cultured thug.

Alex: As we walked along the flatblock marina, I was calm on the outside, but thinking all the time. So now it was to be Georgie the general, saying what we should do and what not to do, and Dim as his mindless greeding bulldog. But suddenly I viddied that thinking was for the gloopy ones and that the oomny ones use, like, inspiration and what Bog sends. For now it was lovely music that came to my aid. There was a window open with the stereo on and I viddied right at once what to do.

Next up: viddying here.

Psychiatrist: Now then. Each of the slides needs a reply from one of the people in the picture. You tell me what you think the person would say. Alright?
Alex: Righty right.
Psychiatrist: [Changes to a slide with two people looking at a peacock] "Isn't the plumage beautiful?"
Alex: I just say what the other person would say?
Psychiatrist: Yes.
Alex: Isn't the plumage beautiful...
Psychiatrist: Oh yes well don't think about it too long, just say the first thing that pops into your mind.
Alex: Cabbages, knickers, uh, it's not got a... A BEAK!
[laughs]
Psychiatrist: Good.
[Changes to a slide with a women and two boys]
Psychiatrist: "The boy you always quarrelled with is seriously ill."
Alex: My mind is a blank. Uh, and I'll smash your face for you, yarblockos!
[laughs]
Psychiatrist: Good.
[Changes slide to a man climbing into a naked woman's bedroom]
Psychiatrist: "What do you want?"
Alex: Uh, no time for the ol' in-out, love. I've just come to read the meter!
Psychiatrist: Good.
[Changes slide to a man in a clock store]
Psychiatrist: "You sold me a crummy watch, I want my money back."
Alex: You know what you can do with that watch? Stick it up your ass!
[laughs]
Psychiatrist: Good.
[Changes slide to woman handing bird eggs to a man]
Psychiatrist: "You can do whatever you like with these."
Alex: Eggiweggs. I would like... to smash them. And pick 'em all up, and THROW-
[moves injured arm]
Alex: OW! Fucking hell!
Psychiatrist: Well there, that's all there is to it. Are you alright?
Alex: Hope so. Is that the end then?
Psychiatrist: Yes.
Alex: I was quite enjoying that.
Psychiatrist: Good, I'm glad!
Alex: How many did I get right?
Psychiatrist: It's not that kind of a test, but you seem well on the way to making a complete recovery!

Well, anyway, to the extent a sociopath might be deemed "recovered".

[about his wife]
Frank Alexander: She was very badly raped, you see! We were assaulted by a gang of vicious, young, hoodlums in this house! In this very room you are sitting in now! I was left a helpless cripple, but for her the agony was too great! The doctor said it was pneumonia; because it happened some months later! During a flu epidemic! The doctors told me it was pneumonia, but I knew what it was! A VICTIM OF THE MODERN AGE! Poor, poor girl!

Cue the spaghetti.

[iambiguous]

Susan Orlean

I never thought very many people in the world were very much like John Laroche, but I realized more and more that he was only an extreme, not an aberration - that most people in some way or another do strive for something exceptional, something to pursue, even at their peril, rather than abide an ordinary life.

Anyone here abiding an ordinary life?

It's not really about collecting the thing itself, Laroche went on. It's about getting immersed in something, and learning about it, and having it become part of your life. It's a kind of direction. He stopped on the word "direction" and chortled. If anybody had a plant I didn't have, I made sure to get it. It was like a heroin addiction. If I ever had money I would spend it on plants.

Or, here, the philosophical equivalent. And lots of clouds, of course.

Now I was also trying to understand how someone could end such intense desire without leaving a trace. If you had really loved something, wouldn't a little bit of it always linger? A couple of houseplants? A dinky Home Depot Phalaenopsis in a coffee can? I personally have always found giving up on something a thousand times harder than getting it started, but evidently Laroche's finishes were downright and absolute, and what's more, he also shut off any chance of amends.

The traces left here.

More and more, I felt that I was meeting people like Lee who didn't at all seem part of this modern world and this moment in time - the world of petty aggravations and obligations and boundaries, a time of bored cynicism - because how they lived and what they lived for was so optimistic. They sincerely loved something, trusted in the perfectibility of some living thing, lived for a myth about themselves and the idea of adventure, were convinced that certain things were really worth dying for, believed that they could make their lives into whatever they dreamed.

The fools!

Country living—and definitely living in the country with a lot of animals—isn’t peaceful. It’s full of blood and guts and murder and rivalry and treachery and chaos, in a lovely green pitiless world.

Praise the Lord!

The library opened in January 1873. Membership was five dollars a year. At the time, five dollars represented several days' pay for an average worker, so only affluent people were able to join. Library rules were schoolmarmish and scoldy. Men were required to remove their hats upon entering the library, and patrons were discouraged from reading too many novels, lest they turn into what the association labeled "fiction fiends." Books considered to be "of dubious moral effect, or trashy, ill-written ones, or flabby ones" were excluded from the collection. Women were not allowed to use the main facilities, but a "Ladies Room" with a selection of magazines was added soon after the library opened. Children were not allowed in the library at all.

Next up: "philosophy fiends".

[iambiguous]

A Clockwork Orange

Alex: What you got back home, little sister, to play your fuzzy warbles on? I bet you got little save pitiful, portable picnic players. Come with uncle and hear all proper! Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones. You are invited.

Both of them.

Minister: What crime did you commit?
Alex: The accidental killing of a person, sir.
Chief Guard Barnes: He brutally murdered a woman, sir, in furtherance of theft. Fourteen years, sir!
Minister: Excellent. He's enterprising, aggressive, outgoing, young, bold, vicious. He'll do.
Governor: Well, fine, we could still look at C-block...
Minister: No, no, no. That's enough. He's perfect. I want his records sent to me. This vicious young hoodlum will be transformed out of all recognition.
Alex: Thank you very much for this chance, sir.
Minister: Let's hope you make the most of it, my boy.

Let's just say they'll meet again.

Prison Chaplain: Choice! The boy has not a real choice, has he? Self-interest, the fear of physical pain drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. The insincerity was clear to be seen. He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice.
Minister: Padre, there are subtleties! We are not concerned with motives, with the higher ethics. We are concerned only with cutting down crime and with relieving the ghastly congestion in our prisons. He will be your true Christian, ready to turn the other cheek, ready to be crucified rather than crucify, sick to the heart at the thought of killing a fly. Reclamation! Joy before the angels of God! The point is that it works!

In any event, at least until it doesn't.

P.R. Deltoid: [giggling maniacally] You are now a murderer, Alex! A murderer!
Alex: Not true, sir. It was only a slight tolchock. She was breathing, I swear it!
P.R. Deltoid: I've just come from the hospital! Your victim has died!
Alex: You try to frighten me, admit so, sir. This is some new form of torture! Say it, Brother Sir.
P.R. Deltoid: It'll be your own torture. I hope to God it'll torture you to madness!
Det. Const. Tom: [to Deltoid] If you'd like to give him a quick bash in the chops, sir, don't mind us. We'll hold him down. He must be a great disappointment to you, sir.
[Deltoid slowly gathers saliva and spits in Alex's face]

Imagine then if he was black!

Alex: You needn't take it any further, sir. You've proved to me that all this ultraviolence and killing is wrong, wrong, and terribly wrong. I've learned me lesson, sir. I've seen now what I've never seen before. I'm cured! Praise god!
Dr. Brodsky: You're not cured yet, boy.

You might say things are just getting started.

Alex: What exactly is the treatment here going to be then?
Dr. Brannon: Quite simple really. Were going to show you some films.

To viddy as it were.

[iambiguous]

Despair

“Those who can't hope can still wish.” Marilynne Robinson

You first.

“We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.” César Chávez

Don't bet on that anymore.

“Anyone can suffer. But joy--that's hard. Ask about joy.” E. Lilly Yu

Next up: ask about schadenfreude.

“My feelings became calmer, if it may be called calmness when the violence of rage sinks into the depths of despair.” Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Who wouldn't agree with that?

“Despair is the emotion we feel at the death of beings within us.” Norman Mailer

Next up: fractured and fragmented beings.

“Wherever I looked, there was nothing but drab despair around me, and I had a soul to match, all mangled and torn.” Gustav Meyrink

And no, as a matter of fact, not just here.

[iambiguous]

A Clockwork Orange

Alex: So I waited. And O, my brothers, I got a lot better, munching away at eggi-wegs and lomticks of toast and lovely steaki-wakes. And then one day, they said I was going to have a very special visitor.

Gee, I wonder who that could be?

Alex: Now they knew who was master and leader. Sheep, thought I. But a real leader knows always when, like, to give and show generous to his unders.

Take me here, for example.

Alex: I didn't so much like the latter part of The Book - which is more like all preachy talking than fighting and the old in-out. I like the parts where these old yahoodies tolchok each other and then drink their Hebrew vino and getting onto the bed with their wives' handmaidens. That kept me going.

So, which parts do you wank to?

Dr. Branom: Roll over on your right side, please. Loosen your pajama pants and pull them halfway down.
Alex: What exactly is the treatment here going to be, then?
Dr. Branom: Oh, it's quite simple, really. We're just going to show you some films.
Alex: You mean like going to the pictures?
Dr. Branom: Something like that.

Of course, it was the way she said it, right?

Alex: I don't care about the dangers, Father. I just want to be good. I want for the rest of my life to be - one act of goodness.
Prison Chaplain: The question is whether or not this technique really makes a man good. Goodness comes from within. Goodness is chosen. When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.
Alex: I don't understand about the whys and wherefores. I only know I want to be good.

To get out, in other words.

Governor: These new ridiculous ideas have come at last. And orders are orders. Though I may say to you in confidence, I do not approve. An eye for an eye, I say. If someone hits you, you hit back, do you not? Why then should not the state, very severely hit by you brutal hooligans, not hit back also? The new view is to say "no." The new view is that we turn the bad into good. All of which seems to me to be grossly unjust, eh?

Of course, it goes without saying that the new view, much like the old view, is our view.

[iambiguous]

A Clockwork Orange

Dr. Branom: You felt ill this afternoon because you're getting better. You see, when we're healthy, we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea. You're becoming healthy, that's all. By this time tomorrow, you'll be healthier still.

Next up: snuffing it.

Alex: l was beginning to get very aware of, like, not feeling all that well. And this I put down to all the rich food and vitamins. But I tried to forget this, concentrating on the next film which jumped right away on a young devotchka who was being given the old in-out, in-out - first by one malchick, then another, then another. When it came to the 6th or 7th malchick, leering and smacking and then going into it, l began to feel really sick. But I could not shut me glazzies. And even if I tried to move my glazzballs about, l still could not get out of the line of fire of this picture.

Next up: not feeling well here.

Governor: I agree, sir. What we need are larger prisons and more money.
Interior Minister: Not a chance, my dear sir. The government can’t be concerned any longer with out-moded penalogical theories. Soon we may be needing all of out prison space for political offenders. Common criminals like these are best dealt with on a purely curative basis. Kill the criminal reflex, that’s all. Full implementation in a years time. Punishment means nothing to them, you can see that. They enjoy their so-called punishment.
Alex: You’re absolutely right, sir!

Next up: Ludovico's Technique

Dr. Brodsky: Very soon now the drug will cause the subject to experience a deathlike paralysis together with deep feelings of terror and helplessness. One of our earlier test subjects described it as being like death. A sense of stifling and drowning. And it is during this period that we have found the subject will make his most rewarding associations between his catastrophic experience environment and the violence he sees.

Next up: Murphy's Law.

Alex: You needn’t take it any further, sir. You’ve proved to me that all this ultraviolence and killing is wrong, wrong, and terribly wrong. I’ve learned me lesson, sir. I’ve seen now what I’ve never seen before. I’m cured! Praise god!
Dr. Brodsky: You’re not cured yet, boy.
Alex: But sirs, misses, I see that it’s wrong. It’s wrong because it’s like against society. It’s wrong because everybody has the right to live and be happy without being tolchoked and knifed.
Dr. Brodsky: No, no, boy. You really must leave it to us. Now be cheerful about it. In less than a fortnight now, you’ll be a free man.

Free, for example, to snuff it.

Interior Minister: Our party promised to restore law and order and to make the streets safe again for the ordinary peace loving citizen. This pledge is now about to become a reality. Ladies and gentlemen, today is an historic moment the problem of criminal violence is soon to be a thing of the past. But enough of words. Actions speak louder than words. Action now, observe all.

You know the part.

Interiror Minister: I can tell you with all sincerity that I and the government which I am a member, are deeply sorry. We tried to help you. We followed recommendations which were made to us that turned out to be wrong. An inquiry will place the responsibility where it belongs. We want you to regard us as friends. We put you right, you’re getting the best of treatment. We never wished you harm, but there are some who did and do and I think you know who those are. There are certain people who wanted to use you for political ends. They would have be glad to have you dead, for they thought they could then blame it all on the government. There is also a certain man, a writer of subversive literature, who has been howling for your blood. He’s been mad with desire to stick a knife in you, but you’re safe from him now. We put him away. He found out that you had done wrong. He formed this 'em in his head that you had been responsible for the death of someone near and dear to him. He was a menace. We put him away for his own protection, and also for yours.
Alex: Where is he now, sir?
Interior Minister: We put him away where he can do you no harm. You see, we are looking after your interest. We are interested in you and when you leave here you’ll have no worries. We’ll see to everything. A good job on a good salary
Alex: What job, and how much?
Interior Minister: You must have an interesting job, at a salary which you would regard as adequate, not only for the job your going to do and in compensation for what you believe you have suffered. But also because you are helping us. We always help our friends, don’t we? It is no secret that this government has lost a lot of popularity because of you, my boy. There are some that think that in the next election we shall be out. The press has chosen to take a very unfavorable view of what we tried to do, but public opinion has a way of changing and you, Alex - if I may call you, Alex.

The "deep state" let's call it.

[promethean75]

"Why do liberals want "free" health care and college that doesn’t make any sense? Nothing is free."

Your homegirl Rosa L. pwns this question:

"I’m no liberal (in fact I despise them nearly as much as I despise conservatives), but here in the UK we already have healthcare free at the point of delivery, and have done so for over 75 years. What is more, the vast majority of us love our NHS — warts and all.

The same is the case across the rest of the ‘industrialised world’ — i.e., in most ‘advanced economies’. It is the US that is the odd one out, where fat cat ‘health insurance’ companies fleece the US population, deliver sub-standard results and laugh all the way to the bank.

So the individual who posted this question is wrong: ‘free’ healthcare makes perfectly good sense, and, as much of the rest of the ‘developed world’ knows, it actually works.

The questioner also says ‘nothing is free’, but the point is that universal healthcare is paid for by us all so that it is free at the point of delivery, and hence costs much less than the hyper-expensive US system, which is geared to deliver profit not health.

The questioner is welcome to it. In the meantime, we prefer health over profit."

[iambiguous]

The Color Purple

Sophia: All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my uncles. I had to fight my brothers. A girl child ain't safe in a family of men, but I ain't never thought I'd have to fight in my own house!

Men!

Celie: [on leaving the farm in Shug's car, shouting to Albert] I'm poor, black, I may even be ugly, but dear God, I'm here. I'm here!

Uh, leave God out of it?
Nope...

Sofia: Sat in that jail, I sat in that jail til I near about done rot to death. I know what it like to wanna go somewhere and cain't. I know what it like to wanna sing... and have it beat out 'ya. I want to thank you, Miss Celie, fo everything you done for me. I 'members that day in the store with Miss Millie - I's feelin' real down. I's feelin' mighty bad. And when I seed you - I know'd there is a God. I know'd there is a God.

After all, think of the alternative.

Sophia: I loves Harpo, God knows I do. But I'll kill him dead 'fo I let him beat me.

To a pulp, one suspects.

Miss Millie: You kids are so clean. You wanna come work for me, be my maid?
Sofia: Hell no.

She does relent though.

Celie: [lunging towards Albert with a knife] I curse you. Until you do right by me everything you think about is gonna crumble!
Sofia: Don't do it Mrs. Celie. Don't trade places with what I been through.
Shug: Come on, Celie, let's go to the car.
Sofia: He ain't worth it, he ain't worth it.
Albert: Who you think you is? You can curse nobody. Look at you. Your black, you're poor, you're ugly, you're a woman, you're nothing at all!

Of course, it's all scripted.

[iambiguous]

Suicide

“I had spent the day before Googling how to kill yourself and how to kill yourself the easiest and how to kill yourself the fastest and when you start to kill yourself do you want to change your mind? but the thing is, when you Google things like that, you won't get answers the way it normally works. You will instead get numbers to hotlines and therapists and articles with lists about why you should stay alive." Kaleena Madruga

Bummer.

“An insane impatience for death was driving mankind to a second suicide, even before the full effect of the first had been felt.” Anna Kavan

You tell me.

“No matter how low life has put you, no matter how deep the pain sits, never believe that you are unworthy or unloved. God doesn't make mistakes; He makes miracles.” Allene vanOirschot

Don't believe it? Start here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... SjDNeMaRoX

“Since the [Golden Gate Bridge] opened in 1937, it has been the site of over 1,500 suicides. No other place in the world has seen as many people take their lives in that period.
What does coupling theory tell us about the Golden Gate Bridge? That it would make a big difference if a barrier prevented people from jumping or a net was installed to catch them before they fell....
So when did the municipality that run the Golden Gate Bridge finally decide to install a suicide barrier? In 2018, more than 80 years after the bridge opened.
In the intermediating period the bridge authority spent millions of dollars building a traffic barrier to protect cyclists crossing the bridge, even though no cyclist has ever been killed by a motorist on the Golden Gate Bridge. It spent millions building a median to separate North and South bound traffic on the grounds of public safety. On the southern end of the bridge, the authority put up an 8 foot cyclone fence to prevent garbage from being thrown onto Fort Baker, a former army installation on the ground below. A protected net was even installed on the initial construction of the bridge at enormous cost to prevent workers from falling from their deaths. The net saved 19 lives. Then it was taken down. But for suicides? Nothing for more than 80 years...” Malcolm Gladwell

Lesson learned?

“She asked the girl what she wanted to be when she grew up and she said dead.” Cormac McCarthy

Lucky guess?

“When you get to a place where dying seems like the easy way out, that changes you.” Erin Stewart

After all, as Lennon once suggested, "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."

[iambiguous]

Mystic River

Jimmy: Is my daughter in there? Is she in there? Is she in there?
Sean: Hey! Hey, take it easy! That’s the father.
Jimmy: Is my daughter in there?
[fighting the officers]
Jimmy: Motherfuckers! Is that my daughter in there? Is she in there?
[Sean gives a small nod]
Jimmy: Sean! Is that my daughter in there? Is that my daughter in there? No! No! No! No, aagggh, no! No! Oh, God! Oh, God! No!

Fiona!

Jimmy: You ever think how one choice can change your life? I heard Hitler’s mother almost aborted him but bailed at the last minute. You know?
Sean: What do you mean, Jimmy?
Jimmy: Say you or me got in that car instead of Dave Boyle.
Whitey: What car?
Sean: I’m losing you here, Jimmy.
Jimmy: If I’d got in that car, life would be a different thing. My first wife, Marita, Katie’s mother? She was beautiful. Regal. You know the way some Latin women can be? And she knew it. You had to have balls to even go near her. And I did. Eighteen years old, the two of us, and she was carrying Katie. Here’s the thing, Sean, if I had gotten in that car, I most likely would’ve ended up a basket case. I never would have had the juice to ask out Marita and Katie would have never been born. And Katie, then, would never have been murdered.

There are two kinds of people in this world: People who think about things like this the way I [and Benjamin Button] do and people who don’t.

Jimmy: And it’s really starting to piss me off, Dave, because I can’t cry for her! She’s my own little daughter, and I can’t even cry for her!
Dave: Jimmy…you’re crying now.

Fast forward to, well, you know when.

Brendan: I loved her so much. I’m never gonna feel that again. It doesn’t happen twice.
Sean: Doesn’t happen once most times.

He wondered if it had ever really happened at all.

Jimmy [thinking out loud about Katie]: I know in my soul I contributed to your death. But I don’t know how.

Let's explain it to him.

Dave: I’m talking Henry and George. They took me for a four-day ride. And they buried me in this ratty old cellar with a sleeping bag, and, man, Celeste, did they have their fun. And no one came to help old Dave then. Dave had to pretend to be someone else.
Celeste: You mean all those years ago? When you were a boy? (touches him) Dave…
Dave [jerking away from her touch]: Dave’s dead. I don’t know who came out of that cellar, but it sure as shit wasn’t Dave!

That ever happen to you?

[iambiguous]

Slavoj Žižek

I am an anti-capitalist because I believe we can improve on it. I believe that we can create the vision I have for a totalized system, a unified system, that can effectively do things. Stop global warming. Feed everybody. Settle disputes diplomatically, and when necessary, quash disputes militarily with proportional measure. This may sound unnecessarily harsh, but it needs to be said, because it is part and parcel of any type of system, if it is to be successful. This is what I think can save us.

Of course, lots of different people think lots of different things about capitalism.

Cynical conformism tells us that emancipatory ideals of more equality, democracy and solidarity are boring and even dangerous, leading to a grey, overregulated society, and that our true and only paradise is the existing 'corrupted' capitalist universe. Radical emancipatory engagement starts from he premise that it is the capitalist dynamics which are boring, offering more of the same in the guise of constant change, and that the struggle for emancipation is still the most daring of all ventures.

Whatever that means?
No, seriously, how might that actually unfold in today's world? A world where you really can't be too cynical about the deep state.

When the subject goes behind the curtain of appearance to search for the hidden essence, he thinks he will discover something that was always there; he does not realize that in passing behind the curtain, he is bringing with him the very thing that he will find.

Hegel with Lacan, anyone?

“...now is the time to drop the “America (or whoever else) First” motto. As Martin Luther King put it more than half a century ago: “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.

The Bilderberg Boat let's call it.

One often hears that today’s cultural war is fought between traditionalists who believe in a firm set of values and postmodern relativists who consider ethical rules, sexual identities, and so on as a result of contingent power games. But is this really the case? The ultimate postmodernists today are conservatives themselves. Once traditional authority loses its substantial power, it is not possible to return to it—all such returns today are a postmodern fake. Does Trump enact traditional values? No, his conservativism is a postmodern performance, a gigantic ego trip. Playing with “traditional values,” mixing references to tradition with open obscenities, Trump is the ultimate postmodern president, while Sanders is an old-fashioned moralist.

No, really, just how aware is Donald Trump that his campaign is just one more manifestation of the long con? That being the deep state itself.

Was 9/11 not the 20th congress of the American Dream?

You tell me. In fact, I dare you to.

[iambiguous]

Mystic River

Dave; You think I killed Katie, don’t you?
Jimmy: Don’t talk, Dave.
Dave: No, no, no. I killed someone, but it wasn’t Katie.
Jimmy: Is this the mugger story?
Dave: He wasn’t a mugger. He, he was a child molester. He was having sex with this kid in his car.

In one ear and out the other...

Dave: That night in McGills she reminded me of a dream I had.
Jimmy: What dream?
Dave: A dream of youth. I don’t remember having one. You’d know what I mean if you had gotten into that car instead of me.

On the other hand, all the FFOs here who don't have a fucking clue about it.

Sean: We got 'em Jimmy.
Jimmy: Got who?
Sean: Katie’s killers. We got 'em cold.

Uh-oh.

Sean: Jimmy, what did you do?
[Jimmy rubs Sean Devine on the shoulder]
Jimmy: Thanks for finding my daughter’s killer, Sean. If only you’d been a little faster.
Sean: Are you gonna send Celeste Boyle 500 a month too?

Yeah, Jimmy, but make it a 1,000.

Sean: The reality is we're still 11 year old boys locked in a cellar imagining what our lives would have been if we'd escaped.

Or, for me, had I never been drafted, been sent to Vietnam and had my whole world turned upside down and inside out.

Jimmy: Admit what you did.

Of course, that was a con too.

[rambo67]

kindness is language deaf can hear and blind can see.

[iambiguous]

Pulp Fiction

Honey Bunny: [about to rob a diner] I love you, Pumpkin.
Pumpkin: I love you, Honey Bunny.
Pumpkin: [Standing up with a gun] All right, everybody be cool, this is a robbery!
Honey Bunny: Any of you fucking pricks move, and I’ll execute every motherfucking last one of ya!

With the possible exception of Jules and Vincent.

Jules: Look, just because I don’t be givin’ no man a foot massage don’t make it right for Marsellus to throw Antwone into a glass motherfuckin’ house, fuckin’ up the way the n***** talks. Motherfucker do that shit to me, he better paralyze my ass, ‘cause I’ll kill the motherfucker, know what I’m sayin’?
Vincent: I ain’t saying it’s right. But you’re saying a foot massage don’t mean nothing, and I’m saying it does. Now look, I’ve given a million ladies a million foot massages, and they all meant something. We act like they don’t, but they do, and that’s what’s so fucking cool about them. There’s a sensuous thing going on where you don’t talk about it, but you know it, she knows it, fucking Marsellus knew it, and Antwone should have fucking better known better. I mean, that’s his fucking wife, man. He can’t be expected to have a sense of humor about that shit. You know what I’m saying?
Jules: That’s an interesting point. Come on, let’s get into character.

Next up: being in character here.

Marsellus [to Butch]: The night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting. That’s pride fucking with you. Fuck pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps…In the fifth your ass goes down.

They meet again, of course...

Lance: [answering the phone] Hello.
Vincent: Lance! It’s Vincent. I’m in big fuckin’ trouble, man. I’m coming to your house.
Lance: Whoa. Whoa. Hold your horses, man. What’s the problem?
Vincent: I’ve got this chick, she fuckin’ O.D.in’ on me!
Lance: Well, don’t bring her here! I’m not even fuckin’ joking with you, man! Do not be bringing some fucked-up pooh-bah to my house!
Vincent: No choice.
Lance: She’s O.D.in’?
Vincent: She’s fuckin’ dyin’ on me, man!
Lance: Okay, then you bite the fuckin’ bullet, take her to a hospital and call a lawyer.
Vincent: Negative.
Lance: This is not my fuckin’ problem, man! You fucked her up, you fuckin’ deal with this!

They deal with it.

Vincent: I-I gotta stab her three times?
Lance: No, you don’t gotta fucking stab her three times! You gotta stab her once, but it’s gotta be hard enough to break through her breastplate into her heart, and then once you do that, you press down on the plunger.
Vincent: What happens after that?
Lance: I’m kinda curious about that myself…

No, really, how close to "real life" was this near fatal fiasco?

Captain Koons: The way your dad looked at it, this watch was your birthright. He’d be damned if any slopes gonna put their greasy yellow hands on his boy’s birthright, so he hid it, in the one place he knew he could hide something: his ass. Five long years, he wore this watch up his ass. Then when he died of dysentery, he gave me the watch. I hid this uncomfortable piece of metal up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the watch to you.

Bye, bye Vincent.

[iambiguous]

Time

“A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you'd think misfortune would get tired but then time is your misfortune” William Faulkner

Let's change that.

“Nothing endures but change.” Heraclitus

Let's change that.

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

Fit yourself in there and then get back to us.

“How little we know of what there is to know. I wish that I were going to live a long time instead of going to die today because I have learned much about life in these four days; more, I think than in all other time. I'd like to be an old man to really know. I wonder if you keep on learning or if there is only a certain amount each man can understand. I thought I knew so many things that I know nothing of. I wish there was more time.” Ernest Hemingway

And how ironic is that?

“If you have the woman you love, what more do you need? Well, besides an alibi for the time of her husband’s murder." Dark Jar Tin Zoo

Let's run this by Keith Morrison.

“A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle between the future and the past.” Fidel Castro

Dialectically as it were.