For the life of me I can't understand why, in this age of over-population, the majority of texts our mainstream culture manages to produce still preach the doctrine of reproduction above, and instead, of all other acts of creation.
Kevin Flynn has attempted the god-like act of creating an entire alternative universe from scratch, and he expects to get results from it that will benefit our world as well - something about perfecting the human genome, eliminating disease and so on that I didn't entirely follow. But oh no! He has been swallowed up, literally, by his work, and can't spend time with his son. How unfortunate. Too late he realizes that the only perfection he should've ever attempted is the one that hides inside this child. All his ideas about making the world better for the kid to grow up in - too bad, he should've scrapped those the moment the stick turned blue.
Well, I'm sorry, but screw you, Mr. Kosinski, and screw you, eight (!) people it took to write this script, and screw you (passionately and at length, and sleep for a while and wake up and then screw you again, but always with contraceptives), Mr. Bridges, but being able to create something other than offspring is what separates us from the animals. It's one of the few good things that separate us from the animals. If you don't mind, some of us would like to keep that option open.
Dec 27, 2010
Dec 23, 2010
Dec 15, 2010
OK, one more. This one is really cool:
"Which represents good and which represents evil --" he asked me, "the rifle or the rubbery, jiggling, giggling bag of bones we call the body?"
I said that the rifle was evil and the body was good.
"But don't you know that this rifle was designed to be used by Americans defending their homes and honor against wicked enemies?" he said.
So I said a lot depended on whose body and whose rifle we were talking about, that either one of them could be good or evil.
"And who renders the final decision on that?" he said.
"God?" I said.
"I mean here on Earth," he said.
"I don't know," I said.
"Painters -- and storytellers, including poets and playwrights and historians," he said. "They are the justices of the Supreme Court of Good and Evil, of which I am now a member, and to which you may belong someday!"
How was that for delusions of moral grandeur!
Yes, and now that I think about it: maybe the most admirable thing about the Abstract Expressionist painters, since so much senseless bloodshed had been caused by cockeyed history lessons, was their refusal to serve on such a court.
I said that the rifle was evil and the body was good.
"But don't you know that this rifle was designed to be used by Americans defending their homes and honor against wicked enemies?" he said.
So I said a lot depended on whose body and whose rifle we were talking about, that either one of them could be good or evil.
"And who renders the final decision on that?" he said.
"God?" I said.
"I mean here on Earth," he said.
"I don't know," I said.
"Painters -- and storytellers, including poets and playwrights and historians," he said. "They are the justices of the Supreme Court of Good and Evil, of which I am now a member, and to which you may belong someday!"
How was that for delusions of moral grandeur!
Yes, and now that I think about it: maybe the most admirable thing about the Abstract Expressionist painters, since so much senseless bloodshed had been caused by cockeyed history lessons, was their refusal to serve on such a court.
Dec 14, 2010
From Kurt Vonnegut's "Bluebeard"
At the very end, her brain-surgeon husband couldn't talk anymore, but he could still scrawl short messages with his left hand, although he was normally right handed. His left hand was all he had left that still worked a little bit.
According to Circe, this was his ultimate communiqué: "I was a radio repairman."
"Either his damaged brain believed that this was a literal truth," she said, "or he had come to the conclusion that all the brains he had operated on were basically just receivers of signals from someplace else. Do you get the concept?"
"I think I do," I said.
"Just because music comes from a little box we call a radio," she said, and here she came over and rapped me on my pate with her knuckles as though it were a radio, "that doesn't mean there's a symphony orchestra inside."
"What's that got to do with Father and Terry Kitchen?" I said.
"Maybe, when they suddenly started doing something they'd never done before, and their personalities changed, too --" she said, "maybe they had started picking up signals from another station, which had very different ideas about what they should say and do."
* * *
I have since tried out this human-beings-as-nothing-but-radio-receivers theory on Paul Slazinger, and he toyed with it some. "So Green River Cemetery is full of busted radios," he mused, "and the transmitters they were tuned to still go on and on."
"That's the theory," I said.
He said that all he'd been able to receive in his own head for the past twenty years was static and what sounded like weather reports in some foreign language he'd never heard before. He said, too, that toward the end of his marriage to Barbira Mencken, the actress, she acted "as though she was wearing headphones and listening to the 1812 Overture in stereo. That's when she was becoming a real actress, and not just another pretty girl onstage that everybody liked a lot. She wasn't even 'Barbara' anymore. All of a sudden she was 'Bar-beer-ah!' "
He said that the first he heard of the name change was during the divorce proceedings, when her lawyer referred to her as "Barbira," and spelled it for the court stenographer.
Out in the courthouse corridor afterwards, Slazinger asked her: "Whatever happened to Barbara?"
She said Barbara was dead!
So Slazinger said to her: "Then what on Earth did we waste all this money on lawyers for?"
¬
* * *
I said that I had seen the same sort of thing happen to Terry Kitchen the first time he played with a spray rig, shooting bursts of red automobile paint at an old piece of beaverboard he'd leaned against the potato barn. All of a sudden, he, too, was like somebody listening through headphones to a perfectly wonderful radio station I couldn't hear.
Red was the only color he had to play with. We'd gotten two cans of the red paint along with the spray rig, which we'd bought from an automobile repair shop in Montauk a couple of hours before. "Just look at it! Just look at it!" he'd say, after every burst.
"He'd just about given up on being a painter, and was going into law practice with his father before we got that spray rig," I said.
"Barbira was just about to give up being an actress and have a baby instead," said Slazinger. "And then she got the part of Tennessee Williams's sister in The Glass Menagerie."
* * *
Actually, now that I think back: Terry Kitchen went through a radical personality change the moment he saw the spray rig for sale, and not when he fired those first bursts of red at the beaverboard. I happened to spot the rig, and said that it was probably war surplus, since it was identical with rigs I had used in the Army for camouflage.
"Buy it for me," he said.
"What for?" I said.
"Buy it for me," he said again. He had to have it, and he wouldn't even have known what it was if I hadn't told him.
He never had any money, although he was from a very rich old family, and the only money I had was supposed to go for a crib and a youth bed for the house I'd bought in Springs. I was in the process of moving my family, much against their will, from the city to the country.
"Buy it for me," he said again.
And I said, "O.K., take it easy. O.K., O.K."
This is a very Vonneguty month for me :)
According to Circe, this was his ultimate communiqué: "I was a radio repairman."
"Either his damaged brain believed that this was a literal truth," she said, "or he had come to the conclusion that all the brains he had operated on were basically just receivers of signals from someplace else. Do you get the concept?"
"I think I do," I said.
"Just because music comes from a little box we call a radio," she said, and here she came over and rapped me on my pate with her knuckles as though it were a radio, "that doesn't mean there's a symphony orchestra inside."
"What's that got to do with Father and Terry Kitchen?" I said.
"Maybe, when they suddenly started doing something they'd never done before, and their personalities changed, too --" she said, "maybe they had started picking up signals from another station, which had very different ideas about what they should say and do."
* * *
I have since tried out this human-beings-as-nothing-but-radio-receivers theory on Paul Slazinger, and he toyed with it some. "So Green River Cemetery is full of busted radios," he mused, "and the transmitters they were tuned to still go on and on."
"That's the theory," I said.
He said that all he'd been able to receive in his own head for the past twenty years was static and what sounded like weather reports in some foreign language he'd never heard before. He said, too, that toward the end of his marriage to Barbira Mencken, the actress, she acted "as though she was wearing headphones and listening to the 1812 Overture in stereo. That's when she was becoming a real actress, and not just another pretty girl onstage that everybody liked a lot. She wasn't even 'Barbara' anymore. All of a sudden she was 'Bar-beer-ah!' "
He said that the first he heard of the name change was during the divorce proceedings, when her lawyer referred to her as "Barbira," and spelled it for the court stenographer.
Out in the courthouse corridor afterwards, Slazinger asked her: "Whatever happened to Barbara?"
She said Barbara was dead!
So Slazinger said to her: "Then what on Earth did we waste all this money on lawyers for?"
¬
* * *
I said that I had seen the same sort of thing happen to Terry Kitchen the first time he played with a spray rig, shooting bursts of red automobile paint at an old piece of beaverboard he'd leaned against the potato barn. All of a sudden, he, too, was like somebody listening through headphones to a perfectly wonderful radio station I couldn't hear.
Red was the only color he had to play with. We'd gotten two cans of the red paint along with the spray rig, which we'd bought from an automobile repair shop in Montauk a couple of hours before. "Just look at it! Just look at it!" he'd say, after every burst.
"He'd just about given up on being a painter, and was going into law practice with his father before we got that spray rig," I said.
"Barbira was just about to give up being an actress and have a baby instead," said Slazinger. "And then she got the part of Tennessee Williams's sister in The Glass Menagerie."
* * *
Actually, now that I think back: Terry Kitchen went through a radical personality change the moment he saw the spray rig for sale, and not when he fired those first bursts of red at the beaverboard. I happened to spot the rig, and said that it was probably war surplus, since it was identical with rigs I had used in the Army for camouflage.
"Buy it for me," he said.
"What for?" I said.
"Buy it for me," he said again. He had to have it, and he wouldn't even have known what it was if I hadn't told him.
He never had any money, although he was from a very rich old family, and the only money I had was supposed to go for a crib and a youth bed for the house I'd bought in Springs. I was in the process of moving my family, much against their will, from the city to the country.
"Buy it for me," he said again.
And I said, "O.K., take it easy. O.K., O.K."
This is a very Vonneguty month for me :)
Dec 13, 2010
Something Positive
Stephen Fry has over two million followers on Twitter. Sarah Palin, whos every tweet is widely discussed in American media, has over three hundred thousand. To me , this means that people prefer nice and intelligent over mean and ignorant. And that helps me sleep better.
Labels:
nationalism,
people,
politics,
prophecy
Dec 10, 2010
"Galapagos" read by Jonathan Davis
I'm listening to the "Galapagos" audiobook, read by someone named Jonathan Davis, who uses such a heart-breakingly melancholy voice that he makes me want to curl up under the covers in a fetal position and wail like a wounded baby seal. Very appropriate for the subject matter.
Dec 9, 2010
Jon Stewart's interview with Marion Jones
I saw this interview almost a month ago, and I'm still pretty broken-hearted about it. I'm not a big lover of sports, but I remember watching Marion Jones in the 2000 olympics and being completely won over by her. She was so amazing and so charming, and so far ahead of everyone else in every race, it was like watching a new species of human being revealing itself for the first time. Looking through 10 years' perspective and loss of innocence, it's pretty clear that she's on performance-enhancing drugs, but back then it was impossible to imagine anything dishonest behind that adorable face, that wonderful childish excitement. I may be a sucker for a pretty woman, but remembering that glowing victory I do believe her that she didn't know about the drugs.
Whatever happened, I'm appalled that they sent her to prison for it. Prison? For cheating in a sports event? People really do take sports way too seriously, I mean really!
P.S.
It reminds me of something Kurt Vonnegut says in his introduction to "Bluebeard" (one of the best books I know) -
May I say, too, that much of what I put in this book was inspired by the grotesque prices paid for works of art during the past century. Tremendous concentrations of paper wealth have made it possible for a few persons or institutions to endow certain sorts of human playfulness with inappropriate and hence distressing seriousness. I think not only of the mudpies of art, but of children's games as well -- running, jumping, catching, throwing.
Or dancing.
Or singing songs.
Whatever happened, I'm appalled that they sent her to prison for it. Prison? For cheating in a sports event? People really do take sports way too seriously, I mean really!
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Marion Jones | ||||
| ||||
P.S.
It reminds me of something Kurt Vonnegut says in his introduction to "Bluebeard" (one of the best books I know) -
May I say, too, that much of what I put in this book was inspired by the grotesque prices paid for works of art during the past century. Tremendous concentrations of paper wealth have made it possible for a few persons or institutions to endow certain sorts of human playfulness with inappropriate and hence distressing seriousness. I think not only of the mudpies of art, but of children's games as well -- running, jumping, catching, throwing.
Or dancing.
Or singing songs.
Dec 2, 2010
Dinner for Schmucks
Well, I didn't want to see this movie, but now that I have I need to talk about it. If you watch it, which I don't recommend, notice this: it's a movie in which a lot of wonderful British comics take the back seat to a lot of mediocre American comics. There's Steve Carell, who is adorable, but I think everyone is as sick of him as I am at this point. There's Paul Rudd, the ultimate non-threatening "vegetarian" male lead, Zach Galifianakis, who belongs to the Tina Fey school of comedy (i.e. the belief that doing something annoying with a straight face and repeating it ad nauseum equals funny), and a female love interest - Stephanie Szostak - who, frankly, inspires even less passion than Paul Rudd. Then, in the smaller roles, you have a wonderful appearance by Lucy Punch - I've been fixating on her since Woody Allen's "Tall Dark Stranger", David Walliams from "Little Britain", and the hilarious and much loved in our house Chris O'Dowd from the cult "IT Crowd". It's a masterpiece of bad decisions, and mostly inspires wishful thinking. For example, my boyfriend (who made me watch it in the first place) said at the end how great this movie could've been if Wes Anderson had directed it. Could've, would've should've...
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