Movies and Music "As there was no script, we would just improvise it. Kubrick would say, 'You guys go away and make up a scene, come back and we'll take a look at it.' It was absolutely incredible. I kind of blew up with Mr. Kubrick, I didn't know what the hell he was talking about! I'm the kind of actor who has to have an open relationship with a director. He would start playing games with you. He'd say one thing one day and completely reverse it the next. By about day six when he said, 'Good morning, Ed,' I didn't know what he meant by that!" Ed Bishop, actor in 2001 "I watched "Vanishing Point" as a rebellious teenager growing up in Asia, before I got my driver's license or had a chance to travel to America. I skipped school so that I could catch the matinee show. The year was '72. (I guess it took a while for movies to be distributed to Asia back then). One thing I got out of the movie was, "Wow, so that's the kind of cool stuff you could do in the US." I fell in love with so many things at once. Cars. Driving on an open road. The US. The open desert scenery. Above all, the freedom. I never looked back. Now, whenever given the chance, I'm out west on the open road. Since that movie, I've traveled to 42 US states, and still counting. In fact, I'll be off to the Death Valley and other parts of the Mojave next week." Review of Vanishing Point by Sierra-11 on imdb, 24 March 1999. "It was a midnight show at the Knitting Factory, and needless to say I was extraordinarily excited. It's hard to describe the gig. It was more or less all new material, as per Fall custom. The band plays with their heads down while their hunched, dour, polished Italian shoe-wearing Kapitan fucks with their amp settings, steals their microphones, shoves them out of the way, and otherwise stalks around them disapprovingly. Kind of like a pissed off owner of a British rooming house, all geared up to collect the rent from his tenants (who he hates). Over the course of the show, Smith dismantled all of the microphones on the stage. I never saw anything like it. He threw backup mics in the kick drum, sang into two at once, dropped them on the ground, and took one backstage in order to sing unmolested. By the end, the stage was a tangle of knocked over mic stands and cable. Blindness was the last song before they headed off the stage, and Smith did this unsettling thing where he kept creeping closer to the edge of the stage. As in, I'd glance at the bass player for a second or something, and when I looked back he'd just be closer. By the end, he was just yelling into the air, sans amplification. Then he stumbled through the detritus littering the stage and sang a few lines from the dressing room." Description of a The Fall concert http://thelittleblackegg.blogspot.com
Writing Something visceral by Ray Bradbury
Something by The Master
A vulture was hacking at my feet. It had already torn my boots and
stockings to shreds, now it was hacking at the feet themselves. Again
and again it struck at them, then circled several times restlessly
round me, then returned to continue its work. A gentleman passed by,
looked on for a while, then asked me why I suffered the vulture. "I'm
helpless," I said. "When it came and began to attack me, I of course
tried to drive it away, even to strangle it, but these animals are very
strong, it was about to spring at my face, but I preferred to sacrifice
my feet. Now they are almost torn to bits." "Fancy letting yourself be
tortured like this!" said the gentleman. "One shot and that's the end
of the vulture." "Really ?" I said. "And would you do that?" "With
pleasure," said the gentleman, "I've only got to go home and get my
gun. Could you wait another half hour?" "I'm not sure about that," said
I, and stood for a moment rigid with pain. Then I said: "Do try it in
any case, please." "Very well," said the gentleman, "I'll be as quick
as I can." During this conversation the vulture had been calmly
listening, letting its eye rove between me and the gentleman. Now I
realized that it had understood everything; it took wing, leaned far
back to gain impetus, and then, like a javelin thrower, thrust its beak
through my mouth, deep into me. Falling back, I was relieved to feel
him drowning irretrievably in my blood, which was filling every depth,
flooding every shore.
The Vulture
Franz Kafka
Fear This quote shows how rational people were overwhelmed by the irrational and gives an idea of how helpless we are without science.
War
The French capitulation to the Germans on June 22 1940 left Britain alarmed that the French navy might be used against it. In combination with the ships of Germany and Italy this would be an unbeatable force. On Churchill's personal order, the following brilliantly written and very chilling ultimatum was handed to French Admiral Gensoul, whose ships were docked in the Algerian port of Mers-el-Kabir. For me, this letter represents the pivotal moment of the 20th century in Europe. The letter is a masterpiece of concentrated writing.
The result? Following instructions from his Vichy commanders, Gensoul refused to hand over his ships, the Royal Navy opened fire and, after vicious shelling for several hours, destroyed the ships, killing about 1300 French with no British losses.
Churchill harshly (and uncharacteristically, since he was a great admirer of France) noted that the French "finally fought with all their vigour for the first time since war broke out". The Germans mounted a propaganda campaign painting the British as duplicitous for attacking their (former) ally. The French launched a retaliatory aerial attack on British forces on Gibraltar. The Americans were, until this time, insisting that the British should surrender their navy into American or Canadian hands. Afterwards, they changed their mind about the inevitability of the German take-over of Europe, and began to sell weapons to fight the war.
Honors "Listen, I don't need honours. Your real honours are your achievements. What you give, what you leave for ever. I do things with care, with compassion, with love, with history. Harrods is my pyramid. The Ritz is my pyramid. My charities are my pyramids. I grew up with 7,000 years of history behind me. Why would I want honours from people who were wearing animal skins and carrying sticks when my people were the greatest civilisation in the world? Fug it." Mohammed Fayed, commenting in The Independent (2005-03-22) on his lack of acceptance by the British establishment.
"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall". Confucius
A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost. -- Jean-Paul Sartre
"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." William Blake"There was no doubt that this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott." William Wordsworth's comment upon the death of William Blake
"Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible." Miguel de Unamuno
I was in a job interview and I opened a book and started reading. Then I said to the guy, "Let me ask you a question. If you are in a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?" He said, "I don't know." I said, "I don't want your job." Steven Wright
Wolvesa) In Sheep's Clothing
"The rose opens her petals, And embraces the violet. The lily too has awakened. They bare their heads to the zephyrs."Iosif Dzhugashvili (aka "Stalin")
b) In Wolf's Clothing
1. "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
2. "Apart from their other characteristics, the outstanding thing about China's 600 million people is that they are "poor and blank.".....On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted."
Mao Zedung
c) How Many Wolves Here?
"0225: The detainee arrives at the interrogation booth at Camp X-Ray. His hood is removed and he is bolted to the floor." Interrogation of Mohammad al-Qahtani
Words of WisdomA kite flies highest against the wind.
Winston Churchill
Never stop. One stops as soon as something is about to happen.
Peter Brock
"The task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees." Erwin Schrodinger
"Everything of importance has already been seen by someone who did not discover it." Whitehead
The power of accurate observation is called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G. B. Shaw
"If knowledge hangs around your neck Like pearls instead of chains, You are a lucky man". -Alan Price
"In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes at issue." -Sayre's Law (often mis-attributed to Henry Kissinger)
A lot of hard work goes into making it look easy. The fact is: the act of weaving words together to look as if they drifted effortlessly onto the page is tough work, and certainly not for the faint of heart.
Graydon Carter, Editor of Vanity Fair, Feb 2001
"If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it is hard to be sought out, and difficult". Heraclitus
No endeavor that is worthwhile is simple in prospect; if it is right, it will be simple in retrospect. Edward Teller
"You can't be a sweet cucumber in a vinegar barrel" Phillip Zimbardo
"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take a lead in the introduction of a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new". Nicolo Machivelli
"Many cultures have considered the shadow world; the Aboriginal's dreamtime, the imaginal realm, even more "real" than this dimension, everything must happen there first. As Robert Anton Wilson notes at the end of Prometheus Rising, "The future exists first in imagination, then in will, and then in reality". When we "grow up", we give this power to governments, to the media, to e! entertainment television, to Rupert Murdoch and Oprah, to President George "mother slaughtering war criminal" W. Bush, to christianity or islam, judaism, hinduism, whatever current scientific theories are generally accepted (at this stage in history). Take back the mind. It is magic, it always has been, it always will be." Howlin' Magic (from The Dreaming 2007)
"Reading makes a full man; speaking makes a ready man; writing makes an exact man." Francis Bacon
"life is pretty simple: you do some stuff. most fails. some works. you do more of what works. if it works big, others quickly copy it. then you do something else. the trick is the doing something else." Phillip Torrone
The Scientific Method
"I don't take the attitude of the following caricature piece: that Nigel comes and says 'We got tritium again - 10**6'. I don't say 'I am going to get in there and check your bloody, and on and on.' I say, 'Mmmm Hmmm.' I put this in my mind, and then I hear bongo has got tritium and bingo has tritium, etc. All have tritium, and I say, 'Gee, probably there.'" John O'Mara Bockris Irish Cold Fusion Researcher
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." H.P. Lovecraft
The Overly Confident
"I won't be jailed because they can't prove anything. My biggest problem is avoiding being put into a madhouse.... That's the real problem. Everything else is no big deal." Count Grishnacht, shortly before being jailed for 21 yrs for the murder of Euronymous.
Religion
Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual. William Torrey Harris, US Commissioner of Education from 1889 to 1906.COMETS AND ASTEROIDS SERVE NO PURPOSE
No one in his proper senses can ascribe the slightest use to the existence of comets. For ages they have served no other conceivable "purpose" than to frighten people out of their wits. History records the terror-stricken condition of whole populace at the approach of these "ominous" visitors in the sky. [When Halley's comet appeared in 1456, "it struck terror into all people," wrote John W. Draper. "From his seat, invisible to it, in Italy, the sovereign pontiff, Calixtus III, issued his ecclesiastical fulminations; ... in vain were all the bells in Europe ordered to be rung to scare it away; in vain was it anathematized; in vain were prayers put up in all directions to stop it." (History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, vol. II, p. 253-254.)] They are, in themselves, disintegrating bodies, which, according to Newcomb, are wasting themselves away through progressive dissipation. Entire dissolution has been reached by several well- known comets. Woolsey Teller, The Atheism of Astronomy, 1938.
If indeed the world in which we live has been produced in accordance with a Plan, we shall have to reckon Nero a saint in comparison with the Author of that Plan. Fortunately, however, the evidence of Divine Purpose is non-existent; so at least one must infer from the fact that no evidence is adduced by those who believe in it. We are, therefore, spared the necessity for that attitude of impotent hatred which every brave and humane man would otherwise be called upon to adopt toward the Almighty Tyrant. -- BERTRAND RUSSELL [The Scientific Outlook, p. 130.]
