02 August 2015

Stuff (with an emphasis on movies)

Right now there is a team of trimmers trimming the trees outside my window: they’re using the exact same wood chipper from the Coen brothers’ movie Fargo, and it’s louder than World War 6 (which, as you’ll recall, was the loudest war yet)—so I can’t do anything but wait till they finish; and I have a spare hour, so I’m going to let myself type until my fingers break…

Stuff

Don’t think that “Magic Marriage” will result from flipping “Wonder Woman” upside-down.

I can click with anyone. I’m the skeleton key of jigsaw puzzle pieces. (Actually, I click with no one.)

People like to scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll. They enjoy watching electronic images zoom past the screen.

At the beginning of the film Rear Window (1954), Jimmy Stewart’s forehead appears very sweaty. That is how sweaty my forehead appears at all times.

If you identify with the second image, then write he. If you identify with this first image, then write the “letter of snake” before he.

(I stole that above-quoted, three-word phrase from Dr. Steve Brule: see the pilot episode of Bag Boy.)

A lot of stuff goes unrecorded by historians.

Either we forfeit our divine awareness and bow to worship Him, or He gets to persecute us forever—our Heavenly Father is like Officer De Luca from Wrong Cops (2013): “It’s a win-win for me, girl.”

Science Itself recently performed a study proving conclusively that nobody has ever actually clicked on a hyperlink to visit a website. In other words, links are like mirages; or like wax fruit; or like a horse costume with nobody inside of it; or fake books on a movie set—they are just for decoration.

Yesterday afternoon at the park, I saw someone jogging and typing on their phone.

I think of ovaries as interior testicles. They’re like pets that figured out how to live inside the house—now they don’t have to remain outdoors like dogs in winter.

I’ve never been able to figure out why people don’t like me.

Intermission

Before I name the movies that I recently screened, here’s a quote from a confab…

You say “I am perfectly human.” I hope that I am too. Paraphrasing Blake: Nature without humankind is barren. And your words about the dynamism of nature remind me of more lines from Whitman:

Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.

Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and increase, always sex,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life.

Movies

Over the last few weeks, I ended up renting a lot of discs from my local library. To memorialize my progress, I photo’d the spines of their cases after watching them. From the images below, the titles that I really LOVED were Brief Encounter; Army of Shadows; Jules and Jim; À nos amours; and all three of the films shown in the last of the pictures below (of course), two of which are old favorites that I already mentioned somewhere in the stuff above, whereas the title Only Angels Have Wings was new to me.

…& here’re 2 more…

…& here’re 3 more…

Postscript

If you’re like me, then you’re always frustrated that my blog entries are too darn short. You wish that they would go on forever—why do they have to end!? Therefore, as a super hidden bonus feature of today’s post, I’ll copy below a couple paragraphs from a book that I recently finished—The Marble Faun by Nathaniel Hawthorne. However, I hasten to add that, if you’re unfamiliar with Hawthorne yet intrigued by the cited passage, I do not mean to recommend The Marble Faun (by quoting it, in fact, I am trying to save you the labor of reading the book, which I found sadly tedious)—I just finished working thru all of his major books, and the ones that I loved most are his rightly famous novel The Scarlet Letter, and his shorter tales and sketches. Keep in mind that I am a trustworthy critic, and I strongly believe that I possess the Spirit of God. (I Cor 7:40) Plus I really enjoyed The House of the Seven Gables, which is also a novel.

…the once genial earth produces, in every successive generation, fewer flowers than used to gladden the preceding ones. Not that the modes and seeming possibilities of human enjoyment are rarer, in our refined and softened era, (on the contrary, they never before were nearly so abundant,) but that mankind are getting so far beyond the childhood of their race, that they scorn to be happy any longer. A simple and joyous character can find no place for itself among the sage and sombre figures that would put his unsophisticated cheerfulness to shame. The entire system of Man’s affairs, as at present established, is built up purposely to exclude the careless and happy soul. The very children would upbraid the wretched individual who should endeavour to take life and the world as (what we might naturally suppose them meant for) a place and opportunity for enjoyment.

It is the iron rule in our days, to require an object and a purpose in life. It makes us all parts of a complicated scheme of progress, which can only result in our arrival at a colder and drearier region than we were born in. It insists upon everybody’s adding somewhat (a mite, perhaps, but earned by incessant effort) to an accumulated pile of usefulness, of which the only use will be, to burthen our posterity with even heavier thoughts and more inordinate labour than our own. No life now wanders like an unfettered stream; there is a millwheel for the tiniest rivulet to turn. We go all wrong, by too strenuous a resolution to go all right.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

he letters of key

Unknown said...

I always click hyperlinks.

Unknown said...

I like you.

Qualo said...

I always click hyperlinks too, Thomas! I figure: Click the damn hyperlinks before they click you! ...And speaking of liking Tersh: How could anyone NOT like the Tersh! ...Great entry..love it all... Fave: "At the beginning of the film Rear Window (1954), Jimmy Stewart’s forehead appears very sweaty. That is how sweaty my forehead appears at all times." Reminds me of something Steven Wright once said: “You know when you're sitting on a chair and you lean back so you're just on two legs and you lean too far so you almost fall over but at the last second you catch yourself? I feel like that all the time...”

Bryan Ray said...

Dear Thomas, re: "he letters of key... I always click hyperlinks... I like you..."—Thanks, I like you too... and I always click hyperlinks too... and he letters of key too!

Dear Qualo, hahahahaha!! I love Steven Wright—I had seen him in a lot of different stuff, like movies and TV shows, but I had never seen him do stand up until recently: I watched a full special of his and totally loved it... there's something hypnotizing about him: he's the type of mad scientist that I aspire to be... plus I feel like that all the time, too (I mean the perpetual "nearly-toppling-chair fear")!!

P.S. Thanks to both of you for coming over and visiting me in my winter wonderland. I promise that next time I will have the space heater fixed... or at least I'll corral a few tauntauns for us to cut open and sleep inside!

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