Some answers; my boss convo; +2 movie quotes

Here’s the next page in the drawing book that I was recently gifted (my previous entry links to the one before that, and so on) – each blank page has a prompt written in the corner; the prompt for this one appears sideways at the top right: “Comic book cover”.

Dear diary,

Today I opened my eyes while still lying in bed, and I looked at the clock. The clock was a blur, just a smudge among smudges, because my eyesight is bad from too much reading (O ye multitudes, I advise ye: never read; only make war!); so I thought to myself: Before rising out of bed and walking closer to the clock till it comes into focus, why not, first, for the sake of amusement, take a guess at the hour—perhaps we possess a trustworthy internal time-keeper: What hour does it feel like? And I answered myself: It feels like 6:53 on the dot. Then I shut my eyes again and, without falling back asleep, I continued leaning and loafing at my ease for a spell before officially arising. I stayed in bed maybe another quarter of an hour. Then I sprang up and dashed over to the clock. It said 6:52. This shocked me: My guess was only a minute off! However, I made that guess a little while ago. What does this mean?

It means that my internal clock runs fifteen minutes fast. By exactly the rate of one curse of postmodern fame, I am trapped in the future.

But enough about this morning. Let’s talk about yesterday.

Yesterday, I woke up feeling sad as usual. But then I turned on my computer. Wow, that made a difference—I got instantly happy: for I saw about six red notifications indicating that someone had commented on six of my posts. I felt like I had hit the jackpot. But then I paused in my celebration, when I noticed that ALL these notifications were for Network XXX-Plus. I wondered aloud: “How could anyone have replied to my posts on Network XXX-Plus?—I never post anything on Network XXX-Plus.” So I sent a prayer up to Socrates, and he cajoled Plato into rescuing me from my ignorance. But this new knowledge was so bright that it blinded my understanding, thus Aristotle had to come and restore back some of my ignorance, so that I could better grasp the truth. And the truth is as follows:

Since I never unchecked the box aside the command “Automatically share all my new posts on Network XXX-Plus” (in the “Settings” section of this weblog’s secret control panel), all my new posts automatically got sent to that region. Thus an operative whose account is codenamed “Rye Baldy” was able to hack into a number of my postings and leave cryptic messages.

So I answered all these messages with decorum. And now I wish to preserve the interchange below. However, since Mr. Baldy’s creative offerings remain the property of his intergalactic handlers, I can only legally copy MY half of the skirmish. Thus it’ll be like hearing just one side of a telephone conversation. But each of my responses clearly & obviously implies the question that provoked it, so I think that everything should be all right, in the end. Here’s my collected replies:

• Yes, this mountain of pure white snow is for sale. In conclusion, you now own this mountain of pure white snow.
• Please convey my sincerest salute to your newly blown brain.
• Decay is always out there waiting for us.
• While this changed your life, it froze mine into a state of inalterability.
• I will now prove that this freshly-lacquered parquetry is clean enough to eat off. [Dies from eating off freshly-lacquered parquetry.]
• Summer is as beautiful as Hell.
• Scientists are working on equipping this “lovely filth” with a conscience, so that it can reward all who behold it with an affectionate tongue-lash.
• Believe it or not, X’s face appeared on this scripture’s spine after burning it. To get the face to disappear, I think I’d have to douse it with pre-toasted gin.
• “Scotch tape” is to “deer playing baseball” as “box of vapor” is to “absinthe on tap”.
• May those song-birds in your gut forever sustain the gut-birds in their song.

OK, the fun’s over. Now I’ll trudge thru the rest of the entry…

What was I supposed to write about? Oh yeah, now I remember: I said near the end of my Feb 7 entry that, “being out of time, I leave many deeds unfinished”; then I listed The 69 Unfinished Deeds... and I nailed it someplace. So now that I’m sitting here before my typewriter exactly one fortnight later, and I’m practically drowning in free time, with nothing else to report, I should try to tackle that list. Let’s see what it says:

I still need to complete my comparison of the marketplace and the art world, regarding their respective stances towards the Ten Commandments, which I began in my previous post and planned to continue…

Alright, I’m gonna skip that task again. I don’t feel like writing about any of that shit now. It’s good that I noted it: it’ll help me remember it for next time. Or maybe I’ll just leave the labor unfinished. It’s a stupid idea anyway. OK what’s next…

PLUS I need to tell you about the talk that I had on Saturday with my boss (it was nothing special, but we name-dropt some movies that I’d like to relay to you here); and I also have two quotes prepared, which I’m eager to share: one’s from Platoon (1986) and the other’s from Judgment at Nuremberg (1961); I copied out both and saved them in a text file, now all I need to do is just plop them onto the screen without any explanation.

Yeah, I can handle that. I’ll try to make it quick. Then I’ll share another rap demo track and get the heck out of here…

Probably I’m mis-paraphrasing this, but I remember the lyricist Bob Dylan once explaining: As soon as I begin to write a song, my sole desire is to get done writing the song.

Part 2: A talk with boss

So I met with my boss on Saturday. After boring work-talk, there was boring leisure-talk. Then somehow our conversation went to the movies:

“I hate Jeff Goldblum.” That’s what my boss blurted out, with no apparent reason. I asked him why. He said “Cuz he’s weird; I don’t like how he moves.” So I said, well it would help if you list a specific film, because I think I could like the same actor in one role and dislike that actor in another. This is a rehash of our argument about Nicolas Cage: you (meaning my boss) always say that you can’t stand him (meaning Cage); but I say that it all depends on which movie you’re talking about. Ordering the titles chronologically by their release date, I love Cage in Moonstruck (1987); Wild at Heart (1990); Leaving Las Vegas (1995); Bringing Out the Dead (1999); Adaptation (2002); World Trade Center (2006); and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009). If you see Cage in any of those pictures, I’ll vouch for the greatness of his performance. But if you watch him in anything else, you’re on your own. The same goes for Goldblum (by the way, O boss, you say that you don’t like how Goldblum moves; well I LOVE how he moves: he’s got the grace of a dancer!)—tho admittedly I don’t know his filmography as well as I know Cage’s, I can at least say that Goldblum is perfect when directed by Wes Anderson, in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014); and also whenever he works with Tim & Eric—their TV shows and commercials etc.

So it turns out that I’m right again, and my boss is wrong.

But our conversation wasn’t over. When I mentioned the comedy of Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, my boss said “I never heard of them.” So I rolled my eyes. Then I said: it doesn’t matter, O boss, for you and I have different tastes in comedy. And I mentioned how, when a popular animated television show was in its heyday, my boss hated it while I loved it. That proves again how much more perceptive I am than my boss. My boss is only good at wheedling money out of corporations that need computer coding done. My boss has sold his soul to…

Anyway, then my boss got quiet and his countenance fell, because he sort of respects me (deep in some cavern of his shriveled heart), and I had spoken dismissively of him when I said that our tastes in comedy differ—I used a snide tone of voice, implying that he is a lost cause and not worth educating, and that I pity his misshapen sensitivities—this probably hurt his feelings. So he then said:

“You’re right. I guess we can’t agree on anything.”

But then I said: No! just consider all the titles that what we love in common—we have so many films that we both agree upon; they’re just not comedy films. I mean, it’s true that you’d probably hate my new all-time favorite motion picture, Wrong Cops (2013) because it’s basically a French farce made in the English language about U.S. authority and art, and I’ve watched that film probably more than a hundred times and I STILL laugh out loud at it, whereas you’d probably not be able to sit thru a single viewing, you’d be antsy as a toddler, because you wouldn’t “get it” (hint: there’s nothing to GET, but you’re a lost cause, O dear boss you expletive deleted)…

But we both love Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 (1968). That film is a holy scripture to ME; and you like it too. Also Star Wars (1977) – we both love the original very first movie directed by George Lucas. And we even have one beloved COMEDY film in common, now that I think of it—Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)! (I thought of that after mentioning 2001.)

Then my boss said “Yeah, I’ve watched Star Wars so many times that I’ve practically memorized it!” And I said, that’s how I am with Wrong Cops. And my boss then makes a comment about “I really loved Star Wars before it got ruined,” and I took this as meaning the subsequent releases tainted the original trilogy for him; but my boss then said: “No, I mean: I hate the special effects that were added to ‘touch up’ the originals upon their re-issue. The VHS cassettes that I owned as a child, which are the version I like, were pre-C.G. (before the invention of computer-generated effects)—that is, they used stop-motion cinematography, claymation, and small-model styles of effects, which are totally different from the smarmy, unctuous ‘digital’ effects that plague both the re-issues of the original trilogy AND all the later films.”

This gave me an idea. So I tell my boss that I’ve been spending a lot of time revisiting Oliver Stone movies lately. I’ve been on a Stone kick since Untold History (2012). Most recently I re-watched JFK (1991) – I tell my boss that I admire how Stone uses different stocks of film (35mm… 16mm… Super 8… also color vs. b&w… not to mention the varying angles of shot, frame types/ aspect ratios) and how he cuts back and forth between these stocks with rapidity, to simulate different dimensions and times and levels of reality—and I say that someone should purposely do something similar with special effects: that is, to characterize elements of their film by purposely mixing stop-motion plasticine animation with disparate other effects and computer-generated trickery…

Part 2.5: Cinemaquotes

That movie JFK is marvelous. That’s Stone’s masterpiece, at least in the realm of drama (Untold History is a forthright documentary). Watching it reminded me how much of a forerunner Stone is to my other favorite director, Errol Morris. I never thought of this relation before. It struck me, during this most recent JFK screening, that the dramatization of the wackiest elements from the CIA’s reports in Morris’ brilliant series Wormwood have their progenitor in the visualization of the Warren report in the courtroom scenes (etc.) from Stone’s JFK. (This is something that card-holding film critics will soon point out in a professional review or textbook, but I’m proud of myself for connecting these dots on my own, just during the natural course of enthusiastic movie-watching.)

Also hearing Oliver Stone speak about his personal life, his youth; about how he volunteered to fight in Vietnam, because he naively believed the hype of the U.S. propaganda; and how his screenplay for Platoon (1986) was based on his own experiences: this made me want to re-suffer that nightmare. So we did. Yes, it’s a hard one to stomach: I’m a pacifist, totally against war, so I actually dislike this film on an aesthetic level: it’s grueling to watch; yet it’s extremely relevant to present-day U.S. citizens, so much so that I’d heartily recommend it to any one, on account of the fact that my country is stuck in a cycle of repeating its horrors; and the greater the amount of minds that dare to contemplate this tragedy, the greater chance of remedying our awful ritual. Once our country stops committing the atrocities mirrored in Platoon, then we can stop forcing ourselves to watch it so frequently – that’s what I suggest.

And I thought a certain monologue from the film was significant enough to copy down, so I’ll give it here—it’s part of a letter that the protagonist Chris writes to his beloved grandmother. In the movie, the text is presented as a voiceover narration. (This character Chris volunteered for the military during wartime, despite being from an upper-class family, like Stone himself.)

Of course, mom & dad didn’t want me to come here. They wanted me to be just like them. Respectable, hardworking, a little house, a family. They drove me crazy with their goddamn world, grandma. You know mom. I guess I’ve always been sheltered and special. I just wanna be anonymous like everybody else. Do my share for my country. Live up to what grandpa did in the first war and dad did in the second.
     Well, here I am, anonymous all right, with guys nobody really cares about. They come from the end of the line, most of ’em. Small towns you never heard of: Pulaski, Tennessee... Brandon, Mississippi... Pork Bend, Utah... Wampum, Pennsylvania. Two years’ high school’s about it. Maybe if they’re lucky, there’s a job waiting for ’em back in a factory. But most of ’em got nothin’. They’re poor. They’re the unwanted. Yet they’re fighting for our society and our freedom. It’s weird, isn’t it? At the bottom of the barrel, and they know it. Maybe that’s why they call themselves ‘grunts’, ’cause a grunt can take it, can take anything. They’re the best I’ve ever seen, grandma. The heart and soul...

So poor kids from small towns risk life and limb for the freedom of society, and then this very society leaves them downtrodden . . . (“bottom of the barrel” . . . “end of the line” . . .)

I could reflect on this excerpt at length, but that would risk making this blog entry interesting; so instead I’ll move on and ham-fistedly give the next movie quote.

Part 3: One last movie quote

It was, again, Stone, who, in an interview, brought this title to my attention: Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). It was mentioned with regard to what We the People could have done (or should have done) to our leaders who provoked the many recent atrocities (fill in the blank with the foreign war of your choice). The address interests me because it’s given by a judge who’s judging judges. In other words, a judge from America is making a decision regarding the actions of a few German judges, on behalf of the World’s court. The focus here is on a seemingly “decent and respectable” individual named Ernst Janning, who apparently wasn’t overjoyed about marching in step with his criminal uppers, tho he never hazarded to disobey (think of your favorite modern U.S. president who oversaw the acts of their empire’s war machine). The speech is delivered by Judge Dan Haywood:

. . . The real complaining party at the bar in this courtroom is civilization. But the Tribunal does say that the men in the dock are responsible for their actions, men who sat in black robes in judgment on other men, men who took part in the enactment of laws and decrees, the purpose of which was the extermination of human beings, men who in executive positions actively participated in the enforcement of these laws – illegal even under German law. The principle of criminal law in every civilized society has this in common: Any person who sways another to commit murder – any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of the crime, any person who is an accessory to the crime – is guilty.

Heir Rolfe [the German defense attorney] further asserts that the defendant, Ernst Janning, was an extraordinary jurist and acted in what he thought was the best interest of this country. There is truth in this also. Janning, to be sure, is a tragic figure. We believe he loathed the evil he did. But compassion for the present torture of his soul must not beget forgetfulness of the torture and the death of millions by the government of which he was a part. Janning’s record and his fate illuminate the most shattering truth that has emerged from this trial: If he and all of the other defendants had been degraded perverts, if all of the leaders of the Third Reich had been sadistic monsters and maniacs, then these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake, or any other natural catastrophe. But this trial has shown that under a national crisis, ordinary—even able and extraordinary—men can delude themselves into the commission of crimes so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination. No one who has sat through this trial can ever forget them: men sterilized because of political belief; a mockery made of friendship and faith; the murder of children. How easily it can happen.

There are those in our own country too who today speak of the “protection of country”, of “survival.” A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient – to look the other way.

Well, the answer to that is “survival as what?” A country isn’t a rock. It’s not an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for. It’s what it stands for when standing for something is most difficult!

Before the people of the world, let it now be noted that here, in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.

If it seems unfair to compare the U.S. at present to the Germany of this film, and swap the name ‘Truman’, ‘Reagan’, ‘Bush’, ‘Clinton’, or ‘Obama’ for the name of ‘Janning’ in the above speech (I purposely leave out the most recent low-hanging fruit from that short list of prezzez), still, isn’t it wiser to slam the foreign-policy brakes and change direction BEFORE such a comparison becomes applicable!?

Brief intermission with two random questions:

What if you locked yourself in your own cocoon?

Isn’t it blank how beauty & ugliness exist side-by-side in this world?

End of brief intermission — now back to WAR:

No matter how old or young we are, we modern United Statesians have all been born into a country that’s been at war since before we existed. So we probably think war is normal. War after war (& can I add the phrase: of aggression?) My dad used to listen to right-wing conservative talk radio all the livelong day (that’s no exaggeration) and he thereby learned to slur any ‘idiot’ who’d assert the type of thoughts that I just wrote here—I mean questionings of the rightness of U.S. warfare—in knee-jerk fashion; he’d say that we idiots all simply “hate America first”; however, isn’t it rather LOVE that makes you point out addictive behavior to your friends? Hey Bryan, I think you have a problem: every time I see you, you’re mixing cocaine and heroin with jet fuel; and you spent all last night yelling at the gargoyle outside your apartment. And the same goes for our country: Dearly beloved homeland, I think you might be addicted to war profiteering. Is the problem stoppable, or must we all just sit tight and watch our vehicle drive right off the cliff?

I’m in good company, I know it. Jesus was wholly against war. William Blake was wholly against war. James Joyce was wholly against war. Love your enemies. Never cease the mental fight. Finnegans Wake!

Yet it was clear that even the name of Joyce counted for little in time of war, and he said bitterly... ‘Why should I write anything else? Nobody reads this book.’

How sad. That’s from p.730 of Ellman’s bio.

And I add to the names above my hero Nietzsche. God assures me that the United Statesians who’re frustrated with their country’s behavior, when beheld from eternity’s vantage (for God is dead), appear indistinguishable from our good European, Friedrich Nietzsche, fuming at the Germany of his day. Below is a passage from The Wanderer and his Shadow (284), which I follow Walter Kaufmann in introducing as “written when Germany was at the zenith of her power”—of course I fondly dream of the U.S. when I read this:

And perhaps the great day will come when a people, distinguished by wars and victories and by the highest development of a military order and intelligence, and accustomed to make the heaviest sacrifices for these things, will exclaim of its own free will, “We break the sword,” and will smash its entire military establishment down to its lowest foundations. Rendering oneself unarmed when one has been the best-armed, out of a height of feeling—that is the means to real peace, which must always rest on a peace of mind: whereas the so-called armed peace, as it now exists in all countries, is the absence of peace of mind. One trusts neither oneself nor one’s neighbor and, half from hatred, half from fear, does not lay down arms. Rather perish than hate and fear, and twice rather perish than make oneself hated and feared—this must some day become the highest maxim for every single commonwealth, too.

P.S.

Now, just to prove how stupid I am and that you should NOT listen to me, here below I’m sharing another old rap demo that I got my friend to produce on his computer. (At the time we recorded this, computerized audio-production was a fairly new thing – or actually it wasn’t, but it seemed so to us.) And I even coaxed my friend to voice a chorus that I wrote: a very wooden, purposely lazy chorus, which rhymes “him” with “him” and obnoxiously explains the obvious. It’s pretty good (that is, at least it doesn’t physically maim or kill you with its extraordinary powers):

https://bryanray444.tumblr.com/post/171093962241/uninspired-demo-recorded-in-2004-i-wrote-said