Wednesday 26 June 2019

Heroic Vomiting




“One man kebabed, hundreds scarred forever by a shared blood ritual — and yet, an astonishing sense of Community here now, a positive atmosphere, a sense of a job well done, a shared sigh of relief, very much like the bizarre euphoria at the end of an hour's vomiting.”


Sancho Panza, who also regarded the amendment of his master as miraculous, begged him to give him what was left in the pigskin, which was no small quantity. 

Don Quixote consented, and he, taking it with both hands, in good faith and with a better will, gulped down and drained off very little less than his master. 

But the fact is, that the stomach of poor Sancho was of necessity not so delicate as that of his master, and so, before vomiting, he was seized with such gripings and retchings, and such sweats and faintness, that verily and truly be believed his last hour had come, and finding himself so racked and tormented he cursed the balsam and the thief that had given it to him. 

Don Quixote seeing him in this state said, "It is my belief, Sancho, that this mischief comes of thy not being dubbed a knight, for I am persuaded this liquor cannot be good for those who are not so." 

"If your worship knew that," returned Sancho—" woe betide me and all my kindred!—why did you let me taste it?" 

At this moment the draught took effect, and the poor squire began to discharge both ways at such a rate that the rush mat on which he had thrown himself and the canvas blanket he had covering him were fit for nothing afterwards. He sweated and perspired with such paroxysms and convulsions that not only he himself but all present thought his end had come. This tempest and tribulation lasted about two hours, at the end of which he was left, not like his master, but so weak and exhausted that he could not stand. 

Don Quixote, however, who, as has been said, felt himself relieved and well, was eager to take his departure at once in quest of adventures, as it seemed to him that all the time he loitered there was a Fraud upon The World and those in it who stood in need of his help and protection, all the more when he had the security and confidence his balsam afforded him; and so, urged by this impulse, he saddled Rocinante himself and put the pack-saddle on his squire's beast, whom likewise he helped to dress and mount the ass; after which he mounted his horse and turning to a corner of the inn he laid hold of a pike that stood there, to serve him by way of a lance. 

All that were in the inn, who were more than twenty persons, stood watching him; the innkeeper's daughter was likewise observing him, and he too never took his eyes off her, and from time to time fetched a sigh that he seemed to pluck up from the depths of his bowels; but they all thought it must be from the pain he felt in his ribs; at any rate they who had seen him plastered the night before thought so.

Sunday 23 June 2019

ARMOUR









Jonathan Pryce's costume as Don Quixote is the one Jean Rochefort wore in the 2000 attempt, as seen in Lost in La Mancha. 

Carlo Poggioli, the assistant of Gabriella Pescucci, costume designer for the 2000 version, rediscovered it while browsing for costumes for an opera. 

Pescucci gave her blessing for the costume to finally be used in a film. 

In the end, Lena Mossum, costume designer for the new version, did some adjustments, and the costume fit Pryce perfectly. Gilliam said that otherwise, "with the money in the budget, there's no way [they] could make something as good as what was on screen".






The first thing he did was to clean up some armour that had belonged to his great-grandfather, and had been for ages lying forgotten in a corner eaten with rust and covered with mildew. He scoured and polished it as best he could, but he perceived one great defect in it, that it had no closed helmet, nothing but a simple morion. This deficiency, however, his ingenuity supplied, for he contrived a kind of half-helmet of pasteboard which, fitted on to the morion, looked like a whole one. It is true that, in order to see if it was strong and fit to stand a cut, he drew his sword and gave it a couple of slashes, the first of which undid in an instant what had taken him a week to do. The ease with which he had knocked it to pieces disconcerted him somewhat, and to guard against that danger he set to work again, fixing bars of iron on the inside until he was satisfied with its strength; and then, not caring to try any more experiments with it, he passed it and adopted it as a helmet of the most perfect construction.



Friday 21 June 2019

YES — BREATHE





Laurie Kaye: “Can you tell us about that meeting?”

JOHN: “With Yoko? Well, it was sort of 1966 and, uh, I got a call from a guy called John Dunbar, who used to be married to Marianne Faithful – you know, everybody’s connected. 

And he had a gallery in London called Indica Gallery, an art gallery. And, I used to go there occasionally to see whatever art show was on, you see? 

And he said, ‘Oh, I’ve got this… there’s this fantastic Japanese girl coming from New York, and she’s gonna do this other thing but she’s also gonna put on an exhibition at my gallery. And it’s gonna be this big event’. 

Something about ‘black bags!’ and I thought, ‘Ooooh, orgies’, you know? These artists, they’re all ravers, you know? It was in the days of happenings, paint, and all that stuff, right? 

So I go right down there, you know, for the opening. ‘Goody, goody!’, you know? Lennon goes down to see what’s happening. I get down there, and it’s the night before the opening. I mean, I thought there was going to be a big party, and an opening and the whole bit, you know? A big hap…  I didn’t wanna get involved. 

I wanted to watch, you know? I get there and its all white and quiet and there’s just these strange things all on display, like an apple on a stand for 200 pounds – when the pound was worth 8 dollars, or something. Whatever. 

And there’s hammers, saying ‘Hammer a nail in’, all this very peculiar stuff, and a ladder with a painting on the sky… or it looked like a blank canvass on the ceiling with a spyglass hanging from it. 

So, I’m lookin’ ’round and there doesn’t seem to be many people. There’s a couple of people downstairs. And I didn’t know who was who. 

So, I get up the ladder, and I look through this spyglass and it says, ‘Yes’. And I took that as a personal, positive message, because most of the avant garde artists of that period were all negative. 

Like, breaking a piano with an axe; it was mainly male… I’m looking at the female…  it was mainly male art, and it was all destructive, and sort of ‘nay, nay-na-nay nay’, you know? 

But here was this little crazy message on the ceiling. And then the guy introduced me to her. And she didn’t know who the hell I was. 

She had no idea. She was living in a different environment altogether. And, uh, I was sayin’ ‘Well this is a good con, isn’t it? Apples at 200 pounds. Hammer a nail. Who’s gonna buy this?’, you know? 

I didn’t know what concept art was; which, in a nutshell is ‘the idea is more important than the object’. So that’s why you won’t see many rich concept artists around, because you can’t really, you know… like the guy that wraps up, uh, what’s the guy that wraps up the… ”

Kaye: “Christo… ”

JOHN: “Christo wraps up things. He doesn’t expect you to buy the canvass. What he’s doing is selling you this idea, whatever it is he’s projecting. It was the same kinda thing, but I hadn’t come across it before. How do you sell a ‘nail in a hammer?’ So anyway, I said, uh, the gallery owner was all fussin’ ’round saying, ‘Is he gonna buy something?’ And she’s not..she’s ignoring me. So he introduced us, and I said ‘Well, uh, where’s the event?’ you know, ‘Where’s the happening?’ ‘Cause I’d seen the bag. So she just takes a card out and gives it to me and it just says, ‘Breathe’. So I said, ‘like that?’ She said, ‘You got it’. I said, ‘Uh huh, alright’. I’m beginning to catch on, here. So, and then I see this hammer, this thing… ”

YOKO: “I just remember his nose… He did it exactly like that.”

JOHN: “… well, you know, what else are you gonna do? This was the big event. I mean, all the way from New York for that? So, I see the hammer hanging on the thing with a few nails. And I said, ‘Well, can I at least hammer a nail in? You know, I’ve come all the way from the suburbs for this’. And she says, ‘No!'”

YOKO: “‘Cause it’s before the opening… ”

JOHN: “… it’s before the opening and she didn’t want the thing messed up. So, anyway, the gallery owner has a ‘little word’ with her. Then she says, she comes over to me and she says, ‘Alright.’ No smiling, or anything. Because, you know how she is, she doesn’t… she’s not runnin’ for office – she never was, though. She looks at me and she says, ‘You give me 5 shillings’. Well, that’s about $10 or maybe $20… ”

YOKO: “$10?!? Are you kidding? 5 shillings was about 50 cents… ”

JOHN: “No, no, in those days the shilling,… well, whatever, she says ‘Give me 5 shillings and you can hammer a nail in.’ So I looked at her and I said, ‘I’ll give you an imaginary 5 shillings and hammer in an imaginary nail in, okay?’ And that’s when we connected really, and we looked at each other like… you know that sort of… something went off. Well, I didn’t see her again for a few weeks. We went to a Claes Oldenburg opening and we were all… we… I went with Paul, and I don’t know who she was with. But I got separated from Paul, and I felt this sort of vibe behind me. And I looked ’round and there she was. And, we’re both very shy – believe it or not. And we… I don’t know what I said. We said something… uh, we didn’t really get together until 18 months later. We didn’t make love ’till two years… You think we’re rock and rollers, you know, all the… life that people lead. And, uh, it’s alright coming on with someone you know its not going to go anywhere. It’s easy to one-night-stand, and groupies and that. But for a real relationship… I was so paranoid and it was 18 months or a year before we got near to, uh, each other physically, as it were. ‘Cause I didn’t know how to treat somebody – a real woman. I only knew how to treat groupies, really. That’s not to say anything against me first wife, but that was when we were kids and our relationship started when we were both kids, so it was a different thing altogether. But this was quite a shock for me, and somebody who demanded equal rights right from the word ‘go’, you know? It was quite a long trip. But we’ve been together now longer than the Beatles. You know that?”

YOKO: “That is interesting… ”

JOHN: “People always think, ‘well, John and Yoko just got together and the Beatles split’. But we’ve been together longer than the Beatles.”

PATHETIC





pathetic (adj.)
1590s, "affecting the emotions, exciting the passions," from Middle French pathétique "moving, stirring, affecting" (16c.), from Late Latin patheticus, from Greek pathetikos "subject to feeling, sensitive, capable of emotion," from pathetos "liable to suffer," verbal adjective of pathein "to suffer" (from PIE root *kwent(h)- "to suffer"). 







Monday 17 June 2019

TULPA



Tony Clifton takes over Jim Carrey’s  press conference for Man in the Moon...





Saturday 15 June 2019

The Knight of The Mirrors







The Chorister : 
What is the one thing evil cannot face? 
Not ever

TEGAN: 
What? 

The Chorister : 
Itself. 

ADRIC: 
But you said the Kinda would react to the mirror. 
They aren't evil. 

The Chorister : 
Ah, Hindle captured their INNOCENCE. 
The Mara will rebel. 
They cannot face themselves, don't you see? 

TEGAN: 
No.





Stop.
Enough.
It's been two weeks.
Get up off the damn mat.


You wanted Don Quixote? 

Oh.


This is it.
By the way, this is what brought him down.


Nobody's brought you down.


The Knight of the Mirrors.
He holds up a mirror and shows him.

- Stop it.

Shows him! I mean, he doesn't fight him with a sword.
He shows him with a mirror what a total fool he looks like.

Thursday 13 June 2019

All Humour is a POWER STRUGGLE



The Queen : 
Have you seen how the hens in
the yard peck at each other?
Each choosing the one just weaker.

Why do the ladies peck at you?

Ophelia :
I'm not noble, My Lady.

The Queen :
Did you know I was not raised at court?

My sister and I were sent as girls to a convent in France.

But even there, there were hens,
and they pecked.


Ophelia : Even the nuns?

The Queen : But I had my sister to defend me.





I have been Denounced by Jeremy Corbyn over a Joke

FROM POWER STRUGGLE TO REVENGE 

YOUTH: 
Okay, all this talk about teleology and such is pure sophistry, and trauma definitely does exist. And people cannot break free from the past. 

Surely you realise that? We cannot go back to the past in a time machine. As long as the past exists as the past, we live within contexts from the past. 

If one were to treat the past as something that does not exist, that would be the same as negating the entire life one has led. Are you suggesting I choose such an irresponsible life? 

PHILOSOPHER: 
It is true that one cannot use a time machine or turn back the hands of time. But what kind of meaning does one attribute to past events? This is the task that is given to ‘you now’. 

YOUTH: 
All right, so let’s talk about ‘now’. Last time, you said that people fabricate the emotion of anger, right? And that that is the standpoint of teleology. I still cannot accept that statement. For example, how would you explain instances of anger toward society, or anger toward government? Would you say that these, too, are emotions fabricated in order to push one’s opinions? 

PHILOSOPHER: 
Certainly, there are times when I feel indignation with regard to social problems. But I would say that rather than a sudden burst of emotion, it is indignation based on logic. There is a difference between personal anger (personal grudge) and indignation with regard to society’s contradictions and injustices (righteous indignation). Personal anger soon cools. Righteous indignation, on the other hand, lasts for a long time. Anger as an expression of a personal grudge is nothing but a tool for making others submit to you. 

YOUTH: You say that personal grudges and righteous indignation are different? 

PHILOSOPHER: They are completely different. Because righteous indignation goes beyond one’s own interests. 

YOUTH: Then, I’ll ask about personal grudges. Surely even you get angry sometimes—for instance, if someone hurls abuse at you for no particular reason—don’t you? 

PHILOSOPHER: 
No, I do not. 

YOUTH: Come on, be honest. 

PHILOSOPHER: If someone were to abuse me to my face, I would think about the person’s hidden goal. Even if you are not directly abusive, when you feel genuinely angry due to another person’s words or behaviour, please consider that the person is challenging you to a power struggle. 

YOUTH: A power struggle? 

PHILOSOPHER: For instance, a child will tease an adult with various pranks and misbehaviours. 
In many cases, this is something done with the goal of getting attention, and will cease just before the adult gets genuinely angry. 
However, if the child does not stop before the adult gets genuinely angry, then his goal is actually to get in a fight. 

YOUTH: 
Why would he want to get in a fight? 

PHILOSOPHER: 
He wants to win. He wants to prove his power by winning. 

YOUTH: I don’t really get that. Could you give me some concrete examples? 
PHILOSOPHER: 
Let’s say you and a friend have been discussing the current political situation. 
Before long, it turns into a heated argument, and neither of you is willing to accept any differences of opinion until finally it reaches the point where he starts engaging in personal attacks—that you’re stupid, and it’s because of people like you that this country doesn’t change; that sort of thing. 

YOUTH: 
But if someone said that to me, 
I wouldn’t be able to put up with it. 

PHILOSOPHER: 
In this case, what is the other person’s goal? 
Is it only that he wants to discuss politics? 
No, it isn’t. It’s that he finds you unbearable, and he wants to criticise and provoke you, and make you submit through a power struggle. If you get angry at this point, the moment he has been anticipating will arrive, and the relationship will suddenly turn into a power struggle. No matter what the provocation, you must not get taken in. 

YOUTH: No, there’s no need to run away from it. If someone wants to start a fight, it’s fine to accept it. Because it’s the other guy who’s at fault, anyway. You can bash his nose in, the stupid fool. With words, that is. PHILOSOPHER: Now, let’s say you take control of the quarrel. And then the other man, who was seeking to defeat you, withdraws in a sportsmanlike manner. The thing is, the power struggle doesn’t end there. Having lost the dispute, he rushes onto the next stage. YOUTH: The next stage? PHILOSOPHER: Yes. It’s the revenge stage. Though he has withdrawn for the time being, he will be scheming some revenge in another place and another form, and will reappear with an act of retaliation. YOUTH: Like what, for instance? PHILOSOPHER: The child oppressed by his parents will turn to delinquency. He’ll stop going to school. He’ll cut his wrists or engage in other acts of self-harm. In Freudian aetiology, this is regarded as simple cause and effect: the parents raised the child in this way, and that is why the child grew up to be like this. It’s just like pointing out that a plant wasn’t watered, so it withered. It’s an interpretation that is certainly easy to understand. But Adlerian teleology does not turn a blind eye to the goal that the child is hiding. That is to say, the goal of revenge on the parents. If he becomes a delinquent, stops going to school, cuts his wrists or things like that, the parents will be upset. They’ll panic and worry themselves sick over him. It is in the knowledge that this will happen that the child engages in problem behaviour. So that the current goal (revenge on the parents) can be realised, not because he is motivated by past causes (home environment). YOUTH: He engages in problem behaviour in order to upset his parents? PHILOSOPHER: That’s right. There are probably a lot of people who feel mystified by seeing a child who cuts his wrists, and think, Why would he do such a thing? But try to think how the people around the child—the parents, for instance—will feel as a result of the behaviour of wrist-cutting. If you do, the goal behind the behaviour should come into view of its own accord. YOUTH: The goal being revenge? PHILOSOPHER: Yes. And once the interpersonal relationship reaches the revenge stage, it is almost impossible for either party to find a solution. To prevent this from happening, when one is challenged to a power struggle, one must never allow oneself to be taken in. 

ADMITTING FAULT IS NOT DEFEAT 

YOUTH: All right, then what should you do when you’re subjected to personal attacks right to your face? Do you just grin and bear it? PHILOSOPHER: No, the idea that you are ‘bearing it’ is proof that you are still stuck in the power struggle. When you are challenged to a fight, and you sense that it is a power struggle, step down from the conflict as soon as possible. Do not answer his action with a reaction. That is the only thing we can do. YOUTH: But is it really that easy to not respond to provocation? In the first place, how would you say I should control my anger? PHILOSOPHER: When you control your anger, you’re ‘bearing it’, right? Instead, let’s learn a way to settle things without using the emotion of anger. Because after all, anger is a tool. A means for achieving a goal. YOUTH: That’s a tough one. PHILOSOPHER: The first thing that I want you to understand here is the fact that anger is a form of communication, and that communication is nevertheless possible without using anger. We can convey our thoughts and intentions and be accepted without any need for anger. If you learn to understand this experientially, the anger emotion will stop appearing, all on its own. YOUTH: But what if they come at you with mistaken accusations, or make insulting comments? I shouldn’t get angry even then? PHILOSOPHER: You don’t seem to understand yet. It’s not that you mustn’t get angry, but that there is no need to rely on the tool of anger. Irascible people do not have short tempers—it is only that they do not know that there are effective communication tools other than anger. That is why people end up saying things like ‘I just snapped’ or ‘he flew into a rage’. We end up relying on anger to communicate. YOUTH: Effective communication tools other than anger … PHILOSOPHER: We have language. We can communicate through language. Believe in the power of language, and the language of logic. YOUTH: Certainly, if I did not believe in that, we wouldn’t be having this dialogue. PHILOSOPHER: One more thing about power struggles. In every instance, no matter how much you might think you are right, try not to criticise the other party on that basis. This is an interpersonal relationship trap that many people fall into. YOUTH: Why’s that? PHILOSOPHER: The moment one is convinced that ‘I am right’ in an interpersonal relationship, one has already stepped into a power struggle. YOUTH: Just because you think you’re right? No way, that’s just blowing things all out of proportion. PHILOSOPHER: I am right. That is to say, the other party is wrong. At that point, the focus of the discussion shifts from ‘the rightness of the assertions’ to ‘the state of the interpersonal relationship’. In other words, the conviction that ‘I am right’ leads to the assumption that ‘this person is wrong’, and finally it becomes a contest and you are thinking, I have to win. It’s a power struggle through and through. YOUTH: Hmm. PHILOSOPHER: In the first place, the rightness of one’s assertions has nothing to do with winning or losing. If you think you are right, regardless of what other people’s opinions might be, the matter should be closed then and there. However, many people will rush into a power struggle, and try to make others submit to them. And that is why they think of ‘admitting a mistake’ as ‘admitting defeat’. YOUTH: Yes, there definitely is that aspect. PHILOSOPHER: Because of one’s mindset of not wanting to lose, one is unable to admit one’s mistake, the result being that one ends up choosing the wrong path. Admitting mistakes, conveying words of apology, and stepping down from power struggles—none of these things is defeat. The pursuit of superiority is not something that is carried out through competition with other people. YOUTH: So, when you’re hung up on winning and losing, you lose the ability to make the right choices? 
PHILOSOPHER: Yes. It clouds your judgement, and all you can see is imminent victory or defeat. Then you turn down the wrong path. It’s only when we take away the lenses of competition and winning and losing that we can begin to correct and change ourselves.

Wednesday 12 June 2019

FAILURE OF IMAGINATION



ODO
He's telling The Truth, Commander --
He doesn't know why the Romulans 
would try to kill him. 

SISKO
What makes you so sure? 

ODO
Because if he did know, he'd already be spinning out an elaborate web of lies to cover up The Truth. 

GARAK
The Truth is usually just an excuse for 
A Lack of Imagination

























On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 men armed with boxcutters directed by a man on dialysis in a cave fortress halfway around the world using a satellite phone and a laptop directed the most sophisticated penetration of the most heavily-defended airspace in the world, overpowering the passengers and the military combat-trained pilots on 4 commercial aircraft before flying those planes wildly off course for over an hour without being molested by a single fighter interceptor.


These 19 hijackers, devout religious fundamentalists who liked to drink alcohol, snort cocaine, and live with pink-haired strippers, managed to knock down 3 buildings with 2 planes in New York, while in Washington a pilot who couldn’t handle a single engine Cessna was able to fly a 757 in an 8,000 foot descending 270 degree corskscrew turn to come exactly level with the ground, hitting the Pentagon in the budget analyst office where DoD staffers were working on the mystery of the 2.3 trillion dollars that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had announced “missing” from the Pentagon’s coffers in a press conference the day before, on September 10, 2001.

Luckily, the news anchors knew who did it within minutes, the pundits knew within hours, the Administration knew within the day, and the evidence literally fell into the FBI’s lap. But for some reason a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists demanded an investigation into the greatest attack on American soil in history.

The investigation was delayed, underfunded, set up to fail, a conflict of interest and a cover upfrom start to finish. It was based on testimony extracted through torture, the records of which were destroyed. It failed to mention the existence of WTC7, Able Danger, Ptech, Sibel Edmonds,OBL and the CIA, and the drills of hijacked aircraft being flown into buildings that were being simulated at the precise same time that those events were actually happening. It was lied to by the Pentagon, the CIA, the Bush Administration and as for Bush and Cheney…well, no one knows what they told it because they testified in secret, off the record, not under oath and behind closed doors. It didn’t bother to look at who funded the attacks because that question is of “little practical significance“. Still, the 9/11 Commission did brilliantly, answering all of the questions the public had (except most of the victims’ family members’ questions) and pinned blame on all the people responsible (although no one so much as lost their job), determining the attacks were “a failure of imagination” because “I don’t think anyone could envision flying airplanes into buildings ” except the Pentagon and FEMA and NORAD and the NRO.

The DIA destroyed 2.5 TB of data on Able Danger, but that’s OK because it probably wasn’t important.

The SEC destroyed their records on the investigation into the insider trading before the attacks, but that’s OK because destroying the records of the largest investigation in SEC history is just part of routine record keeping.

NIST has classified the data that they used for their model of WTC7’s collapse, but that’s OK because knowing how they made their model of that collapse would “jeopardize public safety“.

The FBI has argued that all material related to their investigation of 9/11 should be kept secret from the public, but that’s OK because the FBI probably has nothing to hide.

This man never existed, nor is anything he had to say worthy of your attention, and if you say otherwise you are a paranoid conspiracy theorist and deserve to be shunned by all of humanity. Likewise him, him, him, and her. (and her and her and him).

Osama Bin Laden lived in a cave fortress in the hills of Afghanistan, but somehow got away. Then he was hiding out in Tora Bora but somehow got away. Then he lived in Abottabad for years, taunting the most comprehensive intelligence dragnet employing the most sophisticated technology in the history of the world for 10 years, releasing video after video with complete impunity (and getting younger and younger as he did so), before finally being found in a daring SEAL team raid which wasn’t recorded on video, in which he didn’t resist or use his wife as a human shield, and in which these crack special forces operatives panicked and killed this unarmed man, supposedly the best source of intelligence about those dastardly terrorists on the planet. Then they dumped his body in the ocean before telling anyone about it. Then a couple dozen of that team’s members died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.

This is the story of 9/11, brought to you by the media which told you the hard truths about JFK and incubator babies and mobile production facilities and the rescue of Jessica Lynch.

If you have any questions about this story…you are a batshit, paranoid, tinfoil, dog-abusing baby-hater and will be reviled by everyone. If you love your country and/or freedom, happiness, rainbows, rock and roll, puppy dogs, apple pie and your grandma, you will never ever express doubts about any part of this story to anyone. Ever.

This has been a public service announcement by: the Friends of the FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA, SEC,MSM, White House, NIST, and the 9/11 Commission. 

Because Ignorance is Strength





THE WALL OF SILENCE


SPOCK: 
Curious. Very well. 
For twenty-four hours we'll agree this conversation did not take place.

VALERIS: 
A lie?

SPOCK: 
An Omission.




SPOCK: 
Ah! Mister Scott, I understand you're having difficulty with the warp drive. 
How much time do you require for repair?

SCOTT: 
There's nothing wrong with the bloody thing.

SPOCK: 
Mister Scott. If we return to Spacedock, the assassins would surely find away to dispose of their incriminating footwear
 and we will never see the Captain and Doctor McCoy alive again.

SCOTT: 
It could take weeks, sir.

SPOCK: 
Thank you, Mister Scott. 
Valeris, please inform Starfleet Command our warp drive is inoperative.

VALERIS: 
A lie?

SPOCK: 
An Error.









KIRK: 
Names, Lieutenant.

VALERIS: 
I do not remember.

SPOCK: 
A lie?

VALERIS: 
A Choice.




One of the great myths surrounding Vulcans was that the race was incapable of telling a lie. 

Doctor Leonard McCoy once stated that the simple fact of Spock being a Vulcan meant that he was incapable of lying. (TOS: "The Menagerie, Part I")

While generally believed to be accurate, Vulcans were, in fact, capable of telling lies, usually justifying this action as a logical course towards a means to an end. 

An example of this would be lying to carry out a secret mission or lying to protect the lives of others. 

Spock was in fact capable of lying, as was Valeris, although Valeris' motives were somewhat dubious. 

Tuvok admitted that Vulcans were capable of telling lies but added that he had never found it prudent or necessary to do so, after an inquiry by Seven of Nine into whether or not they were capable of lying. 

(TOS: "The Enterprise Incident"; TOS: "Errand of Mercy"; Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country; VOY: "Hunters"; Star Trek Into Darkness)




SPOCK: 
The destruction of Discovery was tragic 
but does not in and of itself resolve the issue.
Even more radical steps must be taken to ensure that type of scenario never repeats itself.

I'm eager to hear your recommendations, Lieutenant.

Regulation 157, Section Three, requires Starfleet officers to abstain from participating in historical events.
Any residual trace or knowledge of Discovery's data, or the time suit, offers a foothold for those who might not see how critical, 
how deeply critical, that directive is.
Therefore, to insure the Federation never finds itself facing the same danger, all officers remaining with knowledge of these events must be ordered never to speak of Discovery, its spore drive, or her crew again.

Under penalty of treason.

Thank you, Mr. Spock.
We'll take it under advisement.


“Those That Ran The Soviet Union

Believed that they could plan, and manage a new kind of Socialist Society.


They had discovered that it was impossible to control and predict everything — and The Plan had run out of control.





But rather than reveal that reveal this, The Technocrats decided to pretend that everything was still going according to The Plan.


And what emerged instead was a 

Fake Version of The Society.


The Soviet Union became a Society where everyone knew what their leaders said was   

Not-Real, because everyone could see with their own eyes that the economy was falling apart —



But Everybody Had to Play Along, 

and pretend that it was Real —

Because No-One Could Imagine an Alternative.


One Soviet called it 

HYPERNORMALISATION

You were so much a part of The System that it became impossible to see beyond it — 

The Fakeness was HyperNormal.”



FAILURE OF IMAGINATION




Some people like to dive right in

Can you imagine that?

And flap about in bathtub gin

Can you imagine that?


Don’t Forget Scrub Behind Your Ears.

Tuesday 11 June 2019

The Windmills of Reality Fight Back











“In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for coursing. An olla of rather more beef than mutton, a salad on most nights, scraps on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and a pigeon or so extra on Sundays, made away with three-quarters of his income. The rest of it went in a doublet of fine cloth and velvet breeches and shoes to match for holidays, while on week-days he made a brave figure in his best homespun. He had in his house a housekeeper past forty, a niece under twenty, and a lad for the field and market-place, who used to saddle the hack as well as handle the bill-hook. The age of this gentleman of ours was bordering on fifty; he was of a hardy habit, spare, gaunt-featured, a very early riser and a great sportsman. They will have it his surname was Quixada or Quesada (for here there is some difference of opinion among the authors who write on the subject), although from reasonable conjectures it seems plain that he was called Quexana. This, however, is of but little importance to our tale; it will be enough not to stray a hair's breadth from the truth in the telling of it. 

You must know, then, that the above-named gentleman whenever he was at leisure (which was mostly all the year round) gave himself up to reading books of chivalry with such ardour and avidity that he almost entirely neglected the pursuit of his field-sports, and even the management of his property; and to such a pitch did his eagerness and infatuation go that he sold many an acre of tillageland to buy books of chivalry to read, and brought home as many of them as he could get. But of all there were none he liked so well as those of the famous Feliciano de Silva's composition, for their lucidity of style and complicated conceits were as pearls in his sight, particularly when in his reading he came upon courtships and cartels, where he often found passages like "the reason of the unreason with which my reason is afflicted so weakens my reason that with reason I murmur at your beauty;" or again, "the high heavens, that of your divinity divinely fortify you with the stars, render you deserving of the desert your greatness deserves." Over conceits of this sort the poor gentleman lost his wits, and used to lie awake striving to understand them and worm the meaning out of them; what Aristotle himself could not have made out or extracted had he come to life again for that special purpose. He was not at all easy about the wounds which Don Belianis gave and took, because it seemed to him that, great as were the surgeons who had cured him, he must have had his face and body covered all over with seams and scars. He commended, however, the author's way of ending his book with the promise of that interminable adventure, and many a time was he tempted to take up his pen and finish it properly as is there proposed, which no doubt he would have done, and made a successful piece of work of it too, had not greater and more absorbing thoughts prevented him. 

Many an argument did he have with the curate of his village (a learned man, and a graduate of Siguenza) as to which had been the better knight, Palmerin of England or Amadis of Gaul. Master Nicholas, the village barber, however, used to say that neither of them came up to the Knight of Phoebus, and that if there was any that could compare with him it was Don Galaor, the brother of Amadis of Gaul, because he had a spirit that was equal to every occasion, and was no finikin knight, nor lachrymose like his brother, while in the matter of valour he was not a whit behind him. 

In short, he became so absorbed in his books that he spent his nights from sunset to sunrise, and his days from dawn to dark, poring over them; and what with little sleep and much reading his brains got so dry that he lost his wits. His fancy grew full of what he used to read about in his books, enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, wooings, loves, agonies, and all sorts of impossible nonsense; and it so possessed his mind that the whole fabric of invention and fancy he read of was true, that to him no history in the world had more reality in it. He used to say the Cid Ruy Diaz was a very good knight, but that he was not to be compared with the Knight of the Burning Sword who with one back-stroke cut in half two fierce and monstrous giants. He thought more of Bernardo del Carpio because at Roncesvalles he slew Roland in spite of enchantments, availing himself of the artifice of Hercules when he strangled Antaeus the son of Terra in his arms. He approved highly of the giant Morgante, because, although of the giant breed which is always arrogant and ill-conditioned, he alone was affable and well-bred. But above all he admired Reinaldos of Montalban, especially when he saw him sallying forth from his castle and robbing everyone he met, and when beyond the seas he stole that image of Mahomet which, as his history says, was entirely of gold. To have a bout of kicking at that traitor of a Ganelon he would have given his housekeeper, and his niece into the bargain. In short, his wits being quite gone, he hit upon the strangest notion that ever madman in this world hit upon, and that was that he fancied it was right and requisite, as well for the support of his own honour as for the service of his country, that he should make a knight-errant of himself, roaming the world over in full armour and on horseback in quest of adventures, and putting in practice himself all that he had read of as being the usual practices of knights-errant; righting every kind of wrong, and exposing himself to peril and danger from which, in the issue, he was to reap eternal renown and fame. Already the poor man saw himself crowned by the might of his arm Emperor of Trebizond at least; and so, led away by the intense enjoyment he found in these pleasant fancies, he set himself forthwith to put his scheme into execution. The first thing he did was to clean up some armour that had belonged to his great-grandfather, and had been for ages lying forgotten in a corner eaten with rust and covered with mildew. He scoured and polished it as best he could, but he perceived one great defect in it, that it had no closed helmet, nothing but a simple morion. This deficiency, however, his ingenuity supplied, for he contrived a kind of half-helmet of pasteboard which, fitted on to the morion, looked like a whole one. It is true that, in order to see if it was strong and fit to stand a cut, he drew his sword and gave it a couple of slashes, the first of which undid in an instant what had taken him a week to do. The ease with which he had knocked it to pieces disconcerted him somewhat, and to guard against that danger he set to work again, fixing bars of iron on the inside until he was satisfied with its strength; and then, not caring to try any more experiments with it, he passed it and adopted it as a helmet of the most perfect construction. 

He next proceeded to inspect his hack, which, with more quartos than a real and more blemishes than the steed of Gonela, that "tantum pellis et ossa fuit," surpassed in his eyes the Bucephalus of Alexander or the Babieca of the Cid. Four days were spent in thinking what name to give him, because (as he said to himself) it was not right that a horse belonging to a knight so famous, and one with such merits of his own, should be without some distinctive name, and he strove to adapt it so as to indicate what he had been before belonging to a knight-errant, and what he then was; for it was only reasonable that, his master taking a new character, he should take a new name, and that it should be a distinguished and full-sounding one, befitting the new order and calling he was about to follow. 

And so, after having composed, struck out, rejected, added to, unmade, and remade a multitude of names out of his memory and fancy, he decided upon calling him Rocinante, a name, to his thinking, lofty, sonorous, and significant of his condition as a hack before he became what he now was, the first and foremost of all the hacks in the world. 

Having got a name for his horse so much to his taste, he was anxious to get one for himself, and he was eight days more pondering over this point, till at last he made up his mind to call himself "Don Quixote," whence, as has been already said, the authors of this veracious history have inferred that his name must have been beyond a doubt Quixada, and not Quesada as others would have it. Recollecting, however, that the valiant Amadis was not content to call himself curtly Amadis and nothing more, but added the name of his kingdom and country to make it famous, and called himself Amadis of Gaul, he, like a good knight, resolved to add on the name of his, and to style himself Don Quixote of La Mancha, whereby, he considered, he described accurately his origin and country, and did honour to it in taking his surname from it. 


So then, his armour being furbished, his morion turned into a helmet, his hack christened, and he himself confirmed, he came to the conclusion that nothing more was needed now but to look out for a lady to be in love with; for a knight-errant without love was like a tree without leaves or fruit, or a body without a soul. As he said to himself, "If, for my sins, or by my good fortune, I come across some giant hereabouts, a common occurrence with knights-errant, and overthrow him in one onslaught, or cleave him asunder to the waist, or, in short, vanquish and subdue him, will it not be well to have some one I may send him to as a present, that he may come in and fall on his knees before my sweet lady, and in a humble, submissive voice say, 'I am the giant Caraculiambro, lord of the island of Malindrania, vanquished in single combat by the never sufficiently extolled knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, who has commanded me to present myself before your Grace, that your Highness dispose of me at your pleasure'?" Oh, how our good gentleman enjoyed the delivery of this speech, especially when he had thought of some one to call his Lady! There was, so the story goes, in a village near his own a very good-looking farm-girl with whom he had been at one time in love, though, so far as is known, she never knew it nor gave a thought to the matter. Her name was Aldonza Lorenzo, and upon her he thought fit to confer the title of Lady of his Thoughts; and after some search for a name which should not be out of harmony with her own, and should suggest and indicate that of a princess and great lady, he decided upon calling her Dulcinea del Toboso—she being of El Toboso—a name, to his mind, musical, uncommon, and significant, like all those he had already bestowed upon himself and the things belonging to him.

Well if You Wanted Honesty, That’s All You Had to Say....





Well if You Wanted Honesty, 

That’s All You Had to Say...



“The KGB is a Circle of  Accountability —

Nothing More.”












































“The Social Order ITSELF 

is Not Without Intent...” 


“Those That Ran The Soviet Union

Believed that they could plan, and manage a new kind of Socialist Society.


They had discovered that it was impossible to control and predict everything — and The Plan had run out of control.


But rather than reveal that reveal this, The Technocrats decided to pretend that everything was still going according to The Plan.


And what emerged instead was a 

Fake Version of The Society.


The Soviet Union became a Society where everyone knew what their leaders said was   

Not-Real, because everyone could see with their own eyes that the economy was falling apart —


But Everybody Had to Play Along, 

and pretend that it was Real —

Because No-One Could Imagine an Alternative.


One Soviet called it 

HYPERNORMALISATION

You were so much a part of The System that it became impossible to see beyond it — 

The Fakeness was HyperNormal.”



Some people like to dive right in

Can you imagine that?

And flap about in bathtub gin

Can you imagine that?


Don’t Forget Scrub Behind Your Ears.




Well if you wanted honesty, that's all you had to say
I never want to let you down or have you go, it's better off this way
For all the dirty looks
For photographs your boyfriend took
Remember when you broke your foot from jumping out the second floor?
I'm not okay
I'm not okay
I'm not okay
You wear me out
What will it take to show you that it's not the life it seems? (I'm not okay)
I told you time and time again you sing the words but don't know what it means
To be a joke and look
Another line without a hook
I held you close as we both shook for the last time
Take a good hard look
I'm not okay
I'm not okay
I'm not okay
You wear me out
Forget about the dirty looks
The photographs your boyfriend took?
You said you read me like a book, but the pages all are torn and frayed
I'm okay
I'm okay
I'm okay, now
(I'm okay, now)
But you really need to listen to me
Because I'm telling you the truth
I mean this
I'm okay (trust me)
I'm not okay
I'm not okay
Well, I'm not okay
I'm not o-fucking-kay
I'm not okay
I'm not okay (okay)