A is A - The [Objectivist] Gospel According to St. Ditko

Why is Spider-Man morally superior to Superman..?

Because Superman needs to have a Father to tell him what Peter Parker was able to intuitively know and work out on his own. 

Tony Stark: 

Why are you doing this, huh? 

What's your MO? 

I've got to know, what gets you out of that twin bed every morning?

Peter Parker: 

Because... because, I've been me my whole life, 

and I've had these powers for six months. 

I read books, I build computers, and 

I would love to play football, 

but I couldn't then 

and so I shouldn't be able to now...

He Understands about Simony.

Jonathan Kent: 

Been showing off a bit, haven't you, son? 

Young Clark Kent:

Um... I didn't mean to show off, Pop. 

It's just that, guys like that Brad, I just want to tear him apart. 

Jonathan Kent: 

Yeah, I know, I know. 

Young Clark Kent: 

And I know I shouldn't... 

Jonathan Kent: 

Yeah, I know, you can do all these amazing things 

and sometimes you feel like you will just go bust unless you can tell people about them. 

Young Clark Kent: 

Yeah. I mean every time I kick the football I can make a touchdown. 

Every time! 

I mean, is it showing off if somebody's doing the things he's capable of doing? 

Is a bird showing off when it flies? 

Jonathan Kent: 

No, no. Now, you listen to me. 

When you first came to us, we thought people would come and take you away because, when they found out, you know, the things you could do... and that worried us a lot. 

But then a man gets older, and he starts thinking differently and things get very clear. 

And one thing I do know, son, and that is you are here for a reason. 

I don't know whose reason, or whatever the reason is... Maybe it's because... uh... I don't know. 

But I do know one thing -

It's not to score touchdowns. Huh? 

[they laugh] 

Young Clark Kent: 

Thanks, Dad.

Oddly, "Uncle Ben", literally means "Uncle Son" - which is interesting, to say the least.

" You can take your menial position—self-described—and turn that into a very nice little slice of hell. That’s for sure.

I always think of the archetypal diner in that way. You guys have been in this diner. There’s a really good opposite diner. There’s a great diner on YouTube. It’s Tom Waits reading a poem by Bukowski. I think it’s called Nirvana. It’s about a good diner that he happened to visit when he was a kid. A diner where everything was going well. You could listen to that. It’s great. But this is the opposite diner, that I’m thinking about. You go into a diner, right. It’s seven o'clock in the morning. You order some bacon and eggs and some toast. 

You look around the diner, and you think, it was like 1975 when the windows were last washed. There’s this kind of thick coating of who-gives-a-damn grease on the walls. The floor, too, has got that sort of stickiness that you really have to work at to develop over the years. The waitress is not happy to be there. The guy behind the counter isn’t happy that that happens to be the waitress that he’s working with. And then you walk down the stairs to the washroom, and that’s its own little trip. 

You come back, and you order your damn eggs, and you order your toast, and you order your bacon. It comes, and the eggs are too cooked on the bottom, so they’re kind of brown, and then they’re kind of raw on top. They’re cold in the middle. You really have to work to cook an egg like that, man, but you can master that with like 10 years of bitterness. It will teach you how to cook an egg like that. 

And then the toast—here’s what you do with the toast. You take the white bread—the pre-sliced stuff that no one should ever eat—and then you put that in the toaster, and you overcook it. You wait, and then you pop it out of the toaster. Because it’s overcooked, you scrape it off. You knock off the crumbs so that it doesn’t look too burnt, and then you wait until it’s cold, and then you put cold margarine on it. 

First of all, it’s not butter. But, if you put cold margarine on it, you can also kinda tear holes in it. Then it has lumps of margarine in it, and it’s really dry, except where it’s too greasy. That’s like its own little work of art, man.

You put that on the side with eggs. And then you have the potatoes. This is how you cook the potatoes properly: the leftover potatoes—and you keep dumping new leftover potatoes into the old leftover potatoes, over weeks. Some of the potatoes have half returned to mother earth. Then you flap them on the grill, and you sort of burn them a bit, I guess. And then you slap them on the plate. Jesus. You don’t want to eat those, man. That’s for sure. That’s the point.

You have the bacon, and you want to make sure you buy the lowest possible quality bacon. That’s how you start. Then you throw it on the grill—and your grill has to be overheated to do this—and you have to cook the bacon so that it’s raw in places and burnt in other places. 

It has that delightful pig-like odor that only really cheap, badly-cooked bacon can provide. Or maybe you use those little breakfast sausages that no one in their bloody right mind would let within 15 feet of anything living. And then you serve that. And you serve it with the kind of orange juice that is only orange is color, and with coffee that’s…Agh

…What would you say? It was started too early in the morning. That’s the first thing. Bad quality coffee started too early in the morning—got cold once or twice, and has been reheated. And then you serve that with whitener. 

It’s like, here’s your breakfast! 

It’s like, no, man. That’s not breakfast. 

That’s hell, and you created it.

 And then what you do if you have a diner like that is—because you have a miserable life if you have a diner like that, and you really worked on that—you go home, and you curse your wife, and you curse your kids, and you fucking well curse God, too, for producing a universe where a diner like yours is allowed to exist. And that’s your bloody life.  "

Also, that’s what Ditko’s trying to point out, here.

Which is What Makes PornHub a Living Thing.

Larsen-style.

The Tams

SIMON & RIVER 

SHY/SIMPLE/RELATIVELY-PERFECT-MAN

Tam is a Hebrew word meaning shy or simple or relatively perfect man.

The Simon has (or had) a job; he was employed; he has nice, clean, neat hair, clipped accent, fine clothes and good manners - he was "respectable"

The River runs wild.

"I look out for me and mine. 

That don't include you 'less I conjure it does. 

Now you stuck a thorn in the Alliance's paw. That tickles me a bit. But it also means I got to step twice as fast to avoid them and that means turning down plenty of jobs. Even honest ones. 

Put this crew together with the promise of work, which the Alliance makes harder every year. 

Come a day there won’t be room for naughty men like us to slip about at all. 

This job goes South, there well may not be another. 

So here is us, on the raggedy edge. 

Don't push me, and I won't push you.

Esau, a “man of the field,” [ a savage ] became a hunter who had “rough” qualities that distinguished him from his twin brother. 

Among these distinguishing qualities were his red hair and noticeable hairiness.

Jacob was a shy or simple man, depending on the translation of the Hebrew word “Tam” (which also means “relatively perfect man”).

Throughout Genesis, Esau is frequently shown as being supplanted by his younger twin Jacob (Israel).

11And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man: 

12 My father peradventure will feel me, and I shall seem to him as a deceiver; and I shall bring a curse upon me, and not a blessing. 

13 And his mother said unto him, Upon me be thy curse, my son: only obey my voice, and go fetch me them.

14 And he went, and fetched, and brought them to his mother: and his mother made savoury meat, such as his father loved. 

15 And Rebekah took goodly raiment of her eldest son Esau, which were with her in the house, and put them upon Jacob her younger son: 

16 And she put the skins of the kids of the goats upon his hands, and upon the smooth of his neck:

ZOE: 

You've never heard of Reavers?

SIMON: 

Campfire stories . . . Men gone savage at the edge of space, killing, and . . .

ZOE: 

They're not stories.

SIMON: 

What happens if they board us?

ZOE: 

If they take the ship, they'll rape us to death, eat our flesh and sew our skins into their clothing, and if we're very, very lucky, they'll do it in that order.