it's the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he's got some great secret in him.
Elijah :
I have, lad, I have. At sea one day,
You'll smell land where there'll be no land,
and on that day Ahab will go
to his grave, but he'll rise again within the hour.
He will rise and beckon. Then all - all save one shall follow. (Slinking away with a smile on his face) Mornin', lads... mornin'. May the heavens bless Ye.
Moby Dick (1956): Gregory Peck's best scene
[last lines]
"Ishmael" : The coffin. Drowned Queequeg's coffin was my life buoy. For one whole day and night , it sustained me on that soft and dirge-like main. Then, a sail appeared; It was the Rachel. The Rachel who in her long melancholy search for her missing children found... another orphan. The drama's done. All are departed away. The great shroud of the sea rolls over the Pequod, her crew, and Moby Dick. I only am escaped... alone, to tell thee.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day 1991 - Miles Dyson Skynet Creator "Raging Wat...
Flow in positive psychology, also known colloquially as being in the zone or locked in, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one's sense of time.
Flow is the meltingtogetherof action and consciousness;
the state of finding a balance between a skill
and how challenging that task is.
It requires a high level of concentration. Flow is used as a coping skill for stress and anxiety when productively pursuing a form of leisure that matches one's skill set.
Mrs. Dyson :
Miles!
You going to work all day?
Miles Edward Dyson :
....I'm sorry, baby.
This thing is kicking my ass.
Mrs. Dyson :
It's Sunday. You promised to take
the kids to Raging Waters today.
Miles Edward Dyson :
....I can't.
I'm on a roll.
This is gonna blow 'em away.
It's a neural-net processor.
Mrs. Dyson :
I know. You told me.
It thinks and learns like we do.
It's superconducting at room temperature.
Other computers are just pocket calculators by comparison.
Why is that so important?
I need to know, 'cause sometimes
I feel like I'm going crazy here.
Miles Edward Dyson :
Baby, I am this close.
Come here --
Imagine a jet airliner with a pilot that never gets tired,
never makes mistakes, never shows up with a hangover.
-- Meet The Pilot.
Mrs. Dyson :
Why did we get married?
Have children?
You don't need us.
Your heart and your mind are in here.
But it doesn't love you like we do.
Miles Edward Dyson :
I'm sorry. Really.
Mrs. Dyson :
How about spending some time with your other babies?
Subject is Despin Convert at birth (male to female). So far no indication of suppressed trauma related to gender alteration. Subject's I.Q. at level 4.6 GMA personality at 4.2. Indicates that subject's social counts are too low for large crew, up mode status, and has been routinely assigned small crew cyrosleep mode duties which been performed adequately.
Slight hyperactivity and nervousness diagnosed and Loxy-Clav M (oral ingestion) has been successful as self-administered treatment.
Moderate intelligence and performance abilities did not substantially increase after security patrol navigation duties and subject was therefore re-assigned long range cyrosleep duties on cargo transports and tugs. Current assessment indicates subject should not be upgraded until after extensive full range DOQ testing and Frakes-Stephen orientation is applied.
Above was never acted upon due to employment discontinuity [...]
Doctor Who - The Doctor Falls - Bill Cries Over The Doctor
(Cyberman stomp and explode. The Doctor leaps amongst them, causing detonations with his sonic screwdriver.)
Dr. Disco :
Telos! Sealed you into your ice tombs!
Voga! Canary Wharf! Planet 14!
Every single time, you lose.
Even on The Moon.
(He gets zapped in the back by an early-style Cyberman.)
Dr. Disco :
Ah! Hello. I'm the Doctor.
CYBERMAN:
DOCTORS ARE
NOT REQUIRED
(It aims its helmet weapon directly at his chest.)
Dr. Disco :
Argh! No, no. I'm notA Doctor.
I am The Doctor.
The original, you might say.
(It blasts him again. He falls to his knees.
The regeneration energy builds in his hand.)
Dr. Disco :
Doctor. Doctor, let it go.
— Time enough.
(He raises the sonic screwdriver and detonates a massive explosion.
He lies amidst fires, watched by a weeping brown eye.)
"...My Own Individual Biological Past is extremely entangled with The Past of The Town -- to the best of my knowledge My Family has pretty much always lived here.
There have been people coming in from outside blood marrying into the family so that we're perhaps not quite as inbred as some of our neighbors but for example I understand that at some time during the 1700s that a Belgian you you know ribbon maker married into the family and at this point apparently the family suddenly decided that ribbon making was the future until eventually both my paternal and maternal grandparents end up at the green in the borough's an area of Northampton generally understood to be its oldest quarter it's the area surrounding the original castle built by Solomon to song Li and the town has radiated out from this point much is reported upon more idea out from the point at which a pad was been dropped it's almost like this this culture just spreading out in rings from this central point of impact out to the the far eastern reaches of the county to the new developments appear at the process taking hundreds of years the inhabitants of the borough's were a peculiar mix of people in general it was the poorest area of the town the same to my infant Oy to be a fair mix of Romani blood amongst the people of the district there were criminals there were chances con men but con men who were almost conning themselves who were following some completely unrealistic dream of escape of breaking out of the fairly narrow terrorist confines of this fairly growing the working-class world in which they found themselves there were other people who were completely resigned to their lot who would be satisfied to be local legends that these belonged to a different category and a lot of my forebears seemed to fall into that particular niche ginger Vernon a paternal great-grandfather was apparently a craftsman who specialized in fresco painting in the the Michelangelo tradition of hanging in a palette a couple of feet under a roof while touching up the cherubs and the angels you know painting in a few celestial clouds he was also quite a hard-drinking man a compulsive staple Jack who would chin up sheer walls in the middle of town because he spotted a particularly nice chimney breast that he wanted to give closer inspection to he was offered by a friend of his who was just setting up what would become a very large very successful company he was offered a share in the directorship if he would stay out of pubs for a which then he would have been made a director of the company this seemed to him to be artificial behavior this seemed to him to be a pretense pretending if only for a week to be something other than what he was so he politely declined the offer and presumably for the rest of his life had to put up with his wife pointing out the fine three-story house that his former friend now lived in which of course could have been theirs but on a point of principle he had passed that up it was said that the madness in the family came from the Vernon's my great-aunt Bertha who I believe would perhaps have been gingers sister was notable for using The Blitz and The Blackout as an impromptu stage for her accordion recital --
She would wander out into the night with the Bombers going overhead and play these strange hideous wheezing dirges upon the accordion presumably despite the protests of the various air raid wardens that would no doubt be trying to get her back indoors these stories they tend to they filter down they perhaps get exaggerated you know there's no telling how many of them are completely true there's enough truth there to give a sense of what your family's previous life has been like the richness of it these incredible people who whose stories will never be told
Because from our earliest times from our earliest educational we very quickly get the idea that the only the lineages and lives worth recording others of the artists Chakra see if two aristocrats get married or have a falling out or the start of war then this is of immense value and we forever examine the lives the psychology is the personalities of these bygone era static men and women as if that was the only history that was of any importance, as if the movements of The State and of our Royal Families were the only movements, the only families that had contributed to the ongoing human adventure the lives of the ordinary people who made up much of the meat of that adventure are overlooked they are reduced historically to a huge faceless crowd of extras who don't get a speaking part in history whereas in fact the stories the rumors the family legends the family secrets these tell a rich incredibly deep incredibly colorful story and this is true of my family of anyone's family one of the things that are like people to remember when I
One of the comments that I received most frequently upon the publication of the book Voice of The Fire that I wrote about Northampton was an accusation of exaggeration; placing too much importance upon a town whose only real relevance would seem to be to Me -- I had people who were saying, "Yes, but you could saythis about any town --" which is actually ratherThe Point....
what I'd intended to demonstrate by dredging up all of the rich myth and history of a completely nondescript little town Lord Northampton a town that I'm sure to most people is seen as an anonymous industrial running sore in the middle of the country if you can look beneath the surface beneath the flagstones of Northampton and find something magical something wonderful then yes of course that means that wherever you are you could do the same excavation you could find the meaning of the place in which you will probably be spending a great deal of your life this is not difficult this is not something that needs exceptional training all it needs is a willing boy a willing intelligence a receptiveness a willingness to visit these places see what they look like now see what they feel like now try and decipher all of the signals that they are giving you whether that is a clump of moss a crack in a paving stone the way that the lettering has faded upon the shop across the street this is all information soak it up check out the library check out the records of local societies do some work do a little bit of research and I'm sure that everybody wherever they happen to exist could make the townships around them suddenly flare with meaning they could if they so chose live not in degraded dull strips of industrial English potato print landscape people do not have to live in the world view that has been imposed upon them from above they do not have to live in the degraded view of the streets that surround them that they have been handed if they are prepared to simply look they can live in fantastic legendary landscapes filled with gods and monsters and heroes I mean the area in which I live now within a quarter of a mile yes Francis Crick dreaming up the day and I while sitting there on his hard Sunday school bench Buffalo Bill and his Indians riding around the rice course which is a quarter of a mile in the opposite direction Samuel Beckett playing cricket at the County Ground -- no doubt a very long, protractedandambiguous Cricket Game.
Everywherethat we live is surrounded by these fascinating fragments of History they are embedded in it these fantastic vanished personalities these legends these romances these things although they are embedded in the past are very much a part of the fabric of all of our lives and if we wish to live in that world of legend rather than in this somewhat sorry and fallen tabloid world which we've had dished up to us then we have to be prepared to excavate we have to be prepared to look below the surface of our lives and find that rich coal seam of gleaming in History that underlies our entire experience."
(It's Dickens time on The HoloDeck, and Data is playing Scrooge)
MARLEY: You don't believe in me.
DATA: Idon't.
MARLEY: What evidence would you have
of my realitybeyond that of your senses?
DATA: I don't know.
MARLEY: Why do you doubt your senses?
DATA: Because --
a little thing affects them.
A slight disorder
of the stomach
makes them cheats.
You may be an undigested bit of beef,
a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese,
a fragment of an underdone potato --
Why, there's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are.
Humbug, I tell you. Humbug!
(the ghost roars, and Scrooge cowers)
PICARD:Freeze programme. Very well done, Data. Your performance skills really are improving.
DATA: Your courtesy is appreciated, sir. But I am aware that I do not effectively convey the fear called for in this scene.
PICARD: Well, you've never known fear, Data.
But as an acuteobserver of behaviour,
you should be able to approximate it.
DATA: Sir, that is not an appropriate basis for an effective performance. Not by the standards set by my mentors.
PICARD: Your mentors?
DATA: Yes, sir. I have studied the philosophies of virtually every known acting master. I find myself attracted to Stanislavsky, Adler, Garnav. Proponents of an acting technique known as 'The Method' --
TNG Data as Scrooge (Devil's Due)
[Corridor]
(Patrick Stewart is a Method actor, by the way)
PICARD: Method acting? I'm vaguely familiar with it, but why would you choose such an old-fashioned approach?
DATA: Perhaps because the technique requires an actor to seek his own emotional awareness to understand the character he plays.
PICARD: But surely that's an impossible task for you, Data.
DATA: Sir, I have modified The Method for my own uses. Since I have no emotional awareness to create a performance, I am attempting to use performance to create emotional awareness. I believe if I can learn to duplicate the fear of Ebenezer Scrooge, I will be one step closer to truly understanding Humanity.
RIKER [OC]: Captain Picard, please report to the Bridge.
PICARD: On my way, Number One. Data, the moment you decided to stop imitating other actors and create your own interpretation, you were already one step closer to understanding Humanity.
[Bridge]
RIKER: We've received an emergency transmission from the science station on Ventax-Two, sir.
PICARD: What's the nature of the emergency?
RIKER: Uncertain. The signal was interrupted.
WORF: Contact reestablished with Ventax Two, sir.
RIKER: On screen.
(a very static-laden image)
CLARK [on viewscreen]: I am Doctor Howard Clark, director of the science station here on Ventax Two. Thank you for responding.
PICARD: Worf, can you improve our reception?
WORF: The trouble is at the transmission source, sir.
PICARD: Doctor Clark, we are barely able maintain communication with you. Can you boost the level of your power source?
CLARK [on viewscreen]: I'm afraid not, Captain. It's under attack.
PICARD: Under attack?
CLARK [on viewscreen]: There's a mob outside the door, trying to break into the station. The planet is in chaos. Lootings, fires, mass hysteria. These people are all convinced their world is coming to an end. Tomorrow. Please, we must have your immediate --
Captain's Log, stardate 44474.5.
We have reached Ventax Two and are attempting to contact the Federation science station, which at last report was under siege by an angry mob.
