Wednesday 11 July 2018

Odd-Man Hypothesis : Far-Off Men and The Eternal Father


By the 30th Century, Human Society was Highly Compartmentalised....


SpaceTech ROGIN : 
You know what'll happen when you cut that lock.

Teeth+Curls : 
There's no point in both of us being killed by the blast - 
Get into The Ark, man. 

SpaceTech ROGIN: 
You don't want trouble with the space technician's union, Doctor. 

Teeth+Curls : 
What? 

** THUMP **

SpaceTech ROGIN: 
That's My Job. 



The “Odd-Man Hypothesis” is a fictional hypothesis which states that unmarried men are better able to execute the best, most dispassionate decisions in crises—in this case, to disarm the nuclear weapon intended to prevent the escape of organisms from the laboratory in the event the auto-destruct sequence is initiated. In the novel, the Odd-Man explanation is a page in a RAND Corporation report of the results of test series wherein different people were to make command decisions in nuclear and biological wars and chemical crises.

Hall is briefed on the Hypothesis after his arrival at Wildfire. In the book, his copy of the briefing materials has the Hypothesis pages removed; in the film, he is criticized for failure to read the material ahead of time.

Dr. Hall is assumed to have the highest “command decision effectiveness index” among the Wildfire team; this is the reason why he is given a control key to the self-destruct mechanism. Hall initially derides this idea, saying he has no intention of committing suicide before he is told that it is his job to disarm the weapon, rather than to arm it: Stone then admits that the Odd-Man Hypothesis, while accurate (in the confines of the book), was essentially a false document used to justify handing over a nuclear weapon to private individuals and out of government control.

Tuesday 10 July 2018

King Ezekiel Feeds The Elderly





Ezekiel: 
By all means, fair maiden.

Have one.

This enclosure was built for the purpose of common recreation and study.

I had it repurposed into a garden worthy of our splendor.

I dare say it's my favorite place in the entire Kingdom.

It pleases me that you've seen it with your own eyes before...choosing
to leave us so suddenly.

Geez, yeah, I...

I'm real sorry about this.

Um, it's just...

What good am I here?

Jerry... would you excuse us?

Sir Jerry :
[Inhales deeply]
If you need me, holler.

I keep in hollering range.

Deuces!

King Ezekiel I: 
If I hadn't happened upon you right now...

What's that saying?

Never bullshit a bullshitter.

Have I got that right?

The sweet-and-innocent act you've been doing -- it's quite clever.

Worked on me.

Blend in, get people to trust you, acquire what you need from them, and then you're gone, as if you were never there.

The guns you brought here in your pack -- they belong to Saviors.

Carol,
The Great Mother :
What do you know about the Saviors?


King Ezekiel I:
More than I care to, unfortunately.

They nearly extinguished you.

But you did more than put up a fight, Carol -- 
You Won.


Carol,
The Great Mother :
[Chuckles]
By ending up here?



King Ezekiel I:
That's funny to you?


Carol,
The Great Mother :
[Sighs]
You're a joke. This place is.



King Ezekiel I:
That's what you do with jokes -- you laugh.


Carol,
The Great Mother :
Out there -- Out there, it's real.


I've been to places where I thought I wouldn't have to -- where I could just be.

You're selling these people a fairy tale.


King Ezekiel I:
Maybe they need the fairy tale.

Maybe the contradiction is the point.


Carol,
The Great Mother :
And ruling over people and having your ass kissed by everyone's just a perk?




King Ezekiel I:
May I?

People want someone to follow.

It's human nature.

They want someone to make 'em feel safe.

And people who feel safe are less dangerous... more productive.

They see a dude with a tiger, shoot -- they start tellin' stories about finding it in the wild, wrestling it into submission, turning it into his pet.

They make The Guy Larger Than Life, a Hero.

And who am I to burst their bubble?

Next thing you know, they treat me like Royalty.

They wanted --

They needed someone to follow, s-so I-I acted the part.

I faked it till I made it.

I was a zookeeper.

Shiva -- she fell into one of the concrete moats in her exhibit.

It was empty, the vets were on their way, but her leg was ripped open.

She was gonna bleed out.

The sound she made...

She was in so much pain.

I knew the risk.

I had to try.

And I got my shirt up around her leg... saved her life.

After that, she never showed so much as a tooth in my direction.

Keeping a tiger isn't practical -- I know.

She eats as much as 10 people.

She could yank the chain out of my hand -- hell, she could yank my arm right off.

But she hasn't.

She won't.

I lost a lot, just like everybody else.

When it all started to end, I found myself back at the zoo.

Shiva was one of the last animals left.

She was trapped... hungry, alone.

Like me.

She was the last thing left in this world that I loved.

She protected me.

She got me here, made me larger than life.

And I made this place.

I used to act in community theater -- played a few Kings in my day...

[Chuckles]

...Arthur, Macbeth...

Martin Luther.

[Chuckles]

My Name really is Ezekiel, though.

[Sighs]

That's 100% real.

Cards on the table.

Nothing up my sleeve.

I'd appreciate you keep this between us, though, 
for Them.

And, yeah, a little bit for me.


Carol,
The Great Mother :
[Sniffles] 
I don't care.

You do what you want.

I just want to go.



King Ezekiel I:
Go where?

Carol.

Carol,
The Great Mother :
Away.




King Ezekiel I:
I'm sorry.


Carol,
The Great Mother :
For what?


King Ezekiel I:
For whatever bad you've been through.

There's so much of it out there now, you know?

[Sighs]

Too much.

Out there, 
it feels like it's all bad, 
especially when you're alone.

[Sighs]

The thing is, though...

...it's not all bad.

It can't be.

It isn't.

Life isn't.

Where there's Life, there's Hope, Heroism, Grace, and Love.

Where there's life, there's life.

I hope that's not what you're walking away from.


Carol,
The Great Mother :
So what if I am?




King Ezekiel I:
Maybe you don't have to.

I made my own world here.

I found a way to deal with the bad by going a little overboard with all The Good.

I just... embraced the contradiction.

Maybe you could, too, in your own way.

Like, maybe you could go and...not go.

Yeah, I-I sound like a crazy person.

I get it.

You know, maybe I am.

But I think I can help... if you let me.



Carol,
The Great Mother :
Why do you care?


King Ezekiel I:
'Cause it makes me feel good.

I'll get your stuff together, find somebody I trust to meet you at the gate, so you can go and -- and not go.

We'll see if I'm on to something or if it's just more bullshit.

What do you say?


Morgan,
The Spirit of The Wilderness :
You're sure this is what you want, right?


Carol,
The Great Mother :
I am.

Morgan,
The Spirit of The Wilderness :
It's up to you.

It should have always been up to you.


Carol,
The Great Mother :
Whoa.

Whoa.

Okay?

[Horse whinnies]

[Snorts]

Got it.

[Sighs] Stay there.

It's good we're here.

[Snorts]

How's that?


Carol,
The Great Mother :
10 more minutes, and I might start to regret all the times I tried to shoot and stab you.



Morgan,
The Spirit of The Wilderness :
I think you're my favorite person I ever knocked out.

Definitely top two or three.

[Chuckles]


Morgan,
The Spirit of The Wilderness :
Take care of yourself.


Morgan,
The Spirit of The Wilderness :
I will.


Carol,
The Great Mother :
Do you promise?


Morgan,
The Spirit of The Wilderness :
Always watching, always ready, remember?


Carol,
The Great Mother :
I do.



Morgan,
The Spirit of The Wilderness :
Okay.

♪♪

Carol,
The Great Mother :
Thank you.

♪♪

[Lock clanking]

Whoa.

[Gate creaking]

[Sighs]

[Gate closes]

♪♪

[Walker growls]

[Growling]

♪♪

[Growling stops, walker thuds]

♪♪

[Knock on door]

[Shiva growls]


King Ezekiel I:
You really got to try one of these.



The Kingdom is to The East


King Richard,
The Lionheart :
You didn't have to come. 

Morgan,
Man of The Wilderness : 
We have to try, even if it's a long shot, even if it's dangerous. 

King Richard,
The Lionheart :
Tire tracks pointed East... we go East. 

Morgan,
Man of The Wilderness : 
Saviors' compound that you and the group-- that you went to, that was West. 
Seems like she went East.




 

You were right.

I knew it when you said it.
 


I wish it didn't have to end, not this way. It was never my intention to hurt you, but it's how it has to be. 

We have so much here-- people, food, medicine, walls, everything we need to live. 

But what we have other people want, too, and that will never change. 

If we survive this threat and it's not over, another one will be back to take its place, to take what we have. 

I love you all here. I do. 

And I'd have to kill for you. And I can't. I won't. 

Rick sent me away and I wasn't ever gonna come back, but everything happened and I wound up staying. 

But I can't anymore. 

I can't love anyone because I can't kill for anyone.
 


So I'm going, like I always should have. 

Don't come after me, please.



The Judge


"Perhaps it's time I wrote about Fathers and Sons, in memory of my boy, my precious Hamnet."

MARTHA: 
Hamnet? 

SHAKES-SPEARE: 
That's him. 


MARTHA: 
HamNET? 

SHAKES-SPEARE: 
What's wrong with that? 





There’s a fatherly aspect, so here’s what God as a Father is like. 



• You can enter into a covenant with it, so you can make a bargain with it. 

Now, you think about that. Money is like that, because money is a bargain you make with the future. We structured our world so that you can negotiate with the future. I don’t think that we would have got to the point where we could do that without having this idea to begin with. 

You can act as if The Future’s a reality; there’s a spirit of tradition that enables you to act as if the future is something that can be bargained with. 

That’s why you make sacrifices. The sacrifices were acted out for a very long period of time, and now they’re psychological. We know that you can sacrifice something valuable in the present and expect that you’re negotiating with something that’s representing the transcendent future. That’s an amazing human discovery. No other creature can do that, to act as if The Future is real, to know that you can bargain with reality itself and that you can do it successfully. It’s unbelievable. 

• It responds to sacrifice. 

• It answers prayers. 

[ I’m not saying that any of this is true, by the way. I’m just saying what the cloud of ideas represents. ] 

• It punishes and rewards. 

• It judges and forgives. 

• It’s not Nature. 

One of the things weird about the Judeo-Christian tradition is that God and nature are not the same thing at all. Whatever God is, partially manifest in this logos, is something that stands outside of nature. I think that’s something like consciousness as abstracted from the natural world. 

• It built Eden for mankind and then banished us for disobedience. 

• It’s too powerful to be touched. 

• It granted free will. 

• Distance from it is hell. 

• Distance from it is death.

• It reveals itself in dogma and in mystical experience, and 

• It is The Law. 

That’s sort of like the fatherly aspect.

"Everyone Wants Atticus Finch Until There's a Dead Hooker in The Bathtub."

The Son-like aspect : 

• It speaks chaos into order. 

•It slays dragons and feeds people with the remains. 

• It finds Gold. 

• It rescues virgins. 

• It is the body and blood of Christ. 

• It is a tragic victim, scapegoat, and eternally triumphant redeemer simultaneously. 

• It cares for the outcast. 

• It dies and is reborn. 

• It is The King of Kings and hero of heroes. 

•It’s not the state, but is both the fulfilment and critic of the state. 

• It dwells in the perfect house. It is aiming at paradise or heaven. 

• It can rescue from hell. 

• It cares for the outcast. 

• It is the foundation and the cornerstone that was rejected. 

• It is the spirit of the law.

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.


A Bad First Draft of Your Self




" That bad first draft, that’s the most valuable thing. That’s what you need: you need a bad first draft of yourself. 




There’s an idea that Jung developed about The Trickster, or The Jester, or The Comedian. 





The Trickster is the precursor to The Saviour. That’s one of the things I learned from Jung that was just so unlikely

You’d never think that. It’s so amazing that that might be the case. The satirical and the ironic and the troublemaker, the comedian—the fool is the precursor to the saviour. Why? 

Because you’re a fool when you start something new. 

And so, if you’re not willing to be a fool, then you’ll never start anything new. And if you never start anything new, then you won’t develop. And so the willingness to be a fool is the precursor to transformation. That’s the same as humility. 

If you’re going to write your destiny, you can do a bad first job. 

You’re going to get smarter as you move forward.

Something beckons to you. That’s what happens, here. Maybe the star that Geppetto wished on was the wrong damn star, but at least it was a star, right? At least it was in the sky. At least it moved him forward. And so you say in your life, well, something grips you, and fills you with interest. And you think, should I do that? 

The answer is, if not that, then something! 

What if it’s a mistake? It’s a mistake! Rest assured. What do you know? You’re going to stumble around, right? And what’s going to happen is this: you’re going to not stay in stasis; you’re not going to wander around in circles. I see people like that. 

They say, well, I never knew what to do, and now I’m 40. That’s not so good. 

That’s not so good, and there is a literature, too, that suggests that people are a lot more unhappy, when they look back on their lives, about the things they didn’t do than they are about the mistakes they made while they were doing things. And so that’s really worth thinking about, too. 

There’s redemptive mistakes. A redemptive mistake would be a mistake that you make when you go out and try to do something. You think, ok, I’m going to try to do this, and you’re not good at it. You make a bunch of mistakes. What’s the consequence, if you pay attention? You’re not quite so stupid anymore. That’s the thing: you’ve been informed by the results of your errors. What happens is you follow the beacon; you follow the light, and you’re blind, so you don’t know where the light is. It’s dimly apprehended, only, and you’re afraid to follow it. But you decide to take some stumbling steps towards it, and, as you take stumbling steps towards it, you become illuminated and enlightened and informed because of the nature of your experience, and because you’re pushing yourself beyond where you are; you’re going into the country that you have not yet been in. You learn something. What happens, then, is the star moves. You move 10 feet towards it, and you think, no, that’s not right. I didn’t get it right. It isn’t there; it’s actually there. So then you see it somewhere else, and you shift yourself slightly. You move forward.

It's like a Pirate had a Baby with an Angel.



Quill :
How the hell is this dude still alive?

Drax: 
He is not a dude. 
You're a dude. 
This... this is a Man. 
A handsome, muscular man.

Peter Quill: 
I'm muscular.

Rocket Raccoon: 
Who are you kidding, Quill? 
You're one sandwich away from fat.

Peter Quill: 
Yeah, right.

Drax: 
It's True. 
You have put on weight.

Peter Quill: 
What?

[Drax gestures at his chin and gut]

Peter Quill: 
Gamora, do you think I'm...

Mantis: [sensing Thor] 
He is anxious, angry, he feels tremendous loss and guilt.

Drax: 
It's like a Pirate had a baby with an Angel.

Peter Quill: 
Wow. This is a real wake-up call for me. 
Okay, I'm gonna get a Bowflex. 
I'm gonna commit. 

I'm gonna get some dumbbells.

Rocket Raccoon: 
You know you can't eat dumbbells, right?

Gamora: 
[touching Thor's arms
It's like his muscles are made of Chitauri metal fibers.

Peter Quill: 
Stop massaging his muscles.