General Order One

Spy Octopus Helps Friend Hide From Shark

Coconut octopuses are vulnerable to blacktip sharks, who use smell to find prey. 

With the help of an unlikely ally, this octopus is able to hide from hungry sharks.

General Order 1 — Section 1:

Starfleet crew will obey the following with any civilisation that has not achieved a commensurate level of technological and/or societal development as described in Appendix 1.

No identification of self or mission.

No interference with the social, cultural, or technological development of said planet.

No references to space, other worlds, or advanced civilisations.

The exception to this is if said society has already been exposed to concept, herein. 

However, in that instance, section 2 applies.

Section 2 :

If said species has achieved the commensurate level of technological and/or societal development as described in Appendix 1, or has been exposed to the concepts listed in section 1, no Starfleet crew person will engage with said society or species without first gathering extensive information on the specific traditions, laws, and culture of that species civilisation.

Then Starfleet crew will obey the following:

If engaged with diplomatic relations with said culture, will stay within the confines of culture's restrictions.

No interference with the social development of said planet.

All You Have to Say

All I want to hear from your ass is, 

"You ain't GOT no problem, Jules. 

I'm ON the motherfucker — Go back in there,

Chill them niggas out and wait for The Cavalry, 

which should be coming, DIRECTLY."

Mark Kermode reviews Napoleon

Mark Kermode reviews Napoleon - Kermode and Mayo's Take

okay so um Napoleon directed by Ridley

Scott from a script by David scarper the

tagline he came from nothing he

conquered everything you say that both

of those it's a great tagline complete

rubbish yeah I'm just total rubbish in

both section I'm just setting it up okay

so the film follows Napoleon's rise you

know through the the ranks of authority

to war from Warrior to Emperor from

Emperor to Exile from Victoria from you

know

Victorious uh leader to Vanquish anyway

huge battles vast Globe trotting

narrative you know we can't go into

winter it's Russia the horses won't make

it massively compressed historical

narrative and of course the Fab line

which you quoted in that interview you

think you're so great because you have

boats said to the British ambass which I

think should now be put on the you know

on on the British passports we think

we're so great because we have like he

wanted to say was I effing hate the

British I know I know however with all

that I have to say that for me the

central uh theme of this is the

relationship between Napoleon and

Josephine as you know Phoenix says it's

part historical drama part character

study there has been much praise for the

spectacular battles I should say the

spectacular battles are really Grim I

mean they first for a start they're

murky I mean they're shot kind of yeah

they're battles it's mud it's rain it's

violence it's you know people running at

each other with pointed implements and

horses getting hit by cannonballs and

you know blood it's like Saving Private

Ryan Napoleonic style I thought that the

battle scenes were horrific and I I

think they're meant to be and when you

you know people talk obviously about you

know the battle scenes huge and

spectacular they're they're Grim um it's

interesting to knowe incidentally that

that's a movie by you know Ridley Scott

who everybody used to accuse of being

all spectacle and no substance that I

think what this is the substance that's

more interesting than the spectacle so

Napoleon is not sympathetic I mean he

may be a brave Warrior on the

battlefield she calls him a brute but in

private he is a weasy little boy out

there in the world he leads armies into

death and destruction the death tolls

are astonishing and are much is made at

the end of just what the death tolls

were. 

When he's with Josephine, he is to

use a word that wackin Phoenix used in

that interview whiny bratty kind of like a 

schoolboy she exerts her power over him —

in a

in a a particular scene in which she

says to him they're sitting opposite

each other and she's sitting on a chair

and she says to him if you look down you

will see a surprise and once you see it

you will always want it 

now it takes a

very fine actor to deliver that line and

get away with it luckily Vanessa Kirby

is a very fine actor and so the whole

she's a big fan of the podcast by the

way well good that's great and she

delivers that line as you know a a

threat a tease a come on a stale I mean

there's so much power in the way she

delivers that line 

Phoenix talked in

that interview about the Absurd humor of

their relationship and I think that

absurdity is Central — I mean in fact that

on one level the movie itself is

preposterous : Ridley Scott’s Napoleon

would cover you know and I'm,

“What all of it?!”  — preposterous.

But actually that preposterousness is particularly

apposite considering the nature of their

relationship — people have talked about

the great love between 

Napoleon & Josephine;

The Love scenes are ludicrous

deliberately-so  : he makes this weird

sound when he wants to be with her 

just this kind of weird gesture you know 

I I want to be with my — and then the scenes 

of them together he's — they are they are 

played for ludicrousness —

They're not, you know, long 

languorous passionate scenes;

quite the opposite, they are 

perfunctory and canine in 

the way that they're Played-out —

the madness of him crawling

underneath the table and during that

scene about you know why aren't you

pregnant yet the other thing that I

think which hasn't quite been flagged

enough is this is a film that manages to

portray Josephine as a sexually

independent strong woman without ever

demonizing her for it she is who she is

you take it or leave it she asks him

straight off right at the beginning I

have a past is that going to be an issue

and he says no she takes lovers she she

says to him have you had lovers he says

oh oh yes yes you think no you haven't

no you haven't it's just what she does

she's completely charismatic she's also

three-dimensional I mean when she said

in that interview you know first that

she wants a kind of you know distance

avoidance thing with him but then later

on she thinks that she genuinely does

love him she's never portrayed as a

demonized force and this is very unusual

for mainstream C to do something that

and I think that's it's partly to do

with the filming but I think a lot of it

is to do with Vanessa Kirby coming in

and taking control of that role and

making it the kind of lightning rod at

the heart of the film as for Phoenix's

Napoleon I mean he's a narcissistic

lunatic he's kind of like a a calicular

figure actually weirdly enough in terms

of performance there are flashes in his

performance of Malcolm mcdow's cular

petulent whiny brtish also his previous

Emperor for Ridley Scott kodus

is exactly that kind of exactly and

those things they not you know you know

what a fantastic uh you know uh

admirable leader quite the opposite

whiny bratty and brave in as much as the

winter is coming we have to stop no

we're going to carry on oh look

everyone's freezing to death there are a

couple of other performances is worth

mentioning rer Everett is very very good

he is as Sensational as Wellington just

having a fantastic time it looks like

he's drunk an entire bottle of

bitterness and fantastic uh you know and

thank heavens for the for the support um

there was that weird thing when you

compared you said that you know people

have said that uh Tony Scott is like

Napoleon the weird thing when you said

that Ridley Scott is like Napoleon but

he's a benevolent dictator actually the

comparison is between uh uh Ridley Scott

and Stan kuri because of course Stanley

kubric tried for years to get a Napoleon

project together he you know he

researched it it was called the greatest

movie never made uh he just never got it

done abble G's version originally wanted

it to be six films you know even though

the the the the end result of that

Napoleon is considered to be one of the

greatest works of Cinema it wasn't the

full thing that he wanted to do Ridley

Scott just went I'm going to make

Napoleon oh there we are I've made

Napoleon apparently there is a

director's cut coming later on which is

4 hours that we'll come to

yeah coming to Apple TV but so you know

if you look in the history of Cinema you

know the fact that that Ry Scott just

went I'm going to do Napoleon there we

are I've done Napoleon I mean man he

shoots fast 62 days the whole film took

breathtaking breathtaking you know

kurick decades didn't happen abble G

huge amount of su and only did some of

what he wanted to do but I do think that

at the end of it the thing that makes

the film interesting is the portrait of

aoon as this whiny weasly bratty

narcissistic ciglar like figure and the

portrait of Josephine as a strong

independent um three-dimensional

character who absolutely has the measure

of him at the beginning of him and and I

think Vanessa Kirby is the key to it I

think those people who think that uh

Ridley Scott likes events not

explanation will find this as more more

proof of that I think the events are

better than the explanation in terms of

who Napoleon was and who he there is no

explanation as to why he is that guy

there is no explanation as to like for

example the incredible reforms that he

passed the man who reintroduced slavy

reintroduced slavy into the French

colonies where you know where is that

going there are other people like Andrew

Roberts historian who said he was the

Enlightenment on a horse that's how

where where is that where is that

Napoleon so I don't think so when and

when Ridley Scot that's a great phrase

when challenged by Dan snow and others

about the historical accuracy instead of

saying it's a film I've just done a

version he has this Preposterous line

where he says were you there no well

shut up then or stronger language that's

not how history worked absolutely that's

not how history worked so I do think

Ridley needs a little bit of firm media

yes but I want I want to be clear

firstly I'm reviewing the film not the

history exactly and secondly Ridley has

always been like that Ridley has always

been like that anyway it's it's

spectacular if you get a chance to see

it on a big screen do that before it's

on your laptop or your phone because but

the battle scenes are brutal they're not

lavish and G glorious they are but it's

like Gladiator you know it is it's

brutal stuff also when I said Commodus

Emperor Commodus it wasn't Mark Commodus

obviously it was Oh I thought he' played

me oh well he could do he could play me

wacking would be great he would I mean

you know he did Johnny Cash he could do

me thanks very much for watching this

video I hope you enjoyed watching it as

much as we enjoyed making it while

you're here check out all the videos cuz

they're cool too aren't they they are

and if you want to keep up to date with

everything kerm Mayo take then check out

our social channels I mean why wouldn't

you I mean I I would but I have done

excellent.

Horrid

Drop Dead Fred - Outtakes and cut spitting scene - VERY RARE FOOTAGE

This very rare footage was supplied by the director of 'Drop Dead Fred' Ate de Jong. 

The footage is in b/w because sometimes the rushes weren't printed in colour. 

The shot when Fred spits on Elizabeth's head was deemed 

too disgusting by studio executives who cut it out of the film. 

Sadly another extensive sequence involving Fred visiting Drop Dead Fred land appears to be lost :-( 

Was it based on a novel or an actual story by Elizabeth Livingston?

It was an article, and I’m not sure if it was the New York Times or The New Yorker. The writers certainly took a lot of freedom in adapting it and then when I came onboard I also took a lot of freedom; together with the writers. 

The whole foray into The Past was actually non-existent in the original script – not the script that we filmed - but the script I first got, and I felt that the thing in The Past was so essential in understanding her [Elizabeth - Phoebe Cates]. 

 Actually, this next bit might ruin your liking of the film...

No : nothing can do that.

There is an underpinning in the film which is actually extremely serious – because basically she is an abused child. We did it in a way that it wasn’t disturbing but there is a serious undertone in the film. And this psychiatry organisation in California actually used it a lot for therapeutic means – which to be honest I had never thought that could happen. But to me the whole reason for doing the film was this underlying tone.

Well people who don’t like the film just see Rik Mayall flicking snot at people –

Which is funny in itself!

Exactly, and there’s nothing wrong with that! 

So speaking of Rik Mayall, were you aware of Rik prior to the film?

Yes, because of THE YOUNG ONES.

How much of Fred’s antics were in the script and how much was improvisation on Rik’s part?

Not that much improvisation. Rik had to approve me. I lived in Hollywood so I flew to London because it was a British company, Working Title, and this was their first American film. So I talked to Rik and told him my ideas and apparently he liked me and I got along with him marvellously I must say. 

I certainly encouraged him to improvise – but within pretty strict boundaries – we set up very specific rules for what Fred could do and what he couldn’t do. And we stuck to that. 

And then sometimes, for instance when he smears the dog poo on the carpet, I said ‘Rik maybe you should jump on the chair’ and then he does that, but the way he does it is of course something I could never tell him because it’s so much better. 

The studio made us cut out a few things because he did a few more things which I thought were marvellous... like he spits into a cup of coffee and Elizabeth’s mother drinks it and says; hmm... but the spitting got thrown out – they didn’t like it – it was too much for them.

It’s got a ‘12’ certificate in the UK, and I was watching it with my young daughter and we came to the “cobwebs!” scene and I thought : ‘Please don’t ask me to explain that joke...’ but she didn’t.

But kids have the great quality that if they don’t understand something – they just don’t understand it. It’s the moment when they almost understand it that they then ask The Question.

Well she actually gave me Two Questions to ask you – but don’t worry, neither is about cobwebs.. Does Fred remember all the children he’s helped?

In our discussions – Yes, he does remember all the kids he has helped, but once he’s with a new child he doesn’t care about the previous case – so when he’s there at the end, he might recognise Elizabeth, but he’s not interested so he doesn’t pay her any attention.

Ok, and the second question : Was Fred trapped in The Box for all those years or was he off helping other children?

No, in our opinion, he was trapped in The Box. There’s one scene which explains a little bit about that first question, it was a scene of about 8-10 minutes, and they cut it out. At some point Fred goes away from her towards the end and he goes back to Drop Dead Fred Land.

Oh yes...

I must have it somewhere on a videotape. If I find it I’ll send it to you – I know it exists. They go to Drop Dead Fred Land; all the other characters you see in the psychiatrists’ office are there too all having fun. And there are loads of doors and each door represents a new assignment but Fred says : “No, I have to go back – I can’t leave her like that...”

Once again – this film deserves a Blu-ray release with extras...

We did shoot a new ending also, because the original ending finished with Elizabeth telling Her Mother that she needed A Friend. But we felt the film needed a more upbeat ending.

So only Rik Mayall was attached to the film when you came on board. What was it like working with Princess Leia herself, Carrie Fisher?

I adored her. (I was not extremely close to Phoebe to be honest, I mean we could work together) but I adored Carrie. The writers hated her because she made up her own dialogue very often and she was so, so sharp with the dialogue (you could see the writers grinding their teeth). I’m still in touch with the writers and still in touch with Carrie. You know she even once did a scene where she said: “May The Force be with You”. I laughed; but I cut that out – it was a bit too campy.

Bridget Fonda doesn’t appear in the end credits...

No, she did it as a favour for Phoebe, they were good friends and she did it as a cameo.

Your Director of Photography was  Peter Deming – who’d lensed Sam Raimi’s EVIL DEAD 2 prior to DROP DEAD FRED and who has since gone on to work not only with Raimi several more times, but also David Lynch, Wes Craven etc...

We started with another DP, but after 3 days I said to our producer Paul Webster : Paul, this isn’t working, we’re only making 6 shots a day. So Paul had to fire her and Peter, who we’d already met, came back – and he was a great guy.

And the animator on the opening credits, Steve Segal [no not that Segal] went on to work on A BUG’S LIFE and TOY STORY...You’re a human four-leaf clover Ate!

(Laughs) I’ve never thought about it. I hope so!

We spoke a little about the script and the certificate it received here in the UK, was it difficult to know who to pitch the film to, and how far to go with some of the more ‘adult’ references and jokes?

We personally anticipated a slightly older audience than it got. The film was finished, and there were test screenings in different cities. The results of the tests were that this film is ‘particularly good for women over the age of 33’. The film was going to go out with 150 prints (which for an independent film was great).  So they test-released it first in 5 cities. The audience was all kids (kids and their parents). The weird thing was, in the evenings, when there weren’t any kids; there were couples – generally on the younger side – but couples; lots and lots of couples. It was a date movie! (Which we never expected).  The film did so well over that first weekend of the test-release with the 5 prints that they said okay, not 150 prints – 950 prints! And instead of spending $1.5million on publicity and advertising : $7million – more than the actual film’s budget.

Which was...?

$6.5million.

Bargain.

So for me it was like a dream come true. But when we made the film we thought that it was actually more for kids, and that we made the adult jokes for their parents. And then the tests all said no; but ultimately it was more or less true.

Janet

George…. Your Father, 

is in the same place

he’s been for the past

Thirteen Years --

Oak Park Cemetary…

Janet 

fem. proper name, a diminutive of Jane with -et. In Middle English, Ionete-of-the-steues "Janet of the Stews" (see stew (n.)) was a common name for a prostitute (late 14c.).

Related entries & more

 

Jenny 

fem. personal name, originally another form of Jane, Janey and a diminutive of Jane or Janet; in modern use (mid-20c.) typically a shortening of Jennifer. 

Jenny is attested from c. 1600 as female equivalent of jack (n.), and like it applied to animals (especially of birds, of a heron, a jay, but especially Jenny wren, 1640s, in bird-fables the consort of Robin Redbreast). Also like jack used of machinery; Akrwright's spinning jenny (1783) is said to have been named for his wife, but is perhaps rather a corruption of gin (n.2) "engine."

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A Riotous and Indecent German Dance

5 entries found.

waltz (n.)

round dance performed to music in triple time, extraordinarily popular as a fashionable dance from late 18c. to late 19c., the dance itself probably of Bohemian origin, 1779 (walse, in a translation of "Die Leiden des jungen Werthers" from a French translation, which has walse), from German Waltzer, from walzen "to roll, dance," from Old High German walzan "to turn, roll," from Proto-Germanic *walt- (cognate with Old Norse velta), from PIE root *wel- (3) "to turn, revolve."

Described in 1825 as "a riotous and indecent German dance"

 

— Walter Hamilton, 

"A Hand-Book or Concise Dictionary 

of Terms Used in the Arts and Sciences"

The music struck up a beautiful air, and the dancers advanced a few steps, when suddenly, to my no small horror and amazement, the gentlemen seized the ladies round the waist, and all, as if intoxicated by this novel juxtaposition, began to whirl about the room, like a company of Bacchanalians dancing round a statue of the jolly god. "A waltz!" exclaimed I, inexpressibly shocked, "have I lived to see Scotch women waltz?" 

— The Edinburgh Magazine, April 1820

[T]he waltz became a craze at the end of the [eighteenth] century, a double-dactylic, joyful experience of liberation, breaking resolutely away from the proscriptions of the minuet and the philosophy inherent in the minuet, which had emphasized a pattern of order and reason overseen by a sovereign, the individual submerged in the pattern. 

— Miller Williams, 

"Patterns of Poetry"

Related entries & more

 

waltz (v.)

1794, from waltz (n.). Meaning "to move nimbly" (as one does in dancing a waltz) is recorded from 1862. Related: Waltzed; waltzing.

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*wel- (3)

Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to turn, revolve," with derivatives referring to curved, enclosing objects.

It forms all or part of: archivolt; circumvolve; convoluted; convolution; devolve; elytra; evolution; evolve; Helicon; helicopter; helix; helminth; lorimer; ileus; involve; revolt; revolution; revolve; valve; vault (v.1) "jump or leap over;" vault (n.1) "arched roof or ceiling;" volte-face; voluble; volume; voluminous; volute; volvox; volvulus; vulva; wale; walk; wallet; wallow; waltz; well (v.) "to spring, rise, gush;" welter; whelk; willow.

It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Sanskrit valate "turns round," ulvam "womb, vulva;" Lithuanian valtis "twine, net," vilnis "wave," apvalus "round;" Old Church Slavonic valiti "roll, welter," vlŭna "wave;" Greek eluein "to roll round, wind, enwrap," eilein "twist, turn, squeeze; revolve, rotate," helix "spiral object;" Latin volvere "to turn, twist;" Gothic walwjan "to roll;" Old English wealwian "roll," weoloc "whelk, spiral-shelled mollusk;" Old High German walzan "to roll, waltz;" Old Irish fulumain "rolling;" Welsh olwyn "wheel."

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two-step (n.)

dance style, 1893, from two + step (n.); so called for the time signature of the music (as distinguished from the three-step waltz). But as the positions taken by the dancers involved direct contact, it was highly scandalous in its day and enormously popular.

A certain Division of an Auxiliary gave a dance not long since. I went and looked on. What did they dance? Two-step, two-step and two-step. How did they dance? When we used to waltz, we clasped arms easily, took a nice, respectable position, and danced in a poetry of motion. Now, girls, how do you two-step? In nine cases out of ten the dear girl reposes her head on the young man's shoulder, or else their faces press each other. He presses her to his breast as closely as possible, and actually carries her around. Disgraceful? I should say so. Do you wonder at the ministers preaching on dancing as a sin, when it looks like this to a woman like myself who believes in dancing and has danced all her life? Mothers, as you love your girls, forbid them to dance after this manner. 

— letter in the ladies' section of 

Locomotive Engineers' Monthly Journal, 

March 1898

To the Two Step may be accredited, serious injury to the Waltz, awkward and immodest positions assumed in round dancing, also as being a prominent factor in overcrowding the profession and causing a general depression in the business of the legitimate Master of Dancing. 

— The Director, 

March 1898

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homoioteleuton (n.)

 in general, "the repetition of endings in words, rhyme and near rhyme," but also, in palaeography, a form of scribal error which occurs "when two words/phrases/lines end with the same sequence of letters. The scribe, having finished copying the first, skips to the second, omitting all intervening words" 

— Robert B. Waltz, 

"The Encyclopedia of New Testament 

Textual Criticism," 2013

Greek, literally "same ending;" see homo- (1) "the same" + telos.

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Trending words

“If there is any truth or worth to the danse macabre, it is simply that novels, movies, TV and radio programs – even the comic books – dealing with horror always do their work on two levels. On top is the ‘gross-out’ level – when Regan vomits in the priest’s face or masturbates with a crucifix in The Exorcist, or when the raw-looking, terribly inside-out monster in John Frankenheimer’s Prophecy crunches off the helicopter pilot’s head like a Tootsie-Pop. 

The gross-out can be done with varying degrees of artistic finesse, but it’s always there. But on another, more potent level, the work of horror really is a dance – a moving, rhythmic search. And what it’s looking for is the place where you, the viewer or the reader, live at your most primitive level. The work of horror is not interested in the civilized furniture of our lives. Such a work dances through these rooms which we have fitted out one piece at a time, each piece expressing – we hope! – our socially acceptable and pleasantly enlightened character. 

It is in search of another place, a room which may sometimes resemble the secret den of a Victorian gentleman, sometimes the torture chamber of the Spanish Inquisition . . . but perhaps most frequently and most successfully, the simple and brutally plain hole of a Stone Age cave-dweller. 

Is horror art? On this second level, the work of horror can be nothing else; it achieves the level of art simply because it is looking for something beyond art, something that predates art : it is looking for what I would call phobic pressure points. The good horror tale will dance its way to the center of your life and find the secret door to the room you believed no one but you knew of – as both Albert Camus and Billy Joel have pointed out, The Stranger makes us nervous . . . but we love to try on his face in secret. Do spiders give you the horrors? Fine. We’ll have spiders, as in Tarantula, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and Kingdom of the Spiders. What about rats? In James Herbert’s novel of the same name, you can feel them crawl all over you . . . and eat you alive. How about snakes? That shut-in feeling? Heights? Or . . . whatever there is. 

Because books and movies are mass media, the field of horror has often been able to do better than even these personal fears over the last thirty years. During that period (and to a lesser degree, in the seventy or so years preceding), the horror genre has often been able to find national phobic pressure points, and those books and films which have been the most successful almost always seem to play upon and express fears which exist across a wide spectrum of people. Such fears, which are often political, economic, and psychological rather than supernatural, give the best work of horror a pleasing allegorical feel – and it’s the one sort of allegory that most filmmakers seem at home with. Maybe because they know that if the shit starts getting too thick, they can always bring the monster shambling out of the darkness again.

We’re going back to Stratford in 1957 before much longer, but before we do, let me suggest that one of the films of the last thirty years to find a pressure point with great accuracy was Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Further along, we’ll discuss the novel – and Jack Finney, the author, will also have a few things to say – but for now, let’s look briefly at the film. 

There is nothing really physically horrible in the Siegel version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers;* no gnarled and evil star travelers here, no twisted, mutated shape under the facade of normality. The pod people are just a little different, that’s all. A little vague. A little messy. Although Finney never puts this fine a point on it in his book, he certainly suggests that the most horrible thing about ‘them’ is that they lack even the most common and easily attainable sense of aesthetics. Never mind, Finney suggests, that these usurping aliens from outer space can’t appreciate La Traviata or Moby Dick or even a good Norman Rockwell cover on the Saturday Evening Post. That’s bad enough, but – my God! – they don’t mow their lawns or replace the pane of garage glass that got broken when the kid down the street batted a baseball through it. They don’t repaint their houses when they get flaky. The roads leading into Santa Mira, we’re told, are so full of potholes and washouts that pretty soon the salesmen who service the town – who aerate its municipal lungs with the life-giving atmosphere of capitalism, you might say – will soon no longer bother to come. The gross-out level is one thing, but it is on that second level of horror that we often experience that low sense of anxiety which we call ‘the creeps’. Over the years, Invasion of the Body Snatchers has given a lot of people the creeps, and all sorts of high-flown ideas have been imputed to Siegel’s film version. It was seen as an anti-McCarthy film until someone pointed out the fact that Don Siegel’s political views could hardly be called leftish. Then people began seeing it as a ‘better dead than Red’ picture. 

Of the two ideas, I think that second one better fits the film that Siegel made, the picture that ends with Kevin McCarthy in the middle of a freeway, screaming ‘They’re coming! They’re coming!’ to cars which rush heedlessly by him. 

But in my heart, I don’t really believe that Siegel was wearing a political hat at all when he made the movie (and you will see later that Jack Finney has never believed it, either); I believe he was simply having fun and that the undertones . . . just happened. This doesn’t invalidate the idea that there is an allegorical element in Invasion of the Body Snatchers; it is simply to suggest that sometimes these pressure points, these terminals of fear, are so deeply buried and yet so vital that we may tap them like artesian wells – saying one thing out loud while we express something else in a whisper. 

The Philip Kaufman version of Finney’s novel is fun (although, to be fair, not quite as much fun as Siegel’s), but that whisper has changed into something entirely different: the subtext of Kaufman’s picture seems to satirize the whole I’m-okay-you’re-okay-so-let’s-get-in-the-hot-tub-and-massage-our-precious-consciousness movement of the ego-centric seventies. 

Which is to suggest that, although the uneasy dreams of the mass subconscious may change from decade to decade, the pipeline into that well of dreams remains constant and vital. This is the real danse macabre, I suspect: those remarkable moments when the creator of a horror story is able to unite the conscious and subconscious mind with one potent idea. I believe it happened to a greater degree with the Siegel version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but of course both Siegel and Kaufman were able to proceed courtesy of Jack Finney, who sank the original well.

— Stephen King, 

Danse Macabre, 1983

* There is in the Philip Kaufman remake, though. There is a moment in that film which is repulsively horrible. It comes when Donald Sutherland uses a rake to smash in the face of a mostly formed pod. This ‘person’s’ face breaks in with sickening ease, like a rotted piece of fruit, and lets out an explosion of the most realistic stage blood that I have ever seen in a color film. When that moment came, I winced, clapped a hand over my mouth . . . and wondered how in the hell the movie had ever gotten its PG rating. 

Point, and Think —

 The Point of Our Eyes (or, Take Stock)

  Our eyes are always pointing at things we are interested in approaching, or investigating, or looking for, or having. We must see, but to see, we must aim, so we are always aiming. Our minds are built on the hunting-and-gathering platforms of our bodies. To hunt is to specify a target, track it, and throw at it. To gather is to specify and to grasp. We fling stones, and spears, and boomerangs. We toss balls through hoops, and hit pucks into nets, and curl carved granite rocks down the ice onto horizontal bull’s-eyes. We launch projectiles at targets with bows, guns, rifles and rockets. We hurl insults, launch plans, and pitch ideas. We succeed when we score a goal or hit a target. We fail, or sin, when we do not (as the word sin means to miss the mark⁷⁰). We cannot navigate, without something to aim at and, while we are in this world, we must always navigate.⁷¹

  We are always and simultaneously at point “a” (which is less desirable than it could be), moving towards point “b” (which we deem better, in accordance with our explicit and implicit values). We always encounter the world in a state of insufficiency and seek its correction. We can imagine new ways that things could be set right, and improved, even if we have everything we thought we needed. Even when satisfied, temporarily, we remain curious. We live within a framework that defines the present as eternally lacking and the future as eternally better. If we did not see things this way, we would not act at all. We wouldn’t even be able to see, because to see we must focus, and to focus we must pick one thing above all else on which to focus.

  But we can see. We can even see things that aren’t there. We can envision new ways that things could be better. We can construct new, hypothetical worlds, where problems we weren’t even aware of can now show themselves and be addressed. The advantages of this are obvious: we can change the world so that the intolerable state of the present can be rectified in the future. The disadvantage to all this foresight and creativity is chronic unease and discomfort. Because we always contrast what is with what could be, we have to aim at what could be. But we can aim too high. Or too low. Or too chaotically. So we fail and live in disappointment, even when we appear to others to be living well. How can we benefit from our imaginativeness, our ability to improve the future, without continually denigrating our current, insufficiently successful and worthless lives?

  The first step, perhaps, is to take stock. Who are you? When you buy a house and prepare to live in it, you hire an inspector to list all its faults—as it is, in reality, now, not as you wish it could be. You’ll even pay him for the bad news. You need to know. You need to discover the home’s hidden flaws. You need to know whether they are cosmetic imperfections or structural inadequacies. You need to know because you can’t fix something if you don’t know it’s broken—and you’re broken. You need an inspector. The internal critic—it could play that role, if you could get it on track; if you and it could cooperate. It could help you take stock. But you must walk through your psychological house with it and listen judiciously to what it says. Maybe you’re a handy-man’s dream, a real fixer-upper. How can you start your renovations without being demoralized, even crushed, by your internal critic’s lengthy and painful report of your inadequacies?

  Here’s a hint. The future is like the past. But there’s a crucial difference. The past is fixed, but the future—it could be better. It could be better, some precise amount—the amount that can be achieved, perhaps, in a day, with some minimal engagement. The present is eternally flawed. But where you start might not be as important as the direction you are heading. Perhaps happiness is always to be found in the journey uphill, and not in the fleeting sense of satisfaction awaiting at the next peak. Much of happiness is hope, no matter how deep the underworld in which that hope was conceived.

  Called upon properly, the internal critic will suggest something to set in order, which you could set in order, which you would set in order—voluntarily, without resentment, even with pleasure. Ask yourself: is there one thing that exists in disarray in your life or your situation that you could, and would, set straight? Could you, and would you, fix that one thing that announces itself humbly in need of repair? Could you do it now? Imagine that you are someone with whom you must negotiate. Imagine further that you are lazy, touchy, resentful and hard to get along with. With that attitude, it’s not going to be easy to get you moving. You might have to use a little charm and playfulness. “Excuse me,” you might say to yourself, without irony or sarcasm. “I’m trying to reduce some of the unnecessary suffering around here. I could use some help.” Keep the derision at bay. “I’m wondering if there is anything that you would be willing to do? I’d be very grateful for your service.” Ask honestly and with humility. That’s no simple matter.

  You might have to negotiate further, depending on your state of mind. Maybe you don’t trust yourself. You think that you’ll ask yourself for one thing and, having delivered, immediately demand more. And you’ll be punitive and hurtful about it. And you’ll denigrate what was already offered. Who wants to work for a tyrant like that? Not you. That’s why you don’t do what you want yourself to do. You’re a bad employee—but a worse boss. Maybe you need to say to yourself, “OK. I know we haven’t gotten along very well in the past. I’m sorry about that. I’m trying to improve. I’ll probably make some more mistakes along the way, but I’ll try to listen if you object. I’ll try to learn. I noticed, just now, today, that you weren’t really jumping at the opportunity to help when I asked. Is there something I could offer in return for your cooperation? Maybe if you did the dishes, we could go for coffee. You like espresso. How about an espresso—maybe a double shot? Or is there something else you want?” Then you could listen. Maybe you’ll hear a voice inside (maybe it’s even the voice of a long-lost child). Maybe it will reply, “Really? You really want to do something nice for me? You’ll really do it? It’s not a trick?”

  This is where you must be careful.

  That little voice—that’s the voice of someone once burnt and twice shy. So, you could say, very carefully, “Really. I might not do it very well, and I might not be great company, but I will do something nice for you. I promise.” A little careful kindness goes a long way, and judicious reward is a powerful motivator. Then you could take that small bit of yourself by the hand and do the damn dishes. And then you better not go clean the bathroom and forget about the coffee or the movie or the beer or it will be even harder to call those forgotten parts of yourself forth from the nooks and crannies of the underworld.

  You might ask yourself, “What could I say to someone else—my friend, my brother, my boss, my assistant—that would set things a bit more right between us tomorrow? What bit of chaos might I eradicate at home, on my desk, in my kitchen, tonight, so that the stage could be set for a better play? What snakes might I banish from my closet—and my mind?” Five hundred small decisions, five hundred tiny actions, compose your day, today, and every day. Could you aim one or two of these at a better result? Better, in your own private opinion, by your own individual standards? Could you compare your specific personal tomorrow with your specific personal yesterday? Could you use your own judgment, and ask yourself what that better tomorrow might be?

  Aim small. You don’t want to shoulder too much to begin with, given your limited talents, tendency to deceive, burden of resentment, and ability to shirk responsibility. Thus, you set the following goal: by the end of the day, I want things in my life to be a tiny bit better than they were this morning. Then you ask yourself, “What could I do, that I would do, that would accomplish that, and what small thing would I like as a reward?” Then you do what you have decided to do, even if you do it badly. Then you give yourself that damn coffee, in triumph. Maybe you feel a bit stupid about it, but you do it anyway. And you do the same thing tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. And, with each day, your baseline of comparison gets a little higher, and that’s magic. That’s compound interest. Do that for three years, and your life will be entirely different. Now you’re aiming for something higher. Now you’re wishing on a star. Now the beam is disappearing from your eye, and you’re learning to see. And what you aim at determines what you see. That’s worth repeating. What you aim at determines what you see.

 What You Want and What You See

  The dependency of sight on aim (and, therefore, on value—because you aim at what you value) was demonstrated unforgettably by the cognitive psychologist Daniel Simons more than fifteen years ago.⁷² Simons was investigating something called “sustained inattentional blindness.” He would sit his research subjects in front of a video monitor and show them, for example, a field of wheat. Then he would transform the photo slowly, secretly, while they watched. He would slowly fade in a road cutting through the wheat. He didn’t insert some little easy-to-miss footpath, either. It was a major trail, occupying a good third of the image. Remarkably, the observers would frequently fail to take notice.

  The demonstration that made Dr. Simons famous was of the same kind, but more dramatic—even unbelievable. First, he produced a video of two teams of three people.⁷³ One team was wearing white shirts, the other, black. (The two teams were not off in the distance, either, or in any way difficult to see. The six of them filled much of the video screen, and their facial features were close enough to see clearly.) Each team had its own ball, which they bounced or threw to their other team members, as they moved and feinted in the small space in front of the elevators where the game was filmed. Once Dan had his video, he showed it to his study participants. He asked each of them to count the number of times the white shirts threw the ball back and forth to one another. After a few minutes, his subjects were asked to report the number of passes. Most answered “15.” That was the correct answer. Most felt pretty good about that. Ha! They passed the test! But then Dr. Simons asked, “Did you see the gorilla?”

  Was this a joke? What gorilla?

  So, he said, “Watch the video again. But this time, don’t count.” Sure enough, a minute or so in, a man dressed in a gorilla suit waltzes right into the middle of the game for a few long seconds, stops, and then beats his chest in the manner of stereotyped gorillas everywhere. Right in the middle of the screen. Large as life. Painfully and irrefutably evident. But one out of every two of his research subjects missed it, the first time they saw the video. It gets worse. Dr. Simons did another study. This time, he showed his subjects a video of someone being served at a counter. The server dips behind the counter to retrieve something, and pops back up. So what? Most of his participants don’t detect anything amiss. But it was a different person who stood up in the original server’s place! “No way,” you think. “I’d notice.” But it’s “yes way.” There’s a high probability you wouldn’t detect the change, even if the gender or race of the person is switched at the same time. You’re blind too.

  This is partly because vision is expensive—psychophysiologically expensive; neurologically expensive. Very little of your retina is high-resolution fovea—the very central, high-resolution part of the eye, used to do such things as identify faces. Each of the scarce foveal cells needs 10,000 cells in the visual cortex merely to manage the first part of the multi-stage processing of seeing.⁷⁴ Then each of those 10,000 requires 10,000 more just to get to stage two. If all your retina was fovea you would require the skull of a B-movie alien to house your brain. In consequence, we triage, when we see. Most of our vision is peripheral, and low resolution. We save the fovea for things of importance. We point our high-resolution capacities at the few specific things we are aiming at. And we let everything else—which is almost everything—fade, unnoticed, into the background.

  If something you’re not attending to pops its ugly head up in a manner that directly interferes with your narrowly focused current activity, you will see it. Otherwise, it’s just not there. The ball on which Simons’s research subjects were focused was never obscured by the gorilla or by any of the six players. Because of that—because the gorilla did not interfere with the ongoing, narrowly defined task—it was indistinguishable from everything else the participants didn’t see, when they were looking at that ball. The big ape could be safely ignored. That’s how you deal with the overwhelming complexity of the world: you ignore it, while you concentrate minutely on your private concerns. You see things that facilitate your movement forward, toward your desired goals. You detect obstacles, when they pop up in your path. You’re blind to everything else (and there’s a lot of everything else—so you’re very blind). And it has to be that way, because there is much more of the world than there is of you. You must shepherd your limited resources carefully. Seeing is very difficult, so you must choose what to see, and let the rest go.

  There’s a profound idea in the ancient Vedic texts (the oldest scriptures of Hinduism, and part of the bedrock of Indian culture): the world, as perceived, is maya—appearance or illusion. This means, in part, that people are blinded by their desires (as well as merely incapable of seeing things as they truly are). This is true, in a sense that transcends the metaphorical. Your eyes are tools. They are there to help you get what you want. The price you pay for that utility, that specific, focused direction, is blindness to everything else. This doesn’t matter so much when things are going well, and we are getting what we want (although it can be a problem, even then, because getting what we currently want can make blind us to higher callings). But all that ignored world presents a truly terrible problem when we’re in crisis, and nothing whatsoever is turning out the way we want it to. Then, there can be far too much to deal with. Happily, however, that problem contains within it the seeds of its own solution. Since you’ve ignored so much, there is plenty of possibility left where you have not yet looked.

  Imagine that you’re unhappy. You’re not getting what you need. Perversely, this may be because of what you want. You are blind, because of what you desire. Perhaps what you really need is right in front of your eyes, but you cannot see it because of what you are currently aiming for. And that brings us to something else: the price that must be paid before you, or anyone, can get what they want (or, better yet, what they need). Think about it this way. You look at the world in your particular, idiosyncratic manner. You use a set of tools to screen most things out and let some things in. You have spent a lot of time building those tools. They’ve become habitual. They’re not mere abstract thoughts. They’re built right into you. They orient you in the world. They’re your deepest and often implicit and unconscious values. They’ve become part of your biological structure. They’re alive. And they don’t want to disappear, or transform, or die. But sometimes their time has come, and new things need to be born. For this reason (although not only for this reason) it is necessary to let things go during the journey uphill. If things are not going well for you—well, that might be because, as the most cynical of aphorisms has it, life sucks, and then you die. Before your crisis impels you to that hideous conclusion, however, you might consider the following: life doesn’t have the problem. You do. At least that realization leaves you with some options. If your life is not going well, perhaps it is your current knowledge that is insufficient, not life itself. Perhaps your value structure needs some serious retooling. Perhaps what you want is blinding you to what else could be. Perhaps you are holding on to your desires, in the present, so tightly that you cannot see anything else—even what you truly need.

  Imagine that you are thinking, enviously, “I should have my boss’s job.” If your boss sticks to his post, stubbornly and competently, thoughts like that will lead you into in a state of irritation, unhappiness and disgust. You might realize this. You think, “I am unhappy. However, I could be cured of this unhappiness if I could just fulfill my ambition.” But then you might think further. “Wait,” you think. “Maybe I’m not unhappy because I don’t have my boss’s job. Maybe I’m unhappy because I can’t stop wanting that job.” That doesn’t mean you can just simply and magically tell yourself to stop wanting that job, and then listen and transform. You won’t—can’t, in fact—just change yourself that easily. You have to dig deeper. You must change what you are after more profoundly.

  So, you might think, “I don’t know what to do about this stupid suffering. I can’t just abandon my ambitions. That would leave me nowhere to go. But my longing for a job that I can’t have isn’t working.” You might decide to take a different tack. You might ask, instead, for the revelation of a different plan: one that would fulfill your desires and gratify your ambitions in a real sense, but that would remove from your life the bitterness and resentment with which you are currently affected. You might think, “I will make a different plan. I will try to want whatever it is that would make my life better—whatever that might be—and I will start working on it now. If that turns out to mean something other than chasing my boss’s job, I will accept that and I will move forward.”

  Now you’re on a whole different kind of trajectory. Before, what was right, desirable, and worthy of pursuit was something narrow and concrete. But you became stuck there, tightly jammed and unhappy. So you let go. You make the necessary sacrifice, and allow a whole new world of possibility, hidden from you because of your previous ambition, to reveal itself. And there’s a lot there. What would your life look like, if it were better? What would Life Itself look like? What does “better” even mean? You don’t know. And it doesn’t matter that you don’t know, exactly, right away, because you will start to slowly see what is “better,” once you have truly decided to want it. You will start to perceive what remained hidden from you by your presuppositions and preconceptions—by the previous mechanisms of your vision. You will begin to learn.

  This will only work, however, if you genuinely want your life to improve. You can’t fool your implicit perceptual structures. Not even a bit. They aim where you point them. To retool, to take stock, to aim somewhere better, you have to think it through, bottom to top. You have to scour your psyche. You have to clean the damned thing up. And you must be cautious, because making your life better means adopting a lot of responsibility, and that takes more effort and care than living stupidly in pain and remaining arrogant, deceitful and resentful.

  What if it was the case that the world revealed whatever goodness it contains in precise proportion to your desire for the best? What if the more your conception of the best has been elevated, expanded and rendered sophisticated the more possibility and benefit you could perceive? This doesn’t mean that you can have what you want merely by wishing it, or that everything is interpretation, or that there is no reality. The world is still there, with its structures and limits. As you move along with it, it cooperates or objects. But you can dance with it, if your aim is to dance—and maybe you can even lead, if you have enough skill and enough grace. This is not theology. It’s not mysticism. It’s empirical knowledge. There is nothing magical here—or nothing more than the already-present magic of consciousness. We only see what we aim at. The rest of the world (and that’s most of it) is hidden. If we start aiming at something different—something like “I want my life to be better”—our minds will start presenting us with new information, derived from the previously hidden world, to aid us in that pursuit. Then we can put that information to use and move, and act, and observe, and improve. And, after doing so, after improving, we might pursue something different, or higher—something like, “I want whatever might be better than just my life being better.” And then we enter a more elevated and more complete reality.

  In that place, what might we focus on? What might we see?

  Think about it like this. Start from the observation that we indeed desire things—even that we need them. That’s human nature. We share the experience of hunger, loneliness, thirst, sexual desire, aggression, fear and pain. Such things are elements of Being—primordial, axiomatic elements of Being. But we must sort and organize these primordial desires, because the world is a complex and obstinately real place. We can’t just get the one particular thing we especially just want now, along with everything else we usually want, because our desires can produce conflict with our other desires, as well as with other people, and with the world. Thus, we must become conscious of our desires, and articulate them, and prioritize them, and arrange them into hierarchies. That makes them sophisticated. That makes them work with each other, and with the desires of other people, and with the world. It is in that manner that our desires elevate themselves. It is in that manner that they organize themselves into values and become moral. Our values, our morality—they are indicators of our sophistication.

  The philosophical study of morality—of right and wrong—is ethics. Such study can render us more sophisticated in our choices. Even older and deeper than ethics, however, is religion. Religion concerns itself not with (mere) right and wrong but with good and evil themselves—with the archetypes of right and wrong. Religion concerns itself with domain of value, ultimate value. That is not the scientific domain. It’s not the territory of empirical description. The people who wrote and edited the Bible, for example, weren’t scientists. They couldn’t have been scientists, even if they had wanted to be. The viewpoints, methods and practices of science hadn’t been formulated when the Bible was written.

  Religion is instead about proper behaviour. It’s about what Plato called “the Good.” A genuine religious acolyte isn’t trying to formulate accurate ideas about the objective nature of the world (although he may be trying to do that to). He’s striving, instead, to be a “good person.” It may be the case that to him “good” means nothing but “obedient”—even blindly obedient. Hence the classic liberal Western enlightenment objection to religious belief: obedience is not enough. But it’s at least a start (and we have forgotten this): You cannot aim yourself at anything if you are completely undisciplined and untutored. You will not know what to target, and you won’t fly straight, even if you somehow get your aim right. And then you will conclude, “There is nothing to aim for.” And then you will be lost.

  It is therefore necessary and desirable for religions to have a dogmatic element. What good is a value system that does not provide a stable structure? What good is a value system that does not point the way to a higher order? And what good can you possibly be if you cannot or do not internalize that structure, or accept that order—not as a final destination, necessarily, but at least as a starting point? Without that, you’re nothing but an adult two-year-old, without the charm or the potential. That is not to say (to say it again) that obedience is sufficient. But a person capable of obedience—let’s say, instead, a properly disciplined person—is at least a well-forged tool. At least that (and that is not nothing). Of course, there must be vision, beyond discipline; beyond dogma. A tool still needs a purpose. It is for such reasons that Christ said, in the Gospel of Thomas, “The Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, but men do not see it.”⁷⁵

  Does that mean that what we see is dependent on our religious beliefs? Yes! And what we don’t see, as well! You might object, “But I’m an atheist.” No, you’re not (and if you want to understand this, you could read Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, perhaps the greatest novel ever written, in which the main character, Raskolnikov, decides to take his atheism with true seriousness, commits what he has rationalized as a benevolent murder, and pays the price). You’re simply not an atheist in your actions, and it is your actions that most accurately reflect your deepest beliefs—those that are implicit, embedded in your being, underneath your conscious apprehensions and articulable attitudes and surface-level self-knowledge. You can only find out what you actually believe (rather than what you think you believe) by watching how you act. You simply don’t know what you believe, before that. You are too complex to understand yourself.

  It takes careful observation, and education, and reflection, and communication with others, just to scratch the surface of your beliefs. Everything you value is a product of unimaginably lengthy developmental processes, personal, cultural and biological. You don’t understand how what you want—and, therefore, what you see—is conditioned by the immense, abysmal, profound past. You simply don’t understand how every neural circuit through which you peer at the world has been shaped (and painfully) by the ethical aims of millions of years of human ancestors and all of the life that was lived for the billions of years before that.

  You don’t understand anything.

  You didn’t even know that you were blind.

  Some of our knowledge of our beliefs has been documented. We have been watching ourselves act, reflecting on that watching, and telling stories distilled through that reflection, for tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of years. That is all part of our attempts, individual and collective, to discover and articulate what it is that we believe. Part of the knowledge so generated is what is encapsulated in the fundamental teachings of our cultures, in ancient writings such as the Tao te Ching, or the aforementioned Vedic scriptures, or the Biblical stories. The Bible is, for better or worse, the foundational document of Western civilization (of Western values, Western morality, and Western conceptions of good and evil). It’s the product of processes that remain fundamentally beyond our comprehension. The Bible is a library composed of many books, each written and edited by many people. It’s a truly emergent document—a selected, sequenced and finally coherent story written by no one and everyone over many thousands of years. The Bible has been thrown up, out of the deep, by the collective human imagination, which is itself a product of unimaginable forces operating over unfathomable spans of time. Its careful, respectful study can reveal things to us about what we believe and how we do and should act that can be discovered in almost no other manner.