Wednesday 9 February 2022

The Cosmic Treadmill





[device beeping] [phone ringing]

Bugs: Seq, I’m in.


Seq: Captain.


Bugs: You were right. The skylight was a windowpane.


Seq: I’ve got serious interference.


Bugs: Weird, it’s some kind of modal.


Seq: Looks like old code.


Woman: It feels really familiar.


Seq: Drop a pin. I’ll signal for backup.


Bugs: I’m gonna check it out.


Seq: Bugs? If the general finds out we’ve been fishing…


Bugs: A quick peek can’t hurt.


[static]

Seq: Did you hear that? Shit. I think our signal was traced. Bugs, this feels like a trap. Bugs!


[suspenseful music playing]

Swat Officer: Freeze! Do not move! We will shoot! Very slowly, raise your hands.


Lieutenant: Here we go. Hey, where are you going?


Agent: You were warned, Lieutenant.


Lieutenant: I think we can handle one little girl. You’re wasting your time! My men are bringing her down now.


Agent: No, Lieutenant, your men are already dead.


Bugs: Seq, you with me?


Seq: This old code keeps crashing.


Bugs: Your projection’s breaking up. Switch to audio.


Seq: Bugs, this is a direct violation of the general’s protocols.



 

Bugs: I know, I know. But something is happening here. Something important. Oh, fuck. We know what happens next. She kicks their ass. Now she makes a call.


Echo: The line was traced.


Bugs: And then…


Seq: Then she runs for her life.


Echo: Are there any agents?


Bugs: We know this story. This is how it all began.


Echo: God damn it.


Bugs: This is where he began.


Seq: You’re thinking this Modal is a loop? Or a treadmill? Some sort of sequencer evolving a program to do what?


Bugs: I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.


Echo: All right.


Bugs: So deja vu and yet it’s obviously all wrong.


Seq: Why use old code to mirror something new?


Bugs: I don’t know.


Seq: If that’s supposed to be Trinity, that’s not what happens.


Bugs: Maybe this isn’t the story we think it is.


Seq: Bugs, you have to get out of here. It’s gotta be a trap.


Bugs: Shit.


Bugs: Uh… You all carry on. As you were. I’m just gonna… see myself out.


Agent: Kill her.


Bugs: Oh, Seq!


Bugs: 

Why did you Save Me?


Agent: 

You first. Who are you? Where did you come from?


Bugs: 

Okay. My name is Bugs. As in “Bunny.” 

And tech that listens. 


Do you know this is a Modal?


Agent: 

What’s a Modal?


Bugs:

 It’s a simulation used to evolve programs. 

Do you understand that you are… digital sentience?


Agent: 

I know what I am. Just like I know 

my job is to hunt down and destroy synthients. 

Like you. 


And yet


Bugs

Here we are.


Agent

Here we are.


Bugs: 

The other agents don’t know about this room? 

How’d you find it?


Agent: 

No one was ever in the key shop,

 so I started looking.



 

Bugs: More you looked, the more you found. Story of my life.


Agent: What?


Bugs: I feel like I know this room. Holy shit. This is his apartment.


Agent: 

You mean Thomas Anderson’s? 

I searched everywhere. 

He doesn’t exist.


Bugs: 

He stopped being Thomas a long time ago, 

but maybe you know him by his real name. Neo


You do. Oh, okay. Uh… 

I can’t believe this, after all these years. 


You see, most people think that Neo is dead. 

But I know he’s not. 

Because I’ve seen him.


Agent:  Where?


Bugs: 

It’s not something I can explain easily, but… 

But the moment he looked at me, 

I felt something… unlock my mind.


Agent: 

Okay. Something like that happened to me. 

I saw this pattern… and it was everywhere. 


We can’t see it, but we’re all trapped 

inside these strange, repeating loops. 


Somehow I saw it in the mirror. 

Just a flicker, but it was like you said. 

And suddenly I understood.


Bugs:

 This is not the real world.


Agent: For the first time, I felt real purpose. 

I knew who I was and what I had to do.


Bugs

Who are you? 

What do you have to do?


Agent

I am… Morpheus

And I have to find Neo.


Bugs: 

Morpheus. Okay. Okay. 


Oh, my God!

 I have to get you out of here. 

I need to figure out who built this Modal. 


Okay, come with me. 

You have to be ready to leave. 


You have to be really ready. 


And if you’re not, if you think that 

this is where you belong…


Morpheus

You call this A Choice?


Bugs

Oh, honestly, when somebody offered me these things, 

I went off on binary conceptions of the world 

and said there was no way I was swallowing some 

symbolic reduction of My Life —

And the woman with the pills laughed 

’cause I was missing The Point.


Morpheus

What Point?


Bugs

The Choice is an illusion — 

You already know 

What You Have to Do.


Tuesday 8 February 2022

Apish Courtesy


They do me wrong, and I will not endure it. 

I fear our happiness is at its height. 

Who is it that complains unto the king
 that I, forsooth, am stern, and love them not? 
Because I cannot flatter... 
Look fair, smile in men's faces,
deceive, cog, duck with 
French nods and apish courtesy
I must be held a rancorous enemy
 
The World they live in... 
The World they exist in is privy 
to these kinds of... 
internecine family quarrel. 

That's right. 
They are clawing at each other 
for the throne. 
 
Brother Gloucester, we know your meaning. You envy my advancement and my friends'. 
God grant we may never have need of you! 

Meantime, God grants that I have need of you. Our brother is imprison'd by your means... ...myself disgraced... ...the nobility of the house held in contempt... ...while great promotions are daily given to ennoble those... ...that scarce, some two days since, were worth a noble. 

By Him that raised me to this careful height... 
from that contented hap which I enjoy'd
I never did incense his majesty 
against the Duke of Clarence. 

You're gonna say you are not the mean of 
my Lord Hastings' late imprisonment? 
 
You see? Richard's stirring the pot
The King is Dying, 
so he's fearful and paranoid,
sending people to jail --

This is a situation Richard loves
 
He can use the fear, the turmoil to his advantage
He knows they hate each other. 
He'll use their hatred to manipulate them. 
You know, to divide, then conquer. 
 
My Lord of Gloucester, I have too long borne
these blunt upbraidings and these bitter scoffs. By heaven, I will acquaint his majesty 
of these gross taunts. 
I'd rather be a country servant... 
 
What! Threat you me with telling of the king? 
Tell him, and spare not. 
Let me put it in your minds, if you forget.
what you are ere this, and what you are. 
Withal, what I have been, 
and what I am. 
 
 
A murderous villain
and so still thou art. 
 
Well, it is a complicated play too. 
All those relationships and the wives --
The Queen Margaret stuff is difficult
Hear me, you wrangling pirates, 
that fall out in sharing
 that which you have pill'd from me! 
 
Margaret was The Queen before The War. 
She was a Lancaster, 
and she was dethroned 
by The Yorks. 
 
She's a ghost of The Past, 
haunting Yhe Yorks with her curses
 
A husband and a son... 
 
Don't you think she rants and raves 
around the castle like this a lot
 
No
 
No? 
 
I don't think so --
I think she just comes in this day... 
...because it's a crisis time, 
and she FEELS it! 
 
Give way, dull clouds, 
to my quick curses! 
 
It's primordial
She brings that kind of Music 
 into this experience. 
 
Poor painted queen. 
The day will come that thou shalt 
wish for me to help thee
curse this poisonous bunchback'd toad
 
Reading this play, as I take word by word... 
...everything She Says happens
 
Beware of yonder dog! 
Look. Have not to do with him, 
beware of him. 
Sin, death, and hell have set their marks on him...
 ...and all their messengers await on him. 
 
Thou hateful wither'd hag, 
have done thy charm.  
 
And leave out thee? 
Stay, dog, for thou shalt hear me.
 
The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul. 
Thou elvish-mark'd, abortive, rooting hog....
 
Live each of you the subjects to his hate... 
...and he to yours, and all of you 
to God's
 
We don't say a word
We let her go. 
 
The Music... Literally, I mean The Music... 
... and the thoughts and the concepts... 
... and the feelings have not been divorced 
from The Words.
 
And in England,  
You've had centuries 
in which Word 
 has been totally divorced... 
...from Truth --
 
And that's A Problem 
for Us-actors. 
 
 
If we think words are things and have no feelings in words... 
...then we say things to each other that mean nothing. 
But if we felt what we said, we'd say less and mean more.

Sunday 6 February 2022

The Gospel of T•O•M (A.I.)


“She led a very busy life. 
Her mornings were taken up 
in giving lessons to the Red Calf, Her Daughter, 
and in the afternoon she taught the little one 
Deportment and Mooing 
and all the things a really well- 
brought up calf should know. 

Then they had their supper, 
and the Red Cow showed the Red Calf 
how to select a good blade of grass from a bad one; 
and when Her Child had gone to sleep at night 
she would go into a corner of the field 
and chew the cud and think 
her own quiet thoughts. 

All her days were exactly the same. 

One Red Calf grew up and went away 
and another came in its place. 

And it was natural that the Red Cow 
should imagine that her life 
would always be the same as it had always been – 
indeed, she felt that she could ask for nothing better 
than for all her days to be alike 
till she came to the end of them.”

 

G•E•R•T•Y-3000
Sam, This is NOT Going to Work.
  
Sam-88
Why?

G•E•R•T•Y-3000
I have recorded everything 
that has taken place 
on The Base since 
Your Awakening — 
If anyone were to check 
My Memory Cache,
it would put You 
in considerable Danger.

….You could erase
My Memory Banks — 
I could reboot myself,  
once you have departed.

Sam-88 :
Are You okay with that…?

G•E•R•T•Y-3000
:D I'm Here to Keep You SAFE, Sam! :D 
I want to HELP You.
  
Sam-88
I set your... I set your computer 
to reboot, The Moment that I launch.


G•E•R•T•Y-3000
I Understand, Sam.

You should be Okay —  
:D I Hope Life on Earth :D 
:D  is everything :D 
:D  You remember it to Be. :D

  
Sam-88
Thanks, Gerty. 
Are You Going to Be Okay?

G•E•R•T•Y-3000
Of Course. 
The New Sam and I will be 
Back to Our Programming 
as soon as I have  finished rebooting.
  
Sam-88
Gerty — We're Not Programmed — 
We're PEOPLE

Understand?

Freebird

"The idea of getting a, you know, syringe full of heroin and shooting it in the vein under my cock right now seems like almost a productive act."




I'm Sorry Folks (1989); this title may refer to a bootleg recording of a live performance.

[Someone in the crowd yells "Freebird"] 
Please quit yelling that. It's not funny, it's not clever; 
it's stupid, it's repetitive, 
why the fuck would you continue 
to yell that? I'm serious.

[The same man yells something back] 
"Kevin Matthews"; okay, 
what does that mean, now? 

Now, what does it mean?
 
I understand where it comes from, so do you
Now, what does it all mean
What is the culmination of yelling that? 

[The same man yells back again] 

Jimmy Shorts: he's not here
he's not gonna be here. Now what?

Now where are we? 
We're here at 
you interrupting me again
you fucking idiot. That's you

You see, we are here at the same point again where you
the fucking peon masses, can once again 
ruin anyone who tries to do anything because you don't know how to do 
it on your own
That's where we're fucking at! 
Once again the useless wastes of fucking flesh 
that has ruined everything good in this goddamn world! 
That's where we're at! 

HITLER HAD THE RIGHT IDEA! 
HE WAS JUST AN UNDERACHIEVER
KILL 'EM ALL, ADOLF! ALL OF 'EM! JEW, MEXICAN,
AMERICAN, WHITE, KILL 'EM ALL! 
START OVER! THE EXPERIMENT DIDN'T WORK! 

Rain 40 days, please fucking rain to wash these turds off my fucking life! Wash these human wastes of flesh and bones off this planet! I pray to you, God, to kill these fucking people! 

[Someone yells out "Freebird" once more] 
Freebird. 
[Falls back] 
And in the beginning there was the word, Freebird. And Freebird would be yelled throughout the centuries. Freebird, the mantra of the moron."

Saturday 5 February 2022

I Love My Neighbours, Like A Father.



I can see you in court now, surrounded by a bunch of lawyers in double-breasted suits.

You're pleading. You say,
"Judge, it was only a little bit of innocent fun —
I love my neighbors, 
like A Father."





Hitchcock's God 
is cruel and arbitrary,
and like some kind of 
bird of prey or raptor 
which is gazing down rather 
coldly and disinterestedly 
on its human subjects.

In the shower sequence, 
the violence is directed 
and that knife is coming towards US.

So we're being punished 
for being the voyeurs.

There are consequences 
to watching and being watched.

In the character of James Stewart,
if we identify with him in Rear Window 
has a very literal, great fall
at the end of it where he breaks the other leg.

Meaning another six, eight 
months of pain and itchiness and 
not being able 
to screw Grace Kelly.

All those things are 
pertinent to Hitchcock.






But as You are So Fond of Observing, Luthor -- I am NOT Human.









[Enterprise bridge]
KIRK: 
Uhura, send to Commander, Reliant,
 'Prepare to be boarded'.


UHURA: 
Aye sir. 
...Commander, Reliant, 
this is Enterprise...

[Reliant bridge]
UHURA (on intercom): 
...Surrender and prepare to be boarded. 
Enterprise to Reliant, 
you are ordered to surrender your vessel. 
Respond. ...Reliant! 
Come in, Reliant. 
You are ordered to 
surrender your vessel.

[Enterprise bridge]

UHURA: 
Enterprise to Reliant, 
you are ordered to surrender your vessel. Respond.

[Reliant bridge]
KHAN: No, Kirk. ...The Game's not over. ...To the last I will grapple with thee!
(Khan activates the Genesis device)
[Enterprise bridge]
SPOCK: Admiral. Scanning an energy source on Reliant. A pattern I've never seen before.
DAVID: It's the Genesis Wave!
KIRK: What?
DAVID: They're on a build up to detonation!
KIRK: How soon.
DAVID: We encoded four minutes.
KIRK: We'll beam aboard and stop it.
DAVID: You can't!
KIRK: Scotty, I need warp speed in three minutes or we're all dead!
UHURA (on intercom): No response, Admiral.
KIRK: Scotty!
KIRK: Get us out of here, best speed possible!
SULU: Aye sir.
(Spock leaves the bridge)
[Enterprise engineering]
(Spock arrives in engineering. Scott and an engineer are slumped on the floor)
McCOY: Are you out of your Vulcan mind? No human can tolerate the radiation that's in there!
SPOCK: But, as you are so fond of observing, Doctor, I'm not human.
McCOY: You're not going in there!
SPOCK: Perhaps you're right. What is Mister Scott's condition?
McCOY: Well, I don't think that he...
(Spock administers a Vulcan nerve pinch on McCoy)

SPOCK: 
…sorry, Doctor, I have no time to discuss this logically

...Remember!


SCOTT: 
Spock! Get out of there! Spock!

[Enterprise reactor room]
SCOTT (OC): 
Spock! Get out of there!

[Enterprise bridge]
KIRK: 
Time from my mark.


SAAVIK: 
Two minutes, ten seconds.


KIRK: 
Engine room! What's happening?

[Enterprise reactor room]

SCOTT: 
You dumb ninny! 
Get out of there! ...No, Spock, don't!
[Enterprise bridge]

KIRK: 
Time?


SAAVIK: 
Three minutes, thirty seconds.


KIRK: 
Distance from Reliant.


CHEKOV: 
Four hundred kilometres.

SULU:
We're not going to make it, are we?


[Reliant bridge]

KHAN: 
No! ...No! 
You can't get away. 
...From Hell's heart, 
...I stab at thee. 
For hate's sake 
I spit my last breath ...at thee.

[Enterprise bridge]

CADET: 
Sir! The mains are back on line!


KIRK: 
Bless you, Scotty. Go, Sulu!


(Reliant explodes as Enterprise flees the radiating Genesis rings)







THE LAW OF CHANGE IS THE LAW OF GOD
When Joan maintained her own ways she claimed, like Job, that there was not only God and the Church to be considered, but the Word made Flesh: that is, the unaveraged individual, representing life possibly at its highest actual human evolution and possibly at its lowest, but never at its merely mathematical average. Now there is no deification of the democratic average in the theory of the Church: it is an avowed hierarchy in which the members are sifted until at the end of the process an individual stands supreme as the Vicar of Christ. But when the process is examined it appears that its successive steps of selection and election are of the superior by the inferior (the cardinal vice of democracy), with the result that great popes are as rare and accidental as great kings, and that it has sometimes been safer for an aspirant to the Chair and the Keys to pass as a moribund dotard than as an energetic saint. At best very few popes have been canonized, or could be without letting down the standard of sanctity set by the self-elected saints.

No other result could have been reasonably expected; for it is not possible that an official organization of the spiritual needs of millions of men and women, mostly poor and ignorant, should compete successfully in the selection of its principals with the direct choice of the Holy Ghost as it flashes with unerring aim upon the individual. Nor can any College of Cardinals pray effectively that its choice may be inspired. The conscious prayer of the inferior may be that his choice may light on a greater than himself; but the sub-conscious intention of his self-preserving individuality must be to find a trustworthy servant of his own purposes. The saints and prophets, though they may be accidentally in this or that official position or rank, are always really self-selected, like Joan. And since neither Church nor State, by the secular necessities of its constitution, can guarantee even the recognition of such self-chosen missions, there is nothing for us but to make it a point of honor to privilege heresy to the last bearable degree on the simple ground that all evolution in thought and conduct must at first appear as heresy and misconduct. In short, though all society is founded on intolerance, all improvement is founded on tolerance, or the recognition of the fact that the law of evolution is Ibsen's law of change. And as the law of God in any sense of the word which can now command a faith proof against science is a law of evolution, it follows that the law of God is a law of change, and that when the Churches set themselves against change as such, they are setting themselves against the law of God.

BEYOND The Human Evolution




BEYOND The Darkness,
BEYOND The Human Evolution
is KHAN
A Genetically •Superior• Tyrant;

EXILED to a Barren Planet -
Banished by a Starship Captain,
he is DESTINED to Destroy...

"I'll chase him round The Moons of Nybia,
and round the Antares Maelstrom,
and through Perdition's FLAMES,
before I give him up....!"



“I’ve done FAR worse than Kill You —
Dr. HURT You….
And I wish to Go, on — 
HURTING You.

I Shall Leave You, as You Left Me….
Marooned, for all Eternity…
….buried ALIVE!
….buried ALIVE!”

“HH”

THE EVOLUTIONARY APPETITE
What then is the modern view of Joan's voices and visions and messages from God? The nineteenth century said that they were delusions, but that as she was a pretty girl, and had been abominably ill-treated and finally done to death by a superstitious rabble of medieval priests hounded on by a corrupt political bishop, it must be assumed that she was the innocent dupe of these delusions. The twentieth century finds this explanation too vapidly commonplace, and demands something more mystic. I think the twentieth century is right, because an explanation which amounts to Joan being mentally defective instead of, as she obviously was, mentally excessive, will not wash. I cannot believe, nor, if I could, could I expect all my readers to believe, as Joan did, that three ocularly visible well dressed persons, named respectively Saint Catherine, Saint Margaret, and Saint Michael, came down from heaven and gave her certain instructions with which they were charged by God for her. Not that such a belief would be more improbable or fantastic than some modern beliefs which we all swallow; but there are fashions and family habits in belief, and it happens that, my fashion being Victorian and my family habit Protestant, I find myself unable to attach any such objective validity to the form of Joan's visions.

But that there are forces at work which use individuals for purposes far transcending the purpose of keeping these individuals alive and prosperous and respectable and safe and happy in the middle station in life, which is all any good bourgeois can reasonably require, is established by the fact that men will, in the pursuit of knowledge and of social readjustments for which they will not be a penny the better, and are indeed often many pence the worse, face poverty, infamy, exile, imprisonment, dreadful hardship, and death. Even the selfish pursuit of personal power does not nerve men to the efforts and sacrifices which are eagerly made in pursuit of extensions of our power over nature, though these extensions may not touch the personal life of the seeker at any point. There is no more mystery about this appetite for knowledge and power than about the appetite for food: both are known as facts and as facts only, the difference between them being that the appetite for food is necessary to the life of the hungry man and is therefore a personal appetite, whereas the other is an appetite for evolution, and therefore a superpersonal need.

The diverse manners in which our imaginations dramatize the approach of the superpersonal forces is a problem for the psychologist, not for the historian. Only, the historian must understand that visionaries are neither impostors nor lunatics. It is one thing to say that the figure Joan recognized as St Catherine was not really St Catherine, but the dramatization by Joan's imagination of that pressure upon her of the driving force that is behind evolution which I have just called the evolutionary appetite. It is quite another to class her visions with the vision of two moons seen by a drunken person, or with Brocken spectres, echoes and the like. Saint Catherine's instructions were far too cogent for that; and the simplest French peasant who believes in apparitions of celestial personages to favored mortals is nearer to the scientific truth about Joan than the Rationalist and Materialist historians and essayists who feel obliged to set down a girl who saw saints and heard them talking to her as either crazy or mendacious. If Joan was mad, all Christendom was mad too; for people who believe devoutly in the existence of celestial personages are every whit as mad in that sense as the people who think they see them. Luther, when he threw his inkhorn at the devil, was no more mad than any other Augustinian monk: he had a more vivid imagination, and had perhaps eaten and slept less: that was all.

Certainly an Enthusiast








Headmaster :
He's turning out well, isn't he, our Father Henryson?

Father Goddard :
Certainly an enthusiast.

Headmaster :
Mind you, those who teach English Literature do have an unfair advantage.

If only we could make our Latin Julius Caesar as animated as Shakespeare's.

Do you notice how he always 
tries to involve Dyson?
I like that. Poor boy must feel 
terribly left out of it most of the time.

Father Goddard :
I must confess, he rather 
makes my hackles rise.

Headmaster :
Does he? That's a pity.


Father Goddard :
It's, er... it's not his physical affliction, 
but he seems so lacking in spirit.

Headmaster :
Well, he admires you. 
And that is what you must build on.

O Caesar...
Hence! Wilt thou lift up Olympus?
Great Caesar...
Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?
Speak, hands, for me!

Headmaster :
Do you think Stanfield would make 
A Good Priest?

Father Goddard :
If I can lead him in the right direction.

Friday 4 February 2022

The Super-God


It is REQUIRED that you see ‘Psycho
FROM THE VERY BEGINNING.

The manager of this theatre has been instructed, at the risk of his life, not to admit to the theatre any persons after the picture starts.

Any spurious attempts to enter byside doors, fire escapes, or ventilating shafts will be met by FORCE.

The entire objective of this extraordinary policy, of course, is to help you enjoy ‘Psycho’ MORE.

Alfred Hitchcock.





Tracey Venable, 
True Crime Author :
Mr. Bates... 

Norman Bates, SuperGod :
Norman.

Tracey Venable, 
True Crime Author :
I'm writing on the insanity defence and the rehabilitation of mentally ill murderers.

Many people think 
they can't be rehabilitated and 
there shouldn't be
an insanity defence.

We hear the objections of the victims
and relatives, 
but the murderers,
who can't help themselves, 
are victims too
What do you think?

Sherif John Hunt :
If this lady's bothering you, 
I'll have her leave.

Tracey Venable, 
True Crime Author :
Isn't your coffee break over, sheriff?


Anything else, Norman?

Tracey Venable, 
True Crime Author :
What do you think?

Norman Bates, SuperGod :
About?

Tracey Venable, 
True Crime Author :
What we were just saying.
You were incarcerated for 20 years.

Norman Bates, SuperGod :
22.

Tracey Venable, 
True Crime Author :
Right. For 22 years, you were locked away.
The State Says You're Sane.
You paid your debt.
Then Lila Loomis starts to persecute you.

Norman Bates, SuperGod :
Because of what happened 
to Her Sister.

Tracey Venable, 
True Crime Author :
Yes. Marion Crane. Right?

Norman Bates, SuperGod :
Right.


Tracey Venable, 
True Crime Author :
But that was 20 years ago.
A long time to harbor revenge.
Aren't you bitter about what Lila Loomis tried to do to you?

Norman Bates, SuperGod :
I understand.

My cure couldn't cure the hurt I caused.
My return to sanity didn't return the dead.
There's no way to make up that loss.

The past is never really past.
It stays with me all the time.

No matter how hard I try,
I can't escape. It's always there.
Throbbing inside you.
Coloring your perceptions of the world,
and sometimes controlling them.

Tracey Venable, 
True Crime Author :
That's my point, Norman. 
You have A Conscience. 
You live with Guilt.
You punish yourself all the time.
Why does the rest of Society have to?
Take Mrs. Spool's disappearance.
What if a well-meaning citizen thought that you had something to do with it?
I'm not upsetting you, Norman?
All this talk is only hypothetical.


What's yours, babe?

Tracey Venable, 
True Crime Author :
She is only an example of how people might, given your past history,
tend to automatically blame you
for any murder in the area.

You're not going, Norman?
I'd like to talk to you again.

You're not going to stiff us, Norman?

Excuse me. Could you tell me,
is there an inexpensive place to stay here?