Wednesday, January 9, 2013

About Pronking

Pronking refers to the American device of getting out of any situation at all by simply inventing a word, eg we did not LOSE Vietnam, we just DE-ESCALATED.

Here is the video to explain

Monday, January 7, 2013

The Good, the Bad and the American Beauty

At the American Beauty Forum people ask the question re if the titular [npi] movie "holds up" 10 years later.

Now we see the wonderful boobs of Thorny Bush at the window just holding up and we might well ask how long gravity may be so kind, but maybe that is not the question and maybe the question is if the BEAUTY has held up.

Well in my book [literally] Age 7 says no, per:

Age 6.
American Beauty (circa 2000)
6.1.    American Apple Pie is Melting
6.2.    About Happiness?
6.3.    About Drugs?
6.4.    About Pedophiles?
6.5.    About Gays and Closets?

Age 7.
Pandora (circa 2010)
7.1.    The End
7.2.    Resolve for Apocalypse
7.3.    Post Apocalypse and Survival Genres

Doespeare, John (2012-02-16). Seven Ages of America (Kindle Locations 81-87).  . Kindle Edition.

The REAL answer rests with HAL as the advertising God, the "whore" Lester was so keen to put behind him [also npi], and his brilliant one-liner summary OF the Beauty "nope, our marriage is just an ADVERTISEMENT for how normal we are".  The movie was about how that HAL totally controlled the American Beauty, even fooling Lester himself who was so much "in it" up to his neck he couldn't distinguish the REAL Angela from his IMAGINARY Angela till it got all "up close and personal", and even the actual boobs were but a shadow of those CLOSETED behind rose petals, with the jingle-jangle music on overtime.

So back to the question of the Beauty today [ie 2013] and the only way to answer is to go back TO the advertising industry as the trillions of dollars made by corporations per annum totally depends on these "whores" getting it "right".

But "right" does not mean accurate but merely the PERCEIVED right that prompts J Doe [Jnr] to actually BUY the product, and sadly that perceived cardboard cutout is nowhere near to the far less perfect J Doe [Jnr] that buys because he/she WANTS to be the boy/girl in the advert - "same old thing since 1916" folks, ie the rules of advertising have not changed in all of the 100 years since they were gestated.

Generally the advert is "closeted", ie you are not TOLD you are the hero in the advert, but you just "gravitate" that way by the sexual triggers, BUT a new series of KIA ads goes the other way and TELLS J Doe Jnr how he/she SHOULD be.

What is more, the adverts are "bookends" where in each one the subjects collide with each other in mid stream, but keep going.  So please watch these adverts to see yourself as the perfect KIA buying profile.

I could spend hours going through the marketing cleverness of each and every perceived attribute of both genders, starting with the fact the 1970 SNAG has shed the [enforced] "S for Sensitive" and is now just a NAG [but has in fact added pram pushing at the other end, so still "under my thumb"], but I will let you ponder on all that.  Then the concession by gal is she is no longer "I am woman hear me roar", but she now "vocalizes" [which is still too noisy for my liking - lol].

Notice that it cops out totally by letting BOTH "wear the pants" but as a concession to the Sisterhood only the bloke "wears the blame" [ie responsibility].

Also note that gal takes a look at the girls passing by and bloke actually nods at a "fellow gay", so as not to put any "gay" people out of the profile [ie buy the car].

The cleverness of the ad is KIA [etc] only needs to make ONE car, and has done that by "burying the hatchet" in the Gender War of 1970 so the car "suits" both genders.

The sad truth is that the very "Twittermania" shown above as good [for the corporations] is in fact killing the Beauty, and here is the gal TRUTH of the matter which, while satire, is very close to the mark.

The guy disaster is even sadder because it was "Carefully Taught" [South Pacific - 1958] once the feminists took over the formerly named "education system" in 1970.  Here is the video:
Although this creep is below the banana slug in personality and cops out on WHY this happened [ie the 1970s feminists {who actually PAY him}], he is basically correct about why boys too may be more likely to suicide than buy the KIA.  And saddest of all is his audience is mostly the so called "Baby Boomers" that CAUSED the problem by not opposing the blatant feminist takeover in 1970.

That endeths the sermon on the American Beauty heading like Lemmings off [of] that TEOTWAWKI cliff.

Sunday, January 6, 2013

About Unknown Unknowns

The invasion of poor old Iraq by HAL was masterminded by Rumsfeld HAL using the Monolith of G W Bush, and was based on this bit of writty:

"There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know.
There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that, we now know we don't know.
But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know."

United States Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld

The above statement was made by Rumsfeld on February 12, 2002 at a press briefing where he addressed the absence of evidence linking the government of Iraq with the supply of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups.

But HAL Rumsfeld in fact plagiarized it from a 13th century Persian poet, and it went like this:

"* One who knows and knows that he knows... His horse of wisdom will reach the skies.
* One who knows, but doesn't know that he knows... He is fast asleep, so you should wake him up!
* One who doesn't know, but knows that he doesn't know... His limping mule will eventually get him home.
* One who doesn't know and doesn't know that he doesn't know... He will be eternally lost in his hopeless oblivion!"

There are some aspects of this deception that I would note:

Firstly, Australian economist John Quiggin wrote:

"Although the language may be tortured, the basic point is both valid and important ... Having defended Rumsfeld, I’d point out that the considerations he refers to provide the case for being very cautious in going to war."

Secondly there is the use of the "Royal Plural" of "we" [6 times] in sharp contrast to Hitler's "truth statement" of "It is most fortunate for governments that the people do not think", as well as for the Persion poet.  What is a Known Known is that HAL in America does NOT share his knowledge [especially of his 9/11 type misdoings] with J Doe.  And he gets away with that by a simple path back to Hitler, ie J Doe never WILL think [or WANT to know the truth, as the Hollywood fiction is always more entertaining].

Saturday, January 5, 2013

My Monolithic Moment - Take #2

It took another 35 years for my next Monolithic Moment, which was the Full Eclipse of the Sun in November 2012, which I was able to view and film by walking 200 yards from my Donga, where I live in retirement, to our beach which by great fortune was at the ideal location to view this Eclipse.

Pop Version

Ever since buying Days of Future Passed in 1971 I had intended to film an actual dawn sequence [as a slide show] and put it to this music, in fact originally I had seen it as the whole day [a Tuesday of course], but by coincidence it was not until September 2012, with a new camcorder and while camping on Lake Tinaroo that the idea firmed up to do a movie version of the idea, after being awoken in my tent by a brilliant sunrise.

But in the meanwhile people were talking about the impending Eclipse in November 2012, 40 minutes after sunrise, so I decided to make my movie as a sunrise, doom & gloom moment and new sunrise sequence, so I did just that.  Here is the UTube embediment.
 Classical Version

So I had done as I intended 42 years before BUT I decided to go classical and put the movie footage to Beethoven's so called Ode to Joy Symphony, ie the 4th Movement of his 9th Symphony - or at least the first 15 minutes of it.

So here it is and it is far better to click the "UTube" icon on the Lower Right to get my full story of just what is going down here, both with the music and its connection to the Eclipse.  You can actually click on the Time Markers in my description to go to the actual part of the movie being referenced.

Friday, January 4, 2013

My Monolithic Moment - Take #1

90 miles north, as the crow barks, of Nietzsche's Monolithic Moment, on the other side of Switzerland, I had my own Moment in 1977 at The Rhine Falls.

The story is that I was working in England at the time on North Sea Oil projects so had money and time off to spend in Europe.  Our first son was born March 1977 and my Mother-in-Law had come over from Oz to help out, so in June we did a trip to the Alps Region in our E-Type Jag.

20 years later [in 1997] my son is off on his own trip to Europe so I did a website listing all the "must see" areas, eg like this one that he had already visited at 10 weeks old.  So here is the footage, digitized from a Super 8 movie and with Wagner added.  You see the outlaws up front tending the kinder then me eating a veener mit brot und senf, then the Falls.  I will shortly improve the audio as it is but 32 MeatyBites here so a tad raspy on the corners. 

[edit] OK this is the version with added MeatyBites, ripped and rendered at 128 MeatyBites


So as you can see my idea of an inspirational Monolith is a lot more "fluid" and POWERFUL than for Nietzsche.  Here is the web site content for my son in 1997:

I just got a book by Bernard Levin out of the library, "To the End of the Rhine" by a Kraut Michael Palin (Pole to Pole) facsimile.

Just grab a look at this geyser, he is just sooooo typical Germanic. Smile? no he has never even raised a giggle - even at Octoberfest but he puts himself in every picture with his "my shit dont stink" expression.
 
However he has great feeling for Rhine etc.

Take it away Bernard!!!!

"..... I had not so far embarked upon the bosom of the Rhine. The next stretch of the journey seemed to call for a progress on the water, and I signed on, therefore, from Kreuzlingen on the Swiss side of Constance, for the voyage to the Schaffhausen Falls, where I trusted that the boat would stop safely short of the drop. (sic - hey dude, that was my little joke. You guys dont have jokes) (It is from the bridge across the Rhine at Constance that the river is measured; from there to Rotterdam there are huge boards on both banks, marking the progress of the Rhine, measured off in kilometres, with smaller boards marking the tenths. At the Constance bridge the first of the boards says defiantly, 'o'.) I was not to know that this placid stretch of water, strewn on both sides with tiny villages, castles, churches, monuments, inns, towers, meadows and life, would prove to be among the most beautiful and enchanted stretches of the entire river.

The Rhine at Basle, Strasbourg and Cologne is more imposing, at Mainz and Worms more historically significant, at Bonn more political, at Duisburg and Djisseldorf more powerful in their role of purveyors of goods and services to the twentieth century, along the route of Seventy Castles more enrapt in legend; but from the moment the Rhine leaves Lake Constance, via the southern arm at the western end, until the traveller hears the roar of Falls downstream as he approaches his journey's end, there is no part of the Rhine more powerful in the heart's-ease and delight that it provides."

Right on Bernard, just what I would have expected!!! Also you will notice the midpoint town of Stein am Rhein. Well as per my own observance (later on?) of the Kraut diligence in making every town boootiful, he sort of bears this out in also suggesting that Stein is a must to get off and have a peep.

And then Bernard backs me up on Wagner bit - I sort of like this blokenzie

"..... the Nibelungenlied takes place on its waters and its banks, and Wagner set to music not only the legend but the river itself; the Rheingold Prelude is one of the most lifelike musical depictions of a tangible scene ever written, and a blind man who had never heard of the composer, or for that matter the Rhine, could be in no doubt that he was listening to the flowing of a mighty river."


(dum de la dar dum, dum de la dar dum etc) Have a listen (extra loud) to Das Rheingold - Entry of the Gods into Valhalla to see what I mean. I'd say if you started it (10.5 minutes) on your Walkman at the top of the steps, you would reach the climax just as you got to the falls.

I'll send you a tape of a really great version by good old Otto Klemperer. It's on side A about half way (line up the tape and pen marks).

I hope I (and Bernard) have conveyed to you some of the sights and (especially) feelings to be sampled in this area, based on what I have seen/experienced and what I would still like to experience. But dont get too overcome and try to cross that rainbow bridge. There's a bit of froth in the way.

OK, that's the exact text (HTML) I did in 1998, but in 2003 I am now able to fully indulge in my fantasy with a full minute of old Super 8 movie of the Falls, with Wagner in the background (ie the final 60 seconds of the tape I speak of above).

Please believe me that it was no accident that the movie and music fit so well together (as Bernard says, even a blind man could be in no doubt of what this all about). The chords were ringing in my ears as I took the movie in 1977 and I knew at the time that sometime in the future I would put all of this together (but had no idea it would be on a thing called a computer).

PS - It is a tad ironic that exactly 100 years before I took this movie, Nietzsche trotted up to Bayreuth for the first ever performance at Wagner's new Theatre and the first ever piece played was this Rheingold.  Nietzsche had a Hissy Fit saying it was too "Politically Correct", but Wagner was in great debt to the Mad King in building Bayreuth so maybe he should have "cut him a bit of slack".

But that explains why Nietzsche had to ask Strauss to give him something "Wagner like" for Zarathustra.  For my own Monolith Moment I like the real thing from Wagner himself.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Nietzsche's Own Monolithic Moment

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick sets Nietzsche's story of Zarathustra to a "Space Sci-Fi" background to best explain Nietzsche's OWN Monolithic Inspiration for writing Zarathustra in the first place, so here is some background:

"Thus Spoke Zarathustra was conceived while Nietzsche was writing The Gay Science; he made a small note, reading "6,000 feet beyond man and time," as evidence of this. More specifically, this note related to the concept of the eternal recurrence, which is, by Nietzsche's admission, the central idea of Zarathustra; this idea occurred to him by a "pyramidal block of stone" on the shores of Lake Silvaplana in the Upper Engadine, a high alpine region whose valley floor is at 6,000 ft."

Ten years later Strauss [or one of them] added some music, which was far more Wagner like than Strauss like, but for sure it fitted the bill perfectly.  Kubrick morphed all this "geological grandeur" into a "Monolith thing" that appears in the movie [with Strauss fanfare] to signify when things like apes might feel inclined to be inspired.

So without further ado we can zoom right in on the village of Surlej where he stayed in 1885 using GoogleEarth, and using the wonders of BillyWorld to make a short "sound and vision extravaganza".

GoogleEarth is viewing at 12,000 feet so is above the Monolith, meaning you will need to imagine how this Monolith looked to Nietzsche who was in the woods beside the lake, looking up some 3,000 feet.

EDIT - here is a better version of the music by Reiner and Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Mick Jagger Syndrome

When I see movies of the type made by M. Night Shyamalan, Carly Simon jumps into my head and sings:

"You're so vain. I'll bet you think this song is about you."

She released the song in 1972 and it was about her ex lover Mick Jagger and his "mating proclivities" of the peacock variety.  But it seems they remained "just good friends" as Mick joined in doing backing vocals.

But now Carly is singing:

"BECAUSE you're so vain, you bet yer balls this movie is about YOU."

But as always, "There's nobody Home".

"You" of course is the ubiquitous J Doe who is so busy worshiping HAL for his American Apple Pie that he has not seen that "someone left the Pie out in the rain", and nobody is about to convince him of these "issues".  And of course he can't get a "heads up" [or a head job for that matter] as his head is always down in his IPad, Twittering his testosterone away.

In fact he does not even KNOW or WANT to know who HAL is.  All he knows is HAL "communicates" his/her message via The Monolith, which is a user-friendly [if not stupid] "fellow Umurikin - but better paid than himself" reading from an Auto Cue machine, "with God on our side".

The message that J Doe MUST start to THINK is the subject of a great number of movies, even down to the satirical "footnote" of American Beauty "Look Closer" [but even with sarcastic prompting and prodding, he still refuses]

Of course all of this relates back to the genius mantra of Hitler "It is most fortunate for governments that the people do not think".  And of course the non-thinking is not natural, but one must be "Carefully Taught, before they are 6 or 7 or 8" [South Pacific - 1958], and Hitler would surely rollover in his grave seeing just how well the American System has done, even out-propagandering his own propaganda, producing what Nietzsche called the Herd Mentality/Morality, currently pronked as Political Correctness [with extreme prejudice].

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

About Otto

Otto is a character in the John Cleese movie "A Fish Called Wanda" - 1989.  The movie uses a Jewellery Heist as the "vehicle" for Cleese to unwind some memorable Monty Python style "social commentary" on the exigencies of the American and British "social norms" singularly, but moreso the interaction [aka agro] of putting them together in the same room [or closet if you are American].

As an Australian, I [and my kids] totally adore this movie as our own ethnic delight is to Take the Piss out of BOTH "Yanks and Poms".

In this way Cleese delights in displaying the contrast, especially post the Femmo Takeover of 1970, between "American Woman" [ie the smart but fickle Wanda] and "J Doe" [ie the dumbassed Otto who tries to cover up his stupidity by reading Nietzsche and shooting anything he does not understand].

I am Lester_Burnham_Risen because in my own life and with the same timing, I too became a victim of the SNAG doctrine [Lester launders it as a coma] of 1970 via the Monolith of Germaine Greer's book The Female Eunuch.  However, after divorce and my doctor telling me I should have been dead 4 times over from my "post divorce recovery blues", I am now 25 years past that point and although the saying goes as "been there, done that, didn't even get the T-Shirt", I have found that only by attending "the school of hard knocks" does one GET the T-Shirt of Wisdom and Perception, and perhaps able to understand better than most just what is behind Dylan's Gates of Eden.

So in the style of our [Otto's and mine] mutual friend Nietzsche, as well as my individual blogs for favorite movies I have done a Nietzsche style Notebook to table "Global Thoughts".  But just as Cleese honored Otto by making him Minister for Justice in South Africa [but back in 1989], I too honor/honour him by dedicating this blog to him.

Here is snapshot of Otto.
And a longer one, but don't you EVER call me stupid.