After scanning its face again and again,
I began to scale it, picking my holds
With intense caution. About half-way
To the top, I was suddenly brought to
A dead stop, with arms outspread
Clinging close to the face of the rock
Unable to move hand or foot
Either up or down. My doom
Appeared fixed. I MUST fall.
There would be a moment of
Bewilderment, and then,
A lifeless rumble down the cliff
To the glacier below.
My mind seemed to fill with a
Stifling smoke. This terrible eclipse
Lasted only a moment, when life blazed
Forth again with preternatural clearness.
I seemed suddenly to become possessed
Of a new sense. My trembling muscles
Became firm again, every rift and flaw in
The rock was seen as through a microscope,
My limbs moved with a positiveness and precision
With which I seemed to have
Nothing at all to do.
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of
universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I
reach my hands and play with pebbles of
destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs
reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive
in the universe.
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Notice the book right behind Roddy Piper’s ear when he sees the alien at 2:29. “Edgar Cayce on ESP”
Nice touch in the details. This was a better movie than we realized when it came out. Certainly prescient.
I’m damn low on bublegum, myself. I think the whole nation is…
JWM
There’s also a book on the Bermuda triangle below that one.
I have a picture of him mock arm wrestling with my son in a bar in Tampa about 15 years ago.
I used to be a hard-core WWF fan back in the Hulk Hogan era. For years I went to every show at the Sports Arena along with my pal Jeff, and my mother. God, how Mom used to love the Hulkster. I saw Rowdy Roddy Piper perform a bunch of times. It was great fun. We often ran up hundred dollar beer tabs before the show was over. We’d all get roaring drunk, and holler ourselves hoarse. Luckily, our guardian angels must have gone with us. We always made it home, OK.
JWM
I “put on the sunglasses” years ago. Haven’t removed them since except to spy on the Hive Mind from time to time. It seems that one-half of mankind is alien, weird, controlled, subservient, robotic. Like a man infected with hookworms, they don’t know they are infected. If told their condition, they would fight like Hell to shut you up. Men become so used to the Dark, they cannot stand in the Light. Most of them are Eloi; their rulers are Morlocks.
I often wonder if we have really discovered all the rules of Physics, that there might remain other forces yet unseen that really guide the world. We get hints of these from time to time, but dismiss them as “outliers”, unexplainables, freakish. Some men know of them but—wisely for now—keep such esoterica to themselves. If we knew who they are we might call them prophets. Or we might put them to death.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Tocqueville 1835–Princes had turned violence into a physical thing but our democratic republics have made it into something as intellectual as the human will it intends to restrict. The unity, the universality, the omnipotence of society’s power, and the uniformity of its rules represent the outstanding feature of all the political systems invented in our day. They recur at the heart of the strangest utopias. The human mind still pursues these images even in its dreams.
I never had a taste for de Tocqueville. Of course I had to read some of “Democracy in America” in college, but found it tedious. Nowadays I find almost all political philosophers tedious. (Well, maybe not parts of Locke, Hobbes and Jefferson.) I really don’t know why. I used to devour such things.
Perhaps because such talk is obsolete for now. It is no longer a question of comparing laws, constitutions, forms of government and such. Genteel discussions of political theory while sipping Chablis are worse than useless; they take time away from far more necessary activities.
“Whose side are you on?” is a much more pressing question than “What do think of the ‘social contract’ of Hobbes?”
Or as Lenin would say, “Who? Whom?”
Mike sed: “It seems that one-half of mankind is alien…”
=======
Now.
I suspect 90% can easily become aliens as pressure increases. You see this now as the Karens of the world, with no tangible benefit to themselves, willingly turn into mini-tyrants at any opportunity. There are Ken’s (male Karens) doing the same thing.
If, say, the head tyrants offer rewards to Karen’s-in-wait the number of mini-tyrants will expand. They never take into consideration that they too can become a victim of a Karen or Ken. They are blinded by their narcissism and arrogance are unable to think ahead about what could be. They are basal animals and their numbers will increase as the gates close further. Pressure doesn’t always create diamonds, sometimes it creates explosions.
The “increased pressure” is not creating more Karens but more red pilled types. Two weeks ago who would have guessed that “Let’s Go Brandon!” would be chanted by hundreds of thousands around the country. One week ago who would have guessed that a bunch of recently red pilled pilots would bring Southwest Airlines to its knees.
The optimum number of mask wearing jackasses, Karens and other assorted worthless busy-bodies has been reached. What such pressure does accomplish, however, is to reveal the real man. In normal times he was a pleasant neighbor whom you would have over for beers. Now he is a raving lunatic who hates your guts. Why? Just as wine shows the true man—in vino veritas—the insane politics of today show who your neighbor really always—always—was. And that information is useful indeed.
We just watched this movie last weekend with the nephews, one of whom hadn’t seen it before.
Funny how certain movies and shows seem more like documentaries than the fiction they purport to be.
Some film makers and writers have this eerie sense of where things are going. Call each a sort of Nostradamus; or better, a sort of Cassandra. Maybe laughed at in their own time, called paranoid or silly, now they are hailed as prophets. Dostoyevsky, Orwell, Kafka, Wells, Verne, Huxley, Solzhenitsyn are such men. “Hunger Games”, “Network”, “Anthem”, “A Canticle for Leibowitz”, “V For Vendetta”, “1984”, “Brave New World”, “The Road to Serfdom”, “Darkness at Noon” are such works.
There are many more, but there are never enough. But even the greatest prophet has no value in the present if he has no audience. It is only in the future that we recognize his footprints.
I’m intrigued with @Mike Austin’s idea that we might be approaching Peak A$$hole, but not optimistic. Meantimes, I gotta get me some of them sunglasses!
I love it: “Peak Asshole”.
We can define it as “that moment in time when the highest number of assholes is reached in any society experiencing rapid and increasing political, social and economic pressure. That number will tend to reduce as the society turns more and more volatile, though there is no time when the number of assholes reaches zero.”
Every Karen has now revealed herself. Every progressive has now revealed himself. Every government agency has now revealed itself. Every media outlet has now revealed itself. Every government bureaucrat has now revealed himself. No one is hiding any longer as there is nowhere to hide. There is no privacy as everything one does and everything one says is being recorded and remembered. The only thing left is to monitor your thoughts. They’re working on that.
See those birds in the sky? They are called Black Swans. Take cover.
The claws are out. The lines are drawn. Pieces have been put in place. We know who they are; they know who we are. The land is getting red hot. Fuel is being pumped into the border regions.
Anyone have a match?
Lens Theory in action!