R Is the Weirdest Letter
You can learn an awful lot about people, culture, and politics by studying R.
Thursday, February 22, 2024
FTs
North 121 Rust 93
Procedure Addresses 96 🍎110
Indiana Marymount 129 Zollner Pistons 115
Dead Gilberts 109 🐭116
Does Isaiah Stewart have compromising photos of Adam Silver?
Adam suspended the poster-thug for Intermittent Explosive Personal Disorder three games.
Okay, so not "bloodless"
While going back and forth between posting and Wiki on the film's critical reception I lost my place and inadvertently saw:
...on the third day. ...During sex she either has an orgasm or is disgusted by what she is doing, then dresses herself and stabs the man to death with a pair of scissors. She then sits quietly at her dining room table.
Either/or, huh? Either has an O or is disgusted and stabs the motherfucker to death as consequence? Can't say that's ever happened to me! Thank you, Wikipedia, you just saved me one hour and fifty minutes of viewing. Greatest film of all time, huh?
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Now, I have made some notes.
23 quai du Commerce. COMMERCE. Everything Jeanne does is related to commerce.
At bedtime of the first day her son asks her how she met his father. She explains and says although he was ugly he had a business.
"I didn't feel like getting married, but it seemed to be 'the thing to do,' as they say.
"My aunts kept saying, 'He's nice. He has money. He'll make you happy.'
"But I still couldn't decide. Then his business suddenly hit the rocks, so I married him."
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. The business failed "so I married him"?
Son: "If he was ugly, did you want to make love with him?"
Jeanne: "Ugly or not, it wasn't all that important. Besides, 'making love,'
as you call it, is merely a detail. And I had you. And he wasn't as ugly as all that."
...
Son (I don't even know this kid's name): "Well, if I were a woman, I could never make love with someone I wasn't deeply in love with.
Jeanne: "How could you know? You're not a woman."
Okay? Very dutiful, very transactional, very Teutonic, bloodless.
As she sends her son off to school at the beginning of the second day he asks her, "Could I have more today?" She goes into the living room where she keeps the money from her johns and comes back and hands the kid more money. NOT A WORD OF THANKS. My note to self: "Female projection?"
Jeanne Dielman 23 Quai Du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles
I'm at 1:23:00 of a 3:13:10 movie.
"...in 2022, the film was given the distinction of being voted as Sight & Sound's "greatest film of all time".
The greatest film of all time, huh? I will say this, I won't say that, I will say this: It is a very "Teutonic" film. She is fastidious in everything. All obsessive duty performed robotically. She never gets a word of thanks from her son for all she does for him, barely even a word of acknowledgment of her existence.
Jeanne Dielman
Four minutes later the door bell rings again. Jeanne picks up the baby thing and gives it to the person, the mother...(?)
Jeanne Dielman 23 Quai Du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles
She was making a pie and the doorbell just rang. She answered the door and a person handed her an oblong package the size of a tennis racket case. It was a baby in a carry thing. She put the baby package down on a table in the living room and went back to the kitchen.
Wtf?
There is no one self
I have watched the first 17 minutes of Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Who was Jeanne Dielman? For Chantal Akerman, a Belgian, Jeanne was her address. That was where she lived as a widow, made home for herself and her teenage son and turned tricks to make ends meet.
I then switched films and watched 14 minutes of Citizen Kane. Who was Citizen Kane? For Orson Welles, Kane was first a "Citizen". Citizen Kane lived many places, in a rundown house in his early years, in Xanadu "on the Florida Gulf Coast" at the height of his wealth. Kane was not identified by any of the places he lived as Jeanne Dielman was, although both Kane's humble residence as a youth and Xanadu became symbols of who he was. "I'm an American", Kane says in the film. A Citizen, Welles says, that is an Everyman.
Charles Foster Kane was his full name. His name was not who Citizen Kane was. The English have a rule, and they follow it: "Tell me what a man does and I'll tell you who he is." Thus Gardener, Chamberlain, Miller, etc. Citizen Kane was known for what he did, and if Welles had followed the English rule, Citizen Kane's surname, his "real" name, would have been Tycoon. But Welles inverts the English practice: "You see, Thompson, it isn’t enough to tell us what a man did. You’ve got to tell us who he was."
Citizen Kane and Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles are considered at the top of the greatest films of all time, numbers three and four, respectively, by one site. The films are set in different eras 34 years apart, in two very different locations, directed by two very different directors, an American man and a Belgian woman. Yet both of these acclaimed films explore the question of identity. And we have many identities. We are many selves.
I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey yesterday. It is considered at the very top of the greatest films of all time. After watching, I got on the Wikipedia page for the film and was surprised to learn that it was panned on release, "especially by New York critics", and was a money loser until re-release in 1971.
I liked the film for all of the reasons people who like the film like it and I didn't like it for some of the reasons people didn't like it at first, principally that the connecting tissue of the film came unstuck as in an LSD trip.
I then began watching Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, mercifully abbreviated to Jeanne Dielman, but it was late.
"Covid death toll in US likely 16% higher than official tally, study says"-The Guardian (US)
This brought back all the negative memories. In my mind COVID was America's worst failure. We're not "exceptional", we're special ed. We can't even count.
Wednesday, February 21, 2024
I'm for That
As a matter of deep personal policy I want more immigrants, not fewer.
As a member of a nominally democratic republic for the time I am cognizant that my deep personal policy is not that of a majority of my fellow Americans.
As a matter of political philosophy, there is no right to be an American.
As a matter of national policy, there is no right to come to this country. We, those who are here, decide, broadly, and according to the rule of law, who qualifies for admittance to this country, and who does not.
As a matter of local policy, sanctuary cities in the U.S., New York City and others, are stretched to breaking by the influx of immigrants. So called border states, Texas Arizona, and as a matter of political cynicism, Florida are (in the case of Texas and Arizona, overwhelmed on a daily basis by the number of immigrants illegally crossing into the United States.
As a matter of law, it is illegal for people to come to this country illegally. That is consciously tautological.
As a matter of law, we who are here must care for those who make it to this country, even illegally. They become our wards until they are vetted and released or deported.
As a matter of politics, the southern border states are doing everything that they can, and some things that they can't legally, to keep out people from illegally crossing the border.
As a matter of politics, Trumpie has torpedoed the tough immigration bill that he and Low Life Trumpists demanded, that passed the Senate, only to be still born by a House of Representatives who are determined to not do the right thing for America because it would be the right thing for the Democratic president and and the wrong thing politically for their cult leader, Trumpie..
Trumpie is not a real American president, and Trumpie's low life supporters are not real Americans. They are members of an un-American, un-democratic cult.
I refuse to let this Coalition of un-American, un-democratic Low Lifes to use tough immigration policy as a bludgeon against President Biden when political philosophy, the national interest in safe and secure borders, the law, and pragmatic politics augur otherwise.
For all of these reasons, I support whatever the president can do by executive order to make immigration policy right and to disarm Trumpie and his Low Life cultists of this political weapon.
CCXI-CLXXXVI
The lazy, pampered “highly-paid slaves” are back at it tomorrow night after nine days in Cabo and I was so disgusted with them over CCXI-CLXXXVI that I thought I might ignore tomorrow night. I would never ignore Friday night when the “Heat” get back to it and, hard feelings fall easily, I will probably follow tomorrow night also.
Man, Harvard (HARVARD!) is in Trouble!
When 70 university presidents gathered for a summit at the end of January, the topic on everyone’s mind was the crisis at Harvard.
The hosts of the summit treated the university, battered by accusations of coddling antisemitism, as a business-school case study on leadership in higher education, complete with a slide presentation on its plummeting reputation.
The killer slide: “Boeing & Tesla Have Similar Levels of Negative Buzz as Harvard.”
In other words, Harvard, a centuries-old symbol of academic excellence, was generating as much negative attention as an airplane manufacturer that had a door panel drop from the sky and a car company with a mercurial chief executive and multiple recalls.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at Yale’s School of Management, organized the summit. “Despite near 400 years of history, the value of brand equity is nowhere near as permanent as Harvard trustees think it is,” he said in an interview. “There used to be a term in the industry of something being the Cadillac of the industry. Well, Cadillac itself is, you know, sadly not the Cadillac of the industry anymore.”
…
There is already evidence of reputational damage: a 17 percent drop in the number of students applying to Harvard for early admission decisions this year. Other Ivy League schools saw increases.
Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Alabama Supreme Court Quotes Bible, Holds Frozen Embryos Are People (not a joke)
“We believe that each human being, from the moment of conception, is made in the image of God, created by Him to reflect His likeness. It is as if the People of Alabama took what was spoken of the prophet Jeremiah and applied it to every unborn person in this state: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, Before you were born I sanctified you.’ Jeremiah 1:5 (NKJV 1982),”
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