The Invisible Counterpoint

Viewing the earth from space is supposed to be one of those opportunities to chuck off familiar ways of apprehending your lived life into a baptism where cognitive categories need to be reapplied … hold on, it's not just blue sea vs. brown terra which this view tells me it is, but of course the Pacific Ocean, and that chunk of terra is California,  and so on.  It's supposed to be one of those chances where in feeling an actual effort to reapply our entire normal way of perceiving, we feel in ourselves the capacity to change … the "us" in us can flow into a better mold. But though in certain kinds of cultural contexts this realization/rapture can be magnified -- like during the space launch, the utopian 1960s -- in some it can be virtually nullified as the fact that it's simply a view from a height lends it strictly not to perspective but to orientation. Arrogant, aristocratic -- entirely-not-our-own -- orientation. I've heard of differing agents in rega...

This is the End Iron Man 3 Only God Forgives Nebraska Superman: Man of Steel Inside Llewyn Davis The Wolverine Star Trek: Into Darkness The Counselor Filth Lee Daniel's The Butler Pacific Rim 12 Years a Slave Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit ***** Draw, or loss to the woman, owing to "the boy" IDing himself as loyal to mom, or as saving a nation / world, or some other epic  excuse. The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug Thor: The Dark World Star Trek: Into Darkness Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

"Her"  The power of this fusion fantasy can be seen in a simple  experiment that has been repeated over and over again by Silverman and his group.  They showed subliminal messages to hundreds of people, and found that only one —" MOMMY AND I ARE ONE”— had an enormous emotional effect, reducing their  anxieties and pathologies and their smoking and drinking addictions measurably.  “Daddy and I are one” had no effect.  "Iron Man 3" Warriors become fused with the powerful mother that masturbated them during menstruation; they then decorate themselves with menstrual blood-red paint so they can appropriate the fearful power of their Killer Mothers. Wars in early civilizations are fought on behalf of and against Killer  Goddesses, bloodthirsty mothers like Tiamat, Ishtar, Inanna, Isis or Kali. Typical is  the Aztec mother- goddess Hiutzilopochtli, who had “mouths all over her body” that  cried out to be fed the blood of soldiers. ...

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit I admire mainstream films where people are shown behaving in ways you can learn from, draw strength from. In the "Hobbit," one example is my favorite part of the film. After Thorin declares that Bilbo took advantage of being left all alone to leave for home, Bilbo is shown ruminating over what Thorin just accused him of; and, after cancelling his invisibility and becoming visible to the company, offers an inspiring, considered reply. First of course he responds warmly to the dwarves' cheering his return, but after Thorin asks/presses him on why he indeed did come back, he acknowledges Thorin's cause to doubt him -- his love of his home is such, he realizes, that it's appropriate for those forlorn of one to gauge he'd eventually flee for his like-sake at some point -- but also shows him as understanding that having long known a home attractive enough to bait one back is also what leant him  the well-being to ultimately go without a b...

Lloyd DeMause on Kennedy assassination, 2002 When Khrushchev then backed down (thankfully, otherwise you might not be alive and reading this book) and removed the missiles and the crisis suddenly ended without any war, Americans felt an enormous letdown. 17  The media reported on "The Strange Mood of America Today Baffled and uncertain of what to believe..." 18  It began to ask what were seen as frightening questions: "Will It Now Be A World Without Real War? Suddenly the world seems quiet...Why the quiet? What does it mean?" 19  The prospect of peaceful quiet felt terribly frightening.  Americans from all parties were furious with Kennedy for various pretexts. Many began calling for a new Cuban invasion, agreeing with Barry Goldwater's demand that Kennedy "do anything that needs to be done to get rid of that cancer. If it means war, let it mean war." 20  Kennedy was accused of being soft on Communism for living up to his no-invasion pledge to...

Her (Spike Jonze) "The film, with its dewy tone and gentle manners, plays like a feature-length kitten video, leaving viewers to coo at the cute humans who live like pets in a world-scale safe house." ( Richard Brody ) This statement is made by someone who clearly lives outside the safe house. I personally think the number of people out there like that, on the outside, are dwindling, and therefore imagine rather more people are relating to the film than he assumes are cooing. Brody lives in New York, and might assume that most people living in giant metropolises are still denizens of environments who go to kitten videos only as respite from the harsh city, but this may be more and more untrue. The reason is that the leverage cities need to be this way--and it does require leverage: the city as maybe not an easy but a possible sure way to cosmopolitan independence, is an acquisition, a height--may exist too shallowly right now so that in truth they're playing out now ...

The Hobbit (Tolkien) 
I think the thing that must seem most curious about this adventure to slay a dragon and reclaim a homeland and its treasure, is how the hell could adding a burglar to this motley crew be adding the decisive factor? What's the trick? For there must be one, since the dragon has only gotten larger and more deadly as the years have gone by. Peter Jackson changes things so that a burglar is needed because someone small and stealthy needs to enter Smaug’s lair to perhaps snatch one especially bright, brilliant—ostensibly readily noticeable even given its being shrouded by a hoard of lesser delights—jewel, the Arkenstone. With that stone, Thorin will earn control over seven kingdoms of dwarves, and with their might the dragon would finally look to be overmatched. In the book, it develops into a situation where regarding the fighting and killing the dragon, they decide that a full frontal attack of just themselves is their best bet, even as they agree th...