There's Two Stories...

Jericho was on when I came on...I can't follow it...more everyone being made tough...I swear, if I ever happen upon some "tough" guy tormenting a squirrel, or any of the critters, I'll toughen up my own self.

Anyway, I was thinking on Grave's "To Juan at the Winter Solstice" and that opening..

There is one story, and one story only...

The one story of course is romance, but actually it's two, insomuch romantic competition is, well, it's everywhere. The eternal triangle and all.

So I thought maybe the opening should be...

There are two stories, and two stories always...

There's the suitors story and his rival's.

I was going to rework the whole poem!, as the notion is easy to follow through...

Hero and Villain movies use the "theme" all the time.

Jelly Bellies, Peeps and Twinkies on National Geographic...and now children raised by animals like Romulus and Remus...hmm...they might be a good example of the rivals...I'll go see what Graves has to say...

Well, I can't find it, but found stuff for a Comparitive Mythology post I've had in mind...

Meanwhile, a recollection of Cassablanca...

from song As Time Goes By

It's still the same old story

A fight for love and glory

A case of do or die.

The world will always welcome lovers

As time goes by.
Oh yes, the world will always welcome lovers As time goes by.

unquote

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

September 14, 2007

Inspiration Point

Well, I was mulling over that article again and it's notion that the Internet is another "Afghanistan". The Taliban used Afghanistan as a hide out, and the idea is that Al Quida uses the Web the same way.

I find this far fetched, but I've seen other story on this too, that they've become very sophisticated in using the web.

But the notion that web viewers will be won over, inspired, on the web to join the jihad, the parade of martyrs, seems a bit much.

If anything, the web seems to dampen things down, almost a pressure release. Peace marches nowadays are paltry compared to the old days!

But where's the inspiration point? Well, Myra Breckenridge is on, and for her it was the illnesses caused by the power plant pollution...she became radicalized.

Radicalized is a poor term, and poor notion, the whole Reuters article is kindof off, and has the look of just another scare story.

But people get inspired to do, or follow, something all the time, and there's no one recipe that explains it.

Enough on that point.

But here's another! I realized today how MANY of the movies we see are about a story being overtaken by another story. Myra uncovers the pollution story which overtakes the power plants "cover" story.

It's like the Colombo detective stories...Colombo would bit by bit unravel the culprits false alibi story, and coup de gra them with a summation of the true story.

And Men in Black has this fantastic story of aliens everywhere underlying everyone's everday story.

Graves does this with his writing, now that I think of it. He's all the time talking about true poets, and true kings, and true poetry, and I guess we should all know he's telling the truth in illuminating us. But he got took.

Omar ali Shah roped him into collaborating on a translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and in the book Graves compares their translation next to Fitzgerald's, and touts it's genuineness, it's trueness. Not so!, to borrow his frequent protestation!

Shah's story is as concocted as Fitzgerald's, but whose to say...maybe I can find a site that tells this tale...

Well, the Jay Lo as police officer is on again, where the accident victim who loses his family in car blocks out the event and makes up a whole new identity for himself. Again, a story to be overtaken by the true story.

Maybe that's all there is to making a Hollywood script...

Here's a bit of the Omar ali Shah and Robert Graves controversy...too long to snag...http://www.nybooks.com/articles/10797...two stories at odds!

pic from wikipedia's site on Omar Khayyam

and a bit..

quote

If with wine you are drunk be happy

if Seated with a moon-faced (beauty)? Be happy

Since the end purpose of the universe is nothing-ness

Hence then you shall be naught, then while you are, be happy!

unquote

...which is bit like the "Don't Worry,Be Happy" song the Jamaicans sing at work...

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

September 13, 2007

Convincing Moment

quote from Reuter's site:
Internet is "the new Afghanistan": NY police commissioner
Wed Aug 15, 2007 3:51PM EDT
By Michelle Nichols and Edith Honan
unquote

To continue yesterday...

That article was referenced in jfk, and it caught my eye in that it describes a series of things that radicalizes someone.

In Terminator 2, it's the development of Linda Hamilton's character, she convinces herself that to alter time and stave off Armageddon she must stop the research scientist who is studying the remains of the first terminator, it's arm, and a chip. She almost succeeds...but cant go through with it to the point of killing him.

Then, and this is the part I'm trying to get at. the research scientist is "radicalized" by story of the time travel and devastated future...the convincing moment coming when Arnold cuts the skin off his arm and hand, revealing a self same robotic arm and hand to the one the scientist has been working on, the first terminator's.

He joins the little band of rebels, and they go to the lab.

Rebels, believers, I'm not sure what to call them.

It's an interesting character development, Hamilton's and the scientists.

Arnold goes through one too, in that he becomes a bit human...robots are always doing this!...and we are back where he dropped into the molten metal.

What happened is one story is over ridden by another. The new story, that the world is in peril form the rise of the machines, unfolds because of the Terminators rampaging. All through the movie norms of behavior are scoffed at, from the Biker Bar scene to the truck chases busting through the streets. Everyone, and that is everyone in LA, is made to look foolish, living their everday story while this new story unfolds in their midst.

Most adventure movies do this, they break speed limits. Does Hamilton convince herself, or do the repeated breaking of rules convince her?, or both?

Well, I cant sort this out tonight...I'll have to think on it some more.

No pic comes to mind...

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
September 12, 2007

Presage

Well, pleased with hawk pics, I went over to my friends to show them off, especially the big 16x20 print, and while the slide show played, I looked to their faces to see how they liked them, but Terminator 2 was on the TV above, and their eyes too! Oh, it was a bit too much like the blog!! I had to keep saying, look at the hawk!!

It is a more sophisticated film than most viewers are aware, including myself. But I do remember when the villain is driving the Liquid Nitrogen truck, and camera has a long pause on the writing on it's side, that I did think on first seeing the film, that, Oh, the liquid nitrogen is going to somehow freeze the liquid metal terminator. That's a presage. The sort of thing in detective stories, the author putting in hints of what's to come.

Hollywood film script writers are hardly known, not like novelists, and play writes. Part of the reason is that scripts are group efforts.

Now, thinking on this, I was watching ABC's bit on blogs, and one about a rock group that did a kinda test audience session before finalizing their new songs...

You could be getting text messages on what songs to play?

Yeah, like we could have a big screen behind us with texts on it, requesting songs...

I sometimes wonder if Shakespeare's plays were written by script writers like Hollywood films. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, but only after much input from the Founding Fathers.

Something like that going on, inputs coming in while writing, like this ekphrasis blog here, taking off on what the TV is doing while on...and other inputs..

They could have done a special on weblogs in 1986, network TV I mean...none of the big media caught on to the old text only newsgroups and such...

Now, lemegosee what the heck happened, if anything, on August 17, 1997, a date, if I remember it right, of significance in the Terminator Films...the singularity. brb

Actually, it's August 4, 1997, and sometimes a search is just...a search!!

When I was doing the Panay weblog, part of the study was of the bombing of Old Shanghai, this in August 1937 when the USS Augusta was in the harbor, and Chennault's pilots were trying to bomb the Idzumo..they missed, and hit a kindof early mall like building called The Great World.

At the time, it stuck in my head that The Great World was similar in name to The World Trade Center, which at the time was recovering from the first bombing.

I called the bombing of The Great World the "ground zero" of events in Old China, of The Panay Incident and Related Matters. The Panay is often called a prelude to Pearl Harbor. I was going back and forth in history from Dec. 12, 1937, trying to figure it, but on reading about The Great World thought that might be a better date, and event. What I was seeking was the presages of WW2.

This is likely difficult to follow. See the Panay Weblog...it's there...the concerns I had. Of two minds, I was thinking of WW2, and also what was being presaged by the first bombing of The World Trade Center, and later of the USS Cole.

It's intuitive thinking derived from following current events with a background of the past. At times it can look like magic, but it's just study and hard work!

Linda Hamilton has some remarkable scenes in the film...shaking the chain link fence, sitting on the desk smoking a cigarette, going on a rant about the MAD men (no, not those in the new show...who appear to be wearing heavy makeup!)...MAD as in the creators of Mutually Assured Destruction...

Her character's development also follows a well known psychological progression that creates radicals...actually that's a leap by me, as it's not well known to me..but I've seen it explained over in JFK.

I'll "tinker" with that tomorrow...

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

Sept. 11, 2007

Piffle

Pic from wikipedia 911 page...



Some words, once I use them for the first time, take on a kindof charm...like piffle, which no sooner than I thought of it I looked it up in the dictionary...and I like it!

National Geographic on with shows on laying undersea pipeline, and a biker's convention in Daytona Beach--biker nation.

I'm tired, and bloggers going down for maintenance...

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
September 11, 2007

AI Convention

There was an Artificial Intelligence convention this weekend in San Francisco. I read about it in the paper, recalling my post here...

Kid pianist on PBS at Carnegie Hall.

When the machines learn and begin programing themselves...

Well, we do that...parents teach their children to play the piano and become pianists.

And if that can be encoded into the genetic code, and passed on, then that is in the works too...

What's happening is that machinery is married to people who passed the threshold of artificial intelligence a long time ago, that is if our intelligence is "artificial"!

Anyway, some very rich and educated people have taken this serious, notably the creator of Pay Pal...which I'm not sure was a display of intelligence!! I guess it works okay, the spam scared me off, along with the lack of response to queries regarding same.

If these web businesses can sign me up by email, they can just as well unsubscribe and answer questions by same!

By the way, when I sign something with DavidDavid, a painting, or a mountain top registry, I put one David below the other...then draw a line, so it looks like a reflection...

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
September 9, 2007

MAD Max

Mel Gibson is on in a bad guys one good guy with a girl gangsters shootemup...

I dunno why I watch these things...it's a guy thing..

There's actually a lot of virtue being promoted...he shoots 'm all for 70,000 dollars, the collection of a debt, or theft...I missed the beginning.

Mel Gibson of course is Mad Max of the Apocalypse...just to keep the blog in theme here! And, actually, he's been pretty much mad max throughout all his movies...and why in the world he produced a movie about Jesus I dont know, and have never seen it. More storytelling it would seem.

And then a Charlie's Angels movie comes on....

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

September 8, 2007