Barton Fink

Having just watched the Coen Brothers film, "Barton Fink", and then researching comments on the web regarding this production, I have a few comments to add about the film that others seem to have missed.

In the beginning of the film Barton is clearly overwhelmed by the reaction of the audience to his Broadway play, in fact he is confused by the praise for what he considers to be a rather mediocre attempt. He is persuaded to go to Hollywood with promises of more fame and fortune, but is unsure how to present himself and even if he can improve the callibre of his work.

He is afraid that he will have to compromise his work ethic and quickly learns that from here on he will be owned by the studio. It is clear from the moment he enters the hotel that he has entered an alternate reality. The place appears to be dead, quite and deserted - even the front desk is unattended, until the clerk emerges into the scene from below/underneath/underground. Chet is in fact the doorman for the gate to hell. Little does Barton realise that he has already sold his soul to the devil and that his neighbour is the demon who will guide him to destruction.

Notice, that many of the paintings and pictures in the background scenery depict the backs of people as though they are leaving the scene. Even the picture on the wall of his room shows the back of a woman looking some where else. It is as though everything is reversed, a mirror image of reality. This is the only view that he has in his room of the outside world, and it troubles him. It is as though nobody wants to be here, or are all on their way to another place. The only evidence of other occupants is their shoes in the hallway and the screams and moans of pain coming through his walls. In fact, the place is so hot that even the paper peels off the wall and mosquitoes (which are uncommon to the area) feed off his blood.

He is existing in an alternate reality. In the restaurant he enters, the large mural in the background shows a name/word clearly spelt backwards, but also reversed. He is suffering from writers block but his devilish but likeable neighbour becomes his muse. He is writing a screenplay for a wrestling movie, but in reality, he is wrestling with the devil for control of his soul.

It is only after he takes another writer's lover for his muse that his neighbour becomes jealous and conspires with him to dispose of the evidence of the murder he has apparently committed. The fight for his soul has reached a new level and the pain and anguish he feels is punched out on his typewriter into a new screenplay.

Meanwhile, he has been left with an object in a box by his neigbour that may or may not be a head. He is reluctant to open it because it does not belong with him, but he carries it for the rest of the movie - in fact, he will probably carry it with him for the rest of his life - it is his soul, and he cannot get it back, he has already crossed to the other side.

His neighbour repeatedly tells him that he does "not listen" and the studio boss tells him that he will now be owned by them until he learns his lesson.

In the final scenes he is walking along the beach and is confronted by a beautiful woman, but he cannot hear what she is saying to him. As she sits on the sand and looks out to sea, he realises that she is the same woman from the picture in his room and it is the same view. He is now looking at reality from the other side, again - as he was in his room. He tells her that he does not know what is in the box or even if it belongs to him, which seems ironic, considering that his murdering neighbour has admitted with a smile that it really does not belong to him either.

*At this moment I want to pause and reflect on two points often raised by critics of the film.
The first concerns the rolling bedknob when his neighbour frees him from being handcuffed to the bed. There appears to be a mistake in the editing - but, I believe it is done deliberately. The bedknob rolls across the floor without its stem attached, but, this is an allegory for the decapitation of a human head from its neck - notice that the rolling knob is stained heavily as though it had blood on it.
And, the second concerns the final scene of the film as the woman sits on the beach looking out to sea. The Coen Brothers claim that the bird diving into the water was accidental. I believe not - they are playing with the audience. If you watch carefully, that bird does not dive into the water, but falls into the water and lies there - just as a dead bird would. I think that this represents the fact that everything around him is illusory and dead.......Barton is already in Hell.

Moderation is Necessary

I recently posted my comments here regarding a delicate human rights issue.

Titled "Life's a Bitch - The Schapelle Defence".

On re-reading I decided that it was in bad taste.

I have taken the post down, and re-written it, because I feel I may have offended the wrong people.

My apologies.

Life's a Bitch - The Schapelle Defence

I am not willing to sleep my way to the top to be popular, (..it's a good song - google it).

In fact, I am willing to sleep my way to the bottom just to be unpopular.

I could have posted this to my twitter blogg or my facebook blogg or my linkedin blogg but I decided that if my big brother can close down Wikileaks he can close me down.

So I decided that this time I really want to go public and to hell with anonymity.

The link associated with this article makes the hairs crawl up my back and now I'm going to have to buy a longer shaver.

Wot the hell is happening here ? I call it the 'Schapelle Defence'.

I'm sick of all the bleeding hearts screaming for the release of Corby and now I'm sick of the same bleeders screaming for the release of this under-age adult!

I still find it hard to believe that Corby could not feel the difference in weight in her boogie bag when she passed through customs - how many kilo's was that *(google it) ?

And now I find that I will soon be able to buy a book that spills the beans on the whole Corby Operation. Gimme' a break! If YOU had ever held a kilo of dope in your hand you would know it.
But I must admit that every time I see a photo of the student 'Beauty Therapist' with those beautiful deep blue eyes, I feel so sorry for her. (but at least I'm not getting humped by my asian lesbian lover in a sewer pit in a foreign jail).

I'm getting pretty sick of all the media blitz attempts to free her - goddam it - I want her lawyer working for me on a sympathy card.

Which brings me back to the issue of this mini-adult who claims he bought some dope off a peddler because he felt sorry for the dude's circumstances. *(google that too - it's old news!).

I'm sick of all the rhetoric and hyperbole. Please give me a media consultant who can save my arse like that!

From the minute I heard of his arrest, and the minute I heard of her arrest all those years ago - I thought it just possible that she and him may be guilty, but I also know that the media distorts the facts. And after all the pathetic attempts by her lawyer to free her, I just know that both of their lawyers are media leeches who know how to suck.

I don't really believe that the news media think they are both innocent - they know how to maintain interest in a myth that has already passed it's two weeks lead time. This issue is not about freeing the innocent but about improving the status of the news media. They would like us to think that they have a duty to keep us informed but they really think we are dumb bunnies.

I fail to understand that me, as an average citizen can remember all the background to both of these events, and yet the media keeps re-releasing history as if they have suddenly discovered new facts.

It is no wonder that people like Murdoch and his Ranga minion are running for cover - their time is up......they live in the realm of dinosuars - they would be extinct were it not for them incubating the sensationalism they thrive on.

But, the more I follow this pathos the more I wanna' head for the urinal and lurch my innards.

I'm a dad. I have a 30 year old daughter and a 20 year old son. I'm a little bored right now and my drug dealing business is being taxed out of existence (joke!). Maybe I need some new recruits. Hey, I got a great idea : I'm gonna' run a drug business through my surfboard rental business *(google that!) and conscript all my family to run drugs for me.

Or, maybe I'll take my family overseas and on entering their country through their passport gates I will suddenly become blind and fail to read their drug warning signs. Yeah, that's real cool - my son or daughter will get arrested.......but not me.

I have one word to say to those parents - "weasels".

But do you know why I'm really peeved? Not because my kids got caught. But because I can't milk enough money out of this FOR ME.

I had a lawyer once who was very good at keeping people out of jail, he's famous now - he went down big time for playing in the deep end - he's gonna' spend the rest of his life trying to restore his chameleon reputation.

I am now witnessing two pathetic attempts by two alleged pack mules to get their lives back.

They probably never will - but their lawyers will make enough money out of this to give themselves many lives. I would like both of their lawyers to ask each of these parents why they let their children do this.

This is a perfect example of misplaced parenthood. This is another perfect example of why our civilization is going to hell on a long train with too many carriges that are losing their wheels.

If my son or daughter went overseas and didn't heed the warnings and now face doing time for the crime; I would probably want to neck myself for not being a diligent parent.

But I find that it's getting hard for me to forgive those who f..k up on purpose. If I was walking down your street and wanted to f..k up your neighbourhood and you happened to walk into me and look in my eyes - would you try and stop me?

Do you even know what EVIL looks like ?

I can read the signs. They are put in very simple language for any idiot to understand.

I'm an idiot - but what does that make you?

Life's a Bitch - The Schapelle Defence.

Maybe I deserve this version of Hell because someone thinks they found me out. Well let me shake your hand. Congratulations pissant; you think that by putting me down you've managed to solve the problems of the world. Good on ya' dude - you're a hero.

Now that you've put my lights out you won't be blinded by the glare of me driving into you're insanity.

I say : punish them........................make an example of them. Have the intestinal fortitude to enforce your countries rules. Don't be swayed by the Ranga Ragings of the bleeding hearts.

There are too many people juggling small balls who think they can play the maracca's. It's only after Schapelle's dad passed away that a book is about to be published spilling the beans on his alleged operation.

And it's sad to hear that the youngster accused of buying drugs off some destitute pedlar breaks into tears when he finds that he may spend the next three months in a Bali sewer......um, excuse me, but where the hell were his parents when he passed through customs - did not anyone notice the signs!

I'm sure that his parents are in tears as well - it must be a very uncomfortable feeling that that cute little arse of his that you wiped and powdered after he shit himself as a baby is going to get reamed by some soul-less peadophile with no conscience.

I would be entirely satisfied if both of his parents offered to do his time - it's not really his fault - he thought this was acceptable behaviour. If that is considered normal - HOW THE HELL DO THEY LEAD THEIR LIVES?

I think 3 months is adequate punishment for the poor dude - it's gonna' make a great book.

P.S. - If I catch you walking down the wrong side of the of the footpath directly into my face you are going to have a problem. God-damn it bitch, it's easier to drive a car than it is to walk, and you certainly can't drive.

Get outa' my face. Go pick on someone you know you can beat - stop bending my boundaries.

P.S.S - If I suddenly lose all of my friends on facebook, twitter and google - I know that you have read this and I've hurt your little feelings.

Love you all.

My Fuzzy World.

Had you been reading my attempted dialogue with the World Wide Web of late, you may have sensed a tone of confusion permeating my diatribes. You may even have been thinking that I've lost touch with reality.

Please don't worry about me - I just don't care; or as one of my friends said - "Care Factor Zero."

I think Arthur Schopenhauer may have been similarly disturbed by his envirionment when he said - "The world is my idea of it".......... now that makes me feel comfortable as I deal with my angst.

Sometimes I just expect a simple answer to my quest before I leave this mortal coil, but I am relieved that greater men than me have also grappled with the illusion that we are all on the wrong track to discover our purpose in life.

The sad thing is, that most of them died trying to resolve the paradox and the remainder went insane trying to reconcile the oddities of our existence over the last 3000 years. So, in an attempt to prove that we have all taken the wrong path to enlightenment, I wish to summarise (from my knowledge of history) the complexities of their views on existence presented in alphabetical order by name. I do this in sequence because it seems to be the only orderly, factual way to present the evidence that will highlight this insanity we call 'living'.

Anaximenes believed the world is air.

Arendt belived that the philoshopher is an expert in thinking but not in judging.

Berkeley (Archbishop) said the world is just God's thought of it and would go away if God blinked.

Camus wrote "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide."

Debord killed himself in order to end the suffering caused to his nerves by excessive drinking.

Deleuze wrote "It is organisms that die, not life".

Democritus said that the world is made of infinetly many atoms that move in a sea of void.

Descartes believed the world is both mind and matter - the human brain's pineal gland connects the two.

Einstein tried to prove that the world is a great store of energy and that matter or mass converts to energy or vice versa.

Emerson (Ralph Waldo) grieved that grief could teach him nothing. "Nothing is left us now but death. We look to that with a grim satisfaction, saying, There at least is reality that will not dodge us".

Foucalt was interested in the care of the self as a practice of freedom, as something formed and developed: a legitimate strangeness. He said : "Given that I am who I am, whom can I fuck."

Heidegger believed that the Self can only become what it truly is through the confrontation with death.

Heraclitus said the world is fire. He said : "Souls have a sense of smell in Hades".

Kaluza added a fith dimension that included gravity fluid and electromagnetic fluid.

Kant decided that the world is the senseless goo that excites our senses but that we look at the goo through glasses coloured with the abstact notions of time and space, cause and effect.

Leibniz said the world is an infinite set of smart but small mathematical points (monads).

Meno casts the world as a compressible flowing fluid made of tiny spinning gyroscopes (gyrons) that give electricity when accelerated and magnetism when rotated.

Montaigne said : "He who has learned to die has unlearned to be a slave".

Michell showed in 1784 that a big enough star could act as dark star and attract back it's own light.

Maxwell decided the world as an electromagnetic fluid.

Nietzsche (full of parody) wrote : "One pays dearly for being immortal, one has to die several times while alive".......and....... "Some men are born posthumously".

Novalis espoused 'magic idealism' with the premise that "the world is animated by me".

Parmenides was the first to say that the earth is a sphere - it is a big stable ball of matter.

Pythagoras proposed that the world was math. Even numbers were female and odd numbers were male.

Santayana once said : "I don't know whether to get married or buy a dog".

Schopenhauer agreed with Kant's goo but said that the world is will - each of us get one special peek at the naked goo itself. "We begin in the madness of carnal desire and the transport of voluptuousness, we end in the dissolution of all our parts and the musty stench of corpses".

Schroedinger showed that how matter waves move in time depends on how matter concentrates in space.

Socrates insisted that "True philosophers make dying their profession".

Spinoza belived the world is the pure substance - God.

Thales of Greece said that the world is made of water (he also founded modern finance by buying a forward contract that gave him control of the following year's olive presses).

Wheeler believed that the universe rewards the biggest stars and space objects by turning them into black holes.

........ *now, the one thing I've learnt from my history lesson is that I've learnt two things about my concept of identity. Which of course leaves me in a quandary as to my true position in Self.

So if I am going to wrestle with the relevance of whether my existence is necessary or important, I should learn a lesson from all those greater minds who preceeded mine. They also struggled to find solace but fought the battle all their life. I think the only way anyone found the answer was to die - but life is too precious, and the answer still needs to be found.

So how do I find my inner peace ? How do you find yours ? I think humour and validation help. My two favourite philosophers from this list who taught me would have to be Focault espousing validation and Santayana embracing humour.

But, the real thing that keeps me fighting to stay here as a living, participating, suffering individual - maybe, just like the rest of you; is something that Democritus said :

"By convention sweet and by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention colour: in reality there are only atoms and void".

*(I would like to thank Simon Critchley, author of "The Book of Dead Philosophers", and Bart Kosko, author of "Fuzzy Future" for providing some of the facts presented in this article).

Hey there Man - Wake up

Hello folks.

Gee, that sounds hippie-ish.

It's a new word. I just need to prod. Where did the reactionaries go ?

I just waited 2 days and didn't get a reaction - are your downloads slow? Or do you really not care?

I'm feeling socially connected. I need this conection. I'm disconnected from the mainstream and I'm figuring you may connect me with reality.

Woops - I may have missed the boat. Or I didn't know how to buy a ticket.

Nup. That's not the point. Iwasn't even eligible for a ticket - I don't meet their criteria.

I posted this here because Facebook would not publish my post.

I'm actually impressed because I've been censored - and that's my point. You all keep on using a second or third party to voice opinions - but that is not YOU.

If you are really peeved; you understand how the network works. And, if you aren't peeved, you aren't paying attention.

Hey there Man, wake up. If you have never talked to your neighbours, what the the frick do you think you are gonna' offer the rest of the world. For Christ's sake, at least talk to your neighbour when you share the ritual of leaving your refuse on the street. We are all polluters - we may as well relish all rolling in the stink together.

But; I need to admit that I am as guilty as you - I discard my waste, but no one accepts it all without a cost, and no one accepts just a small part of it unless they can see a profit.

............*this took too long to write and I'm running out of time because Facebook has a limit and so does Twitter and so does my web provider (a drop-out usually occurs when I think I'm on a roll)! In fact - everyone has got a limit. The problem I have is that they have boundaries and I don't.

They seem to be able to enforce theirs and I can't. It seems ironic that the more socially connected I try to become, the more socially dissorientated I become.

The opinion police will not walk in here now and close me down - they would like me to think this but it will not happen. It is my choice to wear a condom to protect you from insemination - but you wanted me there. Does encouragement predetermine intent (*where the hell is my spell check?)

God-amn this. My point is : "Why are you wasting your time telling third party media to contact me?"

Take the power away from them - just call me! If illusion is your moniker, you will die in disguise.

If you haven't got the courage to call me - then f..k off.....you have been sucked into the machine and I don't want to deal with you. Go away and read books by Naom Chomsky or Ambrose Briece.

Give me an opinion - don't give me head.

The internet would like to make you feel that you are part of the new world community. That's realy cool for them and the networking, webworking community just love making you feel comfortable and looked after - just like a pedophile offering you a comfort zone.

F..k the world community. Stop making me feel guilty because I can't contribute. I'm not really concerned about how the rest of the world keeps pumping out beautiful innocent newborns. May God help them. I'm really concerned about conspiracies regarding Thalidomide and the Nazis and Three eyed fish and and the Masons and all the other weird insecurities and possibilities fostered by the media that make us feel like we are all smothered in the Big Blanket supplied by the Big Brother.

*Please wake up - this is not old man's talk - this is reality : If you do not recognise the events of history, you are condemned to repeat the mistakes ~!

I'm sick of being cold. I'm sick of feeling like an Emporer (?) Penguin. - Big, brave, caring, scared and confused and facing extinction.

What have you done to my community? What have you done to my envirionment? You marketing leviathans (?).

Damn your sales technique. Damn your advertisements. Damn your preying on my insecurities. Damn you playing with government taxes. Damn you for f..king with my life.

I'm sick and tired, oh I'm sick and tired (may god bless you Anastacia).

I give up. You are all too big for me. You know that there is a sucker born every minute - and you just love 'em. Good on you, you currency vampires.

At the end of the day.....no, that's a beaten turn of phrase. At the end of your last smack, or the end of your last toke, or the end of your last f..k, or the end of your last beat; you really are zilch. You are going outa' here in a cheap arse pine box and you can't fit everything in it that you worked for for all of your life.

Maybe you consider yourself now dead. Good. Sorry that you are gone. I miss you.

I apologise to you that I really didn't take the time to understand what you were trying to say - it was my fault that I didn't want to accept your apology.

I just think that it's all crapp, and the longer you keep this up, the more I'm going to keep this up.

****Keep this up. You manipulative bastards. I know history. So do you.

"It is a beautiful thing to gain a victory un-opposed; but the victor will forever live under skirts"
(re: goblinono. \Today,2011)

I love you all, but some of you are a pain in the arse.