“Keep Moving From This Mountain.” Sermon at Temple Israel, Hollywood, California. February 25, 1965.
Each of us lives in two realms, the within and the without. The within of our lives is somehow found in the realm of ends, the without in the realm of means. The within of our lives, the bottom — that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion for which at best we live. The without of our lives is that realm of instrumentalities, techniques, mechanisms by which we live.
Now the great temptation of life and the great tragedy of life is that so often we allow the without of our lives to absorb the within of our lives. The great tragedy of life is that too often we allow the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live.
We must move on to that mountain which says in substance, “What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world of means — airplanes, televisions, electric lights — and lose the end: the soul?”
You are not your job. You are not your possessions.
From the 1983 African documentary by Jans Rautenbach, not the Elke Sommers movie about the prostitute who tries to go straight but her madam won’t let her (1985).
It’s probably not physically possible, even. It might seem like it is, but it’s not. I’ve been a blubbery bitch from time to time recently myself as October is hitting me hard this year in fresh, worse ways than last, but, as I have checked myself out and I’m not one of those people who weep diamond tears, I’m going to try to get my chin up and knock it the fuck off. Being happy is a choice.
Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.
Oh, my stars and garters, yes. I hate the telephone. I had to spend all kinds of time on the phone yesterday wading through officious folklore and bureaucratic shenanigans, and, as a consequence, I’ve kept my phone off almost this whole day. I only turned it on when Miss D, knowing me too well, alerted me to the fact that she’d be calling in the late morning and I ought to turn my cell on at least until I heard from her. I did, and, once she called, I silenced it again.
I warned her that I think I am slowly transitioning toward abandoning phones as a method of communication altogether. It started with my hatred of texting and has steadily devolved since, to the point that I scowl any time I see someone with so much as a bluetooth earpiece strolling around. Ass, I think to myself, and actively begin to draw wide Borg comparisons. Go ahead, everyone else on Earth it seems, and do join the collective hive-mind of buzz and nothing-talk, but resistance is not so futile in my book. People will claim to hate their cell phones and act like it’s such a hassle to be tethered to everyone they know at all times, shrugging and alluding to the convenience of being able to instantly hear from colleagues or family, but the truth is mainly that you have just allowed the phone to become necessary, and to paraphrase Ms. Steinem, it is no more needed than a shrimp’s hipster fixie bicycle, even if he does have the coolest nalgene bottle evah, with a special attachment for him to hook it on the bike so he can take drinks at intersections and look like hot shit. (You know how shellfish care about appearances. Pfft. Sooo shallow. You’d never catch a catfish pulling that manner of chicanery.)
Look, I’m sure Alexander Graham Bell was a nice guy with nothing but good intentions who could not possibly have foreseen the midnight calls of drunk out-of-touch friends or robo-dialing mortgage adjusters who interrupt dinner, but when I run across him in Heaven, he’s getting a punch in the gut just the same.
Bonus Patricia Highsmith sketch because I can and she was the source of the quote that started this chain of luddite fit-pitchery. I do not have a Graham Greene sketch or I’d post one of him as well — The Destructors is a favorite short story from Way Back.
“Keep Moving From This Mountain.” Sermon at Temple Israel, Hollywood, California. February 25, 1965.
Each of us lives in two realms, the within and the without. The within of our lives is somehow found in the realm of ends, the without in the realm of means. The within of our lives, the bottom — that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion for which at best we live. The without of our lives is that realm of instrumentalities, techniques, mechanisms by which we live.
Now the great temptation of life and the great tragedy of life is that so often we allow the without of our lives to absorb the within of our lives. The great tragedy of life is that too often we allow the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live.
We must move on to that mountain which says in substance, “What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world of means — airplanes, televisions, electric lights — and lose the end: the soul?”
You are not your job. You are not your possessions.
First off, thanks to the — as of this writing — over 6,400 people who’ve swung by the site today! Super-cool!* I see you are being linked by a site called pussycalor.com. My thanks again to you for your visits, and a tip of my hat to the fine folks at the site referring you here for the, erm, clever wordplay in their company title (“Pussy Galore” + “hot” en español, I imagine, right? get it? … it’s a decent enough pun; I give it a 60 but I can’t dance to it).
Dawn Richard, Miss May 1957. Photographed by Ed DeLong and David Sutton.
However, now that you’re here, and I’ve got these vintage cheesecake Playboy centerfolds helping me hold your attention, LeVar Burton’s** twitter and I would like to bend your ear a tick on this whole Haiti earthquake and subsequent increased housing and famine catastrophe. This article in the Miami Herald details legit relief organizations through which you can help with time, money, and food donations the displaced and surviving persons affected by yesterday’s devastating earthquake in Haiti, which is unfortunately only going to compound their existing problems as a developing nation.
Miss December 1959, Pat Sheehan. Photographed by Sam Wu.
Those are all fine and worthy causes if you give the list a genuine spin, but I sense that if you have landed here, you are probably impatient to get on with other things, and I empathize to a point with you on the whole “utter-lack-of-attention-span” thing. (Everyone blames MTV but I think it started with cereal box-backs, because I never had cable and I’ve an awful itchy trigger finger in almost every situation) Here is the super-fast-easy way to seal the deal:
Miss January 1957, June Blair. Photographed by Hal Adams.
In America, text the word “HAITI” to the number 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross. It will automatically come off your phone bill. How easy is that? $10 is not that much, and this is coming from an extremely broke person. So why don’t you take your hand off your dick (only for a moment, don’t worry — I’m not asking for miracles), fetch up the cell phone you’ve undoubtedly parked in your pocket, and take a second to donate even the low amount of $10 to the Red Cross’s special fund, through which, guaranteed, 100% of your donation goes to Haitian quake relief efforts. The playmates you are gawking at would be super, super impressed. That is why they are all in red: for the Red Cross. (Yes, I have so many playmate pictures saved that I was able to cull out a few scantily red-clad ones for just this entry — and even then I narrowed it to these, my faves.)
Miss March 1957, Sandra Edwards. Photographed by Peter Gowland, a dear patron saint. Right on!
I am not telling you how to live your life, just saying it is a quick and easy way to ease suffering while we comfortably enjoy and count ourselves lucky another carefree, nudie-pic-seeking day. Thanks for your time!
*As I said to the Gentleman earlier today, “I have supported the porn industry for years. It’s about time they returned the favor.”
**You’re darned-tootin’ I follow Geordi La Forge on the twitter. And I did not think it was possible he could be more of a nerd than I always imagined, but he is. He’s seen Avatar, like, five times. I almost stopped following him cause it was all he was on about for weeks. But I forgive him.
Monocle is a simple search tool that puts a universal search field at your disposal. When you want search, you can choose from a number of engines to perform the search in different places. Monocle comes preloaded with engines for Google, Wikipedia, Windows Live Search and Yahoo! Search. You can easily add your own engines by performing an example search inside a web browser window in Monocle. (source)
This is in no way an endorsement of that Mac App. I have never used it and likely never will, as I have had the same phone since 2005 and will probably continue to have it until it literally falls apart in my hands because I have grown to believe that I, myself, am built-in obsolescence personified, and everything I learn to use and grow accustomed to must immediately fall out of human use and knowledge, so that I remain freakishly anachronistic in my understanding of technology.
Et tu, Bender, my metal and small and doesn’t judge me at all robot friend? Then you can all keep your fancy-dancy iPhones and droids, and be sure to bite our shiny metal asses.
I believe there is always a person like this in every group that is behind the crest of the trend by deliberate choice, a lone cowboy on an uneasy horse at the edge of the horizon, never quite part of the pack of trailblazers, always slightly at a remove from the rest of society just in case this next invention is that society’s downfall, and in this generation among those I am close to, I apparently have taken on that mantle. Mmm, Apocalypse Bean Soup — with hamhock, even? Wow, thanks, cowpoke! Just like I like it!
So, yes, I know nothing about this newfangled Monocle app folderol. I just like the ads, don’t you?
How do you like the new technology in these Batman films? It keeps it looking very current and almost mundane, doesn’t it. Things like texting, laptop videoconferences, 24-hour-news-network crawls. Most of the technology in other comic adaptation films, it seems to me, is either dated (forward or backward, depending on when it is set — X-Men is an example of forward, Sky Captain an example of back), or, along those lines, is simply made up entirely out of whole cloth in order to keep it simple and tailored to the plot.
Does the very realistic use of technology, smoothly integrated in to the look and even plot points of these newer movies feel authentic to you or tacked on? It makes the movie seem more real, even though you know it is escapist fantasy; do you expect to see more or less? How does it function for you? Good, bad, indifferent?
David Lynch, besides being a genius of the film world, is also a man of opinions and unminced words about mobile movies and cell phone technologies. It’s great because, with the music, it seems like a commercial for the technology. Yeah … it’s not.
He also has opinions and unminced words about product placement by ad sponsors as a source of revenue for studios in a film.
*Stalk is such a strong word. I just parked across the street from his place every few days for a while in the evenings and was “aware” of the neighborhood’s garbage night. Let’s not throw stones, here. I never had an agenda for meeting him; indeed, I hope never to, as I do not believe that I deserve to consciously share his airspace, nor should he have to make eye contact with such a low one as me.
The Thought Experiment 