A Modest Defense of Hatred: “Where man is denied hatred, and he lacks any objective referent of meaning, he sinks into a lobotomized stupor. In such an age, the alternative to a vital hatred is the Last Man. It is in Nietzsche’s forecast of the logical consequences of nihilism where we see something remarkable—that the…
Tag: film
David Lynch: 1946-2025
There’s a treasure trove of David Lynch film reviews at Unz.com, most of which are written by Trevor Lynch (no relation to David that I’m aware of). Some excerpts below. Death My Bride: “Lynch ends [Lost Highway] as he begins it: rocketing down a nighttime highway to Bowie’s ‘I’m Deranged.’ But by ending and beginning…
weekend links: parabolic chiasmus; consumer pathologies; computing reality
Computing Providence: “…PKD had the best interpretation of the I Ching in his novel The Man in the High Castle, where the I Ching is a tool to ‘compute’ whether something has reality (or is reality).” Into the Psychozoic: “The Psychozoic dawns when we start to take responsibility for developing metis with the psychosphere; when…
The Passion of the Christ
I watched The Passion of the Christ for the first time ever on Good Friday this year. I think it’s worth watching and many parts are very well done but I do think Mel Gibson went too far with the blood, the gore and the violence, which apparently has been a recurring criticism of the…
w̷e̷e̷k̷e̷n̷d̷ ̷l̷i̷n̷k̷s̷: home invasions of the mind plus deadzones of Anthropocenic destruction and classical rivers of the dead
Light in the Darkness: “The sun is low on the horizon all day long now, and darkness creeps in like a home invasion of your mind. Demons descend through a red and black sky and no help is on the way. Our country is so mentally hog-tied trying to unravel the twisted events of just…
w̳̿͟͞e̳̿͟͞e̳̿͟͞k̳̿͟͞e̳̿͟͞n̳̿͟͞d̳̿͟͞ ̳̿͟͞l̳̿͟͞i̳̿͟͞n̳̿͟͞k̳̿͟͞s̳̿͟͞: psychologism, stigma, price inflation
Brand the Enemy: “Anonymous accusations of sexual impropriety work as a powerful smear tactic for multiple reasons. People are naturally sympathetic to women, and naturally jealous of promiscuous men. Through selective presentation of details and deliberately emotional language, it is possible to present almost any relationship as abusive, exploitative, or controlling. There are no clearly…
weekend links: death cults, wilderness, eternal tension
Beyond Thaumatophobia 3: The End of the Age of Reason: “[My father, a] lifelong materialist…was startled one day to hear his mother’s voice from the ground floor of his house, calling his boyhood nickname. That was a bit of a surprise, since she was 300 miles away at the time. Startled, he went to look,…
Mid-Week Links: Shatter Zones, Cultures of Refusal, Glory
A Far Away Planet to Which I Would Never Return — The vanishing horizon line of Terrence Malick‘s BADLANDS: “Kit is a trash collector by trade, Batailling against the solar surpluses reclaimable in the culturubble, throwing away items of no-to-low utility, revealing how even The Outsider can only seek emancipation from materialism in refuse materials,…
#WEEKENDLINKS
Culinary Mysticism — review of “Pig,” starring Nicolas Cage (IM1776) Rob does not hate Portland; like Socrates, who dismisses outright the idea of fleeing Athens for Thessaly, he sees it from the standpoint of eternity, and so both loves it and knows it to be deeply broken: Amir: “If the city floods we can always…
w҉̢̡̹̮͌̄ͦ͜͟͟͞͠͞e̵̡̫̫͍͕̎ͭ̐͟͟͝͞e̵̡̫̫͍͕̎ͭ̐͟͟͝͞k҉̴̶̬͈̫̹͖̾̎ͭ́̍̐͜͜͝͠e̵̡̫̫͍͕̎ͭ̐͟͟͝͞n̸͐̈́͟͟͝d҉̴̷̧̢̛̖͔̤ͯ̔̑̄͢͟͡͠ l̶҉̰͚͖͕̍̈́̅͗̏̇͢͜͜͝i҉̧̯̤̙͔̑ͧ̅̔ͦ́͜͟͢͝͠n̸͐̈́͟͟͝k҉̴̶̬͈̫̹͖̾̎ͭ́̍̐͜͜͝͠s҉̝̭̦͚̑ͯ̌͡
End the Cosmopolitan Monopoly: “Our current indulgence of cosmopolitanism can’t endure. It’s ultimately a facile and feel-good doctrine employed by the elites in direct contradistinction to the wishes of the majority. It’s a point of view and state of mind that contains too many inconsistencies, and that causes too much damage. Ultimately, it’s anti-natural. It…
N E I G H B O R S
Cross-posted at Medium ‘Neighbors,’ a 1981 film starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, has been lost to cinematic obscurity, which is sad because the movie is a masterpiece that ruthlessly deploys discomfort and tension as comedic tools. Recently I watched it again and came away impressed with how the movie has aged. It may be funnier than…