A Micro-review of POOR THINGS

POOR THINGS. 10 minutes in, I thought, “A tiresome over-arty obliqueness imitating David Lynch, & trying to fuse Frankenstein, The Miracle Worker & Dr Moreau.” But then it soon came together–& it triumphed. A steampunk-surrealist coming of age story from a hilarious perspective. Gorgeous. Brilliant acting, sets that would have made Fellini jealous.

Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe.

The trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlbR5N6veqw

Trump is the bad comedian who won’t leave the stage because of his sick relationship with certain members of the audience

Trump is a japing babbling senile spittle-spraying 1959-style comedian who’s guilty of rape and keeps getting away with crimes and yet still gets to go up on stage and do his stand-up set for people who pretend to like him because certain lies and unadulterated hate feel good to them.

I see Mitch McConnell is now endorsing Trump. McConnell destroyed America as we know it during Obama’s term: McConnell organized to block Obama’s Supreme Court pick. This led to the right-wing-sycophant dominated SCOTUS we have now, which has allowed the Confederates to win the Civil War after all.

And Trump laughs and slaps his knee and raises a noose in place of the American flag and he hugs the noose and says, “I got noose for you, people! I’m going to be President for life!” And his audience laughs and applauds.

Has the Presidential Election Been Bought by a Counterfeit Currency?

If national polls are to be taken as a general trend lasting into November, then it could be that Trump will win against Biden. It’s a real possibility that this man fighting 91 court charges could once more be President. It seems that voters are being bought–purchased by the counterfeit-currency of lies. The GOP message to voters is: “you will bank more money if Trump is elected.” A lie…but…

GREED.

Greed is an altered state. It’s a kind of drunkenness. It makes people stupid. More likely to believe lies.

Yes, Biden made a mistake, with respect to support on the left. He shouldn’t have eagerly leapt at supporting Israel’s retaliation against Hamas’s brutal incursion of October 7–a retaliation which Netanyahu’s political opportunism turned into a panoply of war crimes. But the latest Big Lie from Republicans is a simple falsehood endlessly echo-chambered: the claim that Biden’s economy is faltering. And Trump will, supposedly, put more money in the public’s pocket. The average person will probably feel some shame, in voting for Trump. They know he’s a rapist, a liar, a con artist, and they may even suspect that he is a Russian Kompromat. A traitor. But they’ll vote for him out of kneejerk, salivating GREED. “I’ll have more money in the bank if Trump is elected.”

They won’t be proud of it. But many of them will do it. Partly because they believe the lie about the economy. Partly because of simple…

GREED.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/

Perhaps the Most Dire Warning regarding the New AIs

The roll-out of new AIs will highlight their use in social control. Over 10 to 20 years, these programs will get increasingly better at media manipulation.They’ll observe what gets the desired social result. They’ll learn what imagistic and misinformation buttons to push, micro-second by micro-second, for optimum control. All this will be at the behest of worldwide oligarchies; at the direction of dictators, and corporatists. AI social control proficiency will be almost invisible, but as effective as steel chains and electric prods.

Unconscious Slogans

There’s such a thing as an unspoken slogan, which forms in the collective unconscious of any institution. Unconscious GOP slogans: “Let us joyfully engage in every hypocrisy possible.”

“It’s charming if it’s harming.”

“Deny, always deny: deny the needs of the people, deny we deny them.”

Some Days It’s Easier to Believe the Devil Might Be Real

The Devil, as you see today, doesn’t like to see people happy. His great success through the NRA has given him a tool that he can use over and over–he can use the weaponized weak-minded to punish any display of human happiness.

As in today’s news: One Dead and at Least 21 Others Shot at Super Bowl Celebration in Kansas City

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/02/14/us/kansas-city-parade-shooting-updates?unlocked_article_code=1.Vk0.iMEo.4Gg3QPcdc1pB&smid=url-share

Wallpaper and Television Writing

Wallpaper and television writing. The best wallpaper–think William Morris–takes a familiar pattern, varies it artistically; elaborates it, makes it fresher. That’s the best we can hope for from most television writing. I anticipate most of the plot and dialogue. Even the best is elaborated wallpaper.

When I worked in television I noticed that plots used were like tinker toy parts, familiar, segments put together in new (but necessarily limited) ways.

The same goes, indeed, for most movies, and most novels, especially most genre novels.

THE GURDJIEFF WORK AND PSYCHO-ACTIVE DRUGS.

Now that marijuana is on the road to legalization, people in the Work should probably decide how they feel about psychoactive drugs with regard to the Gurdjieffian path. My own view is that narcotic use is counterproductive once one has seriously taken up the Gurdjieff work–but there are howevers and modifiers to apply here…

I was told by my teachers in the Work that GI Gurdjieff was opposed to their use while one is engaged in the Work. Lord Pentland, a very influential teacher in the work, was quite strictly opposed to any use of narcotics. Late in life, Ouspensky recommended against them–but he tells of his own experiments with Hashish in one of his books. Gurdjieff certainly knew a good deal about mind altering drugs–he wrote discourses on opium and cocaine–and I have no doubt he had some experience of hashish and probably other drugs, early in his search.

That’s a key phrase, to me–”early in his search.”

Here’s what Gurdjieff told Ouspensky: “There are schools which make use of narcotics in the right way. People in these schools take them for self-study; in order to take a look ahead, to know the possibilities better, to see beforehand, in advance, what can be attained later on as the result of prolonged work. When a man sees this and is convinced that what he has learned theoretically really exists, he then works consciously, he knows where he is going. Sometimes this is the easiest way of being convinced of the real existence of those possibilities which man often suspects in himself.”

So, Gurdjieff acknowledges that mind altering drugs may have some value at a certain point, for some people. (Other people, psychologically fragile or over suggestible people, should avoid them entirely, in my opinion.) That is, psychoactive drugs, like mescaline, say, or certain mushrooms, or even hashish, may open the curtains on a small window. And one can then look through the window and see a wider world out there: the world of higher consciousness. One may briefly be able to perceive more vividly, more intensely, sometimes more insightfully…One’s “frames per second” in the film of reality will increase in number–more will be included. Often it can seem too much more–the experiencer, without the being to handle the increase in perception, can feel overwhelmed.

While a glimpse of something real can be had there, the view of higher consciousness through drugs is blurred by one’s own mind; distorted by hallucinations, personal obsessions, cerebral wiring. And to me it has always appeared that the more frequently people take a drug, the less real use they’re getting from it.

Gurdjieff, quoted above, spoke of certain drugs offering a glimpse into the possibilities of higher consciousness better “in advance”. Implied in his putting it that way is that it’s kind of like climbing a tree to see the lay of the land before a journey. But you do not stay in that tree–and don’t try to jump from tree to tree! You have seen something that confirms that there is a place you can travel to. But now you have to find the practical way to get there: step by step, on the ground, with your eyes wide open.

Use of mind altering drugs has risks. It would be irresponsible to recommend it. But I can’t say it didn’t help me a few times, as a young man, many years before I found the Work. It briefly opened those curtains for me and that was encouraging–I learned that there was something more. Ram Dass said that LSD insight is like a business call–once you get the message, you hang up.

Bottom line, what is attainable by work on oneself is far more vital, more rewarding, more nourishing than drug experience. Higher consciousness achieved through the Gurdjieff work is something that accretes in us slowly–but permanently. And it comes to us without hallucinations, or bad trips, or throwing up, or fits of paranoia.

But here comes a however–some people may have legitimate reasons for moderate use of marijuana, or hash or “magic mushrooms”. Medical reasons perhaps, with pot–and there are legitimate therapeutic uses of psilocybin in psychotherapy. I don’t know as these milder drugs should be entirely forbidden to people in the Work–it’s up to those people themselves, of course. It seems to me that someone could smoke their weed occasionally if they’re not foolish enough to come to a work group stoned, or to try to sit in Fourth Way meditation while stoned. My opinion is, they probably won’t find it a terrible impediment to the Work if they do it occasionally, not in a Work context.

WORSHIP THE GOLDEN IDOL OF AI!

Yes, a study shows AI’s rise is having an enormous environmental impact: major tech companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta combined more than doubled their energy consumption between 2017 and 2021.

But hey, don’t be concerned. Worship this Golden Cow robot generated by AI! WORSHIP IT!

MAGA

 They eat the lies at a steaming trough

Seething, sluicing; never enough 

They spout flies, after feasts on lies 

The flies lay eggs beneath oily skies

 Larvae crawl, burrow in ears 

Thrive in muck alive with fears 

Mouths open, spouting new flies 

Seeking a trough, to fill it with lies