> Dan Kohn wrote:
> > Had anyone else gotten the Rohit Khare is Truman Burbank meme? He's the
> > only real one, and we're just gathered around to give his life a patina
> > of meaning.
>
> I'd buy it in a sort of Biblical Job, "the universe was carefully
> constructed to mock a single person" kind of way.
>
> That movie was teeming with metaphors. Perhaps Adam and Eve weren't
> actually expelled from the Garden of Eden; maybe they chose to be
> dissidents and leave of their own free will.
The entire movie was a set up for a sequel. The entire movie was crafted so
you wouldn't say you didn't care for it or face the scorn of your
"enlightened" friends. When you pay someone $20 million these are the
safety nets that have to be built.
> Rohit wrote:
> > I have a hypothesis there will be Truman people and Christof people:
> > whom do you immediately have the most sympathy for? How hard is it to
> > live in a world for one man, or to create it?
>
> It's hard to have sympathy for the manipulators trying to control
> everything. And it's also hard to have sympathy for the naive bumblers
> who are too self-involved to figure out what's really happening to them.
Adam has sympathy for no man. I have sympathy for the devil.
> Rohit also wrote:
> > Yeah, it moved me, even if it's possible better movies could be edited and
> > plotted out of the same premise. (they also deserve credit for resisting
> > the temptation to explore more of the outside world --- only a book could
> > do that well, a la Contact. The screen canvas widens at its peril: look
> > at how small the cast was for *creating* this meta illusion!)
>
> Actually, I was disappointed by that. I never really found myself
> believing that this could actually happen, perhaps partially because of
> the parsimony of the screenplay.
Read above.
> > Most of all, though, I asked: what do you do for the 97% of life that's
> > utterly and totally uninteresting?
>
> That's the main point, Rohit: there's nothing you can do.
First off this theory of the 97% is so fuckin' immature and absurd as cause
me to break into fits of laughter at it's very mention.
> A FoRKer recently reminded me of the shortsightedness I often have in
> being so adamant in my theory of One Person for a Lifetime. He said
> maybe he could create more overall happiness through several long-term
> relationships than he could perhaps with just one.
Maybe there are no standard answers in life and there shouldn't be. I guess
that simplistic avenue has been overlooked.
>
> Which brings us back to Elwood, the rumors of whose death have (still)
> been greatly exaggerated. When you get right down to it, how many roads
> MUST a man walk down? Is the point of life lots of varied
> relationships, or a few quality relationships, or lots of quality
> relationships? Because the utility function changes based on which
> strategy you shoot for, and time as the only finite resource still
> greatly affects your outcomes.
Elwood is an asshole. Period.
> > Yesterday, for example, was a thoroughly ordinary evening out on the town
> > with a wonderful woman and witty conversation and wacky cliches.
>
> So what you're saying here is that you use us to complain when things go
> badly for you in your mind, by broadcasting to the 80something of us and
> the rest of the world via the web how miserable you want us to think you
> are.
I believe this should be written up and posted for anyone with a search
engine to find and read for years to come.
> > It must have been such a totally prosaic slice of contentment I can't
> > begin to imagine boring y'all with details.
>
> Now you've decided you have qualms about boring us with details?
> Just as the story started to get interesting? You were accepted.
> You were out with someone who enjoyed your company.
Or accepted Visa.
> You filled the void that once was your social life.
>
> I think it's because you have no personal dissatifaction that you feel
> no compelling need to write. It has nothing to do with boring us with
> details. Writers for the most part need to be miserable, because misery
> inspires creativity and misery inspires one's desire to log.
I couldn't disagree more. Misery for me inspires misery.
> Perhaps the only
> thing worse than thinking the universe exists to mock you is thinking
> that FoRK is performance art. It isn't. It's 80something opinions on
> any given subject (90something opinions if that subject has to do with
> nuclear testing, the environment, or economic theory...), 80something
> philosophies on living life, 80something ways to react to any given
> situation.
Agree.
>
> Perhaps the entire paranoid delusional Descartesque fantasy Truman has
> of just him and a malicious, omnipresent deity (with the rest of us just
> subsidiary "extras" unnoticed and uncredited) is just the cruddy
> Nietzschesque philosophy of the "botched and the bungled" taken to the
> extreme. We are not a world of supermen. We are all just human, and at
> this point in the history of the universe, that's all anyone could hope
> for. You-all means a race or a section, family, party, tribe, or clan;
> you-all means the whole connection of the individual man. The delicate
> interconnectedness of things means that each individual has its place.
> Self-importance exists only in small minds.
Adam, the man, wow! Stop it or people are going to say I'm influencing you.
> Oh, by the way, this was my first day at Microsoft. Resistance was
> futile, so I didn't bother fight it. I have been assimilated.
> I really like it here.
Another one bites the dust.
Tim
--Go sell crazy somewhere else, we're full up here. ...Nicholson
<> tbyars@earthlink.net <>