Anybody see this flick? Man it’s pretty fuckin’ good! There are parts of this film In Metallica’s video ONE (METALLICA!) Ms. Smrf just finished the book so we celebrated with the Movie.
We just got this today. I can totally recommend this film to anyone! BEST ANTI WAR FILM EVER! says comic book guy!
Late,
grmpysmrf
You’d think films that shake up society would be all the craze now
Nobody cares anymore! You got any idea slightly right of the middle and your branded a left wing crazy assed liberal. I wonder if the country was like this during McCarthy?
Besides, Everybody’s too busy working 9 jobs or trying to find a job…I think the war movement is much different now than it has ever been (in past wars). the nation seems to be at the convienence point…“stopping the war? that too hard! It’s out of our hands anyway!”
It’s seems there isn’t any avenue for anything creative lately…Which means there is probably going to be a budding underground coming around pretty soon… Hopefully!
Late,
grmpysmrf
Metallica!!!
Landmines has taken my sight
Taken my speech
Taken my hearing
Taken my arms
Taken my legs
Taken my soul
Left me with life in hell
Fuckin’ Metal!!!1111!!!one!!!111
Never got a chance to read that one… it was taken off the Honors reading list shortly before my senior year of high school started because it was “too graphic” or some such nonsense.
Fuck the public education system.
Fuck the public education system.
I’m trying to do something about that… But I’m only one man!![:)] and there’s no way i’m sneaking “johnny got his gun” into eigth graders!! even if they could understand it! I have to kick and scream just to be able to read Fahrenheit 451 with them! (although, as my student’s test scores rise above those of the other teachers’ students, admin pretty much lets me go now!)
I don’t think most of the problem is specifically with public school. it deals mostly in the realm where Jizzy is talking about; culture (although the culture of “school” HAS changed, so in that respect, yes it is Schools fault)
If a lotta peeps liked something - I didn’t. End of discussion.
Man, I was like this All the way through High school LOL! I sounded like one of those faggy goth kids from South Park (Damn comformists!)
Well, I wasn’t capable of reading Dostoevsky after eight hours in that factory. I could not do it to save my life.
That is totally the problem! It’s not that these people (or You were) are too dumb to understand Dostoevsky but after working in physically horrible Conditions that are Mind numbing, Who wants to? At the end of the day you are convinced that you have earned your beer/tv/sleep/ ALL of which take no effort whatsoever… TV is the worst of the lot because TV actually works for you. It constantly changes screen shots so it makes your pupil react at an inhumane rate. It basically tricks you into paying attention with no conscious effort from you what-so-ever
SO then the blue collar circle starts…Don’t want to do anything Cultural or intellectual because you’re too exhausted… When presented with anything cultural or intellectual you don’t really comprehend it because of the mind numbing state you’ve been in all these months/weeks/years so you react to it and dismiss it or get angry at it because you feel it is mocking you!
This over worked attitude/lifestyle(whatever you wanna call it) has seeped in everywhere. Schools have become lazy for basically the same reasons just with different elements
I could maybe crawl into the living room and turn on the television and stare at the motherfuckin A-Team or NFL football before crawling back to bed and get ready to repeat my next shift’s next horrible process.
The sad thing is that many people in this situation feel they have “earned” this after work “reward.” which sucks because it only serves to dig the hole deeper! i guess the easiest way to say this is they put their effort into the wrong things (mind numbing job)so when it comes time to put their effort into a worth while cause there is no effort left. (I’m a sociologist before I’m an English teacher!)
To appreciate a Dostoevsky, or a Johnny Got His Gun or a Final album you have to read listen, or watch these things with a lot of attention.
admittedly, attention takes effort
What I like about these things is that they absorb me because I have to bring some of myself to them. I have to make an effort of reading, or listening, or seeing - it’s not a passive experience.
We are all mostly raised on the passive experience now. which sucks and I think there’s going to be alot more of this type of “culture” (if you can call it that) before there is less of it…I just wonder how we’ll get out of it.
But that’s now because I am in a position where I am not physically exhausted except when I choose to be. Very important distinction. Probably why I’m typing this shit at 1:30 AM in the morning. If I were still slaving away in that bottle factory I could not listen, read, or watch the serious things that I enjoy now most likely. In fact, I don’t think I would have any energy to go to the foreign films I see on the east side occasionally because I would not have the energy to get past the language barrier. All I would do is sit home and watch the fucken A-Team or whatever passes for it today.
How did you pull yourself out? how long did it take? and where did you get your extra drive? (mine was two months of Carl’s Jr. at ungodly hours of the morning for shit pay…That was enough!!)
A lotta assholes still have jobs like that in the USA, and it is god damn scary. Their lifestyles limit their culture and I think to a great extent political views. Lotta blue collar trash in my state dat still can’t figger out dat colored boy a-runnin fer office.
I’d been building towards this but I don’t think i can improve on this statement! what’s worse is even these types of jobs are being lost or it’s become a contest between companies to see who can lower the wage the farthest and still have workers…
But these people will dismiss something as “deep” which means, “We can’t understand it, so go away.” A lot of things they were dismissing as deep weren’t, oddly enough.
Deep isn’t very far down for most people that are used to living 2 dimensional lives!
Late,
grmpysmrf
I can totally relate to not being able to do anything intellectually stimulating after working at a shitty job. I worked in an XBOX factory a few years back, assembling the damn things (ie. using one of those electric scredrivers on them). After 8 hours of that I was unable to do anything except for putting the curry in the microwave and watching sitcoms.
It is terrible that there are jobs out there that make people so intellectually numb. I find it not very surprising now that the usual people you see at the pub are such morons.
Fahrenheit 451. God, that book should be issued to every kid at age twelve or something.
Might do something about this cycle of negativity and cultural asphyxiation (sp?) we’re looking at here.
Bradbury definitely knew his shit.
What’s nice about it is it totally pulls a 360 on the students! All the kids are into it because they like the subject (Yay Let’s burn books 'cause they suck!) but by the end of the book they are all into the book and are rooting for montag. I purposely end the reading for the day on tense parts of the book so that I get a chorus of “NO we gotta keep reading!” to which I reply No way were not finishing this book…Books are for burning, Besides, reading is for nerds anyway!" so that is slap one against their pathetic microcosm they call a world Slap two is when I “treat” them to the movie and then they get even more shattered because the Movie is STUUUUUPID and has nothing to do with the book…So then they are disappointed with “media entertainment”
all in all, it’s a good unit! especially with the parallels to modern day soceity (the chase =Cops and other such stuff)
Late,
grmpysmrf
Metallica!!!
Landmines has taken my sight
Taken my speech
Taken my hearing
Taken my arms
Taken my legs
Taken my soul
Left me with life in hell
Fuckin’ Metal!!!1111!!!one!!!111
Hells YEAH!@#$% \m/ \m/
Metallica!@#$%
“How did I pull myself out?”
Didn’t walk out - I ran the fuck out. I can tell ya that much, sonny. That’s fer damn sure. Severed many relationships in the process. Just couldn’t stand one more day of being around these degenerates. I do not think I malign them too much by defining them as eminently average. From their behaviour, from the pigstys they lived in and still do, the endless 2 litres of Coke they swig, the McDonalds foam burgers they shovel in, their piglike eyes, their fat wives ( who all want to kill me ) the oceanic chewing of Cheetohs, I do not think I demean them too much by perceiving them as creeps, bullies, white trash, clods, abusers, users, non-progessives, anti-upper crust, common lowlifes who aren’t fit to share the same space with dirt, maggots, or feces. Their trash truck smell of bad breath, redolent armpit stench, mixed with farts and shit particles was building a massive neverending headache in my skull and was enough to put me in the foulest of all foul elitist moods I have ever experienced and never fully recuperated from resulting in my eventual departure. I rarely ever see these old friends who pass for human sentient beings anymore. They are all sad pathetic wrecks who collect firearms, go to waterparks, drink shitty beer, love Jesus and have a low threshhold for mental and physical workouts. Do not let these lovers of carbohydrates and Bon Jovi near a voting poll in November. This is your mission. Do not fail me. The world depends on it.
Yup.
You def herd me right, sealclubbers. The end is near.
( turns on Portishead album and resumes peaceful composure )
I guess you’ve had time to think about this! LOL
Late,
grmpysmrf
What’s nice about it is it totally pulls a 360 on the students! All the kids are into it because they like the subject (Yay Let’s burn books 'cause they suck!) but by the end of the book they are all into the book and are rooting for montag. I purposely end the reading for the day on tense parts of the book so that I get a chorus of “NO we gotta keep reading!” to which I reply No way were not finishing this book…Books are for burning, Besides, reading is for nerds anyway!" so that is slap one against their pathetic microcosm they call a world Slap two is when I “treat” them to the movie and then they get even more shattered because the Movie is STUUUUUPID and has nothing to do with the book…So then they are disappointed with “media entertainment”
all in all, it’s a good unit! especially with the parallels to modern day soceity (the chase =Cops and other such stuff)
Late,
grmpysmrf
You, sir, are brilliant. Seriously. Pope Seig Heil or whatever his name is should consider you for sainthood.
Man… it’s always the English teachers and the skill trades teachers who seem to have any idea what’s going ON in the world…
Man… it’s always the English teachers and the skill trades teachers who seem to have any idea what’s going ON in the world…
I have several friends that have trades. One is an electrician the other is a welder and those guys are genius! I think this is so because they hit the peak of blooms taxonomy in about .02 secs. multiple times on a daily basis in the jobs they have. Their Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis abilities are super strong based on their need to constantly use them. which basically means their processing skills are super nice! constant use of bloom (whether they know their using it or not) means they can quickly cut through bullshit no matter what form it is in.
All thoughts and ideas come from language. The better the vocabulary of any one, the better the quality of his/her thoughts and ideas. Since English (for the US anyway) is our language, English teachers are constantly using that higher level vocab. trying to instill it into our students, which means we are constantly trying to find ways to convey our points and thus forces us to use Blooms Taxonomy as well. Plus, the access to some decent literature helps us expand vocabulary with thought, hopefully, not too far behind (as well as some banal literature that’s fun to pick apart with your students-students like nothing more than when you agree with them that a story sucks and then you can discuss with them why it sucks! bitch fests: they’re not just for message boards anymore!)
Text messaging scares the shit out of me! I don’t think any medium has done more to reduce language in such a short amount of time (I actually have students say L-O-L or I-D-K in place of actually laughing or saying I don’t know) read the novel 1984 by George Orwell and read about the revised dictionaries where they actually eliminate words from the dictionaries in order to control language and thus control thoughts!! Frightening stuff!!
Late,
grmpysmrf
Orwell is GOD. No question. I read “1984” about three years ago and promptly realized (rather loudly) that Newspeak and all other Ingsoc-related and inspired bullshit is what the world is coming to.
MAN.
I personally have to restrain myself from slapping the hell out of people (even college students) who slip IM language into normal conversation.
Books = good. Very good. Texting = t3h suXXorz.
…I seriously felt pain typing that.
And Jizzim (may I call you Jizzim?), lolcatz, while horrifyingly wretched, occasionally make me smile. I am a flawed, flawed man.
Though if it’s any consolation, I recently listened to Godflesh’s “Pure” album, and the track “Baby Blue Eyes” is slowly becoming one of my all-time favorites.
Comparing 1984 to the modern world does not fully work. There are several parallels, but that’s about it. To truly work, we’d have to have a way more authoritarian government. We’d have to have suffered another major world war and be in an extreme economic depression. Among other things.
Orwell took a lot of what happened post WWI and things from WWII to shape a view of the future. A future he thought his son would grow up in. Well, it didn’t unfold that way but here’s a couple of examples of things that parallel 1984.
Two minutes hate. Why do I use this? Well, we don’t exactly all gather together to chant BB, and denounce our opposition, but there have been cases of it. The way the US tore into the French after their failure to back us into a war, which I think has never been fully justified. The French didn’t see what we saw, and maybe they were wrong and the US government knew more than they let on. There was this absurd rush to denounce anything French. Breaking French wine in the streets. Changing French fries and French toast to Freedom fries and Freedom toast. Idiotic, inane and all around childish. The kind of thing kids would do. Waste of tax payer money.
Big Brother type surveillance. A double edged sword in our society. While it can help cut down crime and catch criminals innocent people are being watched just as much as the guilty. It’s promoting the “Big Brother is watching you” mentality. Go to any store and look at all the cameras they have. A lot of major cities are adding them more and more. They want it to be a deterrent to criminals. In the end though, it seems to throw a shadow of suspicion on anybody and everyone. You act a little bit odd, and a cop might just come check to see what you’re doing. You could be doing nothing wrong, but fit what they perceive as a criminal and they’ll ask you some questions.
As for text messaging being clever, or Orwell’s newspeak. Nope. I suppose you could say it is newspeak, but even newspeak has more intelligence then text messaging. Text messaging mainly exists because of internet chat lingo. Everyone uses a QWERTY keyboard, and if you don’t, then you just might be an oddball. [:P] It was easier to keep up in chat if you could shorthand messages. Instead of typing out long strings of words, and probably losing the train of the conversation, you could short hand your messages and stay in it. LOL. A simple combo for laughing. Hit the l key, go up to the o, then back to the l. Any typer can hit that combo in probably 2 seconds or less.
It carried over to cell phones for text messaging mainly because in text messages you have limited space for the message and you get charged for each text. Well, at least you used to. So a lot of people would short hand their messages to say what they wanted to in one message, instead of two or three saving them money.
Typing short hand for text messages isn’t a real big time saver on some phones as they don’t have the QWERTY keyboard, while some do now. Though with the addition of T9 and other things, more people can type out what they want to say long hand. It also helps that you can get plans with some companies for unlimited text messaging.
In these modern times, with 1984 we have to ask. Does life imitate art, or is it the other way around? Think about it.
Comparing 1984 to the modern world does not fully work. There are several parallels, but that’s about it. To truly work, we’d have to have a way more authoritarian government. We’d have to have suffered another major world war and be in an extreme economic depression. Among other things.
Well, generally nothing emulates anything else perfectly, BUT for the sake of argument We seem to be on a quickly moving path toward that type of society.(or at least a nice little smattering of 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World) As far as the “way more authoritarian government” they’re trying…See the patriot act, See warrant less wire taps, See authorization of torture, see hidden prisons, see no rights to legal counsel once detained. As far as world war goes ( I know the book was based mostly about world war II and more specifically about Russia) I don’t think we really need that? I don’t think real war is really part of the equation. Orwell even says it in the book the people just have to believe we’re fighting somebody. As far as severe economic depression…Have you looked around this bitch lately? and it’s only gonna get worse. Granted, it’s not as abysmal as it is in the book…yet. but the potential is certainly there! What about the comparisons between the chocolate rations and the Gas prices? Giving us less and telling us it’s more… Pump the gas prices to ridiculously retarded amounts so that when they “drop” the prices back down to just retarded levels we seem grateful. Telling us we have it good because European gas prices are 7 & 8 dollars a gallon but neglecting to mention that those gas prices also pay for medical care for that country.
Two minutes hate. Why do I use this? Well, we don’t exactly all gather together to chant BB, and denounce our opposition, but there have been cases of it. The way the US tore into the French after their failure to back us into a war…
You see this too specific. I think the 2 minute hate is alive and well right now and in various forms…Although they are not so popular now, but talk shows were a prime practice of this. How often did one person on a talk show just act so outrageously stupid for no other reason than to just piss off the audience and the viewers at home? THe audience knew who to hate and they fall in line quickly! The current two minute hate right now is whatever person were told is an asshole on the news! roughly those segments last two minutes at a stretch before we’re shuffled on to the next two minutes.
Big Brother type surveillance. A double edged sword in our society.
That certainly is here! not as intrusive to the point where they are turning our TV’s on for us to get us out of bed (although I’ve heard that technology has been in place since Nixon but I don’t know how much of that is Art Bell nonsense) when I’m getting an actual video of what is going on during a domestic 911 call on the news courtesy of “homeland security” we have a problem!
As for text messaging being clever, or Orwell’s newspeak. Nope. I suppose you could say it is newspeak, but even newspeak has more intelligence then text messaging. Text messaging mainly exists because of internet chat lingo.
The reason for its inception isn’t really the issue. It has more to do with the possible ramifications that come along with it. Slim Jims were made so people could unlock their cars when they had locked their keys in them…so does that mean thieves won’t use them? (And even if that’s not how or why slim jims were made you understand the point I’m making!) no way. the ramifications of the slim Jim have been horrible for some people.
In these modern times, with 1984 we have to ask. Does life imitate art, or is it the other way around? Think about it.
Does it matter, really?
Late,
grmpysmrf