“It’s Just Money”

(From Margin Call.  Again.)

JOHN TULD

When did you start feeling so sorry for yourself?  It’s unbearable.  What, so you think we might’ve put a few people out of business today?  That it’s all for nought?  You’ve been doing that everyday for almost 40 years, Sam.  And if this is all for nought, so is everything out there.

It’s just money.  It’s made up.  Pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don’t have to kill each other just to get something to eat.  It’s not wrong.  And its certainly no different today than its every been.  1637, 1797, 1819, 37, 57, 84, 1901, 07, 29, 1937, 1974, 1987, Jesus didn’t that fuck, fucked me up good, 92, 97, 2000, and whatever we want to call this.  It’s all just the same thing over and over, we can’t help ourselves.  And you and I can’t control it or stop it or even slow it or even so slightly alter it.  We just react.

We make a lot of money if we get it right and we get left on the side of the road if we get it wrong.  And there’ve always been and always will be the same percentage of winners and loosers, happy farts and sad sacks, fat cats and starving dogs in this world.  Yeah there may be more of us today than there’s ever been but the percentages, they stay exactly the same.

“Fuck Normal People”

(From Margin Call.  See it.)

SETH BREGMAN

Alright, Will, am I getting fired?

WILL EMERSON

I don’t know.  Yeah, almost definitely, yes.

SETH BREGMAN

Are you?

WILL EMERSON

No. Seth, it’s nothing you did.  You’re just on the wrong farm at the wrong time.  You young guys are always the first to get culled.  Listen, nothing I’m going to say is going to make you feel any better, its just gonna suck for a while and then you’ll be fine.  You alright?

SETH BREGMAN

Yeah, yeah.  I’m fine.

WILL EMERSON

For what its worth, I‘m sorry this is happening to you.

SETH BREGMAN

Don’t be, you didn’t do it to me.

WILL EMERSON

Still, at least you’re gonna have some nice cash to walk away with.

SETH BREGMAN

I guess.  Shit, this is really gonna affect people.

WILL EMERSON

Yeah, its gonna affect people like me.

SETH BREGMAN

No no, real, real people.

WILL EMERSON

Jesus, Seth.  Listen, if you really wanna do this with your life you have to believe you’re necessary and you are.  People wanna live like this in their cars and big fucking houses they can’t even pay for, then you’re necessary.  The only reason that they all get to continue living like kings is cause we got our fingers on the scales in their favor.  I take my hand off and then the whole world gets really fuckin fair really fuckin quickly and nobody actually wants that.  They say they do but they don’t. They want what we have to give them but they also wanna, you know, play innocent and pretend they have know idea where it came from.  Well, thats more hypocrisy than I’m willing to swallow, so fuck em.  Fuck normal people.  You know, the funny thing is, tomorrow if all of this goes tits up they’re gonna crucify us for being too reckless but if we’re wrong, and everything gets back on track?  Well then, the same people are gonna laugh till they piss their pants cause we’re gonna all look like the biggest pussies god ever let through the door.

SETH BREGMAN

You think we’re gonna be wrong?

WILL EMERSON

Nah. They’re all fucked.

we’re all fighting double digit inflation

STREETWISE!
Recognize.

I watched this on VHS.  On a VCR plugged into a TV with something from Radioshack!  With the man who made it happen.  Wierd.

Occupy the 99%.

Respect.

Streetwise.

Freeez, that’s how I learned my vowels.
Is the end? Are you my friend?
Popcorn Love. But it’s more than that to me.

It’s more than that to me.

Goodnight, Tevatron.

Yesterday was an ending in American high energy particle physics.  I sat with my brother and my friend, drank rum punches, and watched the live stream of the shutdown on a lap top along with about 3000 other people throughout the world.

Oh, the memories, the science, the particles…  what a good time it was.

After it was all over, my friend ordered shots and we toasted Fermilab and the great work they’ve done for 25 years.  We decided the only thing sadder than watching the particle beams shut down and the current leave the magnets was some recent video of Chimps released into the outdoors for the first time in their lives.

RIP Tevatron, yesterday was the end.  But tomorrow, tomorrow will be a new beginning.  For something.  Else.  Hopefully having to do with particle physics.

bin laden is dead, so is our soul

so he’s dead and now we celebrate;  wave flags, honk our horns, an impromptu rally at ground zero and in front of the white house, we raise up our fingers in victory, desperate self-congratulation… i can not help but be revulsed by it.  it is the childish disgusting behavior of a seven year old bully on a playground, it is the ignorant willful blindness of millions of nascent nazis.  we are completely divorced from the real, enraptured by spectacle and breathless screenplay reporting, caught up in a thoughtless, reptillian response to what has essentially become nothing more than a video game to the most of us.

Doug Mills / New York Times

it is embarrassing and confusing.  regardless of your feelings about illegal wars, the capacity of al-qaeda, or what really this all changes, we ought to look at our reaction to this, we ought to strive to understand what our role in the world really is, what it really means and looks like to be perceived as a runaway empire of violent psychopaths.