theContrived

"What is finished… is the idea that this great country is dedicated to the freedom and..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:00:32 -0400

“What is finished… is the idea that this great country is dedicated to the freedom and flourishing of every individual in it. It’s the individual that’s finished. It’s the single, solitary human being that’s finished. It’s every single one of you out there that’s finished, because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals. It’s a nation of some 200-odd million transistorized, deodorized, whiter-than-white, steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as human beings, and as replaceable as piston rods… Well, the time has come to say, is dehumanization such a bad word. Because good or bad, that’s what is so. The whole world is becoming humanoid - creatures that look human but aren’t. The whole world not just us. We’re just the most advanced country, so we’re getting there first. The whole world’s people are becoming mass-produced, programmed, numbered, insensate things…”

- Howard Beale (Network, 1976)

"Good evening. Today is Wednesday, September the 24th, and this is my last broadcast. Yesterday I..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:00:38 -0400

“Good evening. Today is Wednesday, September the 24th, and this is my last broadcast. Yesterday I announced on this program that I was going to commit public suicide, admittedly an act of madness. Well, I’ll tell you what happened: I just ran out of bullshit. Am I still on the air? I really don’t know any other way to say it other than I just ran out of bullshit. Bullshit is all the reasons we give for living. And if we can’t think up any reasons of our own, we always have the God bullshit. We don’t know why we’re going through all this pointless pain, humiliation, decays, so there better be someone somewhere who does know. That’s the God bullshit. And then, there’s the noble man bullshit; that man is a noble creature that can order his own world; who needs God? Well, if there’s anybody out there that can look around this demented slaughterhouse of a world we live in and tell me that man is a noble creature, believe me: That man is full of bullshit. I don’t have anything going for me. I haven’t got any kids. And I was married for thirty-three years of shrill, shrieking fraud. So I don’t have any bullshit left. I just ran out of it, you see.”

- Howard Beale (Network, 1976)

"I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a..."

Sun, 19 May 2013 23:01:24 -0400

“I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’ Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot - I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’ I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!””

- Howard Beale (Network, 1976)

"[Reading from one of John Doe’s journals] On the subway today, a man came up to me to start a..."

Sun, 12 May 2013 23:37:29 -0400

“[Reading from one of John Doe’s journals] On the subway today, a man came up to me to start a conversation. He made small talk, a lonely man talking about the weather and other things. I tried to be pleasant and accommodating, but my head hurt from his banality. I almost didn’t notice it had happened, but I suddenly threw up all over him. He was not pleased, and I couldn’t stop laughing.”

- William Somerset (7even)

"Once a man has seen society’s black underbelly, he can never turn his back on it. Never pretend,..."

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 20:43:25 -0400

“Once a man has seen society’s black underbelly, he can never turn his back on it. Never pretend, like you do, that it doesn’t exist, no matter who orders him to look the other way.”

- Rorschach (The Watchmen)

"Every one being allowed to learn to read, ruineth in the long run not only writing but also..."

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 22:57:00 -0400

“Every one being allowed to learn to read, ruineth in the long run not only writing but also thinking.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

"All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few."

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 23:26:00 -0500

“All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.”

- Stendhal (Henri-Marie Beyle)

"take a writer away from his typewriter and all you have left is the sickness which started..."

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 23:41:18 -0500

“take a writer away from his typewriter
and all you have left
is
the sickness
which started him
typing
in the
beginning”

- Charles Bukowski

they don't understand.

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 23:30:44 -0500

they don’t understand why i’m so sad.

they don’t understand why they’re so happy.

"[…] saw headline in paper: CONGRESS VOWS FIGHT ON CRIME. and I almost sat down and wrote a..."

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 21:00:43 -0500

“[…] saw headline in paper: CONGRESS VOWS FIGHT ON CRIME. and I almost sat down and wrote a mother essay, 8 or 9 pages on what crime IS and what it APPEARS to be, how our whole social structure houses and pardons and builds laws for everyday sanctioned robbery and crime against each other, whereas a direct and HONEST CRIME is punsihed by police, judges, juries. the difference says our society is this: you can take a lot and give a little, but you can’t take everything and give nothing. this is the essential difference between Capitalism and the Gun, and the reason why all judges, juries, cop are finks. the dope bit is all the same—it isn’t the dope that matters to them; it’s how you get it, who hands it to you. if it’s the doctor’s handwriting it’s all right, he is supposed to know whether you need dope or not, that’s why he is so well-paid. but who knows better than I DO WHETHER I NEED DOPE OR NOT? who knows whether I need oranges or eggs or sex or sleep or dope? I do. Who knows whether I am sick or not? the doctor? who is more IMPORTANT? why is everything twisted backwards? but you know all this. […]”

- Charles Bukowski (Letter to William Wantling, oily Febru 1967)

"Then, I don’t know why, but something inside me snapped. I started yelling at the top of my..."

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 22:09:32 -0500

“Then, I don’t know why, but something inside me snapped. I started yelling at the top of my lungs, and I insulted him and told him not to waste his prayers on me. […] He wasn’t even sure he was alive, because he was living like a dead man. Whereas it looked as if I was the one who’d come up empty-handed. But I was sure about me, about everything, surer than he could ever be, sure of my life and sure of the death I had waiting for me. Yes, that was all I had. But at least I had as much of a hold on it as it had on me. I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life on way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn’t done that. I hadn’t done this thing but I had done another. And so? It was as if I had waited all this time for this moment and for the first light of this dawn to be vindicated. Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he.”

- Albert Camus (The Stranger)

turns out it’s all the same. it’s all the same.

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 03:02:28 -0500

turns out
it’s all the same.
it’s all the same.

"The usual false conclusions of mankind are these: a thing exists, therefore it has a right to exist."

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 23:17:11 -0400

“The usual false conclusions of mankind are these: a thing exists, therefore it has a right to exist.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human)

"348. A GAUGE FOR WISDOM - The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the diminution of ill..."

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 18:18:47 -0400

“348. A GAUGE FOR WISDOM - The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the diminution of ill temper.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche (The Wanderer and His Shadow)

prison.

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 19:04:00 -0400

some of the bricks
were used to build
prisons.

some of the bricks
were used to build
prison.

"I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn’t have a god,..."

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 15:53:15 -0400

“I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn’t have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn’t make for an interesting person. I didn’t want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone.”

- Charles Bukowski

Thought.16

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 22:17:52 -0400

you are who i say you are; and nothing more—and plenty less.

"to laugh truly is to continue anyhow."

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 22:07:06 -0400

“to laugh truly is to continue anyhow.”

-
Charles Bukowski

Audio

Sat, 28 Jul 2012 21:27:00 -0400

"Take care that a falling statue does not crush you."

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 21:48:00 -0400

“Take care that a falling statue does not crush you.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche (Ecce Homo)