The master, Alfred Hitchcock
"Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints."

Eva Marie Saint in North By Northwest
“I tend to love stories about people and not cop shows and violence, special effects. And some of the things I see, I'm not prudish, I'm not Pollyanna, but I thought North by Northwest was as sexy as you can get and we had all our clothes on.”


January Jones in Mad Men
"I choose roles that are not me."

Betty Draper Is The Perfect Hitchcock Blond

Betty Draper in the superb AMC series Mad Men played by the wonderful January Jones seems to be modeled on the Hitchcock archtype of the icy untouchable blond as exemplified by Eva Marie Saint. Don Draper had better be careful.

Songs from January Jones' iTunes Celebrity Playlist:

Pearl's Dream-Bat For Lashes
Into the Ocean-Blue October
Quelcu'un M'a Dit-Carla Bruni
Lullaby-The Cure
Cumulus-Imogen Heap
Crabbuckit-K-OS
This Woman's Work-Maxwell
Quiet Dog-Mos Def
Father and Daughter-Paul Simon
Roads-Portishead
Climbing Up the Walls-Radiohead
Break It Down Again-Tears For Fears
Ramalama (Bang Bang)-Róisín Murphy
Wildflowers-Tom Petty

Vincent D'Onofrio as "Private Pyle" in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket
"Hi Joker."

Major Nidal Malik Hasan as himself.
"Allahu Akbar!"

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/05/fort-hood-shootings-7-dea_n_347366.html&cp

words reportedly spoken by Hasan before opening fire Thursday

"If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory. Their intention is not to die because of some despair. The same can be said for the Kamikazees in Japan. They died (via crashing their planes into ships) to kill the enemies for the homeland. You can call them crazy i[f] you want but their act was not one of suicide that is despised by Islam. So the scholars main point is that “It seems as though your intention is the main issue” and Allah (SWT) knows best." Presumed posting by Major Malik Hasan May 20, 2009 (LINK)

Koran [8.39] Shakir: ...fight with them until there is no more persecution and religion should be only for Allah...



All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
-Shakespeare, Jacques, II, 7, As You Like It

Stage: from Latin stare v. to stand, through Old French estage the story of a house

Much more is going on at Fort Hood than meets the eye.

“The shooter was killed. He was a soldier. We since then have apprehended two additional soldiers who are suspects, and I would go into the point that there were eyewitness accounts that there may have been more than one shooter.”- Lieutenant General Robert Cone, November 5, 2009

Quote of the Day

"It is extremely difficult for a Jew to be converted, for how can he bring himself to believe in the divinity of ....another Jew?"-Heinrich Heine

What's With Virginia Tech?

On April 16, 2007 Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people in a two-part shooting rampage at Virginia Polytech Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia. Cho's medical records were mysteriously removed from the University by Robert Miller, former head of the Cook Counseling Center at the university in 2006, when he left the employ of the school. These records were missing for over two years until July 2009 and certainly there was adequate time to scrub them of sensitive information. (LINK). If one needs to confirm that Cho was not quite in his right mind, his legacy of videos can be found on Youtube (LINK).

We may begin to raise the question of what may be going on at Virginia Tech in light of the shootings by malcontent Major Nidal Malik Hasan on November 5, 2009 at Fort Hood. Hasan graduated from Virginia Tech with a bachelor's degree in biochemistry before attending medical school at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Why did it take so long for the military to get its story straight on this one? Sgt. Munley was dead then she's not dead; Hasan is dead then he's not dead; there are two others arrested but there's no plot and they've been let go. Oh yeah, that's just the fog of war.

"Whether he became angry or something else, I don't know... What I do know is that it is impossible that he would do something like that."-Ismail Mustafa Hamad, grandfather of Nidal Malik Hasan (I know, consider the source.)

Ironically, Sgt. Kimberly Munley quickly and bravely acted to bring down Hasan using lessons learned from Cho's attack at Virginia Tech. (Correction: November 13, 2009, Munley was shot by Hasan and then Senior Sgt. Mark Todd brought down Hasan according to a report in the New York Times yesterday. I suspect this story will keep changing and changing.)

"The lesson from Virginia Tech was, don't wait for backup but move to the target and eliminate the shooter.It requires courage and it requires skill."-Chuck Medley, chief of Fort Hood's emergency services.

Now we wait to see how quickly a knee jerk Congress acts to further limit access to guns. I would rather see Congress act to more easily remove obviously disturbed and untrustworthy individuals from the military.

Cathy O'Brien, in her fantastic (and by that I mean I suspect there is a lot of fantasy in them) books TranceFormation of America (1995) and Access Denied: For Reasons of National Security (2004) stated that she had been processed at a DARPA mind control facility near Virginia Tech at Blacksburg. I suspect Cathy has some imprinted false bizarre memories in her subconscious that were inserted to discredit her story (at least I hope some of her tales are fantasy), but this claim becomes much more reasonable after the deadly antics of Cho and Hasan.

"Virginia Tech is good for two things, engineering and mind control." - Cathy O'Brien (LINK)

Dies Irae

Thou hast destroyed it, The beautiful world, With powerful fist: In ruin 'tis hurled, By the blow of a demigod shattered! The scattered Fragments into the void we carry, Deploring the beauty perished beyond restoring. Mightier for the children of men, Brightlier Build it again, IN THINE OWN BOSOM BUILD IT ANEW!
-Goethe, Faust, Chorus of Spirits


From...Rules And Regulations To Manage The Populace

"No one is to be given more true information than is needed to perform his function."
"Explanations are forbidden."
"The information that is publicly promulgated is to be distorted."


Observations

1) The Arabic word for sand is 'el raml' a curious homonym to the name of German General Erwin Rommel, the "Desert Fox".

2) On listening to Keith Hansen's conversation with Gordon Comstock (Here) I began to ruminate until my jaws hurt as follows:

O praeclarum custodem ovium lupum! - An excellent protector of sheep, the wolf!-Cicero

These days we are inundated with predictions and prophecies of doom. There isn't a month that goes by without someone informing us that martial law, alien invasion, catastrophic earth changes, nuclear explosions, armagedon, or the sounding of the last trumpet will be upon us. All one can do is soldier on and make the best of things. But many of us suspect that any or some of these unlucky occurances could happen. Wouldn't it make sense for those who may be arranging such events to put out many false alarms so that when the inevitable disaster finally is launched we will ignore the true warnings that may be leaked by those in the know? Wouldn't it be prudent for the wolves to hire little boys to falsely cry of approaching packs so that when actual danger does arrive none will pay attention to those warning cries?

Verba de Futuro (words about the future)

It seems to me (from a developing Jewish perspective and forgive me for my impertinence to comment on Christian mores) that prophecy and prediction should be irrelevant to the Christian who is saved under the magical formula of the Savior. What difference is it to him what may happen if his faith is true? His soul is certain of its fate. Why do so many Christians insist on prophesying? Did Jesus free them from the fate of false prophets under what they term the Old Testament? Or are they relying on the secular state to protect them from the implications of their false pronouncements? To the Jew who still awaits Mashiach, prophecy could still be a consideration for the conduct of his life. But, as anyone who is familiar with Tanach knows, the implications of incorrect prophecy can be most dire, and no observant Jew would lightly undertake such work. Few do. Besides, in the Messianic Age, all will be prophets. In the end, perhaps those who desperately desire to see the wondrous materialization of a prophecy are only indicating a need to see a miracle to stabilize their own shaky Faiths. I can empathize with that. I was raised a Catholic, 'though it never took, and my favorite Apostle was Thomas.

3) Control is difficult and tedious. Creation is easy and liberating.

4) One of the last things manufactured in the United States is housing. What is to prevent someone from bringing in crews of low cost foreign workers to build houses or to simply erect prefabricated homes?

5) Baseball is a game, unlike others, that is not played between parallel lines, therefore expanding to infinity.