Absurd Movie Quotes

The very idea of higher states of consciousness is absurd. Comparing one state of consciousness to another and saying one is "higher" and the other is "mundane" is like eating a banana and complaining it's not a very good apple.

Wrong' training can be a very innocent thing. Consider a father who allows his child to read good books. That child may soon cease to watch television or go to the movies, nor will he eventually read Book-of-the-Month Club selections, because they are ludicrous and dull. As a young man, then, he will effectually be excluded from all of Madison Avenue and Hollywood and most of publishing, because what moves him or what he creates is quite irrelevant to what is going on: it is too fine. His father has brought him up as a dodo.

Possibilities I prefer movies. I prefer cats. I prefer the oaks along the Warta. I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky. I prefer myself liking people to myself loving mankind. I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case. I prefer the color green. I prefer not to maintain that reason is to blame for everything. I prefer exceptions. I prefer to leave early. I prefer talking to doctors about something else. I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations. I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems. I prefer, where love's concerned, nonspecific anniversaries that can be celebrated every day. I prefer moralists who promise me nothing. I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind. I prefer the earth in civvies. I prefer conquered to conquering countries. I prefer having some reservations. I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order. I prefer Grimms' fairy tales to the newspapers' front pages. I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves. I prefer dogs with uncropped tails. I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark. I prefer desk drawers. I prefer many things that I haven't mentioned here to many things I've also left unsaid. I prefer zeroes on the loose to those lined up behind a cipher. I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars. I prefer to knock on wood. I prefer not to ask how much longer and when. I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility that existence has its own reason for being.

...'Well, I think of you as a straight shooter, Sheriff, but one who can't stop lustin' after the goddamn ineffable.' "She said that, hunh?" "Yup." "Shitfire, Sheriff, what'd you do?" "Well, I shot her.

A car whipped past, the driver eating and a passenger clicking a camera. Moving without going anywhere, taking a trip instead of making one. I laughed at the absurdity of the photographs and then realized I, too, was rolling effortlessly along, turning the windshield into a movie screen in which I, the viewer, did the moving while the subject held still. That was the temptation of the American highway, of the American vacation (from the Latin vacare, "to be empty").

It was Valentine's Day and I had spent the day in bed with my life partner, Ketel One. The two of us watched a romance movie marathon on TBS Superstation that made me wonder how people who write romantic comedies can sleep at night. At some point during almost every romantic comedy, the female lead suddenly trips and falls, stumbling helplessly over something ridiculous like a leaf, and then some Matthew McConaughey type either whips around the corner just in the nick of time to save her or is clumsily pulled down along with her. That event predictably leads to the magical moment of their first kiss. Please. I fall all-the-time. You know who comes and gets me? The bouncer. Then, within the two hour time frame of the movie, the couple meet, fall in love, fall out of love, break up, and then just before the end of the movie, they happen to bump into each other by "coincidence" somewhere absolutely absurd, like by the river. This never happens in real life. The last time I bumped into an ex-boyfriend was at three o'clock in the morning at Rite Aid. I was ringing up Gas-X and corn removers.

In the movie White Men Can’t Jump, the final boss duo that the two street hustlers must defeat are called King and Duck. I felt that, because I’m The Duck King, and I didn’t have to win a basketball game for the title—I was elected via unanimous and cacophonous quack.

I often ask, "What do you want to work at? If you have the chance. When you get out of school, college, the service, etc." Some answer right off and tell their definite plans and projects, highly approved by Papa. I'm pleased for them* but it's a bit boring, because they are such squares. Quite a few will, with prompting, come out with astounding stereotyped, conceited fantasies, such as becoming a movie actor when they are "discovered" "like Marlon Brando, but in my own way." Very rarely somebody will, maybe defiantly and defensively, maybe diffidently but proudly, make you know that he knows very well what he is going to do; it is something great; and he is indeed already doing it, which is the real test. The usual answer, perhaps the normal answer, is "I don't know," meaning, "I'm looking; I haven't found the right thing; it's discouraging but not hopeless." But the terrible answer is, "Nothing." The young man doesn't want to do anything. I remember talking to half a dozen young fellows at Van Wagner's Beach outside of Hamilton, Ontario; and all of them had this one thing to say: "Nothing." They didn't believe that what to work at was the kind of thing one wanted. They rather expected that two or three of them would work for the electric company in town, but they couldn't care less, I turned away from the conversation abruptly because of the uncontrollable burning tears in my eyes and constriction in my chest. Not feeling sorry for them, but tears of frank dismay for the waste of our humanity (they were nice kids). And it is out of that incident that many years later I am writing this book.

Turn off the sound and watch a slap scene in a movie. Even if the gap between hand and check remains one feet, sound effect makes you feel that slap is real. When the picture is incomplete, your mind fills in your own colours in the gaps. If you are madly in love with someone, you will believe their most absurd lies. If you hate someone, you won’t even believe absolute truths told by them.

El Lindo tastes like the line from that famous murder mystery movie “Rambo,” when Nicolas Cage rips off his tuxedo and says, “I may be a lot of things, but I ain’t a man to call Taco Bell Mexican cuisine." I love a good romance.

The imitation lives we see on TV and in the movies whisper the idea that human existence consists of revelations and abrupt changes of heart; by the time we’ve reached full adulthood, I think, this is an idea we have on some level come to accept. Such things may happen from time to time, but I think that for the most part it’s a lie. Life’s changes come slowly…the whole idea of curious cats attaining satisfaction seemed slightly absurd. The world rarely finishes its conversations.

Christian joy, after all, is itself a response to the silly, the absurd: the good news. That God would come down to reclaim us through the sacrificial and atoning work of Jesus, rather than simply scrap it all and start over, is laughably illogical.

Maybe your lot right now could be improved. I know mine could. And working to make things better is great. But we don’t just work to make things better and leave it at that, do we? We live in the idealized world inside our heads. And that keeps us from ever really enjoying what we have right now, from enjoying the work that we’re doing to create our better tomorrow. It’s as if we’re afraid to really commit to this moment because a better one might come along later. This approach is totally ridiculous and completely absurd.*

The mummy felt betrayed, like when a spouse agrees on a movie you decided to watch only to put on a different movie as you go to the bathroom, having to sit through the whole movie and not argue about it because it’s not worth fighting over, just boiling up inside and remembering it for later when they want their coffee with half-and-half, knowing that you put 2-percent milk in there and they won’t know, but you will.

Nook people can overstate their love for a movie, having only watched it once. They are alert to how some spectacles become basically unbearable the second time. And, well, there are benefits to claiming something you’ve only experienced once as your favorite. It’s useful to have many favorites. So many that you've depreciated the use of "favorite." Favorite. Favorite. Favorite. Who cares? At any rate, substantiating favorites is an absurd practice. The genius of the word is that it's more of an expression than a word.

(On D.W Griffith's The Birth of a Nation) This was the one time in movie history that a man of great ability worked freely, in an unspoiled medium, for an unspoiled audience, on a majestic theme which involved all that he was; and brought to it, besides his abilities as an inventor and artist, absolute passion, pity, courage, and honesty. “The Birth of a Nation” is equal with Brady’s photographs, Lincoln’s speeches, Whitman’s war poems; for all its imperfections and absurdities it is equal, in fact, to the best work that has been done in this country. And among moving pictures it is alone, not necessarily as “the greatest” — whatever that means — but as the one great epic, tragic film.

Despite having minority traditions of their own, our present poor are absolute sheep and suckers for the popular culture which they cannot afford, the movies, sharp clothes, and up to Cadillacs. Indeed, it is likely that the popular culture is aimed somewhat at them, as the lowest common denominator. I do not mean that this is not a reasonable compensation, like the Englishman’s liquor and the Irishman’s betting on the horses. Everybody has got to have something, and so poor people show off and feel big by means of the standard of living. But in these circumstances it is immensely admirable that the Beat Generation has contrived a pattern of culture that, turning against the standard culture, costs very little and gives livelier satisfaction. It is a culture communally shared, in small groups. Much of it is handmade, not canned. Some of it is communally improvised.

Nuggsy continued on. ‘Seriously, legend. A bloke might have a six-figure salary at a job he truly loves, but it all means nothing if he has a shit rig and a poor grasp of Anchorman quotes. It probably doesn’t even matter if he averages in the mid-30s and does a lot at the club, because he’ll never go anywhere.’ I briefly wondered as to the relevance of Will Ferrell movie quotes, but then remembered back to my first training session. I had overheard a crew of second graders reciting dialogue from the movie Step Brothers while mucking around on the slips cradle. Obviously this broad style of comedy had particular resonance within grade cricket circles. The humour was absurd, male-skewed, anti-intellectual, and highly quotable. Suddenly, I was beginning to understand the things that made grade cricketers tick. Meanwhile, Nuggsy continued to bluster on, flecks of spit now hissing out from his animated mouth. The next piece of advice he had for me revolved around women: a subject I knew little about.

What if you can't help but judge life negatively? What if yesterday felt awful, today feels awful, and tomorrow is likely to feel awful too? What if you are poverty stricken, coughing up blood, incarcerated, alone, under siege, helpless, and hopeless? How absurd is it to ask you to make meaning and choose the meanings of your life? Don't you need medicine, money, and a friend more than some hard-nosed philosophy? Aren't you better off with a romantic movie, a pitcher of beer, and a dream of heaven rather than a demanding, soul-searching regimen? Doesn't natural psychology make little or no sense in your circumstances? ... It may be the case that someone who has a hard life is exactly the sort of person who would benefit from a philosophy that respects the hardness of reality and that proposes solutions, especially if that person is smart enough to understand the alternatives. That isn't to say that there won't be days when all of us need meaning to amount to more than this, to something more profound and important, to something that better soothes us and helps us forget that we are bound to suffer and that we will cease to be. The natural psychological view does not controvert the facts of existence, and there will be days—many days—when even the staunchest heart wishes that it could. We boldly stare at the facts of existence—and on some days, each of us will blink. Adherents of natural psychology know that days like that are coming.

Islamophobia” as a weapon of jihad The charge of “Islamophobia” is routinely used to shift attention away from jihad terrorists. After a rise in jihadist militancy and the arrest of eight people in Switzerland on suspicion of aiding suicide bombers in Saudi Arabia, some Muslims in Switzerland were in no mood to clean house: “As far as we’re concerned,” said Nadia Karmous, leader of a Muslim women’s group in Switzerland, “there is no rise in Islamism, but rather an increase in Islamophobia.”5 This pattern has recurred in recent years all over the world as “Islamophobia” has passed into the larger lexicon and become a self-perpetuating industry. In Western countries, “Islamophobia” has taken a place beside “racism,” “sexism,” and “homophobia.” The absurdity of all this was well illustrated by a recent incident in Britain: While a crew was filming the harassment of a Muslim for a movie about “Islamophobia,” two passing Brits, who didn’t realize the cameras were rolling, stopped to defend the person being assaulted. Yet neither the filmmakers nor the reporters covering these events seemed to realize that this was evidence that the British were not as violent and xenophobic as the film they were creating suggested.6 Historian Victor Davis Hanson has ably explained the dangerous shift of focus that “Islamophobia” entails: There really isn’t a phenomenon like “Islamophobia”—at least no more than there was a “Germanophobia” in hating Hitler or “Russophobia” in detesting Stalinism. Any unfairness or rudeness that accrues from the “security profiling” of Middle Eastern young males is dwarfed by efforts of Islamic fascists themselves—here in the U.S., in the UK, the Netherlands, France, Turkey, and Israel—to murder Westerners and blow up civilians. The real danger to thousands of innocents is not an occasional evangelical zealot or uncouth politician spouting off about Islam, but the deliberately orchestrated and very sick anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism that floods the airways worldwide, emanating from Iran, Lebanon, and Syria, to be sure, but also from our erstwhile “allies” in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.7

No no, Ivan, I love it!” I laugh and wrap my arms around him, blushing half out of embarrassment and half out of how absurdly cute this otherwise terrifying man was trying to be. It was like he was studying romance movies just to figure out how to surprise me. Me! The girl that is technically his sex slave, but who he treats like a Goddess.

SCALE THE HUMAN MOUNTAIN OF SUMLESS LIES UNTIL YOU LABORIOUSLY REACH THE SUMMIT THEN CAUSE IT TO CRUMBLE BY YOUR EQUALLY SUMLESS BURDEN OF VERITY THAT NO HUMAN MAY FAVOUR YOU WITH A GLANCE ANY MORE AND THOSE WHO DO ARE NO LONGER HUMAN HAVING DIVESTED THEMSELVES OF THEIR HUMANITY AS YOU DID BY VIRTUE OF THE FACT OF * WHAT MAN HAS DONE TO HIMSELF BESIDES , YOU ARE ABLE TO ASCERTAIN HOW MANY '' FRIENDS '' YOU HAVE WHICH IS THE EMPTY SET CONTAINING ONE ELEMENT ONLY : VERITY ! , TO WHICH YOU PERTAIN AS WELL IT IS WHY IT IS THE HARDEST THING TO FIND THE PATH LEADING TO YOURSELF AND IT IS BY THE EMPTY SET THAT ALL OF MATHEMATICS HAS BEEN MADE AN EGREGIOUS LIE TOO IT IS MORE FACILE TO KILL SOMEONE OR , IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO , YOURSELF DO YOU SEE THE POPLAR AND THE ROBIN THAT IS PERCHED ON IT ? ASK THEM ! THEY KNOW HOW TO LIVE YOU DON'T BECAUSE YOU ARE HUMAN AND INTELLIGENT : MAN IS ENDUED WITH HIS SPIRIT OF INVENTION WHICH HAS REDUCED LIFE TO ABSURDITY AS ALL THOSE THEORIES AND TEACHINGS SPRINGING FROM IT HAVE NEVER BENEFITED LIFE , ON THE CONTRARY , DESTROYED IT ! AN APPRECIATION OF THE MAJESTY OF VERITY ALSO ENTAILS THE INEVITABLE CATASTROPHE OF '' BEING '' AND HENCE THE INFELICITY OF YOURSELF WHICH HAS TO BE ASCRIBED TO THOSE PROFOUND TEACHINGS OF MAN AND THE IMPRECATIONS WHICH THEY HEAPED UPON LIFE AND BEHIND WHICH EVERYONE STRIVES TO CONCEAL HIMSELF AS SOMETHING SUBLIME , BROTHERLY , CUNNING , INGENIOUS CONVINCED OF THE '' SUCCESS '' OF SUCH BEING ! INGENUITY AND SUCCESS , DO THOSE TWO WORDS DIFFER ? , AS MAN IS DETREMINED BY THOSE CRITERIA AND HENCE LIFE !... WHAT ALSO COMES TO MIND HERE IS THIS - THERE IS SOMETHING VASTLY ABOMINABLE ABOUT SOCIETY : ITS MEMBERS ARE EVER SO FOND OF ALL THOSE MOVIE STARS AND ALL THOSE OTHER LUMINARIES AND WHAT IS LUMINOUS ABOUT THEM I DO NOT KNOW ! YET THEY ARE IN THE HABIT OF TREATING THOSE VERY SIGNIFICANT PEOPLE DIFFERENTLY FROM ORDINARY PEOPLE SUCH AS A HOUSEMAID OR A GROCER OR A SALESMAN AND SO FORTH , THEREBY CREATING SOMETHING UTTERLY CORRUPT : A FALSE IDEALISM ! THEY NEED THOSE LUMINARIES AS THEY LACK ANY IDEALISM THEMSELVES IN THEIR EVERYDAY REALITY WHICH HAS DEPRAVED THEM OF IT , OVERLOOKING HOWEVER , HOW TRULY ORDINARY IN TRUTH ALL THOSE STARS ARE ! AND ALLOWING THEIR LACK OF IDEALISM TO BE SUPERSEDED BY OTHER PEOPLE'S NONPRESENT IDEALISM ON ACCOUNT OF THEIR PROMINENCE MAKES EVERYTHING LOOK EVEN DARKER IN LIFE , AS THOUGH LIFE CONSISTED IN FAME ! IS THIS WHY IT IS SO DARK IN THE HUMAN WORLD ? AM I THE ONLY PERSON TO APPREHEND DARKNESS IN THEIR LIGHTNESS ? OR WHY IS SO DARK IN THIS WORLD ? SOMETHING LIKE THAT NEEDS TO BE SHRUGGED OFF AS SOMETHING INEXPLICABLY RATIONAL , WHENCE I HAVE ALWAYS THOUGHT MYSELF IRRATIONAL IN NOT GROVELLING BEFORE THOSE WHO ARE EVEN MORE ORDINARY THAN ALL THE OTHER ORDINARY NON-FAMOUS PEOPLE ARE ! IT IS IN PARTICULAR THOSE ALL-IMPORTANT DIGNITARIES WHO TASTE OF METHYLATED SPIRITS IN A MOST ACRID AND NAUSEATING FASHION ! SO MUCH FOR CEANLINESS !...

THIRD EMENDED VERSION , SOME OMISSIONS HAVING BEEN ADDED TO MY LAST '' PUBLICATION '' TO KEEP THE LOGIC MORE LUCID SORRY FOR SETTING EVERYTHING DOWN SO QUICKLY - ''SCALE THE HUMAN MOUNTAIN OF SUMLESS LIES UNTIL YOU LABORIOUSLY REACH THE SUMMIT THEN CAUSE IT TO CRUMBLE BY YOUR EQUALLY SUMLESS BURDEN OF VERITY THAT NO HUMAN MAY FAVOUR YOU WITH A GLANCE ANY MORE AND THOSE WHO DO ARE NO LONGER HUMAN HAVING DIVESTED THEMSELVES OF THEIR HUMANITY AS YOU DID BY VIRTUE OF THE FACT OF WHAT MAN HAS DONE TO HIMSELF BESIDES , YOU ARE ABLE TO ASCERTAIN HOW MANY '' FRIENDS '' YOU HAVE WHICH IS THE EMPTY SET CONTAINING ONE ELEMENT ONLY : VERITY ! , TO WHICH YOU PERTAIN AS WELL IT IS WHY IT IS THE HARDEST THING TO FIND THE PATH LEADING TO YOURSELF AND IT IS BY THE EMPTY SET THAT ALL OF MATHEMATICS HAS BEEN MADE AN EGREGIOUS LIE TOO IT IS MORE FACILE TO KILL SOMEONE OR , IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO , YOURSELF THAN IT IS TO LIVE ! DO YOU SEE THE POPLAR AND THE ROBIN THAT IS PERCHED ON IT ? ASK THEM ! THEY KNOW HOW TO LIVE YOU DON'T BECAUSE YOU ARE HUMAN AND INTELLIGENT : MAN IS ENDUED WITH HIS SPIRIT OF INVENTION WHICH HAS REDUCED LIFE TO ABSURDITY AS ALL THOSE THEORIES AND TEACHINGS SPRINGING FROM IT HAVE NEVER BENEFITED LIFE , ON THE CONTRARY , DESTROYED IT ! AN APPRECIATION OF THE MAJESTY OF VERITY ALSO ENTAILS THE INEVITABLE CATASTROPHE OF '' BEING '' AND HENCE THE INFELICITY OF YOURSELF WHICH HAS TO BE ASCRIBED TO THOSE PROFOUND TEACHINGS OF MAN AND THE IMPRECATIONS WHICH THEY HEAPED UPON LIFE AND BEHIND WHICH EVERYONE STRIVES TO CONCEAL HIMSELF AS SOMETHING SUBLIME , BROTHERLY , CUNNING , INGENIOUS CONVINCED OF THE '' SUCCESS '' OF SUCH BEING ! INGENUITY AND SUCCESS , DO THOSE TWO WORDS DIFFER ? , AS MAN IS DETREMINED BY THOSE CRITERIA AND HENCE LIFE !... WHAT ALSO COMES TO MIND HERE IS THIS - THERE IS SOMETHING VASTLY ABOMINABLE ABOUT SOCIETY : ITS MEMBERS ARE EVER SO FOND OF ALL THOSE MOVIE STARS AND ALL THOSE OTHER LUMINARIES AND WHAT IS LUMINOUS ABOUT THEM I DO NOT KNOW ! YET THEY ARE IN THE HABIT OF TREATING THOSE VERY SIGNIFICANT PEOPLE DIFFERENTLY FROM ORDINARY PEOPLE SUCH AS A HOUSEMAID OR A GROCER OR A SALESMAN AND SO FORTH , THEREBY CREATING SOMETHING UTTERLY CORRUPT : A FALSE IDEALISM ! THEY NEED THOSE LUMINARIES AS THEY LACK ANY IDEALISM THEMSELVES IN THEIR EVERYDAY REALITY WHICH HAS DEPRAVED THEM OF IT , OVERLOOKING HOWEVER , HOW TRULY ORDINARY IN TRUTH ALL THOSE STARS ARE ! AND ALLOWING THEIR LACK OF IDEALISM TO BE SUPERSEDED BY OTHER PEOPLE'S NONPRESENT IDEALISM ON ACCOUNT OF THEIR PROMINENCE MAKES EVERYTHING LOOK EVEN DARKER IN LIFE , AS THOUGH LIFE CONSISTED IN FAME ! IS THIS WHY IT IS SO DARK IN THE HUMAN WORLD ? AM I THE ONLY PERSON TO APPREHEND DARKNESS IN THEIR LIGHTNESS ? OR WHY IS SO DARK IN THIS WORLD ? SOMETHING LIKE THAT NEEDS TO BE SHRUGGED OFF AS SOMETHING INEXPLICABLY RATIONAL , WHENCE I HAVE ALWAYS THOUGHT MYSELF IRRATIONAL IN NOT GROVELLING BEFORE THOSE WHO ARE EVEN MORE ORDINARY THAN ALL THE OTHER ORDINARY NON-FAMOUS PEOPLE ARE ! IT IS IN PARTICULAR THOSE ALL-IMPORTANT DIGNITARIES WHO TASTE OF METHYLATED SPIRITS IN A MOST ACRID AND NAUSEATING FASHION ! SO MUCH FOR CLEANLINESS !... VENERABLE ANCIENT SHADES HOVERING OVER THIS LAKE THAT IS NO MORE AND OF WHICH I AM PART THE WORLD AROUND ME FADES I DISPEL ALL THOSE BLANK AND GRAINED IDEAS MAKING UP HUMAN EXISTENCE I AM NO MORE I DREAM AND HOPEFULLY I WILL NEVER TURN BACK SO AS TO SEE THAT BLANK AND GRAINED HUMAN EXISTENCE AGAIN WHICH CAUSES LIFE TO BLUR SO MUCH THAT I AM NO LONGER IN A POSITION TO SUFFER FOR THIS MUCH GUILT , WHAT IS LIFE ? AMEN !...

Almost every genre film made for a while was an Anti-Genre Film. With the idea behind the film being to expose the absurdity and unsavory politics that have hidden underneath said genre since the beginning of Hollywood

I know that what God is calling us to here is countercultural in the extreme. Today’s culture makes fun of virginity. Hollywood makes comedy movies entirely based on the seemingly absurd idea of not having sex.j If you commit to God’s way, there will be those who don’t understand. Some people will think you’re crazy. Remaining pure may even cost you a relationship or two with people who think sex is a necessary part of dating (in which case, you can be thankful you’ve successfully dodged a bullet). But we are called to be different. We are to “not conform to the pattern of this world” (Rom. 12:2). We are to be “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation” who “shine among them like stars in the sky” (Phil. 2:15). So be different. Even if it were possible to avoid all the consequences of sexual sin—it’s not, but even if it were—we should still strive to follow God’s design for sex and marriage. We should do so both because it is his design and also because it is different. It’s an opportunity to reclaim his world from fallen culture and serve as a living example that he makes people new. Start today. Be different.

When we last saw SpongeBob SquarePants on the big screen a decade ago, he was thwarting deep-sea disaster with the help of David Hasselhoff. That is, admittedly, a tough act to follow. But "The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water" is an even more absurd delight — and not only for its primary fanbase of kids and chemically-altered collegiates.

On Jan. 30, a Japanese-American college student named George Miller, posted a three-and-a-half minute compilation of comedy on YouTube. Miller has been posting videos since 2008 and had developed an absurd comic style and an audience of tens of thousands. Miller’s movie began with 19 seconds of “Pink Guy,” (a character where he plays a mime in a pink body suit who dances and pratfalls) and three friends dancing in Miller’s bedroom to an obscure piece of electronic dance music: “Harlem Shake” by a little-known DJ called Harry Rodrigues, or “Baauer.” Miller’s audience loved the dance. Within hours, one fan had posted a video that looped the 19-second sequence for three and a half minutes.

Her favorite movie was Somewhere In Time, and she wanted me to be her Christopher Reeve. She probably meant she wanted me to be her Superman, but I always took it like she wanted me to be a guy pretending to need a wheelchair before faking my own death.

The abusive man learns early in life, from his surrounding society and beyond, that when he becomes an adult he has the right to swallow a female whole, and that in this way he will fill the vast emptiness inside of him and feel empty no more. He learns that the female of his choosing owes him her life entire in this fashion, that it would be wrong of her to fail to sacrifice her life and herself in this way. Not only that, but he learns that this self-erasure will be her greatest joy. He gets these messages all over the place, from his own unhealthy relatives all the way up to police responses, courts, and Disney movies. All of what he learns is a lie. It is a moral lie, meaning it’s a lie about what’s right and what’s wrong; no woman’s life should ever by martyred to fill a man’s (or anyone’s) emptiness. But not only should this not be done, it also cannot be done. Thus it is not only a moral lie but also a lie about the nature of reality. A human being cannot be vacuumed into the inside of another person and become part of that person, in some kind of twisted reversal of the birth process. It’s absurd that it’s even necessary for me to state this. The abusive man hates the woman for continuing to exist outside of him. No matter how hard she may try, in her terror and in her trauma, to disappear inside of him, she simply cannot do it. (And if she gets some support in her life, she may even attempt to refuse to continue trying.) He hates her for this, for still being there, because he was taught that to disappear inside of him is her unlimited obligation and will make him whole. When you find yourself wondering why the abuser hates you – as most abused women do at one point or another – this is why: because you continue to breathe, because you have skin, because you eat food and then move with the energy of that food, because by getting out of bed and standing up in the morning you have once again demonstrated your failure to become him.

In the pre-internet age, holding conspiratorial beliefs usually meant holding those beliefs in isolation - you read discredited books, you wrote letters to fringe magazines, and you listened to Coast to Coast AM alone in the garage. The thought of an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory crossing into real politics (or even being quasi-validated by a main-stream newspaper) was absurd. Only the internet could make that possible. Before social media, there was no way to gauge the size of a conspiracy population, and individuals promoting unconventional concepts surrendered their credibility within the straight world. When Oliver Stone released the film JFK in 1991, it trafficked in a conspiracy a majority of Americans accepted - that the assassination of John F. Kennedy had involved more than one gunman. But JFK was still ridiculed in most serious publication, sometimes before the movie was even released. Stone was marginalized as a loon for promoting a possibility most people already believed.

Time’s arrow is irreversible, because entropy cannot decrease of its own accord without violating the second law of thermodynamics. A reversible arrow would be like a movie run backward. The scenes in the movie are not impossible by the laws of classical mechanics, but they are patently absurd.

Like most Americans, I was raised to be a white man. I read William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. I read F. Scott Fitzgerald and Charles Bukowski. I came to identify with the emotionally disengaged characters, the staccato sentences, the irreverent dirty old man voice. The books I read asked me to imagine the power I might have. I got a woman pregnant and then worried that they wouldn't get an abortion, tying me down forever when all I wanted to do was continue experiencing my freedom. I wrote poems about the absurdity of writing poems, enjoying the decadence of imagining my readers drinking in my disregard for them. Being likable, explaining myself to others were not prerequisites of protaganism. I watched women move, their hips and dresses, their lips on glasses, their breasts heaving, all that offered up to me to enjoy, to consume. The fact that I was a brown woman was not something that seemed immediately relevant when I was younger. I moved through the world with the sense that I would have the same kind of power as the protagonists I read and movies I watched.

Standing in the bright sunshine, I realized that I had never come back to any of my photographs. I had become an absurd American movie, cutting quickly from one image to another, but never stopping to focus on one thing. For the first time I had looped back—and here was my old photograph, wrapped in a blue blanket while the gulls spiraled overhead.

Then the cops come... That to me means all of the movie with all of this absurdity culminates to an absurdity that is so grounded it's actually real. It shows you that all of these other choices are not that crazy anymore. No matter whether or not the audience bought any of the decisions I've made--they could've viewed the brain transplants or the hypnotizing as ridiculous and fantastical--they have to acknowledge that the cop car showing up is a real threat to Chris's life. And maybe that makes them go back and reevaluate whether the other decisions were that far-fetched after all.

She grinned, and then felt the grin getting bigger and bigger. She hadn’t wanted to run, it was so like a bad movie, but she was running anyway and so was Gaby, taking absurdly long hops in the low gravity.

If Reagan’s story were fiction, it would seem absurdly pat and overdetermined, the irony too heavy-headed. Out of college during the Depression, he went straight to work for the new fantasy-industrial complex. In a Des Moines radio studio, he regularly pretended he was at Wrigley Field in Chicago, performing fake play-by-play broadcasts of Cubs games based on real-time wire-service descriptions. He visited Hollywood and got his first movie role — playing a radio announcer. During World War II he was an officer in the army — serving in the First Motion Picture Unit, stationed in Burbank and Culver City, where he starred in "This Is the Army," a movie in which he played a corporal who stages a piece of musical theater called "This Is the Army.

Until Get Shorty, Elmore’s novels that were made into movies were critical and financial failures, which was why the rights to the novel were still available. Many books by successful authors are optioned before they’re even published, which I hope is the case with Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother. I gave Elmore and his agent, Michael Siegel, my thoughts about comedy, which is that no one on the show should think they’re working on one. The formula for a successful comedy is to have an absurd situation, or an absurd character, played for reality. If the situation is funny, the scene will be funny, but only if it’s played totally real. If the cinematographer knows it’s a comedy, it will be too bright. If the film lab knows, it will be even brighter. If the wardrobe department knows, it will be colorful. If the composer thinks it’s a comedy, there’ll be slide whistles and triangles. The worst, of course, is if the actors or director decide they’re making a comedy. I promised Elmore our show would be funny, because it would be real.

Think about it, a hypothetical movie called The Wages of Pleasure, where four handsome men in two Mercedes Benz cars deliver body oils, perfumes and soaps to a coterie of young beautiful woman in a Playboy Mansion somewhere nearby on a paradise beach. A hollow, bland movie devoid of tension, suspense, action, suffering and fear.

It’s called Sisyphus. No. Sisyphus. Yes. Apparently some Greek myth. This guy is punished for—punished—yes— for something, and has to roll a rock up a hill every day and every day it rolls—a rock, yes— and every day it rolls back down. Something about the absurdity of life. Camus says—Camooo—says it’s about the condition of man and that it’s meaningless and we have to just keep doing it and—the rock, yes, rolling the rock—and that gives our life meaning. Yeah. Well if that don’t drive you to God—

As you slowly take in the movie, however, you start to see that behind the seemingly absurd attachment of people to their animals lies redemption: Yes, life may be bleak, but we can impose meaning on that bleakness. The intense love that people have for their pets, initially presented as silly and absurd, gradually becomes sympathetic, even beautiful. Ultimately, Ebert came to see the film as being about the “hope held by the loneliest people who have ever been seen on film” and “the deepest of human needs, for human companionship.

Bowerbird" Recently I rescued a supermarket bag from the crotch of a tree, found fewer shields than souvenirs, figured out how to game the pain scale and opted not to. Water the color of watery tea comes through the light fixture on a holiday when nobody will come plug it up and make us regret complaining. Nothing like a movie to remind you that you never travel and a lot of almost fornicating happens a mere floor or two above the one you’re on. Shoulder, TV flicker, flash of back. I’ll make up a name and try to affix it to whoever left these four white doors on the sidewalk, which I dragged home two and one at a time. In daylight they reveal smudges left after tenants groped one spot, then the next—hallway, stairwell, street, the mess just beyond, forest on the dented side of a globe. There’s always the absurd woven into every nest I build and hop around, waiting for the right one to wander in. The right one is the one who wanders in.