Different Strokes Famous Quotes

It is a well-known established fact throughout the many-dimensional worlds of the multiverse that most really great discoveries are owed to one brief moment of inspiration. There's a lot of spadework first, of course, but what clinches the whole thing is the sight of, say, a falling apple or a boiling kettle or the water slipping over the edge of the bath. Something goes click inside the observer's head and then everything falls into place. The shape of DNA, it is popularly said, owes its discovery to the chance sight of a spiral staircase when the scientist‘s mind was just at the right receptive temperature. Had he used the elevator, the whole science of genetics might have been a good deal different. This is thought of as somehow wonderful. It isn't. It is tragic. Little particles of inspiration sleet through the universe all the time traveling through the densest matter in the same way that a neutrino passes through a candyfloss haystack, and most of them miss. Even worse, most of the ones that hit the exact cerebral target, hit the wrong one. For example, the weird dream about a lead doughnut on a mile-high gantry, which in the right mind would have been the catalyst for the invention of repressed-gravitational electricity generation (a cheap and inexhaustible and totally non-polluting form of power which the world in question had been seeking for centuries, and for the lack of which it was plunged into a terrible and pointless war) was in fact had by a small and bewildered duck. By another stroke of bad luck, the sight of a herd of wild horses galloping through a field of wild hyacinths would have led a struggling composer to write the famous Flying God Suite, bringing succor and balm to the souls of millions, had he not been at home in bed with shingles. The inspiration thereby fell to a nearby frog, who was not in much of a position to make a startling contributing to the field of tone poetry. Many civilizations have recognized this shocking waste and tried various methods to prevent it, most of them involving enjoyable but illegal attempts to tune the mind into the right wavelength by the use of exotic herbage or yeast products. It never works properly.

Rodolphe Salis was a tall, red-headed bohemian with a coppery beard and boundless charisma. He had tried and failed to make a success of several different careers, including painting decorations for a building in Calcutta. But by 1881 he was listless and creatively frustrated, uncertain where his niche might lie. More pressingly, he was desperate to secure a steady income. But then he had the ingenious idea to turn the studio which he rented, a disused post office on the resolutely working-class Boulevard de Rochechouart, into a cabaret with a quirky, artistic bent. He was not the first to attempt such a venture: La Grande Pinte on the Avenue Trudaine had been uniting artists and writers to discuss and give spontaneous performances for several years. But Salis was determined that his initiative would be different – and better. A fortuitous meeting ensured that it was. Poet Émile Goudeau was the founder of the alternative literary group the Hydropathes (‘water-haters’ – meaning that they preferred wine or beer). After meeting Goudeau in the Latin Quarter and attending a few of the group’s gatherings, Salis became convinced that a more deliberate form of entertainment than had been offered at La Grande Pinte would create a venue that was truly innovative – and profitable. The Hydropathe members needed a new meeting place, and so Salis persuaded Goudeau to rally his comrades and convince them to relocate from the Latin Quarter to his new cabaret artistique. They would be able to drink, smoke, talk and showcase their talents and their wit. Targeting an established group like the Hydropathes was a stroke of genius on Salis’s part. Baptising his cabaret Le Chat Noir after the eponymous feline of Edgar Allan Poe’s story, he made certain that his ready-made clientele were not disappointed. Everything about the ambience and the decor reflected Salis’s unconventional, anti-establishment approach, an ethos which the Hydropathes shared. A seemingly elongated room with low ceilings was divided in two by a curtain. The front section was larger and housed a bar for standard customers. But the back part of the room (referred to as ‘L’Institut’) was reserved exclusively for artists. Fiercely proud of his locality, Salis was adamant that he could make Montmartre glorious. ‘What is Montmartre?’ Salis famously asked. ‘Nothing. What should it be? Everything!’ Accordingly, Salis invited artists from the area to decorate the venue. Adolphe Léon Willette painted stained-glass panels for the windows, while Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen created posters. And all around, a disorientating mishmash of antiques and bric-a-brac gave the place a higgledy-piggledy feel. There was Louis XIII furniture, tapestries and armour alongside rusty swords; there were stags’ heads and wooden statues nestled beside coats of arms. It was weird, it was wonderful and it was utterly bizarre – the customers loved it.

Clinton administration’s famous policy of “triangulation,” its grand effort to minimize the differences between Democrats and Republicans on economic issues. Among the nation’s pundit corps “triangulation” has always been considered a stroke of genius, signaling the end of liberalism’s old-fashioned “class warfare” and also of the Democrats’ faith in “big government.” Clinton’s New Democrats, it was thought, had brought the dawn of an era in which all parties agreed on the sanctity of the free market. As political strategy, though, Clinton’s move to accommodate the right was the purest folly. It simply pulled the rug out from under any possible organizing effort on the left.

While the Wichita Cons worked hard to build their movement, they would not have succeeded so extravagantly had it not been for the simultaneous suicide of the rival movement, the one that traditionally spoke for working-class people. I am referring, of course, to the Clinton administration’s famous policy of “triangulation,” its grand effort to minimize the differences between Democrats and Republicans on economic issues. Among the nation’s pundit corps “triangulation” has always been considered a stroke of genius, signaling the end of liberalism’s old-fashioned “class warfare” and also of the Democrats’ faith in “big government.” Clinton’s New Democrats, it was thought, had brought the dawn of an era in which all parties agreed on the sanctity of the free market. As political strategy, though, Clinton’s move to accommodate the right was the purest folly. It simply pulled the rug out from under any possible organizing effort on the left. While the Cons were busily polarizing the electorate, the Dems were meekly seeking the center.

Several of the filmʼs key sound effects were accomplished musically, the most famous being the monsterʼs roars, which went beyond the sound departmentʼs capabilities.  Various animal noises were recorded and modified but nothing worked until Ifukube came to the rescue by using a contrabass (basically a large bass fiddle); however the only one in existence in all Japan was at the prestigious Tokyo Music Conservatoryʼs Music Department which was not about to loan-out their precious instrument for the purpose of making a monster movie.  So one night Ifukube “borrowedˮ it, removed its lowest string, then had pupil Sei Ikuno stroke the remaining strings with a coarse leather glove coated with resin.  The sound was then tape-recorded before being played backwards at a slower speed supplemented with echo-chamber mixing, and the different roars were achieved by changing the playback speeds, giving the monster a melodic quality (the sound of the monster using its radioactive ray was a sped-up cymbal roll).