World, get off the lying meme

Many believe the world is full of liars.

A couple of years ago a few of these believers made a movie, creating an opposite world.

I guess they thought this would be funny, and would resonate with the irony of the opposite. And maybe even be uplifting. Not to mention educational.

Right?

Well, No. The conceit failed. Despite featuring charismatic and popular stars, The Invention of Lying barely covered its costs.

I could have told them this would happen. I could have told them the irony would be feckless.

Guys, the reason the movie did not make money is your premise was wrong. The world is not made corrupt by being full of liars.

Yes, the world is full of people who say untrue things. But they believe in truth and consciously believe the things they say are true.

It is only subconsciously they know what they say is false.

And now a picture of some kids. Because kids [Hollywood's #1 audience] know.

They can tell that many of the adults in their world are not completely honest human beings. But also that they are not liars.

The lying meme is feckless. Please, world, get off it. That would be step 1 for you to begin to work out what is really wrong.

culture-watching brag

I did it again!

On this blog 3 weeks ago I used a Stephen Colbert 'on notice' generator to put up a few of my peeves. Among other abuses, I put the 'misuse of irony' on notice.

Then yesterday Stephen Colbert himself put irony on notice!!
He didn't pull out the board but he said it.

Is that like proof that I am way cool, or what?

Just call me the 'joke prefigurer' (a very catchy phrase if I don't say so myself).

my earlier bit of premonition
Maybe last year sometime I happened to notice that Tom Cruise's dice had lost another spot, that the movie actor had under gone a 'change'. I was not a Cruise-basher btw. Nor did I follow his story much. But I noticed this before it was news (I won't say how).

I even said it. In another context I predicted that a blowup was coming from Cruise. And just weeks after that he stood on Oprah's stage couch and jumped and yelled. An event which led a gazillion others to notice what I already had.

Did I get credit? No. Not one person said .. that man, he knowz culture. Not one person. they all think they are SO smart. but who spotted what first? ... Sigh.

yes, I know
Clearly, I use too much time looking at popular culture.

Magritte was a faker, but he still inspires book covers

When this was written in 2006 there was a link about an exhibition of book covers called "images in the spirit of Magritte".

I couldn't stand any of them. I have long believed Magritte faked it. So to me the covers were fakes of a faker.

Peruse this
It means nothing. If it is a window into the artist soul, then there is nobody home.

*
Here's the breakdown on the two forms of surrealist art:

“There were two main forms of surrealist art. The first was called organic or biomorphic and involved "automatic" drawing and calligraphy as a way of expressing the subconscious freely.

Magritte was a member of the second branch which created more concrete and dream-like images. This second group created works which could be paradoxically considered to be realistic representations of the absurd or impossible. René Magritte was a master of this second form.”  [italics added]

Instead of the italicized part I would have written "which were empty of meaning but pretended not to be".

*
To clear your sensibility, painted by Joan Miro in 1921-22, an example from the first ('organic' or 'biomorphic') branch of surrealism, called "the Farm"


The world needs more Miro. Here's a crazy idea: when Paris Hilton memoirs are published the publishers could put 'Dawn Perfumed by a Shower of Gold on the cover!

[originally appeared in a longer post
about Backwards City vias]

edited 2007-01-01

then significantly modified on 2008-01-15

irony still being dumped

Last September, the international version of the NYTimes ran a short article about restrooms in the new Moscow

“Restaurants are outdoing one another to create the most elaborate restroom in this booming city awash in oil money, with such things as gold-plated toilets, walls of padded leather, urinals with spectacular skyline views and toilet bowls resembling Gzhel porcelain, the Russian version of Delft”

Among other people, they talked to a movie director about this:

“[Andrei] Konchalovsky discerns deep-seated psychological complexes behind the quest for luxury toilets in the restaurants and homes of Russia's nouveau riche.

"Rich Russians, because they didn't live in very good conditions 10 to 15 years ago, sublimate their attitude to money with extravagant, unthinkable toilets and wine for $1,000," he said.”

The article uses Russian history as its frame (it includes toilet quotes from Putin & Lenin). Finally it gets to this:

“Yevgeny Katsenelson, a prominent restaurateur, waved off attempts to analyze the fancy restroom fixtures - all imported from England - at his latest hit eatery, Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, which takes its name from the film by Luis Buñuel, who, coincidentally, often used toilet imagery in his films.”

Coincidentally?

Somehow I don't think the reporter saw the movie...  Released in 1972, its most memorable scene is a bourgeois dinner party set up around a table as usual but on toilets instead of chairs (they may also have not worn pants). [someone who saw it]

*

I am not posting this now because I just learned there is a new restaurant stupidly referencing an ironically-titled movie. Or that the NYTimes has a bourgeois reporter that didn't seem to get any of the ironies (even as she used the term 'nouveau riche').

No, the reason I post about this now is because a restaurant has just opened in Japan with toilets as the decor! [photos]

zombies agree to have their life story patented!

The USA issued its first patent to a storyline on Thursday, apparently.
Either someone is being witty, or the specific storyline and title is an ironic coincidence:

“Knight's story, The Zombie Stare, tells of an ambitious high school kid, consumed by the anticipation of college admission. He prays one night to remain unconscious until he gets the good news from MIT. The letter arrives - 30 years later, due to a postal error - and he wakes up. He soon discovers that, to all external observers, he has lived a normal life. Thus he endeavours to regain 30 years’ worth of memories, lost as an unconscious, philosophical zombie.”

I say much of the leadership of the US govt are themselves 'unconscious philosophical zombies' whose state also comes from being terrified of not being in the elite.
Agreeing that this is a terrible trend:
 -Most Slashdot posters
 -novelist/blogger 'storytelling' [details]