inkbluesky

Cashback (2006 - trailer) might be the best Philip K. Dick movie ever made that was not based on a PKD story. Ben (Sean Biggerstaff) breaks up with his girlfriend Suzy (Michelle Ryan) and finds that he can’t sleep. That makes for eight hours a day that he gets back that he wouldn’t normally have. He begins to imagine that time can be manipulated. This new found eight hours in particular. It becomes a place where he can stop time for others, frequently to use them in his art. One reviewer felt that the scenes where everyone freezes except Ben ruins the pacing. On the contrary the audience gets to slipstream time with Ben and see it as he sees it. These scenes are awkward in the sense Ben observes the frozen people around him so intensely. Something he and we could not do in real life. At least not without consequences. I would agree that part of Ben’s screen dilemma, that he sees beauty everywhere (ala American Beauty), but is only drawn to conventionally beautiful women muddles the pop aesthetic philosophy, but only to a small degree.  The movie is out on DVD. Just as far as the  the twin issues of growing up and dealing with women Cashback reminded me of The Rachel Papers (1989).

the direction dilemma

Over 35 million Americans faced hunger in 2006 

The U.S. Agriculture Department said a total of 12.65 million households were “food insecure,” or 10.9 percent of U.S. homes, up from 12.59 million a year ago.

The USDA defines food insecurity - its metric for measuring hunger - as having difficulty acquiring enough food for the household throughout the year.

“It looks very stable from this year to last year,” said Mark Nord, who co-authored the annual report for USDA’s Economic Research Service.

Overall, 35.52 million people, including 12.63 million children, went hungry compared with 35.13 million in 2005. The survey was conducted in December 2006 and represented 294 million people, an increase of 2.5 million from 2005.

Maybe this is the way things are supposed to be. Andrew Carnegie, a Scottish immigrant to the U.S. who eventually became an American Gilded Age multi-millionaire wrote the following in the North American Review, June 1889, WEALTH

The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries, is also great; but the advantages of this law are also greater still, for it is to this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train. But, whether the law be benign or not, we must say of it, as we say of the change in the conditions of men to which we have referred: It is here; we cannot evade it; no substitutes for it have been found; and while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race. 

Many people still believe that a nation can and should be run on this psydo-philosophy. Andrew’s flowery defense of Social Darwinism does seem dated so fast forward to a modern expert on such matters, “white, Christian, male power structure”

Bill O’Reilly: But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you’re a part, and so am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have. In that regard, Pat Buchanan is right. So I say you’ve got to cap with a number.

The Pentagon is spending nearly $5 billion per month in Iraq and Afghanistan, a pace that would bring yearly costs to almost $60 billion.