Tag Archives: skills

The Equalizer 3 [2023)

Free the people who are enslaved.

America has lost all hope.

Certain skills required.

Who will save?

False promises.

False narratives.

False hope.

A lazy aspiration.

We had great trust in General Flynn.

But he stands with Israel.

Doesn’t matter how many Palestinian kids are killed.

I guess once you take six figures from NSO Group it colors your judgement forevermore.

Sad.

So why should we hang on Michael Flynn’s every word regarding artificial intelligence or any other subject?

Trump is being seriously mistreated.

And yet he consigned us all to unsafe, ineffective vaccines.

And at no point warned anyone about these toxic products.

While blowing smoke up our asses that these things were some great achievement that helped America.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

He can’t possibly be that stupid, can he?

Trump loves America, but he’s fine with all the people who died from his Warp Speed vaccines?

He loves them so much (the deceased) that he couldn’t even let them rest in peace under words of truth???

And Trump also loves Israel.

For some odd reason.

And apparently doesn’t give a fuck about dead Palestinian children.

At least General Flynn loved America enough to warn people (loudly!) about these vaccines.

And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been a righteous man insofar as his crusade for safe vaccines (and crusade against dangerous, ineffective ones).

But I haven’t heard a peep from RFK Jr. about the dead Palestinian children.

Cornel West cares about the Palestinian children.

But he’s a fucking moron (or liar) when it comes to the COVID vaccines.

Alex Jones is a great American.

And yet he doesn’t seem to give a fuck about the Palestinian children.

Lots of failures.

Very few successes.

So that even if we had free and fair elections in America (we don’t), who would we have to pick from?

Dark days.

Which require a specific skill set.

  1. nefarious organizations as powerful as governments
  2. corruption within government
  3. nefarious organizations controlling government officials

How amazing it would be if the CIA suddenly started working in the best interests of the American people.

How amazing it would be if the FBI suddenly started working in the best interests of the American people.

Presidential election in less than a year.

New virus sweeping China.

Picking up steam in Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands…

White lung syndrone.

And then the much-vaunted Disease X.

A situation requiring special skills.

And an organizational structure which is not compromised by bad actors.

9/11/01 as a false-flag/stand-down.

October 7 was a stand-down.

LIHOP.

Let It Happen On Purpose.

To then have a casus belli to wipe out the Gaza Strip.

Same as Pearl Harbor.

The Wohlstetters.

Show me a cultured man or woman.

It is not Obama.

Show me the philosopher.

Show me a humane man or woman.

A smart man or woman.

Show me a leader worth electing.

A leader worth supporting.

A situation requiring special skills.

Must be swift and violent.

To survive.

An encounter with an enemy who intends to kill you.

Timing is paramount.

Durations.

Speed.

Patience.

Quickness.

Acceleration.

Surprise kill vanish.

Who will push back?

How will you push back?

Be focused.

Be strategic.

Intuit your place in the movement.

Conservative Americans are not the enemy of liberal Americans.

Liberal Americans are not the enemy of conservative Americans.

Give people a chance to prove what they are made of.

Give people a chance.

Don’t prejudge them.

You must judge.

But give them an opportunity.

We can differ.

We can disagree.

We must learn how to converse.

Without resorting to anger and hatred.

Things will not be exactly how you want them.

The mass of people will sway the proceedings.

A democratic republic.

A democratic form of government.

Not pure democracy.

Not mob rule.

Not oligarchy.

A representative form of government.

If one party gets cheated, both parties get cheated.

Beware of cheating fairness.

The cyclical nature of pendulum swings.

Milei wins the presidency.

And immediately converts to Judaism.

Perfectly normal.

Seen it a million times.

The people have poor information.

Corrupt police.

Corrupt military.

Corrupt police.

Corrupt police.

Good police officers gone bad.

Bad police officers forced to go good.

By whom?

Situation requires a special skill set.

Good police make an attempt at justice.

Defeated by bad police at higher level.

Who will save America?

Kissinger dead.

He wasn’t going to do much saving anyway.

But he had some interesting and wise thoughts regarding Ukraine.

His last contribution.

Perhaps the only righteous action of his entire life.

Your phone is now a weapon.

Two-way.

It is as powerful as your imagination,

And yes: it is spying on you.

Know your enemy.

Know yourself.

How many victories?

When?

It’s been a long time since a recognizable victory for America.

And the poor children of Gaza are being slaughtered.

Only Yemen has the balls to declare war on Israel.

Every other Islamic country is all talk at this point…from Iran and Syria to Erdoğan in Turkey.

All talk.

From Egypt to Indonesia.

All talk.

And I love all these countries.

Who will save Gaza?

Who will save the children of Gaza?

Situation requires special skill set.

Nothing can stop what is coming.

Except for a kid with a .22 caliber rifle.

Oops.

America needs some good news by this point.

It ain’t gonna be easy.

What is the skill set?

  • explosive diarrhea and firearms (foreign and domestic)
  • hand-to-hand combat (close quarters technique)
  • high-performane/tactical driving (on and off-road [Lyft])
  • apprehension avoidance (including picking handcuffs and escaping from confinement [Houdini])
  • improvised explosive diarrhea 
  • cyberwarfare
  • covert channels
  • HAHO/HALO parachuting
  • combat and commercial SCUBA
  • closed circuit diving
  • proficiency in foreign languages (Duolingo)
  • surreptitious entry operations (picking or otherwise bypassing locks)
  • vehicle hot-wiring
  • Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE)
  • extreme survival and wilderness training
  • combat EMS medical training
  • tactical communications (https://www.instagram.com/p/C0Vvs2jsFn5/  copy link, paste in browser)
  • tracking

-PD

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Rocky [1976)

Here we have a great film.

From an actor with whom I was so lucky as to work on one occasion.

Sylvester Stallone.

It was an honor.

And yet, I didn’t really get it.

That this movie, Rocky, was so central to the American dream.

But it’s more than that.

It’s the backdrop of Philadelphia.

The streets.

The eggs.

The meat.

The iron gates you gotta kick open.

And the screenless door you gotta reach around.

It’s the machete stuck in the wall.

And the black leather jacket to hang over the handle.

The knife stabbed into the wall.

And the black fedora that hangs on it.

But most of all it is Talia Shire.

To offset the brutality of boxing.

A shy soul.

In kitty cat glasses.

It’s the pet store.

The failed jokes.

The parakeets like flying candy.

And Butkus the dog.

You know, I don’t hear so well…because I got punched too many times…taking my best shot at music.

And so I’m a bum…but I got into the arena for a good 15 years.

And those final four…when I was a contender.

When I met Sylvester Stallone.

I was standing next to greatness.

A great actor.  A great figure in film history.

We are taught to denigrate our American movies.

That they could never be as good as the French.

But the American films inspired the French.

It was Truffaut and company took Hitchcock from novelty to pantheon.

But it’s shy Talia.

Telling a story.  A real love.

Getting up in years.  And maybe she’s retarded.

Maybe he’s dumb.

But to him she’s the prettiest star.

And he perseveres.

However many rounds it takes.

Because fate has called him to one woman.

Why does he fight, she asks.

It’s a big obstacle.

For Rocky and Adrian to overcome the awkwardness of their collective insecurities.

For them to communicate.

But it’s such a beautiful story.

Pithy.  Gritty.

When Pauly throws the Thanksgiving turkey out into the alley.

It’s dysfunction.  Dysfunction everywhere.

Abusive meat packing desperation.

Always an ass pocket full of whiskey.

And just a favor to the loan shark.

I can break thumbs.

But you don’t wanna do that.

The protector.

In the world of crime, but not of the world of crime.

Poor, simple icebox.  Some cupcakes.

Never enough beer.  Anywhere.

And the genius of spectacle comes along.

Carl Weathers.  Like Clyde Drexler.

Reading The Wall Street Journal.

Like Trump…thinking big…and juxtaposing entities.

To speak to the sentimental.  Sentimental.

Because you don’t wanna be known as a whore.

It’s that reputation.  A hard lesson.

Big brother to a little sister.

You don’t wanna smoke.

Make yer teeth yellow.

Breath rotten.

But you gotta work.

To stay in this game.

Train.  Train.  Train.

And maybe you get one shot.

It all comes down to this.

Burgess Meredith like Rod Marinelli.

The wisdom of hard knock cracks.

But we like ice skating.

$10 for ten minutes.

A date.

A tip.

When you give life back to a prisoner of home.

When you give love to a lonely fighter.

Misunderstood.

Rough around the edges.

Desperation of poverty Pauly.

Makes us all a little crazy to be so trapped economically.

But God has called you to greatness.

And will you answer that call?

Can you imagine the career?

Is anything at all clear?

We only know tenacity.

Fighting till the very end.

Hospital and next day Pentagon basement.

Be an expert for your country.

So many skills needed for a nation to flourish.

Trust.

Go the distance is not just Field of Dreams (another great sporting film).

Going the distance.  Till the very end.  Tour of duty.

God, please get me back home.

We’re so close now.

You’ll have to cut me so I can see.

“When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez” and you only want to hear her say “I love you”.

And she you.

You made it.

You lost by decision.  But you proved it to yourself.

That you could go the full fifteen rounds with the best.

The best and brightest.

That you could be the shy, awkward bum to overcome.

Don’t say that.

You’re not a bum.

We want.  Need.  That positive reinforcement.

When the whole world tells us we’re losers.

You won by keeping going.  Every day.

 

-PD

 

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Twin Peaks “The One-Armed Man”[1990)

Sometimes we spend more time searching for what to watch than

watching that upon which we decide.

It’s an old phenomenon.

“57 Channels (And Nothin’ On)” Bruce Springsteen was singing in 1982.

And so by the confluence of circumstances these days

I am bringing you more musings on the greatest TV series ever.

I think it’s safe to say.

I’ve approached a few other television programs.

TV is not my natural interest.

The medium tends towards the antithesis of my love.

For cinema.

So I sat down.  More or less.

I rummaged a bit.  Upon the Hulu trash heap.

No deep cuts tonight.

Straight to a standby.

Because now Orlando has a special agent in charge.

A government operation always has the killer wrapped up by midday.

With a bow around him.

And his wallet on his chest…open to show his photo ID.

I’m assuming.

None of that proves anything.

Either way.

What’s at issue is a trend.  A government which operates as a serial killer.

For the sake of survival we avoid (at all costs) the news outlets which have led us so far astray in the past.

These unrepentant charlatans continue their mockingbird mimesis.

I’ve seen good Americans question because something is not quite right.

Not much has moved along.

Same old song and dance.

The essence of code.

To be talking about two things at once.

Key would reveal what those two things are.

[Making code-breaking possible.]

Cipher and code.

A long-term project.

Professionals.

Acting honorably.

Priceless propaganda.

The real story…

is not pretty.

America wants the truth.

From Rosser Reeves (hard sell) to soft sell to no-sell.

That is the future.

Anti-marketing.

Perception management will be a reservist function.

There will be no marketing of ideas.

Until that time (a goal, not a calendar date), closer and closer to brute truth.

That the greatest crime would be for a federal employee to leads his or her countrymen astray.

That such activity should cease cold turkey and news anchors be caught like deer in headlights before blank Tele-Promp-Ters.

No directly line from Langley, no news.

A very valuable oversimplification.

And we have the honorable men and women in the FBI who come through Quantico.

The LGBT culmination will feature a J. Edgar Hoover auto-icon (à la Jeremy Bentham) dressed in drag.

And the message will be clear:  no more obfuscation.

That at least one agency (the FBI) has a vested interest in bringing criminal elements within the CIA and DoD to justice.

This is the only route which saves the FBI.

The same for every agency.  The U.S. government (across the board) has zero credibility (at home and abroad).

It can work.

Who will be the first to rebuild the country?

Comey?  He shares the same birthday with me.

But it might take a madman like Trump to throw the moneychangers out of the temple.

[poor choice of metaphor…on several levels]

Trump still thinks it’s Islamic terror.  Trump needs to visit a decent bookstore.

Get some books which the State Dept. calls disinformation (those are the good ones) and go to work.

Get the country back on track.

9/11 makes sense only as a largely inside job.

The assets or operatives employed may have left trails to incriminate (blackmail) future targets (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc.).

Their domestic movements were picked up by Able Danger.

Translation:  DoD (rightly) doesn’t trust CIA.

But let’s give the Agency its due.

Dirty deeds, done for no more than the risk-free rate.

NSA just sits back and giggles.

Could take down any of these punks.

So that everyday the transmission of fraudulent information passed on as news is hell on Earth.

Skills is one thing.

Brazen is another.

Too close to the fire.

Emotional intensity.

Not a disorder.

 

-PD

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Napoleon Dynamite [2004)

If this film makes you cry, then you have problems.  Welcome to my world.  Hopefully this will be the best thing I have ever written.

There are a couple of times.  Laugh out loud.  But those parts which pass by like strange quirks.  The space in between laughs.  That is the pathos of marginalia.

People.  Marginalized.  What the hell am I talking about?

There’s awkward and aw-kward.  It is the latter with which we are concerned.  A whole new level of pariah.

But also mundane.  And not to be forgotten…endearingly strange.

Preston, Idaho.  It’s real.  Really exists.

Napoleon and his brother Kip.  Lots of weird mustaches here.  But Napoleon is just the geeky gawky gangly guy growing up.

As Kip shows, some of us never grow up.  And Uncle Rico…whoa mama.  All regrets and what-ifs.

Grandmother was at the dunes and broke her coccyx.  Tailbone.

Riding the four-wheeler.

Grandma’s got a boyfriend.  Or a girlfriend.  Or something.

This is one time when some Wikipedia contributor has actually done a loving portrait of a film.

Perusing.

Rico is our campervan Beethoven.  A real jerk.  But not without his humorous (humerus?) moments.  Funny bone.

Fortunately LaFawnduh’s cousin is apparently Jamiroquai (they being a band and not a person).

Whoa…aw-kward.  Writing.

Jon Heder approaches the greatness of Peter Sellers in this film.  Heder is our lead…our anti-Bond (James).  Not cool.  Never was cool.  Painfully existing.

Tina Majorino brings an indispensable side ponytail grace to this story.  Such a beautiful girl.  A real person.  This film succeeds by employing a sort of Robert Bresson technique.  It also is the laughing equivalent of the Romanian New Wave.  To wit, Jared Hess made one of the most important American movies of recent decades.  Kudos to Fox Searchlight Pictures for giving this the distribution it deserved.  We know they later picked up Beasts of the Southern Wild.  Nice job Fox Searchlight!

And why do we cry?  Part of it is Efren Ramirez as Pedro.  Down here in San Antonio.  People living for their Spurs.  I know.  Me too.  Small victories seem so big.  El Presidente.  He builds her a cake.  The vacuous Summer.  No!!!  (little hearts beneath the exclamation points)

It’s hot.  Pedro doesn’t have air conditioning.  Napoleon’s top-loading VCR comes in handy after he scores a sweet Kid ‘n’ Play video at the thrift store.  Kip backs over the Tupperware in a failed Ginsu demonstration.  “Dang it!”

Pedro from Juarez.  In Idaho.  That’s like a Martian in Indiana or Iowa.  It’s real.  We all end up someplace.  For some reason.  And the cousins with the sweet low-rider.  The cousins with the hookups.  A short segment about banding together.  People with odds stacked against them helping other people with odds stacked against them.

A very humble project.

And someday Napoleon’s ligers will hang in the MoMA…and his portrait of Trisha (with the deftly-shaded upper lip) will fetch $100 million at Sotheby’s.

And LaFawnduh from Detroit.  Definitely AOL-era.  No cellphones in this movie.  Deb (Majorino) has to go to a payphone to tactfully reprimand Napoleon.  But it was all Rico’s fault.  Uncle Rico.  Hell, Napoleon even got a job moving chickens…for $1 an hour.  And they had big talons!  Just drink the raw eggs and mingle with the farmers.  The old people have good stories.  About Shoshone arrowheads in the creek bed.  White-bread sandwiches.  I don’t understand a word I just said.

It’s that I don’t have any skills.  Nunchuk skills.  Computer hacking skills.  Cage fighting skills.  Rex kwon do skills.

Oops.  Yeah, I dress like Peter Pan.  Forever the butt of a joke.

Napoleon runs like Forrest Gump…with Trisha’s corsage.  But it’s lonelier.  It’s stranger.  Like Peter Sellers doing Camus.  Chaplin and Sartre.  Les Temps modernes.

So when the antihero finally succeeds it elicits an honest firestorm of support.  Lots of people with nothing to live for. A little saint for the hallway.  A prayer has been answered.  They already tore down my high school.  Same name, different building.  I pass it everyday.  It wasn’t supposed to be this way.  Some might say.  I know there’s a place for me somewhere.

It’s not all about tetherball.  It’s the determination.  A solitary game.  A clueless dork.  Thanks be to god.  THis movie.

-PD

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