Grouchogandhi - A Punch-Drunk Filter of FACTs: July 2006

Confederate against thee - Israel's destruction delayed

— Monday, July 31, 2006 —
FACT: 0 eigenstates

Recent reports of the discovery of a well-preserved ancient Book of Psalms in an Irish bog have had many folk wildly speculating on the relevance of the find to current Mideast events. The manuscript was found open to Psalm 83 (you know, God whining on and on about the nation of Israel being destroyed by its enemies). The timing couldn't be more clear, right? Finally, after delay after delay after delay, the End is Nigh!

Well, put your wearable placards back in the basement.

Unfortunately for the doomsayers, they've misinterpreted the FACTs about which Psalm the manuscript was actually found to be open to, as this copy of the Books of Psalms is in the old Latin translation of the Hebrew and Greek, known as the Vulgate. In that translation, the Psalms are ordered differently from the relatively recent KJV edition's ordering. Psalm 83 in the Vulgate is actually the "veil of tears" (Psalm 84 in the KJV) and Psalm 82 concerns the eradication of Israel. Oops.

Since as some would claim, the KJV is the unerring Word of the old thunder-god YHVH, the earlier Vulgate editions must be sinfully in error and arranged by Satan himself to lead good souls astray. Thank jebus that old fire-and-brimstone pusher had enough cosmic sense to rearrange the order in the KJV and get the correct edition out to His fans before they lost their souls.

God republishes in mysterious ways. Or so say His agents on Earth.

Seeing A Scanner Darkly

— Sunday, July 23, 2006 —
FACT: 1 eigenstates

"I saw," Bruce said. He thought, I knew. That was it: I saw Substance D growing. I saw death rising from the earth, from the ground itself, in one blue field, in stubbled color.

— A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick

After jonesing through the staggered release schedule, I finally had a chance to hookup with an old source downtown and watch A Scanner Darkly.

Not too surprisingly the theater was packed with a good demo sampling of the usual twenty and thirty-something bottled-water drinking hipster-types. Score one for the marketing department. The audience remained engaged through-out the film and collectively had a fondness for the rapid-fire rant scenes between Robert Downey Jr and Woody Harrelson.

To my delight, Richard Linklater has wonderfully delivered the most faithful Philip K. Dick screen adaptation yet. The film's animation technique worked perfectly for A Scanner Darkly's shifting themes and third-person narrative style found in Dick's 1977 novel. Linklater stongly embraces all of the original material's intangible and duplicitous themes and characters to finally give a wide audience the closest experience yet to what living in a Philip K. Dick novel might be like.

And yet the movie will have a familiar ringtone to many who will instantly pounce on the seemingly prophetic nature of Dick's story to current events and issues. And it's hard to argue against the comparisons. That's what reading Philip K. Dick is all about. His works always seems to end up as hindsight commentary that has been time-shifted to apply to modern life. The more you read his books and stories, the more you come to realize we already seem to be living in PKD World.

A Scanner Darkly faithfully projects a bit of the ever-shifting realities of Philip K. Dick on a screen and into people's heads. Like PKD's works, it's sure to garner a hardcore following.

Overall, both hemispheres agree, go see A Scanner Darkly!

So Darkly the Scan of Man

— Saturday, July 15, 2006 —
FACT: 0 eigenstates

Warner Independent Pictures "widened" its release of a A Scanner Darkly yesterday.

Big woop, two theaters in my major city's area, though only one is verified as actually having it on a screen. And like I need the traffic hassle.

Anyway, since I won't be seeing it for a few days and maybe you might not either, and thanks to ign.com, you can watch the first 24 minutes of A Scanner Darkly online, available after an age-verification check.

"I don't want to sleep with her. I want to buy from her."

Hidden Illuminati Symbols, Messages & FACTs

— Thursday, July 13, 2006 —
FACT: 1 eigenstates

"I would say like, ‘You have to give credit to any institution that’s so evil that they’re completely running the program.’ I’m not a big Illuminati guy. I think paranoia goes from generation to generation and it’s convenient, if you’re neurotic, to imagine there are these people controlling everything — that way it’s manageable, and small. Like fucking Wizard of Oz, to tell you the truth. But that’s not life. Life is messy."

— Robert Downey Jr

CHUD.com interviews our friend Barris — er, Robert Downey Jr...

A Scanner Darkly Smashes No Records

— Monday, July 10, 2006 —
FACT: 0 eigenstates

A Scanner Darkly scanned 17 theaters for an opening haul of $406,000, placing the Keanu Reeves & Richard Linklater talker at 5,597 for All Time Domestic opening weekends. The drug counter-culture animated flick averaged $23K per screen and opens for wider distribution on July 14th.

Warner Independent's counter-marketing strategy with the soft-release of A Scanner Darkly to Buena Vista's powerhouse Pirates of the Carribean sequel gives Scanner a chance to build-up it's needed word-of-mouth. With a built-in Phildickian audience anticipating the wider release, the blogosphere should be a crucial viral marekting component to offering Scanner as a hip alternative to Pirates next weekend.

Scanner will obviously not set any box office records, but could pull in a big enough audience next weekend to seem successful against what Pirates is likely to plunder on it's second weekend in release.

Here's another survey of reviews for A Scanner Darkly:

By cutting to the story's political core, Linklater has given A Scanner Darkly the coherence the book never had, and he has done so without diminishing Dick's scattershot brilliance — which is to say, his life.
— Stuart Klawans
Patient viewers who want to see a more challenging and adventurous kind of film will likely enjoy "A Scanner Darkly" as an imperfect but completely unique viewing experience. If not, at least you get a dose of Keanu and a metaphysical crisis for 10 bucks, and you can't beat that.
— Sean Manning
The coolest thing about the movie version of A Scanner Darkly is how very literally it takes the "scanner" part of that title.
— Bob Mondello
A Scanner Darkly is thought-provoking rather than entertaining. It's the kind of movie that makes you want to go somewhere with your friends afterwards to discuss it, triggering hours of talk about society, politics, drugs, entertainment, and contemporary filmmaking. See it with a group and make sure the theater is near a good gathering place with late hours.
— Jette Kernion

Next weekend, Pirates vs. Druggies.

A Scanner Darkly in Theaters (sorta kinda)

— Friday, July 07, 2006 —
FACT: 0 eigenstates

Warner Independent Pictures releases A Scanner Darkly today — but in very limited release on about 17 screens nationwide. Quite the big splash WIP is making. But obviously, there are pirates to contend with first before it's safe for wider distribution.

Here's a list of the towns you few lucky souls can go catch the premiere in:

Boston
Chicago
Los Angeles
New York
San Francisco
Seattle
Austin

Wider release begins on July 14th, so I'll have a chance to go catch it then.

All things that are, are pink beams of light.

— Sunday, July 02, 2006 —
FACT: 2 eigenstates

Excerpt of an excerpt from Philip K. Dick's Exegesis.

"The Ten Major Principles of
the Gnostic Revelation"

The Gnostic Christians of the second century believed that only a special revelation of knowledge rather than faith could save a person. The contents of this revelation could not be received empirically or derived a priori. They considered this special gnosis so valuable that it must be kept secret. Here are the ten major principles of the gnostic revelation:

The creator of this world is demented.

The world is not as it appears, in order to hide the evil in it, a delusive veil obscuring it and the deranged deity.

There is another, better realm of God, and all our efforts are to be directed toward
a: returning there
b: bringing it here

Our actual lives stretch thousands of years back, and we can be made to remember our origin in the stars.

Each of us has a divine counterpart unfallen who can reach a hand down to us to awaken us. This other personality is the authentic waking self; the one we have now is asleep and minor. We are in fact asleep, and in the hands of a dangerous magician disguised as a good god, the deranged creator deity. The bleakness, the evil and pain in this world, the fact that it is a deterministic prison controlled by the demented creator causes us willingly to split with the reality principle early in life, and so to speak willingly fall asleep in delusion.

You can pass from the delusional prison world into the peaceful kingdom if the True Good God places you under His grace and allows you to see reality through His eyes.

Christ gave, rather than received, revelation; he taught his followers how to enter the kingdom while still alive, where other mystery religions only bring about amnesis: knowledge of it at the "other time" in "the other realm," not here. He causes it to come here, and is the living agency to the Sole Good God (i.e. the Logos).

Probably the real, secret Christian church still exists, long underground, with the living Corpus Christi as its head or ruler, the members absorbed into it. Through participation in it they probably have vast, seemingly magical powers.

The division into "two times" (good and evil) and "two realms" (good and evil) will abruptly end with victory for the good time here, as the presently invisible kingdom separates and becomes visible. We cannot know the date.

During this time period we are on the sifting bridge being judged according to which power we give allegiance to, the deranged creator demiurge of this world or the One Good God and his kingdom, whom we know through Christ.

To know these ten principles of Gnostic Christianity is to court disaster.
(now he tells us?)

Read this full excerpt from Philip K. Dick's Exegesis.

You can also find the latest released pages posted by the Philip K. Dick Trust on the official PKD website.

Replicant (M) Des: LEON	NEXUS-6 N6MAC41717
Incept Date: 10 APRIL, 2017	Func: Combat/Loader (Nuc. Fiss)
Phys: LEV. A	Mental: LEV. C