Pencils

Pencils H, B and 6B

This drawing was done from a still of the film Stalker.

Pencils H, B and 6B

Where is Thorin's beard?

It's Thorin: Thrain's son, Thror's son, king of the Lonely Mountain. You give him a beard and you give him a bloody big one, with braids, not some sparse and dinky close-trim.

And Thorin is florid and dignified in his speech, proud of bearing in his manners but not blinded thereby. He's not some pissy, arrogant, hard-hearted, somber man-model with the wet-look from the cover of some glamour magazine.

The dwarves are hearty and stout and have good appetites. They are not a bunch of ruffian frat boy rugby players, scraping the mud off their boots on Bilbo's furniture and burning the elven furniture for a fire on the elven porch in what is supposed to be the Last Homely House - the House of Elrond in the valley of Rivendell. Seriously, can you imagine? They actually burn furniture of the elves to make a food fire on the porch. And why do they do this? Well, that brings me to the next part.

You may be a vegan, Peter Jackson, and you may think it's all that, but elves, I assure you, are not vegans. Their food is most welcome to all the races of Middle-earth that are not evil. Nor are elves a bunch of absolutely remote, airy-fairy, asexual beings whose music is equally remote.

Gandalf knows his shit. He does not require the platonic caresses of Galadriel and her telling him in her annoying Cate Blanchett droning, affected voice not to be afraid, as Gandalf looks back at her all hopeful-eyed like he was about to cry. What bullshit.

And what up with the G-rated violence? Beren may have written the book in a style which he later abandoned, but even for that, the violence is, well, violence. Here though, when Bilbo pulls Sting out of an orc, it doesn't even have blood on it. The Great Goblin is supposed to get his head cut off and all his minions are supposed to go into a rage over it; not some stupid paper-cut across the belly and another across the throat together with a stupid one-liner that is supposed to be humourous. When Gandalf lights the cones on fire, it's his special fire that sort of explodes when it hits the wolves; not stupid regular fire where everyone else gets to join in in throwing regular-burning cones. Pathetic.

How does one so offend the soul of a work while being so milquetoast at the same time?

Let's see...what else. Oh yes, Cate Blanchett is so horrific a Galadriel it's not even funny. But we already knew that. I guess we just needed to be reminded.

Oh yeah, and Peter Jackson? You had to do the stupid butterfly thing with the eagles again, didn't you?

Yeah, I knew you would. It worked the first time back in 2001. You didn't need to wreck it.

Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas everyone! Happy holidays!

Arvo Pärt - Piano

Couple of delicate piano pieces by Arvo Pärt. They remind me of Chopin.


Variations for the Healing of Arinushka:



 




Hymn to a Great City:

Pencils H, B and 6B

Pencils B, 6B and 2H

"Our ancestors decided that they could do without God, and in their misplaced optimism they thought that in rejecting him they were lifting up human liberty and dignity. But they didn't understand that he himself was our freedom, and that this true freedom was our salvation. And so our supposedly liberated and dignified souls found themselves adrift, only to become dingy and beaten down by the rotten luxuries of the false glory of violent entertainment, the false joy offered by advertising, the false connectedness of pornography. And that's where the next guy is right now, I have no doubt. He's reaching out for some relief, but in places where it can never be found, and it gets worse every day. And as the imprisoned soul turns in on itself, the unthinkable gets a little more thinkable each day. And so I pray for him." --Father Charles, a minor friar, How I'm Praying Today

And so should we all, in repentance.

Birds

I was wondering how birds fly in synchronization, noticing them now and again. Not birds like geese flying in a V, but the quick little birds.

There will be a gust of them, flying as a unit, and in mid-air all of them at once will veer sharp, not one bird lagging; and then another sudden hard angle turn, each of them at the same split second. How do they do this? They do not practice. You never see birds practicing their synchronization, do you? They just fly that way.

There is no leader, as there might be one at the head of the V, as with geese. But these quick little birds fly as an amoebic amalgam, constantly shifting its shape - totally synchronized.

There is only one explanation, and it is this: there is some music that they sense and they fly to this music. There is no other explanation.

If there is another explanation, and you would like to share it, please don't. I don't want to hear it. Because it's a damn lie. Thank you.

Pencils B, 6B and 2H

Pencils 2H and B

Pencils 2H, B and 6B

Golden Oldie IX

Vertigo

The opening for Vertigo is "book-ended" with the film's conclusion. They both "hang" there. The film redounds upon itself, like a cyclic force, like vertigo: one of the reasons why some people find themselves returning to this film again and again.

One of the things that's so great about the opening of Vertigo is it doesn't give you any information, then or later, how Jimmy Stewart gets off the rooftop.

The film has a strong moral lesson about obsession.

Donald Spoto's biography of Hitchcock full of lies

When I was eighteen or so, I read Donald Spoto's biography of Alfred Hitchcock, The Dark Side of Genius: the Life of Alfred Hitchcock. In it, the later Hitchcock is portrayed as a rather dirty old man who, when he was dying, refused to have a priest and to be reconciled in the faith into which he was baptized and raised as a child.

I do remember that in this biography it talked of how the only driving Hitch would do was when he drove his daughter the short way to Mass, which he did regularly, though not attending Mass himself.

Anyways, that biography left me with an uneasiness as to what to think about Alfred Hitchcock the man. I've always loved his films, which made the uneasiness the greater. There's typically a hunch one has when the truth is not being told.

Thus it was with great relief that I just read this article about Hitchcock's last days written by one of the priests who was there.

"After we chatted for a while, we all crossed from the living room through a breezeway to his study, and there, with his wife, Alma, we celebrated a quiet Mass. Across from me were the bound volumes of his movie scripts, "The Birds," "Psycho," "North by Northwest" and others—a great distraction. Hitchcock had been away from the church for some time, and he answered the responses in Latin the old way. But the most remarkable sight was that after receiving communion, he silently cried, tears rolling down his huge cheeks."

Do read the entire article HERE.

Good, good God.

God is so good.

H/T: Father Z.

The Great Fleecing of the Ages

If money is being overprinted today, and overprinting is what's causing price inflation, then why are there not people arriving at stores with their wheelbarrows of worthless trash money to buy just a single loaf of bread? Why are there not people wallpapering their walls with their worthless trash cash if money is being overprinted and that overprinting is what's causing price inflation? If money is being overprinted today, then why aren't people's chequing accounts filled with thousands upon thousands of worthless electronic digits?

Answer: it is not being overprinted. The cause of price inflation is absolutely because of the interest on the debt. Interest rates go up, then so do prices, because people have to make a profit from what they sell. Businesses depend on loans. All money is a loan. The banks own 100% of the money all of the time.

Don't think so? In the beginning they do and in the long run they do - which is basically the definition of something that's on loan. The money that comes into existence as a loan did not exist before the loan was made. If all the money comes into existence as an interest-bearing loan, then - to repeat Byron Dale's simple and ingenious question - where does the money come from to pay the interest on the loan? That too has to be borrowed - at interest.

Which of course, leads to Dale's perceptive analogy:

"You cannot borrow yourself out of debt - no more than you can drink yourself sober."

The cheque that you get from work, the payment that you get for your services, is money that was, at some point in time, by some other person (whether in industry or government), at some other place, borrowed into existence as an interest-bearing loan. That's right: that fiat money in your wallet and purse came into being in the exact same way that credits on a credit card do. There is no fundamental difference between them.

Ah, but surely once a loan is paid back, that money then gets circulated back into the system in various ways and thus there comes to be money in the system that is not loaned?

You want to know the kicker? When a loan is paid back to the bank, they extinguish that money from the system. Before the loan was made, the money did not exist; the borrower's promise to pay is what brings the money into existence as a loan. When it is paid back, the banks extinguish that money from the system. Of course the interest from it they keep as their own and perhaps some of that goes back into the system, but the proportions of that to what is loaned, and loans refused, and what is called back, would not be near enough to make any difference whatsoever.

So yeah, no, there is no overprinting problem today, here in the west. The problem is completely different.

And when you hear people talking about the problem having to do with too much credit (and the "credit-addicted welfare slaves") as well as that damn fiat money, before going off into a tangent about how we need to become less dependent on government Anarcho-Capitalists, you can be assured they don't quite get it - indeed, that they miss the mark entirely. Because that fiat money is nothing but what the credit is. They are the same. The problem with the fiat money is not that it is fiat. The problem with it is that it is borrowed. The problem with government spending is not the spending, but that they borrow in order to spend (and of course, kicking the payment for the debts plus compounding interest to the next generations, not to mention flushing the nation's sovereignty down the toilet). Borrowing is not something exclusive to "credit-addicted welfare slaves"; it is the very foundation of our entire monetary system.

As has been said, if you are in debt, you may get out of debt as an individual; and no fault to you for getting out of debt, but the nature of the beast that has been spawned on us is such that an individual getting out of debt means someone else must go further into debt. Must. The system, being that all the money (or 95% of it) is loaned at interest, is naturally rigged - like a vast pyramid scheme in which all that happens is that debt gets shifted around - means that a number of people have to go bankrupt in order for some to get out of debt (with hopefully some assets to their name instead of merely arriving back at zero). Participation in the system scheme does not depend on whether you personally are in debt or not: in all of our transactions we are shifting around debt. And while individuals may get out of debt, the nation cannot - at least while this system scheme is being perpetuated. In order for that system scheme to keep going on, a nation must go deeper and deeper into debt.

The only way for a nation to get out of this scheme is for the nation's government to start printing its own debt-free money and spend it into existence.

"The power to create, issue and circulate the medium of exchange, which should be recognized as the supreme prerogative power of government, now forms the stock-in-trade of the business of our super-banking system, which functions as the servant of usury in the realm of high finance." --Gerry McGeer, The Conquest of Poverty - or Money, Humanity and Christianity

St. Matthew, pray for us.

Pencils B and 6B

Misc.

So a tally was done for the Archdiocese of Vancouver. The tally was to find out Sunday Mass attendance.

This has to do with the Catholics Come Home project.

The number of Catholics in the Vancouver Archdiocese is something over 400, 000.

Of that number, some 83, 000 attend Sunday Mass.

*

I don't remember ever having genuine Turkish Delight before. I may have had it as a kid - I'm not sure.

Coming across it at the store, I bought a box: all-natural, vegan, no-gmo, gluten-free blah blah blah Turkish Delight.

I now understand Edmund.

*

"Necessity now compels all to recognize that the creation, and issuance of the medium of exchange, the monetization of public credit, the circulation of the medium of exchange, and the general supervision of the monetary system must be restored to government. If we are to make the Golden Rule the “ism” of Democracy we must drive the money changers out of the temples of government and put the spirit of Christ in charge. By such changes the sovereignty of usury can be overthrown and the elected representatives of the people may become the rulers of the “economic bloodstream of the nation”. Responsible government as an expression of Christian Democracy may then be maintained....


....Money must be restored to its proper function. It must be issued and circulated primarily as a tool of trade serving as the medium of exchange in the creation and distribution of the wealth essential to the need, convenience and existence of humanity. It must cease to be an instrument of appropriation functioning primarily for the purpose of impounding the wealth of the nation to the service of lovers of wealth and money power.

“Thou shalt not make unto you gods of silver or gods of gold,”
“Thou shalt not lend on usury”, and
“Thou shalt not worship mammon,”

sayeth the law and the laws of God must be obeyed."

--GERALD GRATTAN MCGEER,
4812 Belmont Avenue,
Vancouver, B.C.
January 6th, 1935.

Gerry McGeer was the 22nd mayor of Vancouver and he influenced then-Prime Minister Mackenzie King to end the debt-based monetary system and start a public debt-free legal tender, which ran from the mid 30's to the mid 70's.

After that, the nation went back to a debt-based monetary system...and what happened? Surprise! An atomic bomb of national debt was set off and has been spreading, and exponentially increasing, its foul radiation to the present.

Can you even imagine a politician today saying or writing the kinds of words as in the above quote though?

*

You know how there are lefty liberals who make claims that since Vatican II there have been modifications to teachings concerning sex and sexuality and the like? Yes? And the staunch traditionalists rightly show them what's what, yes? And some staunch traditionalists claim that there have been modifications to teachings concerning usury - the manipulation of money to make money - just like the lefty liberals claim with sodomy, yes?

Yes, glad we agree. Have a nice day.

*

"But Paul, but Paul!" I hear you saying. "But the gold standard wouldn't be usury! No, the gold standard is sort of like communism: it just hasn't been done right yet, that's all!"

*

"If you think that the price of money can't be changed, just get your business graph and see what happened to the prices of 'things' in the longest 'depression' the U.S. had ever experienced up to that time [1873]. As it worked with the 'half-shekel of the sanctuary,' so also it worked with the Gold Standard." --Fabious Melton Butler writing during the early thirties.

Stupid

There's a frustrating response that people get when they dare to talk about solving the debt problem. People respond to these solutions as though we were not in the worst economic situation that has ever occurred - global collapse. Do you understand what that means? One nation after another, like dominoes.

When people bring up the actual solutions, real solutions, what they get in response is people with the same talking points - oh, that will cause inflation (as though we weren't living in the worst hyperinflation due to debt), and oh, that would have to be taxed (as though we weren't being taxed to death because of debt), like these were absolute pitfalls that implied we simply can't go there. Like we were seated in some economics theory class and had the omniscient luxury of laying out some perfect plan (which is never the case even in good times), rather than living in the worst economic situation the world has seen, and against which simple inflation or its risk and normal taxation would be paradise.

What stupidity.

You want to know why the debt problem doesn't get solved? It's because of economists and economic theory.

And it is the debt problem that is the problem.