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Yes, there are more Matrix spoilers here, kind of. It was brought to my attention that not only are there transcripts of the Architect's speech floating around, but you can actually grab an mp3 of the same speech right here. You probably don't want to listen to that if you haven't seen the film yet, but if you have and you're still confused I say go for it. Of course, I think it's actually becoming less clear the more I listen to it, but that's okay.
So, I know I've mentioned my downstairs neighbor (the one that's quite irretrievably bats) at least a couple times before, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that the absolute highlight of my day today was seeing her hauled off in handcuffs. I heard her starting another incredibly, obnoxiously loud monologue outside earlier (I mean the incredible part literally - her normal speaking voice is simply too loud to be believed, and can wake me up from a sound sleep when I'm two floors above her). She's always liked to yell at people for real or (more usually) imagined slights, but lately she's started yelling at people who aren't actually there, which I've taken to be a good sign. As it turns out, in this particular instance the strident flow of invective that distracted me from my post-work Simpsons watching was intended for the benefit of the guy who owns the house next door, who had parked in our driveway briefly earlier today. This enrages the Beast, despite the fact that she does not and has never owned a car and there is in fact no one currently living in the house who does own a car and would need to use the driveway. So this guy is back in his house but gradually becomes aware that he's being yelled at, so he steps outside and says something rather rude but to the point.
Unfortunately, the moment he chose to do so happened to be just the very same moment when the Beast's sleazy pothead boyfriend was arriving home from work. He's a construction worker, and had one of those big aluminum level things with him. He does not react kindly to his widdle Beasty geting called certain names by the irritated neighbor, regardless of provocation, and in a matter of moments both men are stripped down to unappealingly stained wifebeaters and are engaging in admittedly tentative fisticuffs. At this point, the Beast takes up the discarded level brought home by sleazy boyfriend and starts having at the neighbor, succeeding in whacking him several times before the poor guy just falls over and his wife makes her presence known on the front steps, phone in hand and telling everyone she's calling the police. Beasty and boyfriend scurry into their apartment and lock the outside gate.
After an impressively brief interval, three or four separate police vehicles arrive in a hurry at my building and are, of course, unable to do much since our outside gate is now locked. I resign myself to finding shoes and go down to let them in. I stand around answering initial questions while a couple of the cops go about trying to rouse the Beast from her lair. Apparently, they have been summoned to our address over remarkably similar incidents on three separate occasions, which I guess must have taken place at times when I was at work or class. One cop asks me what exactly was the deal with this instance, since the whacked guy and his wife don't speak English and the Beast/boyfriend alliance isn't being terribly forthcoming, so I tell him what I'd seen and he's not terribly shocked.
Eventually my favorite person is extracted from her basement apartment and attempts some sort of Burly Brawl escape sort of thing that ends up just being a few seconds of flailing cut off by prompt handcuffing, after which she is inserted into a police car and taken far, far away. I hope. I am told something about being a witness and something else about a court date before I lock up and go back inside to catch the end of the Simpsons. Today was a good day.
Consider yourself warned: unrepentant Matrix spoilers follow.
I'd hoped that, on second viewing, the Architect's speech in Reloaded would be a little more intelligible, but it's still pretty puzzling. I found one of the better transcripts of the scene floating around the web, which I'll post here. It's unfortunate that so much of it is literally nonsensical - the semantic difficulties may be buried in big words, but it's still a pretty awkard bit of exposition.
ARCH: Hello, Neo.
NEO: Who are you?
ARCH: I am the Architect. I created the Matrix. I've been waiting for you. You have many questions, and although the process has altered your consciousness, you remain irrevocably human. Ergo, some of my answers you will understand, and some of them you will not. Concordantly, while your first question may be the most pertinent, you may or may not realize it is also irrelevant.
NEO: Why am I here?
ARCH: Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the Matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it remains a burden to assiduously avoid it, it is not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of control. Which has led you, inexorably, here.
NEO: You haven't answered my question.
ARCH: Quite right. Interesting. That was quicker than the others.
NEO [ON MONITORS]: Others? What others? How many? Answer me!
ARCH: The Matrix is older than you know. I prefer counting from the emergence of one integral anomaly to the emergence of the next, in which case this is the sixth version.
NEO [ON MONITORS]: Five versions? Three? I've been lied to. This is bullshit.
NEO: There are only two possible explanations: either no one told me, or no one knows.
ARCH: Precisely. As you are undoubtedly gathering, the anomaly is systemic, creating fluctuations in even the most simplistic equations.
NEO [ON MONITORS]: You can't control me! Fuck you! I'm going to kill you! You can't make me do anything!
NEO: Choice. The problem is choice.
CUT to TRINITY fighting AGENT, then back to ARCHITECT.
ARCH: The first Matrix I designed was quite naturally perfect, it was a work of art, flawless, sublime. A triumph equaled only by its monumental failure. The inevitability of its doom is as apparent to me now as a consequence of the imperfection inherent in every human being, thus I redesigned it based on your history to more accurately reflect the varying grotesqueries of your nature.
ON MONITORS, images of war, tragedy.
ARCH: However, I was again frustrated by failure. I have since come to understand that the answer eluded me because it required a lesser mind, or perhaps a mind less bound by the parameters of perfection. Thus, the answer was stumbled upon by another, an intuitive program, initially created to investigate certain aspects of the human psyche. If I am the father of the Matrix, she would undoubtedly be its mother.
NEO: The Oracle.
ARCH: Please. As I was saying, she stumbled upon a solution whereby nearly 99.9% of all test subjects accepted the program, as long as they were given a choice, even if they were only aware of the choice at a near unconscious level. While this answer functioned, it was obviously fundamentally flawed, thus creating the otherwise contradictory systemic anomaly, that if left unchecked might threaten the system itself. Ergo, those that refused the program, while a minority, if unchecked, would constitute an escalating probability of disaster.
NEO: This is about Zion.
ARCH: You are here because Zion is about to be destroyed. Its every living inhabitant terminated, its entire existence eradicated.
NEO: Bullshit.
NEO [ON MONITORS]: Bullshit!
ARCH: Denial is the most predictable of all human responses. But, rest assured, this will be the sixth time we have destroyed it, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it.
CUT to TRINITY fighting AGENT, then back to ARCHITECT.
ARCH: The function of the One is now to return to the source, allowing a temporary dissemination of the code you carry, reinserting the prime program. After which you will be required to select from the Matrix 23 individuals, 16 female, 7 male, to rebuild Zion. Failure to comply with this process will result in a cataclysmic system crash killing everyone connected to the Matrix, which coupled with the extermination of Zion will ultimately result in the extinction of the entire human race.
NEO: You won't let it happen, you can't. You need human beings to survive.
ARCH: There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept. However, the relevant issue is whether or not you are ready to accept the responsibility for the death of every human being in this world.
ON MONITORS, images of a variety of people.
ARCH: It is interesting reading your reactions. Your five predecessors were by design based on a similar predication, a contingent affirmation that was meant to create a profound attachment to the rest of your species, facilitating the function of the One. While the others experienced this in a very general way, your experience is far more specific. Vis-a-vis, love.
ON MONITORS, images of TRINITY fighting AGENT.
NEO: Trinity.
ARCH: Apropos, she entered the Matrix to save your life at the cost of her own.
NEO: No!
ARCH: Which brings us at last to the moment of truth, wherein the fundamental flaw is ultimately expressed, and the anomaly revealed as both beginning, and end. There are two doors. The door to your right leads to the source, and the salvation of Zion. The door to the left leads back to the Matrix, to her, and to the end of your species. As you adequately put, the problem is choice. But we already know what you're going to do, don't we? Already I can see the chain reaction, the chemical precursors that signal the onset of emotion, designed specifically to overwhelm logic, and reason. An emotion that is already blinding you from the simple, and obvious truth: she is going to die, and there is nothing that you can do to stop it.
NEO walks to the door on his left.
ARCH: Humph. Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness.
NEO: If I were you, I would hope that we don't meet again.
ARCH: We won't.
One thing I can positively guarantee is that if you work with a group of even vaguely technically-oriented people, this clipboard will seriously make you hot shit at meetings. Someone bought it for me years ago when I was just starting my last job, and I thought it was dorky but pretty cute, but I have yet to so much as walk down the hall here without someone expressing his or her admiration for The Mighty Clipboard. Apparently there's also a similarly constructed business card case, but at $23 I guess I'd have to be really, really proud of my business cards to buy it.
Back in Brooklyn after maybe a little more transit-time than I really like to spend in any one particular weekend, but on the whole things were fun. I always seem to come back from my parents' house with simply enormous quantities of books, which of course isn't a bad thing at all. I'm off to make supper and tend to my poor sickly houseplants which don't look that great at all after three waterless days.
I'm out of town this weekend, but for those of you spending it in New York, here are some events to keep you out of (or get you into) trouble:
1. The Brooklyn Bridge is celebrating its 120th birthday tomorrow, and there will be a big walking tour over the bridge at noon, with some sort of Large Cake involved, as well. It's $5 to join in, and everyone's meeting up in front of the Municipal Building (at the corner of Chambers and Centre streets).
2. The first annual New York Burlesque Festival begins today and goes through the weekend. Tonight is a mixer and peep show at The Slipper Room, and tomorrow night the festivities move to the Knitting Factory (where I saw Rasputina a couple years ago). There's a brunch on Sunday as well, but it looks like tomorrow night is the main event: 40 Burlesque sirens will take over 2 floors of lower Manhattans Knitting Factory for a night of titillating performance, live music and debauchery.
3. Sunday there's the third anniversary of Motherfucker, which is of course no longer actually at Mother. Although word is Mother has reopened under different management and is now called Filter 14 - I haven't been down there yet, but I'd be interested in going for nostalgia purposes.
For more, the MUG's got a list of 10 Weekend Pleasures, although whether there's any burlesque involved in it, I can't say.
So, I know there's a handful of you out there. As I've mentioned before, I'm looking at PhD programs in philosophy, and I'd be interested to hear from anyone who is currently getting or has already gotten his or her doctorate in philosophy. How long did it take you? What did you consider when comparing schools? Was the GRE a pain in the ass? Give me all the dirt.
It was about a week ago that I got grades for all of my classes except the one in which I had my first final (which was over two weeks ago). Since then I've been speculating and worrying and nail-biting, but to no avail. So yesterday I made a couple of phone calls and within an hour or so my last grade finally got posted, and I'm going to go ahead and warn you right now that I need to gloat just a little bit, because I managed to pull a 4.0 this term for the first time since my freshman year. I've had a couple 3.8-through-3.9 terms (last semester was marred by a single A-, as I'm sure I bemoaned at least once), and I've certainly gotten A's in individual classes, but not for an entire semester since my very first fall at NYU. And I don't know if straight A's in freshman core curriculum classes is really anything to get that excited about, but straight A's in three philosophy courses and a mid-level computer science makes me pretty god damned pleased with myself.
Incidentally, now that I've officially been granted all the credits for the classes I took this term, that makes me a senior now. Fucking finally.
I think I should point out that years ago, when I used to write with lowercased enthusiasm about the deli paper used to wrap my daily bagel and the ugly coffee cups stocked by my office kitchen, I was not exaggerating. I am exactly that obsessive about the endless aesthetic minutiae involved whenever I so much as leave my house. I'm not sure whether it's a design instinct thing or not - I lean towards probably not, just because it sounds absurd to attribute all of this stuff to a touchy inner artist or whatever. But either way, all of this is true: I still wear pretty much entirely black and grey, not out of some persistent fidelity to a high school ideal but because it's easier to find non-ridiculous clothes that always match each other. I have resorted to reading certain sites in lynx if I dig the writing but can't stomach the design. I pay attention to the color schemes of milk cartons and toothpaste tubes. I have deliberately chosen to buy a small cup of coffee when I wanted a medium, because the medium cups were uglier. And apparently, it's the cup thing in particular that bothers me - all of this was prompted by contemplating the coffee cups stocked at the place around the corner. I was wondering why on earth it's more common to have these horrible earth-toned patterns on paper goods when - I'm assuming - it would be just as easy and/or cost-effective to leave them all plain white, which in turn made me remember those old posts. Maybe I need to start bringing cups from home.
When I mentioned the other day that I was thinking about posting one of my aesthetics papers - specifically one focusing on depiction - I was surprised at the response I received via email. I've looked over the one I'm leaning towards putting up, and I've decided that I'm happy to let you all read it, but as Crispy can confirm, it's probably not that interesting if you haven't read the theories I'm critiquing. To that end, here's a short reading list of the texts you'll find me referring to if and when you end up reading the paper. Both these books and my paper will assume at least a little background in analytic philosophy. Understanding Pictures is ferociously expensive, but Lopes has an interesting account of depiction - it's probably available in libraries. The other text you might want to take a look at is Kendall Walton's massive Mimesis As Make-Believe. As for my paper, expect it sometime next week.
