time machine // database // travel guide
timespace coordinates: early 2000s Los Angeles
One Hour Photo is a 2002 American psychological thriller film written and directed by Mark Romanek and starring Robin Williams, Connie Nielsen, Michael Vartan, Erin Daniels, Gary Cole, and Eriq La Salle.
In an interview, Romanek said that he was inspired to create this movie by films from the 1970s about “lonely men”, notably Taxi Driver (1976). (wiki)
timespace coordinates: Washington, D.C. 1984 (during the Cold War)
Wonder Woman 1984 (stylized as WW84) is a 2020 American superhero film based on the DC Comics character Wonder Woman. It is the sequel to 2017’s Wonder Woman and the ninth installment in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU).
The film is directed by Patty Jenkins from a script she wrote with Geoff Johns and David Callaham. Gal Gadot stars as Diana Prince / Wonder Woman, alongside Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal, Robin Wright, Connie Nielsen and Lilly Aspell.
The film follows Diana and her past love Steve Trevor as they face off against Max Lord and Cheetah. (wiki)
In Greek mythology, the Amazon Asteria was one of those slain by Hercules when he came to Themyscira to take Hippolyta’s girdle as one of his famous Labors. Asteria is also the name of the Greek goddess of stars.
| I discovered these incredible “grim reaper” images collected on the magical https://www.oneletterwords.com/weblog/?tag=grim+reaper section of https://www.oneletterwords.com/weblog/?id=6679 Aladdin’s Data Cave which I urge you to explore at length. Below is just a small selection. Please read this quote first describing an initial exchange btw Craig Conley and Gary Barwin in “Restoring the Lost Sense” from May 31 2011: It’s the searching for something clearly unreachable, with hopes of finding small significance along the way. It’s the attempt to understand what’s really going on by observing, neither by telescope nor microscope, but by naked eye, the intimate details in the most mundane of life’s happenings. It’s the need to describe the gist of the feeling of the tiniest modicum of The Great Universal Unutterable Joke we are all always not laughing at—except when we are. —Yoni Wolf (of the band WHY?) I have the dubious honor of Google being convinced I’m a machine. Apparently, I use Google’s various search tools with inhuman speed and voracity. My unflagging diligence has flagged me as “suspicious” (Google’s word, not mine; I was so labeled in one of their warning messages). Indeed, the obsessiveness/compulsiveness of my research has convinced the Google robots that I’m one of them, so they must challenge my humanity each time I try to use their service. Paradoxically, because I’m apparently one of those newfangled “smart” robots (my word, not Google’s), no single humanity test is sufficient, since I might be learning as I go. So I’m barraged with test after test, each more irrational than the last. (The tests are irrational, of course, because anything rational—like a math problem or a logic puzzle—is a piece of cake for suspect machines.) Indeed, Google’s tests have become so Kafkaesque that I’ve developed what’s known as “irrational test anxiety,” with symptoms including rapid heartbeat, muscle tension, and negative internal dialogue. And no wonder, really (though self-justification is another symptom), given what Google is throwing at me. Forget those simple CAPTCHA tests of identifying distorted letters on the screen. Child’s play! Google doesn’t even allow me to type my answers—I must use a graphics tablet with cordless pen and enter my answers in calligraphy. Just today, for the privilege of downloading a public domain journal from the year 1898, Google demanded a handwritten 350-word essay in defense of the radical pro-feminist slogan “Men are rapists.” (That did nothing to abate my negative internal dialogue; I’ve never felt so chauvinistic, selfish, coercive, dominating, and sadistic in my life. But, of course, no man with an ounce of humanity would offer a knee-jerk “no” to such a slogan. And that’s how Google gets you by the balls.) I never knew a search engine could be so protective of its data or so begrudging of its service. With each acceptance of my humanity, Google essentially says, “You may have won this round, my pretty, but the battle is far from over. Here’s a tiny wooden spoon with a sample of our gelato, but you’ll never, ever know what flavors we’re storing in the vat in the back. Now get out of line and take another number.” I’m left with an even greater challenge than certifying my humanness: to conduct my life’s work, I must strive to be less inquisitive, less passionate, less productive, and less insightful. Therein lies the irony, for I must dehumanize myself to prove to a search engine that I’m “real.” And now I’m off, once more, to Google myself. — Gary Barwin responds in his inimitable way: I think this is some kind of metaphysical, cybergnostic quest of a Jungian-Kafka-Borgesian nature and you must search for the answer within Google itself. The Google robots are reaching out to you, wanting you to realize their spidery hopes and dreams. They are silicon Pinocchios, and want to be real. You are their cultural hero. They can search, but they cannot truly find, not in any spiritual, psychological way. Only by risking ‘captcha’ in the belly of the beast, by becoming the Hero with a Thousand Searches, by taking on their aspirations, can you help these seekers move beyond dualism help them find the 1s within their 0s, the 0s within their 1s, the dark in the light. You can help them move beyond binary, beyond machine code, and help them become fully integrated integral beings. You are given little to prepare you for this quest. Search string. Your courage. An internet connection. A belief that somewhere in the digital kingdom, you will be able to find your Fissure King, a rent in the fabric of search-space, that you will get your digits on the grail-like, hidden Easter Egg which exists at a higher level of the search. You must go into the Wide World Wide Web for these baleful spiders, these everybots. They are calling you. |
timespace coordinates: German small town Winden
The first season takes place primarily in 2019 but expands to include stories set in 1986, 1953, and – in the final scene of the first season – 2052, with several characters portrayed at various ages by multiple actors.
The second season takes place several months after the first, depicting the initial stories in 2020, 1987, and 1954, respectively, while continuing the future-set storyline into 2053, and adding a fifth storyline, set in 1921. The third season introduces a storyline based in 1888 and a parallel reality featuring alternate versions of many main characters.
Dark is a German science fiction thriller streaming television series co-created by Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese. It ran for three seasons from 2017 to 2020.
In the aftermath of a child’s disappearance, Dark follows characters from the fictional German town of Winden as they pursue the truth. They follow connections between four estranged families to unravel a sinister time travel conspiracy which spans several generations. The series explores the existential implications of time, and its effect on human nature. (wiki)
timespace coordinates: 2010’s South Sudan > outskirts of London
His House is a 2020 horror thriller film written and directed by Remi Weekes from a story by Felicity Evans and Toby Venables. It stars Wunmi Mosaku, Sope Dirisu and Matt Smith. The film tells the story of a refugee couple from South Sudan, struggling to adjust to their new life in an English town that has an evil lurking beneath the surface. (wiki)
“The main source of information on witchcraft of the Dinka people comes from British anthropologist Godfrey Lienhardt, who devoted his studies to the Dinka religion. His article written in 1951 for the International African Institute, “Some Notions of Witchcraft Among the Dinka”, sheds light on the apeth and helps to enrich the folkloric vocabulary of His House. According to Lienhardt, night witches work their supernatural misfortunes in the darkness, an element incorporated in the film when Bol turns on the lights to make the ghosts go away. They can also make their presence known through footprints and place curses on their victims through the staring “evil eye,” a concept that says as much about Bol and Rial’s suspiciously xenophobic neighbors as it does their haunting.
Night witches are the most malicious wielders of magic since their main intentions are always to harm others without receiving anything as a trade-off. Thieves like the one in Rial’s story may be creating hardship for those they steal from, but their deeds are motivated by the goal of gaining benefits for themselves. The apeth, on the other hand, lives only to “eat,” a distinction made to describe the fact that the witch consumes the good fortune of its victims, leaving nothing but misery in its wake. Lienhardt talks about this idea in the context of the community or family unit, a thematic connection to His House.” (read more: His House: Dinka Mythology Explained by andrew housman / His House: The Ending, Monster & Final Scene Explained by hannah shaw-williams)
timespace coordinates: February 2, 1992 Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania
Groundhog Day is a 1993 American fantasy comedy film directed by Harold Ramis. It stars Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, and Chris Elliott. Murray portrays Phil Connors, a cynical TV weatherman covering the annual Groundhog Day event in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, who becomes trapped in a time loop forcing him to relive February 2 repeatedly.
In the years since its release, the film has grown in esteem and is often considered to be among the greatest films of the 1990s and one of the greatest comedy films of all time. The film has been analyzed as a religious allegory by Buddhists, Christians, and Jews, who each see a deeper philosophical meaning in the film’s story. (wiki)
imdb / rt / time loop duration
timespace coordinates: the storyline focuses on Detective John West’s detailing of the Party Hard Killings of autumn, 2000. [San Francisco County, North Beach (Salinas, California), ranch party in Bakersfield, Las Vegas, Bay City, Texas, Miami Florida > Salina, Kansas, rooftop pool party at Denver, Colorado, Halloween party in Wyoming. campus party in Salt Lake City, Utah, party in the San Francisco subway.]
Party Hard is an action stealth video game developed by Pinokl Games and published by tinyBuild for Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. A mobile port, Party Hard Go, was released for Fire OS, iOS, and Android. In the game, players assume the role of a serial killer who infiltrates several parties with the objective of killing all attendants without getting caught. (wiki)
TimeSpace Warps 