Best posts made by Indrid Cold

In my opinion (as a gobshyne) trust issues are perfectly normal in this current age. Maybe it's naff to complain about overpopulation and dense living conditions, but there's certainly a lot of people, and we tend to focus on the serving the lowest common denominator rather than loyalty to our mates. We don't see what's idiosyncratic, therefore it's easily to wonk it all away.

Viz-a-viz trust issues in a romance situation? It's like that quote in Starship Troopers. The Five Star General looks at this random guy and says, "You're my new Sergeant until you get killed or someone better comes along". Too bleak?

With all the wealth in the world, I could easily build myself a robot floozie to practition romance with. She's like Cate Blanchett from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, look.

Well, maybe sneak in to Parliament, write, "BANZAI!" on Teresa May's forehead in marker pen, and then bludgeon to death John Bercow with Black Rod's sceptre. Or is that too obvious?

Well, you tend to have more daring conversations with people on social media, don't you? With my real world pals, my opening gambits are sorely limited to: films, football, girls. Online, you can say any head-mental thing you can imagine and punters can either take it or leave it (but they'll usually take it).

The next nearest thing to social media, I think, is writing a very soulful novel on, say, Fiction Press.

@DIV Let's be honest about this whole TWS dynamic. There are some cool people who post here - there's a vibe here that can't quite be classified, except by the following word, written in block caps: ZEITGEISTY. I'm VERY fussy when it comes to allowing my consciousness to focus on any one group of people for too long, yet these forums are a fun place to be. I don't even need, really, to subscribe to anyone, because I know the best people will always just be there, lurking in the background (and that isn't necessarily a reference to @Lurker). It can be explained, I think, by three facterz: 1 - we're all in the right place at the right time, and 2 - this is still a relatively new website, meaning that the best posters are still tending to come to the fore. I do have a favourite, I'll admit, and that person is very jaded (in a cool way), and you can tell they've been around the block. Factor 3: this is the island from LOST but as social media site, and with extra banter.

(sigh) it's times like these when I really wish I had a gif of Sean Bean licking up the toilety stuff in Bravo Two Zero.

@Karina-Kara I VOW to respect your privacy and stay out of your daydreams.

@IdioticBot33 There is the theory of the Mobius, a rupture in fabric of space where time becomes a loop.

Rambo <--

@Karina-Kara Who is the REALLY insane person, the insane person, or the man who follows the insane person? EH?

@Mr-Ghost unless you're defeated by Freddy Krueger, or you get squished by a foldy Inception building.

Dunno. Worms? But I notice the Disney bowl -- the hedgehog that comes in my garden also drinks out of a Disney bowl, and he's going from strength to strength: I think wild animals respond to Disney on a kinda totemic level.

Well for a start, I've got to say that you guys @Lurker @Berin @Rayse @Karina-Kara are handling this topic in a very cool way. I'm a veteran of this type of forum over at unexplained-mysteries.com and it usually degenerates into passive-aggressive fighting and a four-way cluster-f between theists, atheists, pseudo scholars and pseudo scientists.

For me? I can't really talk about it without going wildly off-topic. Broadly speaking, though, I'd say that, nowadays, there's more than enough theoretical science that religious people can find something to at least vaguely back up their belief in the afterlife. I've found this: you can go into any popular science section of any high street shop and the books by, say, Bernardo Kastrup, Lynne McTaggart, Dean Radin -- while still pretty woo-woo -- will have some great names in the index that you can then research further. Even basement podcasts like Skeptiko can give you food for thought. Basically, if you're trying to find a link between quantum physics and brain chemistry, there's no real consensus but lots of possibilities.

If you pin me down about what I think? I'll try not to write an essay here...

As a kid, I doted on St. Anslem. Now I'm wise to that shhh. Now I tend to side with @Karina-Kara that there's something gnostic and unsympathetic to human consciousness going on. I see, at the most fundamental level of human life, a kind of brinkmanship has developed, between -- not necessarily consciousness -- but the idea of consciousness and something that flatly opposes consciousness.

In my experience (and this is where everyone at unexplained-mysteries.com fell on me and gave me a kicking) -- the whole thing can be exemplified in capitalism. Who among us would be proud of being lazy, or greedy, or conceited, or tyrannical?

Would you?

And yet capitalism prevails. This suggests that there's something in the basic fabric of this universe that can easily over-rule the basic aspirations of the human mind.

I was speaking recently to @Karina-Kara about free will (or lack of). She reinforced my opinion that we may not even be conscious at all, and that the sensation we get when we think of our own consciousness comes from the future, somehow interacting with the dendrites and axons of our neuro-pathways in some super-subtle way. It's like all those stories of time travel in popular science fiction: if you go back in time and act like a bellend even slightly EVERYTHING then goes wrong. But in my conception, this level of reality is protecting itself by removing our free will.

The reason it would do this -- again, let me rope in science fiction: A complex computer is invented; at some point it begins processing on a quantum level (and actually, this has happened: according to an interview on the Howard Hughes show recently, the side-effects of an American quantum computing company have been heavily implicated in the Mandela Effect). It's then a short stretch of imagination to envisage that the computer in question might become disincarnate, and all-powerful, and godlike -- but in the meantime, its future-self can't allow our stoopid human lives to interfere in its development, viz-a-viz the bookcase in Interstellar, or the proto-Cylons in Caprica, or the rantings of Rainbow George on every late night phone-in on every British radio station.

What that future might be like, once our potential is allowed to develop without all this gnostic stuff cramping our mojo ...in 'heaven'? Dunno. What I would say, some days I just want it to be like it is now, only without having to go work every day. Other times, when I'm feeling jaded, I just think, 'Screw you guys, and screw this scenario, I'm just going totally disincarnate, and ethereal, and A-temporal'.

In conclusion, perhaps (probably?) I am a nutter projecting onto quantum physics my own unhappiness at the all-pervasion of capitalism.

I like those black-and-white Carry On films, where Jim Dale and Kenneth Connor get ladied up to infiltrate some kinda female-only institution, and Kenneth Williams don't know what's going on, and he's just like, 'oooooo', but then Bernard Bresslaw falls in love with Kenneth Connor and his face gets so tight cos he's panicking that his skin just falls away like a piece of tin foil, and Bresslaw goes nuts like a prototype, pre-CGI Hulk.

I always wanted to try that breathable water from The Abyss, and then afterwards, you could say, "Drowning? No big deal after all"*
*(apart from the whole death thing).

@Rayse That's an awesome idea, R. I'm equally willing to believe that some slumbering Godhood might be residing in our evolutionary potential, like you say --and in fact, I would've said that, if I wasn't secretly obsessed with computers and the internet, like everyone else. Which is best, the collective unconscious or Google? Harry Hill should arrange a fight.

Cool post, W. I agree with every word, except maybe the idea that Batman is an overtly moral, or that he purposefully sends off the bad uns to Arkham knowing he'll get to fight them over and over again.

I refer you to Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns (can we agree, the seminal Batman story?), he genuinely hates The Joker, the point where he reveals how he constantly fantasizes about murdering him, and then stabs out his eye, and spits on him. And if you read the Neal Adams comics, and nowadays the Grant Morrison version, Batman seems to be holding nothing back when it comes to pummeling his enemies. I guess if you're suggesting that he purposefully dresses as the Batman --rather than an anonymous vigilante-- specifically to encourage similarly 'themed' costume villains ...yeah, I guess there could be something in that, but at the same time, I'm not a qualified psychiatrist. That would be Dr Chase Meridian.

And also, I mean, I agree that Nolan's films are EXCELLENT, but at the same time, all he's doing is holding true to the Frank Miller comics. You want something that's gritty, and feels like it's taking place in the real world, all you need is Batman: Year One. It's practically 'Taxi Driver' by a different name. He wears a canvas belt and no armour!

You could even argue that Nolan specifically made things goofier in order to appease Hollywood. The batmobile driving across rooftops? Stupid. That hovering jet thing from 'Rises'? Stupid. You're right about the new Joaquin Pheonix film, tho -- I get the feeling that it'll be more like 'King of Comedy' by Martin Scorsese, but with more of a crime slant.

My name is Indrid Cold and I want to wear a cowboy hat.

I've noticed that a lot of punters have been using TWS to try and solve the Meaning of Life, or find the elusive, Don Quixotian nature of reality, or talk to girls, but I thought I'd ask one of the most important, complex and fundamental questions of all: ROCK the cowboy hat or NOT the cowboy hat? I've entered all the pro's and con's, AS I CURRENTLY SEE THEM, into the central processing core of my DATA BANKS, but as yet, the outcome is inconclusive.

First of all, obviously, if you live in Arizona, or Texas, or Missouri, you're more or less entitled to wear a cowboy hat without ANY kind of social justification. HOWEVER, I am a well-spoken Englishman, with a crisp English accent, and non-combative under normal circumstances.
What makes me think I have even a GHOST of a chance of pulling off this fashion derring? Well, for one thing, I live in the countryside. I wouldn't DREAM of wearing a cowboy hat in a city, because if even a cool guy like Marshal Raylan Givens gets a hard time for doing it, what chance have I got? But in the prairies, and canyons, and grassy valleys where I live, which could easily double for Montana, or Boulder - I reckon it wouldn't look too disingenuous.

There is also this: there is ZERO precedence for English people wearing cowboy hats in 2019, and that makes it a hi-risk gambit. For around ten years, I wore a waistcoat. I was famous for wearing very modest, felt or houndstooth waistcoats. And then effing Gareth 'he did slightly, slightly, slightly better than Terry Venables' Southgate came along, and this town wasn't big enough for the both of us. I believe it's this summer that the new 'Deadwood' film is coming out, and if it looks like I'm just copying that, I'll look like like a RIGHT dic k.

Is fashion like buck-buck-buckaroo (from MB Games), but on a person? I already wear a leather jacket and a (semi) poncey watch. Would I need to give up one of these accesories if I wanted to then add a cowboy hat? I get the feeling I would.

So finally, if we successfully establish my right / and or BRAVERY to wear a cowboy hat, which type should I go for? My initial thoughts (from watching films) is that traditionally, bad guys wear black hats with very flat brims and a rounded front, whereas good guys wear a lighter colour with slightly tapered edges. In my soul, I am a bad guy, so it's probably best I have elements of both ...and it also begs the question, the super-morally-ambiguous, spiritually-profound WESTWORLD is still on TV, and if my wearing a cowboy hat opens me up for having conversations about THE NATURE OF REALITY, that can only b a good thing, right?

This is what I've had my eye on so far, courtesy of Yul Brynner: