Monolithic Misunderstandings || Neurotic Nihilism II.2.2

 

Laying in the midst of rubble, encapsulated in the world’s largest Brutalist tomb built atop the old Chernobyl power plant is the infamous Elephant’s Foot. A mass of pure radioactivity. A human creation. Bob Ross would say of it, a, “happy accident,” as it was not an intentional invention. It’s never so cut and clear. 

The Elephant’s Foot is to the real world what the Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey is: a creation by an intelligent consciousness that has no actual explanation for its spot in the universe when others stumble upon it. Radioactive decay ensures the Foot won’t be around forever, but high is the likelihood of that process outlasting the human gene altogether. Making a hunk for any possible future intelligences to scour the Earth before it gets engulfed by the sun to find; A Mass without meaning. 

Ominous is the choir in Also Sprach Zarathustra incorporated to accompany the existentialist film. Kubrick uses the most vocal moments in the number, in a way that could be seen as akin to hidden radiation when the neurosis of lack of understanding on the cosmic and personal level— though that is more of a stretching connection albeit, and would rather only make sense in hindsight to the film’s release and the moon missions being the former then the latter in historical sequence. The magnitude of what the Elephant’s Foot is to our species is rather trivial and meaningless to any other; which isn’t to imply nonhuman organisms do not feel effected from and are not affected by radiation, an awareness of something different exists but exactly what is unsure, like with the apes (and later homo-genus apes) Monolith in 2001 at the ‘Dawn of Man’.

It is possible the Monolith to be like the Voyager vehicles we launched, devices for exploration of just how far a species could send at least one thing rather than going only to attempt to find other life. Differential in that however as Voyager includes its Golden Record of the Earth (at least according to our species perspective) whereas the Monolith is merely there, obfuscating without any direct imposition or anything. It just is as it can be perceived: there. Meaning is by perception, what exactly can be perceived from an accidental hunk of radiation or traveling pillar?

One has meaning because we made it— literally— the other not so. Flip it around and it’s meaningless in that the meaning is subjective to the perception. Into new life or regular death, it’s there all by making and misunderstanding that maybe we can’t at a certain point… 

A Track Trinity || Neurotic Nihilism III.2

Originally written during the Nimrod time period and titled Black Eyeliner, change of phrase and it became the third track on their next and sixth studio album Warning, Church On Sunday was rechristened. 

Catchy as it is, at least in my opinion the demo from the Nimrod era is better than the concluded track; but what it evolved into fit the theme and jive of Warning whereas Black Eyeliner would not— it went from a ballad type entity in the same vein as that of Wilhelm Fink or Brutal love, to the energy found on later songs on the album like Fashion Victim or Waiting. 

“Bloodshot deadbeat and lack of sleep/ Making your bleed tears down your face/ Leaving traces of mistakes…”

Some slight deviations, depending on time and place in the two songs. Respectively it’s the same hook. Where Black Eyeliner’s verse was reworked into Church On Sunday, Kill Your Friends by frontman Billie Joe Armstrong’s side project The Longshot took it and rewrote it for the chorus. 

Expressed in an its own new light each iteration is a form of longing. As established on the album, it is more of an optimistic delivery, even, “if you live with me I’ll die for you and this compromise,” however cynically, “‘trust’ is a dirty word that comes from such a liar,” yet even within that so long as there’s a hint of some mutual faith there’s as the closing song of the album Macy’s Day Parade says, a, “sized dream of hope.” Stripped to its demo, the imbued variation of this longing is that of Saudade, a more melancholically melodic nostalgia for something so seemingly in sight— grasp— but ultimately forever beyond the time of day. Kill Your Friends is what would seem to be a similar case within this as Grimes’ song ‘My Name Is Dark’ is:

“Heaven’s making rent

 There’s a vacancy for me and all my friends

 The end of days are on their way

 Who needs eulogies?

 When you’ve got your loved ones 

 And everyone’s depressed

 Party in the morgue tonight

 Everything’s gonna be alright

 And we’ll be singing…”

In other words as stated a few lines later in the lyrics of this (as of currently final) iteration: “Fuck the world, it’s judgement day.” Affirming this confirmation bias with a hint of permeating mortality salience throughout. Long story short, it forms a Trinity within the genus of the sonic endeavors of Billie Joe Armstrong, and encapsulates a different aspect of condition that makes sense to neurotic nihilism for all the aforementioned reasons here.

***

This is actually a small bit from a larger, still being written breakdown of Warning, the We Are Chaos of Green Day. 

Gets Its Due

 

Perception—

Endless detection

What’s a little manipulation?

Boredom,

it’s too much

Fun?

that sucks. 

Pass the time until oblivion,

knowing the sun will still come 

Even when done;

Bending blues and shifting hues

Dark always gets its due

Too much and it’s a shift of the axis

The world keeps spinning but it’s never the same

Trapped in an interstellar hurricane 

Smoke in the rain mixing with brains 

Inhale as if it’s the last day

End of Poem. 

A reading of the poem and Etymological overview of the word Perception. 

missing

Saudade, nothing lasts;

The past—

Pitiful and listless, 

Pieces of Gaia’s trash. 

I thank Chaos,

for everything it has wrought. 

Fast-stop-motion-slowed-down;

head in a dance

Draining, constraining—

Eyes wi[l]de[/y] stuttered,

Insignificant other.

Tree of decay and glee

III. Adaptation & Annihilation— Neurotic Nihilism

 “Imminent Annihilation sounds so dope…”

— Grimes, ‘My Name Is Dark’

Mortality Salience in conjunction with its prescription via Terror Management Theory suggests a drift of sorts to Apocalyptic Answers. This meaning, in the face of understanding death as a natural inheritance for everything as it would seem, natural disasters interpreted to the psyche’s understanding and the creation of poetic, fiery end-times scenarios as a result. Beautiful depictions of finality most, if any will ever truly live to bear witness. 

That grains of truth as a result of observation in the natural world follow consistently throughout tale and scientific hypothesis would be and is clear. Famines, extreme weather, geologic and cosmological cataclysms… whether some deity exists in conjunction is irrelevant; the fact there will be some fiery end then oblivion is. That remains throughout— imposed ideals about continued existence are frankly too inconsistent with living nuances to be reliable. What is certain is the finality. What is certain is an end worth witnessing in its brutal beauty. It sounds so dope.  

Annihilation is comforting in its simplicity; like comedy as horror, making the idea of its imminency comforting in its nothing… Neurotically. 

Not caring about living or dying for that matter it’s, “like, ‘whatever, fuck it’ […] how that gets fun,” and gets, “so dark it turns in on itself…” the lyricist behind the lyrics opening remarked in an interview. Annihilation as a wish is a projection, and inheritance. Serene in its calamity, “it’s not a life sentence, but a death-dream…”

***

Fear and Fetish, wherein they meet and where they divorce is up to complete circumstantial speculation. The Law of the Forbidden is an aspect of the Law of Attraction; meaning something stimulates both alarm and arousal, the latter caused by the former.

“…I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.”

— Revelation 3:3 KJV 

Fetish and Fear are intertwined. Freudian as it may seem, that annihilation is a fetish— it’s a thrilling thought of course it is. Annihilation is a kinky ideation in: 

1. The instant ego gratification in death as symbolic fulfillment. 

2. Annihilation in most if not every case would not be instantaneous; the dread becomes dreamy. 

Instant ego gratification in death from annihilation caused by factors that, ‘if I go, at least so does everyone else!’ or, personal biology preventing suicide. Or some number of nuances varying. 

The core of this however is not dissimilar from the jouir of say, some imagined orgasm. A monumental release, not necessarily sexual but at least implicitly. The end is always cinematic in characterization. Whereas the pleasure from the dread of waiting is in the more realistic approach, but neurotically flawed even in that— “the end of the world doesn’t come suddenly or without warning. To imagine it does is to be fooled by popular misconception.” 

Almost reaching the top of the mountain, but never quite peaking. 

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy…” in that, absurdly and sadomasochistically. Pleasure from pain; power from pain. That is the idea. Whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger? Maybe. Scar tissue covers wounds, thicker or thinner than previous skin. Wounds differ and The Body Keeps The Score. “Whatever doesn’t kill you is gonna leave a scar…”

What is power? What is power from pain? What is power if derived from pain? How much and for how long can that truly sustain? What’s even the point? 

Might being momentary, strength as ability to adapt to the situation: whatever doesn’t kill leaves a scar. Until death, until decay, until humans no longer exist as even a thought in the universe. What is power in a vast void?

On a Pale Blue Dot in the midst of an uninhabitable vacuum, cosmic indifference is notable. That nothing can be so arousing, is something interesting. But, it’s only an efficient source of stimulation for so long. 

Pure dread or sensual suggestion, neurosis ensues. 

***

The world is always ending. It’s always beginning too. Most focus on the former. Anything, trivial or of magnitude means the end of the world. It never does, it keeps spinning. Only when engulfed by our dying star in a millennia, will it officially cease to. 

***

Gift auf Deutsch ist poison in English. Alcohol is known as poison. Life is neither a blessing or innate course of suffering: it just is.

Adaptation or annihilation? 

That is the real question in this. 

Adrenaline is short lived. Pain only produces so much power, if it can even be called that. Perpetual pain for power, like in the fictional example Darth Sion is at the expense of any possibly derived pleasure— pain for power in order to inflict more pain perpetuating more power. Eventually, neurotically, there’s nothing left. Attempting to escape nothing, reducing one to insignificance. 

Ironic. 

Like Sion; like Wallace Baker. 

Unlike Jay & Silent Bob. 

Sober solely for the short span of the second installment of Clerks, the famous slacker stoner duo. Even meeting God herself, the conclusion is simple: go to the QuickStop and hang out. JRR Tolkien stating this ideal simply in that, “if more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world…” and echoed by Jack Sparrow in this sentiment: “not all treasure is silver and gold.”

What value there is, merely aesthetic. Power without pleasure is as worthless as it should seem. Psychodrama based on shininess can only go so far. 

Simplicity isn’t stagnation, but small-talk is. 

What’s a good Nietzschean without Neurotic Nihilism?

One spoon at a fucking time; having fun in not giving a fuck collapsing into itself. 

Shiftless: A Shift in Slacker Celluloid

A new interpretation of the Slacker genre in active production. 

I just found this actively being released self-made series on YouTube from a person under the name Rex Lengyel called Shiftless. 

This project is emblematic of how the concept of the slacker is seemingly here to stay, as if it wasn’t always there. The exploration of Mundane Extremes on camera is nothing new per se; the wit evolves to match the gonzo and the gonzo to the wit. 

Starting naturally with episode one, “Pilot” we are introduced to a sort of evolved Clerks setting. Meeting the two main characters, Paul and Steve who are in essence an amalgamation of every notable slacker duo coming before them— Dante and Randal, Jay & Silent Bob, Bill and Ted, the list goes on— working listlessly going about recently acquired jobs at a GameStop; until a customer, Death himself, coming for a refund… while he gets it in the end, it is only to the expense of the two’s employment status. 

Episode two, “Grow Up, Paul and Steve” initially begins like that of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. In Office-style dialogue and direct reference to A Clockwork Orange; Steve and Paul do as the title suggests in order to avoid being kicked out of their friend Marco’s basement where they live as a result of the duo causing perceived issues in Marco’s sex life. 

Retorted derogatorily in the second episode, but being reimagined in positive light here, Shiftless is “a fugue state at best” as any proper slacker should be. What happens in episode 3? Time will tell to see. 

II.2.1 Slacker Salience— Neurotic Nihilism

Nothing, no one, that’s what it’s all about. Main characters might exist, but no more than gonzo day-to -day Reality Bites satirized. Art imitates life; it is an aesthetic manipulation for insight. 

What grandstanding point is there in a slacker film like Empire Records? Clerks? 

Aside from a nice iteration of life, it’s Disenchanted from the insanity (save a few scenes) of a regular comedy. Where it ends is where it begins. 

Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, while not a slacker film, encapsulates this perfectly on a grandiosely existential magnitude. The search for meaning where there is none: it just is, in a vast void. Starting where it ends. Filling in the cosmic unease, is nothing for nothing on a Pale Blue Dot. At least in Empire Records he gets the girl, they save the store; but ultimately wind up right where they began originally… save Warren, who got a job. In Clerks, it’s literally just a “lifelong wait for a hospital stay” being portrayed in the third (and likely final) installment’s take on mortality. Dante (characterized in regards to the famous Dante’s Inferno) and Randal having their respective “widow maker” heart attacks; Randal surviving while Dante walks into the light. 

Seinfeld is the magnum opus of the nihilistic telescreen. Self-aware as ever in its own meta-narrative, the show has a similar prerogative to Neurotic Nihilism; a point in that even such is pointless and a show about nothing. Obviously it’s an influence. Ending not where the cast began, but rather a solid prison.

In that the slacker cinematic series is less a model to attain to, it’s been reached. What it is, is capturing those moments of mundane extremes in gonzo fashion and smart-ass wit. 

Liminal spaces in their used forms, would be the way to characterize such pieces of data. Transitory states: stepping stones. Clerks ideally isn’t an eternity. Absurdly this turns said comedies into horror films because they are ironically comedic. Creations confirming condition. Acceptance of assimilation, and Neuroticism in Mundane Extremes. 

Horror as a byproduct is comedy, often, because it shows the actual, ‘stupid’ reactions to insane and implausible scenarios. Scenes might just be superstitions on a green screen, but the ‘stupid’ reactions of characters we gratuitously watch die act no different in observation than we in real situations do. Splitting up, falling and being too winded to get up, yelling to a friend— basic instincts. Horror is a comedy because of the reality in the implausible; comedy is horror in the plausible. 

***

Irony: impermanent illusion

Ignorance as insight

Inviting intentional idiocy

Information is my IV

Stimulation,

Simulation,

Evaluation,

Revelation— reclamation and recycling. 

A nap is a better revolution. 

Running Man [2025] & Celebritarian Cycles

The Most Dangerous Game meets The Long Walk in Che Guerva fashion. Originally written by Stephen King and adapted in the 1980s— admittedly neither having seen or read either; nonetheless after flipping through the book at Barnes & Nobles briefly I felt the initial sentence to be a general description of the text, and the film’s revolutionary appeal. 

The 2025 adaptation is similar to another film released this year, One Battle After Another. Though less blatant as the DiCaprio film, the theme shows up main-frame nearly every scene. Ben Richard’s in Running Man is a father going to the absolute limit to aid his daughter. As case in point, Michael Cera’s character Elton Parakis has a pull down flag of Che (as well as an anarchy A, to name another). 

Conveniently called ‘the Network’ as the totalitarian regime in charge, there isn’t a leap in the 1960s revolutionary aesthetic as counter to the overt fascistic ones of the ruling corporation. Front and center, most notably the N in their logo is an obvious derivation from the swastika— like the four P’s put together for the Process Church of the Final Judgement’s icon; or Marilyn Manson’s chest tattoo. As a lesser nod, the symbol used in this society for dollar currency is akin to another symbol the National Socialists in 20th century Germany utilized: the Wolfsangel. Derived from the 13th rune in the runic alphabet of the Norse, it’s known as Eihwaz; and embodies mysteries associated with Yggdrasil, to put a long story short. 

Similarly to Stephen King’s other work (which also got a film adaptation this year), The Long Walk this tale is that of death as spectacle for the nation (United States, namely). While The Long Walk has no set limit and goes till the second to last person drops, Running Man is like The Purge for 30 days straight to those signed up. 

Unlike The Most Dangerous Game, the ending of the film is less of an open note; though a confirmation to one of the outcomes. In the end of Running Man, Ben chooses to slay his Zaharoff… while on live camera. Thus continuing the cycle. While the pendulum swings away from what Trump in 2016 called the ‘swamp’ he makes for a future— or even possibly of the moment martyr, as seen in recent months in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s demise. In rising up, he takes the place. “God conquered will become Satan/ Satan conquering will become God…” as Anatole France melancholically noted in the poetic work Revolt of the Angels. 

Remarked within the film, games being put on by the Network for pulling people’s pathos as being akin to the Circus Maximus, it strikes a chord when paired with the implications of Anatole France’s observation. 

Ancient history are the days of gladiatorial combat, at least for the most part. People have moved on, ‘fallen’ into more civilized manners. 

Evolving into spectacles of public execution: hangings, drowning the witch as well as the lovely gift to the world from the French known as the guillotine. Although the last of such in the Western world was just short of a century ago, as time and standards shift so does the way of more bloody entertainment. Take this film Running Man, which can be that fill for some. Wherein now much is better suited in psychodrama. Within the shockwaves in light of Charlie Kirk being publicly murdered, there’s an expressed need for the human animal to have more than mere cinema. 

What not, if just pictures fucking up our eyes?

I.1.5 Control of Khaos— Neurotic Nihilism

Part of the prerogative in Neurotic Nihilism’s broad thesis is the learning to be my own battery without burning myself out; and if I do, how to use even that as fuel. 

Turning the negative into a positive, as it’s being used, “every day, every minute, whether we realize it or not. It is much better for us to acknowledge its power and use it constructively than it is to permit it to tear down the physical bodies in which we live to create conditions in our lives that do not tend to bring […]” anything valuable to personal progress. Echoing Carl Jung when he said, “we cannot change anything unless we accept it,” so while I might, “hate my weaknesses; they made me who I am” as much as my strengths. 

Cynically, like Shubunka in the 1947 film The Gangster, “My sins? My sins are that I wasn’t tough enough. I wasn’t low or dirty enough. I should have trusted no one, never loved a girl. I should have smashed first. That’s the way the world is.” The way it is, is so seemingly pointless. Aphrodite is married to Hephaestus but completed by Ares. Wherein they are singularly superseded and met in Athena: beauty, brains and brawn. What is Might if not momentary? How long is a moment?

The answer, is in the gaps between. The void filled by ‘surrogate activities’ to avoid insignificance. 

***

Gaap (or in some instances Tap or Caap) is the 33rd spirit in highlighted in the Lesser Key of Solomon’s translation of the Goetia. Symbolizing consistently across all historical accounts an imperative on the incitement of hate and love. As Gaap is detailed in the Goetia, with an emphasis on the aforementioned, and a bestower of knowledge and ignorance— which are tied to love and hate albeit but neither are mutually exclusive to one or the other. 

That the name of Gaap is what it is, is unique in my mind. Gaap, like gap. Gap, like that of an abyss. Famous is the line about staring into the abyss…

No matter how one puts it, the universe as we think of it came from a gap. The Greeks viewed it as a cosmic sludge called Khaos. There is a fear of an empty void. The comedy is, the void, gap and abyss are all one and the same metaphor. All are tools for understanding under different lenses— the void for the pointless disparity and abyss to contemplate in order to fill in the gaps; or some combination thereof. 

***

One spoon at a time. 

That’s might. It’s not perpetual strength; which is meaningless without a mind to put it to use. Aleister Crowley referred to every man and woman as a Star; Stars burn out and die. Some collapse in spectacle into singularities. Black holes that sustain their momentum like Darth Nihilus by feeding off everything around them. Eventually releasing it all in violent gamma bursts. Burning out in the end. “The greater the star, the more violent its demise.” 

All in the void of space. 

Holding it together a balance of subatomic particles. Adding one electron to the atoms of the universe would instantly polarize everything to a negative charge— an imbalance— then rip the entire universe apart instantaneously. 

***

What is the balance for my battery? I don’t know, but Neurotically, 

“Today I will go once again

  Into life, into haggling, into market,

  And to lead the army of my songs

  To duel against the market tide.” 

as Velimir Khlebnikov poetically put it.

Pointless point[s]. 

Neurotically Nihilistic, can you hear the jouir in the music?

I.1.4 Saw, The Sith & Power Pitfalls— Neurotic Nihilism

“Live or Die” is what my shirt says. “The rules are simple,” though in that complicated as you “make your choice” in the matter. 

Saw is a Franchise I’ve considered quite a bit in the past, and very Darwinistically projecting in some areas. That however doesn’t discredit the general idea at face value… But, John Kramer’s enactment, is solipsistic in viewing himself as this ultimate arbiter for people’s will to live— take for instance in Saw VI the man who had his lungs crushed for the abhorrent sin of smoking; as if it’s the sole person with the horrific life negating vice— through his own form of dispatched, detached retributive punishment. 

In accordance with Terror Management Theory, the idea is a simple one: how much does one value their own life?

What’s a Good Nietzschean without Neurotic Nihilism?

What would a person do to survive, even if it meant losing a piece of themself that seems vital. As seen in the films, most people take the path of least resistance—assimilation, every conventional idea has already been preconceived and removed as a flaw in the game— and as a result of doing everything that was expected, wind up dead in scenes of gratuitous gore. Like a moth drawn to a flame, burning oneself out. It’s like the Sith do. 

The Dark Side of the Force in Star Wars has much in common with our power philosophy’s here on Earth. Existentially extreme individualism, amassing accumulated power and through said process, personal progress. 

Knights Of The Old Republic II is a game wherein it goes further into depth of the pitfalls of the Sith (as well as Jedi) than Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith presents in the climax of the Republic. KOTOR II’s story, in my opinion, gives cass by case example of what in the real world I see and have personally experienced in some regard to what I have heard called the ‘Ant Conundrum’. This idea is based mainly around the pitfalls in Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. Personal appreciation for Rand and her ideas, as well as my own heavy disagreements with Objectivism on some issues currently irrelevant to this. 

Imprinted onto the three main Sith antagonists (and at times with one, seeming protagonist) of the story, flaws in the rash fundamentalist pitfalls in said misinterpretations of Egoism. It’s Neurotic. Darth Nihilus, Darth Sion and Darth Treya each emblematic to varying results of the extremes to which such ideas can be taken, and to what end? 

Darth Nihilus, the name being blatantly derived from our own word Nihilism and meaning the same thing in essence, is explained in the game as a literal “wound in the force” with the body of a man. Surviving by literally consuming the force of living things, even entire planets. He was a husk consuming but never satisfied. As justification, not unlike Emperor Palpatine’s concept of “unlimited power,” Nihilus gave his reason for doing so as to bring order to the galaxy, when he himself was a mere shell. “Just a man,” in the end. 

Darth Sion was the epitome of pain. If you think Darth Vader had it bad, this guy trumps him. Sion lived every second of existence in excruciating pain, which he himself tended to put himself through. And for what? To live up to a Master who he felt abandoned him? Darth Sion was fueled by his pain, it was the only thing keeping him together while also ripping his body apart every second. He had achieved immortality in this, but to what worthwhile degree? In the end, like Wallace Baker he welcomed death serenely. 

Darth Treya, the secret manipulator behind the entire plot. Your character in KOTOR II is essentially manipulated by her into doing her dirty work: killing her apprentices, Nihilus and Sion; cleaning up her loose ends. Treya goes beyond them in her Neuroticism however, her end goal is the complete severance of living beings from the force. She hates that it seems to have a direction of its own that she cannot control. She makes her own downfall in the end, like the others. 

Interestingly, she distinguishes her concept in that Darth Treya is more of an impersonal entity; “there must always be a Darth Treya.” And in that, while in the main Star Wars series most understand, there is no Darth Treya. Well, there is the Rule of Two. The Sith after time realized their strength was not in numbers, so they made it an ardent tradition that only two Sith existed at once. One Master, one apprentice. As follows, the apprentice would be trained to be stronger than its master for an ensuing culling ritual. Rinse and repeat. 

Sith are servant to self-centered suicide. They see their shit intentionally as, “the Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some would consider, unnatural.” It is an imbalance in the force. While some Sith deviated and were more lax in nature with brains and brute, much was simply barbaric. 

The Jedi (which I negated to mention, there is a fourth antagonist in the game, who is a Jedi), while having their faults— as an example where the Jedi negate say romantic attachment; Sith do so as well in most kill their loved ones, the Jedi restrict but the Sith wreck— their faults are more broadly collectivistic than I have ever been.

Their end, as seen in their utter blindness to what was actually going on around them and complete counterproductive pride, you can see where the Neurotic Nihilism of it is.