Nightcrawler: Death As Spectacle

Recently I got around to finally watching the 2014 Jake Gyllenhaal leading film Nightcrawler. This movie follows his portrayed character named Louis Bloom, or just Lou as he's generally referred, a socially awkward loner (more on that later) with what would be deemed a higher than average intellect who takes an interest in the videotaping of brutal injury and death for TV news after wandering about Los Angeles one night and stumbling upon a man doing just that and selling it to said media for a small profit. As the movie goes on Lou becomes more and more embroiled as well as pervasive in his pursuit of these graphic death scenes as his profession; going so far as to take out the person who had inspired his journey and became a competitor by fiddling with the mechanisms under his car, resulting in a crash which Lou then came to film himself, as planned.

During the course of the movie he acquires a partner, Rick, via more manipulative means, who eventually comes to figure out Lou's methods were being done with less than legal means. He puts together that Lou had intentionally withheld video evidence showing the faces and van license plate numbers of the two perpetrators of a triple homicide which they had arrived to just as the killers were leaving and prior to law enforcement arriving. Lou managed to capture that as well as go through the entire scene of the crime (where during, is revealed to actually be a drug related slaughter), which became a major news story and shortly thereafter visited by two detectives questioning him regarding if he'd seen or captured footage of those who did the act, denying he had. He then used the plate information he very much did possess and with that track down the partners in crime to a corner restaurant where he then tipped off police, which resulted in a shootout; turning into a high speed chase with Lou and Rick in hot pursuit and ending in a massive crash where Lou got out of the car (their vehicle unscathed and not in the accident) to check out the scene, getting back into it and having Rick go to take some video of the multiple overturned mobile machines where the remaining criminal shot him multiple times before getting out of the wreckage; both dying in the end. Lou, knowing the perp was still alive allowed such to occur as Rick had given him a taste of his own manipulative medicine earlier, and in the final moments of Rick's life admitted such.

Movie ending after a short and willing interrogation by one of the detectives who stopped by Lou's apartment earlier, getting out based on there being no evidence to hold against him. Cutting to the final scene from there, showing Lou now with two whole vans and a few new employees as part of his own small media conglomerate dedicated to this type of entertainment.

Now, initially I viewed Lou as being socially awkward in a way analogous to autistic due to his social oddities and straightforward explanations of memorised factoids, however most consensus and with consideration on the matter more accurately landing him on the antisocial personality disorder spectrum. It's likenable to Patrick Bateman from American Psycho (book or movie, take your pick), with the key difference being aptitude for emotional mirroring of Bateman opposing Lou's near constant flat affect. Nonetheless both hold a key intelligent prowess and agility in the situations they find themselves in, commanding the circumstances which they enter. 

Overall though, Nightcrawler reminds me most of a line from the 2019 movie Joker that's spoken by Arthur Fleck when he's donned the signature look and gone on a talk show he'd previously had admiration for, and after revealing himself as the culprit behind a triple murder of three young men on a subway expressed that the outrage regarding them was superficial as they'd been employees of Wayne Investments and that, "if it was me on dying on the sidewalk, you'd walk all over me." Which in a way, this film entirely disproves as it goes to show there's a morbid curiosity and fascination with death. It's more of a spectacle. Nightcrawler serves as a showcase in this tendency, even as contrived as the presented narrative the newswomen explains her own point in it all being a campaign of fear for viewership as; it very well does do that as much as titillate other senses. Death is eye candy, a car crash you can't look away from and to the point as necrophile Karen Greenlee once remarked on the matter of the onlookers of dead's groaning, "people really can't tell if you're grief-stricken or passion stricken." Be it the Colosseum of old Rome, footage of President Kennedy's brains exploding or the crucifixes word by Christians; this enamorment intertwined with aversion and denial is ever constant. As I detailed in a previous piece: 

where it would seem the spirit of this has survived, or transferred is almost that of a regression, but as much been there the entire time. Seen prominently with the Wild-West-outlaw-vigilante-justice acquired by Luigi Mangione's shooting of a man merely referred to now as the UnitedHealtchare CEO— overshadowing the now deceased Brian Thompson entirely; imbuing him with a similar 'aura' (as it is now phrased) as figures like Bonnie & Clyde or Doc Holliday and Billy The Kid. What it really is, I'm not sure entirely but it's a unique aspect of an almost ancient impulse— et tu, Brutus?

Except, as pointed out in Joker, this captivation is impersonal and without rhyme or reason; as is the nature of tragedy itself. It's voyeurism for suffering. 

Melancholic Aptitude

What is now two days ago I watched the new Travis Barker: Louder Than Fear documentary. Being one who has liked Blink-182 (as well as +44) for a good number of years and having even read Mark Hoppus' autobiography, I really didn't have a clue how much of an artist the drummer aficionado is. I knew he popped up in a shit ton of places, and first noticed such with Ghostemane's song D(r)ead and was vaguely aware of his collaborative work with people like MGK (of whom I really just don't care about), and some vague idea of his person based on the old tour diary from the 2002 Pop Disaster Tour that Blink did with Green Day, however this documentary goes to show a much deeper artist than what I saw in that footage from over 20 years ago. That said it gave an incredible detail about the plane crash Barker had been in, which I was vaguely aware of but never knew the story of. What is most interesting in it all is the happenstances of tragedy bringing those in his circle closer together, trauma seems to bind what was once an otherwise juvenile act into a cohesive unit, in spite of the hilarity onstage and in older songs; as such suffering has this unique ability to as easily tear such relationships apart...

Suffering is fascinating like that. Bittersweet in its capacity to attract as much as to dilute into deeper devastation. I remember recently I had this idea to try understanding the anatomy of suffering and its social effects, but in reality such is way too vast to quantify so simply into specifics as it's messy, tragedy is, and too fuckin random to get any real major or generalised gauge on the varying aptitudes to its experience...

full post on my Patreon.

Kite String

Is it in my own solitude?

Wondering why, 

it's so recurring to my mind;

Like television all the time

Suburban warm nights,

Aptitude of awake without any fight

Alone in the thrill of the-

lonesome landline;

Head clear and life nearer

Wandering into the overhead street lights,

Pale and fluorescent, morgue bright;

Musically ecstatic being free like a kite on a string:

Contradiction glaring, like bad bleeding from no beating;

Nothing, noting from nothing-

Imaginary concessions from out of touch dreams;

Baggage is a soiled seam,

Self-sewn, itching and ripped up-

reiterated stitches in mixed-

Conjecture,

Interjection, 

Conscientious objection in liberatory degeneration;

Detective unrelenting, Disneyland confetti,

Liability in listless serendipity

Misguided in introspective relationally constraining legibility

Unalive & Zero Day Reactions

 

Lucifer's Satanic Principles

I've been watching the show Lucifer on Netflix that depicts the Prince of Darkness (no, not Ozzy, though interestingly Sharon Osbourne makes a cameo in an episode) as having gotten bored of ruling Hell, coming up to Earth in the modern era and living as a nightclub owner in LA while helping the LAPD solve crimes. With that I have been considering how it would embody the principles of Satanism as it was codified by Anton LaVey and his Church of Satan, seeing as the series is about Satan and I would be of that classification. In a way beyond the basic explanation of the plot just given, it's a series about agency that beings with a certain cognitive capacity hold, be it human or celestial or— to a bit of a lesser extent within the context of the show— demonic; all having the power to make their own choices and forge the outcomes in their individual existence. To put it more concisely and as plainly put by the Devil himself in the first episode of the fifth season, given each episode serves as a vehicle of sorts for further exploration of his and those in Lucifer's orbit of their self-perception as it continuously develops: "The self-centered simplicity of you humans never ceases to amaze..." and this sentiment goes vice versa and all-around. 

This statement reminds me of something from another piece of popular media. The sentiment expressed by Optimus Prime in the second of the Transformers movies made by Michael Bay, where the leader of the Autobots remarks to a US military official regarding the human tendency toward petty violence; which is ironic, as if the machine beings in the films are so terribly dissimilar in such an instinctive drift towards these trivial yet simultaneously grandiose disputes.

Lust, love, stupidity, vapidity, jealousy, disdain, and everything plain and sweet— it's all there in this take on the King of Hell. From the minuscule misunderstandings to consistent abandonments, betrayals, formed bonds and dirty deeds done dirt cheep, solved and slate reset for further self-discovery. Study through firsthand initiation into life triumphing over counterproductive pride and lacking perspective solipsism; responsibility to those responsible without concern for the psychic vampires and retributive punishment dished out accordingly.... All this in a world of nuanced circumstantial (vital) existence. 

Nightfire Log (8/7-8/2026)

"I thought you'd already left and I was gonna get stabbed!" he laughingly exclaimed. Responding while patting my pocket given that since I went down to the river earlier that, "well, I actually could tonight. But, we're not in London and I'm not a Muslim," as I finished paying while chuckling myself and leaving on that note. From there it was back to the car and two minutes later back in the living room inside.

Full story from my life on Patreon.

Subcultural Entropy

The longer I've gone on the more I've noticed that Boyd Rice calling punk nothing more than a fad is ostensibly a true posit that is hard to argue with. As much as I personally love the genre, it was seemingly contrived from the start and now the bands play on the very cruise ships which are supposedly so detested by these bands and so called 'alternative' artists. One can blame or chalk it all up to said establishment incorporated as grifting culture vultures stealing it or whathaveyou about uppity classes taking it from the lower... 

whatever. money talks and bullshit walks.

The Ramones may precede the Sex Pistols in formation, but it is they (the latter) who enshrined this ideal of punk into the world with Johnny Rotten having the aspired attitude and Sid Vicious dressed up by Vivienne Westwood being the image of it all. That said and good an album as Never Mind The Bollocks is, the Sex Pistols were a boy band contrived by Malcolm McLaren; John Lydon being the only one (with the slight exception of original bassist Glen Matlock, though he rejoined the band once it regrouped for its reunions and still plays with them to this day) having his own entity beyond the band. Sure, it and the aesthetic terrorist movement it existed within was its own counter to the prior generation's counterculture of the hippies. Even then it's not so simply this genuine form of transgressive existence as those flower-power-make-love-not-war-peace-and-love-inc. may have been injected into the world given allegation of the Haight Ashbury clinic distributing LSD itself may have been a CIA operation. How then is one counter to the culture when they become the culture and merely play into it anyway? How does one go against the system by playing to its rules?

"Ugly words on the printed page no more constitute an act of transgression than happy platitudes painted on a protest placard constitute realities of any sort. They are empty and meaningless. Genuine acts of transgression are equally meaningless, though some might constitute criminality. Advocates of transgression seldom make the transition from word to deed, except in the context of the arts.

[...]

"More often than not, acts of transgression in the world lead not to liberation, but rather imprisonment. In a land and at a time where no amount of hyperbole, exaggeration, or overstatement can constitute even a thought crime, real acts are still punishable by law. But very few proponents of transgression resort to real actions, when words alone can create controversy or garner attention."

—Boyd Rice, NO

Most everyone seems to think they're some underdog championing against this overarching power that controls the mainstream with their infinite power, it's rather interesting.

 "Abortion is murder"

    "My body my choice"                 "Trans people out of sports"

                     "Trans women are women"

       "No Kings"                          "Don't tread on me"

                      "Come and take them"

   "One nation under God"                    "God hates fags"

                   "From the river to the sea"

       "Antisemitism"                         "Love is love"

And with that I'll offer one better: "Everyone keeps talking and they can't shut the fuck up," as Green Day sings in their song Lazy Bones. Now I happen to think Green Day is great in spite of all I've said here in regards to punk and its origins and aftermath— they're my favorite band of all time— but even in this I've noticed this shortsighted lacking perspective that goes along with many fans of the group in regards to this idea of the American Idiot; neglecting fundamentally that everyone under that national banner is included. As frontman Billie Joe Armstrong succinctly expressed while creating the title track in the documentary filmed of the albums concocting, being released nearly a decade after the matter and called Heart Like A Hand Grenade, that he himself is the American Idiot and as much when pointing a finger there's still three more aimed back at oneself.

With all this though I'm reminded of something that Charles Manson spoke of in the documentary Charles Manson Superstar, stating that if one is displeased with trees being cut down then stop buying the products like paper and pants produced by the deforestation; constrict what is disdained. And sure, even he may have been some sort of psyop himself, though while there is some credibility to the claim it's dubious at best. And he's not the only one who would be seen as consistent in living this ideal: figures like Ted Kaczynski, Varg Vikernes or John Brown are exemplary in such and embody a more absolute form of this Ghandi platitude of being the change wished to be seen rather than being merely all talk with a goodguy badge; as can be seen with an example of more recent exposure with a protest against the installation of a data center in Salem, MA featured a guillotine as a prop where it's mere performance, however in contrast these same people are of a political bend that tends to preach revolutionary ideals whilst simultaneously detesting and deeming the chanting to, "hang Mike Pence" and those who entered into the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021 as 'terrorists' or more popularly, "insurrectionists." All this to really say, put up or shut the fuck up and in the words of Mindless Self Indulgence:

"You think you're saying something relevant as you connect the dots

You never realized you have to get in line to suck a cock

You're telling me that fifty million screaming fans are never wrong?

I'm telling you that fifty million screaming fans are fucking morons!"

untitled ∞

One poem out of various I wrote with inspiration from the song Drugstore Perfume by Gerard Way. I read it aloud in this video here: 

Anyway as for the actual poem here it is written down. I did tweak it a bit since.

Displeased,

Disparaging covers

Cohesive struggles

Ungluing truthful discoveries

in lifted metaphors,

For every chapter of lived

suffering and satisfactory destitution;

To exist abound,

down and around out of town

Rainy-cover, dancing under clouds before dawn

Far beyond evening

Annoyances away with the day gone

Eating The Law: A Cannibals Guide to the Justice System by Claudia Berdella & ChicoryRed

Common perception sees the act of cannibalism as that of an extreme taboo, or absolute last resort option of obtaining sustenance in a survival scenario. Aside the completely natural history it has and be that as it may, with the exception of the state of Idaho there is no jurisdictional or federal prohibition against the act of cannibalism in the United States. Obviously where the practice would be foiled is in the methods of obtaining the meat to consume, even if it's consensually permitted; it amounts to murder, the desecration of a corpse or health hazard— even in the hypothetical case of a suicide where the cadaver is bequeathed with instructions/allowance is for such a purpose. That may be so, but there is still a way to do it legally in reality.

Extreme body modification is a world which exists within its own area of legal ambiguity. While it is not quite lawful in regards to certain practices, namely with acts like nullification— where a body part, typically an erogenous zone, is removed for aesthetic purposes— it isn't wholly illegal if done by a licensed medical professional. Typically done by the individual wishing to have the cosmetic adoption but not impossible to find a health official with such a proper expertise to do so.

In the instances of surgery which require the removal of a limb, it's not wholly out of the ordinary for the patient to be allowed to keep the severed ligature; though in that there is a lot of bureaucracy involved and it's easier to keep smaller appendages like a finger or toe. Sure, in regards to bodily alteration it's more dubious and then one may have to travel overseas to have the wished gone part hacked off, however then it's a customs dispute more than anything in taking it back to dish up given it's technically considered the transportation of biological matter. However, when back on home soil and with the removed ligature, there's as mentioned, no law that would prevent eating of it aside from personal discretion.

Spider-Man Brand New Day Review

As with much of the common sentiment seen online around discussion involving the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I have had a sort of fatigue by and large in its regard ever since the aftermath of Avengers Endgame, with some exception here and there. Sure, I saw the Thunderbolts movie in theaters twice, but that was for less than enjoyable reasoning and irrelevant to today. That said, last night on its second day of running I went to see the latest in its storylines: Spider-Man Brand New Day and found myself with some of the most enjoyment I've had with the superhero genre in years, and plan on seeing it one more time in theaters when I can.

The marketing team did a good job in concealing the actual plot, only showing snippets of scenes which occurred in really the only first half an hour to 45 minutes of the movie and by doing so subverting all expectations of what would happen; especially in regards to the actual character played by Stranger Things star Sadie Sink. In spite of what is probably already out there online, I won't spoil it either at it's part of the fun of going to see the movie and would ruin part of the allure and story which is absolutely worth the watch. As a continuation of the tale that began being spun in Captain America: Civil War, it serves as an excellent chapter in Tom Holland's variation of the web slinger.

With that end I only have a few gripes and one question with it all. Firstly with the character that Sadie Sink played it essentially took the same sort of story already presented in the Black Widow movie and succeeding Hawkeye one-season series on Disney+ as well as the aforementioned and continuing Thunderbolts movie. Secondly with the other gripe, the end post-credit scene shows Ned's Spidey-Tracker app showing the vigilante off-planet once again to seemingly hint at an upcoming Avengers movie, which would hypothetically just restart the whole cycle this movie decided to do away with and remove the more grass-roots Spider-Man being built. Then as for my question, if Ned's muscle-memory kicked in and rejuvenated his mind with their shared secret handshake then why did similar not work with MJ?