Showing posts with label Jason Bourne. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jason Bourne. Show all posts
Saturday, August 01, 2015
Bourne Movies Better Than Rogue Nation
"They Don't Do Random"
Bourne is more of a tortured soul: that whole amnesia thing.
He seems to seek more close contact with the agency and stay in total confidence that he will have the upper hand, which means he knows the agency inside out, knows their every move.
Bourne has been biologically enhanced: that leads to more intense action sequences, some of the best ones are when he grabs whatever he can get hold of -- a pen? -- and uses them to devastating effects. Closed space action sequences are some of the best I have seen in movies.
You feel greater sympathy for Bourne than you do for Ethan. Ethan feels like a movie star, a Bond. Bourne could use a hug.
Bourne's challenge to the agency is total. Victory is when he finally humanizes himself.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Enemy Of The State
After I put this out and my lawyer submitted printed versions, a few things happened.
Questions Prepared By My Lawyer For Immigration Court Date Tomorrow
Immigration Court Date: June 6, 2011: Prepared Statement
One, my immigration court date got postponed, for now looks like indefinitely.
Two, two black guys claiming to be Hispanics from the Bronx met me at a tech event the final Monday of Internet Week. (Internet Week: Final Day: June 13) They had identical, give-away short hair cuts. The one who talked gave a false name and an email address that bounced. For someone claiming to be a political worker in the Bronx he knew too many details about me. I asked if he knew so and so in the Bronx, he said no. The talk first started gentle. He is like you Obama people really did good raising 10 dollars and so on and so forth. Then he started getting hostile. I felt like he was recording the conversation. It is like when I was in the thick of a political revolution in Nepal in 2006 and some agent showed up in my Yahoo Messenger: I am a Muslim boy, 16 years old, want to come to New York. You can tell when it is a professional or when it is just some stranger.
So this guy is like, you could not have done what you did if you were in NYC. I said that is correct. If I had been in Kathmandu or even Delhi, I could not have done the political work I did for Nepal.
Then he is like, the Indian intelligence agencies are watching your every move. He insinuated I might be sending funds to armed Madhesi groups.
I was about to say, "Tell your boss, I am smarter than him. He is going to stop misbehaving or I am asking for a name and a badge number. This harassment is going to have to stop."
But this is what I said for the benefit of his recording device.
"My mother's cousin was Education Minister for Bihar, the second most populous state in India. There was this guy Laloo who was Chief Minister at the time. Well, a few years back Laloo was Education Minister for all of India."
"My phone company always knows where I am at." You don't fucking need no Indian intelligence agency to follow my moves. It is not even rocket science. Just read my blogs. Give me some page hits.
This reminded me of May 2008. When they picked me up their first insinuation was I might blow up a tunnel. The motherfuckers would say something like that fully knowing there is not an ounce of truth to something like that. The only people more disrespectful of the 3,000 victims of 9/11 than the Al Qaeda are law enforcement people who would do something like that. And now this dude is like we think you are funding armed groups. Motherfucker, I am funding armed groups?
You see that thing before you? The potentially biggest political tsunami in world history that is unfolding before your very fucking eyes, I just so happen to be the top political authority on the topic on the planet, and I look to you like I am funding armed groups? I looked to you like I might blow up a tunnel?
Racist people in Kentucky, racist white people, would do the same thing. They would front a black guy to do their racist bidding. There is a term for that: institutional racism.
Rangel is not in the picture. So who is doing this? The orchestrations against me when inside were too precise for it to even be the work of a committee. Maybe there is one faceless bad apple sitting somewhere in the ranks.
The guy is like, so your hero is Malcolm X? No, motherfucker, my hero is Larry Ellison, I am a tech entrepreneur, I just so happen to be extremely good at this politics thing. Malcolm X never masterminded a nonviolent democracy movement for 30 million people.
Paradigm Shifts And Challenged Assumptions
Three, I was followed when I was taking pictures around Williamsburg. (Hello Williamsburg) I was taking pictures with the same camera that made Barack Obama president.
The First Time I Heard The Obama Name
The haircut gives it away. This clean cut white guy with a dog that just did not look like belonged in a home, it sniffed me with too much care, a trained dog. So I snap a picture.
"Were you taking a picture of the pole?"
The guy is like, you saw me, you got scared, and you nervously took a picture of that pole?
I laughed.
"No. Oh no. I was taking pictures of the Empire State Building" in the distance.
"Hey there doggie," I said to the dog, gently touched.
I turn the corner, walk the block, and they have to plant a black guy again. Will I please take five pictures of him standing against this wall?
Read: we got you sniffed, and we tried to scare you, but you did not get scared, and because there is a black guy in the White House, we think you are clean, you just like to take many, may pictures, and we think that's okay, no, we don't think you are a terrorist.
I go near the water. No van on my way there. But a police van on my way back. A dog barks inside. I make a point to stand right in front of the van and snap a picture of a graffiti on the wall.
I walk three blocks. The van comes by. I meet eyes. The van moves on green. It felt like when Jason Bourne is followed in the streets right before this scene.
I don't do physical, assholes. I do nonviolent militancy on behalf of movements for democracy in the Global South. That is my specialty. Let me be. And, by the way, if a few pages bothered you let me inform you, I have 200 pages that will be published down the line.
I have not been bothered since. And that's a good thing.
My final scare idea from them in 2008 was this Hispanic druglord who had served seven years already in a federal facility. The guy banged on the glass window and threatened to kill the guards. They had me sit next to him on the bus ride to Alabama.
In Alabama I'd buy icecream and I would eat most of it, and I would hand it over to him, and he would finish it up.
I single handedly stopped a fight between this dude and this other black dude. All I did was talked. Something similar in a next door dorm had ended up with use of tear gas shells.
I do political. I do tech. That is what I do. Calm the fuck down.
Arrington, Calm The F____ Down
Doubling Down On Tech Consulting
Using Political Contacts To Beat The Immigration Beast
Monday, August 02, 2010
Obama, Reshma
I did not make phone calls for Barack. That is a remarkable thing to say from a guy who was one of Barack's earliest, staunchest supporters in the city, perhaps the country.
I made no phone calls for Barack. Well, not entirely true. Once when they opened up the downtown Manhattan office, I went for a show of support and to get to know the new guy Rudy. And Obama's sister Maya was to show; she gave me the look one Indian gives to another, her name is Indian. (Maya Soetoro-Ng) After she left, and we were just lingering around someone suggested I make phone calls, so I went through the motions for half an hour. People were watching. Then I said how it had been a wonderful experience and I left.
I absolutely refused to sit on committees. I absolutely stayed away from event planning. The primary thing I was doing was I was sucking all emerging details of Obama 08 nationally like a sponge. I was mentally preparing myself to inject in at the pivot points, which I did a few times. I was doing strategic thinking.
Obama 08 was personal therapy. If you had gone to the high school I went to, if you went to the college I went to, you wanted the personal therapy that was Obama 08. I was doing it as much for me as I was for Barack.
I underestimated Barack's positivity message until he started winning race after race after race and I then declared myself a student of his new kind of politics.
I use movie metaphors a lot. It is because my mind works visually. Somebody once asked me, if you speak so many languages, which is the language you think in? I was perplexed. I don't think in languages.
I identify with the Jason Bourne character. In his case, there is amnesia. That is not true for me. But I have had to drop two major institutions from my life like stones into sea water. He kept the skills, the knowledge, but lost memory. He became an operative. There is a one man army element to his ways that I relate to. I am an extremely political person who is not a politician. I can not be a politician. I don't think I much want to either.
Finally I thought I had found a landmass that I could claim: New York City. But the worst experience of my life happened here. I still feel a little disoriented from that experience, emotionally. Charlie Rangel was personally involved in my mess. That made a senior white police officer so happy he declared a "ceasefire" in Harlem for a day. These people never expected to see me ever again, one way or the other. And yet here I am. Africans at college used to ask me jokingly, "You are not black, you are not white, what are you?" Rangel asked the same question, but in a sinister way. I have always thought of Rangel as a third rate political mind, but never underestimate the ferocity of the dumb people.
There is this scene in my favorite movie Heat. The Al Pacino character says he can't share his experiences of witnessing a crime scene, because he needs to preserve that angst, because that keeps him sharp where he needs to be. Someone like me tries to burn the bad experiences in life like it were fuel. You try to burn those memories to try and further sharpen your instincts. But even Jason Bourne tried so hard to reclaim his humanity, and I am no Jason Bourne, I just like the Bourne movies. I have watched them countless times.
What hurts, hurts.
I have thought in terms of getting some counseling, but I have not been excited about the idea. A counselor is not going to have the vocabulary. I am going to have to teach him a new language before he could talk to me. That is not an enticing thought. I have tried writing. It helps, just a little. But not much. I think I might talk.
It is like I have four or five bullet wounds on my left arm. The bullets are still there. The only solace is I know the bullets, I know when I got hit, I have almost a picture perfect memory of getting hit, as if I can replay the movies in slow motion.
1989 was a departure point. 1997 was a departure point. 2008 was a departure point. There have been smaller departure points in between. They stand out like bullets. They sting still. The six months from June to November 2008 were horror. The thing that I had always valued the most, the thing for which I took some major career hits when not exactly having other rosy options, my freedom, they took it away. It was the most unimagined experience, the most unexpected. Before that Nepal was a political laboratory to me, after that America has been a political laboratory to me.
I spend enormous amounts of time online. I think I am searching for a country.
The anti-India sentiment in Kathmandu is too strong, it did not give me space to claim my Indian identity. The British college counselor asked another Britisher in my presence: "Don't you miss it when we used to rule over India?"
Some day I would like to colonize Britain. And Uganda too. Isn't that where Rangel is from?
I have always wanted to become a member of the Indian community in this country, but so far I have not known how. In Richmond, KY, you saw an Indian across the street, and you waved, and they waved back. I tried the same thing in Philly where I was for summer of 1999, and Indians would look at me weird. Do we know each other?
A poet can look at the same leaf and come up with a different thought. When I was gungho about my startup that the Rangel crowd robbed me of, I had started to think, Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard, I never went to Harvard. That makes me one better in the out of the box thinking department. I was thinking of Obama 08 as my personal therapy. Instead it got me cooked, quite literally.
I made very, very few phone calls for Barack. I knocked on extremely few doors for Barack. I got caught, and so I had to do it. As long as the phone calls are being made, and the doors are being knocked upon, I don't have to be the one doing it. That was my attitude.
I have knocked on hundreds of doors for Reshma. I have made hundreds of phone calls for Reshma. The news is not that I have made more phone calls for Reshma than for Obama. The real news is that I have made more phone calls for Reshma than the total number of phone calls I have made in my entire life before that, period. I have not been much of a phone person. For the longest time I did not have a phone. You could also argue for the longest time I have not owned a plane. I have made very few air trips. My first air trip once in America was during the June-November 2008 period; I got reminded I like the views at ground level so much better. Even today I don't have much of a phone. It is a prepaid that has four minutes on it. People will be like, I called you earlier. I am sure you did. I am sure the phone was ringing on my desk. In case you have not noticed, I don't carry my desk around with me. I am a big screen web guy.
I am going to take those bullets out like Rambo. I have to do it myself. They can't stay there forever, festering.
So yesterday I am at the Reshma 2010 headquarters, and a few hours into the show Reshma gets up, walks around and asks the crowd, "Does anyone want coffee?" Next thing you know the entire place has emptied out. I ask the last person out, what's going on? He says, oh, we are all going for coffee. That is the Reshma charisma for you. I did not like the eery silence in the aftermath. But I kept making call after call, because when in motion, I don't feel the pain. When I am calling, when I am blogging, when I am surfing the web, when I am walking, when I am riding the train, I don't feel the pain. It is not even pain most of the time. It is like this lingering bad smell that sometimes give you the headache. You look for the exit and you are out. You get into motion.
I remain someone in pain. I have to figure out a way to work my way through it. My preferred method would be to try and burn all that pain for fuel. But I am not sure that is entirely possible.
I made no phone calls for Barack. Well, not entirely true. Once when they opened up the downtown Manhattan office, I went for a show of support and to get to know the new guy Rudy. And Obama's sister Maya was to show; she gave me the look one Indian gives to another, her name is Indian. (Maya Soetoro-Ng) After she left, and we were just lingering around someone suggested I make phone calls, so I went through the motions for half an hour. People were watching. Then I said how it had been a wonderful experience and I left.
I absolutely refused to sit on committees. I absolutely stayed away from event planning. The primary thing I was doing was I was sucking all emerging details of Obama 08 nationally like a sponge. I was mentally preparing myself to inject in at the pivot points, which I did a few times. I was doing strategic thinking.
Obama 08 was personal therapy. If you had gone to the high school I went to, if you went to the college I went to, you wanted the personal therapy that was Obama 08. I was doing it as much for me as I was for Barack.
I underestimated Barack's positivity message until he started winning race after race after race and I then declared myself a student of his new kind of politics.
I use movie metaphors a lot. It is because my mind works visually. Somebody once asked me, if you speak so many languages, which is the language you think in? I was perplexed. I don't think in languages.
I identify with the Jason Bourne character. In his case, there is amnesia. That is not true for me. But I have had to drop two major institutions from my life like stones into sea water. He kept the skills, the knowledge, but lost memory. He became an operative. There is a one man army element to his ways that I relate to. I am an extremely political person who is not a politician. I can not be a politician. I don't think I much want to either.
Finally I thought I had found a landmass that I could claim: New York City. But the worst experience of my life happened here. I still feel a little disoriented from that experience, emotionally. Charlie Rangel was personally involved in my mess. That made a senior white police officer so happy he declared a "ceasefire" in Harlem for a day. These people never expected to see me ever again, one way or the other. And yet here I am. Africans at college used to ask me jokingly, "You are not black, you are not white, what are you?" Rangel asked the same question, but in a sinister way. I have always thought of Rangel as a third rate political mind, but never underestimate the ferocity of the dumb people.
There is this scene in my favorite movie Heat. The Al Pacino character says he can't share his experiences of witnessing a crime scene, because he needs to preserve that angst, because that keeps him sharp where he needs to be. Someone like me tries to burn the bad experiences in life like it were fuel. You try to burn those memories to try and further sharpen your instincts. But even Jason Bourne tried so hard to reclaim his humanity, and I am no Jason Bourne, I just like the Bourne movies. I have watched them countless times.
What hurts, hurts.
I have thought in terms of getting some counseling, but I have not been excited about the idea. A counselor is not going to have the vocabulary. I am going to have to teach him a new language before he could talk to me. That is not an enticing thought. I have tried writing. It helps, just a little. But not much. I think I might talk.
It is like I have four or five bullet wounds on my left arm. The bullets are still there. The only solace is I know the bullets, I know when I got hit, I have almost a picture perfect memory of getting hit, as if I can replay the movies in slow motion.
1989 was a departure point. 1997 was a departure point. 2008 was a departure point. There have been smaller departure points in between. They stand out like bullets. They sting still. The six months from June to November 2008 were horror. The thing that I had always valued the most, the thing for which I took some major career hits when not exactly having other rosy options, my freedom, they took it away. It was the most unimagined experience, the most unexpected. Before that Nepal was a political laboratory to me, after that America has been a political laboratory to me.
I spend enormous amounts of time online. I think I am searching for a country.
The anti-India sentiment in Kathmandu is too strong, it did not give me space to claim my Indian identity. The British college counselor asked another Britisher in my presence: "Don't you miss it when we used to rule over India?"
Some day I would like to colonize Britain. And Uganda too. Isn't that where Rangel is from?
I have always wanted to become a member of the Indian community in this country, but so far I have not known how. In Richmond, KY, you saw an Indian across the street, and you waved, and they waved back. I tried the same thing in Philly where I was for summer of 1999, and Indians would look at me weird. Do we know each other?
A poet can look at the same leaf and come up with a different thought. When I was gungho about my startup that the Rangel crowd robbed me of, I had started to think, Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard, I never went to Harvard. That makes me one better in the out of the box thinking department. I was thinking of Obama 08 as my personal therapy. Instead it got me cooked, quite literally.
I made very, very few phone calls for Barack. I knocked on extremely few doors for Barack. I got caught, and so I had to do it. As long as the phone calls are being made, and the doors are being knocked upon, I don't have to be the one doing it. That was my attitude.
I have knocked on hundreds of doors for Reshma. I have made hundreds of phone calls for Reshma. The news is not that I have made more phone calls for Reshma than for Obama. The real news is that I have made more phone calls for Reshma than the total number of phone calls I have made in my entire life before that, period. I have not been much of a phone person. For the longest time I did not have a phone. You could also argue for the longest time I have not owned a plane. I have made very few air trips. My first air trip once in America was during the June-November 2008 period; I got reminded I like the views at ground level so much better. Even today I don't have much of a phone. It is a prepaid that has four minutes on it. People will be like, I called you earlier. I am sure you did. I am sure the phone was ringing on my desk. In case you have not noticed, I don't carry my desk around with me. I am a big screen web guy.
I am going to take those bullets out like Rambo. I have to do it myself. They can't stay there forever, festering.
So yesterday I am at the Reshma 2010 headquarters, and a few hours into the show Reshma gets up, walks around and asks the crowd, "Does anyone want coffee?" Next thing you know the entire place has emptied out. I ask the last person out, what's going on? He says, oh, we are all going for coffee. That is the Reshma charisma for you. I did not like the eery silence in the aftermath. But I kept making call after call, because when in motion, I don't feel the pain. When I am calling, when I am blogging, when I am surfing the web, when I am walking, when I am riding the train, I don't feel the pain. It is not even pain most of the time. It is like this lingering bad smell that sometimes give you the headache. You look for the exit and you are out. You get into motion.
I remain someone in pain. I have to figure out a way to work my way through it. My preferred method would be to try and burn all that pain for fuel. But I am not sure that is entirely possible.
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