It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the wad of cash you put in the fight manager’s pocket so that he “accidentally” crushes an Ambien into the other dog’s morning chow.

Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight. The nuclear fallout will create cool mutations in your sheep.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. But only if a small group of rich people agree with them.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Other than natural disasters, war, famine, plague, asteroid impacts, rinderpest, gamma ray bursts, economic externalizations, Black Swan events, the hand of God, large groups of thoughtful committed people, small groups of thoughtless committed people, small groups of thoughtful uncommitted people, and alligators in the sewers, they’re the only thing that ever has.

Measure twice, cut once, cut once more, read instructions, curse, fling random tool on the garage floor, curse again as it is the exact next tool you needed, give up.

Good things come in small packages, which are then broken by mailmen trying to jam it into your mailbox instead of ringing at your door.

You’ll breed more flies with honey than with vinegar.

You miss all the shots you don’t take. The same cannot be said for the man on the grassy knoll.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Just so long as you never return from that absence.

Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes. You’re now a mile away from him, and you have his shoes.

The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Then Rupert Murdoch looks up and says “is the photo op over? No, seriously, can I go now? Babies are gross.”

It doesn’t take much rope for some people to hang themselves. “Overnight” is a 2003 documentary about someone who hung himself with six inches of empty air. Troy Duffy was a bartender in LA with a screenplay, and he received an opportunity that hardly ever happens to bartenders in LA with a screenplay – a major production and distribution deal from Harvey Weinstein. Thrilled, he immediately hired a couple of local filmmakers to make a documentary about his assured rise to fame and riches. They ended up capturing a Hindenburg disaster on film.

When aliens land and ask us for positive reasons why we shouldn’t be assimilated, I don’t there’ll be many fingers pointing at Troy Duffy. Arrogant, belligerent, with a tendency for insulting the big-name actors that he’s supposed to be schmoozing, he’s never made a movie before, and hasn’t even been to film school. He brags about showing up to production meetings hungover and wearing last night’s trousers. He has one talent: malapropism. “We’re a cesspool of creativity!” he exclaims. Elsewhere, he schools a naysayer: “Get used to my film career, ‘cuz it ain’t going anywhere.”

His boorish antics land him on Hollywood’s collective shit-list, and soon he receives a call from Weinstein. His film has been put into dreaded “turnaround” mode, halting production until a new deal can be negotiated. When a new offer to pick up the film emerges, its financing is very, very thin. And when the film is made, nobody wants to distribute it.

Another plot thread involves Duffy’s band, The Brood, who received a label deal to score the soundtrack to his film. His bandmates soon come to suspect that Duffy is not sharing his sudden windfall equally. At first Duffy says they don’t deserve a share of the royalties. Then, he moderates his position. “You do deserve it, but you’re not gonna get it.”

Things go from disaster to disaster, with Duffy’s family, co-producers, and bandmates going along for the ride (it’s not their first time dealing with this guy. You think they suspect there’ll be rubbernecking opportunities aplenty). As his projects steadily burn down, there’s endless scenes of Troy either partying or being a jackass. No doubt he fancies himself a work-hard-play-hard type, like Howard Hughes. But he hasn’t actually achieved anything yet. He’s like a runner who wants the champaign popped at the 900m line.

The documentary is fairly narrow in focus. We don’t see the critical moment where Duffy negotiates the film deal in the first place. And it doesn’t delve into the conspiracy theories about why Weinstein took a chance with Duffy, even if only for a figurative moment. It’s been speculated that he never planned to make Duffy’s film, that The Boondock Saints was destined for turnaround since day one, and it was just a PR stunt for his company. Yank a peasant out of the mud, and put a crown on his head. Then, when the cheering crowds are gone, quietly take it away. We don’t know if this is what happened. It’s certainly about as plausible as Weinstein trusting Duffy with millions of his dollars.

Ironically, Duffy’s film has proven to be massively popular on DVD. Unfortunately, he signed a contract that does not make him party to DVD profits.

“No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell.” – Antonin Artaud

“You are not the king of your brain. You are the creepy guy standing next to the king going “a most judicious choice, sire”.” – Stephen Kaas

“I could not take lightly the idea that people made love without me.” – Jean Genet

“That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.” – Charles Bukowski

“To increase desires to an unbearable level whilst making the fulfillment of them more and more inaccessible: this was the single principle upon which Western society was based.” – Michel Houellebecq

“I would like to write a Book which would drive men mad, which would be like an open door leading them where they would never have consented to go, in short, a door that opens onto reality.” – Antonin Artaud

“A woman should soften but not weaken a man.” ? Sigmund Freud

“Do not, do not, do not books for ever hammer at people like perpetual bells? When, between two books, silent sky appears: be glad” – Rainer Maria Rilke

[on theater] “The actor is both an element of first importance, since it is upon the effectiveness of his work that the success of the spectacle depends, and a kind of passive and neutral element, since he is rigorously denied all personal initiative.” – Antonin Artaud

“Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.” – Albert Camus

“Far from being the smartest possible biological species, we are probably better thought of as the stupidest possible biological species capable of starting a technological civilization – a niche we filled because we got there first, not because we are in any sense optimally adapted to it.” – Nick Bostrom

“Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness. Unfortunately the happiness is there. There is always the chance (about eight hundred and fifty to one) that another heart will come to mine. I can’t help hoping, and keeping faith, and loving beauty. Quite frequently I am not so miserable as it would be wise to be.” – T.H. White